Eden
Date: 2011-03-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Young Adult; Dystopia; Science Fiction; Romance; Post Apocalyptic; Fantasy; Zombies; Paranormal; Apocalyptic; Fiction
Description: Eve knew the stories of the Fall, of a time before she wandered into the colony of Eden, unable to recall anything but her name. She’s seen the aftermath of the technology that infused human DNA with cybernetic matter, able to grow new organs and limbs, how it evolved out of control. The machine took over and the soul vanished. A world quickly losing its humanity isn’t just a story to her though. At eighteen, this world is Eve’s reality. In their Fallen world, love feels like a selfish luxury, but not understanding what it is makes it difficult to choose between West, who makes her feel alive

THE EDEN TRILOGY

OMNIBUS EDITION

KEARY TAYLOR

THE EDEN TRILOGY

Omnibus Edition

Keary Taylor

Published by Keary Taylor at Smashwords

First Edition

Copyright 2014 Keary Taylor

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and download your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

CONTENTS

THE RAID: an Eden short story

THE BANE: Book One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

THE HUMAN: Book Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

THE ASHES: an Eden prequel

THE EVE: Book Three

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

THE END

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Epilogue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THE RAID

An EDEN Short Story

I exhaled slowly, creating small, wispy clouds as we moved silently through the still evening. Dew collected under my fingers, freezing my hands to my shotgun. The cold of March crept down my neck, wrapping around my body, and sinking into my skin.

I glanced at my companions when we stopped at the tree line. They were tired and cold after traveling the last two days, one of which snow fell from the sky. Despite the danger that lay before them, they were determined, focused. They looked back at me. Bill, Graye, and Tye – my brothers in arms.

We were the elite defenders of Eden.

And this was a raid.

We waited as the last traces of light disappeared from the horizon. The stars fazed into the sky and the moon rose over the city, washing it in pale gray light.

The darkness brought safety in an unsafe world.

“Let’s go,” Tye whispered as he stepped from his hiding place toward the road.

Our feet moved silently, our firearms held at the ready. The dark road stretched before us, illuminated by the flashlights Tye and Graye pointed into the night. The concrete was broken and cracked. Patches of green spread across its dark surface, nature reclaiming what was rightfully its.

There were abandoned cars everywhere. Some parked on the side of the road, some sitting in the middle of the street, the doors hanging open and the keys still in the ignition. The buildings around us started to crumble. And animals that at one time stuck to the mountains out of fear of humans prowled the alleys and wild backyards.

The four of us had been on dozens of raids together before. We moved as a well-trained team, aware of one another’s movements, able to communicate without words. These were my comrades, my fellow soldiers.

I may have only been a seventeen-year-old girl, but they still respected me. I was one of them.

Tye walked at the forefront of us, his rifle sweeping with his eyes. Eyes that were deadly accurate. Tye never missed a target.

“You need to stay focused on the next shot,” he’d told me once when I was thirteen. He adjusted my hands on the rifle and scooted my feet into the right position with his own boots. “If you keep that bad shot in your head, your focus won’t be where it needs to be and you’re probably going to miss the next one too.”

With his teaching, as well as Bill’s, I almost never missed these days.

We were in most dire need of ammunition. It was one of the only things we couldn’t create ourselves, and one thing that was absolutely necessary for our survival. You couldn’t forage bullets in the mountains where the colony survived. With one outdoors store in the city, and one general-carries-everything-you-need store that had ammunition, we headed for the outdoors store.

We came around the back of the familiar building. Tye quickly passed the beam of light through the windows, and found the store empty. Pushing open the glass door we had broken years ago, Tye, Bill, and myself stepped inside while Graye kept watch at the door.

Since we walked into and out of the city on foot, we were extremely limited in what we could take on each raid. We could only carry so much in our packs. That was the reason we had to go on raids nearly once a month. Our minimal supplies could only last so long, and so we had to go back into danger time and time again.

“I’ll load you up first,” Tye said to me as he started picking up shotgun shells from a shelf. The stack was getting smaller and smaller. We’d go through the entire supply before fall came.

I nodded and turned. My pack jerked as he pulled the zipper open and then sagged toward the ground when he started loading it.

“Here,” I said, reaching for the packs of socks on a rack right in front of me. They were thick. Hiking socks. Socks for the end of the world. “Put these in too.” I handed back six packs to Tye.

When my pack was loaded as heavy as it could take without ripping, Tye zipped me up, and I went back outside to keep guard with Graye. Bill and Tye continued to load up on more ammunition, heavy duty boots, and bug repellant.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about tonight,” Graye said in a low voice, more frosty air billowing out of his lips.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, my eyes scanning the alley behind the building. “We know how to be careful.”

Graye’s eyes fell to the ground and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah.”

“Let’s go,” Tye said as he and Bill stepped outside.

We jogged between shops, heading for a building two blocks away. Tye and I took the lead, Bill and Gray watching our backs as we traveled. I tried to ignore the dried blood splattered on the brick walls and the casings that littered the ground. How long ago had those lives been lost? When the world started to go crazy? Just last year?

Something clattered on the rooftop right above us and we all scattered. Bill and Graye backed up the direction we had come, their firearms out. Tye and I dashed further down the alleyway, our own shotguns pointed at the roofline.

Metal met metal in a horrible screech, but whatever it was stayed out of view. Tye tugged on the back of my pack, in the direction of a ladder that led up into the mess of a building that was only half built. We silently ascended, being cautious not to fall. Tye and I pulled ourselves into the exposed rafters of what should have become the first floor ceiling and the second story floor.

Just as we positioned ourselves behind a curtain of shredded and hanging plastic, we heard a body hit the concrete of the road. A moment later, there were dragging, grating footsteps.

I glanced up at Tye through the dim light, questions in my eyes. I wanted to ask what was going on. They weren’t supposed to be awake at night. But his eyes darkened and he pressed a finger against his lips for silence.

The dragging footsteps grew closer. My heart pounded in my chest, my grip tightening around my shotgun. My finger sat poised on the trigger.

It finally rounded the corner, stepping into the moonlight that spilled into the building. Its eyes were dead and empty as it searched the building for life. Its head swept from the left side of the building to the right. It hadn’t seen us, but there was some indication that told it there was something inside.

It stepped fully inside the wide, crumbled opening of the building and I saw the reason for that dragging, grinding sound. Its left leg was bent at an impossible angle, being mostly dragged and not supporting much weight. It must have broken it when it jumped from the roof of the building in the alley. Its right leg had no flesh to cover its metal bones and they clanked against the concrete floor.

I leveled my sight on it, but just before I could pull the trigger, a careful hand was on my arm. Tye looked at me with serious eyes that screamed stop. He shook his head.

Before I could try to ask him why with my eyes, the thing below us froze. Even I could tell it was listening.

A few moments later, it continued across the expansive room, dragging its dead and broken leg behind it. It disappeared into the dark of the building.

Neither of us dared move. For all we knew it could have frozen just on the other side of the dark and was listening for us.

All we could do was wait in the dark. Wait for it to try and kill us. Wait for it to make a move. Wait for the sun to come up and make a run for it.

Something shifted in my pocket and I felt it just a moment too late.

A shotgun shell slipped out and fell to the concrete floor with a soft ping, ping, ping.

Tye and I both fired into the dark, the sound of the shots echoing in the empty space in a disorienting and deafening way. As our shots illuminated the dark, I saw it, lurching through the building in our direction.

In a move I’d never seen before, the figure in the dim light lifted a hammer and hurled in our direction. It caught Tye’s shoulder and time seemed to slow as I watched him fall backward into the dark.

Out of shells, I pulled my handgun from my belt as I leapt out of the beams toward the enemy in the dark.

One, two, three, four shots I fired and finally, I heard a body crash to the floor with a scraping of metal.

“You okay?” I asked in the dark. We were plunged in darkness the moment I stopped firing. I didn’t lower my weapon though.

“Yeah,” Tye groaned and suddenly a beam of light danced on the ceiling when he clicked the flashlight on. He climbed to his feet, favoring his back. I saw pain in his face as he searched the room for the body.

It was lying not seven feet from me. It laid prone, that broken leg sticking out at a grotesque angle.

Tye came to my side, pointing the flashlight directly at it. The light reflected back at us off of its gleaming metal skull. The skin that should have been on its hands was completely gone and it looked as if someone had clawed the flesh off its back. A grimy, silver spine rose in bumps and valleys and ribs held in ticking, pulsing organs. A few seconds later, they stopped and the body was completely still.

“What was it doing out?” Tye asked, wincing as he shifted his pack back into place.

“They’re not supposed to come out at night,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s the most cut and clear rule when it comes to the Bane.”

“There isn’t much that’s cut and clear about our world anymore,” Tye said with weight in his voice.

“What the hell?” Graye suddenly burst through the open doorway, his rifle held at the ready. Bill followed him half a second later. “What was that thing doing awake?”

“You’re going to wake more of them up if you don’t tone it down,” I said, fixing him with a severe stare.

“Sorry,” he said, his volume instantly dropping. “But seriously, what was it doing out?”

“I don’t know,” Tye whispered, quieter than was probably necessary. “But I think we’d better speed things up.”

We didn’t jog anymore when we got back to the alley. We sprinted.

Graye was puffing by the time we stopped at the back of the clinic. Pulling the window up, Tye, Graye, and I squeezed inside while Bill took watch.

The building had always been hit and miss in the past. Sometimes its halls were lined with sleeping, inactive bodies, sometimes it was clear. We were finally catching a break that day. It was empty.

Tye stuffed Graye’s pack full of latex gloves, antibiotics, hand sanitizer, and a dozen other things I didn’t even have names for.

We were out of there in less than two minutes.

Our last stop was the general store.

And it was the most dangerous one of all. There were several hundred Bane standing inside, silent, and empty. Unaware of the destroyed world just outside. Just how they were supposed to be at night.

Knowing it was stupid to split up, we moved as a soundless group through the aisles. Our first stop was for basic needs: toothpaste, soap, girl things. Our packs were starting to bulge.

The last thing we needed before we could go home was clothing. We weren’t animal enough just yet to run around naked, but going shirt shopping wasn’t the safest activity. The entire clothing department was filled with Bane. They stood between racks, in aisles, almost like they were going for a leisurely shop when the machine inside them made them stop caring about everything.

I stepped between two of them, watching their eyes to make sure neither of them would wake, being even more careful to not let my skin brush theirs.

Because one touch was all it took.

One touch to steal your humanity.

I winced every time a hanger made a noise as I pulled an item of clothing off. But none of them turned, none of them woke. The rest of my crew worked quickly as well, grabbing essential items: pants, shirts, jackets.

When our arms were loaded, we carefully stepped back into the wide aisle, watching the Bane as we retreated toward the front doors. We were careful not to trip over the debris that lined the floors. Looters less careful and less alive than us had torn the merchandise from shelves years ago.

Tye, then Bill, then Graye step out of the building and I was just about to leave when I heard something behind me.

It was quiet, just the shuffling of feet.

I turned, and saw what was once a little girl, staring emptily at me. Her metallic eyes shone in the dark. Her hair hung around her face in limp strings. She wore a pink frilly skirt that was covered in grime.

She couldn’t have been more than five.

The flesh on her jaw had decayed or been ripped away, exposing her teeth and wires that ran from her neck up into her head.

My first instinct was to shoot her. She may have been small but she was just as deadly as those full grown Bane behind her.

But if I did shoot, it could possibly wake more of them.

So I took one step away from her, out of the building. At first I had thought she must have gone back into inactivity mode.

But then she blinked.

I aimed my shotgun more accurately at her head, and backed away faster.

Little had I realized that the mechanical girl in front of me was the least of my worries.

A blinding light suddenly illuminated the concrete at my feet and I turned with my shotgun ready. The four of us were engulfed in a huge beam of light, and we were deafened by the sound of the helicopter circling us from above.

“RUN!” Tye screamed.

THE BANE

Book One

BANE – noun

1. A person or thing that ruins or spoils.

2. A deadly poison.

3. Death; destruction; ruin.

4. Obsolete: that which causes death or destroys life.

ONE

“Good-bye my friend,” Avian whispered.  His eyes closed with silent words of regret that echoed through the rest of us.

We all shut our eyes as Avian pressed the device to Tye’s arm.  The back of my throat tightened when I heard the sharp hiss of the cybernetics under his skin short out and die.  Agonizing seconds later, he took his last gasping breath.

Avian set down the one piece of technology that existed in Eden on the wooden table.  I finally opened my eyes again when I heard his suppressed sob.  Bill and Graye bowed out of the medical tent silently, unable to deal with Avian’s grief in addition to their own.

I couldn’t keep my eyes away from Tye.

His body lay limp on the table, one of his legs about to slip off.  His left arm rested at his side, the skin shredded and torn where he had tried to rip it off.  The dirty, bloody wires and metal bones shone from underneath.  His head lolled to one side, staring emptily at me with one still-human eye and one cybernetic one.

I wished Avian would stop sobbing.  I should have tried to comfort him, but what do you say to the man who had just killed his own cousin?

Avian looked up at me from where he stood with his hands braced on the table next to the body.  “Thank you for bringing him back, Eve.”

I bit my lower lip and managed a small nod.  He held my eyes for a long moment, each of us knowing what the other was thinking.  We would never hear Tye’s hesitant laughter again, never urge him to take a break from his post to eat a few bites.  He would never hunt in the woods or go on a raid again.

“I don’t understand,” Avian said quietly.  “They don’t attack at night.  We’re supposed to be safe when it’s dark.”

“I don’t understand either,” I replied.  There were certain rules when it came to the Bane.  Inactivity during the night was one of them.  Night time was the one advantage we had over them.

“Let me help you,” I offered as Avian started picking up the body.  He graciously accepted, his entire frame trembling as we carried what was left of Tye to the furnace.  We couldn’t even bury our fellow men and women in the ground after they were infected – which meant we could never visit their graves.  Even destroyed cybernetics were too dangerous to keep around.  They were melted down and transported away.

Avian collapsed to the ground as we slid the heavy door closed.  Another round of tears consumed him as I lit the fire beneath it.  I sank to the ground next to him, hugging my knees as I watched the flames grow in intensity and consume Tye.

All it had taken was one brief touch from the Bane.  Tye had tried ripping his own arm off before the infection it carried could spread any further.  It was useless.  Less than an hour after being touched, Tye’s eye started changing.  He’d turned on us within three hours and tried to return to the city.  It had taken the entire unit to drag him back to Avian.  Bill had to knock him unconscious so he wouldn’t try to kill us all.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” I said quietly as I stared at the flames.  “I can take care of things.”

“No,” Avian said as he shook his head, wiping a few tears away with the back of his hand.  “I can handle it.”

“You don’t have to,” I tried to argue, but only half-heartedly.

“Go home, Eve.  You’ve done your job.”

I stood and walked out of the tent.

Small fires glowed in the darkness, scattered about in the village of tents.  I avoided eye contact and pushed the flap of my own tent aside and stepped into the darkness. My worn-out cot felt more uncomfortable than ever as I collapsed onto it.  I stared up at the blackness above me, my arms resting above my head.  The sound of Sarah’s breathing a few feet away let me know she was still awake.

We lay silently for a few minutes.  Tye’s death would be as hard on Sarah as it was on Avian, brother and sister in painful loss.

“How’s Avian?” she finally spoke.

“I helped him with the furnace but he sent me back,” I forced the words out of my mouth.  All I wanted to do now was sleep.

Sarah was silent again and I knew there would be tears rolling down her pale cheeks.  I understood why she had not come to the farewell.  It killed a little piece of us all whenever we attended one.

I faintly heard her roll away from me before I fell off the cliff of consciousness into the dark.

TWO

My eyes slid open to meet the darkness above, adrenaline and relief flooding my system at the same time.  We all occasionally screamed in our sleep, every one of us still haunted by nightmares.  At night your mind can turn against you and show you cybernetic-infested friends, make you feel your cells harden and turn you against everything that made you who you were.

I pulled myself up, listening for sounds outside.  It was early, the sun still struggling to make its way above the mountaintops.  Everything was silent.

Wearing the same clothes I had worn yesterday on the raid, Tye’s blood still dried on them, I grabbed my pack from off the floor.  I slid my handgun into my belt and stepped outside, leaving Sarah sleeping.  I headed for the tree line.

My boots darkened, dampened by the heavy morning dew.  My ears strained for any sounds that didn’t belong, searching for any warning hums of an ATV or the faint chop of a helicopter.  The morning was quiet, but that did not mean I dropped my guard.  With danger a constant, dropping your guard meant getting killed, or worse.

The trees dropped away in an abrupt line, giving way to the ten-foot tall wire fence.  Five acres of garden lay before me.  We were each required to work a minimum of two, five-hour shifts per week in the garden.  We were all responsible for keeping Eden alive in one way or another.

I geared up with a pair of worn gloves and a religiously cared for hoe.  I pushed back my dirtied sleeves and fastened my pack tighter to my back.  It never left my back, other than when I slept.  To be separated from it could mean the difference between life and death.  It had everything I needed to survive in the wilderness for nearly a month.

As I worked my way to the southeast corner of the garden, I saw I wasn’t alone.  A figure in dirty rags was kneeling on the ground, working steadily on a row of slowly growing potatoes.  It was Terrif, the oldest member of Eden.  He was mute and growing frail.  He knew the most about gardening though.  Without him, our harvest would be half of what it was.

A person’s value shifts greatly when the world comes to an end.

Terrif looked up at me briefly as I went to work on a new area that would be planted later that afternoon.  His eyes met mine for just a moment, oddly grey orbs that were starting to slowly lose their sight, and went back to his work.

The garden was in its fifth year and gaining maturity.  The fruit trees had produced well the previous year and we were hoping the late start of spring was not going to hurt production this year.  It was agonizing, having so little control over something so vital to our survival.

Within a year of the Evloution, people started realizing they weren’t the only ones on the run and began to band together.  As this colony of thirty-four formed, they knew we were going to have to provide food for all these people or everyone was going to starve.  And so the garden had been planted.  Eden itself might be constantly moving for safety reasons, but the garden was the center, the anchor of which we revolved around.

Each of us had reached Eden in our own way.  Those who had survived the Evolution had figured out that it wasn’t safe to be in the cities anymore.  With so much electricity and other mechanical resources available, the Bane flocked to them like addicts.  If you were smart you ran as fast as you could toward the mountains or to the open country.

I didn’t remember much of my arrival at Eden.  Only that I arrived alone, a thirteen-year-old girl, mostly naked, covered in blood, but without a scratch on me.  I had no memory prior to that time, no recollection of my parents or of where I had come from.  I could only recall one word that might have something to do with my past: Eve.  And so that was what I was called.

I insisted on training with all the older men, learning to handle a weapon and survive out in the wild.  By fourteen I was going on raids and helping to protect those around me.  Avian and Sarah had helped me when I needed, despite how determined I had been that I could take care of myself.

Avian had just escaped from the Army that was tearing itself apart, just as the world was falling to ruin.  He’d rescued his sister Sarah, hiding in the garage after their parents had been infected.  He’d had to shoot both of them to get her out.  He next went after his cousin Tye, who’d locked his infected mother in their trailer home, and stood guard outside the door with a rifle.  Together they fled into the mountains.  They were some of the first to arrive in Eden, only twenty-one, twenty, and nineteen-years-old.

As the sun started graying the sky, others trickled in to the garden, those assigned to work the morning shift while the others guarded camp.  Not many words were spoken, each person working in silent grief.  I saw eyes flicker to my face, questions forming in their heads.  They wanted to know how our elite team had finally failed to bring someone home.  I may have only been seventeen but they didn’t expect any less from me than they did Bill or Graye.  Or Tye.

I wanted to tell them it was Graye they should be questioning, but I would never betray him like that.  If he wanted them to know what he had done to Tye, he could tell them himself.  It wasn’t my place.

Just as the sun broke above the tree line, Sarah joined at my side.  She carried a sack of seeds, dropping them in a shallow trench.  I raked the damp dirt over them.

“How is Avian this morning?” I asked, keeping my voice down.

“He looked like he hadn’t slept all night,” she said as she dropped seeds.  She gave a small cough, covering her mouth with a fist.  “He wouldn’t eat this morning but said he was fine.”

“I’ll talk to him when I get back.”  I sighed as I continued to rake.

Avian was the one person who never left Eden.  He never went on raids, never even worked in the gardens.  He couldn’t leave his supplies and the CDU, the one sure device that protected us from the Bane.  All too often he was needed.  Even though he had only two and a half years’ worth of medical training, he knew more than the rest of us.

“People are wondering what happened last night,” Sarah said, looking around to make sure no one was listening.  “I heard them talking at breakfast this morning.  They’re starting to lose trust in Graye.”

“Why?”

“They overheard someone talking to Avian about how Graye had something to do with Tye’s infection.  We all know he can be selfish and sloppy.”

I straightened slightly and looked over my shoulder where Graye was working.  He was alone, his head hanging low.  I would never say it aloud, but Sarah was right.  Graye always tried to grab just a few more things, one more treasure to take home for himself.  He hadn’t noticed the Bane creeping up on him.  Tye had gotten Graye out before it was too late but it had cost him his life.

“We can’t afford to turn against ourselves,” I said, getting back to work before anyone could notice my stiff behavior.  “We all know better than that.”

“They’re upset,” Sarah said simply.  She coughed again, just once.

“They’re going to have to move on,” I said, more bluntly than I had meant it.  “We need him.  We need everyone.”

Sarah didn’t say anything else as she continued her work.  It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized she was vocalizing not only the thoughts of others in Eden, but her own.

I worked a longer shift than required, in a way anxious to prove my devotion to Eden.  It was unnecessary, but I seemed to be feeling the guilt Graye wasn’t.  The afternoon shift started trickling in, the post in the watchtower shifting.  As I handed off my tools and gloves to someone else, I realized that Graye and I were the last of the morning crew to head back.

I hesitated, unnerved at having to walk back with him, but I wasn’t stupid.  It was safer to travel with a companion, even if it was just between the gardens and home.

We walked in silence.  We’d known each other for four years now and had been going on raids together for almost three.  He was a good fighter and when push came to shove, I would want him on my side.

Graye had come to Eden when I was fourteen.  He was twenty at the time.  He had been recently married and had a baby girl, both lost to the infection.  It was hard to condemn him for his selfish actions; he had lost everything that ever meant anything to him.  He was just trying to take something back from the world that had stolen everything from him.

We were almost back to Eden, our journey nearly successfully silent, when he finally spoke.

“I didn’t mean it you know,” he said in his gravelly voice.  “I never wanted Tye to get hurt.”

“I know,” I said as we stepped into the perimeter of camp.  That was as close to an apology as anyone would ever get from Graye.

We went our separate ways.

THREE

I hadn’t expected anyone but Avian to be inside the medical tent but found him hunched over, working on a skin and bones foot.  Wix lay on the table, propped up on his elbows, watching as Avian worked.

“Hey, Eve,” Wix said with a bright smile on his narrow face.  “Look what I got on the way home!”  He held up one of the fattest snakes I had ever seen.

“Looks like it got you too,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“Eh, it’s nothing,” he said with a grin again, watching as Avian treated the bite.

I just shook my head as I sat on a stump that served as a seat.  Despite being two years older than me, Wix was the skinniest person I had ever met but made up for his small size with personality.  Even all the tough scouts like Bill couldn’t tease him about his build.  It was impossible to dislike the green-eyed, red-haired kid.

“Well, that’s all I can do,” Avian said as he finished wrapping a bandage around Wix’s ankle and foot.  “Let me know if it starts oozing or turns black.  I want to check on it before you go to sleep tonight.”

“Well that doesn’t sound pleasant,” Wix said as he sat up, his twiggish legs hanging off the table.  “Thanks for fixing me up, Doc.”

He limped out of the tent, his prize and dinner swinging at his side.

“Snake is actually pretty good,” I said as I watched Avian clean up.

“What are you doing here, Eve?” he asked.

“Making sure you’re okay,” I said, taking the quick and honest approach.  I took a good look at him.  His lean but toned frame was stiff, his brow pinched together, his intense blue eyes dark.

“I’m fine.  Did Sarah say otherwise?” he said with a sigh, throwing a few used rags into a basket.

I shrugged, picking at a piece of bark that was peeling off the stump I sat on.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said, placing his hands on the table, staring at it.  I had little doubt he was seeing the body of his cousin and hearing the volts course through it.  It was the same thing I was seeing.

“I wanted to talk to you and Gabriel, together.  I’m worried about people turning on Graye,” I said, ignoring Avian’s downfallen attitude.

He looked up at me, and after several long moments, still didn’t say anything.  I was worried that I knew what he was thinking: that maybe they should.

“You know we can’t afford to lose him,” I said quietly, but keeping my voice firm.

His eyes hardened for a moment.  “Gabriel is on scouting duty right now.  He will be back this evening.”

“We need to talk about it,” I said as I stood.  I hesitated at the opening to the tent, wanting to argue.  But keeping my mouth closed, I walked out.  I would make my argument later, when both Avian and Gabriel were there.

I missed the serving of lunch.  I hadn’t bothered to eat breakfast that morning so I was suddenly starving.  I walked to the far end of camp and yanked up the door to the cellar.  The room that stored the majority of the food in Eden smelled like earth.  It was a comforting place, it felt protected, like Mother Earth wouldn’t ever let anything happen to you there.  I helped myself to a couple of carrots and a few hard rolls that were left over from that morning.

It spoke volumes about the character of the people in Eden that there was no need for a guard at the food stores.  Most people who made their way here were starving, living only on what they could find in the wild.  Here everyone could come and go as they pleased, take what they needed.  We all lived by that rule: take what you need.  We knew how to ration, no one would starve.

I ate as I made my way back to my tent.  Finding it empty, I threw my few items of clothing and my bedding in a sack and slung it over my back.

Eden moved every two months or so for safety reasons.  The Bane were starting to use helicopters.  They scouted too.  For humans.  We couldn’t risk them seeing us or pinpointing our exact location.  The two limitations we had were the gardens and water.  We always had to be within walking distance of water.

I walked to the south bend of the river, finding myself alone with only the birds for obnoxiously loud company.  Kneeling next to the water, I scrubbed my clothing.  All of it was barely more than rags anymore.  I washed out my blankets and hung it all on the line to dry.  My clothes felt hardened and caked with grime as I peeled them off.  Dirt clouded the water momentarily as I soaked them and scrubbed furiously.  But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get Tye’s blood out.

The water was freezing, freshly melted snow from the mountains.  Bumps rose on my skin as soon as I stepped into the water, my stomach quivering.  Closing my eyes, I took a short breath and let myself sink into the river.

I let the flow of the water wash my hair, letting it take the dirt away from my skin.  I kept my eyes closed as I settled onto the smooth rocks at the river bottom, listening to the noises I couldn’t discern in the water.  It felt peaceful down here.  There was no one but me.  There was no one else to think about; no worries about supplies, food, or of being infected.  The cybernetics couldn’t survive in the water, everything shorted out.

Down here there was just Eve.

When I finally rose from the water I shivered, the air around me brisk.  Goosebumps flashed over my bare skin.  I climbed out and onto the boulder that my clothes sat on.  I wrapped my arms around my legs tightly, huddling against the cold while my clothes continued to dry.

I hoped Gabriel wouldn’t take too long.  As leader of Eden, he was never away for long.  He would never call himself the leader, but that’s what he was.  He had never been elected, never asked to be such.  But he was the most evenhanded, the one who always seemed to have the answers when no one else did.  He and his family formed Eden.  Terrif was his father-in-law.  Together they had started the gardens that had saved us all from starvation.

He was as much of a father as I’d ever had.

My clothes were still damp when I pulled them on and started the walk back.  I passed several other women on the way, heading to do their own laundry.  Two of them wouldn’t look at me, the third tried very hard to form a polite smile.  I just kept my eyes glued to the ground.

I found the morning scouting group depositing their weapons in the armory, and was relieved to find Gabriel among them.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“Yes, Avian informed me of that,” he said as he came to my side and watched as the rest of the men walked out of the small building.  He scratched at his graying beard, his thick brows furrowing.

“Can we talk now?” I asked, feeling impatient.  The distress that was hanging in the air agitated me, making everything seem urgent.

“Fine,” he said, and we set out for the medical tent to find Avian.  We retrieved him and made our way to Gabriel’s tent.

We each took a seat and I could tell both the men were irritated to be there.  They would both hear me out though.

“What Graye did was wrong but you both know we can’t afford to turn on him.  We need him, especially now that Tye is gone.  You both need to talk to everyone.”  It all came out in a desperate rush.

Gabriel and Avian looked at each other with a knowing glance.  Avian gave a tired sigh as he looked back at me.  “We know that.  Everyone does.  They aren’t going to turn on Graye.  They all love him too, despite his faults.  We lose people every year.”

I sat there, feeling stunned for a while.  I had read everyone wrong?  “Then what is happening?  Everyone is about to explode out there!”

“They’re grieving, Eve,” Gabriel said, his expression a mix of annoyance and disbelief as his eyebrows furrowed together.  “It’s a natural process.  They want someone to blame, to shove it all off on and Graye is that man.”

My eyes slid from Gabriel’s face to Avian’s, whose expression reflected what Gabriel had just said.

“No one is going to force Graye out.  No one is planning revenge.  They’re just trying to deal with Tye’s death,” Avian said, his voice catching on his last two words.

We were quiet for a few moments, my eyes studying theirs, making sure they weren’t lying to me.

I felt stupid for missing the mark so completely.

Once they saw that I believed them they moved on.

“We have found signs of something moving in the southern forest,” Gabriel said.  “We found shoe prints and traces of waste.  We don’t think they’re Bane but we need to be careful.  If they’re human we may watch them for a few days, see if we want to invite them in.”

“How many?” I asked, my interest piqued.

“It looks like three, two older and a smaller child.”

“Where are they headed?” I asked.

“We’re not sure.  If they are headed out this way, they are probably just running.  We will try and contact them soon.  We could use each other, I am sure.”

“Don’t act too soon though,” I said a bit too quickly.  “We have to be careful.”

“Of course,” Gabriel said with a nod.

I didn’t know what to say for a minute.  I had come in here, prepared for an argument, to state my case.  Instead I had made a fool of myself.

“Take the day off, Eve.  Try and relax,” Avian said, looking concerned.

“Take the day off?” I questioned.  I could no sooner take the day off than I could stop breathing.

“Yes, take the day off,” Gabriel said, he eyes sternly set on my face.  “I’m ordering you to take a break from your duties.  I don’t want you scouting today.  You’re too wound up.”

“But Gabriel, I…”

“I mean it, Eve!” he suddenly shouted.  He shook his head at me, his brow furrowed.  “Go home.”

My jaw set, I stood and walked out.

Home.  I didn’t even know what that was.

I threw the flap of my tent aside, finding it empty.  I grabbed my bow and my quiver out of the corner and walked back out.  They may have ordered me to keep away from my duties but I couldn’t sit around idle.

The woods were both silent and full of sound.  Noise didn’t travel far, absorbed by the towering trees that surrounded us, by the earth and moss that covered the ground.  And yet the birds never stopped chirping, the insects never ceased their harmonious singing.  If they ever did it was too late.

I watched for the signs: trails in the grass, the droppings on the ground.  I had to push farther and farther out from the perimeter of Eden to find anything these days.  I wasn’t the only one that hunted in Eden but I was persistent.

Goosebumps rose on my skin as I caught a glimpse of movement to the south.  I pulled the arrow back, holding my breath.  Two seconds later the buck stepped into view.

The next second it jerked violently, the tip of an arrow appearing in the side of its neck.  It took a few staggering steps forward.

My arrow was still nocked in my bow.

A figure leapt out of the underbrush, knife in hand, and slit the thrashing animal’s throat.  Just as the animal fell still, the boy looked up and my gray-blue eyes met his wide brown ones.

It took me a fraction of a second to react.  I leapt over the boulder I had been hiding behind in one bound.  That was all it took for the boy to leap back into the brush and take off at a sprint.

I heard him crashing through the maze of the forest, leaving a wake of fallen grasses and trampled moss behind him.  Every time I thought I was gaining on him though the sound of his retreat would get farther away.  And then it just stopped.

I was persistent, and I searched, but the boy had vanished.

I climbed out of the tree where I had made a desperate attempt to gain some ground and catch a glimpse of movement.  I dropped to the ground with a gentle stirring of the dirt and took off in the direction of Eden.

When I stepped away from the tree line and into camp, I found things in a state of unease.  Several scouts were gathered around Gabriel talking quickly in hushed tones.  Others stood on the perimeter looking nervous and anxious.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I came to Sarah’s side.

She barely glanced at me.  “The scouts saw someone in the woods again.  They’re getting closer.”

“Yeah,” I said as I started walking toward Gabriel and his group.  “I saw one of them.”

Gabriel caught sight of me as I approached them, his brow creasing.  “I told you to take the day off, Eve.”

“I saw him, in the woods,” I said, ignoring his protests.

“You saw him?” he questioned doubtfully.

“Yes, I chased him but he hid.  He got away.”

Gabriel gave the scouts a disapproving look.  “I suppose that explains the fourth body.”

I gave Gabriel a questioning look.

“They found evidence of the three unknowns in the woods.  Eli saw a fourth one, running through the trees.”

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.  “I was out hunting.  He killed my buck.  I tried to capture him but he got away.”

Gabriel glared at the two men in front of him.  “Pay a little closer attention next time,” he said, then waved them off.

“It’s not safe wandering in the woods alone,” Gabriel said as he watched the crowd disband.

I only stared at him, waiting for the moment of false fatherly chiding to pass.

“Even for you,” he added, his tone less scolding now.

“I am going to need two people to help me collect the buck.  He was a big one.”

FOUR

The smell of steel was something I would recognize anywhere and it was strong in the air.  Low, hurried voices spoke behind me, using words I couldn’t understand.

My heart hammered, the only part of my body that seemed able to move.  I lay on my stomach, my face resting in a hole cut into the cold, medal table.

The voices approached through the dark, excitement and nerves tangible in the air.  I was suddenly afraid.  I wanted to run, to hide so the people in the dark could never find me.  I didn’t want to know what they were going to do to me.

A gloved hand touched my head.  It was so cold because all of my hair had been shaved off.

They gathered around me and even though I couldn’t see them, I felt half a dozen pairs of eyes settle onto the back of my exposed head.

The sound of a drill was the last thing I heard.

I jerked awake, my hands flashing to my head.  I slumped back, relieved to find that my straight blond hair was still on my head.  I closed my eyes again, the smell of steel still burning my nose.

Something stirred the dirt outside my tent, immediately drawing my attention from the nightmare.  It was still hours from dawn, no one should have been awake at this hour, much less outside their tents.

Silently, I sprang from my bed, slinging my pack on in the same movement.  I grabbed a knife and a handgun from my own stash of weapons and went to the opening of the tent.

The moon cast a faint glow on Eden, just enough light to enable me to see the figure that was retreating to the tree line.

I stayed out of sight as I slid between tents, careful to keep my cover.  The outline looked vaguely familiar.  It moved with sure, deliberate strides, quieter than I would expect.  He must have dropped something or tripped just outside of my tent for me to have heard him.

He kept watch as he moved through camp but held his pace quick and straight.  He was in a hurry to get out of there.

I followed him to the edge of the forest, hiding behind Wix’s tent as I watched the figure dart into the trees.  He glanced back once before he dropped into the trees.

I darted into the forest ten yards to the west of where he entered.  My footsteps fell silently on the damp earth as I regained footing.  When I heard more than one set of footsteps I took to the trees, being careful not to rustle the leaves as I crossed from one bough to the other.

It wasn’t difficult to keep up with them.  One of the figures moved with a limp, all the while trying to keep a small figure close to her side.  The small group didn’t seem dangerous.

I dropped from a limb directly in front of them, my blade just inches away from the man’s chest.

“We don’t tolerate theft in Eden,” I said, my voice calm.

“Then point that knife back around,” a male voice said, filled with forced confidence.  “I believe you stole my buck.”

I had been right, this was the same person I had seen in the forest earlier.

My eyes flickered to the figures that stood behind him.  A woman who looked to be just a year or so older than myself stared at me with wide green eyes that shone brightly in the moonlight, her brilliantly red hair draping around her face in curls.  She had her arms around a small boy with similarly curly blond hair.

“I couldn’t let them starve,” the man before me said simply.

He carried a cloth in his arms and I could see several food items sticking out of it.  The small child held a piece of bread possessively in his hands, ready to protect it with his life.

“It’s dangerous coming here and taking what isn’t yours,” I said as I held his eyes.

“We haven’t eaten in days,” he said, his voice sounding tired.  I wasn’t sure if I should think of him as a man or a boy.  It was difficult to tell his age.  “We’ve been running for a week, maybe longer.  So I guess either you kill us or starvation will.”

My eyes scanned them carefully, checking for any signs.  Their eyes looked normal but it was difficult to tell in the minimal light.  I was fairly certain the woman was organic, considering her wound.  The Bane could heal themselves as long as the injury wasn’t fatal.  The cybernetic molecules would spread to the damaged area, stealing more of their humanity as the injured flesh was replaced with mechanical components.

The boy seemed likely organic as well.  Bane children didn’t know how to hide their true nature.

So the only one I had to question was the man.  He moved with skill, he had shot with deadly accuracy.  He hadn’t earned a clearing yet.

I observed him for a moment.  He was lean and well-muscled.  A survivor’s body.  His shaggy brown hair fell across similarly brown eyes.  There was a rough scar that ran across his throat and down toward the neck line of his shirt.  Claw marks.

“You are going to have to come with me,” I said finally, keeping the mans tired but determined stare.

He held my eyes for a moment before looking back at his companions.  The woman actually looked slightly relieved.  The child only bit into his bread, devouring it with a speed that left half of the food on his face.

“Alright,” he finally said, as if he actually had a choice.  I nodded my head in the opposite direction and they started walking.  As we moved through the trees, their leader kept glancing over his shoulder at me.

Camp was still silent when we entered its perimeters, as it should have been.  Pressing a finger to my lips, I urged them toward Gabriel’s tent.  I assumed by the lack of alert that the guard in the tower had fallen asleep.  I took a mental note to request that Gabriel add night watches to my list of duties.

I went to the east wall of Gabriel’s tent, the one I knew he slept on.

“Gabriel,” I whispered in attempt to not wake everyone nearby.  “Gabriel!”

I heard a grunt and a shift of movement.  At the same time an alarmed looking Avian stumbled out of his tent.

“Eve?” he questioned as he squinted through the darkness.  “Whoa…what…?”  He struggled to make his brain work, realizing I wasn’t alone.

“I found them out in the woods nearby.  After he stole from the stores,” I gave a hushed explanation.  “Gabriel,” I hissed again.

This seemed to finally rouse him.  I heard a curse and two seconds later Gabriel half tripped out of the entrance.

“What the devil…?” he said angrily and stopped short when he took in the growing group outside his tent.  “Who are they?”

“The ones we saw in the woods,” I repeated.

“You caught them?” Gabriel said stupidly.

“No, he’s forcing me to point the blade at them.”  I rolled my eyes.

Gabriel glared at me for a moment before he turned his attention to Avian.  “Get the CDU,” he said.

With a nod, Avian turned and jogged toward the medical tent.

“Where did you come from?” Gabriel demanded as he turned to the older boy.

“We were just outside a city, a few days south of here.  There were thirteen of us.  We’re all that’s left.”

“The city?” Gabriel said, surprise evident in his voice.  Everyone avoided the cities these days.

He nodded.  “Our camp moved around but we were always within walking distance.  We needed to be able to get to supplies.  The Bane found us though.”

That was explanation enough for us.  While food was becoming scarce in the city as things passed their expiration dates, other supplies were still to be found; clothing, medical supplies, weapons occasionally.  We went on our own raids when the need arose.

The sound of Avian’s quiet jogging announced his return.  His expression was grim as he rejoined the group.  We were all quiet as he charged up the CDU and calibrated it.

“What is it?” the young child asked as he pressed himself against the woman, eyeing the device with uncertainty.

“This,” Avian said as he finished pushing buttons, his tone careful for the child.  “Is called a Cybernetic Diffusion Unit.  Or a CDU for short.  It protects us from the bad things.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m just going to touch you with it.  It will give you a little shock but shouldn’t hurt.”

“This isn’t necessary,” the older boy said as he watched the child.  “We’re not infected.”

Even as Avian touched the CDU to the young boy’s arm I knew nothing would happen.  They weren’t pretending.  A Bane would never let the situation get this far before it tried to infect the entire camp.

The child jumped as the electricity leapt though his system.  He buried his face in the woman’s skirts, not wanting to watch as Avian looked into the woman’s eyes with polite apologies.  She barely flinched as she was shocked.

With more uncertainty, Avian turned to the boy, his expression not so kind anymore.

If the CDU was used on a Bane they would be shorted out and killed instantly, including their human parts.  The cybernetics saturated every part of your body once you were infected, even if your skin stayed intact, your muscles, your hair.  This was the device that had saved us from Tye once he had been infected.

The thief did not take his eyes from Avian as he approached.  He rolled up his sleeves, almost in a challenging way.  As if daring Avian to prove him not organic.

I didn’t even realize I had been holding my breath for over a minute until Avian had taken the CDU away from the boys arm.  He hadn’t even flinched.

“Satisfied?” the boy asked in a flat voice.

“No,” Gabriel said, his thick brows drawing together.  “You’ve stolen from us.”

“We needed food,” the woman spoke for the first time.  “The boy, he had to eat.”

Gabriel turned his dark blue eyes on her, his hands on his hips.  While his face was stern he looked almost comical, standing in the moonlight in his nightgown.  With his gray beard he looked almost like a picture I had seen of Santa Claus long ago.

“What are your names?” Gabriel demanded.

“This is Victoria,” the older boy said, indicating the woman.  “And Brady.  And my name is West.”

“Are you going to cause any trouble here?” Gabriel asked.

West shook his head, his eyes meeting mine.  “I’d rather not have her knife me, so no.”  The woman and the child both shook their heads as well.

“We were going to approach your camp in the morning,” West said, his tone less sarcastic.  “Brady couldn’t wait to eat.”

Gabriel looked at the group for a long moment.  I could see the gears turning in his finally awake head.  The decision to let them stay was a gravely important one.  On the one hand it was risky.  We knew nothing of their past and there was the chance they could be being tracked by the Bane.  On the other hand we could use more bodies, especially West, considering the recent loss of Tye.  And besides that, they were human.  We owed it to them to take them in.  We were becoming a dying race.

“You,” Gabriel finally said, indicating West.  “You may stay with Avian for the time being.  There is an extra tent close to his, used for storage at the moment, that the two of you can stay in,” he said, meaning the woman and child.

Avian and West eyed each other warily but I could tell West was too tired to fight anything.

“Thank you,” Victoria said gratefully.

“Are you alright until morning?” Avian asked, looking at Victoria.  “I have medical training.”

She seemed embarrassed to have his attention on her, her face flushing scarlet, visible even in the moonlight.  “I will be alright, thank you.”

“Don’t try and run off in the night,” I said as everyone started to disband.  “It’s not safe.”

West met my eyes for a moment and I thought I saw a hit of a smile tug at his lips.

“I want to talk to you at day break,” Gabriel said as he lifted the flap of his tent.  “All of you.”

Avian and I nodded, and the newcomers followed Avian.  Alone again, I started the walk to the watchtower.  It wasn’t my night but I climbed the ladder anyway.  I woke the guard who was on duty.  He was immensely apologetic, embarrassed that he had fallen asleep.  More embarrassed that he had been caught.  He would feel ten times worse come morning when he learned three people had raided camp while he had dreams of television and air conditioning.

The distant sound of awkward helpfulness drifted up to the tower for a few minutes and then the night was quiet again, just as it should be.

I sat on the hard wooden bench, pulling my jacket tighter around me.  The air felt suddenly cold now that the adrenaline that had been saturating my muscles had ebbed.

I rubbed my eyes, which suddenly felt heavy.  I hated sleep.  Idleness made me irritable and frustrated.  Sleep was about as idle as one could be.  It wasn’t like it came as a relief to me.  Others in Eden dreamt of times before the Evolution.  Of families, of homes with electricity and running water.  Of what life should have been like.

I couldn’t remember what it was like before the Evolution.  Even though I was thirteen when the world ended, my very first memory was of Avian’s burning blue eyes.

For years, technology had been evolving.  Robotic prosthetics helped people live, artificial hearts kept people alive.  Nanorobotics and cybernetic technology evolved faster than the media could even keep up with.  It started out so harmless.  There was nothing but good intensions.  It was difficult to find faults in the people who had created the infection.

And then the company NovaTor Biotics created a new breed of technology, manufactured a product that was going to save millions of people’s lives, improve a few million more.  They called it TorBane.  Tor to claim it as their own, Bane to tell you what it did.  It stood for Biological And Nanorobotic Enhancement.  Bane.  They created technology that infused human DNA with cybernetic molecules.  TorBane had the ability to generate new limbs, organs, and just about any other human part.  The machine was a part of you, just like your feet or your eyes.  It was a perfect blend of machine and man.

NovaTor and its scientists became legends overnight.  People were put on waiting lists, crying with joy that their lost leg was going to be regenerated, that their little sister who had been waiting for a liver transplant was going to live.

The unconfirmed question hung in the air.  TorBane had the ability to regenerate any body part.  When your heart, liver, lungs began to wear out you could simply buy new cybernetic hybrid ones.  If you could afford it.  Could people now live forever?

Fifteen-hundred implants were given in the beginning.  Those who were treated came from every corner of the world, were observed for a few weeks after the procedure to make sure the implants grew as they were programmed to, and then sent home.  For three months the world seemed like a better place to live in.

But the technology kept trying to improve the human body.  Side effects started showing up.  The people who had undergone the procedures were having other parts of their bodies change.  A cybernetic lung was joined by a mechanical kidney, an enhanced, metallic eye.  TorBane was evolving on its own, slowly taking over the human’s bodies.  Much like a virus, it morphed into something stronger, more deadly.

Then it wasn’t just the patients that were starting to lose themselves.  It was their families, their close friends.  The nanorobotic molecules weren’t stopping where they were supposed to.  The technology was dubbed as “the infection” and could be spread as easily as touching an infected person.  And the later generations claimed the human body within hours instead of weeks.

The soulless, human-looking machines were born.  The Bane.

They were fast, they were aggressive.  And they were hell-bent on infecting us all.

A war broke out between those still left, splitting the world.  There were those who wanted to build an electromagnetic pulse, to wipe the infection out completely.  But the rest of them cried there had to be another way.  Setting off that kind of an EMP would wipe out every computer, every car, every water heater, and backup generator – it would send the world back into the dark ages.

They waited too long to come to an agreement.

By month four, ninety-eight percent of the world’s population was infected, not even human anymore.  More machine than man.  We, mankind, were a dying race.

This was the age of the Evolution.  Of the Bane

It hadn’t mattered, wondering if mankind could now live forever.  They lost their humanity instead and were worse than dead.  Those that had survived fled into the country and the world was plunged back into the dark ages anyway.

FIVE

As the first hints of light started to faze into the sky a man named Tuck came to replace me.  He seemed surprised to see me instead of his comrade whom I had relieved.  I climbed down from the tower with stiff legs and headed back toward the tents.

I caught a glimpse of the red-haired woman and the small child walking with Avian toward the medical tent.  Just as I walked past it, Gabriel stepped out of his tent.  He gave me a knowing look and walked with me after Avian.  A few moments later I heard someone step out of another tent and looked back to see West following us.

The air in the medical tent was sharp, smelling faintly of blood and stolen bleach.  Victoria was already sitting on Avian’s table, pulling her skirt up to her knee as Avian pulled on a pair of precious latex gloves.  It was disheartening how something that had been so mundane just a few years ago had become so precious.

“I trust you got some rest last night?” Avian asked as he inspected her foot, the boy standing close by.  The skin on her foot was swollen and red, puss begging to be let out.

“Yes, thank you,” she answered quietly, her expression timid and uncomfortable, as if the thought of a man touching any part of her body scandalized her.

Gabriel sat on a stump, his fingers scratching at his grayed beard.  I could tell he was searching for words, unsure of what his actions were going to be.

“What are your intentions?” he finally asked, directing his question to West.  “What is your goal right now?”

“Stay alive, just like all of you,” West answered simply.  He glanced over at me, his eyes lingering for a few seconds.

“And where had you been heading, when Eve found you?”

“Just away from the city.  We didn’t know if we would ever find anyone else.  As far as we knew, our little group could be the only humans left.  And then there were only three of us after we got separated from our group.”

Gabriel considered his words.  Emptiness filled me as I thought about what West had said.  The possibility of no one else being out there felt like final defeat.  No wonder they had looked so tired last night.  They’d had the weight of the world on their shoulders.

“We could use you,” Gabriel said, having seemingly made up his mind.  “We lost someone recently; his absence will be felt, in more ways than one.”  Avian’s eyes flickered toward Gabriel’s face for a moment.  I didn’t miss the pain that filled them.  “We invite you to stay with us, if you can be trusted.  We won’t hesitate to dispose of you if we find otherwise.”

“We won’t be trouble,” Victoria said, her voice desperate.  “Please, we just want to stop running.”

Our attention turned to West.  Even though it hadn’t been stated, and even though Victoria seemed to be the same age, he was obviously the one who had taken care of everyone, the one who made the decisions.

He nodded.

“I will have some of the extra tents set up,” Gabriel said.  Avian looked relieved to hear that he wouldn’t have to share his quarters again with a stranger he didn’t know if he could trust.  “How does she look Avian?”

He didn’t even look up as he scrubbed at her skin.  Victoria’s face looked pained.  “The cut was bad.  It’s amazing you didn’t bleed to death.  Even more amazing this infection hasn’t killed you.  I wish we had some antibiotics but if we keep it clean it should heal up fine.  I suggest she stay off her feet for at least a few days.”

Gabriel nodded, looking momentarily at Brady.  I knew it hurt him to see another child.  Gabriel had lost a son to the infection in the beginning.

“You will go with Eve to the fields this morning,” he said, taking his eyes away from the boy and looking at West.  “This is important.  The gardens keep us alive.  Eve, if he acts suspicious, if you fear any betrayal, kill him.”

West glanced at me briefly, his eyes slightly wide with surprise at Gabriel’s bold words.  He then looked back at Gabriel and gave the smallest nod of understanding.

“Come on,” I said as I went to the flap of the tent.  “I am already late.”  I didn’t wait to see if he followed me.

He walked a few steps to the side of me.  I watched him for any wrong movements.  I kept my hand on the knife that was fixed in my belt, ready to use it on him if he tried to attack.  He only followed me, his eyes taking in the forest around us.

“How many are there here?” he finally asked.

“Thirty-four,” I said automatically.  “I mean, thirty-three.  There are thirty-three of us in Eden.”  It felt like a rock had just formed in my chest as the image of Tye’s lifeless metallic eye staring at me came back.

“And your leader, his name is?”

“He’s not exactly our leader.  He didn’t ask to be one but we all trust him.  His name is Gabriel.  And the other one is Avian.  He is as close to a doctor as there is anymore.”

“And your name is Eve.”  It wasn’t really formed as a question, but there was a curious sense of doubt in his words.  “Where do you come from, Eve?”

My stomach knotted up, my hand gripped tighter on my knife.  “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m just trying to figure things out.”

He didn’t say anything else after that and I made sure I didn’t let him see my face, picking up my pace just a bit.  Everyone had come from somewhere in Eden.  But I had no clue where I had been before Eden.  All I had were broken images from nightmares that didn’t link together, a shattered mirror that would never be put together again.

We walked in hardened silence the rest of the way to the gardens.  When we arrived it felt as if every pair of eyes fell upon us, growing wide with fear and curiosity.  I couldn’t raise my gaze to meet theirs.  The attention made me want to run.  I had raised myself to keep out of sight and in the shadows.

Pretending like we weren’t being scrutinized, I led West to the storage shed and grabbed a wheelbarrow.  “This way,” I said, keeping my gaze down.

West was well aware of all the looks he was getting but he didn’t hide from them like I did.  He met their eyes, his face showing no emotion as he followed me through the gate and down a path.  Despite the questions everyone was practically screaming with their eyes, no one said a word as we passed.

We stopped in the western field where hints of corn were starting to sprout.  Tufts of green rose in perfect rows.  Spring brought hope every year.  Every row echoed our victory over the infection, against the Bane.  We were still here.  While we were still here, there was still some form of hope.

I dropped to my hands and knees and started on a row, picking out the rebellious weeds that insisted in cropping up.  Seeing what I did, West dropped a few rows away from me and started pulling too.

My hands worked swiftly but I kept looking back at West’s form.  His back was turned to me, his head bent low as he worked dutifully.  He looked able to take care of himself.  His frame was well-muscled.  His dark hair fell across his eyes, left shaggy and longer like the majority of the males in the world.  The only man in Eden who kept his hair short was Avian, who shaved his head completely every other week or so.

Tangled in my own thoughts, I suddenly realized that West had looked over at me.  He had paused in his work, his hand a few inches above the ground, holding a weed.  I felt frozen for a moment, unable to look away.

The small smile that tugged on his lips was all I needed to snap back into reality.

“How long have you been here, Eve?” he asked, turning back to his task.  He threw the weed into the wheelbarrow.

“For as long as I can remember,” I replied without thinking.  I felt oddly disarmed, as if he had tipped over a wall in me that I didn’t really realize was there.  I didn’t really want that wall tipped.

“Since before the Evolution?”  His voice sounded slightly surprised.

“No, just after it.”

He paused for a moment, as if considering my reply.  “How old are you?” he asked.

“How old are you?” I shot back.

“Eighteen.”

We were both quiet for a few moments, only the soft sound of earth being worked disturbing the silence.

“I’m seventeen,” I said quietly to the dirt.  “I think.”

“You think?”

“I think,” I said sharply, making sure not to look into his face.

I saw little of the newcomers the rest of the afternoon.  They stayed close to Gabriel’s side, getting settled in.  Word was spreading fast about them, it would be impossible for it not to.  Emotions were mixed.  Some were elated to have three new members come into our family.  There was obvious excitement about Brady.  There weren’t many children anymore.  Other’s felt like I did, not sure if trust was to be automatically given just because they were human.

The sun started to set, an orange haze peppered with stars.  I sat on the rocky hill that protected Eden on the north side, watching as everyone went about their evening routine.  Some made trips to the outhouses, others to take an evening bath, some heading to bed early.  I watched them, feeling a sense of pride for them yet feeling disconnected and distant.  I was one of them but I didn’t really understand them.

I heard rubble being disturbed on the trail and a moment later Avian climbed up over the ledge, giving me a half tight-lipped smile as he joined at my side.

The silence between us was comfortable as we saw the fires being lit below us.  Trails of smoke drifted into the sky before they faded into the darkening light.  The sound of Avian’s breathing comforted me.  It was so familiar.  If anything was home in this wreck of a world it was Avian.

“What do you think of them?” I finally broke the silence, my eyes never leaving the tents below us.  I picked West out, walking hesitantly to a fire.  He didn’t sit to warm his hands, just stood back from the group and watched.

“I don’t know,” Avian mused, observing.  The glow of the fires cast an orange haze to his face that highlighted his sharp brow, the line of his cheek bones.  “The woman and child seem harmless.  I don’t know what to think of West though.  There’s something about him.”

I nodded in agreement.  West had history to him.  Some people were just like that.  You just looked at them and could tell there was a story behind their face.  “He’s keeping a secret.”

“Like what?” Avian asked.

I shook my head.  “I’m not sure.  He knows something.”

Avian was quiet, unsure of what to say, echoing my own hesitation.  I didn’t like being uncertain about people, especially when those people could end the lives of the others around me.

“Happy birthday, Eve,” Avian said quietly.  He extended a hand to me, a small box in his palm.

A smile tugged at my lips.  “My birthday.”

It probably wasn’t my real birthday.  Having no memory of anything when I came to Eden, Sarah insisted we pick a day as my birthday.  Some date to mark the years of my life as they passed.  I had no idea the date had come.

“There was once a time when turning eighteen meant something.  It used to be a big deal.”

I took the box from his hand.  It was simple, nothing special to it.  I pulled it open and something light and shiny fell into my palm.  I held it up to the light.  It was a silver necklace, attached to it was a tiny set of wings, carved out of a soft black stone.

I took the wings gently in my fingers.  They seemed so delicate, yet hard at the same time.  I knew I must be gentle with it or it would break.  It was the most elegant piece of craftsmanship I had seen.

I smiled as I recalled the conversation Avian and I had had when I was about fourteen.  I had asked him what his name meant.  He explained that his father had been a pilot and his mother had loved birds.  Avian related to things to do with birds and flight.  To give remembrance his parents he had gotten two small birds tattooed onto his left breast, just above his heart.  I had loved Avian’s name ever since.

“May I?” he asked.

I only nodded.  He took the necklace and fastened the clasp behind my neck.  His hands felt warm as they brushed my skin, causing goosebumps to rise on my flesh.  He sat back and observed where it lay on my chest.

“You made it,” I stated, picking it up again to observe the flawless details.  The feathers looked so soft I brushed my fingers over them, expecting soft plume instead of hard stone.

He only nodded, his eyes still looking at his creation.  “I didn’t want your birthday to go by without some notice.  It’s an important day for you.”

“It doesn’t feel important,” I said as I lowered the necklace to my chest again.

“It is,” Avian said, his eyes going back to Eden.

And we sat there on the hard earth, our shoulders barely brushing, until the sky went black and the stars shone with burning intensity.

SIX

I cinched my pack tighter as I walked out of the armory.  A blade was strapped to each of my legs, a handgun secured in my belt, and a rifle rested in my left hand.  I stood to the side of the entryway as Graye looked at me with serious eyes and ducked inside.  Bill joined us a few moments later.

“Same as always?” I asked as they both looked to me.  They nodded their heads, Graye shifting a gun into his other hand, Bill strapping a blade to his arm.

“Just a minute, Eve.”  I turned to see Gabriel walking toward us, West following two steps behind.  “I want you to take him with you.”

“We can handle it, Gabriel,” I said as I turned back to my scouting partners.

“I’m not asking, Eve,” he said sternly as he joined our small circle.  “With Tye’s loss we need him.  I won’t leave us unprotected because of your pride.”

“Fine,” I said as I stalked into the armory.  I grabbed a rifle and walked back out.  I raised my eyebrows slightly at West as I handed it over.  “Keep up.”

I headed toward the tree line.  West kept just two steps behind me.

Graye took to the northern border, Bill to the west.  We kept a constant circle around Eden.  I was a little disappointed to see that West had not chosen to follow Bill or Graye.

I kept my eyes to the trees, my ears alert.  Maybe I could just simply ignore West’s presence.  Maybe he’d get the message that I didn’t want him there and go scout on his own.

“What have I done to make you hate me?” West suddenly demanded.  His unexpected words stopped me in my tracks.  “You don’t… you don’t even know me.”

I whipped around, all of my defenses instantly bristling.  “That’s the point.  I don’t know you.  I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“And how do I know if I can trust you?” he asked, his voice dropping low.  “How do I know that you aren’t just going to turn that blade on me out here where no one can see us?”

“You don’t,” I said.  “But I wouldn’t do that.  We need you.”

“Exactly,” he said smugly.

My eyes hardened as I held his.  I wanted to wipe the annoying little smile off his face with the butt of my gun.

“Just stay out of my way,” I hissed as I turned and started walking east.

“Why do they treat you different?” he asked as he followed me.  “Like you’re some kind of leader?”

“Why don’t you find out?” I said as I stopped suddenly, turning cold eyes on him again.  When he didn’t say anything, I started walking again.

“’Cause I know how to survive,” I said as I scanned the trees, keeping my ears keen for any misplaced sounds.  “Because I help keep them alive.”

“Why are you any better than either of those other two guys?”

“Would you just shut up?!” I hissed as I glared back at him.  “You’re going to get us both killed!”

West threw both hands up in defense, his rifle pointing toward the blue skies.  “There isn’t anything anywhere near here.  We haven’t seen anything since the first day we left our camp.”

I stared at him in disbelief for a second.  Did he honestly think that meant he could let his guard down?

Finally, I just shook my head and kept walking.

The necklace Avian had given me bounced on my chest as I walked, its surface cool and hard.  The light reflecting off it blinded my vision for a fraction of a second.

A memory stirred.

I’d seen this necklace before.

“Graye!” I screamed as we headed back into an alley.  “Leave it!  We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Hang on!  I’ll be right back.  I’ve got to grab something!”  The helicopter above our heads nearly drowned his voice out.

“Graye!” I screamed, but it was too late, he had already dashed back out into the street.  At the same time, Tye jumped out from behind me, dropping his pack full of supplies beside me.

I was about to dart after them when a strong hand grabbed hold of my arm.  I whipped around to see Bill shaking his head at me.  “We don’t all need to get caught.”

I stared at him wide-eyed, yet knowing what he said was the truth.  I wasn’t thinking clearly.  But what was Graye doing?  We had everything we needed.  What could he possibly be going back for?

A light shone overhead from the circling helicopter.  We ducked behind a long unused Dumpster, dropping into the shadows.  The faint sound of glass breaking was followed by the roar of a Bane’s ATV.

Twenty seconds later we saw a flash of light from in front of the building as the Bane exploded and Graye and Tye came running around the corner.  The glint of the circling light overhead reflected off an object in Graye’s hand.

An hour later Tye’s eye had hardened and turned metallic.

My breathing came in shallow breaths as I looked back down at the necklace and my fingers encircled it.  Avian had asked Graye to grab it for me on the raid.  Tye had saved him from being touched but had been infected himself.  Tye had died to get Avian’s gift for me.

“Why are we stopping?”  I jumped when West’s voice was too close behind me.  His eyes scanned the trees for the reason for my hesitation.

“Nothing.  Why don’t you take the south trail?  You don’t need me to babysit you,” I said as my brow furrowed, my fingers closing tighter around the pair of wings.

West gave me a concerned look but nodded and started walking in the direction I had told him to.

My blood burned with fury.  Why would Avian risk so much for something so stupid?  Something so unnecessary?  Tye’s death was in no way worth the shiny bobble I wasn’t sure I even wanted anymore.

Taking two seconds to collect myself, I started off toward the eastern border.  I wouldn’t let myself get distracted on scouting duty.  I wouldn’t let a Bane slip past me because I was regretting things I had no control over.

The terrain took a steady climb upward when I reached the limits of our boundaries.  I took two steps backward before sprinting forward and then launching myself onto a branch of a wide-leafed tree.  I pulled myself higher into the branches, twigs and leaves brushing my skin as I ascended.  When the branches began to thin and bow under my weight I settled.

Valleys and low mountains spread before me.  At one time this was a part of something, belonging to some state or city.  None of that mattered anymore.  Once the infection got you, nothing mattered anymore, except for turning the rest of us into nothing too.

And beyond where I could see, there was an entire city of Bane.  And more cities full of them beyond that.

There were a few rules when it came to the Bane:

A Bane will always try to infect you.  They won’t try and kill you, but they will be very aggressive in trying to immobilize you.

They sleep at night.  If you’re going to attempt a raid on a city, your best chance is during the night.  For some reason they liked the sun.  Maybe it charged them, made them more powerful.  Maybe it was just an echo of their human selves.

They generally stick to the cities.

But the rules seemed to be changing.  Tye wouldn’t be dead if they weren’t.  They wouldn’t have attacked us on the night he died.  They wouldn’t have been in that helicopter or on the ATV.  And we wouldn’t have to scout the woods if they weren’t wandering away from the cities.

A movement below me caught my attention.  It could have been nothing, a breeze I hadn’t felt, an animal stalking through the forest.  Nonetheless, I was down the tree in less than five seconds and moving through the woods on silent feet.

Something breathed a few yards away, a heavy sound, reverberating through a chest too big to be human.  A musky smell floated in my direction, the scent of wet fur.

It saw me the same time I saw it.  A recently woken brown bear.

Adrenaline shot through my system in an intoxicating way.  I grabbed for my blade and the bear realized it was in danger.  It took lumbering bounds toward me.

I leapt at my opponent, blade gleaming in the air, and swung.  It connected with the bear’s throat, though as I had expected, it wasn’t enough to take it down.  The beast gave a ferocious cry and swiped at me with a massive paw.  I jumped out of its path, reaching to my belt for my handgun.  At the same time another shot was fired from above my right shoulder.

I shouldn’t have gotten distracted by the shot.  I was a better hunter than that.

In the half-second I glanced back at West, the bear leapt at me, angry and fearful.  Blood seeped into his fur from the bullet wound.  That was all I noticed as his gigantic paws swiped at me.

I landed a good four feet from the creature and by the time I rolled over to spring back up, it was on top of me again, its teeth bared as it gave an irate growl in my face.

I pulled my handgun once again and fired one shot straight up into the bear’s heart.

It collapsed on top of me with crushing force.

“Eve!” West’s shout came from somewhere behind the mass of the bear.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would keep coming at you after I shot it!”

Bracing my hands against the bulk of the beast, I shoved with everything I had.  It was just enough to roll it off of me and wiggle out.  I stood, wiping my hands, and noticed West’s wide-eyed expression.

“What?” I asked, annoyance in my voice.

He blinked twice and then shook his head.  “Nothing.  Let’s get this thing back to camp.”

We hacked off what we could, packing as much of the eighteen-hundred-pound beast as we could manage and set off through the woods.

“What was it like?” West suddenly asked as we huffed from our loads, struggling through the forest.  “Where you came from, before here?”

“You really ask too many questions,” I said as I wiped my arm across my forehead quickly.  When he didn’t say anything in response, I shook my head, irritated.  “I don’t remember anything before I came here.  Eden has taken care of me, Gabriel mostly, Sarah.  Avian when I needed him.”

He seemed to be mulling that information over.  We were quiet for a while as we hauled our load.  I was looking forward to eating the fatty meat of the bear tonight but at the same time I wished we hadn’t wandered this far from Eden before finding it.

People buzzed with excitement as we dragged the pieces of bear through camp to the mess hall.  I left them and West to take care of the meat that would feed us for days.

I walked toward my tent, passing by the newly set up tents.  Just as I was about to slip by, a mass of red hair stepped out, followed by an explosion of Brady.  The boy giggled as he raced out and hid behind another tent.

“Brady, stay here!” Victoria said, her voice alarmed.

I paused, feeling awkward just walking away when we stood in such close proximity, but not knowing what to say to this person I didn’t know.

“I’m sorry if he startled you,” she said apologetically as she grabbed Brady’s hand and pulled him back to her side.  “He’s restless.  We’ve been running so long, he’s not sure what to do with himself now.”

“He’s an active boy,” I tried to make conversation.  “He needs that to be a survivor.”

Victoria only gave a nod.  “He’s a good man you know,” she said, her voice dropping a bit.  “I mean West.  I can tell you don’t like him, but we wouldn’t have survived out there without him.”

I stiffened.  Was my hesitancy about him so obvious?  Feeling the awkwardness double, I gave a nod and continued on to my tent.

That night, after the rest of the bear had been retrieved and the other food had been cleared away, the stars started to wink into the sky.  I sat beside the fire in front of my tent, staring into the flames.

I had avoided Avian all day.  I didn’t know how I was going to react to him when I had to face him.  What he had asked Graye to do was stupid.  I didn’t need the necklace.  It was just a silly little thing.  It wasn’t going to help me or anyone else survive.  Why had he bothered?

My thoughts turned to Tye.  He often joined me in my solitude, if he would leave his post.  We shared that.  Neither of us liked having to take time away from our duties.  There were nights we would both sit here, staring into the flames in silence, wishing we could be scouting the woods, or keeping watch in the tower.  Now he was gone, nothing but a pile of ashes thrown into the wind.

The ground crunched as someone walked toward me.  I didn’t look up from the flames, not really caring who it was that joined me.  We sat in the darkening silence, two people lost in their own thoughts.

“She told me you saved them,” I eventually said to the flames.

West didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so cold to you.  I don’t trust people easily.”

He was quiet for a few moments.  He shifted positions, sitting forward, his forearms resting on his knees.  “He’s her son, you know.  Brady.”

I wasn’t completely surprised by this.  Part of me had assumed he was but when I thought of how old Brady was and how young Victoria looked, the numbers didn’t add up.

“Victoria was fifteen when a man forced himself on her.  She joined our camp when Brady was only fourteen months old.  He’s four now and she’s only nineteen.  She’s only a few months older than I am.”

I shook my head, disgust filling my stomach.  It explained why she reacted the way she did when Avian tried to fix her foot, like she couldn’t stand the thought of him touching her.

My eyes remained glued to the flames, I couldn’t think of anything to say.  Conversation was something I wasn’t good at.  I was good at most of the things I did but talking wasn’t one of them.

West checked something in the inside pocket of his jacket, securing it like it was something precious.  I diverted my eyes when he glanced over at me to make sure I hadn’t seen.

West kept secrets.  In our wrecked world, secrets could be dangerous but weren’t we each entitled to them?

SEVEN

I was woken in the early hours of the next morning by the sound of Sarah’s wheezing coughs.  I tried to ignore it at first.  But as the sound of her coughing intensified I rolled onto my side to face her.

“Sarah, are you alright?” I asked quietly through the dark.

She didn’t answer me but her coughing paused.  It took me two full seconds before I realized what had happened, why she was suddenly so deathly quiet.  She had stopped breathing.

“Sarah!” I said in a panicked whisper.  I was out of my bed and across the tent.  Through the dim morning light I could see that Sarah’s skin was covered in sweat and her eyes looked sunken, her lips the wrong color.  Without another second’s hesitation, I scooped her up in my arms and barreled out the tent.

Sarah’s head jostled around as I ran with her in my arms.  Her eyes slid partially open.  They were rolled into the back of her head, looking frighteningly gray.  She still wasn’t breathing and her lips were turning an ugly shade of purple.

“Avian!” I cried as I neared his tent.  “Avian!  Wake up!”

I didn’t even hesitate as I plowed through the flaps of the tent and stumbled inside.  My arms shook as Sarah’s body limply lay in my arms.  “Avian, wake up!”

He jerked up from his cot, his eyes wide but unfocused with sleep.  “What… Eve…?”

“Sarah!” I cried, frustrated that he didn’t understand what was happening.  “She’s not breathing!”

This seemed to finally shake the sleep from his brain as he jumped to his feet, taking Sarah from my arms and laying her on his cot.  He held his fingers to her neck, sitting quiet for a moment.

“She was coughing and then all the sudden she stopped breathing,” I explained as I watched him put his ear to her chest.

“Run to the medical tent, grab my kit,” he said, his eyes wide with fear and adrenaline.

I dashed out of the tent and sprinted for the infirmary.  People were poking their heads out of their tents, wondering what was going on, what all the shouting was about.  I slipped inside the white tent.  It only took me a moment to find the black, hard-sided kit.

It took me all of ten seconds to get back to Avian’s tent.  By this point a few people were standing outside, confusion and sleep filling their faces.

When I stepped back inside, I found Avian doing chest compressions and breathing air into Sarah’s mouth.  I handed the kit to him and stepped back.

He opened the kit and took a syringe out.  He pulled the cap off and plunged the needle into her chest.  Sitting back on his heels, he watched her.

A few seconds later, Sarah took a gasping breath, her entire chest surging off of the cot.  Her eyes didn’t open though.  Suddenly her body went slack again and she lost consciousness.  Thankfully her chest continued to rise and fall.

Avian sat back on his heels, his fist pressed into his pursed lips

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, my throat feeling tight.

He just shook his head, not saying anything for agonizing seconds.  I wondered if he didn’t dare speak yet.  There were emotions just under the surface that were threatening to explode.

The flap of Avian’s tent was opened and in stepped Gabriel, West silently following behind him.

“Sarah’s sick,” I said hoarsely, saving Avian from having to speak.  “She stopped breathing but Avian helped her.”

Gabriel gave a simple nod, his eyes fixed on Sarah.  My eyes slid to West, his own meeting mine.  They were reserved but I was surprised at the concern that I saw there.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” West asked, his voice sincere.

Avian gave a sniff, finally seeming to jerk out of his state of shock.  “You can help me move her to the medical tent.”

Each of them grabbed an end of the blanket Sarah was lying on, and being very careful not to jostle her, carried her from one tent to the other.  By this time, most everyone had woken up.  They watched with fear as she was transported to the medical tent.  I knew what they were all thinking.  We had just lost someone.  We couldn’t deal with that again, not so soon after.

The men laid Sarah softly on the examination table though I didn’t think their tenderness was necessary.  Sarah was still completely out.  I helped Avian place pillows around her in a vain attempt to make her more comfortable.

“She was coughing the other day,” I said.  “When we were in the gardens.”

Avian just nodded, placing his hands on his hips and watching Sarah.

“Eve,” I was slightly startled when I heard Graye’s voice from the entrance.  “We need to leave for scouting duty.  We’re already late.”

I looked from his face to Sarah’s still form.  I wasn’t one to shirk my duties, ever.  But how could I just leave right now?

“I’ll go in her place,” West spoke up.  “I still haven’t been assigned an official scouting party.”  I realized he had been watching my face.  His eyes connected with mine for a brief moment.  I couldn’t make the words “thank you” form on my lips for some reason, but I hoped he felt my gratitude anyway.

Graye nodded once, and West followed him silently.

Avian had grabbed an array of well used but meticulously cared for medical equipment.  He placed an instrument on her chest and listened.  Next he pressed his fingers to her wrist, checking it to the one watch that existed in Eden.  He wrote a few notes down.

“What’s wrong with her Avian?” I asked again, standing along the edge of the tent, unsure of what to do with myself.

He shook his head, bracing his hands on the table next to Sarah.  “I’m not sure.  I might say an allergy attack, but this was too severe and Sarah’s never suffered from allergies before.  Pneumonia maybe?  It could really be anything.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

He didn’t answer right away.  “We’ll do what we can.  But until I can figure out exactly what this is there isn’t going to be much I can do for her.”

“But if she stops breathing again, you have more of those shots, right?”

“It was just adrenaline,” he said as he sat on one of the stumps.  “I have two more now.”

I couldn’t decide if two sounded like a lot or nothing at all.  Avian used those shots for multiple things.  Terrif’s heart had stopped once and Avian’s shots had got it started again.  But what if something like that happened again?  We’d be down to only one.  What if Sarah stopped breathing again?  What if it happened more than once?

“I’m going to go get us some food,” I said, ducking out of the tent without saying anything else.

The scent of freshly baked bread wafted through the air as I made my way to the ovens.  Half a dozen other people were gathered around the kitchen.  A few women passed out the rolls.  Another man was scooping a steaming mush into bowls and handing them to people.

As I stepped up to take Avian’s portion and mine, everyone’s eyes grew a little wider.

“Eve, is she okay?  Is Sarah alright?  What did Avian say?”  I was bombarded with their questions.  It didn’t take long for news to travel in Eden.

“Avian thinks it might have been an allergy attack.  She stopped breathing for a minute this morning.  That’s all I know.”

I grabbed our food and made a hasty retreat back to the tent.  I found Avian staring at Sarah’s still form, his brow furrowed.

“Eat something,” I commanded as I handed him the warm food.

“Thank you,” he said, accepting the bowl and the rolls.  For a brief moment, I saw the young man who had fled for his life five years ago, with fear in his eyes, not knowing what to do.

Avian had been a bright student.  He had skipped grades and eventually got a scholarship to an accelerated private school.  He had graduated high school at the age of fifteen and received a degree in biology by the time he was eighteen.  Scholarships had been offered but it wasn’t going to be enough to pay the hefty price of medical school.  Just months after he came of age, Avian joined the Army with the offer that they would pay for all of his medical school.  Along with his military training, Avian had been put into an accelerated medical program specific for Army and survival training.

But only two and a half years into his training, he noticed how everyone was acting strange.  Violent, disoriented.  Savage.  The world fell apart and Avian took what knowledge he had gained and fled with his sister and cousin into the mountains.

I picked at my food, not feeling like eating in the least.  My stomach was a hard knot and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Sarah.  I was sure at any minute she would open her eyes and complain about having to lay on the hard wooden table.

After we both pretended like we had eaten something, we watched her in silence.  I was getting anxious.  I didn’t know how to handle just sitting.  I debated internally what I could do that was close by, so that if I needed to, I could run right back in.  Not that I could really do anything to help Avian.  When it came to the body, I was just glad mine functioned.  I didn’t know how to fix it.

I was saved from idleness in a horrifying way.

Sarah started shaking violently.  Her arms flailed and her legs shook.  We both sprang to our feet, catching her just a fraction of a second before she fell off the table.

“She’s having a seizure!” Avian said, panicked.

“What do we do?” I screamed.

“Help me roll her onto her side,” he shouted as he ducked out of the way of her thrashing arm.  With difficulty we maneuvered her onto her side, balancing her so she wouldn’t shake her way off.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” Avian said quietly, looking at me with fear in his eyes again.

The seizure lasted for just over a minute.  Her limbs continued to swing violently, her arm beating against Avian’s side so hard I knew he would be bruised in a few hours.  I could only stare at her for a moment when it was finally over, horror filling me.

Avian sank onto his seat again.  His head dropped into his hands, rubbing his scalp with force.  He really didn’t know what was wrong with Sarah.  I felt angry with him for a moment.  Why didn’t he know what to do?  He always knew what to do with everyone else.  Why couldn’t he save his sister?

We paced around the tent, each pretending to do something productive.  I rearranged the plastic aprons used for operating several times.  He cleaned his tools until they shone.

We were both startled by the sound of Sarah coughing.  We jumped to her side, Avian grabbing one of her hands in his.

“Mum… Avi… ahh,” she tried to speak, her eyes struggling to open.

“We’re here Sarah, me and Eve,” Avian said as he pushed the hair back from her face with his free hand.  “We’re here.”

She gave a soft sound of acknowledgment before her eyes closed fully and she fell asleep.  Or into unconsciousness, I wasn’t sure which.

Avian’s body slouched as he stood next to me, his shoulder brushing mine.  His hand fell away from her face.  As it dropped to his side, his hand brushed mine.  His fingers stretched out toward my own, curling around them until our fingers were intertwined securely.

My eyes shifted to our hands, my chest suddenly feeling strange.  It was almost like a bunch of bees were buzzing inside my chest, making my breaths come in shallower swallows.  And I felt like I should pull my hand away.  People generally didn’t touch me, I didn’t touch people.

But I didn’t.  I left my hand in Avian’s.  The feeling of the bees buzzing in my chest didn’t feel too bad.  In fact, it felt kind of nice.

EIGHT

We waited.  And waited.

Sarah’s condition didn’t improve.  She continued to have seizures.  She coughed in her sleep, so violently she started choking.  On the second day we had to use another of the shots.  After four days of watching Sarah waste away, Avian used his last one.

We were going to need more.

Something, maybe everything, in Sarah’s body was breaking down and I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to fix it in a world that had forced us out into the backcountry.

As if Sarah’s illness wasn’t enough, there was a lot of anxiety flowing through Eden.  A Bane had been spotted twenty miles away and a helicopter had been heard, though not seen.  We needed to move camp but Avian begged Gabriel to wait.  He didn’t dare move Sarah, especially since he was out of the adrenaline.

Camp was quiet as I rose and strapped my pack to my back.  There was barely enough light to see by as I pulled my boots on.  I pulled the shiny silver handgun from under my cot and tucked it under my belt.  I grabbed a box of ammunition as well, dumping a heaping handful into the side pocket of my pants.  I secured my favorite rifle to the side of my pack.

I surveyed the tent carefully, making sure there was nothing I was going to leave behind that I would need later.

Last night had been one of panic.  Sarah had started coughing again, so violently it left blood on her lips when she finally stopped.  As I helped Avian, Bill had come into the medical tent informing us that there were now two Bane that had been spotted.  We had no way of knowing if there were more out there.  They were getting closer.

Gabriel was ordering everyone to pack up.  Eden was to move in two days.  Those who could leave sooner were encouraged to do so.

“We can’t move her,” Avian said, panicked.  “She won’t make the trip.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Bill said quietly.  “If we stay here, we’ll all die.”

“If Sarah had the right medicine, would she be okay?” I asked as I hesitantly placed a hand on Avian’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort him.  I felt awkward.  I wasn’t good at that kind of thing.

“She’d stand a chance.  But it’s all gone.  I don’t have anything left.”

So there I was, walking out of my tent, ready to take the two-day journey to the city by myself.  I wasn’t going to let Sarah die.

I had just gotten to the outskirts of the tents when I heard footsteps coming up behind me.  I turned and West met my eyes as he cinched his backpack.

“Let’s go,” he said quietly as he looked away from me into the woods.

I hesitated for just a moment before we took off.

We jogged through the trees silently for nearly an hour as the sun crawled up into the sky.  I had to remind myself frequently to keep my pace slower.  West was in good shape and he was by no means slow, but few people were able to keep up with what was my normal speed.

“Why did you come with me?” I finally asked.  “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“I figured it must be important if you were willing to head into the woods by yourself with Bane in the area,” he said.  “I felt like I needed to do something, even if I’m not sure where I’m going.”

“I’m going to the city.  There are a few pharmacies that should have the medication Sarah needs,” I said as I jumped over a tree that had fallen across our path.  “This is going to be really dangerous.”

“I know,” he said as he jumped over after me.  “She’s really important to you, isn’t she?” West asked.  “Both of them are.”

I nodded.  “Sarah has been like my big sister.  She’s taken care of me.  I owe this to her.”

We stopped briefly at mid-day to drink from a stream that looked clean and I shared some of the food rations I had taken the night before.  We were going to have to be careful.  I had only taken enough for myself.  Now it was going to have to keep the two of us going for the next five days.  Maybe we’d get lucky and find something non-perishable in the city.

The sun was hot as it started toward the western horizon.  Spring was finally starting to warm up into summer.  This was exactly what the gardens needed.

I explained the layout of the city to West as we walked.  There were certain hideout spots we knew were safe, places the Bane would never think to look.  There were three pharmacies in the city, each on opposite ends.  It would take us nearly a full day to get to all three, if there were no complications.

A few weeks ago I would never have tried a raid in the day time, but Tye’s death proved the night was becoming just as dangerous.

As the light faded away, we found a place to make camp.

I caught a decent-sized rabbit and was lucky to find a large handful of wild, though not nearly ripe, blackberries.  When I came back to our camp, I found West had built a fire and slung a hammock high up in a tree.

“Where did you get that?” I asked as I set to skinning and gutting the rabbit.

“I found it in my old camp.  Someone left it.  It will be a lot safer sleeping up in that than it will be on the ground,” he said as I gave him the rabbit.  He drove a narrow, sharp stick through it, then set it over the fire to cook.

I gave a nod, pretending like the fact that we were going to be sleeping right next to each other didn’t make me uncomfortable.

It felt good to get food in my system.  While none of us in Eden were starving, we had to be careful through the winter to make sure our stores would last until spring.  It was nice to get my share.  I licked my fingers and threw the bones as far as I could to keep the wolves away.

The heat of the day faded away and the chill of evening started to set in.  We both huddled closer to the fire, palms raised to the flames.

“What do you remember from before the Evolution?” I asked, my voice quiet.

West glanced at me for a brief moment, taken off-guard by my sudden, very serious question.

“I lived with my father and my grandfather.  My mother left when I was really little.  My grandfather was a scientist, my dad was a doctor.”

“What kind of a scientist?” I asked.  Just the word scientist brought up all kinds of hateful feelings in all of us.  It was the scientists at NovaTor that had ruined our world, our race.

“He did experimental stuff,” he said as he rubbed his tired eyes.  “It was weird; I was always around other adults.  I never even really knew any other kids.  We lived in this unit that was attached to where they worked.  A woman came to take care of me during the day while they were at work.  When she couldn’t come they would take me with them.”

“I bet that wasn’t too fun for you,” I said as I stared into the flames.

“It was all I really knew.  It might have been harder if I’d ever lived any different,” he said with a shrug.  “And you don’t remember anything?” he asked.  “Nothing before you came to Eden?”

I shook my head.

“No parents?  No childhood friends?”

