He nods and there’s a small ghost of a smile. “Yeah. I think maybe I am. I’ve fallen in love with a girl who’s programmed to kill me. Not a very sane thing to do, is it?
My jaw drops. “What? What did you say?”
He looks straight into my eyes. “I love you, Evie.”
* * *
“This is your chance, Evelyn. You won’t get another one like it today. Failure will not be tolerated,” my mentor says. We’re standing in the Square, waiting for Sorting. The water is dark blue over our heads and I can hear the low moaning of the whales in the distance. The Square is decorated in black and purple.
“I understand,” I reply, determined that this time, Mother will notice me. She won’t be able to ignore me this time.
My mentor leaves me to wander the slowly growing crowd and takes her station somewhere on the other side of the aisle left open for Mother. For a loud few minutes, people talk around me, not even noticing me. I don’t look like an Enforcer. Not yet, I think. But soon. Very soon.
Excitement boils in my blood. Butterflies flutter in my stomach but I squash all emotion. Emotion won’t get me noticed. Success will. I will not fail.
Then a hush draws over the crowd. Mother walks through the crowd, and on either side of the aisle, Citizens bow their heads in reverence. Except the Citizen right next to me. An older man. He refuses to bow his head. The Citizens next to him are hissing at him to do it, but he stares straight back at Mother without so much as a nod. She lifts an eyebrow and stops for the briefest of seconds before moving her gaze to me.
I know what I’m supposed to do. It makes me sick to think about it, but failure will not be tolerated. I sneak behind him, then grab him by his arm and pull him into the shadows. Although he struggles, it’s a simple matter of injecting him with the syringe of medication Enforcers use to calm the unwilling. I place my hands around his head and twist. The popping sound his neck makes leaves me nauseated and for a minute, I lean over, pressing my sweaty palms on my thighs.
After a few minutes of breathing shallowly through my nose, I leave his body for one of the disposal crew to clean up. They should be around any minute. I rejoin the crowd with my stomach still rolling. They part for me now and when Mother sees me, she smiles from the stage set in the middle of the Square. I’m disgusted and queasy, but I fight a smile. I’ve been waiting five years for this.
* * *
Memories flash by in an endless series of bodies and blood and pain. The minute one ends another starts, filling my body with sorrow, regret, disgust, and anger. For myself. For the woman who did this to me and for the one who let it happen. But there are certain memories I’m grateful for. Ones that make up for every single one of the bad ones. Memories of Gavin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It is a privilege and an honor to serve as an Enforcer, Elysium’s most prestigious designation … Conditioning is the ideal training method as it is safe, quick, and completely painless.
—EXCERPT FROM SO YOUR DAUGHTER HAS BEEN CHOSEN TO BE AN ENFORCER. CONGRATULATIONS! PAMPHLET
Evie
When I wake, my whole body is sore. Just like in the memories. This is a pain I know well. How many times did they do this before? Too many to count. Enough for me to lose myself, though. Enough to turn me from a normal little girl who wanted to play with dolls and have tea parties to a monster who killed people to impress a different monster. To make someone proud of me.
I open my eyes and survey the people grouped around me. My eyes land on Evangeline. The woman I now realize is my mother. My real mother. I must have been an idiot not to see the resemblance between us. It’s there, slapping me in the face in the color of our eyes. The tilt of our mouths. The upper lip that’s slightly fuller than the bottom. Her face is almost identical to the one I see every time I look in the mirror.
Unlike my reflection, though, she won’t meet my gaze. She knows that I know and that’s just fine with me. I firm my mouth into a straight line. “So, where’s my real father?”
Evangeline’s eyes widen and stare daggers into Eli. “You didn’t tell her?”
Eli looks down at the ground and mumbles, “I thought we should tell her. Together.”
