We land in a tree.
I have no idea where we are—I don’t even know if I’ve ever been this high, or this close to nature—but Nazeera doesn’t seem bothered at all.
I’m breathing hard as I turn to face her, adrenaline and disbelief colliding, but she’s not looking at me. She looks calm—happy, even—as she looks out across the sky, one foot propped up on a tree branch while the other hangs, swinging gently back and forth in the cool breeze. Her left arm rests on her left knee and her hand is relaxed, almost too casual, as it clenches and unclenches around something I can’t see. I tilt my head, part my lips to ask the question when she interrupts me.
“You know,” she says suddenly, “I’ve never, ever shown anyone what I can do.”
I’m caught off guard.
“No one? Ever?” I say, stunned.
She shakes her head.
“Why not?”
She’s quiet for a minute before she says, “The answer to that question is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you.” She touches an absent hand to the diamond piercing at her lip, tapping the tip of one finger against the glittering stone. “So,” she says. “Do you know anything real about your past?”
And the pain is swift, like cold steel, like knives in my chest. Painful reminders of today’s revelations. “I know some things,” I finally say. “I learned most of it this morning, actually.”
She nods. “And that’s why you ran off like you did.”
I turn to face her. “You were watching me?”
“I’ve been shadowing you, yeah.”
“Why?”
She smiles, but it looks tired. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”
I stare at her, confused.
She sighs. Swings both her legs under her and looks out into the distance. “Never mind.”
“No, wait—what do you mean? Am I supposed to remember you?”
She shakes her head.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Forget it,” she says. “It’s nothing. You just look really familiar, and for a split second I thought we’d met before.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” But now she won’t look at me, and I have a strange feeling she’s holding something back.
Still, she says nothing.
She looks lost in thought, chewing on her lip as she looks off in the distance, and doesn’t say anything for what feels like a long time.
“Um. Excuse me? You put me in a tree,” I finally say. “What the hell am I doing here? What do you want?”
She turns to face me. That’s when I realize that the object in her hand is actually a bag of little hard candies. She holds it out to me, indicating with her head that I should take one.
But I don’t trust her. “No thanks,” I say.
She shrugs. Unwraps one of the colorful candies and pops it in her mouth. “So,” she says. “What’d Warner tell you today?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Did he tell you that you have a sister?”
I feel a knot of anger beginning to form in my chest. I say nothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says. She bites down hard on the candy in her mouth. Crunches quietly beside me. “Did he tell you anything else?”
“What do you want from me?” I say. “Who are you?”
“What did he tell you about your parents?” she asks, ignoring me even as she glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “Did he tell you that you were adopted? That your biological parents are still alive?”
I only stare at her.
She tilts her head. Studies me. “Did he tell you their names?”
My eyes widen automatically.
Nazeera smiles, and the action brightens her face. “There it is,” she says, with a triumphant nod. She peels another candy from its wrapper and pops it in her mouth. “Hmm.”
“There what is?”
“The moment,” she says, “where the anger ends, and the curiosity begins.”
I sigh, irritated. “You know my parents’ names?”
“I never said that.”
I feel suddenly exhausted. Powerless. “Does everyone know more about my life than I do?”
She glances at me. Looks away. “Not everyone,” she says. “Those of us with ranks high enough in The Reestablishment know a lot, yeah,” she says. “It’s our business to know. Especially us,” she says, meeting my eyes for a second. “The kids, I mean. Our parents expect us to take over one day. But, no, not everyone knows everything.” She smiles at something, a private joke shared only with herself, when she says, “Most people don’t know shit, actually.” And then, a frown. “Though I guess Warner knows more than I thought he did.”
“So,” I say. “You’ve known Warner for a long time.”
Nazeera pushes her hood back a bit so I can better see her face, leans against a branch, and sighs. “Listen,” she says quietly. “I only know what my dad told us about you guys, and I’m wise enough to the game now to know that most of the things I’ve heard are probably nonsense. But—”
She hesitates. Bites her lip and hesitates.
