Requiem

Lena

By the time I make it onto Forest Avenue, the sound of the fighting has faded, swallowed by the shrill cries of the alarms. Every so often I see a hand twitching at a curtain, a fishbowl-eye peering down at me and then vanishing just as quickly. Everyone is staying locked up and locked in.

I keep my head down, moving as quickly as I can despite the throbbing in my ankle where I landed on it wrong, listening for sounds of squads and patrols. There’s no way I’ll be mistaken for anything but an Invalid: I’m filthy, wearing old, mud-splattered clothes, and my ear is still streaked with blood. Amazingly, there’s no one on the streets. Security forces must have been diverted elsewhere. This is, after all, the poorer part of town; no doubt the city doesn’t feel these people need protection.

A path and a road for everyone . . . and for some, a path straight into the ground.

I make it to Cumberland without problems. As soon as I step onto my old block, I feel for a moment as though I’m caught in a still life from the past. It seems forever ago that I used to turn down this block on my way home from school; that I used to stretch here after my runs, placing one leg on top of the bus-stop bench; that I would watch Jenny and the other kids playing kick the can, and open up the fire hydrants for them when it got hot in the summer.

It was a lifetime ago. I’m a different Lena now.

The street, too, looks different—saggier, as though an invisible black hole is spiraling the whole block slowly down into itself. Even before I reach the gate in front of number 237, I know that the house will be empty. The certainty is lodged like a hard weight between my lungs. But I still stand stupidly in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up at the now-abandoned building—my home, my old house, the little bedroom on the top floor, the smells of soap and laundry and cooked tomato—taking in the peeling paint and the rotting porch steps, the boarded-up windows, the faded red X spray-painted on the door, marking the house as condemned.

I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. Aunt Carol was always so proud of the house. She wouldn’t let a single season go by without repainting, cleaning out the gutters, scrubbing the porch.

Then the grief is replaced by panic. Where did they go?

What happened to Grace?

In the distance, the foghorn bellows, sounding like a funeral song. I start, and recall suddenly where I am: in a foreign, hostile city. It is no longer my place; I am not welcome here. The foghorn blows a second, and then a third time. The signal means that all three bombs have been successfully dropped; that gives us an hour until they blow and all hell breaks loose.

That gives me only an hour to find her—and I have no idea where to begin.

A window bangs shut behind me. I turn just in time to see a white-moon worried face—looks like Mrs. Hendrickson—disappear from view. One thing is obvious: I need to move.

I duck my head and continue hurriedly down the road, turning as soon as I see a narrow alley between buildings. I’m moving blindly now, hoping that my feet will carry me in the right direction. Grace, Grace, Grace. I pray that she might somehow hear me.

Blindly: across Mellen, toward yet another alley, a black gaping mouth, a place of sideways shadows to conceal me. Grace, where are you? In my head, I’m screaming it—screaming so loudly it swallows up everything else and whites out the sound of the approaching car.

And then, out of nowhere, it’s there: the engine ticking and panting, the window reflecting light in my eyes, blinding me, the squealing wheels as the driver tries to stop. Then pain, and a sensation of tumbling—I think I’m going to die; I see the sky revolving above me, I see Alex’s face, smiling—and then I feel the hard bite of pavement underneath me. The air gets knocked out of me and I roll over onto my back, my lungs stuttering, fighting for air.

For a confused moment, watching the blue sky above me, strung taut and high between the roofs of the buildings, I forget where I am. I feel like I’m floating, drifting across a surface of blue water. All I know is I’m not dead. My body is still mine: I twitch my hands and flex my feet just to be sure. Miraculously, I managed to avoid hitting my head.

Doors slam. Voices are shouting. I remember that I need to move—I need to get to my feet. Grace. But before I can do anything, hands grab me roughly by the arms, haul me to my feet. Everything is coming to me in flashes. Dark black suits. Guns. Mean faces.

Very bad.

Instinct takes over, and I begin twisting and kicking. I bite down on the hand of the guard who is gripping me, but he doesn’t release me, and another guard steps forward and slaps me in the face. The blow stings and sends a fiery explosion across my vision. I spit blindly at him. Another guard—there are three of them—aims his gun at my head. His eyes are as black and cold as cut stone, full of not hatred—cureds don’t hate, cureds don’t hate and they don’t care, either—but disgust, as though I am a particularly disgusting brand of insect, and I know then that I will die.

