But he shakes his head. “One of the perks of the fifth floor, I guess.”
“Guns?”
“Guns.”
Underneath our boots, there is a loud roar, followed by a chorus of angry men and women. Protests. They have been happening more and more; unrest in Compound Eleven is rampant and growing by the day. Floor Two is particularly vocal, demanding better conditions, more allotments, respect. As far as I know, Katz and the other leaders don’t bat an eye in return.
I ignore the chanting and frown under bright lights. I should be mad. The Premes get to carry guns, and the rest of us don’t. It isn’t fair; I know that. But my eyes still radiate with sunlight, and I can’t summon the will for anger.
Wren is talking. “Is being a guard something you’re interested in?” One hand runs through light brown hair. Then he leans against the wall with the gun hanging easily by his side. “I assume you’ll be picking a job next month, seeing as how you’re not working and not in class right now.”
“I finished school a few weeks ago,” I agree. My gaze follows every move he makes, from the way his fingers tap gently against the plastic wall behind him to the way his neck arches when he looks at the floor. Suddenly, my experience in the Oracle begins to fade. Suddenly, the fact that I am standing in a hallway with the boy who beat me to a pulp becomes apparent. And we are having a regular conversation, seemingly, except that I am a Lower Mean and he is a Preme. A Preme.
I feel like I am betraying everyone I know.
“A few weeks ago?” he says. “Yeah, me, too. So I guess that would make me two years older than you.”
It would. Premes go to school until they are eighteen, Means until they are sixteen, Noms until they are twelve. “Wow,” I say. “I didn’t know pretty boys could do math.”
“And I didn’t know you thought I was pretty.” He grins.
I roll my eyes. “Two years older. Well, no wonder you won in the ring, then.”
He tilts his head like he’s considering it, and I take the opportunity to stare at his straight nose, the one I smashed blood from while the ref wasn’t looking. It has healed without a trace. And the cut under his eye has disappeared, leaving smooth and even skin in its wake. Maybe I am disappointed by this, maybe not.
Now he’s watching me examine him. “What?” His low voice is quiet.
I cast my eyes quickly away. “Nothing,” I mutter. As blood rushes to my face, I turn toward the atrium. “I should go.”
His back straightens so he no longer leans against the wall. “You’re not heading downstairs right now. Listen to them.” He is referring to the protesters who grow louder by the second. Any moment now, the shouting could be interrupted by a spray of bullets from the guards, a reminder that insubordination is not appreciated by the Premes in charge, that revolt will be met with ruthless and indiscriminate force.
“I’ll be fine,” I say sharply. I don’t need him looking out for me, that much I know.
“There’s the Eve I remember. Are you ever not fine?” Before I can turn my head or feel the full twinge of defensiveness rising in my stomach, he laughs. “If you’re thinking about applying for a guard—”
“I’m not,” I interrupt. “I’d rather die.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Okay. Well even so, if you’d like to learn how to shoot…” The hand holding the gun gestures to me.
“Are you serious?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “You’ll show me how?”
“If you’re interested.”
Of course I am. But why would he do something like that? I am a waste of his time; he said so himself.
So I shake my head and shrug. “Somehow I doubt they let Means into the shooting range.”
“You’re with me. Come on, it’ll be fun.” He doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t wait for an answer. He just turns and heads to a corridor I haven’t been down before.
You’re with me. What does that mean? He’s a Preme; of course he gets special treatment. Or is there more to it than that?
I stare at the back of his head and exhale. I can’t go. I need to get back downstairs before people ask questions. I need to relive my time in the Oracle before it fades from my mind. I need to not betray all those who are important to me by hanging out with someone like him.
Instead my feet kick after him. My body has an unfortunate habit of disobeying my brain.
Chapter Nine
“Is this a trick?” I say as I hurry after him. The corridors are quieter up here than downstairs, even with the rhythmic shouts of the protestors, and so I hear my boots squeak against the polished floor with every step. Downstairs, they don’t squeak; they crunch, from dirt or glass underfoot.
He half turns, and his eyebrows inch up.
“You know. An easy way to finish me off.”
I say it mostly as a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. Instead he looks serious. “You think I’m a monster.” He says it not as a question but as a simple fact. A grave one.
In truth, I don’t know if he is a monster or not. I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t be following him into the depths of the fifth floor. I tell him so. “Besides,” I continue, “I’ve already been shot at today. If you want to join in, go for it. No hard feelings.”
He gives me a look. “Very funny.” I am silent, and he slows his pace. “You were kidding, right?”
A small smile turns my lip. I don’t know why I feel like joking around with this boy who is a Preeminate, who beat me to a pulp in front of thousands of people, but I suspect my time in the Oracle has something to do with it. “Kind of. A guard did shoot at me this morning. But if I’m being honest, I would prefer it if you didn’t join in.”
I expect him to ask me what I did to deserve it. Because if a guard is shooting at a Lower Mean, it must be her fault. But instead he shakes his head, a faint look of amusement spreading across his face. “I’m beginning to think you’re suicidal. That or an adrenaline junkie. Hard to say which.”
