Once inside I can pull myself along the walls. It’s an animalistic kind of four-legged gallop, and would be fun if it wasn’t for our destination.
The rebreather built into the mask makes a gentle hum as I breathe. We’ve been underwater for a while now. What if the equipment fails? Even assuming I could swim, or manage to not suck water up my nose, there’s no route to fresh air.
Finally the tunnel opens up. And then up.
There’s a current here now, with water flowing from all the Center’s uses down to the main city system. Luckily the human waste goes through a separate pipe that just opens into the place we entered, so this is just runoff from sinks and such. During the day, Lark told us, the outward flow would be so strong that we couldn’t swim against it. At night, though, with a skeleton staff manning the Center, there’s little water use, and only a gentle flow for us to swim through.
That’s a good sign. Fewer people for us to contend with.
The tunnel narrows, branches, but as instructed we stick to the main one. It finally opens up in a bulb-shaped chamber with a multitude of pipes feeding into it. In the center of that is a hatch.
We’ve been under a long time. The air I’m breathing seems stale, and I’m starting to feel a strange hypnotic sensation, like my focus is expanding and contracting. Lights dance in front of my eyes. I see the water flowing in front of me . . . but it’s different water. That makes no sense. There is the slightly clouded water I’m swimming in (if this strange flailing crawl of mine can be considered swimming), and beyond that—no, on top of that—is another water, more clear, with a different, circular flow.
The edges of my vision dim and all I see is that other water. A light shines through it at an angle, making shadows of the things moving through it. Shapes, the size of my palm, shadows without color or solid form, moving in a unison so precise it must be mechanical. I squint at this vision, confused, trying to see it all more clearly. Is it here? Am I losing my mind?
I pull at Lachlan’s arm, distracting him from trying to open the hatch. I point at the shapes, but he doesn’t understand. He thinks I’m gesturing to the hatch, and he holds up one finger: he’ll have it open in a minute. He can’t see what I’m seeing.
He finally gets the hatch open and in the sudden bright overhead light I can see the shapes clearly. They’re fish, moving in a tight school, as gaudily colored as inner circle ladies out for a night on the town. I just see them for a flash, and then they’re gone, and all I see is Lachlan at the round open hatch.
What is happening to me?
The fresh air will clear my head. I can’t wait to tear this rebreather off. I have to suck in every breath as if it is fighting me, and my lungs feel heavy and sore.
But before my head breaches the surface so I can take that yearned-for breath, Lachlan shoves me down again. He pushes up the hatch, kicking hard against the resistance of the water.
He mimes something, and it is a long while before my fuzzy brain figures out that he’s telling me there’s someone up there. We can’t go out yet.
But we have to! There’s something wrong with my rebreather. I’m out of air. Have we been down here an hour? My perception is fuzzy. I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know is that I have to breathe and I can’t with this thing over my face. I start to claw at it, pulling with desperate brute force at first, then trying to get my fingers between the bonded layers. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know this is a terrible idea, but I can’t help myself.
Lachlan tries to stop me, but I fight him as hard as if he’s trying to drown me. That’s what it feels like. Part of me can see his frantic eyes behind his own mask, but anything that keeps this suffocating film over my face has become the enemy.
Finally I tear it off . . . and as the water hits my face I come to my senses. It’s all I can do not to draw in a huge breath. I look through the water, and see a blurry Lachlan inches away. He’s doing something . . . ripping off his own mask. He comes closer. I feel his mouth on mine.
He’s giving me his air. His last breath. Helping me hold on. I feel a moment of relief, instantly clouded by the twin thoughts that there’s no more air after this for me . . . or for Lachlan.
I want to tell him something. Bubbles escape my mouth, and the words are lost to the water.
