I feel sick. I’ve become a financial transaction.
“Mom, they don’t know for sure who I am or where I live. Can’t I get the surgery and . . .” I was going to say hide out with a friend, but I can’t tell her about Lark. Mom would be so disappointed in me if she knew what I’ve done. And she’d believe that Lark betrayed me. Betrayed all of us. I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing her say that.
I can fight the truth in my own head, but if it comes from my mom’s mouth it will seem real. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t.
“I can hide out, just ride the autoloop for a few days, find a place in the outer circles to hole up. And then after a few days, a week, if no one has been here to investigate . . .”
Mom shakes her head sorrowfully. “It has to be now, and it has to be for good.” She seems to harden herself, standing and turning her back on me to resume throwing my every possession into the trash. I’m hurt, until I realize that she’s just trying to carry on, to protect me as always. If she gives in to emotion she’ll collapse and she won’t be able to protect me.
Protect me by giving me away to money-hungry strangers.
I grit my teeth. This is my life! Two nights in the city were enough to fill me with a sense of my own purpose and strength. I decide here and now that even though I have no choice but to go along with Mom’s plans, there’s no way in hell I’m going to stick with them for the rest of my life. I’ll get the eye implants so I can fit in with the rest of Eden. I’ll go live with the mercenary family that wants my family’s money more than they want me. But it won’t be for good. There will come a time when I can be with my family again. When I can be with Lark. When I can stand proudly and be myself, and be with whoever I want, even if I am a second child.
I can’t fight this now. But I see a battle coming. Resolutely, I pick up my favorite stuffed animal—a ragged chimpanzee I’ve cuddled with since I was a baby—and shove it into one of the garbage bags.
At that moment, Ash comes in, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Mom, with her back turned to him, flashes me an urgent, adamant look and shakes her head almost imperceptibly. I immediately understand: don’t tell Ash too much. But is that fair to him? To me?
“What’s going on?” he asks. “Why are you throwing away all of Rowan’s stuff?”
Mom composes her face carefully. “I’m not throwing it away, silly,” she lies with an ease that astounds me. “There’s been a change in plans, and the doctor who will perform her surgery is being reassigned tomorrow, so we have to go tonight, right now, to get her implants. We decided it’s best if she moves to her new house right away. Since we’re moving fast, we don’t have time to pack up neatly.” She turns to me. “But you don’t mind, do you Rowan?”
I gulp, but manage to say, “No, of course not. Who cares about a few wrinkles? I’ll iron once I get there.”
She’s really not going to tell him that someone is actively hunting for me? That I’m never supposed to come back? I open my mouth to tell him myself, then snap it shut. I’m a coward. I don’t want to see that look of despair in his eyes. Selfishly, I leave it to Mom to tell him, to bear the brunt of his sorrow. I wonder if he’ll forgive me, once he knows. But I just want this last moment with him that isn’t marred with too much grief. I will hold it for both of us. What he knows is sad enough.
He’s taking it pretty well, though. Mom excuses herself (I hear the hiccup of a sob as she departs), and Ash dumps out a trash bag and starts methodically folding the clothes Mom shoved inside. The repetitive, precise action seems to give him focus, and he talks fairly calmly as he folds. But he doesn’t talk about what’s happening. He tells me about yesterday at school, how he missed a question on his Eco-history test, how the latest fashion calls for tiny iridescent robotic butterflies in the hair, how Lark seemed strangely tired but happy all day . . .
I understand. He desperately wants everything to be normal. He doesn’t want the patterns of the last sixteen years to change.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you!” I blurt out suddenly. The shirt he is folding drops into his lap in a messy heap.
He gives a little laugh. “You? What about me? What am I going to do without my sister watching out for me?”
“How do I watch out for you? I’m never out with you.”
“You might not be with me, Rowan, but you always have my back. Whenever I need advice, reassurance—anything—you’re there for me. Always. I’ve been thinking more and more about your bravery, and you’ve inspired me. You know, I think I’m finally going to ask Lark out.”
I gasp, just a little, then bite my lip.
“What?” he asks, a little sharply. “You don’t think I should? You think she’ll say no?”
“I . . . I don’t know anything about relationships,” I say truthfully. “I think you should do whatever feels right.” It felt right when Lark kissed me. But it was nothing like any kind of romance I ever imagined.
“Well, don’t worry about that,” he says, making an attempt to sound breezy. “You have enough to think about.” I sniff. “Listen, I’m doing my best not to cry, too, so let’s just look forward to the next time we can see each other. It will be soon, right?”
He looks so eagerly hopeful that I feel my throat tighten. But I manage to say, “I’m sure it will be.” Then I fling my arms around his neck. I can feel his tears dampening my shoulder. Mine are falling, too. It’s not fair. He should know.
But Mom, who has apparently been lurking just outside the door, bustles in and says it’s time to go.
Ash takes my hand and we walk out into the main living quarters.
“It’s only for a little while,” Ash whispers, more to reassure himself than me, I think. “We’ll be together again soon.” I choke back a sob and hug him.
“Come on, we should go,” Mom says.
