Chapter Text
I woke up in the mid-morning, ear still resting on Fang’s chest, listening to the soft rasps of their breath. For a few minutes, I kept my eyes closed, wings working as a makeshift blanket for the both of us, and allowed myself to breathe with them. It was like we were both eleven again and I had decided to sleep over in theirs and Iggy’s room, curling up under that heated blanket Jeb had bought them because they were always freezing in winter. Not far from me, I could hear Angel’s soft snores and the steady rhythm of Nudge’s breath that I had heard nearly every morning for the past four years.
I sat up slowly, ruffling my wings and raking my hair out of my face. For a second, I was confused that it wasn’t braided back, before I felt it end, harsh and uneven, right below my ears.
Right.
Well, I wasn’t Nudge or Fang, who had refused to cut their hair beyond trimmings ever since we escaped. I wasn’t Angel, whose favorite princess was Rapunzel. My eyes stung for a moment, and I felt something bitter well up in my throat, but when I breathed in, I smelled ocean salt instead of antiseptic, so it was more than worth it. Jeb could have my hair, just like he could have my coat— he hadn’t taken anything that I couldn’t live without. I’d ask Fang to cut it properly and get a bandana to keep it out of my face until it was long enough to tie back again.
I stood quietly, looking over all of my siblings. Angel and Gazzy passed out on the bed, Nudge curled up in the corner, Fang laying flat on the floor, and Iggy—
“I thought you’d sleep longer,” I whispered. He leaned against the bedframe where he had fallen asleep a few hours ago, close enough to keep ahold of Gazzy’s hand, but his body held a tension to it that he didn’t have when he was sleeping.
“Really? What time is it?”
“Ten or eleven, so… six-ish hours since we fell asleep.”
“That’s better than we get most nights. Do you think we should wake the others? Get Michael, see what the Institute has on us?”
Yes, I wanted to say. After everything we went through over the past week, the past month, the past fourteen years, I didn’t want to wait.
“Let’s let them sleep a bit longer,” I whispered. “We can see if there’s anything to eat in here until then.”
Turned out, the only things that this vacation home had stocked were a few condiments— all of which were expired, which told me exactly why this place wasn’t booked— and two bags of coffee. One was normal in the cupboards, and the other was decaf, left open on the counter next to a fresh pot, because apparently Iggy and I weren’t the only people awake, even if we were the only people in the main room. With a little bit more looking, I found half a box of plain green tea bags as well and slid them over to Iggy. I went as far as to help him find mugs and a pot to boil the water in before retreating to the dining table and letting him work.
“I was thinking,” Iggy murmured, shuffling to the table and handing me my tea once he had finished.
“That’s never a good thing.”
“Shut up. If the Institute has files on all of us as individuals, and our resident human friend has all of them on his laptop… I mean, obviously there’s nothing to stop him from going through all of our information. But I want it to just be him and me who go over my files. You guys don’t need to know everything.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “Igneous…”
“What happened when we were kids, whatever they have on us about that— that— everything you don’t remember…” he clenched his fingers around the mug, fresh burns stark against his pale skin. “I’m not keeping secrets. I promise I’ll tell you everything important. Any medical issues, every whitecoat that worked with me, hell, you can know about my parents, assuming there’s information on them. But— but they did so much to all of us in there. I went blind. I don’t want you or Fang or god forbid the kids knowing all of the grisly details.”
“It’s not your job to shield us from what happened, Iggy,” I said, reaching over and squeezing his wrist, mindful not to touch the wounds. “Whatever happened to any of us, not knowing doesn’t change that it happened. And it doesn’t make us burdens to each other.”
“I know.”
“I really don’t think you do.”
Iggy scoffed, taking a sip of tea. In the soft light from the window, parts of his hair were silver in the light— even with all of his scars and sharp edges, he looked nearly ethereal. I didn’t understand why he held himself like his mere existence could hurt me.
“Maybe there are still things I want to keep to myself,” he whispered. Then, quirking his lips slightly, continued, “maybe I did something really embarrassing that I want to keep hidden. You know I have zero tolerance towards embarrassment.”
“That’s a bold-faced lie. You let Gazzy draw a mustache on you with a blue sharpie and didn’t wash it off for two days.”
“My other point stands, though.”