Then he wrenches the hatch open and shoves me upward. I grab the rim, my head breaches the surface, and I gasp, the first heavenly breath stinging my lungs. I suck in another, and another, before my head clears enough that I remember Lachlan. He went so far back under in his effort to push me to the surface. I start to try to dive under the water to help him—knowing that I’m more likely to drown him than to help him—but without the rebreather I feel like I’m drowning as soon as my face hits the water. I can’t do it!
I kneel at the edge and peer over. He used the last of his air, his strength, to save me. I can see him far below the surface, indistinct. Is he moving? Is he trying? He saved me when I was drowning in the nanosand. “Lachlan!” I call in despair, and plunge my hands helplessly into the water. There’s nothing I can do. He’s just a dim dark shape far beneath the water, sinking deeper every moment.
Suddenly there’s another shape there. In a confusion of movement I see a shadow appear, and merge with him. The shapes get bigger—they’re coming up! There’s someone else down there, pushing Lachlan to the surface!
The second he’s close enough I reach down and grab whatever I can reach, his clothes, his hands, his hair, fumbling for anything to hold on to, and pull him up. His rescuer pushes from below, and scrambles out herself, pulling off her rebreather as she stands dripping.
“Lark!” I gasp. “You were supposed to stay behind, stay safe!”
She gives me a soft smile. “Do you really think I’d let you go into danger alone?” I look down at Lachlan, choking up water at our feet, and want to say that I wasn’t alone. But I let it go. More quietly, Lark adds, “It’s my fault your mother was killed. It’s my fault Ash was captured. I made the mistake of trusting someone. Now I have to win back your trust.”
“Oh, Lark,” I breathe . . . but there isn’t time for more. Lachlan has struggled to his knees. He looks up at Lark, a strange mix of gratitude and hostility in his eyes.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says. I can tell he’s deeply embarrassed at having to be rescued. He’s always been the fighter, the strong one.
Lark just shrugs. “Well, I am here. Good thing, too.”
“You can’t come inside with us,” he insists. “You don’t fit into our plan.”
“Luckily, I have my own plan,” she says flippantly. There is a row of lockers against the far wall. She takes out a sealed package, tears it open, and slips on a set of pale green coveralls. She hides her lilac hair under a cap and flashes an ID.
“I’ll pick up some tools and the things I need in another supply closet, and be waiting for you right outside the holding cells. I won’t be able to get any closer than that, but I’ll be ready for anything.”
“You can’t . . .” Lachlan begins, but I cut him off. I know arguing with her is useless at this point. The only thing left to do is make sure she’s in a good position. A safe position.
“You can’t be so close, or you’ll be affected, too. Wait for us near the lobby. We may need your help there.” If all goes according to plan, we can make it out without anyone the wiser. I’m hoping not to involve Lark anymore at all. After Lachlan, Ash, and I get out, she can slip out on her own, shed her disguise, and go home. I need her to be safe. I don’t think I can go through with all the hard things ahead of me if I can’t picture Lark in her bedroom, lying on her mulberry-colored bed, safe and secure.
I latch onto this future, trying not to think about the in-between. After all, we only just made it inside, and we already almost died.
“That’s okay,” Lark says. “I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve. If you get in trouble, I’ll be able to provide a distraction.”
I envision her scre
aming to draw Greenshirt eyes, or even fighting. “Don’t draw attention to yourself!” I insist.
She pulls the cap down lower. “No one will even notice me,” she says with utter confidence. She looks exactly like an ordinary maintenance worker, so she might be right.
My clothes are dry, thanks to the automatic seal on the exposure suit that bonded to my skin as soon as the mask was breached. Most of my hair is even still dry. When I ripped the mask off, the hood section of the suit bonded instantly to the skin around my hairline. For a second I marvel at the technology humans can create. How did we get to be so powerful, but so destructive? With so much intelligence, couldn’t we see the point past which one begets the other?
We dressed for the mission in the typical gray suits of the Center elite. The pants are slim, light steel-colored with the faintest iron-hued pinstripes, the high-necked form-fitting jacket just a shade darker, layered over a black shirt for him, an iridescent silvery mother-of-pearl for me.
