Children of Eden

  “You’d break,” Flint says, but he doesn’t sound so sure.

  “She would,” Lachlan says to my surprise. “But how long would it take? We need to get the lenses soon. Particularly if there’s any risk that the traitor in the Edge might know about us. We need to set our plan in motion, and it can only work if I have the lenses. Of course you can break her, eventually. But what if it takes days? What if she dies in the process?”

  I know exactly what he’s doing, but I give no sign. Flint looks uncertain, and the uncertainty makes him angry. I don’t know much about government, but I don’t think easy anger is a good thing in a leader.

  “You want to save what you love,” I point out. “So do I.”

  “Outside,” Flint snaps to Lachlan and turns on his heel. Lachlan follows, and as he passes me he winks.

  Alone, I wrap my arms around Lark and hold her tight. I can feel her body trembling, and I embrace her until the tremors start to subside.

  “What is this place?” she asks.

  Maybe I shouldn’t tell her anything. What she already knows—or must have figured out by now—could get her killed. But she’s my friend, and she should know. She made a mistake revealing secrets before. She’ll know to be more careful now.

  “It’s called the Underground. It was designed as a backup for Eden, if anything went wrong. Now it’s a secret sanctuary for second children.”

  Her face lights up, as if she’s forgotten all about her torture, her uncertain fate. “You have a home! A place just for you! I’m so happy for you. But . . .” Her face falls, and I can see her lively mind calculating. “But won’t I be able to see you? Won’t you be able to leave, or can’t I visit?”

  “Lark, there’s so much I don’t know yet. I don’t know what the Edge does, but the Underground is serious. A lot of lives depend on this place, and keeping it secret.”

  She looks a little sulky, then shakes her head, her lilac hair lashing her cheeks. “You’ll sneak out,” she says with confidence, a mischievous smile on her face. “You’ll come to me. I know you will.”

  And even in the middle of danger and doubt I feel the irresistible pull of her, and know that no matter what happens, no matter what the risk, I’ll try to see her again.

  Lachlan comes in, stopping short when he sees us embracing, our faces so near, Lark’s eyes sparkling. A quick frown darkens his brow, clearing almost before I know it’s there.

  I pull away from Lark awkwardly, one finger catching in a snarl of her disheveled hair. I don’t know which one of them to look at. I owe so much to both of them. But what I feel—for both of them—doesn’t stem strictly from obligation. Feelings, new and strange, swirl in me, and right now there’s only one thing I can do. Ignore them. It’s like being awed by the grandeur of a mountain peak, and fearing the coming struggle to climb it . . . while you’re still fording the raging river at its base. The mountain of Lachlan and Lark, of their kisses, looms, inescapable before me. But it’s not immediate, and I have to turn my mind away from it.

  “So?” I ask, making myself defiant with my hands on my hips.

  “Flint has agreed,” he begins, and by a quirk of his mouth I can tell the more accurate words would be has been persuaded, “to let me help you rescue Ash.”

  With a quick gasp of relief I reach for him . . . and stop myself.

  “With certain conditions,” he adds. “First, Lark will be drugged before we leave. She’ll be unconscious, and when she wakes she probably won’t be able to remember much of the last twenty-four hours. Is that acceptable?”

  I look to Lark, and she nods.

  “Not that we don’t trust you, but,” he narrows his eyes at her, “people make mistakes.” She bows her head, cringing. “I’ll come for you later, you’ll get me inside the Center, and you will never make any attempt to find the Underground, or contact Rowan, again.”

  “But . . . ,” both Lark and I say at the same time.

  “Never. If you’re seen anywhere near any of our entrances, or in Rowan’s company, you’ll be killed. No second chances.”

  “But she’s my friend,” I protest.

  Lark doesn’t object, just takes my hand and gives me a look that says Agree, for now.

  I’ve snuck out, I’ve risked myself to be with her before. Later, anything can happen. For now, Ash is my priority. That, and making sure Lark leaves the Underground safely. Raging river first. The mountain will always be there.

  And then I think, did that condition that Lark and I never meet again come from Flint . . . or from Lachlan?

