Eve of Man Read online

  “I bet you would if we were out on the Drop.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, looking up at her pinched face. I never see the beauty in this one, even though she’s the same aesthetically as the others. She makes Holly ugly, which is no easy feat.

  “Nothing,” she says, a little startled at being pulled up on her comment.

  “Right.” I feel my back prickle in self-defense.

  “It’s just you seem to open up more there.”

  “Must be the view,” I retort, leaving the room and slamming the door behind me.

  I shower off the day and throw on a loose-fitting black floor-length summer dress. I leave my hair to dry naturally, letting it hang over my shoulders, then head barefooted to the Drop.

  I ache to see her.

  It irks me that the special connection with my Holly has been noted, but something within me doesn’t care. We’re currently counting down to a life-altering change that is beyond my control and will imprison me more inescapably than ever.

  This is it.

  The last bit of time for me.

  The end of my so-called youth.

  “What took you so long?” I ask a few minutes later. I feel as if I’ve been sitting on my own for hours, even though I know it could only have been a few minutes.

  As I ask the question, I suddenly feel a pang of fear that it’s not her. It is, and my smile grows in a way it never has before, surprising me. That cements what I already know.

  “Nothing.” She shrugs, giving a subtle frown.

  “What are you wearing?”

  She looks down and her jaw drops at the sight of her frilly pink lace gown. It’s awful.

  “Just a casual number.” She laughs, breezily arching her back against the metal pole frame of the Drop and stretching out her arms in a dramatic pose.

  “It suits you.”

  “You think?” she asks, a cheeky glint in her eye that causes another smile to form on my lips.

  “I’ll have to see if they do something similar in my size,” I say through muffled giggles. “You’ve always been such a fashion icon to me. Vivian would be so pleased that I’m following your lead.”

  “I’m sure she would.”

  I enjoy the easy laughter that descends upon us.

  “So how was it?” she asks, draping her arms over a railing and looking out at the view. “As horrendous as I imagine?”

  “It was fine,” I lie. “Crazy to think a small part of me is going to be meeting him in some science lab downstairs soon.”

  “And that something so tiny has the potential to have such a huge impact on the world,” she says, not looking at me.

  “That too,” I say, but the thought of what will take place the next couple of times I’m in that room is making me feel uneasy. It’s what I’ve chosen, but that doesn’t mean I want it to happen. It was simply the lesser of two evils.

  “Did it hurt?” she asks quietly, catching my eye before bashfully looking at the clouds below.

  Her question surprises me, mostly because of the genuine anguish on her face, as though any pain I might have felt would affect her too somehow.

  I shake my head, giving a noncommittal smile that I know she’ll see through.

  “Sorry,” she says, trying to gather the endless material of her dress behind her knees so that she can sit next to me. There’s so much that it’s not an easy maneuver. If it weren’t for the current topic of conversation I’d find her struggles hilarious.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say, tearing my eyes away from her to look ahead. “It’s the world we live in. The life I was born into. I should be used to it.”

  “Yeah…,” she says. She opens her mouth to say more but stops. She blows out a lungful of air.

  “And I was used to it,” I say thoughtfully, letting my mind wander. “There was a proper plan before and I knew what lay ahead of me. I didn’t expect this series of events.”

  “No one could’ve predicted it.”

  “I guess not.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments. A comfortable one, but it’s a rarity for us nonetheless.

  “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to live in a different time?”

  “Like when?” she asks, moving her weight backward so that she’s resting on her elbows and looking at the sky above. I copy her.

  “I don’t know.” I sigh. “The 1960s, when they danced all the time?” I suggest the first era that pops into my head. I think it was a happier time in our history.

  “I bet they didn’t really.”

  “Are you saying my history lessons are founded on lies?”

  “N-no!” she stammers.

  I laugh. “Or maybe the seventeenth century, when I could’ve been a grand thespian on the stage, spouting Shakespeare in a melodramatic voice,” I say, swinging my arms around.

  “Young boys played girl roles back then. You’d have had no chance.” She giggles with me.

  I can’t help but turn my head so that I can take in her perfectly sloped upturned nose and pink heart-shaped lips—a boy playing a girl. Imagine that.

  “What is it that makes you wonder about those times?” She coughs, her laughter dying. Sitting up, she scratches her ankle, as though it’s not the conversation that’s made her move.

  “I just bet it was simpler.” My eye is drawn to a little black dot far away in the clouds above. I watch it flicker and hover.

  “They all had their troubles,” she says, turning to me and gesturing for me to sit up.

  “And I’m just not told of them?” I ask, seeing the raised scar on my wrist as I push myself into a sitting position.

  “You know more than me,” she states, which is probably true, as she doesn’t come to those classes with me. I’ve no idea what Bram knows about our history or if what I know is even true. We joke, but they could’ve rewritten the whole lot to brainwash me into their way of thinking. There may be huge chunks of our past that I know nothing about because they’ve decided they aren’t right for me, and I wouldn’t have a clue.