“Life’s different down there,” I reply evenly.
He nods. “Fair enough.”
Our ears fill with more shouts from below, punctuated only by the sound of our boots. His legs are longer than mine, and even though he has slowed his pace, I must hurry to keep up. Out of my peripheral vision, I glance at him, and it strikes me that he doesn’t look like a Preme. He moves like one, and he has the confidence that comes with this floor—the easy saunter, the head held high—but his clothing is casual enough to be Lower Mean. A T-shirt and jeans, just like me. Except his jeans aren’t ripped, and his shirt is crisp.
Finally, he slows in front of a door. It looks like the door I just broke through, except it isn’t locked. He pushes it open, and I follow him inside.
A long room, coated in black foam panels and darkness. Targets hang at the far end, white with black concentric circles, and light shines on them but nowhere else. After the brightness of the Oracle and the Preme hallways, the lack of light here is unsettling.
“Why’s it so dark?” I ask quietly. My breathing is steady, but my pulse is not.
He looks over his shoulder at me as he walks to a far table, past two others who load bullets into their weapons. They don’t bother to turn their heads as we pass, but I see they are older men, around my father’s age. “What’s wrong, Eve? Afraid of the dark?”
“Of course not,” I lie. “It was just a question.”
The shouting from below has vanished. It is because of the soundproofing in here—no sound can penetrate these walls. Even my cell in the middle of the night isn’t so silent. It pulls at my eardrums; it presses against my head.
The sharp burst of a gun a few rows down from us punches through the air, and I jump. My hand lands on the smooth skin of his arm before I can jerk it away. “Sorry,” I say quickly. “It’s just because of earlier. When I was shot at.” I can’t tell him the truth. That I am afr
aid of the dark—or worse, why. I take a deep breath and will myself to get a grip.
My eyes adjust to the darkness enough to see him staring at me. He is grinning. “You sucker punch me in front of thousands of people, yet you’re sorry for lightly touching my arm?”
I stand up straighter. “Okay, I guess I’m not sorry. I just wanted to make sure you knew that…”
All of a sudden, I am grateful for the dark. It hides how jumbled and uncertain I feel.
“Yes?”
“Well, that I didn’t actually mean for—”
“Eve?”
“Yeah?”
“Take the gun.” He grabs my hand and pushes my fingers apart, and cool metal sinks into my flesh. I have never held one before—only stared at them in the guards’ holsters—and it feels foreign. Foreign yet comfortable.
It is solid but not heavy. Smooth but not slippery. Cold. So cold it is grounding.
Wren shows me how to hold it and then how to stand. “Aim at the target, pull the trigger, and don’t move the gun when you fire.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I do as he says, but the gun jumps as the bullet is released. It misses the mark by a mile, and my ears ring from the silence the blast leaves.
“You can’t let the gun kick like that. You have to hold it steady.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Move your hands up higher, for starters. And grip tighter.”
I do as he says, but my second shot is no better.
“You have muscle, don’t you?”
I glare at the side of his face. “You’re lucky I’m preoccupied right now, or I’d punch you.”
“As a little reminder of that muscle, I’m guessing?”
“That’s right.”
My next shot hits the target, barely, and the one after that, too. Wren watches with his arms crossed, but I barely notice. Instead I focus only on what I am doing. It is a powerful feeling, to shoot a gun. It is wonderful. But it is also a grave responsibility, and the thought of the guards today pointing and shooting at me makes my stomach awash with acid. I see now how worthless I am in their eyes. How truly disposable. How lightly they take this power of theirs, gifted into their palms. They have internalized it in the cruelest way.
I hate the guards now more than ever, something I didn’t think was even possible.
“You haven’t moved for a while,” Wren says. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just thinking about… I’m just thinking.”
After a few moments, he nods. “Okay.” He clears his throat. “So, Eve, if the thought of becoming a guard makes you want to die, what exactly do you want to be?”
I place the gun down on the table. My eyes have adjusted to the low level of light, and I am no longer fearful.
Then I notice that the others in the shooting range have cleared out; it is just the two of us. Typically, I don’t like to be alone with someone I barely know, especially if that person is significantly stronger than I am. And he is that. He has beaten me senseless once before, and he is capable of great violence. Emerald was right; the headbutt to my face could have killed me. But I look him in the eye and see none of the anger I witnessed before.
Even in the darkness, though, they flash. They flash, and something stirs behind them that I can’t quite identify. Could it be danger?
Is he, to use his terminology, a monster?
I think he is dangerous, and I think I ought to be careful, but once again my gut tells me that he isn’t a monster. Should I trust my gut?
He steps forward so that more of his cheekbone catches the light from the opposite end of the room. It makes him look animalistic. “Are you going to answer my question?” he asks.
“What? Oh, yeah. Um, a job. I don’t really know.”
“Tell me you’re not going to be a pro fighter.”
“Is that supposed to be a jab? Because I can beat a lot of people.”
