Elites of Eden

  Now they’re back, and I’m Rowan again.

  Only, I’m Yarrow, too.

  I’m not one person with memories of before and after. I’m two different girls living in one body, sharing one brain.

  The pain in my eyes is excruciating, but I try to open them, just to figure out what is going on. I am in a million places at once, with a billion things happening to me. But when I open my eyes, the world is dark.

  I rub them, and feel someone grab my wrists. “You can’t do that!” a woman shouts at me, and I pull back, staggering against something cold, metal. An operating table. That woman’s voice, could it be?

  I’m back in the lab again, and that woman I thought was my mother is trying to torture me again, to take away my self, my soul! My eyes are wide open and staring, but I can’t see a thing. I’m blind! She’s carved out my eyes!

  “No!” I scream, a single word to protest every single thing that has been done to me, everything they are planning to do. I’ll never let them steal my identity again. I’ll never let them meddle with my brain. I’d die first.

  I’d kill first.

  When hands touch me, I flail wildly at first, but as soon as I can grab a hank of material I pull the person in and start pounding them with my fists. I can tell from the meaty resistance that I’m not hitting anything vital, maybe a hip or a thigh, so I keep tight hold and drop to the ground, wrapping my legs around them. We roll, and as soon as I end up on top I start swinging.

  “Rowan, stop!” the woman’s voice says, but I’m an animal fighting for her life. I hear a muffled oof and a snap of bone. Ribs, I think.

  Suddenly I feel arms around me, big, strong arms, and I’m being lifted off the ground. For a moment my legs kick, and then I’m enfolded in an embrace that is part straitjacket, part hug. I still can’t see a thing, but I know the touch of him, the smell.

  “Lachlan,” I breathe into his chest. “Help me!” I plead, my voice muffled and desperate.

  He says those sweet, comforting nothings, and I feel the fire drain away. I just want to be comforted. His arms make me feel safe.

  “It hurts, Lachlan. It hurts so much . . .”

  He kisses my brow, softly, reverently, like he did before. “I know, Rowan. But it will pass. Do you remember anything?”

  I look up at his face with wide, unseeing eyes.

  “Lachlan, I remember everything.”

  Then I pull him closer so that my lips brush against his earlobe as I speak. Of all the things I remember, one thing outshines all the torment, the pain, the loss. One glittering beacon of hope.

  “There’s life outside of Eden!”

  “WHO’S HERE?” I reach out a hand, and feel the answering pressure of fingers I’m sure are Lark’s. I’m on the ground, my back pressed securely against Lachlan’s chest.

  “I’m with you, Rowan,” Lark says.

  “Me too,” echoes Ash.

  “I can’t see!” I manage not to shout, but nothing can hide the edge of hysteria in my voice. Lachlan holds me a little tighter, and I feel the slightest nuzzle of his cheek against my hair. My panic is held in check—barely.

  “Things didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped.” I hear Flame’s voice, flat and cynical as ever. “Your eyes and nerves didn’t respond quite the way I’d anticipated.” She’s disappointed, with her own skill, I suppose, but she makes it sound like my eyes were the ones who deliberately let her down. Well, sorry.

  “But . . . you remember?” Lark asks, breathless with hope.

  “I remember everything,” I say, and rub my thumb over the knuckles of the hand I’m still clutching. I’m almost glad I can’t see the expression on her face, and Lachlan’s. The two people with feelings for me, both holding me, wanting to comfort me. They’ve waited for me to remember them for so long. Even amid all the other chaos of our lives, I know they’ve waited for me to choose. And I can’t. I love them both. My feelings for Lark are fresher, since we were friends when I was Yarrow. But that’s all we were in that incarnation of me: friends. Rowan loved her, Yarrow . . . might have, soon. And the second I remembered Lachlan, my feelings for him hit me like the tackle of a securitybot, hard, fast, devastating.

  I can’t think about this now.

  Part of me doesn’t want to think about anything else. Hard as that is, everything else is so much harder.