I sighed, closing my eyes briefly. “You tell me everything important, understood? Every single whitecoat that came in contact with you, medical complications, possible ongoing health concerns, anything they wrote about why they made you, any weird quirks they noted—”
“Wow, this is a long list.”
“Triggers that might come up, any additional avian traits, and yes, what’s going on with your parents.”
“I don’t want to contact them.”
“I’m not going to make you do anything about them, I just don’t… want that rattling around in your head unsupervised.” I said. “You know this is probably going to make everyone go over their files privately.”
“I think that we all have that right, if anyone else wants it. Except maybe Gazzy and Angel— they’re a bit young to figure out what’s important information to share. I don’t think medical privacy extends to kids, anyway,” Iggy said. And then with a pause, muttered, “also maybe Fang, in their current state. Not sure if they’re… sane enough to learn anything alone.”
I winced, whole body feeling cold, even with the August heat against my skin.
“We’ll get them back,” I whispered. “We’ve gotten you back, haven’t we?”
“We will,” he agreed. “I’m going to… go make more tea for when everyone wakes up.”
It wasn’t long before the others joined us, all looking worn and tired, but whole. Angel’s eyes had a shine to them that I hadn’t seen in a while, and Nudge kept drumming her fingers on the table as we sat together in near-silence. Fang even took the mug Iggy thrust into their hands, even if they didn’t look like they knew exactly what to do with it.
“Should we… send Nudge to talk to Mike?” Gazzy finally asked, after Iggy, Nudge and I finished our tea and Nudge started on our meager dishes. “Is he awake?”
“I popped into his room before I came out. He said he’ll be out in a few minutes, he’s just trying to sort through how many of the files are usable,” Nudge replied, fidgeting more at her friend’s mention. “Apparently some of them got corrupted, which is a thing that computer files can do. Do you think he’ll teach me about hacking if I ask nicely?”
Considering he burned most— if not all— of his bridges in New York because Nudge asked for his help, he probably would.
“Oh, speaking of the resident human,” Iggy said. Half a second later, Mike emerged from the hall, looking just as unkempt as the rest of us, glasses slightly askew and hair having come out of his ponytail sometime during the night. He didn’t even look at us as he went for the coffee pot.
“It’s not even caffeinated,” I said, feeling my nose wrinkle. “Why do you drink it if it doesn’t do anything?”
“Anythin’ anythin’— you’re really Nudge’s sister, ain’t’cha?” He leaned against the counter and took a long sip before actually answering my question. “Placebo effect.”
“Huh.” Personally, if I were trying to avoid caffeine, I wouldn’t try to substitute it with coffee we found in a cheap vacation home that probably tasted more like dishwater than an actual drink, but he seemed to get something out of it. “Have you had the chance to look at anything?”
“Spent last night tryin’ to go through everything. Learned more about birds than I ever wanted in my life, still don’t understand most of the medical stuff, and some of the files got corrupted or didn’t load fully, but there’s still a lot.” He finally made his way over to the table, sitting down and opening his laptop. I saw the USB plugged in, containing our entire lives, and for a moment, wondered if I even wanted any of it.
My eyes found Nudge, who had seen a copy of her death certificate and been full of questions ever since. I found Angel, whose mind extended so far beyond her body that her brain couldn’t handle the input. Gazzy, who didn’t remember why he was so afraid of things he couldn’t explain, and Iggy, who remembered too much.
Fang, who needed me to keep that information for them, because when they came back to life, they would want to know.
My arm ached from the past few days, fingers half-curled into a fist, sending electrical sparks up my shoulder and into my spine. Because the Institute had put a chip in my body and didn’t even tell me it was there, let alone what it knew about me.
I deserved to have those answers, too.
“Well, Iggy has informed me that he wants to keep his private information to himself, so I guess I should ask if Nudge wants to do that, too,” I said. And as Gazzy opened his mouth, “Gaz, Angelita, you guys are too young. Iggy can figure out what information is necessary to share, but for you I need to know everything. And Fang…”
“I don’t care,” they signed, slouching in their seat and staring at the table. I shut my mouth. That made things easier.
“I think… I mean, I assume we have incident logs or something, right?” Nudge said. Mike nodded. “I think I want to go over those by myself, after we hear everything else. Well, with you. It’s your computer. And maybe Fang. I just… I’ll tell everyone everything, but I want to go through it slowly, and have some time to… to…” Something behind her eyes was getting distant, the way Fang’s did when they were slipping, so I reached over and squeezed her wrist as hard as I could, giving her an encouraging smile.
