“EcoPan has had every opportunity to intervene,” she answers smoothly. “It obviously agrees with what I’m doing. For the benefit of all mankind.”
One of the Greenshirts checks his watch and whispers something into her ear.
“Already?” she asks him, and he nods. “Well, aren’t my troops a model of efficiency? Oh, very well.” She backs toward the door, dragging Mom with her. “It appears I don’t have very much leisure after all. You and I will have some mother-daughter time later, my dear. And your mother and I have so much to catch up on. The rest of these people are unnecessary. Guards! Kill them all!”
I hear weapons being racked, and I scream, “Wait! I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
She holds up a hand to stop the Greenshirts, and they stand poised with their weapons pointed at the head of everyone I love. Except for Lark. I can’t believe she’s doing this of her own free will. She might be lost to me, but I still love her—the real Lark, who I know is hidden underneath.
To save her, to save my mom and friends, I tell Chief Ellena all about Harmonia, about the beautiful, living world beyond the desert of Eden. Maybe my words will move her, I think. Maybe it will make her realize that war, that controlling people, is futile.
She doesn’t believe me. “Are you still spouting the same deluded nonsense you did before? I suppose I broke you even more than I realized. Ah well, we’ll find out when we dissect your brain. If you won’t tell me what I want to know, then we have no use for any of you.”
“It’s true!” Mira chimes in. “There is a world beyond Eden. I live there! I was born there!”
The Chief whirls on her. “Hold her head!” Deftly, the Chief pops out Mira’s fake lenses. “Another second child, I see. Is the world overrun with the vermin?” She waves her hand. “Kill her, and round up the others.”
“No!” I scream, as without hesitation the Greenshirt puts a gun to the back of Mira’s head. I close my eyes at the sound, but when I open them the Greenshirt is on the ground, Mira’s foot on his throat. Chief Ellena and the other Greenshirts all have their weapons pointed at Mira, but the Chief laughs and waves them away. “Your wild paradise must be quite dangerous to produce a fighter like you. You’re too interesting to kill quickly. Let’s see, who shall it be, then?”
The Oaks students standing near her look on with blank faces, oblivious to the threats and violence.
For a moment we do nothing. I feel too paralyzed to act. But Carnelian, seeing Mira in danger, suddenly breaks free of the Greenshirt holding him, elbowing him in the head and surging toward his love. Two of the Greenshirts break from guarding the door to tackle him. One hits him in the head with the butt of his gun, and Carnelian lays on the floor, groaning and insensible. I hear Chief Ellena say in a bored voice, “This is getting out of hand. Luckily, I can delegate.” I see Chief Ellena take out a small device and tap in a command. All at once every one of the students seems to come unnaturally alert. Then chaos erupts. The students are fighting—us, everyone. It’s like someone flipped a switch in their brains that turned on unthinking aggression.
I realize that’s exactly what happened. She’s turned on a localized tweak of her enhanced mind control. It probably wasn’t even that hard. Just code the brain to signal the body to release adrenaline, testosterone, and all the other hormones associated with violence and aggression. She can’t control them with enough finesse to tell them who to fight, but she can turn them into mindless killers and let them loose. With their overwhelming numbers, they’ll take care of us as easily as the Greenshirts.
One of the students takes a swing at me, another kicks for my shins. Someone pulls my hair from behind. Luckily none of these people are fighters, but I don’t want to hurt any of them, so for now there’s a limit to how much I can fight back.
I hear gunshots. The Greenshirts aren’t leaving all the fighting to the brainwashed students. I try to reach Mom, my fists clenched, ready to fight, to kill, no matter what the consequences. There’s no going back now. This is a final stand for all of us. We’re doomed, I know it. Now the only thing we can hope for is to take the Chief down with us. Without her, maybe all this will end.
My murderous charge is halted when a slender arm snakes around my neck, pulling me back and off my feet. Gasping for breath, I pull Lark’s forearm off my trachea and roll to my back, but immediately she’s on top of me. There’s nothing of my sweet Lark in her contorted face, and I know she’ll kill me if she can.
