Renegade (The Elysium Chronicles #1)(39)

I blink, looking again at the kit in my hands. In some small way, I almost admire Mother’s efficiency. But that feeling is overwhelmed by shock and … revulsion. How could anyone be so calculating?

“Evie?” Gavin asks when I haven’t moved for some time. I slowly raise my eyes to meet his. He seems angry as he takes the vials from my hands. “Want to know what you can do with these?”

“What?”

“This.” He drops them onto the floor, then smashes them under the heel of his shoe. He smiles at me. “That. Now, is there anything in that pack that can actually help us?”

I shake my head. “Maybe the first-aid kits?”

He grimaces. “Let’s hope we don’t need those. So … what now?”

I don’t know. The first order of business is to change in case we have to move quickly. Running in heels is not ideal. I’ve almost twisted my ankle twice in these things. Gavin is in a pair of jeans, but he’s still wearing his dirty, torn T-shirt.

“Put this on.” I toss him the extra shirt I’d grabbed for him. It will probably be too tight for him, but it’s too large for me—I sometimes use it as a nightshirt—and I hope it’ll be big enough to do for now. “We need to disappear, and the dirt and blood on your white shirt is like a beacon.”

He removes his other shirt and pulls on the one I handed him. It’s a little tight, but it looks really good on him, showing off the lines of his muscles. Somehow, it’s almost more alluring than seeing his bare chest.

To distract myself, I start to change my own clothes. That’s when I realize I need to strip in front of him. “Turn around,” I say.

He spins in a circle, his arms at the ready to defend himself. “What? Why?” He frowns at me.

“I need to change. I can’t keep running around in this silly dress and stiletto boots.”

He laughs and covers his eyes with his hand, making a show out of peering through the crack between his fingers. “It’s not like you haven’t already shown me almost everything in that cheap excuse for a dress already, you know.”

“Keyword is almost.” I wag my finger in a circle, and wait until he turns around with a sigh and a muttered “Harsh.”

I wiggle out of the dress, then ball it up and toss it in the bag. Never know when it might come in handy. Then I pull on the black skirt and shirt. They’re loose enough to be comfortable, yet tight enough not to be a hindrance if I need to fight. I pause in the middle of straightening my shirt.

Fight? And just what exactly do I think I could do in a fight? Garden them to death?

When I glance up to tell Gavin he can turn around, I see the mirror on the far wall. His eyes stare into mine perfectly. He has a grin on his face.

Who the hell puts a mirror in a supper club cellar?

“You could have told me there was a mirror there,” I say, fighting my blush.

“What’s the fun in that?” He turns to face me. “Besides, I didn’t see anything. I closed my eyes. For most of it.” He grins at me again.

I roll my eyes, but sit back on the floor, then pat the floor next to me. “We need to figure out our next move. We can’t just stay here. Someone will come down eventually and then we’re finished.” I pause, because it looks like something is bothering him.

“What’s up with the lighting here?” he asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“The lighting. Everywhere you’ve taken me is all dark and dingy. The only places with normal lights are the Palace Wing, the prison place, and the Square. It’s like I’m in a creepy horror movie.” He shudders.

I want to be angry he considers my home creepy, but I can’t, because I’m terrified of his world, too, even if I am sort of curious. It’s supposed to be hell on Earth, with demons running around killing one another. Huge animals that kill you in your sleep. Insects that burrow into your skin and use you as a host until they control your mind.

I push those thoughts aside. Gavin isn’t the animal skin–wearing savage I’d expected of a Surface Dweller, and when he talked about his home in the cell, he made it sound not so bad. And it seems Mother has lied about more important things. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d lied about the Surface as well. What better way to make sure people didn’t want to leave the relative safety of Elysium?

“Citizens tended to congregate where there’s more light, and after the Enforcers … became necessary, the shadows served another purpose. Now Mother keeps the places where she doesn’t really want people to gather the darkest, while the places where she wants people are the brightest.”

“That, sadly, makes a lot of sense,” he says, but then frowns. “Okay, so, Mother is the Governess? How’d that happen?”

“It’s kind of a long story, but Mother had this city built during the War. She wanted to have a safe place away from all the bombings and fighting that happened on the Surface. She hired a few top scientists, and then recruited other people to live down here. But they had to fit the image of the ideal person.”

“There is no such thing as the perfect person,” he interrupts, then gives me his lopsided grin. “But you’re pretty damned close.”

I place my hands on my hips and let a small smile form. “According to Mother’s scientific data, I am the perfect person.” I tug on my hair. “Blond hair, blue eyes. Pale skin. The people she recruited even had to pass an intelligence and psychological test. She started the city with only fifty people. And we grew from there.”