All morals aside, Eden appreciated her job at Cardinal Enterprises. It came with a well-furnished but soullessly sterile dorm on the second floor of campus; Eden had topped every surface with silk flowers and wrapped the legs of the tables, chairs, and her bed in artificial vines and leaves. She could almost pretend her dorm was cozy, if she didn’t let her eyes linger too long on the blocky polymer furniture. From her window on the second floor of Cardinal Enterprises’ main campus, she could see the Garden, the only true greenspace in the city. She tried to be grateful.
Eden dressed by the light of the moons, as she always did, rather than subjecting herself to the fluorescent lighting a moment too soon, and she tied her blonde hair into a sloppy braid, staring out at the Garden and the city beyond as she did so. The rest of Haven had not yet woken and the streets below, which all seemed to lead to Cardinal Enterprises Main Campus, were quiet except for a few Cards stalking down the avenue. It wasn’t the nearly empty sidewalks or the red uniformed bullies patrolling them that had her attention, or the twin moons that were fading by the second. Every morning, Eden rose before the sun and stared out at the Garden while she tried to appreciate her circumstances.
The Garden, the jewel of the city, was only two blocks away from campus, but it was easily visible from nearly every point in Haven, even on the outskirts of the city where the most cheaply constructed houses hunched beneath the curvature of the dome. The tall flowering vine-laden trees, that acted as a barrier between the sterility of the city and the lush expanse of the Garden, were draped in fairy lights, glittering and beckoning to Eden. Compared to the red dirt that stretched for miles beyond the safety of the dome that sheltered the city—Eden’s constant view from her childhood bedroom—the greenery and blooming flowers of the Garden were a welcome respite, and she cherished the view from her dorm nearly as much as she did her paychecks.
For a moment, Eden felt a familiar pang of guilt as she tied her apron around her waist snugly, but she was well practiced in pushing that guilt away. She made more than a respectable wage, she reminded herself. Despite everything, Cardinal Enterprises paid their employees well. She had security in her career, the first in a long line of Coopers to have such.
Her parents, Silas and Elena Cooper, had been more than disappointed when Eden had informed them, almost eight years ago to the day, that she was leaving home to work for the enemy. She’d seen Elena cry before; her mother was never one to hide her feelings. The sharp pain in her core when she remembered the solitary tear Silas had shed was just as strong as it had always been.
The money that had come from the sale of the Cooper land would run out soon enough. and then there would be nothing to replace it but the meager income provided by the city. Then, perhaps, Silas and Elena would be proud to have a resourceful daughter, a daughter who had been able to set aside her own pride and now set aside her savings, to provide for them. City income would be enough to keep them fed, or keep the house in good repair, or afford a small luxury here and there, but not all three. They deserved more. Even if it hurt them to see Eden go out and earn it.
Eden flicked on the lights in her cozy kingdom and smiled as the fluorescents sleepily flickered on and illuminated her gently humming kitchen. The counters were shining stainless steel, and every appliance had been polished the night before until it gleamed. She’d been sure of that herself. She fired up the stovetop, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work.
When the last of the imported bacon was crisped to her satisfaction, she slid it into a warmer and took a moment to try to stretch the last of her aches from her body. She was unsuccessful and brushed the loose hair from her eyes as she began frying her freshly shredded hash browns in the bacon grease. It spit and hissed angrily at her, but she was an old hand in the kitchen and did not flinch.
Her aids, Daphne and Eloise, joined her shortly after the potatoes had turned golden brown. Daphne, with her heavy lidded eyes and gentle smile, began separating the potatoes into metal containers for the buffet line and placed them in the warmer beside the bacon. Rosy and soft Eloise began mixing pancake batter and deftly ladling it onto the griddle.
Her helpers set to work quietly, with only a murmured “good morning” to each other and Eden. They’d be nothing but chatter later, but for now, Eden savored the companionable silence. She stood back and let them take the bulk of the preparations from her, focusing again on working some of the aches out her hamstrings. The dull hungry roar of the breakfast crowd waiting in the cafeteria beyond was growing and leaked into the kitchen. Eden listened with a practiced ear. It was still friendly.
“You guys good for a minute?” she asked.
Daphne and Eloise nodded, focused on their tasks at hand as they prepped the rest of the breakfast offerings. Eden slipped out the back door onto the artificial lawn, leaving the door just cracked. The air was no fresher outside, but Eden liked to pretend it was. She leaned against the cool siding of the building. At the far end of the lawn, just beyond the shadow of the building, a squad of Cards--the red-clad security force trained by and devoted to the company--jogged in tight formation around the exercise track, blessedly moving away from her.
