Children of Eden (27 page)

The electrified fence around the modification center gives off a low, menacing hum. Lachlan cocks his head up at it. “I wish you'd told me about the electricity ahead of time. It's going to take me a while to disable it, and I don't want to be outside here any longer than necessary.”

“I can get us in,” I tell him, and repeat Mom's instructions. “They turn off the electricity to the third panel from the left on the southeast side.” I have a moment of doubt. “South
west
?”

He gives me a wry look. “You
do
know the voltage level is very likely fatal, don't you?”

“Southeast. I'm sure of it.” Fairly sure. “It's off between three and four in the morning.”

He checks his watch and nods. “I guess this place has dealings with a few people on the wrong side of the law. Nice of them to give their friends a back door inside.” He leads me around the back of the building, and we count three chain-link superconductive panels from the left.

I lean close to try to listen for the telltale buzz of a charge, but the whole thing is humming and I can't tell if this panel is deactivated. I look around for some debris to test it with. Maybe if we throw something at the fence we'd see a spark? I'm not really sure how this works.

“Can we . . . ?” I begin uncertainly, but in what I'm beginning to realize is a characteristically Lachlan approach he hurls himself at the fence . . . and doesn't sizzle to death. He grins over his shoulder at me. “Coming?”

I can't help laughing. And then . . . I can't help racing him to the top. Despite his head start, my hand clasps the top before his. I feel strong, capable.

We drop down on the far side and make our way to the back door. As Mom told me, I knock twice up on the high corner of the door, pause for a breath, and knock three times near the bottom. There's a long, tense wait, and finally we hear footsteps approaching from within.

I don't know what I was expecting—a middle-aged scientist, a businesslike doctor in a white coat? We're greeted by a young woman with red hair pulled severely back from her face, her eyes heavily lined in black, in an otherwise bone-pale face. Her paleness is further set off by her all-white clothes. She's not wearing the traditional doctor's coat I'm used to seeing my dad in, but rather an edgy ensemble of strange angles, accented with sleek steel fastenings. Against all that stark whiteness her slicked-back hair is like a lava flow, her eyes like burning coals.

She stares—no, glares—at me for a moment, then her eyes widen slightly. “
Bikk!
Where the hell have you been?” she hisses. “And who the hell are you?” She turns those smoldering eyes on Lachlan.

“I'm . . .” he begins, but she obviously has no patience for an answer. She grabs us each by an arm and jerks us inside.

“I don't want to know who you are. And Rowan I know
quite well. At least from your mother, and from physical schematics of you. I'm Flame.” The name suits her perfectly. “Why didn't you show up yesterday?” she demands.

In as steady a voice as I can manage I tell her about the roadblock, Mom's murder.

“She said someone was onto you,” the cybersurgeon muses. “
Bikk!
” she swears again, stalking away from us. We drift in her wake. “I should have destroyed the lenses the second there was even a hint of trouble.”

“You didn't though, did you?” Lachlan asks, and Flame looks at him sharply.

“What does it matter to you? Never mind.” She turns to me. “Are you ready? The procedure will take about an hour, but we'll have to monitor you for a while afterward. Then follow-up visits for twelve weeks. It will be six months at least before the lenses fully bond to your neurons, and you'll need a final check after that. Until then if they're removed or damaged you'll have to start from scratch. After that, they'll be a permanent part of your body. But don't do anything to screw this up, because this is the only pair I've successfully made, and frankly after I implant them I'm out of this business. I don't need the trouble. The money, yes, but not the risk of death.”

I try to get a word in edgewise through the whole monologue, but I don't have a hope until she runs out of steam. Then I finally blurt out, “I'm not taking the lenses. I want Lach—my friend to have them.” I realized just in time that I probably shouldn't give his name.

She doesn't even stop walking. “Nope. Not gonna happen.”

I trot to catch up. “But I don't want them. And he needs them.”

She dramatically pantomimes blocking her ears. “I don't want to hear it. I got paid enough to move Serpentine three rings in, and that's the only social issue that matters to me. You
go fight the Center or turn yourself into a turtle or feed the hungry or uplift the poor—it's all the same to me. Just don't
tell
me.”

“You don't need to know why,” I try again. “Just give them to him, not me.”

“Kid, don't you understand? These are
your
lenses. Yours, no one else's.”

“I know my mom paid, but . . .”

“This isn't about money.” She gives a mirthless chuckle. “First and last time those words will ever pass my lips. Do you realize that no one outside the Center has even successfully made lenses that will bond to the individual? That will feed into the EcoPan like these do? This is my masterpiece! Me, with all my training and degrees, who spends her life implanting horns and scales onto Bestials, finally came up with something brilliant. These are not just any lenses. Your mom gave me scans of your eyes, your brain, a personality assessment, basal temperature readings, metabolic data . . . These are custom-made for you. They won't work in anyone else.”

I'm stunned. I don't know what to think. At one point I was desperate for a normal life, but when that became impossible I decided I absolutely didn't want the lenses. I want to stay me. My eyes, my identity, even if I have to hide it all my life. Even if I have to die for it.

I'm about to say
Forget it, destroy them, we're leaving
 . . . when Lachlan grips my shoulder. I don't think he means to, but he's clutching me so hard it hurts.

“You have to get the lenses,” he says between clenched teeth. “You have to take my place.”

I start to shake my head. “No . . .” I begin. But he pulls me out of the room, muttering “
Excuse us
” while the cybersurgeon shrugs and makes a gesture of aggravated dismissal.

