Ash, Mom, Mira, and Carnelian will head to the outer, public portion of the Temple. They will be acting as sentries, ready to tackle anyone who tries to enter. Low-key, trustworthy-looking Ash will be their point man, ready to convince anyone who comes that they have an innocent reason to be there, and that no one should go any deeper into the Temple. They are to engage as a last resort, and are mostly there to let the four in the vanguard know if anyone is coming for them.
The rest of us are going into the inner sanctum of the Temple, the roofless Skyhall and the sacred honeycomb of rooms that is the Chambers of Mysteries. Even though I’ve been there before, that won’t be much help. I can only clearly recall the way through the outer area of the Skyhall. Once I got to the hexagonal rooms, it all looked the same, and I have no memory of the route I took. We’ll have to rely on trial and error. With so many people searching, though, it shouldn’t take long.
Only some of us are armed, though. We weren’t sure about security at the entrance to Oaks, and figured that if the armed members were caught, at least the rest of us could get through and try to continue the mission.
Angel (who more and more I want to call Pearl, now that we are back in our old haunts) and I are, out of the group, the ones best able to look like arrogant inner circle elites. We mingle with the crowd, checking for any overt signs of danger while the others make their way into position. We can’t all go that way at once. It would be too obvious. We’ll join them in a moment.
If our lenses have set off a silent alarm, or if any Center officials or security show up for a random check, Angel and I will be the first to spot them. We all have tiny, hidden earbuds to communicate with each other. They’re so sensitive they can pick up our speech as well as transmit the signal, so we don’t need a separate microphone. At the first sign of trouble I’ll sound the alarm.
Or, I think grimly, take care of it myself.
After a few moments, we judge it is time to head into the Temple with the others. But I’m anxious. What if I’m wrong, and there are no seeds here? Was it foolish to put all of us at so much risk over what is essentially a hunch? It would make sense if they had seeds in the Chambers of Mysteries, and other relics from the Earth they all thought had perished. But I know it is by no means a sure thing. I have to admit that the most likely scenario is that we will come out of the Temple shaking our heads, and we’ll have made this dangerous journey for nothing.
“I can’t believe people live like this,” Angel says. “So much waste, so much effort put into things that don’t matter, like clothes, appearance. I know they’re forced into complacency by the Chief’s mind control, but they were like this before, weren’t they?”
I nod, thinking I was right not to tell her. She’d be aghast at the person she used to be, even if it wasn’t her fault.
“I don’t even know how heavily these people are being controlled,” I say. “Lachlan told me that they focus most of the signal from the mid circles outward. In here, people are controlled by other means. Money, comfort, striving to be more fashionable and popular than your neighbors.” I look at the elaborate shallowness all around me. “The inner-circle elites do a good job of controlling themselves, numbing themselves to the problems around them.”
“It’s disgusting,” she says, and her lip curls into a sneer as we walk toward the temple.
That one small expression is our undoing. Most of Angel’s face is hidden, but that sneer is telltale.
Two girls are walking by, their elaborate floppy hats drooping over half their faces, barely sparing us a glance. Then one of them stops, and grabs the other by the arm, jerking her to a halt, too.
“Hello,” Angel says affably.
“Pearl?” says an incredulous voice. It’s Lynx.
Then the other pushes back the brim of her hat and squeaks, “No bikking way! It is her!” It’s Copper.
Oh, bik! Now that we’ve been spotted, it will be too dangerous for us to follow the others into the Temple. We’ll have to stay out here.
No one else has recognized us before now. Pearl is so unlike her usual self, and I’m more or less in disguise, too. They knew me with bleached hair, and now it is back to its true, lustrous dark hue. I’m wearing a snakeskin bodysuit, and the hologlasses that are fashionable at the moment. The projection is a scaled pattern in glittering black and gold that makes it look like I have a serpent’s slit eyes. I can see clearly out, but no one can see my eyes.