Eden sighed, trying not to let it get to her, but if there were Cards still training at this hour, there was no way she’d be able to get in a workout on the track until late. Regardless of the fact that she was still sore from her run the day previous, Eden was loath to give up any time on the track. It was a delicate balance, with late nights only making the mornings earlier. The squad of Cards rounded one turn and then another, led by their platinum-haired bully-in-chief, and now they were facing her, jogging down the straightaway towards her. Eden gritted her teeth and started to slip back into the kitchen too slowly. She’d been spotted.
“Eden!” Hal Cooke bellowed across the plastic grass towards her.
He jogged off the track, waving at his cronies to go on without him, and stopped just in front of Eden, a sheen of sweat coating every inch of his visible skin. His blond hair was plastered back across his forehead and there was a familiar mean glint in his eyes.
“Afraid to join us?” Hal asked, smirking at her. “Sounds like it, from what the captain said.”
Eden gritted her teeth, regretting stepping outside at all. So much for a moment of quiet before the breakfast rush. “Afraid has nothing to do with it,” she said.
Hal’s smirk became a cat-like grin and Eden regretted both stepping outside and opening her mouth. She wasn’t going to stand here and discuss her conversation with Mara over the weekend. It was none of Hal’s business, especially with where she and Mara had ended the discussion.
“I think it’s got more to do with it than you let on,” he said. “What other reason could you have to turn her down?”
Eden frowned. “I was told that that conversation was going to be confidential,” she said. “But maybe that’s too much to expect.”
“The squad says you think you’re too good to be one of us,” Hal said. There was a sharp edge of accusation in his voice, but beneath that, something a bit more personal. It wasn’t Card Hal, bully and asshole, that she was speaking to now. It was Neighborhood Hal, who’d grown up down the street and always lost in races to her. “I think you’re afraid that you’re not any better than us, after all. I think you’re afraid you’d enjoy it if you joined us.”
“I’m here to feed my family, and that’s it, Hal,” Eden said firmly. She hated that she had to look up to meet his eyes but she did it anyway.
“What do you think I’m here doing?” he shot back.
Eden bit her tongue.
“Say it,” he challenged. “You’ve got something to say? Go on.”
Eden shook her head. Childhood Hal was disappearing before her eyes and, while she was bold, she wasn’t stupid. Card Hal wasn’t someone she needed to challenge this morning.
“Like I said,” Hal snorted. “Afraid.”
“My wage is high enough in the kitchen,” Eden snapped. “I’m not interested in skulking down the street with you and your buddies, pushing people around and pocketing bribes.”
Hal flushed a deep red, his dark eyes flashing. “Watch it,” he said warningly. “That’s a big accusation you’re making.”
It was Eden’s turn to flush with anger. The Cards, in their official capacity, were meant to protect the interests of the company: to protect shipments moving between the research institute and the Farm, to provide security around the campuses, to investigate any threats against the company. Eden and every other Havenite who’d encountered a Card in their daily life knew their secondary purpose: to line their own pockets. Most said nothing, with Silas Cooper merely glowering as he transferred a few credits to the Cards acting as security at the festivals they’d set up at, before the Coopers had gone out of business. He didn’t like it, but it was a small fee to pay to ensure that everything went smoothly for them.
“I’m not one of you, Hal. I’m faster than you and a better shot. That’s why Mara wants me on the squad, and we both know that. But we both also know that I’m not anything like you. I don’t need a laser to feel big, and I don’t need to harass people until they pay me to leave them alone.”
Hal’s hand was quicker than Eden could register and the left side of her face exploded in pain. She tasted blood but she bit her tongue again and didn’t cry out, although her eyes watered.
“I told you to watch your mouth,” he hissed at her. “I’m not the scrawny kid down the street anymore. And you’re not any better than me.”
He left her with that, jogging back to join the rest of his squad as they looped around the exercise track a third time and falling into pace easily, as she stood in the shadow of the building, holding her swelling lip.
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“I’m fine,” she said, even as the girls crowded around her. “It’s nothing.”
Eloise passed her a cool wet cloth to dab at her lip. Eden coming back inside from her break with a bleeding lip had effectively put a stop to the nearly finished breakfast preparations, despite Eden’s protestations.
“Do you want to go to the infirmary?” Daphne asked.
