Escape to Eden (3 page)

What a horrible way to die.

A
fierce wind twists between the buildings, swinging my body on the cables like a plastic sack caught on a wire. After sliding further down on the wires, I hold my breath and close my eyes. There is a commotion above me as people search for the boy and me.

“She’s got to be here!” It’s a man’s authoritative voice. “Look everywhere.”

“You four go next door,” someone else says. Their running footsteps echo on the bridge. The movement rattles the metal, shaking the wires I’m gripping.

“Over here!” a man yells.

I open my eyes. Metal scrapes on metal. Suddenly I’m more frightened at what I hear than I am of falling.

“I found one!”

Several voices talk at once, but all I hear is a child whimpering.
The boy
. I move to leave my hiding spot, but logic stops me. I don’t know who this boy is, and besides, what can I do? I was lucky before, but now I’m out of ideas. Later I will return for him. When I know more. When I know who I am.

My heart aches when the boy cries louder. I shut out his voice and focus on the shrill sound of the wind. On the soft whirring of the vehicles below. On the sounds of footsteps slowly retreating back inside.

Hours pass, and my muscles are burning hanging onto the cables. I’ve shifted positions dozens of times to keep them from seizing up, but that is no longer effective.

The sunset provides a temporary distraction, sinking in swirls
of reds and oranges, then draining away until all that is left is black. I hang on in the darkness and the silence.

Very slowly, I begin to inch my way back to the end of the bridge. My muscles won’t let me move any other way. The cables tear open blisters that have formed on my hands. I grit my teeth and continue forward. When I reach the end, I drop my feet, and dangle next to the side of the building, so high in the air. This time I don’t look down. My muscles tighten for a few seconds and relax. They shake as I step upon a narrow lip of the bridge attached to the skyscraper. Painfully, I climb back onto the rooftop, and crouch low, hiding in the shadows.

No one is around. I’m tempted to return to where I hid the boy, just to be sure, but I spot a camera above the door pointed in that direction, like they expect me to come back for him. I purse my lips together. Later.

Bending low, I scamper across the bridge to the next building. I’m sure there are cameras there too, but shadows are my friends, my only ones, and I keep to them.

I stop next to the rooftop door and search all around. It doesn’t have the same security as the Institute’s. I open the door, careful not to leave blood from my palm on anything. No alarm goes off so I slip inside.

This building smells different, like beef stew with carrots and potatoes. A rumbling creates a pit in my stomach. I follow the scent down two flights of stairs until I hear voices. Through a window in a door, I spot rows and rows of room dividers, sectioning a massive room into small offices. In each cubicle sits a person with a headset. I squint to see if maybe they are like me. Their foreheads are, but the only way I will know for sure is if I see their eyes. I’m struck by what my memory is choosing to remember. Why can’t I remember the important things? I look down at my thin blue gown, at the bruise on my arm, and touch it lightly. Whatever happened, whatever put me in that place, it was bad. My heart, the way it feels as if there’s a great hole directly in the center, is my witness.

Just then the door opens. I stumble back, caught unaware. Just as surprised, a tall man with dark hair and eyes the color of gold
meets my gaze. I wait for his reaction. He stares for what feels like forever. My nerves can’t stretch any tighter. Finally my shoulders slump. I am completely exhausted.

“Help me?” My voice is small.

He turns from me to look up and down the stairwell. When he looks at me again his amber eyes turn a soft caramel. He is not like me.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

I open my mouth, hoping my mushy brain will have dried out a bit, but a name never comes. I shake my head beginning to breathe heavily.

“My name is Anthony.” His eyes flicker to the purple stain on my skin. “Your arm. May I see it?”

I hesitate, waiting for my instincts to guide me. Anthony is older than me, mid-twenties, perhaps, tall and well built with thick brown hair.

“You can trust me.” His eyes hold mine, his voice as smoothly modulated as music.

When an instinct doesn’t come, I raise my arm. He carefully lifts the wide sleeve of the gown and studies the bruise. “We have to get you out of here,” he says looking up. “Now.”

“Where?” I ask, but I’m too tired to care. Too tired to even think.

Anthony says nothing. He frowns, the first real expression I’ve seen on his face. He opens the door a crack and peers inside the giant room with all the people. “My office,” he says. “It is along this back wall in the corner.” The frown is gone, his face again smooth. “I’m going to distract everyone. When I do, I want you to cross quietly to it. Do you understand?”

I nod. For the first time since waking today, I take a deep, full breath. Someone is helping me.

He searches my face. “You’re going to be okay,” he says, “but no matter what happens, don’t let anyone see your eyes.”

I nod again. Eyes are important.

Anthony walks into the room and crosses to the far side. “Everyone, I’d like to make an announcement. May I have your attention, please?”

All heads swivel in his direction and when they do, I sneak in. I stay close to the wall and try to act invisible.

“Our daily quota has been met for twenty days in a row. Because of this success, I am allowing you all to go home early.”

There’s a buzz of voices and a few hands clap. I’m already inside his office, crouched on the floor. The room is gray, and a black desk takes up most of the space. Papers rest on top, neat and organized. A framed slogan on the wall reads: “MyTalk: Your Voice Matters.”

Anthony speaks again, “It is Friday night. I would like you to all,” he pauses only briefly, “to go have fun.”

The voices grow louder, but I don’t hear anyone moving.

“I’m serious,” he says. “Leave or I’ll change my mind.”

This time people move.

Several minutes go by before I take a chance and peek between the crack in the door. Most everyone has left, but a few people are gathered around Anthony, talking and laughing. They are beautiful people, perfectly symmetrical faces, smooth, flawless skin, some dark and some light. The eyes of two of them are the same gold color as Anthony’s.