“But you have to say good-bye to Dad,” Ash says, with that same look of vague confusion I always see on his face whenever the issue of Dad’s relationship with me comes up. Mom and I make sure it rarely does. She and I glance at each other now.
“Right,” she says, nodding decisively. “He’s in his room. Go on, but be quick.”
I’d rather not, but with Ash watching, I should pretend there’s at least some normal feeling between us. I knock softly at the bedroom door, but when I don’t get an answer I just push it open slowly.
He’s in striped pajamas, perched tensely at the edge of the bed. “You’re still here,” he says.
Oh, Dad, even now, even at the end, you can’t just lie and pretend to just a little bit of feeling? Not a good luck, or an I’ll miss you, or anything?
Nothing. So I steel myself and say coldly, though with a tremor in my voice, “For another minute, anyway.”
He nods, looking down at his knees. I search for anything—sadness, anger—but his expression is unreadable. Mostly it seems like he’s waiting. He’s been waiting for sixteen years for me to conveniently disappear from his life, and now, if he can just hold out a little longer, he’ll get his fondest wish.
“Okay then, Dad,” I say, swallowing hard. “Good-bye.”
I wait. Nothing except the crease of his frown deepening between his brows.
So I leave. Leaving him is the one thing I’m truly glad of in all this mess.
IT FEELS SO weird going out through the front door like a regular person. Mom glances at me like she’s expecting me to be in shock at being outside for the first time in my life, so I do my best to look awestruck, to gawk at everything from what she imagines is a new perspective.
She leads me to the small arched outbuilding that holds our tiny car. I’ve read that back before the Ecofail, cars were huge monsters that ate fossil fuels with a gluttonous appetite. They actually burned gasoline, with engines that ran by caging explosions. They were violent juggernauts that thundered through the world by the billions like vast migrating herds of some destructive creature.
We still use the word “car,” but the few that exi
st in Eden (almost all in the inner circles) are nothing like their namesake. Our water-fueled vehicle is an elegant deep-pink egg with a shell so thin we can see the world around us in a rose-colored haze. It reminds me of Lark’s glasses.
We sit in comfort in the center, as Mom switches the controls to manual. Usually, you tell it where you want to go, close your eyes, and listen to music until you’re there. Like the bots that zip through the city, Eden’s cars are programmed to avoid collisions, and are usually completely autonomous. Few people use the manual option. Of course, Mom doesn’t want a record of where we’re going.
I have to keep it together, I think as I stare out at the fleeting scenery, the landscape that, after a couple of nights out, now seems almost familiar. It is slowly sinking in how serious this is. Not just that it is the end of everything I know. Suddenly, the danger feels real. Before, when I snuck out it was scary, sure, but there was always an edge of excitement to it, like when I played laser hunt with Lark. Sneaking out was a challenge, and getting home again with adventure and experience under my belt was a victory.
Now, though, someone is apparently actively hunting me. This just got real.
I reach over and take my mom’s hand, leaving her to drive with the other. She flashes me a quick, loving look, then fixes her eyes back on the road. It’s about 3 a.m. and the streets are virtually deserted. Even the cleanbots are recharging. Still, she has to be careful. An accident would be disastrous.
“Out in the world at last,” Mom says, squeezing my fingers as she maneuvers down one of the radial streets, away from the green glowing eye of the Center. “And you didn’t even have to knock down the courtyard walls to do it,” she jokes. “I always knew, right from the start, that it was going to be hard for you. But now my strong-willed little girl is growing into a strong-willed woman. Rowan, I am so proud of you.”
She speaks the words very distinctly, as if she’s trying to burn them into my memory.
“And now you’re finally going to get the freedom you deserve.”
“But the price!” I say.
She shakes her head. “I . . . we would have spent anything to help you have a normal life. Luckily we can afford it.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know,” she says softly. “But there’s always a price, to every decision. I’ve paid a heavy price since the moment you were born, a price of guilt at the life I’ve forced you to lead. And your father . . .” She breaks off, and I notice for the first time that she has my habit of clenching her jaw in moments of extreme emotion. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her upset until the past few days. She always seemed so calm, so stable, so happy . . . though I wonder now whether she kept her equilibrium at home to make things easier for the rest of us.
“What about my father?” I ask sharply.
“It’s . . . nothing.”
Of course I can tell from her voice, from the play of muscles in her jaw, that it is the very opposite of nothing. “We only have a little while longer, Mom. You owe me honesty.” I see her wince a little. “He hates me, and I don’t know why. Is it just because I’m an inconvenience? An obstacle on his path to greatness?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she begins, and I can tell she wants to lie. But finally she says, “He doesn’t hate you, Rowan. He hates himself.”
In a halting voice she tells me what she herself only found out a few years ago, when my father was drunk and tired and weak and too crushed under the burden of his guilt to keep the secret any longer.
When my dad found out that Mom was pregnant with twins he took it upon himself—without asking her, without telling her—to try to abort one of us. During what was supposed to be a routine prenatal check he used a modified ultrasound device he created to try to destroy one of us.
Did he pick his victim at random? Did he let chance decide whether Ash or I would be a first child, an only child—or no child at all?
No. He wanted a son.
