скачать книгу бесплатно
Once We Were
Kat Zhang
The hotly anticipated and stunningly written second book in Kat Zhang’s heart-stopping Hybrid Trilogy.Imagine that you have two minds, sharing one body. You and your other self are closer than twins, better than friends. You have known each other forever.Then imagine that people like you are hated and feared. That the government want to hunt you down and tear out your second soul, separating you from the person you love most in the world.Now meet Eva and Addie.THEY DON’T HAVE TO IMAGINE.The second book in Kat Khang's heart-stopping Hybrid Trilogy
Copyright (#u2921bb23-d63d-5521-a04e-16c2e8749e3c)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Text copyright © Kat Zhang 2015
Design and typography © www.blacksheep-uk.com (http://www.blacksheep-uk.com)
Photo © Yolande de Kort/Trevillion Images
Kat Zhang asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007490363
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007476428
Version: 2014-11-25
Dedication (#u2921bb23-d63d-5521-a04e-16c2e8749e3c)
For Dechan, who may not be my sister in blood, but is in soul
Contents
Cover (#u197396dd-6d9f-5cb2-8cfa-8082aafacabd)
Title Page (#u157313e5-5a1d-516a-b635-e0a4c19d5a14)
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgments
Also by Kat Zhang
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE (#u2921bb23-d63d-5521-a04e-16c2e8749e3c)
We share a heart, Addie and I. We own the same pair of hands. Inhabit the same limbs. That hot June day, freshly escaped from Nornand Clinic, we stood and saw the ocean for the first time through shared eyes. The wind batted our hair against our cheeks. The sand stuck to our salt-soaked skin, turning our pale legs tan.
We experienced that day as we’d experienced the past fifteen years of our lives. As Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie. Two souls sharing one body. Hybrid.
But the thing is, sharing hands doesn’t mean sharing goals. Sharing eyes doesn’t mean sharing visions. And sharing a heart doesn’t mean sharing the things we love.
Here are some of the things I loved.
The cold shock of the ocean when I stood waist-deep in the water, jumping at the crest of each oncoming wave. The sound of Kitty’s laughter when I tickled her. The breathless joy of Hally’s dancing. The way Ryan smiled when I turned to look at him and he was already looking at me.
Addie liked these things, too. But she didn’t cherish them the way I did—desperately. Because I never should have had them. Millions of recessive souls never reached age five, let alone fifteen. That was the way of the world—or so Addie and I had been taught. Two souls born to each body. One marked by genetics to disappear.
I was lucky in so many ways.
I told myself this every morning when we opened our eyes, every night before we went to sleep.
I am lucky. So lucky.
I was alive. I was, in some ways, free. In a country where hybrids were forbidden and locked away, Addie and I had escaped. And I—
I could move and speak again. Me, who had known since childhood that I was the recessive soul, destined to fade away. That my parents would mourn quietly, quickly, then move on. That they would tell themselves this was the way of the world, the way things had always been, and who were they to question the workings of nature?
Children were supposed to shed recessive souls, leaving them behind like they would one day discard their baby teeth. Just another step on the journey to adulthood.
The alternative, never settling—retaining both souls—meant staying trapped in the chaos of a perpetual childhood, never gaining the steady, rational mind of an adult who could be trusted to control her own body. How could a hybrid ever fit into society? How would she marry? Would she be able to work, with two souls pulling and yearning in two different directions? To be hybrid was to be forever unstable, forever torn.
I was twelve, two years past the government-mandated deadline, when I succumbed to the curse lettered in my genes. But I was lucky, even then. I lost control of my body, leaving Addie to command our limbs, but I never disappeared completely.
It was better than dying.
Are you all right, Addie? Mom asked, those first few weeks after I was declared gone. She spoke the words like they pinched her lips on the way out, like she didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that Addie might not be okay, even then. Addie should have been normal.
I’m fine, Addie said, even when I screamed and screamed in her head, even when she was holding me as she smiled for our parents, telling me she was sorry, begging me to be as okay as she supposedly was.
Hally and Ryan Mullan were the ones who released me from the prison of my own bones. Where would I be if Hally hadn’t convinced Addie to go home with her that afternoon? Still paralyzed. Still alone. Not entirely, because I would always have Addie, but—alone, in every other sense of the word.
<We’d be home> Addie said once, when I whispered the question to her. The words floated between our linked minds, where no one else could hear us. <Mr. Conivent wouldn’t have taken us to Nornand. We wouldn’t be here.>
Here in Anchoit, this shining city by the western sea, smelling the salt the waves tossed into the air.
It had been my turn, then, to say I’m sorry. Because Addie was right. If Hally hadn’t—if I hadn’t convinced Addie to go to the Mullans’ house, to take the medication, to take that first step away from normality, we would still be home. We wouldn’t be out of danger—as hybrids, we could never truly relax—but we would be a little safer. We’d be going to school and watching movies and laughing at our little brother when he clowned around the kitchen.
<Don’t apologize, Eva. That’s not what I meant. I—> She’d hesitated, staring at the ceiling of this strange new apartment. Our new hideaway. <I never could have done it. Let you live like that. Not when I knew there was another way. And we’re out of Nornand. We’re going to be okay.>
Not like the other children who’d walked through those hospital halls. Like Jaime Cortae, who’d lost his other soul to a scalpel.
Addie and I had been lucky.
Perhaps, if we stayed lucky, we would never again have to see Mr. Conivent with his pressed, white button-up shirts. We would never again feel Jenson’s cold grip on our wrist—never come under the jurisdiction of his review board.
We would be allowed to live just as we were: Eva and Addie, Addie and Eva. Two girls inside of one.
ONE (#u2921bb23-d63d-5521-a04e-16c2e8749e3c)