  My mom trusted Vivian and the team around her. She’d suffered loss after loss and suddenly a powerful figure was taking care of her, saying they’d do everything in their power to bring her daughter safely into the world. Of course she trusted them. Of course she listened to their advice and did all they asked of her. She trusted their knowledge. She must’ve felt she had no other choice.

  I’ve lived under their knowledge for sixteen years, and although I might not have my mom’s experience of life out there, the manipulation in here has fogged my vision for long enough. It’s time things changed. It’s time to break down that wall and see through the cracks.

  “I wonder what it was like back then to fall freely and unequivocally in love,” I say, my voice shaking. I know where I want this to lead. “To follow your heart’s desire, to do exactly as it directs and not hold back.”

  “Every generation had rules, Eve,” she comments, adding flippantly, “except the 1960s—then they seemed to do whatever the hell they liked.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I say, although I can’t recall anything particularly interesting about that decade. “I wonder what it was like for my mother and father. To find love.”

  “Love?” she asks, her voice soft as the energy around us shifts, becoming charged once more.

  “Yeah…To find each other in a sea of thousands,” I add, forcing myself to continue—because I want to. I want to say these things to him. “Don’t you ever feel a grief over that? A loss for what should have been? We should’ve had that right. Love can’t be contained. But they’ve contained us.”

  “I…,” he flounders. I’ve caught him off guard. Him. She is only he to me now. I’ve become more aware of it in every conversation we’ve shared, in every thought I have of us when we’re not toget
her. I barely see Holly anymore. I just see those dark brown eyes. I see Bram.

  “Do you want to know the one thing I’m sad about?” I ask, my insides flipping.

  “What?” he croaks.

  “That I’ll never find out what it’s like to be kissed. Properly kissed. By someone I love.” That sentence takes my breath away.

  Now that I’ve said it I have to wait for him to grasp what I’m yearning for him to do. I keep my eyes low and almost closed as I turn my face in his direction. My lips prickle at the thought of what’s to come and how desperately I want it to happen. A huge part of me is scared he’ll just disappear before we get the chance. But it can’t be rushed.

  Ever so slowly I’m aware of his face behind hers moving toward mine. The world stops turning. I hold my breath as I lean over, my face edging closer to my best friend. My Holly, dressed in a ridiculous pink outfit yet looking as beautiful as ever. My lips become fuller.

  I close my eyes to see only him in my mind. “Kiss me,” I whisper.

  Then I feel him.

  24

  BRAM

  Connection lost.

  The words blind me as they illuminate the inside of my visor.

  “What happened?” I blast, holding my thumb and little finger together to speak directly to Hartman, in case Eve can still hear me.

  Eve. Our lips touched for the briefest moment, my first kiss with a female, her first kiss ever, and it was over almost before it had begun.

  “Hartman? What’s happening? Are we disconnected?” I ask, growing more frustrated at losing the moment. Eve chose me. I know she wasn’t kissing Holly. It was me she was reaching out to, the real me.

  I slip off my visor, half expecting to have it ripped from my hands and smashed around my head again. Instead I’m greeted with a far more concerning sight.

  “Miss Silva,” I say, dipping my head in respect as her unmistakable silhouette catches my eye while my vision adjusts to the darkness of the room. I’ve never seen her in the studio before. Something moves in my peripheral vision. I take a quick glance and see Hartman being escorted by security out through the door and into the locker room.

  “That’s mine. It’s got, er, sensitive data on it,” he cries as the guard rips his drive from the terminal and drops it into a black plastic bag.

  “I think we need to have a talk, Bram, don’t you?” Vivian says calmly, hands behind her back, her cold face catching the dimmed lights of the studio.

  Hartman is shoved out of the room and the door hisses shut. It’s just me and Vivian now.

  I’m suddenly cold and very aware of how exposed I feel, wearing nothing but a Lycra bodysuit in front of her.

  She says nothing but instead lets my brain do the work for her. The silence is intimidating. She emits power so effortlessly that I’m defeated already.

  “Hartman had nothing to do with that. It was all me,” I say.

  “That may be so, but you are a team, and the actions of one impact on the other. He could have asked you to stop. He could have made us aware if he was troubled by your recent behavior.”

  “You mean report me?” I ask.

  “Precisely. He is the only one of your team not to have done so.” She pauses to let those words sink in.

  The entire squad has reported me? Have I been that reckless? Have my actions been so obviously selfish? Have I actually put in jeopardy what we’re trying to achieve? The future of humanity? My heart is beating almost as fast as it was a few moments ago, when my lips were millimeters away from Eve’s.

  Almost.

  “You’re suspended, Bram,” Vivian says. “You and Hartman.”

  “No, you can’t. Not now. We’re so close. This is what we’ve been working toward our entire lives. She needs me right now,” I beg, realizing I won’t be able to see Eve. I’ll never get that moment back.

  “Have you forgotten your place?” Vivian says calmly, almost as though she revels in my panic. “Eve doesn’t need you. Eve does not need Bram Wells. Eve needs Holly.” She corrects my obvious blunder. “Eve will get her scheduled time with Holly as she always does, except the person behind the eyes will not be you until you have proven to us that you are once again up to the standard we require of our pilots.”