“That’s fine. This is a lot for all of us. You can take your time,” I told her. She nodded, so I turned to Mike. “Would you like to talk to Iggy first, or…”
“Wish I would’ve known to not read everything beforehand, but—”
“You’re not family. I care significantly less about what you know, and it’s not like I can read it myself. C’mon, let’s talk.”
After the two of them left for Mike’s room, I tried to keep my mind off of what they could be talking about. Nudge kept drumming her fingers on the table, leg starting to bounce. Gazzy and Angel were starting to fidget as well, and after a few seconds, he leaned over to whisper something to her. The only person who looked unconcerned was Fang, who was staring into their empty mug as if it had depths to stare into.
“Anyone wanna play dominoes?” Gazzy asked. “I have dominoes in my bag.”
“Thank god. Yes, let’s play dominoes,” Nudge replied.
We played through two and a half rounds— Fang won the first round, Angel won the second— before Iggy and Mike came back in. Iggy’s face was carefully neutral as he sat down, taking special care to fold his cane and stow it away as we all watched him. It took another few long moments before he swallowed a few times and announced,
“I’m a northern gannet. It’s why I can hold my breath for so long. And why my air sacs go into my skull. Apparently my skeleton looks nightmarish. And… I think all three of us had to get surgery to fix our sternum and clavicles, but last time I got my X-rays, everything from those modifications was holding well.” He scratched at his collar, picking off a thin, papery scab before continuing, “I got meningitis when I was six months old, so that’s why I was legally blind in my—” he tapped near his good eye, which had been blurry and ill-focused ever since I could remember. “And then when I was seven, the whitecoats took me in for surgery to try to… there was always a risk, but they thought they could fix it. And we all know how that ends.”
He said it with a little shrug and a quirk of his lips, like it didn’t affect him anymore, even as his nails dug further into skin.
“So, it wasn’t cancer! I’ve had a few screenings, but as of four years ago, nothing was coming up, so it looks like I’m not prone to it,” he said. “Let’s see… I’ve had my share of pneumonia, I had to get my proventriculus removed when I was three, but overall I think I have a pretty clean bill of health.”
“As of four years ago,” I said, though the news that Iggy wasn’t prone to cancer and hadn’t lost his eyes to it was more of a relief than I realized it would be.
“As of four years ago,” Iggy conceded.
“Youse have a messed up definition of a clean bill of health.”
“We’re Gen 1— the Institute’s definition of success with us is that we made it out of the womb at all.”
“Hey Ig,” Gazzy whispered, reaching over to poke at his arm. “Do you know who your parents are?”
The change was subtle, but it wasn’t hard for me to notice. The way his back straightened, how he carefully placed both of his hands on the table, away from anything he could scratch. How, for a few seconds too long, he didn’t breathe at all.
“The Institute of Higher Living is working with another company,” Mike was the one to speak instead of Iggy, his voice jarring in the silence. “New Tomorrows is a national fertility company that helps with people experiencing infertility issues. At least on the outside. There isn’t actually any proof of links between New Tomorrows and The Institute of Higher Living, just a whole lot of speculative evidence, but from the looks of it, they helped Igneous’ parents get pregnant and then faked his death. And he’s not the only one.”
“The Institute for Higher Living, New Tomorrows, and Itexicon International,” I repeated, half to myself. Those were the companies responsible for us. Those were the companies that we had to take down, and our files took us one step closer.
“I have a death certificate,” Iggy added quietly. “My name was— I would’ve been Jamesetta Louise Griffiths. My parents are Jefferson and Denise Griffiths. Denise… my mother… died.”
I heard myself hiss in a breath.
“How?” Nudge asked.
“Childbirth. It’s a hard process even if the kid doesn’t have an extra set of limbs. Sucks for my dad, I guess, losing his wife and his kid at the same time.” His hands clenched on the table, a muscle twitching in his jaw before he said firmly, “I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“Ig—”
“He’s had fourteen years to grieve, Nudge. He has his own life that doesn’t include me, and I have everything I need with all of you. I’m… I’m glad I know. I deserve to know. But I don’t need to do anything with the information. I don’t need him.”
I wondered if that rigid, placating exterior would shatter if I told Iggy that he wasn’t radioactive, so he couldn’t hurt someone by being in proximity to them. He couldn’t hurt someone by existing.
