Echoes of Us (27 page)

Someone pounded on the door. I didn’t doubt they’d break it down before long. If Lyle went first, he had a better chance of escaping the house before the guards came in. But if he went first, and he fell—there’d be no one to catch him.

I said, and that settled it.

Lyle hovered nervously as I edged out of the window. The fire behind us grew, spreading. We barely saw the door through the flames. Even if the officers broke through, they’d have quite an obstacle in the way.

We’d
have quite an obstacle in the way if we didn’t get out of here fast enough.

Addie gasped as I reached for the drainage pipe. Our feet almost slipped on the sill. I retracted our arm. Looked at Lyle, who stared back at us. We could barely reach the pipe. How was he going to do it?

It was too late to go back now. I took a deep breath. Wrapped our fingers around the pipe and swung our foot out, scrabbling for purchase against the wall.

Addie whispered.

So I did. I launched out of the window and clutched at the drainage pipe and slid down—
down
—down until we struck the ground. Fell. Rolled through the damp grass.

I gasped for breath. Picked ourself up. Lyle was leaning out the window. I didn’t dare shout, but I waved up at him. He put his foot against the windowsill, as I’d done, but hesitated.

Something inside the house banged. Lyle twisted around. When he turned back to us, the terror on his face told us everything we needed to know.

I forgot trying to keep quiet. I screamed at him, “Jump!”

Still, he hesitated. He looked behind him again.

“Jump
,
Lyle
—
”

He jumped—

Fell toward us, flying limbs and terror, and we caught him—we sort of caught him—we broke his fall. We sprawled against the lawn, the breath knocked from our lungs. Lyle was on his feet first. He pulled us up, too.

“Come on,” he gasped. “Come on, Eva—”

We ran into the darkness, past the fire trucks when they came with their wailing sirens, past the crowd of people gathering outside, staring.

We ran until there was silence in the world again, and it enveloped us completely.

L
yle stuck close as we crept through the darkness. Soon, we were downtown, sneaking through the ghost-town streets until we found an abandoned-looking pay phone.

“Keep watch for me,” I whispered, and Lyle nodded.

I called the new satellite-phone number. Then held our breath as the phone rang. Once. Twice. Thrice—

“Hello?” Ryan’s voice was raspy with sleep. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. He must have answered the phone on instinct, because when he spoke again, his voice had sharpened, like he’d jolted more awake. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I whispered.

“Eva?” Confusion warred with concern in the two syllables of my name. “Where are you?”

“I’m near the Capitol,” I said. “I—”

I cut off. Because right then, something started glowing bright red in the darkness of the booth.

Addie said.

I stared at it. The light came from under the band—what had Marion said? The light would glow red when the memory was full.

Addie whispered as she realized, too.

We’d taken footage of the vigil. We’d never turned the ring off again.

The raid at the Capitol mall. The car ride to Jenson’s house. Jenson’s words.

Addie and I had all of it.

“Eva?” Ryan’s voice broke through my shock. We heard him getting out of bed, the springs creaking. “Are you all right? What’s going on? Are you at the vigil?”

“I came with Lyle—and Hally. I’ve got Lyle with me, but I don’t know where Hally is. We’re—we’re on Willis Avenue, right before it hits Jamerson.”

“Wait right there,” he said. “We’re coming right now.”

Lyle was falling asleep by the time the cars arrived, lulled by exhaustion and the cold air. I’d tried to get him to huddle in the phone booth itself, where it was a little warmer, but he wanted to be where we were, so we ended up sitting by a patch of trees nearby, his head on our shoulder.

I didn’t recognize the cars at first. I shook Lyle awake and was ready to make a run for it when the first car slowed to a stop and Dad stepped out, along with Ryan. The other vehicle never killed its engine, the low growl muffling Ryan’s footsteps as he ran for us.

“We’re fine,” I said quickly, reaching for him, letting him obliterate the rest of the world for just a moment with the way his arms wrapped around us.

I didn’t say anything about Jenson. Not yet. Once I started talking, there would be too much to say. Too much to explain. Better that for now, he simply thought we’d managed to escape the police.

“Where’s Hally?” he said, but from the tightness of the words, he already knew my answer.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Let’s not hang around,” Dad said. He came over and awkwardly squeezed Addie and me on the shoulder.

Ryan spun to face him. “We can’t head back without my sister.” There was a cold certainty to him. Worry about Hally and Lissa had always been one of the few things to drive him to both fire and ice.

“It’s a bad night to be roaming the streets,” Dad said quietly. “If Hally is still out there, she can lie low for a while. As long as the government isn’t already on the lookout for her . . . You can’t tell a hybrid by sight.”

“But she isn’t just hybrid, is she? You
can
pick her out of a crowd, just by looking.” Ryan’s voice had gotten too loud. He capped it with effort, his throat jumping. His eyes swung back to Addie and me. When he spoke again, the words were quiet. “We have two cars. You take one and head back with Eva and Lyle. I’ll stay with the others and keep looking. We’ve already picked up two people from the vigil. There may be more.”

“No—” I started to say, but Ryan leaned toward us. Whispered so softly in our ear I could barely catch it—
“Your family’s frantic about you, Eva. Go with them.”

Addie said quietly.

It all made sense. But sense could be a hard thing to obey.

“Later,” Ryan said. It was both a promise and a request. He kissed us on the cheek, just briefly. A moment of warmth in a frigid night. “I’ll find Hally and Lissa. We’ll meet you back at the house.”

“Can we get something to eat?” Lyle murmured from the backseat once we’d pulled away from the curb.

