Children of Eden (31 page)

Lark flashes him a disdainful look. “You really don't have a high opinion of my covert skills, do you? Oh, that's right, we Edgers are just dabbling dilettante do-gooders.” She presses at a section of the wall and a door pops open. Inside are several sterile full-body contamination suits, along with disposable full-face masks.

I look at them dubiously. They don't seem watertight.

“Don't worry, they shrink to fit and then make a biofuse once you put them on. There's a built-in rebreather with enough for at least an hour. Nothing is breaching that. At least, nothing floating in there. When you get to the other side you can strip them off and shove them somewhere.”

“And if we have to leave this way, too, instead of the main entrance?” Lachlan asks.

“There will be more on the other side. They're everywhere. Every time something goes wrong or gets clogged someone has to dive underneath the sludge. It's actually a very efficient system, overall. Just not one that takes human dignity into consideration. My father used to have this job, before he got promoted. Now he just decides when someone else has to do this job.”

“And we'll come up right underneath the Center?”

“Right inside,” she says. “There will be an access hatch. My dad has taken me all over Eden underground. I can travel anywhere, unseen—if I don't mind getting a little dirty. Most of the tunnels aren't bad, though.”

“I wish we knew about this,” Lachlan says. “We have our own system, passageways left over from when the Underground was first built, but we know nothing about the water and sewage system. When this is all over, would you be willing to share maps with us?”

“Of course. Assuming we live.”

I try to ignore that comment.

“You're not coming,” I tell her.

“But . . .”

“No,” both Lachlan and I say. “You've done your part,” I go on. “You've risked yourself enough for us.”

“No, not enough. Never enough.” She's looking intensely at me. “Ash is my friend.” She turns to Lachlan. “And Rowan is . . . more than that.”

Lachlan raises his eyebrows at that comment, but luckily doesn't look at me. Despite everything else that's going on, I know I'm blushing at that statement. “Rowan has the right to go. Ash is her brother. But you're just one more person to give us away, to make a mistake, to get hurt . . . to have to leave behind.” He pauses to let that sink in. To him, she's the expendable one. If he has the chance to rescue anyone, it will be me, not her. She'll be on her own.

She sighs, but knows she's beat. Instead she busies herself helping us put on the underwater hazmat suits.

I look at the lake of foul sludge in distaste. “Are you sure we can actually swim in that?”

She chuckles. “It's just on the surface, about four feet of it floating in a layer on top of the water. Once you clear that, you just have to swim.”

I suddenly see another obstacle I somehow never thought of. I've never been in water deeper or bigger than a bathtub. “I can't swim.”

“Luckily, you don't have to,” Lachlan says. “At least, not
really. It only counts as swimming if you have to get to the surface to breathe. All you have to do here is not panic. You can do that, right?”

I remember the nanosand crushing me, filling my nose, my mouth, creeping toward my lungs. Will swimming be like that? Maybe not, but drowning will.

But “Right!” I say, of course. I hope I don't let Lachlan down. I hope we both don't let Ash down. “If . . . if I don't make it, will you go on and still try to save him?” I ask Lachlan. I bite my lower lip, tense. If I'm gone—with my lens implants, my special undercover assignment—what motivation will he have for saving Ash?

I keep misjudging him. But what do I know of people anyway?

“I won't
let
you not make it,” he says with a lighthearted wink. “But if you don't, I'll get your brother for you . . . or die trying.”

He makes it sound preposterously melodramatic, but I know he means it.

Lark helps us into the suits, and even before I plunge into the sludge I feel like I'm suffocating. The suit is made of some kind of biofilm that fuses seamlessly wherever the coded edges meet, sealing me inside what feels like a death chamber. When the mask goes on I almost panic. The second my desperate breathing starts to fog up the full-face mask, Lachlan catches one of my hands, Lark the other, like they're in a race to be the first to soothe me. Their competition distracts me enough to make me stop worrying about the suit killing me. I stop hyperventilating and sigh in exasperation. That works, and I find I can breathe tolerably well even inside my latest prison.

