Rise An Eve Novel

fourteen



I WAS AFRAID TO TURN MOSS OVER, WORRIED THAT MOVING him might cause more damage. The wound in his back barely bled. Instead his lips lost color and his chest swelled, as if he were taking one long, permanent breath. I undid the top buttons of his shirt and took his tie off, trying to create space for air. His mouth opened and shut, again and again, slower each time, like a fish without water.

It felt surreal, like a strange scene I was witnessing but not a part of. I tried to breathe into his lungs, as I’d seen at School when one of the younger girls had had a seizure. Nothing worked. The bullet had entered in the center of his back, breaking something inside him.

By the time we reached the bottom of the tower Moss was dead. I knew I had to leave, but I couldn’t pull my fingers from his wrist, as if his pulse would return if I held them there long enough. I felt the cold dampness in his palms. I noticed the way his eyes stayed open, his limbs tense and still. When I finally started out of the elevator, I waited until the doors closed behind me, locking his body inside.

I kept my eyes down as I passed the row of soldiers by the entrance. The Palace workers still hovered just beyond the glass, watching as the last prisoners were executed. I pulled the sweater around my hands, trying to hide the blood smeared on my skin. I had minutes, if that, before they were all alerted, before the Lieutenant was at the base of the tower, searching the main road.

I wound down the long driveway, moving south until I reached the street. I kept imagining what would’ve happened if we had turned right, not left, out of my father’s suite, if I had been the one who reached the elevator doors first. What did it mean for the Trail with Moss gone, how would the—

“Eve—stop!” a familiar voice yelled. “I’ve been calling you. Why didn’t you turn around?” I flinched as Clara’s hand came down on my wrist.

Her face was a mess of tears, the tip of her nose light pink. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she asked. She glanced behind me, where the crowd was dispersing into the Outlands. The sky above was a smothering gray, which rolled and cracked with thunder.

“I have to go,” I said. “They’re after me.” I swiped at my cheeks, for the first time noticing that I was crying. I squeezed her hand, feeling the warmth of it in my own, and then turned away, back down the main strip, moving south along the road.

I lost myself in the shifting current of the crowd. I caught glimpses of the fountains outside the Bellagio, of two older women in front of me who were holding hands, of the man who pressed his cap to his chest, against his heart.

I was just beyond the Cosmopolitan tower when Clara found me, her breaths slowing as her steps synched up with mine. “I’m coming with you,” she said.

I glanced over her shoulder, but there were no soldiers in view. The sky rocked with thunder, and the clouds let loose their first heavy drops. Ahead of us, people held their jackets above their heads to shield themselves from the coming rain. I pulled my hair down around my face, trying to hide from a soldier standing to the east, just beyond the metal barricades. “Now that the siege is over, you won’t be hurt. You don’t have to come; you—”

“I won’t live here,” she said. “Not like this.” She glanced back at the Palace, where the wooden platform was still visible. Two more bodies were being cut down from the ropes.

“You can’t,” I said. “They know about what I did. If you’re found with me, you’ll be killed, too.” I hurried my pace, turning right, crossing the main road, where the crowd thinned out. The tunnel couldn’t be more than two miles off. I could leave the City within an hour, even if I wound through the Outlands, avoiding the stretches of open road.

“What’s the option?” Clara asked. She kept along, not taking her eyes away from me. “Stay here? Wait until there’s another attack? Wait until they tell me they’ve found you? You can’t go alone, Eve.” The last part of her sentence somehow held a question, as if she were asking me: Why would I let you do that? I pressed my face into her neck, clinging to her for just a moment before breaking away.

“The tunnel is in the south,” I whispered, leading her down a narrow alleyway, where old shops were boarded up, graffiti scrawled across their sides. A FREE CITY NOW was written in red paint. Without Moss, it was impossible to know if the tunnel would be clear or if the remaining rebels would be using it for escape. But what choice did we have?

I brought my hand to my face, trying to breathe through my mouth, anything to dull the smells that came off the road. A body lay among the burned ash and ruin, its back toward us, a thin plastic jacket fused to the skeleton.

We kept moving, the sound of a Jeep’s engine splitting the air, the tires kicking up dust and sand as it flew past the road behind us. The rain came down. Some of the residents in the Outlands ducked in doorways or under the shallow overhangs of buildings. A group scattered into a parking lot, sitting in the hollow shells of cars, waiting for the storm to pass.

I held the bag tight to my side, keeping my head down. It was only when I turned, watching another Jeep disappear into the Outlands, that I noticed the hospital, no more than a hundred yards off.

“What is it?” Clara asked. She kept up her pace, leaving me there at the edge of the road. She shielded her eyes from the rain.

I couldn’t look away. Now that the siege had ended, the girls would be taken out of the City, back to the Schools. It could be years before they were liberated, if ever. How many of them would be taken to those buildings? This was their only chance to get out of the City. I wouldn’t be able to take more than a few, if I could get in at all, but I couldn’t leave them without doing something.

“Wait there,” I called to Clara. “The tunnel isn’t more than two blocks farther. It’s in a motel marked with an eight.” I dropped my bag, gesturing to the awning of an abandoned grocery store. Clara called after me, asking me what to wait for, but I took off toward the building, her voice disappearing behind the heavy rain.

Two soldiers were standing outside the front entrance. I slunk around the back, noticing an older woman at the side door. Our eyes met. She signaled to me with her hand. It wasn’t until I was a few yards away that I noticed the bright red streak in her hair. It was the same woman Moss had mentioned.

