All my struggling only uses up oxygen. By the time the second minute has come and gone, my mind is a red haze, my chest is convulsing. And then, I can’t help myself. I open my mouth, gasping desperately for a breath that isn’t there, screaming soundlessly into the powdery sand.
Nanosand, almost-microscopic bots in a hive-mind swarm, fills my mouth, creeping insidiously into my lungs . . . and I go limp.
I’m dying. I’m alone.
A vibration shakes the nanosand, and it thuds against me in waves like slow-moving water.
The next instant a hand finds mine—a big, callused hand. A tender hand that tucks mine within its fingers, pulls my whole body closer and curls protectively around me as I slip from consciousness . . .
* * *
I WAKE CHOKING and gasping. I can feel each tiny particle of nanosand crawling up from my lungs, spilling onto the floor, where it coalesces before marching off like a line of ants. I take a deep, grateful breath, and look around. I’m in a bare room with other people, strangers. Before I can take stock of the situation I see a tube descend from the ceiling. Like some strange creature giving birth, it deposits Lachlan, then Mom, and Mira, and Carnelian, too. They fall in a sandy heap and choke up the sand.
They followed me! Relief and guilt are so mixed I don’t even know what to feel.
Mom gets shakily to her feet and turns on me with mixed feelings of her own: relief and fury. “Don’t you ever dare do that to me again! I won’t lose you!”
Besides the five of us, there are a few other people in this perfectly square, perfectly white room. One of them has a survival suit on, similar to the one we used when we first tried to cross the desert. Two blond men have makeshift protection—masks that shade their eyes and face, loose clothing that covers their skin, thick-soled shoes. They obviously tried to prepare for the journey, to no avail. A trio of green- and gold-coiffed women who are obviously from the inner circles are wearing some kind of skin with veins running through it. The veins pulse as liquid runs through them—a cooling system, I think. I wonder if it would have worked if the nanosand hadn’t caught them.
In one corner sits an old man with no protection whatsoever. His clothes are rags, his skin scorched. He rocks forward and back, staring into space, muttering to himself.
“Who are these people?” I ask.
“Some are rebels, I’m sure,” Lachlan says. “Others are glitches, people who for whatever reason aren’t completely affected by the mind control, or who it affects in unpredictable ways. Random people who either through luck or strength of character managed to resist the Center.”
“You all tried to cross the desert?” I ask as I brush the last of the nanosand off my skin. Everyone in the room watches the final grains skitter across the room of their own volition and disappear down a grate where the floor meets the wall.
There are nods and murmurs of assent. “It’s out there,” a green-haired woman says. “The wild world. I know it is! The prophet said so. She saw it!”
I didn’t think it was the right time to tell her that I was the supposed prophet.
“Whoa, second children? All of you?” The blond men peer into our eyes. Mom’s are still flat-colored with the lenses, even though they are deactivated, but Lachlan, Mira, and Carnelian all have natural eyes. I have one natural, one with a lens. They clap us on the back, murmuring slogans of rebellion.
But the three elite women curl their lips at us. “The only thing worse than prison is a mixed prison,” one says with a sneer.
They get dirty looks from the blond prisoners, who obviously come from some of the outer circles. “When we are free, we’ll be equal,” one says.
“We’ll never be free if we don’t find a way to cross the desert,” grumbles his companion.
“You didn’t prepare,” the man in the survival suit tells us. “It’s amazing you didn’t die before the nanosand got you.”
“We weren’t exactly planning to go into the desert,” Mom says.
“Ah, you were on the run. Rebels then?”
“Don’t be stupid,” one of the people in makeshift protection says. “We’re all rebels.”
“Outer-circle idiot,” mutters the green-haired elite.
“Bikking inner-circle weakling.”
“There’s no point in dealing with them,” Lachlan murmurs to our group. “I told you there were many factions, all at odds with each other. Many people want to cross the desert.”
“We need to focus on getting out of here,” I say, turning to Carnelian. “Do you see any way?”
He frowns as he looks around. “There’s an access panel by the door, and maybe a way to get at the wires and controls inside the ventilation system.”
“There’s only one way out of here,” comes a voice from the ground. It’s the ragged man covered in dust and burns. “Death, and rebirth.”
“There he goes again,” one of the elites says. “That’s Old Leo. We’ve been in here for two days, and that’s all he talks about. If you’d died, old man, this wouldn’t be your fourth time in here.”
“Oh, that lunatic is lying,” says the man in the survival suit. “We all know we’re going to prison for trying to get out. They’re not going to let him go to try again. We’re all doomed.”
The elite rolls her eyes. “So dramatic! We’ll pay a fine and be on our merry way. I know the first magistrate.” She examines her nails and yawns dramatically.
“Death came,” Old Leo says. “Did you know that Death is a woman? She stuck needles in my eyes. She tried to erase me. But I came back to life.” The ragged man gives me a maniacal grin. “I remembered everything. I remembered this place. The desert speaks to me. The Earth speaks to me. A bird flew overhead and dropped the answer in my hand.”
