“We can't go back to Eden. There's no one else there. Maybe we can just make new identities--” Evelyn began.
“It'll only work for a little while, Evelyn,” Rhett said, interrupting her with a gentle hand to her shoulder. “They'll get desperate when they realize we've taken you away. I wouldn't put it past them to create an event that will coerce the world's population into asking to be chipped, and then it'll be over.”
Evelyn shrugged his hand off and stalked in the middle of the circle, looking at Dragar, Dracht, her sisters. “So we just find a remote place off the grid and live. What's so hard about that? If we don't live in a place where we need to be chipped--”
“We won't be able to even buy food. You'll pay for your groceries with the chip, get your medical treatment, have all your records on file there, and any other tiny detail about your life on a piece of material the size of a grain of rice. Once they've got the majority of the population done, they'll be able to use their super computers and satellites to pin down the location of anyone who doesn't have it. Narrow it right down to a square foot of land anywhere on earth. There will be no place to hide,” Dragar said. Solemn, jaw tight, he delivered his news with grim confidence.
Evelyn turned a slow circle. Around, around, studying each face. She saw the truth of it in Rhett's eyes, in Dracht's. Dragars. And she saw Minna's expression turn bleak, saw Alexandra tilt her face to the sky and exhale. Not quite defeat, but something like it. Alexandra, the one who usually fought to the teeth to keep her freedom.
Facing Dragar, appealing to his leadership, she said, “Then why don't we find a way to convince them they don't want what we have. What if we pass word back through their agents to tell them that the fruit will make them sick? That they can't get into Eden with or without us?”
It was a last, desperate attempt to set the world back on a familiar axis. Stop the crazy, out of control spin this meeting had put it into. Desperation made her bold, aggressive.
“Do you think they will just take your word for it? Besides the desire for possible immortality, the location of Eden has other political and religious implications that they will want to manipulate. Playing it 'safe' is a thing of the past for them, Evelyn. They'll come full on now, whatever the risk and the consequence, to get what they want.” Dragar did not seem convinced anything she had to pass on would make any difference.
“You don't have to stay forever. Maybe wait twenty, thirty years and try again. With any luck, they won't pass the knowledge on to other men who will try and seek the same thing.” Dracht added. Doubt lingered in his voice.
“How can they have so much control over people? Why have they been allowed to tag us like sheep, herd us around here and there at their whim? We have every right to live our lives without the fear of being hunted into the ground.” Her frustrations manifested into a rant. It was one thing to recognize they would one day have to return to Eden, and another to be forced to go before she was ready.
She faced Rhett, next, pleading with her eyes. Appealing to his connection with her to help find a way around it. Twenty or thirty years was nothing for her, but it meant the end of everything they wanted to try together.
He jammed his hands on his hips, maintaining eye contact.
“They're right, Evelyn. When you think about all the angles, the motivations, they're right,” Minna said behind her.
Evelyn didn't look away from Rhett. She felt the others, all of them, staring at her.
“I think he's right,” Rhett said. “When it comes down to a matter of life or death, your life or death, Eden is the only answer left.”
***
“We need to get rid of all the phones, the cars. Everything. They've probably hacked into the Church's files and found out who, what and where we got all our new electronics from.” Dragar pivoted around, stalking to the car he'd drove there with Minna.
Evelyn felt like a fish out of water. Gaping, words all stuck in her throat, nothing but exasperated puffs of air escaping. She stared at Rhett almost accusingly and he gave her a hard look that promised they'd talk about it later.
“Well, we can't walk to Eden,” Alexandra said. “I mean we could, but we'd have to swim, too, and I don't think any of us are in that good of shape.”
Evelyn brushed Alexandra's sarcasm off. She was used to it after all these years. With growing unease, she watched Dracht and Rhett start dragging things out of the cars.
“You mean we have to leave behind everything?” she asked. They were in the middle of nowhere. Walking back to any kind of civilization would take hours as it was.
“We need to know where we're going. Which direction. We can take the cars only as far as the outskirts of the first town we come to and then we have to ditch them,” Dracht said.
“I thought the phones were secure, couldn't be traced?” Evelyn asked, digging her own phone out of her jeans.
“Not by normal means, but they can if they've pinpointed our seller. All they have to do is lock on to the signal. Same with the cars. These aren't untraceable.” Rhett tossed his phone into the center between the idling vehicles.
Dracht followed suit, along with Dragar. Alexandra groaned and flipped hers in. Minna set it down near the others.
It seemed that there was no other recourse than to go along with Dragar's suggestion. Brooding, irritable, Evelyn finally got around to answering Dracht's request to know where they needed to go.
“Egypt. We're going back to Egypt,” she said, drawing a glance from everyone around the circle. It was the first time they'd ever given any kind of hint of the location of Eden.
Rhett used the heel of his boot to crush the phones into tiny bits of unrecognizable plastic.
“We split up from here then, and meet there,” Dragar said.
Each of the Templars would have a sister with them to guide the way to Eden. No maps needed to be drawn or taken with them.
“Wouldn't it be safer to stay together?” Evelyn asked. She hated parting off from Alex and Minna especially now that their once secure mode of communication was laying in tiny splinters on the ground.