“Nothing,” I said.  “I know everyone has lost someone, but I don’t even remember there being anyone.  People talk about electricity and running water in houses, but it’s just a story to me.  A myth even.  The world in Eden, the world of raids and running, it’s all I’ve ever known.”

West looked over at me and I looked back at him, watched the flames dance in his eyes.  “Maybe it’s better you don’t remember.  Not everyone has a happy childhood.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that so I looked back into the fire.  Even though I didn’t feel cold often, the wind that gusted through suddenly shook me with a shiver.  West draped an arm across my shoulders, squeezing me to his side.  As he did, I felt something square and flat press into my side.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, tensing up.  “Just…a connection to my past.”

I looked at his face for a moment.  More secrets.

“We should probably get some sleep,” I finally said as I looked away from him.

“Good idea.”  West stood.  We both kicked dirt over the dying fire until it was smothered.

West helped hoist me up into the hammock and I pulled him in after me.  Despite how uncomfortable I felt, we wrapped our arms around each other to keep warm.

West quickly drifted off to sleep.  I considered the fact that I was going to be sleeping in the arms of the boy I wasn’t sure if I could trust and could hardly stand just a week or two ago.  The fact that he had chosen to take off with me into dangerous woods with no hesitation spoke pretty loudly though.  Maybe I had judged him too harshly.

I didn’t sleep more than a total of three hours.  Every little sound made me jump, ready to pull my handgun out and unload it.

West slept like the dead.

We got moving long before the sun came up.  We were quiet as we moved, feeling the seriousness of what was coming.

We managed to keep out of sight of any Bane that day and made camp far back in a cave that night.  We didn’t say much and I silently wondered if West was regretting his decision to come with me.  Maybe he finally understood just how dangerous this really was.

I doubted either of us slept that night.

It was always haunting, walking among the houses, feeling the pavement underfoot.  This may as well have been an alien world to me.  I preferred my canvas tent to the brick walls.  The houses seemed too much like a prison.

The suburbs eventually gave way to the rise of apartment buildings and offices.

We crouched behind a long abandoned car as we came to an intersection.  After I checked to make sure nothing was watching, I signaled West, and we darted across the street to the pharmacy.  Hugging the wall, we made our way around to the back of the building.  As we stepped inside, I heard the whooshing of helicopter blades off in the distance.  Gray color started to creep into the city.

The door had been busted in by Bill a few years ago.  We’d cleared out the items we needed, things to reduce fevers, things to clean out wounds.  I just hoped I would recognize the syringes Avian needed.

“Hurry,” I whispered as I looked around the building to make sure there wasn’t any sleeping Bane inside.

“What are we looking for?” he asked as he hopped over the counter and started searching through shelves.  I climbed over as well and started searching with him.

“The adrenaline was in a syringe,” I said as I headed to look toward the back.  I noticed the fridges and opened one.  It seemed a miracle that the electricity still ran in the building.  The fridge was cold.  Row after row of vials and syringes greeted me.  “Got it!”

We both scoured the labels, searching for any indicator of what we needed.  I didn’t even understand what most of it was supposed to be.  My heart started pounding faster as the room lightened.  They would all be waking soon.

“This is it!” West suddenly gave an excited hiss.  “There’s… one, two, two of them.”

“That’s all?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink into my knees.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” he said, checking again.

I grabbed the syringes from him and wrapped them in the cleanest shirt I had, packed exactly for that purpose.  “Check for aspirin, cough medicine, anything that looks like we could use it.   And hurry, we haven’t got much time.”

We picked our way through everything.  I wished I could load up one of those long-forgotten cars outside and just dump the entire store into it.  Even if everything was expired by several years, it could still help us.

“Come on,” West said as we double checked to be sure there was nothing left we might need.

We slipped out the back door.  As we did, I picked up on the sound of the chopper blades again, this time sounding further away than earlier.  They were heading out to scan the outskirts of the city.

The other pharmacy was five blocks to the east, all city with nothing but abandoned cars for cover.

I bit my lip, scanning the road for any signs of activity.  “Let’s go,” I said.

I bolted toward a bus that was tipped over in the middle of the road.  West’s footsteps pounded softly behind me.  My own adrenaline raced in my system, propelling me all the faster as I peeked around the bus, saw that the coast was clear and sprinted along the side of a building.

“You okay?” I asked as I stole a brief glance at West as we pressed against the side of the building.

He only nodded as he stared wide-eyed back at me.

I looked around the corner, keeping my body pressed to the cool surface of the side of the building.  I caught sight of a woman walking in the opposite direction from us.  Only half her head was covered with red hair that trailed to her waist.  The other half of her head was shiny metal.  Her left hand had no flesh, only cybernetic skeletal fingers poked out of her long-sleeved shirt.

I glanced at West, pressed a finger to my lips, then motioned for him to follow me.  We sprinted silently across the street.

There was only one block to go.  I could see the pharmacy when something inside the bottom floor of a building caught my eye.

There were Bane, just standing inside.  Frozen.  Motionless.  Staring out at us.

“Why are they like that?” I asked, my head turning as we continued to jog toward the pharmacy.  “Why do some of them try to infect us when others just stand there?  They look like they’re waiting for something.”

“Let’s not find out what for,” West said, shaking his head.

We reached the pharmacy and stepped through the large broken window.  We went to the fridge first this time.  The electricity was still working in this building as well.

“Here we go,” West said.  “Four… five… six.  There’s six of them here.”

“Great,” I said as I wrapped them with the others.  I stuffed the shirt back in my bag and set it down on the ground as I went to scour the shelves.  “That’s got to be enough.  I don’t think we’ll have to go to the other pharmacy.  We probably couldn’t make it anyway with it getting this light.  It’s across the city.  Six or seven miles.”

There were bottles and bottles of aspirin, cases of allergy medication I hoped might have a chance of helping Sarah.  There was probably something here for seizures as well, but I wouldn’t know what it was.

“Does it smell funny in here to you?” I asked as I followed the source of the strange scent.

“Just like an old abandoned building with breaking down chemicals,” West said as he stuffed his pack full of life-saving medication.

I wandered to the back of the building, into a utility room.  A rusty looking water heater dominated the cramped space.  Electric cables and lines ran in different directions, disappearing into the wall.  This was where the smell was coming from.

A movement outside the small window to my left caught my eye.

The glass shattered as the Bane outside fired.  The bullet brushed past my left shoulder, embedding itself into the thick metal side of the water heater.  It was just enough to cause an explosion.

“West!” I screamed, ducking as the flames billowed out at me.  “Get out of here!”

I could feel the oxygen being quickly sucked out of the building as the flames ate it up.  I scrambled along the floor toward my pack.

“Eve!” I heard West screaming toward the front of the building.

“Run!” I shouted as I came to his side, grabbed his hand in mine, and bolted out the door.

The sun had broken over the buildings and the morning rays were charging the enemy.  I heard the rev of an engine come from behind the building and the screeching of tires against asphalt.

We were only two blocks away from where the forest butted up against the city but we weren’t as fast as an ATV.

The Bane shot across the street behind us.  The sound of the engine was the only thing I could concentrate on as we ran for our lives.

The pile of metal that slammed into me from the side and knocked me to my back wasn’t the one I expected.

Neither of us had noticed the other Bane hiding in the shadows of another building.  He had launched himself in my direction, tackling me to the asphalt, immobilizing and choking the life out of me with one bare flesh hand and another cybernetic one.

As I stared into his metallic eyes, I couldn’t believe this was how my end was finally going to come.

The Bane suddenly jerked to the side as a metal rod dented its head in.  It collapsed with a hiss of dying electric sounds.  I looked up to see West holding a five foot long broken street sign, looking quite pleased with himself.  A half-smile tugged at his lips despite the terror in his eyes.

I climbed to my feet and pulled my pack tighter as we started running again, praying none of the syringes had broken during my fall.

As the screech of tires against pavement assaulted my ears again, I turned and pulled my handgun out.

In one shot, I embedded the bullet into the gas tank and the ATV exploded in a ball of blazing glory for humanity.

Somehow we made it to the edge of the city and back into the trees.  West wheezed as we ran further into the forest, falling several steps behind me.

“Holy…” he gasped.  “Eve.”

I slowed and turned to him as we stopped.  “What?”

“Your shoulder,” he said, his eyes filled with horror.

My stomach knotted instantly and I almost didn’t dare look.  With all the adrenaline coursing through my system I didn’t consider two very important things that had just happened.

I looked down at my shoulder and realized half my shirt had been burned away.  So had my flesh.  The skin from the top of my right shoulder down as far as I could see on my back was a charred, black, smoking mess.

“Oh my ga… Eve,” West said, his voice a horrified whisper that choked off.  “Are you…?” I knew he was going to ask me if I was okay but it was obvious I wasn’t.

And then it hit me.  “I don’t feel anything.  I didn’t even know it was there.”

West continued to look at me with that horrified expression.  I could only stare back for a moment.

“It touched you.”  I could barely even hear his words as they escaped his throat.

My blood froze in my veins and it felt like all my internal organs had suddenly disappeared.   One touch was all it took.  The Bane had been all over me.

“I have to go back to the city,” I said as I locked eyes with him.  “You have to run, West.  Don’t look back.”

I took two steps back where we had come from when he grabbed my wrist.  “No,” he growled and shook his head.  “No.”

“I have to West,” I hissed, angry with him.  He knew how our world worked now.  “I only have a few hours.  Then I’ll be trying to kill you too.”

“No,” he said again, his jaw clenched as his eyes burned into mine.  There was moisture brimming in them.  “I’m taking you with me.  If you start to turn, I’ll shoot you myself and run.”

“It’s not a question of if, West,” I said, my voice low and husky sounding.  I shook his hand off and started back again.

West grabbed my wrist again, this time yanking me back toward him with much more force.  His other hand encircled my waist pulling me against his body.  “No,” he said again.

And then he crushed his lips to mine.  I could have sworn I was back in the middle of that explosion in that moment.

I didn’t even realize for several seconds after that I was being dragged through the forest again, West’s hand securely around my wrist.  I couldn’t think straight enough to resist.

Finally, I yanked the gun from the belt of my pants and forced it into West’s other hand.  “Here,” I said, my eyes daring him to fight me.  “You’re going to need this soon.”

He tucked it into his own pants and continued to pull me through the trees.

NINE

The chill of the morning air shook West in an obvious way, his teeth chattering as we ran through the forest.  His hand was still clenched around mine, his fingers a frozen color of purple.  Our breath caused clouds to bloom around us in the chilly morning air.

As we pounded our way through the woods, I could only think one thing, over and over.  What was happening?  Or more accurately: what wasn’t happening?

We had run through the entire day after I had been tackled by the Bane, and had continued through the night.  I kept waiting for the sensation of my cells hardening, waiting for my vision to sharpen and for data to start flashing across my eyes, or something.  It shouldn’t have taken more than two or three hours for the changes to start.  It had now been just short of twenty-four and still nothing had happened.

The terrain became familiar and I felt both relief and panic.  Perhaps Avian could give me some answers and I now had the medication Sarah needed.  Yet I was infected.  I couldn’t bring it into Eden.  That was the very thing we had fought all these years to keep out.

I was startled to see how Eden had changed since I left it.  There were only a few tents still standing and the place that was my home looked deserted.  I remembered that Gabriel had told everyone to leave.

The few people who were left looked busy packing and preparing for departure.  But they stopped and stared at West and I as we walked swiftly toward the medical tent.

“Avian!”  I half shouted before we were even inside the tent.  “Avian!”

“Eve?” I heard his excited yet panicked shout as we burst into the tent.

I froze as I got inside, seeing nothing but Avian, standing there looking back at me.  All the years watching him work, the hours we had spent by campfires, the feeling of his hand in mine, the sound of his breathing rushed through my head.  Everything I was going to lose by turning into a Bane was standing in this tent.

“Eve,” he finally whispered as he closed the gap between us and wrapped me in his arms.  His entire frame was trembling.

He took a step back, placing his hands on my shoulders, and took a good look at me.  He then realized what was under his right hand.

“Eve!” he nearly shouted as he whipped his hand away.  “You’re fried!  How are you not writhing in pain?”  He grabbed me and maneuvered me onto the table.

Sarah wasn’t lying on it anymore.

Was I too late?

“I can’t feel it,” I said, my voice sounding dead.  “There was an explosion.”

“It’s a good thing you can’t,” Avian said as he poured some water onto a rag.  “Burns are some of the most painful injuries.  This would really, really hurt.”

Avian cut away the rest of my charred shirt and I clung to the tattered pieces to keep myself covered.  I stole a glance at West who stood in the doorway and watched with fearful eyes.  Avian started scrubbing my charred skin.

“When did this happen?” Avian asked, his voice oddly tight.

“Yesterday morning,” West answered.

“This looks a week old,” Avian said quietly, shaking his head.  “It’s already started to heal.”

I tried to swallow the rock in my throat but it wouldn’t go down.  “A Bane touched me, Avian.  It was all over me.  It happened just after the explosion.”

Avian suddenly froze.  He stopped breathing for a moment and I felt him automatically withdraw his hand just slightly.

“I haven’t changed.  Nothing’s happened, except that I can’t feel this,” I said as I nodded my head toward my shoulder.

He paused for a while longer before hesitantly placing the rag back to my shoulder and slowly started scrubbing again.

“What does this mean, Avian?” I asked quietly.  “Why haven’t I changed?”

He didn’t say anything for a little bit.  It nearly drove me insane.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice tight again.

“This doesn’t happen.  They all ch…chan…ange.”

I blacked out.

There were wires attached to every exposed surface of my body.  And I was running.  It felt like I’d been running forever.  The belt turned under my feet, creating an endless four-foot section of road.

“Increase the speed,” a voice said.

The belt started spinning faster under my small bare feet.  My pace picked up so I wouldn’t fall.

“Doesn’t she get tired?” a young voice asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” the first voice replied.

I turned my head toward the window where they watched me.  A pair of curious eyes stared back at me.

I opened my eyes, only to squint them back closed.  Light streamed in, momentarily blinding me.  My left shoulder felt stiff, and as I reached a hand to it, I found it covered in layers of bandages.  I was also wearing a shirt that I recognized as Avian’s.

“Try not to move too much,” a voice said kindly.

Ignoring the voice, I pulled myself into a sitting position.  I blinked my eyes several times, willing them to focus.

I was still on the medical table but found Gabriel had joined us.  I wondered when he had come back.  He should have been with the others at the new location.

“What happened?” I asked as I rubbed my eyes.

“You passed out from the pain,” Avian said, his voice stiff again.

“But I didn’t feel it,” I said, my voice sounding a little more annoyed than I had meant it to.  “I still don’t feel it.”

Avian and Gabriel exchanged looks.  West just stared at me with a blank expression.

“We need to have a talk, Eve,” Gabriel said as he looked at me.  “In private.”

West seemed to realize this last part was directed at him.  “I’m not leaving her,” he said, his voice stubborn.

“I’m not giving you a choice,” Gabriel said, his eyes hard.  I then heard someone shift position outside and recognized Bill’s shadow through the wall of the tent.

“Go,” I said quietly to West.  “I can take care of myself.”

He gave me a hard look.  He didn’t like this but after a moment he walked out.  Bill walked away with him.

Once I was sure West was out of earshot I looked back at Avian and Gabriel.  “What is happening to me?” I asked, my eyes daring them to not answer me.  “I can’t feel the pain.  I didn’t change.”

“You still feel the pain,” Avian said, swallowing hard on the rock that seemed to have moved into his own throat.  “Your brain just doesn’t tell you it’s feeling it.  That’s why you passed out this morning.  Your body couldn’t handle the pain once I started cleaning the injury.”

“But I didn’t feel it,” I insisted.

The two of them exchanged looks again.  That was really starting to annoy me.

“What do you know?” I snapped.  “What aren’t you two telling me?”

Avian bit his lower lip, his eyes dropping to the floor.  Gabriel took this as an indicator to take the lead.  “When you came to us, Avian and I knew right away that something was different about you, Eve.  You shouldn’t have survived out there on your own.  You were only a thirteen-year-old girl for heaven’s sake,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes dark with remembrance.

“We didn’t know what it was.  We watched you for weeks, looking for any signs that you were a Bane, sent to spy on us or something.  We kept the CDU with us at all times, ready to use it should you show any indicator that you might turn on us.

“You started training with the scouts.  You were nearly as strong as any of the grown men.  You never got tired.  You were so blasted tough and solid.  But you never seemed to notice that you were any different.  You lived among us.  You didn’t turn against us.  So Avian and I kept your secret.  We never told the others in Eden, to protect you, and to protect them.”

“You’ve been injured before, Eve,” Avian spoke.  “Never anything as serious as this, but you never even realized you were hurt.  And I never had to fix anything.  Your body just fixes itself.”

My heart pounded as I listened to Gabriel.  I recalled everything he was saying, remembered the way the two of them had hovered over me at all times when I was younger.  I had thought they were trying to protect me.  They had been protecting themselves though.  They had been ready to short me out at any moment.

Apparently there had been reason to.

I was still too strong, still too fast.  And apparently my brain didn’t register pain.

“What the hell am I?” I said in a raged hiss.

“We don’t know,” Avian finally said as he looked up.  “You’re human but part of you is cybernetic.  You’ve been enhanced in a way we’ve never even heard of before.

“That’s why you didn’t change when the Bane touched you.  You’re already part Bane.”

My breathing increased as my eyes dropped to the floor.  It suddenly rushed up at me as I fell off the table and landed roughly on my hands and knees.  Avian jumped to help me up but I pushed him away.

“No,” I said as I shook my head and stumbled to my feet.  “Get away from me!”

I bolted out of the tent and stumbled through what was left of Eden without seeing or caring where I was going.

My tent felt safe and frightening all at the same time.  This was my space, a place where I could be alone and try to think.  And yet it was wrong.  Sarah still wasn’t here.  While I hid in my tent, Avian had come to tell me that she was starting to recover but was staying in his tent so he could watch her.

Eden was too quiet as darkness fell.  It felt strange to have our colony split up like this.

The dirt stirred outside my tent as someone approached.

“Go away, Avian!  I don’t want to talk to you right now!” I shouted as I lay in my bed and pulled my blanket up over my head.

“Good thing I’m not Avian,” a voice said as it entered my tent.

“What are you doing here, West?” I asked as I glared at him, pulling the blanket back down.

He stood there, staring back at me, refusing to be intimidated.  He held something bulky and black in one arm.

“I brought something I hope might make you feel better,” he said as he shrugged.

“I just found out I’m the enemy I’ve been fighting against for the last five years.  I don’t think there’s anything you can do to make me feel better.”

West rolled his eyes.  “You could try not biting my head off.  Get up,” he said.

“What?” I asked, my voice annoyed again.

“Get up so I can lay this down,” he said as he raised his eyebrows at me.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I did as he asked.  He then rolled out the black mass and I realized it was a hide.

“The bear?” I asked as I rubbed my hand over the soft fur.

“Yeah,” he said as he looked at it on my bed with a half-smile.  “I asked Bill if he could tan it for me.  I wanted to give it to you as an apology for stealing your kills.”

“Well, I did take your buck that one time.  I was the one who technically stole it.”

West looked up at me, a half smile coming to his lips.  “See, it made you feel better.”

I realized that I was smiling too.

“Thank you,” I said, really meaning it.

West nodded then stood there uncomfortably as if he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

“They asked you to watch me tonight, didn’t they?” I asked as I narrowed my eyes at him.

“And you’re not going to give me trouble about that, are you?” he shot back at me.

I just glared at him for a minute.  I hadn’t forgotten the fact that we had spent two nights together, a little more intimately than I would have cared to remember, or the fact that in the moment he thought I was as good as dead, he had kissed me.

“You can sleep in Sarah’s bed, then.  Don’t oversleep though; I’m packing up early in the morning.”

“Good,” he said as he went to lie on the other bed.  “I’ve already packed up all my things.  I would have been sleeping in the dirt if you kicked me out.”

I crawled into my new bed, surprised at how much of a difference the hide made.  I balled my pillow up under my head and pulled the covers up to my chin.

“Goodnight, Eve,” West said quietly through the now dark tent.

“Goodnight, West,” I half whispered as I turned away from him onto my side.

TEN

The stiffness in my arm woke me as I tried to roll over.  The bandaging had loosened up during the night but still prevented me from having full movement.

It was already very light outside.  I must have been asleep for nearly nine hours.  I then remembered what Avian had said about my body feeling pain, even if my brain didn’t register it.  Apparently all of me had needed rest.

A soft snore reminded me that I wasn’t alone and I rolled over to see West sprawled across Sarah’s bed.  He lay on his back, his arms spread out, his head lolling to the side facing me.  I suddenly wondered where he’d gotten the scar on his neck from.

I noticed something on the floor that didn’t belong and reached across the cramped space for it.  It was a notebook, its edges tattered and frayed.  The cover had all kinds of writing on it, but most prominent were big bold letters that had worn down to just ATOR BIOT.  I opened to somewhere in the middle of it, evaluating its shape and size, and realized this was the object West always carried on him.

I wasn’t one to invade another’s privacy and was about to close the notebook when some of the writing caught my eye.

Block capabilities of chip X73I implanted in project Eve seem to be successful.

I read the line twice to be sure I had read it correctly.

Quickly, I looked up at West to make sure he was still asleep.

Suddenly I had to reevaluate everything I had ever known or thought about him.

Unable to keep from doing so, I turned my eyes back to the pages.  I continued from the line I had started with.

Subject Eve I was tested on treadmill for two hours straight with no indicators of tiredness.  Vitals remained stable, peaking little during fastest speed.  Tests have yielded similar results for the past five days.

Eve continues to show lessened need for sleep.  After close monitoring for the past four months, we have recorded subject sleeps for little more than five hours a night, at times less.

Tomorrow weight endurance testing will begin.

I stared at the scribbled words for a full two minutes when I came to the end of the page.  My stomach knotted.  I realized I had been holding my breath.

My eyes focused on the page again and I noted the date written in the top right corner.  I would have been roughly seven years old at the time.

I flipped through the pages, seeing words and equations and endless things I couldn’t comprehend, but taking nothing in really.  All I saw was my name.  Subject Eve, tests done to Eve, problems with Eve.

“What are you doing?!”

The notebook was suddenly ripped out of my hands and I looked up to see West glaring at me with burning eyes.

“What is that?” I asked as I stared at the notebook in his hand.  “Where did you get it?”

He didn’t say anything for a second, just continued to look at me.  An internal debate warred behind his eyes.

“Don’t you dare lie to me, West,” I said, my voice turning cold.  “I will hurt you if you lie to me.”

He continued to look at me for a minute.  A mix of emotions played out behind his eyes: fear, agony, regret, among other things I wasn’t so sure about.

“I told you my grandfather was a scientist,” he said, his voice hoarse sounding.  “Those are some of his personal notes.  About a third of them are about you.”

I couldn’t make my throat form my loss of words.  My chest felt oddly hard as West confirmed what I had had assumed.

“He experimented on me,” I finally managed.  “For how long?”

“I remember you always being there.  Since you were a baby.”

“You remember me?” I said slowly, my eyes never breaking from his.

“Like I told you, my grandfather was the scientist.  My father was the doctor who monitored you.  We lived at the testing facility.  Sometimes they would let us play together.”  His voice trembled a little as he spoke.

“I don’t remember you.”  I forced myself to speak.  “I don’t remember any of it.”

“Someone released you after the infection started.  I think they wiped your memory.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice suddenly shaking with rage.  “Why didn’t you tell me right away?  I had no idea who I was, but you knew!”

“I wasn’t sure,” he said, the tone of his voice picking up with defense.  “It’s been nearly six years since I’ve seen you, Eve!  You’re a woman now, not a girl with a shaved head!  And I thought you must have died a long time ago!  It wasn’t easy for me to think you were dead.  You were my best friend!  My only friend!”

I glared at West.  I wished he hadn’t said that.  I wanted to be angry with him.  I wanted to throw him out and to tell him to leave Eden and never come back.  But a part of me wondered if what he was saying was the truth.  Maybe West had been my friend at one time.

But I couldn’t remember any of it.

“I trusted you,” I whispered as I glared at him.  “You should have told me sooner.  Were you ever going to tell me?”

He was quiet for a second as he looked back at me.  “I don’t know.”

“Well at least you’re being honest about that,” I said coldly.  “You should leave now.  I have to get ready to move.”

“Eve, I’m…”

“Get out!” I shouted.

He stood and went to the flap of the tent.  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly as he walked out.

I set to packing my things.

I had just finished putting my clothes away when the flap of the tent was pushed aside.  Avian stood there, his expression open, waiting for me to attack him again.

I just kept gathering all of my stuff.

“Sarah told me to come get her things.  She’s strong enough now we can move her.  The allergy pills that you brought back are what finally did it I think.  Maybe.”

I just glanced at him so he would know that I had heard him.  I rolled the bear hide up, vowing to give it back to West later.  I didn’t want it anymore.

Avian set to gathering Sarah’s belongings, stuffing them in a bag the same way I did.  Within a few minutes we had everything cleared out of the tent.

“I can get this myself,” I said as we stepped out and Avian started taking down the tent.

“I know,” he said simply as he untied a tether.

We worked quietly as the tent came down.  We then packed the poles into their bag and set to rolling the canvas up.

“We wanted to thank you for what you did,” Avian said as he worked at my side.  “I wanted to thank you.  It was incredibly dangerous but you did it anyway.”

I just held the bag open and Avian slid the bulk of the tent in.  I tied the opening after the poles went in and set it on the ground.

“The wagon should be back in just a few minutes,” Avian said as he looked out to the east.  “Sarah went this morning with Bill.  West set out on his own a little while ago.  It’s just the two of us now and our things.”

I allowed Avian to help me carry the three bags that had once been mine and Sarah’s tent toward the pile that was his belongings and the medical supplies and tent.

“I don’t want you to be angry with me forever,” Avian said as we stood there, side by side.  “You have no idea how many times I wanted to tell you, how many times I knew I should have told you.  I’m sorry, Eve.  It was wrong.”

I gave a nod, as close as I could get to accepting his apology at the moment.  Right then, it felt like everyone I knew had betrayed or lied to me.

The sound of wheels on the hard ground alerted us to the return of the wagon.

There had been two horses kept in Eden, until about eight months ago.  The older of the two had broken its leg and Gabriel had to put him down.  We managed with the smaller wagon with just one horse.

A woman by the name of Morgan and her husband, Eli, drove the wagon and helped us to load our things into the small space.  With everything that had to be hauled, there was no room for anything else.  Avian and I would be walking.

That was fine with me.  I would have walked anyway.

Little was said as we finished loading.  The couple told us that no one had seen any signs of Bane and that the new location for Eden was the best we’d had yet, located right next to a lake.  Everyone was getting settled in just fine.

The wagon made good pace and we let them go ahead of us.  It didn’t take long before it was out of sight, leaving Avian and I alone.

We walked silently for the first few minutes.  But Avian kept glancing over at me with this look like he just knew something was wrong.

“He knew who I was,” I finally said.  “West.  He knew me before I came here.  His grandfather experimented on me.  He’s the reason I can do the things I can do.”

“He told you this?” Avian asked, his brow furrowed.

I shook my head.  “No, I found a notebook filled with the things he did to me.  West said I had been at this facility for as long as he could remember. Since I was a baby.  He told me we used to play together as children sometimes.”

“I have a hard time imagining you playing anything,” Avian said.  I noticed a smile tugging on his lips.

“I can’t imagine I was very good at it.”

A chuckle suddenly broke from Avian’s chest.  I couldn’t help smiling too.

We walked quietly again for a while.  My ears listened to the sounds of the woods around us, searching for any sign of alert.  My eyes scanned the trees.  I even smelled at the air, being alert for any scent of exhaust from an ATV or a helicopter.

I kept the handgun West had given back to me tucked into the back of my pants.  I was ready to pull it out at any moment and unload it, grab Avian, and run for our lives.

“Why did you ask Graye to get the necklace for me?” I asked as I searched the trees with my eyes.

Avian hesitated for a few moments.  “I wanted you to have something special for your birthday,” he said as he looked at me briefly.  He stiffened slightly.  “I thought you should have something a woman would normally have.  I hoped you would like it.”

I looked away from him, fixing my eyes on the trail.  I couldn’t think of anything that seemed less fit for me as a gift.  I’d never owned any other piece of jewelry nor had I ever had the desire to own any.

“You shouldn’t have asked him to,” I said quietly.  “It wasn’t worth it.”

“I know,” he answered me even more quietly.

I regretted my words instantly.  Tye’s death had been hardest on Avian and I kept bringing it up.  Now I was pointing it out that in a way it had been Avian’s fault he was dead.

Not really knowing what I was doing, I reached over and took Avian’s hand in mine.  I wasn’t sure if it was an apology, an attempt at comfort, or just what exactly.  But it seemed to work.  He squeezed my fingers, his shoulder brushing mine.

“I was out of my mind,” Avian said, his voice tight as he looked down at his feet.  “When you left.  I didn’t know what happened to you, what was going to happen to you.  You’re tough, but you’re not indestructible.  If it hadn’t have been for Sarah I would have come after you.”

“You can’t do that,” I said as I furrowed my brows, looking back up at him.  “They need you here.”

Avian slowed, pulling me to a stop with him, our hands still clasped together.  “Don’t do that again, Eve.  Don’t run off on me.”

I looked up into Avian’s face, surprised at the intensity that burned in his eyes.  His face was closer than I expected it to be.

“I’ll do what I have to,” I finally managed to say.  My heart was pounding in my chest in a way that was foreign.  “I’ll protect them, always.”

He continued to look at me for a long, intense moment.  He brought his other hand and softly brushed a thumb across my cheek for just a moment.  My skin tingled as his hand went back to his side.  He started walking back down the path, my hand still in his.

“Tell me what it was like, what it would have been like, if the world hadn’t fallen apart,” I said, moving on when I wasn’t sure how to handle Avian’s intensity or the intensity that was building up inside of me.  “What would my life have been like right now, if I wasn’t a cybernetic human hybrid?”

That brought a sad little smile to his face.  “Let’s see, it’s early May.  You would have been in your last year of high school.  You’d be dying to get out of school.  The last few months of your senior year are agony.  All you want is for it to be over.

“Prom would probably be around this time.  You would have had a dozen different guys ask you to go with them.  You would have had your pick.”

“What’s prom?” I asked.

Avian laughed.  “It’s a dance.  It’s probably the biggest event of the school year.  Girls buy fancy dresses and guys wear tuxedos.  People rent expensive cars and pick up their dates.  Then they go to the dance and just have fun.”

The things Avian told me about seemed so foreign.  It was like he was reading to me out of a fairy tale book and I barely even understood the terminology he used.  I would never go to a prom.

“You might have had a boyfriend.  The two of you would go on special outings, just the two of you or with friends.  You might try and sneak out of your parent’s house to try and see him.  Boys always get girls into trouble.”

“I can’t imagine you getting me into trouble,” I said as I glanced over at him.  “Is that what you were like?”

Avian smiled and looked at the ground.  “I was the guy that couldn’t get up the nerve to ask the girl I wanted out.  I would have stayed home by myself, burying my head in my latest medical book.

“I would have wanted to ask you but you would have said no.”

I looked over at Avian and really looked at him.  He was tall, at least six feet.  He wasn’t built as big as Bill or even West, but he wasn’t small.  He had the lean frame of a man who worked hard and had lived on a rations diet for the last five years.  His dark, short hair accented the tanned color of his skin, his surprisingly blue eyes piercing.  “I highly doubt that.”

He smiled and squeezed my hand.

“Problem would have been that while you would still be in high school, I would have still been in the Army, hopefully going through real medical school.  People wouldn’t have liked the age difference.  You would have barely even been legal.”

There was meaning and weight behind Avian’s words that I didn’t really understand.  I pushed the feeling aside.

I considered what I might have been like if I hadn’t grown up the way I did.  I was as mature as any of the other women in Eden, at least I thought so.  They didn’t look down on me and I didn’t consider any of the others superior to myself.  But maybe if I hadn’t been experimented on and grown up in a world of running and raids I wouldn’t have been that way.  Maybe all I would have cared about would have been jewelry and what boy was asking me to the prom or what dress I was going to wear.

The world we lived in made me grow up.  I didn’t know what it was like to be a real teenager.

We walked at a swift pace for another two hours before signs of life were detected.  We stopped at the tree line, looking out over the tents and bustling people.  I glanced at Avian.  He gave a weak smile, the smile of knowing the tiring, endless work that was before the both of us.  I returned his smile, let go of his hand, and went to help reassemble Eden.

ELEVEN

With as little as we possessed it didn’t take long to put everything back together.  Everyone helped, no one was left in distress about what needed to be done.  We were a family, a unit that worked as one.

Things were different though.  With Sarah’s newfound medical condition, she had moved into Avian’s tent permanently.  The seizures were infrequent but happened enough that Avian insisted.  I was on my own now.

The sun shone down on us as we worked on the rows of vegetables in the gardens the next day, the temperature rising slowly.  Graye worked silently two rows behind me.  We had talked little since I realized what he had done for Avian.  In a strange way, I felt like I should apologize to him but at the same time, it wasn’t me that had asked him to grab the necklace.

Terrif directed people soundlessly to the areas they should work on.  I could tell he was getting flustered with Wix, who had pulled up a section of carrots, thinking they were weeds.  It was hard to stay mad at him though when he started eating the green stems as a way of apology.

West worked in the opposite corner, never looking up as he weeded in the potato patch.  We had kept up a careful pattern of avoidance ever since I had discovered the notebook.  I had a million questions, but I wasn’t ready to face him and ask them.

I pulled a massive weed out of the patch of peas I was working on, and tossed it into a wheelbarrow.  My eyes scanned the tree line for the fiftieth time since we had arrived.  Even though all the scouting parties, including my own, had found no signs of the Bane, I felt uneasy.  They had to still be out there somewhere.  The Bane were persistent.

The afternoon shift arrived and I bolted out of the garden as soon as I handed my gloves off.  I wasn’t ready to have to talk to West yet.  I wasn’t sure what I should say or how I would even react.  Apparently he wasn’t ready to talk to me either since he never made any attempts.  That was just fine with me.

Upon arriving back at camp, I looked for Sarah.  I’d had little chance to talk to her since she had gotten sick.  I didn’t want her to feel like I was avoiding her.

Just as I was about step inside their tent, Avian came out, our bodies bumping into each other unexpectedly.  He grabbed my shoulders to steady the both of us and his vivid blue eyes looked down at me, a small smile coming to his lips.  A hint of a smile crept into the corner of my lips as well.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I just came to see Sarah.”

“She’s inside resting,” he said.  “She had another seizure a few minutes ago.”

“Is she going to be alright?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said as he smiled at me again, warmth spreading through his eyes.

“I’m not deaf, you know,” Sarah called from inside the tent.

Avian chuckled, placing a hand on my arm again.  “I’ve got to go.  Victoria is having troubles with her foot again.”

“Bye,” I said as he walked away.

I stepped inside Avian and Sarah’s tent.  It was dark, the air stuffy and warm.

“Tie it back, would you?” Sarah said through the darkness as I entered.  “I think he’s trying to suffocate me.  I feel like I’m living in a cave these days.”

I tied the flap of the tent back as she asked, light flooding the cramped space.  I then sat on Avian’s bed.

Sarah’s hair was tousled, her dark curls sticking out in every direction.  Her eyes were reddened and tired looking.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, hoping she didn’t notice the way I scrutinized every inch of her.

“I’d be better if everyone would stop asking me that question,” she said with a tired tone.

“Everyone is concerned.”

“I know,” she sighed as she lay back down.  “I’m just tired of being the frail, sick one.  I’m as fine as I can be I guess.  I’m handling it.  Whatever this is.”

“There’s nothing he can do?” I asked.

“If he had access to an MRI machine, a pharmacy full of drugs, and a neurologist, maybe.  But we just have to be careful now.”

“We can get drugs,” I said.  “I can go on another raid.  I got the shots Avian needed before.  If he tells me what you need I can get it.”

Sarah shook her head, a smile creeping onto her face.  “He would never ask you to do that, to go into danger like that again.”

“He wouldn’t need to ask me,” I said as my brow furrowed, my blood boiling just a little.

“He wouldn’t tell you what to look for to prevent you from trying.  You’re too important to him.”

An awkward silence hung in the air after she stopped talking.  Something was changing between Avian and me.

“Don’t be angry with him for keeping the secret from you,” she said softly, her eyes hesitating to meet mine.

“You knew too?” I asked, my voice accusing.

“No, but Avian told me after you came back.  How are you handling that information?”

“The fact that I’m a robotic-human hybrid?” I said.  “Just great.”

“I’m serious, Eve.”

I didn’t say anything for a second as I looked down at my weathered hands.  “I’m trying not to think about it too much.  The fact that my shoulder has already healed up isn’t helping that much though.”

“He said you were hurt pretty badly.”

“You should see the scar,” I joked half-heartedly.  “I didn’t feel anything.  I didn’t even know it was there until West told me.”

I felt it before I even saw the sly grin that crept onto Sarah’s face.  “Running off to the city with the new man in Eden, huh?  Never would have pegged you for that type.”

“What?” I asked.  “What are you talking about?  He just…came with me.”

“And you had no desire to get a little close and cozy along the way with a face and body like that?”

“I’m going to go now,” I said as I suddenly stood.  “Take it easy.”

Sarah just chuckled as I stepped outside.

Evening settled and the camp started to grow quiet.  The stars seemed more intense than usual as they reflected off the surface of the lake.

I had tried to insist on taking the night guard but apparently Bill had already beaten me to it.  A new watchtower had been erected and everything was nearly back to business as usual.  With nothing else to do, I found myself around the fire with Avian and Sarah.  Recalling Sarah’s comments earlier, I made a new resolve to not be distracted by anything or anyone.  I sat as far away from Avian as I could.

“Is Victoria alright?” Sarah asked, pulling her blanket tighter around her shrinking frame.

“It’s a small infection.  It just needed a little cleaning out,” Avian replied.

I heard someone walk up from behind us and turned to see West hesitantly approaching.  “Do you mind if I join you?” he asked to no one in particular.

Avian shook his head.

With little elsewhere to sit, he sat just to the right of me.  He was close enough I could smell the earthy scent of him.

“Have they seen any more signs of the Bane?” Sarah asked.  I was grateful for her insight and tactic to keep awkward silences away.

I shook my head.  “Not since we left our last site.”

“Maybe they’re giving up,” she said as she gazed into the flames.

“I doubt that,” Avian said as he stared at the fire.

“Will they ever?”

No one said anything for a moment.  That was what we had all wondered for the last five years.

“It’s something in their engineering,” West suddenly spoke.  “The infection craves more human flesh.  It mutated to spread.  It’s trying to keep reproducing.”

“That’s why the Bane keep looking,” Avian said, neither a statement nor a question exactly.

West nodded.  “It’s looking to assimilate more.”

“There’s got to be a way to stop them,” Sarah said as she shook her head.  “Like making a large CDU.  Why haven’t we done that, Avian?”

“We don’t have the resources,” he said as he too shook his head.  I knew he’d thought about this idea before.  We all had.  “Everything we need is in the city.  And we can’t just take the materials and bring it back here.  We’d need massive amounts of electricity to make it work.  And besides, none of us know how exactly the CDU even works, how it’s engineered.  It’s some very complex technology.”

“So basically, we’re all just waiting around to be infected,” Sarah said, her voice falling.  “As long as there are still people out there, the Bane will keep coming.”

“And we’ll keep fighting,” I said harshly, my tone coming out more sharply than I meant it to.

Sarah looked at me with cold eyes that surprised me.  Without her even saying it, I knew what she was thinking.  I didn’t have to worry about being infected.  I was already immune by essentially being one of them.

“Maybe we should all get some rest,” Avian suggested, feeling the tension that was building around the fire.

Without saying anything, Sarah stood and walked back inside the tent.

“Goodnight,” Avian said.

I stood, pushing my hands into my pockets as I stared into the fire.  West stood too, and together we slowly walked away from Avian and Sarah’s tent.

“I want to look through the notebook,” I blurted out and stopped walking not ten seconds later.  West took a few more steps before stopping.  I stood watching his back, my hands still pushed into my pockets against the cold.

He didn’t say anything for a while as he stood with his back to me.  I could almost see the gears in his head turning as he considered my request and what it would mean.

Slowly, he turned and took three steps toward me to close the gap.  He stared into my eyes, intensity burning in his own.  He reached his right hand into his jacket and pulled the tattered notebook out.

“The pages in the middle are the ones about you,” he said, keeping his voice quiet.  “And don’t lose it.  If you do…” he squeezed his eyes closed, his lips forming a thin line as he considered the horrifying possibility.

“I won’t,” I promised as I went to take it.  West opened his eyes, holding onto the notebook for another heavy moment before finally letting go.

“Goodnight, West,” I said as I stared back into his eyes.

“Goodnight,” he whispered.  He hesitated just a moment longer before he stepped away and ducked into his tent.

Armed with the answers to my past, I returned to my own.

TWELVE

The notebook lay on my chest, my fingers clenching it tightly.  I looked up blankly at the dark ceiling.  I hadn’t been able to will myself to open it.  All the things I couldn’t remember, all the dreams that haunted me, the answers were all inside and I couldn’t make myself look at them.

I squeezed my eyes closed as I remembered smelling the steel beneath me, of hearing the drill.  Feeling my head and realizing all my hair had been shaved off.  I had dreamed of running endlessly.  Dreamed of a pair of earthy eyes watching me through an observation window.  It was West, I knew that now.  He had seen everything they had done to me.  The only person I had actually known my whole life, and I couldn’t remember him.

I didn’t sleep that night.  I just stared up at the ceiling, trying to dredge up memories I couldn’t recall, memories that were recorded by someone else’s hand on the pages I held.

Morning came, casting a grey hue to the space around me.  I didn’t leave my tent, couldn’t make myself even get out of my bed.  But it was one of those very rare days I didn’t have any duties.

As I heard Eden begin to stir, a plate of food was pushed under the flap of my tent and then I heard footsteps retreating.  I reached for it, eating what was there without realizing what it even was.

The food in my system seemed to boost my commitment to unlock the past and I finally opened the pages.

The notebook seemed thinner than it should have been, like there were pages missing.  It was in pretty poor shape though, many of the pages barely clinging to the metal spiral that kept them all bound together.

West was right, the pages about me were located in the middle.  The notes in the beginning of the notebook may as well have been written in another language.  It was scientific and talked about a lot of different alloys, programming, words I didn’t understand.  I could only guess that they were about the design for making me what I was.

The first entry was dated from when I would have been roughly four-years-old.

It feels so impossible that my last entry was only six months ago.  Given last week’s visit from the military, it seems the past few years were so distant and so much easier.

I assumed this was where the pages went missing from.  The pages previous to this entry were of the mathematical, formula type.

NovaTor has been approached by a branch of the military to develop some new technology.  The government has been kept aware of what we have been researching in regards to TorBane the last few years.  But no one is supposed to officially know about the Eve project.

Last week three men came to us with a separate project.  They themselves had been working on something to make soldiers stronger, faster.  It is a chip.  It would be implanted in the brain and it overrules tiredness, pain, and emotion.  You couldn’t ask for a better soldier if you could take out those factors.  I suppose maybe the last one is debatable.

They have been doing human testing with the technology.  They had five subjects.  But they are running into complications.  Where these soldiers don’t feel pain and don’t get tired, they either collapse from exhaustion because their bodies become depleted, because their body is still functioning normally, their brain just doesn’t tell them to slow down, or they break and injure themselves and don’t realize it until they are completely immobilized or dead.

But they heard about the Eve project.  About the regenerative capabilities.  About the ability to heal.

They want us to combine the two technologies.

And they’re offering money that is hard to refuse.

What concerns me is the blocked emotion.  I know what it could do to a young girl’s development.  And I question what a life without emotion would be like.

They don’t want just one test subject.  But how can I in good conscious give them more than that?

I never understood the concept of blackmail fully until recently.  Such a dark, malevolent thing.

After digging around and questioning my staff, they discovered the full details about the Eve project.  How it wasn’t exactly approved or fully documented.  They threatened to report us and get the entire TorBane project shut down.  But they’ll keep quiet if we do their testing.

I have no choice but to turn the Eve project over to them.

I was a blackmailed science project.  I was a freak.

Had I been with my family before that?  Had I even had one, ever?  Maybe they had picked me out of an orphanage.  They could have found me in the trash for all I knew.

The next entry was dated two months later.

Our entire team has been working with the military on the chip.  The development and technology is good, but it isn’t fully ready.  It isn’t quite fine-tuned.  A person’s emotions are bound to develop around their blocks and eventually the block will become undone.  They need the ability to do adjustments without having to physically go back into the brain each time.

We’ve brought on Dr. Erik Beeson.  He’s young, just two years out of his doctorate program.  But the boy is brilliant.  I’ve read many of his papers over the years about the brain and wireless capabilities.  And after speaking to him I have no doubt he is going to be the perfect addition to NovaTor Biotics.

He is currently fine tuning the chip.

I feel as if I’m turning into the devil.  And I’m dragging the Eve project down into the fiery pits with me.

Three months later:

Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.

Two days after surgery:

Operation was a success as far as we can tell.  Chip was implanted and project Eve transferred to recovery room.  Currently under observation.  Being kept under sedation for the first three days and then we shall see what happens.  Under normal circumstances, recovery could take up to a month, maybe longer.  But considering Eve’s capabilities I expect less.  Vitals are showing signs of recovery already.  Brain activity is steadily increasing.

What he didn’t know was that the sedation had taken longer than they had expected.  I had relived those horrifying moments of paralysis in my dreams.  I had heard the drill.  Thankfully, I must have been finally pulled under before they bored into the back of my skull.  Or if I hadn’t, I didn’t remember that part.

Seven days later:

Subject I began to awaken five days after surgery.  Eve was sluggish at first, appearing confused and unsteady.  Coordination was obviously thrown off.  Things changed rapidly by the next day.

An assistant went to check on Eve and to give her the morning rations.  Subject was startled awake and attacked the assistant.  We heard the racket and opened the door to find Eve on top of the assistant, fingers gripped tightly around her neck.  The assistant wasn’t breathing.  Upon seeing us enter the room, subject leapt at us, attacking with force far beyond what a normal five-year-old should be capable of.  It took three of us to wrestle her onto the bed and secure her down.

Aggression was extreme for the next few days.  We waited for things to even out.  The fusion of the chip and the human brain is bound to be fought.  The implant is placed in an area of the brain where emotion stems from.  The brain is trying to attack itself, manifesting as aggression.  Programming will be adjusted to fix the problem.  I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise considering her previous condition.

Adjustments automatically given to II.  No complications.

Problem.  That was what my reaction to being altered was.  It was a problem that I hadn’t liked what they had done to me, that I had tried to fight back.

“Eve?  Are you alright?”

I jumped violently when I heard the voice from outside my tent.

“Yes, Gabriel,” I said, trying to steady my shaking voice.  “I just needed some time to myself today.”  Was I lying?  What counted more as time to yourself when you’re learning what happened to you in the past that you can’t remember?

He hesitated, catching my out-of-character response.  “Okay,” he said, drawing out the word.  “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” I said, shrinking into my bed.  I listened hard until I heard his footsteps fade away.

My hands were shaking as I looked back at the notebook.  I suddenly felt like I had to keep this a secret, as much as West had felt he had to.  I didn’t want anyone to know what was in here.  The past it contained exposed what I was, what I was capable of.  It exposed the fact that I wasn’t completely human.

But West had read it all.  He knew everything that was written here.  And he hadn’t been afraid of me.  He hadn’t run away.

I shook my head.  West was a distraction I couldn’t afford.  I didn’t like to admit it, but that’s what he was.  A distraction.

An entry from several months after the chip had been implanted:

Thus far the chip has been successful in overriding limitations as designed.  Endurance has been increased.  Exhaustion has been overruled.  Tied to this is increased strength.

Phase II of the experiment is progressing well.  It has been fascinating to see the differences.

The shock of reading what was continued on those pages should have worn off.  It didn’t.  Things continued to get more twisted and terrifying.

And unexpected side effect of the chip implantation has occurred.  I have been aware of the fact that everything project Eve is able to do should be impossible.  The strength, speed, increased eyesight and hearing capacities.  This has evolved beyond the capability of the military’s chip and TorBane.

The two technologies have intertwined with each other I believe.  The chip has given the TorBane technology the ability to spread and evolve.  After sedation and a full body scan, hints of cybernetic enhancements have been detected throughout Eve’s body.  It is not just the brain, lungs, and heart that have been altered now.  It is the entire body.

Test’s I and II yield duplicate results.

I stared at my hand, willing my eyes to see the metallic fingers I had seen on the Bane, searching for any signs of alloys bonded to my bones.  My skin didn’t look any different than Sarah’s would have, no different than Gabriel’s or Morgan’s.  It was all inside.  That was the reason I was so much faster, so much stronger.

This just brought up a whole new slew of questions.  There was a lot about these notes that I didn’t really understand.  I didn’t speak scientist.  But what had he meant by my brain, lungs, and heart being altered?

And that was when it finally hit me.  West’s grandfather was the one who had created TorBane.  Those letters on the cover that were worn out had at one time spelled NOVATOR BIOTICS.  It was his research and his creation that had led to the fall of humanity.  And I had been a part of that.  He must have given me the technology, and that was why the military wanted to use that chip on me.  I must have been among the first to get TorBane.  He had created the infection using the data he had collected from the experiments done on me.

I suddenly hated myself.

I forced myself to read through the rest of the pages.  It didn’t seem important to read them in detail anymore.  I had been experimented upon as a child.  And now here I was.  I was the way I was and there was nothing I could do to change that.

There were pages and pages recording the endurance tests I had been put through.  They continued to monitor my sleep habits.  It seemed I had required little sleep my entire life.  I didn’t even require as much food as normal people.

An entry from when I was ten:

As Eve’s brain has continued to develop and evolve, adjustments have been required in II.  Her emotions have been changing.  Fear and anger started to surface this last week, indicating our previous programming has been outdone.  As she continues to grow we will need to make more adjustments.

I did the tuning myself.  It is a complex procedure; the programming must be done precisely.  Emotion is something not easily blocked.  Modification must be dealt with carefully to not harm the brain and therefore, the body.  After I had the programming correctly written, the adjustments were interfaced with the chip.  The change was instantaneous.  Amazing, the control that is exacted through remote programming.

Subject is again devoid of emotion.

I stared at the last line for a long time, my insides feeling hollow and empty.  It was as if this man had reached through the pages and yanked all my insides out.

Subject is again devoid of emotion.

It explained a lot.  How I didn’t panic when others did.  How I didn’t understand what was happening to everyone after Tye had died, how I didn’t recognize their grief.  How I always felt so disconnected from everyone around me.

I forced myself to read the last page that referenced directly to me.

Apparently the money has run out.  I’m finally being released from the military’s hold.  They want the Eve project maintained and will pay for that, but they are putting it on hiatus for a few years now.  This finally frees me and my team up to finish the TorBane research.  We should have the final strain ready for mass production within two years.  Maybe less.  It is time to move on from the Eve project.  All data needed in regards to TorBane has been collected from experiments done to project Eve.  Project is being handed off to Dr. Beeson for maintenance.  The next phase of TorBane testing is ready.

And that was the end of the entries about me.

The sun started to sink into the western horizon and I still had not left my tent.  Another plate of food had been pushed under the entry flap as evening set but it remained untouched on the ground.

I imagined myself sinking through the ground, of burying myself into the earth and disappearing.  I had helped cause the end of the world.  Whether it was by my choice or not, I was a means to the end.  I was now meaningless, an experiment forgotten about, no longer needed.  I was a hollow vessel with no reason for still being.  They had gotten what they needed out of me and moved on.

Eden fell quiet, slumber sweeping over its inhabitants.  And still I lay there, my eyes staring up at the ceiling, yet seeing nothing.  My mind was blank, my insides hollow.  It felt better that way.  Should I fill back in, everything would collapse in on me.

I barely even heard the sound of feet outside before a dark figure entered my tent.  I knew who it was, even if my eyes couldn’t see his face until he raised the lantern and closed the flap behind him.

I looked away from him and drew my eyes back to the ceiling.

West stepped closer to me, set the lantern on the ground by the wall and sat on the floor facing me.

“Here,” I managed to make my throat work as I handed the notebook to him.  “Please take it.”

He accepted it.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

I should have told him that none of it was his fault.  He had been a child after all.  It was his father and grandfather, NovaTor, not him that had done this.  But I couldn’t do it.

“You still don’t remember any of it?” he asked quietly.

I barely managed to shake my head.

“I’ve thought about it.  Dr. Beeson, the one who took over your care and research, he was a kind man.  He didn’t approve of everything that was done to you.  When things started getting out of control, when TorBane started taking everyone, I think he let you go.  He made you forget somehow.  Probably with the chip.  He knew you would survive, that you could take care of yourself.”

I gave the smallest of nods.  “Why did he do it to me?  Why did your grandfather give me TorBane?”

West was quiet for a moment, as if recalling the past.  “I honestly don’t know how you came to be at NovaTor.  But I do know you were sick.  You were a brand new baby and you were going to die.  My grandpa wanted to do a human test with TorBane and he just went ahead and did it.  He didn’t tell anyone.  And you got better.  You were fine because of the technology.  And I think that’s why you can’t infect anyone.  You were given it at such a young age, it is just part of who you are.  Everyone else was given it as an adult so it overtook them.  But this is who you are, Eve.”

I nodded.  What had happened didn’t matter.  I was what I was.  What had happened wasn’t going to change, no matter the paths that had created it.

“Please say something,” he said quietly.

I turned my head slightly to look at him.  Tears traced patterns in the dirt on his face as they slid down his cheeks.  “I don’t think I can even do that,” I said as I watched one of the tears drop into the dirt beneath him.

West wiped his thumb across his cheek, before slowly extending his hand to my face.  His eyes burned and clouded at the same time as he wiped his damp thumb across my own cheek.  Borrowed tears.

“I can’t feel anything,” I spoke quietly through the dim light.  “I can’t feel emotion.  I’m hollow.”

West shook his head.  “You’re not hollow.  You feel things.”

I shook my head.  “He blocked it all.  He made sure I didn’t feel anything.  It became a problem.”

West scooted closer, shifting himself forward.  He reached a hand toward me, placing his palm on my cheek, his thumb traveling from my cheek to my lips.  I closed my eyes as heat tingled on the surface of my skin.

“You feel things,” he whispered again.  His hand trailed down the side of my neck, down my arm until his fingers intertwined with mine.

A quivering filled my stomach as I kept my eyes closed.  My entire body felt like it hummed as I smelled West’s presence, so close to me.  It felt as if I could sense every surface of his body, so acutely aware of him it was as if he was an extension of my own being.

West shifted again, the one hand still intertwined with mine, his other one coming up to the side of my neck.  And then his lips were on mine.

It wasn’t crushing like the first unexpected one had been.  This one saturated me slowly, hesitant in a way that consumed me.  It smoldered at first, heat rising with every passing moment, eating me up from my stomach outward.

A tiny gasp escaped from my lips as they parted and I didn’t even realize what I was doing as my free hand knotted in West’s shaggy hair.  He shifted again, most of his body lying on top of mine.

I burned from the inside out.  My heart raced.  I wanted more but felt totally consumed by West, getting everything I needed yet feeling that it was not even close to being enough.

He pulled away just a bit, resting his forehead against mine.  His eyes were closed as he tried to slow his breathing.  “You feel things.” He said raggedly.  “I know you felt that.”

West fell asleep, his arms wrapped tightly around me.  His face seemed so peaceful.  He looked younger.  In sleep he didn’t have to worry about survival, feel guilt for the actions of his family.

It took me a while to understand how I was feeling that night.  I was relaxed too.  Sluggish almost.  This was more than the fall of my defenses

I felt happy.

Maybe I did feel things after all.

Maybe I’d had my own evolution.

THIRTEEN

Sweat beaded between my shoulder blades and rolled down my back.  I wiped my forehead and scanned the trees again.  Maybe it was just the fact that I was out on scouting patrol by myself but I felt uneasy.  Something was waiting to happen.

While on duty that morning, I happened upon the biggest elk I had ever seen.  It had taken three shots to bring it down.  Bill and Graye had taken it back to Eden to be prepared to eat that night.  And now I was out here on my own.

Dead pine needles crunched softly underneath my feet as I circled around the lake.  I smelled at the air, searching for any traces of something that didn’t belong.  I tried to keep my head in the task at hand but I’d been distracted the last few days.

Everything had changed and yet everything hadn’t.

Despite all the truths I had learned about myself, everything had somehow gone back to normal.  I was still who I was.  I hadn’t changed.  I just knew how I had become the way I was.  I was still Eve.  As long as I was breathing, as long as I was still in control of my actions and the cybernetic side of me didn’t turn me against myself, I would continue to protect Eden until I took my last breath.

I’d been away from the people of Eden for the most part since that day I had read the notebook.  Maybe I’d needed some time alone to think things over, to come to terms or something.  I’d been on scouting duty every day and then on watch tower nearly every night.  I wanted to talk to Avian about everything I’d learned, to have him help me process it all, but I wasn’t quite ready just yet.

Gauging by the position of the sun above me, I knew it was about time for the scouting switch.  I headed back toward the lake.  I took a quick bath and walked to Eden in the fading daylight.

I dragged my fingers through my tangled blond hair and stepped back into the mass of tents.  The scent of something delicious wafted through the air.  There was a sense of excitement buzzing around, almost a tangible thing.

“Eve!” Sarah called.  “Come on!”

I made my way through our version of a city, watching as people bustled about.  I was confused why everyone wore their nicest clothes; at least what passed for nice these days.

“What’s going on?” I asked her as I observed several women cooking up a food frenzy in our makeshift kitchen area.

“We’re having a party,” Sarah said with a wide smile.  “Today is Gabriel’s sixtieth birthday!”

My eyes widened a bit at this and I gave a nod.  It was impressive.  Not many people lived to see that age anymore.  Terrif was the only person older than Gabriel in Eden.  Only the strong had survived the Evolution.

“Come with me,” Sarah said excitedly as she grabbed hold of my wrist and pulled me in the direction of her tent.  “We have to get you ready.”

“What’s wrong with the way I am now?”

“You may only be part human, Eve, but the woman inside of you needs some pampering.”

I wasn’t sure what Sarah was talking about and if I was being honest, I was a little wary of what she might mean.  We stepped into the tent and found Avian, just pulling a shirt over his thin but toned frame.

“Out,” Sarah commanded.  “I have to get Eve ready.”

For some reason Avian wouldn’t meet my eyes.  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and ducked out without another word.

I stared at the place where he had disappeared with a strange feeling in my stomach.  There had been a weird vibe between us the last few days.  I had not been around anyone much but I had seen less of Avian than I had expected.  He would hardly look at me.  I realized then that he had been purposefully avoiding me.

“Put this on,” Sarah said as she rummaged through a bag of things.  She shoved a mass of light green material at me.

“What is this?” I asked, holding it away from me and inspecting it.

“A dress,” Sarah said with a half-smile as she looked back at me.  She herself held something similar, but in a red color.

“A dress?” I questioned as I held the folds up, looking through what must have been the top of it.  “It looks more like a small tent.”

Sarah chuckled.  “Here, let me help you.”

Despite my protests, Sarah soon had me undressed and into the light green dress.  I felt half-naked.  While it was long enough to cover even my ankles, the thin straps at the top of it felt like they would barely hold the dress on my frame.  The front of it plunged far lower than felt appropriate, exposing what even I felt embarrassed to see.

“This is ridiculous,” I said again as Sarah worked on my hair, twisting and pulling at it.  But despite my protests, a small smile played on the edge of my lips.

“It’s part of being human, of being a woman.  Or at least it used to be.  We’re all clinging to anything we can.  Trying not to forget what it used to be like.”

We were quiet for a while as her fingers continued their swift work.  I wondered if the fact that it had never been a part of my existence had crossed Sarah’s mind.

“You have a birthmark on the back of your head,” she said quietly, her fingers rubbing at a place on the back of my scalp.  “Did you know that?”

I shook my head, not really thinking about what she was saying.

“Avian’s been strange lately,” I said, recalling the cold way he had left earlier.  “He’s been avoiding me.”

Sarah paused for a moment.  She gave the slightest of sighs before resuming.  “He saw you and West the other night.  He saw your shadows through the tent.”

“He was watching?”

“He went to talk to you, to make sure you were alright.  He was worried because you hadn’t come out all day,” her voice grew quiet, sad.  “That’s when he saw you and West kissing.”

A knot formed in my chest.  I wanted to explain, to talk to Avian.  But what was there to say?  West had kissed me, but I had kissed him back.  More than that, I had liked it.  I had felt something.

But why did I feel so guilty?

“You deserve to be happy, Eve,” Sarah said with another sigh, her hands falling into her lap.  “As much as anyone else here, maybe more after all you’ve been through and done for us.  But just be careful.  He has feelings for you, even if he won’t be obvious about them.”

My stomach felt empty, but not in the way of being hungry.  That hollow feeling was pulling at me again.

I closed my eyes and hugged my arms into my chest.  Life was getting too complicated.

“You’ve got feelings for both of them,” Sarah said softly.  Even though I wasn’t looking at her I detected the small smile that was in the corner of her lips.  “Love’s a complex emotion, isn’t it?”

“Love?” I said, my brow furrowing as I looked up at her.  “There is no place for love in this world anymore.  The luxury of love died with the rest of the world.”

“If love dies, that’s when we’ve all truly died.  That’s when the Bane will have won.”

I didn’t know what to say for a while, contemplating everything she had said.

“Thank you, Sarah,” I said with a half-smile, trying to distract myself.  “For all of this,” I said as I indicated the hair and the dress.

“You look beautiful,” Sarah said with a smile.  “Now come on, let’s go!”

We went back to the party and sat down at the table, surrounded by Morgan, Eli, Bill, and Wix.  Piles of food had been placed on the table, a good chunk of our left over stores from the previous fall’s harvest were put out.  The elk I had killed earlier had been prepared in every way I could think possible.  Gabriel sat at the head of the long table, his wife Leah next to him.  I had never seen him look so happy.  He deserved it.

I glanced down the table as I ate.  Avian sat near Gabriel.  He still wouldn’t look at me.  West was seated at the middle of the table, next to Graye.  He on the other hand kept glancing down at me, the barest hint of a smile ever present on his face.  The smile of a secret.

“I’d like to make a toast,” Avian said halfway through the meal, standing up and holding his glass.  “To Gabriel.  To the man who has always kept us safe.  The man who has willingly led us, for not having to be asked to do so.  To the man who has built this place we call home.  To Gabriel.”

“To Gabriel,” we echoed.

As the meal came to a close, an unfamiliar sound came from the head of the table.  Wix and a few other people stood in a semi-circle, holding a mixture of instruments.

“What are those?” I asked Sarah as I observed them.

“Teresa is playing a guitar,” Sarah said quietly to me.  “Thereon is playing a drum.  And Wix is playing his violin.  He was something of a child protégé when he was young, before the Evolution.  He got to play at all these world-class venues and with famous symphonies.”

I watched them as they played.  The sounds were beautiful, but so foreign and strange to me.  I knew nothing of music but something told me these instruments were not normally played together.  Still, it was the most beautiful thing I had heard.

When everyone was finished eating, the tables were cleared away and a bonfire was built in the middle of the clearing.  People started dancing to the music.

I stood to the side along the tree line, watching how they moved.  At first it had looked so strange, silly.  But as I observed the way they moved in time with the music I understood why they did it.  There was something about the music that spoke to a place inside of me.  Dancing was a way to let the body and the music combine.

“You look beautiful tonight,” a voice said from behind me.  I turned to see Gabriel come to my side.

“Thank you,” I said as my eyes dropped to my bare feet.  “I feel so exposed.”

Gabriel chuckled, his lips disappearing into the mass of his beard as they pressed together.  “Not exactly what you’re used to.”

“I’ve never worn a dress before.”

“It’s good for you.  A reminder of what you really are.”  When I didn’t say anything in response Gabriel filled it in.  “Human.”

“Thank you, Gabriel,” I said quietly as I looked back down at my feet.  “Happy birthday.”

He sighed but smiled.  “I feel so old.”

“That’s a good thing,” I reminded him.  “Not too many get to feel old anymore.”

Footsteps approached us and we both looked up to see West.  He joined us, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Happy birthday, Gabriel,” he said.

“Thank you.  Well, I’d better get back to my party,” Gabriel said with a grin that got lost in his beard again.  He winked at me once and then wandered back into the crowd.

West and I stood there for a few moments, staring at the scene before us.  The fire, the people dressed up, the music, and the laughter.  It was almost as if the Evolution had never happened.

But in that case, we would probably be inside a building, not under the stars.  There would be a heater warming the room, not a billowing fire that licked out at the night air.

I think I preferred it this way.

“You look beautiful,” West finally broke the silence.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling heat rush to my cheeks, both from his compliment and from the way our shoulders brushed.  West slipped his hand out of his pocket and his fingers intertwined with mine.  For a fraction of a second, the world died black.  And then it was all back.

“Would you dance with me, Eve?” he said quietly as we both continued to watch the people move before us.  I blinked once, my vision back to normal.

I shook my head.  “I don’t know how.  I’ll look ridiculous.”

He took a step toward the woods, pulling me behind him.

We didn’t go far, just through the trees enough that no one would see us.  There was an old trailer rusting away at the water’s edge that we stepped around.  I was careful not to snag Sarah’s dress on it.  We stopped where the trees met the water’s sandy edge.

“No one has to see you dance,” he said quietly as we stood face to face.  I could still faintly hear the music coming through the trees.  West took one of my hands in his, wrapping his other hand around my waist.  I placed my other hand on his shoulder since that seemed like the right place to put it.  West pulled me closer and I let my head settle on his chest as we just rocked side to side in a small circle.

The sound of West’s heart beating matched the slow rhythm of the music.

“So have you thought about what I said?” he asked quietly into my ear, his cheek resting on the top of my head.  “I know you feel things.  You’ve evolved past the blockers, I know it.”

“I’ve never felt things like this before.  It’s overwhelming,” I said quietly into the soft cloth of his shirt.

“Is it bad though?”

I considered that for half a moment and then shook my head.  “No,” I whispered.  I didn’t tell him how it terrified me more than anything else had terrified me though.  I’d been through a lot in my life and developing feelings was the scariest thing I had ever faced.

West slowed to a stop and brought his hand to my chin.  Slowly he tipped my face up to his, his eyes staring down at mine with intensity.  In that moment, I thought I almost remembered them looking at me through a window, younger and more innocent.

Almost.

“I’m glad you don’t remember,” he said in a low voice, his eyes turning darker.  “Even if that means you don’t remember me.”

He tipped his head down and his lips met mine, brushing them so softly they tingled with anticipation as if they’d never touched at all.

“What was that?” I hissed as I whipped my head toward the tree line.  I stepped away from West and into a stance ready to spring.  My ears strained, listening for the sound of a branch breaking again.  I smelled at the air, searching for signs of life that shouldn’t be there.

I took a few steps into the trees, West following quietly behind me.  “I didn’t hear anything besides the party.”

“Shh,” I hissed at him, my eyes straining to see through the dark.  A figure stepped back into the clearing at the same time someone else stepped toward us.

“Eve?” Sarah’s voice called through the dark.  “Is that you?”

I sighed as I glanced back at West who had a very annoying smile on his face.

“A little paranoid?” he said quietly.

“Shut up,” I said as I rolled my eyes and walked toward Sarah.

“Eve!” Sarah called excitedly as she saw me walking through the trees.  “The guys are setting up a knife throwing contest.  The prize is Terrif’s old hunting blade.  They were all hoping you’d stay gone so they’d have a chance at winning.”

I stepped back into the clearing and saw the target set up across from where everyone was gathered.  As soon as Bill and Graye saw me they groaned and threw up their hands in surrender.

“Come on, Sarah!” Graye moaned.  “Why’d you have to go and tell her?  We might as well not play!”

“Settle down, boys,” I said with a smile as I shook my head.  “Go ahead.  I’ll just watch.”

Cheers erupted and the energy turned to teasing Wix for taking up a blade to enter.  He kept up with the banter though, pretending to be the toughest of them all.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” West whispered into my ear.  He then started walking in the direction of his tent.

Sarah caught my eye, flashing a knowing smile.

It was pretty comical, watching Wix try and keep up with our best scouts in Eden.  I had to respect him for trying though.  The kid wouldn’t be bullied.

I looked up from my place by the food tent and searched for Sarah.  I found her talking to Morgan.  Her skin was covered in a glaze of sweat, flushed in a not-good way.  She glanced over at me and as she did I felt my insides hollow out.  Her eyes were suddenly glazed-over, her face blank.  I bolted up from my seat and was across the clearing in five bounding steps.  I caught her just as she collapsed.

Sarah’s right arm flailed wildly as I carefully lowered her to the ground.  Her eyes stared blankly up at the night sky, her body thrashing violently.

Everyone had been told of Sarah’s newfound condition.  It had been necessary should she be with someone and have a seizure, they needed to know how to help her.  But everyone still gathered around her, watching in horror and sadness.

“Where’s Avian?” I asked to no one in particular as Sarah’s arm batted against my right shoulder.

“He went back to his tent a while ago,” Morgan said as she crouched down next to us, Sarah’s form starting to still.

“Stay with her,” I instructed.  Morgan sat next to me and pulled Sarah’s head into her lap.  “I’ll go get him.”

I jogged towards Avian’s tent with silent feet.  A sense of dread filled me as I approached.  I pulled the flap back, finding him reading on his cot.

His eyes met mine, and for a second I forgot my reason for being there.  The look in his eyes screamed pain.  I’d never seen that look on Avian’s face before, and now that it was directed at me I never wanted to see it again.

“Sarah had another seizure,” I finally said, my voice almost too quiet.

He marked his place in the book and rose to his feet.  He couldn’t even look at me as he walked out of the tent without saying a word.

I took a few steps away from his tent before stopping to watch him walk away, back toward the clearing.

“Hey.”  West’s voice surprised me from the side.  His hand slipped into mine.  “You want to go back to the party?”

I took a quick step away, slipping out of his hand.  “I think I’m going to go to bed now,” I said.  I didn’t even glance back as I walked swiftly toward my tent.

I wanted to turn everything inside of me off.

Not feeling was easier.

FOURTEEN

I deposited my pack in my tent, always a nearly painful thing to do, and made my way to the east side of the lake.  The trees hung over the water in this section, providing a lot of privacy.  I slipped out of my sticky clothes, washed them quickly, then hung them out to dry.  Summer had finally arrived in full force.  I jumped in the water, the cool water hitting my skin with a sharp slap.  I gave a sigh as my head surfaced, pushing my hair out of my face.  The sun was nearly blinding as it danced on the surface of the water.

I set out for the west side of the lake.

It took everything I had in me to not think about everything.  To not think about West, to not think about Avian, not think about Sarah’s illness or the truth about what I really was.  But my stomach turned to knots every time I thought about any of it.

I reached the western shore of the lake and turned back.

I was nearly back to where my clothes hung to dry when I felt something splash against me, waves not created by my strokes.  I pulled up short, my head popping out of the water at the same time Avian’s did.

“Avian!” I gasped as my hands automatically clamped around my chest.  “What are you doing here?!”

“Swimming!” he said in a shocked tone.  “What are you doing here?”

“Swimming!” I answered, turning my back to him.  The water was dark because of the shadowing of the trees, for which I was immensely grateful.  But we were still nearly ten yards away from the shore.  I noticed Avian’s clothes hanging about twenty feet away from mine, dripping wet, just as mine were.

“Well, turn around,” I commanded as I started swimming for the shore again.  Avian did as I asked.

I debated what to pull on.  Everything was still soaking.  My cheeks flushed as I pulled on only my underthings.  It was uncomfortable wearing wet clothes with the temperatures so warm.  I turned my back as Avian came to shore and pulled on his pants.

We stood there, both unsure of what to say, not quite looking at each other.  There was so much tension rolling off of Avian.  I hated the way it made me feel inside.

“I don’t want things to be like this between us,” I finally said, looking up into his face.  “I can’t stand this.  You mean more to me than anyone here in Eden.”

“Don’t say something you don’t mean,” he said, his voice tight.

I took a few steps toward him, stopping just a foot away from him.  “What is that supposed to mean?”

Avian finally looked into my eyes, his blue ones filled with emotions I was starting to understand.  “You mean everything to me, Eve.  I know I haven’t exactly come right out and said it yet, but you do.  But if you have feelings for West, I…” he trailed off as his eyes again fell to the rough sand underneath our feet.

I bit my lower lip, my own eyes falling from his face.  They settled onto the two birds tattooed on his chest.  “Something is happening to me, Avian.  There is something inside of me that is waking up and I don’t know how to handle it.  I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before.  Things I don’t understand.  I’m terrified, Avian.”

His eyes met mine again, soft and sad looking at the same time.  I wanted him to do something, to say something.  Avian always had the answers for me, always sorted things out when I couldn’t understand.  “Is…” his voice faded as he tried to make himself vocalize what was on his mind.  “Is there any way you could someday feel the same way that I feel about you?”

I held his eyes for a long time, not answering.  Something inside of me felt like it grew, making my heart beat erratically.

It suddenly seemed like I was looking at a whole new Avian.

Everything instantly changed between us.

“Yes,” I said.

A small smile spread on his face.  But it didn’t reach his eyes and there was pain in it.  He closed his eyes for a moment.  “Then you need to realize that you can’t have both, Eve.  It just doesn’t work that way.”

I felt like I was going to get swallowed up by myself again.  Something inside of me reached out to Avian, wanting to pull him closer and never have to let go.

He reached up, taking in his hand the stone wings he had carved, his eyes studying its surface.  “No matter what you choose, I’ll still be here.  Just don’t expect me to not get hurt.”

My lips were against his before I even allowed myself to consider what I was doing.  My arms wrapped behind his neck at the same time that his wrapped around my waist.  My insides surged in ways I didn’t understand, and a feeling of what I could describe as nothing other than belonging settled into every corner of my being.  Everything about his scent, his body, his presence brought on a flood of memories, sizzling with newness and anticipation.

And almost as soon as it started, Avian pulled away, resting his forehead against mine, one of his hands pressing softly against my bare stomach.  He closed his eyes, his lips pursed together.  “You can’t have both,” he said quietly.  He pressed one more quick kiss to my forehead, then grabbed his clothes and walked back in the direction of Eden.

FIFTEEN

The floorboards creaked in protest as my booted feet walked across them.  Dust swirled around my legs, the light catching their form, tracing patterns in the air.  The air was stale with the heavy scent of abandonment.

While on scouting duty that morning, I had found a cabin in the woods.  A roughhewn road led up to it, the forest pressing back in, trying to take the land back.  I had watched silently from the trees for a full ten minutes before I dared move closer.  Silently, I had peered into the windows, searching for any signs of life, enemy or friend.  There were none.

I felt like I was stepping into another world.  The world of houses, of flooring, running water and windows was from another age.  The age of humanity, of mankind.  We were in the age of the Bane now.

The front area was full of furniture.  Pictures lined the walls, smiling faces staring back at me.  Books were stacked on random surfaces, a yellowing newspaper lay casually on the kitchen table.  I grabbed a handful of the books and stuffed them into my bag for Gabriel and Wix.  A bedroom led off of the front room.  It was a small space with little more than the bed in it, but it was still larger than my tent.  I was tempted to lie down on the bed, just to see how soft it was, but my nerves were too on edge.

A small bathroom was attached to the bedroom.  I lifted the handle of the faucet in the sink and a small smile crept onto my face as brown water sputtered out.  It was true.  Running water really was real.  I left it on as I turned to explore the rest of the house.

The kitchen was small, but it may have served the king of the land for all I knew.  It was glorious looking.  I knew what the women who worked in our kitchen would give to have use of this.  I opened a lower cupboard and pulled out bottles, not even knowing what they were for, but figuring Eden would appreciate anything I could bring back.

I was looking out the cracked window of the back door when I felt the boards under my feet wiggle.  There was a cutout shape of a small door.  It creaked as I pulled it open.  The overpowering smell of spoiled food assaulted my senses.  I pulled my shirt over my nose and dropped into the dark space below.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.  The air was damp, tasting like earth and humidity.

The area that had been dug out had to be nearly as big as the rest of the cabin.  Rows and rows of shelves crowded the area.  Canned goods were stacked everywhere, buckets of flour and sugar covered all of the bottom racks.  Two entire shelves were filled with glass bottles of water.  The source of the smell was a few sacks of rotting potatoes in one corner.

Whoever had lived here was preparing for something.  Had they been found by Bane?  Had they gone to the city for supplies, only to be infected there?

Pushing away the ghosts of the past, I climbed back up the ladder and closed the hatch behind me.  I wandered back into the bathroom to where the water was still running.  It was clear now and flowing steady.  There was a glass stall in the bathroom with a drain disappearing into the floor.  This must have been a shower.  It seemed to fit Sarah’s description.  I turned the knobs in it and a minute or so later, it too was cascading clear water.

Checking again to make sure the house was still clear and that that there was nothing outside, I stripped down and climbed inside.  The water was cold but not as cold as it was at the lake.  I found a few bottles of liquid and sniffed at their contents.  They smelled so good, I massaged them into every surface of my body.  I couldn’t stop smelling my skin.

A towel was hanging next to the shower and after flicking a spider off of it, I used it to dry myself off.  A movement to my right caught my eye, causing adrenaline to flood my system.  It had only been my reflection though.

I approached the mirror slowly, taking in the person who stared back at me.  My grey-blue eyes looked washed out in the dim light.  My cheek bones were bordering on gaunt looking, having spent all my remembered life on rations and scouting through the forest every day.  My jaw line was sharp as well, all of my features pronounced.

I turned my back to the mirror, glancing over my shoulder at my bare shoulder.  The skin was rippled and twisted looking.  Even though it had healed completely in just a few days, the scar would be there forever.

Unease crept into my system at letting my defenses down for so long and I climbed back into my clothes and pulled my pack back on.  I walked back outside and headed toward the back of the house.

There was a large outbuilding behind the cabin, no windows, just roughhewn wood siding.  I pulled the doors open and my heart jumped into my throat.

I had never seen a vehicle this far from the city before.

It was large, with a big bed for cargo.  Bill called this kind of vehicle a truck.  I could tell it was old – even in the days when it would have been used it would have been old.  I wished I knew how to drive to see if it still ran.  I made a note to bring Bill here with me soon.

I gathered up what more I could fit into my pack and started back toward Eden.

The light was just starting to dim in the sky when I reached the halfway point.  The sound of a branch breaking drove me up the nearest tree.  I moved silently along the boughs, my eyes searching for the source of the noise.  I saw West, walking back in the direction of Eden.

I picked the biggest pine cone I could find out of the tree I stood in and threw it at West with precision, hitting him square in the back of the head.  His shoulders scrunched up towards his ears, whipping around violently, a knife clenched in one hand, a handgun in the other.

A sly smile crossed my face as I picked another, throwing it so it landed just behind him.  He spun around again, his eyes scanning the trees, a curse slipping across his lips.  I couldn’t help it as the laugh slipped out.

West whipped around, the knife launching from his fingers.  Instinct reaction took over as I caught the blade tightly in my hand; the tip of it just inches away from my chest.

“Geez, West,” I said sharply as I threw it back down at him, burying the blade in the ground between his feet.   “A bit paranoid?”  As I looked back down at my hand, the skin was already closing up where it had been cut.  I wiped the few drops of blood off on my pants.

His eyes finally found me and after picking his knife up, he scaled the tree, sitting next to me on the large branch.  “I was wondering where you had wandered off to,” he said, his eyes hesitant as they met mine.

“I found a house,” I said, trying to drive away the awkward moment.  “It had a cellar underneath it.  It was stock full of non-perishables.  Enough for two people to live off of for a year.  And they had a truck.  I don’t know if it runs though.  I don’t know how to work it.”

“Me either,” he said as he shook his head.  His eyes grew in intensity as he looked at me and I saw his thoughts reeling.  “Is everything okay?  You’ve volunteered for night watch almost every night since the party.  It feels a little like you’ve been avoiding me the last few days.”

“I have been,” I said honestly as my eyes dropped to the ground below us.

“Does this have anything to do with Avian?” West asked, his voice dropping in volume a bit.

I pressed my lips tightly together.  Yes, it did have something to do with Avian.  “I’m confused right now.  I don’t know how to handle all these feelings.  Everything is so intense.”

West’s hand shifted, his fingers covering mine.  I looked back at him.  He stared back at me.

“It’s normal,” he said quietly.  “You’re supposed to feel this way.”

“Not for me, it’s not normal.”

“Evolution, remember?” he said as he leaned forward.

I debated with myself for the briefest moment, whether or not to let him kiss me.

But before his lips could meet mine, someone screamed.

I leapt out of the tree and was sprinting through the forest before West could even open his eyes to look for the source of the scream.  It hadn’t been far away.  Within ten seconds I saw Graye, lying on the ground, twitching and writhing in pain.  Two metal barbs were embedded into the skin of his chest, a sharp hiss emanating from them as they shocked Graye, over and over.

I’d never seen a Bane use a weapon.

I felt the sharp shock of the electricity coursing through my body as I yanked the barbs out of Graye.  As I stuffed them into my pocket, I saw it, sprinting towards us, with robotically enhanced speed.

I sprang though the air at the Bane.  His eyes shown with a metallic glint, empty and cold.  Two cybernetic hands stretched towards me and we collided with a heavy smack.  His hands went straight for my throat, my hands pulling at every gear, wire, and cog I could get them on.

“Eve!” I heard the scream as we collided.

“Get out of here, West!” I tried to scream, my voice cut off as the Bane’s hands tightened around my throat.  “Run!”

Black spots started forming in my vision as my air supply was choked off.  I clawed at the hands, gaining no breathing room.  Its eyes stared at me, empty as ever.

I worked my hand into my pocket, the metal rods sizzling my skin as it shocked me over and over.  My arm felt ridged as they forced the muscles in it to clench up.  With every ounce of strength I had, I forced my arm to move.  I jammed the rods into the Bane’s eye with everything I had.

Even though I knew it couldn’t feel pain, it jerked away, its hands reaching up to its destroyed eye.  It was just enough for me to wiggle my hand free and pull my handgun out and blast its head open.

At the same time, another shot was fired from behind me, hitting the Bane square in the chest.

I fell back to the ground, my breath coming in sharp gasps.  The Bane collapsed to the earth with a hiss of electric death, its form falling still.  I stared up at the blood red sky and tried to steady my breathing.

“Eve!” West yelled as he half fell to my side.  “Are you alright?”

I was about to say yes when I raised my hand to look at it, the one I had grabbed the rods with.  The skin of my fingers had been burned away, muscle, bone, and metallic parts gleaming in the fading light.

“Holy…” I breathed as I took it in.  There was the proof.  It was more than my lungs and heart that were cybernetic.  It looked as if the cybernetics had bonded to my bones.

“Come on,” West said as he yanked me to my feet.  “We’ve got to get Graye to Avian.  Whatever those things were, they burned some nice sized holes into his chest.”

I stumbled to my feet and back toward Graye.  His form was limp as I picked him up and slung him across my shoulders.  We were both running through the forest moments later, desperation propelling us faster and faster.

“Since when do the Bane use weapons like that?” West huffed.

“They don’t,” I said, recalling every time I’d ever encountered a Bane.  They never used weapons, other than their own two hands and the infection.

“Avian!” West started shouting as we reached the edge of the tents.  “Avian!”

We barreled into the clearing and ran straight for the medical tent.  Avian burst out of his tent, stepping aside when he saw my load, and followed us in.

“A Bane shot him with these electric rods,” I explained as I laid Graye’s still form on the table.  “They hurt.”

“What?!” Avian shouted as he grabbed a piece of medical equipment and pressed it to Graye’s chest, listening to the other end.  “He’s still breathing but his heart beat is erratic.  How long were they in him?”  Avian started compressions to Graye’s chest.