I’m sorry, Alex. And Julian, too. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Grace.

I close my eyes.

“Wait!”

I open my eyes. A girl is emerging from the backseat.

She is dressed in the white muslin of a new bride. Her hair is elaborately knotted and curled around her head, and her procedural scar has been highlighted with makeup, so it looks like a little colored star just beneath her left ear. She is beautiful; she looks just like the paintings of angels we used to see in church.

Then her eyes land on me, and my stomach wrenches. The ground opens underneath me. I can hardly trust myself to stand.

“Lena,” she says calmly. It is more of an announcement than a greeting.

I can’t bring myself to speak. I can’t say her name, even though it screams, echoing, through my head.

Hana.

“Where are we going?”

Hana turns toward me. These are the first words I have managed to say to her. For a second she registers surprise, and something else, too. Pleasure? It’s hard to tell. Her expressions are different, and I can’t read her face anymore.

“My house,” she says after a brief pause.

I could laugh out loud. She’s so ridiculously calm; she could be inviting me over to surf LAMM for music, or curl up on her couch and watch a movie.

“You’re not going to turn me in?” My voice is sarcastic. I know she’s going to turn me in; I knew it the moment I saw the scar, saw the flatness behind her eyes, like a pool that has lost all its depth.

Either she doesn’t detect the challenge or she chooses to ignore it. “I will,” she says simply. “But not yet.” An expression flickers across her face—a momentary uncertainty—and she seems about to say something else. Instead she turns back to the window, chewing her lower lip.

That bothers me, the lip-chewing. It is a break in her surface of calm, a ripple I didn’t expect. It’s the old Hana peeking out of this shiny new version, and it makes my stomach cramp again. I’m overwhelmed by the momentary urge to throw my arms around her, to inhale her smell—two dabs of vanilla at the elbows, and jasmine on her neck—to tell her how much I’ve missed her.

Just in time, she catches me staring at her and presses her mouth firmly into a line. And I remind myself that the old Hana is gone. She probably doesn’t even smell the same. She hasn’t asked me a single question about what has happened to me, where I’ve been, how I came to be in Portland, streaked with blood and wearing dirt-encrusted clothing. She has barely looked at me at all, and when she does, it is with a vague, detached curiosity, as though I’m a strange animal species in a zoo.

I’m expecting us to turn toward West End, but instead we head off-peninsula. Hana must have moved. The houses here are even larger and statelier than in her old neighborhood. I don’t know why I’m surprised. That is one thing I have learned during my time with the resistance. The cure is about control. It’s about structure. And the rich get richer and richer, while the poor get squeezed into narrow alleys and cramped apartments, and told they are being protected, and promised they will be rewarded in heaven for obedience. Servitude is called safety.

We turn onto a street lined with ancient-looking maple trees, whose branches embrace overhead to form a canopy. A street sign flashes by: Essex Street. My stomach gives another violent twist. 88 Essex Street is where Pippa has planted the bomb. How long has it been since the foghorn blew? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

Sweat is pooling under my arms. I scan the mailboxes as we pass. One of these homes—one of these glorious white houses, crowned like cakes with latticework and cupolas, ringed with wide white porches and set back from the street on vivid green lawns—is going to blow in less than an hour.

The car slows to a stop in front of ornate iron gates. The driver leans out his window to punch a code into a keypad, and the gates whir smoothly open. It reminds me of Julian’s old house in New York City, and amazes me still: all this power, all this energy flowing and pumping to a handful of people.

Hana is still staring impassively out the window, and I have the sudden urge to reach out and drive my fist through her image as it is reflected there. She has no idea what the rest of the world is like. She has never seen hardship or been without food, without heat or comfort. I’m amazed that she could ever have been my best friend. We were always living in two separate worlds; I was just stupid enough to believe it didn’t matter.

Towering hedges surround the car on both sides, flanking a short drive that leads to another monstrous house. It is larger than any we have seen thus far. An iron number is nailed above the front door.

88.

For an instant, my vision goes black. I blink. But the number is still there.

88 Essex Street. The bomb is here. Sweat tickles my lower back. It doesn’t make any sense; the other bombs are planted downtown, in municipal buildings, like they were last year.

