Page 14 of Evolved

When I’m done, we take turns in the bathroom and we pass in the hall.

I catch his scent, and it lingers, crisp, bold, warm, nothing like his dark hawk’s eyes, and I long to say his name in the dark, feel its shape in my mouth, the long pull of the O, the hard snap of the X, and I wonder what would he do if I caught his hand in mine, traced the calluses on his palms?

I can imagine it so clearly, that mouth of his, parted lips, the touch of his tongue, breath on my skin, the feel of his beating heart.

And I feel afraid.

Even without the sock, risking changing the way things are is terrifying.

The moment passes, and so do we.

4|Centuries of First Ladies

OTTILIE

Another week has passed …

Frankie and Auden are living without electricity, and Yorke is adrift, alone in the city.

“OTTILIE,”a hoarse whisper plunges its way through the walls of my dreams and rips me from sleep.

I roll toward it.

I was reading a medical book when I fell asleep, specifically a section on evaluating the success of treatment, and my dream self was panicked that the drugs we’d been giving Gran along with dialysis were all wrong. “We’ll try more,” I murmur.

A soft alarm nags at me. Something distant but insistent. Awarning.

“Ottilie. Wake up. The sensors are going off.”

The censors? Like for a census? Does he mean a poll?

My hand flaps out and hits a face, soft lips, a hard jaw that hasn’t been shaved in a while.

“Knox.” It’s the first time I’ve had the guts to say it, and now only because I’m confused and half asleep.

“We need to go,” he whispers.

The alarms are clear now. Not censors. Sensors. Motion sensors.

I lurch upright.

“People are inside the perimeter. They’ll be in the building any second,” he whispers, and immediately my senses shift, sounds prickling through my ear canal; it’s raining, not snowing like I’d have expected, given how relentlessly cold it’s been the last couple of days. I can hear the spatter of it through the windows, then … faint, distant, barely there, and then crystal clear … smashing glass.

I bolt to my feet, barefoot but for socks.

Somewhere in the distance, a man shouts, and the timbre of it chills my blood.

Another one calls out.

A louder crash.

More of them.

“They didn’t come because of our post-its,” babbles out of me.

“No. And t’s too many to fight.”

“We need to go,” I whisper.

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