Eve of Man Read online

  The crowd surrounding me loses its collective balance and falls back, releasing its grip on me. My body hits the water, but I’m back on my feet in a split second, fists ready for whoever gets up first.

  The surrounding men stand slowly and I see their faces up close for the first time. This isn’t like watching them on realiTV monitors, zooming in from my dorm as they protest outside. This is real. I can smell their matted beards, their sweat-soaked clothes. I can see the passion in their bloodshot eyes, their hate for me and everything I represent. No, everything I used to represent.

  As I stare back at the ten or so men who front the hundred-strong crowd, I see the Tower behind them. Its sleek metal frame, its impenetrable concrete walls. It is ugly, inside and out. Impressive, but ugly. Here in front of me, for the first time, I’m seeing something real. Men who stand for something they believe in, something I’m only just starting to understand. The truth.

  “Wait,” I say, holding up my hands. “I’m not what you think I am. I’m not one of them.”

  I point to the Tower looming over all of us. Suddenly I see the damage on my chute. Water is pouring out of holes from an explosion. I’m lucky I made it.

  “Your uniform says you are,” a gritty voice grumbles back at me.

  I look down at my jumpsuit. My name badge and the mission patches sewn onto my chest and arms give me away.

  “I know what this looks like, but it’s not what you think. I’m not one of them anymore.” I try to sound genuine, which is always harder when you’re actually being honest.

  “Don’t listen to this shit-stain. He’s like every one of those bastards keeping her locked up in there,” the heavy younger Freever says.

  “Wait, look!” one of the oldest says through his gray, soggy beard. His deep brown, heavily scarred face glares menacingly across the flooded courtyard at my uniform. “Look at his patch…He’s a pilot.”

  Whispers and gasps ripple back into the crowd and they fall silent around me. I stay quiet. My heart races.

  “Is it true?” the gritty voice asks, his hard black eyes piercing into my own. “You’ve met Eve?”

  Do I tell them? Would they even believe me? Can I trust them?

  I nod, and as my mouth opens, something falls from the sky above, dropping through the purple clouds, buzzing like wasps from hell. Drones.

  “Run!” the man orders. “Retreat!”

  It’s like someone has dropped a bomb of chaos on the protesters. A human stampede erupts in my direction as the sleek black craft scan the hundreds of faces, dropping Fear Gas canisters on particular areas once they’ve established I’m not there.

  I get body-slammed to the ground. My head slips below the surface of the water, where the booted feet of Freevers stomp any serenity to death.

  Suddenly I’m pulled up. I can breathe again.

  “If you’re a pilot, you’re coming with us.” The scarred man’s breath stinks as he spits his words at me, an inch from my face.

  I look into his eyes. “Get me as far away from here as you can, and I swear I’ll help you get what you want.”

  He looks back up to the Tower with a smirk. “You know how many of you ‘insiders’ have said that? How many times we’ve paid for knowledge, put our trust in men of your kind, and got nowhere?”

  “You’ve never had anyone like me before.” I grab his arm. “I promise you that.”

  He takes in my words. Then he nods, drops of water falling from his matted gray hair, a few wild dreadlocks whipping around as he stands to command his team. “Let’s go,” he orders. His men reach down into the water, pull out homemade riot shields, and lift them over their heads. As we hunch together beneath them and march out through a hole blown into the perimeter fence, I steal a final look up through a gap in our protection at the Tower, and although I can’t see the Dome through the clouds, I stare in its direction and make her a promise.

  I’m coming back for you.

  37

  BRAM

  The wind pushes my cheeks back as we speed through what were once the streets of this enormous city, in what I heard one of the Freevers call a pod. It’s a homemade boat, its curved-glass bottom allowing us to sail silently and speedily away. The makeshift engine strapped to the back is pretty impressive for tech they’ve botched together out of whatever they could find or steal.

  “When we get closer, blindfold the pilot,” I hear the scarred man bark. I assume he’s their leader. The younger, larger one nods and picks up a length of black material.

  “Two more of ’em coming in!” cries a Freever from the pod sailing to our left, as it weaves between the rooftops of two sunken buildings.

  The seven men in my pod look in the direction he’s pointing, as do I, and see the two remaining drones following us. I’d watched the Freevers take down five in our escape through the perimeter wall, so these two shouldn’t be a problem.

  “Down ’em,” the leader orders.

  The pod beside us immediately slows and falls back. It pulls up next to a flat rooftop that sits a meter above flood level. Two men climb up, silhouetted in the light emitted by the enormous Tower in the distance. Although we’re a few miles clear of the perimeter, the Tower doesn’t seem any smaller. In fact, against these sunken relics of Central’s ancient landmarks, it seems even more colossal.

  Two rockets blast into the sky, illuminating the floodwater as they explode like violent fireworks. Instead of pretty little sparks twinkling like starlight, sharp lightning bolts zap in every direction, electrifying anything they connect with: clouds, buildings, water—drones.

  Both drones fizz and fry in the bolts, then drop out of the sky, making huge waves that rock our pod as they hit the water.

