Mount Eden (3 chapter preview)

Chapter 1

'You've got this?'

'I've got this.'

Amy took off down the street, every step thrusting her forward with barely a tap on the cobble. Noah watched her go, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. She was fast; not as fast as he, but quieter. At the end of the road was a brick wall, three metres high, but that wasn't going to stop her. Her feet carried her two steps up and her hands caught the top of the wall, hauling herself up like she weighed no more than a feather to perch on her toes.

She turned and grinned back at him, pausing only to scrape the loose hair back from her eyes before she hopped onto the adjacent roof. Noah turned away and jogged down the alley that'd been hiding in, an empty rucksack bouncing on his back. He hadn't quite mastered Amy's near-silence, and every step echoed between the brick.

With the street lamps already extinguished, there was little need to keep to the rooftops or alleys. The night kept them hidden well enough, but one could never be sure who might take a peek out of a window.

At the mouth of the alley Noah slowed back to a brisk walk, glancing at the various windows still flickering with orange candlelight out of the corner of his eye. Every house, all of them uniformly two storeys tall, was connected to its neighbours as far as the street stretched, breaking only at curves in the road. The roads in this part of the city, close to the base of the mountain, were just wide enough for a car to fit through. Not that any came through the Pillars very often.

He couldn't see Amy from here, but he knew where she was. From the church, the tallest building in the district, she would have the perfect view of the loading platform beside the Gate. More importantly, she could see a good portion of the peace keepers' patrol route. She didn't need to worry about being spotted; residents of the Pillars avoided looking up whenever possible.

Not that looking up ever revealed much. The top of Mount Eden was lost in the ever-present haze of the Pillars. No one really knew how high it went. Only the Elites could know that, and they had all disappeared within the rocky fortress long before the fog arrived. The mountain itself was nearly always present on Noah's peripheries, casting deep shadows across most of the city for half the day even in summertime.

At the end of the street, Noah stepped off the cobbles to cut through the park; which was really just a wild, overgrown field that had long lost its crop-growing ability. The church spire cut through the sea of rooftops, but he couldn't yet see if Amy had reached it. Out of sight of the houses, he broke into a sprint across the grass. No candlelight out here, but the silhouette of the mountain, blacker than the night's black, was enough of a guide to get across without smacking face-first into a tree.

The other end of the park was bordered off with a black wrought iron fence. Noah used to slip between the bars once upon a time, but that changed quickly after he hit a growth spurt and managed to get himself stuck one time. He still felt the sting of humiliation whenever he thought about Amy having to come and rescue him, cackling like a witch as she shoved his head back through the bars. This time, he sped towards the fence and pulled himself up and over, perhaps not as effortlessly as his sister managed to make it look but it was easy enough.

Down another labyrinthine street and through a short alley between houses, these ones bigger but converted into apartments, Noah stopped and looked back towards the church spire. He spotted Amy's silhouette beside it, one arm raised.

Noah hunkered down at the mouth of the alley, palms resting on the wall, eyes glued to Amy's silhouette. He waited for several minutes before her arm came down and he straightened up, turning onto the street. The roads were paved here, but the maintenance had stopped a long time ago and weeds grew up out of potholes unchallenged. The windows here were all dark, but he pulled up his hood regardless. He wasn't especially afraid of being seen—no one would recognise him in this district, but peace keepers didn't like anyone too near the Gate after sunset.