“Just say it,” I tell her, shaking my head as I do. “I’ve already heard so many people tell me I’m crazy for falling for him. You wouldn’t be the first.”
“What? No,” she says, and laughs. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I mean, I get why people might think he’s trouble, but he’s my people, you know? I knew his parents. Anderson made my own dad seem like a nice guy. We’re all kind of messed up, that’s true, but Warner’s not a bad person. He’s just trying to find a way to survive this insanity, just like the rest of us.”
“Oh,” I say. Surprised.
“Anyway,” she says with a shrug, “no, I understand why you like him. And even if I didn’t, I mean—I’m not blind.” She raises a knowing eyebrow at me. “I get you, girl.”
I’m still stunned. This might be the very first time I’ve heard anyone but myself make an argument for Warner.
“No, what I’m trying to say is that I think it might be a good time for you to focus on yourself for a little while. Take a beat. And anyway, Lena’s going to be here any minute, so it’s probably best for you to stay away from that situation for as long as you can.” She shoots me another knowing look. “I really don’t think you need any more drama in your life, and that whole”—she gestures to the air—“thing is bound to just—you know—get really ugly.”
“What?” I frown. “What thing? What situation? Who’s Lena?”
Nazeera’s surprise is so swift, so genuine, I can’t help but feel instantly concerned. My pulse picks up as Nazeera turns fully in my direction and says, very, very slowly, “Lena. Lena Mishkin. She’s the daughter of the supreme commander of Europe.”
I stare at her. Shake my head.
Nazeera’s eyes widen. “Girl, what the hell?”
“What?” I say, scared now. “Who is she?”
“Who is she? Are you serious? She’s Warner’s ex-girlfriend.”
I nearly fall out of the tree.
It’s funny, I thought I’d feel more than this.
Old Juliette would’ve cried. Broken Juliette would’ve split open from the sudden impact of today’s many heartbreaking revelations, from the depth of Warner’s lies, from the pain of feeling so deeply betrayed. But this new version of me is refusing to react; instead, my body is shutting down.
I feel my arms go numb as Nazeera offers me details about Warner’s old relationship—details I do and don’t want to hear. She says Lena and Warner were a big deal for the world of The Reestablishment and suddenly three fingers on my right hand begin to twitch without my permission. She says that Lena’s mom and Warner’s dad were excited about an alliance between their families, about a bond that would only make their regime stronger, and electric currents bolt down my legs, shocking and paralyzing me all at once.
She says that Lena was in love with him—really in love with him—but that Warner broke her heart, that he never treated her with any real affection and she’s hated him for it, that “Lena’s been in a rage ever since she heard the stories of how he fell for you, especially because you were supposed to be, like, fresh out of a mental asylum, you know? Apparently it was a huge blow to her ego” and hearing this does nothing to soothe me. It makes me feel strange and foreign, like a specimen in a tank, like my life was never my own, like I’m an actor in a play directed by strangers and I feel an exhalation of arctic wind blow steadily into my chest, a bitter breeze circling my heart and I close my eyes as frostbite eases my pain, its icy hands closing around the wounds festering in my flesh.
Only then
Only then do I finally breathe, luxuriating in the disconnection from this pain.
I look up, feeling broken and brand-new, eyes cold and unfeeling as I blink slowly and say, “How do you know all this?”
Nazeera breaks a leaf off a nearby branch and folds it between her fingers. She shrugs. “It’s a small, incestuous circle we move in. I’ve known Lena forever. She and I were never close, exactly, but we move in the same world.” Another shrug. “She was really messed up over him. It’s all she ever wanted to talk about. And she’d talk to anyone about it.”
“How long were they together?”
“Two years.”
Two years.
The answer is so unexpectedly painful it spears through my new defenses.