“You live here?” I say to Hana. She is getting out of the car, still with that same infuriating calm, as though we’re on a social visit.

Once again, she hesitates. “It’s Fred’s house,” she says. “I guess we share it now.” When I stare at her, she amends, “Fred Hargrove. He’s mayor.”

I had completely forgotten that Hana was paired with Fred Hargrove. We’d heard rumors through the resistance that Hargrove senior had been killed during the Incidents. Fred must have taken his father’s place. Now it begins to make sense that a bomb was planted in his home; nothing is more symbolic than striking the leader directly. But we’ve miscalculated—it isn’t Fred who will be at home. It’s Hana.

My mouth feels dry and itchy. One of her goons tries to grab me and force me out of the car, and I wrench away from him.

“I’m not going to run,” I practically spit, and slide out of the car on my own. I know I wouldn’t get more than three feet before they opened fire. I’ll have to watch carefully, and think, and look for an opportunity to escape. No way am I going to be within three blocks of this place when it blows.

Hana has preceded us up the porch steps. She waits, her back to me, until one of the guards steps forward and opens the door. I feel a rush of hatred for this brittle, spoiled girl, with her spotless white linens and her vast rooms.

Inside, it’s surprisingly dark, full of lots of polished, dark oak and leather. Most of the windows are half-obscured by elaborate drapery and velvet curtains. Hana starts to lead me into the living room, and then thinks better of it. She continues down the hall without bothering to switch on the light, turning back only once to look at me with an expression I can’t decipher, and finally leads me through two swinging doors and into the kitchen.

This room, in contrast with the rest of the house, is very bright. Large windows face out over an enormous backyard. The wood here is shaved pine or ash, soft and nearly white, and the counters are spotless white marble.

The guards follow us into the room. Hana turns to them.

“Leave us,” she says. Illuminated by the slanted sunlight, which makes it appear as if she is glowing slightly, she once again looks like an angel. I’m struck by her stillness, and by the quietness of the house, its cleanliness and beauty.

And somewhere in its underbelly, buried deep, a tumor is growing, ticking toward its eventual explosion.

The guard who was driving—the one who had me in a headlock earlier—makes noises of protest, but Hana silences him quickly.

“I said, leave us.” For a second, the old Hana resurges; I see the defiance in her eyes, the imperial tilt of her chin. “And close the doors behind you.”

The guards file out reluctantly. I can feel the weight of their stares, and I know that if Hana were not here, I would already be dead. But I refuse to feel grateful to her. I won’t.

When they are gone, Hana stares at me for a minute in silence. Her expression is unreadable. Finally she says, “You’re too skinny.”

I could almost laugh. “Yeah, well. The restaurants in the Wilds are mostly closed. They’re mostly bombed, actually.” I don’t bother keeping the edge out of my voice.

She doesn’t react. She just keeps watching me. Another beat of silence passes. Then she gestures to the table. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand, thanks.”

Hana frowns. “You can treat that as an order.”

I don’t really think that she’ll call the guards back if I refuse to sit, but there’s no point in risking it. I slide into a chair, glaring at her the whole time. But I can’t get comfortable. It has been twenty minutes at least since the foghorn blew. That means I have less than forty minutes to get out of here.

As soon as I sit, Hana whirls around and disappears into the back of the kitchen, where a dark gap beyond the refrigerator indicates a pantry. Before I can think of escape, she reemerges, carrying a loaf of bread wrapped in a tea towel. She stands at the counter and slices off thick hunks, slathering them in butter and piling them high onto a plate. Then she moves to the sink and wets the tea towel.

Watching her turn on the faucet, watching the steaming water that appears instantly, I am filled with envy. It has been forever since I’ve had a proper shower, or gotten to clean myself except in frigid rivers.

“Here.” She passes me the hot towel. “You’re a mess.”

“I didn’t have time to do my makeup,” I reply sarcastically. But I take the towel anyway, and touch it gingerly to my ear. I’ve stopped bleeding, at least, although the towel comes back flecked with dried blood. I keep my eyes on her as I wipe off my face and hands. I wonder what she is thinking.

She slides the plate of bread in front of me when I’ve finished with the towel, and fills a glass with water, along with real ice cubes, five of them rattling joyfully together.

