But everything is perfect. Just as if Mom is still there, ruling so sweetly over the family.
I move through the quiet house, touching things, smelling Mom’s side of the sofa, the place where her ponytail would rest when she flopped down after a long day at work. And I listen for the sound of my father. The house is silent.
Cautiously, I creep toward my parents’ bedroom. There, finally, is a small sign of disruption. The bedclothes are disheveled. Did he forget to make the bed, plagued by guilt? Did he simply not know how to perform a task Mom usually did? Or has he been unable to sleep in their bed since her death? I don’t know, but at least something is different.
If it wasn’t made mostly of stone, I’d like to burn this whole house to the ground.
The bedroom is empty, and so is the rest of the house. My father is out. Maybe at work, maybe scheming to destroy someone else. Maybe, if he has an ounce of goodness in him, getting drunk and nerving himself up to jump off the tallest building in Eden. Bitterness consumes me, a hate that hurts, but I can’t fight.
I let Lark in. “We’re alone,” I say, and lead her to my father’s office. We’re looking for his security pass. I can only hope that he’s not staying late at work, but out somewhere else. If he’s at work, he’ll have his ID on him. I have no idea what we’ll do then. We might also need other security codes to pass Center security. Lachlan would know exactly what we need. I’m not so sure myself. Where is Lachlan?
I start to go through various documents in my father’s office.
“Can’t you find it?” Lark asks, glancing anxiously in the direction of the front door, listening for sounds of approach. I’m beginning to panic that I won’t be able to find it. What if he still has it on him? Do we wait for him to come home, and take it from him by force?
Finally I find it, shoved haphazardly in a drawer as if he just wanted to get rid of it in a hurry. “I’ve got it!” I cry excitedly, holding it up. “I think this is all we need. My father doesn’t seem to be very security-conscious.”
“Then let’s go,” she says urgently. “He could be back any minute.”
“I want to see if there’s anything else useful here. I don’t know what else we might need once we’re inside the Center.” I also wonder if there might be anything incriminating in here, leverage to use against my father. Or maybe something that would be useful to the Underground. I scan each page as quickly as I can.
“Come on!” Lark says anxiously, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
But it’s too late. I hear the doorknob turn, my father’s heavy tread, stumbling.
I reach under my shirt and touch the gun pressed against my navel.
“No,” I say, very softly, reminding myself that I’m a good person. Better than my father, at any rate.
If he doesn’t come in here, if he goes straight to bed, we can slip out the front door.
He’s talking. Did he bring someone home with him? I step closer to the closed over (but not completely closed) door and listen.
“It’s not my fault.” His voice is wheedling, pathetic. I’ve never heard him sound like that before. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
I wait, but there’s no answer. He’s alone, talking to himself.
“In here, quick,” I say to Lark as I pull the trick bookcase out on its silent and smooth pneumatic hinges. She steps into the secret alcove behind and I close the door over. Not all the way, though. Once closed, it can only be opened from the outside. If anything should go wrong, I don’t want Lark trapped in there. I creep out. I’m being foolish, I know, but I feel like I need to see my father. I haven’t decided yet if he needs to see me.
“I was supposed to be the good example, the man who puts Eden before family. The incorruptible leader who isn’t tainted by his family’s transgressions.” I hear a meaty thud, and another. When I poke my head carefully around the corner and look into the kitchen I see him striking the sides of his head with his hands.
“Oh, Ash, what have I done? They promised me!”
He slams his head down on the counter, and when he stands, swaying unsteadily, there’s a bloody gash in his forehead.
Good, I think. I’m getting used to blood now.
Another part hurts for him. Whatever else he is, he loved Mom. And Ash, I thought.
I step into the room. “What did they promise you?”
He whirls, and the stench of alcohol hits me hard. For a second he looks overjoyed to see me. He starts toward me, arms starting to open. At the same time I stiffen, and he seems to remember how he has felt about me all my life. He comes to an abrupt halt.
“You’re alive.”
“So are you,” I counter, my voice low and steady. Remarkably steady, given my inner turmoil. “But you shouldn’t be. You gave up Ash to save yourself.”
“N-no,” he stammers, swaying where he stands. “It wasn’t like that. The Center needs stability, or the circles will not hold. That’s what they told me. They said they need an example. I thought they meant me. A good example.”
He babbles on, slurring and incoherent at times, telling me how the chancellor told him removing him from the vice chancellorship would be disastrous at this point. Everyone knew that he’d been tapped to fill the position, and if they changed their minds now, if he was brought down by a terrible scandal, it would make the Center look weak. So they decided to make my father look like the hero of Eden, the self-sacrificing kind of leader who would turn in his own beloved family for the sake of right and law and the preservation of our precious sanctuary.