“It's like before, Ev, when we didn't want to make a big target out of ourselves,” Alexandra said.
“Everything electronic needs to go in.” Dracht pointedly looked at Alexandra.
The tomboy exhaled her frustration and got into the backseat of the car she'd arrived in with Dracht. Taking the netbook out of her bag, she tossed it into the busted fray of phones.
Rhett cracked the case with the first stomp, and shattered it with the second. “All we have left is our clothes, money and weapons. We'll dump the car when we get out of the foothills. Everyone ready to go? We need to be far away from here when the satellite goes live again.”
Evelyn still wasn't convinced splitting up was the right answer. What about the old adage safety in numbers? She hugged Alex first, then Minna. Their displeasure was as palpable as her own.
“Don't worry Evelyn, we'll be all right.” Minna palmed Evelyn's cheek in a motherly way and turned back to Dragar's car.
Alexandra split off for Dracht's.
“We'll see you in Eden,” Evelyn said.
After transferring another black bag from Dracht's trunk to the back seat of their car, Rhett shook hands with his brother and father and climbed into the driver's side.
Evelyn followed Rhett and slid into the passenger seat, unhappy with the turn of events. While Rhett spun the tires and fishtailed them out of the clearing, she stared up at the sky out her window.
It felt like a big, all seeing eye stared down, marking their every move.
***
“So explain to me how they'll be able to find us now that we've gotten rid of all the electronics,” Evelyn asked Rhett, staring balefully out the window. She guessed they had three hours or so of darkness left.
“See, it's like this. I'm conjecturing here? But I'm probably not far off. Since their agents haven't checked in for three days, they know they've been compromised. I have no
doubt they were tracking both of them and Christian, too. They knew about the stronghold. Once they discover we've split up, taking you with us, they immediately set up a perimeter. Right away they engage all the security cameras in every public place they can and trace us to the last possible location that we used these cars and the cell phones. I'm sure they can find the hotel we stayed at in Kineta and from there they map out how many miles in any direction we can go in a specific amount of time, and close the net from there. Our pictures have been sent to every police station, all the airports, everywhere. They'll tighten the noose until we can't move far in any direction without being spotted. Get it? That's why we're going to get rid of this car in short order.”
Inwardly, she railed at technology. At men and women with enough power to wield it for nefarious purposes. Cameras, cell phones, tracking devices. They were everywhere. On street corners, in space, inside vehicles. For the 'safety and security' of the citizens. In her opinion, security had never felt so suffocating.
Rhett made a fine example of just how precarious their situation really was. She expected to see police cars come hurtling from offshoot roads and intersections any second.
“What are we going to do after we ditch the car? Get a taxi to the coastline?” she asked next, not wanting to hear anymore about how advanced the world's spying powers had become.
“Cabs have on board cameras. Considering the area they've probably localized us to, it might take a super computer maybe a half hour of filtering images to land on ours. We might be able to stay ahead of them, but not by much.”
“...is it really that bad, Rhett?” Evelyn couldn't wrap her mind around it. The night felt so normal beyond the confines of the car. Peaceful, asleep, waiting for daybreak that would urge sleepy denizens from their beds and into their regular schedules. She couldn't detect anything nefarious out there, nothing that could home in on them and threaten their right to exist. Yet goosebumps decorated the skin of her arms, spreading an icy chill through her bones. It was out there. They were out there.
A shiver raced down her spine at the look Rhett threw her across the car. It said better than words that yes, it really was that bad.
“We're going to skirt the edges of the smallest towns and look for someone willing to trade their car with this one. That way, if they do lock on, they'll be following a stranger and wasting time while we head to Isthmia.”
Evelyn knew they were heading west, away from Athens. She didn't have to be told he wanted to avoid the entire area around the stronghold. “Why Isthmia?”
“It's small and we'll have a better chance of hiring a boat from a private owner rather than a big company that will want identification and credit cards. Lacking all that, we'll steal one.”
She snapped a look sideways. This was Rhett, getting done what needed to be done.
For an hour they drove on what seemed like every back road there was toward Isthmia. Rhett drove fast in places he knew there were less likely to be police, only slowing when they passed a few clusters of homes tucked into the scenery, visible by porch lights glowing through the trees like fat fireflies.
She wondered what directions Dracht and Alexandra were heading, and whether Dragar and Minna were already on the water somewhere.
Nestled into the foothill, surrounded by trees, they came upon a gas station. Illuminated by strong overhead lamps, it glowed like a beacon in the darkness. It was the kind with a small convenience store inside and a broad, overhead canopy protecting the pumps. Even at this late hour there were customers inside, their vehicles dotting the parking lot. Rhett pulled in and veered away from the front of the store itself to a parking spot cloistered in shadows.
Out of the range of any cameras, she guessed.
“Stay here,” Rhett said, putting the car in park. He reached across her and opened the glove compartment. From it he took a pink slip, already signed. Twisting, he got into the bag in the back seat, the one transferred over from Dracht's car, and took out a black billfold, a Denver Broncos baseball cap, and a gun. Tucking the latter into the back of his waistband, he put the billfold in a front pocket, slapped the hat on his head and got out.