Evangeline—I don’t know if I can think of her as my mom—shakes her head. “You mean leave it to me.” She lowers herself to the bed and tries to stroke my hair, but I jerk myself away from her. She sighs. “Father is your real father.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. Evangeline is obviously my real mom. Eli, on the other hand … I tilt my head to study him, but looking at him, there really isn’t anything physical we share. But … there is something similar. Our mannerisms. Our facial expressions. Even the way he’s looking at me, obviously trying not to let me know how nervous he is about what Evangeline just told me, is something I would do, and I doubt anyone else would even know he’s nervous.
More than that, there’s some kind of connection between us. More of one than I feel toward my mom, and enough of one that I trusted him to get us here. My memories are like leaves fluttering on the wind. No order yet, but something tells me I still don’t have the whole story of what happened between Eli and Evangeline.
I sneak a look at Gavin, who doesn’t seem that shocked. But Asher is gaping at Eli, and a considering look crosses his face when he turns his attention to me.
I frown at him, wondering what he’s thinking, but I say, “This isn’t right. He’s not my dad.” I focus back on Evangeline. “I remember someone else. I never met you until … until after I became an Enforcer.”
Eli has this half smile on his face, but Evangeline shoots a worried look at him. He nods at her to continue, and for a minute she looks like she’s going to refuse, but then she sighs and stands as if she’s too nervous to just sit and do nothing.
“You’re right, Evie. This is all very complicated, but there was someone else. His name was Nathaniel. We were Coupled and he…” She stops and closes her eyes, taking a shaky breath before continuing. “He’s the one who raised you, but he wasn’t your real dad. Not genetically.”
My heart starts pounding in my chest and I know I don’t want to hear the rest of the story, but I can’t make myself tell her to stop. It’s as if my body knows I need to hear the rest.
“I was so young. Just barely sixteen. But Nathaniel and I were in love. I was already approved as a breeder, so it was simply a matter of obtaining the license to Couple. So we went to Mother and applied for it. We were approved, but there was a stipulation.” She looks at me, and lets out this short, humorless laugh before glancing down to her hands. “For me, anyway. But I didn’t know it. Not until after Nathaniel and I were Coupled. Nathaniel and I decided we wanted to start our family right away. We said it was to do our duty for Elysium, but we really just wanted to have children.” She smiles at me, but I can’t smile back, so she looks back at her hands. “I remember that day perfectly. It was two months after our Coupling and I was in what was to be your nursery. Getting it ready in the hopes that it would give me good luck.” She looks at me. “I’d failed to conceive up until this point and she—Mother—came to find me personally. She told me that my genetics were a perfect match for something she was hoping to do. She’d chosen me to be the mother to a new breed of Enforcers. A breed designed specifically for the task. At first I was flattered. Who wouldn’t be?”
She smiles at me, but I’m not amused. She was flattered? Really? How fantastic for her.
She clears her throat. “Um … it was short-lived. She went on to say that the father of the baby I would carry would not be Nathaniel, but would be her own partner. Father.”
Everyone looks at Eli and he shifts from side to side, looking at the ground.
“I don’t understand.” Gavin moves his gaze back to Evangeline. “If she wanted you to Couple with Eli, why did she allow you to Couple with Nathaniel?”
“To force her to agree,” Asher says, and I shift my attention to him. He’s looking at Evangeline. “Right? She
gave you what you wanted, then threatened to take it away if you didn’t do what she wanted.”
Tears fall from Evangeline’s eyes, but she nods. “Yes. Exactly. When she told me that she wanted me to breed with Father—” She looks at each of us in turn. “Not Couple,” she clarifies. “Coupling would mean she would have had to give him up. And there was no way she was going to allow that. No, she only wanted him to breed with me. Anyway, when she told me, I refused. I said that I was Coupled and that I wanted children with Nathaniel. So she threatened me. She told me that Nathaniel was sterile. A failure. He wouldn’t be able to breed, but she had allowed me to Couple with him anyway, because he would make an excellent father to the child she wanted to create. Since Father wouldn’t be there to be the dad, somebody else would have to stand in. And because of my genetics, I would make the perfect mother.
