Children of Eden (19 page)

And so, haltingly, I tell him about Mom's arrangement to send me to a foster family after getting the lens implants. I tell him how just a few hours ago I was shaken awake, taken to find the cybersurgeon who would perform the operation. How we were trapped at the roadbock. How Mom gave her life so I could get away.

I hug my backpack to my chest and start to weep silently, my body shaking.

I feel his arm around me. I stiffen, then relax, then lean into him, wetting his shoulder with my tears.

“I'm so sorry about your mother,” he says.

“And now I'm all alone,” I say miserably. “I can never go back home. My father wouldn't want me, and even if he did . . . the Greenshirts will find out who my mother is, and find my dad and brother through her. What will happen to them?”

“I don't know,” he says gently. “Right now, we have to focus on keeping you safe. After that, maybe we can help them.”

I have no idea how that can be possible. The two of us against all the might of the Center? Still, there's something about him that gives me hope. He sounds too confident, too competent to be wrong.

Or is he just telling me what I need to hear right now, so I can get through the moment?

Either way, I'm grateful.

“Thank you for saving me,” I say shyly from under the crook of his arm. He loosens his comforting hold, and I sit up . . . and scoot a little away. “I'm . . . I'm glad I have you with me. Another second child. Do you think we're the only ones?”

He's silent for a long moment, staring at me so intently that I want to look away. But I hold his gaze until at last he whispers, “I have an entire family of second children, Rowan.”

FOR A MOMENT
I can't breathe. More second children? A
family
of them?

“Are you strong enough to move?”

I nod vigorously. If it means meeting more second children, I'm strong enough to do anything! Sleep has relieved many of my aches, given my cuts time to scab, and even my ankle is a little less swollen. I won't be winning any races, but I can walk.

“Where are they?” I ask, and my eagerness must be apparent on my face because he laughs and says, “Easy now. You've waited sixteen years to meet more second children. You can wait another hour or two.”

“Are they out here in the beanstalks? Are they in the outermost circle?” I'm rewarded with another one of his sly, mysterious smiles.

“Second children are everywhere,” he says. “All over Eden, right under your feet, and you'd never know.” He springs to his own feet and offers me his hand. Even though I feel a lot better than I did twelve hours ago, I'm grateful for his help getting up.

“We have to travel fast, and be inconspicuous,” he says. “What do you have in that pack? Can you leave it behind?”

I scoop it up and sling it onto my shoulders. I haven't even looked inside it, but it is the only thing I have from home, from Mom, and no force on Earth will make me part with it.

“That answers that question,” he says, and starts walking. I scurry to catch up, feeling somehow that he's disappointed in me.

“When we get back into the city, you need to do exactly what I tell you. Understand? They're actively looking for you, and the next hours will be extremely dangerous. Luckily, I know someone who can reduce the risk considerably.” He slows to wait for me. “Good thing you're tall. You'll look the part.”

He knows an easier route through the tangle of rubble than the one I took, and I make it through with hardly a scratch. We emerge at the back of a building and he leads me inside, through a door barely hanging on its hinges.

“Are
these
the second children?” I ask. In the dim light I see bodies sprawled in corners, lying on makeshift mattresses or on the cold bare floor. It's hard to make out details, but their faces look gaunt. As we walk swiftly through, I see a young woman with a band tied tightly around her upper arm. Below it, blue-black veins bulge. There's a needle in the crook of her arm . . .

Lachlan takes my elbow and hustles me away. “No. We'd never let a second child come to this. We take care of our own. We protect each other, from the Center, and from ourselves—to the death.”

I feel a deep shiver run down my spine.

“Don't these people need protection, too? Even though they aren't second children?”

I think I touched a nerve. “They have every opportunity that legitimacy can provide,” he snaps. “If they choose to destroy themselves, it's not our problem.”

I don't know. There's something in his eyes as he looks at the addicts that makes me think his inner thoughts don't quite match his words.

We're through the building in a moment, exiting onto a narrow alley that takes us within a few steps to another building. We slither through a street-level window into an empty basement apartment, and wend our way through corridors until we emerge somewhere else. Over and over we do this, traveling mostly through basements of decrepit buildings, through abandoned warehouses and empty businesses, emerging only for a few seconds at a time, using the structures like a warren of tunnels to travel out of sight.

It isn't long before I've lost all sense of direction. I don't know if we've traveled miles toward the Center or in a circle. Finally we slip from one basement into an adjoining building, climb five flights of stairs, and stop at a door locked with a thumbprint scanner. Lachlan presses his thumb to the pad. He seems to shift it restlessly as he presses down.

I frown. “Is it a good idea to have your prints on record?” I ask.

“Good thinking,” Lachlan replies. “Luckily the scanner is just a decoy. The door unlocks from the rhythm I just tapped in with my thumb pressure. It only scans the fingerprint if someone doesn't tap the code. Then we can track whoever is trying to get in without authorization.”

Clever. There's apparently a whole world of trickery in Eden that I never imagined.

Inside we find a businesslike middle-aged woman in the sort of suit typical of a Center official. Instinctively, I flinch behind Lachlan, but he greets her by name. “Hey Rose, do you have the day's roster?” I peek around his shoulder and look at her eyes. They have the flat, dull sheen of the implants. Not a second child, then.

“Of course, whippersnapper. When do I
not
have the roster?”

He gives her a quick hug, a peck on the cheek.

“Who's this then?” she asks.

“No one—yet. I'm taking her to the others.”

Rose raises her eyebrows and looks me over. “Has she been tested yet? She really shouldn't be here if she hasn't been tested.”