She watched him approach the store from the sidewalk, stopping at a payphone sequestered under a lamp with a flickering bulb. Pretending to look in the phone book, Rhett kept a low profile. He resembled any lost tourist searching for directions.
Evelyn tried to be as inconspicuous as Rhett when she glanced through the parking lot for anything suspicious.
A trucker exited the convenience store first and angled toward a big rig parked off on the opposite side of the lot. If Rhett noticed, Evelyn couldn't tell. He looked engrossed in finding a number.
Several minutes later, a young man swept through the doors, coffee steaming in one hand, keys in the other. College aged, he wore oversized pants with a plain white tee shirt sloppily tucked in. A pair of clear glasses on invisible frames sat high on the bridge of his nose. Of Asian descent, he was built whipcord thin with black hair sticking up at odd angles, obviously the design of fingers and styling gel.
He turned Rhett's way on the sidewalk and the only car that could have been his was a compact two door Eclipse in gunmetal gray. It appeared less than five years old with shaded windows and custom wheels. Evelyn wasn't a car aficionado, but she knew Rhett's BMW was probably twice as expensive and a year or two newer. All the Templars drove the same kind, vehicles provided for transportation anywhere they needed to go.
Rhett broke away from the phone and engaged the man. He seemed to speak quick and to the point, snapping out the pink slip for the guy to see. Evelyn wished she could hear what he was saying over the idling engine.
The young man looked over to their car, obviously hesitant. And why shouldn't he be? A stranger approaching in the wee hours of the morning, wanting to do a car trade. He shook his head. Took a step back.
Rhett took one forward and made a gesture of appeal with his empty hand.
If nothing else, Evelyn could read their body language with little trouble.
The young man had a sudden change of heart. He nodded enthusiastically and started marching over with Rhett at his side. What the hell had Rhett said to sway him so thoroughly? Anticipating them, she reaching into the back and grabbed the three bags—his, hers and the new one—and lugged them into her lap before opening her door.
She got out just as the two arrived.
The man with the coffee stared at her like he felt sorry for her. Evelyn smiled and inclined her head in silent hello, curiosity eating her alive. She glanced at Rhett. He wasn't looking at her but pointing out details that only cemented the deal.
“Twenty-four thousand miles, brand new tires, bullet proof glass--”
“Whoa, no shit? Bullet proof glass?” the man asked.
“It's got all the bells and whistles, no body damage, everything works like we just drove it off the lot. You have a pen? I'll sign right now.” Rhett laid the pink slip on the hood of the car.
“Dude, you've got a deal. Pen in my car, be right back.” The man grinned like it was Christmas after checking out the interior and walked back to his car. Using the remote on his keychain, he unlocked the doors, opened the passenger side, and rifled around. When he returned he extended a pen between two fingers.
Rhett signed the car over with a few sharp strokes, handed the slip to the young man, and took a card out of his wallet.
Evelyn caught a glimpse of the fake CIA stamp. Rhett really knew how to use those to his advantage, she thought wryly.
The young man, impressed and swayed by the show of authority, took the card, pink slip and exchanged keys with Rhett.
“Remember. Not a word if anyone comes asking,” Rhett warned him.
“I swear. Won't say a thing,” he promised with a specific look at Evelyn.
Was she dying? An alien? Missus Claus? Subduing her inner sarcasm, she headed toward the Eclipse in Rhett's wake.
Once they were inside, doors closed and windows up, E
velyn half turned in her seat with an accusation ripe on her tongue.
Rhett beat her to the proverbial punch. “I told him you were in the witness protection program and we were on the run. Made him think he was doing a good deed for the day. Never mind he got a hell of an upgrade out of the deal besides his promised silence.”
Jamming the key into the ignition, he turned the engine over. Eminem, Lose Yourself, blared from the speakers. The heavy beat vibrated her seat.
Rhett reached over to turn the volume down enough to have a conversation. Spinning the wheel, he sped out of the lot and back onto the familiar, lonely road.
“I thought for a minute you told him the truth,” she said, snapping the buckle into place.
“You should know better. I'm not above using whatever means I have to—anything but that. Why don't you try and get some rest? We've got about an hour before we come to the interchange.”
“I'll try.” Thoughtful, she slouched down and closed her eyes.
A moment later, Rhett turned the music up. The rhythmic melody helped blot out the terrors and the tragedies and before she knew it, Evelyn fell asleep.
Chapter Five
Christian stared balefully at the two-way viewing window. Meals had come gone, the hours ticking away while he languished in his subterranean cell. He didn't know whether it was night or day beyond the confines of the stronghold or how long it had been since Roman had visited him. Time all but stood still down here, with no windows to mark the rise and descent of the sun.
An edgy restlessness forced him to pace the cell like it was a cage—and for all intents and purposes, it was. A growing feeling of being trapped kept him awake when he should be sleeping, skewing his inner clock off kilter.
The reflection the window bounced back mocked him; he looked well rested, sharp eyed, intent. All while the heavy slabs of concrete on all sides reminded him he was a prisoner. He wasn't used to so much inactivity, and he couldn't get his mind off his son.
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