Two years? Two years with another girl and he never said a word about it. Two years with someone else. And how many others? A shock of pain tries to reach me, to circumvent my new, cold heart, and I manage to fight the worst of it. Even so, a brick of something hot and horrible buries itself in my chest.
Not jealousy, no.
Inferiority. Inexperience. Naïveté.
How much more will I learn about him? How much more has he kept from me? How will I ever be able to trust him again?
I close my eyes and feel the weight of loss and resignation settle deep, deep within me. My bones shift, rearranging to make room for these new hurts.
This wave of fresh anger.
“When did they break up?” I ask.
“Like . . . eight months ago?”
Now I stop asking questions.
I want to become a tree. A blade of grass. I want to become dirt or air or nothing. Nothing. Yes. I want to become nothing.
I feel like such a fool.
“I don’t understand why he never told you,” Nazeera is saying to me now, but I can hardly hear her. “That’s crazy. It was pretty big news in our world.”
“Why have you been following me?” I change the subject with zero finesse. My eyes are half lidded. My fists are clenched. I don’t want to talk about Warner anymore. Ever again. I want to rip my heart out of my chest and throw it in our piss-filled ocean for all the good its ever done me.
I don’t want to feel anything anymore.
Nazeera sits back, surprised. “There’s a lot going on right now,” she says. “There’s so much you don’t know, so much crap you’re just beginning to wade into. I mean—hell, someone tried to kill you yesterday.” She shakes her head. “I’m just worried about you.”
“You don’t even know me. Why bother worrying about me?”
This time, she doesn’t respond. She just looks at me. Slowly, she unwraps another candy. Pops it in her mouth and looks away.
“My dad forced me to come here,” she says quietly. “I didn’t want to have any part in any of this. I never have. I hate everything The Reestablishment stands for. But I told myself that if I had to be here, I would look out for you. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’m looking out for you.”
“Well, don’t waste your time,” I say to her, feeling callous. “I don’t need your pity or your protection.”
Nazeera goes quiet. Finally, she sighs. “Listen—I’m really sorry,” she says. “I honestly thought you knew about Lena.”
“I don’t care about Lena,” I lie. “I have more important things to worry about.”
“Right,” she says. She clears her throat. “I know. Still, I’m sorry.”
I say nothing.
“Hey,” Nazeera says. “Really. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just want you to know that I’m not here to hurt you. I’m trying to look out for you.”
“I don’t need you to look out for me. I’m doing fine.”
Now she rolls her eyes. “Didn’t I just save your life?”
I mumble something dumb under my breath.
Nazeera shakes her head. “You have to get it together, girl, or you’re not going to get through this alive,” she says to me. “You have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes or what the other commanders have in store for you.” When I don’t respond she says, “Lena won’t be the last of us to arrive here, you know. And no one is coming here to play nice.”
I look up at her. My eyes are dead of emotion. “Good,” I say. “Let them come.”
She laughs, but there’s no life in it. “So you and Warner have some drama and now you just don’t care about anything? That’s real mature.”
Fire flashes through me. My eyes sharpen. “If I’m upset right now, it’s because I’ve just discovered that everyone closest to me has been lying to me. Using me. Manipulating me for their own needs. My parents,” I say angrily, “are still alive, and apparently they’re no better than the abusive monsters who adopted me. I have a sister being actively tortured by The Reestablishment—and I never even knew she existed. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that nothing is going to be the same for me, not ever again, and I have no idea who to trust or how to move forward. So yeah,” I say, nearly shouting the words, “right now I don’t care about anything. Because I don’t know what I’m fighting for anymore. And I don’t know who my friends are. Right now,” I say, “everyone is my enemy, including you.”
Nazeera is unmoved. “You could fight for your sister,” she says.
“I don’t even know who she is.”
Nazeera shoots me a sidelong look, heavy with disbelief. “Isn’t it enough that she’s an innocent girl being tortured? I thought there was some greater good you were fighting for.”