But that wasn’t a conversation I was about to have in front of everyone else.
That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have at all, and maybe both of us were getting too good at pretending we didn’t see each other’s cracks.
“Let’s figure out what’s going on with the rest of us, then,” I said. Iggy nodded in agreement, and we moved away from him.
Most of our files were gibberish— I understood what Mike meant by corrupted files when I saw half of Nudge’s medical records that hadn’t been properly loaded, and some of my own were similar. Even more of the files weren’t comprehensible simply because of the shorthand and vocabulary that we didn’t understand. On top of that, there was no indisputable evidence that these files were, in fact, from the Institute of Higher Living— again, plenty of speculation, but speculation wasn’t worth much if we wanted to expose all of their dirty secrets without risking our freedom. Mike said he was looking for an electronic signature, but would need more time and possibly more data.
But what we did have…
Every test done, every update to our record, every scrap of paperwork that we had stolen had a name attached. Scientists, doctors, supervisors, everyone who had come into contact with us. Jebediah Batchelder, Diana Johansen, and Miranda Schultz barely scratched the surface. I recorded every name that we came across, from the nurses who took our vitals to—
“Soup guy!” Nudge exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “Roland Ter Borcht! He’s the chief scientific officer at the IFHL. That has to prove something, right?”
“Still circumstantial. No doubt IFHL’d claim this guy was workin’ with a different, unknown company on the side to save themselves. But I can start cross-referencing all of these people with IFHL employment records. Definitely a start, and only so much they can say is coincidence,” Mike replied.
I wrote down Roland Ter Borcht in the project supervisors category of the notebook, right next to the name Marina Jansen. Her name was familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember why. They stopped working directly on the project when we were young, but Borcht returned to California for a few months when Gazzy succeeded in living past two, and again when Angel turned two, just three months before we left for Colorado.
Jeb appeared to be the direct project manager, now. Assuming I hadn’t—
I raked a hand through my hair, as if I could banish those thoughts by pulling them out of my head, and continued to read.
The medical files were dense, and after a few minutes of attempting to read through every single one, I made the decision to only read through what they had written during our kidnapping, and assume that anything life-altering would be included.
Angel’s seizures had been classified, as guessed, into generalized epilepsy, though her MRIs had also come back with more white matter than average, and the whitecoats had been looking into some of those spots as possible lesions. I made a note to do more research into those terms to better understand them.
There wasn’t anything too concerning in Nudge’s or my files, thankfully, though the documentation of our injuries would hopefully help prove that the Institute was abusing its experiments, if our existence wasn’t proof enough. Fang had been brought in with a grade three concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and lacerations to their arm and wing.
They also documented what injuries were added, so I could name the teeth they had yanked out and the ones they had damaged beyond repair. I tried to focus on the vindication that someday soon I could use that information to bury the whitecoats responsible, and not the rage that it had happened at all.
And then, all too soon, there was only one question left to answer.
For a few seconds, all of us were still and quiet. Even Nudge, who I thought would jump on the information she had been chasing without a second of hesitation, didn’t have a word to say. Then, as if sensing that none of us were about to make the first move, Mike let out a heavy breath and pulled up a document.
It was Nudge’s, because he definitely had a favorite.
Monique Charlotte Robinson, the birth certificate read.
Place of Birth: Tipisco Community Hospital, Tipisco, Arizona.
Six pounds, two ounces.
Father’s name: Jacob Robinson
Mother’s name: Zoe Robinson
A few seconds later, once we had the time to read it, he pulled up two separate files— medical intake files of Zoe and Jacob Robinson, including both of their pictures. I saw her father’s round eyes and full lips, her mother’s light brown skin and dimple on her right cheek, and had to blink a few times to keep my vision clear.
“They were—” Mike paused, cleared his throat, and started again, “They were strugglin’ with having a kid. Worked through New Tomorrows just like Iggy’s parents. There are a bunch of medical tests through the pregnancy, health evaluations, more consent forms… you have a death certificate, too. I think— I think New Tomorrows might have their addresses on file, but those’d be the addresses from eleven years ago, and technically since it’s a different company than The Institute, the Institute doesn’t have— and I’m not qualified to talk about corporate— don’t even understand half of—”
“I have parents,” Nudge whispered. “Do we know— there has to be more on them. Maybe not an address, but something.”