I don’t know about myself, but he looks the very image of every young Center official I’ve ever seen on news vids. Except for that scar on his face. That might raise suspicions. That, and the perpetually rakish look in his second-child eyes. He covers them with green-tinted glasses, the kind he says are popular with pretentious young bureaucrats on the rise.
“You have to look more serious,” I insist as I tie my own hair into a businesslike knot at the back of my head. The colors Lark added are mostly hidden, and with the severe hairstyle I know I can pass for at least a few years older.
He immediately assumes an intensely bland face. “Better?”
I can’t help but chuckle, my default mode around Lachlan no matter how terrible the circumstances. We might have just come close to death, and capture (maybe worse than death) looms ahead of us as a very real possibility. But somehow he can always make me smile. Are other people like that? Somehow, I don’t think so. How is it he can always make me happy no matter how bad things get?
I catch Lark watching our interaction, and I bend my head, flushing. Then I straighten defiantly. What’s wrong with having two friends? Why can’t two people make me happy? I had so little for so long. I think I’m entitled to have both Lark and Lachlan without them getting prickly whenever I pay too much attention to either.
But now isn’t the time to dwell on that. I steel myself as I’ve learned to do, and together we head up the long, narrow steps first to the official sub-basements. There, Lark branches off from us, to gather the tools that will be part of her cover, and then wait for us in the main lobby. She blows me a kiss as we separate. I see Lachlan try to hide a scowl. Lachlan and I then go to the data storage floors, and finally to the ground floor, the headquarters of all Center law and security.
We’ve made it so far without incident. My father’s security card buzzes us through every barrier, and the few people we’ve passed hardly glance at us. Lower down, I think most of the people were just trying to finish jobs that had taken longer than expected, so they could go home. They were maintenance types and lower-level data clerks, who probably wanted nothing to do with what we appeared to be—powerful young officials on the rise. People who could make trouble for them, assign them extra tasks, criticize their work. So they lowered their eyes, pretended we didn’t exist, and hoped we showed them the same courtesy.
Here on the ground floor, though, things get harder. Now we have to make sure our story is perfect.
WE WENT OVER it as many times as possible before we broke in so I’d know exactly what to do. Lachlan, buoyant with confidence, explained that even though the Center was the most secret and secure place in Eden, it relied far more on technology than on people.
“If your card scans, you’re legitimate,” he had said. “They trust the EcoPan. If the EcoPan believes we belong here, no one else will question us. Thanks to your father’s ID, one of the highest-ranking Center officials is simply making a tour of the facilities, or taking care of secret business. There’s no cross-reference, no body scans at this level. They won’t analyze me and figure out that I’m thirty pounds lighter and thirty years younger than the owner of the ID.”
There was a complex assortment of scans and checks at the main entrances—biometric readings, lens scans, all sorts of detectors—but we had neatly bypassed all of those by going through the sewer. Once a person was in the building they were in the clear. It was assumed that the EcoPan had done its job. Anyone inside was one of the privileged, the elite. So even if our faces are unfamiliar, Lachlan told me, we’ll be accepted. They’ll think we work another shift, or we’re new, or the children of someone so important they don’t dare question us. Students who are children of the elite often get internships here, or high-level jobs straight out of school, so no one is surprised if we look a bit young.
“People underestimate the power of expectations,” Lachlan whispers to me as we make our way toward the prison section of the security floor. “We don’t have to prove we belong here. We simply have to be here.” In strange circular logic, our presence is proof of our right to be here.
We’re climbing the spiral staircase to the second floor. It is a strangely beautiful architectural touch, broad and lovely as a bisected seashell. Strong light streams into the lobby—the only part of the Center most civilians ever see—and everything is white, bright, with blue accents and touches of green, like a seaside. A waterfall feature cascades down from the second floor to the first, right beside the spiral staircase, flowing an unreal shade of aqua. Three tiny cleanbots scurry around the pool at the base, mopping up the few drops of water that splash onto the floor.
