Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(25)

I remember most of the tricky holds for the way down, and scale the wall easily, leaping down the last four feet just to show off.

“You’re amazing!” Lark cries as she runs up to me. “How do you do that? When you climb you look like a squirrel, or . . . a gecko!”

“And you look like a flower,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

She lowers her head for a second, but when she raises it her eyes are shining.

“Here,” she says, and hands me a pair of glasses. I unfold them, and see that the lenses are in a faceted kaleidoscope of pink and sky blue and lilac. Lark slips on a pair of her own. “Dragonfly glasses,” she tells me. “Aren’t they beautiful? Lots of people are wearing them, even at night, so no one will even think about your eyes.”

I put them on. Despite the facets on the lenses, when I look through them my vision isn’t fractured. The only difference is that a pink-purple glow is cast over the world. Eden has gone rosy tonight.

Lark takes my hand. “Come on! I want to run!” And then we’re off, down the road, our linked arms swinging, laughing, careless of who might hear us. We’re just two girls enjoying life. Why would anyone look twice?

It isn’t long before she’s panting, though I’m only just warming up. I feel like I could run forever.

“I can’t run like you,” she gasps out. “How did you get so fast and so strong?”

“There’s not much else for me to do, except run and climb and stretch and exercise,” I explain.

She regards me in what I think is admiration. “You’re so . . .” She breaks off, shaking her head. “Do you know what you could do with speed like that? No one could ever catch you. The Greenshirts are soft compared to you. Why, I bet you could even outrun a securitybot. And climbing could be pretty useful to someone who . . .” She stops herself again. “But we shouldn’t talk about that now. Not until we get there.”

“Where’s there?” I ask.

She gives me her quirky up-and-down smile. “That’s for me to know . . . and you to find out.” She crooks her elbow in mine and we head to the nearest autoloop station.





PANIC HITS ME as soon as we slide through the turnstile. Walking through a crowd on a public street where everyone goes about their own business is one thing. But here there is an actual checkpoint of sorts, where passengers have to pay for their ticket. I try to back up, but my thighs hit the turnstile’s padded bar.

“One way,” Lark says, catching my arm. More loudly she adds for the benefit of those behind us annoyed at the holdup, “Don’t worry, the bathroom is over this way.”

“What if they . . . ,” I begin, but she shushes me with a squeeze.

“You’ll be fine. I’ll put the fare on my chip. Just act normal.”

Bikk! Money! I hadn’t even thought about that. There are so many little things that could catch me out. I don’t have any funds, of course, nor do I know how to use them or what anything costs.

Lark goes first to show me how it’s done. It’s simple. There’s what looks like a mirror at the entrance to the autoloop platform. She lifts her glasses and smiles into it, adjusting her flower-colored hair coquettishly, and says brightly, “Two please!” The mirror quickly dims and brightens again as it reads her eye implants. Her currency has been transferred, and two small chits roll out from a slot under the mirror. She heads through the corridor leading to the station platform. There are people in uniform everywhere. Only one is a Greenshirt, lounging against the wall at the far end of the station, chewing at a hangnail. But even the station attendants alarm me in their crisp, official-looking costumes. They have the bull’s-eye insignia of the Center on their lapels, and even if they’re low-level functionaries, they still represent the establishment that is my natural enemy . . . whose lair I’m attempting to infiltrate.

Ash was wrong about me. I am afraid.

But I hold myself steady, and even force a playful sidelong smile for the ticket-taker. A smile that pretends to openness, but actually hides my eyes just in case he can glimpse anything from the side of the glasses. He takes my ticket and lets me pass.

I feel elated with that simple success! I was afraid, but I did it anyway. Maybe, I think, that’s what it means to be brave. Maybe Ash was right about me after all.

Holding my head as high as any firstborn, I follow Lark onto the platform. Within a few minutes the autoloop pulls into the station and we step aboard. When the pneumatic doors slide breathily shut, I flinch. I’m trapped! My speed and agility won’t do a thing for me if there’s trouble in here. But Lark sits on a molded lime-green seat and slouches down so her knees press against the fuchsia seat in front of her. I slide in beside her, mimicking her position as the autoloop lurches forward. It gains speed rapidly, accelerating on a monorail that coils in a spiral around Eden, from the Center to the outer circles.

“Where . . . ?” I try again, but she shushes me.

“Just look around. This is your first view of the rest of Eden. I’m curious to know what you think.” She stands and wiggles until we’ve switched seats and I’m by the window.

And I look, at scenery more vivid than a datablock, streaming past me so fast that it almost blurs. Whenever I catch sight of something interesting—an oddly shaped building, the swirling green inside an algae spire—I have to whip my head around to follow it. Everything slips behind me. My body, and my life, are moving forward faster than I ever dared dream.