  “Salvage!” the scarred man calls. The two men drop back into their pod, head to the crash site and begin pulling the smoking drones out of the water. So that’s how they get their tech. Smart.

  The scarred man nods and our pod picks up speed, throwing cold, salty water into my face. I swallow a mouthful and cough it back out. The men laugh, but I don’t mind: it’s refreshing to feel something real. If my life weren’t in some serious danger right now, I might even be enjoying myself.

  The buildings get taller as we head into the heart of Central, once called London, following the sunken streets below us, where the roots of these buildings now lie untouched at the bottom of this ever-growing ocean.

  Light from our pod streaks down into the watery ghost world below. My heart leaps as I see a face staring up from near street level, but it’s nothing more than a statue reaching up at us as if begging to be rescued. We turn a corner, floating above a wider sunken street, and I see more statues observing us from the depths, as if our presence is interrupting their peaceful sleep.

  I’ve seen photos of these statues, of when they stood gracefully in this glorious city, before the storms claimed it. Just like every other city, or so we’re told.

  I remind myself that I used to live out here, and as I take in the sights the city once had to offer, I can’t believe people still do.

  “Enjoying the view, are ya?” the fat one says, kneeing me in the back.

  “Just reminiscing, that’s all,” I say. “I lived here once.”

  “Really?” He whips the black material around my head and yanks me backward, slamming me onto the glass floor of the pod. “Welcome home.”

  I hear him spit and feel it land on my face. I crawl back to the side of the pod, irritated that I can’t see anything through the blindfold.

  Our boat makes multiple turns for the next ten minutes. I try to trace its movement in my mind. I’ve looked down on these streets from the Tower for most of my life and can recall them, like reading a map. If my senses are correct, I think we’re about to enter the area where the gaps between the rooftops widen, where the spires and towers of wrecked buildings don’t me
et, where the old river used to wind through them, like a snake.

  Wind rushes over my face and I sense more space around us. I’m right. We’re sailing down the old Thames route.

  There is a click, and even though I thought I couldn’t see, everything somehow gets darker. The lights of the pod have been switched off. We’re sailing in darkness now.

  “Dock them both and we’ll take the dinghy across,” the scarred man orders. No one replies, but I sense their compliance as our pod turns to the right and crosses the river.

  We slow, and through the gauze of my blindfold, I see light shining from somewhere outside our boat.

  “How many souls?” a young voice calls from alongside us.

  “All accounted for, plus one,” someone beside me replies.

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “Pilot.”

  There’s a silence and I sense people staring at me.

  “Say that again? I thought you said you’d picked up a pilot.”

  Someone grabs my arm and makes me stand. I feel his flashlight beam blast on my chest, lighting up my mission patches.

  “Not here, you idiots,” the leader barks. “Get him to Ben, and then you kids can gossip all you want.”

  “Yes, Frost. I mean, sir. Sorry, sir,” the young voice stutters.

  Our pod hits something metallic and I lurch forward as the entire boat is hoisted out of the water. We come to a complete stop. No motion at all.

  In the slight pause in our journey my head fills with questions. Where are we going? Have we arrived? Can I escape? Who is Ben?

  Suddenly I’m lifted from the curved glass deck, and my stomach hits my throat as I fall.

  The water pierces my skin as I sink into it, the cold gripping my bones, like the icy hands of the Grim Reaper pulling me down. They’ve thrown me overboard. I splash with my arms and feel the cold grip me tighter. Suddenly they pull me up and out of the water.

  I flop into a dinghy, still blindfolded. Voices laugh and argue around me as I cough up salt water into the boat.

  “Jesus, if you’re gonna spew, do it over the side,” a new voice, with a hint of the north, says, as a nudge with his foot shows me where the side of the rubber boat is.

  I haul myself up onto it and feel the vessel speed off. I take the opportunity to adjust my blindfold minutely, giving me the thinnest sliver of a view down the crack between my cheek and the material.

  As we cross to the other side of the river, I see the glass pod we traveled in resting in its dock, suspended in a giant circular metal frame, half of which is submerged beneath the water. Freevers making good use of Central’s history.

  Resourceful bunch!

  As the small boat bounces across the open stretch of water, I tilt my head to see where we’re headed and realize I know where we’re going. I know exactly who Ben is.

  38

  EVE

  Hours pass, with us women cooped up in the safe room, wondering what’s going on outside as we putter around aimlessly. There’s no way out: they’ve locked us in.

  Drinks are poured, more food is eaten, card games are played and naps taken—all while we wait for the phone to ring so that we can know more of the incident that has disrupted our daily routine and removed Bram.

  I lie on the bed, monotonously playing with my Rubik’s Cube while my head becomes a little less giddy, thanks to the food I’ve been eating. I wonder what Bram could possibly have done to spark such a panic. The realization that they haven’t sent a Holly to me keeps playing on my mind. I shouldn’t be surprised, given that it was one of the Holly team who caused the lockdown, but the significance of my being put into a room that I didn’t even know about is telling. If I didn’t know about it, I can only assume the Hollys didn’t either. And that must be what they want—to put me somewhere he can’t find me. The thought sends a chill up my spine and makes me shudder. I don’t want to think of us no longer being allowed that connection, or of him not being here. He’s been the sparkle in my day for as long as I can remember.