“No,” she answered sharply. “I said I’m fine. Let’s just get breakfast out.”
“You’ll go later then,” Daphne insisted. “Right?”
Eden sighed, although it came out as more of a hiss between clenched teeth. “Yes, I will. Now let’s get going, before the mob turns angry.”
The girls began gathering everything together and loading up the breakfast carts while Eden focused on blinking away those traitor tears, but it was anger that clouded her vision. Together, the three stacked up the metal tins of food from the warmer, the plates and utensils, and wheeled the breakfast cart through the sliding doors to the cafeteria.
The cafeteria was packed, and every hungry eye turned on the trio. Eden ducked her head as she walked through the doors and let a few wayward pieces of blonde hair fall over her face. Once the buffet line was set up, the hoard descended on the feast. Eden and her helpers stood to the side and waited patiently until there was nothing left but the dishes. They gathered it all up and carted it back to the kitchen, where Eden hoped that the topic of her split lip would not come up again.
“Are you going to report it?” Daphne asked, passing a soapy dish to Eloise to rinse after a few blissful moments of silent cleaning.
“Not sure what the use would be,” Eden answered absently, pulling up the lunch menu on the control screen at the back of the kitchen. Unlike breakfast and dinner, which were served buffet style, lunches and dinners were prepped and delivered to each department. She scrolled through the options, glad for the program Rory had written her to generate menus based on her inventory.
“They won’t care,” Eloise agreed from where she stood beside Daphne at the sink. After she wiped the plate dry, she placed it neatly in the sonic cleanser, just barely missing the elbow jab Daphne had aimed at her.
By the time the clean up was done, Eden had the menu put together, and it was time to start lunch preparations. They worked in silence, getting everything assembled: sandwiches for most of the staff and delicate varied bento boxes for the upper level staff. Eden ignored the throbbing of her broken lip and the metallic taste in her mouth. Once lunches were packed and prepped for the runners to collect and distribute, Eden finished up the inventory order. She finished just in time for Beth, the evening chef, to relieve her.
“What happened to your face?” Beth asked, concern written across her brow. Beth was a tall woman, warm and motherly. There were streaks of gray through her dark hair, which she kept pulled back into a tight bun. Beth never talked back to the Cards, and her unblemished face proved it.
“Just clumsy,” Eden said.
“Sure.” She sounded unconvinced.
By this time, Eden’s stomach was growling, so she ignored the chatter of Eloise and Daphne greeting Beth. They’d tell her what had happened, she knew. Likely seconds after she fled the kitchen. She retrieved her own breakfast plate from the warmer: bacon, hashbrowns, and a small stack of pancakes with a side of syrup.
“Have a good shift,” Eden said, shedding her apron and hanging it on its hook by the door.
She was gone before they could comment further, covered breakfast plate in hand and the taste of her humiliation on her tongue. To her relief, the halls were mostly empty, and the only sound was the hum of the air purifier hard at work. While she waited for the elevator in the lobby, she carefully extracted a piece of bacon and devoured it. It was rubbery from hours spent in the warmer, as most of her food was, and all it did was encourage her hunger. Her stomach growled again.
Instead of taking the elevator up to her dorm on the third floor, Eden stopped it at the second and disembarked. The second floor was humming with activity as she stepped into the lobby. All of Cardinal Enterprises’ best and brightest minds had their offices here, and the scientists and engineers and assorted doctors flitted from one office to the next, comparing notes and pushing the boundaries of science every day. She was invisible here, something she didn’t mind at all, and kept to the wall to avoid being trampled by . It took her a while to find Rory’s new office, but at the end of the hall, she finally located the shining name plate beside his open door: “Dr. Rory Lawrence”.
Rory was seated at his glass and chrome desk, engrossed in whatever his computer screen displayed. The office was too clean, except for a stack of boxes piled beneath the wide window on the opposite wall. The walls themselves were still bare and starkly white. Beside one of the boxes, she saw a few awards and certificates stacked on top of his university diploma. All earned within a few short years of each other and eager to be hung proudly on the walls. Rory’s desk was always the exception to the “too clean” rule, with baubles and stacks of printed reports, and in the center of the chaos sat Rory, crowned by his scruffy brown hair, his lips murmuring softly as he read his screen aloud to himself.
He still hadn’t noticed her. She knocked rhythmically on the door frame, and he looked up, startled, his blue eyes wide. He grinned at the sight of her, but his eyes flashed quickly to the plate in her hands.
