Free Pandora's Genes by Kathryn Lance Page A

said Zach. He pulled the sword out and wiped it on the grass. He felt sick and unclean, and had to breathe deeply several times to clear his head.
    He told himself that this had been necessary for Evvy’s sake. Now he must find her before Orin did, and take her to the Garden. That was all that mattered.
    He put the sword into his belt and stood, unsteadily. Ermil was breathing in shallow gasps, his eyes staring at nothing. Zach turned and walked across the clearing to where the red dirt road disappeared into the trees. He had nearly reached it when he heard a noise behind him. He turned, and was stunned to see Ermil propped on one elbow, incredibly still alive. He had forgotten about the knife, and by the time he realized what had happened it was too late. Ermil threw before he could move. He felt the knife slip into his chest like a diver into water, and knew that he was a dead man.
    He did not fall at once. In slow motion, as if under water, he turned and walked toward the woods. Behind him he thought he heard Ermil laughing. He felt a deep and overpowering anger, not at Ermil, who had killed him, but at himself. Every promise he had made had now been broken, and for nothing. All his life he had considered himself a man of honor, but now he knew that honor was as fragile as the shell of an egg. Whole, it would support a man throughout his life as an egg protects a baby chick. But once a crack appeared, however small, the life inside an egg was doomed; further cracks would radiate from the first as inevitably as one act of dishonor followed another. In both cases the end was the same: contamination and death.
    His anger spread from a white-hot point where the knife had gone into him, and moved to his limbs, making them heavy. He could no longer stand and fell to his knees. Even as his legs gave way and he began to cough and spit up blood, he continued to crawl toward the woods where Evvy had gone. He was still trying to follow her when his body stopped moving and he felt his life draining away into the soft, mossy ground.

PART TWO
     

The Principal

One
     
    E VVY WOKE COLD AND STIFF , damp leaves pressed into her face and hair. She was huddled in a hollow at the base of an oak tree. The faint light of early dawn showed through pink-and-gray clouds, and a gentle drizzle was falling. She pulled her sodden cloak tightly about herself, then slowly sat up. Automatically she looked around for Zach, then remembered all that had happened yesterday: how she had disobeyed Zach, his anger, and her own headlong flight into the woods.
    Long after dark she had fallen, exhausted, at the base of the tree where she now lay. It had been too late to build a fire, and in any case she no longer had Zach’s flint – she had lost it one of the many times she had fallen in her despair and panic. Frantically, she had searched her pocket for the seal ring and had fallen asleep with it clutched tightly in her hand. She opened her palm now and looked at it, wondering what to do.
    It was too late to go back and try to help Zach now, and she wouldn’t want to risk disappointing him again. She thought of simply waiting here for him to find her, but she was cold and hungry, and besides, the rain must by now have obscured any signs of her passage.
    Above her and around as far as she could see were thick, leafy branches and wildly growing stalks. She would never find her way out of here – she would starve or be eaten by a wild animal. Each wet rustling of the leaves might be a fox-cat preparing to spring. Her teeth began to chatter, and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, wanting to cry, to call out for her mother or for Zach.
    But her mother had sold her and Zach wasn’t here.
    “You’re acting like a child!” She opened her eyes wide. Zach’s words of yesterday echoed inside her head, and she realized she had spoken them, aloud, to herself. The menacing leaves were once again just forest, where she had been for weeks. She would do what she