  “Why can’t I see?” I ask. Because that seems to be one of the top ten important things in the ten thousand important things going on right now.

  I hear Flame suck in her breath, and I think it almost kills her to have to say, “I don’t know. You should be able to see just fine. In theory. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “One of the lenses came out without a hitch, and it looks like I managed to undo all of the damage and excise all of the connections the lens made.”

  “One of them?” I have a bad feeling about what is coming next.

  “Lefty was fine. The right eye, though, presented more significant problems. I found I couldn’t completely sever the connection, so I had to be a little more aggressive. Unfortunately . . .” I can almost hear the shrug in her voice. “Hey, in my defense, I don’t think there’s a person in Eden who could have done what I did with old Lefty, even the people who were messing with your neurons in the first place. Do you realize that your lenses were intricately linked directly to your brain? Most lenses have a slight connection via the optic nerve to the brain, but yours were almost fully involved. I’ve never seen such a tangle of real and artificial nerves. If those lenses had stayed in a few more months, it would have been irreversible. We’re lucky we got one out, and your memories back.”

  I process this for a moment. “You mean,” I ask slowly, “I still have one of my lenses?”

  “Yes,” Flame says. “The right one.”

  “And . . .” I gulp. “There’s still a connection in the right lens?” Lachlan must be able to feel my pulse accelerating where my back presses against his chest. He starts to stroke me soothingly from my shoulder down my arm.

  “I took out a lot of the connections, nearly all of them, but yes, there are still some there.”

  I feel my control waver, and say much louder than I mean to, “You mean they can still access my brain? Get inside my head and mess with my memories?”

  “No, no,” Flame reassures me. “Well, yes. A bit. But they’d have to have you back in the Center.” She pauses a beat. “Probably.”

  “You’re never going back there, Rowan,” Ash says. “You’re safe now. You can stay in the Underground. No one will change your memories again.” His voice sounds unexpectedly strong and resolute. I think living down here has been good for him. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard him cough more than once since I came down here. “I’m not going to lose my kid sister again.”

  I flinch at that, because now I remember that I’m really the oldest one. When he was born second, with a lung condition, my parents chose to make him the firstborn. He needed medical treatment. If they’d hidden him away, he would have died. I love my brother. I’d give my life for him. Still, resentment for that decision, for the long years of isolation I bore, smolders under my love for him. I hate that about myself, but I can’t help it.

  Now, if I’m actually blind, I’ll be trapped again. I’ve gotten my memories, but without working eyes I won’t be able to leave the Underground. I’d need help, I’d be too conspicuous, I’d put everyone in danger.

  Trapped again.

  First trapped behind a wall. Then trapped under Yarrow’s personality. And now trapped deep below the surface by blindness.

  “Your sight might return,” Flame adds, sending a surge of bright hope through me. “Your optic nerves have suffered severe trauma. Right now you need to rest, close your eyes, and wait. I’ll give you something to help you sleep. When you wake up, I’ll evaluate you and we should have a cle
arer picture about your prognosis.”

  Sleep sounds heavenly. Just to drift away from all my problems, from the onslaught of memories. But . . .

  “I have to tell you something. Who else is here?” Because I hear the murmurs and movement of other people who haven’t yet spoken aloud. And the thing I whispered to Lachlan isn’t meant for every ear. Oh, it should be. I should shout it from the highest algae spire in Eden. But I worry about the chaos it might inspire. I think this is something that has to be handled carefully at first.

  “Flint,” Lachlan breathes into my ear. Maybe I should get up, but I feel so comfortable here. Without my sight I’m better on the ground, with someone I trust completely at my back. “Iris. And Adder.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “The woman with the snake tattoos you saw earlier.”

  “And that’s all?”

  I feel him nod, and I wonder if he’s using it as an excuse to brush his cheek against my hair.