I’m stronger than she is, and roll her over so that I’m on top, but I have no wish to hurt her, and she uses that to her advantage, throwing a punch from the bottom that makes me rear back to avoid it. She uses this momentum to flip me again and we roll, over and over, fighting for dominance, until we hit the wall. We end up with Lark on top, and in the confusion of zombie-like Oaks students someone kicks me in the head, someone else steps on my hand, so that Lark manages to get her hands around my throat.
Her grip is like steel, like an eagle’s talons. With the wall on one side, oblivious Oaks students in their stupor on the other, I can’t roll her. I can’t even get my hands up to fend her off.
This all happens in seconds. I hear gunfire, and wonder why the Greenshirts haven’t shot me yet. It doesn’t matter. Lark is doing their job for them. My pulse pounds against her squeezing hands, slower, slower . . .
“Lark, please,” I beg as my consciousness dims.
For a second she falters and her grip loosens enough to let a little more blood to my brain. “No! You won’t trap me again! I’m better alone!” She squeezes, but I’ve managed to get one hand free, the hand closest to the wall. I claw at her choking fingers, but I’m too weak to get purchase. I wonder what is going on around me. So much confusion, so many gunshots . . .
My flailing hand brushes something on the wall. It is a panel of switches. With the last of my conscious mind I realize what it is, what it means. It’s the control panel for the lights and speakers. I flail at the switches, hitting them all, and suddenly the room explodes in flashing light and booming music. The strobes are dizzyingly fast. Lark’s eyes grow wide, and she stiffens, which for a moment makes her hands clench even tighter around my throat. Then she topples like a tree, convulsing as the flashing lights trigger an epileptic seizure.
Gasping, I roll to my knees and look at the chaos around me.
Chaos . . . and carnage.
At least a dozen Oaks students lay bloody and wounded. Two Greenshirts lay sprawled on the ground, too.
Then suddenly everything changes. The students stop, looking confused, and start to mill around, averting their eyes from blood and anything else disturbing. “What’s happening?” Chief Ellena shouts. “Why aren’t they fighting?”
I see a slim figure with hair like fire, furiously typing with her thumbs at some kind of device. It is one of the localized disruptors that blocks mind control! With the students out of the equation, we have a chance to fight our way out of here.
Oh, and there is Lachlan, his face illuminated by muzzle flash as he grimly takes down another Greenshirt.
I hear Chief Ellena shout at her remaining Greenshirts to retreat, and the gunfire stops. There is a scramble near the door, and all I can see is one Greenshirt, with Chief Ellena hidden behind him, dragging my Mom, trying to edge to the exit. He has his gun out, but can’t pick a target. At best he’ll get one shot before being mowed down. Lachlan and Flame both point guns at him.
“Sorry we were late,” Lachlan says as I struggle to my feet.
“Better late than never,” I choke out.
My father rushes forward, taking me in his arms. “Are you okay?” he asks, touching my face, looking into my eyes with deep concern. I nod, but point to Mom, held hostage.
“You!” Chief Ellena says, staring at my father. “The biggest traitor of them all. My chief physician, turned rebel. Did you really think you would get away with letting all my little test subjects go? And now this deluded attempt to rescue Lark? All very he
roic, but soon you’ll realize exactly how little it matters. After tonight, Eden is mine.” She laughs wickedly. “But know this: I never suffer traitors to live!” Before any of us can react, she aims her gun around the Greenshirt’s bulk and shoots my dad in the chest. Then she ducks out of the door and the Greenshirt slams it closed. I rattle the door, but it is locked from the outside. Mom is gone. While Flame tries to get the door unlocked, I run to my father’s side. Oh, great Earth, not now! Not when I’ve just started to forgive him, when for the first time in my life I have a chance at having a real father . . .
I press at the wound in his chest, but the damage is too great. Dad’s eyelids flutter, and he clutches at my hand.
“So . . . proud. So . . . sorry . . .” Then he presses something in my hand, his eyes roll back in his head, and he is gone.