“Not more than fifteen seconds.  I wasn’t far away,” I paced the small space of the tent, passing West as he stood in one corner, watching Graye as Avian worked on him.

“The Bane?” Avian huffed as he worked on Graye.  He stopped and listened to Graye’s chest again.

“I shot it,” I said through clenched teeth.  “I don’t know if there are any more.”

“You’ve got to get back out there,” Avian said as he ripped away the remains of Graye’s shirt, exposing the burned flesh underneath.  “You’ve got to check.”

“Come on,” I said to West, stepping out of the tent.  Gabriel and Bill came running up to us just as we exited.

“Is Graye with you?” Bill asked as he stopped before us.  “I couldn’t find him.”

“A Bane shot him,” I said, knowing we were wasting time.  “Avian’s taking care of him.  We’ve got to go check for more of them though.”

Bill nodded and the three of us ran back into the trees without another word to Gabriel or anyone else.

“How much ammo do you have?” I asked Bill as we jogged through the trees.

“Two mags and a pocketful,” Bill answered as his eyes scanned the trees.

“West?” I asked as I checked the chamber of my own handgun, replacing the bullet I had used on the Bane.

“Full mag,” he replied as he checked it.  “Nothing extra though.”

“Here.”  I shoved a handful of bullets into his hand, pulling them out of my pocket.

I pressed faster back to where I had found Graye and the Bane, West and Bill quickly falling behind me.  I smelled at the air.  The scent of the Bane I had killed wafted through the air, undetectable to anyone but me, I was sure.  I quickly passed its body, following the path it had created through the grass and undergrowth.

I ran another half mile before I saw it.

I froze beneath a low tree, jumping behind it as it came into view.  My ears searched for any hints of an attack.  When I found none, I turned my eyes back to the mechanical beast before me.

I’d never seen a helicopter so close before.  It looked like an oversized mechanical bug, its blades still and less threatening looking.  It was hard to believe the machine could be so silent.  It was a piece of raw, powerful destruction when it was flying.

But if there was a helicopter here, that meant there was more than one Bane.  They always flew in pairs.

Bill and West finally caught up to me, huffing as they came to my side.

“A chopper?” Bill said as he crouched, a gun in one hand, his finger on the trigger.  “Then there’s another one out there.”

We scanned the trees, our senses strained and ready to spring.

“Stay close,” I said as I started west, heading in the opposite direction we had just come from.  “If you can’t shoot it, run.  Let me take care of it.”

They followed silently as we came to the other side of the helicopter.  A clear trail led in the exact opposite direction the other had gone.  They had split up to cover more ground.  The Bane didn’t bother to cover up their trails.  They had nothing to be afraid of, no one to hide from.

We followed the trail for two miles, seeing no traces of the Bane other than his footsteps.

“You think it doubled back?” Bill whispered, his gun still raised, finger on the trigger, the same as West and I.

“We would have seen it by now,” I said quietly in response.  And just as soon as I said it the trail ended.  The small patches of grass and moss that had been smashed by its weight suddenly disappeared.  I glanced up, my eyes searching.

“It went up,” I said, my eyes tracing the path it had taken through the trees.  There wasn’t much to see but there was broken branches and a handprint on a mossy branch.  “It could be anywhere now.”

“Maybe we should split up,” West said, his breathing betraying his nerves.

“Bad idea,” I said quietly.  “You wander on your own and what’s going to be your barrier?”

“I’d prefer it not have to be you,” he murmured.

As I registered West’s words I heard the snap behind us.  “Get down!” I screamed as I whipped around, pushing both Bill and West to the ground.  Half a second later the Bane fired, the bullet grazing the side of my thigh.  I stumbled, half falling on top of Bill.

I had just gotten back to my feet when it started sprinting towards us.  Every muscle in my body flexed as I hurtled myself at the Bane.

We crashed to the ground, a mere ten feet from Bill and West.  I clung to its shoulder with one hand, beating at the back of its head with the butt of my gun with the other.  With one hand, it reached back, grabbed me by the back of my neck, and slammed me to the ground.

My hands flung out, grabbing its ankle as it started toward the others, and dropped it to the ground.  It turned its empty eyes on me, coiling its leg for a crushing kick to my face that I barely managed to avoid.  Two shots were suddenly fired, both barely missing the Bane and myself.

Undeterred by my efforts, the Bane turned its focus back to West and Bill.

“No!” I screamed as I leapt back up and jumped onto its back.  “Get away from them!”

Something I couldn’t explain happened.  The Bane froze, me still clinging to its frame, and took two steps back.  And then it stood there, staring out at nothing.  Before it could do anything else, I scrambled off its back, drew my gun again and blasted a hole in the back of its head.  It collapsed to the ground in a heap.

And then I buckled, caving in on my right leg.  It didn’t hurt, but apparently it wasn’t going to hold my weight anymore.

West and Bill were instantly at my side.  “How’d you do that?” Bill demanded.  “It listened to you.”

“What are you talking about?” I huffed as they each grabbed one of my arms and helped me to my feet, supporting my weight for me.  “And since when do the Bane carry guns?”

“You told it to get away from us,” West filled in for Bill.  “And then it stopped and backed away.”

Adrenaline was still pumping through my system, making everything seem like a blur in my head.  “Why would it listen to me?”

“Maybe because you’re partly like them,” West said as we scrambled through the trees.

“Whatever just happened, let’s just get out of here,” Bill said as his eyes stared intently at the path we had just come down.  “We’ve got to get you to Avian.”

SIXTEEN

I limped out of the medical tent, cursing under my breath.

There wasn’t much Avian could do for my leg.  I had tried to tell Bill and West that.  He had simply wrapped the wound and sent me out, turning his attention back to Graye.  He was still unconscious and Avian was having to pound on his chest every so often to keep his heart beating normally.

“Eve,” West called as I headed in the direction of my tent.  “Are you alright?”

“Leave me alone, West,” I said as I shook my head.  I refused to look at him, keeping on my path.

“What?” he asked, his voice sounding taken aback.  “What did I do?”

I just shook my head, my jaw clenching together.  Something boiled under my skin.  He’d better do as I said or he was going to be the victim of an explosion.

“Eve,” he said as he followed me, his voice becoming more insistent.  “Eve!  Look at me!”

“Seriously, West, leave me alone.”

His hand grabbed my wrist, pulling me to a stop.  I whipped around to face him, my hand rising.  I barely registered the shock in West’s face before I stopped myself.  I’d been about to connect my fist with his jaw.

“What’s going on, Eve?” he asked, his brow furrowing, his eyes searching mine.  “What did I do?”

I finally erupted.

“I can’t be around you like this!” I shouted, not even looking around to make sure no one else was listening.  “Yes, you make me feel things, but you also distract me so much I can’t even do my job!  It was my fault Graye got hurt.  He was looking for me and where was I?  Up a tree with you!  He could have been killed!  If I had been five seconds later getting to him, he would have been infected!

“I can’t do this, West.  I can’t keep getting distracted.  I can’t feel things that the rest of you feel.  People will get killed if I do.”

He stared at me, hurt and anger creeping into his eyes.  When he didn’t say anything, I looked away.  A few people had stopped what they were doing to watch us.  “What are you all looking at?” I snapped.  Before anyone could say anything, I took off in the direction of my tent.

I shut it all off and kept away from everyone.

After talking to Gabriel, I got myself on scouting duty every day, trading out my gardening hours.  He didn’t fight me like I had expected, but then again, he had heard my outburst and he knew what I had said was true.  I couldn’t afford to be distracted.

I also took over all of Graye’s night watch duties.  Without Gabriel’s knowledge, I took over everyone else’s as well.

Between scouting duty in the morning and watch at night, I simply slept the rest of the time.  I blocked out the noise and light around me and shut myself down.  It wasn’t hard, with everything I was doing I was actually feeling exhausted.  I was finally finding my limits.

Gabriel had thought about moving Eden again after what had happened with Graye but Avian and I had talked him out of it.  It was obvious the Bane were getting more persistent.  There wasn’t far for us to go without getting too far away from water and the gardens.  We were just going to have to fight them off if they continued to come.  Even if they were going to start coming with weapons.  Plus, we were never going to find a better location than the one we were already at.

Everyone short of two people on scouting duty was gathered together for a light dinner.  We had been trying to be careful lately with our provisions.  We were in the lull of time between the leftovers of last year’s harvest and this year’s pickings.

Some of us peeled off, settling into our nightly activities.  I found myself with my eyes glued to the fire, watching as the flames danced in the night air.  Gabriel, Bill, Graye, Avian, and a mix of others stayed as well.  We were all quiet, lost in thoughts of mixed memories and fears, the flow of our lives.  The same thing ran through our minds though.  Life, our world, what was going to happen to it.

“I can’t believe how fast it happened,” Gabriel said suddenly as he stared into the flames, seated only a few feet away from me.  “Civilization took thousands of years to build up to where we were.  And it was destroyed in just four months.”

None of us said anything for a while, each reminiscing on how we had gotten here.

“My aunt was one of the first to get the technology,” Bill surprised me when he spoke up.  Bill usually wasn’t one for many words.  “She’d been waiting for four years for a new heart.  All the money in the world at her disposal and it couldn’t buy her a new organ.  Until NovaTor’s infection was created.  The week after TorBane was approved, her husband had her transported to the facility and she was fine the next month.  Cured.  Until she choked the life out of Uncle Rich twelve weeks after the operation.”

A log popped in the fire, sending a billow of red-hot ash into the darkening sky.

“Fifteen hundred had the implants.  Fifteen hundred was all it took to wipe out six billion and a half,” Avian said.  I glanced up at him, watching as the flames danced in his eyes.  They were always so serious.  I wondered how they would look if none of this had ever happened.

“Everything collapsed so quickly,” Gabriel said quietly.  “The Army, the Navy, the Marines couldn’t fight it off.  All the weapons and technology we did have and they couldn’t destroy this.”

I glanced around at all of them.  Gabriel looked so sad and I felt a twinge of pain for him.  He’d been in the normal world the longest.  How things used to be had been so engrained in him.  The world was nothing like how it used to be.

My eyes moved to Bill.  He was another one of those people who you just looked at and knew there was a story to them.  But I didn’t know much of anything about Bill’s past.  He had very little family as far as I knew.  He’d never been married, never had any children even though he had to be in his early forties.  I didn’t think he had even had any parents left before the world evolved.  I sensed that in a way, he almost liked this way of living.  Because even though everything was so complicated, life was simpler now.  You didn’t have to worry about having a nice car, a job, or whatever else people used to worry about.  You just had to survive.  Bill was good at that.

Graye sat silent, staring into the fire, just like the rest of us.  He was a person I could never fully figure out.  There was a history to him that he never talked about, that he kept locked up and buried in a deep place.  I knew he had been married before, had a daughter.  How had he escaped the infection when they didn’t?  Had he had to leave them and get to a safe place?  Somehow I didn’t think he could just up and walk away from them.  Out of everyone in our circle, he was the angriest at our destroyed world.

“Did you ever run into any marauders?” Gabriel asked Bill, nothing more than a small glance in his direction.

“Just once,” he answered as he cleared his throat.  “I walked a long ways.  There were two of them in a truck, scavenging for food.  They had guns but they were desperate.”

“What happened?” I asked through the dark.

“I walked away with what I walked into there with.”  He left it at that.  Bill would fight until he had no fight left in him.

“They killed each other off pretty quick,” Gabriel said, not directing his recollections at anyone.  “They fought over food, open territory.  Eventually there was no one left who would fight with them over it.”

The stars winked into view overhead, burning with intensity.  I was going to have to head up to my post soon.

“How did any of us survive it?” Avian said as he rubbed two fingers over his lips.

No one answered for a while.  The sky was now almost pitch dark as I stood, pulling my pack tight around my shoulders.  “You were smart.  That’s how.”

I walked away from them, feeling one pair of eyes watching me as I left.

The trees chirped with life as the sun started spreading its rays.  I stretched my legs, shaking my body awake.  It was harder than I expected to switch my internal clock to a nocturnal sleeping pattern.

I heard boots on the ladder and poked my head over the ledge of the watchtower.  Sarah looked up at me with dark circled eyes.  I gave her a hand and pulled her up over the edge.  She half tripped as she got to the top.  I caught her and helped ease her down to the rough bench.

“You alright?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said with a small chuckle.  “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”  She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment.

I looked at her closely, taking in every detail of her.  Her eyes were dark.  I guessed she hadn’t been sleeping well for a while now.  She looked like she had lost a little weight as well.

“Are you feeling okay?  You don’t look so good.”

She gave a laugh, her eyes opening again.  They looked tired.  “You could try being a little more tactful.”

“Blame it on the robot in me,” I said with a little bite in my voice.  She just smiled up at me and patted the space next to her.  I sat and watched as the sun continued to creep up into the sky.

“So are you?” I asked.  “Feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly.  It didn’t fully feel like the truth.  “I just had a seizure this morning.  Woke me up.”

I didn’t feel scared often, but this shook me.  There was nothing I could do about the seizures, there was no battle I could fight.  I could never be strong enough to fix her.  “How many a day?”

“It depends.  Some days it’s only one.  Others it’s five or six.”

I just shook my head as I looked down into my lap.

“I’m fine.”  It felt like she was saying it more to herself than to me.  “So how are things going with West?  Better than with Avian?”

I shook my head, my eyes falling to the boards at my feet.  “Feelings are too complicated.  How is anyone supposed to deal with it?  They just make you crazy.”

“Crazy sounds like a good description,” she laughed.  But it sent her into a coughing fit.

“How ironic is it, that whatever is killing me would have been fixed by what TorBane was supposed to be?”  Her voice was shaky as she spoke.

“That’s pretty messed up,” I said, my eyes scanning the trees before us.

“It could probably still fix me,” she said, her voice growing quiet.  “The tech.  It could probably still heal whatever is broken inside of me.”

“Don’t say that,” I said, my voice sharp as I met her eyes.  “Those people who all got infected, they aren’t people anymore.  They’re dead.  Don’t wish to be one of them.”

“I didn’t say that, Eve,” she said, taking my hand in hers.  She felt so fragile.  “I’m sorry I upset you.”

“Sarah?”  I heard the call from the ground beneath us.  Avian.

She sighed.  “He will hardly let me out of his sight these days.”

I didn’t blame him.  He was scared.

“Coming!” she yelled and headed down the ladder.  “Hang in there, Eve.  You’ll figure out what your heart wants eventually.”

I looked over the edge as she went down.  Avian’s eyes met mine and he gave me a sad half smile.  I wasn’t sure if I managed to return it.

I waited a few minutes before I climbed down, Tuck, the day watchman, coming to replace me.  As I walked toward the kitchen area, I realized I was being followed.  I turned to see the child shadowing me.

“Can I help you?” I said awkwardly.  I had never been around a child before.  How did you talk to one?

He just stared at me with his big green eyes.

“Where’s your mother?” I asked as I stopped walking and turned toward him.  He halted suddenly, nearly tripping over himself.  It only now struck me how odd it was that Victoria was actually his mother.  She was so young.

“She’s working,” he said.

I nodded, still unsure how to interact with Brady.  I remembered Victoria had been assigned as seamstress.

“Does she know you’re wandering around?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Maybe you should go back to her.”  I was squirming by now, itching to get away from a situation I didn’t know how to handle.

“Can you teach me how to use this?”  I hadn’t realized he was holding anything until he held up the slingshot.  “He told me you could teach me.”  I looked as he pointed, my eyes catching West’s.  He gave me a coy smile.  I just shook my head at him and turned back to Brady.

“You think you’re big enough to handle that thing?”

He gave a very enthusiastic nod.

“Come on,” I said as I glanced back at West, giving him the smug look this time.  “I’ll give you a few pointers.”

I thought the smile was going to crack Brady’s face as we moved away from the growing crowd.

We walked down to the lake’s edge and stopped at a spot with round stones large enough to use.

“Here,” I said as I picked up a medium-sized one and handed it to him.  “Show me what you’ve got.”

Brady pursed his lips together and placed the stone in the sling.  He closed one eye and pulled it back.  Just before he released it, he squeezed both eyes closed.  It flew about five feet before it splashed in the water.

“Hmm,” I said as I looked everything over.  “Try this and keep your eyes open this time.”

I adjusted his hands, showing how to properly hold the sling.  I showed him how to aim it, told him all the tricks I could think of for better accuracy.  He was making every target I gave him within an hour.

“How old are you Brady?” I asked as I watched him hit a tree fifteen feet away.

“Four and a half,” he answered as he bent and picked up another stone.

“Brady!” Victoria’s frantic voice floated over the tents at our backs.  “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

She rushed over and grabbed onto one of his arms.  “I’m sorry if he’s been bothering you, Eve.  I thought he was with Leah.  I’ve been working all morning.”

“No, he’s been fine.  I’ve just been teaching him how to use the slingshot.  He’s pretty good actually,” I said.  That brought the smile back to Brady’s face.

“Well, thank you,” she said as she looked down at him.

“Actually, do you have some time?  I could really use a few new shirts.  Mine are getting a little threadbare.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said with a grin and a nod.  “Come on.  I’ll measure you right now.”

I returned her smile and followed her.

Why did my face feel so hollow lately?

SEVENTEEN

Sleep came all too easily when I finally managed to get into bed.  When I woke up that evening though, I was ready to explode.

“What do you mean they went without me?!” I demanded of Gabriel.  “Bill and Graye don’t go on raids without me!”

“They left just before mid-day.  We weren’t sure where you were.  Supplies are low.  They had to go.”  Gabriel wouldn’t meet my eyes as he spoke to me.

“You’re lying to me,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest.  “Of course you knew where to find me.  I was the same place I always am this time of day.  They don’t just go on spur of the moment raids.            How could you let them go on a raid without me?”

“Calm down, Eve,” Gabriel said in a low voice.  He glanced around to make sure no one was listening to our argument.  Or rather, my explosion.

“Clam down?!  They could get killed out there without me!  Worse, infected!  How could you let them go without me?”

Gabriel sighed, looking around again.  “Avian asked that they go without you.”

“What?!” I bellowed.  “Avian…and you listened to him?  You know I’m the best soldier on raids!”

“Of course, Eve.  But, he…” Gabriel struggled for words.

“I’m going now.  It’s only been six hours, I can still catch up with them.”

“Eve, we need you here.  The three of you are our best scouts and guards.  It’s best you stay put.”

I wanted to hit Gabriel.  I wanted to punch Avian so hard it made his head spin.  How could he do this to me?   “Is Graye even healed yet?”

“Avian cleared him this morning,” Gabriel said quietly.

I clenched my jaw and just shook my head.  I couldn’t believe this.  I had gone on every raid in the last three years.  I didn’t like being left out.

“I’m going hunting,” I said through clenched teeth.  I didn’t wait for a response as I headed toward the armory.

The door banged against the wall as I shoved it open.  I jumped as West whipped around to look at me.

“What are you doing in here?” I nearly shouted.

“I just got off scouting duty,” he said defensively.  “Just putting my stuff away.”

I shook my head and squeezed my eyes closed for a moment.  “Sorry I snapped at you.  Grab your bow, we’re going hunting.”

“Really?” he said, his voice hitching up a notch with excitement.

“Yeah, come on,” I said, irritated again as I grabbed my bow.

We headed out east, towards the higher mountains.  We’d been on enough scouting and hunting trips together now to know how each other moved.  We listened and watched as a team.

What I didn’t expect was West’s cool and easy silence.  He never once asked me what was the matter, why I was so angry, or even about how I had been avoiding him again.  We were just two soldiers, two hunters.

We paused as we came to the edge of the trees.  A rock cliff jutted out in front of us, dropping down far enough we couldn’t see the bottom.  Perched on the edge was the fattest wild turkey I had ever seen.

I gave West one glare, which he returned with a smile that said, Fine, this one’s yours.

I drew an arrow and sent it slicing through the air.  It embedded itself in the turkey’s fat neck.

“Well, that couldn’t have been easier,” West said as he stood from our hiding spot.

“Hey, you won’t be complaining when your stomach is full tonight,” I shot back as I walked forward and pulled the arrow out of the bird.  I wiped it clean on a mossy tree trunk.

“Well, it isn’t a bear,” he joked as he handed me a length of rope.

I just rolled my eyes at him as we tied it by its legs to the back of my pack.  We set out again on a trail heading south without another word.

Being so far away from Eden, we didn’t try for anything bigger than birds and rabbits.  As we felt the temperature drop slightly as the sun started to think about going down, we took a break on a rock outcropping that overlooked a valley.

I closed my eyes and breathed the summer-scented air in.  “I almost wish I could just stay out here for a few nights, away from everything.”

“Why don’t you?” West asked as he leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows.

“You know why.  I have jobs, duties.”  I took a sigh.  “I just wish…”

“That you could have a break,” he said.  It wasn’t a question.  He knew he’d filled in the blank.

“Yeah,” I said as I let my breath out, opening my eyes to the view before me.  “It’s all just so…”

“Exhausting?”  This time he didn’t seem so sure.

“I guess,” I said as I looked down at my hands in my lap.  The hand that had been eaten away from the barbs was covered in more rippled scar tissue.  “It’s a lot of pressure I suppose.  Not that I’ve really known any different.”

“You’re pretty amazing,” he said after a few moments of quiet.  “You know that?”

“Just ‘cause your grandfather made me that way.”

“No, you’re amazing.  Eve.  The human part of you.  You’ll never stop fighting for them.  You always put them before yourself.”

And he was right.  As much as I liked being with West, as good and alive as he made me feel, I would keep him pushed away so something like the incident with Graye would never happen again.

“They may be all that’s left,” I said quietly.  “I’ve got to keep them alive.  We’re already an endangered species.”

“Just don’t forget who you are in the process,” he said as he looked out over the trees.

“This is who I am.  I’ve never been anyone else.”

“Well, maybe you need to find something that’s just for you.”

I considered this.  What else was there to do besides what I already was doing?

“Maybe,” was all I could say.  “Hey, how did you get that scar on your neck?  I’ve always meant to ask you.”

“Mountain lion,” he said, his eyes going back out over the trees.

We sat there for a moment longer, the sky growing darker.  “We’d better get going.  I’ve got night watch tonight.”

“You mean every night?” he said as we stood and started down a deer trail.

“Every night,” I agreed with him.

“No one will do a better job.”

“Exactly.”

I couldn’t look at Avian for the next five days.  I knew if I did I would explode on him, and there was a part of me that was human enough to not want to do that.

Eden got a big surprise that fifth day though.  Graye and Bill returned.  In a truck with a flatbed trailer.  Full of non-perishables, clothing, shoes, tents, and other supplies.

We came running out of our tents in the early hours of the morning, alarmed by the noise the truck created.  It was a sound a lot of people hadn’t heard in years and for some of us, a sound we had never heard outside of the city.  Half of us came running out with guns, ready to mow down a Bane on an ATV.  Graye had jumped out, arms waving.

We all pitched in, helping to unload the supplies, shipping off the clothing and shoes to Victoria, sending the food to the kitchen help, and sorting everything else out where it needed to go.  Once all the work was done, the two of them pulled Gabriel, Avian, and I into a tent.

“Something is happening out there,” Graye said.  It was only then that I noticed the slightly panicked look in his eyes.  “We went in during the night but Bane were coming out of everywhere.  It wasn’t like before when just a few of them came after us. I don’t know, I mean, maybe they were just being more aggressive.  We had to take the truck, just to help keep them off of us!”

“Slow down, Graye,” Gabriel said, holding a hand up to him.  “Were there actually more Bane?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  They were just everywhere.  We couldn’t seem to hide from them.”

“They’re getting more aggressive,” Bill said, his voice low.  “We used most of our ammo keeping them off of us.”

“We have four bullets left!” Graye said with a fearful sounding chuckle.  “It’s a good thing we got the truck to start or we wouldn’t have gotten out of there.”

“If they’re getting so much more aggressive, is it going to be possible to go back again?” Avian asked, keeping his voice down.  “Especially if they’re becoming more active at night?”

Neither of them said anything for a moment.  They exchanged looks and I knew their answer before either spoke.

“If it keeps going like this, there’s no way,” Bill answered.

“I don’t know how we made it out of there, much less with all the supplies we got,” Graye said as he rubbed his hands together.

“Do we move again?” I asked as I looked at Gabriel.

“It’s likely they’re getting more aggressive everywhere,” Avian said when Gabriel seemed at a loss for an answer.  “West said it’s designed to spread.  There isn’t much of any one left to spread it to.  It’s desperate.  Any other cities will probably be the same way.  And besides, we have the gardens here.  We’d be smarter to stay put.”

I swallowed hard as another thought occurred to me.  If the Bane were getting so desperate, they were likely to keep pressing further and further into the country and outskirts looking for what was left of the human race.

Something within told me our dangerous world would soon become much more dangerous.

Gabriel pursed his lips and gave a small nod.  “That’s it then.  No more going back into the city.  We can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

I felt an itch inside of me as we disbanded.  We needed to do something.  I didn’t like the feeling that we were just sitting and waiting around to be attacked.  But what were we supposed to do?  There were billions of Bane out there.  How were we supposed to take a stand against them?

EIGHTEEN

I woke up the next afternoon with a plan.

They were going for an all or nothing assimilation.  We had to fight back.  We were going to have to use the same approach they were using themselves.

We had to get rid of them all.

“Avian?” I called before I even entered the medical tent.  I found him washing out a handful of bloody rags in a basin of sharp smelling water.  I swallowed hard, knowing we wouldn’t be able to go after more bleach.  Just one more thing that had become so precious.  “What happened?” I asked.

“Brady,” he said with a sigh.  “He fell out of a tree and split his forehead open.  I stitched it up.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’ll have a nice scar all his life, but he’ll be fine.”  Avian wrung out a rag and set it out to dry on the table.  He looked up at me expectantly, waiting for me to say whatever I found important enough to say to break my silent treatment toward him.

I paced around the tent, trying to gather my thoughts into a question, or just a statement, or something.

“The CDU, it shorts out anything cybernetic,” I said as I continued to pace.

Avian paused, as if questioning what was going through my mind.  “Yes.”

“There’s got to be designs for it somewhere,” I said as I rubbed my cheek, continuing to pace.  “If we could get those designs we could figure out a way to make it bigger.  There’s got to be a way to make a pulse that would destroy anything cybernetic within a certain range.  Someone has to have designed something like this when everything started.”

Avian turned to face me, his face suddenly tired looking.  “It’s not that simple, Eve.  For starters, where would we even look for plans like that?  They’d be in a city.  We wouldn’t even know where to start.  And then there’s the matter of getting into the city.  It might be possible if we could have free reign of the right city for about a week, but that’s not going to happen.

“And then there’s the materials to even build it.  And none of us here would know how to build it.”

I stopped my pacing and stared at Avian, feeling hollow again.  “What are we supposed to do then?  Just wait here for them to come get us?  They’re getting more aggressive, more dangerous than ever.  What happens when a dozen Bane come?  Thirty, forty, or fifty of them?  A thousand?  I can’t fight them all off.  We can’t fight them forever!”

Avian took a step toward me and placed his hands on my arms.  “Calm down, Eve.  Take a deep breath.”

I realized my breaths had been coming in short, shallow gasps.  My head was spinning and my heart was pounding.  “What’s wrong with me?”  Black spots were forming on the edges of my vision.

“Breathe, Eve,” Avian said as he placed his hands on my cheeks, looking into my eyes.  I forced myself to focus on the intense blueness of his as I took deep breaths in and out.  Slowly, the dizziness in my head ebbed away.  “Better?”

I bit my lower lip, closed my eyes, and nodded my head.  “Something’s wrong with me.  Maybe I’m sick.”

Avian chuckled.  “You’re not sick.  It’s just emotion.  It’s normal.”

“I don’t like it,” I said.  Not even realizing what I was doing, I leaned into Avian’s chest and wrapped my arms around his waist.  His arms came around my shoulders, his chin resting on the top of my head.  It didn’t take long for my heartbeat to match the rhythm of Avian’s.  I wanted to stay there forever and just forget everything that felt so out of control.  Everything was safe here.

“Why did you tell Gabriel to send the raid without me?”  And just like that, I had broken the peace I had found.

He didn’t say anything for a minute.  “Because I didn’t think I’d survive the few days of not knowing what was happening to you.”

Part of me wanted to yell at Avian and tell him he should know I could take care of myself.  Another part of me felt…open.  Vulnerable.

“We won’t ever give up, Eve,” he said quietly in my ear.

We stood like that for another long moment.  I didn’t want to leave.  It felt like something inside of me finally relaxed, maybe something that had never relaxed before.

“I need to talk to you sometime.  I read the notebook,” I said.  “Later?”

He nodded.

“First I need to go talk to West,” I said, taking a step away, breaking the bubble of comfort.  “I have to look through that notebook.  There were all kinds of notes in it.  Maybe there will be something that will help us figure out a way to win this.”

Avian’s face fell at the mention of West, but he made a good effort to cover it.  “It couldn’t hurt.”

My eyes met his again and not thinking about what I was doing, I placed my hand on his cheek, feeling stubble forming there.  My eyes searched his, wanting to give him promises, not even knowing what they meant.  Wanting to give promises I knew I would never be able to keep.

And so I didn’t say anything.  I simply stepped outside of the tent into the blinding light.

Summer had a way of bringing the people of Eden to life.  Everyone bustled around, going about their duties with a smile on their face.  In the summer people seemed to feel safer, knowing there was plenty of food and that we wouldn’t freeze to death.

I understood then why people kept secrets so often.  What if I were to suddenly announce to everyone that we could no longer go on raids?  That we could expect at any time to have the Bane come down on us?

Sometimes it was better not to know.

I’d still rather know though.

West was by the lake.  He stood in only a pair of pants, washing out his clothes.  He looked up at me, his shaggy hair flopping across his forehead as he did.

“I want to look at that notebook again,” I said, coming to a stop ten feet away from him, stuffing my hands in my pockets.

“Well, hi, Eve.  I’m doing great this beautiful afternoon.  How are you?” he said, his eyes slightly annoyed but playful looking.

“Great,” I said shortly.  “I’d like to look at the notebook again.”

His expression stiffened.  “Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“Kinda.”

“I think I have a right to look at it as much as I like, considering most of it is about me,” I said, feeling an itch of annoyance start in my chest.

“Only about a third of it,” he said sarcastically as he stepped out of the water, wringing a shirt out.

“Why does everything have to turn into a joke with you?” I asked, my tone sharp.

“Geez, Eve,” he said as he narrowed his eyes at me.  “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?”

I clenched my teeth together.  My eyes dropped from his, to the pile of his things at the base of a tree.  I saw the notebook there, lying next to his pack.  Without hesitating, I walked over to it and grabbed it.  I started heading back in the direction of my tent.

“Hey!  Eve!” he yelled as he started after me.  “What do you think you are doing?”

He grabbed my arm, pulling me around to face him.

Before I even realized what I was doing my left hand wrapped around his throat.  For half a second, everything flickered black.

“Eve!  Stop it!  What are you doing?” I heard Sarah’s screams from behind me.  I dropped my hand.  West started coughing violently and fell to his hands and knees.  Sarah dropped next to him, her hand on his back.

I took two steps away from him.  My mouth opened and closed a few times before I found any words to form.  “I’m…I’m sorry.  I…”  I couldn’t seem to find anything else to say so I turned and jogged toward my tent, notebook in hand.

I sank onto my cot, breathing hard.  What had I just done?  I didn’t even remember making the decision to do what I did.  I didn’t think I was even that worked up over his reluctance.

I pressed my hands over my eyes, trying to calm myself.  My chest was hammering again.

Two minutes later the flap of my tent was pushed aside.

“You attacked West?” Avian asked, his voice stiff.

“I’m sorry, Avian!  I don’t know what happened!  It’s almost like I blacked out.”  I couldn’t even look up into his face.  My eyes remained fixed on the floor.

He didn’t say anything, just stood in front of me.

Why wouldn’t he say anything?

“Let’s take a look at that notebook,” he finally said quietly as he sat beside me.  I closed my eyes again and leaned into him.  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and gave me a tight squeeze.  I took several deep, long breaths.

I sat back up, feeling slightly better, and opened the notebook.

“All this is about you?” Avian asked as we started flipping through tattered pages.

“Just the middle ones,” I said.

“That’s so bizarre,” he mused.  “I can’t even imagine what it was like for you to read it all.”

“Bizarre,” I breathed.  Avian chuckled.

We turned to the pages that came after all the entries about me.  I didn’t understand what most of it meant, just that it was the notes about the evolution of the technology that was a part of me and how it changed into the infection.

My eyes were glued to the page as we came upon one entry.

It is spreading.  Lab assistant Kelly Strong, who received a hearing implant, has been complaining about uncontrollable movement in her left leg.  Other reports have been coming in from other patients as well.

We all assumed project Eve’s technology started to evolve because of the chip.  How terribly wrong we were.  We made TorBane work faster, made it stronger.  But we just made it mutate into something that is uncontrollable.

We’ve made a terrible mistake.

“They should have stopped it right then,” I said as we turned the page.

“They thought they could control it,” Avian said quietly.

He thumbed through the pages for a moment, hesitating when he started seeing my name pop up, like he didn’t want to invade on my privacy.

“It started with me,” I said quietly.  “I was the first one they tested TorBane on.  West said I would have died without it.”

And I recounted everything I’d read.  How the technology had fixed me and saved my life.  How the military blackmailed NovaTor into doing their experiment.  How they shut my emotions off.

“They made it so I can’t feel anything,” I said, my eyes falling from his.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked, lifting my chin so I had to look at him.

I didn’t respond.

“Because I don’t believe it for one second,” he continued.  “You might be different.  You don’t always understand what you’re feeling.  But you feel.  I know you do.  You wouldn’t keep doing what you do for Eden every day if you didn’t.”

I could only give him a small smile.  I’d never be able to put into words the relief I felt with Avian’s assurance that I wasn’t empty.

We continued to flip through pages, reading hurried, scribbled notes about what could have been done differently to prevent all of this.  If they had been just a little more patient with the technology, they could have saved the world.

“Hang on a second,” Avian said, turning a page back.

“What?”

He didn’t say anything as he brought the notebook up closer to his face.  There was a drawing on the page, an octagonal shaped thing, with other crazy drawings inside of it.  Hurried notes were scribbled all around it.  None of it made sense to me.

Avian flipped to another page.  This one had more drawings.  These looked more detailed, like maybe they were the things inside the octagon.  Tiny writing was crammed inside of the drawings, so small I had to look very closely to read it.

“What is it?” I asked, looking at Avian.

His nose was only about an inch away from the pages, his eyes squinting.  “I don’t even know what half of this stuff is.  They’re materials.  Reactive elements.  I think this is it.”

“What we need to destroy it?”

“I guess,” he said as he shook his head.  “I didn’t think it was this complicated.  I had always assumed it was just some kind of electrical pulse but this is far more complex.  I never studied engineering or that kind of thing much so I don’t really understand it all.  But this is more involved than I had thought it would be.”

“The infection must be harder to kill off then we realized,” I said quietly.

Avian turned the page, finding the next one to be full of notes.  I didn’t even bother reading it.  I wasn’t going to understand what it was talking about.

He read through four more pages of notes.  After a few minutes he kept flipping back and forth between a few of the last ones.

“It’s not finished,” he said as he looked up at me.  “It’s here, I think.  But it’s not complete.  The notes on how to create the core, the thing that makes the whole thing work, they’re not here.”

“He got infected before he could complete it,” I said quietly.  West had told me how his grandfather and his father had evolved fairly early on.  How could they not, being so involved in everything?

“Why didn’t West tell us he had this?” I asked as I narrowed my eyes on the pages.  “We could figure it out.  West had the instructions on how to save us hidden away in his jacket the whole time.  Why has he been hiding it?”

“Hang on, Eve,” Avian said with a little sigh.  “I’m not positive that is what this even is.  We don’t know the scale of this thing.  For all we know it’s for nothing more than our very own CDU.”

“Still,” I said, the pitch of my voice rising.  “Why didn’t he tell us?  Why has he been hiding it?”

Avian didn’t have anything to say to that.

It started building up inside of me.  An unfamiliar sensation.  It took me a while to recognize it.

It was distrust.

Every moment I had spent too close to West flashed through my head.  All the times I had let him kiss me, touch me in any excessive way, filled me with regret.  I had been so stupid.  I hadn’t trusted him in the beginning.  I had let my guard down too quickly.  He was human, he knew the peril we were all in.  So why would he hide something like this?

“He’s not getting this back,” I said as I stood and started pacing my tent.  “How can he even call it his?  This kind of information belongs to us all.”

“It doesn’t do us a lot of good,” Avian said as he stood.  “If we can’t understand what any of it means.  How to use it.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said through clenched teeth.

“You know where an electro-physics engineer is?”  I was surprised at the tone Avian used.  It wasn’t harsh, but it was still unexpected.  It felt like he was taking West’s side.

“No, but I’ll find one,” I said as I glared at him.

“Good luck,” he said as he stepped toward the door.  “I’ll see you at dinner.”

I headed to the gardens after that.  I needed something to distract myself.  I was afraid what I might do with all this angry energy built up inside of me.  Ripping weeds out of the ground seemed to help a little.

West wasn’t at dinner that night.  I felt like I should feel guilty or something for what I’d done.  I wanted to throttle him though.  Why did West have to keep so many secrets?

Avian kept ahold of the notebook, which was fine with me.  None of it made sense to me and I had no desire to look over the parts about me again.  I remembered every word like they had been branded into my partially cybernetic brain.

Alone on the watch tower that night, I paced from one end to the other.  The night was passing slowly, as they had been for the past few.  I kept thinking about the notes, wondering how we could use them, if we could even use them.  My brain hurt from thinking about all the things I could do nothing about.

My eyes scanned the trees.

Something felt off.  I couldn’t explain it, but I could feel something.

I shifted the rifle in my hand, too on edge to sling it back over my shoulder.  My pack was cinched tight to my back.  In my agitation, I had sorted through it all twice.  Food, water, ammunition.  Everything I needed to survive on my own out in the wild.  For as long as it would take me to reach a city and take what I needed.

But Bill and Graye claimed it wasn’t safe to go into the cities anymore.  I didn’t think I could fully believe that though until I’d witnessed it myself.  Maybe it wasn’t safe for them, but it might be for me.  I was at least not in danger of getting infected.

They could still blow me apart though.

This dangerous world was becoming impossible.

NINETEEN

My breathing came in steady rhythm as my bare feet beat against the gravel.  I checked my surroundings as I ran.  The houses were starting to fall away and trees rose up around me.  The sound of another set of feet was catching up to me.

I brushed leaves out of my tangled hair as I ducked into the bushes.  It felt unnatural for it to be so long.

My feet were agile as I leapt over a fallen tree and crashed through the undergrowth.  My pursuer continued to chase after me.

I analyzed the terrain before me, picking out the best path.  My hesitation was too long though.  The next second I was tackled to the ground.

All I saw after that was red and gleaming metal parts.

The dream haunted me as I joined the others in the gardens the next afternoon.  I’d never had that one before.

Red.

There had been so much red.

“Set this in there, will you?” Sarah said as she extended a cucumber toward me.  I grabbed it from her and set it in the basket at my feet.

The heat was getting intense, made all the worse by the clouds that were coming in.  The air was heavy with humidity.  Several people begged for it to rain.

With summer midway over, the garden was producing well.  This was our second round of early harvesting.  There was an abundance of squash, peas, beans, cucumbers, and other delicious vegetables.  The kitchen crew had been busy canning the last week or so.  Our new cellar was getting its shelves filled quickly.

“Do you know what it is Avian’s been working on lately?” Sarah asked as she handed me another cucumber.  “He’s been obsessed, but he won’t tell me what it is he’s doing.”

Avian and I had both agreed to keep our discoveries quiet.  Until we understood what it was we were looking at, we didn’t want to give anyone false hope.  I was ignoring the fact that maybe that was the same reason West had never told any of us about the notes.

“Why does this project seem so strange?” I diverted.  “He gets into different projects sometimes.”

“I don’t know.  He’s just being so secretive.  And he’s been weird lately.  I don’t know how to describe it.”

I did.  Desperate hope filled with total inept ability.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” I said as I reached for the next vegetable she handed me.  It slipped through Sarah’s fingers before I grabbed it.

Sarah cursed under her breath, shaking her hand.

“You alright?” I asked as I bent and picked it up off the ground.

“Yeah,” she said as she shook her head and went back to work.

“You sure?”

“I’m fine!” she snapped at me.

I watched her closely after that.  I didn’t understand what the fact that Sarah seemed to be having a hard time keeping her grip on things meant.

But I was sure it wasn’t good.

That evening, I watched as one of the afternoon scouting groups arrived back at camp.  Among them was West, who wouldn’t even look me in the eye as he grabbed a bowl of soup and headed straight for his tent.

Good.  I didn’t want to talk to him either.

I didn’t know if I would ever be able to trust him again.

That night as I went up the tower for watch duty, Avian followed me, West’s notebook in hand.

“I recognize these things here,” Avian said as he sat on the bench.  “These things here could be found at any hardware store.  Most of these,” he said, pointing to something else.  “Could be found in just about any lab.  But these,” he said, indicating another few things.  “I’m not even sure what they are.”

My eyes scanned the trees.  I had that feeling again.

“There’s got to be someone out there who knows what it is,” I said distractedly.

“Have you talked to West about this yet?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t think I can face him without doing something stupid again.”

“He may know what we’re looking at,” Avian said quietly.  “We should talk to him.”

“Feel free,” I said as I paced.

“I’m serious, Eve.  He might know something.  I think he’s a lot smarter than any of us realize.  What he said about the infection having been designed to spread.  It makes sense.  He’s bound to have picked up on a lot of things from his family.”

“He was thirteen when everything happened.  I doubt he learned too much about electro physics, or whatever.”

“Don’t underestimate inherited intelligence.  I think we should talk to him.”

“Fine,” I sighed.  I fought back the urge to send Avian back to his tent.  It was setting me on edge to have him talking at me.  I needed to be on full alert.

As darkness overtook the light Avian fell asleep on the bench, the notebook balanced on his chest.  I sighed in relief when I heard his heavy breathing.  Finally, silence.

The air felt thick as the clouds kept building.  There was a charge running through the atmosphere, like the sky was ready to split apart at any moment.

Two hours before dawn would have broken, the thing I had been waiting for finally happened.

The sound of a chopper buzzed through the air.  A few moments later I picked up on the sound of another.  I barely made out the tiny black dots in the sky to the west of Eden.

I cursed under my breath.  They were slowing down in their approach.

Twenty seconds later, the glow of a stream of fire blazed through the pre-dawn sky.

“NO!” I screamed, true horror filling me for the first time.

Avian jerked awake as the scream ripped from my throat.  His eyes followed my line of sight.

Both helicopters had fire billowing out from them.

They were burning the gardens.

“Gabriel!” Avian bellowed as he leapt down the ladder and started sprinting through Eden.  I flew down after him, heading directly to the tree line.

I had to be careful not to crash into any trees in the nearly nonexistent light as I plowed through the woods.  I pulled my pack in front of me, digging though it for more ammunition, putting it into a side pocket.

The glow of the flames told me I was getting close.  It took me a while to realize the sound of the helicopters had disappeared.

I was about fifty yards away when it came running at me.  A nearly all metal Bane leapt at me from the trees.  I pulled my gun and blasted its head open before it got within ten feet of me.

I had just gotten to the fence line when another tackled me, its hands closing around my throat.  My gun flew clean from my hands.  I rolled, coming on top of it.  Getting my hands free, I attacked its head with my clenched fists.  As soon as the outer metal was broken I started pulling at wires and gears.  Its form grew still a few seconds later.  I pried its dead hands away from my throat, picked my handgun up from the dirt, and fired.

Finally, I turned back to the fence, my fingers linking in the chinks.  I could only stand there and watch as the rows of peas, spinach, tomatoes, and pretty much everything else, burned.  The fruit trees were totally engulfed, the flames reaching up into the night from the branches.

Shouts started racing toward me in the chaos the early morning had become.  There was nothing we could do but stand at the fence and watch everything we had built the last five years burn.

Maybe there was a God out there.  The sky finally couldn’t hold any more pressure and the rain started to fall.  As I watched the fires sizzle out, a hand slipped into mine.  I didn’t even have the will to turn and see who it was.  It felt like nothing mattered anymore.

We were finally done for.

TWENTY

Even though no one had died, the feeling of death and despair hung in the air like a ghost.

We salvaged what we could out of the garden.  Two tomato plants, half a row of squash, a small patch of potatoes, and one broccoli plant was all that had survived.  The amount of food it would eventually produce would feed everyone in Eden for less than a week.

Inventory of our stores was immediately taken.  We had enough to last about four months if we all went on starvation diets.

Two days after the burn, I had taken Bill with me on scouting duty.  He got the truck that I had found at the cabin to start and together we filled the back with everything that had been in the storage room beneath the house.  That would buy us another month or so if we were careful.  Nearly everyone cried when we drove the truck back through the forest and showed them the supplies.

Three weeks after the burn, I came back from my morning scouting duty, joining the others for dinner.  We were each given a roll and half a scoop of canned corn.  After receiving my plate, I sat next to Sarah.  My skin was turning a light shade of pink under my normally tanned tone.  The sun had been brutal the last few days.

“You should go see Avian about that,” Sarah said as she looked at my arm that rested next to her pale white one.  “He has some aloe he could put on it.”

“I’m fine,” I said as I tore a small piece off of my roll.  “I’m sure someone will need it more than me.  It’s not like it hurts.”

Sarah nodded her head, not wanting to argue with me.  She scooped her corn into her spoon and raised it to her lips with a shaking hand.  I looked at her closely as she chewed the bite carefully.

Sarah looked like a skeleton.  She had started dropping weight even before the burn happened, and then when we all went on starvation rations, she started declining even more rapidly.  She was frightening to look at now; I didn’t want to know how she would look in a few more weeks, let alone a few months when the food ran out.

“I’m not very hungry,” I said as I picked my plate up and scooped my corn onto her hers.  I broke half of my roll off and set it there as well.  “Why don’t you have mine?”

“Eve,” she said as she looked at me with tired eyes.  “You have to eat too.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said again as I stuffed what was left of my roll into my mouth.  As I stood, my stomach growled.  Before Sarah could protest further, I walked toward the medical tent.  Just as I was about to step inside, West stepped out, nearly crashing into me.  My eyes dropped to the tear in his shirt.  His sleeve was soaked in blood and there were fresh stitches in his arm.

“You alright?” I asked stiffly.

“Fine,” he said shortly.  “I just fell.”  He walked away without saying anything else.

A strange rock seemed to form in the pit of my stomach as I swallowed hard and stepped inside.

“Hi,” Avian said as he looked up at me with a small smile.  He pulled off a pair of bloodied latex gloves.

“I have an hour or so,” I said as I sat on a stump, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my arms on them.

“You should be sleeping,” he said as he busied himself with cleaning up.  “You’re going to over work yourself.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Of course it is,” he said as he finished up and sat across his examination table from me.  “You’re still human.  Look how much weight you’ve dropped already.”

I didn’t look, but I knew Sarah wasn’t the only one who had dropped a few pounds.  We all had.

“Are you still eating your rations?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I lied.  But I sensed Avian knew I wasn’t telling the truth.

He knew better than to argue with me though, so he just turned and pulled the notebook off of a shelf.

Over the past few weeks, we had been studying the last pages of the notebook.  Avian had been trying to match its parts to those of our own CDU, but he wasn’t making much headway.  It all just ended up leaving him frustrated.

I watched him as he studied the illustrations.

How was it possible for someone to be so good?  We’d been so fortunate to have Avian in Eden.  He’d given up his life in a way to keep us alive, tying himself to this one place, a constant prisoner.  How had I been so lucky to have him come into my life?  It could have been anyone who found me, some twisted man who could have taken advantage of a young girl who didn’t know who she was, didn’t know anything.

My chest felt tight when he looked up at me.  I realized he had asked me a question and I mumbled something I hoped would serve as an answer.  A weird feeling formed in my stomach.  I didn’t know how to identify it.  I had that hollow feeling but also had a burning desire to fill it back in with something.  And I couldn’t seem to look away from Avian as he continued studying.  I found my eyes studying his hands as he flipped through pages of the notebook.  I recalled the day he had held my hand.  The oxygen seemed to freeze in my lungs.

“I have to go,” I suddenly said.  I stood and walked out of the tent before he even said anything.

The hollow feeling continued to get worse as I walked toward my own tent.  I soon felt sick from it.

What was wrong with me?  Where was this coming from?

I lay on my bed and squeezed my eyes closed, forcing myself not to think about anything as the back of my eyes burned.

The glass felt smooth under my fingers, flowing perfectly, one molecule into another.  How was it possible to make something so perfect and even?  It warmed under my hand, a ghost of my flesh forming in fog as the heat of my body met the cool of its surface.

I realized then that the air around me was freezing.

Turning, my body chilled as my eyes scanned the cinder block walls.  No outside light tricked in, only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling cast a cold shadow on everything.  My chest tightened as I searched for an escape.  There wasn’t even a single door, just the window.  A bed was pushed into one corner of the room.  This was as good as a prison cell.

As I turned back to the window, a pair of earthy eyes stared back at me.

“West!” I screamed as I put my hands against the glass.  “Get me out of here!”

He stared at me, his lips set in a firm line.  A single tear slipped down his cheek.

“West, please,” I said, slapping my palm against the cool surface.  “Please let me out!”

“Please, grandpa,” he said, turning away from me.  “Can we please let her out?”

There was suddenly a shadowy figure behind West, standing in a doorway.

“She may attack you again.  You know she doesn’t trust you,” a gravelly voice said.

West turned back to me.  Another tear rolled down his face.  Slowly he raised a hand to the glass, our palms and fingers separated only by the window.  “I know,” he whispered.

My eyes widened in the window’s reflection as his expression harden, betraying the hurt I had caused him.  I shook my head, taking a step away from the glass.  I crawled up into the bed, tucking my knees under my chin, my eyes never leaving West’s.

“She’s not really human anymore,” the shadowed voice said again.  “If she were she would see what she is doing to you.”

West continued to stare at me with mixed emotions on his face.  He brought both his hands up, pressing them to the glass as if he wished he could slip through it, and push me further away, all at the same time.

I saw him mouth my name, but the rumble of a noise I couldn’t identify was rising quickly in my ears.  For a moment I was panicked the building might be collapsing on us, one floor crashing down on the next.  But the walls weren’t shaking, dust wasn’t falling from the ceiling.  The noise continued to grow to a deafening point.  It saturated every corner of my body.

“Eve!” I saw him scream though the glass.  And then everything was silent.

The next second the window exploded into a billion stars of red death.

I jerked upright with a gasp.  My hands wiped at my face, trying to brush away the shards of glass that weren’t really there.  I felt momentarily panicked when I realized everything was totally black.  Had I not just been dreaming?  Had I been blinded by something while I slept?

The panic ebbed away as I realized it was simply dark because of the muggy night.  I leapt out of my bed as I realized that meant I was beyond late for my night watch.  I pulled my pack on and jogged out of my tent.

Most all the fires had completely died out and there wasn’t a soul around as I crossed camp.  Gripping the rungs, I scaled the ladder to the watchtower.  I jumped violently when I was about to climb over the ledge and a head popped over.  West looked at me with a smirk.

“Hope you enjoyed your beauty sleep,” he said as he extended a hand and pulled me up and over the edge.

“I don’t usually oversleep,” I said as I pulled the straps of my pack tighter, my eyes scanning the trees.

“You’ve been working yourself to death for the last month.  And running on no food.  If you were human you’d be collapsing from exhaustion more often.”

My stomach turned to stone as I recalled what the man from the dream had said.  She’s not really human anymore.  West chuckled, but I couldn’t seem to force even a crack of a smile.

West sat on the bench, patting the empty space next to him.  I eyed him for a moment.  I hadn’t been close to him for a while now.  The last time we had touched I could have easily killed him.  He must have known his life was in danger.

I sat.

West turned his gaze to the dark night.  I followed, looking into the endless star-peppered sky.

“Do you ever wonder if there is anyone else out there?” he asked quietly, his eyes never leaving the stars.

“No,” I answered honestly.

“I can’t imagine there isn’t,” he said.  “All that space.  We can’t be the only living things out there.

“Makes you feel kind of important though, if we are the only ones.  All that beauty and it’s there for only our eyes.”

I looked over at West, watching him as he observed the heavens.  His hair fell across his brown eyes, in need of a haircut.  His shoulders were shrugged up to his ears as he leaned back.  In that moment I saw something in West.  Not the boy who always turned everything into a joke, always got to me in a bad way.  But the boy who had to live with the knowledge that it was his family who had destroyed the world.

“I want to hate you, you know,” he said, though he still didn’t look at me.  “For the way things have been between us these last few weeks.  I want to hate you for attacking me like that, for taking the notebook.  For all the ways I see you look at Avian.  I want to hate you for the ways you make me feel.  For the way I feel every time I think about the times we kissed.”

“I don’t want you to hate me,” was all I could say.

“That’s the thing.  I can’t.  I don’t think I could ever hate you Eve.”

“I’m still just not sure I can trust you.”

West finally looked at me, his eyes almost empty looking.  “That I can hate.”

TWENTY-ONE

Bill and Graye headed off to the south while West and I headed east.  Now that I had figured out I could be around West again without attacking him, I had agreed to let Gabriel put him back in our scouting group.

The sun beat down on us with an intensity that was beyond miserable.  Had I felt pain like the rest of everyone I was sure my sunburned skin would make it beyond uncomfortable to move, much less go on an entire scouting operation.

West and I walked silently through the woods, eyes searching the tree line.  Birds chirped in an annoying afternoon chat.  Insects hummed.  But there were no other sounds.  No traces of any Bane.

“Clear?” West whispered, clutching his rifle tightly in his hands.

“Clear,” I said as we finished sweeping around the perimeter of the gardens.  West waited at the bottom while I scaled the biggest nearby tree.  When I reached the top, I shook its branches with as much force as I possessed.  The entire top half of the tree swayed.

One hundred yards away I saw a figure wave at me.  They knew it was safe to come work.

I dropped down to the ground and straightened my pack.  We had to be more careful than ever these days.  The Bane obviously knew where the gardens where and must know we would be nearby.  It wouldn’t be too difficult for them to track us down now, using the gardens as a trap.  That was why we scouted the area every morning first, before a small crew came to tend.

Not that there was much to tend anymore.  The heat wave wasn’t letting up and everything was withering away.  Soon there would be nothing left.

West and I set out to the north again.

“What do you think is going to happen to us now?” West said quietly as we walked.

I didn’t answer for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts.  “Eventually we’re going to have to move.  Sooner than later.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s obvious.  We have supplies for a while but winter is coming.  We don’t have enough to last that long.  We’re going to have to move where it’s warmer or we’re going to starve to death,” I said as I stepped over a log.  “We have natural resources here, animals to hunt, but it’s not going to be enough to sustain everyone through the entire winter.”

West was quiet for a while.  “Have you talked to Gabriel about this?  You’re right, but he’s going to have to be the one to initiate it.”

“I will,” I said as I readjusted my grip on the shotgun in my hands.  “The problem is, how do we move that many people without being spotted by Bane?  How do we move that many supplies at once?”

“That’s a good question,” he said quietly as his eyes jerked to the right.  A squirrel scampered down a tree.

I briefly considered shooting the animal.  I decided against it.  With as little meat it would provide it wouldn’t be worth the ammunition.  As if on cue, West’s stomach let out a rumbling growl.  I chuckled.

“Okay, we’ve seriously got to bring back some food.  I can’t take the starvation rations anymore,” West said in exasperation.

“When we’re ready to head back we’ll look,” I said as I started the climb up the low hills that looked over Eden.

I was grateful we didn’t see anything the entire day.  While it was boring to be walking endlessly through the woods, it was better than running into something we didn’t want to.  As we started back in the direction of Eden, we kept our eyes peeled for anything to eat.  I sensed there was something West wanted to talk to me about, but had been putting it off the entire day.  And now he had to be quiet if he wanted to eat.

The woods were silent as we moved, as if sensing we were on the lookout to take something home to Eden’s bellies.  Something to the left caught West’s eye and he drew his bow and an arrow before I even caught sight of what he had seen.  The arrow sliced through the air and the next second we heard a scream.

A human one.

We were both bolting through the trees without a second’s hesitation, my mind running through the possibilities of what we might find.  Surely not Bane.  They didn’t feel pain and therefore would never scream.  Could it be Bill?  Graye?  Everyone else knew better than to wander this far from Eden on their own.

He was slumped against a tree, clutching at his left shoulder.  He had already broken off the shaft of the arrow.  His eyes were squeezed shut in agony.  He bit his lower lip to hold back the scream.

“Holy…” West breathed as the man came into view.  I didn’t recognize him.  “I thought it was a deer or something.  What is he doing out here?”

We both dropped to the man’s side, his eyes flying open in delirious confusion.

“You’ve been shot with an arrow,” I said, my voice calm and even.  “We have a doctor at our camp.  I am going to have to pull the arrow out or it will cause more damage as I move you.”

The man’s green eyes opened wide, searching the sky for things only he could see now.

“West, help me,” I said as I placed my hands on the base of the arrow that was still embedded into his chest.  “This is going to hurt him.”

West shifted forward, placing his hands on the man’s shoulders, being careful to stay clear of the wound.  In one swift movement, I yanked the rest of the arrow out.  The man screamed in agony.

“We need something to stop the bleeding,” I said as I tried to recall what Avian would do in a situation like this.  West slid off his pack and pulled his shirt off.  It was damp with sweat but it would work.  I pressed it into the wound and together we secured it with a length of rope from my pack.  Another scream leapt from his throat as I picked him up, gathering him securely in my arms.

“What was he doing out here?” West asked as we jogged through the trees.  We were still far from Eden.  So much for getting food for tonight.

“On the run maybe?” I said as I glanced down at him.  He’d had only the clothing on his back.  I hadn’t seen any provisions with him, no tent, no food.

It took us nearly an hour to get back to Eden.  Even my arms weren’t strong enough to carry him by myself the entire trip and West had taken half the load.  The man had turned a pasty white and he shivered violently, despite the blazing sun above us.  He bled through West’s shirt.  My left arm was covered in his blood.

Avian was in the medical tent when we stumbled into it.  He set the notebook down and jumped to his feet.

“Who is he?” Avian asked as he pulled on a pair of gloves and removed West’s bloodied shirt.  He started cutting away the man’s own t-shirt.  He barely even whimpered as his wound was jostled.  Until Avian began cleaning it.  Then he screamed.

“He was just in the woods.  We didn’t realize it was a person,” I said as I moved out of Avian’s way.

“I thought he was a deer,” West said, his eyes looking tortured.  “I couldn’t really see anything.  Something moved in the trees and I just shot.”

“Where’d he come from?” Avian asked.  He threaded a needle.  I watched with wide eyes as he started sewing the man back up.

“We don’t know,” West said quietly.  “Is he going to be okay?”

“A chest wound like this is serious.  It’s close to his heart and his lungs.  There are a lot of major blood vessels in that area.  I can’t repair the internal damage so there’s a risk that even if the bleeding stops on the outside, it may not stop on the inside.”

West’s face blanched white.

The man opened his eyes, which rolled around in his head.  “My wife,” he said.  His voice was rough sounding and then I noticed the tears rolling back toward his ears.  “My son.  They found us.  I…was out.  They got them…had to run.”

We all looked up at each other.  Avian dropped what he was doing and opened the box that contained the CDU.  Less than thirty seconds later he had it charged up and calibrated.  The man jerked away as it was pressed to his bare arm.  His eyes continued to roll around in his head.

Organic, but dying quickly.

“Where did you come from?” I asked, leaning over him.  His eyes remained unfocused.

“He may not be able to speak right now,” Avian said as he cut the threads of the stitches.  “His body is going into shock.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked again.

“E… east,” he barely managed to whisper.  “Been running since… day before yesterday.”  He then started coughing violently.  Red splatters coated his lips.

“His lung has been punctured,” Avian said in despair as he took half a step back and rubbed his hand over his hair.

“He’s not going to make it,” I said quietly, looking back down at the man.  Avian shook his head.

“I killed him,” West whispered, backing up to sit on a stump.

“You didn’t know,” I said, glancing at him.  “You were trying to feed us, keep us alive.”

“He’s obviously not food,” West’s voice was hoarse.

Two hours later, the man whose name we didn’t even know, took his last shallow breath.  Avian checked his pulse and pronounced him dead.  Gabriel instructed Bill and Graye to bury him on the outskirts of camp.  After it was done, Gabriel, Avian, West and I gathered back in the medical tent.

“They’re getting close again,” I said as I paced the length of the tent.  “Attacks don’t usually come from the east.  It’s just mountains for miles and miles.”

“Graye was right,” Avian spoke.  “They’re getting more and more aggressive.  This man probably lived in a cabin somewhere with his family.  They tracked him down.  We all know what they did to the gardens a few weeks ago.”

Gabriel rubbed at his beard, deep in thought.  I wanted him to say something, to tell us what to do.  But he didn’t seem to know what to say.

“We’re going to have to leave,” I spoke when he didn’t.  “We have a few months of food left but it won’t be enough to last us through the winter.”

“Where would we go?” Gabriel asked.  I saw something frightening in his eyes that I had never seen there before.  A loss of hope.

“It would have to be south,” Avian spoke up, his eyes coming to my face.

“Exactly,” I said.  “If we can get somewhere warm enough we should be able to scavenge for food until we can figure something else out.  I think it would also be wise to go southwest.  Heading east first will take too much time.  The trucks we have might not make it very far and it could take months just to hike over the mountains with all of our supplies, if or when they break down.  By then winter will claim the rest of us.”

Gabriel nodded his head, his brain seeming to start to work again.  “I agree but going west won’t be easy either.  We leave now and we’ll be crossing nothing but desert in the heat of summer.”

“Do we wait?” West asked, the first he had spoken since the meeting began.

“We risk the Bane pressing further in on us if we wait,” I pointed out.

“We risk the desert heat claiming us if we go now,” Avian said, sitting forward, resting his elbows on his knees.  “Temperatures can get close to 120 degrees out that direction.  Without massive amounts of water, no one would last long.”

We seemed to be at a standstill.  What was the right thing to do?  The safest thing?

“I say we take it to everyone in Eden,” West said.  “We have to let everyone know what is happening.  They have to be figuring it out for themselves anyway.  Let’s let everyone decide what to do.”

“I agree,” Avian said as he sat back again.

Gabriel nodded, his eyes thoughtful.  “Fine.  We’ll call a meeting tonight after dinner.”

West and Gabriel exited the tent to spread the word.  I stood rooted and closed my eyes.  I counted backward from ten to help push out the feelings of loss and despair I didn’t know how to deal with.  A warm hand slipped into mine, immediately enhancing the calm I was looking for.  Without opening my eyes, I raised our hands to my face and rubbed the back of Avian’s hand against my cheek.  I could sense Avian’s eyes on my face and could feel the worry rolling off of him.

I wanted to reassure him that everything was going to be okay.  I wanted to tell him that we were all going to make it out of this.  I wanted to tell him that I knew exactly what to do.

But I couldn’t do any of those things.  I didn’t have any answers.

I finally opened my eyes and looked into Avian’s.  His eyes burned as he looked down at me.

It took everything I had in me to let go of Avian’s hand and stepped outside into the dying light.

You can’t have both.

Avian was right.  Even though I didn’t know how to handle feelings like this, I knew what I had been doing was wrong.  I couldn’t have both.  It was unfair to them.  And it was tearing me apart.

Someone had to sit out and keep watch during the meeting so West volunteered.  The rest of us gathered in the center of camp.  I watched them as they assembled, saw the way the lines around their eyes were tighter, the way their breathing was just slightly shallower.  Everyone was on edge.

Our already slight frames were all the more thin.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” I was surprised when it was Avian who took control of the meeting.  I glanced over at Gabriel.  He sat to the side of Avian, his eyes on his hands in his lap.  His face looked empty.  “You are all aware of what happened a few weeks ago.  I know everyone has been thinking about it but it is time we actually talked about things and what this means for our future.

“We will run out of food in the middle of the winter.  We have enough for everyone for a few more months but with most all this year’s harvest gone to ash we will not make it to next spring.

“Add to that fact that the Bane have become more aggressive.  They’re using weapons now.  We can’t go into the cities anymore.  They have been pushing further and further into the country.  Just today a man passed away who was on the run after his family was attacked.  He came from the east.  We’ve never heard of them pressing in from the mountains like that.”

Avian cleared his throat, his eyes dropping to the ground.  I realized how hard this must be on him, having to be the one to finally bring this to everyone’s attention.  He was strong in a way I had never realized before.  He may not have been as physically tough like Bill and Graye were but he was a rock, a foundation for the rest of us.

“It has been proposed that we need to move,” his voice broke, just a tiny bit.”  “I don’t think there is any other choice.  The natural resources we have will not carry us to spring.  We’re going to have to go someplace warmer.  Southwest.

“The question is when and how to move,” Avian said as he looked around at our fellow men and women.  “If we leave right now we would be crossing the deserts in the hottest time of the year.  And yet if we don’t leave now our supplies will become all the more depleted.  And we risk being found.

“It would be incredibly dangerous to move any way we do it.  If we leave all at once it will be easier for Bane to spot us.  At the same time, there is safety in numbers.  We can have our best scouts with us all at once.  If we move in smaller groups it will be easier to stay hidden, to keep a low profile.  But each group could have no more than one or two of our most skilled scouts.  It also splits all of us.  There’s the risk that we might not all ever be reunited.  Without electronic devices it will be difficult to stay in contact and reconvene.

“It is up to you.  We won’t force any decisions on you.  This affects all of us.  The choice is yours.”

Everyone was silent for a long while.  How was anyone supposed to make this decision?  There were pros and cons to each choice.  There was no clear decision to make.  Each carried the possibility of destruction, with being wiped out in one big cluster or the chance we would never be a group again, a family.

“We could go in two sets,” Graye spoke up.  “If we split right down the middle, one group could go in a few weeks or so when things will start to cool slightly.  We could leave messages for the group to follow, traces the Bane won’t pick up on.  Leave a trail for each other to the new location.  The last group will bring the rest of the food.  We have the two trucks, if we camouflage them well enough, we should be able to bring enough supplies.  At least until we run out of fuel.”

The group was quiet for a bit, mulling over Graye’s idea.

“That seems reasonable to me,” Avian finally said.  “Eve?  Gabriel?”

“It seems a viable option,” I answered.

Gabriel simply nodded his head.  His behavior was disturbing.

“All those in favor of Graye’s plan?” Avian asked, turning his eyes over the group.

The majority of hands, including mine, went up.  After a few hesitant and thoughtful seconds, the rest of them went up as well.

“It is agreed then,” Avian said with a nod.  “We will make preparations.  I think until then our priority should be to hunt as much as possible and gather as many other resources as we can find.  Traveling would be hard under normal circumstances, but considering the conditions we have been under these last few weeks, it will be even more difficult.  We will need food to keep up our strength.  Our survival has become all the more challenging.”

A flurry of mixed emotions was tangible as everyone left.  I watched their faces as they did, Wix, Victoria, Morgan.  Each of them had different thoughts behind their eyes, but there was one unifying one: we had to survive.

TWENTY-TWO

The beast hit the ground with a loud cry.  A circle of red started forming on his neck before he was even fully down.  He twitched for a few moments before the fight seeped out of him.

I slung my bow back across my shoulders and leapt down the small cliff I had been hiding on.  I crouched beside the animal, checking to make sure it was fully dead.  I saw my own reflection in the buck’s eye as he took his last strangled breath.

I pulled my arrow out of his neck and wiped it clean on the grass at my feet.  I placed two fingers under my tongue and gave a loud whistle.  Two minutes later Bill and Graye joined me.  Together we started the mile journey back to Eden with the animal.

We had been hunting nonstop for the last three days.  While scouting duty was as important as ever, it was now just as important to find food.  We had brought back three does, a few foxes and rabbits, and now this buck.  The kitchen had been busy cooking, bottling, and drying the meat, others tanning the hides.

Not only would our food supplies have to last us the few weeks until the first group left, and then another month after the second group left, it would also have to last the week, maybe two, journey into the unknown.  And who knew what immediate food sources would be like once we reached where we were going.

It had been brilliant on Avian’s part to put everyone to work on making preparations to leave.  With everyone so busy, there was no time for anyone to sit and worry too much about the fact that we were moving, that we would be traveling so far.  Everyone had a role to play.  Hands were needed to forage the woods nearby, searching for berries and edible mushrooms.  Others were needed to collect water in any containers we could spare.

As I walked through Eden, after I had dropped off the buck, I caught a glimpse of Gabriel.  He sat at the entrance of his tent, staring out over the rest of us.  He watched as the rest of us worked.  He wasn’t supervising, checking to make sure everything was done right.  He was just gone.  He’d checked out.

Checking to make sure no one was watching me, I poked my head inside Avian’s tent.

Sarah had not come out of the tent since before the meeting.  When I pressed Avian about it he simply told me that she was not feeling well.  I didn’t think he was intentionally lying to me.  He was lying to himself.

“Sarah?” I said quietly through the dim light.  “Sarah?”

Only silence greeted me.  I stepped inside, closing the flap behind me.  It felt muggy inside and it was suffocatingly hot as the sun beat down above.  “Sarah?” I said again as I knelt next to her cot.

A thin sheet was gathered up around her neck, damp and clinging to her skin where it touched her.  Her brown curls were matted and stuck to her face.  Her skin clung to her cheekbones.  Her eyes were closed.  They looked like they were sinking into her head.

“Sarah,” I called again, my voice insistent.  I felt the urgent need to wake her up.  Now.  “Sarah,” I said again as I placed my hands on her and shook her slightly.

“Eve.”  The tent was suddenly flooded with light as Avian opened the flap.  “Leave her alone.”  He waved me out.

“She looks like death,” I whispered as I followed him out into the light.  “What is happening to her?”

Avian pursed his lips together, his eyes dropped to the ground.  His hand rubbed over his short hair.  He did this when he felt stressed or worried.

“She’s getting worse, isn’t she?” I asked.

It took a moment before Avian nodded his head.  “She’s not having as many seizures but she’s sleeping the majority of the time.  She’s woken up a total of maybe two hours in the last twenty-four.  She can’t keep much of anything down.

“I think she might have cancer,” he said.  He sounded totally defeated.  “It explains the respiratory failure, the seizures, the overall declining health.  And once symptoms like this show up…  It’s advanced.  I don’t know what else to do for her,” he said in a hoarse whisper.  “Maybe if I were an actual doctor…”

“Hey,” I cut him off, giving him a sharp look.  “Don’t talk like that.  You’re an amazing doctor.  Sometimes nature just can’t be fought.”

He nodded his head, his eyes still on the ground.

“There’s West,” I said as I looked back toward the center of camp.  “Come on.  We’re supposed to meet again.”

Avian, West, Bill, and I all sat around the long dining table and smoothed the plans we had written out over its rough surface.

“If the scouts continue at the rate you have been going, we should gain at least a few more weeks worth of food supplies, maybe even another month,” Avian took control of the meeting again.  It bothered me that he had not even asked Gabriel to join us.  He knew as well as I did though that it was pointless.  Gabriel was gone for the time being.  “We need a few more things that we’re going to have to go look for.  We need more water containers.  We’ll go through what we have quickly.

“We’re also going to need a way to transport a large amount of people.  The supplies we will have to haul will fill the beds of the trucks.  Bill, the trailer you and Graye brought back from the city will work.  I’m hoping we can fix up the old one that was rusting away by the lake.  I’ve already got a few people working it.  This trip will go much faster if we can ride instead of walk.

“We need a way to communicate with the second group.  A way to leave signs the Bane won’t notice.  Any ideas?”

No one jumped right away.  “Think about it for a while, let us know if you come up with anything,” Avian said.

“The other issue.  It will be invaluable if we can take the trucks with us the entire way.  We’re going to have to look for gas stations, as far on the outskirts of towns we can find.  We also run the risk that any fuel that will be left will have gone bad.  It’s been nearly six years since any new fuel was brought in.  It may very well destroy the engines.”

“We don’t exactly have any other choice though, do we,” West piped in.

“Exactly,” Avian said as he looked up at West.  “Bill has maps, we’ll carefully plan our route, try to avoid any Bane, any big city areas.”

With this, Bill reached into his pack and pulled out a book that must have weighed a good ten pounds.  He flipped it open somewhere near the middle and started scanning through pages.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, my eyes growing wide.  Maps weren’t common.

“Got it from a man who didn’t need it anymore,” he said, not looking up from the map.

“This is where we’re at,” Bill said as he pointed to a place on the map.  I recognized the shape of the lake, the terrain of the mountains.  “This is the closest city,” he dragged his finger over the page.  “We should find somewhere to get fuel on the outskirts here.  It’s a small city so there is a chance there won’t even be any Bane.  They tend to flock to the larger ones.  We could get out of there scot-free.”

“What about the groups?” I asked as I looked up at the faces around me.  “Who is going to go when?”

Avian didn’t answer right away as he took all of us in, gauging the abilities of each individual.  “Obviously you have to go in the first group, just in case we run into any problems with Bane.”  I nodded in agreement.  “I’m also going with the first group.”

“What about the rest of them?” I immediately protested.  “What if they need you?”

“And what if the first group needs me?” he said as he looked at me sharply.  “I can’t clone myself, Eve.  I can’t be in both places.  I’ll ask for a volunteer and train them in every way I can before we go.  There’s no other choice.  I think it’s clear that the first group will be in the most danger.  That’s where I feel I need to be.”

“If Eve is going with the first group, it would probably be best if Graye and I went with the second group, to even things out,” Bill said.  “Gabriel can also go with us, since you two are going with the first group.”

“That’s a good idea,” Avian nodded in agreement.  “I suppose you can pick which group you want to go with,” he said to West, his jaw suddenly tightening up.

“I’m going in the first group,” he said without any hesitation.  His eyes flicked up to mine.

“Fine,” Avian said.  “We’ll let the rest of Eden decide when they want to go, with some monitoring to make sure things are even.”

We disbanded with plans to scout for water containers and a time later that evening to meet with everyone in Eden to layout the plans.  Then it occurred to me: if Avian was going with the first group, Sarah would have to come with us as well.  From what I had just seen, I couldn’t imagine any way she would be able to move.  I didn’t think she would even be able to walk out of her own tent, much less survive the thousand miles or more that were ahead of us.

Groups were chosen.  Avian and Bill had monitored and made sure things would be even, that there was no one group that would be bigger than the other, that one group would not be left without someone to make sure everyone stayed fed or protected.

Something settled over Eden as our futures were laid out before us.  Things were becoming more real every day.  We were going to have to leave the place we had all called home.  This had been our safe haven, the place we had fled the world to.  And now we were leaving it behind.

The next morning, birds chirped annoyingly loud as I padded silently through the undergrowth.  They were complaining about the heat as well.  My eyes watched the lay of the land, recalling certain trees and rocks.

I stepped away from the trees toward the cabin.  After watching the area for a moment to make sure it was clear, I walked inside.

The groan of floorboards sounded from one of the back rooms and I quickly crouched behind the dusty couch, my handgun held firmly in my clammy hands.  As I heard steps approaching, I poked my head out.  My eyes met a pair of worn brown boots.

“What are you doing here?” I said as I stood.  The barrel of West’s shotgun was immediately pointed at my chest.

“Geez, Eve!” he snapped as he jumped.  He immediately lowered the gun.  “I could have shot you!  I don’t think even you could recover from a blow like that.”

“Probably not,” I mused, my eyes scanning my surroundings again.  “How do you know about this place?”

“I scouted it out, same as you,” he said as he headed back to the other room.  “I’m assuming this is the house where you found all the food?”

“Um hum,” I mumbled as I followed him.  The room held two large white boxes that were hard sided and nearly as large as me.  It also contained a sink, a few cupboards, and a small counter space.  West opened the cupboards and my eyes grew wide as I recognized the round white bottles he started pulling out.

“Bleach.”  I breathed.  “I didn’t see it when I was here last.  And look at those, they’ll be perfect for storing water,” I said as I spotted some empty plastic containers on the top shelf.

“Here,” West said as he pulled a length of rope out of his pack.  “Tie them on for me.”

The containers secured to West’s pack, we searched the rest of the house for more but didn’t find anything useful.  We headed outside and started pacing the perimeter.

“Look at these,” I said as four blue barrels that were nearly the same size as me came into view.

“Catchment containers,” West said, his voice hitching up a notch in excitement.  “See that pipe that leads into the top of this one?” he said as his finger traced the line that ran along the roof line and dropped into the first barrel.  “These connect them.  It’s set up as a big containment unit but they would work individually.  They’d hold probably 200 gallons between all of them.”

“They’re nearly empty,” I said as I knocked on the side of one.  “We could each take one back with us tonight, bring the rest tomorrow.  It’s nearly time to head back anyway.”

We got the catchment system unhooked and drained the rest of the water out of them.

Maneuvering the barrels through the woods wasn’t easy but it was worth every push.  This was exactly what we needed to survive the heat of the desert.

The silence hung heavy over us as we moved, discomfort growing by the minute.  I felt like I had two people inside regarding West.  One part of me was constantly infuriated at the way he reacted to everything, the things he said, the way he looked at me.  The other half wanted me to constantly move closer, to let him wake up the all too human side of me.  Right then I wasn’t sure which Eve I was.

West finally broke the silence.  “Did you really mean it when you said that you couldn’t be around me?”

I instantly wished for the silence back.

“Yes,” I answered simply as I maneuvered my barrel around a boulder.

West stopped short in front of me, making me stop as well.  He looked back at me, his eyes hard to read.  He stuffed his hands in his pockets.  “You have no idea what you want, do you?”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.  “The only thing I want is to survive, to have Eden survive.”

“No, Eve,” he said as his eyes hardened as he shook his head once.  “That’s not the only thing you want and you don’t even know it.  You don’t think that I don’t see what is happening to you?  I know you feel something when we’re together, that you crave more of it.  If you didn’t it wouldn’t keep happening.  But then there’s Avian.  When you are around him, you’re different.  You’re…yourself. You can’t stay away from him, unlike me, even when you’re furious with him.

“You want us both,” he said more quietly.  “But you also need to realize that you can’t have both.”

“I know that,” I whispered as I looked away from West and started pushing my barrel again.

TWENTY-THREE

Everyone was ecstatic when we brought the barrels back and I sensed a small feeling of pride that I was part of the team that had located them.  I found myself seeking Avian out to report the good news.

I heard his voice floating out from the open aired medical tent.  Another voice joined his and they burst into a chorus of laughter.  I slowed my approach, stepping behind a tent to conceal myself.

Avian stood next to Victoria, pointing to something in a book.  He looked up at her and I watched as his eyes trailed over her red curls.  I saw the light that danced in his eyes.  His shoulder brushed against hers as he reached across the table for a gauze wrap.  She held out her hand as he demonstrated his technique for stopping blood flow.

Victoria had volunteered to be Avian’s apprentice.  It made sense considering she had been our seamstress.  They had been spending a lot of time together the last few days.

I swallowed hard as I turned and walked the other way.

I had to consider then the fact that had never seemed important until now.  Avian was older than me.  Had the world not fallen apart, we would be in different places in our lives.  There was a good chance Avian might be married, might even have a son like Brady.

Maybe he should be with someone like Victoria.  Maybe he should have a family.  Maybe he should be with someone who could give him a life I never could.

But could I handle seeing him with someone else?  I’d never had to face that thought before.

The light burned away with the blazing heat of the day, a violent colored sky painted above our heads.  Dinner was quiet as we quickly ate our small portions and set about our evening activities.  Fires were built as the last of the day’s light faded away.  I stood on the edge of the lake against the tree line, just watching.

Morgan, the woman who took care of our horse, walked to her husband Eli, placed a kiss on his forehead as she sat beside him.  Gabriel wandered out of his tent, joining his wife Leah at the dining table where she talked to a few other women.  Under the table he rested his hand on her knee, a brief moment of affection flashing in their eyes as they looked at each other.

Was that what love was?  Brief touches and physical assurances of another’s presence?  Or was it what that touch made you feel inside?  Was it the impression that it left inside of you and stayed with you for as long as you would remember?

Would I ever understand what that word meant?

I was too aware of the lack of Avian’s presence.  He and Victoria made a brief appearance at dinner before disappearing back into the lamp-lit medical tent.  Brady scampered around with Wix, laughing at the jokes his babysitter made.  The two of them had been spending a lot of time together with Victoria being so preoccupied with medical training.

My eyes found a lone figure, sitting hunched against the light of a small fire.  My feet were moving toward it without my head thinking about it.

I sat on the log next to West, close enough my shoulder brushed his as I settled.  He glanced over at me briefly.  He held a long stick in his hands, stirring the coals that fell of the larger logs.

“Tell me about where you came from, West,” I said as my eyes fixed on the flames.  Something inside of me felt hollow again and I craved something to fill it back in.  “What happened after the evolution?  How did you come back into my life after I left yours?”

He stared into the coals and I could envision the images that flashed before his eyes.  But what things had he seen that I couldn’t imagine?

“My father evolved first,” he said, his voice low and rough.  “It wasn’t any surprise I guess, working and operating on them like he did.  He changed the second week of the spread.  I was kept in solitary when my grandfather realized what has happening.  He locked me away in our apartment.  I was there by myself for two whole weeks.

“A few men broke in through the locked door,” West said as he shifted positions, resting his forearms on his knees.  “They were wearing biohazard suits.  As if that would have stopped TorBane.  They said that my grandfather had been infected but that he had told them to come and get me and transport me away.  I grabbed my grandfather’s notebook before I was shoved out the door.  They took me and a few others to a van and then we just drove.  For days.”

I tried to bring up the images that I knew must be in my brain.  Somewhere inside there must have been a record of NovaTor, of the scientists’ faces, of West’s.  But there was nothing.

“I slept most of the drive but I could tell we were a long way from home.  Finally, we were let out at a camp.  It was very different than this one,” he said with his jaw suddenly stiff.  “That camp was filled mostly with military personnel and government officials.  I was the only teenager there.

“Everyone had a duty to perform.  I suppose like here, but there it was your only reason for existing.  They all knew who I was, who my family was.  They never said it but they hated me for it.  People didn’t talk to me and I spent a lot of time alone.  I scrubbed the dishes three times a day until my hands were raw and bleeding.  For three years.”

The heat of the day finally gave way to the mercy of the night.  A breeze picked up, ruffling my tied-back hair.  My eyes ascended to the star dusted sky, resting on the moon as it shone with furious intensity.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” West continued.  “I gathered provisions and just left.  I wasn’t really sure where I was going, but I thought that even getting infected was almost better than being treated the way I had been.”

I looked over at West with hard eyes.  How could real life ever be worse than getting infected?  What had they done to him for him to say that?

“I spent probably close to a month traveling on my own.  I didn’t see another soul, not a single Bane.  It nearly drove me mad, being alone like that.

“And then I met two men who had been out hunting.  They took what little food I had and brought me back to their camp.  There were twenty or so of them.  They were survivors but they weren’t a family like here.  It was every man for himself first, help your fellow man stay alive second.

“But they knew how to survive.  They taught me how to hunt, to survive in the woods.  I owe them a lot I guess.  They could have just killed me on sight out wandering in the woods,” he glanced over at me with awkward hints of a smile.  I saw scars behind that smile.  He dodged away from my probing stare, looking back down at the fire.

“Victoria found us there.  She was beaten and could barely stand.  She had Brady with her, not even able to walk yet.  Brady had to grow up in the middle of that group.  No child should ever have to learn to live in that setting.

“The group was out on a scouting duty, different from how we do it here.  We were sent out in groups, all of us, to collect any food we could find and bring it back.  Victoria and Brady were in my group, along with another man.  That’s when the attack happened.  We heard the blast, even from a few miles away.  But it wasn’t the Bane, it was one of our group.  Stupid enough to toss a grenade at one of the Bane.  Our camp was gone.  Soon we heard the helicopters and we knew the others were gone too.

