Children of Eden
Page 38

I frown. “Is it a good idea to have your prints on record?” I ask.
“Good thinking,” Lachlan replies. “Luckily the scanner is just a decoy. The door unlocks from the rhythm I just tapped in with my thumb pressure. It only scans the fingerprint if someone doesn’t tap the code. Then we can track whoever is trying to get in without authorization.”
Clever. There’s apparently a whole world of trickery in Eden that I never imagined.
Inside we find a businesslike middle-aged woman in the sort of suit typical of a Center official. Instinctively, I flinch behind Lachlan, but he greets her by name. “Hey Rose, do you have the day’s roster?” I peek around his shoulder and look at her eyes. They have the flat, dull sheen of the implants. Not a second child, then.
“Of course, whippersnapper. When do I not have the roster?”
He gives her a quick hug, a peck on the cheek.
“Who’s this then?” she asks.
“No one—yet. I’m taking her to the others.”
Rose raises her eyebrows and looks me over. “Has she been tested yet? She really shouldn’t be here if she hasn’t been tested.”
Lachlan glances at me. “In the last day she’s been tested as much as many other second children.”
“But not as much as some,” she replies, looking at him hard. “Still, if you say she can be trusted . . .”
“I do.”
“Then follow me.” She leads us to a back room, and then to a closet full of Greenshirt uniforms. “The usual lieutenant for you, Lachlan?”
“Rank without too much responsibility, that’s me.”
“And I’m guessing recruit for this one.” She pulls two uniforms off of the racks and thrusts one at me. “Change. There.” I step behind a screen and strip off my dirty, torn clothes, feeling so strange being naked in the same room as strangers, my height making my shoulders and half my chest stick up over the screen. When I’ve struggled into the uniform I step out and Rose yanks the fabric into order. “Straighten your gig line, recruit!” she says, pulling my belt into alignment with my zipper.
I look at myself in the mirror, wearing the uniform of the enemy. My eyes look frightened . . . until Rose hands me a pair of darkly tinted glasses. Then I look as menacing as any Greenshirt. I’m a little scared of my own reflection.
Dressed as authority figures, we move through Eden unmolested. In the outer circles, people sidle out of our way. Closer to the Center, they mostly ignore us, though some nod in greeting, believing their elite position in society means they have nothing to fear. Some of the time we travel by autoloop, but at the end we’re on foot again. For my backpack, which would otherwise look out of place, Rose has given me a large tag that reads “Evidence.” I’m just a recruit finishing up a case.
There is a brief moment when I recognize streets I walked along with Lark, and the memory brings a pang. I look at each face, thinking I might see her. But she’d be in school, and wouldn’t recognize me in this uniform, and I couldn’t dare approach her even if I saw her.
Then Lachlan’s pace quickens, and he leads me through streets at such a pace that I get disoriented again.
Suddenly he says, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I say at once, not even thinking about whether it is true. People keep asking me that.
“Then follow me.”
He pulls me abruptly down a side street, kicks a loose grate aside, and points to what looks to me like a bottomless black pit. It is only just wider than my shoulders. I take an inadvertent step back.
“Don’t think. Don’t question. Just jump.” He looks a little excited, like he’s wondering what I’ll do, whether I’ll disappoint him.
I’ve never been afraid of climbing. Though I’ll never have an opportunity to climb a mountain, I know for a fact that no matter how high I ascend, it will never bother me. Falling, though, the very antithesis of climbing, scares me to death.
What if this is all a trick, a trap? What if he’s working for the Center and this is a pit to my doom? What easier way to get rid of a second child than to convince her to voluntarily leap to her own death. This might be an abattoir filled with the bodies of . . .
He pushes me.
My hands claw for the edge but I’m falling down . . . down . . . the passage narrows. The sides are perfectly smooth, nothing to grab onto to slow my descent. The walls are closing in. I’m going to be wedged in here forever, left to die . . .
As my body brushes the sides, though, the tunnel begins to slant and instead of falling I’m sliding smoothly. The slide levels out, and before I know it I’m skidding to a gentle stop. Now that it’s over and the adrenaline leeches from my body, I decide it was rather fun. I’d like to do it again—without all the fear of death part.
I find myself in a stone chamber. Stone! Rock! Real natural minerals just like the walls of my own house! This must be an underground cave system. Phosphorescent strips along the floor offer a gentle glow, and I wonderingly examine the whorls and crevices of the cave, the formations that hang like jagged teeth from the ceiling. I’m so lost in the marvelous sight that Lachlan bumps me from behind when he slides down.
“I told you to do exactly what I say,” he tells me brusquely. “There’s no time for indecision in a second child’s life. Any mistake can be your last.”
Then it is a race through twists and turns that leave me baffled. I try to pay attention to our direction—and I try to admire the amazing natural cave system I never knew was under Eden—but Lachlan pulls me along at breakneck speed. Once, I’m sure, he leads me past the same rock formation three times.
It is such an utterly baffling labyrinth down here! I realize that these confusing tunnels are the best layer of security imaginable, probably more effective than armed guards. Even if they found the entrance, which didn’t seem likely, the impossible maze down here would thwart any invader.
Finally he slows, in a passage that looks like every other—arching stone walls, dim lights barely illuminating our feet.
“We’re here,” Lachlan says, and turns to smile at me. “Are you ready? You’re about to meet your brothers and sisters. An entire family of second children.” He takes my hand and squeezes it quickly before releasing it.
I feel my breath coming fast, and smile back. People like me! Second children who have made a life for themselves! I have no idea what kind of life that is, but I am giddy at the thought of finding out.