Once An Eve Novel

nine



FIVE HOURS LATER, THE JEEP CAME TO A STOP OUTSIDE A WALL nearly thirty feet high, ivy snaking up its stone front. My skin was sweaty and sunburned, and my hands and feet had gone numb from the restraints. I squinted against the sun, awake and alert. Months on the run, so many near misses and escapes—none of it had mattered. I’d ended up here anyway. The City of Sand.

“Arden—wake up,” I whispered, nudging her in the side. She had fallen asleep a few hours into the trip, her sobs giving way to exhaustion. Her face was red and streaked with tears, her eyes nearly swollen shut.

“This is Stark,” the young soldier spoke into a handset in the front seat. “Nine-five-two-one-eight-zero. We have her here.” I cringed at how cocky he seemed now that he had me sitting, hands tied, in the back of the truck. He’d been in the front seat during the five-hour ride, talking the driver through each turn, answering the radio whenever it buzzed. The other two glanced at him before doing anything, as if seeking permission. An hour into the journey, Arden and I had loosened the plastic ties and tried to jump from the moving car, but the soldier in the backseat caught sight of us and tied our wrists to the Jeep’s metal carriage.

The air filled with static. “Opening the gate now. You can pull inside,” a voice replied through the handset.

I pulled at the rope threaded through my wrist restraints. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” Arden whispered, looking up at the wall. Her shirt hung loose around her chest, exposing the top of the thick pink scar. “All that talk about its grandeur. A bunch of crock.”

Those twelve years I’d been at School it was always a point among the Teachers, and in all those radio addresses they broadcast in the main hall—the City of Sand was an extraordinary place, the center of The New America, a city in the middle of the desert, restored by the King. Pip and I had talked about our future inside its walls, of the massive luxury apartments overlooking elegant fountains, the train that passed on a track above the street, the shops filled with restored clothing and jewelry. We dreamed of the roller coasters and amusement parks, the zoos, and the towering Palace filled with restaurants and shops. This was nothing like the grand metropolis we’d envisioned. The wall was hardly higher than the one at School, and there were no glittering towers visible beyond it.

The metal gate clanked and shifted, opening slowly. The pale soldier, whose name was Lowell, got out of the Jeep and circled around to Arden, cutting the rope that tied her to the carriage. Stark cut me free as the gate pulled back, exposing a short brick building. His hand was on my arm, moving me from the Jeep’s bed to the backseat.

“No,” Arden muttered as we both realized where we were, her body turning to dead weight as she dropped to the ground. “I’m not going back.” Lowell yanked her arm, trying to get her on her feet.

Standing on either side of the gate were Joby and Cleo, the two guards who had been fixtures at School for so many years. Their machine guns were aimed at the woods behind us. From the back, the brick building looked smaller than I remembered, with a row of low, barred windows. A grassy yard was beside it, surrounded by a chain-link fence, its top curved inward to prevent escape. A few of the girls were outside, dressed in identical blue paper robes, sitting at two wide stone tables.

The Jeep pulled forward. I ran toward Arden, throwing myself at Lowell. I rammed my shoulder into his side, but with my hands tied behind my back, it was practically useless. He quickly caught his balance, then began pulling Arden through the gate. Cleo grabbed her legs to keep her from kicking. “You can’t do this,” I yelled. Stark’s hand closed around my arm as he escorted me back to the Jeep.

“This is where she belongs,” he said coldly. I looked back at her over my shoulder. Arden struggled against the soldiers, her feet and hands still bound. Lowell covered her mouth as they entered the fenced-in area. He and Cleo passed her off to the two guards by the door as if she were a sack of rice.

“Just one minute,” I pleaded, digging my heels into the earth, refusing to take even one more step. Stark turned to look at me, but his hand was still on my arm. “Can’t you allow me that? You have her here—you did what you came to do. I’m going to the City of Sand. Now I want one minute, just one, to say good-bye.” He stared at the high fences on either side of the dirt path, then at the building ahead, its stone facade nearly thirty feet high. The soldiers had pulled the Jeep sideways, blocking the gate. There was nowhere for me to go.

Stark finally released me. “You have one minute,” he said. “Do what you need to.” I started up the dirt path, my skin stinging where he had grabbed me. A woman came out of the building. She wore a paper mask over her mouth. She wheeled a metal bed to the entrance and Cleo strapped Arden down, exchanging the plastic restraints for thicker, sturdier leather ones.

My eyes met Arden’s. When she saw me there, beyond the fence, her body relaxed. “I won’t let them do this to you,” I said. “I won’t.” She opened her mouth to respond, but Joby pulled her inside, the lock clicking behind them. She was gone.

“What about me?” a familiar voice asked.

I froze, knowing who it was before I turned my head. She stood just two yards away from me, her hands gripping the chain-link fence. I walked toward her, taking in her sweat-dampened black hair, the bruises around her wrists and ankles, the scratchy paper gown that came down to her knees. “Ruby,” I said, looking down at her stomach, hidden behind the robe. She didn’t look like she was pregnant—at least not yet. “You’re okay.”

The night I left, I had stood there in the doorway to our bedroom, listening to my friends’ breathing, and wondered when I’d be able to return. In Califia, every time Maeve taught me something—how to use a knife, shoot an arrow, climb a rope—I’d imagined bringing the women of Califia with me back to School, Quinn or Isis beside me as we charged through the dim dormitory, waking the girls from sleep. I hadn’t imagined things happening like this.

Ruby’s eyes were half closed. As she clung to the fence her body swayed back and forth, her limbs loose. “What’s wrong? What did they do to you?” I asked. My eyes darted around the small lawn. I noticed a few girls from my class, and a few more from the year above, sitting at the stone picnic tables. Maxine, a button-nosed girl who had gossiped incessantly, had her head down on the table. “Ruby?”

“Get away from the fence,” a guard called from inside. The woman was short and thickset, her cheeks covered in pockmarks. “Stand back!” She pointed her gun at me but I ignored her, instead pressing my face against the fence so my nose nearly touched Ruby’s.

“Where’s Pip?” I whispered. Ruby didn’t look at me, her eyes fixed on my battered gray boots. “Ruby, answer me,” I hissed more urgently. The guard inside the pen was coming toward us. Stark had climbed out of the Jeep. We didn’t have much time.

Ruby looked up at the sky. The sun hit her chestnut eyes, illuminating the browns and golds hidden in their depths. Say something, I thought as Stark started toward me, Lowell right behind him. Please just say something.

“Back away from the fence, Eve! Enough,” Stark called. Then, to the guard, “Lower your weapon!”

“Please,” I urged.

She parted her lips to speak. “Where did all the birds go?” she asked, then rested her forehead on the fence.

Stark grabbed my elbow. He raised his hand to the guard, signaling for her to lower her weapon. “All right, enough. Back in the truck,” he muttered, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of my arm.

As they loaded me back into the Jeep and tied me to the carriage once more, I kept my eyes on Ruby. She was still leaning against the fence, her mouth moving, as if she hadn’t even noticed I’d gone.

Lowell started the engine and the Jeep’s tires ground against the hard earth. The gate pulled back. I felt that familiar loneliness, the bottomless, empty feeling of having no one. The place that had stolen Pip and Ruby from me had taken Arden, too. I watched the stone wall disappear behind the trees as the gate shut, so much of my life still trapped inside.