“The man who was with us, he heard something coming up on us.  He told me to take Victoria and Brady and run.  He went back to keep them off our trail.”

West was quiet after that, his eyes resting in the dirt at our feet.  I knew the fate of the man who had saved them.

Life had never been easy for West.  In a way he had been shunned his entire life.  When he was a child, he had been shut out because of the fact that he was one.  And then because everyone had known who he was.  I couldn’t blame him for keeping his knowledge and information to himself anymore.

The next night I stayed silent as I crept to the medical tent.  Its flaps were tied back again even though today had been much cooler.  Avian and Victoria were inside, slowly eating as they sat side by side.  They talked quietly in easy conversation, no awkward or tense silences between them.

They looked…happy.

I walked away, an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I didn’t even realize where I was going until I was at Sarah and Avian’s tent.  A lamp softly glowed from within and I pushed aside the flap.

To my amazement, Sarah was propped up slightly, a plate of food in her lap.  It was double portions to what the rest of us had been getting.

“You’re alive,” I said.  I had had doubts if I would find her to be so.

She gave me a weak smile and a glare as she forked some canned carrots into her mouth.

“I’ve been worried,” I said as I sat down on Avian’s cot across from her.  “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” she said.  Her voice sounded terrible.

I stared at Sarah while she ate.  She was nothing more than a skeleton now, her skin too loose on her frame.  Her hair was a matted mess and truthfully, she smelled off.

“What is the matter, Eve?” Sarah said as she finished the last of her dinner and set her plate aside.  “Something is bothering you.”

My eyes stared at nothing as I tried to collect my thoughts.  She was right, something was wrong, but I didn’t know where to start.  It felt like everything was wrong.

“Is Avian in love with Victoria?” I suddenly blurted.

“Victoria?”  Sarah sounded startled.  “Have they been spending time together?”

“Quite a bit,” I said quietly.  “He has been training her.”

Sarah watched my face for a moment.  “You’re jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“You don’t like him spending time with her, do you?” she said with the tiniest hint of a smile.

“No,” I said with a relieved sigh before I could think to be more tactful.  It was freeing in a way, to finally be able to vocalize what I felt.

“Do you know what you feel for Avian?” she asked, her voice soft and kind.

I bit my lower lip and shook my head.  “I wish I did.”

“How does Avian make you feel?” she asked.

I looked up into Sarah’s eyes.  How did Avian make me feel?

“Avian makes me feel safe, even though I can keep myself safe,” I finally said, feeling like my chest was swelling.  “He makes me feel normal, like I’m me.  He knows me.  He matters, far more than he should, to me.”

“And how does West make you feel?”

“Alive, I guess,” I said, an almost frustrated sigh escaping my chest.  “I feel like I grow when I’m with him but not always in a good way.  He pushes me to be more human but then he also brings out the Bane in me.”

Sarah looked at me, silent with contemplation.  I hoped almost violently that she was thinking of the answers to give me.  If only she could lay things out clearly, tell me exactly what I needed to hear.

“I don’t know which one is going to be right for you.  You are going to have to learn that for yourself.  But I think there is going to be a time that eventually comes when you’re going to realize it in an instant and there’s going to be no question in your mind.”

“Can’t that be right now?” I said wistfully.

She chuckled, shaking her head slightly.  That brought on a round of coughing.  I helped her lay down and tucked her blankets up under her chin.

“I’d better go.  Got to keep prepping for the trek,” I said as I moved to the flap of the tent.

“Trek?” she questioned, her brow furrowing.

I was about to explain when I suddenly stopped myself.  “Never mind,” I said.  “Just get some rest.”

Sarah only nodded, too tired to question me further.  She rolled to her side and was almost immediately asleep.

I stepped out of the tent and started for my own.  I wasn’t even halfway there when a figure moved toward me in the darkness.  I was familiar enough with his gait to know it was Avian.

“Hi,” I said, my voice rising in pitch a bit and I stopped a little too suddenly.

“Hi.”  He stopped just a few feet from me.  We stood there in momentary awkward silence.  I wanted to walk away because just then I didn’t want to be around Avian for a reason I didn’t understand.  But at the same time I didn’t think I could walk away.  I was so relieved to see him, to have him notice me again.

“How is the training going?” I asked, taking a hard swallow.

“Very well,” he said, a smile instantly filling his face.  “Victoria catches on quickly.”

I took another swallow, only able to nod my head.

“You haven’t told Sarah we’re leaving,” I said.

“No,” he said simply, his voice catching in his throat.

It felt as if my insides had hardened and I could only nod my head again.  My eyes dropped to the dirt at our feet and my arms wrapped around my midsection.

Avian closed the distance between us and placed his warm hand on my cheek.  I squeezed my eyes closed as relief flooded my system.  I craved more.

“Things are going to be okay,” he whispered.

My eyes rose to meet his.  “I don’t see how,” I said.

“Somehow they will be.”  His eyes burned as he stared back at me.

There were a million things I wanted to say to Avian in that moment.  I wanted to tell him that I wanted to know it was him that I wanted.  I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want to be alone tonight.  I wanted to tell him that in a way I wished it was just him and I that were leaving to go into the unknown.

But how could I say those things when I didn’t even know if he felt the same way anymore?

“Goodnight, Avian,” I said quietly as I took a step away from him.

“Goodnight, Eve,” he whispered back, his burning eyes following me as I walked away into the dark.

TWENTY-FOUR

Two days later, the flap of my tent was opened in the dead of night.  Avian stepped inside, his face grave and sharply illuminated by the lantern in his hand.

“Can you come with me?” he asked.  I had never heard his voice sound so rough.  There were red rims around his eyes.  I nodded once and followed him through the dark without a word.

Somehow I knew before we even left my tent that we were going to his.  The darkness felt heavy and cold, despite the summer heat.  My hands were clammy and my insides hollow.

We stepped inside and I felt myself freeze up in despair.

Sarah lay on her cot, her eyes closed, lined with a frightening shade of red.  Her face was covered with a sheen of sweat and her entire frame trembled slightly.  Her breathing came in terrifying gasps.

“She’s been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours,” Avian said, his voice sounding as if it were being dragged over rocks.  “I can’t wake her up.”

I knelt at her side, pushing the hair back from her face.  Her torso twitched violently as her body fought for air.

“Sarah?” I said quietly, taking one of her bony hands in mine.  “Sarah?” I said again, my lips pressed into her clammy skin.

Avian sank to his cot, resting his face in his hands.  In a few moments his shoulders started to shake as the tears consumed him.

I knew then why Avian had asked me to come.  He had wanted me to be able to say good-bye.

I closed my eyes as I pressed my lips to her hand again.  Every time Sarah had gathered me up in her arms, every encouraging word she had spoken to me as a young teenager reverberated in my mind.  Flashes of her smiling face swam through my head.  I recalled all the squabbles she and Avian had gotten into, remembered all the days they wouldn’t talk to each other afterwards, and then the awkward apologies that followed.

West, Bill, or even Gabriel might say that I had never had a mother, never known a sister.  But they were wrong.  I’d had Sarah.

“I will always miss you,” I whispered, surprised at how rough my own voice sounded.  Avian’s sobs became all the louder.  “I will always remember you.  I don’t know that I would have turned out as human if it wasn’t for you.  You gave me a family when I didn’t have one.

“Thank you for everything, Sarah.”

Avian gave a heart-wrenching cry, his shoulders shaking violently.

The sound of Sarah’s labored breathing became all the more terrifying over the next hour.  Her skin started turning a grey-purple and her hands grew cold.  I squeezed her hand all the tighter.

Just before dawn, Sarah’s body was finally still.

We buried her by the lake.  Bill and Graye had found a perfectly smooth salmon colored rock and had somehow managed to carve her name into its surface.  Gabriel snapped out of his stupor just enough to speak, to give honor and remembrance to her name.  Avian hadn’t said a word since he had come to get me the night Sarah died.  I held his trembling frame the rest of that day and all through the night.

TWENTY-FIVE

I rolled the blue barrel up the ramp and it settled at the front of the truck bed with a small sloshing sound.  I hopped down and West helped me roll the next one in.  The rest of the first group started packing in the remaining water, then loaded the supplies and our food stores.

The boxes I grabbed rattled as I picked them up and I suddenly realized just how valuable all of our ammunition had become.  We couldn’t grow ammunition; we couldn’t scavenge it out of the woods.  Ammunition had to be found in civilization and it had become nearly impossible to go into the cities.  We were going to have to be more careful than ever.

Sarah’s death seemed to have woken something back up in Gabriel.  I had talked to Avian about it.  He’d explained that more than likely, Gabriel had just snapped.  He’d been trying to keep everyone alive for so long and finally, after recent events, he just couldn’t take anymore.  But he was back to his old self, taking charge and making sure things were taken care of.  It was he that had come up with our future means of leaving messages, just twelve hours before we were to leave.

“What are the Bane?” Gabriel asked.

“The Bane?” I asked, confused at his question.

Gabriel nodded.  “The Bane.  What are they?”

“Robots,” West said.  I hadn’t heard him approach us and jumped at his voice.

Gabriel nodded again, bending down to pick up a rock.  “And what are they made of?  What makes them tick?”

“Metal,” I said, watching him pass the rock from hand to hand.  “Nanites.  Pulses and currents.  I don’t get what you are…”

“Exactly.”  Gabriel interrupted.  “They aren’t organic.  Not anymore.  They don’t see the world.  The Bane don’t notice nature, not in the way we do.  We’ll use nature to hide our messages.”  He crouched to the ground, gathering stones that had any size to them.  Carefully, he started stacking them, one on top of the other.  “The Bane won’t notice them.  They will just see the rocks.  But we, Eden, we will see the messages. They’re called cairns.”

“We could leave notes at the bases of them,” West said, his voice excited as he observed Gabriel’s work.  “The things we’ve found, any warnings.  If we place them under the stones the Bane will never see them.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel said, his smile disappearing into his beard.  “My wife Leah has been copying the maps as exactly as she can for the last few weeks so we can leave locations.  We run a smaller risk that we will be permanently separated that way.  Pick a destination in the direction we are headed and let us know where to go.  We have our general direction but there is going to have to be room for change.  Who knows what we’re walking into.”

The work on the trailers was completed that night.  The one that had been rusting away for years, left abandoned, was the one that the first group would take.  The second one that Bill and Graye had brought back from the city would transport the second group.  And if either of them failed to function, we always had our legs.

On our last night in Eden we feasted, at least as best we could on our starvation rations.  Food never tasted so wonderful as I helped myself to two rolls, a heaping scoop of canned corn, a baked potato, and rabbit.  For a moment I thought about seeking out Sarah so I could share my portions.  Then I remembered.

I glanced down the table at Avian who sat talking hurriedly with Victoria, pointing at something in the book that was laid on the table before them.  Not that it truly mattered, but her status and usability in Eden would be greatly increased if we ever all actually made it south.  She was going from seamstress to back up doctor.

The thought that that would free up Avian crossed my mind and the smallest hint of a smile tugged at my lips.

West sat next to me, wolfing down his food faster than he could chew it.  I laughed, shaking my head at him.

“What?” he said around a mouthful of bread.  “I’m starving!”

“I know,” I said with a smile.

“You going to finish yours?” he said, eying the remains on my plate.

“Yes,” I said as I raised my eyebrows at him.  “I intend to finish every bite.”

He chuckled then.  Underneath the table he gave my knee a small squeeze.

We finished packing most everything that night.  The members of the second group had to open their tents up to those in the first since everything had been loaded into the truck.  I was glad I had watch duty that night; I wouldn’t have known how to handle that awkward situation.

I looked out over the tents that night.  I was starting to realize that this place we were staying at wasn’t Eden.  Eden was wherever these people were, Eden was them.

I wondered if there were any other places like this.  It didn’t sound like it from what I had heard others say.  How had I been so lucky to have come here?

Sarah wouldn’t have called it luck.  To her it would have been fate.  Maybe it was.

But Eden would be breaking up in the morning.  Would it ever be fully put back together again?  What were our numbers going to be like if it did?  Who would be lost along the way?

By dawn, Eden was teeming with life.  Nerves were running high.

People said hurried goodbyes with hurried hugs, tears pooling in their eyes.  They knew this could be a permanent good-bye.  My chest hardened as I watched Avian talking to Victoria again.   He gave her a slightly longer than necessary hug good-bye.

Bill and Graye walked up to me and to my surprise, a pang formed in my chest.  These two had been my team.  We were part of the elite, the best.  In a way they were my brothers.

Bill wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a hug.  “Be careful out there,” he said quietly before he released me.

I gave him a small smile.  I looked over at Graye and he could only give me a tight-lipped smile and a nod of agreement.  “Just remember that they can still blow you up,” he said with a smirk.

“Thanks,” I said with a chuckle as I shook my head.  “You two be careful.  You’re smart, you know how to survive.  Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

“Promise,” Bill said, his cool gray eyes on me.

I walked back to the truck, joining Avian and West.  “Everything ready?” I asked, feeling both anxious and reluctant to leave.

“I believe so,” Avian said as he hoisted his bag of half the medical supplies into the back of the truck.  We couldn’t fit much more in it.

Gabriel walked up to us, his hands stuffed into his pockets.  His lips were invisible in his beard as he pressed them tightly together.

“We’ll reach the first destination this evening,” Avian said as he turned to Gabriel.  “We’ll leave the marker with any notes on what we encounter today.”

Gabriel nodded.  “I wanted to thank you,” he said, his voice suddenly rough sounding.  “For keeping things going when I snapped.  It was selfish of me.”

Avian pressed his lips together and nodded.  “No one can really blame you.”

Gabriel extended his hand and Avian gave it a tight shake.  He then shook mine and West’s hands as well.  “Be safe,” he said.  “We have to keep Eden alive.  We may be all that’s left out there.”

All the members of our first group loaded onto the trailer and into the truck.  The day watchman, Tuck, volunteered to drive.  Morgan climbed into the front cab with him and so did another woman by the name of Bea.  The other fourteen of us got to ride the bumpy thousand miles on the flat-bed trailer.

The members of the second group gathered around as Tuck started the truck to life.  As he pulled away they waved, tears falling down half their faces.

The first hour was slow going as we made our way through the forest over uneven ground.  We had worked hard to keep ourselves hidden so that we couldn’t be found by any still-remaining marauders or Bane.  We each had to hold onto the short railing that lined the edge of the trailer to keep from being bucked off.

No one said anything for the first few hours but we all knew what the other was thinking.  There was uncertainty and fear about traveling into the unknown.  There was the very real possibility that this truck wouldn’t continue to run for more than another mile.  Or it could break down in the middle of the desert.  Helicopters could buzz over our heads at any time, reign down on us with dozens of Bane and infect us all.

There were endless horrible ways for us to die on this journey.

But it was sure death by starvation or infection if we stayed.

We jarred over a rough patch, everyone jerking violently to the right.  “Careful!” I was surprised when Avian shouted at Tuck.

“I’m sorry,” he called.  “I don’t see a clearer path.”

Avian said something under his breath as he turned his eyes forward.

“You okay?” I asked quietly.  I suddenly felt all too open to everyone.  There wouldn’t be much privacy for the next week or so.

Avian shook his head, his eyes darting to the cab of the truck.  “Morgan’s pregnant,” he whispered.

“Pregnant?” I repeated.  I glanced at the back of her head through the window.  It explained why she was sitting up there.

Avian nodded.  “Sharp, rough movement like that isn’t very good for the baby.”

“Should she be coming with us if she is carrying a child?” I asked.  Suddenly this journey seemed all the more perilous.

“I thought it would be safer.  Victoria would be able to stitch a wound or anything basic but her training is limited.  Not that I know that much about taking care of a pregnant woman but I thought it would be better.  She’s not that far along anyway.  She should be just fine.”

I glanced at Morgan’s husband, Eli, saw that he was watching us.  I thought I was supposed to say congratulations or something but it didn’t seem like something to celebrate anymore.  Our world wasn’t a safe place for children.

After two hours the truck pulled to a stop and Tuck poked his head out the window to look back at us.  “This is going to get really rough and I’m going to have to go really slow.  I think it would be best if everyone got off and walked for a bit.”

Without another word, everyone hopped off and we started the slow journey down the rocky face of the mountain on foot.

As we moved I watched Avian.  He walked at the front of us all.  He held a rifle tight in his hands, his eyes scanning the trees and sky before us.  I couldn’t recall ever seeing Avian with a gun.  But his hands were perfectly positioned, his frame aware of everything around him.  His shoulders were set tight, his knees bent slightly, ready to fight or run at any second.

I had never seen the soldier side of Avian before.  Avian was probably better trained than I was to survive in our new world.

Curious, how a person’s value is placed.  We needed soldiers.  We needed people who could protect us, who knew what they were doing when it came to weapons.  But we had also needed someone who could take care of us, stitch us back together.  Even with the limited amount of training Avian had, he was more valuable to us as a make-do doctor than as the best trained soldier we had.

“So what do you think it will be like?” West’s voice jarred me back to my senses.  “When we get to our new location?”

“Uh,” I stuttered, trying to refocus my attention from Avian to West.  “Warm?  I don’t know.”

He laughed, adjusting his grip on his rifle.  “I hope, wherever we end up, it’s near the ocean.  I remember going to the beach as a kid with my father a few times.”

“What was it like?” I asked.

“Big.”  He breathed.  “It never ends.  It’s really beautiful.  And scary.”

“How could a body of water be scary?” I asked.

“That much water is a lot bigger than you,” he said as he glanced over at me.  “You think you could control the violence of the ocean?”

I was quiet after that, trying to imagine what the ocean would look like.  It was hard to envision it as a threat.  “I’d like to see the ocean someday.”

West looked over at me with another smile, bumping his shoulder against mine.

For the briefest moment, it felt like my heart jumped into my throat.  But the strange part was that for just a second, my vision went completely black.

I tripped over the stones under my feet, throwing my hands out to catch myself before I fell.

“Whoa!” West said, obvious concern in his voice.  “You okay?”

“Of course,” I tried to recover, brushing the dirt off my knees.  Avian glanced back at me, a probing look in his eyes.  I shook my head and after a lingering hard look, he turned his attention back upfront.

I didn’t think I had ever tripped before.

“And I hope it never snows,” West continued, brushing my incident off.  “After last winter I wouldn’t mind if I never saw snow again.”

“Agreed,” I said distractedly.

We were both quiet for a few minutes as we kept pace with the rest of the group.  “Do you think we’ll ever be able to stop running from them?” West asked.

I thought about my response before I spoke.  “I guess if we could hide ourselves well enough.  Push far enough into the country.  If they can’t find us, they can’t infect us.”

West kept his eyes glued to the rocks at our feet.  “I’m so sick of running,” he said quietly.

“Me too.”

We finally got to the base of the mountain and out of the canyon.  We would be stopping here until dark, when it would be safer to travel.  We had only traveled the last few hours in daylight because it was too dangerous to come down the mountain in the dark.  We all would have killed ourselves on the rocks and cliffs.  For now we would take shifts, some would sleep while others would keep watch.

I’d be staying up all night, as usual.

“Avian,” I said as I walked to his side.  “I’m going to get a few minutes of sleep before nightfall.”

“I think I’d better do that too,” he said as he looked around at those who were traveling with us.  “I think it would be best if I stayed up at night since my rifle has a night vision scope.  Coby,” he said to a man walking past us.  “I’m checking out for a while.  Keep an eye on things, will you?”

He nodded, securing his handgun.

“West,” I called as I spotted him.  “Keep watch for a while?”

“Sure,” he said with a nod and automatically turned his eyes to our perimeters.

Avian and I walked towards a tree, each greedy for the shade it would provide.  We settled on the wild grass that grew at its base, side-by-side in the coolness.

“I’ve never seen the soldier side of you before,” I said as my eyes slid closed.

“There hasn’t been much opportunity,” he said as he gave a sigh and relaxed.  “It feels weird being back in that mode.  It was drilled into me constantly for over two years and it kept me alive for another four months.  Then it got pushed to the back of my mind.”

“Eden has been lucky to have you,” I said quietly as I shifted around to get more comfortable, sleep already creeping in to take me over.

“I could say the same about you,” he said, his voice drifting away.

A few moments later I joined him.

TWENTY-SIX

I tried to press my back further into the corner.  My vision blurred and the dark shadows before me blended together.

“She’s never been this aggressive before,” a voice said.  It felt like someone was screaming into my ear.  Everything was too loud.  I pressed my hands over the sides of my head, trying to block it all out.

“She’s afraid,” a lighter voice said.

I couldn’t make out anything anymore as I opened and closed my eyes, trying to clear my vision.  My head felt fuzzy and clouded.

The next second all I could make out was the scent of steel under me.  And that my head felt cold.

Then there was the sound of a drill.

My eyes slid open, blinking immediately closed against the dimming but still bright light of the evening sun.  I turned my head to the side, raising my hand to block it from my face.  At the same moment my pillow moved and I opened my eyes to find myself nose to nose with Avian.

“You were having a nightmare,” he said quietly as he pushed a few stray hairs out of my face.  I realized then that I was lying on his arm as a pillow, still under the same tree.  After I glanced around at our caravan and knew things were still safe, I relaxed again, resting my head back on his arm.

“Yeah,” I said quietly.  “Did you sleep much?”

“For a while.”

I lay there for a little longer, listening as Avian breathed, the sound of everything that was still okay in the world.  A part of me wanted to never have to move again, to lay here until the sun died and time ceased to exist or matter anymore.

“We should probably get going,” Avian said, always right about everything.  I nodded, pulling myself up to my feet, then helping Avian to his own.  He went to take a step back toward the group but before he could, I slipped my hand into his.  I had been wanting to do that for so long, but starving myself of it.

Avian looked down at me, his eyes open and intense at the same time.  I brought our hands up to my cheek and just held it there for a moment.  I took a deep breath, very aware of the steady rhythm of my heart.  Then I let go and walked back to the group.

The sun slid below the horizon in the west, the temperature immediately dropping.  I watched as Avian stacked some rocks at the base of another tree where it would be obvious to see, the note he had written tucked securely under the largest stone inside a waterproof bag.  We all loaded onto the trailer and for the first time, Tuck set out on level ground.

“It won’t go any faster than about forty miles-per-hour,” Tuck called out the window.

“It’s a miracle that it still runs at all,” Avian called back to him.  “Let’s just pray that it will keep that pace.”

Tuck nodded, turning his attention back to the level ground before him.  Those who traveled with us had grabbed their blankets out of the back of the truck and started arranging themselves to get more comfortable.  It was cramped quarters but they used each other as pillows, everyone suddenly getting much closer to one another than they ever had before.

Avian sat at the front passenger side of the trailer, rifle ready at any moment.  I sat in the opposite corner in the back, watching the landscape as it fell behind us.  West lay at my left, his head resting against my thigh as he drifted off to sleep.  As far as I could tell, all the others were asleep before we even got to the road.  It had been a long, hard hike down the mountain.

The pavement of the road wasn’t perfectly smooth.  After not being taken care of for so many years it had cracked and started to break down.  The only sound that met my ears was the wind around us, the grumble of the truck, and its tires rubbing the road.  The truck’s one working headlight created a tunnel of light before us that made me slightly uneasy.  It felt like a beacon jumping up into the sky, alerting our position.

I reminded myself that the Bane weren’t supposed to come out during the night.

Except for when they burned gardens.  And infected fallen soldiers.

It wasn’t long before we reached the outskirts of a small city.  My nerves pitched as houses came into view.  Tuck pulled off the road and continued through the fields.  I saw the shadow of buildings that created the small city.

As we got to the outskirts, we reconnected with the road and pulled into a gas station.

Tuck pulled up to one of the pumps and Avian jumped off the trailer, grabbing a hose and started punching a few buttons.  Nothing happened.  Avian started walking toward the back of the store, waving Tuck forward with the truck.  I hopped off, jogging ahead to catch up with Avian.  I kept my shotgun level to my eye, my finger on the trigger.  I wasn’t going to be caught off guard if anything woke up.

“Here we go,” Avian whispered, a bit of a smile forming on his lips.  He waved Tuck over to a pipe that rose up out of the ground.  At the top it had some sort of hand pump and a hose that ran off the side of it.

I watched in fascination as Avian opened a small round cover on the side of the truck.  Tuck shut it off and stepped out, walking the length of the truck back and forth to stretch his legs.  Avian put one end of the hose in the hole in the side of the truck and started pumping.

“This is going to take a while,” Avian huffed as he worked the stiff joints.  “Watch the perimeter.”

I nodded once and walked to the side of the store, checking to make sure it was clear.  I snuck back around to the front of the store, still clear.  My nerves tight, I crept up to the glass front door and peaked inside.  It had been raided and the shelves were mostly barren.

I continued to pace the perimeter of the building the entire ten minutes or so that it took Avian to pump the truck full of gas.  When he finished he asked me to wait with the truck while he ran inside to look for something.

Less than two minutes later Avian jogged back towards us, five blue bottles in his hands.

“What’s that?” I asked, eyeing it warily.

“It cleans the fuel,” he whispered as he set three of them in the back of the truck and set to pouring the other two of the bottles in with the gas.  “I don’t know if any of it is still good, the fuel or the cleaner, but I figure if it has a chance of helping we’ve got to try it.”

I nodded.  When Avian was finished, he set the empty bottles on the ground.  He motioned for the three of us to get back inside.  A few people stirred as the truck was started back up but they were asleep by the time we pulled back on the road and continued down it.

“We should be good for another three hundred miles or so,” Avian said quietly.  “Depending on what kind of mileage this thing still gets.  And if it keeps running.”

I nodded again, watching the darkness around us.  It was frustrating that I couldn’t see anything.  I took a little comfort in the fact that Avian could though.  He kept looking through his night vision scope every few minutes.

West eased his head back up onto my thigh, a soft snore letting me know just how asleep he really was.  I tried to ignore him, remembering what had happened earlier when we had just brushed shoulders.  My vision was already black, I didn’t need my brain going black as well.

“Is it harder now?” I asked Avian quietly.  My fingers felt for the wings around my throat.  “To keep going now that they’re all gone?  Now that you’ve lost all your family?”

“I still have you,” he said very quietly.  “As long as you’re still around I’ve got something to keep fighting for.  And them as well,” he said as he observed those sleeping around us.  “They’re my family too.”

That swelling in my chest started up again.  I both craved it and didn’t want it.  It made me say stupid things.

“Are you in love with Victoria?”

Avian’s eyebrows knitted together.  “What?”

“Are you?”  My face suddenly felt hot.

“Victoria is a smart woman and she is beautiful, but…  Why would you think that?”  I was surprised to see that Avian’s face looked almost hurt.

I suddenly wished I had never said anything.  What had been the point of this conversation?  “I just…  I didn’t…” I couldn’t find words that wouldn’t make me want to jump off this trailer and hide myself in a hole in the ground from humiliation.

“You’re jealous,” Avian said with dawning in his voice.  A bit of a smile tugged on his lips.

“Jealous,” I said, meaning to form it as a question.  That was what Sarah had said I was feeling.

“It’s not a fun emotion, is it?” he said as his face grew more serious, though a tight lipped smile formed.  As he said it, he glanced down at West.

“No, it’s not,” I said quietly, my eyes falling down to West’s sleeping form.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I felt too exposed, too open.  I suddenly missed the mountains, the trees.  They protected us.  Now in the open desert, I wanted to get out from under the wide sky and distant horizons as fast as possible.

The sun was blinding as it gleamed against the sand.  Amazing how the Earth could change so fast, in just the eight hours we had driven, going from forest to stark desert.  We had pulled off the road for the day into a patch of rocks and a plant Tuck had told me was called cactus.  There wasn’t anything else to hide us from being seen.  It was poor camouflage but it was all we were going to get.

Breakfast was prepared, canned pears and bread left over from the day before.  I now understood why Avian had been so insistent on storing so much water.  With every bite I took I felt like my tongue was sticking to the top of my mouth.  I would have guzzled down an entire gallon if I didn’t know how precious our supplies were.

“I kind of like this heat,” West said as we scouted the perimeter.  It looked like waves were rising off the hot clay.   “There’s something, I don’t know, comforting about it.”

“You mean suffocating, right?”

“No,” he smiled.  “I don’t know.  I just kind of like it.  I wouldn’t want to deal with it all the time but it’s kind of a nice change.  Dry.  Not like how it’s felt so humid all the time lately.”

“I guess,” I said as I glanced back at the caravan.  Everything looked blurred from this far away, like it was engulfed in water.  Maybe we would be better hidden than I had thought.  They just looked like an extension of the rock outcropping and cactus.

West sat on a large boulder, patting the space beside him.  I took one more look around before I joined him.  We sat together in awkward silence for almost a full minute.

There was something on West’s mind, I could feel it.

“What?” I simply asked.

He took a breath to speak then stopped.  His eyes glanced up once before falling back down to his weapon in his hands.  “You’re going to make a choice someday, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I already knew exactly what he was asking.

West didn’t say anything for a while.  He just held my eyes.

“Never mind,” he finally said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head.  Heat was rising in my blood.  “You don’t just get to say something like that and then say ‘never mind.’  You can’t take something like that back.”

“I don’t want to talk about this, forget I said anything,” he said shaking his head and breaking eye contact.  “I can’t think straight.  My head is in all the wrong places these days.”

I just watched him for a bit.  He looked so sad.  “I’m sorry, that’s probably my fault.”  My eyes fell, looking down at our hands where they rested side by side.  I slipped my fingers into his.

The world flickered black for a moment.  And then suddenly everything went dark.

I opened my eyes to the washed out color of canvas.  Two faces leaned over my field of vision, both filled with concern and another emotion that surprised me: fear.

“What happened?” I asked as I pulled myself up into a sitting position, shaking what felt like fog from my brain.

West and Avian glanced at each other.  “What happened?” I demanded again.

“You… passed out,” West said.  I noticed the sweat that suddenly beaded on his forehead.  I glanced at Avian who couldn’t meet my eyes.

“It’s over one-hundred degrees out there,” West said as he sat back on his heels.  “You’re not used to the heat.”

“And you are?” I scoffed.  I didn’t believe West.  I hadn’t passed out from the heat.  He was lying and Avian knew it.

“You’re obviously fine now,” West said as he pulled himself to his feet and left the tent.

That night, once everyone was asleep on the trailer again, I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

“What really happened to me earlier?” I asked quietly.  “I didn’t really pass out, did I?”

“I didn’t see it happen,” Avian finally said after a long, thoughtful pause.  “West walked you back to the group.  You were awake, but you weren’t there.  Your eyes were totally blank and you wouldn’t respond.  He said you two had been talking when you suddenly just…froze up.”

“Froze up?” I asked.  Even as I did, I knew what he was talking about.  The way I had blanked and then tripped the day before.  The way I had felt like I was suddenly gone when I had nearly choked West.

“You weren’t there for a while,” Avian said, his voice cool.  “It was like you were empty all of the sudden.  Hollow.”

I swallowed hard, not because of the dryness or the heat this time.  “Am I going to turn into one of them?” my voice sounded hoarse.

“I think if you were going to you would have already.”  Avian’s voice was tight.  “There’s been plenty of time for you to change, plenty of opportunity for you to be infected.  I think this is something different.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

As pressure built in the air I felt uneasy.  It reminded me of the night the Bane burned the gardens.  The stars disappeared, plunging the night into a darkness I had never known.

One good thing about traveling through the desert was that there were few towns that we had to skirt around.  It slowed us down a great deal having to drive around a city.  There was always the risk that we would find Bane on the outskirts.

“Pull over here,” Avian said in a harsh whisper as we approached the next gas station.  “Kill the lights.”  Tuck did as he said immediately.

Avian jumped off the trailer, his rifle held at eye level.  I jumped off at the same time, my own shotgun held firmly in hand.  His eyes never left the glass front of the store as he stalked slowly towards it.  I released my safety, gauging how many extra shells I had in my pocket that I could easily grab if needed.

“There’s two of them inside,” Avian whispered.  I saw the gleam of their metallic parts.  Their eyes stared back out at us, empty orbs.

“Should we go to a different gas station?” I breathed.

Avian shook his head.  “We most likely wouldn’t make it to another.”

“Together?” I said quietly.

“On my count,” Avian breathed.  “Three… two… one.”

The glass exploded into a billion shards, followed by screams from those who were sleeping unsuspecting on the trailer.  The next second, the two Bane leapt through the remains of the glass, barreling straight towards us.

Countless shots were fired but only the one charging at me dropped.  By the time I had realized what had happened it was too late to load again.

“No!” I screamed as I sprinted toward the Bane who was barreling straight at Avian.  I leapt between the two of them, slamming my body in it.

We hit the ground in a tangled mess of arms, each trying to destroy the other.  It’s steel cold hand wrapped around my throat, cutting off my air supply.

“Dis… dis…” I gasped for air.  “Disengage!” I screamed out.  It stopped moving immediately.

I clawed its hand away from my throat, realizing then that as I had jumped to get between the Bane and Avian my handgun had fallen out of its holster.  Instead, my hands beat at the frame that covered its neck and lower face, exposing the gears and wires beneath.  I lost it, ripping and shredding everything I could get my fingers around.  I didn’t even care when the volts of electricity the infected body produced shocked me over and over again.

I sat back, straddling the now still body, my breaths coming in shaking, gasping swallows.  I glanced back over at Avian only to see him surrounded by the rest of the group.  Their faces were a mix of shock, awe, and fear.

They all finally knew my secret.

I looked back down at the Bane, my hand rising to my throat, and took a hard swallow.  In its blank eyes, I saw everything I hated about myself.  All the things that were wrong with me, all the things I couldn’t remember but knew the truth about.

I spit in its face and stood to walk back to the others.

“Let’s gas up and get going,” I said.

No one said anything as Tuck and Avian pulled the truck around to the hand pump and filled it.  They all got back on the trailer but I felt their eyes on me as I stood at one corner of the building, pretending to be watching the perimeter, even though I couldn’t see much of anything.

Avian and Gabriel had worked all these years to keep my true nature a secret.  It had only taken a few moments to undo all that effort.

“Are you okay?” West asked quietly from behind me.

“I’m fine,” I said, my voice rough.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

“I’m fine!” I said harshly.  “You lied to me again.”

“Lied?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing.

“I didn’t pass out earlier,” I said quietly.  “It was like I was suddenly one of them, wasn’t it?”

West swallowed hard, his eyes guarded as he looked back at me.  “It was the same way you looked when you tried to choke me.”

“And why does it only seem to happen when I’m around you?”

West looked back at me, hurt plain on his face.

“You know,” he said.  “You used to be so much easier to deal with.  You didn’t used to freak out over every little thing.”

He turned and walked back to the group.

Avian left a message and a cairn at the gas station, warning the second group to take extra caution.

The pressure in the sky kept building, turning the air muggy and heavy.  We stopped two hours after we had gassed up, hiding ourselves in a cluster of sickly looking trees.  Tents were set up, five of them, as a precaution to the saturated sky.

Not five minutes after we had everything staked and secured, the sky finally broke.

I’d never seen rain like that.

I kept the perimeter, Tuck volunteering to keep watch with me.  I was soaked through almost instantly and it was difficult to see far.  Small wisps of steam rose from the sunbaked ground, heat and cool colliding.

The world was doused in a hazy color of gray as the sun fought to break through the heavy clouds above us.  The rain continued to pour, soaking us in more rain than I had ever seen fall at one time.  Small streams started tracing lines in the desert, running to unseen rivers.  We set out our empty water containers to refill from the heavens.

A few hours into my scouting Avian walked out, using a raincoat that had been smartly packed to keep his head dry.  He walked over to me, and covered my head.  He handed me two carrots.

“I doubt we’re going to see any of them in this,” Avian said, having to speak louder than normal to talk over the noise of the rain pounding above our heads.  “They don’t like the water too much.”

“I’m not taking any risks,” I said as I bit the end of one of the carrots off.  “And what was that back there?  At the gas station.  You know I can take care of myself.”

“I know,” he said as his eyes fell to the ground.  “Just instinct, I guess.”

He stood there with me for a while, our eyes watching the rain as it fell, our feet getting soaked as it did.

“Did you say something to West?” he asked.  “He’s acting kind of…put out.”

I swallowed my bite before answering.  “I told him that I knew he had lied to me earlier.  I also pointed out the fact that I only have these blackouts when I’m around him.”

“Really?”

I nodded.  “The first time was when I choked him.  It was like I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“And then when you tripped,” Avian said, his eyes staring out over the desert.  “You two had been talking.  I’ve never seen you stumble before.”

I nodded again.  “And then yesterday.”

“Why do you think that is?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said as I shook my head.

“If being around him makes you lose control of yourself, it’s a danger to us all.  We can’t afford to have you gone, to have you check-out, even if you don’t mean to.  And we can’t afford to have you turn on us.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I defended as I glared at him.

“I know you wouldn’t,” Avian said as he looked at me.  “But what if you don’t have a choice?  I mean, you didn’t want to strangle West, did you?”

“Of course not,” I said.  “I mean I was mad at him but I would never actually do that.”

“That’s what I mean.  If you don’t have control over this it’s dangerous for us all for you to be around him.”

I mumbled something, hoping it would pass as acknowledgement.

“I wanted to ask you…” he started.

“Stop right there!” I shouted as I took five steps forward into the rain, my shotgun level to my eyes.

Thirty yards away, two figures stopped in their tracks, their hands held up.

“Please,” a female voice called through the torrent.  “We just need something to eat.  We’ve been lost in this desert for days.”

I walked toward them, gun in hand, Avian following me, his own handgun held steady.  As the figures became clearer, I saw it was a man and a woman, looking to be in their late thirties.

“Please,” the man said.  “We mean you no harm.  We just need something to eat.  If you can spare anything.”

“Where’d you come from?” Avian demanded, his gun pointed right at the man’s chest.

“The southeast,” the man said.  “We’ve been running for almost a year now.”

“Come with us,” Avian said.

We walked behind them, their hands held behind their backs where we could see them.  I looked down at their feet.  Their shoes were held together with strips of material and lengths of rope.  Their clothes were torn and ragged looking.

We led them to one of the tents.  Morgan and Eli were inside resting and jumped at the sight of the strangers.  “Who are they?” Eli demanded as he put himself between the newcomers and his wife.

“We’re about to find out,” Avian said as he walked back to the truck while I kept an eye on them.  A minute later Avian walked back in, the CDU in hand.

“What are you going to do with that?” the woman asked, eyeing it warily.

“Just make sure you’re really human,” I said.

Avian made one swipe down the woman’s bare arm, water rolling off of her to the floor of the tent.

“What are you doing?” she jumped, huddling back into the man.

“This puts out an electrical current.  Being this soaked will make it much more intense,” Avian explained as he met their eyes.  With hesitancy, she let him wipe her arm more.  The man tried drying his own arm.

They didn’t fight us as Avian touched the device to their still damp skin.  Organic.

“What are you doing out here?” Avian asked.

“Things are bad back east,” the woman started.  “There is hardly anyone left, if anyone.  The Bane have gotten so aggressive.  It wasn’t safe anywhere.  We had no choice but to come west.”

“It took us a year to figure out what was happening anyway,” the man said, his eyes wild with recollection.  “It’s amazing we stayed alive.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The two of them exchanged a look, a million memories between them.  “We were on a year long sailing study,” the man started.  “That’s how we met.  We were both working for the university, doing marine studies.  There were six of us on the sailboat.  We hadn’t been into port in nearly six months, hadn’t seen another human being beside the six of us in that long either.

“We came in for supplies only to find the ocean-side town abandoned.  Or so we thought.”

“We went to look for food,” the woman said, her eyes haunted.  “That’s when we saw them, sleeping in the buildings.  It was dark but we saw them, hundreds of them.  Just staring out at nothing.  We didn’t know what had happened.”

“We split into groups,” the man said.  “We hid ourselves as best we could.  Got supplies at night because occasionally we saw ones that were awake during the day.  We did okay for a few years but they started pushing further and further into the country.  They started looking for us.  Using weapons to take us down, make us easier to infect.  We didn’t think it was safe anymore to stay.  So we started walking.”

“That was a year ago,” the woman said hoarsely.  “We’ve been running ever since.”

“But you’re still alive,” Avian said quietly.  “That’s the part that really matters.”

“What are your names?” I asked, finally relaxing my shotgun.

“Tess,” the woman said.  “And this is Van.”

“I’m Avian,” he said.  “This is Eve, that’s Morgan and Eli.”

“Thank you for giving us shelter,” Van said as he put his arm around Tess.  “We will be out of your way soon.”

“You’re welcome to travel with us,” Avian said.  I stiffened at his hasty acceptance.  “We are headed southwest before the winter comes.  We plan to find somewhere safe and set up camp again.  Ours was just destroyed.  The rest of our group is coming later.”

“How many of you are there?” Tess asked.

“Here now, seventeen.  There are another seventeen that will follow.  With the two of you that will bring us up to thirty-six members of Eden.”

“Eden,” Tess said, a hint of a smile in the corner of her lips.  “We would love to be members of Eden.”

Avian nodded, a smile on his own lips, as he placed his hand on her knee for just a moment.

We fed Tess and Van as much as we could.  But it wasn’t much.

When I woke up that evening the rain had not let up.  The clouds were still dumping on us and Tuck told us that unless it stopped soon there was no way we were going to be able to drive that night.  The windshield wipers didn’t work anymore.  He wouldn’t be able to see a thing.  Avian was also worried everyone would catch sick if they sat out in the rain on the trailer all night.

Everyone settled down in one tent or another that night, each silently grateful to be able to sleep on stationary ground after two nights on the trailer.  I watched as West went to one tent, Avian to another.  I stationed myself just outside one of the tents they hadn’t chosen, volunteering as usual to keep night watch.

TWENTY-NINE

Two days later everyone had just started falling asleep when Avian’s attention perked up.  He stood in his place on the trailer, his eyes narrowing at something ahead of us.

“What is it?” I asked quietly in an attempt to not wake anyone.  I took the safety off my shotgun.

“Stop the truck,” Avian told Tuck.  As he did, Avian hopped out, myself in close pursuit.  He walked up to an old road sign and only then did I notice that there was something different about this one.

“What are those?” I asked as I looked closely at the white dots beneath the words leading to somewhere that now meant nothing.

“Morse code,” Avian whispered as he ran his fingers over the dots.

“What does it say?” I asked as my eyes swept the area again.  No threats in this desert forsaken place.

Avian shook his head, his eyes frustrated looking.  “I don’t know.”

Without hesitation I walked back over to the trailer.  “Wake up!” I said loudly.  A few bodies stirred.  “Come on.  Wake up.”

Some of them eyed the gun in my hands warily, others simply rubbed the sleep out of their eyes.  “Does anyone know how to read Morse code?”

West yawned as he raised his hand.  “Come on,” I said, waving him toward the sign.  “Sorry to wake everyone.  You can go back to sleep now.”

I heard a few grumbles as we walked toward the sign.  Most of them lay back down but a few of them watched what we were doing with curiosity.

“You know Morse code?” Avian asked as we walked up.

“My grandpa thought it was a fun game when I was little,” West said as he rubbed his eyes again.  “That’s a scientist’s version of fun for you.”

“What does it say?” Avian asked as he looked back at the sign.  “This isn’t the regular paint that was used for signs.  It’s too irregular and the paint doesn’t look that worn.  This was put there in the last few years.  After the Evolution.”

West squinted through the dark to read the sign.  As he did, he stepped around it, looked at the back, then looked at the edge of it.  “It just says ‘look beneath’.”

Avian furrowed his brow at West, then looked back at the sign.  Then we all saw the slightly bent form of the metal sign in the bottom right corner.

With a hefty tug, the three loose screws at the top of the sign were ripped out and I let the metal sign fall to the ground with a thud in the dust.

Our eyes grew wide as we took in what had been hidden under the old road sign.  Words were crammed onto the wood board beneath, and a detailed but obviously hand drawn map spread over most of it.  There had unquestionably been people here, trying to leave a message for anyone who might find it.

“Holy…” both Avian and West breathed.

“Where is the map leading?” I asked, my eyes following the hand drawn lines.

“Right to the middle of one of the biggest cities there was,” Avian said quietly.

If you’re reading this, congratulations on surviving.  To be brief, there is a group of us, hiding in the city.  We have unlimited supplies of food, water, other necessities.  We also have electricity and can offer you protection.  A life.  If you can reach us.  This is a map to our location.  Travel at night and travel silently.  Good luck.

Below that, in another person’s handwriting, was written: May the force be with you.

“What does that even mean?” I asked.  May the force be with you.  It sounded like gibberish to me.

Avian chuckled again.  “It was a line from a very famous movie.”  When he saw my confusion at the word movie he just shook his head and laughed again.  “Never mind.  Just know that it is a very human thing to say.”

“How is that even possible?” West asked, fully awake now.  “For a group of people to be living in a city?”

“I can’t imagine anyone is that careful,” I said quietly.

“But if they were…” West said wistfully.  “Can you even imagine?  Having actual electricity, living indoors?”

“No,” I said, furrowing my brow at him.  “I can’t imagine it.  It would be too dangerous.  Avian said that was one of the biggest cities.  It is going to be flooded with Bane.  We couldn’t even get fifty miles outside the perimeter.”

“But they must have a way of getting people in if they’ve left this message,” West continued.  “They said to travel at night and to travel silently.  Why would they have us walk into a death trap?”

“This could have been left a few years ago,” I said, my voice rising.  “They could all be infected by now, dead.  There could be no one left in the city anymore.”

“But if there are people there…” Avian said.  “They could have access to anything if they can get around that city.”

“You can’t be serious about this,” I demanded as I turned my eyes on him.  “We can’t take this risk.  We have a mission to complete.  Find a new, safe location for Eden and settle.  Lead the others to us.”

“We could change our course,” Avian said as he walked back to the truck.  He grabbed Bill’s atlas out of the trailer.  He opened it up and quickly found our location.  “We were going here,” he said as he pointed to a place that was due south of our current location.  “We could get there by dawn if we can get the truck to drive fast enough.  But we could go here,” he said as he drug his finger across the page to a place that was west of our location.  “Frankly it will be a nicer location.  We’ll have access to more water, there will be more natural resources.  And it is close to the ocean so there might also be more options for fishing.  Temperatures shouldn’t be any different.”

“But it is surrounded by cities,” I observed as I read the names around the textured green space Avian had his finger on.

Avian nodded his head.  “But it is less than sixty miles from where these other people are supposedly hiding out.  We could go to this new location, even if it is only temporary, hide out and send a scouting party to check things out.”

“This is suicide, Avian,” I said.  “A city that size?  We don’t have a chance of even getting to the outskirts.”

“But if there are people there…” Avian said again.  “Eve, we’ve already lost so many people this last year.  As far as we knew, we were the only ones left.  But if there are more of them out there…  We have to stick together, to keep humanity alive.”

I looked up at Avian, searching his eyes.  There was hope burning there, but I was surprised at another thing I felt coming from him: a total lack of fear.  I had underestimated Avian so much.

“This isn’t just our decision,” I said quietly.  “This affects all of them too,” I said as I indicated those waiting on the trailer for us.  “We have to let them decide as well.”

Avian and West looked up to those who were watching us silently.  Everyone was awake now.  Their faces were anxious looking, mixed with hope and fear.  They could read what was written on the sign as well as I could.

“What do all of you think?” Avian said as he took a few steps toward them.  “I assume you heard everything we said.”

No one spoke up at first and I sensed they were afraid to voice their opinions.

“Tuck,” I called on him.  He jumped slightly at being directly addressed.  “What do you think?”

“I…” he stuttered.  “It is dangerous, but if there really are people there I think we have to go.”

“No, we don’t,” Tess, the newcomer, spoke up loudly.  “Like Eve said, this is suicide!  Have any of you ever been to a city?  We have, and it’s been years.  It’s bound to have gotten worse.”

“Eli?” I asked when Tess was finished.

He glanced at Morgan where she stood at his side.  “I’m not willing to risk putting my family in danger, but if there are some who want to go into the city to scout, I’m okay with changing course.  It could only be temporary.  I trust the three of you to keep us safe.”

The majority of the heads in our group nodded, much to my surprise.  Maybe they did still trust me with their lives, even if they now knew what I was.

“Let’s put it to a vote then,” Avian said, putting his hands on his hips.  “All those in favor of changing course and hiding out while some of us scout the area, raise your hand.”

Every hand but mine, Tess and Van’s went up.

“That’s the majority,” Avian said with a nod.  He turned his intense blue eyes on me, his brow furrowed with mixed emotions.  “Are you going to be with us Eve, if we change course?  Would you go with the scouting party?”

I glared at him.  Where had my cautious Avian gone?  Who was this daring risk taker?

“Of course I will go with you,” I said, my jaw tight.  “If anyone is going into the city I have to go with them.  I’m the only one that can’t get infected.”

The smallest hint of a smile formed in the corner of his mouth but I didn’t miss it.  I almost returned it.

“Alright,” Avian said, clapping his hands together.  “We’ll get our new destination mapped out and get going as soon as we can.  We’ve still got a few hours of darkness left.”

“Crazy idiot,” I muttered under my breath as we turned back to the map.  Avian just gave me a smug smile as he started drawing on the map.

A few minutes later we all loaded up, heading out west on the crumbled highway.

“We’ll find somewhere safe to hide everyone for at least a few days,” Avian said as he squinted against the wind that blew in his face.  “If everything goes smooth, we’ll get everyone settled in the morning, get some sleep, and then the three of us will head into the city tomorrow night.”

“I’d like to come too, sir, if that’s alright with you,” Tuck said from the driver’s seat.

West chuckled and Avian couldn’t seem to help himself as he cracked a smile.  I wondered if anyone had ever called Avian “sir.”  “That’s up to you.  You seem competent enough with a gun.  If you’re willing to take the risk you’re welcome to come.”

Tuck just nodded.

“I’m assuming you will be coming with us?” I asked West, who had been unnaturally quiet the last few hours.

“Of course,” he said, his voice almost sounding insulted.  “I’m not going to let you and Avian have all the fun.”

An hour and a half later, a few looming figures to the south of us drew my attention.  They almost looked like…giant birds.  “Avian, what are those?”

He squinted in the direction I pointed then he raised his rifle to his eye level to look through the night-vision scope.  “They’re planes,” he said as he glanced down at the map in his lap.  “This is an old Air Force base.  Tuck, pull over.”

“Military?” I asked, my attention perking.  “They would have weapons inside somewhere?”

Avian shook his head and shrugged.  “Maybe.  The base I was stationed at was just abandoned when things started falling apart.  Who knows what we’d find in there.”

“Would we have time to go take a look around?” West asked.

Avian looked at the map again.  “We’re making good time.  We should have about an hour of wiggle room.  You really want to go inside?  There could be dozens of them in there.”

“It’s really secluded out here,” West said as he looked around us.  There wasn’t even sagebrush growing in the cracked earth.  “I doubt this small base attracted them.”

“I think West is right,” I said as I scanned the area.  “It doesn’t seem like a likely place for Bane.”

“Alright,” Avian said as he nodded.  “Eve, obviously it’s best if you go in.  We’ll stay here and keep an eye out for if anything happens.”

“No way,” West said as he shook his head.  “I’m not letting her go in there by herself.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said as I rolled my eyes at him.  “I think you would know that by now.”

“Even so, I’m not going to just sit here,” West said as he locked eyes with Avian.

“Get over it you two,” I said in an exasperated tone as I jumped out of the trailer and started walking toward the looming buildings.  A moment later another set of feet jumped to the ground and jogged to keep up with me.

West and I padded silently across the sand and clay, guns in hand, ready to fire at the slightest movement.  As we approached the buildings my eyes grew wide.

“They’re huge,” I breathed as I took the size of them in.  The place just went on and on, a massive landscape of waved metal.  I had never seen a building so big.

“You should have seen the NovaTor building we used to live in,” West said.  I gave him a hard look before he let out an awkward chuckle.  “Okay, maybe not.”

We found a door in the vastness of the north wall.  It was locked.  I tapped it, testing its thickness.  “It’s pretty thin,” I said as I squinted through the dark.  “Ready to see how enhanced I am?” I said with a coy smile.  West just shook his head and laughed.

I punched a hole through the waved aluminum.  A thin scratch ran down the length of my hand, a few tiny drops of blood dripping to the ground.  Ignoring it, I reached through and opened the door from the inside.

The interior of the building was massive.  Everyone in Eden could have set up their tents inside and still had plenty of room to roam.  “They must have put those planes in here,” West said as he too took our surroundings in.  There were no traces of any life around, cybernetic or organic.

“Come on,” I said.  “Let’s get moving.”

We jogged along the perimeter of the building, finding a few rooms in one corner.  One contained a desk, papers and books scattered around the room.  We found a handgun in one of the drawers and a small box of ammunition.  The other room was used for storage.  We found a few sets of shoes and pairs of pants to bring back with us.

We went back outside and jogged to the next building.  It too was locked.  Two seconds later it wasn’t.

Proof of West’s theory was found inside this building.  Through the darkness we could make out the figure of one of the massive planes.

“Isn’t that amazing?” West mused.  “That we used to have control over the sky like that?  I would have loved to learn to fly one of those.”

“Maybe someday you’ll get your chance,” I whispered as I started along the perimeter of the building.  We found a kitchen but there was no food left in it.  It was in the next room we struck gold.

“Here we go,” I said with a smirk as I stood in the doorway.

The walls were lined with all kinds of weaponry.  Handguns, shotguns, things I had never even seen before but would learn to use shortly.  “Grab everything you can,” I said, reaching for the nearest menacing looking piece of destruction and salvation.

I filled my pockets with ammunition until my pants threatened not to stay on my hips from the weight.  I grabbed three oblong balls with small pins stuck in the top.  I wasn’t sure what they would do but if they were in this room they must have had destructive force.  I shoved them into one of the pockets at the side of my knees.

“What you said before, about only blacking out around me, it’s true, isn’t it?” West said as he continued to load up.

“Yeah,” I grunted as I strapped two guns to the side of my pack.

“I guess I thought you were just mad at me before, as usual, when you said it,” he said quietly as he worked.  “Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling a little frustrated.  I just wanted to be doing something useful and not have to deal with feelings right now.

“Do you think maybe feeling what you do kind of…overloads you?” he asked quietly.

“Maybe,” I said as I felt along an upper shelf.  I pulled down another box of bullets.

West was quiet for a while after that and I could sense all the turmoil he was in.  “I don’t know how to stay away from you, Eve.  I don’t think I can just shut my feelings for you off.”

“Can we not talk about this right now?” I said, my hands faltering in their hurried work.

I heard him walk up behind me.  I felt his hand on my arm, slowly turning me around.  I met his brown eyes, alive and dancing in the darkness.  His hands came to my waist, softly pushing me back against the wall behind me.

“I know how I make you feel, Eve,” he whispered, his lips only an inch away from mine.

I was about to push West away, knowing we had a job to do when West pressed his lips to mine.

And then the lights went out.

THIRTY

When I opened my eyes the sky was starting to lighten, a pale shade of blue and pink.  The tips of trees surrounded my vision.  For half a second I thought we were back in Eden.  But the shape of this lake was different, the trees a different species, though similar.  And there were only nine tents instead of a few dozen.

The people of our group bustled around, finishing setting up the tents, putting their belongings inside, washing their sweat-crusted clothes out in the small lake.

How long had I been out for?  It must have been a few hours if we had finally left the desert behind and found a forest.

I sat up, realizing I was lying on the trailer.  I shook my head, trying to clear the fog that was still nesting in my brain.  I spotted West at his tent.  He glanced over at me and my eyes narrowed at him.  His left eye was surrounded with a ring of black.

My eyes then found Avian.  His bottom lip was split.

I didn’t even have to ask what had happened.

I got up, still feeling a little off, and went to look for my tent in the back of the truck.  I realized that it was already being set up.  To my surprise it was Tuck who was assembling it.

“Thank you,” I said as I grabbed a pole and helped him.  “I can take care of it.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said, his lips pulling into a small smile.

I tried to return it, unsure if I had succeeded.  It felt strange working next to him, I didn’t know him well.  Tuck had only been with us for just over a year.

“Was it bad?” I asked him quietly.

“What?” he asked as he started hammering a stake into the ground.

“The fight.”

Tuck gave the smallest of chuckles.  “A few fists flew but it was over pretty quick.  I reminded them that we didn’t have time for squabbles.”

I just shook my head, letting out a frustrated breath.  “I didn’t do anything did I?  Nothing…I don’t know.”

“Just zombie walked,” he said as he stood and wiped his hands off on his pants.  When I gave him a blank stare he continued.  “You just walked back to the truck with West, loaded up with weapons.  But your eyes were…”

“Blank,” I finished for him.  “Was that all?”

He nodded.  “You just sat on the trailer where we placed you, staring out into nothing.”

My insides felt all twisted up as I imagined what I must have looked like.  “Was everyone afraid of me?”

He didn’t answer right away.  “Some of them were a little concerned.  Avian kind of chewed them out for it though.  He made a good point.  You’ve protected everyone for the last five years, why would you turn on us now?”

“Thank you, Tuck,” I said.  He just nodded and walked back toward his own tent.

Tess walked up to me, a wary look on her face.

“Why did you just agree to their plan?” she asked, looking uncomfortable to be talking to me.  “If you’re so afraid to go so close to the city, why would you allow them to come here?  You know how dangerous this is.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said.  “It’s all of them I’m worried about.  I will go wherever they do to keep them from getting infected.”

“So it’s true?” she half whispered.  “That you can’t be infected?”

“Yes,” I said as I swallowed hard.  “I’ve been touched by Bane, multiple times.”

“Why is that?”

I felt uncomfortable.  I didn’t know this woman, didn’t know if I could trust her.  “I just can’t.”

“And that’s why you’re not afraid,” she said, giving me an almost harsh look, and walked back toward Van.

I decided I didn’t like Tess very much.  But she had been right.

I couldn’t avoid them any longer.  I finally sought out Avian, finding him keeping watch on our western perimeter, in the direction of the cities.  I stood there, ten feet away, not even knowing what to say.

“We should get prepped to leave tonight,” Avian mercifully broke the silence.  “We need get as familiar with the route as we can.”

Even though Avian spoke of plans, he didn’t move.  I nodded my head, unable to do anything but stare in those infinitely blue eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I finally managed.

“I don’t blame only you,” he said as he slung his gun over his shoulder and started back towards camp.

We found West and Tuck and took the map back to the trailer.  Setting it down, we all gathered around it.  “We’re here,” Avian said, pointing to a spot next to an exact replica of the small lake.  “I think we can take the truck this far,” he said has he pointed to another spot.  “From there we’re going to have to walk.  I’m guessing it’s about fifteen miles.  Even if everything goes smooth and we don’t run into any Bane, it’s going to take us nearly all night to get there.  If we don’t find these people by morning we’re going to have to find somewhere to hide for the day.”

“This is insane, Avian,” I said as I shook my head.  “There are going to be so many of them.  This is like sticking your hand into the middle of a beehive and expecting not to get stung.”

“But if the people that are hiding in the city have put other messages out there, they must watch for others,” West said.  “Maybe they have some form of transportation they can take to scout.”

“An electric vehicle would be virtually silent,” Tuck said as he studied the map.  “If they have electricity and can power one, they’re around.  They aren’t as fast as a normal car but it should be fast enough to outrun a Bane.”

“That may be,” Avian said.  “But we can’t count on that.  Everyone we’re leaving behind has to know that we may be gone more than just tonight.  We may be gone for a while.”

“And how long do they wait ‘til they have to assume we’re dead?” I said harshly.  “Then what do they do?”

“Survive,” Avian said as he glared at me.  “As they’ve been doing for the last five years.”

“Did you want to talk about anything else?” I asked impatiently.

Avian shook his head.  “I think we’re set, as long as we are all ready to leave tonight.”

We each nodded our heads that we were.  “Have any of you slept yet?” I asked them.  Their pause told me they hadn’t.  “I’ll keep watch since I’ve been sleeping for the last however many hours.  Or whatever it was that I was doing.”

West gave me a little half smile.  Avian glared at him.  They finally turned and went to their tents.

The four of us loaded our minimal supplies and the majority of the weaponry into the back of the truck and headed directly south.

I felt unprepared as Avian checked the map and we pulled over less than an hour after we had left the rest of the group.  As the houses started to crop up, we parked it next to a few other vehicles that had been long abandoned.  We all hunted around for stones of any size and stacked them up directly behind the truck.

Thankful for a nearly full moon to see by, we set out at a jog, each in a hurry to get this suicidal task over with.

The houses seemed so forlorn, their windows empty and hollow.  All of the families that had once lived there now didn’t care about their upkeep, didn’t laugh or tell stories within their walls.  The houses were all just overgrown pieces of a dead history now.

When we had looked at the map all I saw was city after city stacked together, crammed into such a small space.  As we came into the center of the first one, my blood chilled.

“I don’t understand,” Avian breathed as he cautiously walked up to a building.  Dozens of Bane stared back out at us, their eyes inactive and empty.  “Why do some of them attack and some of them just stand there?”

“They look like they’re just waiting for something,” Tuck said, going nowhere near the building.

“Let’s not find out what for,” I said as I started back down the cracked road.

I wasn’t sure how they defined one city from the next.  It all just seemed like one endless city that kept repeating over and over.  And empty eyes watched us everywhere.

We jogged for as long as Tuck, Avian, and West could breathe for.  Tuck held his side as we slowed, Avian’s breathing became heavy, and West struggled to keep up.  I had to constantly remind myself to slow down.  Not all of us were machines.

Buildings grew taller around us as we approached the middle of our map.  If there were people still alive, we should find them soon.

We had just turned a corner when I stopped dead in my tracks, West plowing into me from behind, Avian and Tuck nearly tripping over him.

The barrel of a shotgun pressed tightly to my chest.

THIRTY-ONE

“Who are you?” a thickly built man with graying hair demanded.  “How’d you get here?”

“We walked,” I started, holding my hands up, despite the weaponry that hung all over my body.  “We found your sign.  We came looking, to see if there was anyone still alive.”

He lowered his gun slightly.  Now it was just pointed at my feet.  “We haven’t seen anyone else in well over a year.  We weren’t sure there was anyone left.”

“There are more of us,” Avian started.  “We’re only part of a fairly large group.  Half are still back east.  The rest of us are hidden about sixty miles from here.”

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

There was a vehicle parked behind him.  It looked like a miniature version of our truck.  We climbed into the bed, the other man cautiously sat behind the wheel.  He kept glancing back at us every few seconds.  As we started down the street I was expecting the normal engine noise I knew a vehicle should make.  This one was soundless.

“Electric,” West said when he saw my confusion.  “Now I believe you owe Avian and I an apology?”

“For what?” I asked.

“For doubting, for telling us we were wrong.  There are people here.  Apparently more than one considering he said ‘we’.”

I just shook my head and watched the buildings as they whipped by.  Avian, who sat smashed against my side in the tight quarters of the small vehicle, slipped his hand into mine.

Empty eyes of the Bane watched us as we sped down the crumbling streets.  I watched for signs of other life, surely this man was not alone out here.  But I didn’t see any, just the sad reminders of the empire the human race had once had.

“Where do you think he is taking us?” Tuck asked.

“It will be somewhere incredibly secure,” I said as I continued to observe.  “They probably don’t have enough CDUs to give to each of their scouts.  I assume they have them.  I’m sure he’s taking us wherever there is one.”

Avian’s hand tightened around mine and I noticed how he readjusted his hold on his rifle.  Unease washed over me.  Not for fear that I might be shorted out in the next hour, but that Avian might do something stupid trying to protect me.

“Don’t,” I whispered to him.

“I’m not going to let them do anything to you,” he said, keeping his eyes forward.

“But I’ll never forgive you if you get yourself killed because of me,” I said quietly, giving his hand a small squeeze.

“Same goes here,” he said as he glanced over at me for just a moment.

We drove for not more than ten minutes when I started seeing them.  Humans, standing on top of the towering buildings, watching us from above.  Each was heavily armed and looked like they knew how to use their weapons.

We slowed down as we approached a building that had levels upon levels and spanned massively in both directions.

“A real hospital,” Avian breathed.

The vehicle we sat in pulled around to the back of the hospital and straight through a huge door.  As we stopped inside and the door closed behind us.

There were five armed men just inside.  They each looked as surprised to see us as the first man had been.

“Where’s Royce?” the man who had brought us here asked as he climbed out of the truck.  He indicated for us to climb out, his gun pointed at our backs.  I wondered if he realized how ridiculous he looked with his one single shotgun when we each had at least three firearms on us.

“He’s upstairs,” one of the men answered him.

“That way,” he said as he prodded West in the back with the barrel.

As we moved I observed rows and rows of vehicles in this concrete expanse of a room.  Each of them were shiny and beautiful.  They had picked through the best of all the cars, trucks, and vans they could find.

We walked to an elevator and the doors slid closed behind us.  When the doors opened again there was a hallway stretched out before us, buzzing with the hum of electric devices behind closed doors.

We walked where the man told us to, stopping at a door midway down the hall.  The man knocked, listening.

“Come in,” a voice called.

There were four people inside, gathered around a large desk, looking over some papers.  A man with well-trimmed gray hair and a beard straightened.  I assumed this was Royce.

“I found them on patrol,” the man behind us said.  “They said they found one of our signs and came to take a look.”

“Are there more of you?” the man asked, his gray eyes showing hints of excitement that had given away the rest of them.

Avian nodded his head.  “There are sixteen more of us waiting outside the city.  The other half of our group is at our old camp.  About 800 miles away.”

The man’s eyes widened.  “You’ve traveled a long ways to reach us.  How was the journey?”

“We made it,” Avian said simply.

“Forgive our unfriendly welcome,” he said as he walked around the table, his arms folded over his chest.  “I’m sure you understand the precautions we have to take these days.”

“Of course,” Avian said.  I heard the anxiety that was creeping into his voice.

“Come with me, please,” Royce said as he stepped around us and out of the room.  We followed silently.

Just looking at Royce, one would think he was a leader.  His stature was tall and confident.  His shoulders were sure, his gait unfaltering.  He looked like a man who knew what he was doing, all the time.

Royce led us down the hall and into a room that had no windows and was totally empty of anything other than a leather case lying on a table.  He opened it up as we stepped inside.  Other soldiers followed us in.  I didn’t miss the weapons in their belts, in their pockets, and obviously in their hands.  And I was very aware of the fact that they had closed the door behind us.

It looked different than ours but it was unmistakably a CDU.  As if on cue, West, Avian, and Tuck adjusted their stances so they were standing just in front of me.

“This shouldn’t hurt gentlemen, and lady,” Royce said with a tight-lipped smile as he charged it up.  The center of it glowed a brilliant blue.  “Just a small shock.”

Avian stepped up first, pulling the sleeve of his shirt up and offering his arm.  It twitched as the device was pressed to his arm.  West went next, followed by Tuck.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Royce said, giving them that same tight-lipped, fake looking smile.  “My lady.”

The three of them tightened around me.  As they did, Royce’s eyes hardened and he stopped in his tracks.  “You know all newcomers must be tested.  She is no exception.”

“She is,” West said quietly.

“She’s different,” Avian said, trying to keep his voice calm.

As if their words had opened up a book on our faces, Royce’s eyes widened and he took a step back, drawing a handgun out from the belt of his pants.  As he did, the rest of the people in the room drew their weapons as well.

“Hold on!” Avian shouted as he backed further into me, holding his hands up toward our captors.  “She’s not a Bane!  But she has cybernetic parts in her.  She’s different from them.”

“They’re all the same!” Royce shouted as he aimed his gun at my head.  “She’s a danger being here.  My scouts should have shot her before she came within a hundred feet of this building.”

“She can’t be infected!” West shouted at the man.  “She was experimented on.  My grandfather was Dr. Evans.  He worked at NovaTor Biotics.  She was his preliminary test before TorBane was fully developed.”

“Dr. Evans?” Royce spat out.  “That heartless scum bag created the infection.  He wouldn’t have bothered with a hybrid.  In his quest for savior status he destroyed the world.”

“Yes he did, but I assure you he was my grandfather.  My father evolved early on and someone set Eve free after everything happened.  She’s human but he did things to her that make her different.  You can’t test her or it will kill her,” West’s voice sounded pleading.

“They are all the same!” Royce shouted as he thrust his gun in our direction again.  “I don’t know how she’s tricked you into thinking differently but it’s a miracle she hasn’t infected you yet.”

At the same time, both Avian and West turned and each took one of my hands.

“She doesn’t carry the infection,” Avian said, his voice serious and low.  “She’s been with me for the last five years and she’s never turned against us.  She’s done nothing but protect us.”

The door at our backs suddenly opened and a very tanned looking face with jet-black hair popped in.

“What is all the shouting about?” he asked, his voice sounding slightly alarmed.

“She’s one of them,” Royce said, his voice cold.  “They’re claiming she’s different.”

The new man’s eyes jumped to my face and his eyes narrowed at me.  “Eve?”

“How do you know my name?” I spoke for the first time since we had been brought in.

“It’s really you,” he breathed as he stepped inside.  “You survived.”

“Dr. Beeson?” West asked with uncertainty in his voice.

“West!”  The man didn’t hide his surprise when his eyes met West’s.  They paused for a moment when their eyes met, almost as if some sort of unspoken message passed between them in that moment.  Dr. Beeson’s eyes grew serious, and he gave the smallest of nods.

“You were the one who took over my observation,” I said as the name from the notebook echoed in my memory.

He nodded, his eyes still wide.

“So, you’re saying they’re telling the truth, Erik?” Royce demanded.

“She is different, yes,” Dr. Beeson said as he glanced over at Royce.  “She had a chip implanted into her brain that enhanced her.  She was a preliminary experiment that led up to the infection.  Since she was given TorBane at such a young age, and so precisely, it blended with her DNA, stayed under control.  If you use that on her, it will kill her,” he said as he indicated the CDU Royce still had clutched in his hand.

“If I turn on you, you can shoot me yourself,” I said to Royce with hard eyes.

He looked at me long and hard, distrust written all over his face.

“Remove her weapons from her,” Royce said.  “I won’t have you walking around here armed like that.”

I saw West’s eyes flash to my face in momentary panic.  I shook my head at him.  I didn’t like it either but I also didn’t see any other way to get through this.

Their men relieved me of my weapons.  When one of them reached for my pack, I grabbed his wrist, shaking my head at him.  His eyes grew wide and he withdrew his hand, backing away.  I almost smiled.

“You’re sure she’s different, Erik?” Royce asked again, his eyes narrowed.

“Quite,” he said as he opened the door and held it open for everyone.

Royce finally lowered his weapon.  As he did, the rest of his men followed suit.  “Forgive me if I’m not exactly welcoming,” he said as his face softened, though his eyes were still cold on me.  “I’m not so keen on the reliability of a human-Bane hybrid I’ve never heard of.”

“I wasn’t so keen on the idea myself when I first found out what I was,” I said back, never loosing eye contact.

Everyone else in the room probably missed it, but my enhanced eyes caught the twitch in his cheek as a smile was fought back.

“Well, gentlemen,” Royce said as he started for the door.  “And lady.  Welcome to Los Angeles.  This is our sanctuary in the middle of hell on Earth.”

We followed him back out into the hall and Dr. Beeson broke off from the rest of us.  He looked nervous and pale as he walked away.

“Our offices are on this level, as well as several of our labs,” Royce said as he indicated the doors down this hall.  We followed him back where we had come from and reentered the elevator.  My stomach felt strange as we started to descend.  The door opened to a different level, this one bustling with people, opening up into a big lobby.

“This is our other headquarters,” Royce said as we stepped out and into the busy room.  “Everything runs from this room.  All the scheduling for patrol, shifts in the kitchen, maintenance, it’s all managed here.  Everything is logged in, tracked.  We keep a tight schedule but everything runs smoothly.”

I noticed the solid steel shutters that covered the front door, all of the windows, and every other opening.

“Keeps out things we don’t want getting in,” Royce said when he noticed me observing them.

“You keep them out during the day, even in the middle of all of this,” I said, impressed.

Royce nodded as we continued to follow him toward the back of the big front area.  We entered another hallway, this one wider and more open than the one upstairs.  “Restrooms are right there,” he said, pointing to a pair of wooden doors.  I wondered what he meant by “restrooms.”

We turned a corner and came into another fairly large room with tables and chairs set up everywhere.  Along one wall was some sort of glass case and beyond that I could see the strangest looking kitchen I had ever seen.  It was all shiny steel and smooth surfaces.

“Back there’s the kitchen,” Royce said as he pointed in that direction.  “Meals are served at nine PM, one AM, and seven AM.  Pretty much all of us keep a nocturnal schedule here.  Dinner will be served in about two hours,” he said as he glanced at his watch.  “Most of us wake up around eight PM, just before the sun starts to go down outside.  Bed is around ten AM.”

“Doesn’t this place start to feel like a prison?” I couldn’t help but asking.  “You never even see the sun.”

“Our lifestyle isn’t easy,” Royce said as he met my eyes.  “But it’s kept over one hundred people alive all this time.”

“There are that many of you?” West asked in amazement.

“For a few years we were gaining five or six new people a year.  Then it started becoming fewer and fewer.  There’s been no one for the last year.  We figured there wasn’t anyone left.”

“We found two more people on our way here,” I said as we walked out of the dining room and back out into the hall.  “In the middle of the desert.”

“We look forward to meeting everyone in your group.  I’ve never heard of such a large group traveling so far.  How did you manage it?”

“We drove,” Avian answered.

“I’m impressed,” he said as he raised his brows.  We turned another corner and stopped at a desk where a man in a white jacket sat.  He looked up at us with surprise in his eyes as we approached him.  “This is Dr. Giles.  He’s the head physician here.  These people here traveled from back east,” he explained to Dr. Giles.  After the introduction, Royce excused himself for a moment and stepped into a side room.

“Congratulations on surviving,” Dr. Giles said.  I watched as Avian and Tuck shook his hand, observing closely so I did it just right when it came my turn.  The motion felt strange and foreign.

“You’re a real doctor?” Avian asked, longing and awe in his voice.

“Board certified,” he said with a smile.  His teeth were astonishingly white.  “Well, used to be before there was no more board to pass.  There are three other medical doctors here as well.”

The amazement was obvious in Avian’s eyes as he shook his head.

“Avian has been our doctor for the last five years,” I said, feeling a sense of pride in him.

“Ah, wonderful,” Dr. Giles said.  “Where was your practice before the Evolution?”

“Uh,” Avian stumbled over his words.  “I actually never attended medical school.  I had two and a half years of medical training when I was in the Army.  Since I had the most experience I became the doctor.  I learned most of my knowledge through experience.”

“Very good,” Dr. Giles said, something in his eyes changing.  It took me a moment to realize what it was.  It was the loss of respect.  I suddenly didn’t like the doctor half as much.  I’d like to see this man treat a bullet wound in the middle of the forest with next to no supplies.

“Do you mind if I take a look around your quarters?” Avian asked, unbothered.

“We have a few open rooms you’re welcome to examine,” he said, his friendly demeanor back.  “And so is our surgery room.  We have patients in a few rooms so I’ll ask you to keep quiet.”

He led us into a room that was so sterile I hesitated in the doorway with my dusty boots and dirty clothes.

Avian walked into the room alone while the rest of us waited in the doorway.  His eyes were excited as he observed the strange bed with rails on the side of it.  He ran his hands over a piece of equipment that stood as tall as him, all kinds of buttons and screens on it.  He opened and closed drawers and I could just imagine what he would have done for all of these supplies.

I realized then what the fact that there were four doctors here meant.  If we stayed here, moved the rest of Eden into this city, Avian would never have to be tied down because of his medical knowledge again.  He would be free to do whatever he wanted.  He could go anywhere.

Dr. Giles took us to the surgery room, but only let us look in through a window.  As I observed the steel blades that lay out, gleaming in the light as it shone through the window, my breath caught in my throat.  I saw the steel table in the middle of the room and my nightmares came back at me like a punch in the gut.

The sound of the drill and the cool against the back of my shaven head were all I could process.

“Come on,” West’s voice said from somewhere and I felt him take my hand and lead me back out into the hall.

I stood with my back against the tall desk, holding my arms around me.  My eyes were open but I wasn’t seeing anything.  West stood to the side of me, his arm draped around my shoulders, squeezing me into his side.

Avian finally walked back out into the hall and stopped in his tracks.  He looked at me, glanced back in the direction of the surgery room, and his face blanched white.  “Eve, I’m so sorry,” he said, his eyes looking panicked.

I just shook my head, my eyes glued to the floor.  Avian was suddenly standing right in front of me, his hands on either side of my face.  As I looked up into his blue eyes, I felt my insides loosen up.  I still felt sick though.

“You shouldn’t be touching her,” Avian said, his voice cold as he looked over at West.  “Having her black out here is not going to help Eve’s case.”  He spoke quietly enough only the three of us could hear.

West only looked at Avian coldly as he took two steps away from me.  All three of us glanced over at Royce who had just stepped out of the room and Dr. Giles who watched us with hesitancy.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” Avian said as he stepped away from me slightly.  “Just bad memories for some of us.”

They both gave slight nods, though they still looked at me warily.

“I’ll show you our sleeping quarters,” Royce said, dismissing the awkward moment.  He walked back out into the main hall and continued down.  As we followed, West slipped his hand into mine.  I shook it off, remembering what Avian had said to him.  It was too great of a risk, having West send me into overload here.  West should have understood that.

We entered another hall that was lined with doors.  These ones were different however.  They had names written on them, some written in clear, precise letters, others painted in colored fonts that I could hardly read.

“These are the living quarters,” Royce said as we walked passed personalized doors.  “Of course they were once just normal hospital rooms.  We’ve converted them into living space.  Each of them has their own restroom.  They’re not large but they’re big enough to keep all of your personal effects in and get some sleep.”

“What’s a ‘restroom’,” I whispered to Tuck as we walked.

He gave a slight chuckle and whispered in my ear.  My brow furrowed.  “If that’s what it is why do they call it a restroom?”

Tuck just smiled again and shrugged his shoulders.

We came to the end of the hall and opened a door that revealed a set of stairs.  As we exited on the next floor up, we discovered another hallway of personalized doors.

“Would you like rooms for this afternoon?” Royce asked as we stopped in the middle of the hallway.  “I hope you plan on staying with us.  Of course you’re free to leave whenever you like but I would encourage you to stay.  We can offer you protection, food, comfort.”

Comfort.  I was pretty sure I would be more comfortable out in the woods than I would be in this boxed-up prison.

“We’re not sure what our plans are honestly,” Avian said as he glanced at West, Tuck, and I.

“We weren’t even sure if we’d find anyone alive, or if we were walking into a death trap,” West said.

“I’m sure we could all use some sleep though,” Avian continued.  “I know at least I would like to stay for another day, explore your facility more.  I’m fascinated by how you’ve managed to thrive in the middle of a city.”

Royce nodded.  “Of course.  This way.”  He led us further down the hall.  “You can use these three rooms.”

“Three?” I questioned.  “There are four of us.”

Royce looked confused for a moment.  “I’m sorry, I assumed the two of you would want a room together,” he said as he indicated Avian and I.  I then remembered how he had watched as Avian had held my face between his hands, how close our faces had been together.

“If you have four rooms,” West jumped in, not looking at Avian or I.

A small smile crossed Royce’s face.  “That one is available as well,” he said as he pointed at the door across from the other three.  “Will you remember how to get back to the dining room in an hour for dinner?”

We each nodded our heads and Royce turned and left.

Before I would have to face any more of the awkwardness between the two of them I let myself into one of the rooms and closed the door behind me.

The room felt so sterile, just like the rest of the hospital.  The walls were all white, the bed made up with white sheets, white pillows.  Even the wooden drawers and cupboards felt too clean and pristine.

I longed for my tent back in Eden.

I opened a door, finding the restroom.  The hint of a smile tugged on my face as I saw the shower, remembering the one real one I had had in the cabin I had found.

A knock on the door startled me.  “Who is it?” I called through the thick wood.

“I’ve brought you some things,” a female voice called from behind the door.

Hesitantly, I opened it.  The girl behind it looked close to my age.  Her eyes were narrow and dark, her hair jet black and perfectly straight.

“My name is Lin,” she said, giving me a smile.  Her eyes seemed to almost disappear when she did so.  “I brought you a few things.”

She was standing next to a cart with wheels.  She grabbed a gray colored blanket, a few items of clothing, and a few bottles of unknown liquid.

“What are these?” I asked as I opened the lids and took a wiff.  They smelled nice.

“To wash your hair?” she said, her face looking slightly confused.  The smallest of a laugh escaped her lips but it didn’t feel mocking.

“Thank you,” I said as I put all my new things under my arm.  There was something about this girl I liked.  She seemed…warm.

“If you need anything else, any help, I’m just a few doors down,” she said as she pointed down the hall.  “My door is the one with the white lily painted on it.”

“Thank you, Lin,” I said again.  She gave me another smile and crossed the hall to knock on another door.

I went back into the bathroom and after a few minutes figured out how to get the hot water to flow.  My clothes felt crusted as I pealed them off.  I quickly washed them in the sink and then hung them to dry.

A sigh escaped my throat as the hot water poured over my beat and scarred body.  My muscles relaxed and even my insides felt cleaner as I breathed in the steam.  The water ran brown for a while, the desert we had survived going down the polished silver drain.

I used the products Lin had given me on my hair.  I ended up lathering it all over my entire body it smelled so nice.  My hair felt so smooth after it all washed out.

But the relief the shower and hot water provided didn’t last long.  The situation waiting outside my door crept back in on me.  I stood with my hands braced against the shower wall, the water cascading over my head.  I didn’t want to go back out there, to where I knew people didn’t trust me.  Facing Avian and West felt like too much to deal with right now.  It was all to exhausting to think about.

After almost an hour, I climbed out of the shower, dried off with the towel Lin had given me, and pulled on the stark green clothes.  Grabbing the gray blanket, I curled up in my new bed.

I had finally hit my limit.  Just a few seconds later I was out.

THIRTY-TWO

The ceiling above my head confused me when I first woke.  Dim lights glowed along the floor as I slid my feet off the edge of the bed.  I walked to the now open window and looked out.

How strange, to live in this concrete jungle.  Small patches of green cropped up but it was being choked out by the gray cement, steel, and glass.  And everywhere I could see eyes.  How could they stand it, being in the middle of them all, all the time?  How had they kept them out?

The lights glowed brightly overhead as I walked out into the empty hall.  My steps echoed as I descended the stairs.  I had to take a deep breath as I stood behind the steel door, gathering courage to go out into the unknown.  Why was it so simple to go on a raid into the city, knowing I might not come back alive, and yet walking out among those strangers, among other humans, was so hard and terrifying?

I traced my way back to the infirmary, passed the dining hall and kitchen, and out into the bustling lobby.  I stood at the entrance of the hall for a while, watching as the people moved around.

In a way, they were all like soldiers.  They all had their orders, a task to execute.  Some of them entered what I assumed was some kind of information into black boxes, presumably computers, a few cleaned the area, other’s brought in sheets of paper.  The guard switched as a handful of armed men walked out those glass front doors.  I wondered where I would fit into this hive.

I saw no signs of Avian, West, or Tuck and I felt awkward for a while, unsure of what to do with myself.  And I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t know where any of my weapons had gone to.

“Eve,” a familiar voice called from behind me.  As I turned, I recognized Dr. Beeson.  His smile was bright as he approached me.  “I was just looking for you.  You’re companion, Avian, said you were still resting.”

“I overslept,” I said simply as we stood together.

“Would you mind chatting with me for a while?  I’m dying of curiosity as to what has happened to you the past five years.”

“I suppose,” I agreed.  This man didn’t seem like a threat, and even without any weapons I was quite confident I could overpower him if I had to.

We walked to the elevator, a dozen pairs of eyes watching us as we did.  He pushed the number seven button and slowly we began to rise again.  When it slid open I was almost startled at all the brilliant blue lights that ran through the walls, along the floor, on the ceiling.

