I run to the base of the tree and stomp out the nearby flames with my feet. My toes are singed, but I hardly notice. “Rainbow!” I scream as I dig among the roots, trying to find the handle. I hear a muffled voice from below and finally grasp the handle. When I open it I see her little face looking up at me, worried but stoic beyond her years.
“The tree is on fire. We have to go! Get everyone out.” She’s a natural leader and marshals the terrified children. “Rainbow, is there an exit down here? Or a safe place we can hide?” She knows this place much better than me. She’s been running around exploring every nook and crevice almost since she was born. This is her world. She has no memory of the surface of Eden.
She takes my hand. Hers is ice cold, and she squeezes tightly. But she says with decision, “Come this way.”
She leads us through the kitchen, and down twisting corridors I’ve never explored. There’s a passageway so low to the ground that I have to crawl, though most of the kids just hunch over. The way is pitch black, but Rainbow leads us unerringly. “I wouldn’t show you ’cept for a ’mergency,” she says. “It’s my best hiding spot. No one ever found me in hide-and-seek.”
When we enter, an automatic gentle glow illuminates the large chamber. There are barrels marked with names that make no sense to me. Some kind of chemical names. There are blocks of what looks like putty, like something a child would play with. And wires everywhere, linking all the unidentifiable substances.
“What is this place?” I whisper.
“They call it the Boom Room,” Rainbow says, then slaps a little boy’s hand away when he reaches for a block of pink putty. “No touching! It’s a self-instruction room.”
Self-instru . . . Oh! I see the panel on the wall, high above the reach of children, with a very simple, obvious red button. I have no doubt about what would happen if I hit that button. I grab the two nearest kids and start to back out.
“Iris said absolutely no touching. I’m not supposed to go here.” For the first time she seems in danger of breaking down. “They took Iris. They didn’t see me, but they shot her and she fell down and . . .”
“It’s okay, sweetie. I promise, I won’t let anything bad happen to you. To any of you.” I think she believes me. She looks at me with such trust! I can’t let her down. I’ve made a promise. “But I don’t think we can stay here. Is there an exit? The cavern will fill up with smoke, even down here, eventually.”
“I think there’s another exit,” she says, scrubbing her cheek with her fists.
“You’re doing great, Rainbow. I know you’re scared. Just do your best.”
She leads us back out through the low, twisting corridors. “We have to go out into the cavern,” she says. “Just for a bit. The secret tunnel is through another passage. Is it safe?”
I peer out, fighting back my choking as the acrid smoke hits me. The smoke is so thick I can’t even see the fire in the treetop. I pull the front of my shirt up over my mouth and nose. “I think so,” I say. “I don’t see anyone.”
I step out first, and remember the deer I saw coming out of the forest into the meadow. The steps tentative at first, then bold. Was that real? “Come on.” I beckon to the kids.
Then I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut, and every muscle in my body cramps at once. I stiffen, and topple like the bean trees did in the earthquake. I can’t turn, I can’t move my arms to break my fall. I’m utterly powerless as I fall on top of Rainbow.
She screams and struggles out from under me. Then I see her face freeze in a horrible grimace as she’s hit and paralyzed, too. Greenshirts are charging us. They grab the other children by the arms, the legs, the hair, dragging them out and shooting them at point-blank range.
My eyes are open. I can see, and think, and breathe. But beyond that, I have no control of my body. I’m a living corpse.
By chance, Rainbow falls so that we’re staring into each other’s eyes. She can’t move either, but I can see the expression frozen on her face. You promised us, Rowan. You promised you’d keep us safe.
I can feel the hands that grab me roughly and roll me to my back. The Greenshirts are wearing respirators now as they clear away the last survivors—us.
Suddenly I hear a familiar voice shouting from across the cavern, getting closer. It is shrill and imperious, a voice that is used to being obeyed. “Not her, you idiots. She’s one of us!”