Mike shrugged. “Haven’t found anythin’ yet. You’d have to figure out where New Tomorrows is keepin’ their data. But— but there are other ways to track down someone. It’s the digital age, there ain’t much that’s private anymore, and we have their names. We know they were in Tipisco eleven years ago. That’s a good start.”
“That— yeah. Yeah, that’s a great start. We can go back to Arizona ourselves if we have to,” Nudge nodded. “What about everyone else? Angel and Fang and Gazzy and—”
Mike grimaced. “Angel and Gazzy are a bit… I read through it, but the files either didn’t load properly or— or—” his fingers hit the keys a bit harder than necessary as he pulled up Gazzy’s file, giving a huff. “New Tomorrows also has a surrogacy program, but either they don’t transfer the files to the Institute because it’s a… I don’t know, different department, maybe? Or maybe I didn’t load them properly, or they wanted less of a paper trail, because there’s not nearly as much. On either of them.”
I looked over sharply to Gazzy and Angel. Gazzy pursed his lips, trying to put on a brave face, but Angel’s expression all-but crumpled.
“There’s— their mom’s name was Taina Gavrilov. Twenty-eight when she had Gazzy, thirty with Angel, compensated thirty thousand— you don’t… need to know those details.”
“What’s a surrogacy program?” Gazzy asked, voice small and shaky.
“It’s…” he paused, head craning at a strange angle as his eyes went distant, staying still and quiet for long enough that I nearly started counting, because he hadn’t said anything about being epileptic but it looked like a seizure, before continuing as if nothing had happened, “I’m gonna default to Max’s judgment, are they old enough to know what a surrogate is?”
“I don’t know what a surrogate is,” I replied.
“Um. Okay, then. Hm. A surrogate is a woman who’s paid to have someone else’s child. Usually a couple, usually with the… the… honestly, I don’t know all that much about it because, y’know, I’m a guy and also sixteen, there’s really no reason to—”
“You’re sixteen!” Nudge exclaimed, sitting up straight and pointing at Mike. “I knew you were a kid like the rest of us!”
“Godda— Maldit—” Mike squeezed his eyes shut and stuffed his fist in his mouth for a few seconds, trying not to swear as I took the time to mull over the new information.
So New Tomorrows had a surrogate service, and a surrogate service was something that paid women to have children for other people. The women who carried the kids would have no expectation to keep them, and if there was no one on the other side who actually wanted the kid, it would be easy for them to disappear.
“Our mom was paid to have us? She sold us?” Gazzy said, cracking from Iggy’s younger voice into my own as his expression morphed into something more jagged.
“Not… exactly? Would’ve thought she was givin’ you to someone who wanted you, but couldn’t give birth themselves. And also…”
“...isn’t our mom,” Angel whispered. At Mike’s silence, she glared. “You’re thinking it. You’re just trying to find a way to say it nice. Don’t. She’s not our mom, she’s someone who got paid to let someone else be a mom, except there wasn’t actually anyone, so she’s not our mom and no one else is our mom so we don’t have one. No one wants us! Don’t try to make it sound better! We’re not stupid!”
I gripped the edge of my seat as Angel’s voice raised to a yell, breathing hard as she finished. Angel wasn’t a yeller— I liked to think that none of us were, but Angel hardly ever yelled when she was upset. I might still be slow on what a surrogate meant for Angel and Gazzy, but whatever Mike was thinking had to be painting an awful picture.
She took another few breaths, blinking back tears, and whispered, “Fuck it. Iggy’s right, we don’t need parents.”
“No!” Gazzy protested. “So she didn’t have us for mother-y reasons. She got paid for it. So what? We could still be important to her. Or at least… she’d want to know. The Institute still lied to her.”
“Maybe,” Angel whispered as she wiped her eyes, glaring daggers at Mike. “Quit thinking so loud. Just because your parents left you high and dry doesn’t mean—”
“Do not bring my parents into—” Mike paused, expression cracking into a glare, before he seemed to realize he was glaring at a six-year-old. I realized that I hadn’t informed him of the whole six-year-old who leaks into your mind thing, and decided to shelf that conversation for as long as possible. “Maybe Ms. Gavrilov would want to meet you. I don’t know. But assumin’ this practice is widespread in this department, I imagine at least some of these women would want to know what they were used for. There have to be financial records or emails or something that link Tomorrow to Th’instit— the Institute, and money has to be going somewhere.”