“We use a lot of power on this floor.  This level has been specially wired to keep up,” he explained.

We walked down the hall a little bit, stopping at a large solid black door.  Dr. Beeson entered a code into a number pad and it clicked open.

The room we entered into glowed with the blue lights, heavily contrasted by the darkness of having no windows into the starlit night.  Screens glowed from the walls, flashes of information bursting across them.

“This is my office, my lab,” he said as he looked around the room with me.  For some reason all the information flashing across his screens seemed familiar, like a language I had forgotten how to speak.  “Please, have a seat.”

I sat in one of the two overly comfortable black chairs, perched on the edge of it, my hands tucked between my knees.

“So, I assume you know what happened to you?” he asked, his voice losing its cheeriness.  He had that slightly uncomfortable look on his face again.  “About the things that were done to you?”

I nodded my head.  “I know that West’s grandfather, NovaTor, experimented on me.  The military came in and forced him to place some kind of chip in my brain.  I was observed for years and eventually he used the information he gathered from me to create the infection.”

I stopped there, swallowing the lump in my throat.

Dr. Beeson nodded.  “First, let me say that I never agreed with what they were doing to you.  I was a young scientist then, working on my development of the capacity of the human mind to receive wireless signals.  I was fascinated with the work he was doing on you.  But you were just a girl.  What Dr. Evans and NovaTor did was wrong.

“But, if we would have been able to control what happened, we would have saved millions of lives.”

“Instead billions were killed,” I said coldly.

“Unforgivable,” he said as his eyes dropped to the ground.  “I first tried to remedy what I did by setting you free.  I used the wireless capability of the chip in your brain to wipe your memory clean.  No girl should have to remember the things you were put through.  I assume it worked?”

“I have dreams sometimes,” I said quietly, my eyes falling to my hands.  “How much of it is purely nightmare and how much of it is something real, I don’t know.”

“The brain is a complex thing.  I’m sorry I couldn’t spare you from everything.”

“Will those memories ever be recovered?” I asked.

“I have no reason to think so,” he said.  “Would you really want to remember the rest of it though?”

I had to think about it for a while.  “No.”

“There were only five of us that escaped that facility, and yet I’m the only one who made it to Los Angeles.  Everyone else evolved so quickly.  It’s a miracle that I made it out.  I tasked one of the other men who made it out to take you out into the country and set you free.  I never saw that man again.”

“Avian found me,” I filled in the empty blanks of the past.  “Nearly naked out in the forest, covered in blood, but with not a scratch on me.”  Dr. Beeson’s face faltered at that.  Ignoring his confusion, I continued.  “They knew something was different about me.  They just didn’t know what.  I only found out a few months ago.”

“Tell me what you’re able to do,” he said, excitement building in his eyes again.  “Has the programming evolved more?  The cybernetics?”

I sat forward again, rubbing my hand over the thin scar that had already formed on the back of my hand from when I had punched a hole through the metal door at the Air Force base.  “I heal quickly,” I started.  “I don’t usually feel pain.  Electricity is about the only thing I seem to feel.  It’s made me pass out before though, pain.  My brain still registers it I guess.

“I don’t require as much sleep as normal.  I don’t get tired very easily.  I don’t need to eat as much as normal people.  I’m faster than everyone, stronger than most.”

“Have you ever been up against a Bane?”

The smile on my face couldn’t be fought back.  “More than a few times.  I didn’t understand what was happening the first time one tackled me.  I thought I was going to change.  But I didn’t.”

“Do you understand why?” he asked.

“Not really,” I answered.

“Because you were given TorBane at such a young age, and in such a specific, controlled way, your body was able to control the technology.  You are able to handle it the way it was supposed to work on everyone.  After you were given the chip and we saw that more of your body was turning cybernetic, everyone assumed it was because of the chip.  But in reality, it was just a precursor to what the later strains of TorBane would do.”

I struggled to keep up with what he was saying.  I didn’t understand it all, but it made some sense.

“Have you seen any traces of the cybernetic parts that have saturated your system?”

I nodded.  “The Bane have these metal barbs that shock you.  I grabbed some once and it burned away my skin,” I said as I turned my hand over, observing the scars there.  “I could see all the gears and wires.”

“That must have been frightening for you,” he said.

“But you know that I’m not supposed to feel fear,” I said quietly as my eyes rose to meet his.

He didn’t say anything for a while as he held my stare.  I wondered how he lived with himself, knowing he had helped bring about the end of the world and then survived to see the destruction.  “You’re right.  You aren’t supposed to feel emotion.  But we suspected that eventually you would evolve past the programming.  Occasionally there were signs that you were moving past it and we’d have to make adjustments.   There were times when you got overwhelmed by your emotions and you just blacked out.  Just like those Bane you see outside.”

I swallowed hard, my stomach knotting up.  “It still happens.”

“Really?” he said, his eyebrows knitting together as he sat back in his chair.

“But only when I’m around one certain person.”

“And how do you feel about this person?”

“That’s the unanswerable question,” I said quietly.

“Do you have romantic feelings for him?  Or maybe an extreme hatred?”

I gave a hollow chuckle.  “I think both.”

“It’s one of the men you arrived with, isn’t it?” he said with a sly smile.

I nodded.  “I didn’t feel things like this until he showed up at our camp.  Something inside of me started waking up.  I don’t know how to handle it.  He makes me feel excited, free, and yet he can anger me so much I almost tried to kill him once.  And then I just black out.”

“It’s probably overloading you, or rather the chip.  Your body is telling you to feel things but the chip is trying its hardest to block it all out.  Your brain and the chip can’t work together and it shuts you down in a way.  I don’t think you will be a danger to anyone.  It’s not like you’re turning into a Bane.  You just kind of…shut down.”

It was a relief to have it so plainly explained to me.  And to know I wasn’t going to try and kill anyone.  If only the other parts related to it all could be so easily explained.

“Can we talk about something else?” I asked.  My voice sounded smaller than I would have liked it to.

“Of course,” he said mercifully.  “Would you like to see the woman who was your mother?”

“What?” I said, my voice almost sounding like a hiccup.

Dr. Beeson smiled, small lines forming around his dark eyes.  He turned in his swivel chair and pulled a drawer open.  He rooted around in it for a moment and then pulled out a packet of pages.

“Her name was Emma,” he said opening the packet.  He leafed through the pages for a moment.  And then he handed me a photo.

The woman who looked back at me was beautiful.  Her hair was tied back, perfectly smooth.  Her skin was flawless looking.  She had a sophisticated pair of glasses perched on her nose.

If she was about fifteen pounds thinner and her skin a bit more roughed up from the wilderness, she would have looked exactly like me.

“She worked for NovaTor.  She was a lab research assistant,” Dr. Beeson said, looking through more of the pages.  I couldn’t look away from the woman’s face though.  “She was young, just starting her master’s degree.  But she was brilliant.  She was going to go far.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“What happens to a lot of young, pretty girls,” he said with a sigh.  “She had this boyfriend.  They were on and off every other month.  Loved each other like crazy, but also couldn’t stand the sight of each other.  I don’t think Emma ever told him she was pregnant.”

He handed me another few pictures.  One looked like it was taken at some kind of party.  They were all wearing white jackets, holding up a sign that said happy birthday.  She stood behind the sign looking rather embarrassed.  There was another one behind that picture that was more of a candid shot.  She stood next to a table, reading some papers.  Her belly was large and rounded.

Dr. Beeson cleared his throat and took the last two pictures back.  I thought I saw something flicker in his eyes but couldn’t be sure.

“Where is she?” I asked.  “Why didn’t she take care of me?”

“She died,” Dr. Beeson said.  “Giving birth to you.”

My stomach dropped out.  “She died giving birth?  That was very uncommon, wasn’t it?  Women didn’t die often during child birth before the Evolution.”

Dr. Beeson nodded.  “Yes, it was.  Tragic.  Emma didn’t have any family.  Both her parents had died years ago, she was an only child.  We didn’t even know her boyfriend’s name.  Her work and school were her life.

“We weren’t sure what to do with you.  There was no family to send you to.  You were born more than two months premature.  You were underdeveloped.  Sick.  You were going to die.  Dr. Evans senior decided to do the first human test of TorBane on you.  He didn’t tell anyone he was going to do it.  He just did it.  He figured you were going to die anyway.

“It might have been wrong, and immoral.  But he did save your life with TorBane.  And that’s the reason you don’t infect anyone.  You were given the technology before you were even supposed to be born, in such a controlled and precise way.  It’s a part of your very DNA.  It stays contained in you.”

I nodded, my brain still trying to process all the information and keep up.  “So,” I said, having to force my voice to work.  “My father, he could still be out there?”

Dr. Beeson’s eyes saddened.  “I wouldn’t count on it, Eve.  You know how few are still out there.”

I nodded.  It was true.  There was no way he was still alive.

“You can keep that, if you like,” he said, pointing at the picture.

“Thank you.”

“Eve,” he said in a low voice.  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.  “I know how confusing emotions can be, for anyone.  It isn’t fair that it should be ten times worse for you because of what NovaTor did to you.  I think I can help that.”

My brows pulled together as my eyes met his.  “What do you mean?”

He held my eyes for a long time, like he was analyzing something.  He almost looked like maybe he had spoken too soon and now he wondered if he should take it back.  But a moment later, he gave the slightest of nods as if he’d made up his mind.

“Your emotional blockers were done with the chip in your head.  It was all done wirelessly.  And I think I could remove them.”

I stared at him blankly for a long moment, not fully comprehending what he was saying.

“I think we would have to do it slowly,” he continued.  “I’m afraid if I just erased it all at once it would overwhelm you.  Your body and your brain couldn’t handle it.  But I think if we do it bit by bit, over a length of time, you could be brought back to normal.

“You wouldn’t have blackouts anymore.”

My eyes dropped to the floor, my breathing coming in shallow swallows.  I would finally understand what everyone else felt.  I could allow myself to feel.  There wouldn’t be any danger of me attacking anyone any longer.

“Would you like to give it a try, Eve?”

The back of my eyes started to sting just slightly as I nodded my head.

“I can start it right now,” he said as he glanced at his computer screens.  “It won’t take very long.  I will however, have to kind of shut you down for a while to do it.  It will take a reboot, if you will, for everything to take effect.”

Something inside of me swelled as I thought about the possibilities.  It was followed by a flood of adrenaline.

“Do it.”

THIRTY-THREE

There were only a few people left in the dining hall when I wandered down the next day.  I was handed a scoop of pears, a pile of steaming eggs and a glass of ice cold, formerly powdered milk.  I sat at a table in the corner of the room, shoveling everything down so fast the real chicken eggs burned my throat.

After Dr. Beeson’s reprogram, I expected to feel astronomically different.  I’d expected to feel overwhelmed.  But I only felt more aware of everything.  Like everything looked just a little brighter.  But like Dr. Beeson said, we were going to have to do this in baby steps.

I caught sight of Royce approaching from across the room.  I observed him as he moved toward me.  He was in good shape, especially for being in his later forties I guessed.  His nose was straight, his jaw sharp.  He looked like a leader you would want to follow.

He sat down at the table across from me.  “Erik told me everything that happened,” he said directly.  There was no dancing around with Royce.  I appreciated that about him.  “Everything about what was done to you as a child.  I also talked with Avian.  He told me what you did for the members of Eden.  For his sister.

“I’m sorry for my behavior before,” he said uncomfortably.  I had a feeling Royce wasn’t one that apologized often.  “What you’ve been though is unfathomable.”

“We could use a soldier like you,” he said as he held my eyes steadily.  “It’s getting harder and harder to keep them out, times are changing.  We want to invite you, and the rest of your group to join with us.  We would be honored to have all of you here.”

I just looked at him, trying to make my brain process everything.  I felt sluggish from Dr. Beeson’s reboot.  “What did Avian say?” I asked.

“He hasn’t given me an answer yet.  I talked with West and Tuck as well.  They both liked the idea but wouldn’t give an answer without consulting with the rest of your group.”

I nodded.  “My answer is the same.  It’s not just my decision.”

Royce nodded.  “That’s fine.  I wouldn’t expect anything different.  I want to show you something though.  All four of you.”

I stood, returned my plate and glass for cleaning, and followed Royce out into the main front room.  We spotted West reading a book in a corner and Royce indicated for him to come with us.  West marked his place, set the book down and joined us.

“There are a few things I want to show you,” Royce repeated to West.  We spotted Tuck across the room as well, talking to a woman.  He joined us.

We entered the medical wing and Avian came walking out of a room with a doctor I had not seen yet.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” the new doctor said.  “I’d love to give it a try sometime.”

“When we have more time I’ll tell you how I removed a tree branch from a man’s chest cavity in the middle of the forest with no medical supplies.  Without killing him,” Avian said with a chuckle.

“Okay,” the doctor laughed back.  He shook Avian’s hand and walked into another room.

“There’s something I’d like to show you,” Royce said when Avian turned his eyes on us.  We all headed for the elevator.

We stepped out into the blue glowing hallway and approached the door to Dr. Beeson’s lab.  We stopped just outside it.

“I understand your hesitancies in joining us,” Royce started.  “Living here has its challenges.  But I want you to understand the benefits that come with a place like this, besides the obvious of electricity and running water.”

He opened the door and we crowded into the room.  Dr. Beeson sat inside, staring at the flashing screens before him.

“Erik has developed technology that interfaces with the Bane,” Royce started explaining.  “Trust me, there are endless Hunters out there who would have ripped this building apart, bit by bit, if not for his research.”

“Hunters?” Avian asked, his brow furrowing.

“Hunters, strikers, finishers,” Royce said, looking at us.  “Call them what you like.”

“What do you mean?” West questioned, folding his arms over his chest.

“You know about the three classes of Bane, don’t you?” Royce said, his eyes a mix of disbelieving and annoyance.

“No,” Avian answered simply.

“May I, Eric?” Royce asked, reaching for a writing instrument that sat on his desk.  Dr. Beeson just nodded his head, not even taking his eyes from the screens.

Royce grabbed the marker and turned to a blank space of wall between some of the monitors.  He uncapped it and started writing on the wall.  His letters glowed brilliant green.

“You have Babies,” he said as he wrote the word.  “Sleepers…and Hunters.  At least that’s what we like to call them.

“Babies are the newly infected,” Royce said, capping the marker again and handing it back to Dr. Beeson.  “This stage doesn’t last long.  Usually a month, at the most.”

“But Babies?” West questioned, his voice hinting at mockery.

“Babies come into this world screaming, kicking, and fighting like you can’t believe.  But they’re also weak, not very smart.  They run off of instinct.  Just like a newly infected.

“Sleepers are self-explanatory.  They’re the ones that just stand around, watching us.  Are you familiar with how the tech works after you are infected?”

“What is there to understand?” West said.  “You get touched, the cybernetics start to take over, and after that all you care about is infecting everyone else.  Spreading the cybernetics and creating more Bane.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Royce said, shaking his head.  “Just after you get infected your brain and body go into overdrive.  Survival instincts take over.  But your brain can’t handle the new technology.  They conflict.  That’s why the Babies don’t stay Babies for long.  Their brains eventually shut down.”

“And they become Sleepers,” I said.

“Exactly,” Royce said.  “The Bane basically go into a coma after a few weeks.  Their minds just shut down.  It takes time for the brain to be rewired.  The technology works its way into every part of you quickly, but the brain isn’t so simple.  Sleepers stay asleep for a long time.”

“Like how long?” Avian asked.

“Like a few years usually,” Royce answered.  “The process is slow.  But deadly effective.  They wake up and are ready for action.  They’re ready to complete their task.”

“So it is the Hunters that are so aggressive,” I said.  “They’re the ones who are attacking us?”

“The last class of Bane aren’t just aggressive,” Royce said, his eyes clouding in the way only eyes that had seen too much destruction could.  “They’re getting smarter.”

His words hung in the air for a moment.  None of us said anything, unable to accept the truth.

“The Bane, they’re starting to think like machines,” Royce finally continued.  “They’re calculating, they analyze.  They are starting to think about their actions and they’re trying to outsmart us.  And it’s just going to keep getting worse, the longer they’re alive.”

“Then how are you all still alive here in the middle of a city?” West questioned.

“Like I said, Erik has developed technology that interfaces with the Bane,” Royce continued.  “We wouldn’t be alive without his research.”

That explained how he’d been able to make my adjustments.

“You can control them?” West asked.

“What we can do is very limited,” Dr. Beeson said as he tore his eyes away from the screen before him.  “It’s difficult to transmit information to such a large amount of receptacles.  If we could focus only on one Bane we could probably make it do just about anything.  But with so many, pretty much all we can do is tell them to keep away from this building.”

“So in a way, you make this building invisible, or make them forget that it’s here?” West questioned.  He eyed the information on the screens closely.  I wondered if he understood any of it.  “It’s kind of like when Eve controls them.”

“You can?” both Royce and Dr. Beeson exclaimed at the same time.

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  I’ve just made them stop what they were doing before.  All I did was tell them to get away.  For some reason they listened.”

Dr. Beeson’s eyes narrowed at me and that look crossed his face again.  “The chip in your brain is set up for wireless transmission.  As you know, that is how we made adjustments.  You were never supposed to be able to send signals.”

“Evolution, Dr. Beeson,” West said as he glanced over at me.

“So, could I be controlled with that?” I asked hesitantly, pointing at the screens.  Dr. Beeson looked back at them.

“I don’t see why not.  The technology is virtually the same.  But this computer is password protected, the door constantly locked, so that only myself and my assistant have access to it.  No one is going to hijack your brain,” he said with the hint of a smile.

“So you see why we are safe here?” Royce said.  “In the four years that we have had this set up, we have never had a breach.  The Bane are getting smarter, but we’re still outsmarting them.”

For now, I couldn’t help but thinking.

“It’s impressive,” West said, studying everything before him.  “Would you mind if I came back later and talked to you about this some more?” he asked Dr. Beeson.

“Of course,” he said with a nod.  “Now, I hope you will excuse me.  I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Thank you, Erik,” Royce said as we walked back out into the glowing hall and closed the door behind us.  “This way.  There’s something else I want you to see.”

We walked further down the hall and opened another heavy black door.  The room we entered into was largely dominated by a terrifying looking steel chair in the center.  Bands for securing a person’s hands were welded to the arms of the chair, another set of bands for the ankles.  The entire chair was surrounded by five metallic arms that rose from the ground, curving in a bowl shape, giving the slight resemblance to a terrifying bird cage.  They shone in a menacing and primal way.

“We’ve been lucky to have the best scientists and engineers who survived at this facility,” Royce said as he approached the contraption.  It almost seemed to glow under the blue lights.  “We worked on this for four years before they got it right.  We started on it before this facility was even fully developed.

“I worked in weapons development and warfare research for the United States government for seventeen years before the Evolution.  It was my concept but I couldn’t have done it without the entire team here in LA.”

“What is it?” Avian asked.

“It’s an extractor.”

“For what?”

“TorBane.”

We all stood in silence for a moment, processing what Royce had just said.

“It extracts the infection?” West said, his voice doubtful.  “As in takes the cybernetics out?”

Royce nodded and started circling the extractor.  “It isn’t always successful.  The person who has been infected must start treatment within an hour of being touched.  After that time frame it seems to always be too late.”

“And it’s worked?” Avian asked in awe.

“On one man.  We’ve tried it on two others but it was not successful.  They had been infected for over two hours though.  The process, however,” Royce paused, looking us in the eye as he rested his hands on the back of the intimidating chair, “is very painful.”

“These are magnetic, aren’t they?” West asked as he approached the extractor and touched one of the rounded arms.  They were taller than he was.

Royce nodded.  “Surgery could never find all the tiny parts.  And you could never operate fast enough.  They’d turn on the table and heal before your eyes.  And then they’d infect you.  With this method, it gets every little piece.  And pulls it right out through your skin.”

“But how could anyone survive that?” Avian asked, his brow furrowing.  “The process would kill you just from the pain you would experience.”

“Anyone going through the treatment is placed in a medically induced coma.  It’s a slow process.  If we pull too fast, all of the person’s insides will be shredded to bits.  We have to extract everything slowly, allowing the body to heal as everything is being pulled out.  And then this,” he said as he pointed to a round disk in the ceiling above us, “keeps it from spreading.  It’s an electrical pulse that contains it.  It’s not strong enough to wipe everything out.  If we crank it up too far, it would kill the person too fast.”

“You wanted to see me, Royce?” a voice from behind us said.  We all turned at once.

“Yes, please come in, Elijah,” Royce said as he stepped forward.  “Elijah underwent extraction five months ago.  He has fully recovered with no traces of cybernetics left.”

Saying this man had fully recovered seemed like a cruel joke.  He wore an eye patch; the eyes were usually the first thing to turn.  Half of his face looked like it had been dragged over the crumbling road, and not let up for hours.  The short sleeved shirt he wore exposed the pocked and scarred skin of his arms.  His hands looked similar.

“Elijah had been on scouting duty when a Hunter cornered him.  As you know, one touch is all it takes.  One of our other scouts killed the Bane and brought Elijah back here.  It had only been just over a half an hour when he started the treatment.”

“How long did it take?” Avian asked.  I saw him swallow hard.  I wondered if he was thinking of Tye, like I was.

“Almost three weeks,” Elijah said.  His voice was as rough sounding as the rest of his body looked.

“This is really amazing,” Avian said, shaking his head.  He just kept blinking, as if what he was seeing would disappear at any moment.

I didn’t blame him.  This didn’t seem real.

“I have to get back to my duties,” Elijah said, looking over at Royce.

“Of course,” he said.  “Thank you for coming.”  Elijah stepped out of the room and I heard his footsteps fade down the hall.

“I see no reason for you not to stay,” Royce said as he turned and looked at the four of us.  “We can keep you fed, keep you safe, comfortable.  I think we have an obligation to keep the human race alive.  We all do.

“But, I understand that you need everyone to make a decision.  We can send vehicles after the rest of your group if you like.  We have military tanks that will keep any Bane out and there is room enough for all the members you brought with you.”

“If we could have a bit of time alone to discuss this, it would be appreciated,” Avian said, glancing at West, Tuck, and I.

“Of course,” Royce nodded.  “You’re welcome to use one of the offices if you’d like.  I will be in my own if you need me.”

We followed Royce back to the elevator.  We entered into an empty room just a few doors down from Royce’s office.  It was devoid of anything but two wooden chairs.

“This is amazing,” West said as he closed the door behind us.  “I wondered how they kept them away here but I never would have imagined it was through wireless communication.”

“And that extractor is incredible,” Avian said, the same excitement in his voice.

“I see no reason we shouldn’t go get everyone else,” West said as he slowly paced the room.

“If they have military tanks they would probably be safe to even go out during the day,” Tuck said quietly.  He’d been so quite this whole time that I’d almost forgotten he was with us.  “Not that they would, but it would be better than us trying to sneak out and get them ourselves.”

“I agree,” Avian said.  “What do you think Eve?”

I shook my head.  Maybe I should have waited until things settled a bit more before I let Dr. Beeson work on my brain.  I still felt foggy.  “I think we should think about it for a few hours.  This all seems very exciting and perfect at the moment, but it might look a little different tomorrow.  There’s no rush to do it right this second.”

None of them said anything for a moment and I could see it in their faces that they wanted to just do this now.  But slowly they came down off the high and back into reality.

“You’re probably right, “Avian said, rubbing a hand over his head.  His hair was getting long from the lack of a shave the last nearly two weeks.  He looked over at West and Tuck who both finally gave a nod.

“Let’s sleep on it,” Avian said with a small nod.  “We can go tomorrow night if that’s what we decide is best.”

They all nodded and headed for the door.

I was the last to exit the room and had gotten just two steps from the door when I felt a hand on my arm.  I turned to see Royce standing just to the side of the door, a finger pressed to his lips for me to stay quiet.

I glanced back at the rest of my group, seeing Avian, West, and Tuck retreating back toward the stairs.

“I wanted to speak to you, alone,” Royce said in a quiet tone.

I glanced back toward my fellow scouts just once.  And then I nodded to Royce.

We returned to the blue floor.  I followed Royce down the hall, to the very end.  Two armed guards stood to either side of a thick black door.  This one was closed, heavier and stronger looking than all the other ones.  Royce punched a few numbers into the keypad attached to the handle.  It beeped twice and I heard it unlock before he pushed it open.

Almost immediately inside the door was a set of stairs.  All three of the men glanced back at me before starting up them, making me feel uneasy.

My eyes grew wide when we got to the top of the stairs.  They opened onto the very top floor of the hospital, one big room.  But all the walls and the entire ceiling were made of glass.  It was almost as if we had just walked out onto the roof.

Dominating the center of the room was a ring.  A fifteen-foot wide ring, balanced on five steel legs about four feet off the ground.  Inside the ring were more rings, gears, mechanical devices I didn’t even have names for.  But I knew what it was.

“It’s a CDU,” I breathed as I took it in.

A small smile crossed Royce’s face as he looked at me and nodded.  “Yes it is.  We call it the Pulse.”

“It’s massive,” I said as I started to circle it.

“It’s taken us a long time to build it,” Royce said as he crossed his arms over his chest.  “We’re not sure exactly how far the blast will reach but we are certain it will at least clear the city.”

“Why haven’t you used it yet?” I asked as I ran my hand along the smooth metal surface.  I immediately withdrew my hand though, remembering what it would do when it was live.  It would kill me immediately.  My thoughts turned briefly to the designs at the end of West’s notebook.  We hadn’t needed them after all.

“It’s not quite finished,” he answered.  “It still needs a power source.”

I nodded as I stopped, coming back around the gigantic ring.  “I suppose you can’t just plug it into any normal outlet.”

“The amount of power this thing requires is astronomical,” Royce said, his eyes fixed on me.  “Even directing all the power that runs to the hospital wouldn’t be enough to charge this thing and set it off.  We need to tap directly into the power plant that is three blocks from here.”

“Why haven’t you done it yet?” I asked, my brow knitting together.

He looked at me for a moment before he replied.  “Because it is crawling with Bane.  Even at night.”

The pieces to Royce’s puzzle slid into place without much effort.  “You need me to go in,” I said.  “I’m the only one that can’t be infected.”

He simply nodded, his eyes fixed on me.

I looked back at the Pulse, thinking of what it could mean if it really did work.  This entire city, maybe farther, free of any Bane.  At least for a while.

“If I help set this off, what’s to keep it from shorting me out and killing me?”

Royce adjusted his stance, pushing his hands in his pockets.  “We’ve been working on proofing the entire hospital for the last two years.  This room was added a while ago, completely sealed off from the rest of the building.  The glass is all going to blow, but the rest of the hospital won’t be affected.  You’ll be perfectly safe inside, along with all of our other electrical equipment.”

“And how do I get into the plant without being torn apart, limb from limb?” I asked.

“Heavily armed,” he said, a sly smile tugging on his lips.

“No,” a voice suddenly said from behind us.  Both Avian and West stepped into the room, looks of rage and fury on their faces.  “She’ll never make it out of the plant alive,” West said through clenched teeth.

“You can’t ask this of her,” Avian said, his eyes dark.

“Apparently Lex forgot to close the door behind us,” Royce said as he glared at one of the armed men behind him.  The man just gave a shrug.

“You realize what this device will do for us?  For humanity?” Royce asked, turning his eyes on Avian and West again.

“But not at the cost of losing Eve,” Avian said, his hands forming fists.

“We will not be sending her in there naked,” he said with harsh eyes and annoyance.  “A tank will drive her as close as possible, our men will take out as many as they can from a distance.  She will be armed.”

“No,” West said, shaking his head.  “It’s too great of a risk.  There will be hundreds of them there, if not thousands.”

The three of them stood like that for a long moment, staring at each other with unrelenting eyes.

“I’ll do it,” I finally spoke.  “When will everything be ready?”

“In a few days,” Royce said.

“No, Eve!” West hissed at the same time.

“You can’t do this!” Avian chimed in.

“Yes, I can and I will!” I nearly shouted back.  “Neither of you are in charge of me.  I’m the only one that can do this and I am going to do it.”

“Wonderful,” Royce said as he clapped a hand on my back.  “I’ll let Dr. Beeson’s team know and we will get things prepared.”

Avian looked at me with cold eyes and I read a million words of shock, hurt, and betrayal in them.  Without another word he turned and walked back down the stairs.

“You can’t do this Eve,” West said, closing the gap between us.  He took my hands in his.  “You most likely won’t walk out of this.  Don’t kill yourself to make life a little easier for us.”

“Maybe you’re underestimating me,” I said quietly, slipping my hands out of his.  “I am doing this.”

Before he could say anything else, I stepped around him and walked down the stairs.

I stood a good chance of not making it out of the power plant alive, but I would do it a million times over.

We finally stood a fighting chance.

THIRTY-FOUR

West and Avian still wanted to go pick everyone up the next day.  And I had to agree, it felt like the right, and safest thing to do.  Eden would join the residents of Los Angeles.

We informed Royce of our decision and he set up a team that would go with us and take the tanks to pick everyone else up.

I stood at the back door, the one we had been brought through when we first arrived at the hospital.  I looked out into the dark night, keeping guard while others behind me prepped for our departure.  I could hear Avian talking to Royce, telling him about Morgan and her pregnancy, making plans for her care.  West chatted with one of the other soldiers.

I heard something fifteen yards to my right.  Tapping.  I peered around the corner, searching for the source of the noise through the dark.

There it was again.  A small tapping sound.  And once again.

I took two steps out of the door toward the sound, my beautiful, new assault rifle leveled before me.

I heard the sound again.  Tapping, followed by the shuffle of feet.

Remaining silent, I crept further into the dark.

The tapping started again, coming quicker and steadier sounding.

I was only ten yards from the entrance to the hospital when I saw it.  She looked young, no older than me.  But her eyes gleamed as she tapped the spoon against the concrete walls of a building.

My finger was pulling the trigger when I was tackled to the ground.  We rolled before it came on top of me, its eyes gleaming in the dark.  My firearm was knocked clean from my hands.

Before I could call for help it pressed a hard, cold hand over my mouth, pressing in on me with a crushing force.  I plowed a fist into its still human-soft side.  It caved around my blow, throwing it off balance enough for me to knock it to the side.

“Close the doors!” I screamed as I got to my feet and scrambled for my firearm.  It caught my ankle, taking me to the ground just as I wrapped my fingers around the rifle’s barrel.  I turned and fired a shot at the mechanical girl who approached behind the one holding on to me.  She dropped to the ground in a heap.

Before I could fire again, the machine gripping me squeezed my ankle as it drew me to it.  I felt something inside of me crunch and crumple.  There was shouting behind me but I couldn’t turn to look and see if they were in fact closing the doors.

The thing had just broken my ankle.

And I could actually feel it.

The pain raced up my leg before exploding into the rest of my body.  An enraged scream ripped from my throat as I finally righted the rifle in my hands and fired two shots into his chest.  But he reached for the barrel of the rifle.  He squeezed, crunching it, and bent it back until it pointed at me.  He then gave a good hard yank, and flung it off into the distance.

My blood burned hot as my eyes narrowed.  I coiled my good let and landed a crushing blow to its face.  Its left cheek and eye socket caved in.

But it gripped the front of my jacket in one fist, lifting me a good foot off the ground.  I heard shots being fired from behind me and the concrete of the building just behind us exploded as it was hit.

Quick as it had picked me up, it threw me like a rag doll across the street.  I hit the concrete outside of the hospital like a rag doll.

And everything was dark.

My eyes focused on the dimmed lights above my head.  My hair stuck to my forehead and neck as I turned my head to see where I was.  I laid on one of the strange skeletal looking beds and there were tubes and wires sticking to and in my body.  They led to a machine with a screen that beeped and flashed things I didn’t understand.

I looked the other way, my cheek brushing the top of Avian’s recently shaven head.  His head rested right next to my shoulder, my left hand held loosely in his.  As I brushed against him, his head jerked up.  The whites of his eyes were red.  He looked like he hadn’t slept for a while.

“Hey,” he said, a small smile forming on his lips.  He squeezed my hand tighter.  “How do you feel?”

“What happened?” I questioned, immediately sitting up in panic.  My hands were encumbered by multiple tubes that were sticking out of my skin.  I ripped them out in one quick move.  “Did you get them?  Did they get inside?”

“Whoa,” Avian said, grabbing my arm before I could jump out of bed.  “Everything is okay, Eve.  We got them.  They’re dead.”

“You sure?” I asked, my body unsure of what to do now that it had so much adrenaline surging through it.

“Yes,” he reassured me, easing me back into the bed.  “We got them.”

He stood and stepped around the bed and pulled something out of a drawer.  Raising my hand, he wiped the drops of blood that were forming where I had ripped out the tubes and placed a small bandage over it.

“How long have I been out?” I asked as I rubbed my eyes.  The room came into sharper focus.

“About six hours,” Avian said quietly as he sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand in his again.  His eyes were serious as he looked into mine.

“Royce was right,” I said.  “They’re getting smarter.  They lured me out of the hospital and ambushed me.”

Avian clenched his teeth together, making the muscles in his jaw stand out.  He gave a frustrated sigh.  “We were afraid of that.”

“We can’t wait to set that Pulse off,” I said, shaking my head as I held his eyes.  “Even with Dr. Beeson’s wireless transmission system they’re going to figure out a way to get to us.  I have to go into that plant.”

Avian was quiet for a moment and I knew he couldn’t argue against it anymore.

“West and Tuck?”

“They set out with Royce’s team an hour after you were brought to the infirmary.  We didn’t dare wait to go get everyone, not after what just happened to you.  They should be back before dawn.”

I nodded my head that I heard him.  Grabbing the rail with my other hand, I pulled myself forward with Avian’s reluctant assistance.  My head swam and throbbed.  My ankle screamed as it moved.

I groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Avian asked with concern.

“Why do I hurt?” I asked, cradling my hands on either side of my head.

“You’re feeling pain?” he said, disbelief in his voice.

I just nodded.

“No idea,” he said, easing me back down to lie on the bed.  “You sustained a pretty serious concussion and a crushed ankle.  It’s already healing.  But honestly I didn’t really worry about the pain.  It’s never bothered you before.”

I squeezed my eyes closed.

It had to have something to do with Dr. Beeson lessening my emotional blockers.  He must have removed some of my pain blockers as well.

But why would he do that?  Why would I need to feel pain?

“Eve?” Avian asked, his voice quiet.  “Who is this?”

I opened my eyes to see that he was holding the picture that Dr. Beeson had given me.

“I found it on the ground next to where the Bane threw you against the hospital,” he explained as I took it between my fingers.

“She’s my mother,” I said, meeting his eyes.  I saw in them that I had confirmed what he had suspected.  “Her name was Emma.”

He asked questions and I relayed everything Dr. Beeson had revealed.  About my premature birth, about her death, about why I was given TorBane.

“You look just like her,” he said with a smile as he looked at the picture again.

I watched his face, thinking then about how much he and Sarah looked alike when they smiled.

“I wish I could tell Sarah about her,” I said, my eyes falling to the picture again.

He met my eyes, his instantly becoming sad.

“I was going to show you something,” he said.  To my surprise, his hands went to the hem of his shirt and he pulled the fabric over his head.

My eyes instantly went to his chest.  There was a third bird tattooed on his chest.  The skin around it was red and swollen, freshly inked.

“There’s a lady here who has a machine that does the inking,” he said as he watched my face.  My fingers rose to gingerly touch the third bird.  There was a subtle S in the way the wing blended in with the body.  “She did this two days ago.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Avian took my hand in his and pressed a kiss to my fingers.  He held them there against his lips for a long moment.  He squeezed his eyes closed and a moment later a single tear slipped down his cheek.

THIRTY-FIVE

The rest of our group arrived safely at the hospital and two days later I was healed and cleared to go to the power plant.

I shifted the weapons that were secured to me, counting again how many grenades I had attached to my belt.  I pulled the vest, feeling uncomfortable.  It might have been bulletproof but it was torture to wear.

I glanced around at the four men that sat nestled in the tank with me.  Their faces were set hard, no emotions present.

The noise from the track wheels died away and I knew we had arrived.

One of the men opened the top hatch and we all climbed out.  We were only about seventy-five yards away from the plant.  I could see them even from here, rows and rows of Bane, standing on and around it.

“We’ll take out as many of them as we can with this,” one of the men said as he patted the firing turret.  “We have to be careful not to damage the plant though.  The rest of us will pick them off one by one, as quickly as we can.”

I nodded, my eyes never leaving the gleaming bodies ahead of me.

Two of the men unhooked the mile long power supply line from the back of the tank.  One end of it trailed behind us, going directly back to the Pulse.  We unwound the rest of it, attaching the end of it to a hook on the back of my vest that I could easily release once I got inside.  I shrugged my shoulders, testing its weight.  It would have been too heavy for me to carry if I had been a normal girl.  It had taken two of them to carry the entire line.

As one of Royce’s soldiers handed me my weapon, I couldn’t help but smile.  I had to admit, the M4 assault rifle was beautiful.

“You ready?” one of the men asked, gripping the firing turret.

“Fire away,” I said as I turned my eyes ahead of me.

The blast from the tank shook the ground and nearly knocked me off my feet.  Gleaming metal eyes jumped to life as they turned in our direction.  I took off running toward them as the second blast was fired.

Gleaming parts exploded and flew through the air as dozens of them leapt at me.  I fired, flashes of light illuminating the streets.  Bodies dropped, metal frames shattered, wires sparked.  Shots fired from behind me and more bodies hit the ground.  Still more and more of them woke to life, leaping to attack.

The line attached to me slowed my progress more than I anticipated.  I put all of my weight into it, dragging it behind me as I fired.  The plant suddenly seemed miles away, even though I was closing in on only a few dozen yards.

I pulled the pin of one of the grenades and tossed it at the chain-link fence that surrounded the plant.  I almost couldn’t see it through all the Bane that surrounded it.  A few seconds later, metal flew through the air, raining down on me with deadly force.

A hand grabbed at my right arm, closing in with crushing force.  I jammed the butt of my firearm in its face, knocking it away for just long enough to blow its head off.  Another leapt at me, its eyes gleaming through the dark.  It was riddled with bullet holes before it even hit the ground.

I remembered the advice Dr. Beeson had given me and focused all my thoughts on pushing the Bane away as my feet pounded the pavement.  A few Bane hesitated as they ran at me, their movements becoming jerky as they fought my wireless commands.  I couldn’t transmit to them all and keep a very strong connection.

The plant was a mere twenty feet away.  While plenty of them had woken, most of them stood motionless, their eyes fixed on the source of electricity ahead of them.  Sleepers, I assumed.  I had to push my way through mechanical bodies, firing as I went to take out as many of them as I could.

I was plowed into from the side, knocking me to my back.  I rolled as I went down, the line wrapping around my midsection.  A body leapt on top of me, its hands closing around my throat.  Before it could even squeeze, its head exploded from a shot coming from the tank.  I jumped to my feet again, untangling myself as I sprinted.

Just as the transformer came in sight, I heard the additional gun shots.  But this time they were being fired in my direction.  I didn’t look back as I pushed myself faster.

Bodies started dropping ahead of me as both me and Royce’s men fired.  I mowed down the last row of Bane who stood at the edge of the plant, clearing my way to the ladder that rose fifteen feet up to the transformer.  The metal sang as I ascended, my boots striking each rung.  The ladder vibrated as another body joined me in the climb.

The Bane climbed faster than I had and grabbed my barely healed ankle, threatening to pull me back over the edge.  The sound of another shot filled my head and a fraction of a second later blood sprayed from my left arm as my flesh was torn open.  Another shot was fired and the Bane grabbing me dropped to the ground with the hiss of electric death.

Blood started to spill from my arm as I heaved myself onto the platform and pulled the line to give me some slack.  I hadn’t noticed the two Bane who were surrounding the transformer until they tackled me to the cement.

One of them closed its hands around my throat and it held me pinned to the ground.  The other pulled a hand gun, releasing the safety.

I narrowed my eyes at the armed one, focusing every thought I had towards it.  The next second, the Bane choking the life out of me dropped to the ground, killed by its fellow kind.  It turned the gun on itself the next second.

I scrambled to my feet again, finally reaching the transformer.  I could feel the currents of electricity emanating from it as I finally connected the line.  It hummed to life instantly.

The sound of metal scraping concrete sounded as I turned to make my escape.  Dozens of Bane climbed onto the platform, their dead eyes fixed on me.  Light flashed through the sky as shots were fired from both directions.

I sprinted forward without thinking, barreling through the bodies in front of me before they could react.  I leapt off the platform, flying through the night sky for one freeing second before I slammed to the ground.

Stay away, stay away, stay away, I thought as my boots slapped the pavement back toward the tank.

Just as I was clear of the ring of Bane that surrounded the plant, I heard an explosion.  The buildings and streets before me were illuminated as the fire billowed out, racing towards me with unstoppable force.  I screamed as the flames ate away the fabric of my pants, melted the rubber of my boots to my feet.  I felt every cell of my skin as it singed and was burned up.  I hit the ground just fifteen yards away from the tank as the flames of the Bane’s explosive died away.

I couldn’t distinguish one scream from the next as I heard feet meeting the concrete and felt hands close around my arms and start pulling me back toward the tank.  Every movement felt like tortured death as they hauled me up and inside.  The tank roared to life as we crawled back to the hospital.

“Are they following us?” a voice asked.

A few moments later a voice responded.  “No, they’re flocking around the plant again.  That’s incredible!  The Sleepers don’t even seem to care.”

I clenched my teeth together as I tried to force my vision to focus on the roof of the tank.  My breathing came in labored gasps and I felt lightheaded.  I’d made it out of the plant alive but would I make it back to the hospital?

“Hang on!” a voice called to me.  A face floated across my vision.

Black spots swam in my vision as I was jostled again a few minutes later.  One of my legs scraped against the lip of the hatch of the tank, sending a blood curdling scream ripping from my chest.

I didn’t question it anymore.  It had been more than my emotional blockers that Dr. Beeson had removed.

Between each gasping breath, I couldn’t help but let out another agonizing scream.

Men in white jackets surrounded me and I was blinded by the lights on the ceiling of the white hallways.  The only thing I could see was the pair of blue eyes above me, trying to speak words that I couldn’t hear.

My body exploded in blossoms of pain as I was moved again, a hard board suddenly beneath my body.

I heard only jumbles of words.  My brain tried to sort everything out, trying to grasp onto something that made sense.

“…transfusions…”

“…skin grafts…”

“…cybernetic parts…”

“…accelerated regeneration…”

A strange thumping in my chest startled me.  It didn’t come in even beats, it was erratic, painful.  My breaths came in quick gasps.  Even that hurt.  It hurt to scream.  It hurt to lie still, it hurt to move.  It hurt to be.

Finally I slipped under.

THIRTY-SIX

Beeping noises surrounded me as my eyes slid open.  The ceiling tiles slowly came into focus, the sound of air blowing through a vent above me pulling me to wakefulness as I blinked.

I carefully sat up, my head feeling like it was spinning.  I was back in a hospital room, surrounded by the now familiar flashing screens, dripping bags, and tubes sticking out of my arms.  The room was completely devoid of life other than myself.

I ripped the lines out of my arm, a small bubble of blood immediately forming on my skin.  Shifting my weight, I slipped my legs out from under the heavy quilt and off the side of the bed.

I barely suppressed the scream when I saw my legs coming out from under my hospital gown.

My right leg was a mass of crusted and wavy looking skin, small pieces of black rubber melted into the heel of my foot.  Despite the intensity of the burn, it looked like it was already healing.

But my left leg was worse.  So much worse.

The skin twisted and deformed in disgusting ways, hardly identifiable as human flesh.  But from mid-calf down, there was nothing left but a gleaming metal skeleton.

I crashed to the floor, my hands barely reaching out to catch myself before the ground came rushing up at me.  I scrambled to my feet, not even noticing how I once again felt no pain from my injuries.  The back of my eyes burned as I heard the sound of my metal foot clanking against the tile of the floor.

The hall was devoid of any life as I stumbled out.  I blinked hard several times, making my vision refocus as it tried to fail me.  I held to the rail along the wall as I dragged myself down the hall.  I didn’t make it more than ten feet before I collapsed to the ground, a mix of terror, unregistered pain, and shock bringing me down.

As my head fell back against the tile, a pair of boots came into view.

“Eve!” someone shouted.  The next moment I felt a pair of arms underneath me and the ceiling came a little closer.  A few seconds later my bed was back underneath me.

Slowly, the sight of West’s brown eyes came into focus.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, his voice sounding so far away.

I gave a nod, blinking hard.  When I opened my eyes again everything was clearer.

“You really shouldn’t be getting up right now,” West said, taking one of my hands in his.  He sat in a seat next to my bed, pressing my knuckles to his lips.

I looked over at him, my thoughts running a million places all at once.  “How long have I been out?” I started.  It seemed like I was having to ask that question to often lately.

“Only about a day,” he breathed, his eyes intense on mine.

I glanced back down, catching the light as it gleamed off the skeleton of my foot.  I lay back down, swallowing hard.

“It’s a lot better than it was last night,” he said quietly.  “There was nothing from your knee down.”

“How can you still look at me?” I said quietly, laying my other arm across my eyes.  “Seeing what I really am?  I’m one of them.”

I heard West stand, letting go of my hand, he sat on the edge of the bed.  He placed his hands on either side of my face.  “You are nothing like the Bane,” he said seriously, his eyes burning into mine.

I heard another set of footsteps enter the room and saw Avian enter.  His face was hard to read as he took in the sight of West and I, so close together.  I felt myself hating everything I was again.

“You’re awake,” he said simply.

“I’ll let him catch you up on everything,” West said quietly and to my surprise, left without another word.

As I watched Avian standing there, my eyes stung and my lower lip started to tremble just slightly.  I couldn’t breathe.

He crossed the room silently and gathered me up into his arms, his face buried in my mass of tangled hair.  His entire frame shook as he held me tightly.  The sob that escaped my chest surprised me.

“My leg…” I barely managed to get the words out.

Avian sat back a bit, placing one hand on the back of my neck, his forehead resting against mine.  His blue eyes looked like there might be flames burning behind them as he stared at me.  “You will forever be the most beautiful creature on this planet to me, no matter what.  I don’t care what you’re skeletal frame is made of.  You’re still Eve.”

“Avian, I want…” I dropped off, not even knowing how to finish that sentence.  I was tempted to put my head in that gigantic ring on the roof, just to stop all the confusion I felt.

“Don’t,” he said, pressing a finger to my lips.  “You just need to finish healing right now.”

I took a deep breath, finding some sense of my normal self, and nodded.

“Someday you’re going to realize that you’re not indestructible.”

“How bad was it?” I asked.

Avian sat back, close to the foot of the bed.  “The skin on your left leg was totally burned away up to your knee,” he started.  “Traces of metal could be seen in your right leg, most of the skin was gone, and a lot of the muscle had been burned away as well.  Your lower back had been burned but not too horribly.  The bullet proof vest protected you quite a bit.  It healed pretty fast.  You lost a few inches of hair.  You were bleeding profusely from the bullet wound in your arm and all your other injuries.  You needed a blood transfusion.  But within hours you were already healing.  I would expect your left leg will look totally normal again within three days.”

I nodded, my eyes drifting to the ceiling.  “I don’t feel the pain anymore.”

“I told Dr. Beeson about that,” he said.  “He isn’t sure why your pain blockers were lessened.  I didn’t realize you’d asked him to remove some of the emotional blockers.”  There was a trace of hope in his voice that made me blush.  The smallest hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.  “Dr. Beeson said it was an accident, messing with the pain blockers.  He seemed pretty concerned about it.  But he thinks he got it fixed.  It seems like it’s working.  Right?”

I nodded.  “Guess you were right about being wary about letting me go to the plant,” I said.

He smiled.  “Like I could have stopped you.”

“You couldn’t have,” I said.  “Now find me some pants and boots so I don’t scare everyone away.”

He just chuckled and shook his head.

It took him a few minutes but Avian found me some clothes and we walked down the hall together.

“They haven’t set the Pulse off yet, have they?” I asked.  My boots were too big without any flesh to fill them and the metal foot slid around inside it.  I walked with a major limp.

“No,” he answered, his always serious eyes forward.  “Royce said it takes about two days to build up enough power to set it off.  It’s charging now though.”

“Two days,” I breathed.  “Do you really think it will work?”

Avian shrugged.  “The technology seems right.  They have the brains here to do it.”

“I can’t even imagine what life is going to be like if it works.”

“It will be better,” Avian said quietly as we entered the main lobby area.  “You’ll see how life should have been, in a post-apocalyptic way.”

By now the lobby was emptying out, everyone preparing for sleep at mid-day.  I suddenly missed my days of scouting, of roaming through the woods, free without any walls barricading me in.  Hopefully all that would end in just a few short days.

I followed the others up to the rooms, feeling like everyone could see through my pants to my cybernetic leg as I limped along.  No one bothered me though, didn’t ask questions or pull my pant leg up to bear witness to the horror.  I made it to my room without being exposed for what I was.

The ceiling greeted me as I lay down, knowing I wasn’t going to be getting any sleep for the next eight hours of silence.  Images started to slide across my mind: the blinding light from the explosion that had tried to take my legs, the blue eyes that had tried to call out to me when my brain couldn’t handle it all.  Flickers of row after row of Bane.  The flash of light from my firearms.

So much violence.

I turned my head when a crack of light started growing on my wall.  The silhouette of a man appeared in the door before he closed it behind him.

“Hi,” I breathed as he hesitated next to the door.

“Hi,” West said through the dark.  I could feel the mixture of feelings that were rolling off of him.  I knew what it was like to feel like an emotional wreck.

“I won’t bite you,” I said as I scooted to one side of my bed.

“You sure?” he said light-heartedly as he crossed the room and lay next to me on the bed.  He lay on his side, just looking at me for a long time.

West trailed his fingers softly across my forehead, brushing stray hairs off my face.  He didn’t look in my eyes as he did so, his gaze lingered on my ears, my shoulder, my neck, as he struggled with how to form the words he had in his head.  Hesitantly, he picked up the wings attached to my necklace and held them lightly in his hand.  I wondered if he knew Avian had made it for me, and the sacrifice he had given for me to have it.

“I thought you were going to die,” he said quietly.  “When they brought you in after the explosion, you looked so broken, I wasn’t sure they could put you back together.  It was so much worse than the other night.  Your heart barely kept going.  For a while I think I’d fooled myself into believing that you couldn’t die.”

“Good thing I’m not dead then,” I said as I placed my hand over his and he stilled it on my cheek.  The coals started to burn as we touched.  A sense of anticipation started to ignite in my belly.

“I wanted to give you something,” he said quietly as he finally met my eyes.  “One last thing before I stop this.  It won’t happen again until you make your choice.”

He leaned forward then, his eyes holding mine all the way until his lips met mine.  My own eyes slid closed as I kissed West back, feeling the fire leap to life inside of me.  West’s lips moved with mine, parting as gasps were inhaled.  I blazed to life from the inside out, the flames licking along my veins.

Could I ever give up this heat?  Would I ever feel so alive again?

West’s hand came to the back of my neck as my hand tangled in his hair.  I craved more.

Dr. Beeson had lessened my emotional blockers.  How far could I push before I blacked out?  Would I ever again?

But in the middle of the burn West pulled away, his earth-colored eyes looking into mine as I wished for more.

“I won’t do this again until you’ve made your choice, Eve,” he said quietly.  I could feel all the hurt and pain I had caused him in the last few months in his voice then.  Hate crept into my stomach again.  “This isn’t right.  I like Avian, respect him, despite everything.  It isn’t fair to anyone.  You have to make a choice.  Until then, I’m tired of trying to convince you that it should be me.  I’m not even sure it should be me anymore.”

I tried to find the words to reassure West, to convince him that he was wrong.  I wanted to come up with promises and answers then but I couldn’t.  He’d been right.  About everything.

“I’m sorry,” was all I managed.

“Just don’t take forever,” he said as he stood.  “If I’ve got miles of pain before me I’d rather start walking them sooner than later.”

And he walked out of the room.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Something was going on the next night.  I’d seen no sign of Royce, most of his scouts, West, or Avian.  Their presence was strangely absent from the lobby area.  I couldn’t find them in their rooms, or in the dining area.

As I came down from the private rooms, I stopped in the main hall, hiding myself when I saw a few of the missing men trickling out of the stairwell.  They were all heavily armed, each dressed in bulletproof vests.  They were going out for something serious and dangerous and I had every intention of going with them.

I dashed back toward the stairs that led to the second floor.  I barely limped as I ran down the hall, layers of tissue already forming over my metallic bones.  I burst into my room, grabbing my familiar firearms, strapping them to my person.

As I turned to walk back out my door, an unexplainable thing happened.

My vision flickered for half a second.  And then everything turned off.

THIRTY-EIGHT

I couldn’t…

Couldn’t…

Move.

A flash of light flickered across my vision and my eyes twitched just once as my brain flipped on and off.  Another flash of light and I managed to turn my head to the left just slightly.  Another and I was able to twitch the fingers on my left hand.

I took a gasping breath as the lights stayed for longer sparks of time.  As my muscles unlocked for half a second, I attempted a step forward, only to crash to the floor as my brain flashed out again for a brief moment.

The lights stayed on finally, only occasionally flickering in the corner of my vision. Slowly, movement by movement, I worked my way to my hands and knees.

Struggling for each breath, my muscles finally released and the flashes stopped.

Looking at the clock on the wall, I saw it was almost four hours later than it should have been.

My movements still stiff and jerky, I closed my hand around the doorknob and pulled.  Feeling slightly numb, I started to work my way down the hall.

I’d been alone.  I hadn’t emotionally overworked myself.

I couldn’t think of any other explanation.  Someone had shut me down.

“Eve,” a voice called to me from behind.  I turned to see Dr. Beeson jogging down the hall toward me.  “I thought you would have gone out with the others?”

“I tried,” I said, my voice bizarre sounding, not quite working right.  He slowed to match my still clumsy gait.  I narrowed my eyes as I looked over at him.  “You didn’t shut me down did you?”

“What?” he asked, his brow furrowing.  “Of course not.”

“I’ve spent the last four hours, frozen and gone in my room.”

Dr. Beeson’s step faltered as he looked at me, his face blanching white.

“Someone shut me down,” I said through clenched teeth.

He cursed under his breath and ran a hand roughly through his hair.  “West spent nearly an entire night with me, asking questions about the wireless transmission system.”

“He…” I nearly choked on my words.  “West shut me down?”

“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly.  “Come with me.  They’re having problems with the communication system with those who went out.  I’m going to take a look at it and see if I can get it fixed.”

Numbly, I followed him down the stairwell and into the frantic lobby.

It seemed that everyone who lived in the hospital that hadn’t gone out on the mission was gathered.  Tension rippled through everyone, setting my nerves on edge.  Seeing Tuck by the front door, I joined him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his brow furrowing as he looked at me.  “I thought you had gone with them.”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” I said as I looked out into the dark and silent night.  “What’s going on?”

“Something pulled your power line about five hours ago,” Tuck explained.  “Royce’s men and a few others went with him to go fix it.”

“West and Avian went out, didn’t they?”  I felt hollow.

Tuck simply nodded.  “We lost communication with everyone though.  They called for Dr. Beeson to try and fix it.  We have no idea what’s going on out there.”

I turned to see Dr. Beeson working with a handful of other people, their movements rushed and frantic.

A crackle suddenly sounded from the device Dr. Beeson and the others worked on.

“…anyone there?  Please come in…” a voice came through the system.

“Yes, we’re here!” a woman said as she took the handheld piece that was attached to the system.  “Is everything okay?”

“People shot…” the voice cut out.  “…at least four dead…”  The sound cut out again for a solid five seconds before finally coming back online.  “Get the Extractor powered up!”

Everyone seemed to freeze as those last words filled the room.  I felt my blood run cold.

“Who’s been infected?” the woman asked, her voice sounding dead.

“…Bane hidden…shots fired everywhere…” the voice continued to crackle in and out.  “…Royce and West…  Avian… didn’t see it…”

“Who was it?” I suddenly said, louder than I should have.  “Who got infected?”

Everyone in the room suddenly looked up at me, every single pair of eyes.  “I’m not sure,” Dr. Beeson finally answered.

I looked at the woman who had been speaking.  “I couldn’t tell either,” she said quietly.  No one seemed to notice how the receiver had gone dead again.

It was pure adrenaline that forced my legs to work.  I sprinted out the front glass door into the dark night.

In that moment I finally knew.

I knew which one I would grieve over.  A piece of me would be missing forever if he was gone.  A part of me would break.  But I would make it through.

And I knew which one of them I couldn’t live without, couldn’t take another single breath if he were to be taken away from me.

In that moment I finally understood what love meant.

Sarah had been right all along.  A single moment was all it had taken.

The wind whipped through my singed hair, my cybernetic legs pumping me faster than I’d ever moved before.

Shouts and screams of agony rose into the night air.  Shots were fired and flashes of light pinpointed their exact location.  As I rounded the corner, I raised my rifle, firing two shots at the pair of Bane who rushed the struggling group from behind.  They dropped to the ground in a heap.  One of Royce’s men raised his own gun.  For a moment I thought he was pointing at me, until the Hunter I hadn’t noticed creeping up on me from behind dropped to the ground.

I didn’t even remember feeling my feet slap the pavement as I ran toward him, my eyes never leaving his face.  In that moment, every memory I had of him, every second we had spent together, flashed through my mind.

I ran straight into his blood soaked arms.  I threw my arms around his shoulders, crushing him into myself, pressing my lips to his with a heat that burned me from the inside out.  Avian’s assault rifle fell to the ground with a clatter as he wrapped one arm around my waist, bringing his other hand up behind my neck.  Everything about his lips, his breathing, the way his body melted into mine left me craving more.

There was no destroyed world around us as I kissed Avian and he took my breath away.  There was no infection, there were no cybernetics.  There was no running, no fighting, no violence or death.  There was only Avian and there was only me.

I’d never felt the heat from Avian that West had given me but I realized then that it had been because I wouldn’t allow myself to seek it out until I was sure it was Avian that I wanted and needed.

Now I was sure.

West may have made me feel alive but he didn’t have the gravitational pull that Avian did.  Avian was my world, my universe.  He was everything I had that was worth living, fighting, and dying for.

“I love you,” I whispered against his lips as Avian consumed me, body and soul.  “It’s you.  It’s always been you.”  And I realized then that it was true.  I had always loved Avian, it was always him.

I felt the tears as they rolled down Avian’s cheek, his lips still moving with mine.  “I love you, Eve.  More than anything.”

“We’ve got to get out of here!” a man screamed.  I looked back, realizing the majority of the group had continued back to the hospital.  I barely caught sight of a body being hauled around the corner.

West.

I raised my rifle and fired at the two Hunters who sprinted down the street after us.  They dropped with a clatter.

Taking Avian’s hand in mine, I half dragged him back to the hospital with me.  I realized then that there was blood oozing out of his left arm in two different places and in one spot in his right thigh.

The lobby was a shifting mess of chaos and blood as everyone got back inside, just as the sky started to lighten.  People ran in every direction, more than one life on the edge of being lost.  Avian and I spotted a group of men in white coats hauling West’s twitching body into the elevator.  We dashed for the stairs, taking them two at a time.  Avian stumbled behind me, blood dripping onto the steel stairs as we ascended.

We followed the shouting as we got to the blue floor, down to the extraction room.  A doctor ran past us, back to the stairs.  As we stepped into the room, it all finally hit me.

West was infected.

“How long?” I asked quietly, squeezing Avian’s hand all the tighter.

“Just over an hour ago, I think,” he forced the words out.  “They kept coming at us as we tried to make our way back.”

A group of men and women forced West’s twitching body into the chair, clamping his wrists and ankles secure.  He stilled for just a moment when he caught sight of me.  “Eve!” he screamed, his eyes wide, terrified and confused.

Metallic veins were already growing in his left eye.

West gave a blood-curdling scream, squeezing his eyes closed as his chest surged forward, his body held back by the bands around his wrists.  A pair of doctors rushed back into the room and I watched, horrified, as they injected something into West’s neck.  He was instantly still.

I couldn’t look anymore as I turned into Avian and buried my face in his chest.  I heard the doctors fussing around, bandaging his wounds with gloved hands, trying their best to stop West’s bleeding.

The hum of electricity alerted everyone that the Extractor was being powered up.  Avian took two steps away from it, pulling me with him.

Avian suddenly stumbled, his skin pale and clammy.  There was a pool of blood at his feet.  “Eve, I…” he didn’t finish as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“Avian!” I shouted as I clung to his sagging form.  I slung him across my shoulders and dashed back down the hallway.  Avian was totally limp as I took the stairs two at a time, too impatient to wait out the slow elevator ride down.  The sound of my feet against the tile echoed off the walls as I ran toward the medical wing.

“Help!” I shouted as I neared.

As I stepped into the hall, I stopped, taking in the scene before me.

Avian and West weren’t the only ones who had been shot.  Most of the floor was covered with a slick sheet of red.  People rushed everywhere, panicked.

“Help him!” I shouted to no one in particular.  Not a single eye turned in my direction.  More blood continued to drip from Avian’s wounds.  “He needs help!” I shouted at the closest person in white.  He paid no attention to me.

“Please,” I said to a woman who rushed past me, reaching out for her arm.  She barely glanced at me and shook her head.

“I already have four patients.”

Anger surged in my system and for the briefest moment, the room shifted with lines of black.

I drew my handgun and fired two shots into the ceiling.

Every eye in the room turned to me and every single body froze.

I lowered the gun and leveled it on a woman in those strange starched green clothes.  “If you let him die I will not hesitate to kill you.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes twice their normal size.  She gave one nod and pointed me towards a room.

There was already a blood-covered man in one of the beds but I didn’t really care as I laid Avian’s limp form in the empty one.  The young woman followed me in, her hands shaking.

“He’s been shot,” I said, my voice calm and even.

She simply nodded and lifted Avian’s bleeding arm.  “There’s no exit wound.  The bullets are still inside.  It could be a while before I can get the instruments to get them out.”

“It can’t wait that long,” I said as I shook my head at her.  “He’s already lost too much blood.  Can you sew him up?  You’re a doctor, right?”

She shook her head.  “I’m a nurse but I know how to suture.”

I grabbed a pair of gloves out of one of the boxes on the wall and pulled them on.  “You’re helping me get them out now.”

The nurse watched me wide-eyed as I dug my fingers into Avian’s flesh and felt for the bullets.

They each gave a small ping as I dropped them in the sink.  The nurse set to stitching his skin closed while I fished the bullet out of his thigh.  I gave a hard swallow as I dropped the last one in the sink.

Once she was done with the stitches the nurse left the room for a moment and came back with a bag of blood.  “He needs a transfusion, he’s lost a lot of blood,” she said as she punctured Avian’s skin and the blood started mixing with his own.  I didn’t like the idea of some stranger’s blood mixing with his.

The soldier in the bed next to us limped out of the room, eyeing me as he walked by.  “I would have done the same thing if it had been my wife bleeding to death,” he said as he met my eyes.  I managed to give him a nod as he walked out the door.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” the nurse said as she peeled off her gloves and threw them in the trash.  “He could start coming around any time now.  I’ll be back to check on him in a while.”

“Thank you,” I said as she started for the door.  I reached out and lightly touched her arm.  She flinched.  “I’m sorry about earlier.”  She merely gave a short nod, her eyes betraying her fear, and walked out the door.

Just as I was about to sit on the edge of Avian’s bed, three heavily armed men walked into the room.

“You need to come with us,” one of them said.  His eyes were hard, his brows drawn together.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said as I glared back at him.

“You’ve been deemed a security threat,” he said as he took another step toward me.  “You fired two shots in the middle of a crowded room, threatened a nurse.  You need to be secured.”

“I’m not leaving him,” my voice was cold and hard.

The three of them took another step, their hands twitching on their firearms.

“I suggest you don’t come any closer if you like your nose the way it looks,” I warned, balling my fingers.

He merely gave a cocky little smile and took another step forward.

A scream of pain leapt from his throat as my cybernetic-boned fist met his face.  One of the men behind him raised his firearm, leveling it at my head.  In the same movement I spun, knocking it out of his hands with my heel.  The third man turned and ran out into the hall for backup.

“I told you I’m not leaving,” I said calmly as I extended a hand to the man with the now broken nose.  He simply glared at me and got to his feet on his own, holding his bleeding nose.  “You can take these,” I said as I handed over my firearms.  “But I’m not leaving.”

He took my weapons, surprised at my cooperation.  “We’ll be keeping watch over you.  Isaac, you take the first shift.  Watch her like a hawk.”

Isaac looked at the first man hard, like he might want to hit him too.

“I won’t bite,” I said as I turned and walked back to Avian’s side.  The first man left in a hurry, the second stationed himself outside the door.

Not many things scared me but seeing Avian lying there like that did.  Now that I finally understood who it was that I needed, was I going to lose him?  Was I to only get a few glorious but horror-filled minutes now that I had finally made my choice?  I might be losing both of them at the same time.  Maybe this was my punishment for taking so long to figure my feelings out.  For doing what I had done to them.

But 2,634 seconds later, Avian’s eyes blinked open.  I jumped back to his bed, after pacing back and forth for what felt like an eternity.  I balanced on the edge of the mattress as I took his hand in mine, pressing my lips to the back of his hand.  He blinked several times before he turned his head and his eyes found mine.

“Hi,” I said quietly, kissing his still clammy skin.

“Hi,” he said back, the life coming back into his eyes.

“For a while there I thought I was going to lose you,” I said, closing my eyes.  “You lost a lot of blood.”

“So I didn’t just imagine everything that happened?” he asked.  “West being infected?  You telling me that you loved me?”

I shook my head as I kept his intense gaze.  “Are you sure?” he asked very quietly.

“Without a doubt,” I said as I pressed my lips to his again briefly.

“When did you finally decide?”

“When we heard over the radio that someone had been infected,” I said.  “I realized then that there was only one person I couldn’t survive loosing.  I’ve lost Tye, Sarah, everyone in my past that I can’t even remember.  But I knew then that I couldn’t live through losing you.”

Avian brought his hand up behind my neck, bringing my lips to his again for just a moment.  “I love you, Eve.  I promise I always will.”

“I love you,” I breathed, relishing in the warmth that radiated into every corner of my body.  I finally understood what it meant.

“Eve,” he said as his eyes shifted to the doorway.  “Why is there an armed guard standing just outside the door?”

I glanced in that direction, seeing Isaac standing there with his back turned to us but his automatic weapon in obvious sight.  “I may have used a little more force than needed to get someone to help you,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes.

“You didn’t hurt anyone did you?” he said with a hint of a sigh.

“There are just a couple of new bullet holes in their ceiling…”

Avian suddenly laughed.  He brought my hand up to his lips, pressing a brief kiss there.  “That’s my Eve.”

I gave him a small smile, everything inside of me loving being called “his.”

“Have you heard anything yet?” Avian asked as he lay back on his pillow.  “About West?”

I shook my head as I sat back, my hands falling into my lap.  “I haven’t left you since you collapsed upstairs.”

“You should go find out what happened,” he said, his eyes sad and serious.  “See if we were too late.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, my brow furrowing.  I didn’t like the idea of leaving him here like this alone.

“It’s just a couple of bullet holes,” he said with a small smile.  “I’ve patched enough of them to know that I’ll survive.”

I held his eyes for a long moment.  I didn’t want to lose the peace that we’d formed, even if it was in the middle of all this chaos.  But I had to know what was going to happen.  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said as I stood.  I glanced back at him one last time before I walked out the door.

THIRTY-NINE

My guard wasn’t going to let me leave the room.  I argued with him for a good five minutes and finally convinced him that he could follow me.

A sense of dread knotted in my stomach as I started up the stairs.  The blue floor was abuzz with activity as I entered the hall.  People went in and out of the stairwell that led up to the Pulse, Dr. Beeson’s door was wide open, people coming and going.  But most of the activity was coming from the Extraction room.

I held my arms around my midsection as I stepped into the room.  It felt like everything inside of me was about to crack and fall apart, like I’d been filled with too many strong emotions and then someone had taken a sledgehammer to me.

A group of people surrounded West’s limp body.  Bandages were wrapped around half of him but even I could tell the blood had stopped flowing.  His wounds were already healing themselves.

Those who worked on West stilled when they noticed me in the room.  I fidgeted under all their eyes, not knowing how to deal with their attention.

“Is it going to work on him?” I asked.

A man with flaming red hair glanced at the others before stepping away from the group towards me.

“The extraction process has begun but we are unsure of the exact time frame of when he was touched and when he was brought in.  Some are guessing it was only forty minutes, others thought it was an hour and a half.”

“And the magic time frame is an hour or less, right?”

“Exactly,” the man said, his eyes regretful looking.  “Under such stressful circumstances, no one is sure how long it was.  If it really was less than hour, he stands a good chance of recovering.  If not…”

I nodded, understanding what his trailing thoughts meant.  “How long until we know?”

The man glanced at West.  “When it worked before, we didn’t see any results for over a week.  Within a week and a half we started to see positive signs that he might recover.”

“So we just have to wait?”

He simply nodded.

I couldn’t take any more then.  I turned and walked back down the hall without another look back.  My breaths were coming in choked sobs before I reached the end of the hall.  It felt like someone was trying to squeeze me from the inside out.  As I stepped into the stairwell, I leaned against the cold cinderblock walls and slid to the floor.  When the guard saw me, he stepped back out, his discomfort obvious.  I heard him walk away.

It took me far too long to get myself back under control.  The image of metallic veins sprouting in West’s eye kept playing over and over behind my eyelids.

I used every ounce of strength I had to force myself off the floor and go back down the stairs.

As I walked numbly back into the medical wing, I saw a man lying on a hospital bed in another room.  In my panic of the previous hours, I hadn’t noticed that he was injured.

“Royce?” I said as I stepped into his room a few feet.  “Are you alright?”

He just gave a shrug, brushing it off.  “I’m fine.  Just a few bullet holes.  Nothing I haven’t lived through before.”

I nodded.

“I really am sorry about your friend,” Royce said, his eyes studying my face.  “He seemed like a good man.  We all hope for the very best.”

I nodded again, my eyes glued to the floor but not really seeing anything.  Even though no one had said it, I heard it in the tone of their voices.  They might have been hopeful, but they didn’t expect a positive outcome.

“When do you plan on setting off the Pulse?” I changed the subject.

“With the Extractor running a lot of power will be diverted to it.  It will be another day before the Pulse has gathered enough power to go off.”

I nodded, stuffing my hands into my pockets.

“He tried saving West, you know,” Royce said quietly.  “Avian.  Everyone was firing at the Bane who were flooding the platform.  But Avian jumped in front of West while he was helping me repair the line.  West probably would have died right then if not for Avian.”

I squeezed my eyes closed, imagining the horrific scene behind my eyelids.  “If I’d been there they both would have been fine.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“He wouldn’t have gotten infected.”

“Maybe.”

I turned to leave when Royce spoke again.  “Eve, if I ever hear about you firing a weapon in this hospital again I will have Dr. Beeson make you think you’re a three-year-old little girl for the rest of your life.”

I glanced back at him, a smile creeping onto my lips.  “It won’t happen again, promise.”

He gave a twitch of a smile.  Something started to beep on one of his medical devices and two doctors rushed in from behind me.  I took the opportunity to duck out.

Avian was asleep when I returned to his side, much to my disappointment.  The doctors said they were giving him antibiotics to keep infection out but other than that there was little more they were going to have to do to him.

As I sat with Avian’s hand in mine, I thought about what was to come.  If the Pulse really worked and we were able to freely roam, what would that mean for Avian and I, now that I had finally made my decision?

I imagined taking him hunting with me, intrigued by the total mystery of it.  I’d never seen him out in the woods like that, free to do and go as he pleased.  I had little doubt he would be good at it.  Avian seemed to be good at everything.

Where would we live once we were let out of this hospital?  What would it be like to live with Avian, the way Gabriel and Leah lived together, Morgan and Eli?  The thought was strange yet exciting.

Three years ago I watched with everyone as Morgan and Eli stood before everyone, she dressed in a makeshift wedding dress.  They spoke words to each other that I didn’t understand then.  Now they made perfect sense.  Would Avian and I ever speak words like that to each other?  Would I ever wear a dress for him?

Finally, after two hours of restless sitting, Royce limped into Avian’s room, accompanied by his regular armed men.  The man with the broken nose was among them.  He glared at me with blackened eyes.

“We’re getting everything prepped for tomorrow,” Royce said as he leaned on his crutches.  “I thought you might want to come see before it goes off.”

I glanced from Avian’s still form and back to Royce.  “We can have the doctors page you when he wakes up,” Royce said.

“Alright.”

The doctors on duty gave me a small black box to carry around and they informed me that it would beep loudly when Avian woke up.  Already feeling slightly more like myself, I followed Royce’s group to the blue floor and up the locked stairwell.

I had to blink furiously as we reached the top of the stairs, to the old roof of the building.  The sun shone with burning intensity.  It felt like forever since I had actually seen the sun.  I had missed it.

The Pulse had a blue glow emanating from its core already.  The loud hum was a testament to the amount of electricity that was being poured into it.

“Those are energy storage devices,” Royce said loudly as he pointed to five hulking, black boxes.  They were as tall as I was and wider than four of me.  “When it’s time, all the power stored in them will surge into the Pulse.  They’re going to be blown to high-heaven when the thing goes off, but hopefully not before they’ve been completely drained.  With any luck we won’t ever need them again.”

“And you’re sure the hospital will be protected from the blast?” I asked as I looked at the beautiful, yet menacing device before me.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure it is,” Royce said with a half-smile.  “Trust me, no one here wants to lose electricity or all of our electrical devices.  We all lived in the dark for too long.  None of us want to go back.”

I nodded that I understood as I paced around the Pulse.  The central ring of it was spinning rapidly, each of the outer rings moving steadily as well.

It seemed like there were a million things that could go wrong in the next four or five hours.  The device could just not work.  Its reach could be no further than the walls of this hospital.  The precautions to proof this building could fail.  I could be dead in just a few hours.

But if everything went off as planned, life was going to change dramatically.  We could go out into the city.  We could start to rebuild.  I dreamed of the outcome for the simple reason of being able to go back out into the sun freely.

I spent an hour, just looking at the beautiful blue glow of the Pulse, trying to not think of anything, to simply zone it all out.  But before long I was advised to leave the Pulse room.  As the power it held built, I could feel the sting of electrical output.  I didn’t argue as I descended the stairs.  As I did, my pager started beeping.

The medical wing was quieter by then, all of the damage from the previous day’s mission taken care of.  When I came back into Avian’s room I found him sitting up, tying the shoelaces of his boots.

“How do you feel?” I asked as I leaned against the doorframe, my arms folded over my chest.

“Like I’ve been shot three times,” he said with a chuckle.  “But better.”

“You sure you want to be getting up now?”

“You sound like me,” he teased as he stood slowly.

“Just worried about you.”

“Now you know the feeling,” he said as he took a few steps toward me, limping as he did, his eyebrow raising.  “I see you lost your guard.”

“I think he got bored.”

“Everything almost ready?”

I nodded as we turned and walked out of the room.  Avian put an arm across my shoulder, letting me help with his wounded leg.  “I think so.  It’s a bomb of electricity up there.  I had to leave.”

“I’d be lying if I said this whole thing didn’t scare me.”

“Royce assures me the hospital will be protected,” I said as we continued down the hall.  We walked up the stairs to the second floor and went into Avian’s room.  He kicked off his boots again and laid gingerly back on the bed.  “I just needed out of that stuffy room,” he said when he saw the smirk on my face.  I just shook my head and lay next to him, nestling in the crook of his good arm.

“I’ve been thinking about something.  If you don’t like it, just tell me.  I will understand.”

“What?” he asked as he pressed his cheek to the top of my head.

“I think I should be in with West when the Pulse goes off.  Even if he can’t hear me, there are a few things I need to say to him.  Something doesn’t feel right inside of me and I think it’s because West has no idea what is going on.  It feels too unfair.”

Avian propped himself up just enough to look down into my eyes.  “I think you should.  We don’t know what is in his future and I think you should be there when this happens.  I don’t like feeling like we’ve gone behind his back with this.”

I brought my hand to the side of Avian’s face.  “I hoped you would understand.”

“Even if you say you don’t love him, he means a lot to you.  He always will,” Avian said as he looked down at me.  “I would never expect that to change.  People affect you, some stay with you forever.  West will be one of those people.”

I gave him a small smile, blinking several times before I pressed my lips to his briefly.  “Thank you.”

“What do you want to do once this is over?” Avian asked, changing the subject, and lying back down.  He may have understood but West being in the picture had still caused him pain in the past.  I didn’t blame him for not wanting to talk about West anymore.

“Get out of this hospital,” I said immediately, settling my head back against his shoulder.  “I just realized that I hate being here.  The people are fine, and I will admit it is nice to feel so protected.  But this place feels like a prison.  I can’t breathe.  I need some sun.”

“I wondered how you were handling being locked up in here,” he said.

“I want to see the ocean,” I said as I stared at the white ceiling.  “West told me about it once.  How big and intimidating it is.  We’re so close to it I swear I can almost smell it at times.

“What about you?”

Avian was thoughtful for a while.  “I just want freedom to go wherever I want.  I have no complaints about how things ran in Eden.  In a way it was a utopia.  But I couldn’t ever leave.  I was limited to this mile radius of wherever the people of Eden were.  After the trip out here, of having the freedom to move around even just the hospital as I wish, it’s been freeing.  I want to just take off into the mountains if I want, to go, I don’t know, explore if I want to, without having to worry about someone dying if I’m unavailable.”

“You’ve been a prisoner in a way for the last five years,” I said as I nuzzled closer.  I’d reinforced that feeling multiple times, telling Avian that he couldn’t leave.  Everyone had needed him too much.  He’d saved so many lives.

He pressed his lips briefly to my forehead.  “And I just want to spend time with you.”

FORTY

The blue floor was a buzz of activity again, people rushing in and out of every room.  Such chaos before the storm.  It was easy to feel the excitement that coursed through their veins but you could almost touch their nervousness as if it were a tangible thing.  I felt my own heartbeat pick up a few paces.

There was only one doctor in the Extraction room when we walked in.  He entered something into a computer as we approached, glancing up at us.  “I’m almost done, then you can be alone with him.”

“How is he doing?” Avian asked.  As he spoke, I remembered what Royce had said about what he had done for West.  Despite everything, Avian had risked his life to save West’s.

“No change yet,” the doctor said as he stepped away from the computer, ready to leave.  “It hasn’t been very long though.  We won’t know any different for about a week, probably more.”

Avian gave a nod and the doctor stepped out.

We walked up to the Extractor silently, each lost in our thoughts.  I knew Avian felt no sense of relief at now having West out of the way, no longer a distraction to me.  That was just Avian, always pure-hearted and a good man.

“I hope he responds soon,” Avian said quietly as we stopped five feet away from the curved arms that rose around West, circling him in an open bowl.  “He is a good soldier.”

I simply nodded, unable to say much.  My throat was tight.

Avian’s hand slipped into mine.  “Take as much time as you need.”

He pressed a quick kiss to my forehead and left without another word.  I glanced at the clock as he closed the door behind him.  Fifteen minutes to activation.

Thoughts raced through my head in a mixed up jumble of words and emotions.  Where did I start and where did I stop?  Was this totally pointless if West couldn’t even hear me?  I had already been told that West was in a medically induced coma.

I grabbed a chair and sat in front of him.

I hated seeing him so broken.  West had always been so strong, he had always survived and could take care of himself.  He had proven that over the last five years.  And here he was, after such a long battle, right as our enemy was about to be wiped out, his system infected.

A horrifying thought occurred to me then.  If the extraction didn’t work, if it was too late, West would be the only body left around that was still actively infected if the Pulse worked.  They would only try to cure him for so long.  They could only keep his body around for so long.  As it was now, they could no longer touch his skin with their bare hands without getting infected themselves.  Eventually, if he didn’t respond, they would have to destroy his body.

“You have to pull out of this,” I started.  “You’re too strong to go down like this.  I need to say this to your face, to tell you what has happened these past few days.  This is too easy and too hard all at the same time.  But in case I don’t get that chance, I’m going to tell you now and hope that you can somehow hear me.”

I swallowed hard, my eyes falling to my hands, my fingers interlocked.  “You woke something up inside of me.  I didn’t used to care about being with someone.  About feeling attachment.  About getting close to people.   And despite how terrible my past is, I’m glad you had the answers for me, most of them anyway.  I don’t think you can fully understand who you are until you know where you’ve come from.

“But something was missing between us, West.  Loving someone isn’t just about feeling passion, or whatever it is.  You got under my skin, you drove me insane.  And I could have gotten over those things.  You learn to deal with people’s faults.  But I never felt like I could trust you.  You deliberately kept things from me, with no intention to ever tell me the truth.  I can’t have a relationship built on lies.  You carry too many secrets.”

I paused, taking a few deep breaths, unsure if I would ever be able to give this speech again if West did wake up.  It felt like I was ripping myself to shreds.  And yet I felt so relieved, to finally understand how I felt.  To be speaking the truth.

“I love Avian,” I said quietly, my chest swelling with my words.  “I have for a while, I just didn’t realize it.

“I’ve made my choice, West.”

As the words escaped my lips the building suddenly shook and I faintly heard glass shatter.

This was it.

The lights flickered as all the electricity was directed to the roof.  Another blast could be faintly heard.  The building shook again, frightening moans echoing through the walls.  A third blast sounded, the air surging.  And then all was quiet and still.

I was still alive.

Royce had been right.  They’d protected the hospital.

Cheering erupted out in the halls.  Feet pounded the floor as people ran toward the stairs and elevator.

“Goodbye, West,” I whispered.

I walked out the door.

FORTY-ONE

I took the stairs two at a time to find everyone.  As I sprinted into the lobby, I saw everyone standing at the front sliding doors, the protective steel doors retracted, looking through the thin glass out into the sunlight.

I was confused by their hesitancy at first, their silence.  But they were afraid.  Afraid that it might not have worked.  Afraid that it might have.

I worked my way to the front of the crowd, stepping out in front of them.  A few hundred eyes settled on my back as I hesitated for a moment.  Taking a deep breath, I pried the doors open, letting in a rush of sun filled air.  Just before I stepped outside, a familiar hand slid into mine.  I glanced over at Avian, his burning blue eyes giving me courage.

We stepped out into the light, the streets perfectly silent.  Making sure no Hunters were hiding in the shadows, waiting to leap out at us, the two of us crossed the street to another building.  My heart hammering in my chest, we looked through the windows.

They were all there, crumpled in a pile of destroyed metal and flesh.

“It worked,” I breathed, opening the door.  I slipped inside, my eyes widening as I saw dozens of bodies lying around, empty eyes staring up at us.  “It worked.”

Avian walked up to a woman with a half-metal face and pushed her shoulder with his booted toe.  She didn’t move.  “They’re dead,” he whispered.

“They’ve been dead for a long time,” I said as I nudged a body.  I couldn’t even tell if it was male or female anymore.  “They just can’t kill us anymore.”

Not one of them moved as we continued to check the bodies.  Assured that none of them were faking, we walked back out into the sunlight.  Faces watched us from the doorway of the hospital, a few of Royce’s men standing just outside, their firearms held tightly.

“It worked,” Avian said loudly as we crossed the street.  “The Bane are dead!”

That was all it took.  Everyone started pouring out of the building in a stampede, rushing out onto the street.  Cries of joy echoed off the buildings, laughter emanating from everywhere.  I couldn’t help but smile too.  Avian turned his face to the blue sky, a laugh shaking his entire body.  He pulled me into his arms for a moment and gave me a tight squeeze.

“This probably wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for you,” Royce’s voice came from behind us.  He struggled to coordinate himself on the crutches.  “We owe you a lot.”

“You would have found some other way if I hadn’t come along,” I said, giving him a small smile.