“They already know about you,” she said, leaning in. She didn’t look at me. Instead her eyes watched the scene over my shoulder. The high shrubs provided little cover from any vehicles that passed on the road. “The alerts have gone out. You have ten minutes, maybe fifteen, before they’re here. They’ve dispatched the Jeeps from the north end of the wall. You have to leave now.”

I pushed against the side of the building, trying to get some respite from the rain that pelted my skin. The blood came off my fingers, the water pooling pink in my palm before it flooded over the sides of my hand and washed away. “I need you to let me inside,” I said. “Please—I’ll be quick.”

“There’s dozens of girls on this floor—maybe more. What are you going to do?”

“Please,” I said again. “I don’t have time.”

She didn’t respond. Instead she opened the lock, and for the first time I noticed that her hands were shaking. “That’s all I can do,” she said. “I’m sorry, I won’t tell, but I can’t help you any more than this.” She stepped back, away from me, disappearing around the side of the building.

I propped the door open with a rock. Inside, the long corridor was quiet. A few girls in a side room were talking about the explosions they’d heard outside, wondering what had happened and why. Two people sat under a giant calendar labeled January 2025, their heads bowed together as they spoke. It wasn’t until Beatrice turned, hearing my footsteps, that I recognized her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, starting toward me. Sarah followed along behind her, her eyes swollen. “Is what they’re saying true? They’re taking the girls back to the Schools?”

“We have to gather as many girls as possible,” I said, glancing into one of the rooms. A group of girls were sitting with their legs folded, reading some old magazines. “There’s a route we can take out of the City. Have them bring their warmest clothes and whatever supplies they have. How many are on this hall?”

“Just nine of us,” Sarah said. “The rest are past there.” She pointed to the closed double doors behind her.

I ducked into the second room, not waiting for Beatrice to respond. Four girls were curled up in bed, reading a tattered copy of something called Harry Potter. They looked up when I came in, scanning my drenched clothes and my hair, which clung to my face and neck in thick, black coils. Locking eyes with them, I suddenly wasn’t quite certain what to say, how to convince them to come now, with me, away from everything they’d known. “I need you to gather all your things and line up by the exit,” I said. “It’s not safe here anymore. Take whatever supplies you have and be ready to leave in two minutes, no more.”

A girl with blond hair and freckles narrowed her eyes at me. “Who are you? Do the guards know you’re here?”

“No—and you won’t tell them.” I grabbed one of the top drawers and emptied it onto the bed, tossing the girl a canvas bag that had fallen out. “I’m Genevieve—the King’s daughter. And we need to leave the City tonight, now, before you no longer have the chance.”

The girl with freckles grabbed her friend’s arm, rooting her in place. “Why would we leave the City? They said they’re taking us back to the Schools soon. They said it’s safe now.”

“Because they’ve lied to you,” I said. The girl behind her shifted on her feet. “There are no trade schools. After graduation, the girls in the Schools—girls like you, like my friends—are impregnated and spend years giving birth in that building. They’re held there against their will. The King is trying to raise the population numbers any way he can.”

“You’re lying,” the girl with the long braid said. But the others looked less certain.

“Have you ever seen the girls who graduated before you? Have they ever come back to say what they’re doing inside the City?” I paused. “What if I’m not lying? What will you do once you’re back at the School and you realize I was right? What will you do then?”

A girl with tiny black braids got up and slowly started picking through a box below her cot. “Come on, Bette,” she said. “What if she is right? Why would the Princess lie to us?”

I didn’t have time to convince them. I went into the hall as a few of the others started packing, whispering to one another. Four of the girls from the room beside us were in there, clutching the knapsacks they’d brought from School. They looked uncertain, some on the verge of tears, others laughing, as if I were accompanying them on some sort of excursion. Beatrice had locked her arm around Sarah’s and was standing at the front of the door, watching the corridor behind me. “Take them across the road, to the empty grocery store on the other side,” I told her. “Clara will be there.”

Beatrice peered out the door, watching the narrow street that ran beside us. The water pooled by the cracked curbs, spreading out in vast, murky puddles. The only sound was the rain as it hit the side of the stone building. “Then what?” she asked.

“I’ll bring the rest of them as soon as they’re ready.” I turned down the hall, toward the stairs, as Beatrice left. I looked up the first long flight. The girls from my School were several floors above, waiting to be brought back to that building across the lake. I had to at least try. Didn’t I owe them that?

“Quickly,” I said, turning to the girls in the hall. A few more trailed out of the room, thick sweaters pulled over their jumpers. Others filed out behind Beatrice. When I turned back to the stairs I heard it: the quick, constant clomp of boots descending the steps. Two flights up, a female soldier peered over the railing, spotting me, her face tense as she drew her gun.

I started down the hall, pulling the stairwell door shut and rolling a rusted metal cart in front of it to slow her. “Go,” I yelled, gesturing for the girls to follow Beatrice out the side exit. “Now!”

Five of them stood by the door. “You have to trust me,” I yelled, running up behind them. Slowly, the girls started outside and into the rain, holding their bags above their heads as they ran. I followed behind them, urging them to move faster, to weave through the alleyway to the abandoned store, where Beatrice and the others waited, their figures barely visible beneath the ripped awning.

I splashed through the ankle-deep puddles, letting the rain soak me again. When I looked back the soldier was emerging from the side of the building, two more men in tow as they started after us. As soon as I reached the store I sprinted out front, ignoring the sound of the Jeeps as they sped south on the road, toward us, their headlights illuminating the dark.