“And if she really doesn’t want to be your mom, we can share my parents,” Nudge assured Angel softly, reaching over Fang to put her hand on top of Angel’s. “All of us, if we want to. And then we won’t have to worry about traveling between them. I mean, if my mom really wanted kids enough to go to a company for help with it, she won’t say no to either of you.”
Angel nodded as Gazzy leaned over and hugged her tightly, Iggy reaching to squeeze Gazzy’s shoulder.
“You wouldn’t get jealous?” Angel asked.
“Of course not!”
“You’d even let Iggy share?” She gave a wobbly smile, and then shot Iggy a look and said, “Gazzy, whack your brother for me.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You were thinking—”
I hit Iggy’s shoulder with my wing, saving Gazzy from having to. Iggy swore louder than he needed to, Angel repeated it a little quieter, and the world felt a little bit better. Like we could handle Gazzy and Angel not having parents, Iggy not wanting his own, and Nudge’s thinking she was dead.
Two left.
“What about Fang and I?” I asked. He grimaced at the screen, and I felt my throat grow dry. My mind went to Jeb, his white coat and icy gaze and all of the blood on that rebar, telling me that I was his daughter. I couldn’t see myself in Jeb the same way I could see Nudge in her parents, but then again, I had never looked. It had always been an unattainable fantasy, as real as the lullabies I heard my older sister rasp when I didn’t get enough sleep.
For four years, I had wanted nothing more than for him to be my father. Now I wanted to throw up.
“I got Fang’s files,” he muttered, so quick and quiet that I nearly didn’t catch it. “I— I spent hours last night tryin’ to recover everything, but there were safeguards on all of youse’s files that they’d be destroyed before they got stolen, we’re lucky that we have this. I didn’t get anything on One’s parents, either—”
“Emergency,” I corrected.
“Wait, what?”
“Subject 01’s name is Emergency,” I repeated, even though that probably wasn’t the right thing to be focusing on. Everyone around me, save for maybe Fang, had information— maybe their parentage was more complicated than we had thought it could be, or maybe one of them wasn’t there anymore, but it was still tangible, undeniable proof that they had existed outside of the Institute. That someone had wanted something more for them, even if it was just to give them to a family that didn’t actually exist. It was only me who had nothing, who didn’t have the choice to run to a mother or father and let them keep me safe, who was alone—
I wasn’t alone.
Iggy sat beside me, one of his hands steady on Gazzy’s shoulder as the other reached for my own. Angel and Gazzy looked at me, the two kids I had practically raised with Iggy and Fang, who had gone through hell in the past month and still looked at me like I could make it right. Nudge stood up, chair scraping over the wood floor, and went around the table so she could hug me as tight as she could. And Fang didn’t move, didn’t even look at me, but they had been beating back their own death for weeks so they could stay with us. Stay with me.
Emergency didn’t have those answers, either, the files just as lost as my own. Even if she did have them, she wasn’t around to read them. I wasn’t alone in that, either.
“You said mine and Emergency’s files were corrupted. That means you have Fang’s, right? And Gene’s, the other subject I told you to get,” I said, reaching with my free hand to squeeze Nudge’s arm. I meant it as a friendly, I’m okay and you can let go of me squeeze, but she must have taken it differently, because while she loosened her grip, she didn’t let go. I felt her cheek rest on the top of my head.
“Fang is not from New Tomorrows. Or at least I can’t prove they are, or if they’re from another ITEX-owned company, ’cause apparently ITEX is hemorrhaging shells and Pennsylvania legal system—” he pulled up a file as he continued to talk, but I stopped paying attention so I could read. There was a birth certificate in front of me, Gabriel Xue printed in black lettering, right above John Hopkins Children’s Center.
I glanced over to Fang, who wasn’t looking at Mike’s computer screen, but I could read them by the set of their jaw and the way they hid their hands under their crossed arms.
“There’s no record of a dad,” I finally tuned back into Mike’s chatter. “And your mom’s information is scarce. She was in high school when she had you, worried about complications of a younger birth, which… maybe that’s something New Tomorrows specializes in, I don’t know. But since she was a kid and she gave you up for adoption, a lot of the records are sealed, even from the Institute.”
