Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(33)

“No,” she whispers at last. “But it was best we stay together.” She takes a deep breath. “Rowan, I know you want to talk more about that, but it isn’t relevant now. The past can’t be changed. But . . . it has to be understood. Listen carefully. I put something in your backpack. Something I found in the house long ago, around the time you were born. It . . . it changed the way I see things. It made me believe that . . . Bikk!”

I see her eyes widen at the vista ahead. “Oh, great Earth, no!”

Ahead of us are the flashing blue-and-green lights of a Greenshirt checkpoint. We’ve just turned onto one of the narrow radial roads that connect one ring to another. There are no side streets, and the road is barely wider than our car. We could turn around, but it would be blatantly obvious we were avoiding the checkpoint. They would be after us in a heartbeat.

I can see the choices flashing across my mother’s face, foremost among them a panicked urge to make a run for it. I don’t know. If I was on foot, and alone, I’d go for it. But cars aren’t designed to go more than twenty-five miles per hour, and if we bailed, Mom couldn’t run as fast as me. Plus they’d easily find out who owned the car.

Mom has an answer, though.

“Pretend you’re asleep. Pull your hat over your face and curl up against the far door. I can probably talk my way through.” She gives a weak chuckle. “After all, I work for the Center, and have friends in high places.” Dropping my father’s name would certainly help. How ironic, that he might actually save my life this time.

I have confidence it will work. I know that Greenshirts tend to respect anyone with a Center ID. Still, I can feel myself tremble as I tuck myself into a ball. We cruise slowly toward the checkpoint. It is such a long way away that it feels foolish now not to have turned around, but I have to trust Mom’s judgment.

She talks to me in a low voice as we progress toward the barricades and flashing lights. “The surgery center is in a back office of a modification parlor called Serpentine.” I understand. That’s a place where the people who believe they should have been born into an animal body get their scales and claws and horns. “It’s in the next-to-last circle, on the east side. An orange building, almost the color of your tunic. There’s an electric fence around it, but third panel from the left on the southeast corner is turned off from three to four in the morning. You can climb over. Go to the back door and knock twice up high, and three times down low. Can you remember that?”

“Yes,” I murmur into the sleeve that is curled over my face.

“And whatever happens, keep that backpack close. Keep it safe.”

Wait . . . keep it safe? Not keep me safe?

“What . . . ?”

“Shh,” she cautions. “There’s something inside for you. Something that . . . Stay down! They’re coming toward us. They have their weapons out.” She gasps. “Are those real guns?”

It’s too late for me to ask what she means by that, but I have a terrible idea I know. All Greenshirts carry weapons, the kind that slam you with an electrical charge carried in plasma. They’re usually called guns. But before the Ecofail I know there used to be more lethal things, also called guns, which shot metal bullets that ripped through human bodies. They’ve been outlawed in Eden. Could Mom possibly mean . . . ?

I try not to move, but I know my rapid breathing will give me away if they look too closely. Try as I might, I can’t calm my breath to sound like I’m sleeping. I listen as hard as I can.

“Step out of the car, ma’am,” one barks right away in a deep, gruff voice.

I can hear the smile in her voice, and I silently applaud her cool. “I’m on Center business,” she says, and I’m sure she is tilting her head at him so he can more easily scan her eyes. “My assistant and I were collecting some archival material from the outer circles, and I got turned around. Am I heading inbound now, or out?”

He doesn’t answer her question, but only says, “Step out of the car.”

Mom’s voice hardens slightly. “I said I’m on Center business. There are very valuable documents that needed to be . . .”

“Step out,” he says again, flatly. “Now.”

I can tell she’s starting to sound desperate, but to the Greenshirt she probably only sounds angry when she says, “My husband is Dr. . . .”

I hear the door open, and there’s a tussle and scramble. “What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieks. “Do you know who I am? You’re impeding Center research.”

“Quiet!” the Greenshirt commands. “I have orders to search every vehicle originating in the inner circles, no exceptions. Get your assistant out and scanned, and you can be on your way.”

“She . . . she’s asleep. I’ve made her work a double shift. Don’t wake her, please.” She’s babbling now, and every nerve of my body yearns to spring to her aid. But I do what she told me, staying curled and helpless as a baby in the womb, even when I hear her say, “Let go of me!” followed by a cry of pain.

I stay immobile, following Mom’s orders, trusting her to protect me, even when I hear someone grasp the door handle on my side. A second later my body is shifting as the door I’m leaning against is pulled open. I turn my grunt of alarm into a sleepy sound and keep my eyes closed. There’s a crunch of rapid footsteps. “Leave her alone! She’s my assistant, traveling under my pass! You have no right!”