  I can’t look at her. There’s so much history between us. I’ve grown up here. I’ve stood in front of her as a boy, being given my orders for what she wanted me to get Eve to do. Now I’m eighteen, a man, but I feel like that little boy again.

  “You’re to take a week to retrain yourself. To get your head back into shape. We need you, Bram, now more than ever, but I cannot allow you to be with Eve until you remember why we’re all here. We need you, but you’re still replaceable.” Vivian stares at me and I bow my head to let her know that I’ve heard her words, that I have absorbed and understood them.

  She turns to leave and waits for the door to slide open. Before she goes she glances back at me.

  “Oh, and, Bram, it’s not just your career on the line. If you don’t get back into shape you’ll be escorted from the Tower and off base for good. Out into the world down there. You and Hartman. Don’t forget that.”

  * * *

  —

  “You idiot!” I scream at myself as I punch the locker. I pull my fist out of the dent that has formed around my knuckles and thrust it back in, making the dent twice as deep. “What were you thinking, you complete moron?”

  I slam my head into the sheet metal and hold it there, trying to calm the raging thoughts in my brain.

  “Yeah, exactly. What were you thinking?” Hartman interrupts my moment of self-punishment as he enters the locker room carrying the black bin liner containing his hard drive.

  “I’m so sorry, man. I just got carried away. She leaned in for the kiss and I…”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” he says, and I can’t help but notice his concerned frown. “Dude, are you all right?” He places his hard drive on the bench and approaches me. It’s only as watery droplets frame my vision and blur the edges of the room that I realize I’m crying.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine.” I laugh it off, wiping away the tears before they fall. “It’s just a bit overwhelming, all this.”

  “I know it’s hard for you, Bram. You’ve grown up with Eve. You’ve spent your whole life working toward what’s about to happen in the next few weeks, and it’s natural that you’re going to feel more emotional about it than the rest of us.” Hartman tries his best to console me. If he weren’t so off the mark it would probably have had some impact.

  Sure, everything he’s saying is correct. It is more emotional for me than the others. I’ve been here from the start and we’re approaching the moment we’ve all been working so hard for. But the truth is, I don’t think I’m upset about that. As I search my brain, the thing that keeps coming back to me is that somehow I have to finish that kiss.

  25

  EVE

  The kiss. The kiss. The kiss.

  I sit there with my eyes closed for what feels like hours. Every little hair is standing on end. My whole body feels alive, wanted, and wanton. Heat gathers at the spot where our lips met, then disperses, touching every inch of me, even my toes.

  I breathe into it, loving the silent buzz that surrounds us, numbing any rational thought that might be urging me to stop. I won’t. I don’t want to hear it. Not now.

  Nothing else matters.

  Just.

  That.

  Kiss.

  When I feel him leaving, when I know they’ve taken him from me, I stay there, kissing the air, still able to feel the energy we’ve created, thanks to the burning sensation on my lips.

  My body is relaxed, and I’m the happiest and most content I’ve felt in ages. Possibly ever.

  Who’d have thought one of the Hollys could make me feel like this? Perhaps I should feel f
oolish for not having spotted the potential spark between us sooner.

  Potential spark.

  Potential.

  Could Bram be a Potential? Would they allow it?

  The butterflies swirling in my tummy tell me it has to be a possibility. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Whatever hoops they made Connor, Diego, and Koa run through to get into that meeting room, whatever tests they completed, whatever special DNA they carry to have made it as a Potential, can’t be compared to the natural chemistry between Bram and me. It’s the same as what happened with my mother and father. Like them, what we share is real. It’s magical. And they allowed me to make a decision about the last meeting with a Potential. That must mean my own opinions and desires have some weight finally—so they’ll listen.

  Suddenly my mouth curls into the biggest grin my face has ever cracked and a giggle spills out of me, forcing me to cover my mouth with both hands as the laughter grows. The cold metal of the Drop is beneath me as my back collapses against the floor.

  I was blind before to the oppression and control, even if that’s not the intention of those who lovingly care for me, like the Mothers. I’ve always known the direction my life is heading, my purpose, but as I look at the blue skies above me I am hit by an overwhelming sense of hope. For once the future holds something special for me. I finally care about it and the life I may be able to live that would fill me with happiness.

  I wonder how they could change the current arrangements to accommodate Bram and whether there would be a proper meeting, like I had with Connor and Diego. It would be awkward with everyone surrounding us, and I know I wasn’t keen on having one with Koa, but this is different. I know Bram to some extent, and he certainly knows me. This meeting wouldn’t be for us to confirm what we already know about our connection, but to highlight the strength of our feelings to them, so that they couldn’t dispute them. They would have to support us.

  I don’t see how they couldn’t.

  Minutes and hours pass while I dream, wondering what the next stages might be. I even think of our wedding. They probably don’t happen very often now, with the numbers dwindling outside, but it would give the people a surge of hope that the old life is returning for future generations.