I grind my teeth, clench my fists, and look at the bloodshed around me.
“It better be worth it,” Ash says in angry despair.
“Death is never worth it,” I say grimly, then hold up the thing my father just gave me. “But . . . we got the seed.”
WITH CHIEF ELLENA gone, the Oaks kids are free of their mind control. I don’t know if they even remember what just happened, but they are completely freaked out and are fighting to get out of the door. My eyes turn away from my father’s corpse. Carnelian is hugging Mira, so relieved his warrior woman is still alive when he thought for sure she was doomed. There are Lachlan, and Ash, and Flame. Lark is in the corner, unconscious. Angel stands panting with a bruised cheek and disheveled hair. She’s shaken, but it looks like she acquitted herself well.
“We have to go after Mom!” Ash says, starting for the door, which Flame has just managed to get open. Lachlan catches him by the shoulder.
“That would be suicidally stupid,” he tells my brother. Ash gives him a furious look and jerks away, looking to me for support.
“I can’t lose her again!” I cry. “You know what will happen to her.”
“If we can catch them before they take her off campus . . .” Angel suggests, but Lachlan shakes his head.
I want to go after Mom, but I know it is no use right now. “Chief Ellena didn’t bring many people with her because she had to move fast when she got word from Lark that I was here. She got as many Greenshirts as she could, but her objective was speed, not numbers. She thought it was just me and Angel and Mira. She didn’t think she’d have to fight all of you. But now that she knows, she’s calling in reinforcements.”
“Right,” Lachlan says. “Your mom will be in a Center prison in moments, and this place will be swarming with troops. We have to get out of here now, or we’ll be captured ourselves.”
“And then getting the seed will be for nothing,” Flame says. “The sacrifices, for nothing.” She looks at my father’s body. “He might have made some mistakes in his life, but once he saw the right course he was a fearless, selfless leader. The rebellion would not have come this far without him.”
I can’t have a true relationship with him, but at least I can remember him as an honorable man, at the end anyway.
“With the seed, and time to plan, and more people, we can get into the Center, and not only shut down the mind control, but rescue your mom, too,” Lachlan promises us.
Ash shakes his head. “She would come for us. If we were captured, she’d go charging right into the Center . . .”
“And she’d die,” Lachlan says harshly. “Come on, we have to leave before more Greenshirts come. Rowan! Do you think the Chief knows what we came here for?”
“No,” I tell him. “I’m sure they don’t know anything about the Temple, or the seed.”
He looks at me questioningly.
“Lark thinks I came for her. Didn’t you hear the Chief? She thinks I brought all of you here simply to rescue Lark.” Would I have? I wonder. Would I have put my friends, my family in jeopardy to save her? “I think she still sees us as a bunch of kids on a sentimental mission, not rebels bent on saving Eden. So she might not go all out to catch us. At least, not as much as if she knew the truth.”
“Then we have a chance,” Lachlan says. “School staff will be here any minute to sort this out and help the wounded. We can slip out in the confusion.”
I nod as I kneel to check on Lark. She’s still completely unconscious. I hook my hands under her armpits and look around, waiting for one of my friends to help me carry her.
“You’re not serious,” Flame says.
“What do you mean?” I ask, uncomprehending.
Lachlan answers for her, very gently. “Rowan, she’s under direct control of Chief Ellena. It’s too dangerous to bring her along.”
“She’ll lead the Chief directly to us, wherever we are,” Flame says, her voice so businesslike. “It might be against her will, but she’s the enemy now.”
“I know, but this is Lark!” I insist.
“I don’t want to leave her either,” Ash says, and comes nearer to me so that I assume he’s going to help me carry her. It turns out he’s not on my side either. “But this is more important than one person.”
“Would you leave me behind for the sake of the mission?” I ask hotly. “I wouldn’t leave you!”
“Maybe not,” Ash says. “But you would try to make us leave you behind, if you were hurt, if helping you threatened the mission. You know you would.”