Pearl is running up, coughing, bruised, and bloody, but somehow managing to look regal. She’s an inner circle elite, and these Greenshirts instinctively defer to her. “If you’ve harmed her, you’ll be working security at a recycling facility for the rest of your career!”
She bends over me, letting her silver hair fall over us, making a shield. Her hand comes toward my face, and I can’t flinch away.
“Be Yarrow!” she hisses as she slips a dull gray contact over my kaleidoscope eye.
I WAKE UP in a dimly lit room with sparkling lights above me. I smile to myself. The crystal cavern. I’m warm and comfortable, with an overall lethargy making my body feel heavy. My eyes are just barely slitted as I lie in a daze. I can’t see anything except the bright spots against the darkness.
Maybe it’s not the crystal cavern, I think lazily. My brain seems to be working in slow motion. Maybe I’m back in my dorm room at Oaks. The glittering could be coming from the lights I have tacked on my wall. This gives me hope. I can hold on to things, no matter how they try to change me.
It’s the raw scratching in my throat that makes me remember. Smoke. Fire. Death. It feels like a dream. But so does most of my life at this point, hovering between reality and implanted memories, between Rowan and Yarrow. Maybe if I close my eyes the raid on the Underground will really be a dream. I remember being captured, paralyzed. I remember a sharp sting in my neck, and then the world went black.
I don’t want to face whatever reality this is, the reality of imprisonment and humiliation, torture and fear. I don’t want to forget who I am again. But I have to be strong. I survived being brainwashed once. I have to do it again, to make myself hold on to some scrap of who I really am, so I can save Ash, Rainbow, Lachlan—everyone who matters to me.
Resolutely, I open my eyes . . .
. . . into exactly the hell I feared most. I’m in the Center, strapped to a metal table. The flickering lights aren’t the beauty of the cavern or the comfort of my room, but rather the winking lights of monitors and scanners, of mysterious, vile machines with wires coming out of them, of the artificial light glinting off scalpels and probes.
I remember Pearl bending over me, whispering in my ear. Be Yarrow. Sure enough, the vision in my remaining good eye has that slightly hazy quality that tells me the counterfeit, temporary lens is in place. Maybe I can bluff my way through this. I have to try.
There’s no time to prepare myself, though. A movement across the room catches my eye, and I see Chief Ellena rise gracefully from a swivel stool. She’s swinging something dangling from her fingers, almost playfully, a little smile on her face. It’s my pink crystal necklace, a piece of the Underground.
It takes all my effort to say blearily, “What happened, Mom?” I don’t dare reveal anything yet. I want to wait for her to commit first.
Chief Ellena drops the crystal on my chest. I want more than anything to clutch it in my hand, to keep it away from her prying eyes. But I’m strapped down at the wrists and ankles. Not too tight, and this in itself almost seems like another kind of mockery. You can wiggle all you want, but you can’t get away.
“Sounds like you had a terrible few days,” she says. “We didn’t know what to think when you disappeared.” She snatches back the necklace and slips it into her pocket.
I feel like an actor shoved on stage without ever having read the script. What did Pearl tell them? I decide to act confused—which isn’t really an act.
“I don’t remember everything that
happened. I snuck out of Oaks for a party, and . . . I don’t know. Maybe I was drugged?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Seems to be happening a lot lately.”
“I’m sorry . . . Mother.” The false word sticks in my throat.
“I expected better from you, Yarrow. I’ve devoted a great deal of time to your . . . upbringing. What a disappointment you are.”
“I’ll try to do better, I promise,” I say, trying to sound like a contrite child. I sneak a look at her face. Maybe she’s buying it . . .
“Your reactions are surprising. Of course, it’s not entirely your fault.” She presses a button, and the door is opened by two guards. Pearl walks in between them, leaving them outside.
Her reaction is perfect. “Great Earth, Yarrow, you look disgusting. I can’t tell you how happy I was to wash off all the filth from that place.” Her face is bruised, but she carries herself like a particularly snobby goddess. Her hair is clean, covering her shoulders in a perfect silvery cascade. She’s wearing flowing white.
