“He spread that recording among the Dominion followers, and that attracted more. Suddenly there were thousands of people who were convinced that there is a living world beyond Eden, that it is their manifest destiny to find it and fill it, to use it and exploit it.”
“But they can’t . . .” I choke out. “You mean, as soon as they hear about all this wonder out here, they want to lay waste to it?”
“They think it is their right. The Dominion was in open war with the Center, trying to find a way out of Eden. Guards were posted everywhere, and the outer circle turned into a militarized zone.”
I was only trying to tell the truth, to let people know there was a way to live with space, with freedom, without government control. The survival of the natural world was supposed to be happy news. But there are always some people who will corrupt anything.
“But the factions couldn’t work together, and no single group could achieve dominance. Still, they caused a lot of trouble for the Center.”
“Things sound pretty bad,” I say.
“You have to be hopeful, Rowan,” Lachlan urges. “Yes, things are terrible now, but great things can come out of chaos.”
“But now it sounds like all that’s coming from it is death,” I say miserably.
“Chaos is better than blindness and apathy. They were fighting. If they could have come together, the Center might have been overthrown.”
But they didn’t, he tells us, and then Chief Ellena implemented her new plan.
“The Center looked like it was in trouble for a while. So many people were mobilizing against it. But then the Center came up with a new way to control the people.”
Usually, the lens implants that every legal citizen of Eden has can only control them in minor, basic ways. Through the lenses, EcoPan subtly turns their attention away from things it doesn’t want them to see, keeps them from getting too curious. And the lenses can be used to monitor their actions and, in a rough way, their thoughts. But most of that came from EcoPan. At times when the Center wanted to really mess up someone’s perceptions, they had to do it through surgery, going directly into the brain to access the connections already initially forged by the lenses.
Changing people completely, like the Chief did with me or Pearl, was a slow and complicated process. Until just a couple of weeks ago.
Chief Ellena came up with a way to broadcast complicated mind control directly to anyone with an implant.
“This can do far more than they’d ever done before,” Lachlan tells me. “Overnight, almost the entire population was as calm and happy as if they were drugged. In a way, they are. We think the signal stimulates the centers of the brain that identify pleasure and contentment. Suddenly everyone, even the most passionate of the rebels, stopped worrying.”
It almost sounds nice, doesn’t it? Yarrow says.
“They’re like happy zombies now. They’ve forgotten about the rebellion, forgotten about the fighting. I mean, there are still bullet casings in the street! People’s wives, children, friends are missing! And no one cares. They do their jobs, eat their synthetic food, go to school, play games, gossip . . . and look almost like they did before. Almost normal. But nothing bothers anyone anymore.”
I know what we’re all thinking—the same thing that Yarrow thought. In a way, it sounds like a Utopian society, right? Everyone content, no one complaining. A happy, peaceful population where everyone knows their place, and accepts it.
I shudder with a deep, terrible chill.
“The worst thing in the world is to be forced to feel something,” I say softly. “Even if it is happiness. We have to stop them.”
“The second children aren’t affected,” he says. “Only people with the eye implants.”
“Everyone with implants is affected?” I ask.
“Almost. There are some . . . glitches. Some people seem to break out of it, at least for a while. Some go almost numb, uninterested in anything around them, even eating. But for the most part, everyone is under the Chief’s control. But . . . you remember Flame, right?”
Of course. She’s the intense, red-haired neurocybersurgeon who deactivated my lenses. She could only remove one, though, so I’m left with mismatched eyes. “Flame has been deactivating as many people as she can, severing the connection with the Center. She learned a lot from your surgery. We basically have to kidnap our old allies and do the procedure. Once it’s done, though, they remember what they were fighting for and rejoin us.”
“Do you know how to stop it completely?” I ask.
“Flame and the others are working on it. I haven’t seen her since the raid on the Underground, though. I’ve been working near the Center, sabotaging security, trying to cut Center communications. The main rebel holdout is in the outer circle. She’s there, I think. I only get bits and pieces of what is going on. Communication has been difficult, as you might imagine.”