He fishes in his mouth, his fingers probing between his lip and gum where he is hiding something. Finally he pulls the object out, a trail of slime making a bridge from mouth to fingers. I catch a glimpse of what looks like a pebble, but don’t pay much attention. He’s obviously not in his right mind.
“It doesn’t matter if I never make it out of Eden,” the old man says, not sad, but resigned. “If a million ants try to cross the river, most of them will drown. But a few will make it, and the ants will go on. I’m fine with being an ant carrying a seed. As long as I know that somewhere out there there’s a world with ants and seeds in it.”
How quickly I’ve taken it for granted, that living world outside of Eden. I can hardly remember that all this man has known is a sterile city, like this cold white room, where the only living things are other people. I want to kneel by his side, to whisper there is a living world beyond the desert, that I will get him there if I can.
But he doesn’t seem to need any more hope. He has all he needs, in his quiet way.
Instead I ask Lachlan, “If he’s been captured and had his memory altered, how is it he can remember being in the desert, being here four times?”
“Because there’s no such thing as perfect mind control,” Lachlan tells us as we separate ourselves from the other prisoners. We cluster by Carnelian, who has taken out a set of small tools rolled in fabric and is probing the control panel, ferreting out its secrets. “We’ve been learning a lot about what Chief Ellena is trying to do to the population since you left, and the Center just isn’t as skilled as it thinks it is. That guy, for example, looks like his mind wasn’t in the best shape to begin with. If you try to alter someone unstable, the results are unpredictable. Also, the more often they meddle with someone’s mind, the more likely people are to start having memories and flashbacks, no matter how much they try to erase them.”
“Beyond that,” Lachlan goes on, “I know that Flame came up with a way to locally block the mind control transmissions. She managed to create ‘dead zones’ where the signal is blocked. The outermost circle is blanketed with them, so they are all protected. And though I haven’t been in contact with the outer circle rebels directly, they’ve managed to smuggle disruptors out to some of us
. We’ve set up interference points all around Eden. Every time someone steps in one, they become their real selves. It might only last for a moment, but every time someone is free, every time they question what they think, it helps them break away from the Center’s control. The Center keeps finding the dead zones, and shutting them down, but we keep installing them. But it’s a stopgap measure. We need to figure out how the Center is broadcasting the control signals. Maybe we could set up larger-scale interference. Maybe we could stop it entirely.”
We check on Carnelian’s progress. Some of the other captives are watching with interest, but the elite trio are openly dismissive. “Don’t you think we’ve tried everything by now? We’ve been here for hours. There’s no way out.”
Carnelian gives them a wry look. “No way out, huh? So you’re saying that even if I get this open you’re just going to stay right here?”
“Like I said, it’s impossi—”
She breaks off in amazement as the control panel sparks and the door slides halfway open.
“You were saying?” Carnelian asks with a raised eyebrow.
Mira laughs and hugs him. “Let’s go!”
“But go where, exactly?” he asks.
It’s a good question.
The door opens on a maze of corridors that branch out from an octagonal room.
“Are we under the city, or out in the desert?” I ask.
“Probably under the outer circles,” one of the captives says. “I didn’t make it far before the nanosand swallowed me, and I didn’t lose consciousness when I went down. I landed in a capsule that snapped shut around me, and a bot rolled me here. It didn’t take more than a minute or two, so we’re not far from the desert.”
“We just have to find our way to the surface,” Lachlan says. “Once I get my bearings I can get us to a safe house in the outer circles. If any of the old ones still exist.”
“Ew,” says one of the elites. “I am not slumming it in the outer circles. Bad enough crossing through to get to the desert.” She turns accusingly to her friend. “Birdy, I can’t believe I went along with your dumb idea. Who wants dominion over dumb old nature? Bugs and dirt are probably gross anyway!”
“You’re Dominion?” I ask her.
“Well, yeah. They throw the best parties.”
I can’t help but laugh. Between fanatics and the bored rich looking for the latest trend, I don’t know which is worse.
“Though lately none of the old gang seems to care about it,” she goes on. “We planned this escapade weeks ago, twenty of us, and now only the three of us still wanted to try.” Of course, I think. They were the only ones of their old Dominion group who escaped the Center control for whatever reason. A trio of glitches.
“Which corridor do we take?” I ask.
Mira examines the branching hallways. “Look at the floors. See how shiny this one is, but there are little grooves, like something mechanical and heavy has rolled over the exact same path a lot of times.”
“Bots must go this way, transporting prisoners to the Center,” I say.
“And here, this one is more scuffed. People walk on this one.”
“Maybe it’s part of the water or sewer maintenance system?” I guess. Lark, Lachlan, and I used the wastewater system to infiltrate the Center once. I bite back a pang of pain. Where is she now? The last I saw of her was her blank face behind the prison door, staring at me without recognition. My father freed the prisoners, but in that state would Lark have even known to run?
“Could be,” Mom agrees, snapping me back to the present. “What about that corridor?” Mira examines it, her woodland skills translating smoothly to this artificial environment. “No marks on the floor.” She bends and swipes with her finger, showing the faintest layer of dust. Then she walks a few steps in, sniffing. “The air is staler. They don’t keep any circulation system going, so it must not be used regularly.”