“We would have lost a lot more people,” he said, clapping a hand on my right shoulder.  “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” I said as I watched him hobble down the street after his people.

“They did it,” Tuck said, his hands pushed into his pockets as he walked up to us.

“We all did,” Avian said as he glanced at me.

“Just imagine Eden’s surprise when our messages lead them into a cleared city,” he said with a smile creeping onto his face.

“They were planning to leave in just over a week,” Avian said.  “We should be seeing them in less than two.”

“How different Eden is going to be,” I breathed.

“Not so different,” Avian said as he slid his hand into mine.  “We’ll always have each other.  As long as we have that, it will always be Eden.”

And as usual, I knew Avian was right.

FOURTY-TWO

Not a single trace of glass was to be found as the roof of the hospital was flooded with its occupants.  The Pulse sat in the middle of the expansive space, a gleaming trophy for every single one of us.  It was a testament to mankind’s will to survive.  To live.

Twinkling lights were strung around the area, the only light to see by beside the huge moon that loomed in the sky.  Music filtered through a box that was plugged into one of the many electrical cords that ran back into the building.  I watched as people moved in time with it, saw their smiling faces as they held each other close.

The rest of the members of Eden had arrived only six days after the Pulse went off.  When Hunters had been spotted every day for three days straight they decided they had no other choice but to leave early.  Their truck had run better and faster than ours had and they found us quickly.

I had felt like my insides might burst from the joy I felt as we explained to them the bodies they saw lying everywhere.  We were finally safe.  Hopefully for a good long while.  Nearly every one of them had tears in their eyes.

I hesitantly hugged Gabriel when a sob escaped his chest.  “Thank you,” he had simply whispered.  I pulled Bill into my arms next.  To my surprise, he didn’t let go for quite a while.  Even though I knew it made him uncomfortable, I pulled Graye into a hug as well and gave him a tight squeeze.  It felt so good to see my brothers again.

Their joy was crushed though when we told them about West.  Their tears of joy quickly turned to tears of sorrow.  Victoria broke down into sobs.  I didn’t think West ever realized just how loved he had been in Eden.  He had been accepted as a family member, even if he didn’t realize it.

What was unexpected though, was seeing the way Wix looked at Victoria, the way he consoled her tears.  I didn’t anticipate seeing her slide her hand into his.  And to see Brady grab Wix’s other hand and call him “daddy.”  Apparently I’d been way off the marker thinking she and Avian were falling for each other.

And so there we were, three days later, watching as Wix and Victoria stood before the one-hundred and thirty-six residents of Los Angeles.  Gabriel stood with them and spoke of love lasting beyond death.  And wearing the white dress she had picked from one of the long forgotten about shops, she and Wix spoke words to each other I finally understood.

Maybe I should have waited to have Dr. Beeson lessen my emotional blockers.  Ever since the rest of my family was reunited, I’ve felt everything was going to overwhelm me.  One little bit at a time, he said, and someday I’d be normal.  As normal as I could be anyway.  Now I had to decide if I really wanted to be normal.  Already at times I felt everything would consume me, all the joy I felt, all the sorrow I experienced for the billions of lives that had been lost.

But mostly I felt an overwhelming sense of hope for the future.

We’d slowly been clearing bodies out of the city in the days since the Pulse went off.  Even though we knew everything was dead, most of us didn’t trust having them all lying in the streets and in buildings.  There was enough live tissue left in most of them for there to be a risk of disease spreading.  We were never going to be able to clear all the hundreds of thousands of bodies out, but we would clear the areas we inhabited.  The floor of the Pacific Ocean would be littered with bodies.

I pushed the plate of food away from me as I brought myself back to the present, feeling fuller than I could remember ever feeling.  Avian walked over in his recently picked out suit, two cups filled with some kind of liquid.  He offered one to me and when I shook my head, he set them down on the table.  I couldn’t help but smile at him as he held a hand out to me.  I took it and stood, the green silky fabric of the dress I wore sliding around my body in an alien way.

My hand in his, Avian led us to the area of the roof where people danced, moving in time to the music that wove around us.  He slid his hand around my waist, pulling me close, resting his cheek against mine.

“You look amazing,” he said quietly as we moved in a slow circle.

“You clean up pretty nicely yourself,” I said with a smile.

We danced slowly, our hearts slowing to the same rhythm.

“I can’t believe you asked me if I was in love with Victoria,” Avian suddenly said with a chuckle.

“You’re bringing this up now?” I said defensively as I backed away from him just a bit.

“I just think it’s funny,” he said with a chuckle, pulling me close again.  I just shook my head and rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see.

“She looks really beautiful tonight,” I said as I watched her and Wix dance together.  Their red hair nearly glowed under the twinkling light.  Brady danced by himself next to them in his own little suit.

We slowed a bit as Avian turned to look at her.  The fabric draped around her thin frame in an almost dreamy way, shimmering in the lights.

“Would you wear one?” Avian asked quietly as he looked at me with his burning blue eyes.  “Someday.  For me?”

My eyes widened a bit as I realized what he was really asking.  My insides swelled, my heart picking up in pace.  A smile crossed my lips as I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his.  “Only for you,” I whispered.

Avian smiled as I pulled away, giving me a small squeeze.  His eyes still on mine, he took a step away, keeping my hand in his.  He led me through the crowd, through the door, and back down the stairs into the hospital.

As we walked past the door to the Extraction room, I gave a hard swallow.  It was hard to fully enjoy the wedding party when I knew West was sitting unconscious in that room.

We continued to watch West on a daily basis.  His vitals remained stable, his wounds completely healed from that awful day.  Every night someone would go in to sweep up the cybernetic scraps that worked their way out of his skin.  They were melted down and transported away.

I asked the doctors every few days what they thought would happen to West but they only said that they still don’t know if he would recover or not.  We could only hope.

Things had escalated between Avian and I the last few days.  Even though West still didn’t know what had happened, things feel whole.  Maybe it was the nights we’d spent together, sleeping in each other’s arms.  Maybe it was the hunts we’d gone on.  It didn’t matter.  It only mattered how right it was, how perfect.

There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about the future.  I didn’t know if West would ever wake up.  I didn’t know how I would deal with it if he never did.  I didn’t know if the Bane would ever travel here from another city, if we would ever have to fight them off again.  I didn’t know how everyone in Eden would adjust to our new way of life.

I didn’t know if we would ever reclaim our planet or even just our country, whatever that meant anymore.

But there were a few things that I did know.

I knew that I would continue to take care of Eden.  I knew I would help till our new gardens come spring.  I would continue to do everything in my power to keep my family alive.

I knew that I could count on Avian to be by my side until the day my heart stopped beating.

And I finally knew what love was.

I woke the next morning just an hour from dawn.  I felt the cold sheets next to me, realizing that Avian was gone.  At the same time, the door to my room opened, letting in a little sliver of light.

“Where were you?” I asked as I pushed my hair out of my face.

“Come on,” he said through the dim light.  Even with how dark it was I could see the smile on his face.  “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

I pulled on my boots and followed Avian silently through the sleeping hospital.  We came out on the ground level and exited through the front doors.  Sitting on the sidewalk was a beautiful two-wheeled red mass of machinery.

“What is it?” I asked, running my hand along its glossy surface.

“It’s called a motorcycle,” Avian said with a smile as he walked over to it.

“Does it still work?”

“Royce had it saved in the basement of the hospital.  Do you want to go for a ride?”

I couldn’t suppress the smile that spread on my face as I nodded.

Avian straddled the motorcycle and a moment later had the engine roaring to life.  I sat on the seat behind him, wrapping my arms around his chest.  “Hang on,” he said over his shoulder.

The beast ripped to life, the pavement falling behind us as the hospital faded away.  The night air caressed my cheeks as we sped by, my hair fanning out behind me.  This was a freedom I had never experienced, one I vowed to live over and over again.

We drove for nearly an hour and I realized where we were going when I smelled the salt in the air.  Avian parked the motorcycle in the middle of the road and looked out to the west.

I didn’t wait for him to follow me as I slid off the back of the motorcycle.  My eyes fixed in front of me as I crossed the pavement and then my boots sank into the sand.  I walked to the edge of the water, staring into the horizon.

There was nothing but water and sky for as far as I could see.

I understood then what West had said about the ocean being scary and beautiful at the same time.  I felt so small, so helpless.  It could claim my life in just a moment if it were to awaken with fury.  But it was beautiful.  The slowly fading moon gleamed on its surface, an endless dance of celestial skill.  Mankind could never hope to have that kind of grace.

And then I noticed something at the edge of the sand.  My old tent had been pitched, waiting there like an old friend.

“Welcome home,” Avian said softly.

As I looked back out over the water, his thumb brushed across my cheek.  I realized there were tears streaming down my face.

Maybe I was more human than I thought.

THE HUMAN

Book Two

ONE

Nearly everywhere I looked, there were bodies.

They lay limp in the streets.  They were piled on top of each other inside buildings.  They sat still and slumped over inside vehicles.

We were surrounded by over three million decomposing, cybernetic-infused corpses.

I closed my eyes as a sense of overwhelming vertigo seized me.  Rubble fell from the roof, down into the street below, as I took one step back from the ledge.

There were so many bodies.  They surrounded us on all sides.  Silent and immobile.  They were dead.  They couldn’t infect us anymore.

But I had lived my whole life running from them.

Every instinct in me wanted to flee the city.

I opened my eyes, turning them east.  I missed the mountains.  I missed the trees.  I missed the heat and the snow and the changing leaves.

I missed protecting my family.  I missed staying up all night to make sure we were safe.

I missed having a purpose.

We were safe now.  The Bane in the city were destroyed.

What purpose did I serve now?

I took two more steps back, bumping into the Pulse.  Its sharp edges dug into my ribs, but I stayed pressed into it, hoping to feel something other than guilt and loss.

I’d had a purpose then.  I’d helped to clear this city.  So had many others.

But not all of us had made it out.

And my actions ate at me every day.

“Eve?”

Avian stepped out onto the roof of the hospital.  A rifle was slung over his shoulder, a utility belt hanging low on his narrow hips.  His eyes were serious and searching as he met mine.

I looked back out over the city to the east.  His footsteps approached, slow but knowing.

He stepped in front of me, locking his eyes on mine.  He placed a hand on either side of my face and pressed his forehead to mine.

“We can leave,” he breathed as my eyes slid closed.  “You don’t have to stay here and torture yourself.”

I shook my head slightly and the air around me seemed to tighten and constrict around my chest and throat.

“I can’t abandon them,” I whispered, placing my hand on Avian’s chest.  The only sure thing in my world, Avian’s heart beat back the echo of everything I had ever fought for.  “I have to deal with the messes I’ve made.”

“You’ve saved them, Eve,” he said.  His rough cheek brushed mine as his lips whispered next to my ear.  “Maybe it’s time to save yourself.”

I didn’t respond because I would never be able to make him understand the weight and turmoil that burned through my veins.  I simply pressed my face into Avian’s neck and crushed him into my chest.

“Come on,” Avian said after a long while, taking my hand.  He pulled me toward the stairs that led back into the hospital.  “Dinner will be ready soon.”

We made our way to the armory, finding it empty.

We didn’t really need weapons anymore, but not a single one of our scouts was going to walk around the city without a firearm.

Instincts don’t die quickly.

A rack of firearms lined one wall.  There were labels below each shotgun or rifle.  I had six firearms myself.  Avian had five.  And those were just the ones we kept in the armory.

My eyes hesitated on one name.

West.

His rifle and shotgun had sat untouched for weeks.

Static crackled over my radio, making me jump.

"It’s happening again!  I need you up here, Eve!  Now!”

Royce.  There was unmistakable frustration and fear in his voice.

My teeth threatened to break as my jaw clenched.  I placed my M4 assault rifle back on the rack and looked over at Avian.  He hesitated for a moment, the pain of the past surfacing once more like a heavy, dark cloud.  He finally gave an assuring nod.

“I’m on my way,” I said into the radio.  I squeezed Avian’s shoulder, hoping it was reassuring.  "I'll be back as soon as I can."

“Yeah,” was all he said.  The muscles in his neck tightened and his eyes darted away from mine.  He went back to cleaning his weapon.

My footsteps echoed off the walls.  The hospital felt so quiet and yet so busy these days.  In the two months since the Pulse went off, everyone had slowly started moving out.  But the hospital remained the base of operations here in Los Angeles, now renamed New Eden.  It was still the most secure location and all of our military supplies, food, and medical equipment remained stored within its walls.

I jogged up six flights of stairs and exited onto the blue floor.

"Eve!" I heard Royce bellow from down the hall.  "Take your time.  It's not like he isn't trying his best to kill us!"

I picked up my pace, sprinting toward the door I was becoming all too familiar with.

"For a robotic freak you sure can be slow," Royce growled as he helped Graye hold the door shut.  Something slammed against it from the other side.  They groaned as their feet slid back and the door jerked open a few inches.

"How long ago did he wake up?" I asked, pressing my palm flat against the door, pushing it back shut.  I avoided looking thorough the tiny window made of reinforced glass.

"It’s been about twenty minutes," Graye answered.  "He was pretty out of it for a bit, then he freaked out."

I nodded, feeling everything in me tire.  This whole process exhausted me mentally and physically, and it just kept repeating.

"I've got it," I said.  "You two can leave now."

"You sure you can handle him?" Royce asked.  "He’s raging today."

I wasn’t ready, at all.  But I wouldn’t tell Royce that.  “Yeah.”

Finally he nodded.

"Count of three?" I asked.  "One, two, three!"

They jumped away as I yanked the door open, stepped inside, and slammed the door closed behind me.  I broke the door handle off, locking the both of us inside until I could get him to cooperate and help me force it open.

I heard him freeze behind me.

It took a long time to turn away from the door.  The last seven weeks had been painful.  I'd been preparing myself for a bad situation, because there was no easy way for this all to end. But I hadn't expected this to end like it did.

"Eve," he breathed behind me.  I heard him take a step closer and everything in me wanted to retreat, to not have to go through all of this, again and again.  "What’s going on?"

Collecting myself, I turned, and looked at West.

He wasn't as bad as Elijah.  He'd at least kept both his eyes.  But the skin was bubbled on the right side of his face, the left had a few scattered scars.  His face was in bad shape, there was no question about it.  His entire body was covered in marks and scar tissue.  I could barely distinguish the claw marks on his neck—which had once been so prominent—from the new scars.

He was broken, but he was still West.

Even if he wasn't my West.

Even if he couldn't remember that.

"What happened to me?" he asked for the third time.  "What is this?"

My eyes dropped to his bare chest.  A device was implanted there, just above his heart, and small barbs disappeared into his skin.  Components swirled, ticked, and spun, casting a pale green glow, keeping it charged at all times.

Keeping me away at all times.

"It's keeping you human," I said with a hard swallow.  I didn't know how many times I could keep doing this.

West stared at me for a long time, like he couldn't quite make sense of my words.  He looked back down at the device, his fingers touching where it went into his bare chest.

"I..." he stuttered.  "I remember...  I remember going to the plant, all the Bane.  I was helping Royce repair the line.  A gun fired…  I don't remember how I got back here."

I recalled the night I had been at the power plant myself.  My mission had been to connect the power line for the Pulse to the power source.  There had been hundreds of Bane gathered around it.  There were flashes of light, gunfire, explosions.  I’d nearly lost my legs that night.  But it had been for nothing.

The Bane had pulled the line, and West went with a team to try and fix it.

I shifted from one foot to the other, again fighting the urge to run.  I was having a hard time meeting his eyes.  "You were attacked," I explained.  "The Bane got you.  You were infected."

"Infected?" he said, his voice breathy with shock and disbelief.  "No, I couldn't...  I can't...  I made it this long!"

"I know," I said, debating if I could walk away from the door or not.  West was unpredictable when he forgot.  He had a tendency to break things—and sometimes people.

I finally stepped away from the door and crossed to the small metal chair in the corner, opposite of where West stood.  On the nightstand next to me, West’s grandfather’s notebook rested so innocently on it.

"The night you all fixed the power supply to the Pulse, you were infected.  No one saw the Bane that was hiding.  Royce and his men got you back here and put you under the Extractor.  We weren't sure if you were going to make it or not.  No one was sure how long it had been since you were touched.”

"Royce said it had to be under an hour," West said.  He rubbed the device in his chest absent mindedly.  "That was the magic number."

I nodded.  I pressed my palms flat against each other between my knees, rubbing them together slowly.  "We watched you for a long time, waiting to see if we could get all the cybernetics out.  Normally the process takes about ten days.  We waited fifteen."

I’d fought Royce the final three days.  He wanted to dispose of West, certain it had been too late to save him.  The only living TorBane in the city was trapped in West’s body and Royce wasn’t willing to risk the safety of our people over one man.

In the end, Royce gave West a few more days.  West had woken up just in time.

"So they fixed me, right?" West said, his voice full of hope and fear at the same time.  "I mean, I'm alive.  I don't feel like infecting everyone, so that means it worked?"

I tried to nod, to reassure him that he was going to be okay.  But that glowing inhibitor was right there in front of me.

"Not exactly," I said, my palms turning white as I pressed them together harder.  "They thought they had everything out.  But Dr. Beeson did a scan, and saw one small piece left.  A half inch long, an eighth of an inch wide.  That's all that's left.  It’s relatively tiny.  But it's formed in your heart.  They can't get it out, not without killing you."

West stared at me, almost like he hadn’t heard me.  I wondered for a moment if he was lapsing again.

"And this?" he finally said, so quiet, even I almost didn't hear him.  Then he glanced down at the device.

"Like I said, it’s keeping you human," I started explaining.  I rubbed a hand over my eyes, just wanting to skip the rest of this day and go home to bed.  "That scrap inside of you is still TorBane.  It still wants to spread throughout your body. That inhibitor is keeping it from spreading.  Well, slowing it down."

"Slowing it down?" West asked as he sank onto his bed.  "Not fully stopping it?"

I shook my head.  "It keeps it at bay for about two weeks at a time, but no. It doesn't stop it permanently.  You have to go back in the Extractor every two weeks."

West stared at me in disbelief for a moment.  "How do you know all this?  How...  How long has this been going on?"

"Just short of two months," I answered him hollowly. I sat back in the chair, my arms crossing over my chest.  "You've undergone extraction three times now.  And every time you come back out, you don't remember what's happened."

West shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed tightly, like maybe he could shake the memories into focus.

"You should probably get some rest, eat some food," I said, climbing to my feet.  "I will walk with you to the kitchen, let them know you're okay."

"Did I hurt anyone?" he asked.  “They’ve got me locked up.  There must be a reason for that.”

I stilled by the door.  The first time he had woken, Dr. Beeson had been there, as well as some of his team.  He had broken three of Dr. Beeson’s fingers and the arm of his assistant, Addie.  “It doesn’t matter,” I said after too long of a pause.  “We just need to focus on getting you better.”

West turned toward the mirror that hung on the wall.  Or what remained of it.  He had thrown a book at it the second time he woke up and broken it pretty badly.  His face paled when he saw his reflection.  One of his hands rose to touch his skin.

"Come on," I said uncomfortably, trying to draw his attention away from what he was seeing.  "Let’s get you some food."

"I'm not hungry," he said, still studying his reflection.

"Fine," I said.  "Help me get the door open?"

West didn’t respond.  His head whipped to the right, toward the small window that looked out to the sunny street below.  He crossed to it, looking out.

“It worked?” he breathed.  “Didn’t it?”

I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me.  “Yeah, the Pulse killed them all off.  We’re safe, for now.”

West took a deep breath and continued to stare out the window for a long moment.   “I can’t believe I missed it.”

It was my fault he had.  He’d been trying to protect me when he got infected.

Finally, he turned.  With his help, we forced the door open.  I stepped out into the hall.

"Are you going to terrorize anyone, or do I need to send up an armed guard?" I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets.  It might have sounded like I was making a joke, but I wasn’t.

"I feel okay.  Freaked out, but okay."  He shook his head when he looked out into the hall, realizing he was on the blue floor and not the residential second floor.

"Good," I said, turning to go.

I'd only taken two steps away from West when he called out to me.

"You chose Avian, didn't you?"

I hesitated mid-step, a sharp, biting cold spreading through my veins.  I had hoped we could avoid this part for just a little while longer this time around.

"Yes," I answered simply.  Without waiting for his reply, I kept walking down the hall.

TWO

“Are you okay?”

My eyes jerked to the right, finding Lin walking out of room 104.  The room behind her was filled with children.  They sat in a circle, reading books and coloring pictures.  Lin was the new-age elementary school teacher.

I’d been standing in the lobby, zoned out, trying not to think about West or cybernetics or Bane or the complexity of love.  She stopped at my side, her arms folded across her tiny frame.  “West woke up, didn’t he?” she asked.

I nodded, pressing my lips tightly together.  My eyes searched the lobby.

“I think Avian went back to his room,” Lin said as she too scanned the space.  It wasn’t as busy as it had been a few weeks ago.  The day-to-day operations of New Eden had changed.  We didn’t have to worry about the Bane falling down on us.  For now.

“West was pretty calm this time,” I said, looking back toward the classroom.  Parents came to collect their children.  Wix took Brady by the hand and led him out into the sun outside.  “Once I got there anyway.”

“Are you okay though?” Lin asked.  Her eyes searched for the truth I knew she’d find.

My eyes rose to the ceiling and I shook my head.  “I don’t know,” I said quietly.  “He asked about my decision almost immediately.”

“It’s still fresh for him,” Lin said.

“It’s always fresh for him,” I said, wrapping my arms around my midsection.  “That’s the problem.  I keep trying to move on, to let go of the guilt I feel.  But him forgetting every time makes that impossible.”

“You don’t need to punish yourself,” Lin said, placing a tiny hand on my arm.  “You deserve to be happy, Eve.  You can’t save everyone and you can’t always fix every problem.”

I met her gaze again and I felt an immense sense of gratitude toward her.  Lin was one of the most understanding people I had ever met.  I couldn’t comprehend how she could always take things so calmly and evenly.  But she always said the right things when I needed to hear them.

“Thanks,” I said, attempting a bit of a smile.

“Any time,” she said before wrapping me in a hug that was surprisingly strong, considering her size.

“I think I’m going to go find Avian now,” I said when she released me.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she said with a wink before she walked back to the remaining students.

Climbing the stairs, I turned down the hall.  I knocked on Avian’s door once.  No one answered so I peeked inside, only to find it empty.

I opened the door to my own room to find a small package sitting on my bed.  I crossed the room and gingerly picked it up.

It was solid, far heavier than I expected it to be.

Tearing back the brown paper packaging, I found a box.  I lifted the lid to find a beautiful, silver handgun.

“I kind of thought it just screamed ‘Eve.’”

I turned to see Avian leaning in the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Is this a Desert Eagle .44 magnum?” I asked, my voice disbelieving.  I looked back at the firearm.  I pulled the clip out and found it fully loaded.

“Yep,” Avian said, crossing the room and stopping by my side.  “I found it while I was out with the rehoming crew.”

“These are nearly impossible to find,” I said with a laugh in my voice.  “And you just happen across one?”

Avian placed his hands on my shoulders.  He leaned in close, brushing his lips across my shoulder.  “Uh huh.”

“You want to go test it out after duty tomorrow?” I asked, replacing the clip and eying along the barrel.

“I was hoping you would say that,” he said and I could hear the smile in his voice.  “I got myself a new compound bow and a quiver full of broad tipped carbon shaft arrows.  I wanted to test them out.”

Setting the gun down on the bed, the safety on, I turned and faced Avian.  He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me in close.  There was a hint of a smile playing in the corners of his mouth.

“Are you using firearms to get me alone in my room?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, his smile growing as he pushed the door closed.

Avian’s lips were as familiar as the feeling of clothing against my skin, but he was different fabrics and textures every time they met.  His lips consumed my own, trailed to my jaw, explored my neck, sought other places on my body.

I lay back on the bed, my new firearm hard under my spine.  Avian lifted me further onto the bed and he shifted on top of me.  My hands clutched the fabric of his shirt and as his lips trailed once again to my throat, the fabric suddenly split as I tugged.  Neither of us noticed as I let the tattered remains fall to the floor.

Avian was the one sure way to pull me back to the surface on my dark, drowning days.

His hands held the small of my back, his skin meeting mine in a way that threatened to black me out.  My breath came out ragged in a way hours of running never managed to bring out of me.

I tugged on his lower lip with my teeth, my hand running over his buzzed hair.  I loved it when it got to this length.  It was soft and fuzzy.  I rolled on top of him, my legs straddling his.

Somehow we'd found heaven on Earth in the middle of hell.  Avian and I together, that was what it was.  Heaven.  Happiness.

There was a knock on the door.  “Eve?” Royce’s voice rang though the heavy wood.  “You in there?”

I jerked back from Avian, covering my mouth to stifle the scream or laugh I knew was about to come.  My face felt warm and I knew I was blushing.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, springing off of Avian and straightening my clothes.  I half-tripped across the room and cracked the door open.

Royce shook his head, a coy smile playing on his lips that said he knew exactly what I had just been doing.

“You need something?” I squeaked.

“Dr. Beeson and Dr. Stone would like a report on West,” Royce said.  His own face was slightly red with embarrassment.

“Okay, I’ll be up in a few minutes,” I said, my voice higher pitched than I would have liked.

“Five minutes,” he said, attempting to be serious once again.  “Oh, and Avian,” he said loudly.  My face flushed all the more hot.  “Nice work on the block five scout.  Looks like those units will be perfect.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Avian called from behind me.  I faintly heard him suppressing a laugh.

Royce just shook his head as he walked away.  I heard him mutter something like “horny hybrid” under his breath.

I turned back to Avian, feeling utterly horrified.

Avian burst into laughter.

“This is not funny, Avian!” I said, throwing a box of tissues in his direction.

He just laughed as he dodged them.  “I have to say, I never thought I’d have the experience of being walked in on by the father with you,” he said.

“Royce…” I started to argue.

“He might as well be,” Avian said, the smile still on his face.  “Trust me, he’s protective enough of you to be your father.”

My face still felt hot.  “Well, I’m fully aware of what the human emotion of embarrassment feels like now.”

Avian chuckled and bent to grab his shirt.  He held up the tattered remains with a ridiculous smile.

“Sorry about that,” I said, not feeling sorry in the slightest.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said light-heartedly as he dropped it into my garbage can.  “I can always get another in this city.”

I couldn't help but stare at him for a moment.  He really was beautiful.  His eyes burned bright in the dim light, his brow heavy and dark, giving him a deep and soulful look.  His jaw was strong, all his features so serious and deep.  I'd heard stories about angels—beautiful, good, and perfect creatures that came from heaven and walked the earth.

Avian was an angel if ever there were one.

“You’d better get going or you’re going to get in trouble with your dad,” Avian teased, pressing a kiss to my forehead.  I punched him in the arm, maybe a little too hard considering he winced.

“Thank you for the gun,” I said, truly meaning it.

“You’re welcome,” he said, pressing a kiss to my lips.

THREE

That night, Avian had a nightmare about Sarah.  They came frequently and ferociously.  It was the guilt of leaving her behind, back in the mountains.  It ate at him.  He knew there had been nothing he could do about it.  But that didn’t prevent the nightmares.

Nights like those he found his way into my bed.

I woke again sometime around four in the morning.  Seeing Avian still asleep, I slid out from next to him, pulled my work clothes and boots on, and slipped out the door.  I made my way through the dark halls to the kitchen, my stomach growling.  Coming to Los Angeles had been good for everyone in Eden.  We had all been starving when we arrived, trying to survive off of dwindling food stores after the Bane burned the gardens to ash.

The kitchen was dark, as it should be this time of night.  Everyone was adjusting back to a diurnal sleeping schedule quickly.

Flipping a light on, I went for the refrigerator.

“I take it you couldn’t sleep either?”

My fingers flew to the gun at my hip and I poised it in front of me.

“I see all your old habits haven’t died just yet,” West said, his familiar cocky grin cracking on his lips.  His face looked more like its old self when he smiled.  He sat on the counter, a half-eaten carrot in one hand.  “Still the same old gun-happy Eve.”

“Geeze, West,” I griped at him, slipping my gun back into its holster.  I reached for an orange from the fridge.  “Were you trying to get your head shot off?”

“If someone is going to do it, it might as well be you,” he said, hopping down from the counter.

“What are you doing up right now?” I asked, digging my fingers into the rind of the orange.  Its strong odor flooded my nose.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, leaning back against the upper cabinets.  “Nightmares.”

I nodded.  I knew what that was like.  But lately my nightmares usually involved West.

He stood there for a long minute, staring at me as I ate the orange.  I couldn’t quite meet his eyes.  I fought the urge to turn and leave, to not have to answer the million questions and accusations I knew were running through his head.

“You’re different,” West finally said.  My eyes rose to meet his as I wiped my hands on my pants.  My heart was beating just a little too fast.  He slid off the counter.

West took a step closer to me.  I could see the conflict in his face.  Before, he would have reached for me, touched my face, tried to take my hand.  But I had made my choice.  And it wasn’t him.  “You seem…older?  More beaten.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, trying to keep my voice hard.  I wasn’t going to show how uncomfortable I was.  I wasn’t going to let him get to me.

“Was it easy?” he asked.  “Just flipping it off like that?”

“West, don’t do this,” I said, shaking my head.

“This kind of seems like something we should talk about,” he said.  There was obvious pain in his eyes.  There was anger right alongside it.  “Don’t you think?”

“We have talked about it,” I replied softly, my eyes dropping.

West faltered at that.

We had talked, the first time he had woken up.  He’d been in disbelief, over his infection, over my choice, over what he was to do with his future.

“This hasn’t been easy for you, has it?” he asked, taking another half step forward.  “What happened to me?”

“Doesn’t that sound a bit presumptuous to you?”  Something stung under the surface of my skin and my eyes dropped to the blue glow of West’s inhibitor.

“I know you, Eve,” West said, his voice growing quiet.  He reached up and pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear, bringing him even closer.  It felt like all my bones were seizing up, my blood hissing to life.  “Better than even Avian knows you.  You might have picked him, but I know what happened to me had an effect on you.”

“Not like you’re thinking though,” I managed to say.  My jaw clenched, pain prickling along my bones.  “I couldn’t live with the guilt, knowing you didn’t know what I had done, that I’d finally made my choice.”

“Are you sure that’s it?” West asked, his finger tracing along my cheek.

My breath caught in my throat.  My lungs felt like they were being pulled out through my rib cage.  “Unlike you West, I don’t keep everything hidden, masking the truth at all times.  I picked Avian, end of story.”

A painful half smile formed on West’s face.  He gave the smallest of nods.  “Then why doesn’t it feel that way?”

My bones were starting to splinter as the device embedded into West pulled at all the cybernetic and mechanical parts inside of me.

“West,” I breathed, my voice coming out as a whisper.

“Yes?” he replied hopefully.  He came closer, so close our clothes were touching.

“You’re hurting me,” I forced out, barely able to breathe anymore.

“Trust me,” he said, his expression hardening.  “It’s nothing like how I’ve been hurting since that night on the transformer.”

“No—” I hissed, my eyes squeezing closed.

“She means you’re physically ripping her apart,” a voice from behind us suddenly said.  “You should really step away before you kill her.”

I couldn’t even turn my head but I knew Royce’s voice.  West’s eyes widened, panic flashing across his face.  He scrambled away from me, backing up against the stainless steel counter.

I collapsed to the ground on my hands and knees, my breath coming in and out in painful gulps.

Royce’s boots came into view and I felt his calloused hands around my arms, helping me to my feet again.

“I’m sorry,” West stammered.  “I didn’t realize this thing would affect her like that.”

“You’re an idiot then,” Royce said, his voice hard.  Sure I would be okay, he turned toward West, his fist balled.  “That thing controls what her entire body is made of.  You never stopped to consider that?”

My eyes rose to West.  He looked tortured, pain at his unknown actions plain on his face.  A part of me wanted to feel sorry for him, to tell him it was okay.  But forgiving West was something I was getting tired of doing.

“I don’t particularly like the fact that the last remaining infected person within one hundred miles is walking around my base, but because of Eve’s insistence I’ve allowed you to stay.  Don’t give me a reason to get rid of you,” Royce’s voice dripped with ice.  “She’s our most valuable asset here in New Eden next to the Pulse.  And you…are not.”

Royce’s hardness was startling and I saw the fear in West’s eyes.

“Eve?” another voice said from the entrance to the kitchen.  I turned to see Avian looking at us, uncertainty on his face.  “What’s going on?”

I glanced back toward West, guilt and shame racing through my blood.

Avian looked from West to me and I saw his eyes harden.  “Did he hurt you?”

“No, Avian, I’m—” I started to say, but Avian was suddenly across the kitchen, right up in West’s face.

“Keep your distance with that thing,” Avian said.  “Or I swear—”

“Avian!” I yelled, pulling on the back of his shirt.  He stumbled back four steps but his gaze remained locked on West.  West glowered back.

“Take Eve back to her room,” Royce growled, pushing Avian gently back with a hand on his chest.  “Make her get some rest.”

After a long while, Avian nodded, tearing his eyes from West to look at me.  His expression softened only slightly.

I couldn’t meet his eyes and I hated that.

The radio crackled later that afternoon.  Royce was calling for the weekly meeting.

As people gathered around me in the conference room, I wondered if this was how society worked before—leaders meeting to discuss how things should run and planning how to keep everyone alive.

But before the Evolution they didn’t have to rebuild from scratch.  They didn’t have to talk about where to find food, to scavenge new homes, to have to haul away decomposing bodies.

I sat at the long table, between Avian and Gabriel—Eden’s former leadership—joined by half a dozen others, Royce and Elijah included.

“Welcome, everybody,” Royce started out as he walked into the room.  He pulled his chair back and took a seat.  He folded his arms on the table, his grey eyes turning to meet ours.  “Bet ten years ago you never thought you’d be on the board of what’s left of humanity.”

A few people chuckled, but most just gave a tight-lipped smile, not always appreciative of Royce’s harsh and blunt humor.

“Let’s go over the weekly report,” Royce said, pulling out a notepad and a pen.  The sight was strange, too relaxed and too organized for our chaotic world.  “Tuck, why don’t you start us out?”

Tuck cleared his throat as he stood.  His eyes shifted just a little too fast from his own notebook to the faces around the table. Tuck had gone from simple watchman in Eden to leader of the Bane Removal Crew, or the BRC, in New Eden.

“We cleared block sixteen this week, and got half of block seventeen cleared,” he said as he walked to the map that hung on one of the walls, marking block sixteen with a big red X.  “No issues reported.”  We had created this map with the hospital as ground zero, sectioning off each block spreading out around us.  The bodies may have been dead, TorBane destroyed, but no one wanted to see the hundreds of thousands of bodies lying everywhere.  And the remaining decomposing human flesh was a health hazard.

“How close are we to filling the first shipper?” Royce asked as he studied the map.

“It’s only about half filled,” Tuck said.  “We’ve sealed off the filled areas.  It should be ready to send out in another three weeks.”

I’d seen the huge ships once, docked out at the edge of the ocean.  Tuck told me they were called cruise ships and that once upon a time people boarded them for relaxing trips out on the water.

“Great,” Royce said, turning his attention to his notebook again, scribbling something down.  “The quicker we get those bodies cleared out, the better.”

“And the rehoming crew?” Royce asked.

“We’ve continued with the housing scout,” Elijah said.  It was always painful to look at him.  He was a harsh reminder that West could have turned out so much worse.  “Team one cleared block seven yesterday.  We should be able to set up three units in it.”

“Team two finished up block five, as you know,” Avian said.  Unlike me, Avian did have a purpose here in New Eden.  He and Elijah had their own teams that scouted out new homes for us all to start inhabiting.

I couldn’t stand working on the rehoming crew.  Finding a new home in the city meant I would be trapped here forever.  Thinking about that made me want to do self-destructive things.

But for everyone else, getting a new home outside the hospital meant the return to a more normal life.  One that resembled the world before the Evolution.

“I’ve also been working with them on emergency medical care,” Avian said.  “Dr. Reziks and Dr. Sun have been assisting me.”

Royce nodded as he continued scribbling notes down.  “Great.  Gabriel, what about your end?”

Gabriel cleared his throat, sitting up a little straighter in his seat.  I still couldn’t get over how different he looked with his beard neat and trimmed, his hair cut short.  He looked like a totally different man.  He appeared at least ten years younger.

“We’ve split civilians into two groups.  The first is in charge of food and general goods regulation.  There are two subgroups of this one.  One half is in charge of the garden and scouring the city for non-perishables.  The other half is in charge of setting up a supply store.  They are currently developing a regulation system so people can go and get what they need.

“The second group is in charge of cleaning up the units the rehoming scouts deem safe.  There was a former general contractor here in Los Angeles as well as an electrician.  Together they are heading up a team to start in blocks three and six and make them fit to reside in.  We’ve already established six homes in block four and they are currently being inhabited.”

It was strange hearing Gabriel try and succeeding in sounding so official.  He was attempting to prove that he was every bit as capable of leading as Royce was.  Not that he needed to.  Royce might have been a genius when it came to leading the military and scientific side of New Eden, but he was often too brutal and blunt to connect with everyone else.  People naturally looked to and trusted Gabriel.

“And how are our survivors adapting?” Royce asked.

“They’re… adjusting,” Gabriel said.  “It hasn’t been easy for them, but given what they’ve gone through, it isn’t surprising.”

About a week after the second half of Eden arrived in New Eden, Tuck and his then small crew found three people in a building, hiding and terrified.  They were young, ages sixteen, seventeen, and nineteen.  They’d survived the last five years by holing up in a police station, locking themselves behind bars during the day, boarding up the doors and windows, and only venturing out in the dead of night to find food and supplies.  Two of them were siblings, the youngest another girl they had found.  They were all half-starved.

And then a few days later a group of four more survivors walked right into the hospital.  They’d been watching us for two days, and finally decided we were safe to approach.  They’d all been hiding in a similar way the last few years.

In a city that once had a population of nearly four million, there were now only one hundred forty-three known survivors and a quarter of us had immigrated from elsewhere.

“And lastly, Erik,” Royce said, pulling me back into the room.

“The radio message is up and running still, broadcasting on a constant loop over five different stations,” Dr. Beeson said.  “We can’t be sure, but we’re estimating the signal should be able to be heard and found within a fifteen-hundred-mile radius.  If someone turns a radio on and scans, they’ll find the message.”

I’d been there when Royce recorded that message.  The message that said we’d cleared New Eden, that it was safe, that we could provide food and shelter if one could get here.  Royce gave our exact location.

So far no one had come.

Considering how the Bane continued to Evolve, how they’d hunted us down, burned our gardens to starve us out, there was probably no one left out there.  The Bane were getting too smart and too aggressive.

Yet I felt uneasy about the message.  If they looked, anyone could find it.  Just because someone was human didn’t mean they could be trusted.

“And we’re checking incoming signals?” Royce asked.

“All hours of the day,” Dr. Beeson said.  “Now that they don’t have the Pulse to focus on, it’s something to keep my team busy.”

Royce chuckled, crinkle lines forming around his eyes.  “I can only imagine what a team of bored scientists will do to keep themselves entertained.”  This time most of the room did laugh at Royce’s more appropriate joke.

“They’re still mourning that they’re done with their greatest creation,” Dr. Beeson joked.  “They’re missing their work on the Pulse.”

“I still think that once we’ve gotten everyone settled in their own residences we should rebuild the energy storage devices,” I said.  I wasn’t in charge of anything, the only one in this room without a purpose, but they still allowed me to sit in on these meetings.

“I was just talking to Royce about that this morning,” Dr. Beeson said with a nod.  “We have no guarantee that the city will stay clear.  Once things settle down with the rehoming, my team will be back on it.”

I nodded.  Avian squeezed my knee under the table.  He and I discussed the possibility of the Bane migrating back into the city often.

“Unless you have anything more, Gabriel?” Royce said.  Gabriel shook his head.  “Then I think that is all for today.  We’ll meet again same time next week.”

FOUR

Dinner consisted of canned chicken, canned green beans, and canned potatoes.  I would have fought off ten Bane if it meant I could have gotten my hands on some fresh spinach or wild berries.

When I was finished eating I started down the hall toward the stairs that led up to my room.

I was just about to pass the medical wing when I heard Avian’s voice.

“—getting worse,” he said, his voice low.  “I don’t know that it’s going to get any better while she stays in the city.”

“It certainly sounds like conditional depression.”  It was Dr. Sun who replied.  “Given her history, it is understandable that she would be having a hard time dealing with all of the changes.”

“She’s worked so hard all her life,” Avian mused.  “I never thought I’d say something like this, but I think life is too easy here.  She doesn’t know how to handle it.”

“Depression is easy to slip into when you don’t have any goals to work toward.”

Their words stung like a hundred yellow jackets.

Depression.  I was depressed?

There wasn’t room in this world for depression.

Balling my fists, I continued down the hall and up the stairs to my room.

I closed the door behind me, leaning back on it.  I let my eyes fall closed and pressed my hands in on either side of my head.

Goals.  What goals had I had before the Pulse went off?

Survive.  Protect my family.

What was I working for anymore?

Nothing.

And it was mentally breaking me.

Letting out a slow breath, internally telling myself to calm down, I opened my eyes.

There was a folded piece of paper lying on my bed.  I crossed the room and picked it up.  The page was half filled with sloppy handwriting.

You were obsessed with manuals as a kid.  You read faster than anyone I’d ever met and you always wanted to read the most boring stuff.  Someone left the manual for some piece of equipment in your room once and you read the whole thing in less than an hour.  When I came to visit you that afternoon, you recounted every detailed instruction on how to use it to me.  Told me how to fix a dozen different problems that might arise with it.

After that, you were obsessively curious about every piece of equipment in the lab.  You wanted to know how the treadmill you always ran on worked.  You wanted to know how the blood testing machines worked.  You wanted to know how everything mechanical worked.

So I started swiping manuals for you.  There was this filing cabinet in one of the offices where NovaTor kept them all.  So every few days I’d sneak in and take one or two for you.  You’d devour them instantly and impatiently wait for me to bring others.

The first time you remember meeting me was when I stole from Eden, but the first time I ever stole something was for you.

My eyes swept the page two or three times.  I searched inside of myself, looking for that girl who liked to read boring instruction manuals.  But if there was any tiny trace of her in there, I couldn’t find her.

West was playing a game of tactics with me.  He knew how desperately I wanted to remember my past, to understand who I was and why I had become the thing I was today.  He was going to try and make me change my mind about choosing Avian by telling me all the stories of the two of us as children.

It wasn’t going to work.

But I couldn’t blame West for trying.

The next morning I found another note slipped under my door.

I fell asleep in your room once.  I think we were probably about seven.  I don’t know if Dad or Grandpa forgot about me or what, but they left me there.  The only time it ever happened.

But next thing I knew, you were sitting bolt upright in bed, screaming and crying that the walls were crushing in on you.  I was pretty freaked out.  Your emotional blockers were turned up full blast then and that was the most emotion I’d ever seen come from you.  I mean, you were actually crying.  The only time I’ve ever seen you cry.

When you saw I was still in the room, you hugged me and held on so tight I was covered in bruises the next day.

When Dad found me in the morning, he tried to take me back to our living quarters but you flipped out.  You wouldn’t let me leave.

I crumpled both of the notes and hid them in the back of my pants drawer.  Bracing my hands on the dresser, I let my head hang in between my arms, my hair cascading around my face.

Like West had described in that nightmare from so long ago, it felt like the walls of this hospital were crushing in on me.  West was a ghost that was present at all times.  One that threatened to drown me and choke me from the inside out.

“Eve?”

My head jerked up to see Avian standing in the doorway, concern radiating off of him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I lied.

FIVE

“We’re sweeping block eight today,” Avian said.  He stood at the front of the room next to Elijah.  Avian drew a circle around the block on the map that hung on the wall before us.  He capped the pen and turned back toward the crew.

“Tuck and the BRC cleared the bodies from there five days ago,” Elijah spoke up.  “Dr. Sun said that should be long enough for any communicable diseases from the bodies to die out.  Still, it is recommended you wear a mask and throw in an antibody fogger before entering any buildings.”

Bill started passing out small cans.  Royce had developed them, with the help of Dr. Beeson’s team.  They could kill out any remaining organisms and keep us from contracting any diseases from the rotting Bane bodies.

Avian and Elijah’s teams were doing a combined scout today.

“Let’s move out,” Avian said.

Avian insisted I work with the rehoming crew that day.  I was going to go insane and he knew it.  So for today, I would do something productive, even if the extra help wasn’t needed.  Regardless of how it made my chest constrict and the thought of living here forever.

We all filed out into the hall and toward the south entrance.  We were nearly out the doors when West stepped into the lobby, dressed for duty.

So far I’d managed to avoid him in the twenty-four hours since his last note.

Avian fixed West with a grim expression and I couldn’t seem to look at West.

“West has asked to join the rehoming crew,” Elijah said in his rough voice.  “Dr. Stone cleared him yesterday.”

That was all the explanation Elijah gave.  Because what else could he say?

I picked up my pace and moved to the front of our crew.  I fell in next to Bill.

“Looks like this is about to turn into an awkward day,” he said.

“Yeah.”

I didn’t look back as we headed for block eight.  I had work to do and work was what I was good at.

Block eight was a solid looking row of apartments and two abandoned restaurants.  They were older, but they seemed structurally sound.  Window flower boxes hung from each unit, dried and scraggly looking plants lying dead in them.

“I want three soldiers to each unit,” Elijah said loud enough the crowd would hear him.  “Avian and I will take the commercial buildings.”

I practically glued myself to Bill’s side and pulled Nick into our circle.  West met my eyes and shook his head.  He turned to Graye and joined him and Raj.

Something heated under my skin and I swear, I could feel the tickle of a blackout in the back of my head.

“Let’s go,” Bill said, grabbing the collar of my jacket and dragging me toward the building.  Balling my fists just once more, I turned and followed him and Nick toward a unit on the upper floor.

“You got this one?” Bill asked Nick.

He held up one of the cans and shook it violently to activate it.  “On the count of three.”  Bill nodded, placing his hand on the door knob.  “Three…” Nick counted.  I held my shotgun ready, even though I knew there wouldn’t be any Bane inside.  Instinct dies hard.  “Two…  One…”

Bill pushed the door open a foot and Nick depressed the button on the top of the can and threw it inside.  Bill yanked the door closed again.

Once the button was pushed on the antibody can you had exactly four seconds before it started fogging.  Get locked in a room with one and you’re dead.

We had to wait sixty seconds before we could enter the building.  Nick watched the time tick away on his watch.

“How’s Avian handling everything?” Bill asked quietly.  Nick glanced up at us, but as usual for him, he remained silent.

“It’s harder this time,” I said, looking over the railing to the units below.  “Avian got pretty pissed off when West got a little too close the other night.  Royce was pretty angry too.”

“That boy’s going to have to learn to follow common sense someday,” Bill said, shaking his head.

I didn’t have a response.  This entire situation was hard and I was quickly losing my cool when it came to West and his recovery.  But I had in fact had feelings for West.  Those weren’t completely gone.  I couldn’t just hate West because I had decided I wanted to be with someone else.

These human emotions were too damn complicated.

“Time,” Nick said as his watch beeped.

I pushed the door open and swept the space with my shotgun.  It was perfectly empty though.

The building wasn’t large.  We entered a living area with simple furniture and carpeted floors.  Just to the left was a small kitchen with molding food on the counter and an even smaller dining area with a table and four chairs.

“Looks pretty safe,” Nick said as he walked around the space, testing his weight on the floor.  Bill checked the kitchen.

I nodded, heading back for the doors that led off from the living room.

The door creaked when I pushed it open.  I found a large bed, the sheets and blankets in a twisted mess in the middle of it.  There was a dresser too large for the space.  Sitting on it were three picture frames.

In one there was a picture with a smiling couple.  She wore a flowing wedding dress, her hair in an elegant knot.  He wore a handsome grey suit.  They were looking at each other, their faces radiating love.

In another picture there was a little girl, probably younger than Brady.  She had curly blond hair and wore a bright pink shirt.  In the last picture there was a baby.  The baby was young enough it was hard to tell if it was a boy or girl, but the pink blanket it lay on gave it away.

Swallowing hard, I checked the bedroom and bathroom attached to it.  Everything looked safe.

There was one more door to check.

I pushed it open and stopped in the doorway.

The walls were painted a pale pink.  A tiny bed was pushed into one corner.  A frilly white blanket was tangled at the foot of it.  A huge stuffed rabbit was about to fall off the edge.  And in the opposite corner there was a crib.  Toys sat neatly in bins along the walls.  Sunlight shone in through the windows.

The room looked as if it was just waiting for those two little girls to come home and play.

“Everything good back here?” Nick asked, startling me.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice sounding rough.  “Let’s go.”

The three of us stepped back outside.  Many of the other soldiers were already done.  They stood in front of the building, talking and laughing, looking normal.  Bill and Nick went to join them.

Seeing that pink room had shaken me.  I thought of those little girls and how they’d had their life stolen from them.  I thought about my own childhood, the one that had been stolen from me.

A hard knot formed in my stomach.  I ducked around the building to try and find some quiet.  The side road was littered with garbage and debris.  I stepped over a trash can.  I didn’t want to be in my head just then.

I turned a corner into the back alley when I bumped right into someone.  My bones instantly hissed to life and my breath snagged in my chest.  I reached out a hand to steady myself, and pressed it right into the surface of West’s inhibitor.

A scream leapt from my throat as I pulled my hand back.  My hand looked deformed, as if all the bones in it had broken and magnetized themselves to the inhibitor.

West swore under his breath and reached out to steady me.  “Are you okay?” he asked at the same time I shook out of his grasp.

“Stay away from me,” I hissed, cradling my hand to my chest.  The discomfort was dulling, my pain blockers kicking in.  I could feel my bones trying to right themselves.

“Yeah, that’s what everyone seems to be telling me these days,” West said, a hard edge to his voice.

I looked up at him.  His expression was angry, frightening even, now that his face was covered in so many scars.

“Look, West,” I said, dropping my hand to my side.  “I don’t want things to have to be like this between us.  But you’ve got to start thinking things through.  You’re pretty much the one person here who can kill me now.  You’ve got to be more careful.”

West suddenly chuckled as his gaze rose to the hazy blue sky and he shook his head.  “Just think how romantically tragic this all would have been if you’d picked me instead of him.  In love and wanting to be together, but you couldn’t even touch me.”

“West, stop it,” I said, my voice dropping low as I sensed where he was going to take this.

“But instead, you get your happy ending,” he said, his voice growing cold.  He took a step toward me.  His head dropped and he looked up at me from beneath his thick, dark lashes.  “And what do I get?”  He stopped a mere foot from me.  My blood hissed.  I stood with my back to the wall.  “I get screwed!”  West pounded his fist into the wall just to the left of my head.  His nose was only six inches from mine.

“I get infected and you go and pick him?” he bellowed, his eyes growing darker by the second.

“I made my decision before I knew who was infected,” I spat back as best I could.  It felt as if my throat were closing up.  I was struggling to breathe.

“What am I supposed to do now, Eve?” he said, his voice not softening in the slightest.  “I’m supposed to live the rest of my life looking like a monster and watch you and him live out a happily ever after?”

“Back…” I struggled.  “Back off, West.”

“I don’t think so,” he said with a laugh in his voice.  And for the first time in my life, I was afraid of West.  “Not until you tell me that you don’t love me.  That the past doesn’t matter.”

“West…” I said.  There were thick black spots swimming in my vision.

“Get off of her!” Avian bellowed and I heard feet pounding the road.

The next second an arm wrapped around West’s throat and the two of them were tumbling across the pavement.

I collapsed to the ground, coughing violently.  Avian rolled on top of West, pinning him to the ground.  His fist connected with West’s jaw, West’s head sharply snapping to the left.

“Don’t come near her again!” Avian threatened, landing another blow as West swung back.

West took a swing at Avian, which he blocked with his forearm before landing another punch to West’s face.

“You have no idea who she really is!” West yelled.  “She was never supposed to pick you!  It was always me and her.  Always!”

“That’s enough!” Elijah shouted as he sprang for the two.  He shoved Avian off of West while West tried for another swing.  Bill darted into the alley, pulling Avian away, holding his arms pinned behind his back.

“I mean it!” Avian screamed.  “You touch her again and I will kill you!”

I couldn’t move, sitting immobile and stunned on the ground as I watched the mess I’d caused explode out of control.

What had I done?

What kind of an unfixable disaster had I created?

“All three of you back to the hospital, right now!” Elijah commanded, his eye wild and angry.  “I will not have my own crew fighting amongst themselves!”

Avian jerked in Bill’s arms, trying to get back at West, who stared at him with death in his eyes.

“That’s enough!” I yelled, my ability to breathe returning.

“Cool it,” Bill said, jerking when Avian lurched for West.

“Back to the hospital,” Elijah growled again.

When Avian relaxed, Bill released him.  Avian didn’t look away from West as he shrugged his shoulders, adjusting the rifle on his back.  His jaw flexed along with his fists as he turned and walked down the alley.

West shoved Elijah off of him and walked away in the opposite direction.

“You three need to get your crap together,” Elijah snapped at me.  “Your little love tiff is going to get someone killed.”

SIX

“Welcome back.”

I blinked, clearing the black, shifting lines from my vision.

The room hadn’t even come into focus before Dr. Beeson wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm.  It ticked as it filled, squeezing my arm.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

My heart beat erratically.  My breathing came in shallow gulps.  There must have been something physical inside of me, rising up, attempting to choke me, trying to drown me from the inside out.

All the guilt, shock, shame, everything I’d felt earlier, came crushing in on me tenfold.

“I…” I stuttered, overcome at the rushing feeling going on within me.

“Take a deep breath,” Dr. Beeson said, his brows furrowing together.  He pressed the stethoscope to my chest and listened to my heart crash against my rib cage.  “Try to relax.”

I made a small O with my lips and focused on my breaths.

This was my fourth emotional adjustment.  This one was supposed to take my emotional blockers down to less than fifty percent.

“You seem overwhelmed,” Dr. Beeson said, concern obvious in his voice.  He lowered the stethoscope.  “Your heart is racing and your blood pressure is up.  Perhaps this was too big of a jump.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.  “It’s okay.  I need this.”

“Is there a specific reason why?” he asked.

I opened my eyes and pulled myself into a sitting position.  It felt like all of my insides had swelled and everything was trying to push its way up my throat to suffocate me.

“I’m going to hurt West if he keeps relapsing like this and I stay so emotionally unsympathetic.”  My vision blurred as I fixed my eyes on the floor.  “Things are getting bad.  I need to figure out how to deal with all this.”

“I don’t know that it has anything to do with your emotional blockers,” Dr. Beeson said, glancing up at me from my chart.  “This would be emotionally trying on anyone.”

“Still,” I said, shaking my head.  I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.  It made me feel slightly better, like maybe I wouldn’t crack open and fall to pieces right there on the table.  “I know I should try and talk to him again, to explain why I didn’t choose him, but I know I’ll screw it up and make things worse.  Besides, he’ll forget it all again soon.”

“If this adjustment seems like too much, I want you to tell me right away,” Dr. Beeson said, ignoring my last comment.  What was he supposed to do?  Give me relationship advice?  “We have to be careful with this.  We don’t want to fracture you mentally.  We could cause some serious damage.”

“Serious damage,” I said, shaking my head, giving a humorless chuckle.  “Only I could get seriously damaged from becoming like everyone else.”

“But you’re not like everyone else,” Dr. Beeson said, his voice lowering.  “You are unique, Eve.  You are special.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.  Accepting who, or rather what, I was had become a daily battle.

Suddenly a smile cocked in the corner of his mouth.  “I still can’t believe how much you look like your mother.”

“How well did you know her?” I asked, glad for the distraction.

Dr. Beeson sat back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest.  “I only ever actually met her once.  I was still in graduate school and was given the opportunity to tour the NovaTor facility.  We ended up talking afterward.  We met for dinner and ended up visiting for probably three hours.”

“What was she like?” I asked.

A sad look flashed across his face, knowing he had enjoyed an opportunity I had been robbed of.

“She was whip-smart,” he said, threading his fingers together in his lap.  “Her attention to detail was impeccable.  Her dedication to the development of TorBane was astounding.  She was convinced it would save the world.  She made me believe it would.”

I had to swallow hard at that.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.  My mother had helped develop TorBane, the technology that would destroy the world in a matter of months once it was made available to the public.  She had helped develop the technology that made me less than human.

“How long was that before I was born?” I asked.

Dr. Beeson paused for a moment before he responded, as if calculating the time.

“I would suspect she was pregnant with you at that time,” he said quietly.  “She had said something about how she and her boyfriend had recently broken up.”

An ache in my chest swelled.

My father.  Who was he?  What did he look like?  Was he still out there somewhere?  Was there any chance he was alive?

The worst part was that I knew I would never find the answers to my question.

I would never even know his name.

“That’s enough for today,” Dr. Beeson said.  He placed his hand on my back.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought your mother up.  Not when you’re like this.”

“It’s okay,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure it was.

“I’ll call Avian to take you home, away from the hospital,” he said, reaching for his radio.  “I think it would be wise for you to have a few days to take it easy and adjust.  Honestly, it sounds like you both could use some time away.”

“You’ll keep an eye on West for me?” I asked.  Just saying West’s name brought up a hurricane inside of me.  “He’s not in a good place right now.”

“Of course.”

Avian was not happy when he picked me up from Dr. Beeson’s office.  The three of us had argued for twenty minutes.  Avian was insisting I shouldn’t have to deal with being overwhelmed.  I insisted that I was going to do something stupid if I didn’t continue with my adjustments.

They finally got tired of arguing with me.  Avian drove us to the beach.

But while the night progressed, I knew that maybe I was wrong.  As we ate, I could feel this sense of regret, dread, and guilt building up inside of me.

The weight of the world seemed to be settling on my shoulders.  The wreck I’d caused pressed in on my throat.  Avian’s reaction earlier had been because of my indecision.

Why couldn’t I handle this?  Why couldn’t I be a normal person?  Why was I so weak?

Avian was quiet and watched me, never saying a word.

When we were done with our dinner, I exited the tent and walked toward the water.

I stood with my toes in the sand, the salty waves lapping at them.  I watched as the early December clouds gathered, growing heavy and dark.  Electricity fizzed through the air, giving a sense of urgency to the world around me.  A storm was gathering.

The air, the energy around and in me, the sense of needing to do something more, reminded me of the night the Bane had burned our gardens in the mountains to ash.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I rubbed my hands over my skin.  Winter was upon us, and while it didn’t have the bite and chill, or snow of old Eden, it was getting cooler.  I’d soon be grateful for the warmth of the hospital, even though it would mean that I would be trapped within its walls for the next few months.

And I’d never be able to escape West there.

With the cities endless concrete walls, limitless broken roads, too many abandoned cars; I felt like a trapped animal.

For a moment I considered heading north.  Far, far north.  I’d seen maps before, knew that if I could travel far enough I’d find trees and forests again.  Nature felt like home, in a way it was where I was born.

Somehow I didn’t think this concrete jungle would ever feel like home.

Maybe we’d survive, if Avian and I just took off.  We could find somewhere remote enough to outlast the Bane.  We could take supplies with us, hunt for food.  Maybe I could be happy again, feel free.

Then maybe West could move on.

But that was insane.  Winter was at our door, food would be scarce.  Temperatures would make it difficult to survive.

And what about Gabriel?  Royce?  Victoria, and Brady, and Lin, and Tuck?

And West?

I couldn’t leave.

Home was wherever the people I cared about were.  Home wasn’t a dot on the map.

The soft crunch of sand behind me let me know Avian had stepped out of the tent.  I took a few quick, deep breaths in attempt to calm myself down.  I was getting worked up, my emotions too close to the surface.

Avian stopped at my side, his hands stuffed into his pockets.  He didn’t say anything, just stared out over the dark waters with his ever serious eyes.

I was grateful for Avian’s silence.  From the way he stood, the way he angled himself towards me just slightly, the way he kept pressing his lips together, I knew he could tell this adjustment had been too much.  But he also had the sense to know when I just needed him there, even if he didn’t say anything.

“What’s on the other side?” I asked quietly, squeezing myself tighter as the temperature dropped a few more degrees.  “What’s across the water?”

“A whole lot of ocean, for a long ways,” he said as he watched the lightning that started out far from the coast.  “You’ll start to see the curve of the Earth before you get to land.  There are some scattered islands, but they’re small.  Then eventually you’ll run into the Asian continent, Australia if you veer south.”

“Do you think the Bane have gotten as bad in those places as they are here?” I asked.

“It’s hard to imagine they haven’t,” he answered, his voice heavy and sad.  “TorBane took hold worldwide within a few weeks.”

I nodded.  The wind started to pick up, fanning my hair behind me, making my breath catch in my throat.

“Maybe there’s a place out there,” I said, my eyes glazing over.  Everything went blurry as my focus turned internal.  “A place where the infection didn’t travel to.  One of those islands in a warm place.  There’d be trees and sand, animals for hunting.  It’d be safe.”

Avian’s arms wrapped around me from behind, his warmth sending a wave of goosebumps flashing across my skin.

“There is,” he said, his lips close to my ear as he rested his chin on my shoulder.  “That place is in each of us.  It’s what’s kept us all going the last six years.”

Something stung at the back of my eyes and I hated my human side for being weak.  I couldn’t vocalize that for the last few weeks I had felt like that place was disappearing for me.

As soon as I thought it, I knew how terrible and selfish that was.  We’d won here in New Eden.  We’d defeated the Bane and we’d found safety.  At least for now.  I had no right to complain or to be unhappy.  I was alive and so were the people I cared about.

A flash of light let us know that the storm was moving closer to land and the clap of thunder followed just one second later.

Avian took my hand in his and led me back to the tent.

SEVEN

I inhaled slowly, leveling my eyes along the sight.  And exhaling, I squeezed the trigger.

The old cup lid I’d tacked up on the outside wall of the long forgotten about house exploded as I hit it dead center.  I was having a good time with Avian’s gift.

“Perfect,” Avian said.  I glanced over at him to find a wide smile on his face.  He’d started smiling so much more since the Pulse went off.  “Not that I’d expect anything less from you.”

“Weapons and shooting are easy,” I said as I refilled the magazine.  “It’s people that are difficult.  This is just calculation and a good eye.”

A can that lay discarded on the ground down the road jumped into the air as I hit it.

“I wonder if we could make an arrow with an explosive head,” I said as I watched Avian take aim with his new bow.  “An arrow alone might not be enough to take down a Bane, but you make it explosive, and if you can embed it in their chest or something, and you’d take them out for sure.”

“Sounds like an afternoon of fun for Royce,” Avian said as he released the arrow.

It would be.  There might not be any Bane around at the moment, but that didn’t keep Royce from making all kinds of new toys of mass destruction.  As a former weapons specialist, he had the deranged creativity to create anything, if he could only get his hands on the resources.

“You hungry?” Avian asked, embedding yet another perfect shot.  I still wasn’t used to seeing him handle weapons, and even more so, use them so accurately.  Avian was a better shot than I was with a bow.

“Ugh,” I groaned.  “I need to go hunting.  I can’t stand any more of this canned and last-forever food they have here.”

Avian chuckled.  “Yeah, I’ll admit, I miss our gardens so much it hurts some days.  What I wouldn’t do for a few fresh tomatoes or a handful of strawberries.”

“Don’t remind me,” I growled, placing my Desert Eagle in the holster at my hip.  “That’s cruel.”

Shouldering his bow, Avian took my hand in his and we slowly made our way back to the beach.

The wind had finally died out after raging all night.  The tent had flapped and whipped around, the stakes were yanked out of the ground.  The only thing that kept it from blowing away was the weight of our bodies.

Neither of us had gotten much sleep that night.  But at least we weren’t caged up in the hospital.

By morning I was feeling better, or at least I didn’t feel like I was getting overwhelmed by everything going on inside of me.

Avian set to building a fire to cook our meager meal and I stashed our weapons beneath our cots.  It was an impressive hoard of firepower I’d been building.  I had another stockpile in the closest house that looked out over the water.  The Bane were gone, for now, but that didn’t mean I let my guard down.

I stepped back outside and watched as Avian started cooking our meal.

“You were pretty aggressive with West yesterday,” I said, not wanting to talk about the event, but knowing it had to be addressed.

Avian grunted, but didn’t look up from the fire.  His expression darkened.

“Want to tell me what that was about?” I asked.  “I’ve never seen you like that.”

He sighed, placing a pan over the fire and dumping some kind of substance into it.  When he was finished he stayed where he was, kneeling on one knee.

“I keep losing people,” he said, finally meeting my eye.  “I lost all my commanding officers, my fellow soldiers.  Then I had to shoot my own parents to save Sarah.  Then Tye got infected.  Given that one was my own fault.”

I shook my head, about to argue that he couldn’t have known Tye would get infected because of a request he made, but Avian plowed on.  “And then Sarah dies of something I can’t cure.”

He ran a hand over his short hair, his mouth pulling downward in a frown.  He shook his head and I noticed then that he was trembling just slightly.  I crossed to kneel by him in the sand.  I put a hand on either side of his face, drawing his eyes to mine.

“You’re all I have left, Eve,” he said, his voice husky and low.  “I will do anything—anything—to keep something from happening to you.  I’m tired of being the calm one who always fixes things.  I’m not going to sit back and watch West hurt you.”

“I know,” I said quietly, searching his eyes.  There was regret in them.  I knew he wasn’t proud of what he’d done.  But there was also desperation.  I felt it too.

I pressed my lips to his.  All the hurt and pain and confusion slowly melted away as his hand came up to my hair, pulling me closer.

“Avian, Eve,” a familiar voice called from up by the road.  I turned to see Tuck walking up on the beach, an unfamiliar electric car parked on the road at the edge of the sand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.  No one other than Elijah and Gabriel had ever come to the tent.

“Royce sent me after you two,” Tuck said.  The alarm in his eyes outweighed the embarrassed flush in his cheeks at catching us together.  “Some new people showed up today.”

“How many?” Avian asked, his expression dark and serious again.

“Twenty,” Tuck said.  “They’re well-armed and seem to know how to handle themselves.”

“Twenty?” I said, not hiding my shock.  “Where did they come from?”

“That’s what’s got Royce and Gabriel so worried,” he said.  “They won’t say.  But they arrived by Coast Guard ship early this morning, just north of here.  They’ve been asking a lot of questions but not answering any.”

“Okay,” I said, turning back to Avian.  He gave a little nod, his eyes carrying a sad look, like he knew how much I didn’t want to go back into the city yet—that in reality—I wasn’t quite ready.  “We’ll head out in just a minute.”

Tuck nodded and jogged back toward the electric car.

“You ready to go back?” Avian asked, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

“Are you?” I asked and instantly the air grew heavy.

“I think it’s best if I just avoid West for a while,” he said.  His gaze fell to the sand beneath us.

“Hey,” I said, my brow furrowing.  “What is it?”

“I trust you, okay?  Don’t get me wrong there.  But just promise me that you’ll always be honest with me.”

I shook my head.  “You know I will,” I said, attempting to push back the black feelings trying to rise up in my blood.  “What’s this really about?”

He took a moment to respond and I could feel his turmoil.  “I know that you have mixed emotions about West,” Avian said.  “You still have some kind of feelings about him and I wouldn’t expect that to immediately go away.  You two have some kind of history that I can never be a part of.  I get that.  Just…always be honest with me about it, okay?”

He pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me.  I laid my head on his chest, listening for the beat of his heart, the sound that was the anchor to my world.

“The honest truth is this,” I said, looking up into his eyes.  “I love you.  You are who I want and need to be with.  That’s never going to change.”

As we parked the motorcycle in the underground parking garage, Avian tucked a small handgun into his belt beneath his shirt.  I checked my Desert Eagle, making sure I could pull it out quickly in case I needed it.  I had no doubt a lot of members of New Eden would be packing with these newcomers.

The stairs echoed back our footsteps as we climbed the two sets of flights to the main level of the hospital.  A gust of warm air caressed my face when we stepped out onto the main floor.

I bumped the door into Graye as we entered.  There were no civilians in the lobby, which was odd considering this was the main hub of all operations of New Eden.  Instead I found Elijah and the majority of his and Avian’s crew, as well as all of Tuck’s team guarding doors and stairways with loaded weapons.

In the middle of the room stood twenty people I didn’t know, their pale faces and bodies hardened by the world we lived in.  They held their own weapons.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Graye.

“They’re refusing to tell Gabriel or Royce much of anything.  They want to talk with Royce privately but Elijah isn’t having it, not without Avian here.  He wants someone here in charge of security detail.”

“And you and Bill are useless?” I asked in an annoyed voice.

Graye shrugged, shaking his head in exasperation.

“Finally,” Royce suddenly said, spotting Avian and me.  “Elijah, happy now?”

Elijah nodded his scarred head.

“You two, come with us,” Royce said, pointing at two people in the front of this new group with the tip of his AK-47.  “Avian, Eve, care to join us?”

I nodded, as did Avian.  Royce, Gabriel, the two newcomers, Avian, and I all wedged ourselves into the elevator.

“Anyone makes a wrong move, don’t hesitate to shoot,” Royce said as the silver doors slid closed.

“This is how you treat your guests?” the woman asked, her voice hard and mocking.

“Forgive us if our manners are a little rusty,” Royce barked.  “But when you come into our city armed like this with no answers, we don’t serve up the welcome cookies and milk.”

The elevator dinged and we walked down the hall toward the conference room.  I felt uneasy that we were only one floor below the blue level, where the most valuable devices and people in the world resided.

As soon as everyone was in the room, I positioned myself in front of the door and Avian stood in front of the window.

“We could start with some names,” Royce said, bracing his hands on the table, staring them down with his steely eyes.

“Margaret,” the woman said, leaning forward as if to prove Royce didn’t intimidate her.

“Alistar,” the man beside her said.

“Good,” Royce said with a cocky smile.  “That’s better.  Because when you walk into our town, you answer our questions.  You heard our radio message.”

“Yes,” Margaret replied, folding her hands over one another on the table.  “Your message did promise food, shelter, a home.”

“Somehow I don’t get the feeling that’s what you’re really looking for here,” Royce growled.  “You don’t go begging for a bed armed like this.”

“We’ve never heard of another group surviving in such large numbers,” Gabriel butted in.  I sensed his attempt to smooth things over.  Gabriel was always the peacekeeper but knew when to not let things get out of hand.  “We’re just surprised at your numbers.”

“Where are you from?” Royce asked.  I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d asked these two this question.

“Where are any of us from?” Margaret said back.  “Like you, we’re from everywhere.  Just trying to survive in an impossible world.”

“That isn’t an answer,” Royce said, leaning forward again, his voice icy.

This game was tiring me very quickly and I was having a very bad week.  The distrust and anger inside of me quickly flooded my veins.

I crossed the room and nestled the barrel of my rifle between her ribs.  “Where are you from?” I said.

She jumped, much to my satisfaction, and her face blanched all the more white.

Good.  She was still capable of feeling fear.

“North,” she said, her voice a little too loud.  “We’ve been in the forests up north.  We’ve been hiding there for the past year.”

“The Redwoods?” Avian asked, studying them.

Margaret nodded.

“We heard the message,” Margaret said, now fixing me with hard eyes.  I stepped back to the door now that she was talking.  “We were curious to talk to other survivors, so we came.  We weren’t exactly expecting to be held hostage.”

“One can never be too careful these days,” Royce said, standing straight again.  He was still tense, but I felt him backing down now that they had answered some of his questions.

“We’re not looking to join you permanently,” Alistar said, looking around at each of us.  “We just wanted to talk, share information.  We thought it could be valuable.”

Royce glanced over at Gabriel who shrugged and shook his head as if to say it was Royce’s call.

“Everyone will be heading to bed right now,” Royce said.  I glanced out the window that overlooked the buildings around us.  The sun had dipped below the skyline and darkness was settling.  “We’ll talk in the morning.  Avian, Gabriel, will you take their group to the fourth floor?”

They both nodded and directed Margaret and Alistar back toward the elevator.

I almost smiled when Royce said the fourth floor.  It was the former mental unit.  Very secure.  Easy to lock down.

Royce didn’t trust these people any more than I did.

When they were out in the hall, Royce shut the door and turned to me.

“I’m shutting down all the elevators when they’re settled,” he said, meeting my eyes and crossing his arms over his chest.  “I want you guarding the blue floor.  All the scientists will be sleeping on that floor tonight. We’re not saying anything about the Pulse, the Extractor, you, or West until we know more about these people.  Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said with a nod.

“Don’t shoot me, Eve,” he said as I turned to leave.  “But I think it’s best if West stays up there tonight as well.  It’s a little obvious just looking at him that he’s had some major work.”

I gave him a hard stare for a long moment.  But in the end logic won out, and I couldn’t argue with him.

“Make sure Avian knows where I am tonight,” I said as I walked toward the stairs.

“Yes ma’am.”

The scientists didn’t even begin to argue when I told them we were all in lockdown for the night.  Half of them slept up on the blue floor more than they slept in their own rooms anyway.  Many of them had become anti-social after all the years they had spent holed up on the blue floor working on the Pulse.  A lot of them didn’t know how to mingle with the general population any more.

Thankfully I could always count on Dr. Beeson to feel guilty about what he’d helped do to me, and he kept West occupied while I stood guard at the door to the stairs that led access to the rest of the hospital.

The floor grew quiet as everyone settled down for the night.  The lights along the floor, running through the walls, glowed brilliant as ever.  I positioned myself with an assault rifle in front of the door to the staircase.

There was something about what Margaret and Alistar had said that didn’t sit right with me.  They were from north of us.  But not far enough north that they wouldn’t see the sun on a nearly daily basis.  They, as well as the rest of their group, had been white and pasty-faced.  I looked down at my own arms.  Even though I’d been inside quite a bit the last two months, my skin was still well tanned from the sun.

I wondered how big their lies really were.

EIGHT

“Any idea what’s going on down there?”

I turned to find West behind me, hands stuffed into his pockets.  My eyes immediately fell to the blue glow coming through his shirt.

“No,” I responded and turned back to the door leading to the stairwell.

The sun had risen.  It was now eight o’clock and the blue floor had yet to receive an update.

“Royce must really not trust them if he’s hiding all of us up here,” West said.  I heard him sit on the floor against the wall.

“There’s something not right about them,” I said.  I blinked hard.

I wasn’t tired.  I was used to staying up at nights and keep guard.  This was second nature to me.  This was what I was good at.

But my eyes were burning from staring at that stupid door all night.

“You look like crap,” he said.

“I could say the same thing,” I snapped.  “But that would be mean.”

“Cold, Eve,” he said.  “Not that I don’t somewhat deserve it.”

“Somewhat?”

“I’m not going to make this easy for you,” he said in a low voice.

I could tell he wanted me to look back at him, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.  He needed to face reality.

I was trying with West.  I really was.

“Lock down is over.”  Dr. Beeson was in the hall, a radio in his hand.  “They’re calling everyone down for a meeting in the auditorium.”

I didn’t like it, it felt dangerous to gather us all into one room, but I didn’t exactly have the power to override Royce.

Everyone from the blue floor made their way down the stairway and we all exited onto the second floor.

I’d only ever been in the auditorium once before.  It was a massive room that dropped down at an angle toward a stage.  Rows upon rows of seats rose up from the elevated stage.  The room would easily seat five hundred people.

As soon as I entered the room, Avian and Elijah signaled to me from just to the side of the stage.

“What’s going on?” I whispered as I joined them.  I was on instant alert when I realized they were keeping to the shadows, out of view of the masses.

“We still didn’t get any answers this morning,” Avian said, his eyes scanning those who filtered into the room.  “They mostly just asked a lot of questions.  We told them about the Pulse since they basically already knew about it being as they walked into a cleared city.  No one is too worried about them stealing it.  It doesn’t exactly fit into your back pocket.”

“They’re saying they’d like to stay a while, talk some more, tell us what it’s like up north,” Elijah said.  He held a rifle tight in his hands.  “They’re asking that we let them stay for a week.”

“I don’t like it,” I whispered, shaking my head.  My eyes fell on Margaret, who sat in the front row.  She had the tips of her fingers pressed together, her gaze fixed on the empty stage.

“Neither does Royce,” Elijah said.  “That’s why he’s having security detail quietly follow them at all times.  They know we’re going to be watching them.  But not how closely.”

“Why doesn’t Royce just ask them to leave?” I asked.  By this point it looked like most everyone had entered the room.

“Because none of us want a war to start,” Avian said.

Royce and Gabriel stepped onto the stage.

“Take the right exit,” Elijah said, pointing back toward the door I’d entered through.  “Keep a low profile.”

I nodded and quietly slipped back up the stairs to the door.  I kept my rifle hanging at my left side so that it was out of sight, but was ready to use it at one wrong move.

“Thank you all for coming,” Royce said as he turned his eyes out on those before him.  “I am sure you are all wondering what the dramatics have been about the last twenty-four hours.”

The members of New Eden looked frightened, glancing around at those they did not recognize.  Brady hung tight around Victoria’s neck, Wix with his arms around her.  Lin sat next to a few other women, each eying the strangers.

“We’ve been honored with a surprise visit from our friends to the north,” Royce said.  Even from a distance, I could see how he clenched his teeth.  “They heard our radio broadcast and came to learn more about our way of life.  They will be staying on the fourth floor for the next seven days.”  There was an underlying tone that said they would not be welcome after seven days.

“You are welcome to talk to them if you like, but I won’t feel bad if you don’t feel compelled to get to know these people who will be leaving our presence in a week.  But I wanted to let you all know what was going on,” Royce said.

“Please let your friends and neighbors know,” Gabriel said, stepping forward.  “Not everyone is in attendance today, so we don’t want anyone feeling alarmed when they see strangers in our city.”

“Back to life, people,” Royce said with a wave of his arms, dismissing everyone.

Most everyone looked at least slightly wary and confused but they all filed back out of the auditorium.  Royce and Gabriel stayed behind with Margaret and Alistar, but Elijah once again signaled to Avian and me.

We all quickly made our way to room 112, center of security.

Bill, Graye, and the other dozen soldiers on security detail were already gathered.  I did however notice West was not joining us.  Elijah must have finally realized having him mix with the crew was a bad idea for now.

“Royce wants us to tail these people for the next week.  That means twenty-four-seven.  Raj and Nick, you’ll be on night watch,” Elijah said, pointing to the two of them.  “I want a guard in the staircase, and another at the elevator.  They’ll know there’s someone at the elevator, but we’re not telling them about the staircase.  Royce wants to test them and see if they’re going to sneak out at night and go snooping around.

“The rest of you will each be assigned a floor.  Bill, Graye, and Banner, you three will cover the grounds around the hospital.  Anyone leaves, you tail them.  Call for back up if they spread more than the three of you can keep an eye on.”

“Dr. Beeson will be bringing hand-held radios any moment for each of you.  You’re to check in on an hourly basis.  They will report directly back to myself and Royce.  I don’t have to say that if you see something suspicious, you report it immediately.”

“I really don’t like this,” I said once again under my breath.

“Yeah,” Avian said back.  “I think everyone has a bad feeling about this.”

I was torn between duty and curiosity.

Avian and I were in charge of watching the first floor, from the time we woke, until the time the newcomers were herded back to the fourth floor at night.

My assignment was to watch.  To make sure nothing happened, that no one got out of line.

But I wanted to know what was going on.

Margaret and Royce spent most of their time on the sixth floor, in his office.  Elijah stood constant guard alone just outside Royce’s door.

I wanted to know what they were talking about.  I wanted to make sure Royce didn’t spill our secrets, even though I trusted him not to.  I wanted to hear what was happening to the world outside of New Eden.

But I wouldn’t abandon my duties.

I finally had a job.

I hung back in the lobby, watching.  We’d moved the elementary and other school classes to the empty third floor.  While Lin and the other teachers conducted class an armed guard stood watch over them.  The dozen people who were employed in the operation of New Eden worked as usual in the lobby, but these outsiders slowly wandered, watching, asking questions.

I was proud of those around me.  They were careful.  They watched what they said.

But I had a bad feeling that eventually someone was going to slip up.

I looked up when West stepped into the lobby.  West met my gaze for a moment when he spotted me.  He shook his head nearly imperceptibly before his attention turned to the outsider who approached him.

I watched very carefully as West talked.

I’d had trust issues with West ever since the day I caught him stealing food from Eden.  But back then those trust issues had only been important between the two of us.

Could I still trust him to keep our people and our secrets safe?

By the fifth day, I was so agitated I could hardly stand it.  I felt cooped up and blind.  I felt in the dark and out of the loop.

“You okay?” Avian asked as we switched places.  We took shifts, either at the front of the hospital, with the lobby and restrooms, or the back, with the kitchens and medical wing.

“I just want them to leave,” I said, my eyes sweeping the hallway.

“Two more days,” he said quietly.  He placed his hand on the back of my head and pressed a kiss to my brow.

“I can’t stand this,” I said, shaking my head.  “I need out.  I need trees and mountains.  I need—”

“Hey,” Avian cut me off, pulling me into his arms.  “It’s okay.”

“No,” I said.  It felt like something wild and dangerous was in my throat, quickly rising up, choking me.  “It’s not.  I need out.  I can’t breathe.”

“Whoa,” Avian said, stepping back just a bit so he could look down into my face.  “Eve, if you need a break, I’m sure we could tell Elijah.  He’ll find someone to fill in.”

“I don’t need a break,” I said, my voice sounding disgusted.  I instantly felt ashamed at myself.  “Forget what I said.  I’m…fine.”

“Eve, you’re obviously not fine,” he said, concern flooding his face.  “You’ve been on the verge of a lash-out for the last week.  It’s understandable that moving into the city and having all these adjustments would be hard on you.”

I shook my head, the back of my eyes stinging.  My line of sight rose to the ceiling and I couldn’t look back at Avian because I felt so disgusted with myself.  “I am not that weak.  I am not that human.”

“Eve,” Avian said, his voice hard and stern.  It took me off guard enough to meet his eyes again.  “You are human.  And it is okay.”

“I’m going to talk to Dr. Beeson,” I said, taking a step away from him, my eyes falling to the floor this time.  “This last adjustment was too much.  You two were right.  I can’t handle any more of these.”

Avian stopped short.  Everything in his posture and stance said that he didn’t know what to say.

Gathering myself, I turned and headed back toward the kitchen.

An hour after the outsiders went to bed, I lied down, staring up at the dark ceiling.  I was working very hard to not think or feel anything.

My door opened but I didn’t bother turning to see who it was.  A warm body slipped into the bed next to me, strong arms circling my waist.  I numbly turned on my side and rested my head on Avian’s chest.

“I understand how hard you are trying to be empathetic with West,” he said in a low voice.  “And how you’re trying your best to be like the rest of us.  I know you’re trying to understand the crazy emotions we all have to deal with.”

He pressed his lips into my hair, gathering me tighter against his body.  He took several deep breaths and I realized the way I had been behaving the last week had not been hard on me alone.

“But you seem to think that you need to rediscover who you are now that you know the truth about your origins.”

He pulled away from me slightly so he could meet my eyes.  His own burned with intensity.  “Eve, there is nothing wrong with who you are.  With the way you are.  You are you, Eve, and not anyone else.  You’re tough and you’re stubborn, and you don’t always understand emotions and what you or everyone else is feeling, but that is part of who you are.

“I fell in love with a girl who was okay with not fully understanding her past.  I fell in love with a girl who stood on her own and owned her present and future.  That is who you are, Eve.  You don’t need to be anyone else, for anyone else.”

For the second time in my life, I felt a bead of moisture rolling down my cheek.

Not because Avian had made me sad or hurt my feelings.

But because I had never had that much acceptance of myself.  I had never thought someone could fully love me the way I was—twisted, manipulated, and engineered.

He was right.  I didn’t need to rediscover who I was.  I didn’t need to change into someone different.  That was betraying myself.  That was the worst kind of self-loathing I could imagine.

I pressed my forehead to Avian’s and breathed for a moment, emotions swelling in my chest.  This time, I didn’t mind them.