Flame is focusing on a way to stop the mind control. Meanwhile, Lachlan embarked on a mission of his own.
“It might not work,” he admitted. “There might be no way to stop the Center. But maybe we can escape it. That’s why I had to reach the outside. I thought if I could cross over, if I could prove that there was an outside world, it would give people hope and purpose. They would unify. We could stop fighting the Center directly, and focus instead of finding a way to open up Eden. We all have to leave.”
“Even the Dominion faction?”
“Who knows how many of their members are true fanatics?” Lachlan says as he holds my hand and leans close. “I think many of them are just desperate for something to believe in. Anything, other than the city, which is all they’ve ever known. If a starving child dreams of a candy store, do they fantasize about eating just one sweet? Or do they dream about going crazy, devouring everything in sight with no thought of the consequences? I think if the Dominion knew there was actually an outside world, if they could see it as I have, they would never want to risk destroying it.”
I stare out the window at the flickering blur of the tube walls flying past. Am I the only cynical one? Everyone else seems to believe wholeheartedly that if humans had a chance in the natural world they wouldn’t mess it up. I’d like to think that . . . but I’m still not sure.
The hypertube comes to a stop. I have no idea how far we’ve traveled. Its speed is impossible to calculate. We’d been traveling no more than twenty minutes, but we could have gone fifty miles or two hundred.
“Uh-oh,” Mom says as she flips through her guidebook. “I made a mistake. Don’t worry, not a major one. I hope.” She gives a nervous laugh. “The main terminal is just outside of Eden. It’s just in a separate facility than this one. We have to leave this station, go to the surface, and walk . . .” She squints at a diagram. “Oh, not far at all. A few hundred yards. No problem.”
I let everyone else go ahead of me. I hear Mira’s exclamation of disappointment. “I can’t see anything! Just desert.”
“You were hoping for smog and grime and factory turrets?” Carnelian asks. “The wails of tormented souls?”
“Well, you hear about hell for so long, you kind of hope it is going to look a little more impressive,” she says.
I have to take a deep breath before I step into the open. The sun, just risen above the horizon, glows molten in the east as I look toward my old home.
Mira is right—it doesn’t look very impressive. The pale gold desert shimmers with blistering heat. Beyond that, I know, is the line of the towering bean trees, but they are camouflaged, and hide any trace of the city beyond a sort of fog, the haze of the particulate dome that arcs over the whole city. We were once told it protected us from the harmful effects of the sun’s interaction with the atmospheric particles that supposedly destroyed the Earth (the supposed reason everyone in Eden had to get lenses). But we know that was all a lie. The lenses were for monitoring and mind control. What is the hazy dome for? Some other way to keep humanity trapped and controlled?
Still, I know that
there are more than a million people just a few miles away. A million people at war, suffering, struggling.
Finally, I ask the question that has been struggling to come out. The question I have been so deeply afraid to ask. Until I ask, until I know, anything is possible, and I can pretend that the best-case scenario is true. When I asked Lachlan about Lark earlier, he reacted in an odd way. More than I could attribute to jealousy. Does that mean he doesn’t know . . . or knows, but doesn’t want to say?
And Lachlan hasn’t volunteered anything. That can’t be a good sign, can it? If she were alive, he would have told me straightaway, right?
“Do you know what happened to the second children?” I ask in a trembling voice. “To everyone?” I’m afraid to say Lark’s name. Afraid to hear bad news.
“I wish I could tell you more about your brother. I’m sorry. It has been hard to coordinate communications, and we’ve tried to divide the resistance cells so that if someone is captured and interrogated—or mind-probed—they can’t give away too much. I know most of the second children made it out of the Center, thanks to you, and your father, but what their fate is now, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know about Lark?”
