Rise An Eve Novel

building, I tried the next set of doors, then the next. The soldier broke into a sprint, his pace overtaking mine as I struggled, trying to find an entrance. Within seconds he had caught up.
    “Princess,” he said, his knife out. He grabbed my arm and pulled me around, nicking the restraints with the blade. “There. I thought you could use help.”
    The blood went back into my hands, the cold, tingling feeling startling me awake. I squeezed my fists shut, trying to get the warmth back into my fingers. He was only a year or two older than me, with buzzed orange hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose. I vaguely recognized him as one of the soldiers who’d been stationed in the Palace conservatory. His gray eyes searched my face, my arms, then drifted down to my stomach. I realized then—he’d known I was pregnant.
    He glanced over his shoulder, watching the remnants of the crowd coming from the main road. Another soldier appeared across the canals, at the edge of the bridge, and my rescuer started off again, running east, away from me. He nodded before turning behind the old hotel.
    I sprinted toward the Outlands, moving past the monorail, which was frozen overhead. In the distance, beyond the remaining hotels, the land opened up to dry, gray patches of sand. I ran past a parking lot. A few bodies lay there, the blood congealed on the pavement in horrible, blooming puddles. I turned away, trying to keep my eyes on a three-story warehouse ahead of me. A group of eight or so people funneled inside. A woman in a ripped coat was the last one in, and she turned, pulling the door shut behind her.
    “Wait!” I yelled, glancing back to the main road. The sound of gunfire was coming closer. “One more,” I said quickly, starting inside.
    “Not her,” a man with disheveled black hair called out from just beyond the doorway. “We’ll be tried for siding with the rebels.”
    The woman’s face was thin and pale, the skin on her neck loose with age. “Only if the rebels lose,” she said, turning back to him. “She’s pregnant. We can’t let her stay out here.”
    There was arguing inside. I glanced behind me, watching as the soldiers from the colonies spread out, starting through the streets. Two darted north, turning before they saw us hovering at the door.
    “Please,” I pleaded.
    The woman didn’t bother asking the others again. Instead she pulled me past her, into the dark warehouse, and locked the door behind us.

thirty-one
    THE SUN SLIPPED AWAY. THE SKY TURNED A DEEP PURPLE, THE stars dusted over the giant dome, disappearing behind the smoke that billowed up from the wall. There were thousands of soldiers. The trucks and Jeeps were scattered to the west, just outside the City. I couldn’t make them out in detail, but rebels still climbed from their covered beds, moving toward the broken City gate, their bodies barely visible in the growing dark.
    I gripped the roof ledge, and a few women crowded in behind me, looking over the Outlands. The army from the colonies was still covering territory, branching off onto the side streets, banging on doors of dilapidated apartment complexes. They worked their way through the garment factories and around the crop fields to the west. There were thousands of them, some pulling through in restored vehicles similar to the government Jeeps, others on foot. They all had a piece of red fabric wrapped around the arm, some carrying guns, others knives.
    We’d been on the rooftop two hours, possibly more. Time passed quickly as the rebels came south, appearing less than half a mile away. I saw two New American soldiers on one of the roads below. They knelt down, their guns in the dirt in front of them, their hands raised in surrender. When a rebel approached, he lashed their wrists together, lining them up against the wall.
    “We were supposed to outnumber them,” a woman behind me muttered. She was a head taller than the rest of us, her fingers pressed to her cheek. “They said the colonies didn’t have the resources to reach us.”
    “It was a lie.” I barely turned as I addressed her. My eyes were fixed on the growing number of rebels that appeared in the streets, moving under the monorail, closer toward us. Whenever I’d heard my father speak of the colonies, it was to tell people how lucky we were, here inside the City, what luxuries we had compared to those who’d assembled in the east. He’d described the two largest colonies in Texas and