Zoe Thanatos (22 page)

Her head titled back as he leaned
in, his mouth on hers again. The kiss was gentle, his lips parting around hers.
His hands moved to her waist as he kissed her, his arms keeping her close to
him. The kiss deepened, his lips capturing her bottom lip and pulling softly.
When he met her mouth again she parted her lips further, inviting him in. She
moaned at the taste of him in her mouth, the inviting warmth of his tongue
caressing her own. Her chest became tender as it pressed against his, skin
desiring to touch flesh. She could feel her pulse between her legs, the pumping
of her heart reverberating against the most delicate of her senses.

His hands found their way beneath
her top, his touch electrifying her nerve endings as his hands moved up and
along the sides of her ribs. She felt his desire grow as his hands moved around
her, his thumbs brushing unhurriedly beneath the delicate cup of her breasts.

Her hands moved to shoulders,
feeling the breadth of hard muscle beneath the fabric of his shirt. She moved
up and over until her fingers felt the muscles of his shoulder blades moving as
he touched her.

He slowed the cadence of their
kiss, bringing her back to the pleasant sensation of his lips between hers.
After a moment his lips separated from hers, and she found her eyes felt soft,
unwilling to open as though coming out from a deep sleep. She leaned in and
kissed him again, her lips moving into a smile against his mouth. She could
still feel the stiffness of his body against hers, her bottom lip receding in
between her teeth as she smiled happily up at him.

“You’re smiling again,” he said,
his own mouth curving into a brilliant, teeth-bearing smile.

“You made me happy,” she whispered
back, fully enjoying the sensation. She’d forgotten what the warmth of
happiness felt like, how it made everything come to a standstill.

“I must be a very lucky man.” His
hands moved from beneath her blouse, his fingers trailing back down along the
length of her torso before tugging the fabric down around her. He cupped her
face in his hands and brought her to him again for another kiss. A small moan
escaped her as he did, gently vibrating the air between their lips.

A knock brought Zoe’s attention
back to reality just outside her happiness. Although no one entered she knew
that Eva on the other side, respectfully announcing that their time was up.

A thought occurred to her as she
stood still in his arms, her eyes still on the door. She turned and looked up
at him, his bright green eyes locked with her own dark brown.

“Don’t let me forget who I was when
you met me, especially if come back a different person.”

“Okay,” he promised, though to her
it sounded more like a question.

“Promise me,” she insisted.

“I will if you promise to come
back.”

“That’s the plan. At least, I hope
it is. I hope your sister knows what she’s doing.”

Evan expelled a breath and leaned
his forehead against hers, his fingers tangling with hers as he held her hand.
“So do I.”

They kissed again before parting, and
then together they walked for the entryway, Evan’s hand on the small of her
back as they made their way to the common room.

Eva was crouched over the bag Zoe
brought with her from home, placing items inside until it was full to capacity.
She looked up at each of them as she stood and hoisted the bag’s strap up over
her shoulder. “Ready?” she asked.

Zoe looked up at Evan, then at Eva.
“As I’ll ever be.”

She stepped to the side as Eva
approached her brother, her arms wrapping around him protectively, his circling
around her waist. She kissed him on the cheek before taking a step backward,
standing by Zoe’s side.

“Remember, you’ll be able to find
her and I’ll always find you. Keep me updated about what’s going on here,
okay?”

Evan nodded at his sister, a small
smile on his face meant just for her.

“Take care of each other.” He
looked to each of them, his eyes settling on Zoe last. “Be careful.”

Zoe stood beside Evadine in the
glass corridor as she peered in to the great hall of the Transport Station.
When they crossed through the room together when Zoe first arrived, it was
filled with people as they made their way home, their voices like an electric
buzz cackling through the air. The room had emptied considerably since then,
and the only sound was that of the soft padding of feet shuffling around. Crown
Soldiers?

Eva turned towards her and set the
bag she’d been carrying down on the ground. In one quick motion she gathered
the thick strands of chestnut hair that had fallen over her shoulders and
pulled them back, looping her hair into a simple chignon.

