Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(4)

AS I POISE on the precipice between safety and freedom, about to descend into the unknown, I hear a small sound: the melodious chime of three notes that announces someone is at our front door. Bikk! I curse under my breath. I freeze, and the air around me is suddenly cold. Did someone see me? Is it the Greenshirts coming for me? I try to steady my breathing. It’s probably just a delivery, or maybe a messenger from the hospital, come to fetch my father for an emergency surgery.

Then Ash creeps into the courtyard. I see him look around, quickly, then when he doesn’t immediately spot me, again more slowly. I whistle softly, a bird call I heard on a vid, and he looks up.

“You have to hide!” he hisses urgently. “He has a Center uniform on!”

My eyes fly open wide, and for a moment I feel like I’m pinned to the wall, immobile and helpless.

“Hurry!” Ash says, and even from up here I can tell he’s panicking. It’s only because I climb this wall every day that I can make my way down so fast. Even so, I push out and let myself drop the last few feet, landing in a light crouch.

“Who is it?” I ask as we sprint together to the house. He only shrugs, and I hear a rasping sound as my brother breathes. Nerves and even this small amount of running are making his lungs act up.

“You have to go straight for your inhaler,” I insist, suddenly more worried about him than myself.

He slows down, but shakes his head. “Gotta . . . get you safe,” he gasps.

“No!” I say too loudly. “I’ll be fine. But if you code out I won’t be fine. Can you make it upstairs by yourself?” His breathing is ragged. These attacks, mostly brought on by stress, come only rarely. But every time it happens I’m sure I’m going to lose my brother. I force my face to stay calm, because I know that any kind of worry will only make him worse at this point.

He nods, not wanting to waste his breath on speaking.

“Okay, then. You go, and I’ll use the wall hideout.”

There are four hiding places in our large and sprawling house. The best of them, a small cellar, has a trapdoor that has to be closed from above and then concealed under a carpet and heavy chair. Next best is a secret recess in the wall behind a bookcase that looks immovable but can swing out on pneumatic gliders. Unfortunately, that mechanism has a design flaw in that it has to be operated from the outside. So both of those depend on someone outside to seal me in (and release me again).

That means I have to go either up to the attic—which is spacious and comfortable but also one of the first places someone would search—or into an insufferably narrow space between two walls. The gap, no more than a foot and a half wide, used to hold some kind of ventilation system that was modernized and moved at some point in the house’s history. Now only the old air vent remains, and serves as an access port to a place that is so uncomfortable it makes torture sound like fun.

Ash is gasping now. I take his arm and guide him to the foot of the stairs that lead to his room. Our room, really. I have a bedroom of sorts, but there’s nothing of my own in it. It’s a guest room, which I make up every morning just as if no one has slept there in weeks. If anyone ever came to inspect the house, they’d find nothing more than a neat, generic bedroom waiting for a visitor.

For everything other than sleeping, Ash and I have more or less shared a room since childhood. Shared everything, really. Any personal possessions I have are in Ash’s bedroom, hidden among his things. And they all look like things a boy might have. I can’t have too many possessions of my own. Imagine if someone came in and found a bedroom with dresses, and holoposters of shirtless pop stars and all the other things other girls probably have in their rooms. Dead giveaway. Ash and I even share most of our clothes.

I don’t want to let Ash go. He feels my hold on his arm tighten, sees the fear in my eyes I can’t quite hide. I’m hardly even thinking about the unexpected visitor. “You go hide,” he says in a raspy whisper. “I can make it.”

I’m not sure he’s right, but I don’t have any more time to spare. I hear the quiet whine of the front door sliding open, and then the murmur of unfamiliar voices. With a final worried glance at Ash hauling himself up the stairs, I whirl and run for the closest sanctuary, hoping I’ll be in time.

I have to crawl backwards on my belly through the low ventilation access door into an impossibly cramped space. If I go forward, I won’t be able to close the door myself. I have only about an inch of clearance on either side. As I snap the door shut, I remember that I was running on moss, climbing on rocks just a moment before. Did I leave any telltale marks on the floor outside my hiding place? Too late to check now. I slither backwards on my elbows and toes, an inch at a time, for several feet, until I reach the place where the crevice opens up enough for me to stand.

It’s a little better here, but not much. Unlike my other hiding spots, this one isn’t built for any kind of comfort. It’s an emergency bolt-hole. We run periodic drills, Mom timing me, to make sure I can access all four of my hiding places quickly. But I’ve never had to use this one before. It’s the last resort.

I have room to stand, and that’s about it. Each time I breathe, my chest and back press against the plaster of the wall. It smells odd in here, stale and close. I’ve gotten used to having a limited life, but this is a little extreme. My vista ends about three inches away from my eyes.