The older boy's jaw tightened. "I want to see them now. I want to go home now."
"I know," Yuyan said softly. "I understand wanting that so badly it hurts. But there are two hundred of you, and the special team need to do this carefully to make sure everyone gets matched with the right families. It won't be instant, but it will happen."
She sat with them for a while, letting them tell her about their families, their homes, the lives they'd been stolen from. The older boy had a younger sister who he was supposed to walk home from school. The younger boy had parents who ran a small restaurant and let him help in the kitchen. They clung to these memories like lifelines, proof that they'd existed before the basement, that they had places they belonged.
