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.