Even though he is a Preme, even though his own mother is one of the compound leaders, I trust Wren. That is one thing I am suddenly certain of.
Her eyebrows draw together. “Right now?”
I nod.
“It seems a little early.”
She looks unsure, and so I step in front of the heavily tattooed man. “It’ll be fun, I promise,” I begin, but I’m distracted by a slight figure with a child positioned on her hip.
“Hi, Eve,” Monica says, smiling. “Did they change your shift around?”
“No. I thought I’d pop by to invite you guys upstairs for a bit. Me and some friends are headed to the Bowl, and Avery might have fun playing with the equipment.”
Silently, she collects her breakfast items and passes half to her beaming boy. “Can we go, Mama?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. And I’m sorry to you, too, Eve, but we can’t go.”
“But—”
“It’s against compound rules. Denominators aren’t allowed on the Mean floors, you know that. What would happen if we were caught?” she asks quietly, nodding in Avery’s direction.
I say nothing. Because of course it’s risky sneaking around in Eleven, and nobody is treated more harshly for breaking the rules than Noms. With a child…there’s just too much on the line.
“Thank you for the invite,” she adds. “To think an upper-floor might be thinking of us…well. It means a lot. I’ll see you later, at lunch duty—yes?”
“Looking forward to it,” I confirm. I wink at Avery and then wave goodbye, feeling uneasy.
“Will you come up, at least?” I ask Jules.
“Okay,” she says, after she’s taken a bite of the bread I hand her. “I’ll see you in a sec.”
“Thought you were just going to stand there,” says the man behind me. He crosses his arms.
“So sorry about that,” I say in a rush of sarcasm. “And thanks so much for all your help.” Then I am gone, up the stairs and back to my friends, none of whom look terribly happy about our unexplained detour. “We need to go meet Jules,” I explain to them.
“What’s going on, Eve?” asks Hunter.
I don’t slow down, but I look over my shoulder and sigh. “All I know is that Wren told me to invite her upstairs, and that’s what I did. Trust me, I’m as confused as you are.”
“That’s weird,” Maggie says slowly as I head for the stairwell. “It’s not like him to dictate your social life, is it? Or do you think something else is going on?”
I shrug.
A few minutes later, Jules walks up the stairs toward me. “Can’t a girl enjoy her breakfast in peace anymore?”
I force myself to laugh. “Don’t give me that. I know how much you like punching things. Could I really leave you out?”
“Of course not.” She nudges Hunter and nods at Emerald and Maggie. “You guys enjoy the party?”
“A lot more than the next morning,” Maggie replies.
“You’re telling me.”
The four of them laugh. When we reach the Bowl, I feel Emerald tense up beside me, so I knock her on the arm. “You doing okay?”
She tries to smile, but it looks more like a grimace. “Dandy. Thanks.”
“Bruno loved this place. He wouldn’t want it to be poisoned for you.” Then I grab her hand and pull her through the door into the cylindrical tunnel that leads to the Bowl. “Come on. Remember all the times you warmed up here before a big fight? Remember the sound of the crowd?” I smack the punching bag closest to us with my fist. “Remember that sound?”
“It’s a beautiful sound,” she agrees, and half her mouth twists upward. I stand aside, and she punches it once, twice.
Hunter turns to the Bowl. “I suppose there aren’t any fights scheduled for today, given how empty it is right now.” Behind us, Maggie and Jules try on gloves, laughing intermittently.
“Nope.”
“Let’s head to the ring, then. If you’re going to make us fight, it may as well be somewhere good.”
I look at Emerald and see beads of sweat shining on her forehead. She looks focused, peaceful.
“You want to take center stage, Hunter?” I smile. “It’s probably not allowed, but…yeah, okay. I’m game.” I grab a handful of punch pads and tape, then lead them through the end of the tunnel and into the Bowl itself. My gaze casts upward and around. It is eerie, being here when the stands are dead empty, when the only sound is our boots underfoot.
“This is actually pretty neat,” Hunter comments. He twists around as his gaze combs thousands of empty seats.
“Yeah,” says Jules. “This is badass. I don’t know how you do it with a kajillion people in the stands.”
“You don’t even notice them,” says Emerald quickly, and when I look at her, I see her brown skin is flushed pink. Her eyes are alive. “I mean, you do and you don’t. It’s just such a rush, you know?”
We climb into the ring in the center of the Bowl, and inwardly I am smiling. So far, aside from Monica and Avery, my plan has worked quite well. Emerald is falling in love with fighting again, Jules is upstairs as Wren recommended, and Maggie is about to learn how to defend herself. Things could definitely be worse.
That’s when I hear the first round of gunshots go off.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Bowl whirls around me, and the countless rows of seats that ascend to the top of the Mean floor blur into streaks. But it isn’t the room itself that moves; it is me.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
I forget to blink as I search for the source, eyeballs burning. It sounds close; it sounds far. Rapid fire, a short break, another round. Repeat.
All of it with a backdrop of screams.
Around and around I go.