When there were billions of people still crawling on the planet, men and women weren’t always treated equally. Ash and I used to laugh about that when we studied ancient history together. Imagine, anyone thinking women were lesser than men! Here in Eden, I believed that kind of prejudice didn’t exist.
Dear old Dad, though—he wanted a child created in his own image. He wanted a boy to mold like him, to follow in his footsteps, to become a great doctor or politician.
“He aimed the ultrasound device . . .”
“Call it what it is, Mom,” I say bitterly. “A weapon.” I think of myself, huddled in the womb with Ash, safe and warm . . . with my own father aiming a gun at my head.
“He aimed it at you, but something happened. He was almost incoherent when he confessed, and I never spoke with him about it again, but he said that you moved at the last second. That you were close to Ash, that . . . that you hugged him. You pulled him to you, and the sound beam hit Ash instead of you. Your father shut it off instantly, but some damage was done. It hit Ash in the chest. It injured his lungs.”
To my surprise, a tiny part of me almost feels sorry for the monster that is my father. For sixteen years he’s lived with the guilt of the crime he committed. Every day he has to look at his ill son and think That’s my fault.
But every day he has to look at his daughter and think I tried to kill her, and failed.
I feel sick inside.
There’s one thing I can’t understand. “You forgave him for that?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, steering the car around a tricky curve as we skirt an algae spire.
“No,” she whispers at last. “But it was best we stay together.” She takes a deep breath. “Rowan, I know you want to talk more about that, but it isn’t relevant now. The past can’t be changed. But . . . it has to be understood. Listen carefully. I put something in your backpack. Something I found in the house long ago, around the time you were born. It . . . it changed the way I see things. It made me believe that . . . Bikk!”
I see her eyes widen at the vista ahead. “Oh, great Earth, no!”
Ahead of us are the flashing blue-and-green lights of a Greenshirt checkpoint. We’ve just turned onto one of the narrow radial roads that connect one ring to another. There are no side streets, and the road is barely wider than our car. We could turn around, but it would be blatantly obvious we were avoiding the checkpoint. They would be after us in a heartbeat.
I can see the choices flashing across my mother’s face, foremost among them a panicked urge to make a run for it. I don’t know. If I was on foot, and alone, I’d go for it. But cars aren’t designed to go more than twenty-five miles per hour, and if we bailed, Mom couldn’t run as fast as me. Plus they’d easily find out who owned the car.
Mom has an answer, though.
“Pretend you’re asleep. Pull your hat over your face and curl up against the far door. I can probably talk my way through.” She gives a weak chuckle. “After all, I work for the Center, and have friends in high places.” Dropping my father’s name would certainly help. How ironic, that he might actually save my life this time.
I have confidence it will work. I know that Greenshirts tend to respect anyone with a Center ID. Still, I can feel myself tremble as I tuck myself into a ball. We cruise slowly toward the checkpoint. It is such a long way away that it feels foolish now not to have turned around, but I have to trust Mom’s judgment.
She talks to me in a low voice as we progress toward the barricades and flashing lights. “The surgery center is in a back office of a modification parlor called Serpentine.” I understand. That’s a place where the people who believe they should have been born into an animal body get their scales and claws and horns. “It’s in the next-to-last circle, on the east side. An orange building, almost the color of your tunic. There’s an electric fence around it, but third panel from the left on the southeast corner is turned off from three to four in the morning. You can climb over. Go to the back door and knock twice up high, and three times down low. Can you
remember that?”
“Yes,” I murmur into the sleeve that is curled over my face.
“And whatever happens, keep that backpack close. Keep it safe.”
Wait . . . keep it safe? Not keep me safe?
“What . . . ?”
“Shh,” she cautions. “There’s something inside for you. Something that . . . Stay down! They’re coming toward us. They have their weapons out.” She gasps. “Are those real guns?”
It’s too late for me to ask what she means by that, but I have a terrible idea I know. All Greenshirts carry weapons, the kind that slam you with an electrical charge carried in plasma. They’re usually called guns. But before the Ecofail I know there used to be more lethal things, also called guns, which shot metal bullets that ripped through human bodies. They’ve been outlawed in Eden. Could Mom possibly mean . . . ?
I try not to move, but I know my rapid breathing will give me away if they look too closely. Try as I might, I can’t calm my breath to sound like I’m sleeping. I listen as hard as I can.
“Step out of the car, ma’am,” one barks right away in a deep, gruff voice.
I can hear the smile in her voice, and I silently applaud her cool. “I’m on Center business,” she says, and I’m sure she is tilting her head at him so he can more easily scan her eyes. “My assistant and I were collecting some archival material from the outer circles, and I got turned around. Am I heading inbound now, or out?”
He doesn’t answer her question, but only says, “Step out of the car.”
Mom’s voice hardens slightly. “I said I’m on Center business. There are very valuable documents that needed to be . . .”
“Step out,” he says again, flatly. “Now.”
I can tell she’s starting to sound desperate, but to the Greenshirt she probably only sounds angry when she says, “My husband is Dr. . . .”
I hear the door open, and there’s a tussle and scramble. “What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieks. “Do you know who I am? You’re impeding Center research.”
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