“She was a teenager?” I asked, looking at the file of Jennifer Xue. The grainy picture of her looked to be around our age, and it only made it more obvious how much Fang had taken after her. Her skin was a little darker, her cheeks a little more round, but that could just be the malnourishment. Her eyes were the same, her nose scrunched up when she smiled, and I could make out a dark mole on her left cheek. A perfect mirror to the one on Fang’s.
“Uh… yeah. More common than you’d think. Doesn’t say a thing about you, Fang. Just… something that happens sometimes. No one’s fault.”
Fang’s gaze finally strayed to the screen, looking almost stricken as they saw their mother for the first time. For a moment, they only stared, breaths slow and shallow, face blank of everything they could be feeling.
“She—” their voice came out like gravel, making their nose wrinkle, and they really were the spitting image of their mom, “she didn’t want me.”
“Fang,” I whispered.
“She probably thought she was giving you to someone better,” Nudge said. “Isn’t that why most people give their kids up for adoption?”
“But she didn’t want me. So it doesn’t matter that— it’s better. It’s better that—” they blinked harshly, a crease forming in their brow. “It’s good that it’s like this. She thinks she gave me to someone better. She thinks I’m still…” Wood scraped on wood as they stood, moving to pull at their hair before they remembered I had braided it out of their face. “Need to—”
It seemed like that was the furthest their voice would carry them, because all that came out was a strangled croak. They tried to speak a few more times before they gave up and signed,
“I’m going for a flight.”
“There’s no way it’s safe enough this close to New Yor— don’t walk away from me.”
“No one outside this room sees me.”
“You’re not flying like this.”
“Then I’m going for a walk.”
I glared. They didn’t glare back, but whatever they were doing— standing still, breathing becoming more and more shaky, eyes sunken and dead as the rest of them— was somehow worse.
“You’re taking Iggy with you,” I ordered. They nodded stiffly and turned, brushing past all of us and leaving Iggy to follow much less gracefully, managing to whack his shin off of a chair before he caught up. A few seconds later, the door swung open and closed with a dull thud.
“I could go after them,” Nudge said softly, squeezing me tighter. It felt less for my reassurance and more for her own, so I leaned back in my chair and let my head fall against her chest.
“I think they need some space. We’ll talk once they come back,” I replied.
“We can all share my mom and dad,” she said. “And your mom— Taina— we’ll find Taina and we’ll tell her what they did to you, and she’ll still want to help us take down the Institute. And we’ll find Fang’s mom for them. She couldn’t be a mom when she was a teenager, but she’s, like, thirty by now. And Fang’s not a baby, so that makes things easier on her. So that will be fine.”
“And we still have what we need to start taking down the Institute,” I finished. “We have names of everyone who hurt us. We have proof that someone hurt us. I know…”
Angel’s eyes were still red around the edges, watery even as she tried to hold back her tears. Gazzy had sunken into himself sometime between learning that none of us were about to die and learning that he didn’t have parents the way we thought he would. Iggy’s mother died trying to bring him into the world, and Fang…
I shook off Nudge and leaned forward, propping my elbows on the table and looking Gazzy and Angel in the eye.
“I know that we didn’t get exactly what we wanted from this. I know this hurts. But we’re free, we’re alive, and we’re going to stay that way. We know everything that we need to. And this information is what is going to bring The Institute, New Tomorrows, ITEX, whatever they decide to call themselves down. They will pay for ever touching us, and we’re going to live to see them do it. Okay?”
Angel and Gazzy nodded, though Angel’s eyes were still downcast.
“Okay?” I repeated a bit louder, standing from my chair and taking Nudge’s hand in my own.
“Okay,” Gazzy murmured.
“I can’t hear you, Captain Terror! We can do better than that!”
“Okay!” Nudge and Gazzy both yelled, and I saw Angel’s lips move.
“Louder! Come on, we’re free, we don’t have to keep our voices down! Swear it out if you want to!”
“God dammit okay!” Angel screamed loud enough for me to wince, but I felt a smile come to my face and a laugh come out of my throat.
“Hell yeah!” I yelled back.
“Fuck!” she screamed.
I took a deep breath, and screamed it louder.
If anyone was around to find it suspicious that a seemingly vacant vacation home was filled with the sound of children and teenagers swearing at the top of their lungs, they didn’t find it weird enough to report it to the police. We screamed, and eventually we managed to laugh. When Fang and Iggy finally came back, Nudge leapt over the table to give them the tightest hug she possibly could until Iggy desperately tapped out. I didn’t let my mind stray towards Jeb, nor towards the files that I didn’t have. At least for a moment, they didn’t matter.