“Which could mean it is unfinished, or leads to a dead end,” Lachlan says.
“But it is also the path on which we’re less likely to run into angry bots or people with guns,” I say.
We agree to go down that corridor, and I wonder again: have I doomed my friends and family in my eagerness to save other friends and family?
Do I ever make the right choice?
I WORRY THAT we’re going to be saddled with all of the other prisoners. Is it selfish of me that I don’t really want to save everybody right now?
You do want to save everyone, Yarrow clarifies in my head. Big-picture everyone. Just not these people, at the moment anyway Ash and Lark first, and then all of humanity. Anything in between is too hard right now.
See, she gets me.
The only one who doesn’t come with us is Old Leo. We leave him still sitting in his corner, gently rocking, rolling his tongue around the secret seed he has hidden. I try to talk him into escaping with us. “They’ll torture you again, try to erase your memory, change who you are.”
He just looks at me serenely and says, “How can they change who I am? I’m me. Who else could I ever be? Even if I die, I’m still me.”
The rest come with us. Everyone wants to get back to wherever they came from. No one more than the green-haired inner circle elites. I think they realize now how real their little adventure has gotten. Heedless of danger in their haste to get home, they take the lead down the corridor.
“Sweet eye effect,” the nicest of the three elites tells me as she scurries after her friends. “Two colors: half citizen, half second child. I think I might try that. Birdy! Wait for me!” She flutters her little white hand in farewell as she and her high society friends look for a way home. If we are in the outer circles, I wonder how long they’ll last out here.
After many twists, turns, and dead ends, the long, unused corridor has led us to the surface—to a war zone.
A war zone full of smiling people.
It is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. We come out onto the street in a narrow alleyway that is shrouded from the slanting, dim morning sun. From the shadows I look out at a broad outer circle street where the windows are either smashed or boarded up. Glass and building plaster litters the street. There are no bots scurrying to clean the mess.
“This is the next-to-outermost ring,” Lachlan says after a quick reconnaissance peek. “It was heavily involved in the rebel fighting, but the Center got it under its thumb once the Eden-wide mind control was upgraded.”
I can see evidence of the battles all over the street. Amid remnants of destruction people walk with absolute calm, like they are strolling through a flower-filled meadow on a sunny day. They are smiling. When they cross paths with another person, they nod. Their faces are relaxed; even the middle-aged people look strangely young, without the slightest tinge of worry clouding their faces.
Mira and Carnelian come up behind me. At first they are staring open-mouthed at the tall buildings. “It’s all so bare, and angled, and hard!” Mira shivers as she clutches Carnelian’s hand as if for protection. “It’s awful.”
And she hasn’t even seen the worst of it yet.
We see a small group of children pass by. Two of them are holding hands and skipping in a strange, methodical way. There’s a look of abstract joy in their eyes as they pass before a wall painted in an abstract rust-red design, freckled with a random scattering of dots.
“I guess I could get used to it,” Mira begins . . . Then her fist flies to her mouth to stifle a cry. I follow her intense gaze.
“Oh, great Earth!”
“It’s blood,” she breathes in disbelief. “And bullet holes.”
Mira, an expert tracker, can read the whole story as if it is happening now. She pushes her way forward. “They lined people up there, against the wall.” There are tears in her eyes. “They lined them up and shot them.” She takes a tentative step toward the scene of horror. “More than once. The blood is at different stages of . . .”
“The fighting was brutal for a while,” Lachlan says.
&
nbsp; “Chief Ellena authorized lethal force?” I ask. “Against her own people?” Bad enough to single out people she thought were a threat, but to kill citizens on the street? She’s completely lost control.
Which is worse, I wonder—fighting and dying for a cause, or living in peace indifferent to injustice? A tiny part of me appreciates that these people are at least safe, even if their happiness is an illusion.
“And nobody cares,” Carnelian says. “Those little kids are just walking by as if . . .” The horror is robbing us of the power of speech.
“They can’t care,” Lachlan says grimly. “They’re under Center control. They’ve been working from the middle outward to totally brainwash the people into complacency.”
A couple of the outer circle people from the holding cell sidle up to us, introducing themselves as Cedar and Cliff. “This ring is still in the reclamation process,” Cedar says. “Once the population is completely under the Center’s sway, they’ll send in bots to clean up all traces of the fighting.”
“The people have already forgotten,” Cliff adds. “Or just don’t care.”
“The outermost ring is holding strong, though,” Cedar says. “We’re blocking most of the Center’s signals for now, and the resistance is strong enough that they don’t dare send in troops . . . yet.”
My friends are looking at the scene in abject horror. It is completely outside of anything they’ve experienced. Again I feel the crush of guilt. Mira, Carnelian—they’ve never even saw a gun! They only know what one is in theory. They’ve spent a life removed from blood, from violence. And I bring them to this?
I have a moment of existential confusion. Was that really me who rashly decided to jump back into Eden and lure people I love after me? I hardly know what came over me, to make me do that. I feel like I can’t save anyone without risking anyone. I’m happy to risk myself, but was it fair to let them come, too? But . . . I’d never succeed without their help.
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