I bow my head to the truth of that, but I can’t leave her here. I thought I’d never see her again. She thinks I betrayed her, abandoned her, already. I don’t care if half of that was Chief Ellena’s manipulation. Part of it is real, and to think that Lark feels that about me, even a little bit, is utterly heartbreaking. I don’t ever want to see that look in her face again.
“I won’t leave her,” I declare adamantly. “But I can’t carry her by myself, not for long. Ash?”
He shakes his head.
“Lachlan?”
“That’s not even Lark anymore. I’m sorry, but I won’t let her be the reason we fail. I won’t let anyone be the reason.” I can see the effort it costs him to say this, though. He knows the right thing to do—the humane thing. And I know his decision makes perfect sense, and yet . . .
I look from face to face, begging for help. “Mira?” I ask desperately.
For a moment she looks at me. Then, making a sudden decision, she leaves Carnelian’s side, even when he tries to hold her back. “From this big lug over here, I learned about love. And from you, Rowan, I learned about true friendship. I know you feel both things for this poor girl here. She betrayed you. It’s her fault your father is dead. But if you think there’s a chance for redemption, I’ll help you to the ends of the Earth.”
I’m overwhelmed by her strength of character. She helps me pick up Lark, but neither of us can carry her easily by ourselves. I hear Carnelian give a reluctant sigh. “Here, allow me,” he says, and scoops up Lark with ease.
“Everyone deserves to be saved,” he says with stolid certainty. “Her now, all people soon.”
With a nod of gratitude I follow him out into the dark campus. Our group slips off the grounds and into the street, prepared for anything.
We’ve made it through the first circle when Ash says, “Bik! Look out!”
There are a couple of party girls, a little too old for the clothes and makeup they’re wearing, out for a night of trying to recapture their youth. At first they look like they’re going to pass us, just like everyone else has so far. But this time it is different. As they pass us, their lively, shrill conversation ceases and they stare at us.
“They look suspicious,” one says.
“Yeah, very suspicious,” her friend replies. “We should tell someone.”
“They’re disruptive,” the first woman says with her lip curled in derision.
“Different.”
We hurry on, but they follow us, slowly, methodically, robotically.
“We can’t be on the streets anymore,” Flame says.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You’ve seen how the mind control works—people have been programmed to basically ignore anything outside of themselves that is unpleasant, like civil war or injustice or inequality. They’re just comfortable, insular in their own lives. Well, with a little bit of a tweak, the Center can activate another aspect of that program that makes people look for anything a little off—sneaky behavior, the wrong clothes, someone out of place—that might clue them in that something is about to be unpleasant. It makes them want to put a stop to it before it tries to disrupt their lives.”
I consider this as we hurry away from the women, who are still steadily following us, whispering to each other and eyeing us with suspicion. “So it’s another way they make people ignore unpleasantness? Basically by nipping it in the bud?”
“Yes,” Flame confirms. “It is an insidiously subtle piece of programming. All of it plays on different aspects of people’s natural complacency. Most people will give up all kinds of freedom for comfort. All she has to do is send out a signal, and suddenly every citizen of Eden is a spy.”
I gasp as I realize the implications of this. “So those women . . .”
She nods. “Along with anyone else who sees us tonight. To the average unaffected citizen, we would pass muster. Now every person is asking themselves who we are, why they haven’t seen us before, where we’re going, are we behaving perfectly normally—or too normally. Every person who sees us tonight is analyzing us . . . and reporting us to the Center. We have to get off the street now!”
“We won’t be able to take the sneaky alleys and basement routes until we get farther away from the center,” Ash says. He knows the secret rebel routes well now. “Where can we go?”
“I have no idea,” Lachlan admits. “We have to be on the streets for a while.”
At once, Ash and I look at each other. We know this area well, and simultaneously realize exactly where we should go. “This way!” I say, and we run away from the slowly following women. They’ve met a man, and as we run they point us out, stopping to confer. Any moment now they’ll contact the authorities.
Rebels of Eden Page 24