“I am not me without you,” I said.  “Thank you for always standing by my side.”

Avian brushed his lips against mine.  His hand pressed into the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair.

It took a man capable of an immeasurable amount of understanding to strip away the insecurities I’d felt after learning what I was.  It took a man capable of loving me until the end of the world to make me accept myself.

And I would move heaven and hell to keep him.

Always.

I breathed a little easier the next morning.  I just had to survive today and tomorrow and then these outsiders would leave.

And then Dr. Beeson would have time to fix me.  To make me me again.  And maybe I wouldn’t have a nuclear meltdown.

Avian and I switched places, he headed for the lobby, and I started for the kitchen.

I was about to walk into the dining area when I heard two voices followed by a laugh, and froze.  I ducked just outside of the doorway and listened.

“Come on,” a female voice said.  “You did not get scars like that falling out of a truck.”

Even though she was asking about a heavy subject, her voice was light, like she was amused at the conversation.

It could only be Elijah or West who would answer, and I knew exactly where Elijah was and that wasn’t down here in the dining area.

“Are you calling me a liar?” West responded.

“Yeah,” the girl said with a laugh.  “I guess I am.”

“Maybe I’m Frankenstein’s monster,” he said.  I could almost see the way he would raise his eyebrow at her.

“You’re pretty scary looking,” she said.  “But not quite that scary.”

“I am a monster,” he said, his tone growing more serious.  “Just not that kind.”

Hot urgency burned through my veins.  I wasn’t going to sit and listen to this anymore.  I stormed into the dining area and over to their table.  I barely glanced at the girl he sat with.  I grabbed West by the front of his thick shirt and hauled him out into the hall and into a closet.

“You need to be more careful,” I said between clenched teeth.  “You’re going to expose us all.”

“Get off me, Eve,” he said, his voice escalating as he tried to shove me.  I didn’t budge.

I had him pinned against the shelves, my forearm across his shoulders.

“Royce doesn’t want them knowing about the Extractor,” I said, my eyes burning into his.  “And you’re about to blow that.”

“It’s a little difficult keeping that secret, walking around looking like this,” he said.  “And hiding this.”  He ripped his button up shirt open, exposing his inhibitor through the thin white shirt he wore underneath.

“Stay away from them if you have to,” I said, backing off because my bones were starting to splinter being so close to West.

“No,” he said indignantly.  “I am not going to lock myself up in some room because you can’t stand the sight of me actually talking to another woman.”

“Oh my gosh,” I said, not able to help rolling my eyes.  “We so need to get over this.  This is a lot bigger than our little love triangle past.”

West shook his head and stormed out of the closet.

I stood in the dark for a moment, trying to pull in the wild pieces that seemed to be breaking off of me.

Avian was right.  I was on the verge of a break down, and I was going to hurt someone.

And I knew who that someone would be.

The second these people left, I’d have Dr. Beeson fix me.

Because I didn’t know how to function as a human.  I was part Bane, and I was finally ready to accept that.

NINE

“All units to the auditorium.”

The radio crackled to life, static for just a moment, followed by a harsh, demanding voice.  Royce.

I shot out of bed, adrenaline flooding my system.  For a moment I was back in my tent, ready to track a Bane down through the woods, shotgun in hand.

“What’d that just say?” Avian asked groggily in the dark.

“All units to the auditorium,” I repeated, my pants already pulled on and tying the laces on my boots.  “It was Royce.”

I was impatient, waiting for Avian’s sleepy self to get ready to move.  We both jogged down the hall toward the auditorium, each of us with a rifle in one hand, a handgun in another pocket.  Avian’s necklace bounced softly on my chest as we ran.

We stepped into the dimly lit space and found what looked to be every one of the outsiders gathered on the stage.  Raj, Nick, Elijah, and Royce all surrounded them, guns pointed in their directions.

Half a dozen other soldiers burst into the auditorium the same time Avian and I did, and we joined those on the stage.

“What’s going on?” I asked at the same time as Bill.

“This one was trying to sneak out through the stairway,” Raj said in his heavy accent, pointing to one of the outsiders.  “He was trying to get to the roof with that.”  He pointed to a small black box that sat in the middle of the stage.  It was maybe six inches by six inches.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They’re not saying,” Royce said, his jaw so tight I thought his teeth might crack.  His eyes blazed and every muscle in his body was flexed.  He looked ready to kill someone.

Dr. Beeson suddenly appeared in the doorway and jogged down the stairs.

“Is this it?” he asked, pointing to the box when he reached the stage.

“That’s what he was trying to get to the roof,” Raj said with a nod.

Dr. Beeson crossed to the box, and carefully picked it up.  He lifted a lid and his face was illuminated with a flashing green light.

“Bomb?” Graye asked, automatically taking a step back.

Dr. Beeson’s face paled, but he shook his head.  He tipped the box and something small slipped out into his hand.

It was a two inch, silver cylinder.  A green light flashed at the top of it every two seconds.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Dr. Beeson said with a shaking voice.  “It’s a beacon.”

“A beacon?” Avian said.  “What kind of beacon?”

“You built a beacon to call out the Bane?” Royce bellowed.  Something hot and wild flashed across his eyes.  He slammed the butt of his gun to the back of Alistar’s head.  He collapsed in a limp heap.

Instantly, everyone was drawing weapons and two handguns and a crossbow were pointed in my own direction.

“You better start talking,” Elijah said through clenched teeth.  “Or this is going to turn into a blood bath.”

“Alright,” Margaret said, closing her eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath.  “You have your devices and we have ours.  Together we could clear the entire west coast.”

“And you were what?  Just going to set off your beacon and hope we’d power up the Pulse for you to wipe out the Bane that would come flooding into the city?” Royce growled.

“You have a device that could save the rest of humanity and you aren’t using it,” she said, turning cold, hard eyes on him.

“We don’t even know that it will work again,” he growled.  “It requires an astronomical amount of power that has to be built up over days.  If you’d set that thing off tonight, you would have killed us all.”

“Surely you have it ready should the need for it arise,” she said, her voice disbelieving.

“It isn’t something easily turned on and off on a whim,” Dr. Beeson said.

“Are you really so comfortable here in your little city that you think it safe to let your defenses down?” Margaret scoffed.

“You’ll leave as soon as it is light outside,” Royce growled.

“We are not done discussing this matter,” Margaret answered.

“Trust me, we are.”

“And how are you certain that this is the only beacon we brought with us?” she asked.  “How do you know we didn’t plant another before you found us?”

Royce crossed through the group and roughly grabbed Margaret’s arm.  “You’re coming with me.  The rest of you, keep them here.”

I met the eyes of the girl whom West had been talking with.

My stomach disappeared when a slow smile curled on her lips.

We stood like that, for two hours.  Guns and crossbows and even bows and arrows pointed at each other.

No one dared utter a word, for fear of setting everyone off.

Finally, a voice crackled over the radio.

“All newcomers are to be taken out the south entrance of the hospital.”  Royce.  He said no more.

“I want you to move out, single file,” Elijah said in his rough voice.  “Out that door, down the hall, and through the south doors.  Nick, take the lead.”

My entire body tensed when all the outsiders looked at us for a long moment.  There was indecision in their eyes, like they weren’t sure if they should do as they were told, or stay and fight.

I didn’t relax though when they started following in a careful line behind Nick out the door.  I glanced over at Avian once before I followed along the line.  He just nodded.

One by one, we walked down the hall, descended the stairs, and out the front doors.

We stopped outside the hospital, and waited for orders.

Margaret’s form appeared in the door.  Followed by Royce.

He had a gun pressed square to the back of her head.

“What’s going on?” an outsider yelled.  Half of them stepped forward.

I pressed the barrel of my shotgun to a man’s chest and shook my head.  “I suggest you don’t move.”

“The lot of you will leave this city immediately!” Royce shouted so all would hear him.  “You will head out now or I will shoot her right here.”

A shot rang out.  Royce darted to the left, rolling on the ground as Margaret dashed forward.

I turned, my barrel scanning the crowd around me.

Margaret and a few of her men had turned down the road and were sprinting west.

I took off after them, my shotgun leveled.

There was a decision to make in that moment.  Did I shoot them dead and become a murderer but keep them from possibly murdering us?  Or did I show mercy and risk them flooding our city with Bane?

They cut around a corner, killing the choice.

“Eve!” I heard Avian shout from behind me.

I turned just briefly enough to see him knock a man unconscious with the butt of his shotgun and take off after me.

“I got this!” I bellowed, kicking up my speed.

I turned the corner and faltered for just a moment.  Margaret was in sight.  But her men were gone.

Something embedded itself into my side and every muscle in my body locked up.  Air froze in my lungs, and black lines flickered across my vision.  I hit the ground like a freshly cut tree.  Across the street and just around the corner, I could see Avian, his fist connecting with another man’s jaw.

I rolled as I hit the ground, my vision turning up to the cloudy sky.  A man’s face entered my field of vision.  He had something in his hands and everything in me wanted to fight back as he covered my head with it.

But then everything shut down.

TEN

The ground was moving and it made my stomach sick.

A quick tug upward, and then a stomach dropping downward motion.  Repeat.

Over and over I bobbed.

I was on water.

My eyes felt like sandpaper as I tried to pull them open.  Everything was black and blur.  And I couldn’t find my body.  I was aware that it was still there, but it may as well have been dead.  Nothing could move.

I could however hear feet shuffling.  They sounded like they were behind a door maybe.  Muffled.

Air couldn’t move past my dead lips, couldn’t cry out for answers.  Or help.

Suddenly, there were voices.

“You really think this doctor of yours can fix me?”

Something inside of me died when I recognized that voice.

West.

“He was the best heart surgeon there was on the West Coast before the Evolution.”

And instantly I was full of fire and wrath.

That was the girl he’d been talking to in the dining area.

“I just hope this wasn’t a mistake,” he said, his voice growing quieter.  “Cause I’m a dead man if he can’t take that scrap out.”

The pieces of the puzzle started sliding into place with only a few words.

I calculated in my head the amount of time West had.  I got the sense we’d left New Eden and were headed back to wherever these people were from.  I couldn’t gauge how long we’d been traveling.  But it had been just over a week from the time West came out of Extraction to the time before I got knocked out.

West only had about five days.  Seven if he was really lucky.

He really was a dead man if this supposed doctor couldn’t fix him.

Had my harshness toward him really driven him to do this?  To betray his family and look for an elusive fix?

But I also had to consider why I was here, drugged and bound.  I couldn’t imagine anyone else would have given away my secret.  Had West traded it for the surgery?  Had they tricked it out of him?  Had he let it slip?

“Don’t look so down,” the female voice said.  “You made the right choice.”

“I know I needed away from her,” West’s voice grew quieter.  “But I just feel weird about leaving everyone.  About leaving her.  I searched for her for five years, and now I’m just walking away.”

“You made the right choice,” she said again, her words starting to slur in my ears.

Shadows started climbing in my brain, heavy and thick.  I tried to keep them out, to find a door to close to them.  But they were fog and mist and they crept in through all the cracks in my head.

There was light dancing behind my eyelids.  It was dull and gray.  But it was light.

“A little too effective,” a voice said.  “Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes ma’am,” another responded, shame and fear in it.

“See if you can rouse her.”  The voice was female.

Something hard and cold whipped my head sharply to the left.  But the rest of my body held firmly in place.

My eyes flashed open.

The outsiders were gathered around me, Margaret at the forefront of them all.  Alistar stood at her side and another man with a gun stood just to the side of me.  It was him that had just woken me with the butt end of his rifle.

I was bound to what looked like a moving-dolly with heavy chains.  I tried jerking my arms, but didn’t move an inch.  I wasn’t going anywhere.

We were all on a boat.  A very large boat.  We were bobbing just twenty yards from the shore.

And sitting right on that shore was a massive, towering city.

“This doesn’t exactly look like the Redwoods,” I growled as my eyes met Margaret’s.

“We lied,” she said, that grin creeping across her face.  “Welcome to Seattle.”

“What about New Eden?” I asked, red hot coals building in me.

“Fine, for the most part,” she said, her expression going dark.  “Once we realized what a valuable asset you were, we decided to take what we could and cut our losses.  We don’t have the Pulse, but I’m sure you’ll provide some very interesting, very valuable information.”

“I don’t know anything about how to build the Pulse,” I said through gritted teeth.  “And I’m not telling you anything.”

“That’s not exactly what we’re after,” she said with that wicked grin of hers.  “And talking wasn’t the method I had in mind to obtain it.”

“Where’s West?” I demanded, again trying to jerk out of my bonds.

“He and some of the others headed for shore just before dawn on the speed boat,” she answered.  “He’s safe.”

“What did you promise him?”

“We’ll honor our promise,” she said, lifting her chin just a bit, as if I had insulted her integrity.  “He provided valuable information, even if he didn’t realize he was giving it and what we intended to do with it.”

“You tricked it out of him,” I said, hatred spewing from my every word.

The grin spread on her face and there was a manic look in her eyes.  “The poor boy was so starved for some female attention.  Tara was so attentive and such a good listener.  She was so willing to hear all about the emotionally broken girl who picked another man over him.”

“He doesn’t know you’ve taken me, does he?” I said, my voice growing quieter.

“We thought it best with his…condition, if he remained cooperative and calm.  You wouldn’t want him making any rash decisions, would you?  We just might not be able to help him if he becomes unpleasant.  And you might not have picked him, but I am sure you still don’t want him Evolving.”

I knew then that I would have no choice but to cooperate with this witch.

She saw it in my face and I wanted to kill her when that smile of hers reached her eyes.

“Now then,” she said turning to look at the shore.  “We need your help I’m afraid.  This big ship didn’t move as fast as we would have liked it to.  We sent ahead some of our crew on the speed boat, including your West.  They should have gotten to safety before the Bane woke.  But it’s starting to get light, and they’re waiting for us.”

She pointed to the shore and I finally noticed the small details I had missed before.

Bane.

At least a dozen of them standing along the shore, watching us with empty eyes.

“From what your friend told Tara, you have the ability to control them,” she looked back at me with curiosity.  “We need you to keep them off us so we can get home.”

I chuckled and shook my head.  “I think you’re overestimating my abilities.  Controlling the Bane, especially that many, isn’t a sure thing.”

“I think you’ll manage,” she said coldly.  Suddenly she made a signal with her hand and the boat growled back to life and started to crawl forward.

It was going to be pointless to fight them, that much was obvious.

So all I could do was start thinking stay away.

The massive boat pulled alongside the dock, and with jerky movements, the Bane along the shore started moving toward us.

One of them had been standing on the boardwalk and was moving at a quick rate.  His legs moved at jerky intervals as if he were walking through tar.

“I suggest you make it stop,” Margaret said, turning cold eyes on me.  “Because if you can’t do what your friend West said you could do, we have no reason to try and keep you alive.”

“Just shoot it!” I yelled as I watched it make its way closer.  It stumbled as its legs froze.

“Call this a test,” she said.

By now the Bane had climbed to its feet again and was sprinting toward the dock.

“Stop!” I yelled, my heart pounding in my chest.

And it instantly froze in place.

“The water,” I said, my voice shaking more than I would have liked.  “Now.”

It jumped off the dock.  It hit the water with hissing sounds and a quick pop of light before it shorted out and sank out of sight.

I slowly met Margaret’s eyes.  That wicked grin was back.  “Now that’s more like it,” she said.  “Test completed.  Shoot the rest of them.”

The air was instantly alive with the sound of gunfire.  Their bodies dropped on the shore.

“Let’s move!” Alistar screamed.

The dolly I was chained to suddenly jerked to motion as one of the men grabbed the back of it and started pushing me out onto the dock.  And everyone was running.

When we got to the end of the boardwalk and out onto a road, I saw why.

A good one hundred Bane were climbing out of buildings, running down roads.  All called by the noise of their shots.

Stay back, I thought, over and over.

“Stay away from us!” I yelled.

More and more bodies climbed out of buildings.

My connection wasn’t very strong with so many of them, but my captors fired as we ran.  And I was able to keep them far enough away to keep any of them from touching us.

We had run for less than a minute when one of the armed men pulled open a heavy door in the sidewalk.  A set of stairs dropped into the darkness.  Someone grabbed the metal plate beneath my feet, and the two of them lifted me and down we dropped.

Once everyone had clambered inside, the door was closed and I heard a lock slide into place.

The lighting was dim and it took even my eyes a few moments to adjust.

We were in some kind of tunnel.  Crumbling brick, stone, and wood walls stretched out before us.  Moisture was heavy in the air.  Everything tasted like mildew.  Gas lamps hung every so often, providing little light to see by.

They carried me down the tunnel.  As we moved, other’s popped their heads out from doors.  Each of them was as pale and sickly looking as the last.

I didn’t have to ask questions.  They survived in this city by never seeing the sun.

But that was only going to last so long.  The Bane were Evolving past that need.

We entered a large room.  The floor was dirty and dusty, just like all the walls and the crumbling ceiling.

The men carrying me set the dolly down and Margaret and Alistar stood before me.

“Welcome to the Underground,” she said.

“I think I’ll decline that welcome,” I growled.

“Then decline it,” she said, her expression going sour.  “But you’re not going anywhere.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said.  I wasn’t sure if I felt any better when her armed men started disbanding from the room.  “I mean, you’re human.  Aren’t we supposed to be helping each other survive?  Not kidnapping each other.”

“Exactly!” she exploded.  Her eyes blazed and she seemed to grow six inches.  “Those of us who are left are supposed to help each other!  Each of us has a duty to reclaim our world.  But your people keep their technology to themselves.  They let that weapon sit and rot on the roof when they could be using it to clear our country, our continent!”

“What did you expect?” I spat back.  “You came in with secrets and lies and guns and just expected us to hand it over to you?”

“I expected you all to see what the right thing to do was,” she said coldly as she took a step closer to me.  “We are growing fewer and fewer each and every day.  You want to know what the estimated percentage of the remaining human population is now?  Less than half a percent!  Ninety-nine point five percent of the population has been infected.  If we don’t do something now, we are handing the planet over to the Bane.”

The last statistic I had heard was ninety-eight.  And even though it had only changed by one and a half percent, it was crushing to hear it.

I didn’t have anything to say in response.

“We’re not done with your friends down south,” Margaret said.  She placed her hands on her hips and took another step closer.  “But we have a new subject to learn from first.”

“I’m not telling you anything until I see that West is safe.”  Everything in me screamed to find a way out of this place, to not say a word.  But I couldn’t just leave West here unaware of what these people were really doing.

“And I’m happy to oblige,” she said with that repulsive smile.  I realized then why it was so vile.  Her teeth were a disgusting mix of yellow and brown and the ones on the left side of her mouth were horridly crooked.  “Right this way.”

Alistar came behind me and wheeled me down another tunnel.

“I seriously suggest you don’t say a word, or even breathe,” Margaret said as we slowed at the end of a tunnel.  “He is never to know you are here.”

“I understand,” I said with a dead voice.

We stopped outside a door with a cloudy window.  Alistar wheeled me right up to it.

West was seated inside, talking to a man with a bushy beard that didn’t fit his narrow body.  The man tapped the device in West’s chest, speaking words I couldn’t hear.

“Thank you,” I said quietly and they started wheeling me down another tunnel.  “What is this place?” I asked when we had some distance between us.

“The Underground of Seattle,” Alistar said.  So he did speak for himself after all.  “The majority of the city of Seattle burned in the late 1800’s.  The ground level frequently flooded with the tides and rain though, so instead of rebuilding, they built on top of the remains.  These tunnels are what’s left of the original city.  We’ve extended them into the basements of other buildings, securing them.”

“How many of you are there?”

“That doesn’t concern you,” Margaret said in her cold voice.  We reached another door which she pulled open and Alistar wheeled me into it.

I was unprepared for this room.

A single light bulb hung from the ceiling.  In the middle of the small room, was a steel table.

It took everything I had in me not to start screaming for my release, not to break my cybernetic bones to get free.

The sound of a drill was echoing in my brain.

“Welcome to your room,” Margaret said.

Alistar wheeled me to one corner and parked me there.

“It’s been a long day,” she said as they walked to the door.  “We’ll be back for you tomorrow morning.  I hope you’re comfortable.”

They stepped outside and the door locked with a solid grinding sound of a metal post sliding into the wall.

And I was left there, chained to the dolly.

ELEVEN

I’d nearly tipped myself over in the struggle to free myself.  The skin covering my ankles was torn and bleeding.  I wore the flesh on my wrists away trying to escape my bonds.  My cybernetic bones clanged against the chains.

But I’d gained no freedom.

Cyclones of emotions ripped through me.  I’d been buoyed by rage and hatred for hours.  I’d struggled against my bonds, my tiny new world washed in red.

But slowly uncertainty, bordering on fear, crept in.

What were they planning to do with me?

Assumptions were easy to make with that steel table in the middle of the room.

“She’s afraid,” a voice from the past echoed.

The drill screamed and the air was cold.

I closed my eyes, trying to force the dreams and memories out of my head.

“Doesn’t she ever get tired?

“She’s never been this aggressive before.”

There was so much red.  Metal and blood.

My breath caught in my chest and I jerked my arms again, tearing my flesh more.

Subject is again devoid of emotion.

“Sometimes they would let us play together.”

“Damn it, West,” I hissed, my eyes sliding open and rising to the damp looking ceiling.  “What did you do?”

I’d probably only been this room for a few hours, and already I was losing my mind.

But I’d been losing my mind before these people had cyborgnapped me.  Avian had been right, it was only a matter of time before I would have snapped.  And who knows who I would have broken with me.

I knew the answer to that question.  I’d already started doing it.

West.

Despite how beyond angry I was with him in that moment, I hoped wherever he was, he was safe.  As safe as he could be.

I assumed he would be.  He’d left home willingly in order to escape me.

But how safe was everyone in New Eden now?  How much damage had been done before my captors left?

A horrifying thought occurred to me then.  What if they hadn’t all left?  How did I know that they had all returned to Seattle?

How did I know that I was the only hostage?

“Avian.”  His name whispered over my lips with the skip of a heartbeat and ice in my stomach.

No, he’d been fighting when I went down.  I saw that.  I had to tell myself that he was fine, back in New Eden.  These people wanted to study me.  Avian was normal, human.  They would gain nothing by taking him.

But Avian tended to do stupid, irrational things when it came to my safety.  What would he do when he found I was gone?

A low growl worked its way up my chest.

I’d kill every single one of them if anything happened to him.

I counted the seconds eagerly.

Sometime they were going to have to release me.  Sometime these chains were going to loosen.  Sometime someone was going to accidently grant me a tiny window of opportunity and I would exploit it.

I was going to make it out of here.

And I was going to make it home.

I waited in the pitch black, in the musty dark.  I plotted all the ways I was going to choke Alistar.  The way I would break in all of Margaret’s disgusting teeth.

And finally, the dim bulb above my head flickered back on.

Feet shuffled out in the hall.  Muffled voices tricked in through the cracks around the door.

The knob turned, and the door shrieked as it was pushed open.

A tiny man with thick, black glasses stepped timidly into the room.  His small shoulders were covered with a white lab coat.  His shoes were ragged and worn.  He wouldn’t make eye contact as I stared at him with dark eyes.

He carried a device with him.  It reminded me of a radio but had something that looked like a tiny computer hooked to it.

“You are holding me prisoner here,” I said through clenched teeth.  “We are both human, we do not treat each other like this.  Not since the world started teetering on the edge of extinction.”

“That’s apparently debatable,” he said.  His voice as small and weak sounding as his physique.

“What?” I questioned, not sure I had even heard what he had said.

“Us both being human.”  He pushed a button on the radio looking portion of the device.  It started making scratchy sounds.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, shaking my head, flexing my muscles, straining against my bonds.  If only I could break free.  I could snap this tiny man with little effort.

“You’re emitting a low frequency signal,” he said, turning the device so I could see it.  A screen showed two barely twitching brilliant green lines.  “Two, actually.  One that is similar to the what the Bane emit.  It doesn’t really do anything.  It’s more a side effect of all of their cybernetic components.  But the other, I’m not really sure what it is.  Fascinating.”

“I swear to you, if you don’t let me go I will call a hoard of Bane down here to destroy every living soul in this hovel!” I screamed.  And suddenly the idea, however startling it was, seemed like an option to gain my freedom.

“I don’t suggest it,” he said, his eyes dropping to my feet.  “You see, while you were drugged, we attached a live electrical wire to that lovely thing you’re chained to.  I just have to push this little button if you do anything I don’t like, and a shock strong enough to all but kill you will run through your mechanical body.”

“You son of a—”

“Language, please,” he said, his voice rising just slightly for the first time.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from spewing more vile things.  My insides were full of them.

“Now,” he said, pulling a stool from beneath the table.  It scraped the concrete floor and the sound echoed off the stone walls.  “I have some questions.  If you don’t mind.”

“Doesn’t seem I have much of a choice,” I said, my voice low.

“Not really,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.  They were dead eyes, gray and hollow.  They reminded me of the eyes of the Bane.  “We’ll get our answers one way or another.”

“I don’t intend to do this the easy way.”

“That’s fine,” he said.  His voice was madly calm and even.  Almost as if he was talking to an animal he didn’t wish to scare away.  “But for your safety, I suggest you change your mind on that.”

He didn’t wait for me to respond and placed another device on the table.  It was an old fashioned tape recorder.  The tape started slowly spinning when he pushed the button with the red circle.

“How long were you at NovaTor Biotics?” he asked, his eyes meeting mine again.

“How do you know I was ever there?” I said, once again trying to gain any wiggle room in my chains.

“Your friend accidently shared quite a few secrets,” he said.

“What did he tell you?”

“Not as much as we would like to know,” he said.  “That is why I am asking you these questions.  Now, how long were you at NovaTor?”

I held his eyes for a long time.  There was something terrifying about this little man.  Like he knew how to twist things into the shape he wanted to see, break you in ways you didn’t know you could be broken.

This little man was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And maybe, just maybe, if I cooperated, I’d make it out of here alive to get back to Avian and New Eden.

“I was born there,” I said, my voice almost too quiet to hear at first.  “My mother worked at NovaTor.”

“Thank you,” he said with the barest hint of a smile forming on his face.  “And when were you given TorBane?”

“As an infant,” I said, recalling the truths Dr. Beeson had revealed.  “I was underdeveloped, born premature.  I would have died without it.”

“And you were the first?” he asked.  “The first human to be given TorBane.”

“Yes.”

“And how is it that you don’t spread TorBane like all the others?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice rising with my frustration.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”  For the first time, there was a hint of impatience in his voice.

And I finally knew what they were really after.

“I’m saying that I don’t know why I don’t spread the infection,” I said, my emotional hurricane calming.  It’s easier to form a plan when you know what it is your enemies want.  “I don’t understand everything that was done to me.  I know it has something to do with my young age and controlled dosages.  But it isn’t as if I’ve had notes to study.”

He just looked at me for a moment after that.  Normally with a silence like that, after hearing information like he just had, you can tell they are formulating a theory or a plan, or something.

But his eyes just looked impassive.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” he suddenly said.  He’d been so quiet and still that I nearly jumped when he finally seemed to come back to life.  “We will let you know if we wish to ask you more questions.”  And he stood to leave.

“Wait, that’s it?” I said, my eyes following him as he pulled the door open.  “That was all you wanted to know?”

“For now,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

By my rough calculations, they left me there in that room for another twenty-four hours.

It left me with far too much time to think.

There was that question he had asked.

Why didn’t I infect others?  How did TorBane exist in me, as it was designed to, when it just took everyone else over?

I’d told him the truth when I told him I didn’t really know.

Dr. Beeson had told me once but he didn’t exactly spell it out.  I didn’t understand the science.  I understood that TorBane worked on me the way it was intended to work on the rest of the world.

I wasn’t going to be able to give them the answers they wanted.

My head jerked up when the ground beneath my feet shook and even in my isolated cell, I could hear shouting and gun fire.

I jerked against my bonds once more, my bones clanging against the chains.  The skin around my wounds was swollen and red, attempting to heal.

The sound of gunfire drew closer, the shouts grew more desperate.  Screams ricochet off the walls.

And suddenly the firing stopped and the voices grew calmer.

I hated this blindness.  I hated being bound.  I hated everything about Seattle.

What was happening?

The door to my cell screamed as it was pushed open and two guards appeared in the doorway.  They didn’t look at me though.  They dragged something behind them, keeping their heads down as they pulled.

When they cleared the doorway, I saw what it was.

They each grasped a metal hook.  The other end sank into the chest of a Bane.

“Did it touch anyone?” I couldn’t help but asking.  “How’d it get in?”

But they didn’t answer me.  They dragged the bullet riddled carcass into the opposite corner and left the body in a heap.  The two of them then turned and left, locking the door behind them.

Great, not only was I locked up, but I now had a rotting mechanical corpse as a cell mate.

I studied its form where it lay on the ground as the noise outside the door died away.  It was a female.  She looked like she was probably the same age as me.  Her stark pale skin was a heavy contrast to the metallic eyes that stared emptily up at the ceiling.  Most of the left side of her jaw was a mangled mess of muscle and metal and blood.  Her chest was the same way.

I then noticed the simple band that encircled her left ring finger.

She’d been engaged or married at some point.  She’d loved someone and committed to spend the rest of her life with them.

But then TorBane got her and she unknowingly made another kind of lifetime commitment.

The sense of helplessness I had once felt back in the mountains of Eden crept back in on me.  We’d managed to wipe out millions of Bane in Los Angeles, but there were still billions left out there.  The numbers were staggering.

Would we just keep fighting to the very last human?  Would we keep running and hiding in our holes in the ground until that last person sat alone in the dark, with the weight of an annihilated race on their shoulders?

I felt sorry for that last person.  And I prayed it would never be me.

Eight more hours by my guess.  That’s how long I sat alone with that body.

Then the door opened again, the same two guards came back in with their hooks, and dragged the body out.  It was just me again.

I could only assume they had been waiting for dark to get rid of the body.  They had placed it with the one person who couldn’t be infected until that time came.

With the body gone, my head started to sag, and my eyelids fluttered.  Exhaustion was finally overtaking me.  I’d made myself stay awake the entire time I’d been in the Underground.  I’d had no food or water.  I was part Bane, but enough of me was human to be weakened.

There was no doubt in my mind they were depriving me on purpose.  I couldn’t fight back if I was too weak to keep my eyelids open.

I had frantic dreams.  Dreams of fighting the Bane in the forest surrounding old Eden.  Dreams of watching West’s eyes change from human white to metallic Bane.  Dreams of Avian being choked to death by a mechanical Margaret.

“Rise and shine.”

My head jerked up, my eyes struggling to focus for a moment.

Speak of the devil.

Margaret stood across the table from me, her hands resting on it, her gaze fixed on me.

“I hope you rested well,” she said, her eyes dancing.

“Best sleep of my life,” I growled.

That disgusting grin of hers spread and she chuckled.  “You really should stop struggling you know.  That looks like it hurts.”  She indicated my wrists and ankles.  “But that’s right.  You don’t feel pain.”

I just continued to glare at her.

“It is indeed rather convenient your friend doesn’t know you’re here.  He’s quite willing to talk to Tara about you when he thinks you’re back home safe with your lover.”

Her words stung.  Far more than I wanted them to.

“He explained how you don’t feel things like pain.  How you didn’t used to feel much of any emotion,” her eyes darkened in a way I didn’t understand.  “He told me how you were the first.  That if it wasn’t for your early arrival into this world, and for your fragile state, TorBane might not have ever been developed.”

And I started to understand her hatred and hostility toward me.  She was starting to uncover my past and how I helped to bring about the end of the world.

There was something personal about this behind those eyes.

She’d lost someone.  Someone more important to her than just the rest of the world.

“But I think maybe,” she said, her voice dropping an octave.  “Just maybe, you can help save it.”

“If you know a way, trust me, I’m all ears,” I said.  My stomach felt heavy and sea-sick like.

“Thank you for your cooperation.  I am glad to hear that you are willing to help,” she said, that deadly smile returning.  “Bring them in!”

The door suddenly opened and five new bodies filled the small room.  Two guards, two men in white lab coats, and another woman in scrubs.

“What are you doing?” I said, the urgency in my voice rising.  “Wait!  I said I would help you!”

“And you are going to help us,” Margaret said as the guards lifted me with the dolly.  While they did so, one of the men in the lab coats sank a needle into my neck.  The world instantly grew hazy.  “But unfortunately you can’t tell us what we need to see.”

TWELVE

The man sat in front of me, turned to the side so he was facing that flat rectangle.  His fingers flashed over the pad that sat on the table, each of his fingers rapidly tapping certain points on it.

I watched him as he worked, observing the details that made up the whole that was him.  His hair was so dark.  So much darker than my own.  It was longer than many of the other men I knew.  It curled slightly at the ends.

His skin was dark as well and almost looked black in the creases and wrinkles.  He didn’t have as many of those as Dr. Evans did though.  Dr. Beeson was much younger.

I felt differently toward Dr. Beeson than I did toward Dr. Evans.

But I didn’t know how to identify that feeling.

I’d been taught to observe others and identify their body language.  Shifting eyes and skittish hands indicated nervousness.  A smile and bright eyes usually meant happiness.  Tears and trembling lips were surely sadness.

But when it came to what happened inside of me, there wasn’t anything.

I’d stared at myself in a mirror for exactly ten minutes once.  My face had been blank.  No body language to read.  I’d tried smiling like I’d seen others do.  I tried frowning.  But it didn’t look right.

I realized then that there had to be something going on inside to make the outside look correct.

My inside was mostly hollow.

“How do you feel, Eve?” Dr. Beeson asked, finally turning toward me.  His eyes looked sad.

“I feel like myself,” I said.

He studied me, much like I had studied him moments ago.

“You don’t feel angry?” he asked.  “You don’t feel sad?”

I shook my head.

He kept looking at me, not saying anything.

So I kept looking back at him.

His eyes rose to look at someone behind me.  “The last adjustment is holding.  She doesn’t need another.”

“Very good,” a voice said.  I turned in my seat to find the speaker.  There was a large television with a gruff-looking man on the screen.  His eyes narrowed at me.  “Keep us updated.”

“Yes, sir,” Dr. Beeson said.  I turned back to him, and noticed uncertainty in his eyes.

Dr. Beeson didn’t like the man on the screen.

“Try it again,” the woman said patiently.  “Look at the letters.  Sound them out.”

I looked from her face back to the book.  The words seemed to shift and rearrange themselves on the page.  But I narrowed my eyes, focusing on one word.

“Bio…” I struggled to make them stay focused.  “Bio…log…ical.”

“Very good,” she said, a smile spreading on her face.  She patted my back.  “Read on.”

“The biological reasons for this are unknown.  Possible exp…lanations include increased risk of pregnancy complications.”  I paused, looking from the article to the woman again.  “Why am I reading this?”

“Because it helps you learn,” she said, her eyes meeting mine.  Something changed in them, but I didn’t know how to recognize it.

I blinked twice at her before turning back to the article.

I was almost finished reading it when Dr. Evans stepped inside the room.  I met his eyes and he gave me a sad smile.  His smile was always sad.

“Keep reading,” the woman said.  “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

I kept reading.

The woman and Dr. Evans slipped to the back of the room and talked in quiet voices.

“Any sign that the dyslexia is improving?” Dr. Evans asked.

“Slowly but surely,” she said.

I tried to keep my reading smooth and even so they would not be able to tell I was listening.

“This is taking longer than we expected,” he said.  “Subject one has recovered much more quickly and from a much more serious neurological condition.”

The woman was quiet for a moment.  “I wish you wouldn’t call them that.  We could give them real names.”

Dr. Evans paused, the air serious, even from across the room.  “It’s easier this way.”

Neither of them said anything and finally I heard the door open and then click shut again.

“This is argued to be caused by an unbalanced gen…” I struggled.

“Genomic.”  The woman was flustered and distracted if she was giving me the full word without making me sound it out.

“Genomic imprinting,” I continued.  “Favoring paternal genes in the case of autism and maternal genes in the case of psychosis.”

“Very good,” the woman said.  “You can take a break before you are taken to the gym.”

And she turned and left.

Since I didn’t normally feel pain, I didn’t know how to describe the feeling.

Like cold and sandpaper squeezing all the nerves in my head.

It wasn’t crushing or like fire, like some of the pain I had experienced before.

This was like slow suffocation.

My eyelids fluttered open for a moment.  There was no detail to the space around me, just hazy gray.

“…can’t go out like this,” a voice said.  “Look at her.”

“I don’t see how we have much of a choice.”

Goosebumps prickled along my skin.  The air around me was chilly and moist.

That cold, grating feeling in my head pulsed once and darkness started rising in my eyes.

An alarm was sounding and I placed my hands over my ears in attempt to block it out.  People dashed down the halls, shouting, fear in their eyes.

Dr. Evans peered around the corner, looking both ways down the hall, before turning back to me.

“We’re going to run for Dr. Beeson’s office, okay?” he said.  He was just as scared as everyone else.  “You’re not going to say a word and you’re going to do whatever he tells you.  Don’t say anything, got it?”

I nodded, my eyes wide.

There was something clawing under my skin, fighting to break out.

I suddenly hoped Dr. Beeson might do an adjustment and make the feeling go away.

“Let’s go!” he yelled.

My hand gripped tightly in his, we sprinted down the hall.

THIRTEEN

“We can’t afford to wait any longer.”

I knew that voice and it made my fists ball.

“You rouse her too quickly and we could lose her,” a voice said.

And suddenly everything in me flooded back to life.

I was off the table in a frantic scramble.  Finding Margaret at my side, my right hand closed around her throat.  Grabbing a shining blade from the table, I backed her into a corner and held the blade to her throat.

“Let me go,” I hissed.

There were three others in the room.  A man who looked like he must be a doctor, and two soldiers.

“Calm down, Eve,” the doctor said.  “Or you’re going to make yourself bleed to death.”

As he spoke I felt a wet, warm trickle work its way down my neck.  I glanced down just a moment too long.

One guard snatched Margaret out of my grip, but not without the blade nicking her jawline.  She cursed loudly.  The other guard rushed me, pressing his shotgun across my throat, pinning me to the wall.

It had been a line of blood that had distracted me, running from the back of my head, down around my throat and in between my breasts.

“Please calm down,” the doctor said, wild fear in his eyes.  He held his hands up as if he were surrendering.  “You’re already tearing the stitches.”

“What are you doing to me?” I barely managed to get the words out.  My body shook with rage and uncertainty.

“Gaining knowledge,” Margaret said with a growl.  “Look, there isn’t much time.  As much as it pains me to say it, we need your help.”

“Haven’t I already been helping you?” I spat back.

“Could you just shut up for a moment?!” she bellowed, crossing the room and getting in my face.

My mouth closed and I stared back at her.

“Alistar and his team went out for supplies last night and have gotten themselves trapped in a building.  The Bane weren’t supposed to be awake.”

“You know that rule is quickly dying, right?” I said as the guard stepped away, releasing my throat.  “That only applies to a few of them now.  The older the Hunter, the more they’re awake.”

Something passed over her eyes that told me she had only recently discovered this.

“It’s because of the clouds here, isn’t it?” I said as the pieces started to fall into place.  “It’s delayed their Evolution.  They’re only just now starting to be active at night, aren’t they?”

It took her a moment to respond.  “Yes.”

“They’ve been waking up at night everywhere else I’ve been for months now.”  I recalled the first time we’d learned that lesson.  We’d lost Tye that night, a good soldier, and Avian’s best friend and cousin.

“We weren’t expecting it,” she said, her voice weak sounding for the first time since I had met her.  “And now one of our teams is trapped inside a building.  We need you to go and get them out.”

“Why would I ever help you?” I hissed.

“Because West’s surgery is scheduled for tomorrow and I swear on my mother’s grave we will let him Evolve if you don’t do as we say.”

My insides swelled, filling with hot ash and burning coals.  I wanted to snap her neck and continue breaking every bone in her body.  Rage was becoming a part of who I was lately.  I was a caged animal and I’d been backed into a corner.

“What time of day is it right now?” I asked.

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“And you want me to go out there right now?” I demanded.  I couldn’t help it as my hands rose and I shoved her away from me.  She wasn’t expecting it and tripped backwards into the arms of the soldier who had pulled her away from me.

“If we wait any longer their location will be breached,” she shouted back, righting herself, once again getting in my face.

“They will pull me apart, limb from limb this time of day.”

“It’s raining heavily,” she said.  Her eyes told me she knew this was a poor defense.  “They’re less active when it rains.  Some of them are too Evolved to go out in the rain without being shorted out.  You stand a better chance.  And we’ll send a soldier with you.”

I just kept her eyes for a long moment and finally shook my head.

“I want to see West again,” I said.  Something in my body sagged, knowing I had no choice but to bend to this woman’s will.

She took a second to answer.  “Give us a minute.”

And then she and the doctor left, leaving me with the guards.

I couldn’t help it as my hands rose to my head.  At the crown of my head, there was a three inch circle of hair that I found shaven away.  It was sticky with blood and my fingers ran over careful stitches.

It was more horrifying than it should have been.

Finding a hair tie still around my wrist, I carefully pulled my hair back into a ponytail, hiding the bald spot.

My hands came out streaked with sticky blood.

“This way,” Margaret said, opening the door again and nodding down the hall with her head.

The guards stepped behind me, pointing their guns at my back as we walked.  We snaked through a maze of crumbling passages, passing doors and openings into other rooms.  We stopped at a wall with a glass window.

“Don’t let him see you,” Margaret warned again.

“I won’t,” I said as I carefully peered around the window through the dark.

West sat on a grubby, broken-down couch.  He looked relaxed, leaning back, his ankle crossed over the other knee.  A smile broke out over his face and he laughed.  He was talking to Tara.  She laughed back, a dimple forming in her right cheek.  There were others in the room too, eating small meals, talking quickly and nervously.  This must have been some sort of a mess hall.

“He’s fine,” Margaret said, placing a hand on my arm and pulling me away gently.

“I need a shotgun, a handgun and a few grenades if you’ve got them,” I said.

I swore under my breath as I stared up at the metal hatch above my head.

My head was pounding.  It must have been really bad if I could actually feel it through my chips pain blockers.

My legs were wobbling and I could tell I’d lost more blood that was safe to go out running about a Bane-infested city.

During the day.

“You ready for this?” I asked.  I looked back.

The man behind me nodded his head.  In many ways he reminded me of Avian, with his closely shaved hair and lean frame.  But he was younger than Avian, probably closer to West’s age.  I’d guess twenty.

He carried not one, but three shotguns and one assault rifle.  He had probably eight grenades attached to the utility belt around his waist.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Why?” he questioned.

“Because if we die today, I want to know the name of the man I’m going down with.”

This might have rattled a lot of people.  Even a lot of soldiers.  But there was a darkness behind his eyes that seemed to understand.

“Tristan,” he said.

“Let’s go, Tristan.”

Gripping the lock of the hatch, I twisted it and pushed it open.

My arm was instantly soaked as the rain started falling into the hole.  Checking to make sure the road was clear, I climbed out of the hole and onto the sidewalk.  Tristan followed me an instant later and closed the hatch again.

“This way,” he said, pointing with his rifle up a street, away from the water.

The roads rose quickly the further we went from the water.  The rain ran down the gutters furiously, creating a small river.  My hair instantly stuck to my face, washing the blood from my face and neck.

We hugged buildings as we ran up the road.  But I cringed every time I looked inside a storefront and saw the Bane, standing there, staring emptily out at us.

“You know they’re not going to stay like that for long, right?” I said as we crouched behind a car.  “The Sleepers are going to wake up.”

“That’s what we’ve been theorizing,” he said.  “That’s why Margaret’s gotten so crazy.  She’s desperate.”

We dashed across the road and hugged the building again as we worked our way up the street.

“You mean she wasn’t always this…hostile?” I said, keeping my voice low.

“She’s always been a little intense, but you have to understand, you being here, TorBane, it’s all personal,” he said as his eyes swept the buildings around us.

“What do you mean?” I asked, scanning the roofline across the street.

“Margaret had two daughters.  The oldest one, Bridget, she was fifteen when she was infected last year.  There was a breach,” he said.  We both saw movement at the same time and ducked behind a car.  I peeked through a window and watched a boy cross the street.  He still looked human except for his bare, mechanical feet.

“But she also had a three year old who was dying of liver failure before the Evolution,” Tristan whispered.  “No organ donors came up, no transplant came available.  Margaret sold everything to pay for her to get a TorBane upgrade.”

I’d seen the evidence of everyone who had turned, who had been infected.  But it was always so much worse hearing stories about the first generation, who embraced TorBane without knowing what it would shortly do to them and the rest of the world.

“So you understand why Margaret hates you so much,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.  They were green.

“I can’t blame her,” I said.  “I hate myself too sometimes.”

“Sounds to me like it wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice more understanding than I deserved.

“Road’s clear again,” I said, looking out the window.

We bolted down the road as the rain continued to fall.

I couldn’t help the instinct to fire when I heard the clatter to my left.

A Bane hurtled itself at a window when it saw us moving.  I fired in its direction, shattering the large glass window and took it out.  But there were a dozen others standing next to it, staring out at us, their muscles, or whatever they still had flexing and twitching to jump out after us.  This group was almost one hundred percent mechanical-looking.  Most of them didn’t even have skin anymore.

But they stood frozen just under the cover of the building.

“The rain,” I said in awe.  “They won’t come out because of the rain!”

“Let’s move!” Tristan shouted.

We sprinted, turning down another road.

Glass continually shattered as we moved, Bane throwing themselves out at us, only to twitch and short out as the rain crept into their mechanical innards.  They could only stand under the cover of buildings and race along after us or die.

“How much further?” I asked.  I was heavily weighed down with ammunition, but the amount of bullets I had didn’t equal the number of Bane that were surrounding us.

“Two more blocks,” Tristan called.

With all the adrenaline pumping through my system, I hadn’t realized my head had stopped pounding and the wound was no longer bleeding.  TorBane was healing my body.

Tristan turned down another block.  As soon as we rounded the corner, he turned, grabbed two of the grenades from his belt, pulled the pins, and tossed them at the hoard that chased after us.

Body parts littered the street.  And there was a horrible grinding, crunching sound as the side of the building broke apart and crashed to the street, crushing the bodies, and narrowly missing us.

“Good aim,” I said, my pace slowing slightly, now that the danger level had dropped a bit.  My head was no longer pounding, but my legs were wobbly still and I felt slightly woozy.

“You okay?” he asked, turning concerned eyes on me.

“I can understand why that woman hates me, but damn her for making me less than what I should be and throwing me out to the Bane,” I growled, my step faltering slightly.

“I don’t know what they’re doing to you,” he said as we slowed to a walk.  He pulled me behind a car and eased me down to the ground.  “But I’m pretty sure there has to be a better method.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to him.  I didn’t know how much he knew about me or what they were trying to get from me.

“Desperate times make people act desperate,” he said as his eyes met mine for a moment.  “Desperation has a way of bringing out the worst in people.”

“Yeah,” was all I could say.  Because I’d seen it too often.  I’d seen it in myself on more than one occasion.

“You ready to go again?” he asked.

“Where are we actually headed anyway?” I asked.  My head was slowly evening out.

“Our group was getting supplies at a hardware store when something went wrong.  We’re not entirely sure what happened,” he said.  “But they knew something was coming and they barricaded themselves in the bank across the street.  There’s a vault they’re hiding in.”

“Alistar is more than some soldier to Margaret, isn’t he?” I asked, climbing to my feet.  We started down the road again.

“He’s her lover,” Tristan said, shaking his head.  “I don’t get it.  Margaret is… Margaret.  How can he stand her?”

“Maybe he enjoys power-hungry women,” I said, disgust rising in my stomach.

To my surprise, Tristan laughed.  It was a deep, belly laugh.  It was so unexpected, I couldn’t help but smile too.

“That’s it right there,” he said, once again serious.  Tristan pointed to a building sandwiched between a dozen others.  Its front was stark marble white with gold trim.  On the ground level, the entire front was nearly all glass.

“I know you’re supposed to be able to communicate with them or something, but I think our best bet is to just fire as many rounds as we can,” Tristan said.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.  “I can do my best to keep them away from us.”

Tristan looked at me, his brows knitting together.  “It doesn’t really matter to me what you are,” he said, his eyes trailing over me.  “But so far I think you’re pretty impressive.”

“I’m also involved,” I blurted.

A coy grin cracked on his lips.  “That wasn’t what I meant, but good to know.  I’m just saying you’re one impressive soldier.”

My face turned warm with embarrassment.  “Thanks,” I muttered.  “Let’s go.”

We jogged toward the building.  I slowed as we approached the bank, stopping just out of sight.

There were seven of them inside.  Advanced looking.  Most of them had no flesh at all anymore.

Five of them stood in a line facing what must have been the vault.  They were perfectly still, frozen like they were statues.  One of them stood next to the combination, its hand pressed flat against the steel wall.  And another had its hand on the dial, slowly rotating it to the right.

“What are they doing?” Tristan barely whispered.

The realization hit me just as the one turning the dial stopped turning it and I barely registered the faint click.

I started firing the same time the Bane yanked the vault open.  Screams filled the air and metal scraped against marble as the Bane rushed into the vault.

“NO!” Tristan bellowed as he fired into the bank.

I didn’t stop shooting.  But I knew it was too late.  The Bane were all over the five people inside.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” I screamed, grabbing the back of Tristan’s soaked jacket and pulling him quickly back toward the doors.

The Bane then registered we were there.

Knowing they had completed their only reason for being—infecting humans—they turned and sprinted after us.

Tristan and I crashed to the road as we backed out of the bank, landing in a puddle.  I kept firing, hitting two of the mechanical creatures that sprinted across the bank after us.  They dropped in a heap.

But three others barreled right out of the building into the rain.

Hissing filled the air as two of them instantly shorted out and dropped to the ground as Tristan and I scrambled backwards.  But the last one with more flesh than the others kept rushing forward.

Slipping in the rain, I lost my footing and was taken down just a moment too long.

The Bane was on top of me, its hands around my throat.  My head was forced into a puddle.  Water lapped just over my eyes, making my vision wave under the water.

It jerked over and over again as Tristan fired at it, but it didn’t go down.

That familiar red rage flooded my system again and I wanted with everything in my system for this creature trying to kill me to meet a horrible end.

I watched as its hands left my throat and went to its own head.  In one movement, it twisted its head violently to the left and up.

The head was ripped clean from its body.

It collapsed to the left of me with a splash that sent currents of electricity through the water to shock me endlessly.

A screamed leapt from my lips and then there were strong hands dragging me out of the puddle.  Tristan swore, stumbling under my weight and stopping in the middle of the road.

“You’ve got to do it now,” I faintly heard a voice.  My system recovering from the electrocution, I stood and my vision cleared.  The two Bane who were left stood just under the cover of the bank’s opening, staring at Tristan and I.  They wouldn’t come out after us into the rain.

But next to them stood four people, and I saw Alistar’s body lying on the floor behind them.  He’d been mauled to death.

It was strange, seeing the Bane stand next to the four humans.  But their only task in life was completed.  They had no reason to pay them anymore attention.

“We’re as good as dead,” a woman said.  “End us now before we end anyone else.”

There was terror in the other three’s eyes, but they each slowly nodded.

“I can’t,” Tristan said.  His voice cracked.

“You have to,” I said quietly, thinking of Tye.

Tristan’s eyes fell to the ground and he wiped the back of his hand across his nose.  He shook his head, swearing under his breath again.

“Will you help me?” he said, his eyes rising to meet mine.

It took me a moment to nod.

Tristan took four steps closer to the bank, his shotgun held loosely in his hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice rough and scratchy.  “You’ve made it this long.”

“No need for speeches,” the woman said, tears streaming down her face.  “Just get it over with, please.”

Tristan nodded and waved me forward.  I held my shotgun ready.

“You take the two on the right,” he said to me.  “I’ll take the two on the left.”

A lump formed in my throat as I raised my shotgun, leveling it on a very terrified looking man who had to be in his sixties.  I was glad Tristan hadn’t told me their names.

“Fire!” Tristan shouted.

And for the first time, I shot at a man who was still mostly human.

He dropped to the ground at the same time another woman did.  The others screamed.

I couldn’t wait for Tristan’s command.  I shot the woman who had spoken for them.

Apparently Tristan couldn’t give the command again, because he fired at the same time I did.

We both stood frozen for a moment, Tristan with his shotgun still leveled.  I was fairly sure he wasn’t breathing.

“Let’s go,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.

The rain continued to fall harder and harder as we made our way back.  Plenty of Bane had woken and watched us from the cover of the buildings.  But as long as we stayed in the middle of the road, far from their reach, they left us alone.

I froze outside the hatch, unable to make myself go back down into that hole.

“Is she going to kill me?” I asked.  “Since we failed?”

“I don’t think so,” Tristan said, clearing his throat.  He had been trying hard the entire journey home to control his emotions.  “You seem to be pretty valuable.”

“Margaret has a short temper,” I said hollowly.

His green eyes met mine.  “I won’t let her do anything to you.”

“Somehow I don’t think you can stop her from getting whatever it is she wants from me.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t try,” he said, his grip tightening on his shotgun.

“Why are you here, Tristan?” I asked, my eyes narrowing at him.  “You don’t seem to fit in with this crowd.”

He shrugged.  “What else am I supposed to do?  It’s safer to stay in groups.  I’d never last out there on my own.  We’ve got to stick together.”

I looked at him for a long time.  Maybe it was all about uncontrollable fate.  You had to live with the people you could find these days.  West had first been with a harsh military group, and then a group that was only a step above marauders.

But I’d found Eden.  A place where people were good, where people did their best to help one another.

Tristan had crazy Margaret.

My fate was better than his.

And even though I had only known him for an hour, I wanted to save him from his fate.  But I was powerless to do so.

“Are they really going to help my friend?” I asked.

Tristan broke eye contact and gave a sniff before wiping the rain water from his nose with the back of his hand.  “Margaret will keep her word.  She’s insane, but she’ll do what she says.”

“Will you make sure?” I asked.  “That she helps him?  If I can’t do it myself?”

He met my eyes again for a long time and finally nodded.

“Thank you.”

“Ready?”

“No,” I answered honestly.

There was sympathy in his eyes, but what was he supposed to do?

He bent and unlocked the hatch and held it open for me.

FOURTEEN

I didn’t even see Margaret.

As soon as Tristan and I entered the tunnel we were greeted by four guards.  Tristan explained what happened and I was instantly bound.

Tristan held my eyes as they started dragging me away.

“I’ll make sure,” he had said.  “I promise.”

And so I went willingly with the guards back to my room.

The doctors were waiting for me.

Sometimes there was darkness.  Heavy and warm and light and cold.

Sometimes there was a fuzzy gray ceiling and voices in the haze that I couldn’t see.

But most of the time there was a kaleidoscope of broken memories and nightmares.

“Would you like a balloon?” the man asked as he crouched in front of me.  He had a lot of hair above his lip, but the rest of his face was smooth.

“Do you have a red one?” I asked.  I sat on my bed, my legs tucked into my chest.

“I think I do,” he said, his voice excited and kind.  He dug into the pocket of his white jacket, and produced a floppy red balloon.  He pulled something black out of his other pocket and blew up the balloon with it.  It filled, long and skinny.

He then twisted it in different sections, the rubber squeaking high pitched as he did.

“It’s a dog!” I said excitedly as I recognized the form.

“That’s right,” he said with a laugh and a smile.  “Here you go.”

He handed it to me and I took it, absolutely delighted.

“Are you ready for your test?” he asked.

“I don’t like the tests,” I said, my eyes growing dark and shaking my head.

“I know,” he said, his tone understanding.  “But we need to make sure your heart is working like it should.  I’ll make you a deal.  If you’re really good and do the test, I’ll make you a horse when we’re done.”

“Promise?” I asked.

“Promise.”

“How about this one instead?” he asked, holding up the green marker.

“No,” I said, gritting my teeth.  “I want the blue one.”

“But I need the blue one,” he said, his tone rising.

“I had it first!” I yelled.

“No you didn’t!”

“Yes, I did!” I screamed, reaching for the blue marker.  He gripped it tightly and I tugged, only to fall backward when the cap came off and I lost my balance.

He laughed at me.

“I hate you, West!” I screamed, throwing the cap at him.  To my satisfaction, it hit him right in the eye and he immediately started crying.

“Dad!” he wailed.

Dr. Evans Jr. was instantly in the room, the crying West wrapped around his legs.

“Really, Eve?” he chided me.  “We don’t throw things.  And hate isn’t a kind word.”

“But I hate him,” I growled, scowling at West who glowered right back at me.  “He doesn’t share!”

“West?” Dr. Evans questioned, looking down at West.

“She started it!” he shouted, glaring back at me.

“Okay,” Dr. Evans said.  “I think that’s enough for one day.”

West stuck his tongue out at me as his father led him out of the room.

I stuck mine right back out at him.

They all stared at me.

There were four of them with Dr. Evans, and they all looked at me.

“She’s perfectly healthy now?” one of them asked.  “No complications?”

Dr. Evans shook his head.  “Her heart was only developed to eighty percent of what it should have been, her lungs only to sixty.  But they both function perfectly now.”

“And the other one?” another man asked.

“Her development is slower,” Dr. Evans said.  His voice sounded tired and heavy.  “We weren’t sure how TorBane would react with a psychological disorder so this is totally uncharted territory.  But she’s coming along.  She’s talking, she’s well behaved the majority of the time.  She’s slowly learning how to interact.”

“Tell us about the regenerative abilities.”

Dr. Evans eyes met mine and something in them lightened.

“Eve,” he said kindly.  “Would you come over here for a moment?”

I got to my feet, my eyes meeting the strangers warily.  I crossed the room and gripped Dr. Evans’ jacket tightly in one fist.

“Can you show me that cut you got the other day?” he asked me.

I held up my left hand, exposing my palm.

“The nurse dropped a glass two days ago and it shattered on the floor in Eve two’s bedroom.  Eve here tried to help clean it up and cut herself.  But as you can see, it’s completely healed.”

This brought a smile to the strangers’ faces.  “Perfect,” one woman said.

“I think TorBane and chip X731 are going to be a perfect match, Dr. Evans.”

“No!” I screamed as I leapt across my bed.  I grabbed my hair brush and threw it at the man.  “Don’t touch me!”

“Come back here, you little…”  He chased after me.

I wrapped my tiny hand around the neck of my lamp and hurled it at him next.  It caught him in the shoulder and shattered.

A growl ripped from his throat and he tackled me to the ground.

A sharp pain pricked in my neck as he jabbed a needle into my skin.

Everything seemed to slow instantly.

I jabbed my finger into his eye and he reeled backwards into a wall.

“Don’t…” I tried to yell but my throat felt thick.  “Don’t touch me.”

“Eve,” a familiar voice said.  Dr. Evans.  The younger one.  “Everything is going to be alright.”

“No”, I shook my head.  I tried to press my back further into the corner.  My vision blurred and the dark shadows before me blended together.

“She’s never been this aggressive before,” a voice said.  It felt like someone was screaming into my ear.  Everything was too loud.  I pressed my hands over the sides of my head, trying to block it all out.

“She’s afraid,” a lighter voice said.

I couldn’t make out any details anymore as I opened and closed my eyes, trying to clear my vision.  My head felt fuzzy and clouded.

There was a pair of warm arms underneath me and I could feel them moving.

My vision was totally black by now and at some point, someone slid my eyelids closed when I couldn’t do it myself.

They changed my clothes and there was a strange buzzing sound.

Soon my head felt lighter and cold.

The next second all I could make out was the scent of steel under me.  There were voices in the dark, talking excitedly behind me.

Then there was the sound of a drill.

“What’s wrong with her?”

West sat in front of me, building a tower with foam blocks.  But he kept looking up at me.

“She had her surgery,” a woman said.  I looked over at her and blinked.  She looked at me.  There was something about her face that looked off.  Her brows were pulled together slightly.  A sheen of sweat beaded on her forehead.  There was a bit of moisture under her arms.

“Are you scared of her?” West asked, looking at the woman too.

She looked at West, but then her eyes fell quickly to the floor.  “Build your tower,” she said.

West stacked another block, then looked up at me again.

“She normally tries to take my stuff,” he said, still looking at me.  “Why is she just sitting there?”

“Build your tower,” the woman said again.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“The other one is the same way,” West said, turning back to his blocks.  He made a fence around his tower.  “She didn’t used to fight, but she just sits there now too.”

“Build your tower, West.”

Tests.

Running.

Weight lifting.

Observation.

Always.

“You see that there?”

I could faintly hear them through the glass wall and over the noise the machine around me made.

“Wow,” someone else said.  “Is that…?”

“Yeah,” the other person breathed.  “Her bones.  They’re completely fused with cybernetics.”

“That’s…” a voice said.  “Incredible.”

“And look here.  Her heart.  It looks like it’s about seventy-five percent cybernetic as well.”

“It would take a lot to stop a heart like that.  These girls, they might damn near live forever.”

“No one lives forever.”

“Are you not seeing what is on this scan?”

“God would not permit anyone to live forever.”

“It looks like man has caught up to God if you ask me.”

“…kidding me,” a voice said through the haze.

“It picked the lock on the southeast entrance.”

“That’s the second breach in the last week.”  Margaret.  “We’ll have to increase the guard.”

“We’ve already got a guard at each entrance at all hours,” the man said.  “We only have so many bodies.”

“Please,” I moaned.  My vision blurred and swirled.  “Stop.”

“She’s waking up,” Margaret said, her voice rising in alarm.  “Increase the dosage.”

“We’re almost out,” someone said.

“Then we’d better hurry up.”

I walked down the hall, headed back for my room.  I’d just finished four hours on the treadmill and Dr. Evans and the people who always watched what we did seemed pleased.

Voices floated through a window as I paused.

West was there, reading a book aloud.

I sat next to him, my face totally blank but looking at the pages.

West turned to me and asked me a question.  My eyes met his and I muttered a response and looked back at the book.

West draped his arm around my shoulders and kept reading.

Something bubbled up inside of me, hot and toxic.  West was kind and caring with that me.  But the real me he pestered and annoyed and tortured and pushed until I exploded.

My fingers curled into fists and tiny black lines flickered across my vision.

I turned and continued down the hall.

“Is it true?” the woman asked.

I’d been in her care for years, but she had never given me her name.

Not that I had ever asked for it.

Dr. Evans nodded, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips as he looked at me.  It was the first real looking one I’d seen on his face in years.

“They ran out of funding,” he said, turning back to the woman.  “They’re going to pay for us to keep the Eve project maintained, but we don’t have to do any more testing.”

“What will you do with them?” she asked, glancing over at me.  “They’ll never be normal again.  Not after this long.”

“We’ll keep them here,” he said, his tone falling once again into seriousness.  “This is their home anyway, it’s all they’ve ever known.  I’ve already talked to Dr. Beeson.  He’s going to maintain them.  I assume you are on board to continue in two’s care?”

“Of course,” she said, looking back at me.

I sat on a chair, my hands resting on my thighs, just observing them.  Every time Dr. Beeson did an adjustments, I could sit like this, quiet and still, for hours.

“And what will you do?” she asked, looking at Dr. Evans.

He looked from the woman, back to me.  “TorBane needs to be completed.  The world deserves to have it finished.  I need to make it a priority.”

“You’re a good man, Dr. Evans,” the woman said, touching his arm gently.  “You’ve been placed in some impossible situations, but you’re still a good man.”

His head sagged just a bit and he blinked at the floor a few times.  “I don’t know about that anymore.”

Dr. Beeson was at his computer again, reading numbers that flashed across his screens.  One of his team members looked over his shoulder and they conversed quietly.

I sat in front of me, locked with my eyes.  Grey-blue and empty.  I blinked at the same time I did.

I scratched my chin, my fingernails causing small skin cells to float down to the ground.  I reached up and scratched my chin too, but my skin didn’t itch.

“Do you think West will still be allowed to visit?” I asked me.

“I hope not,” I said, that thing that was red and prickly rising up inside of me again.

“Why don’t you tolerate him?” I asked.

“The woman said some people just naturally don’t get along,” I responded.  “She said that’s just how me and him are.”

“I like him,” I said, blinking.

“Good for you.”

Faces I knew taking me outside the building I had never been outside of.

Sunlight that was too bright and too foreign.

A device I was led into and that moved.

Tape over my mouth and around my wrists and ankles.

Darkness.

And then NovaTor’s front doors.

My skin hummed.

People screamed.

Bodies were still.

Myself attacking everyone in sight.

Blood all over the floor.

West on the floor.

Dr. Evans Jr. with his hands around my neck.

Dr. Evans saying he would dispose of me.

Lies and secrets.

Dr. Beeson.

And then nothing.

FIFTEEN

It was so cold and so dark.

I could almost feel the mist forming in the air as I exhaled.  Moisture covered my skin, dew collecting on me like I was a leaf in the mountains of Eden.

My head lolled to the right, my eyes searching the dark.

There was a faint glow around the door, barely revealing an empty room.

I rolled to my side, the world instantly spinning as I did so.  I started heaving, but there was nothing in my stomach to expel.

Bracing a hand on the table, I pushed myself into a lopsided sitting position.

Adrenaline flooded my system when the door slowly creaked open, a sliver of light fell on the floor and wall.  But my body was too weak to do anything with it.

“Eve?” someone whispered in the dark.

“Stay away from me.”  I tried to sound threatening, but my voice was just a hoarse croak.

“It’s Tristan,” the figure said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.  He set something on the table and then a lantern started to glow softly.  He placed a bag next to it and met my eyes.  His features were pronounced in the dim light.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I could use some water,” I managed to get out.

“Of course,” he said, reaching into the bag and producing a plastic bottle.  He unscrewed the lid and handed it to me.  I drank half of it before taking a breath.

“Gunner was supposed to have night watch over you tonight,” Tristan said as he pulled some sort of survival food bar from the bag as well.  He unwrapped it and handed it to me.  I started in on it greedily.  “I convinced him to let me switch.”

“You don’t normally stand guard over me though, do you?” I questioned.

“No,” he said, meeting my eyes.  “He seemed pretty suspicious, but he was also dozing off.”

“Night time then?” I asked, feeling my strength start to return.  I flexed my arms and legs and pulled myself into an upright sitting position.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling something out of the bag.  “About three in the morning.”

“How long has it been?” I asked.  I realized then it was clothing he’d pulled out of the bag and I was wearing a grimy hospital gown.  “How long have I been under?”

“Fourteen days,” he said, his voice grave.

“What?!” I shouted without thinking.  Tristan instantly hissed for me to keep it down, a finger pressed to his lips.

“I’ve been out for two weeks?” I said.  My head spun again at my spike in hostility.

Tristan nodded, looking back toward the door.  It remained closed and the hall quiet.

“What about West?” I asked, my stomach turning cold and hard.

“They did the surgery,” Tristan said, turning his attention back to me.  “It was pretty rough from what I hear.  We only had so much anesthesia since you were under for so long, so they couldn’t give him a strong dosage.  It wasn’t easy for him.”

“But they got it out?” I asked.  It felt like a snake had wrapped around my heart and lungs, tightening until I heard what I needed confirmed.  “The scrap?”

He slowly nodded.  “Yeah, they got it.”

A relieved sigh escaped my chest and my entire body sagged with it.

“He’s in recovery, but it’s going to take a while.  Like I said, it was pretty rough.  He’s been drinking a lot of alcohol just to try and dull the pain.”

As sorry as I might feel for West that he was in pain, I knew he would survive it.  If he could survive TorBane, he could survive the pain.

“Thank you,” I said, placing a hand on Tristan’s arm.

He nodded again.

“Come on,” he said.  “We’ve got to get you dressed before I get you out of here.”

“You’re going to help me escape?” I questioned, my eyes narrowing at him.

“They’ve helped your friend,” he said, pulling a pair of boots from his bag.  “They can’t hang that over your head anymore.  And…well, they’ve sewn you up so they must be finished with you.”

Suddenly I had to confront what I had been ignoring until that point.

My head was freezing cold.

I raised a tentative hand, my fingers hovering for a long moment.  The back of my eyes stung and there was a large lump in my throat.

“Gentle,” Tristan said, his expression regretful.

My fingers very first met sticky stitches.  And bare skin.

I slowly ran a hand over my head.

They’d shaven every last trace of my hair away.

“What did they do to me?” I whispered, my eyes blurring.

Tristan cleared his throat and his voice was rough when he spoke.  “I didn’t see any of it,” his eyes dropped from mine.  “But the stitches run all the way around your head.  It looks like they did some serious digging.”

And then everything I’d seen while I was under hit me like an anvil to the chest.

Dr. Evans.  Both of them.  West as a kid.  A kid that I hated.

Seeing myself.  Talking to myself.  Hating myself.

What did that even mean?  How far had they broken me that I would be seeing and talking to myself?

“You okay?” Tristan whispered.

“No,” I answered, shaking my head as my eyes stared at nothing distinguishable on the floor.  “I am not okay.”

“Understandable,” he said.  “But we’d better get moving or we’re not going to get you out of here in time.”

I nodded, taking a second to try to collect myself.

I stood, only to collapse to the floor.

Tristan swore and helped to pull me to my feet.  “I swear I’m not just trying to catch a peek, but it looks like I’m going to have to help you get dressed.”

Holding Avian firmly in my mind the entire time, I let Tristan help me stand while I awkwardly pulled the hospital gown off and slid into clothes that weren’t mine.  I was immensely grateful when I realized the necklace Avian had made me was still around my neck.

“Drink some of this,” Tristan said when I was clothed.  He handed me another plastic bottle of red liquid.  “It tastes like crap, but it will help bring your strength back quicker.”

He was right, it was awful.  Like liquid sugar.  But it instantly flooded my system with energy.

“Come on,” he said, slipping one of my arms around his neck and half hauling me out the door.

He dimmed the lamp when we got into the hallway.  He turned left down a passageway and we walked silently for about fifty yards.  We took a sharp left, and then another immediate right.  Tristan opened a door with a set of keys and then locked it again behind us.

The space we were in was large and dark.  An old bed was pushed into one corner and a guitar leaned against the wall.

“This is my room,” Tristan said, leading me to the bed and easing me onto it.  “It’s right under an old coffee shop.  I opened up the floor to it a few weeks after I joined the Underground.  Like you said, there’s something not moral about a few people here and I wanted a way out if I needed it, whenever I wanted.  No one else knows about it.”

I nodded.  “Just give me a second.”

I placed my hands over my eyes.  My fingers were shaking violently.

I was always the one who saved people.  I wasn’t the one that needed saving.  This wasn’t who I was.

I took five deep breaths, then sat halfway up.

“You could come with me,” I said, meeting his eyes.  “You’d fit in in New Eden.  The people there aren’t perfect, but they’re good people.”

“You have no idea how tempting that offer is,” Tristan said, shaking his head as he looked up at the ceiling.  “But there is something else you need to know.”

The air grew colder somehow with his heavy words and I knew whatever he said next would be bad.

“I overheard Margaret talking to some of her crew,” he started explaining.  “That beacon they tried setting off down where you live?  They left another one there and they’re planning to set it off remotely.”

“What?” I growled.  “When?”

“New Year’s day,” he said, his expression darkening.  “Margaret is pretty pissed off.  Her entire mission seems to have failed, first with getting your colony to cooperate, and second with you.  Sounds like they didn’t get what they wanted from you.”

“New Year’s,” I breathed.  “How far away is that?”

“Thirteen days,” Tristan replied.

“What about West?” I asked.  “I’ve got to get him away from these people.  West hasn’t exactly been pleasant to be around lately, but he shouldn’t be here.”

Tristan shook his head, pacing the room.  “He won’t be ready to leave for at least a few more days.  You can’t wait that long.  You’ve got to warn your people.”

“How am I supposed to just leave him here though?” I said, my chest tightening.  I was pissed with West for what he’d done, but I wouldn’t let them keep swaying him into being a bad human being.

“I’ll stay, keep an eye on him.  I can’t guarantee what Margaret will do when she discovers you’re gone.  I’ll protect him until he’s strong enough to travel.  Then I’ll tell him what happened, the truth.  We’ll follow you as soon as he’s ready.”

“And you’re sure you’ll be able to get the both of you out?” I questioned.  Tristan really was a good man if he was willing to protect West, not even knowing him.

“I’m going to try my best.”  He walked to the far corner of his room and pulled an armoire away from the wall.  I saw the dim cut out square in the ceiling.

“I’m sorry, I know you’re not at your peak, but we’ve got to get moving,” he said, crossing the space back to his bed.  He reached underneath it and pulled out a shotgun and a box of ammunition.  “There’s only twenty shells left,” he explained as he emptied the box into one of my cargo pockets.  He also slipped a knife in.  “Hopefully it’s enough to keep you alive until you can get home.”

“I’ll make it enough,” I said, accepting the shotgun.  It was old, but it was going to have to do.

“Come on.”

With his help, I climbed on top of the armoire and lifted the board to the floor above.

Dust clouded my lungs from the rug that covered the hidden door.  I coughed as quietly as I could manage.  Tristan lifted me into the space above.

It seemed to be one of the few buildings in Seattle the Bane didn’t occupy.  How Tristan had managed that, I didn’t know and I wasn’t going to risk speaking and calling them to us.  Tristan popped up after me, and taking one of my hands in his, led us out of the building.

It was raining lightly and I felt my clothes slowly dampening.  Once again, we walked in the middle of the road, up the street, rising away from the water.

We moved slowly and I was getting tired of feeling weak and human.  But I kept pace as best I could.

Thankfully, we didn’t go far before slowing at the side of a road.

“These are the keys,” Tristan said, placing something cold and hard in my hand.  He stopped beside a very aggressive looking motorcycle.  “This is a bullet bike.  It’s built for speed but it isn’t necessarily built for stability.  The roads aren’t exactly in good shape these days so you’re going to have to be careful.  You know how to drive one of these?”

I nodded.  Avian had been teaching me how to ride his.

“Good,” Tristan said.  He kept checking around us but there wasn’t much to see.  With the overhead clouds, it was incredibly dark.  “You’re going to head up this block and get on the freeway.  This road will lead you right to it.  You’re going to drive on it for a few hours and watch for the exit for highway 101.”  He was speaking quickly now as if sensing our window of time was closing.  “It will take you straight back to your home and it’s a smaller road than the freeway.  Smaller cities, less Bane.  It’ll take you longer than the freeway, but you stand a higher chance of surviving.”

“Got it,” I said.  I stretched my neck from the left to the right.  I was starting to feel like my normal self once again.  My skin felt tight around my scalp.  The stitches were already healing.  I’d have to cut them out in a few hours.

“Now, it’s probably going to wake the Bane when you start this.  It isn’t exactly quiet.  This might sound a little non-chivalrous, but wait until I get back inside before you start the engine, okay?”

This managed to crack a smile on my lips.

“Chivalry is wasted on someone like me,” I said.

This brought a upwards curl to his lips.  For the first time, I noticed his bottom teeth were crooked.  But unlike Margaret’s, which were disgusting, Tristan’s were…endearing.

He met my eyes again.  “I regret that I haven’t gotten the opportunity to get to know you more, Eve,” he said.  “I can only keep my fingers crossed that I will get the opportunity later.”

“Me too,” I said, my expression growing serious again.  “Thank you.  For everything.”

“Somehow I have a feeling you’re more important than just learning how the Bane came to be.  Something tells me you might be able to save us all someday.”

“I think you might be overestimating me,” I said, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.  I wasn’t unsure how to deal with his over spoken, very serious statement.  “But I appreciate the heroics.”

He nodded and clapped a hand on my shoulder.

“Godspeed.”

“Stay safe,” I said back.

Tristan then turned, and jogged back toward the coffee shop.

I’d counted my steps on our way here and translated them to seconds.

That’s exactly how long I waited before roaring the motorcycle to life.

A brilliant beam of light shot through the dark, directly into a window.  The Bane inside instantly crashed through the glass.

I gunned the gas, and shot straight toward them.

I wasn’t left handed, and since I only had one hand to shoot with, I missed the first shot.  The three Bane rushing me grew closer as I rocketed toward them.

I fired again, taking one of them down.

The other two were closing in on me when I turned sharply to the left, down an alley.  It was barely wide enough for the bike to fit through, but keeping my balance and the handlebars straight, I leaned flat against the bike and rocketed between buildings.

I took the next right I could and got back onto the main road, the one Tristan had said would lead to the freeway.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw a dozen Bane already sprinting down the street after me.  The light drizzle above wasn’t enough to keep them indoors.

But they weren’t as fast as the bike beneath me and they soon fell behind.  The headlight illuminated a green sign with directions to the onramp for I-5.  I had to slow momentarily as I climbed the ramp.  The road was badly cracked and dropping away in sections.

The freeway practically sang to me as I reached it and pushed the bike past ninety miles an hour.

“I’m coming, Avian,” I breathed.

SIXTEEN

All along the freeway there was city after city.  I saw Bane waking to life off the side of the road, but by the time they reached it, I was long gone.  The Bane were fast, but this bike’s speedometer read over one hundred miles an hour when I really pushed it.

I realized just how far I’d been taken north by how much longer it took the sun to faze into the sky.  It was also nearly the end of December and the days were at their shortest.  I had turned off the freeway onto Tristan’s highway 101 for a half hour before the sun started lightening the world.  The air was crisp and had I been normal, I would be freezing with the thin jacket Tristan had brought me.  The moisture in the air hung between the point of dew and frost.

A tiny costal town had just fallen behind me when I decided it was time to hide for the day.  I left the motorcycle on the side of the road, next to an abandoned bus, and headed into the trees.  The scarce grass crunched under my feet as the temperatures hovered at freezing.

Finding an ancient maple tree, I climbed high into its branches and settled.

Taking out the pocket knife Tristan had given me, I felt along the crown of my head.  The stitches were pulling tight.  The incision line was completely healed.  I tried not to wonder if they had pulled my entire scalp off to dig in my brain.  Or if they cut the top of my skull off…

Trying my best to be careful, I slipped the small knife under the thread, and cut.

Small trickles of blood traced their way down my face and neck by the time I was done, but I cut each of the stitches and piled them on the branch.

The back of my throat swelled.

I’d never given much thought to my hair before.  Many times it had felt like a nuisance, always getting in my vision.

But for the first time in my life, I actually felt ugly.

My hair was now shorter than Avian’s.  And Avian very nearly didn’t have hair with how frequently he shaved it.

How long would it take to grow back?

I collected myself after a few minutes.  I had to survive a fifteen-hundred-mile journey.  I didn’t have time to mourn the loss of something as silly and unnecessary as hair.

The sun broke over the tops of the trees, and through them, I could just barely make out the ocean.

It seemed Tristan was right.  This highway literally ran right next to the ocean, and so far, there had only been small towns along it.  Towns small enough to not even have any Bane in them.

But I was grossly underprepared for this journey.  I had no idea what had happened to my pack.  In a way that almost felt like losing an arm.  I would have been just fine if I’d had that.  Now I had no food, no water.  I had no extra clothing and I was nearly soaked through.  I had none of my familiar firearms and this shotgun Tristan had given me wasn’t exactly in prime condition.

I was going to have to raid one of these towns.  And search for gas before too long.

As badly as I wanted to deny it, my body was exhausted.  The raid would have to wait.  I didn’t last much more than a few minutes before I drifted off.

A bird squawked.  I opened one eye and saw it standing on the branch above me.  It looked right at me, so focused and so precise it didn’t even really look like a real bird.  I didn’t recognize its species; he must have been native to this area.  But he was big.

My stomach rumbled.  I had no idea if the people in Seattle had starved me those fourteen days they’d had me under or not, but I was famished.

And that bird looked like a meal.

Moving very slowly, I pulled the knife from my pocket.  I opened the blade and pinched it very carefully between my index finger and thumb.

I flicked the blade and threw it before the bird could even blink.  The knife embedded itself in the creature’s throat and he dropped from the branch.

A smile threatening to cross my face, I pulled myself half into a sitting position, about to jump off the branch and retrieve my meal when I froze.

At least twenty Bane stood at the base of the tree.  Just staring up at me.

A curse slipped over my lips as I scrambled higher up the tree.  Branches and bark scraped my skin, but I felt nothing as I fled, trapping myself in the tree.  I leveled my shotgun at the nearest Bane.

But they didn’t move.  They didn’t blink.

They just stood there staring at me.

My heart thundered in my chest.  My breaths came in quick spurts.  My hands grew slick with sweat.

Why weren’t they attacking?

Why weren’t they acting like Bane?

What were they waiting for?

And then one of them raised an arm, straight up towards me.  Clutched in its hand was a water bottle.

Another one raised its arm as well.  It held a can of baked beans.

Another held up a handgun and another a box of ammunition.

And another gripped a backpack.

One held up a gas can that sloshed.

“What is going on?” I whispered.  My eyes grew wide, my grip on the branches I clung to tightening.  “How…?”

They continued to stand there, looking up at me with their empty eyes.

I’d thought about every one of these things before I’d fallen asleep.  I knew I was going to have to go after these supplies if I was going to survive.

And these Bane had brought every single thing I’d needed.

“Put them on the ground,” I said, my voice cracking on the word ground.

Every one of them put their items in the dirt at their feet.

“Back up,” I said, climbing down one branch tentatively.

The entire group stepped back exactly ten steps.

“What…?” I whispered.  I’d been able to control one or two Bane at a time before.  But there were twenty-four of them here, and they’d obeyed me precisely.

And somehow they’d known exactly what I’d needed.

I climbed down a few more branches, watching them the entire time I moved.  I kept my shotgun aimed at them, but they just stood there, watching me as I descended.

I dropped to the hard ground, just in front of their stash.

They just continued to stare at me.

Had I finally become enough like them that they no longer felt the need to try and infect me?  Were they recognizing me as one of their own?

But they wouldn’t bring supplies to one of their own.  The Bane would have no use for them.

“Lift your arms,” I said hesitantly, keeping my shotgun pointed at them.

Every one of them instantly raised their arms to the sky.

“Holy…” I breathed, shaking my head.  I took another step closer, stepping over the backpack.  “Turn around once.”

They all turned in a full circle before facing me again.

“Now leave,” I said, keeping the shotgun pointed at them.  “Head north, and don’t come back.”

Instantly they turned as one and marched north.  I watched as they retreated through the woods.  None of them looked back.

I stood there, stunned, long after they disappeared from sight.

This was new.  This was game-changing in a way that I didn’t really understand yet.  This could either hurt us or maybe save us.

Either way, the world of the post-Evolution was changing once again.

Turning back to the scattered supplies, I grabbed a can opener one of the Bane had brought and opened the beans.  They felt cold and slimy as they went down, but they calmed the rumbling in my stomach.

More than one of them had brought water.  I counted six water bottles.  I drained one and packed the rest into the backpack.  I tried to ignore the math homework and diary I had to pull out of it and discard.

I grabbed the handgun and checked the ammunition.  They’d brought the right kind.  The Bane really were getting smarter.  They’d checked to make sure it was the right caliber.

There was other food as well.  Granola bars, all of which were moldy and rotten when I opened the wrappers.  Guess the Bane weren’t smart enough to make sure the food was edible.  But there were two cans of green beans that were still good, as well as three cans of soup.  I loaded it all into the backpack.

Peeling off my soaked clothes, I changed into the dry ones.  They were too big—men’s—but they were military grade and durable.

I left the dead bird, now sorry for needlessly killing it, and collected Tristan’s knife.

I walked back out to the road and my motorcycle, gas can in hand.  I looked both ways.  The road was empty.

Judging from the position of the sun in the sky, I would guess it was four in the afternoon.  I’d slept for a long time.  I shuttered to think how long the Bane might have waited below me, watching me while I slept with supplies I needed, but hadn’t told them to collect.

I couldn’t sleep any longer and there was no way I was going to sit around and wait until dark.  Strapping the pack to my back tight, I topped off the motorcycle with the gas.  It didn’t require much and I had plenty left over once it was full.  Finding some ties in the tiny storage compartment in the back of the bike, I strapped the gas can on for when I would need it later.

