Requiem

Tony and the other guards don’t need to be asked twice. In an instant, they’re rocketing into the street, guns drawn, leaving the doors of the car hanging open. My hands are shaking. I squeeze them into fists and lean back, taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. With the doors open, I can hear the alarms more clearly, and distant sounds of shouting, too, like the echo-roar of the ocean.

This is Portland, my Portland. In that moment, nothing else matters—not the lies or the mistakes, and the promises we’ve failed to keep. This is my city, and my city is under attack. The anger tightens.

Tony is hauling the girl to her feet. She is fighting, although she is outnumbered and completely outmatched. Her hair is hanging in her face, and she’s kicking and scratching like an animal.

Maybe I’ll kill this one myself.

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 Je

It wasa 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 Xspray-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 a

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.