Now Copper and Lynx barely look at me. They appear uncertain, almost cringing, their eyes darting around the room warily, and at first I think they’re planning to turn us in. In a moment, though, I realize it is their old fear of Pearl returning, that nervous deference and desire to stay in her good graces. I silently will Pearl to speak.
“We didn’t think we’d ever see you again,” Copper says uneasily. “You’re still registered as a student, but the faculty won’t say . . .”
“We heard your family lost all its money,” Lynx interjects.
“I’m sorry. We really didn’t think you’d be back.” Copper looks miserable and unsure. “She took your room, threw out half of your stuff.”
“We told her to wait and see, but . . .”
“She said you’d never be back. She said you were finished.”
“She said you had a baby.”
“That you were a synthmesc addict.”
They are talking in lightning-fast patter, as if getting in a certain number of words would make everything okay. Beside me, Angel is looking confused, but has wisely decided not to say anything yet.
“Look, we didn’t have anything to do with it. If you’re really back, you better talk to her.”
Finally Angel speaks. “Talk to who?”
“Why, the one who took your place. Lark, of course.”
It feels like the deafened silence after an explosion. Voices around me grow indistinct and then fade away entirely. The edges of the room blur. She’s here?
“Did I hear my name?” I hear the sweetest voice in the world say.
I turn, and see a lilac-haired goddess. A goddess who resembles Lark. But it can’t be. This girl is all the things Lark despised. Her hair looks like a team spent all afternoon coloring and styling it, like each single strand was dyed a unique color so that when she moved, her hair looked like a cascade of wildflowers blowing in the breeze on a sunny day. Her clothes are exquisite. Not overdone and overblown like so many people’s here. Deep, low-cut violet velvet hugs her curves—curves which are decidedly more exaggerated than they were a scant three months ago. The dress is all that single color, with no sparkles or embellishments. Sleeveless, with a high slit to the thigh, it leaves a lot of skin exposed. She doesn’t wear a single piece of jewelry.
All of her ornaments are on her skin.
They aren’t tattoos, as I thought at first glance. It’s not a hologram either, because it seems to be not just on but in her skin. Maybe it is some kind of paint, but it isn’t something anyone was using when I left. In any case, designs seem to flow across her skin as if they were alive. Fish swim sinuously across—and apparently through—her flesh as if she were a living aquarium. Stunning reef creatures in jewel tones dance playfully over her exposed skin, while a sinuous eel wraps itself around her leg, starting at her ankle, disappearing between her thighs. She is a living work of art, a masterpiece.
But her face! It is that which makes me question whether this is really my own Lark. Her face is different. Not just her expression, but the contours, altered in subtle ways. Objectively, it makes her more beautiful. Her face is perfectly symmetrical now, her eyes a little bigger, her nose just a fraction smaller. Her mouth, naturally full and curvy, is now positively lush. The planes of her face, the angles of her cheekbones and jaw have all changed in subtle ways.
It’s like someone tried to make a perfect copy of Lark. Not an exact copy, but to make her perfect.
It is horrible.
But after the quickest glance I know without a doubt that it is tr
uly Lark. Despite those changes, I can tell from more subtle clues—the way she moves her hands, the fresh-cut-flower smell of her skin—that this is really her.
She’s looking at Pearl, obviously recognizing her, but I am the one who breathes her name.
“Lark.”
Her eyes dart instantly from Pearl to me, and for one unguarded instant I see her perfect composure falter. Then it is back, and she says my name, gasps it with surprise and apparent joy, and suddenly her arms are around me, my face is in her hair.
For a moment I stand immobile. I don’t know what to think. How can she be here? The last I saw her she was a prisoner, sitting unresponsive in a cell. I didn’t know if she was drugged or if she’d had her brain wiped clean. I suspected the worst—that she was left to a horrible fate of experimentation, resisting all she could, being cruelly conquered, and when there was nothing left of her, tossed aside to a gutter or a grave.