He gives me a puzzled look. “Lark? She . . .” He swallows hard. “Did they wipe your memory again?” He takes my hand and says very gently, “Rowan, Lark died. Don’t you remember? The nanosand took her when we tried to cross the desert.”
“Oh, you don’t know!” I beam at him. “She’s alive! The nanosand doesn’t kill. It’s just another lie we’ve been told. It swallows people down to an underground holding station, and they’re sent to the Center, imprisoned or reeducated or experimented on, or whatever evil thing the Center wants to do. I saw her! She was in prison, alive!”
“Did she get out with the others? I know everyone from the Underground escaped.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I was hoping you knew.”
He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry, Rowan. I haven’t seen her or heard about her. But you have to remember, there’s been a lot of chaos. I’ve only had contact with a couple of the second children. None of them have mentioned her, and of course I wouldn’t think to ask.”
Strangely, I feel almost elated. I was braced for the worst news. To still not know means that all possibilities are still open. If he doesn’t know Lark and Ash are dead, they might still be alive! I feel a surge of hope . . .
“The station is this way,” Mom calls, interrupting my reverie. “Come on, Rowan. We’ll come back soon, once we have a plan. I promise.”
But so many things can go wrong between promise and fulfillment. Just a few miles away, a computer program and a madwoman are controlling people’s minds. Somewhere in there, Ash might be alive. And Lark.
Lachlan is looking at his lifelong home, too. “I used to think we had to fix Eden,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “Now I know that it is irrevocably broken. EcoPan, the Center . . . there’s no way Eden can be saved. Humanity needs a new beginning.”
“We’ll be back, Rowan,” Mira says, taking Carnelian’s arm and following my mom.
But we’re here now. If we leave, who knows what might happen? Once we’re at the distant sea, Mom’s access codes might be revoked. We might be stuck there.
We don’t have a plan. I know it would be suicide to go into Eden without a foolproof scheme, an army of allies. And even if we had that, how could we get in? Even with an exposure suit, the desert almost killed Lachlan. If only the hypertube had a conduit that ran underneath the desert, I think, as with heavy feet I turn away to follow the others.
If only there was a way across the desert, through, or over, or under . . .
Quick as lightning, I make my impulsive decision and take off running.
“Rowan, come back!” Mom screams, but I hardly hear her. I’m racing into the brutal, scorching desert sands.
The heat smacks me like a stone wall, making me stagger as my skin instantly flushes red.
“Rowan, are you crazy?” Mira shouts. “We have to go! You can’t get across that now. You’ll die.”
I stop and turn around. “I can’t leave them inside. I can’t leave them without hope!”
“The desert will kill you, Rowan,” Lachlan says, stepping tentatively onto the sand. “You can’t cross without protection. Even with it. You know that. We tried before. I don’t know how I made it across this time. I was sure I was going to die.”
“You risked your life for what you believe in,” I shout across the blistering sands. “You don’t expect me to do the same?”
“It’s not the same,” he argues, coming closer. “I had a chance. You have no chance of getting across.”
“I have no intention of crossing the desert,” I say, and I can see the relief wash over him. He holds out a hopeful hand. “I’m going to go under it.” His hand falls and he stares at me in confusion.
I turn and scan the horizon. Any moment now . . .
He sees it before I do. “Nanosand!” he cries in warning, and I run.
But I don’t run away from the mobile, hungry threat.
“Rowan, look out!”
And Mom shouts, “What are you doing?”
“The nanosand will take me to the Center,” I yell back to her. “It’s a way into Eden!”
“Don’t be crazy!” Lachlan fumes. “Even if that’s true, you’ll just be delivering yourself to the Center. The Chief will experiment on you again. You’ll forget everything.” I can see the anguish on his face. “Please, no. Not after I only just found you again.”
I can feel my heart breaking. But it is also breaking for the people imprisoned in Eden. I walk toward the nanosand. It in turn is stalking me, creeping closer, expecting me to flee.
