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.”