Frantically, I try to think of an optimistic explanation. Maybe without me around, Chief Ellena had no reason to keep Lark. Maybe it was mostly to torture me, and with me presumably blown up, Lark just wasn’t any fun anymore. The Chief could have returned Lark to her parents, perhaps with selective parts of her memory wiped, and they just kept her enrolled in Oaks.
But no, I make myself realize even as Lark rests warm against my body—it can never be that easy. If Chief Ellena let Lark live, it has to be for some malicious purpose. With me, and with Pearl, she wanted to create the perfect citizens in the intense crucible of an elite private school. And she wanted to see how far she could alter someone’s mind before they went insane.
Lark has to be another victim of her sick experiments.
I tell myself to be ready for anything. Lark could have been reprogrammed in any way. When I was Yarrow, I had no real memory of my past. I acted in ways I now find abhorrent. Lark might be like that.
At least she knows who I am. I’m surprised the Chief didn’t wipe all memory of me. But then, I know that Lark’s brain chemistry makes her hard to program. She has epilepsy, and every time she has a seizure, the electrical activity in her brain resets at least some of whatever mind control is being used on her. I remember that her lenses malfunctioned, and most of the time she couldn’t be tracked. Maybe she managed to fight the Chief’s mind manipulation.
Only one thing is for certain—as of this moment, my mission has changed. Let the others focus on getting the seed, I think as I finally let my arms twine around her. My main objective right now is to rescue Lark.
“Did you come for me?” she whispers into my ear, her breath warm and ticklish.
Without the slightest hesitation I say, “Did you imagine I’d let you go?” I can’t trust her with the truth until I know more about what happened to her. Maybe she’s free, under no control, and ready to be an ally. Maybe she’s a mind-slave and I’ll have to rescue her against her will, and she won’t be her old self until Flame surgically disconnects her lenses and whatever else the Center might have in her head.
She disengages from my hug, looking smugly satisfied. Then she turns her attention to Pearl. “I’m surprised you have the nerve to show your face here.” She turns and whispers something into Copper’s ear, and the girls giggle together, while Pearl blushes.
“Do you know me?” she asks innocently.
This makes Lark, Copper, and Lynx break into more uproarious laughter.
“What’s the joke, Lark?” I ask with an edge to my voice.
Lark stands in her most arrogant pose, looking for all the world like Pearl, like the old Pearl, but amped up. “Well, we heard a lot of rumors about what happened to dear old Pearl. Frankly, I believed the story that she had a baby with a school janitor. But I’m so relieved to know another tale was true—that she went crazy, and had to have a lobotomy. Ha! Look at her empty eyes. Poor thing.” She puts on a mocking tone of sympathy, then laughs.
“Rowan, what’s going on?” Pearl asks in an undertone. “How do they know me?”
“Yeah, Rowan,” Lark says, emphasizing my real name, to the confusion of the other girls, who know me as Yarrow. “What is going on?”
“What’s wrong with you, Lark?” I ask. “This isn’t you.”
“Isn’t it?” Instantly her entire demeanor shifts and she laughs it off. “I was just teasing. You know how it is in this school. Come on, we have a lot to talk about. Let’s go to my room.”
I glance at Pearl.
“Oh, Copper and Lynx can keep her company,” Lark says. “Right now the two of us have a lot to catch up on. And maybe some plans to make.”
It is everything I can do not to look toward the Temple. I don’t want to risk doing anything to jeopardize our plan to get the seed, but I have to at least get Lark alone, where we can talk openly and honestly.
“It’s okay,” Pearl says. “I’ll get something to drink, and talk to our friends.” Her emphasis makes me sure she’s going to use the earbud transmitters to let the rest of our group know what is going on. I hope they’re okay. I think we would have heard by now if there was trouble. I just hope I have time to figure things out with Lark before we have to flee.
I automatically head toward Lark’s old room, but she leads me instead to my old room, which apparently is now hers. It has been completely redecorated, except for the lights I had on the walls, the ones that reminded me of the crystal cave in the Underground.