“Have you eaten?” she asked. Yesterday’s wrapped lunch sat untouched on the corner of his desk.
“Oh, I-- well, I remember I had a sandwich not long ago,” he said thoughtfully.
“Probably wasn’t today,” Eden pointed out, offering him the plate.
He sheepishly selected a small pancake and dipped it sloppily in the syrup cup before cramming the entire thing in his mouth. He mumbled something incomprehensible–perhaps a thank you–as she pushed a stack of papers to the side and perched on the corner of his desk. She shifted uncomfortably; this glass and chrome monstrosity was not the comfortably worn polymer desk that had seen him through his years as a junior software engineer, although she’d had fewer opportunities to perch on the corner of that one. Rory, recently headhunted and poached from the city, was one of Cardinal Enterprises’ brightest rising stars. She knew it; everyone knew it. Though he’d never admit it, she knew Rory knew it as well. She crossed her legs and popped a few hashbrowns into her mouth. She could get used to the desk, she thought. It was more fitting for a lead software engineer than the old polymer would have been.
“I said, ‘what brings you up here’?” Rory said again, wiping the syrup from his face with another small pancake, which he then popped into his mouth. Finally, he powered down his computer screen and turned to her, relinquishing his full attention.
“What happened to your face? Are you okay?”
Eden raised a hand to her lip, feeling the swollen area self consciously. “How bad does it look?”
Rory grimaced. “Very subtle,” he said, his voice catching the way it always did when he lied. “Hardly noticeable at all.”
She glowered at him. “Hal again.”
“You report it?”
“To what end?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. Before he could interject, she asked, “How are you settling in? Love the new office. You’re like a big deal now!”
He laughed, but his eyes lingered uneasily on her swollen lip. “Actually,” he said. “I’m not sure yet. I’m still unpacking, obviously. It’s an upgrade and the dorm is comfortable. I haven’t met the rest of the team though. I assume I have a team, anyways. The whole thing has been pretty mysterious.”
“Mysterious?”
“Things were a lot more straightforward when I worked for the city,” he admitted. He lowered his voice, though she could see no danger of being overheard. “Everything was public record. It’s not like that here. They moved me to campus, gave me this great office, and, don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited about this job. They still haven’t really told me what the job is. It’s all vague talk about special interests, but it all seems very nebulous.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t been assigned a project yet. I haven’t met the team, if there is one. I report directly to Dr. Abrahams, himself, now. That’s all I know. And I’ve been reading up on him. He’s an intimidating guy.”
“Huh. Guess you really are a big shot now.”
He laughed. “Guess so. I’ve only just gotten moved into the office. I think I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve just been familiarizing myself with Dr. Abrahams profile in the meantime.”
Eden shrugged. The CEO of Cardinal Enterprises was often spoken of in hushed tones and general reverence; he was a cold cutthroat man who’s rivals in business never stayed open for long. Her own parents could attest to that. Eden had never had much interest in him over the course of her employment, beyond his name on her employment contract. “I’m just glad to have you working on campus now!”
They were interrupted by a soft cough from the doorway before Rory could respond. Neither of them had heard the opening of the door, but a white haired bespectacled gentleman stood just outside the office, only taking up perhaps a quarter of the space in the doorway. Eden didn’t recognize him, but the word “wizened” came to mind.
“Dr. Whitmore!” Rory exclaimed. “Come in, please.” Rory waved the man toward the chair across the desk from himself. “Eden, this is Dr. Whitmore, a brilliant astrobiologist and even more brilliant mentor. Dr. Whitmore, this is my friend, Eden Cooper. We grew up together.”
Eden twisted herself awkwardly around from her perch on the desk to see the wizened man that Rory seemed so fond of. She smiled at him, regretting it instantly when her lip split open again. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Whitmore.”
“Ah, Eden. Lovely to have a face to put to the name now.”
Eden raised an eyebrow at Rory, who flushed pink. “Please, come in, Dr. Whitmore. We were just talking about how excited I am about this position!” he said.
Dr. Whitmore coughed again. “Actually,” he said, “if I could speak to you privately, Dr. Lawrence…” He trailed off, his eyes flashing to Eden.
She took her cue, hopping down from the desk and collecting the empty plate from their lunch. Suddenly, she was tired, the day’s work taking its toll on her, and all she wanted was to crawl back into her bed. “I’ll leave you two to it, then,” she said. “See you later, Rory. It was nice to meet you, Dr. Whitmore.”