  I take a deep breath, aware that this is perhaps the most momentous moment of my life. Briefly, I tell them what happened after we broke Ash out of the Center. To give them the best chance to escape, I realized at the last moment that I had to stay behind, a distraction. I tell them of my manic flight through the city, to the very edge of Eden. How I passed the wall of refuse into the camouflaged forest of towering artificial trees.

  “Then an earthquake came. The ground heaved up, and the trees started to fall. A huge split opened in the ground.”

  “I don’t remember an earthquake that day,” Ash said, looking at me confusedly with his flat lenses.

  “We think the Center can erase some memories through the lens interface,” Flint says. “No one on the surface remembers the earthquake. Only second children.”

  “And I remember it,” Lark chimes in, then chuckles. “When your brain randomly zaps itself, it’s hard for anyone to take it over, I guess.”

  “When the earthquake happened, everything changed. The desert stopped being hot. There was no nanosand. And when the Greenshirts came after me and I ran out across the sand, I saw . . .”

  “Go on,” Lachlan urges me gently.

  “I saw a wilderness.” My voice is full of wonder. It is unbelievable, even though I clearly remember seeing it with my own eyes. “Trees! A whole forest of trees! A meadow with flowers and bees and butterflies. A deer! It came out of the forest and looked me right in the eye!” My voice is rising with excitement. I know I sound like a fanatic, but how can I not? It is what the people of Eden have been anticipating for generations. The Earth has healed itself.

  When I finish speaking there is utter silence for a long moment.

  “That’s amazing,” Lark says, though there’s something off about her voice. Does she believe me? Or does she just care about me so much she wants to support anything I believe, even if she thinks it is a delusion?

  But nothing can dampen Ash’s enthusiasm. I hear a thud as he drops to his knees in front of me and takes my hands.

  “You’ve seen our salvation, Rowan!” he says. “This makes everything we’ve been through worthwhile.”

  Everything, I think. My prison, and all of humanity’s prison in the city of Eden. Our mother’s death. Our father’s betrayal of us. Was all of the suffering the price we paid for the paradise that awaits us out there?

  Then there’s another silence. At first I think it’s surprise and awe. Then the realization sets in. “You don’t believe me?” I ask, incredulous. I didn’t expect instant belief, but at least I thought they’d be curious, ask questions. Aside from Ash and Lark, though, they all seem to dismiss what I’ve said outright.

  “Rowan,” Flame says with a gentleness unusual in her. “Your brain has been through rather a lot. They’ve done things to you I can only guess at. You’ve gotten your memories back, but there might be other things left behind.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, growing nervous.

  “They implanted a whole new person, and a new personality. I couldn’t actually erase anything they might have added to you. I could only unlock the things they had banished from your memory.”

  “So you’re saying that among all of the things I remember, things about my real life, they might have implanted more false memories? Not just Yarrow’s personality?”

  I stare into the blackness. She’s right. Although I can remember everything from my life as Rowan, I can also remember the memories of being a young Yarrow. That birthday, the day in the rain. But I know, rationally, that those are false memories, like a vivid vid I watched over and over so many times it became ingrained in me. I might feel like I remember those Yarrow memories, but my brain can rationally decide that they aren’t real.

  But they still feel real. Could it be possible that the fertile land I saw outside of Eden is a false memory, implanted by the Center?

  No.

  Maybe.

  No! I can remember the smell of the wildflowers, of the herbs I crushed under my feet as I walked. I remember the dark liquid eye of the deer. It is real!

  I hate the tiny trace of doubt that haunts me, and I react with anger. “I saw it with my own eyes!” I realize too late the irony of this, but forge on. “I was there. It wasn’t the result of a neural interface or implanted memories. I walked across a meadow. A bee landed on my arm. There was a forest, deep and dark, and a deer walked out of it.” My voice is getting louder and louder, and I can feel Lachlan squeeze me gently, in warning. Does he believe me? I couldn’t bear it if he didn’t. But he doesn’t say anything.