  A pleasant-looking young man with bottle-green second child eyes comes in with a syringe, and Lark holds out her arm obligingly. “See you on the other side,” she says, and it is only as the clear liquid plunges into her vein that the thought occurs to me.

  I whirl to Lachlan in a panic. “It’s just to make her unconscious, right? Not the lethal syringe?”

  “Rowan, what do you take me for?” He looks genuinely hurt.

  “Swear it!” I cry, grabbing him by the shirtfront.

  He takes hold of my hands. “Rowan, I swear it. Trust me.”

  Why does everyone keep saying that to me?

  It isn’t long before Lark starts to drift off. As her eyes grow heavy, I give her a kiss on the cheek. On the periphery of my vision I see Lachlan avert his eyes. A little while later a large man comes in and scoops Lark up like a limp doll. I feel an emptiness when he takes her away.

  “He’ll bring her to her house. She should be reviving at that point. She can let herself in, and with luck, forget about her little adventure in the Underground.”

  “But remember enough to help us.”

  He looks at me for a long moment. “I think that girl would do anything for you.”

  I bite my lip, and don’t know what to say.

  “How did you convince Flint?” I ask instead, changing the subject in what I hope isn’t a too-obvious way.

  Lachlan laughs, and it is such a relief to see. I like the smiling, joking Lachlan. He makes me so comfortable, so . . . happy. I just don’t know how to react to the other Lachlans: the fighter, the leader . . . the man.

  Lachlan drops his voice to a low confidential murmur. “I think what got him was the very real possibility that I might die in this raid on the Center. We’ve always butted heads, and you know he thinks he should be the one to get the implants, and alter our plan. So he’s letting me help you. Me, alone. His reasoning is this: When I don’t come back, when I’ve failed in the rescue, our part of the bargain will be done. We tried, and now you’ll have to take him to the cybersurgeon.”

  What a merciless man Flint is. The fight to save second children shouldn’t be a power struggle between its two most charismatic leaders. “I wouldn’t give him the lenses if you . . . didn’t make it.”

  He touches my shoulder, then seems to realize what he’s doing and jerks his hand away. “You held out admirably before, but make no mistake—he would have made you talk. His ways are . . . not my ways. I don’t believe that causing pain can ever bring about a better society. Death, perhaps, under certain circumstances. But there’s enough cruelty and suffering in the world. I won’t add more if I can help it.”

  I feel such a warmth for him, filling my chest, spreading along my limbs, making my fingertips tingle. Why is my body reacting in such a visceral way? Why is it reacting to two different people? Is it only that I’ve never met anyone before? Maybe I’m enamored of the idea of people . . .

  “Isn’t there something you can do to get the better of Flint?” I ask.

  “A girl after my own heart,” he says with a wink. I feel my cheeks flush. “There’s no convincing Flint to help you—or help me, for that matter. But there is certainly a way to force the issue, with your help.” He leans close and whispers in my ear. So—if you’re agreeable—we’re going to turn the tables on Flint. Tonight, we go to the cybersurgeon and get my lenses.”

  I have a flash of suspicion. If I help him, and then afterward
he refuses to help me save Ash . . .

  But no. I trust him.

  “And then not only will it be too late for Flint to get the lenses for himself, but I’ll be so valuable to the Underground that they won’t dare risk letting me break into the Center alone. He’ll have to commit a few more people to help me. I’ll have a much better chance of success with a little backup.”

  It was brilliant, and I beamed at him. But one thing was wrong.

  “Not just help you,” I say. “Us. I’m going, too.”

  And though he tries for a long time, nothing he says can dissuade me. I won’t let him go alone into danger.

  SO MANY THINGS, so fast. I stultified for sixteen years, and now a lifetime of danger and grief and wonder and emotion are all compressed within a few days.

  We set out shortly afterward by a different passageway than the one I’d entered through. We enter a labyrinth of winding, confusing tunnels that double back on themselves. Once we come to what looks like a dead end, but Lachlan shifts a rock and a low stone door slides open on silent pneumatic hinges. We crawl for a while, then come to a place we can stand again. I’m utterly lost, but Lachlan knows the way unerringly.

  I’m supposed to be snug in my bed while Lachlan takes the risk for me. I can’t quite believe that Flint hoped (or nearly hoped) Lachlan would fail. Lachlan, though, seems perfectly confident as he sneaks me out of the Underground by a series of twisting, gradually rising passages. Excited, bouncy even.