“So I had a choice. I could either allow her to artificially inseminate me and keep my mouth shut, letting Nathaniel think he was the father. Or I could refuse and Nathaniel and I would disappear. She’d take what she needed from me and ‘gift’ some other woman with being the mother to the perfect Enforcer. She gave me twenty-four hours to think about it. I didn’t have any choice but to accept. The next day when she came, she brought the doctor with her.” She shrugs. “She knew I’d accept. We started treatments and a few months later I was pregnant with you.”
“So,” I say, anger boiling up in me like a volcano, “I was … just a means to an end.” I look between Eli and Evangeline. “For Mother I was … the beginning of a perfect race of assassins. For you, Evangeline, a way to stay alive, and for you, Eli? What … what was I to you?” My voice gets higher and louder with each word. But I don’t let him answer before asking, “I was never wanted? None of you wanted me? Only Mother?”
“Oh hell,” Asher says.
“It wasn’t like that, Evelyn, you have to understand—” Evangeline starts to say.
“I understand perfectly. No one wanted me except Mother, and she only wanted me for my … DNA.” I swipe my palms together as if to clean them. “I’m just a bunch of spare parts waiting to be assembled into something better. What a terrible inconvenience for you all that I turned out to be a real person!”
“No, no—” she starts to say.
“Evie—” Eli starts to speak but I cut him off with a glare.
“You’re the worst of them. You knew what she was capable of and you let her do it anyway. To your own daughter.” My chest aches and my eyes burn miserably. “You didn’t even care, did you?”
“Don’t answer that,” Gavin says to my parents, then turns to me. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter the motivation of any of them. Look at me.” He peers into my eyes when I do. “I love you. I want you. And no matter what you were created for, that will always be true. Okay?”
His words are like a balm on the open wounds Evangeline just broke open, and I nod, but it doesn’t stop me from needing to know the answers. I turn back to Evangeline, who is watching me.
“We loved you, Evie. Me. Nathaniel and—”
“Me,” Eli says, and I jerk my head around to look at him. “I loved you, too. We still do.”
“But you still sent me to her. Sent me to be an Enforcer. Let them”—I search for the word Gavin used—“brainwash me. If you loved me, how could you do that?” I look between the two of them. “How could any decent human being do that to anyone? You’re despicable.” The burning in my eyes melts into tears, but I refuse to let them fall.
They glance at each other and I can almost see them asking each other how to answer the question. I push myself up to my feet, but stagger when the blood rushes from my head. Both Gavin and Asher rush to catch me before I can fall. My parents exchange another look.
This, of course, makes the volcano of anger boil over and I shout, “Answer me!”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Evangeline finally says. “Being an Enforcer was … is a privilege. Mother’s most prestigious designation. We didn’t know what would happen.”
“Bullshit!” Gavin says.
“Watch your tongue, boy,” Eli says. “She wanted answers, she’s getting them.”
Evangeline looks at Gavin. “We did know about the Conditioning.” She turns back to me. “But we didn’t know that your brain would be able to fight it. If we had, we might have done things differently.”
“What?” I demand, crossing my arms over my aching chest. “What would you have done?”
She shakes her head. “I—I don’t know. Something. Anything.” She meets my eyes and takes my hands in hers, frowning at them. “But you have to know—I loved you. Love you. Very much. It didn’t matter to me why you were here, just that you were. You were always my daughter, even when she thought of you as hers.”
“But you gave me up! You didn’t fight for me at all! You let her take me. I lost myself before I even knew who I was! How could you do that?” My voice is a whisper. A husk of itself.
“You’ve seen her,” Eli says. “I know you’ve seen her in those memories. Even if they don’t all make sense at the moment. You know what she’s like and you also know she’s the one who did this to you. And you’re not the only one. You’re not even the last. But if you want this to stop … you know what has to be done.”
“What?” I ask, sniffling and running a hand under my running nose.