I shrug. Look away.
“You know what? You don’t have to care,” she says. “But I do. I care about what The Reestablishment has done to innocent people. I care that our parents are all a bunch of psychopaths. I care a great deal about what The Reestablishment has done, in particular, to those of us with abilities.
“And to answer your earlier question: I never told anyone about my powers because I saw what they did to people like me. How they locked them up. Tortured and abused them.” She looks me in the eye. “And I don’t want to be the next experiment.”
Something inside me hollows. Mellows out. I feel suddenly empty and sad. “I do care,” I finally say to her. “I care too much, probably.”
And Nazeera’s anger subsides. She sighs.
“Warner said The Reestablishment wants to take me back,” I say.
She nods. “Seems about right.”
“Where do they want to take me?”
“I’m not sure,” she says. Shrugs. “They might just kill you.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Or,” she says, smiling a little, “they’ll send you to another continent, maybe. New alias. New facility.”
“Another continent?” I say, curious despite myself. “I’ve never even been on a plane before.”
Somehow, I’ve said the wrong thing.
Nazeera looks almost stricken for a second. Pain flashes in and out of her eyes and she looks away. Clears her throat. But when she looks back her face is neutral once more. “Yeah. Well. You’re not missing much.”
“Do you travel a lot?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“Where are you from?”
“Sector 2. Asian continent.” And then, at the look at my face: “But I was born in Baghdad.”
“Baghdad,” I say, almost to myself. It sounds so familiar, and I’m trying to remember, trying to place it on the map, when she says
“Iraq.”
“Oh,” I say. “Wow.”
“A lot to take in, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. And then—hating myself even as I say the words—I can’t help but ask, “Where’s Lena from?”
Nazeera laughs. “I thought you said you didn’t care about Lena.”
I close my eyes. Shake my head, mortified.
“She was born in Peterhof, a suburb of Saint Petersburg.”
“Russia,” I say, relieved to finally recognize one of these cities. “War and Peace.”
“Great book,” Nazeera says with a nod. “Too bad it’s still on the burn list.”
“Burn list?”
“To be destroyed,” she says. “The Reestablishment has big plans to reset language, literature, and culture. They want to create a new kind of, I don’t know,” she says, making a random gesture with one hand, “universal humanity.”
I nod, quietly horrified. I already know this. I’d first heard about this from Adam right after he was assigned to become my cellmate in the asylum. And the idea of destroying art—culture—everything that makes human beings diverse and beautiful—
It makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“Anyway,” she says, “it’s obviously a garbage, grotesque experiment, but we have to go through the motions. We were given lists of books to sort through, and we have to read them, write reports, decide what to keep and what to get rid of.” She exhales. “I finally finished reading most of the classics a couple of months ago—but early last year they forced all of us to read War and Peace in five languages, because they wanted us to analyze how culture plays a role in manipulating the translation of the same text.” She hesitates, remembering. “It was definitely the most fun to read in French. But I think, ultimately, it’s best in Russian. All other translations—especially the English ones—are missing that necessary . . . toska. You know what I mean?”
My mouth drops open a little.
It’s the way she says it—like it’s no big deal, like she’s just said something perfectly normal, like anyone could read Tolstoy in five different languages and polish off the books in an afternoon. It’s her easy, effortless self-assuredness that makes my heart deflate. It took me a month to read War and Peace. In English.
“Right,” I say, and look away. “Yeah. That’s, um, interesting.”
It’s becoming too familiar, this feeling of inferiority. Too powerful. Every time I think I’ve made progress in my life I seem to be reminded of how much further I still have to go. Though I guess it’s not Nazeera’s fault that she and the rest of these kids were bred to be violent geniuses.
“So,” she says, clapping her hands together. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Yeah,” I say. “What’s the deal with your brother?”
She looks surprised. “Haider?” She hesitates. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, like”—I frown—“is he loyal to your dad? To The Reestablishment? Is he trustworthy?”
