Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(10)

From my height I can see the lights of several people from our circle all heading toward another ring, where they’ll be going to parties, clubs, restaurants, the theater. If only I had someplace to go, someone who was waiting for me to arrive. I picture myself entering a party, all of my friends calling my name, beckoning me over. Someone hands me a drink, another cracks a joke about something we’ve all shared. I am welcome. I am accepted.

Again, I swing one leg over the outer edge of the wall, but this time, I start to climb down.

Mom sometimes uses an expression: I know it like the back of my hand. As I lower myself in grueling slow motion down the far side of the wall, I realize that defines my entire life until this moment.

In the first few seconds of my first foray away from home, I am overwhelmed with difference. Since birth, I’ve known every detail of my whole world to a hair’s breadth. If I lost my sight I would hardly notice—I could navigate my tiny realm without any of my senses. The home side of the wall is a friend, with crevices that reach out to help me like welcoming hands. On this side, the wall almost seems to be trying to throw me off.

I cling, frozen, just a couple of feet down from the ledge. Deliberately I steady myself, trying to feel the memory of the Earth within the stones. This helps a little, and I ease myself down another few inches. As I breathe slowly, the rock seems to breathe with me, pressing rhythmically against my chest. Smiling a little to myself, I descend again.

I make it down two more hand-and footholds before a crevice I thought was stable suddenly collapses under my toe. My hands tense and my foot scrapes against the wall, searching frantically for a hold. I find one—barely. The edge of my shoe is just touching the tiny outcrop. Worse yet, my hands are slipping.

The inside wall has been neglected, giving it character and, more important to me, irregularities and crevices I can use to climb. This outer facade, with its face to the world, has been maintained so that all the plaster between the stones is relatively fresh, the rocks themselves smoother. The holds are so much narrower than I’m used to.

I pick the worst hand grip and let go, to skitter my fingers over the wall like a long-extinct spider, searching. There’s one! I shift my weight, trying to remember not to hug the wall too much. If I try to press myself against the stones too hard, I’ll actually thrust my body out away from the wall.

I hear voices in the distance, but I have to focus all my attention on not falling. I’m still twenty feet up. The fall would be survivable—probably. At least the effort of climbing has distracted me a little from my anger and resentment and confusion. It’s hard to think about emotions when your life, or at least your safety, is on the line.

I have managed to lower myself another few feet, when I notice the voices are coming closer. Careful not to shift my precarious balance, I turn my head and search for the source. Bikk! At the very farthest limit of my vision, several blocks away, stands a cluster of Greenshirts on patrol. They are illuminated in a glowing orb of light, and rays of their flashlights extend from that center, making it look like a many-armed underwater creature. The Greenshirts are searching the neighborhood for any signs of suspicious activity.

If they see me, they’ll think I’m some outer circle punk high on synthocybe looking for gelt to finance her next fix. What could be more suspicious than a girl scaling a wall in a ritzy inner circle neighborhood?

Well, a second-child girl with no lens implants, of course. I’m not just any common criminal. I can be as law-abiding as I like. My life itself is a violation of the highest order.

Time for this nonexistent, illegal girl to get back home. My urge to see the world suddenly begins to evaporate as the chance of capture looms. They haven’t seen me—their lights are focused in the other direction—but they’re out, and much too close for comfort.

I lunge for a hold right above my head. As my fingers grip it, though, I have a strange, dizzying, disjointed sensation. The world seems to shiver slightly, and the entire block comes loose in my hand. I’d committed too hard, and with a sickening lurch I fall, my body scraping against the rock wall as I try to slow my descent. After what feels like an eternity—though I’ve only slid about a foot—my fingers catch and I dangle, swinging by one aching arm, still ten feet above the ground.

The stone has crashed below with a deafening noise, and I expect the Greenshirts to come running. But they don’t react. I’m panting now, crying at my own stupidity, wondering how on Earth I was ever so foolish as to try to go out into the world on my own. I’m not equipped for this. Why, I can’t even make it safely out of the house! What did I think I was going to do? Go to a party? Make a friend? I probably can’t even navigate the streets or figure out how to talk to someone I’m not related to and haven’t known my whole life!

Only a moment before, I’d felt in a panic to escape. Now I’m frantic to get back inside, where everything is predictable and safe. I have to leave in three days. I need to cherish what little time I have. Or so I tell myself. Some part of me still yearns to be out in the city, to defy the fate that has kept me a prisoner all my life.

But no matter how I stretch and twist I can’t find a single handhold above me. I’ve slithered into a trap, and there’s nowhere to go but down.

I try to picture Mom’s face when I ring the chime, and she opens the door to find me, shamefaced, on the wrong side of it. She’s going to be so disappointed in me.