So far, so good.
When the spiral turns and lets us into the security section of the Center, all that beachy brightness is stripped away. This place is bare, sere. I’d almost call it gritty if it wasn’t so clean. The entire tone has changed, of the building and the people. I glance down to the lobby floor and see an innocuous maintenance worker pushing a wheeled cart full of tools and buckets across the atrium. Only the slight build clues me in to the fact that it is Lark. I wish she’d look up, give me the brief reassurance of her bright gaze. But she’s too sensible for that, and I tear my own eyes quickly away.
We pass a check-in desk with little more than a word from Lachlan and a wave-through. Somberly, seriously, we move through corridors that Lachlan mapped out from the Underground’s intelligence and water system schematics that Lark provided.
Now we go down a narrow hallway that feeds into a large chamber. I hear the sounds of human misery, subdued but evident. I smell something I can’t identify, subtle and sharp, that makes my skin prickle. Maybe it is the smell of fear.
I stop abruptly. There are prison cells lining the walls.
“Remember who you are,” Lachlan says under his breath. By which he means, remember who I’m supposed to be. A young psychology student with her Center guide, come to interview the renegade Ash about why he would betray his home, his very species. My knowledge, through my father, of the workings of high-level Center medicine will allow me to answer at least the most basic questions anyone might throw at me.
“I think the me I’m pretending to be would still be surprised at this.”
I’ve seen the violent side of Eden, but I haven’t seen it institutionalized.
Walls and bars. Through some of them I see fingers straining. For what? For aid, for food, for freedom?
Civics vids always talk about how there’s so little crime in Eden. Who would steal, or kill, when to steal is to take food from the entire human species, to kill is to end a statistically staggering percentage of the surviving human population? I suppose there aren’t many prisoners in comparison to the entire population of Eden. I can see maybe a hundred cells spread along in diminishing perspective down the long rectangular room. But there are far too many for a society that claims to be a utopia. I wonder how many people, normal people, know about this place?
Two burly guards stand at the entrance. I expected them to be armed,
but oddly, they aren’t.
“We’re here to see prisoner eighty-nine,” Lachlan says brusquely, twirling a pen cleverly around his fingers. There’s another stuck behind his ear.
“You’re not on the list,” one of the guards says without moving.
“Request should have been forwarded while we were en route.” Lachlan sounds supremely bored, and adds a yawn for good measure. “Overtime for me, firing for my secretary.” He shrugs, and gestures to me over his shoulder with his thumb. “I have to shepherd this one around to make the boss happy.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Boss’s pet.” He winks, and I look uncomfortable. Not a hard act under the circumstances.
“Do you need him out of the cell?” the guard asks.
Lachlan looks at me, and I play my part, saying primly, “The psychology of the deranged mind cannot be properly explored through bars.” I fiddle with the clipboard in my hands, taking out the attached pen and slipping it back again. “It is important to understand what inspires these societal aberrations so that we can nip such actions in the bud.” I hope I sound like a pure academic without any motivations beyond proving myself to my lead professor. I practiced the pedantic tone a lot.
I see Lachlan roll his eyes. “Wants to rehabilitate him, probably.”
“Too late for this one,” I snap, “but maybe we can help other people before they go astray.”
Lachlan clenches his hand and pummels his other palm. “There’s only one way to correct people like this,” he says. “The fist if you catch them early, and a more terminal solution if the fist doesn’t work.”
The guard laughs and, recognizing a like-minded man in the young official Lachlan pretends to be, waves us through to another man, who waves a handheld device over us, checking us for weapons. I assumed we’d bring the guns, but Lachlan said no. No weapons are allowed in the secure area, not even for the guards. Lachlan says this will make everything easier. When there are weapons, people die . . . and some of those people might be us.
Children of Eden Page 23