“I don’t know if I’d call him trustworthy,” she says, looking thoughtful. “But I think all of us have complicated relationships with The Reestablishment. Haider doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.”
“Really?”
She nods. “Warner probably doesn’t consider any of us his friends, but Haider does. And Haider went through a really dark time last year.” She pauses. Breaks another leaf off a nearby branch. Folds and refolds it between her fingers as she says, “My dad was putting a lot of pressure on him, forcing him through some really intense training—the details of which Haider still won’t share with me—and a few weeks later he just started spiraling. He was exhibiting suicidal tendencies. Self-harming. And I got really scared. I called Warner because I knew Haider would listen to him.” She shakes her head. “Warner didn’t say a word. He just got on a plane. And he stayed with us for a couple of weeks. I don’t know what he said to Haider,” she says. “I don’t know what he did or how he got him through it, but”—she looks off into the distance, shrugs—“it’s hard to forget something like that. Even though our parents keep trying to pit us against each other. They’re trying to keep us from getting too soft.” She laughs. “But it’s so much bullshit.”
And I’m reeling, stunned.
There’s so much to unpack here I don’t even know where to begin. I’m not sure if I want to. All of Nazeera’s comments about Warner just seem to spear me in the heart. They make me miss him.
They make me want to forgive him.
But I can’t let my emotions control me. Not now. Not ever. So I force the feelings down, out of my head, and instead, I say, “Wow. And I just thought Haider was kind of a jerk.”
Nazeera smiles. Waves an absent hand. “He’s working on it.”
“Does he have any . . . supernatural abilities?”
“None that I know of.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“But you can fly,” I say.
She nods.
“That’s interesting.”
She smiles, wide, and turns to face me. Her eyes are big and beautifully lit from the dappled light breaking through the branches, and her excitement is so pure that it makes something inside of me shrivel up and die.
“It’s so much more than interesting,” she says, and it’s then that I feel a pang of something new:
Jealousy.
Envy.
Resentment.
My abilities have always been a curse—a source of endless pain and conflict. Everything about me is designed to kill and destroy and it’s a reality I’ve never been able to fully accept. “Must be nice,” I say.
She turns away again, smiling into the wind. “The best part?” she says. “Is that I can also do this—”
Nazeera goes suddenly invisible.
I jerk back sharply.
And then she’s back, beaming. “Isn’t it great?” she says, eyes glittering with excitement. “I’ve never been able to share this with anyone before.”
“Uh . . . yeah.” I laugh but it sounds fake, too high. “Very cool.” And then, more quietly, “Kenji is going to be pissed.”
Nazeera stops smiling. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“Well—” I nod in her general direction. “I mean, what you just did? That’s Kenji’s thing. And he’s not good at sharing the spotlight, generally.”
“I didn’t know there could be someone else with the same power,” she says, visibly heartbroken. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and I feel a sudden urge to laugh. She’s so determined to dislike Kenji that I’m starting to wonder why. And then I’m reminded, all at once, of today’s horrible revelations, and the smile is wiped off my face. “So,” I say quickly, “should we get back to base? I still have a ton of things to figure out, including how I’m going to deal with this stupid symposium tomorrow. I don’t know if I should bail or just—”
“Don’t bail.” Nazeera cuts me off. “If you bail they might think you know something. Don’t show your hand,” she says. “Not yet. Just go through the motions until you get your own plan together.”
I stare at her. Study her. Finally, I say, “Okay.”
“And once you decide what you want to do, let me know. I can always help evacuate people. Hold down the fort. Fight. Whatever. Just say the word.”
“What—?” I frown. “Evacuate people? What are you talking about?”
She smiles as she shakes her head. “Girl, you still don’t get it, do you? Why do you think we’re here? The Reestablishment is planning on destroying Sector 45.” She stares at me. “And that includes everyone in it.”