Rebels of Eden by Joey Graceffa

Author:Joey Graceffa
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atria/Keywords Press

I WORRY THAT we’re going to be saddled with all of the other prisoners. Is it selfish of me that I don’t really want to save everybody right now?

You do want to save everyone, Yarrow clarifies in my head. Big-picture everyone. Just not these people, at the moment anyway Ash and Lark first, and then all of humanity. Anything in between is too hard right now.

See, she gets me.

The only one who doesn’t come with us is Old Leo. We leave him still sitting in his corner, gently rocking, rolling his tongue around the secret seed he has hidden. I try to talk him into escaping with us. “They’ll torture you again, try to erase your memory, change who you are.”

He just looks at me serenely and says, “How can they change who I am? I’m me. Who else could I ever be? Even if I die, I’m still me.”

The rest come with us. Everyone wants to get back to wherever they came from. No one more than the green-haired inner circle elites. I think they realize now how real their little adventure has gotten. Heedless of danger in their haste to get home, they take the lead down the corridor.

“Sweet eye effect,” the nicest of the three elites tells me as she scurries after her friends. “Two colors: half citizen, half second child. I think I might try that. Birdy! Wait for me!” She flutters her little white hand in farewell as she and her high society friends look for a way home. If we are in the outer circles, I wonder how long they’ll last out here.

After many twists, turns, and dead ends, the long, unused corridor has led us to the surface—to a war zone.

A war zone full of smiling people.

It is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. We come out onto the street in a narrow alleyway that is shrouded from the slanting, dim morning sun. From the shadows I look out at a broad outer circle street where the windows are either smashed or boarded up. Glass and building plaster litters the street. There are no bots scurrying to clean the mess.

“This is the next-to-outermost ring,” Lachlan says after a quick reconnaissance peek. “It was heavily involved in the rebel fighting, but the Center got it under its thumb once the Eden-wide mind control was upgraded.”

I can see evidence of the battles all over the street. Amid remnants of destruction people walk with absolute calm, like they are strolling through a flower-filled meadow on a sunny day. They are smiling. When they cross paths with another person, they nod. Their faces are relaxed; even the middle-aged people look strangely young, without the slightest tinge of worry clouding their faces.

Mira and Carnelian come up behind me. At first they are staring open-mouthed at the tall buildings. “It’s all so bare, and angled, and hard!” Mira shivers as she clutches Carnelian’s hand as if for protection. “It’s awful.”

And she hasn’t even seen the worst of it yet.

We see a small group of children pass by.

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