“So,” she says lightly, still not turning around. “What’s new?”
“What’s new?” I ask, aghast. War and death, miracles and tragedy. She’s talking like none of it ever happened. “Lark, what’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” she asks, whirling on me with a fierce and frightening light in her eyes. Have her lenses been enhanced? Her irises seem to glow the same lilac as her hair. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. Are you kidding? I have it all—everything I always wanted.”
“Lark, this doesn’t sound like you. I think the Chief . . .”
Lark throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, so just because you were a victim you think I’d be one, too? No, Rowan. I wasn’t altered. I just grew up. A little time away from you and I began to realize what I actually want in this life, and how to get it. Look at me now!”
I do, and see the most beautiful and the most disappointing thing I can imagine.
“It was you—you and your weakling brother—who held me back. I was soft then, looking for a cause, someone to take care of. Poor sickly Ash! Poor endangered Rowan. You were so interesting then . . . for about five minutes. Now I’ve found real meaning in my life.”
“I don’t believe you. Those things mattered.”
She comes close enough that I can feel her breath on my face. I’m mesmerized by those perfect lips, but horrified at what she’s saying. “I rule this place, and one day I’ll rule all of Eden. Pearl was nothing compared to me—a joke. The queen is dead, long live the queen! Now I’m the center of attention. It’s not all about Rowan, the interesting second child with all of her troubles, and all of her needs.”
“It was never like that,” I protest.
“Selfish Rowan, who always put herself first and expected the world to bow and scrape to serve her.”
I reach for her and she turns away from me, but not so quickly that I can’t see that the peculiar glint in her eyes is unshed tears. When she speaks again, her voice is ragged.
“I did spend a little time in the Center. Call it . . . a retreat. It gave me time to think about where my best interests lie—and who my true friends are. I was loyal to my friends!” She smashes her fist against her thigh, and I see her shoulders shaking. “And what did it get me?”
She whirls around. “You abandoned me!” I step toward her, but she shrinks back, holding her hands out defensively. “I loved you, and you left me in a cage to rot!” she shouts at me. “I didn’t matter, as long as you and your precious Lachlan survived. I was swallowed by nanosand. I could have died, and what did you care, as long as you and La
chlan got to run off and find your romantic happily ever after!”
I don’t see Center control in her tear-filled eyes. I see deep hurt, a sense of betrayal, and heartbreaking loneliness. I see the barriers she constructed to combat them, to keep herself from breaking. The brittle cruelty, the change to her appearance, her blatant ambition.
The way she is blaming me for all her pain.
“Lark,” I say gently. “When I lost you in the desert, I thought I would never be whole again. When I found out you were alive, imprisoned by the Chief, not a day went by when I didn’t think about you, scheme for some way to save you. For three months I tried to get back into Eden to save you, fearing all the time that Chief Ellena might have killed you, or . . . changed you.”
“The outside?” she asks. “What do you mean?”
“It’s real,” I tell her. “I made it there. And I want to take you there. Oh Lark, you should see it! It’s better than we ever could have dreamed!”
“You’re lying,” she says, but I can see her grief start to break, her hard heart soften.
“I came for you, Lark. This isn’t you, this isn’t what you want. Come with me to the living world outside of Eden.”
“I . . . Do you mean it?” She sniffs, looking suddenly younger, more innocent despite her enhancements. “You didn’t abandon me?”
“How could I?” I ask her. “I love you, Lark. I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
She takes a deep breath and lets it out with a shuddering sigh. “I’ve missed you,” she says in a small voice.
“Let’s go. We can escape here, find our way to the outermost circle and escape Eden for good.” It isn’t the time to mention all of the things we have to do in between—stop the Center mind control, maybe free the rest of Eden, too. Lark seems too unstable for that. I need her to understand how much I care about her, help her heal from her sorrow and sense of abandonment.
“I want to, but . . . I can’t. Not yet.”
“Why not? What’s keeping you here?”
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