It wasn’t until we had all congregated in the living room, plastic covering the couches and shag rug on the floor— when was this place built?— that Mike quietly tapped me on the shoulder and asked to talk. I nodded and attempted to gracefully extract myself from Angel’s attempts to braid what remained of my hair, passing her off to Fang and promising to be back soon, before following Mike back into the dining room. I kept half-listening to make sure that the mood didn’t dampen without me before I could focus my full attention on the human in front of me.
“Anything wrong?” I asked him.
“No pressingly. First: the last subject’s name is…”
“Gene.”
“Gene. Well, Gene also had a surrogate, like Angel and Gazzy. Morana Evanson. His files are mostly here, so if you want to go through them… maybe not now, with the…” he gestured towards the entrance to the living room. “But eventually. I do have them.”
I nodded. “And you have some of Emergency’s, right?”
“Some. Not her parents.”
“Good. Fang, Iggy, and I can look…” I swallowed something sharp down to my chest where it belonged, and continued, “The younger kids don’t remember them very well, so we’ll talk about them later.” For a moment, I considered saying that we’d talk about it when it didn’t feel like it would hurt, but I stopped myself.
They were our brother and sister. It was always going to hurt. It was supposed to hurt.
“What about… what about Project Darwin?” I finally asked. The question that had been at the back of my mind ever since I realized Everyone wasn’t in my head anymore. SInce they said it in the first place, back in that room that spun and breathed.
He shook his head. “That’s the not-so-great news. Was still tryin’ to get past the fire when we had to pack, didn’t get anything. Sorry. And really, really sorry about your parents. That sucks, and if I had—”
“Don’t be sorry,” I interrupted, throat and chest feeling too tight for a second. “We wouldn’t have gotten any of that without your help. I know who hurt me. I know why they had the power to do it. I know that me and my siblings aren’t about to die of cancer or a brain aneurysm or something. So don’t apologize. I should be thanking you.”
He blinked a few times, like he didn’t know how to deal with common decency.
“Do people not know how to say thank you in New York, or something? Is it illegal to be nice?”
“Screw you.”
“Apparently it is.”
He rolled his eyes, leaning against the table. “What is Project Darwin, anyway?”
I thought of the Voice echoing in my skull, that enormity of Everyone. Something that felt so much bigger than myself. I didn’t know what the Institute of Higher Living had done to make that possible. I didn’t know what they were playing with.
I did know that, whatever it was, if it was a person or a machine or something more, it wasn’t in my head anymore. Not right now, anyway. And I didn’t want anything to do with it.
“It was nothing. Just a name I picked up on in the School.”
“Hm.”
I stood, stretching my wings above my head. “I’m going to step outside really quick. Could you tell them where I am and… really, take a nap. You look awful.”
“I’m not takin’ sass about my sleep schedule from a fourteen-year-old.”
“Yeah, because sixteen is so much better, fellow kid.”
I stepped out onto the back porch, planks creaking underneath my weight, and propped my elbows on the rail. I clenched my bad hand into a fist, remembering the cold bite of metal against my palm. The rebar was in the bedroom we had slept in last night, still covered in blood. When the salt-laced wind blew past me, it hit the back of my neck— the price I paid to make it out of that building, even if I hadn’t made it out whole.
I didn’t need to be whole. I hadn’t been whole in a long time.
Maybe it was for the best for me to not know who my parents were. I didn’t need them. I never had. I wasn’t even sure if I had even wanted them, more than I had just wanted someone who could take part of the burden of being a leader. Being the oldest, and everything it entailed in our family.
But that adult had never needed to be mine. We had never needed all of us to find our parents— all we needed was enough of them to care if we went missing. Enough that were hurt by the Institute in the form of stolen children and lies of what their bodies had been used for. Enough who would be angry enough to seek justice.
As I stared at my hand, trying to stretch out my fingers and watching them strain and tremble, I didn’t know if the tightness in my chest was a grief for what had been stolen from me fourteen years old, or a heavy, bone-numbing relief that I would never know. I could never go back to New York, to that place that had my parents’ names somewhere in their records. That part of my life was closed to me. The only path left for me to take was forward, for better or for worse.
I turned my eyes to the sky, took a deep breath of ocean air, and felt myself smile.