Michael Grant - Eve and Adam

We dash fifty feet down a long hallway. Solo stops at an office, panting, and stabs some numbers into a keyboard. The door opens. It’s dark inside.

“Office belongs to a dude who’s been on medical leave for months,” Solo explains.

Aislin reaches for the light switch.

“No.” Solo shakes his head. “No lights.”

There isn’t much to see in the office except the view out over the San Francisco Bay. Clouds hang thick on the Golden Gate. The stars are sparse, the moon visible only as a silvery glow without distinct location.

Solo pulls open a file drawer. “Either of you ever do any mountain climbing?” He has a big coil of rope in his hands.

“I have,” Aislin says.

I blink at her, sure it’s a joke. But she’s taken a length of webbing and some metal rings from Solo. She weaves the webbing through her crotch, pulls out one loop of the webbing, and clips on the ring.

“What?” she says, in response to our shared amazement. “It’s not all parties. My dad’s taken me top-roping at Tahoe a few times.”

We move out onto the balcony. The Spiker building glitters beneath us, spreading off to our right, a massive ornament of light perched above black water and invisible rocks. Solo ties the rope to the balcony railing and tosses the coil over the side.

He’s chosen his location perfectly. It’s one of the view spots in the complex where there’s a clear drop without terraces in the way.

The coiled rope falls into darkness. Has it reached the ground? No way to know. I can only hope Solo has planned well.

“Okay, Aislin, you go first,” Solo says. He helps her climb over the railing. “The figure eight may get twisted, so be careful.”

To my amazement, Aislin understands what he’s talking about.

She checks the rope and the carabiner like a pro and winks at me. I lean over to watch her fall, holding my breath. I’m not a big fan of heights.

She’s sort of bouncing down the side of the building, feet hitting balcony rails and plate glass, pushing off, dropping another few feet.

She disappears from sight.

“Is she okay?” I ask.

Solo points to the knot. “The rope is slack. She’s down, she’s unhooked, and she’s fine. Your turn.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” I say. Now that I’m faced with actually climbing over the railing, leaning back with nothing but a rope, I’m having serious doubts about this plan.

“Listen, you just need to—”

“I’m not a wimp,” I interrupt. “I could kick your ass in a 10K, no sweat.”

“I have no doubt of that.”

“But I don’t, you know, like high places. Falling from them, anyway.”

“I’ll carry you down,” Solo says.

“Not happening.”

“We are short on time, Eve. Tommy is on the hunt. Like I said, he’s not stupid. And if it hasn’t happened already, your mother will have security all over this. We have seconds.” He scrunches down a little so he can look me in the eye. “Don’t worry. I won’t drop you.”

“I could beat you in a 5K, too,” I add.

“Climb over the rail.”

I do it, fast, before I lose my nerve. The wind is cold and strong. I’m extremely aware that if my feet slip I’ll have a few seconds to scream before I hit the bottom.

I may be genetically modified, but I doubt my physical repair ability extends to recovering from death.

Solo swings easily over the railing. He loops the rope through his harness. He leans back, confident.

“Climb on,” he says.

“How?”

“Your arms around my neck, your legs wrapped around my waist. Try not to choke me.”

His body is at an angle to the building. He has one hand free. The other holds the trailing rope. Keeping all available hands on the railing, I turn to face him.

He pulls himself in closer, presses his body against mine.

Putting my arms around his neck is the easy part. The harder part is wrapping my legs around him. It feels ridiculous, and he has to lean slowly back to take my weight.

My calves are pressed hard against him. I don’t know what to do with my head. So I just look at him, and he looks past me at the rope. “Eve?” he says. “You okay?”

“Why do you insist on calling me Eve?” I ask, because I don’t really want to address the question of how okay I may or may not be.

“Dunno. Just feels right,” Solo says, and then we start to fall.

We float downward. When we slow and gently bounce, it drives me against him. We drop again and bounce. Fall, slow, impact. Fall, slow, impact.

“See?” Solo says, pausing halfway down. “It’s not hard.”

It takes me a few beats to realize he’s talking about the rappelling.

I snork a sudden, very stupid laugh.

He gets it, grins, looks away, and we bounce off again, falling, and now the truth is I am in no hurry to get to the bottom.

A final drop, and we land.

Aislin is waiting. It’s dark, so I can’t see her face very well, but her mocking, fake-disgruntled voice is clear enough.

“That’s so unfair. No one even told me coming down that way was an option.”

We are in weeds and rocks beneath stunted trees. The ground is so steep no one has ever made much of an effort to landscape it. It’s almost vertical from the foundation of the building down to the water.

“There’s a staircase, if we can get there before it occurs to anyone to cut us off,” Solo says. He points. “This way. Watch the branches—they might snap back as I push through.”

It’s not far, a hundred feet maybe, but it’s a struggle to avoid losing our footing.

The stairs turn out to be wooden, a little ramshackle. They must have been here before the Spiker complex was built. It’s dark, but there’s some moonlight bouncing off the water, so while I can’t see the steps, I can see the handrail.

Solo is in the lead, then Aislin, and I’m at the back. We try not to make noise, but the stairs creak and our breathing seems incredibly loud in the stillness.

“What do we do at the bottom?” I hiss.

“There’s a boat,” Solo calls back in a loud whisper.

It’s ridiculous, but I was almost hoping we’d have to swim somewhere. I’m an excellent swimmer. I could easily make the team, but I don’t want to be in cold water every morning before school. I’d like to show off my competence at something, after not exactly impressing during the rappelling event.

Then: “Someone’s coming!” I say, loudly enough, maybe, for Solo and Aislin to hear.

Powerful flashlights stab cylinders of light into the darkness. There are three beams, then a fourth, and one is on me, lighting up my arm and the side of my face, blinding my right eye.

“There they are!” a man’s voice cries.

They’re at the top of the steps. They are not trying to be quiet. They are thundering down after us, their lights bobbing wildly.

The water is close. I see a wooden pier. I see two boats, both small, open motorboats. One has a wooden hull and the other is an inflatable Zodiac-style boat.

Two boats are worse than one. One boat is an escape. Two boats are a chase.

Solo leaps into the wooden boat.

“Cast off!” he yells to Aislin and me.

Aislin says, “What?” But I dive toward the stern rope. It’s looped over a cleat. Aislin sees, understands, and starts to tug at the bow rope.

I hear the sound of a starter.

“Get them, get them, get them!” someone shouts.

A man, no two, hit the pier, two big, football-player-size guys charging at us.

Solo’s hand flashes out and I am yanked bodily through the air, swung aboard. I hit my knees on the bench and trip. My hands plunge into the few inches of cold water in the bottom of the boat.