  I hear Adder’s voice next. “Does she expect us to believe that nonsense? She’s delusional. Or still drugged. Flint, let’s see what she knows about the Center and take it from there. We don’t have time for this kid’s stories.” She doesn’t even respect me enough to talk to me. Just about me, to Flint.

  Flint is more diplomatic. “Rowan, try to look at things clearly. If the Earth is healed, if all that is really out there, we’d know about it. The EcoPan has sensors out there, monitoring the air and water and soil conditions, looking for signs of recovery. What you’re describing would take centuries to happen. Millennia. Eons. Scientifically, it isn’t possible. There are no more plants. There are no more animals. The land has to heal, and then they have to evolve. Or, at best, we can hope that some of the seed banks survived the fall of mankind and the Ecofail. Bioengineered plants and mechanical bees. In any case, the most we can hope for is a clean but empty earth. Not trees and animals. It’s simply impossible.”

  His voice is so calm and reasonable, his logic so persuasive.

  “I know it doesn’t sound likely,” I say, and I’m ashamed that my voice is faltering. “But it was there!” I’m breathing hard and my voice rises again. “I saw it, and it was . . . it was . . .” I break down. The memory of that wild beauty, combined with my burgeoning doubts about its existence, is overwhelming me. I can feel tears welling in my eyes, and I try to blink them back, but I feel one fall from my right eye.

  Lark gasps. “Rowan! You’re bleeding!”

  The tear feels strangely heavy, and when I wipe it away it has the viscous feel and metallic smell of blood.

  “That’s enough!” Flame hauls me abruptly to my feet. I feel bereft without the comfort of Lachlan’s chest at my back. “She just got out of surgery, and you’re overtaxing her. She needs time to recover.” She guides me across the room, and my thighs bump the edge of a bed.

  “We need more information from her!” Adder says. “Real information we can use, about the Center, not those deranged babblings about a forest.”

  “Your rebel work can wait,” Flame says coldly. “I’m responsible for her health, and I insist she be left alone.”

  I hear Adder mutter, and Flint whisper that there’s still time before their plan is fully operational. Then I feel the prick of a needle in my arm. By the time Flame and Iris have me tucked in, the voices have all faded, and I??
?m drifting away . . .

  * * *

  SOME TIME LATER—an hour, a day, a week—I wake up and open my eyes. I’m in what must be a recovery room. It looks partly like a medical unit, and partly like a bedroom. It takes me a moment before I realize I can see again.

  I start to grin . . . but something is wrong. When I reach for the glass of water waiting at my bedside, my fingers fumble and I almost knock the glass over. I stop and look at it, then at everything else in the room. Things look a little flat and . . . I can’t quite define it. Not quite right.

  It is a full minute before I realize I’m still blind in my right eye.

  I have to talk myself down from panic. I can see—that’s good. Losing sight in one eye isn’t the end of the world. A mirthless chuckle erupts. The end of the world already happened with the Ecofail, so there’s nowhere to go but up.

  I try to count my blessings, but I’m scared and upset as I cross the room to look in the mirror. I hear the door open. “Rowan, you’re awake!” It’s Ash, with Lark on his heels. But I don’t even look at them. I’m fixated on my image in the mirror.

  My left eye is my own, the one I’ve known my whole life. Blue, green, and gold, sparkling where the light hits it.

  My right eye is a flat, dead gray. The lens is still implanted.

  Both of my lives, my selves, are represented in my eyes. Rowan on the left, Yarrow on the right. I’m still both girls. Does that mean I’m accepted in both worlds, the Underground and the surface? Or that I’ll forever be an outsider to both?

  From somewhere very nearby, I seem to hear a voice whisper, “I see you, Rowan.”

  “What did you say?” I snap, whirling to face Lark and Ash.

  “You’re awake,” Lark says, looking a little confused. “Can you see me?” She peers more closely at me. “Oh!” Her hand flies to her mouth. I close my eyes.

  “No, it’s okay,” Lark instantly says to soothe both of us. “It looks beautiful! Interesting!”