“Ready?” Lachlan asks.

“No,” I say. “Not at all.”

He laughs, thinking I'm joking, and dives in head-first,
certain I'll follow him. That's what happens when you get a reputation for bravery, I guess. Is that how courageous people persevere? They do one brave thing, and have to live up to their reputation ever after? It would be so much easier to be a coward. But harder to live with myself.

Alone, I turn to Lark. Something has been nagging me in the back of my mind. “You told me before you had something to tell me. What is it?” My voice is muffled beneath the mask.

Two lines crease, then quickly smooth between her golden eyebrows. “It's . . . nothing. It can wait.” She flashes a brilliant smile and gives me a quick hug. “I'll tell you later. Promise. Don't worry. I'll be looking after you, too.”

“What do you mean?”

She hesitates a moment, with a secret little smile. “Why, waiting here of course, to help you if you have to escape this way.” She touches my face, but it is remote through the hazmat mask.

Lachlan surfaces in the filth, beckoning me urgently.

Awkwardly, I plunge in after him.

Terrible blackness weighs me down, clings to me with its foulness so that even though I know none of it is touching my skin I feel deeply contaminated.

Then . . . wonderful lightness. I'm clean, pure, in a crystal weightless world. The wastewater pool is huge, but lights set along the walls beam inward, making a star pattern of silvery illumination. Is this swimming, this cool clear hovering that seems to strip all my cares away? I wish I could shrug out of the protective suit and feel the water on my skin.

Then I try to move, and I realize that this is an alien world. Only technology is keeping me alive down here. I have an abstract idea of how to swim, of course. I've seen vids of people swimming. I move my arms a certain way, I kick my legs. In my head, it makes sense.

My first arm stroke sends me spinning sideways. I try to kick, and somersault through the water. Lachlan grabs me and steadies me with one hand on the small of my back, one under my arm. I hold my breath and start to rise upward toward the ceiling of sludge. Lachlan pushes me down, and mimes a proper swimming technique. I try, but end up in a modified crawl, as if I'm scaling a weird kind of malleable wall. But it moves me along—however awkwardly—and we head toward a tunnel.

Once inside I can pull myself along the walls. It's an animalistic kind of four-legged gallop, and would be fun if it wasn't for our destination.

The rebreather built into the mask makes a gentle hum as I breathe. We've been underwater for a while now. What if the equipment fails? Even assuming I could swim, or manage to not suck water up my nose, there's no route to fresh air.

Finally the tunnel opens up. And then
up
.

There's a current here now, with water flowing from all the Center's uses down to the main city system. Luckily the human waste goes through a separate pipe that just opens into the place we entered, so this is just runoff from sinks and such. During the day, Lark told us, the outward flow would be so strong that we couldn't swim against it. At night, though, with a skeleton staff manning the Center, there's little water use, and only a gentle flow for us to swim through.

That's a good sign. Fewer people for us to contend with.

The tunnel narrows, branches, but as instructed we stick to the main one. It finally opens up in a bulb-shaped chamber with a multitude of pipes feeding into it. In the center of that is a hatch.

We've been under a long time. The air I'm breathing seems stale, and I'm starting to feel a strange hypnotic sensation, like my focus is expanding and contracting. Lights dance
in front of my eyes. I see the water flowing in front of me . . . but it's different water. That makes no sense. There is the slightly clouded water I'm swimming in (if this strange flailing crawl of mine can be considered swimming), and beyond that—no, on top of that—is another water, more clear, with a different, circular flow.

The edges of my vision dim and all I see is that other water. A light shines through it at an angle, making shadows of the things moving through it. Shapes, the size of my palm, shadows without color or solid form, moving in a unison so precise it must be mechanical. I squint at this vision, confused, trying to see it all more clearly. Is it here? Am I losing my mind?

I pull at Lachlan's arm, distracting him from trying to open the hatch. I point at the shapes, but he doesn't understand. He thinks I'm gesturing to the hatch, and he holds up one finger: he'll have it open in a minute. He can't see what I'm seeing.