I duck back when Anthony glances in my direction. “Go home. Have a good weekend,” he tells them.

Soon there is only the sound of footsteps approaching the office. Anthony enters the room and closes the door.

“Everyone’s gone,” he says. “You’re safe.”

He studies me for a moment, and I wonder if he thinks the same thing about me that Ebony thought, that I am simpleminded and plain—ugly. I have the urge to shrink into the wall.

“The Institute’s Security searched this building several hours ago,” he says. “They didn’t say for what, but it was for you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Where have you been hiding?”

I open my palms and stare down at the raw blisters. “Under the bridge. Hanging on the cables.”

A vertical line appears between his dark eyebrows. “You hung on this whole time?” He reaches into a lower drawer of the desk. “I only have a few,” he says as he removes something small and
clear, then he comes over to me and bends down. “We’ll put them on the worst ones.”

I hold out my hands, and he covers a translucent material over the wounds that have blood oozing from them.

“Thank you.”

He smiles. It transforms his face into something bright and welcoming. “You must have many questions. I am wondering why you’re not asking them.”

“I don’t know what to ask first,” I admit. “Everything is so confusing.”

“Here, have a seat.” He gently helps me off the floor and into his chair. Every muscle in my body fights the movement, and I wish I could lie down, but instincts, or maybe just common sense, tell me there isn’t time for that, and won’t be for a long time.

“Can you start by telling me what you remember?” he asks.

I inhale deeply. On my exhale, I say, “I woke up in what looked like a hospital room. I couldn’t remember anything: not my own name, or how I got there, or where I’m from. There was a woman there who called herself a Techhead.”

At this Anthony straightens, no longer leaning against the desk. “Did she tell you her name?”

“Ebony. She was really smart and was monitoring me or something. She said it was to keep me safe.”

The muscles in his jaw tighten, but a moment later his face is smooth again. “What happened then? How did you escape?”

“I’m not sure.” I shake my head. “Something inside me, an instinct, told me to flatter her.” I search his eyes for a reaction, but they give nothing back. I speak faster, telling him about the words on my fingers, the plastic spoon, about knowing how to paralyze the woman with the purple eyes, how I ran into the hallway and knew how to stop the lady with the white eyes, and how I knew about the giant, deformed man.

And I tell him about the boy.

My throat feels swollen all of a sudden. I should’ve done more to help him. I finish by telling him the boy was taken while I hid under the bridge.

He is back against the desk, studying me, his arms crossed to his chest. “An amazing story,” he finally says.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I do. It’s just remarkable that someone with no special abilities,” he pauses, then continues, “can do what you did.”

“But how did I? And why do they want me if I’m as unremarkable as Ebony said? Why am I so different from you? From them? And where am I?”

Anthony lifts his hand to silence me and smiles once more. “Let me answer what I can. First, you’re in Boston. You have just escaped from the headquarters of the Institute of Human Research and Development, a near-impossible feat, I might add. Obviously you have been well trained. You may not know who you are, but someone taught you the layout of the Institute, taught you about the different races, their weaknesses, their strengths. The training has been so ingrained into you that when you feel threatened, your instincts, as you call them, take over. As for why they want you, you’re different. An enigma they’d like to get rid of but can’t because they need you.”

“What do you mean?” A cold breeze—at least I think it’s a breeze—chills me.

Without saying anything, Anthony removes his suit jacket and wraps it around me. “Over a century ago, closer to two centuries, the world was a perfect place. No wars, no illnesses, prosperity for everyone.” He scoots more onto the desk, his legs dangling. “It was like this for a long time, but then man grew bored. You see, man by nature is a conqueror, so in a peaceful, illness-free world, what is man to do?”

He pauses, still looking at me. I’m not sure if he’s waiting for me to answer the question, because I can’t. My brain is still mush.

He continues, “With nothing to conquer, man turned on himself, searching desperately for a way to make us perfect. They created the Institute of Human Research and Development to search for ways to eradicate what they thought to be the weaknesses from human DNA, like being short, overweight, bad-looking, and so on.

“The experiments with DNA started out small. Scientists were
able to locate certain genes, the intelligent gene for example, and replicate it. They injected it first into newborns and, with some refinement, the experiments turned out to be a success. So they searched for other positive DNA traits to duplicate. When they were combined, they called this prime DNA. The rich paid enormous amounts of money to alter their children to be the smartest, fastest, prettiest kids around. It did not take long before others had access to the scientists’ research, much of it illegally. Criminals sold it on the black market. Some unscrupulous researchers, utilizing animal DNA, created whole new breeds of humans.

“A gulf opened between the altered and the unaltered population. To combat such an imbalance, the government issued a mandate that all schoolchildren would be injected with doses of pDNA to help them be the best they could be. It was believed at the time that this would solve the imbalance and cure the problems inherent in human behavior. Two generations passed before we started to notice complications. People began dying early from diseases no one had ever seen before, making the population decline rapidly. We call it the Kiss.”

I shiver at the name.

He looks back at me. “After a century of mass pDNA injections, humans became a genetically altered species. One that dies at a very young age. Scientists tried to fix the problem by adding synthetic DNA, but that only gave us abnormal abilities, some of them extremely dangerous.”

The woman with the white eyes
, I think.

“But for the majority of us, it is nothing so extreme. Amber eyes are the result of our ancestors complying with what their government required of them. A lot of us have developed minor enhanced abilities, but nothing to brag about. There are others, however.”