“Eat,” she says. “Drink.”

“I’m not hungry,” I lie.

She rolls her eyes, and once again I see the old Hana float up into this new impostor. “Don’t be stupid. Of course you’re hungry. You’re starving. You’re probably dying of thirst, too.”

“Why are you doing this?” I ask her.

Hana opens her mouth and then closes it again. “We were friends,” she says.

“Were,” I say firmly. “Now we’re enemies.”

“Are we?” Hana looks startled, as though the idea has never occurred to her. Once again, I feel a flicker of unease, a squirming feeling of guilt. Something isn’t right. I force the feelings down.

“Of course,” I say.

Hana watches me for a second more. Then, abruptly, she gets up from the table and moves over to the windows. Once her back is to me, I quickly take a piece of bread and stuff it in my mouth, eating as quickly as I can without choking. I wash it down with a long slug of water, so cold it brings a blazing, delicious pain to my head.

For a long time, Hana doesn’t say anything. I eat another piece of bread. She can no doubt hear me chewing, but she doesn’t comment on it or turn around. She allows me to keep up the pretense that I am not eating, and I experience a brief burst of gratitude.

“I’m sorry about Alex,” she says at last, still without turning.

My stomach gives an uncomfortable twist. Too much; too quickly.

“He didn’t die.” My voice sounds overloud. I don’t know why I feel the urge to tell her. But I need her to know that her side, her people, didn’t win, at least not in this case. Even though of course, in some ways, they did.

She turns around. “What?”

“He didn’t die,” I repeat. “He was thrown into the Crypts.”

Hana flinches, as though I’ve reached out and slapped her. She sucks her lower lip into her mouth again and starts chewing. “I—” She stops herself, frowning a little.

“What?” I know that face; I recognize it. She knows something. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I . . .” She shakes her head, as though to dislodge an idea there. “I thought I saw him.”

My stomach surges into my throat. “Where?”

“Here.” She looks at me with another one of her inscrutable expressions. The new Hana is much harder to read than the old one. “Last night. But if he’s in the Crypts . . .”

“He’s not. He escaped.” Hana, the light, the kitchen—even the bomb ticking quietly underneath us, moving us slowly toward oblivion—suddenly seem far away. As soon as Hana suggests it, I see that it makes sense. Alex was all alone. He would have gone back to familiar territory.

Alex could be here—somewhere in Portland. Close. Maybe there’s hope after all.

If I can only get out of here.

“So?” I push up from the chair. “Are you going to call the regulators, or what?”

Even as I’m talking, I’m planning. I could probably take her down, if it comes to it, but the idea of attacking her makes me uneasy. And she’ll no doubt put up a fight. By the time I get the better of her, the guards will be on top of us.

But if I can get her out of the kitchen for even a few seconds—I’ll put the chair through the window, cut through the garden, try to lose the guards in the trees. The garden probably backs up onto another street; if not, I’ll have to loop around to Essex. It’s a long shot, but it’s a chance.

Hana watches me steadily. The clock above the stove seems to be moving at record speed, and I imagine the timer on the bomb ticking forward as well.

“I want to apologize to you,” she says calmly.

“Oh yeah? For what?” I don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She’ll be here, in the house . . .

My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I’m worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn’t my concern, and it isn’t my fault, either.

“For telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,” she says. “For telling them about you and Alex.”

Just like that, my brain powers down. “What?”

“I told them.” She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. “I’m sorry. I was jealous.”

I can’t speak. I’m swimming through a fog. “Jealous?” I manage to spit out.

“I—I wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn’t understand what I was doing.” She shakes her head again.

I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. Hana—golden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. “You were my best friend.”

“I know.” Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.

“You had everything.” I can’t stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. “Perfect life. Perfect grades. Everything.” I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. “I had nothing. He was my one thing. My only—” The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. “Why couldn’t you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?”

“I told you I was sorry,” Hana says again mechanically. I could shriek with laughter. I could cry, or tear her eyes out.

Instead I reach out and slap her. The current flows down into my hand, into my arm, before I know what I am doing. The noise is unexpectedly loud, and for a moment I’m sure the guards will burst through the door. But no one comes.