“I don’t recognize any of the
Soldiers but we can’t take the chance that they recognize me. When we go in
just keep your eyes straight ahead and try to look inconspicuous. We should be
able to board the transport without any problems.”

Zoe nodded and adjusted her own
hair. She wasn’t used to it feeling so slick and straight at the nape of her
neck and pulled tightly enough to give her a slight headache. She checked her
own ensemble again, content that she looked as similar to Eva as she could.

“Follow me. Remember to just act
natural.”

Eva led the way as they entered the
hall, the awaiting transport sitting empty in the berth of the station directly
ahead of them. From Zoe’s peripheral vision she could see the Crown Soldiers watching
them, following their movements. Not a single one seemed to recognize Eva, who
looked decidedly different with her long hair pulled back discreetly.

Together they passed through the
pneumatic doors of the transport under the watchful eyes of the Crown Soldiers.
The interior reminded her of a futuristic rendering of a train from Earth with
slick aerodynamic lines and fancy seats arranged into compartmentalized
sections. Like the world around them everything was steel, glass, and
monochromatic. In fact, the only color she ever really saw was in the
picturesque projections of the glass walls. They took adjacent seats in the
middle of the car, the bag Eva carried placed protectively between them.  It
only took a few moments for the transport to come alive, humming with a slight
vibration as it began its departure.

The glass wall panels came to life
as they moved. Stretched out beyond them lay a wasteland of barren vegetation,
wilted trees, and dried up river beds. The atmospheric light was dull and grey and
Zoe couldn’t tell whether it was day, night, or somewhere in between. There
were no animals scampering across the land, no birds flying in the sky, not
even a sun.

“This is depressing. Who chose this
view?” she asked.

Eva looked up from the bag she had
been rifling through and shook her head. “No one. That’s Terra.”

“
What
?” Zoe took a second
look at her surroundings. She turned saw the real Royal City stretched out like
a behemoth, all concrete and steel against the same grey sky. She stood with
the city on her left instead of behind her and the wasteland to her right.

“This is what it really looks
like?” She looked from left to right, trying to understand how the dystopian
landscape to her right could be the same land beneath the never-ending expanse
of concrete and glass that made up the city.

“It’s been like this for most of my
life.” Eva closed the bag and leaned back in her seat, her right leg crossing
over the left as she sunk into the overstuffed cushions.

“It explains so much about Evan.”
Zoe snapped out of her thoughts and sat down again, turning her attention
towards her companion. “I remember him telling me he was taking a tour of the
California coast, having already made his way to Ventura and Santa Barbara from
San Diego. No wonder he was so enthralled by the ocean.”

 “I think I remember a lake we once
swam in as kids.” Her eyes froze on the middle-distance as a forgotten memory
came back to the forefront of her mind. “There must have been a few of us
there. The water was cold but we welcomed it. We swam until we were tired,
splashing each other and having contests to see who could hold their breath
underwater the longest. One of us, I can’t remember who, stepped on the jagged
edge of a rock that was hidden in the ground beneath the water. I’d never seen
blood like that before.”

It was a familiar story. “That
happened to me, too. I ended up with a scar in the shape of a half-circle on my
instep.”

Eva’s eyes focused on her, a
curious expression on her face. “About the size of my fist?” She held her hand
up to demonstrate the size.

Zoe’s memory was fuzzy at best, but
she definitely remembered the pain and the ugly scar. “Yes, about that size.”
She brought her right leg up, knee to chest, and set her heel on the edge of
the seat. She unlaced the heavy military-style boot Eva had lent her and pulled
it off. It fell to the ground with a loud thump. She angled her foot until they
could both see the half-moon shaped scar carved into her skin.

Eva looked astonished. “It must
have been you.”

