Rise An Eve Novel by Anna Carey

said. “Not like this.” She glanced back at the Palace, where the wooden platform was still visible. Two more bodies were being cut down from the ropes.
    “You can’t,” I said. “They know about what I did. If you’re found with me, you’ll be killed, too.” I hurried my pace, turning right, crossing the main road, where the crowd thinned out. The tunnel couldn’t be more than two miles off. I could leave the City within an hour, even if I wound through the Outlands, avoiding the stretches of open road.
    “What’s the option?” Clara asked. She kept along, not taking her eyes away from me. “Stay here? Wait until there’s another attack? Wait until they tell me they’ve found you? You can’t go alone, Eve.” The last part of her sentence somehow held a question, as if she were asking me: Why would I let you do that? I pressed my face into her neck, clinging to her for just a moment before breaking away.
    “The tunnel is in the south,” I whispered, leading her down a narrow alleyway, where old shops were boarded up, graffiti scrawled across their sides. A FREE CITY NOW was written in red paint. Without Moss, it was impossible to know if the tunnel would be clear or if the remaining rebels would be using it for escape. But what choice did we have?
    I brought my hand to my face, trying to breathe through my mouth, anything to dull the smells that came off the road. A body lay among the burned ash and ruin, its back toward us, a thin plastic jacket fused to the skeleton.
    We kept moving, the sound of a Jeep’s engine splitting the air, the tires kicking up dust and sand as it flew past the road behind us. The rain came down. Some of the residents in the Outlands ducked in doorways or under the shallow overhangs of buildings. A group scattered into a parking lot, sitting in the hollow shells of cars, waiting for the storm to pass.
    I held the bag tight to my side, keeping my head down. It was only when I turned, watching another Jeep disappear into the Outlands, that I noticed the hospital, no more than a hundred yards off.
    “What is it?” Clara asked. She kept up her pace, leaving me there at the edge of the road. She shielded her eyes from the rain.
    I couldn’t look away. Now that the siege had ended, the girls would be taken out of the City, back to the Schools. It could be years before they were liberated, if ever. How many of them would be taken to those buildings? This was their only chance to get out of the City. I wouldn’t be able to take more than a few, if I could get in at all, but I couldn’t leave them without doing something .
    “Wait there,” I called to Clara. “The tunnel isn’t more than two blocks farther. It’s in a motel marked with an eight.” I dropped my bag, gesturing to the awning of an abandoned grocery store. Clara called after me, asking me what to wait for, but I took off toward the building, her voice disappearing behind the heavy rain.
    Two soldiers were standing outside the front entrance. I slunk around the back, noticing an older woman at the side door. Our eyes met. She signaled to me with her hand. It wasn’t until I was a few yards away that I noticed the bright red streak in her hair. It was the same woman Moss had mentioned.
    “They already know about you,” she said, leaning in. She didn’t look at me. Instead her eyes watched the scene over my shoulder. The high shrubs provided little cover from any vehicles that passed on the road. “The alerts have gone out. You have ten minutes, maybe fifteen, before they’re here. They’ve dispatched the Jeeps from the north end of the wall. You have to leave now.”
    I pushed against the side of the building, trying to get some respite from the rain that pelted my skin. The blood came off my fingers, the water pooling pink in my palm before it flooded over the sides of my hand and washed away. “I need you to let me inside,” I said. “Please—I’ll be quick.”
    “There’s dozens of girls on this