Instantly, Hana’s face begins to redden. But she doesn’t cry out. She doesn’t make a sound.

In the silence, I can hear my own breathing—ragged and desperate. I feel tears pushing at the back of my eyes. I’m ashamed and angry and sick all at once.

Hana turns slowly back to face me. She almost looks sad. “I deserved that,” she says.

Suddenly I am overcome with exhaustion. I am tired of fighting, of hitting and being hit. This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors. It’s the upside-down nature of life. It’s all I can do not to collapse into a chair again.

“I felt terrible afterward,” Hana says in a voice hardly above a whisper. “You should know that. That’s why I helped you escape. I felt”—Hana searches for the right word—“remorse.”

“What about now?” I ask her.

Hana lifts a shoulder. “Now I’m cured,” she says. “It’s different.”

“Different how?” For a split second, I wish—more than anything, more than breathing—that I had stayed here, with her, that I had let the knife fall.

“I feel freer,” she says. Whatever I was expecting her to say, it isn’t this. She must sense that I’m surprised, because she goes on. “Everything’s kind of . . . muffled. Like hearing sounds underwater. I don’t have to feel things for other people so much.” One side of her mouth quirks into a smile. “Maybe, like you said, I never did.”

My head has started to ache. Over. It’s all over. I just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep. “I didn’t mean that. You did. Feel things, I mean, for other people. You used to.”

I’m not sure she hears me. She says, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t have to listen to anybody anymore.” Something in her tone is off—triumphant, almost. When I look at her, she smiles. I wonder whether she’s thinking of anyone in particular.

There is the sound of a door opening and closing and the bark of a man’s voice. Hana’s whole face changes. She gets serious again in an instant. “Fred,” she says. She crosses quickly to the swinging doors behind me and pokes her head into the hall tentatively. Then she whirls around to face me, suddenly breathless.

“Come on,” she says. “Quick, while he’s in the study.”

“Come on where?” I say.

Hana looks momentarily irritated. “The back door leads onto the porch. From there you can cut through the garden and onto Dennett. That will take you back to Brighton. Quickly,” she adds. “If he sees you, he’ll kill you.”

I’m so shocked that for a moment I just stand there, gaping at her. “Why?” I say. “Why are you helping me?”

Hana smiles again, but her eyes stay cloudy and unreadable. “You said it yourself. I was your best friend.”

All at once, my energy returns. She’s going to let me go. Before she can change her mind, I move toward her. She presses her back against one of the swinging doors, keeping it open for me, poking her head into the hall every few seconds to make sure the coast is clear. Just as I’m about to scoot past her, I stop.

Jasmine and vanilla. She still wears it after all. She does smell the same.

“Hana,” I say. I’m standing so close to her, I can see the gold threaded through the blue of her eyes. I lick my lips. “There’s a bomb.”

She jerks back a fraction of an inch. “What?”

I don’t have time to regret what I’m saying. “Here. Somewhere in the house. Get out of here, okay? Get yourself out.” She’ll take Fred, too, and the explosion will be a failure, but I don’t care. I loved Hana once, and she is helping me now. I owe this to her.

Once again, her expression is unreadable. “How much time?” she asks abruptly.

I shake my head. “Ten, fifteen minutes tops.”

She nods to show that she has understood. I move past her, into the darkness of the hallway. She stays where she is, pressed against the swinging doors, rigid as a statue. She lifts her chin toward the back door.

Just as I’m placing a hand on a door handle, she calls to me in a whisper.

“I almost forgot.” She moves toward me, her dress rustling, and for a moment I am struck by the impression that she is a ghost. “Grace is in the Highlands. 31 Wynnewood Road. They’re living there now.”

I stare at her. Somewhere, deep inside this stranger, my best friend is buried. “Hana—” I start to say.

She cuts me off. “Don’t thank me,” she says in a low voice. “Just go.”

Impulsively, without thinking about what I am doing, I reach out and seize her hand. Two long pulses, two short ones. Our old signal.

Hana looks startled; then, slowly, her face relaxes. For just one second, she shines as though lit up by a torch from within. “I remember. . . .” she whispers.

A door slams somewhere. Hana wrenches away, looking suddenly afraid. She pivots me around and pushes me toward the door.

“Go,” she says, and I do. I don’t look back.