Finally, the gunshots cease, and the silence they leave in their wake is heavy against my ears. The Bowl stops whirling, and I glance at the others.
All of us are stationary, mouths open. Slowly, our senses come back to us; we blink and swallow, lick our lips. Without speaking, we climb out of the ring, and our steps are deliberate and tentative, as if we are learning to walk for the very first time. Every nerve in my body prickles, and sweat pools along the crease where my palm meets my fingers. As we walk through the cylindrical tunnel, I can hear them.
I can hear their voices mashed into one, can feel their energy from here. When we open the door and join the throngs outside, it is chaos. Complete chaos. Some scream in fear; others yell with anger; everywhere, people push. I don’t know where they are going, and they don’t seem to, either.
A memory of being in the shooting range with Wren flashes in front of me, and I can feel cool metal in my hand, heavy and unyielding. I feel the bullet shock the gun as it speeds from the chamber; I smell the smoke that drifts backward. Deadly and destructive and terrible.
I push and am pushed, and then through the crowd I spot the first of them. One leads to several to many, all with eyes glassy and round. Denominators. The one near the front clutches at her side, and I see a purple stain on her shirt. Adrenaline must drive her, but not for long. The stain swells as I watch. My eyes slowly scan over the rest of them. Two rows back, a man’s dense beard is covered in pearls of red, and the palm of the man next in line looks like it has been dipped in paint.
So the gunfire came from below.
Jules bursts past me in their direction, and before I can follow, a hand pushes at my back, too strong for me to resist.
“We need to go, now!” Emerald shouts in my ear.
“But—but Jules.”
“She needs to find her family.”
“And we need to help her!”
“Are you familiar with the first floor, Eve? Didn’t think so. Come on, hurry up!”
And then a terrible thought occurs to me. “Monica! And Avery! I can�
�t stay—I need to make sure—”
“No! No. Keep walking.” Her hand presses harder against my back, shoving me through the crowd. “How do you know, Eve, that the danger is over? For all we know, there’s a madman walking around the place, shooting everyone up! So. Keep walking.”
I shake my head and mutter, “It’s over, Emerald. You know it is.”
“Maybe from the madman, but you know how quickly a crowd can go sideways down here. We don’t need to get caught up in a riot, thanks.”
I look over my shoulder and see that Maggie is pale-faced, her nose is bleeding—probably from an elbow thrown inadvertently in her direction. She looks so terrified that I have no choice but to turn away from the madness.
Once we’re far enough, Emerald comes to a stop and wipes sweat from her face. Her knuckles are still pink from the Bowl. “What. The. Hell. Just. Happened.”
“Don’t know,” I mutter. The only thing I do know is that I need to speak with Wren. Unease claws the lining of my stomach and makes me nauseous. It is too unlikely that he would tell me to invite Jules and Monica up right before gunfire broke out on the first floor. It can’t be a coincidence; I know that.
But how could he have known?
Probably, he isn’t finished with the test yet, but I can’t stand to be here for another second, images of the wounded Denominators flashing through my brain… “Go lock yourselves in your cells,” I instruct, “and wait for everything to settle down. It’ll be safer there than out here.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’ll be back later!” I yell over my shoulder before they can stop me. I dart toward the main corridor.
My feet move quickly—I am pent up with energy, but the main corridor is thick with bodies, and I am forced to slow. The ceiling overhead seems to linger just a smidgen lower than usual, and between it and the elbows pressing around me, it is difficult to force a full breath into my lungs.
And then I am shoved hard to the side. I see why a moment later; down the middle of the hall walk guards shoulder to shoulder. Each one is masked, and each one carries a tall stack of folded gray plastic with Compound Eleven stamped in white. It makes a stone fall in my stomach.
Body bags. Hundreds of them.
Something bad happened downstairs. Something very bad. I think of Monica and Avery and try not to be sick.
All around me, people shout. Ask what is going on. Demand an explanation. I wait for an answer, but of course there is none. The guards walk on as if they don’t hear us, as if they don’t notice our existence at all.
People mutter and swear and wring their hands with frustration, but that is the extent of their feelings.
Rage will come. Whatever happened downstairs, rage will come. People are always mad in Compound Eleven.
When I get to the elevator bank, I turn to the main stairwell, just as I often do. Less crowded, no line. But I pause. I turn back to the elevators; I wait for a spot. I feel weak right now, and I don’t want to be in the stairwell ever again when I feel weak. And these are dangerous times right now—I can taste it.
My thumb punches the button for the fifth floor. My brain echoes with the sound of gunshots. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Others empty out of the elevator at the third floor, at the fourth. I am the only one going to the top.
When I step onto the fifth floor, it is into a different world. Not just because the lights shine brightly overhead; they always do. I am used to it by now. It is that the white, pristine hallways are silent. Empty. Calm.
Not at all like the chaos unfurling down below.
Since I have no idea where the test rooms are, I decide to wait for Wren here, in the atrium. The glass front of the library lines the far side, but I don’t go there now. Instead I walk to the large bronze globe that sits in the middle of the space.