“Chief Ellena,” she goes on, “when can Yarrow come home? Back to Oaks, I mean. And, pardon me for saying so, but when can she take a bath?” She turns up her delicate nose, which, although several shades of purple, has been set straight. “No offense, but she stinks! Not her fault, being in that horrible place. And thank the Earth she was there!”
She’s chatting so smoothly, in her typically superior Pearl fashion, that even I almost believe her. She’s blithely ignoring the fact that I’m strapped down, and the Chief’s suspicious looks.
“How did she manage to save you?” the Chief asks.
Pearl and I exchange looks. I gulp, and come up with something they can never prove didn’t happen. “I remember now. It was Lark who took me down there. She has some connection with those criminals. Well, Lark has a crush on me, so I was treated nicely.” It kills me to use Lark’s name like this, but I don’t think she’d mind saving me one more time. And whatever I accuse her of, it can’t hurt her now. She’s beyond the reach of the Center. I feel the pricking of tears, but blink them back. “But Lark always hated Pearl, so they were going to kill her. I distracted them, and then set her free.”
“She was amazing,” Pearl says, still managing to sound a little bored, as Pearl would. “She saved my life.”
“Of course!” I say. “You’re my best friend. I’d do anything for you. Mom, why am I here? I’d really like to get cleaned up. I need to get back to school.”
“What small concerns you have, Rowan,” she says. “When you should really be thinking about things that matter, like I do. The future of Eden. The future of humanity.”
She slips it in so casually that I don’t notice it right away. When I do, I gasp, and try to hide it in a wince. Should I ignore it? Should I ask who Rowan is?
No. I can tell by her eyes that she knows everything. She leans in close. “You’ve been unconscious for a while, Rowan. Plenty of time to tap into your memories and learn the truth.”
I tug desperately at the restraints, but this time they react to my struggles, automatically tightening and locking my arms and legs down against the cold metal slab.
“You were always a gamble. A first-generation experiment. I mean, anything can happen when you get too deeply into someone’s brain, their psyche, their personality. It’s all very tricky business. A lot of trial . . . and error. Oh, Rowan, I wish you could see some of the errors. It would give you a whole new appreciation for the work we did on you. The others didn’t react so well to having multiple personalities superimposed on each other. Some of them went mad, and tore their own faces off trying to recapture what we took from them. Some went catatonic, utterly unable to cope. But you, Rowan—you’re special. Why is that, I wonder? Because you went so long without lenses, perhaps? Everyone gets a little tweaking, almost as soon as they’re born.”
Pearl, realizing the danger she’s in, backs toward the door. “I should go. My parents will be worried.”
The Chief shoots Pearl a sharp look. “My dear, your parents have already forgotten that they even have a daughter.” Pearl gasps. “Wiping one memory is easy.”
“I . . . I . . .” She shakes her head in confusion. “I’ll just be going . . . ,” she tries again. The elite queen is crumbling, and there’s a scared girl standing in the room with us. Because she knows that the things the Chief is saying are not meant for her ears. Secrets. And those kinds of secrets only get told to people who won’t be in a position to repeat them much longer.
The Chief presses a button and the guards come swiftly back in. They’ve been told what to do ahead of time. Instantly they grab Pearl and slam her onto another metal table next to mine. The restraints snake up automatically, coiling around her wrists and ankles.
“Let her go!” I scream. “She didn’t do anything!”
“Is that what makes you different, Rowan? That urge to save people? All the things I programmed Pearl to do to you, and you still want to help her. And the cruelties she urged you to participate in? You went along, for a while. I tried to give you no choice. But Rowan kept coming through Yarrow no matter how hard I tried to keep her down. So you were a success and failure both, Rowan. What about you, Pearl?” The Chief cocks her head to the side quizzically. “How do you think you would fare in Rowan’s place?”