“It’s suicide! You’ll be caught, and never escape from the Center.”
“Maybe,” I say. “If I don’t have help.” Then I stand still and let the nanosand take me.
“Oh, great Earth, no!” Lachlan is running to me. Mira and Mom and Carnelian, too, braving the heat in an attempt to save me.
My skin crawls as if with a thousand ants when the nanosand envelops my feet. It brings back terrifying memories of my other encounters with it. Watching Lark being swallowed up, certain I’d lost her forever. And the time the nanosand caught me, dragging me inexorably down until it choked me, blinded me . . .
Lachlan saved me then. I won’t let him save me now. When the dragging sand makes my feet lurch, I don’t try to keep my balance, don’t try to escape. I let myself fall backward, out of Lachlan’s reach.
He skids to a halt, despair naked on his face. “What have you done?”
“I’m going back. And you’re right, I’ll definitely be captured if I go alone.” Do it, Yarrow screams at me inside my head. I know it doesn’t feel fair, but do it, or we’ll die!
“But you, Lachlan—you’re the best fighter I know.” The nanosand drags me slowly down, but I fight my fear. “And Mom, you used to work for the Center. You know their buildings, their procedures.” That’s right, Yarrow says in her selfish, practical voice. Convince them. You need them.
Lachlan is pacing the edge of the nanosand like a thwarted panther, desperate to reach me, but powerless. I hate that I’m doing this to them, but Yarrow is right. “Carnelian, you know enough about tech to bypass any security system they’ve got. And Mira, you can run as fast as me, climb as high, you’re braver than I ever was.” The nanosand trickles into my ears, and their protesting shouts grow muffled. “With your help, we have a chance to save people. To save all of Eden.”
“Follow me!” I shout as the nanosand brushes my eyes. I squeeze them shut, then struggle to free a hand to pinch my nose closed. “Follow me, or let humanity down. Follow me, or lose me forever.”
The billion tiny particles pulling at me seem to redouble their effort, and the sun disappears as the suffocating sand closes around my face . . .
FOR A MOMENT I can still see the sun’s reassuring glow through the san
d, through my closed eyelids. Then I sink deeper and I’m encased in black silence.
Be calm, Yarrow tells me. This is part of your plan. It will all work out. You’ll sink through the nanosand and in just a moment you’ll end up in a holding pen beneath the desert.
My plan? This was your idea! And it wasn’t a plan, you idiot, I tell her. It was an impulse. I couldn’t be so close to my friends stuck in Eden without trying to help them.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, not so much.
I’m sinking into the most terrible danger. And I’m alone.
I feel so guilty for trying to manipulate them like that. I’m glad—almost glad—no one made the rash decision to join me. If I’m doomed (and I surely am), at least I’m doomed by myself. I put myself in a position where they couldn’t rescue me, where the only possible way to save me was to join me. I was wrong to expect them to cast their lot in with my crazy idea.
As the seconds tick by and I sink slowly, despair begins to clutch at me. Despair, and a frantic, maddening urge to breathe. How long will it take to make it through to the holding cell? I was thinking no more than a minute, but that has to have passed by now. The second initiation test showed me exactly how long I can hold my breath. That time is rapidly coming to an end.
Don’t panic, I chant to myself as my diaphragm clenches and my mouth tries to open against my will. You’re not an unthinking animal—you’re a reasoning human. Yes, this is unpleasant, terrifying. But you know, logically that it has an end.
When did logic ever win against biology? Panic creeps up on me, and suddenly pounces. No amount of lecturing can help me. My brain isn’t even working well enough to form coherent thoughts. I squeeze everything shut—my mouth, my eyes, my pinched nose—and curl up into a ball, screaming in my head. For just a second I hold the terror in check. Then my body, my animal nature, takes over and I’m flailing in the nanosand, reaching out for anything to grab onto, desperate to save myself. I can’t help it. The threat of death, the will to live, overrides all reason.
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