  I wonder what could possibly have happened. It’s been two days since we had our moment on the Drop, and I don’t believe it’s taken this long for him to be reprimanded.

  He cared too much to leave me. I know he did. I don’t believe he would just have left without saying anything, without giving me an inkling that he was thinking about it. But I’d been pushing him more and more with each visit to show me himself. Maybe they deemed him too much of a risk. Or maybe he found out something and threatened to tell me. Perhaps they wanted him to do something he was uncomfortable with and Vivian sacrificed him as an example of what happens if you don’t obey orders. Or maybe he’d had enough of life up here and just felt like getting out.

  Even I don’t believe that, but the possibilities are endless, and unless someone is willing to give me answers, I guess I’ll never know the truth.

  This is how my time has been spent: I’ve been worrying about Bram and dreaming of all the things I don’t know about life in the Tower and the world outside, and how I can find out what’s being kept from me.

  A trio of musical notes sounds loudly, causing the women around me to hush their conversations and focus on the screen as it flickers from its usual logo to Vivian’s face.

  I move to the other side of the bed to get a better view. She looks as stern, cold, and unperturbed as usual, her eyes squinting through the screen as though she can see each and every one of us. Maybe she can. I’ve no doubt they’ve got cameras on us here too. She sits there, as still as stone, waiting to ensure she has our full attention.

  It looks as though she’s linking in from her office, although I doubt she’d have remained in there with all of us herded into this little bunker. I imagine the thought of being here with us was too much. I’ve no doubt her office is just as protected as this room and more practical: she can still control everyone from there. And we all know how much she loves control. She’s an important woman, after all. I’m sure anyone of such stature has enemies regardless of their behavior, but as she’s heartless, I’m sure she’s more hated than anyone else. But maybe I’m wrong: it was the people who put her in that position of power. I think back to the Vivian I used to know and the woman my mother talks about in her letters. It’s hard to believe they’re the person I’m watching on the screen now. They’re worlds apart.

  This Vivian is so driven, determined, and focused she’s forgotten how to be human. How can such a woman be in charge of mending the human race?

  “Hello, ladies.” She sighs, acting exhausted while slowly tilting her head to one side, as though she’s trying to empathize with us cramped in here while she’s still out there. “We trust you’re comfortable. Well done for getting in there so quickly and without panicking—we’d never drilled for this scenario, but you coped with utter professionalism. Thank you,” she says, bowing her head slowly. I look around and see many of the women nodding and smiling, finding joy in her praise, but I don’t buy it. I don’t think it’s genuine, either her words or their reaction to them.

  “Now,” Vivian continues, “I know you’ll all be wondering what’s going on, but it’s for your own security that we keep certain matters classified. They do not concern you up there, as we’ve ensured you’re safe, as is Eve. That is all that matters, and that alone must always be at the forefront of your minds. Rest assured, we are dealing with the situation, and things will be back to normal soon. The intolerable problem will be eliminated promptly. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Vivian’s face fades back into the logo as the same trio of notes rings out to let us know the message is over. We have learned nothing of the situation downstairs. The low grumbling that follows tells me some of the Mothers feel as I do, that they’re frustrated at being kept in the dark and cooped up in this room.

  I wonder if any are worried about Bram. He’s one of their
own, a friend in the Tower whom they’ve worked with regularly. They’ve grown to know him through Holly. I wonder if they’re afraid of him and glad to be in here, or feeling betrayed. Or, like me, just scared for him and what might happen if he’s caught.

  I saw what they did to Diego when he threatened my life. So although my heart is heavy at the thought of never seeing Bram again, I’d rather he escaped unharmed.

  As a tear drops onto my cheek, I slide under my duvet so that the Mothers can’t see me. I bury myself and close my eyes, willing the thoughts and fears looping through my brain to stop.

  Seconds later a hand lands on my arm and I feel someone lean over me, then plant a kiss on my cheek.

  “Please don’t cry, little one,” Mother Kimberley’s voice whispers with a quiver. “I’m so sorry we left you, Eve. We were wrong. We’re here for you. We’re yours.” Her cheek rests on mine for a few seconds longer. Then she leaves me on my own once more.

  They’re scared, I realize.

  At least when Vivian threatens me I know she can’t do anything to me. Yes, she can take away my possessions, my food, and lock me in my room. She said I’m a “small cog,” but I know I’m a vital one. Without this little cog, Vivian’s infrastructure would fall apart and she knows it.

  The Mothers, however, are in a more precarious position. I know Vivian wouldn’t think twice about making an example of one. If I’m a “small cog,” then I can’t imagine what she calls them when I’m not around.

  I think of my mother feeling like a failure after losing her sons, and of the many others who felt worthless because their natural ability to procreate no longer existed. Women haven’t had an easy ride. Those in charge have been working so mindlessly on the rebirth, fighting to bring a new generation of women into the world, they’ve forgotten to look after the ones who are here. They’ve been enslaved to Vivian, and I’m not sure she deserves that control any longer.