Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(82)

But I can’t. I have to keep running out into this brutal oven while they do their best to kill me for reasons none of us fully understand.

And the nanosand is coming.

Now that I know what to look for I can see it. It shimmers just a little, setting it apart from the matte dun color of the rest of the sand. There’s a patch behind me, and one to my left. Maybe another ahead of me, I can’t quite tell. They’re moving at the pace of a brisk walk, swimming through the sea of sand directly toward me. The quaking has stopped for the moment, and I can move faster than the nanosand pools for now. But there are more now, two coming from the right, and I know however fast I’m traveling now the heat will make me slow down soon. They’ll surround me, swallow me down.

My skin is scorched pink, so hot I don’t even sweat. I stumble to one knee but scramble up again right away. For a moment I look at the two Greenshirts standing on the edge of the desert. They don’t dare follow me. Smart men.

What if I just walk toward them? Will they shoot me the moment I’m in range? Will they talk to me about how ridiculous it is that we three of the few surviving humans on the planet want to kill each other? The nanosand slithers inexorably closer.

Uncertain, I raise my hand to the tiny distant figures standing on the edge of the ruined beanstalk forest. I see one of them start to raise a hand, too. To wave, to beckon me in? Or to shoot at me again?

Before I can decide, the Earth decides for me. I hear a terrible grinding, cracking, exploding sound, and in the most powerful tremor of all the ground rises at least ten feet, throwing me down on my belly. From my new high vantage point I think I see the Earth begin to smile, a fierce grin of jagged, rocky teeth. Another vision from my lenses? No, the Earth really is splitting, opening up in a fissure fifty feet wide. As I watch, it stretches from the desert toward Eden, traveling like an arrow toward the Center. I see a brilliant green flash at the heart of Eden, so bright it burns an afterimage on my retinas.

And then, from one blink to another, the world changes.

As if by magic all the heat is sucked out of the air. The glaring white light dims to pinkish morning sunshine, rosy and comforting. As the ground shivers and grows still again, I see the merciless desert change to a mere strip of sand. It’s cool beneath my hands. I look down at my palms, scorched and blistered from touching the sand just a moment ago. A soft wind begins to blow from out beyond the desert, cooling my skin.

I look around me. The shimmering nanosand is gone.

I smell something, sharp and strange and compelling, carried on the fresh breeze. It reminds me a little bit of the camphor tree, wild and peaceful all at once. I turn toward the scent, eager. In this sudden calm, the terror of the earthquake, of my escape and pursuit, are forgotten.

On the far horizon, where before I only saw the shimmer of rising desert heat, I see a smudge of green.

I take a step toward it. Another.

Then I’m running, not away from something for the first time in forever, but toward something. Some spark, some nerve hidden deep within me hopes—no, knows—what it is. But my conscious mind doesn’t get that far. I only know I have to get to it.

I hear indistinct shouting behind me. The two surviving Greenshirts are coming after me, moving swiftly now that the sand is solid, the heat gone, the land still, and the air gentle. I don’t care. I have to get to the horizon. Something primitive and atavistic in me has taken over.

The very sand beneath my feet changes. It’s no longer thick, rolling dunes of desert, but a sprinkling of sand over something else. I kick at the sand as I run. Earth! Black, rich dirt, of the kind no one in Eden has ever seen. Wild dirt. Laughing as I run, I want to roll in it, rub it on my arms, taste it.

But ahead of me the green smudge is resolving itself into something wonderful.

How long do I run? A mile, two miles, over land that until recently was desert. But I see now it was a fake desert, false like so many things in Eden. Where the breeze blows sand away I see the grates of what can only be heaters, now cool and dead. They must have been elevating the temperature, creating a desert environment where none existed.

To keep humans from venturing out into the dead, barren land, I would have guessed once. To keep us safe from the poisons we put into our own world.

That was before I saw the forest.

It makes a mockery of the fake beanstalk woods. When I first saw them, I thought they were glorious, because I had no grounds for comparison. Even the camphor, huge and lovely and unbelievable as it may be, is sad compared to what I’m looking at right now. The camphor is a tree out of place, trapped as I was trapped my whole life. They’ve done wonders keeping it alive, thriving even, but how can a tree be a proper tree imprisoned underground?

I’m standing in grass, as high as my knees, shot through with flowers and scratchy seed heads. There’s a low buzzing sound, and I think another tremor is starting, but no, it is only a bee flying sleepily from flower to flower.

Beyond the little field of grass the forest springs up abruptly, thick and dark. Birds flit through the boughs. There’s a movement to one side. An animal, as tall as I am, slenderly made and elegant, steps carefully on small sharp hooves, testing the air with its black nose. Antlers branch from its brow. It smells me, but doesn’t seem to see me. I’m perfectly still, and it can’t have ever seen my kind in all its lifetime.

Everything I’ve read about, seen illustrated in datablocks, animated in vids . . . it exists, right before my eyes. This isn’t another vision. It’s not a trick.