“As . . . as a test subject?” she asks, confused. She tries to come up with an answer that will keep the Chief happy. “I hope I’d make you proud. But I’m a first child, a citizen of Eden. You only experiment on the . . .” She wants to end that sentence with a slur, an insult, but I think she sees me as a real person now. She’s seen second children, knows they’re people just like her, and she can’t bring herself to insult us. “On the unfortunate second born,” she says at last.
It’s a mistake. The Chief regards her with scorn. “Rowan, at least, shows strength. A strength we would like to crush, true, but strength is admirable. What are you, Pearl? A reed that bends in the wind? You have no spine, no core, Pearl. You are a hollow creature. And the hollow are ready to be filled up. Still, all in all I would count you as an utter failure as a test subject.”
“What do you mean, test subject?” Pearl cries as she pulls against her bonds.
“Oh, little Pearl . . . did you really think someone could be as horrible as you all on their own? You were my first success, in the beginning at least. When the Chancellor and I realized that the EcoPan technology could be taken further, we saw the possibilities immediately. Humans are sheep at heart. They follow . . . but they bleat, too. There has been far too much bleating lately. Outer circles complaining about their lot in life. Privileged inner circle brats chaffing at confinement within Eden. It was a volcano bubbling below the surface, on the verge of cataclysm. Until I stepped in.”
She tells us how she found a way to use the EcoPan’s neural connection through the lenses to gain a deeper access to the brain. They learned how to change a person’s entire personality by layering a new one on top of the old. It wasn’t even that hard, she said. People believe whatever is easiest to believe, and who would ever believe that they weren’t themselves? It was simply a matter of implanting a few key false memories. The human brain was remarkable at being able to fill in the gaps.
I think of the few sharp memories I have of Yarrow’s childhood—the birthday, the Rain Festival. She’s right. I took those few things that seemed real and built a whole plausible life out of them. I did most of her work for her.
“People want to conform,” she says. “They want to obey. They just don’t like to admit it. My technology just makes it a little bit easier. It’s not perfect, we’ll still lose a few subjects, I’m sure. But now, thanks to you two, we’re ready to proceed with the next stage of testing. Before long, all of Eden will be peaceful and obedient. And happy. Oh, don’t think for a moment I don’t want people to be happy. But happiness and freedom don’t mix, I’ve found. Too
much thinking leads to discontent. Now wherever we see discontent, we can simply take it away. Are you a person who resents being trapped inside our paradise, eating synthetic strawberries and sipping algae smoothies? Well then, we’ll just change you into someone who doesn’t have that resentment.” She snaps her fingers. “Simple as that.”
“You can’t do that to people!” I rage at her. “You can’t take away who they are!”
“Oh, but I can. We will be a city of peace and tranquility and utter contentment as we wait for the world to heal. We won’t be the unruly animals who got us into this mess in the first place. And now that I have dozens of new test subjects, it is only a matter of time before I open this up to the rest of Eden.”
“Test subjects?”
“All those other lovely second children you delivered to me! What a treat, what a boon! And like you, not a one of them ever had the implants. I think we will learn some very interesting things from this batch of test subjects. Especially the children. Their minds are so . . . malleable.”
“No! Leave them alone! You can’t!”
She ignores me, and turns to Pearl while I helplessly struggle and curse. “You were always my favorite though, Pearl. Do you even remember what you were like when you first came to me? It was four years ago. You were such a shy, quiet, kind thing.”
I almost laugh when I hear this. Pearl? Quiet and . . . kind? But then I fully realize what she’s saying. The Chief had been manipulating Pearl’s brain, taking away the person she really was, turning her into the Pearl that all the students (and half of the teachers) at Oaks envied and feared.
That girl Yarrow followed and worshiped, that girl Rowan hated? That wasn’t the real Pearl.
“She’s in there, somewhere, though, isn’t she?” the Chief asks. “That’s why you helped Rowan, in the end. And here I thought our control of your mind was so perfect! We expected glitches with Rowan, the second child. But you were supposed to be a good, obedient girl. You’re the gold standard of Eden citizens. The model for the others. But you went off script, Pearl. And I had written your script so very carefully.”