Page 57 of Rite of Unity

I looked away, pressure building in my chest that had nowhere to go.Somewhere on the other side, someone was already waiting.Our spy.Someone I had no way to identify, no way to reach.Without a face or a name, I'd be cut off from Lucen.

We moved through the Upper-Middle, and the wall became impossibly taller.As we approached, men readied their weapons, two pointing them at us.

“This is where I leave you,” Lucen said, rolling up his window.

The car slid to a stop, and the lock clicked.I pressed the door open, stepping out into the dying evening light.

“Identification,” a man barked.I slung my bag over my shoulder, lifting the pin from my collar that had arrived at the house less than an hour ago.

“Step forward.”

He set his gun down, holding up a metal device that looked similar to the one the genetic inspector had used the day he came to my office.The men to his left and right held their guns up, pointed at me.

I stared at the man with the scanner, holding the pin out toward him.

A beep sounded.The two men on either side of him relaxed their weapons.

“Clear.”

He stepped back, and the massive wall before me began to open.I tipped my head back, watching it slide apart.It stopped, the opening only wide enough for me to fit through, and I moved, stepping over the invisible line that had divided me from the elite all my life.

The moment I was on the other side, it slammed shut, a gust of air kicking up dust and blowing my skirts; I wrapped a hand around them to keep from showing too much leg.

But here, at the edge of the wall, even in the center, it seemed no one dared come too close to the boundary.

I stood very still.No net.No way back.Just me and everything I'd been prepared for, on the wrong side of a wall that had just sealed itself shut.I straightened and lifted my chin.

A white car, pristine in every way, rolled to a stop, and I leaned down to look inside.

It was empty apart from the chaperone staring straight ahead.

I straightened looking around.

“Maryn Veil, daughter of Joel Veil.Enter.”

I jumped.The car had spoken.Leaning down, I peered inside the front window again.

“Maryn Veil, daughter of Joel Veil.Enter.”

I stepped forward, touching the handle.It clicked, the door sliding open, and I climbed in, scooting over soft fabric to sit across from my silent companion.

The door slid shut, and the car rolled forward.Unlike cars in the Middle, no glass separated the back from the front.I inched forward, leaning to inspect the front seat.

The wheel turned, and the car followed, gliding onto a street that sparkled in the setting sun.

Lining the pristine street on either side were rows of treelined sidewalks.I craned my head around to stare at a woman pushing a stroller, her perfectly styled hair pulled back to expose a pair of glittering gems in her ears.

The car rounded another corner, the road stretching out in front of me.A straight line, and all the way at its end, a shimmering expanse of blue that disappeared into an infinite distance.

Lake Michigan.

I watched as we approached the way a dying man watched the light at the end of a tunnel.

An object sailed past, and I tracked it.

To my right, green rolling slopes were dotted with people.Moms and their children.Teens lounging on blankets.A boy caught the object that had flown past the car.Everyone was laughing, smiling, living.

Girls mingled with boys under the watchful eye of their mothers or chaperones.