Lachlan glances at me. “In the last day she's been tested as much as many other second children.”

“But not as much as some,” she replies, looking at him hard. “Still, if you say she can be trusted . . .”

“I do.”

“Then follow me.” She leads us to a back room, and then to a closet full of Greenshirt uniforms. “The usual lieutenant for you, Lachlan?”

“Rank without too much responsibility, that's me.”

“And I'm guessing recruit for this one.” She pulls two uniforms off of the racks and thrusts one at me. “Change. There.” I step behind a screen and strip off my dirty, torn clothes, feeling so strange being naked in the same room as strangers, my height making my shoulders and half my chest stick up over the screen. When I've struggled into the uniform I step out and Rose yanks the fabric into order. “Straighten your gig line, recruit!” she says, pulling my belt into alignment with my zipper.

I look at myself in the mirror, wearing the uniform of the enemy. My eyes look frightened . . . until Rose hands me a pair of darkly tinted glasses. Then I look as menacing as any Greenshirt. I'm a little scared of my own reflection.

Dressed as authority figures, we move through Eden unmolested. In the outer circles, people sidle out of our way. Closer to the Center, they mostly ignore us, though some nod
in greeting, believing their elite position in society means they have nothing to fear. Some of the time we travel by autoloop, but at the end we're on foot again. For my backpack, which would otherwise look out of place, Rose has given me a large tag that reads “Evidence.” I'm just a recruit finishing up a case.

There is a brief moment when I recognize streets I walked along with Lark, and the memory brings a pang. I look at each face, thinking I might see her. But she'd be in school, and wouldn't recognize me in this uniform, and I couldn't dare approach her even if I saw her.

Then Lachlan's pace quickens, and he leads me through streets at such a pace that I get disoriented again.

Suddenly he says, “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I say at once, not even thinking about whether it is true. People keep asking me that.

“Then follow me.”

He pulls me abruptly down a side street, kicks a loose grate aside, and points to what looks to me like a bottomless black pit. It is only just wider than my shoulders. I take an inadvertent step back.

“Don't think. Don't question. Just jump.” He looks a little excited, like he's wondering what I'll do, whether I'll disappoint him.

I've never been afraid of climbing. Though I'll never have an opportunity to climb a mountain, I know for a fact that no matter how high I ascend, it will never bother me. Falling, though, the very antithesis of climbing, scares me to death.

What if this is all a trick, a trap? What if he's working for the Center and this is a pit to my doom? What easier way to get rid of a second child than to convince her to voluntarily leap to her own death. This might be an abattoir filled with the bodies of . . .

He pushes me.

My hands claw for the edge but I'm falling down . . . down . . . the passage narrows. The sides are perfectly smooth, nothing to grab onto to slow my descent. The walls are closing in. I'm going to be wedged in here forever, left to die . . .

As my body brushes the sides, though, the tunnel begins to slant and instead of falling I'm sliding smoothly. The slide levels out, and before I know it I'm skidding to a gentle stop. Now that it's over and the adrenaline leeches from my body, I decide it was rather fun. I'd like to do it again—without all the fear of death part.

I find myself in a stone chamber. Stone! Rock! Real natural minerals just like the walls of my own house! This must be an underground cave system. Phosphorescent strips along the floor offer a gentle glow, and I wonderingly examine the whorls and crevices of the cave, the formations that hang like jagged teeth from the ceiling. I'm so lost in the marvelous sight that Lachlan bumps me from behind when he slides down.

“I told you to do exactly what I say,” he tells me brusquely. “There's no time for indecision in a second child's life. Any mistake can be your last.”

Then it is a race through twists and turns that leave me baffled. I try to pay attention to our direction—and I try to admire the amazing natural cave system I never knew was under Eden—but Lachlan pulls me along at breakneck speed. Once, I'm sure, he leads me past the same rock formation three times.

It is such an utterly baffling labyrinth down here! I realize that these confusing tunnels are the best layer of security imaginable, probably more effective than armed guards. Even if they found the entrance, which didn't seem likely, the impossible maze down here would thwart any invader.

Finally he slows, in a passage that looks like every other—arching stone walls, dim lights barely illuminating our feet.

“We're here,”
Lachlan says, and turns to smile at me. “Are you ready? You're about to meet your brothers and sisters. An entire family of second children.” He takes my hand and squeezes it quickly before releasing it.

I feel my breath coming fast, and smile back. People like me! Second children who have made a life for themselves! I have no idea what kind of life that is, but I am giddy at the thought of finding out.

Lachlan presses a hidden panel in the end of the cavernous chamber and the rock seems to split. A crevice opens up that turns into a door, cleverly hidden in the stone. It creaks slowly open to a black void.

“Go on,” he urges, his smile so joyful and welcoming. I don't repeat the mistake I made at the pit. Without question, without fear, I step through into the impenetrable darkness.

There's movement, hands on my body, something heavy and wet forced over my head so I'm trapped, suffocating.

“No! Let her go!” I hear Lachlan bellow. “Rowan! No!” I hear the sound of fighting, but I'm being dragged away. I feel a prick in my arm, and the world goes blurry for a while . . .

When I come to my senses, the heavy bag is still over my head, cinched tight at my neck. I can feel the cords of the drawstring draped over my shoulders.

“She's awake.” I hear a slosh, and someone dumps freezing water over my head. It soaks through the bag, making it cling tightly to my nose, my mouth. I can't breathe! When I shake my head, I manage to make a small gap between the canvas and my mouth, just enough to suck in a little air. But it's not enough, I feel light-headed, drowning on dry land.