Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(32)

We sit in comfort in the center, as Mom switches the controls to manual. Usually, you tell it where you want to go, close your eyes, and listen to music until you’re there. Like the bots that zip through the city, Eden’s cars are programmed to avoid collisions, and are usually completely autonomous. Few people use the manual option. Of course, Mom doesn’t want a record of where we’re going.

I have to keep it together, I think as I stare out at the fleeting scenery, the landscape that, after a couple of nights out, now seems almost familiar. It is slowly sinking in how serious this is. Not just that it is the end of everything I know. Suddenly, the danger feels real. Before, when I snuck out it was scary, sure, but there was always an edge of excitement to it, like when I played laser hunt with Lark. Sneaking out was a challenge, and getting home again with adventure and experience under my belt was a victory.

Now, though, someone is apparently actively hunting me. This just got real.

I reach over and take my mom’s hand, leaving her to drive with the other. She flashes me a quick, loving look, then fixes her eyes back on the road. It’s about 3 a.m. and the streets are virtually deserted. Even the cleanbots are recharging. Still, she has to be careful. An accident would be disastrous.

“Out in the world at last,” Mom says, squeezing my fingers as she maneuvers down one of the radial streets, away from the green glowing eye of the Center. “And you didn’t even have to knock down the courtyard walls to do it,” she jokes. “I always knew, right from the start, that it was going to be hard for you. But now my strong-willed little girl is growing into a strong-willed woman. Rowan, I am so proud of you.”

She speaks the words very distinctly, as if she’s trying to burn them into my memory.

“And now you’re finally going to get the freedom you deserve.”

“But the price!” I say.

She shakes her head. “I . . . we would have spent anything to help you have a normal life. Luckily we can afford it.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know,” she says softly. “But there’s always a price, to every decision. I’ve paid a heavy price since the moment you were born, a price of guilt at the life I’ve forced you to lead. And your father . . .” She breaks off, and I notice for the first time that she has my habit of clenching her jaw in moments of extreme emotion. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her upset until the past few days. She always seemed so calm, so stable, so happy . . . though I wonder now whether she kept her equilibrium at home to make things easier for the rest of us.

“What about my father?” I ask sharply.

“It’s . . . nothing.”

Of course I can tell from her voice, from the play of muscles in her jaw, that it is the very opposite of nothing. “We only have a little while longer, Mom. You owe me honesty.” I see her wince a little. “He hates me, and I don’t know why. Is it just because I’m an inconvenience? An obstacle on his path to greatness?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she begins, and I can tell she wants to lie. But finally she says, “He doesn’t hate you, Rowan. He hates himself.”

In a halting voice she tells me what she herself only found out a few years ago, when my father was drunk and tired and weak and too crushed under the burden of his guilt to keep the secret any longer.

When my dad found out that Mom was pregnant with twins he took it upon himself—without asking her, without telling her—to try to abort one of us. During what was supposed to be a routine prenatal check he used a modified ultrasound device he created to try to destroy one of us.

Did he pick his victim at random? Did he let chance decide whether Ash or I would be a first child, an only child—or no child at all?

No. He wanted a son.

When there were billions of people still crawling on the planet, men and women weren’t always treated equally. Ash and I used to laugh about that when we studied ancient history together. Imagine, anyone thinking women were lesser than men! Here in Eden, I believed that kind of prejudice didn’t exist.

Dear old Dad, though—he wanted a child created in his own image. He wanted a boy to mold like him, to follow in his footsteps, to become a great doctor or politician.

“He aimed the ultrasound device . . .”

“Call it what it is, Mom,” I say bitterly. “A weapon.” I think of myself, huddled in the womb with Ash, safe and warm . . . with my own father aiming a gun at my head.

“He aimed it at you, but something happened. He was almost incoherent when he confessed, and I never spoke with him about it again, but he said that you moved at the last second. That you were close to Ash, that . . . that you hugged him. You pulled him to you, and the sound beam hit Ash instead of you. Your father shut it off instantly, but some damage was done. It hit Ash in the chest. It injured his lungs.”

To my surprise, a tiny part of me almost feels sorry for the monster that is my father. For sixteen years he’s lived with the guilt of the crime he committed. Every day he has to look at his ill son and think That’s my fault.

But every day he has to look at his daughter and think I tried to kill her, and failed.

I feel sick inside.

There’s one thing I can’t understand. “You forgave him for that?”

She’s quiet for a long moment, steering the car around a tricky curve as we skirt an algae spire.