  “You just don’t know what this means to us,” he must say a dozen times as we make our way to the surface. “Having real lenses will change everything.”

  I want to know how, exactly, but whenever I ask, he’s vague, or changes the subject. I know he wants to infiltrate the highest levels as an elite student, but what else? What next? I feel a swell of resentment. I’ve trusted him so many times—with Lark’s life, with the secret of my lenses. I understand the danger of confiding in someone—look what happened when Lark told people she trusted about me—but when I’m the one shut out of secrets, it hurts.

  “The next to last circle,” I tell him definitively as we step out into the blackness. Eden doesn’t respond to him any more than it does to me, and the ground at our feet stays dark.

  He looks at me, apparently amused. “So you remember now?”

  I don’t know whether to pretend anymore or not, so I only look at him sidelong. “It’s all coming back to me. Slowly.”

  He laughs, a low chuckle that warms me. “As long as you’re on my side, I don’t mind if you take your time telling the truth. Believe me, I get it.”

  It’s strange how walking around Eden feels almost natural now. True, we sneak and skulk in the shadows, avoiding the few souls abroad tonight. But to be out, to move, to be part of the city now feels normal. The danger exists . . . but that feels normal, too, somehow. My body feels alive, eager, tingling with excitement. I feel ready.

  We emerged only one circle away from our destination, and it isn’t long before we cross the radius and head right, toward the east side.

  “There’s a modification parlor somewhere around here. Serpentine, it’s called.” Mom’s words are burned clearly on my memory.

  “I know that place,” Lachlan says. “It’s very popular with the Bestial crowd. But I had no idea there were shady dealings going on there. It’s not in a great neighborhood, but the place has an air of respectability. Now, if you’d just told me it was the Serpentine in the first place you could be back in your nice safe bed dreaming of a better world.”

  “Dreaming gets you nowhere,” I tell him as we walk. “I want to make a better world. Even if there’s not much for me to do.”

  “You’re giving up your lenses.” He stops in the middle of the dark street and turns to me. The look on his face is one of respect, and maybe, I think, a little bit of awe. “You’re giving up your chance to be part of a world you must have longed to join all of your life. You could walk away from the Underground, from me, from all of us, and take your chances up here in Eden, with your new eyes and maybe even the family your mom set you up with.”

  I look at him skeptically. “I got the impression Flint wouldn’t have given me a choice.”

  A hard look flashes across his face, but then he cracks a smile. He makes light of things whenever he can. “I think you’ve gathered by now that Flint and I have slightly different approaches. Your lenses may very well save the Underground, and change Eden forever. But I believe in free will, and self-determination. Those things are at the core of what we’re fighting for. If you had decided that you didn’t want to give up your lenses, I wouldn’t have forced you.” That hard look casts another quick shadow across his face. “And if Flint had tried, I would have stopped him.”

  I wonder when this conflict between Lachlan and the leader of the Underground will break into all-out war, and what it might mean for the secret world of second children.

  But I can’t worry about that now, or about the dozens of other things plaguing my mind right now. We’ve come to Serpentine.

  It is, as Mom described it, a glaringly orange building. Unlike most other structures in this overall squalid next-to-outermost ring, Serpentine is gently illuminated, a golden glow holding back the dark.

  In there I would have become normal. In there, I would have found a real life . . . but one away from my family, my first friend. A life, sure, but it would really just be a different kind of a lie. Another kind of hiding.

  No, I decide, firmly and absolutely. I don’t want the lenses. I don’t want to be part of a society that doesn’t want me. Since there’s no scenario in my future that doesn’t have me hunted, a pariah, I’d rather just commit wholeheartedly to being what I am: a second child, among other second children.

  A sense of relief washes over me. I’d been perfectly willing to give up my lenses to Lachlan and his cause, but that had been a rational decision. Now it was an emotional, gut choice, too. I realize I’m so much happier at the prospect of just being me, with my vivid second-child eyes, not something altered and corrupted by the Center, changing just to fit in some-place I only now realize I don’t really want to be.

  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. “Southwest?”

  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.”