Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(26)

The quality of the neighborhoods changes quickly. As I watch the gaudy lights of the inner circles dim to muted pastels, the chic evening clothes turn to darker, perfunctory casual garments, I realize we were on an express route to the outer circles.

After what feels like a long time later, we slow our headlong rush and descend to ground level. Figures become once again people, not blurs.

When I was in my own entertainment circle, people traveled mostly in pairs, sometimes in loose, casual formations. It seemed as if everyone knew one another, like no matter their age they were all basically part of the same crowd. People flowed from one group to another. Without exception they were smiling, laughing—happy.

Here, in this dingy outer circle, people either move through the streets in tight packs or completely alone. The packs look uniform and tough. They don’t wear the same clothes, exactly, but each group seems to have a common theme. There is one pack in black, with tight shining clothes and flashes of metal. I can’t tell if they are studs or armor or even weapons. Another group seems to be made up of people like the fascinating snake man I saw in the Rain Forest Club. Like some peaceable (and at the same time savage) kingdom, they flock together, birds with cats, wolves with sheep.

Moving among them are people utterly alone. Most are hunched and introverted, eyes on the ground, taking care to avoid contact with anyone else.

But a few are different. Here and there, as the autoloop cruises into the final station, I see solitary men, and one woman, who look as if they’d be a match for even the black-clad group. They are upright, swaggering, arrogant in their bearing. They walk as if they owned the Earth.

The autoloop has almost stopped when I see him, a young man not much older than me, with bright chestnut hair and a face set in hard lines. He isn’t as big as some of the other loners, but in a glance I can tell that he doesn’t care, that he has absolute confidence that he can handle anything the world might throw at him. For a second his face turns, and I catch sight of a crescent-shaped scar from the corner of his left eye to just below his cheekbone. I pull my head back so he doesn’t see me. But he was only glancing at the train. The next second we’ve pulled into the covered station.

Lark jumps to her feet, looking excited. “Come on!” she says, pulling me after her and lunging for the door. Only a couple of other people rise along with us. Some of the inner circle travelers seem to be tourists. “That’s the Deadnight gang, I do believe,” one woman says in cultured tones to her chic friend. “And do you see that splendid specimen? That’s the Jaguar. They say she once killed five men in one night.”

“I heard it was four men, a woman, and a child,” her companion says, shivering deliciously. They giggle softly behind their hands.

The boisterously civilized inner rings were one thing, but Lark actually expects me to go out into this maelstrom of danger and strange humanity?

“Do you trust me?” Lark asks when she sees the naked uncertainty on my face.

I only pause for a second. In that instant, an image of Mom flashes through my mind. Don’t trust anyone except family, she would tell me. Your very life is at stake.

“I trust you completely,” I say firmly.

Lark smiles, and takes me into the outer circles.

What can I say about that night? To say it was like nothing I’d ever experienced would be pointless. I’ve never experienced anything. Like nothing I’d ever imagined? I didn’t even know enough of the world, and people, and pleasure, to begin to imagine anything like it.

“A girl who keeps her wits about her isn’t in any danger,” Lark tells me as we saunter through the dim streets. “They’re not bad people. Just poor, that’s all. Most would never dream of hurting anyone. As long as you don’t make any mistakes.”

Apparently, there are a lot of potential mistakes I might make. One gang, she says, would attack me if I spit within their sight. No worry about that. Even if I wasn’t too polite, my mouth is far too dry. Another gang insists that anyone they pass should immediately stop and turn their backs on them. “For them, keeping an eye on them is a sign of mistrust, and a grave insult. If you turn your back, though, you’re showing you trust them and so they’ll leave you alone.”

I would be lost without her. Again.

She takes me to a club, a place both calm and wild at the same time. No one is dancing. There are booths and tables, and recessed nooks hidden by curtains. People drink bitter black coffee (or as near as we can get, synthetic caffeine in a liquid suspension) and listen to someone on stage say perplexing, deep things that sound seditious. I don’t quite understand him, but he speaks about freedom and autonomy and endless open spaces in a way that makes my heart soar. We take a booth and listen to the conversations all around us. Everyone has an opinion. Voices rise. The mood turns agitated. Someone throws a chair across the room, shouting, “Better to be killed than lied to!” There is a quick brawl, before large bouncers tattooed all over in fern fronds haul out the offenders, and everyone else goes back to arguing about everything under the sun.

It is wonderful.

My skin is positively tingling with excitement, or maybe caffeine, when Lark pays the tab and leads me out. “But I like it so much here!” I protest. It was just right for me—an exciting spectacle I could enjoy without directly participating in. No one cared that I didn’t make eye contact or engage in debate. They were too intent on their own points, too in love with the sound of their own voices, to bother with me. It was like a classroom for me, a lesson in social behavior.