Four weeks ago, I stood right here—I studied this very sculpture. And I realized that the world is a large place, that Compound Eleven occupies a very tiny sliver. I realized that the number of other compounds out there must be staggering, that I can keep searching and searching, on and on, for my rightful home…
Or can I?
What if I wake up one day and find that I spent my whole life searching for something that doesn’t even exist? What if all life is…is this? Ups and downs, highs and lows. Unspeakable cruelty, sharing laughs with friends. Unwanted violence, kisses with boys. Loving, working, killing time, growing, changing, discovering.
I can have those things here.
Is there more to life, or is that it?
I don’t know how long I stand here thinking about it, but slowly I realize that people pass by, that the air is alive with movement. I look up, and my eyes find his. For a second, I can’t remember why I am here, but then it all comes crashing back, and I push my way to him, gunshots once again ringing in my head.
He is still, and his jaw is set, his eyes unreachable.
“What the hell happened on the ground floor?” I hiss at him. “And don’t you dare say you don’t know, because why else would you tell me to have Jules and Monica up right before it happened?”
He grabs my elbow and leads me to the quietest corner of the atrium, where a little girl dressed in yellow tugs at his sleeve. Nell. She must recognize that something is amiss; her eyes look startled. Instinctively, his hand slips over her hair, just enough to provide reassurance before she is pulled along with the current.
“Did you have them up?” he asks, terse once more.
“Jules, I did. We were hanging out in the Bowl when about a thousand gunshots started going off under our feet.” I cross my arms and stare at him. “And Monica refused to come upstairs, by the way. Because it’s against the laws of the compound and she has a little kid to think about. Who knows if they’re okay. Who knows if Jules’s family is okay.”
He pulls a face, like he is frustrated. It passes quickly, and just like earlier, he stares at my collarbone. “Look. I don’t know much about it. And I’m not supposed to say anything to anyone, but…” He looks me in the eye and sighs. “They call it a cleanse. Every generation or two they do it, or so I’ve heard.”
I feel like something crushes against my chest, and it restricts my ability to get oxygen to my brain. I remember those whispers of how disposable the Noms are in the eyes of the Premes, and the crushing sensation worsens. “Who’s they?”
He hesitates. “I’m not sure which office is in charge of making those decisions—”
“But the orders come from this floor.”
“Yes, Eve. They come from this floor. This floor controls the entire compound.”
That old hatred of the Premes wells up in me once more. “You’re telling me that the leaders of our compound just slaughtered God knows how many of their own people…”
He nods. “I don’t like it any better than you—”
“Bullshit!” I snap before I can stop myself.
He grabs me by the shoulders. “Eve. Stop. I understand you’re furious, but I’m not the bad guy here. Try to remember that. Please try to remember that.”
I look around at faces that come and go. Everyone up here looks as pristine as the floors. Pristine and content—the exact opposite of down there. It makes me sick. “Why would they do this, Wren?” My voice is weak.
“It’s to control populations down there. The one-baby policy doesn’t work perfectly—”
He goes still, and my cheeks fill with heat. “So you’re saying I should feel ashamed, Wren? That my mom had a second child? You know, in contravention of the one-baby policy and everything? I guess it’s her fault—people like her—and she’s to blame for shooting up a bunch of innocent people, right?”
“Stop.” His eyes are flashing, and he lowers his head so we are eye to eye. He squeezes my shoulders so tightly I almost wince. “Stop. Stop putting words in my mouth. Stop getting mad at me for
something I had nothing to do with. Just stop.”
But I am mad. Every fiber of my being twitches with anger. It burns in a million different directions, and I don’t know which yarn to tug at. I take a step back and breathe deeply. I can set it aside; I can. “Okay,” I say finally, willing my voice to relax. “Okay, fine. Let’s talk about something else. Your test, then.”
“My test?” He shrugs. “It went as expected.”
“Surprised I know about it? Maggie told me. I guess Connor tells her more about himself than you bother to tell me.”
He rolls his eyes. “Eve, that’s ridiculous. You’ve had a lot of shit going on the past couple of weeks, so I didn’t want to burden you with—”
“With what, Wren—your life? You’re making excuses. An important test that determines your entire future is the kind of thing you share with your girlfriend.”
He stares at me. “Noted. Can we drop it now?”
I shake my head and glare at the wall next to us. The test doesn’t seem relevant right now, but I don’t want to admit that to him. I don’t know what I want to admit, what I want to talk about.
“So probably our floor is next, is that right?” I blurt out. “They shoot up the Denominators first, then move on to the second floor, take out Maggie and Hunter, maybe my parents, too?”
“I’ve never heard of it happening on the Mean floors. Means are valuable to the functioning of the compound—factories, food, you name it. But the Denominators…to those in charge, that’s a different story.” He frowns. “And in case you couldn’t figure this out for yourself, there was nothing I could have done to stop it. I did my best to help your friends.”
The elevator doors slide open just then, and four guards exit the elevator, then calmly walk past. Each carries a body bag, and each body bag is full. My insides seize up at the sight. I feel lightheaded, like I could vomit.
Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy) Page 28