“You have to eliminate Mother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ELITE ENFORCER TESTING REQUIREMENTS
In order to pass training, an Enforcer must:
• Lift 8 times her own body weight (minimum)
• Master all forms of martial art techniques
• Be able to name, repair, and correctly use all weapons modern or archaic, while also adapting easily to new technologies
• Endure emotional, pain tolerance, and healing tests, while being able to make snap judgments that benefit the whole, even if sacrificing the few
• Demonstrate knowledge of all computer skills including but not limited to: extensive knowledge of all operating systems (past and present, and adaptation to new technologies), coding, software for the express purpose of “hacking,” forensics, and electronic bypassing
Evie
I push myself up to my feet. “Absolutely not. I can’t kill someone.”
Eli keeps his gaze on mine. “You’re the only one who can, Evie. You’ve had Enforcer training—”
“I don’t remember it!” A lie. Bits and pieces of those memories crowd my brain, making me dizzy. But it’s all jumbled, just like all the rest.
“Your body does, even if you don’t.”
I flash back to the path in the woods, how I tore the birds’ heads from their bodies without even batting an eye. The attack on Asher. And then again when I knocked Gavin out.
The blood rushes from my head, and I have to sit back down. He’s right. My body does remember what to do. But still … “I can’t kill her. Then I’m no better than she is.”
Gavin squeezes my hand. “Of course you can’t kill her.” He glares at Eli. “How can you even ask that of her?” He stands, pulling me up with him, and I let him. I don’t care that I just found out who my parents are, I just want to get away from these psychotic people.
“You can’t leave here,” Eli says, stopping Gavin and me in our tracks.
“Yes we can, and we will,” Gavin says, his teeth and fists clenching.
“You can. She can’t. She’ll lose everything again. There’s an EMF field around the city. If you leave, the field will cause the bots to hardlock. They’ll automatically suppress Evelyn’s memories again. It prevents people who’ve managed to … leave—not that it happens very often—from telling our secrets to the Surface Dwellers. But if you help us, I’ll figure out a way to bypass that so you can go. Both of you.”
I exchange a glance with Gavin. As much as I don’t want to believe Eli, there’s something that rings true about what he’s saying. I think I knew this. Somehow.
; I don’t say anything, but Asher says, “What if we come up with a compromise?” He glances to me. “We don’t have to kill anyone. We could just … exile her.”
Evangeline’s eyes light up. “Yes. To the Surface. For her that would be a fate worse than death.”
Eli furrows her brow. “How are we going to do that? She’s never going to go without a fight. And who’s to say she won’t find a way to come back in when we’re not expecting her? It’s too dangerous.”
The room becomes quiet again, but I don’t care. “I’m not killing anyone,” I say. “No matter how horrible she is. Or how I was trained. I’m not taking someone’s life. It’s wrong. And I refuse to do it again for you or anyone.”
Eli holds my gaze for a long minute. “Fine,” he says finally. “Exile could work, but we need to remove her from office and find a way to get her out of here and onto the Surface, while figuring out how to keep her from returning. And for that we’ll still need you. Your training will still be the best advantage we have, especially if things go wrong.”
Gavin shakes his head. “No. This isn’t our fight anymore. We appreciate you helping her, but we can’t stay. I’m not going to let her get herself hurt again. Mother doesn’t know she’s here, as far as we know, and I’d rather it stay that way.” He looks up at me. “Right, Evie?”
I don’t know what to say. My mind is still chaotic. I’m starting to put together all the information that I’ve regained access to, but not all of it makes sense. A lot of it doesn’t, actually. It’s like putting a puzzle together without having the box to tell you what the whole picture is supposed to look like. I can’t be certain of anything. I can’t even be sure the memories I have are real memories or ones my brain has supplied to fill in the gaps. All I really have is what they’ve told me. Is that enough for me to risk my life for people I don’t even know anymore?
Gavin may be right. This isn’t really my fight anymore, and Mother is surely out for my blood. It’d be much better for us—Asher, Gavin, and me—to just leave now.
Revelations (The Elysium Chronicles) Page 25