“No, I remember. This happened at
the lake in-” her mind went blank. She’d had the memory in her head not a
moment before, and now it was gone, the walls of the memory fading away into
one she didn’t recognize. She was certain she’d been alone in the memory, but now
there were others, one child clearer than the others. It was a girl with dark
chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, and a cute face with an exuberant pink
smile. She looked like Eva.

“Are you okay?” Eva asked.

“I’m fine. It just makes me
wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“What else about my memory is
wrong?” She had little recollection of her time on Earth and yet she had been
there for possibly hundreds of years. At least one childhood memory from Terra
had somehow rewired itself for Earth. Were there others?

Eva’s hand went to Zoe’s and
squeezed it gently. “If everything goes according to plan you’ll be remembering
an entire life. I wouldn’t expect it to be easy.”

Zoe nodded. “I know. I just wonder
if I’m ready for my entire identity to change literally overnight.” She looked
up at the depressing scenery of Terra as the transport catapulted them along
the length of the city.

“We should be arriving soon.”

“Are you sure they won’t track us
there?”

“The transport makes a route from
the main Transport Station all the way to Last City and then back again. Unless
they’re specifically looking for us we’ll be fine.”

“Have you ever been there before?
The Forgotten Gardens?”

 “No. I don’t know anyone who has.
Until the King mentioned it I assumed it was just some mythical place that my
parents used to tell me stories about when I was little.”

“Then how do you know it’s real?”
She’d just assumed they all knew about the Forgotten Gardens. It didn’t even cross
her mind that the place might not physically exist outside the realms of
mythology.

“Well, supposedly it is our very
own Garden of Eden, a city rich in green life and water, not at all dissimilar
to your Earth. Take a look around you though,” she uttered, motioning to the
view of the barren landscape around them. “Does it look like there’s a paradise
anywhere?”

“So that’s what makes it mythical?
That no one is sure that it even exists?”

“Not exactly. I haven’t heard the
stories since my parents were alive but from what I recall, it’s where our
ancestors lived before Royal City was built. I guess it’s the original Royal
City. My mom used to tell me that it was the resting place for all the original
families, that their spirits lived on and that’s why it’s called the Forgotten
Gardens.” She let out a shallow breath of air. “For all we know it looks no
different from the rest of Terra.”

A foreboding feeling weighed Zoe’s
insides down. There were too many unknown variables and for all she knew they
were heading into a trap, or worse. There was also the issue of the gate in
Last City. From everything she’d heard from Eva and Evan, the gate was
essentially a crude imitation of the gates in the Transport Station. How could
they know for sure it would work the same way? The residents had supposedly
used the same technology as the real gates, but there was no way to know if it
was a true and working replica.

Her foot tapped rhythmically on the
transport floor, the sound echoing around them. She wondered how long it had
been since they left the Transport Station. It was difficult to gauge a
measurement of time in Terra, what with the artificial lighting and unnatural
surroundings. Even the real landscape of Terra gave no indication of the time
of day. She vaguely recalled Evan telling her that time worked differently,
that it wasn’t measured in minutes, hours, days and years like on Earth but in
generations, which could last hundreds of years in Earth time.

However hard she tried she just
could not understand the idea of timelessness. She was used to sunrises, high
noons, and sunsets, where the position of the sun and the moon in the sky told
her brain when to do what. She wasn’t even sure how long it had been since she
left home. Was it merely hours or could it have been days? She had only slept
once and barely enough to satisfy her mind’s need for unconsciousness. If not
for the constant visual stimulation of Terra her mind might give into the lack
of REM sleep and render her utterly exhausted.

It wasn’t until she felt Eva’s
hands on hers that she realized she had been fidgeting in her lap.

“Relax, Zoe,” she spoke. “You’re
not alone. I promised I’d take care of you and I will. We’re in this together,
okay?”

Zoe’s nerves receded and her
breathing calmed to a gentle rhythm. She focused on the crystal blue color of
Eva’s eyes as her hands and feet steadied, noting somewhere in the back of her
mind that her eyes were the color of the Santa Barbara sky. For whatever reason
it made her trust her more.