“This is our only chance,” he hisses at me the second we're
alone. He's pulled me so close. I suddenly feel uncomfortably warm. “There's a very narrow window. And the way I've set it up, a very narrow age range. Someone our age has to infiltrate the school, the inner circle families, or this entire operation is shot to hell.”

“I . . . I'm not like you. I hardly even know what's going on!”

“You're more like me than you realize. I know you have a sense of justice. I know you want fair treatment for second children, and all children of Eden.”

“But I can't! You're . . .”

“I'm what? What can I do that you can't do, or learn? I'm nothing special. A kid who was kicked around, kept down, until he decided to fight. You're a fighter, Rowan.” He rubs his cheek where I punched him. But that was different.

I shake my head. “I'm just . . . me.”

“Never think that ‘just you' isn't enough. Rowan, listen to me! Everything is riding on this. I've prepared for this, trained for this, thought about nothing else for the past year.”

“But I haven't! I don't even know what to do. I don't want—”

I was going to say
I don't want to
, but he cuts me off, and probably thinks I'm going to say something noble, like
I don't want to let you down
. But that's not it. I was just getting used to the idea of peace, underground. Of companions, safety. A new family.

“I'll help you. I'll be with you all the way—or as close as I can get. I'll be your handler.” As if to illustrate, he links his fingers through mine. I feel a strange mix of elation and trepidation. My handler? As if I'm a puppet, with him pulling the strings.

“It will be easy. All you have to do at first is go to school, make friends, act normal.”

A laugh bursts out of me, uncontrollable. “
That's
easy? Until a few days ago, I knew three people, of which only two liked me. Make friends? Act normal? If you put me in, your mission will fail in the first five minutes!”

He smiles gently and squeezes my fingers in his. “You're more charming than you imagine,” he says softly. “I believe in you, Rowan. Believe in yourself and you can do it. I wouldn't ask you if I didn't think you could. The mission is too important to trust to someone incompetent.” He strokes one of my knuckles with his thumb. “And your life is too important to risk if I didn't think you'd succeed.”

“Why?” I ask. I'm not fishing for compliments, not asking out of vanity. I really want to know why he values my life so much.

He flushes, actually turns pink. His eyes drop to my fingers, our fingers.

“I'll just pick one reason,” he says, lifting his gaze to mine again, but not releasing my hands. The small room feels warmer than ever. “The way you fight for people you care about. For Lark when she was in danger. For your brother. You forget yourself, and think only of the person you love. That makes you extraordinary.” He sighs, and there's a tremor in that sigh so deeply sad. “I only wish once in my life someone had fought for me like that.”

I only have one question for him. “If I say no, will you still help me rescue Ash?”

“Yes,” he answers without hesitation.

And because he says yes, I say yes.

Within minutes I'm in a brightly lit room, being prepped for surgery. A few breaths later, I slip into blackness . . .

. . . AND AWAKE
to gunfire. Only, I'm not really awake. I can't be, because even though my eyes are open I'm still seeing dreamlike images. My eyeballs tingle. Not just sensation, but movement, a rapid vibration that is maddening. I see . . . I don't know. People, in a chrome room sickly with a green glow that seems to emanate from above. Small animals, hairless and pink, helpless in cages. Wires protruding from tubs of bubbling gel. The images dance incoherently, but I can't tell if I'm seeing them with my eyes or my imagination. There's shouting, too, and another bang. Another gunshot? Real or imagined?

No, it's the sound of my own body crashing to the floor, jarring every bone. Except my skull. A hand holds my head, saving it from the hard ground. I sense a warm pressure on me, and feel unaccountably safe.

Finally my vision comes into focus, and I see Lachlan. He's pressed against me, holding me down on the floor. I smile. I don't know which parts are real, but this feels right.

“We have to get you out of here,” Lachlan says. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell? The hand that's not cupping my head begins to feel along my body. I giggle when he brushes
my ribs. The strange look he gives me when I do suddenly cues me in to what's real, what's not.

Gunfire. I had my lens implant surgery. We're under attack.

I look around wildly from my prone position. I'm practically under the operating table. Strange, sharp instruments are scattered on the floor around me. I try to get up, but Lachlan holds me down.

“They're at the front. Two, maybe three Greenshirts. Luckily your talented cybersurgeon is also a skilled hacker, and seems to have modified a couple of securitybots to do her bidding, and they're keeping the Greenshirts at bay. Can you stand?”

“I was trying to,” I say testily, afterimages of some strange room haunting me, stamped on the back of my eyelids.

“There's no sign of Flame.” There's a gun in his hand. I don't even know where he wore it. I didn't seen a trace of it on his body.

“We have to get out of here.” He's looking at me strangely, and my hand creeps to my eyes. I want to see them, but it isn't exactly an opportune time to find a mirror. They're puffy and tender, but the world looks the same as ever through them now. Those other images must have been a hangover from my anesthesia.

“The shots are coming from the front,” I mumble, trying to piece together the layout of Serpentine from the small amount I've seen. “Can we get out the back?”

“Maybe. But the fence is electrified again.”

We're kept prisoner by the thing that is supposed to keep people out.

“Can you turn it off?”

“There should be a control box somewhere, but . . .”

I follow the direction of his gaze.

“It's
probably in the front,” I conclude dismally. “What are we going to do?”

“
You
are going to stay here.
I'm
going to give those ally securitybots a little help.”