Once An Eve Novel

nudging her in the side. She had fallen asleep a few hours into the trip, her sobs giving way to exhaustion. Her face was red and streaked with tears, her eyes nearly swollen shut.
    “This is Stark,” the young soldier spoke into a handset in the front seat. “Nine-five-two-one-eight-zero. We have her here.” I cringed at how cocky he seemed now that he had me sitting, hands tied, in the back of the truck. He’d been in the front seat during the five-hour ride, talking the driver through each turn, answering the radio whenever it buzzed. The other two glanced at him before doing anything, as if seeking permission. An hour into the journey, Arden and I had loosened the plastic ties and tried to jump from the moving car, but the soldier in the backseat caught sight of us and tied our wrists to the Jeep’s metal carriage.
    The air filled with static. “Opening the gate now. You can pull inside,” a voice replied through the handset.
    I pulled at the rope threaded through my wrist restraints. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” Arden whispered, looking up at the wall. Her shirt hung loose around her chest, exposing the top of the thick pink scar. “All that talk about its grandeur. A bunch of crock.”
    Those twelve years I’d been at School it was always a point among the Teachers, and in all those radio addresses they broadcast in the main hall—the City of Sand was an extraordinary place, the center of The New America, a city in the middle of the desert, restored by the King. Pip and I had talked about our future inside its walls, of the massive luxury apartments overlooking elegant fountains, the train that passed on a track above the street, the shops filled with restored clothing and jewelry. We dreamed of the roller coasters and amusement parks, the zoos, and the towering Palace filled with restaurants and shops. This was nothing like the grand metropolis we’d envisioned. The wall was hardly higher than the one at School, and there were no glittering towers visible beyond it.
    The metal gate clanked and shifted, opening slowly. The pale soldier, whose name was Lowell, got out of the Jeep and circled around to Arden, cutting the rope that tied her to the carriage. Stark cut me free as the gate pulled back, exposing a short brick building. His hand was on my arm, moving me from the Jeep’s bed to the backseat.
    “No,” Arden muttered as we both realized where we were, her body turning to dead weight as she dropped to the ground. “I’m not going back.” Lowell yanked her arm, trying to get her on her feet.
    Standing on either side of the gate were Joby and Cleo, the two guards who had been fixtures at School for so many years. Their machine guns were aimed at the woods behind us. From the back, the brick building looked smaller than I remembered, with a row of low, barred windows. A grassy yard was beside it, surrounded by a chain-link fence, its top curved inward to prevent escape. A few of the girls were outside, dressed in identical blue paper robes, sitting at two wide stone tables.
    The Jeep pulled forward. I ran toward Arden, throwing myself at Lowell. I rammed my shoulder into his side, but with my hands tied behind my back, it was practically useless. He quickly caught his balance, then began pulling Arden through the gate. Cleo grabbed her legs to keep her from kicking. “You can’t do this,” I yelled. Stark’s hand closed around my arm as he escorted me back to the Jeep.
    “This is where she belongs,” he said coldly. I looked back at her over my shoulder. Arden struggled against the soldiers, her feet and hands still bound. Lowell covered her mouth as they entered the fenced-in area. He and Cleo passed her off to the two guards by the door as if she were a sack of rice.
    “Just one minute,” I pleaded, digging my heels into the earth, refusing to take even one more step. Stark turned to look at me, but his hand was still on my arm. “Can’t you allow me that? You have her here—you did what you came to do. I’m going to the City of Sand. Now I want one minute, just one, to say good-bye.” He stared at the high fences on either side of the dirt path, then at the building ahead, its stone facade nearly thirty feet high. The soldiers had pulled the Jeep sideways, blocking the gate. There was nowhere for me to go.
    Stark finally released me. “You have one minute,” he said. “Do what you need to.” I started up the dirt path, my skin stinging where he had