Read Online Once We Were by Kat Zhang - Free Book Online Page B

smiles then, his almost lackadaisical air. But he hadn’t been flippant. Not truly.
    I thought about the meeting we’d attended last night. The room silent with grief after Peter explained what had happened at Hahns. Christoph’s barely contained anger, and how Jackson had tried to keep him in check.
    Sabine and Christoph had been in Anchoit for half a decade. What about Cordelia and Jackson?
    
I said quietly.

    “When’s Peter’s next meeting?” Christoph sat the farthest from the standing lamp, and the fairy lights softened his features.
    Sabine shrugged. “He’s talking with some people one-on-one. I don’t think he’ll be having a general meeting anytime soon, though. Not unless something big happens.”
    Christoph snorted and looked up at the ceiling. “Something big has already happened.”
    “And we had a meeting when it did,” Sabine said. “We’ll have another when—”
    Christoph’s voice turned rough. “When the earth slows, and the seas rise, and Peter finishes making his plans and remaking his plans and—”
    “And remaking those plans,” Sabine finished for him. She smiled, and he didn’t quite smile back, but he quieted. Sabine’s gaze flickered to Addie and me, then to Devon. “It isn’t that we don’t appreciate everything Peter’s done. We do. We’re here because his plans worked. But no one can deny that Peter’s slow. Meticulous, yes. Careful, yes. And that’s all good, but slow. He believes in taking his time, and sometimes—”
    “Sometimes there isn’t any time,” Addie said.
    Sabine nodded.
    “That institution you mentioned at the meeting,” Devon said slowly. “Powatt. How long has it been open?”
    There was a hiccup of silence. Sabine shifted in her seat. “It hasn’t opened yet. They’re still setting things up, I think. Powatt’s going to be one of the institutions spearheading the new hybrid-cure initiative. They’re going to be testing some kind of—some kind of new machine that’s supposed to make the surgeries more precise.”
    The word
surgeries
flashed us back to Nornand’s basement. To the feeling of cold metal, to Jaime’s voice babbling through the door, and sallow-lit hallways.
    “There’s this guy,” Sabine said, “Hogan Nalles—he’s lower-level government. He’ll be downtown next Friday at Lankster Square, going on about how proud we should be, and all that. A pep rally of sorts. Stage and balloons and a couple hundred people, most likely.”
    “A big, screaming crowd,” Christoph said. “Cheering on the systematic, government-supported
lobotomization
of children.”
    Sabine grinned wryly. “I don’t think lobotomization is quite the same thing. And if we don’t do anything . . . if we just sit here and let Powatt open in a couple months, are we really that much better than they are?”
    “Say what you mean to say, Sabine,” Cordelia intoned in what was obviously supposed to be a mockery of Peter’s voice. She giggled quietly into Sabine’s shoulder, and the other girl wrapped an obliging arm around her.
    When Sabine spoke, though, her voice was utterly serious. “We’re going to stop Powatt from ever opening.”
    As if it were really that simple. As if by Sabine declaring it, we could make it so.
    “How?” Devon said.
    “I don’t have a complete plan yet. I’d need more information. But I know how to get that information, and that’s a start.” Sabine watched Devon as she spoke, but if she was trying to read him, he gave her nothing to see. “I worked under Nalles for a few months last year, before Cordelia and I opened the shop. Pushing papers, making appointments. Things like that.” Her lips twitched up at the corners. “Don’t let Peter know. He’s got strict rules about getting involved with government. Anyway, Nalles has access to information. He’ll know the details of the Powatt plans—exactly when