He walks past me and picks up the gun. Our shoulders brush. He slides a bullet into the chamber, then gazes at me. “Do you really think I need to be reminded of that? As someone who has been on the receiving end of your punches, I know very well, thanks.”
His first shot hits the bull’s-eye.
“Okay, so why shouldn’t I be a fighter, then?”
“Are you always this defensive, Eve?”
“Maybe.”
He laughs, and it is quiet and rumbly. “You shouldn’t be a fighter because it’s brutal, that’s why. Do you like pain? Do you like waking up in the nurse’s station covered in blood?”
I scoff. “Easy for someone like you to say.”
“Yeah, maybe it is. But surely there are other jobs for Means that are better than that. You should consider them.” He picks up another bullet and shoves it into the gun. “Been on any of the job tours?”
“Nope. Don’t plan on going on any, either. You?”
His eyebrows pinch together. “What do you mean by that?”
“I guess I mean that I don’t really care about picking a job at selection time. Maybe I pick one, maybe I don’t. Maybe this bullet hits the target, maybe it doesn’t.” I take the gun from his hands and wrap my own around it. “You obviously don’t need any practice,” I add by way of explanation.
This time I hit the target only a few inches from his strike.
“Impressive. So, what do you do with yourself, then, if you aren’t bothering with the job tours? Other than fighting for the fun of it. Oh, and pretending to be in the library.”
I give him a look over my shoulder. “I do go to the library, actually. A lot of the time.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know, read?”
“Read what?”
“You ask too many questions, Preme.”
“Come on.”
“Okay. About life aboveground, mostly.” I think of the Oracle and smile. “You know, before everything moved down here.”
He is silent, so I turn and see that he is staring at me. His eyes are thoughtful. They aren’t hard; they aren’t even cold. Just thoughtful. Still he says nothing, and so I keep talking. “And I do other stuff, too. Hang out with my friends, train for the Bowl, work the food lines for the Denominators.”
“Is that volunteer?”
I nod and turn back to the target, take another shot. Another successful strike. I am getting the hang of it. “For as long as I can remember,” I tell him. “I used to do it with my mother. Now it’s just me.”
“Want company next time you go?”
The suggestion is unexpected, and I put the gun down hurriedly and face him. He stands close enough that even without adequate light, I notice a thin scar that runs along his jaw, the stubble that reminds me he is two years older. “Seriously?” I say. “You want to help give food to the Noms?”
He shrugs. “Sounds interesting enough. And sometimes, Eve,” he says as he picks up the gun, “it’s fun to try new things.”
I peer at him through the dark, expecting to see something cruel shooting through his eyes. That perhaps hanging out with a Lower Mean nobody like myself is something new to try. Something to laugh about with his Preme friends later. There must be an explanation along those lines.
But instead, his eyes are earnest. I can’t figure this Preme out.
Chapter Ten
The darkness claws at the back of my throat. It suffocates me, like there is a sock wedged behind my teeth. Like a tether is twisting around my neck. My hand twitches at my side. It wants to reach over, turn on the bedside lamp, but I resist the urge. I have resisted the urge for a long time, ever since my father decided I was too old to be afraid of the dark. So I am not going to indulge myself now.
Time for sleep, I try to remind myself. But it is hard to slow my thoughts
after a day like today. My time in the Oracle is too fresh, like a wound that still drips blood. Whenever I close my eyes, I see the trees swaying, the birds soaring.
I feel more caged in now than ever before.
A tear falls against my pillowcase before I realize I’ve spilled it. It’s the unknown that scares me right now. What awaits in another compound. Whether I can even make it to another compound in the first place. Because though others have managed to go before me, though they have located the tunnels, forced their way through, well…their exits have become the stuff of legend. They are the outliers. Most people who try to break out of our compound and into another receive a back full of bullets before they make it very far.
What if I do make it, only to have them send me back to Eleven? What if the compound I stumble into is even worse?
Another tear follows in the same path as the first. There is no need to wipe it away, not really. I am alone. When I lived with my parents, I would have to hide the tears; I would have to stifle the sobs. My father wouldn’t tolerate it. Only when Jack was sent aboveground did he give allowance, and even then, not for long. Crying is for those who can’t manage their emotions, he said. Those who are strong manage them always.
I know that.
So even though there is no need to wipe away the tear, I do. I am strong. I flex my arm and run a hand over bulging muscle, an easy reminder of my strength. Strong body, strong mind. His words.
Am I, though? I am tough and muscular and a good fighter because I have to be. Because I am a Lower Mean and because my father has trained me to be. I have known no other way. But what if I didn’t have to be? Do I enjoy punching people?
Part of me does. I am powerful, self-sufficient; I rely on no one. And I like that. But I don’t lust for blood the way someone like Daniel does. I don’t take joy in seeing someone else suffer under my hand.
A sob rings out from my chest and through the darkness, sudden and sharp. I can’t manage my emotions; I am weak. My father bred me to be strong and fierce, but it is a charade. I am not cruel enough. My heart beats, and it craves peace and the kindness of others; it does. And all around me is violence.
Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy) Page 6