Dad promised him that there would be food once we got back to the house, and Lyle fell properly asleep soon after. Then it was just Addie and me and Dad, flying along the highway, the moon a sliver in the sky.

Addie whispered

I hesitated and turned toward the window.

Addie was quiet, and I almost apologized for bringing up such a silly, inconsequential thing. But by then, we were both lost in the idea of it. In this darkness, we could almost pretend it was half a year ago, and Dad had flown out to Nornand and demanded we be returned home. How had he put it?
I’ll fly right up there and kidnap you from under their noses.

Funny, how I remembered the exact words after so long. Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t strange at all to remember promises one’s father made, and didn’t keep.

But that wasn’t fair, perhaps, to think. People made decisions as best they could. Sometimes, it seemed like there wasn’t any other choice. Or that there were only bad ones, and choosing the lesser of two evils was the best anyone could do.

I’d made choices myself I wished I hadn’t.

“I’m Eva,” I said suddenly. Dad’s eyes shifted from the road to our face. I struggled not to look away. “I—I don’t know if you heard, when Ryan said—I mean, I just wanted you to be sure. In case you weren’t.”

Dad was quiet a long while. He’d gone back to watching the road.

“You were always more stubborn than Addie,” he said finally. He turned to us again and smiled. “You liked to take risks. Liked to climb trees and go camping and look over the edge of cliffs like you didn’t know you could fall.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if you’re still like that.”

For a moment, I was too afraid to speak. Frightened that if I did, our voice might shudder, or crack. But I found it in me to keep it steady, and I said, “I guess I am.”

I looked up, out the window. “Pyxis,” I said softly. And there it was, faint but visible in the night sky.

“The mariner’s compass,” Dad said. He laughed a little. “Do you remember? When you and Addie were little, you guys used to say it looked nothing like a compass. You said it should have been called the telescope. What captains looked through when they were at sea, so they could see the shore.”

It seemed like half the house was awake by the time we got back, many huddled in front of the television in various states of dress. Eyes were bleary. Hair wild and crumpled. Some nursed cups of coffee. Outside the windows, the horizon held the glimmerings of dawn.

The news on the TV was much the same as what Addie and I had heard at Jenson’s house. The president had been killed. Investigations were still under way. More information would be released soon.

I said as we slowly joined the others in the living room.

Addie said.

Addie said.

Marion was, of course, among the ones awake. We left Dad and Lyle’s side to reach her, our hand in our pocket where the ring was cool to the touch. The news anchor had just started to talk about the inauguration of the vice president, Carson Loyde.

Hybrids hadn’t officially been blamed yet for the initial attack, but I figured it was only a matter of time before Jenson spun his story.

Meanwhile, we had our own.

“We need,” I said, quietly, to Marion, “to make one more broadcast.”

Marion couldn’t extract the video from the ring here. She needed special equipment. But we didn’t have time to waste. Addie and I wanted this footage broadcasted before the government officially pinned the presidential assassination on hybrids.

I said.

Marion’s contact at the news station, the one who’d been hacking the system to broadcast our footage, would have everything necessary to retrieve the ring’s footage. We decided, in the end, to just trust him to piece everything together. Sending the ring by post would take too long. Someone would need to drive there and deliver it directly.

But first, there was something we needed to add to the video.

Marion set up a camera in the dining room. I waited as she fiddled with the camera settings. Our parents stood near the back wall, silent and watching. Jackson hovered near us at the table, but Marion shooed him out of the way so she could pin a microphone to our shirt.

There was an air of command about her I hadn’t noticed before. A kind of casual assurance and precision in her motions.

Finally, she grew still, calling for quiet.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she said and smiled at us with real encouragement.

I swallowed. Addie and I stared straight into the camera’s cold eye, but I tried to picture in my mind the footage we would be broadcasting before this segment—the beauty, then terror, of the vigil. The hysterical attempt to beat the flames from Lyle’s clothes. The ride to Jenson’s home.

Then we’d cut to the jump out the window and our escape.

The gap in the footage was intentional.

We’d end in this room. With this recording of Addie and me.

Addie said softly.

So I did.

I didn’t call him out by name. Didn’t crush him like I could have, if I’d wanted to.

Just said, steadily, for the camera—for Jenson—for the entire country to hear: “I have the rest of the footage. The part missing in the middle. But I won’t show it. Not for now. Not when we can talk.”

We stared into the cold camera lens until Marion nodded. She switched the camera off. “We’ll just put this along with the ring. If we can get someone to leave soon, they’ll have it delivered by this evening.”

The dining-room door opened. “I’ll take it,” a voice said.

It was Logan. He had a nasty cut on the side of his face, but it had mostly stopped bleeding. Behind him came Ryan.

I found ourself standing. Ready to ask—

But then we saw his face, and I didn’t need to ask.

He hadn’t found Hally and Lissa.

The footage broadcasted the next morning, Christmas Day, in the middle of a rerun of Carson Loyde’s first address to the American public as president. This time, Marion had been warned, and we were all gathered in front of the television, waiting.

As vice president, Loyde’s face and presence hadn’t been as ubiquitous as that of the president, but we’d been exposed to it all our lives. When I saw him, I hardly saw a person. I saw the pages in our history books, where pictures of him as a young man filled the chapters about the campaign he’d shared with the last president. I saw all the early mornings before school when parts of his speeches would play on the morning news, and the dinners where his voice murmured in the background.

He was younger than the previous president. Maybe sixty, maybe a year or two under. I couldn’t remember. His hair wasn’t yet all the way gray. There was a slow deliberateness to the way he moved on the screen, the way he spoke.