He finally gets the hatch open and in the sudden bright overhead light I can see the shapes clearly. They're fish, moving in a tight school, as gaudily colored as inner circle ladies out for a night on the town. I just see them for a flash, and then they're gone, and all I see is Lachlan at the round open hatch.

What is happening to me?

The fresh air will clear my head. I can't wait to tear this rebreather off. I have to suck in every breath as if it is fighting me, and my lungs feel heavy and sore.

But before my head breaches the surface so I can take that yearned-for breath, Lachlan shoves me down again. He pushes up the hatch, kicking hard against the resistance of the water.

He mimes something, and it is a long while before my
fuzzy brain figures out that he's telling me there's someone up there. We can't go out yet.

But we have to! There's something wrong with my rebreather. I'm out of air. Have we been down here an hour? My perception is fuzzy. I don't know what I'm doing. All I know is that I have to breathe and I can't with this thing over my face. I start to claw at it, pulling with desperate brute force at first, then trying to get my fingers between the bonded layers. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know this is a terrible idea, but I can't help myself.

Lachlan tries to stop me, but I fight him as hard as if he's trying to drown me. That's what it feels like. Part of me can see his frantic eyes behind his own mask, but anything that keeps this suffocating film over my face has become the enemy.

Finally I tear it off . . . and as the water hits my face I come to my senses. It's all I can do not to draw in a huge breath. I look through the water, and see a blurry Lachlan inches away. He's doing something . . . ripping off his own mask. He comes closer. I feel his mouth on mine.

He's giving me his air. His last breath. Helping me hold on. I feel a moment of relief, instantly clouded by the twin thoughts that there's no more air after this for me . . . or for Lachlan.

I want to tell him something. Bubbles escape my mouth, and the words are lost to the water.

Then he wrenches the hatch open and shoves me upward. I grab the rim, my head breaches the surface, and I gasp, the first heavenly breath stinging my lungs. I suck in another, and another, before my head clears enough that I remember Lachlan. He went so far back under in his effort to push me to the surface. I start to try to dive under the water to
help him—knowing that I'm more likely to drown him than to help him—but without the rebreather I feel like I'm drowning as soon as my face hits the water. I can't do it!

I kneel at the edge and peer over. He used the last of his air, his strength, to save me. I can see him far below the surface, indistinct. Is he moving? Is he trying? He saved me when I was drowning in the nanosand. “Lachlan!” I call in despair, and plunge my hands helplessly into the water. There's nothing I can do. He's just a dim dark shape far beneath the water, sinking deeper every moment.

Suddenly there's another shape there. In a confusion of movement I see a shadow appear, and merge with him. The shapes get bigger—they're coming up! There's someone else down there, pushing Lachlan to the surface!

The second he's close enough I reach down and grab whatever I can reach, his clothes, his hands, his hair, fumbling for anything to hold on to, and pull him up. His rescuer pushes from below, and scrambles out herself, pulling off her rebreather as she stands dripping.

“Lark!” I gasp. “You were supposed to stay behind, stay safe!”

She gives me a soft smile. “Do you really think I'd let you go into danger alone?” I look down at Lachlan, choking up water at our feet, and want to say that I wasn't alone. But I let it go. More quietly, Lark adds, “It's my fault your mother was killed. It's my fault Ash was captured.
I
made the mistake of trusting someone. Now I have to win back
your
trust.”

“Oh, Lark,” I breathe . . . but there isn't time for more. Lachlan has struggled to his knees. He looks up at Lark, a strange mix of gratitude and hostility in his eyes.

“You're not supposed to be here,” he says. I can tell he's deeply embarrassed at having to be rescued. He's always been the fighter, the strong one.

Lark just shrugs. “Well, I am here. Good thing, too.”

“You can't come inside with us,” he insists. “You don't fit into our plan.”

“Luckily, I have my own plan,” she says flippantly. There is a row of lockers against the far wall. She takes out a sealed package, tears it open, and slips on a set of pale green coveralls. She hides her lilac hair under a cap and flashes an ID.