“They’ve painted your mom as some kind of activist.” He spits the word. “No one knows you’re our daughter. They think your mother was just part of an underground network of people helping second children. Your mom, and Ash. They’re telling everyone I turned her in. They . . .” He falls to his knees, overcome. Maybe begging for my forgiveness? “They’re calling me a hero,” he chokes out between sobs. “A real hero of Eden. A second Aaron Al-Baz.”
How ironic, how fitting, that Dad should be compared to that monster.
“And Ash?” I ask coldly.
“They said they needed an example. Oh, great Earth, I didn’t ask questions! I just signed whatever they put in front of me. I was so afraid. I could be executed for keeping you safe.”
“Instead, your own son is going to be killed, while you assume the second-highest position in Eden. Always protect yourself, right?” Almost as if it has a will of its own, my hand creeps toward my stomach, my fingers twitching at the hem of my shirt. I can feel the irregular bulk of the gun beneath my clothes. Dad can’t see it, though. Not yet.
“It wasn’t supposed to be that way!” he moans, rocking back and forth on his knees. “He was supposed to be kept in prison until everything died down, set free somewhere far from the Center.”
“Oh, so you just wanted to ruin his life, shuffle him away to the outer circles where he could starve?” A step above execution, barely. I shake my head slowly. “You’ve been a rotten father. Even to the child you actually love. You burned a hole in him while he was still in the womb, and now you’re finishing the job of killing him.”
He looks up at me, aghast. “You knew?”
“Recently. Mom told me, before the Greenshirts gunned her down.” I sound so hard and cold. My voice doesn’t seem like my own anymore. My father winces, cringes, seems to shrink inside himself.
“What can I do?” he asks, holding up his hands helplessly. But his hands are empty, powerless. There’s nothing he can do to make this right, except . . .
I pull the gun out from under my shirt and point it at his head.
I expect him to shout, to weep harder, to beg, to lunge at me. But he just kneels at my feet, looking sadly up at me, accepting.
If he had begged, I would have shot him. But this broken man waiting quietly for the end . . .
I’m so focused on my father that Lark, swooping in behind him, is a blur of movement. She has a heavy lamp in her hand, one m
y Mom never liked but which we kept because it had been her own mother’s. With a grunt of effort Lark hits my dad hard in the side of the head. He crumples to the tile floor, unconscious.
“Why didn’t you let me shoot him?” I ask Lark. She doesn’t know that I had already controlled myself.
“You need to have a clear head tonight,” she says with a lighthearted wink that reminds me of Lachlan. “Do you think you’d be calm and collected if you’d just executed your own father?”
She’s right, of course. She understands me.
“Let’s go,” I say, and lead her from my house.
Lachlan is outside, lurking in a cluster of faux palm trees planted near our doorway.
“Where were you?” I demand at the same time he says, “Why didn’t you wait for me?”
Then we both notice I still have the gun in my hand. I realize I don’t even know if it is lethal, or will only stun. With my jaw clenched tightly I tuck it back into my waistband.
“Do I even want to know what happened in there?” Lachlan asks.
I shake my head.
“Do I even want to know why you didn’t show?” I ask him.
He flashes me a crooked grin. “Probably not. Just a few simple acts of thievery.”
“Me too,” I say guardedly.
He looks down where the gun is now concealed against my belly. “Any other crimes?”
“No,” I say, then after a pause I add, “If I’d even consider shooting him a crime.”
“Don’t get hard, Rowan,” he whispers to me, touching my arm lightly with his fingertips. “If the world calls for someone hard . . . call on me. I’m already broken.”
“NO,” I SAY when I look at the route Lark has arranged for us to break into the Center. I feel a gut-wrenching shock of revulsion. “Not a chance. Not even for Ash will I go into that.”
“I know you don’t mean that,” Lark says.
“My head and heart don’t, but my nose and gut do.” But I press my lips together (I wish I could do something not-too-obvious to stop up my nose) and stand stoically looking over the huge underground reservoir that seems to contain the human waste of all of Eden.
We’re underground, having traveled by conduits where Eden’s water flows. Up until now it was what Lark called gray water—liquid that had been used for showering, washing dishes, brushing teeth. It wasn’t exactly clean, but it wasn’t disgusting. This, however, is everything that was shunted from the inner circle toilets.
“This is part of being human,” Lark says philosophically. “Especially when lots of humans live together. Rich or poor, bodily waste all smells the same.”
Lachlan looks just as calm at the prospect as I try to pretend to be, but he’s quick to voice an objection in his usual sardonic tone. “If all goes well, we hope to not meet anyone the entire time we’re inside,” he tells Lark. “But in my experience, things rarely go as well as they should. Failing that, we hope, with her father’s ID, to be able to pass as employees or messengers to a cursory glance.” He sniffs deeply. “Do you really think anyone will buy our cover story for a second if we lurk around the most important, most secure place in Eden stinking like a sewer and covered in feces?”
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 joki
ng, 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.