The motorcycle growled to life and I took off down the coast.

This had to be an advantage for me, for New Eden.  The way the Bane had listened to me was precise.  There was no hesitation in their obedience.  They’d gotten exactly what I’d needed without me saying a word.

There had to be a way I could use this to help me get home.  To protect those around me.

It started raining not five minutes after I got back on the road.  I was soaked once again in under a minute.  It was a relief to not have my hair sticking to my face from the rain, but my head was freezing cold.

The rain would start and stop for the next hour but the gray clouds overhead never left.

Something loomed ahead and I wiped the water from my eyes, trying to see what was coming up.

It looked like there was a big river or maybe a bay ahead of me.  A bridge stretched over a huge expanse of water and on the other side there looked to be a town.  I started across.

Just then, the sun broke from the clouds and the rain stopped.

And as soon as the sun broke, Bane erupted from every building, every car, and every overhang.

I screeched to a halt on the bridge, the back tire of the bike lifting slightly.  My chest bumped the fuel tank as I slid forward with my abrupt stop.

The ground looked like it was moving, constantly shifting, there were so many bodies.  There had to be hundreds of thousands of Bane.  I’d seen a sign as I hit the halfway point on the bridge, a sign that had said some town name and listed the population as just under ten-thousand.

These Bane had come from somewhere else.

I narrowed my enhanced eyes, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Batches of them crushed cars to flat metal disks.  Others broke windows, and things started flying out them as they ransacked the buildings.  And then the explosions started.

Building after building started coming down.

They moved like clockwork.  Thousands of them moved in a direct line, going block by block, searching each building and then leveling it.

A small flash of light caught my eyes.  There were five Bane standing in a line behind the others, in a straight line.  But these looked different from the others.  They literally had no flesh left on their frames.  Metallic bones held in pulsing and ticking organs.

“What are you doing out there?  Are you trying to get infected?”

My head whipped to the right, toward a hissing voice.

A pair of brown eyes peaked up at me from the side of the bridge, down on the small beach at the land and water’s edge.  He waved me over.

Glancing back at the unbelievable scene before me, I climbed off my bike, leaving it in the middle of the road, and ran to the man’s hiding place.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked as I ducked under the road next to him.

He was dressed in survival gear and had one rifle and one shotgun crossed over his back.  He held a crossbow in one hand.

“Studying,” he said, his voice gruff.  He looked to be in his forties, wrinkles sprouting from the corners of his eyes.  His hair was shaggy, his beard knotted and tangled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Something’s changing out there,” he said, his expression growing dark.  “I first noticed it in Minneapolis.  You saw those freaky looking ones?  The ones with no traces of skin on them?”

I nodded.

“They’re first gens,” he said, his eyes glancing back toward the road, and then back to me.  “The source.  They were the first ones to get TorBane.”

“How do you know?” I questioned.

“Because one of them is my father,” he said, his jaw tightening.  “He got a heart upgrade in the beginning.  I’d been overseas in the Navy when all this happened.  When I got back, he’d already lost his humanity.  A lot of people had.  So I watched him.  I’ve been tracking him for the past six years.  He’s one of the first gens.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding.  It made sense.  The longer you were infected, the more machine-like you became.  I’d already seen that.

“Two other first gens found him about three months ago,” the man said, again looking toward the road.  “They started going through houses and tearing them apart.  And I mean leveling them.  They’ve been looking for people, anyone who’s left.  And as they moved through the city, any awake Bane they came across went with them.  They started growing an army.  All the others, they seem to be following the first gens.”

“Hang on,” I said, holding a hand up.  “That can’t be possible.  The Bane cannot be smart enough to create an army.”

“Did you not just see what is happening in that town?” he asked, his eyes blazing.  He pointed a finger toward the city.  “Can you not call that an army?”

I swore under my breath.  He was right.  It was an army.

“They’re moving like the black plague,” he continued.  “They’re marching in a line, perfectly east to west.  They’re leveling houses, forests, anything that might hide people.  And anyone they find, they infect.  They’re thinking like a machine.  They’re doing precise sweeps.”

“They’ve reached the coast now,” I said, trying to bring up a map I’d seen of or continent.  “What do you think they’ll do now?”

“I expect they’ll turn, make a sweep west to east until they reach the east coast.  If they’re really thinking like a machine, that’s how a machine would do it.”

“And you’ve what?” I asked.  “You’ve just been following them?”

He nodded.  “I have an all-terrain vehicle,” he said, inclining his head back toward the city.  “I’ve been trying to get out ahead of them, find anyone I can.  Warn them to get out.”

“Have you found anyone?” I asked, hope surging in my chest.

His eyes grew dark.  “I’ve come across five people, in two different locations.  I told them to head north.  My guess is that they’ll shift south now that they’ve reached the coast.”

“How long do you think it’ll take them to reach Los Angeles?” I asked, fear gripping my chest.

He took a deep breath before letting it out slowly as he shook his head.  “No for sure way to tell.  I’m guessing they’ll continue sweeping east to west, west to east.  They’re gaining speed.  They keep collecting more Bane as they move, and they haven’t even hit any major cities yet.  I can’t imagine how their numbers are going to grow when they hit Chicago or Portland.  Or, shit, New York.  The more Bane they have, the faster they can work and the wider the sweep they can do.”

“How long?” I asked again.

“I’d guess six months,” he said with a shrug.  “But probably shorter.  They could have hundreds of millions of them by the time they hit Los Angeles.  Why do you ask about that location?”

I hesitated.  My trust in mankind was greatly compromised after what had just happened to me in Seattle.  However, this man hadn’t asked me any questions before spilling all of his information.

“Because that’s where I’m from.  There are over one hundred of us living there.  There are probably still more in hiding.”

“Wow,” he said, his eyes growing wider.  “That’s the biggest colony I’ve heard of.”

“And it’s going to be obliterated if that many Bane show up to level it,” I said quietly, my thoughts racing.

We had to get the Pulse ready for more than one reason now.

We needed to build more of it if possible.

“If you’re from Los Angeles, what are you doing this far north?” he asked.  Suddenly his eyes jumped to my hair line.  “And what happened to you, child?”

“Some of us humans are getting desperate,” I said with my jaw clenched.

“It was one of us that did that?” he asked, disgust in his voice.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, his eyes growing softer.  “What’s your name?”

“Eve,” I said.

“I’m Tom,” he offered, shifting the firearms on his back.

“Nice to meet you, Tom,” I said.  And I meant it.  In a way, Tom reminded me of Bill.  A little rough around the edges, but at his core, he was a good man.

He simply gave a smile and a nod in return.

We hid there the rest of the day, sharing what information we each had.  But neither of us learned anything new.  The Bane were Evolving, they’d soon take us over.

The sound of destruction from the town never stopped.

There were explosions almost constantly.  Tom said they managed to find explosives wherever they went, but much of the sounds we were hearing were gas lines being broken and lit.  There were grinding sounds as buildings came down and homes and businesses were destroyed.

“Did you find anyone here?” I asked.  The Bane had moved to the south end of the city and he and I sat on the bank, watching the destruction.  Half the city burned, sending plumes of smoke into the sky.

Tom shook his head.

“When those people took me,” I said, running a hand over my bald head.  “They told me there was less than half a percent left of the human population left.”

“That sounds about right,” Tom said, shaking his head.

“Something’s got to happen soon or we’re done for.”

“I’ve kept thinking that someday someone would come and light the way, to have the answers and this would all end,” Tom said, his voice growing quiet.  “Seems it’s too late for that now.”

I remembered Tristan’s words.  About me being the key to saving them all.

No matter how much I wished I could save this planet, I didn’t see how that could ever be possible.

Evening started to fall and the sounds grew less intense.

“That’s my cue to leave,” Tom said, standing.  “I don’t normally linger this long.  I’d better get moving.  There’s always another town.”

I stood as well, tightening the pack on my back.  “Thank you, Tom.  You might have just saved my family.”

“I’ll keep warning people until I get caught,” he said, giving a shrug.  “I’ll use this on myself though before I let myself turn.”  He patted his shotgun.

“Stay safe, Tom,” I said with a nod.

He saluted me and started down the road.  He didn’t go far before he climbed onto an ATV I hadn’t even noticed.  It was well camouflaged with neutral paint.  The engine growled and he took off.

I watched for an hour on the beach.  Then there was no city left.  Only rubble and smoke.

The army of Bane started marching east, just as Tom had predicted.

SEVENTEEN

It was dark before I dared head out.  I turned the headlight on the motorcycle and started walking it through the cluttered street.  It took me a long time to make my way through.  Broken glass threatened to pop the tires.  Busted concrete that was once part of some building blocked the way.

But finally I made it to the other side, back into open trees and clear road.

There were trees.  Endless trees.  More trees than I could even imagine.

There were tiny towns.

And there was the endless ocean to my right that gave me hope that I would be seeing my family soon.  This was the same ocean Avian and I lived next to.  Somehow that made him seem not so far away.

Hours passed and one state became another.

And I started seeing signs that made me pause.

Redwoods National Forest.

Where the Seattle people claimed they were from.

Lies.

The trees here were ancient, towering.  They blocked out the starlight, creating a dark tunnel.  The temperature dropped and the world grew eerily quiet.  A barely-there skiff of snow covered the branches and ground.

My speed must have been pushing eighty miles per hour, so when the hulking object in the middle of the overgrown road came into my limited view, I didn’t have enough time to stop.

I slammed on the breaks and swerved just a little too hard to the right.  Losing traction on the frosty road, the back tire came up as the bike turned and I was on the ground, sliding with the bike.  We both slammed into something metal and large.

Gingerly picking myself off the ground, I saw what looked a lot like a track wheel where the motorcycle illuminated the object in the dark.  I righted the mangled motorcycle, backing up to give light to the entire mass.

The words NEW EDEN were painted in big, bold, black letters on the side of the tank.

“Avian!” I screamed.  “Royce?  Gabriel!”

Adrenaline burned through my system and for the first time in the last three weeks, I felt truly alive again.

I dragged the motorcycle back, making the circle of light larger.  I jumped up on the track wheel and climbed up to the hatch.

“Avian!” I yelled again as I struggled with the lock.  “Bill?”

Finally unlocking it, I heaved the hatch open and peered into the dark.

“Hello?”

But only silence answered me.

I dropped down inside, my eyes struggling to adjust to the nearly nonexistent light.  “Hello?”

My blood grew cold.

Grappling through the dark, my fingers found a flashlight and I flipped it on.

The interior of the tank was devoid of life.

Where were they?

I pulled my upper half back up through the hatch of the tank, staring out into the silent night.

“Hello?” I bellowed.  “Is anyone out there?”

The trees were silent.

I dropped back into the tank.  The light from the flashlight reflected off of something on the floor and I bent to inspect it.  It was dark drops of blood and for a moment I was about to go into full panic mode for my family’s safety, when more drops fell to the floor and I realized it was my own.  I shined the light on my right arm and found it ground to pieces.  Small bits of gravel were embedded in my skin.

Ignoring it for the moment, I swept the flashlight through the interior of the tank again.

It was difficult to tell how many members of New Eden had come in the tank.  It was an empty shell that offered no clues.

They could have gotten raided by marauders.  But I doubted that.  There weren’t many people left in general and anyone who would have come after me would now how to handle themselves.

They could have been found by the Bane, but I doubted that too.  There would be nothing about this area that would attract the Bane.  Not that there wasn’t a chance they tracked into the area, but I didn’t think that was it.

It circled back to the reason the tank had to be here.  The Seattle people had said they were from the Redwoods.  New Eden had come after me.  Whatever supplies they’d brought with them they took out with them to go look for me.

They were out there.  Somewhere.

And I had no doubt that Avian was with them.

I sat on the lip of the hatch the rest of that night, my shotgun ready in my lap.  I listened for any trace of sound, but the trees and moss that surrounded me killed any noise.

The sun started creeping through the morning haze, washing the earth in gray light.

While I’d waited for morning to come, I strategized.  There had to be thousands of square miles in these forests.  Avian and the others could be anywhere.

But there was only one place they’d left the tank.

And eventually they had to come back to it.

I made a small fire as soon as it was light enough for me to find wood that might burn.  It was nearly impossible to get it started.  Everything here was wet from the snow and I didn’t have a proper flint.  But after a half hour of trying, I finally got a small flame.

I blackened one end of a stick and when it was charcoaled enough, I took that end to the side of the tank.

I’m here.  Be back at sun down.  Wait.  -Eve

I stepped back when I was finished writing, making sure it was noticeable enough.

They couldn’t miss it if they came back to the tank.

Dropping the stick off the side of the road and smothering the fire I’d worked so hard to start, I set out through the trees.

I headed east off the highway.  If there really was a hiding colony like the Seattle people were supposed to have, that would be the logical direction for a camp.  But they wouldn’t go more than a few days from the road and ocean.  They would stick to their resources, just like we had back in the mountains.

It made my heart ache as I hiked through the forest.  I had missed nature.  I had missed trees and moss and soft earth.  If I had a choice, I would choose to live in a place like this.  Not in a city with endless buildings and concrete.

“Avian!” I shouted every so often as I hiked.  “Royce?  Bill?  Tuck?”

But no one responded.

As the sky started to darken, I made my way back to the tank.  My heart started beating faster as I moved back in its direction.  I imagined how I would react if I found Avian there, waiting for me.  The back of my eyes stung and my chest constricted.

But he wasn’t there when I reached the tank.  No one was.

How long had the tank been sitting there?  They could have come looking for me as soon as they realized I was gone.  I didn’t know how long the fighting had gone on after they’d taken me, but I couldn’t imagine it was long.  There had been a fairly large crew when we returned to Seattle.  It probably took Avian three or four days to get from New Eden to the forest.

They could have been trooping through these trees for two weeks now.

It might be a few more weeks before they came back to the tank.  And I didn’t have that kind of time to wait.

I slept on the hard road that night, again ever grateful that I didn’t feel pain.  I tried not shiver the entire time.

In the morning I hiked through the woods.  The sun came out and melted the snow.

Again I found no one.

I slept on the road again.  Fear started creeping up in my stomach.  What if they couldn’t get back to the tank?  What if they’d been injured?  What if the Bane really were out in these woods?  We’d been driven out of our own mountains because they’d pressed so far into the wilderness before.

When morning came, a thought occurred to me.  I’d called Bane I hadn’t meant to call before.  Why couldn’t I do it again?  If there was a chance there were Bane in this forest, I could do the one thing I could to protect whoever from New Eden might be out there.

I focused all my thoughts, channeled my energy or whatever I thought would help, into calling the Bane to me.

Today I would wait at the tank.

I stood just in front of it, my shotgun ready.  And I waited.

The first one came an hour after I started the call.  It came out of the woods twenty yards south of the tank onto the road.  It headed directly up the road toward me, its dead eyes fixed on me.

It took only two shells to kill it.  It dropped in the middle of the road.

Another came out of the woods, right in front of me, three hours later.  He was so close before I saw him emerge from the woods that it only took one shot to take him down.

As the time continued to pass, my stomach started to growl, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything in more than twenty-four hours.

I’d just taken off my pack and was digging through it for one of the cans of soup when I heard shots being fired.

“Avian!” I bellowed, instantly sprinting through the trees toward the sounds.

“Eve?” I heard him yell, probably two hundred yards away.

Seven more shots were fired, shouts rose into the air, and then they ceased.

“Avian!” I screamed again.  I was rocketing through the trees at this point.

And suddenly he came into view.  Fifty yards away through the trees.  He was running in my direction too.

His step faltered when his eyes found me.  Horror filled his face.

But he crushed me into his chest when we finally collided.

“What the hell did they do to you?” he growled into the curve of my neck.  I looked up into his eyes to see them burning with hatred.  He inspected my hairline and the still fresh scar I knew was there.

“I’m okay,” I said, shaking my head, then laying my cheek on his chest and squeezing him tighter.  Avian’s hand hesitantly came to the back of my head as he embraced me.

“Eve?” I heard Gabriel’s voice a ways away.  I turned from Avian to see who else had come to find me.

Gabriel, Bill, and Tuck came towards us through the woods.

There were two Bane lying dead in a heap, their bodies riddled with bullet holes.

“They didn’t try to hurt anyone, did they?” I asked, looking back at Avian.

“No,” Avian shook his head.  “They were just marching through the trees.  That’s what caught our attention.  They walked right past us and didn’t even acknowledge we were there.  We followed them but didn’t dare let them get any closer to the tank.”

“It was me,” I said, my voice lowered.  Gabriel, Bill, and Tuck stopped at our sides.  “They were heading here because of me.”

“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.

“I was waiting for you all to come back to the tank,” I said, looking each of them over for damage.  They all looked fine.  “I’ve been waiting for two days.  But…something’s changed.  The people who took me?  They did something to me.”

Avian swore under his breath.  “What’d they do?”  His eyes were pained.

For some reason I felt ashamed for what had happened.  I was too strong to let them do something like this to me.  “They were trying to figure out the reason why I can’t be infected.  I think they thought they could find a cure.  I don’t know if they found what they were looking for, but they did something else while they were in there.  And I don’t think they realized they did it.”

“What is it, Eve?” Avian asked, his voice low.

“You know how I could control the Bane before?” I asked, looking around to Gabriel, Bill, and Tuck.  “Just one or two of them?”

They each nodded.

“It’s exponentially stronger now,” I said, my eyes growing dark.  “I was trying to call any Bane that might be in the forest, to keep them away from you until I could find you.”

“But you were so far away,” Tuck said, his eyes narrowing at me.  “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  I told them about how I had only thought of the supplies I needed to survive, and how the next morning the Bane had collected them for me.

“This changes things,” Bill said.  “I’m not exactly sure how, but it changes things.”

I nodded in agreement.

“One more thing,” I said, looking back at Avian.  “Those people who invaded New Eden.  They’re not here.  Someone helped me escape, but West is still in Seattle.”

“You’ve been in Seattle all this time?” Avian gaped, anger blazing in his eyes again.  He shook his head, his fists balling.

“What about West?” Gabriel asked.  “Did he turn?  He’s supposed to have gone back in for Extraction by now.”

“They said they’d help him,” I said.  “They promised their doctor would get the scrap out of his heart and that he’d be TorBane-free.  They told me the surgery worked.  The man who helped me get out, he said he would bring West as soon as he was well enough to travel.”

“Do you trust them?” Bill asked.  “Do you trust them that they won’t kill him once they realize you’re gone?”

“Them, no,” I said shaking my head.  “The man who helped me, yes.  He said he’d protect West until then.”

“This is his fault, isn’t it?” Avian growled.  His expression darkened.  “He told them about you, didn’t he?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head, pushing my emotions down.  “It doesn’t matter now.  I’m back.  I’m okay.”

“Oh, it matters,” he hissed.

“Avian,” Gabriel chided.  “You’ve got to get over this anger towards him.  It’s not going to do anyone any good.”

“West could have gotten her killed, Gabriel!” Avian shouted.  “Look at her!”

“But like she said,” Gabriel spoke, his voice rising slightly.  “She’s back now.”

Avian gave a big sigh, his body slumping as the fight went out of him.  He wrapped his arms around me again, crushing me into his chest.  Suddenly Gabriel wrapped his arms around the two of us and I was sandwiched in the middle.

“I was worried you were gone to us,” Gabriel said in his rough voice.  “You’ve made it through too much to be taken out by humans.”

“I’m okay,” I said again.  But I wasn’t really sure it was true.

“Any idea what this is?” Bill asked and his finger lightly touched the back of my scalp.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a roman numeral two tattooed to the back of your head,” Bill said.  Avian turned me so he could inspect it himself.

“That’s not fresh,” Avian said.  “That’s old ink.”

“Who knows,” I said, shaking my head and turning around again.  I took one of Avian’s hands and one of Gabriel’s.  “I just want to go home now.”

“Let’s head back to the tank,” Avian said, looking down at me.  He pressed a kiss to my forehead.  “We’ll head home in the morning.”

EIGHTEEN

I sat across from Avian, simply looking at him, still not quite believing that I’d found him, so far from home.  Against the odds, we’d found each other again.

But something in me knew that I would always find Avian.

Gabriel, Bill, and Tuck had offered to sleep outside.  At first I had blushed.  I didn’t feel embarrassed often, but the thought of them just outside the steel walls made my face warm.

But as I sat across the tank from Avian, I was grateful for their offer.

“I took off on my own at first,” Avian said, his eyes never breaking away from mine.  “As soon as I realized they took you, I grabbed an emergency pack and a gun and just took off.  Gabriel caught up to me twenty minutes later in the tank.”

I shook my head, a real smile pulling at my lips.  “That wasn’t very smart.”

A smile flitted across his own face.  “I tend to lose my head when it comes to you.”

That happy expression finally spread on my face.  “How does stuff like this happen?” I asked.  I felt silly for the grin on my face.  “How does fate align perfectly that I find Eden, a place safe with good people who could help to mold me into the person I’ve become?  That I find you?  That I get taken across the country and the moment I escape, find my way back to you?”

Avian’s eyes grew dark and serious but they danced like stars reflecting on water.  He stood and crossed the space toward me.  He nudged my legs apart with his knee, standing between them.  He placed a hand behind my neck.  The gesture felt strange now.  His hand should have been tangled in my hair.

“Because sometimes there are two people in this world who are bigger than fate.  Sometimes there are two people who are just a force of nature and against all odds, a force this strong cannot be denied.”

“I missed you, Avian,” I whispered as his forehead touched mine.

“I nearly died without you,” he said, his lips only a whisper away from mine.  I felt all of his anger and his desperation in that moment and understood them.  We were all each other had left in this world.

“Never again,” I said, making a promise I knew I would do everything in my power to keep.

“I will always find you.”

And finally, he kissed me.

It nearly brought a sob from my chest.  I hadn’t allowed myself to accept it before, but I had feared I would never be in this place again.  I had nearly lost us forever.

This was me, the unchangeable, unbreakable part of me.

Avian’s lips weren’t gentle.  They were desperate and they were lonely.  They were fearful and possessive.  His teeth tugged on my bottom lip.  His breathing came out ragged.

My hands slid under his shirt, my fingers feeling alive and electric as they passed over his toned abdomen.  I pushed his shirt up and pulled it up over his head.  Goosebumps instantly flashed over his skin.

He let me look at him for a moment and I drank him in.  His chest was tight and sculpted.  Coming to New Eden had done glorious things for his already beautiful body.  With more food and free time to do things more challenging than doctoring, he had the body of a god.

My eyes settled on the tattoo of three birds on his chest.  My fingers rose to touch the one with the shape of an “S” in the way its wings met its body.

“I love you, Avian,” I said.  It was a moment before my eyes left the bird and returned to his.  “I don’t exist as a whole without you.”

Avian’s eyes burned as he looked back at me through the dim light.  He took one of my hands in his and pulled me to my feet.  His arms wrapped around my waist and he rested his forehead against mine.

“I promise you my forever,” Avian said, pressing a soft and gentle kiss to each of my eyelids.

“My forever is yours to keep,” I returned, pulling myself into his chest.  I buried my face in his neck, clinging to his frame and breathing him in.  I felt his heart beating into my own chest.

There was a fire building between the two of us that night.   A fire that had never burned so bright until that moment, but would continue to burn for that forever we’d promised.  Because that promise of forever, that was my word, my bond, and my eternal will.

NINETEEN

In the morning I told everyone about the other beacon, which was to be set off New Year’s day.  This sent everyone into action and we immediately rolled south.

I felt like the slow journey would kill me.  The motorcycle I’d taken from Seattle was wrecked when I crashed into the tank.  We had no choice but to all take the trek home in the tank.  It had taken them three days to get here, it was going to take us three days to get home.  There was nothing we could do about it.  We would get home with seven days to spare.  In that time, the scientists would have to rebuild the energy storage devices and get the Pulse charge up.  There was zero room for error.

“There is something else you need to know,” I said, loud enough so everyone could hear me over the sound of the track wheels.  Tuck glanced down at me, he drove the tank.  Avian, Bill, and Gabriel turned their full attention to me.

“The Bane, we’ve known for a few months that they’re getting smarter,” I started.  “But the first generation receivers of TorBane, all the others are following them.  They’re building an army.”

“How is that possible?” Gabriel questioned.  “An army of Bane?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know exactly, but they’re thinking logically.  The day before I found the tank, I was about to head through this city when all of the sudden hundreds of thousands of Bane came crawling out and started leveling the city.  It was a small town so I knew they had to be coming from somewhere else.

“There was this man,” I continued.  “He’d been following them, studying them.  He said they’re sweeping.  They’re leveling everything, looking for people.  They’re moving west to east.  When they reach the coast they turn south.”

“How long till they reach New Eden?” Avian asked, his brow furrowing.

“Tom was estimating maybe six months,” I said, the weight of my words filling the interior of the tank.  “But he thought it would probably be less.  They’re gaining numbers as they go.  Any Bane that are awake, any Hunters, they’re joining the army.”

“Well that’s as scary as anything I could imagine,” Tuck said, shaking his head.

“There aren’t nearly as many Sleepers,” Gabriel said, rubbing a hand over his once again overgrown beard.  “They’re all starting to wake up.  Millions of them.”

“We’re going to have to prepare,” I said, nodding.  “We’ve got to get the Pulse back up and running.  And if possible, I think we need to build others.”

“If it’s true and they are gaining numbers as they move, there will be over three hundred million of them by the time the reach New Eden,” Avian said.  “Even if we have multiple Pulses, will it be enough?”

“It will have to be,” Bill said.  “What other choice would we have?”

“We could move,” Tuck suggested.

“Not again,” Gabriel shook his head.  “There are too many of us now in New Eden.  We have a perfect set up there.  We will fight back.”

“Besides, it isn’t like the rest of the country is going to be totally Bane-free,” I said, looking up at Tuck.  “There are still thousands of Sleepers out there.  Eventually they’re going to wake up, after the army has left.”

Tuck sighed, shaking his head.  He muttered something about good things never lasting.

“One more thing,” I said.  I fidgeted with the shotgun that sat in my lap.  “I don’t think it’s safe for me to go back into New Eden.  I have no idea what those people did to me, but it seems the Bane might be attracted to me now.  I think it’s safer for me to hang out on the outskirts.  You all can go back in and send Dr. Beeson out to me.  He can check me out, see what he thinks.”

“Eve…” Avian started to argue.

“You know it can’t be safe,” I said, shaking my head at him.  “We can’t risk the Bane following me into the city.”

“He’ll fix it,” Gabriel said.  “I’ve never met a man smarter than Erik.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said with a sigh.  But something inside of me wasn’t so sure.

We drove through the night and fueled up when the sky was darkest.  I took most of the night shift, finally fully recovered from my imprisonment and surgery.  Avian slept with his hand on my calf, as if he was afraid I would disappear on him again.

By morning we were reaching cities.

Bill kept track of where we were on his maps.  We’d been lucky to have forests to the north.  There weren’t many cities.  But the trees were falling away and the buildings were rising around us.

“I think it’s about time for you to head up,” Bill said, his finger tracing along the paper.  “It all starts here.”

Avian met my eyes and where in the past there would have been fear, there was admiration and confidence.  He gave me a lopsided smile and pressed a kiss to my forehead.  “Go save the world some more,” he said.

I couldn’t help the full smile that spread on my face.  I checked my magazine, loaded my pockets with more ammunition, and opened the hatch.

There were still trees around us but they weren’t the towering ancient guardians of the north.  These were smaller and more ragged.  They had to struggle a little harder for survival.

There was a gas station up ahead and a few shops.  There were blocks of houses.

The tank kept rolling through the morning light.

I raised my rifle to eye level, my finger poised on the trigger.

We clattered into the edges of the town.  And almost as if it had trumpeted our arrival, bodies stepped into the light.

I started firing as the first batch of twenty sprang at us.  Two bodies dropped to the ground with a scraping of metal on concrete.

“Stay back!” I bellowed as the crowd grew and rushed us.

The two hundred plus bodies that were swarming us instantly stopped and took a few steps back.

“You guys want to see this?” I said loud enough those below would be able to hear.

The tank slowed to a stop and I shifted to the side so the others could emerge.

The crowd of Bane just stood before us, twitching and shifting like they wanted to break from my hold the instant I dropped it.  But they didn’t come any closer.

“Holy…” Bill whispered.

“There are hundreds of them,” Gabriel mused.  “Why is it so strong now?”

“They did some serious digging in there,” I said, keeping my shotgun leveled at the crowd.  So did the rest of the team.  “I don’t think they meant to do this though.  I think it is just an unexpected side effect of whatever it was they did to me.”

“They’re standing back, this many of them,” Avian said, holding a hand up to shield the sun from his eyes.  “How many of them do you think would listen?”

“We’ll find out soon,” Bill said.  “The next big city after this is San Francisco.  Population eight hundred thousand.”

“There’s no way I can hold off that many of them,” I said, shaking my head.

“But hopefully they’re not going to all come at us at once,” Gabriel said.  “We made it through fine in the night when we came up here.  We’ll make it through again.”

How could they be so confident in me?  They didn’t know what I was capable of anymore.  I didn’t even know what I was capable of.

But those Bane before we were still standing there, just looking at us.  Waiting for orders.

“March west,” I shouted.  “Don’t stop when you get to the water.”

And as one, the growing crowd turned to their left and started marching, their strides perfectly in unison.

“Not possible,” Gabriel whispered as his eyes followed them.

“Welcome to the new age,” Avian said.  His hand rose to my shoulder and gave a squeeze.

There were Sleepers inside the buildings, just staring out at the world.  But not a single Bane moved as we rolled through the town.

It was an exact replay when we reached the next three small towns.  But each town got a little bigger.  And I sent more and more Bane marching toward the Pacific Ocean.

At noon day, the Golden Gate Bridge was looming before us.

“Maybe we should go around the city,” Gabriel said, as we approached.  He, Bill, Avian, and I were perched atop the tank while Tuck continued to drive.

Bill shook his head.  “That could take us another full day.  Probably more.  We can’t afford to lose any time.”

We were all quiet for a moment.  I was trying to ignore my self-doubt.  Trying to ignore the urgency to get back to New Eden as soon as possible.

“I’ve got an idea,” I suddenly said.  “The Bane, they really don’t like water.  The more Evolved they get, the more so.  I saw it while I was in Seattle.  It would rain and they were a lot more hesitant to come out.  A lot of them would die just stepping out in the rain.

“If I can call as many of them out as I can onto that bridge, I can make them jump off.  The water will kill most of them.”

“And you’re sure they won’t rip you apart?” Gabriel asked doubtfully.

I swallowed hard.  No, I wasn’t sure at all.  “I don’t see any other option.”

Avian’s eyes met mine, and to my surprise, pride shone in them.  He draped an arm across my shoulders.  “Sounds like a plan.”  Hopefully gone were his days of overprotectiveness.

Avian’s confidence bolstered mine.

Old habits dying hard, we all turned to Gabriel for approval.

He didn’t respond at first.  He eyed me carefully, his eyes unable to keep from drifting up to the scar that wrapped around my head.  When his eyes met mine again, they were resolved.  “Let’s do it.”

I nodded.  “I want you guys to wait a ways back.  Keep the hatch locked until I give the go ahead.  If this doesn’t work, I’m not risking any of you getting infected.”

Avian hesitated, and finally nodded.  “You’re never going to change, are you?” he said, cracking a smile.  “Always putting yourself in danger to save the rest of us.”

“Never,” I said, a smile tugging at my own lips.

We rolled the tank closer and Tuck parked.  They wouldn’t be able to see much from this far away but I came up with a signal to let them know when it was safe to come to the bridge.

As soon as they had the tank parked and I walked away from it, Bane started stepping out from their hiding places.

“You’ll follow me,” I said loudly.  There were more and more of them emerging every second.  My heart started hammering as there came to be twenty, fifty, seventy of them.

“You will not look away, you will go nowhere else,” I said loudly again as I started walking toward the bridge.  “You will follow me to the bridge.”

The crowd that had started forming between me and the bridge parted as I moved forward.  I glanced over my shoulder and saw that they were indeed following me.

Looking forward once more, I concentrated my thoughts.  I imagined every Bane that must be in this city, in the entire bay area.  I imagined them collecting on the bridge.  I called to each of them in my head, screamed for them to come to me.

At first the movement was hard to make out.  I squinted through the cold, pale light, trying to see all the way to the other side of the bridge.  The land was shifting, or so it looked.  Like a dark avalanche.  An avalanche that started funneling itself to the massive rust colored bridge.

With my first step onto the bridge, I questioned our decision to cross it.  The road was cracked and some of the gigantic steel cables that held the bridge up had rusted away and snapped.  And I was about to flood it with thousands and thousands of bodies.

Sensing that my time was going to quickly disappear, I broke into a sprint across the bridge.  A thundering of feet followed me.  And a horde rushed at me from the other side.

The bridge rattled and shook.  The cables groaned and a sharp snap sounded as one broke and fell over the side.  The bridge jerked sharply as the cable dangled toward the water.

I froze when I finally reached the middle of the bridge.  I looked back the way I’d come to see thousands of bodies filling the road behind me.  I turned again to observe those that were coming.

There were men and women and, always the most disturbing, children.  There were old men who had no teeth but gleaming bones that cut through their saggy skin.  A child that couldn’t be more than eighteen-months-old crawled down the road.  Its human flesh had worn away to expose cybernetic bones.  I couldn’t look at it.  It was too disturbing to imagine the horrifying looking thing as a human that had once been someone’s darling baby.

I faced the crowd that had followed me onto the bridge.  They all looked at me, their faces blank and waiting for orders.

There now had to be well over a hundred thousand Bane on the bridge.  And they all waited for my command.

“Jump,” I said, too quiet to be heard very far.

But every body turned to one side of the bridge or the other.  They climbed the rail, balancing there for just a half a moment.

And then they jumped.

The water hissed as the cybernetics inside of them shorted out and died.  Sparks of light flashed under the water and the bodies sank to the bottom of the ocean.

Come, I thought.  Meet a real end.  Reclaim your humanity through death.  Be released from this manmade hell.  Go on to the afterlife you should have been allowed to earn.

Bodies continued to flood onto the bridge.  They crossed to the middle.  Then they climbed the rail, and took the leap.

This went on for an hour.

I had no way of calculating how many of them jumped to their death, or whatever you call the end of a machine.  But there had to have been nearly three hundred thousand of them.  Maybe more.

I had reached them all.

They had all heard me.

And they had all obeyed.

There was something terrible and fearful about that kind of power.  Something that made my hands shake and my stomach weak.

I was just Eve.  I was just a girl who didn’t understand people most of the time.  I was just a girl who never said the right things.

I wasn’t a girl who could control hundreds of thousands.

I wasn’t this god of TorBane.

Finally, the last dozen bodies dropped into the water.

I turned to wave my arms in the air, to signal to the others that it was safe to cross.  Then there was a pulsing, piercing pain behind my eyes.  My head felt like it was splitting in two.

A scream ripped from my throat as I collapsed onto my knees.  My hands came up to either side of my head and I pressed in, trying to keep my head from falling apart.

I opened my eyes but everything looked vividly green and numbers flashed across my vision.  There were degree symbols and feet and inches.  Something that looked like longitude and latitude.

Slowly it formed into a three-hundred eighty-one.  The number flashed five times.

“Eve!” I faintly heard Avian scream.

And everything went black.

TWENTY

“You’ve got to wake her up, now!” a voice shouted.  A gun fired.

I gasped for air as my eyes slid open.  All four of the men were at the hatch.  Another round of shots was fired.  Something hit the side of the tank just as I jerked into a sitting position.

“Move!” I bellowed, grabbing the shotgun that was at my side.  Bill and Tuck ducked back into the tank, providing a hole big enough at the hatch for me to pop out of.

There were probably twenty Bane rushing the tank.

I fired as I concentrated my thoughts.

The Bane turned on each other.  One ripped another’s arm clean off.  Another broke his brother’s neck.  Another simply started beating another Bane to a crushed pile of metal and skin.

Avian, Gabriel, and I picked off the rest of them.  Then the afternoon was still.

“What happened?” I asked as I took in our surroundings.  We were on a narrow highway, the ocean directly to the west, a steep hillside with little more than shrubs covering it to the other side.

“We’re just outside Santa Cruz,” Bill said as we all dropped back inside and closed the hatch.  “We were waiting for you to wake up before we went into the city, but there was a pack of Hunters.”

“What about earlier?” I asked, trying to remember what had happened after the Bane had started jumping in the water.

There was nothing.

“We were about to come across the bridge when you collapsed,” Avian said, concern in his eyes.  “You screamed and then crumpled to the ground.  You were unresponsive for over an hour.”

“We didn’t dare wait,” Gabriel said.  “We had no way to be sure you’d cleared all the Hunters out of the city, we had to get out of there.  We’re already behind schedule.”

I nodded, closing my eyes.  There was a dull throb behind them.

“What did they do to you?” Avian said quietly, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

“I think we need to hurry up,” I said, swallowing hard.  “I need to see Dr. Beeson.”

We didn’t stop.

We didn’t take time to come up with elaborate plans to wipe out the Bane as we moved.  I simply sat atop the tank and managed to keep the Bane back as we drove through city after city.  I ignored my drooping eyelids when night came.  If I slept, that meant we would have to stop and hide somewhere, and that meant we wouldn’t reach New Eden in time to warn them about the beacon.

My companions took turns driving and we continued through the night.

The night was easier.  There were still some of the Bane that held to their old rules of inactivity during the night.

Avian never left my side except to take his shift driving.  I could feel the anticipation inside of him.  He wanted to take me home, to go back our abnormal normal schedule.  To return to our rooms in the hospital or our tent on the beach.  But he remembered how I’d been on the edge of a nervous breakdown before I’d been taken.  Going back to the city was going to bring me right back to that point.

“I love you, you know that, right?” I said in the dark.  Avian’s strong fingers linked through mine.  His hand was getting cold in the dark winter night.

He looked over at me, and even though I didn’t turn to look at him, I knew his eyes would be serious.  “I know,” he said.

“No matter what happens to me, just don’t forget that.”

“Eve,” he said, his voice rising in uncertainty.  “Dr. Beeson is going to fix this.  We’ll get you back.  Whatever they did to you, we’ll find a way to repair it.  And he can reverse your last adjustment.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t necessarily believe it was true.

“We’ll wait in the mountains where we hid everyone a few months ago,” Avian said, squeezing my hand tighter.  “Next to the lake?”  I remembered.  I’d only spent a few hours there, but I remembered.  “I’ll stay with you.  The others will go get Dr. Beeson, he’ll come back and we’ll figure this thing out.”

I nodded emptily once again.

“Hey,” Avian said.  “Don’t give up on me.  I have faith in you, in this.  In mankind.  Don’t give up on yourself.”

I finally met his eyes.  I couldn’t find any words to say, so instead I just looked back out into the dark.

Because it wasn’t just the worry that the people from the Underground had done irreparable damage to me that was eating me away.  It was that I could feel that dark, ugly feeling creeping back up inside of me as we rolled back toward the city.  The depression was settling in again.  The emotions that had started pushing me towards my break were coating my insides with blackness.

There was something wrong with me and I wasn’t sure an adjustment from Dr. Beeson could fix it.

I needed away from the city, but the city was where I was needed.

Like Avian had said, I was never going to change.  I would always do what was needed of me.  I would protect my family.  I would keep being Eve until being Eve killed me.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Gabriel assured me.  He stood in the hatch, about to duck back inside.

“Okay,” I said, nodding.

We watched the tank drive away.

“Let’s find some dinner,” I said, not giving a moment for speeches that made me feel no better.  I dropped Avian’s hand and headed into the trees.

He knew there was something wrong.  Avian knew how to read me better than I knew how to read myself most of the time.  But he also knew when I didn’t want to talk.  When I just needed to go back to my old instincts and do what I was good at.

After being in the Redwoods, this forest seemed dehydrated and starved.  These trees were small, more shrub like.  They felt like sad impersonations.

A movement to the left caught my attention.  There was a flash of orange and white.  I crept behind a tree, peering around it.

A fox was eating something.  Feathers.  A bird.

Knowing my shotgun was going to riddle the body with buck shot, I opted for my knife instead.  Well, Tristan’s knife.  Tristan’s shotgun too.

I flicked my wrist and embedded the blade in the side of its neck.  It gave a choked off howl before it collapsed to the ground.

Avian skinned it while I built a fire.  My stomach actually started growling.  It seemed like it had been ages since I’d had fresh meat.

I dared a glance at Avian while we ate.  I wasn’t really in the mood to talk but Avian almost always was.  So his silence was out of place.

He stared into the fire, his expression distant.  His shoulders were shrugged up towards his ears.  He picked at his meat absentmindedly.

I knew he was trying to think of a way to fix the problem that was me.  He was turning the situation over and over in his head, trying to find a way to keep me from going crazy.  But we were both needed in the city.

Avian spent too much time worrying about me.

“I haven’t forgotten about what you said the night of Victoria and Wix’s wedding, you know,” I said.  I leaned over and bumped his shoulder with mine.  “About wearing a white dress for you someday.”

He looked over at me, the spark instantly back in his eyes.  “Oh yeah?”

“Don’t know how a girl could forget something like that.”  It was incredible how the air instantly lightened around us, the pressure lifting off my chest.  “Sarah told me about marriage proposals once.  I don’t think you did it quite right.”

Avian smiled, one that lit up his whole face.  “I never said that was a proposal.  I can be a little more grand than that.  I was just asking you a question that night.”

“You said, as we were looking at Victoria’s wedding dress, ‘would you wear one for me someday?’  Did that not count?”  I was smiling now, too.

“No it does not,” Avian said as he leaned in closer, his nose only inches from mine.  “Like I said, I can be a little more grand than that.”

“You’re going to build up expectations in my head, staying stuff like that,” I said as I breathed in his nearness.  “Are you sure you’ll be able to live up to them?”

“Are you doubting me?”  He brushed his lips against mine.

I met his eyes, that familiar hunger rising in my blood.  His hand was hot on my cheek despite the cool around us.  I was aware of every place his body touched mine.  The way he breathed in and out touched a place in me that felt similar to the way my heart beat in my chest.

Then suddenly it felt like an arrow pierced me between the eyes.

I screamed out, crumpling into Avian’s lap.

“Eve!” he yelled, pulling me close into him.

I opened my eyes, a vivid green wash and numbers flashing across my vision.  I pressed my hands in on either side of my head.

“Ahh!” I screamed, feeling like my brain was going to explode.

“Stay with me, Eve!” Avian called to me from somewhere outside the pain.

A sixty-two point one pulsed across my vision and then everything was dark.

TWENTY-ONE

A blinding light suddenly filled my vision and I reacted on instinct.

My fist connected with a jaw.

Someone swore and I was momentarily blind as I climbed to my feet.

“That’s probably the first time someone has ever punched you, isn’t it Addie?”

I blinked furiously, trying to clear the white lights blocking my vision.  “Royce?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said.

Finally the white started to fade from my vision, leaving only the dull pain behind my eyes.  Addie, Dr. Beeson’s assistant, was pulling herself into a sitting position, cradling her reddened jaw.  She gave me a disbelieving look.  Royce laughed, shaking his head.

“That would indeed be the first time someone has ever punched me,” Addie said as she picked herself up off the ground, brushing dirt from her clothes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head once more.  “Instinct, I guess.  Where’s Dr. Beeson?”

“He’s been really sick,” Addie said.  “Pneumonia.  There’s been a bad case of the flu at the hospital.”

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

Addie shrugged.  “Sounds like it.  It’s just going to take time.  It seems like everyone is on the tail end of things.”

“Do you remember what happened this time?” Avian asked, turning back to me.  He eased me down onto a fallen tree.  When the world swayed to the left a bit, I didn’t fight him.

I shook my head.  “Just pain all of the sudden.  And then passing out.  Just like before.”

“And this is the second time this has happened since you were released?” Addie asked.

Avian took a small, silver cylinder from her and crouched in front of me.  He pressed a button on the bottom and a tiny beam of light erupted from it.  He shone it in my eyes, using his thumb to open them wider.

“I did this same thing two days ago,” I said as I looked into the light.

“This isn’t at all like before,” Avian said as he stood, clicking the light off, and handing it back.  “When she’d get emotionally overloaded and shut down.  She was never in pain before.”

“Well, she’s not supposed to be feeling pain at all,” Addie said.  I stiffened momentarily.  I wasn’t particularly comfortable with her knowing all of my hybrid details.  “Whatever is going on inside of her head must be pretty intense.”

“What were they after?” Royce asked, always direct.  “What did Margaret want from you?”

“They seemed the most interested in the reason why I don’t spread the infection, why I can’t be infected,” I said, climbing to my feet as Royce pulled me upright.  “I think they thought they might find a cure or something.”

“Did they find it?” he asked, his interest piqued.

I shook my head.  “I don’t think so.”

Royce nodded, his eyes drifting up to my new scars.  “Bald is a good look on you,” he said.  He tried to keep a straight face, but I saw it crack, just slightly.

“Not funny, Royce,” Avian scolded, glaring.

“Who says I’m joking?” he said, winking at me.

I just shook my head and lay back on the tree, blocking the sun with my hand.  I felt out of sorts and violated.  I was fifteen hundred miles away from the Underground and they were still torturing me somehow.

“Royce, we have to get the Pulse back up and ready,” I said, looking up at him.  “I’m assuming Gabriel told you what’s going to happen?”

He nodded, his expression darkening.  “Dr. Beeson’s team is finishing up the energy storage devices.  They’d started them just before you were taken.  They’ll get them wrapped up tonight and then get the Pulse prepped tomorrow.”

I shook my head.  “It doesn’t just end with the beacon, Royce.  Things are changing out there.  The Bane, they really are getting smarter.  They’re sweeping through the country.”

I recounted every horrifying detail I’d learned from Tom.

“They’re going to come for us,” I said, imagining how it would play out in my head.  The buildings that would fall.  How we would cower inside the hospital until they started ripping it apart one steel beam at a time.  “We’ve got to fight back.”

“Fighting back is what you and I do best.  Let’s get you home so we can figure out how.”

“Royce, I can’t go back into the city,” I said, shaking my head.  “If the Bane really are attracted to me, I could call them back into New Eden without even meaning to.  And we have no idea what the Underground did to me.  I won’t put everyone at risk.”

“I’m a little insulted that you doubt my abilities to protect our people,” Royce said, actually looking offended.  “We did survive in the city for five years before you wandered into town.  We’ll turn the wireless transmission system back on.  If you do call them, we’ll have it and the Pulse ready.  We’ve always got bullets.”

“You’re sure I should come back?” I asked.

Royce nodded.

“We’ll be able to do further testing back at the lab,” Addie said.  “There isn’t much I can do out here with no equipment and no electricity.”

Avian’s hand rested on my shoulder and I turned to look at him.  There was understanding in his eyes.  He knew I didn’t want to go back into the city.  But he also saw the fire in me.  It was time to fight back.

I turned back to Royce.  “Let’s go then.”

The four of us hiked back down to the main road.  Avian climbed into the driver’s seat when Royce said he wanted to talk more.  We headed back for the hospital.

“They all jumped?” Royce asked, looking at me like he might be able to see what was inside of me that had changed.  “Hundreds of thousands of them?”

“Yes,” I said.  “They didn’t hesitate.”

He was quiet for a moment but his eyes never left mine.  I could see the wheels turning in his head.  Royce was one of the smartest men I knew.  If anyone could figure out how to use my new ability to its full advantage, it would be him.

“Got anything?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said, breaking eye contact.

“Whoa,” Avian suddenly said, grinding to a halt.  “Did you guys feel that?”

“What?” Royce asked, leaning forward in his seat, his eyes sweeping the road and the buildings around us.

The ground shook and there was a great rumbling sound.

“That,” Avian whispered.

The ground vibrated harder, the air filled with the sounds of the earth grinding and shifting.

“It’s an earthquake,” Addie said, her voice rising.

“Drive!” Royce shouted.

Avian slammed on the gas and we rocketed forward.

The truck shook back and forth violently and for a moment it tipped up on two wheels.

I looked out the window to see all the other abandoned vehicles outside shifting and rocking in place.  The mostly dead palm trees swayed.

“Ever had an earthquake out here before?” Avian shouted above the din.

“We always get a few little ones every year,” Addie shouted.  “Nothing like this though.”

The ground gave one last quake and finally, as we rounded the corner and came up to the hospital’s underground garage, the earth stood still.

“Check that everyone is okay!” Royce bellowed to his men as soon as Avian stopped the truck.

We all ran for the stairwell and our footsteps reverberated off the walls.  We burst into the main lobby and our ears were assaulted with shouting and screams.

There was glass all over the floor in the lobby where the computers had fallen and shattered.  Papers were scattered everywhere.  A screaming woman cowered under one of the desks, clutching her wrist which was bleeding profusely.

“I got her!” Avian shouted, breaking off and pulling off his shirt to press into the bleeding wound.

“Anyone else need medical attention?” Royce bellowed, pausing momentarily in the lobby.  Everyone else seemed to be okay.

“Eve, take the second floor, find Elijah if you can.  Make sure everyone is okay,” Royce ordered.  “Send everyone out the south doors.  Addie, the blue floor.”

We all broke off.

I dashed up the stairwell, taking them two at a time.  They all seemed to be intact.

“Get off the stairs!” I shouted, dodging around a small group of older women cowering on a landing.  “Royce wants everyone outside the building now!  South entrance!”

They looked at me fearfully, but nodded and started down the stairs.

I stepped out into the hallway and started knocking on doors.

“Everyone alright in here?” I asked, finding a couple inside.  There was stuff covering the floor, but nothing looked terribly damaged.

They nodded their heads.  “You’re back?”

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling self-conscious of my shaved head.  “Royce wants everyone outside the south entrance.”

They slipped into the stairway.

I continued to check doors.  A woman had slipped in the shower when the quake started and hit her head on the sink.  There was blood gushing from her eyebrow.  I sent her in Avian’s direction.

Elijah had worked his way down from the opposite end of the hallway and we met in the middle.

“Welcome back!” he shouted as the ground shook once more.

“Again?” I said, struggling to keep my balance.

“Aftershock,” he said, waving me back toward the stairway.  “They’ll keep coming for a bit.”

When we got to the stairway, we found a stampede of scientists in white lab coats frantically carrying equipment down the stairs.  They shouted in angry, stressed voices.  I made out words like “broken equipment” and “years of research”.

The damage would be worst on the blue floor.

And my heart sank into my stomach.

“The Pulse,” I said to Elijah, my eyes wide.  “It’s on the roof!”

“Don’t worry,” Elijah said as we waited for the scientists to clear out.  “After those people took you, Royce had it moved to an underground, secure location.”

“Is that going to be any better?” I asked as we descended the stairs.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.  “Let’s go check it out.”

After we were sure everyone had made their way outside, we searched briefly for Royce to tell him where we were going.  When he was nowhere to be found, we passed the message along to Avian as he stitched people up.

Elijah and I sprinted down the road.  Another aftershock hit, nearly knocking us to the ground.  He led me two blocks away and down into a parking garage.

There was a large steel door blocking off the entrance and Elijah pressed a number into a keypad.  It beeped twice and retracted.

Dust billowed out at us as soon as the door started opening and Elijah swore loudly.  We ducked beneath the door and Elijah shined a flashlight through the dust.

It looked like the back half of the building had collapsed down into the garage.

And one side of the Pulse was crushed completely.

Elijah swore again.

“It would have been perfectly safe from people like the ones that took you,” Elijah said as we approached to inspect the damage.  “Who would have anticipated that it would be Mother Earth that would turn on us this time?”

As we looked closer, it was only a quarter of the gigantic ring that had been smashed by a pillar that had toppled over on it.

“This took them four years to build,” I said, panic building in my system.  “We’re going to have thousands and thousands of Bane falling on us in three days.”

“So it’s true?” Elijah asked, glaring at me through the dim light.  “They really left a beacon here in the city?”

I nodded.  “Come on,” I said, turning and sprinting back outside.

We found Royce immediately when we got back to the hospital.  The aftershocks seemed to have finally died out.  He was barking for Elijah when we came up.

“The Pulse,” I said, my voice anxious.  “You’ve got to get it out of that garage.  The entire building is about to collapse on it.  It’s already damaged.”

Royce’s face reddened further and he took half a moment to formulate a plan.  “Get a team.  Take one of the tanks.  Pull it out of there!”

Elijah started shouting for his crew.

“You got this?” I asked Elijah, who nodded and headed for our own underground parking garage for one of the tanks.

I turned to see what I could do to help Royce when a bolt of lightning flashed through my brain and my knees buckled.

Everything illuminated in green.  Numbers flashed everywhere.  Suddenly they all pulsed and formed into a zero point one two in the center of my vision.

And the world was black again.

TWENTY-TWO

I was lying on a cot when I came to.  It was dark and the air was cold.

I sat up and looked around.

It seemed everyone was sleeping outside.  It must have been late, considering it looked like most everyone was in fact sleeping.  Several small fires were scattered about, a few lone figures sat around them, warming their hands and talking.

I heard Avian speaking not far away and found him with Royce, their heads low, their voices heavy and quiet.  I rose to join them.

They stood over a man and my entire body felt cold when his face and all of the blood came into view.

Eli.  Morgan’s husband.  Expectant father.

“Is he…?” I tried to ask.

Avian met my eyes and nodded his head.

“What happened?”

“They were out with the rehoming crew,” Royce said, his voice rough.  “They were all cleaning a new building when the quake hit.  The roof collapsed on them.”

“He bled out,” Avian said, his voice catching.

I squeezed my eyes closed, shaking my head.

“Where is Morgan?” I asked.

Avian pointed to a cot a ways away.  She was curled into a ball around her slowly growing stomach.  “She was hit too.  It knocked her unconscious.  She hasn’t woken up yet.”

“The baby?”

“We don’t know.”

I nodded, hugging my arms around me.  “Will it be safe to go back inside the hospital?” I asked Royce.  I couldn’t dwell on the death and despair any more.

“Elijah’s crew scouted it out.  Everything looks okay,” Royce said.  “We want to check it again in the morning.  We thought it safest to give everything some time to settle.”

“Do you remember anything this time?” Avian asked me, walking around Eli’s cot, pulling me into his arms.

I shook my head.  “Same as the last two times.”

“Once we get this all cleaned up Dr. Beeson will fix it,” Avian said, pressing his forehead to mine.  “It looks like most of the equipment made it through.  He’ll do what he does best.”

I nodded, biting my upper lip.  I suddenly recalled the memories and nightmares I’d had in the Underground, the dreams.  Dr. Beeson evaluating me and declaring I didn’t need an adjustment yet.

“Get some rest you two,” Royce said as he covered Eli with a blanket.  “There isn’t much more you can do until morning.”

“What about you?” I asked Royce.  There were dark bags beneath his eyes.

“Not now,” he said, shaking his head.  “There will be no sleep for me tonight.”

I wanted to ask him more questions.  I wanted to know if we’d be able to fix the Pulse.  We needed to make plans.  I wanted to know if everyone else had made it out of the hospital okay.  But his eyes told me he was done with questions for the night.

“Come on,” Avian said, taking my hand and pulling me toward one of the fires.

We stopped in the firelight.  Avian held his hands up to the flames to warm them.  They were covered in blood.

“I’m going to try and go back to the tent tomorrow as soon as I can manage,” I said, a lump in my throat.  “I’m going to need some of my stuff.”

Avian met my eyes with sadness.  “When you’re this close to the coast and there’s an earthquake, often times the shore gets flooded.  We’re lucky a tsunami didn’t rush in on us.  There’s a good chance the tent isn’t there anymore.”

I squeezed my eyelids closed, my stomach feeling sick.  There was nothing in it that was dire, nothing that I couldn’t find in this city elsewhere.  Except for the picture of my mother.

“We’ll check though,” Avian said.  He placed a finger on my chin.  I opened my eyes to meet his.  “It might still be there.”

I could only nod once again.

I didn’t sleep that night.  Avian and I curled into each other on a blanket on the ground, never once letting go.  While I listened to his steady breathing, I could only gaze out into the dark night.

My thoughts turned to West.  I wondered if he was okay.  Would Margaret hurt him?  Turn him out onto the Bane-infested streets?

I could only pray that Tristan would be able to protect West like he promised.

But would West even want to come back with Tristan?  He’d left New Eden willingly to try and get away from me.  How was he really supposed to move on if he had to see Avian and me every day?  I wouldn’t really be able to blame him if he didn’t want to come back.

Finally morning started growing in the horizon.  I pressed a kiss to Avian’s forehead and went to see how I could help.

Avian’s patients slept, probably with the aid of some kind of medication.  Morgan was still sleeping, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her eyelids.  While I certainly didn’t want her to die, I almost wished for her to never have to wake up and find the love of her life and the father of her unborn child gone.

I was looking at Eli’s empty cot when Gabriel stopped silently at my side.  I observed his face, saw the heavy bags beneath his eyes.  He’d been up most of the night, if not all of it.  I had little doubt it had been him that had buried Eli.

“It’s not fair,” I said, looking back to the cot.  It was covered mostly with a blanket, but it had slipped off one corner, exposing the blood stains.  “He survived the Bane this long.  And then to be killed by a force of nature?”

Gabriel cleared his throat and swallowed heavily.  “No it isn’t fair, but in a way it was a kind of beautiful way to die.  Better to be claimed by nature than to be stolen by TorBane.”

“I suppose.”

By now the morning light had broken over the tops of buildings, calling everyone to wakefulness.  I turned to see Avian roll over, his eyes searching the crowd.  When he found me, a smile lit up his sleepy face.

This time I did manage to smile back.

Something moved in the corner of my eye.  I looked over to see two figures down the street, moving slowly, struggling.

I took a few steps closer, squinting to see through the blinding sunlight.

“Tristan?” I said.

He looked up as I said his name.  Then he and the figure at his side collapsed to the ground.

“West!”

I rushed toward them, at the same time Elijah, Nick, and Tuck did with guns pointed in their direction.

“No!” I shouted to them, waving a hand at them.  “It’s okay.  He’s a friend.”

West was laying on the ground, looking totally out of it, his eyes dully searching the sky.  He looked like he’d dropped fifteen pounds since I had last seen him.  But the inhibitor was gone.

Tristan knelt on the ground next to him, his body trembling slightly in fatigue.

“Is he okay?” I asked Tristan, kneeling at West’s side.  I was conflicted, wanting to both assure myself that he was alive and wanting to strangle him at the same time for betraying me.

“He’ll be fine,” Tristan said.  “He’s actually drugged right now.  I told him the truth about what happened with you and he was totally freaking out.  I didn’t want him getting too worked up during the journey until he could see that you were okay.”

“Eve?” West mumbled, his eyes still totally unfocused.  He blinked hard and shook his head.

“How did you get down here?” I asked, turning to Tristan and standing.  “Surely you didn’t walk this whole way.”

He shook his head, a smile playing on his lips.  “We took a boat.  I didn’t think we’d survive the drive down.”

West moaned as he pulled himself into a sitting position.  “My head,” he said, pressing his hands into the sides of his head.  “What did you give me?”

“A sedative,” Tristan said with a chuckle.  “It was intended for livestock, but it did the trick.”

West finally opened his eyes, and saw me standing there with a hard expression.  “Eve,” he said, his voice rising as he made his way to his feet.    “Eve, you’ve got to listen to me—”

And then Avian plowed into him.

They both skidded across the concrete and hadn’t even stopped before Avian’s fists were connecting with West’s jaw.

“You’ve screwed Eve over for the last time!” Avian screamed.  “And now you’ve probably killed us all!”

“Avian!” I screamed, lunging after him at the same time Nick did.

Avian shoved me off and punched Nick.  He turned back to West and to my horror, pulled his hand gun and leveled it in West’s face.

“You keep making mistake after mistake,” Avian whispered.  “And I am sorry for what you’ve gone through, but I’m getting tired of forgiving you.  This…what you did to her this time…I’m not letting this go.”

“Avian!” I yelled again, taking a slow step forward.  “This isn’t you.  You don’t want to hurt him.”

“Believe me,” Avian said, shaking his head, his eyes never leaving West’s.  “I do.”

“Avian, I—” West started.

“Shut up!” Avian screamed, spit flying from his mouth.  He shoved his gun in West’s face again.  “You don’t deserve any more second chances.  I nearly lost her forever because of you!”

“Avian, don’t do this,” I said as I took another step toward him.

I looked up to Nick, who met my worried gaze for a second.  I saw the action in his eyes before I could yell to stop him.

Nick rushed forward.  His arms wrapped around Avian’s waist and they both rolled over the concrete, wrestling for the gun.

A shot fired.

Nick collapsed to the road, his breath’s coming in shallow gasps.  His hands clutched his bleeding abdomen.

“Nick!” I screamed, darting forward to press my own hands into his to try and stop the blood.

“No,” Avian whispered.  “I didn’t…  I’m sorry…  I—”

Elijah tackled Avian, forcing his face to the ground.  He snapped a pair of handcuffs around Avian’s wrists.

“Royce!” Elijah bellowed.  “Dr. Sun!”

The next sixty seconds were a blur of Avian apologizing, his eyes wild, Royce barking for Avian to be taken into confinement, men hauling the bleeding Nick and West back to the hospital, and Tristan and I standing there stunned, not knowing what had just happened or what to do.

They all shut me out.

Elijah locked Avian up and he, Royce, Gabriel, and everyone else important headed for the conference room to figure out a plan.  As well as what to do with Avian.

They literally locked me out.

“Eve,” Tristan said.  He’d followed me up to the sixth floor and we both stood outside the locked door.  “I really need to talk to you.”

It took me a long moment to respond.  I just stood staring at that locked door thinking I should be inside, helping to formulate a plan for how to save everyone here.

The Pulse was broken, and we had less than seventy-two hours until the Underground set off their hidden beacon.

And Avian was locked up like a criminal.

I had to do something.  But what?

“Eve?” Tristan repeated.

“Okay,” I finally said.

I led him down into my room and locked the door behind me.

Out of view of everyone else, Tristan suddenly engulfed me in a hug.  “You made it back okay then?”

“Yeah,” I answered, surprised at his bold move of affection.  I patted his back awkwardly before he released me.

“I have to admit, I was worried I was sending you away to get ripped apart,” he said, his eyes dark.  “Things started getting worse at the Underground after you left.”

“More break-ins?” I asked, my stomach hollowing out.

“Twice,” he nodded, his eyes turning to the window and the streets outside, like he didn’t quite believe that the city was actually cleared.  “We got it the first time before anything happened.  But we lost a soldier the second time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  I truly was, despite what they had done to me.  “Are you okay?  Did they punish you after you let me go?”

This was when his eyes truly darkened.  “That’s what I needed to talk to you about.  They never questioned anyone after they discovered you were gone.  But I kept getting all these knowing looks.  They knew it was me, Eve.  But they never said a word.  They acted like they expected this, like they might have even planned your escape.”

I was quiet for a moment, digesting what this would possibly mean.  “They wanted me to get out of there.”

Tristan nodded.  “And I think they wanted you to get back quickly.  Those were Alistar’s keys I took.  To his motorcycle.  I didn’t think about it at the time, but I found them just outside my door.  They looked like they had been dropped there by accident.  But I don’t think it was any mistake.  I don’t think Margaret is quite finished with you, Eve.”

My blood turned cold as I met Tristan’s eyes again.  A shaky hand rose to my head, running along my scalp.  There was now very short fuzz covering my skin.  “Something has been happening,” I whispered.  “I keep having these head-splitting headaches.  Blackouts that follow.”

“I have little doubt that it is because of them,” he shook his head.  “Something is going to happen.”

“Margaret was obsessed with the Pulse,” I said.  “I guarantee this has something to do with it.”

“That’s what cleared the city for you?” he asked.

I nodded.  “She was livid when we told her we wouldn’t use it when she was down here those few weeks ago.  She’s trying to force us to use it.”

“I suggest you tell your people to have it ready.”  His eyes were dark and serious and regretful.

I shook my head this time, my eyes falling to the ground.  “You just missed the earthquake.  They hid the Pulse after the Underground took me.  But it got damaged.  There’s no way it will work.  And I have no idea how long it will take to fix.”

Tristan swore under his breath.

All the information I’d learned, all the secrets and lies tumbled through my head, as if on repeat.

“Tristan,” I whispered, my blood going cold.  I froze, my gaze locking with his.  “What if I’m the trigger?”

His face blanched.  I could see the gears swirling in his head as things started to fall into place.  “That’s the reason they wanted you to escape.”

“They put the trigger in my head and sent me back.  What if I’ve already started some kind of countdown?”

“Then we’re all in for a load of trouble,” Tristan said in a low growl.

“Come on,” I said, darting for the door.  “We’ve got to tell Royce and Gabriel.”

The two of us sprinted back to the staircase.  We exploded onto the sixth floor and I started pounding on the door to the conference room.

“Royce!” I bellowed.  “I have to talk to you now or we’re all going to be dead!”

The door was yanked open and Royce’s expression was livid.  “I do not have time to deal with your love mess, Eve,” he hissed in my face.  “Avian shot someone, I can’t ignore…”

“I think I’m the trigger,” I interrupted him, pushing my way past him into the room.  “I’m going to set the beacon off, if I haven’t already set off some kind of countdown.”

Everyone in the room finally froze and every gaze locked on me.

“This is Tristan,” I said, holding a hand out toward him where he stood just outside the door.  I waved him in.  “He was the one who helped me escape and brought West back.  He has something you need to hear.”

I had to respect Tristan.  There was no hesitation or intimidation in him.  He launched into the story he’d told me.  How this had all been a set up.

“It makes sense,” I said, shaking my head when Tristan was done.  “These blackouts I’ve been having, they have to have something to do with them.  They wanted me to get home and get home quickly.”

“I’d say let’s put you on an ATV and get you far away from here, but what if you’ve already initiated a countdown?” Elijah said.

“We have to evacuate the city,” Royce growled, glaring at me.  “With how much smarter and more aggressive the Hunters have gotten, the wireless transmission system might not be enough to keep them out of the hospital.  Even if it is on lockdown.”

“The water,” Tristan said, his hands on his hips.  “Most of the Bane won’t even get near it.  You head out into the water and you’ll be safe.”

“We can’t just abandon the hospital though,” Gabriel said, his brow furrowing.  “We’ll survive out on the water for a while, but we’re going to have to come back to land.  We have to get the Pulse back up and running and that’s not going to happen if we’re all hiding on a ship off the coast.”

“Thank you for your information, Eve,” Royce said, again glowering at me.  He placed a hand on both of my shoulders and maneuvered me toward the door.

“Wait a second—” I started fighting.

“You’ve caused enough trouble for one day,” he said, shoving me toward the door and then pushing Tristan towards it as well.  “Leave the plotting to the grown-ups.”

He closed the door in our faces.

“Royce!” I yelled, pounding on the door.  “Gabriel!”

No one replied.

“Eve,” a voice called down from the hall.  I turned to see Bill, marching toward us with a shotgun in hand.  “Leave them alone.  Never thought I’d be called for backup with you as a threat.”

“You’re here because of me?” I said, my voice livid.

“Elijah radioed me up to escort you away from this floor,” he said, regret in his eyes.

I shook my head, clenching my jaw.  “I assume you’ve heard about all the drama?” I asked as I reluctantly walked away from the door, Tristan in our wake.

Bill nodded.

“Any idea how Nick is doing?” I asked.

“He’s in surgery,” Bill said, shaking his head.  “It doesn’t look very good.”

I swore under my breath, closing my eyes for a moment.

“Avian really freaked out like that?” Bill asked, the disbelief obvious in his voice.

It took me a moment to nod.  The whole scene hadn’t seemed real.  “Avian’s never been a violent person.  Never.”

“I assume that’s the guy you’re involved with?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah,” I responded as we entered the stairway.  “Any idea what they’re going to do with him?”

Bill shook his head.  “Royce has him locked up on the fourth floor for now.  He said something about determining his fate when we learn Nick’s.”

I swallowed hard.  What had Avian been thinking?

“What about West?” I asked as we descended the stairs.

“He’s in the hospital wing right now,” Bill responded as we exited on the main level.  “Avian banged him up pretty bad, but Dr. Stone is patching him up.”

I swore again as we paused in the lobby.  “Can anything else go wrong?”

“Knock on wood,” Tristan said, shaking his head.  “Are things always so dramatic around here?”

A chuckle unexpectedly erupted from my lips and I shook my head.  “No kidding.”

“Now, are you going to cause any more issues, or can I go back to work?” Bill asked.

“I make no promises,” I answered honestly.

Bill just shook his head with a hint of a smile and walked away.

“Well, this was quite the introduction to your little colony,” Tristan said as his eyes swept the lobby.

“Welcome to New Eden.”

TWENTY-THREE

What could I do at that point but go back to work?

I’d tried to demand to see Avian, but Raj, who stood guard outside his door, refused me in a very in-my-face kind of way.  He literally shoved his rifle in my face and told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to Avian.

I had no control.  I couldn’t dig the remote out of my head, if there was one.  I couldn’t make Royce figure out a plan any faster.  I couldn’t make them all come out of that room.  I couldn’t decide Avian’s fate.  I couldn’t save Nick.

But I could work.

Tristan and I helped move everyone back into the hospital when it was determined safe.  No one was to go back to their houses except to get supplies until we knew what to do.

Besides the Pulse, nothing major had been damaged during the earthquake.

I gave Tristan the tour of the hospital as people started settling down.  He marveled over the kitchens, over the lobby, over the school rooms.  I couldn’t blame him.  It was the same reaction I had the first time Royce had shown us around.

“Do you think you’ll stay?” I asked him as we sat in the dining area, eating dinner.  “Here in New Eden?”

Tristan met my eyes for a moment before dropping them to his plate again.  “I don’t think I could go back,” he said, pushing his eggs around on his plate.  “I can just feel it here.  How different things are, despite your drama.  I hope you appreciate how unique of a situation you have here, these good people.  The fact that you all work together in harmony.”

I nodded as I finished off my roll.  “I haven’t been anywhere but with these people since the Evolution, but I know we’re lucky.”

“So to answer your question, yes, if New Eden will have me, I’d like to stay,” Tristan said.

“You helped me get home,” I said with a smile.  “If you were looking for immediate acceptance, that pretty much guaranteed it.  I know everyone is kind of pissed at me right know, but we’re all still family.”

Tristan chuckled, looking back at me.  “I think they’re happy to have you home for more than the reason of being family.  You’re probably still the key to fixing all this somehow.  How does it not go to your head, being so blasted important?”

“Oh, the knowledge that I helped bring about the end of the world keeps me pretty humble,” I said, my tone sarcastic.

“Good point,” Tristan said, his tone teasing and serious at the same time.

“What about you?” I asked, stacking my empty plate on his.  “Where were you when everything fell apart?”

“Well,” he said, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.  “I was sixteen.  I was in high school and my best friend told me how his cousin had been acting weird after her surgery.  She was a first gen.  A few days later I heard something on the news about TorBane spreading and a week later, my best friend wasn’t human any more.  As soon as I told my dad about it, he took us into the mountains.”

“How did you end up in Seattle then?” I asked, folding my arms on the table and leaning forward.

“My dad went out on a hunting trip one day, looking for some food for us.  I was seventeen then.  I was supposed to watch our camp because there had been marauders in the area.  Dad never came back.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, truly meaning it.

Tristan gave a little nod with a tight-lipped smile in appreciation.  “There was this man, Stanley, who found me.  He didn’t say much, but he said I could come with him, that he’d try his best to keep the both of us safe.  Eventually we ended up at the Underground.  Eventually he ended up getting infected.”

I shook my head.  “There are so few of us left.”

“Eve?” a voice called from behind.  I turned to see Lin rushing across the room.

She collided with me as she skidded across the tile floor, engulfing me in a hug.  “I heard you were back.  Are you okay?”  She backed away slightly, her eyes instantly going to my shaven head and the scars there.

“I don’t know about okay,” I said.  “But I’m back.”

“Your hair,” she said, her face falling.  “You always had the most beautiful hair.  That doesn’t hurt, does it?”  She gingerly touched the scars.

“I’m a freak, remember?” I teased her with serious eyes.

“Ah, yes, no pain,” she said.  “And who is this?”

“Lin, this is Tristan,” I said, turning back to him.  “Tristan, this is my…friend, Lin.”

And suddenly I felt like I had taken advantage of Lin.  I knew she would have called me a friend without a second thought.  I sometimes needed to remember people were people, not just tools for survival.

“Nice to meet you, Lin,” Tristan said, extending a hand toward her.  He held a mischievous smile on his face.

“And you too,” Lin said.  Lin smiled a lot, but this one was different.

I’d never been a matchmaker before.

I had to hope then that we’d all live long enough for them to get to know each other.

TWENTY-FOUR

The plan was this:

In forty-eight hours the vast majority of New Eden would evacuate the hospital.  They would pack their necessities and head for the harbors and everyone would take off into the water.  Special teams would pack as much food and provisions as possible in those forty-eight.  They would all have roughly eight hours to get to safety.

I would stay at the hospital as well as a handful of the scientists while they repaired the Pulse.  We would have the wireless transmission system on full blast and would keep the hospital on lock down, just how they’d all survived before the Pulse went off.  Royce would stay with us and Gabriel would go with everyone else to the water.

And we’d work as fast and furious as we could to rid the city once again of the Bane that were about to be called out.

Because no one saw a solution to stopping the beacon.

While everyone else prepared for evacuation, I had a few personal issues to take care of.

Despite the panic that was sweeping the hospital and city about having to evacuate, there was endless talk.

People didn’t know what to think about Avian’s actions.

Some called for his immediate exile from New Eden.  Violence against our own couldn’t be tolerated.  Could Avian be trusted anymore?  What other ways would he lash out violently in the future?

Nick was still alive, but he only had a fifty-fifty chance of making it.

West had recovered from his injuries and had been released to prepare for evacuation.  I made sure to avoid him.  At this point it seemed best.

But I had to talk to Avian.

The floor was silent when I stepped out from the stairway.  The lights on this floor flickered, air rushed through the vents, giving the feeling there where whispering ghosts whispering.  Waiting to tell you their secrets.

I moved silently through the hall, finding it empty.  Glancing around the corner, I spotted Raj, slumped on the floor.  I could faintly hear his snore.

There was a supply closet just to the left of where he slept.  I grabbed an electrical cord that was lying on the floor next to me and silently crept forward.

In one swift movement, I yanked his rifle from his hands and threw it down the hall.  With my other hand, I grasped the front of his shirt and hauled him up and into the closet.  He gave a startled, half-asleep yell, but he was too disoriented to fight back.  I stuffed him into the closet and pulled the door closed.  I wound one end of the chord around the handle and then wound the other end around a door handle across the hall.

The door to the closet jerked, but the cord held, locking Raj inside.

“Eve!” he yelled, his voice faint through the solid door.  “Don’t do this!  These are Royce’s orders!”

“I just need to talk to him,” I said, though probably not loud enough for him to hear me.

I turned to the door he’d been guarding.  It looked like any normal hospital room, but it locked from the outside.  I wondered if Royce had ordered it special made for Avian or if he’d thought to have a prison room before everything went down.

“Avian?” I called, knocking on the door.

“Eve?” he responded.  I heard his feet shuffled across the floor.  “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice rough.  I’d tried to rehearse what I would say to him when I faced him once more, but nothing had come.  “I’m coming in.  Stand back from the door.”

He shuffled away and I set my own shotgun down for a moment.  Coiling my right leg back, I landed a solid blow next to the door handle.  The wood split but not enough to open the door.  On the third kick, it caved and flew open.

Avian stood in the middle of the room.  He had dark circles under his eyes and his entire countenance seemed darker.

But the grief and pain on his face showed me that he was still Avian.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words cracking.

“I know,” I said.  But I didn’t move farther into the room.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he said.  His eyes dropping to the floor.  He shook his head.  I’d never seen his hair so long.  He was probably going on a month without a shave.  “I just kept thinking about how you could have died when they had you cut open and how we were all going to get infected because of what he’d done.  I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“I know,” I said, the words sticking in my throat.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I did, Eve,” he said, his gaze finally rising to meet mine.  “I don’t expect you to love a monster.”

“We’re all monsters in some way or another.”

Avian held my eyes for a long time and moisture brimmed in his.  He gave a small nod.

“What is Royce planning to do with you?” I asked as I slid my hands into my pockets.  I couldn’t make myself move into the room.

“I don’t think he has time to figure that out with the impending evacuation,” he said.  “But I’m not going to be one of the evacuees.”

My throat felt tight and the words I tried to say couldn’t move up my throat.

“Eve,” he breathed and took two steps forward.

“Promise me you’ll never do something like that again,” I forced out, my words louder and more broken sounding than I had intended them to be.  “Promise me you will never hurt one of us, ever again.  Because that man back there, I don’t know who he was.”

Avian froze, and his face became all the whiter.  He swallowed hard.  “It was unforgivable.  I don’t know who that man was either.  And I promise, you will never, ever, see him again.”

I nodded, trying to push the knot in my throat down.  “Good.  Because I need you right now.  Always.”

I didn’t hold back any longer.  I rushed forward, crushing myself into his chest.

“I forgive you,” I said into the fabric of his shirt.  “As long as you never do anything stupid like that again.”

“Promise,” he whispered into my short, fuzzy hair.  He kissed the top of my head.

“After everyone is evacuated, I’ll talk to Royce about your release,” I said, looking up at him.  “Once everything begins, I’m sure we’ll need you.”

“Whatever everyone thinks is suitable punishment, I’ll take it,” he said, his voice dead sounding.  “I deserve it.”

“You’re human, Avian.  We all make mistakes.”

I knocked on the thick black door of Dr. Beeson’s office.  After ten seconds it opened.

It was Addie who answered.

“How’s Dr. Beeson doing?” I asked.  Addie held the door open just wide enough for her face to pop out.

“He’s still pretty out of it,” she said, her entire demeanor crest fallen.  I understood it.  Dr. Beeson, helping him with his research and work, it was her entire world.  “Dr. Stone has him all drugged up but he thinks Erik will be okay by the time everything goes down.”

I nodded, my eyes falling to the floor.  I shifted from one foot to the other.  My heart started beating quicker.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

There was no hesitation when I shook my head.  “This last adjustment, it was too much,” I said.  I finally looked up.  “I need him to fix me.”

Addie’s eyes darted back into the office before looking back at me.

“He said something about that in his notes,” she said.

I was a little annoyed that she had access to nearly everything in Dr. Beeson’s office, including such detailed notes about me.  That felt too personal.  I would have rather kept it between the two of us.  We had history, history that didn’t need to be shared with anyone in the present.

“I am very familiar with the wireless transmission system,” Addie said.  She fidgeted.  “I helped him develop it.  He trained me extensively.  I was the one who got it back up and running yesterday.  He always said that should something happen to him, someone would need to know how to work it.  I’ve read all the notes on what he does with your adjustments.  I’m ninety-five percent confident I could do it.  If you’d like.”

Addie’s offer threw me.  It took a lot of trust to let Dr. Beeson mess with my head.  He could do anything to me when I was shut down and vulnerable like that.  He could turn me into a blithering idiot.  He could turn me back into an infant.  But I trusted him to help me.

Could I trust Addie?

“I promise I won’t do anything other than restore your emotional blockers,” Addie said, as if she could read my mind.  “Trust me, I have no interest in harming you.  You’re pretty much the most amazing science experiment I’ve ever met.”

My eyes must have darkened because she apologized.

“What I mean is that I will make sure it works,” she said.  “I promise.”

This seemed stupid.  I knew if Avian was here there was no way he would allow me to do this.  Nearly anyone in the hospital would protest.

But that beacon was about to go off.  The Underground wasn’t finished with me and I needed to be at the top of my game if I was going to fight back.

“Promise?” I asked.  “You’re sure you can do this?”

“Ninety-five percent,” Addie said, giving a little nod.

“That’s going to have to be sure enough, I guess.”

She opened the door wider and let me in.

The air was crisp with the promise of the New Year.  I rolled Avian’s motorcycle out of the underground garage.  I was clouded in exhaust fumes as I started the engine.

I took a solid breath before I started down the road.

I finally felt like me again.

I didn’t feel like I was going to crack at any moment, like I was going to have a meltdown.  I could see things clearly and my insides didn’t feel like a snaking mess.

Addie had done the adjustment perfectly.

Even though my emotions were dulled back to normal, there was something very personal I had to investigate for myself before I got down to Bane business.

One moment I had myself convinced that there was no way my tent could be washed away, the next I couldn’t image that it hadn’t been.

But when I parked the motorcycle next to the beach, I saw it, sitting battered and sideways, but still there.

My boots sank into the wet sand.  The shoreline looked different, as if the water had in fact rushed in, dragging the granules away.  The tide had pulled my tent down the beach.  It sat only two feet from the water.

I righted two of the poles before I stepped inside.

The floor was soggy and my clothes that had been stashed under the cot were soaked.  But when I checked underneath my pillow, I found the picture of my mother, undamaged.

I held it to my chest, taking a deep breath.

My past.

Had I been remembering it back at the Underground?  Were those scenes and images real?  Or had I just been going crazy?  Had they broken my brain enough to make me see things that just mimicked reality?

I looked down at the woman who looked just like me.

If she hadn’t died giving birth to me, the world might still be recognizable.  She might have stopped Dr. Evans from giving me TorBane, let me die the natural death I should have died, and TorBane might have just stayed a theory in a file.

But these thoughts weren’t going to change the past.  So I put them away.

Tucking the picture in my pocket, I rescued a few of Avian’s books and tucked them into my pack.

I took my time emptying the tent.  I broke into one of the houses that sat on the beach, storing my clothing, cot, pillow, sleeping things, Avian’s belongings, and eventually, the tent, inside.

I was doomed to live forever inside prison walls.

When I was finished, I stood with the tips of my boots in the water.  I closed my eyes, breathing the ocean air in.  Before me was freedom and peace.  At my back was the real world of destruction and endless, crushing work.

“Goodbye,” I whispered to the water as my eyes opened.  I knew that it would be a while before I would see it again.

Straddling the bike, I pointed it back in the direction of the hospital.

I wove between bodies that lay on the streets, all Hunters that had been outside when the Pulse had gone off.  It seemed unreal that that had only been three months ago.  So much had happened since then.

I was three blocks from the hospital when something caught my eye.

A movement.  Something darting behind a building.

I stopped the motorcycle on the side of the road and killed the engine.  I pulled my Desert Eagle from my back pocket.  Peeking around the corner, I slipped silently along the wall.

My handgun was held steady when I popped around the corner, only to find an empty alley.

Something hit my shoulder—dirt—and my eyes jumped up just in time to see a foot disappearing over the edge of the roof.

I scaled the fire escape, making sure my feet were silent as I did.  And just as I got onto the roof, I saw two figures jump off the side of the building.

I sprinted across the roof.  Bodies hit something solid with a clatter and a curse below me and then feet were running.

I looked over the side of the roof just as they disappeared around a corner.

Darting back to the fire escape, I slid down the ladder and ran back to the motorcycle.  I pushed it to close to eighty miles an hour in the three blocks I had left.

When I rounded the final corner, I saw a crowd of people in front of the main entrance of the hospital and stopped the bike on the grass there.

Elijah had his foot on the back of a man who was handcuffed and on his knees.  Graye held a gun to the man’s head.  Royce stood before him, his arms crossed over his chest.

“What’s going on?” I asked, joining them.

“Graye found him spying about fifteen minutes ago,” Elijah said.  “He’s not saying what he’s doing or where he’s from.”

“I highly suggest you start talking,” Royce said, squatting right in front of the man.  “You see, when I worked for the United States government developing weapons of war, I got a contract to develop a few nasty items for a more individual base of destruction.  You do not want me digging in my closet.  But I will if you don’t tell me what I want to hear.”

Fear shook the man’s body, but he was trying hard to keep his face blank.

“Is it ready?” he asked, his voice shaking slightly.

“Is what ready?” Royce asked, narrowing his eyes at him.

“The device.”

“What…the Pulse?”

The man nodded.

“You’re with them,” Royce said, his eyes growing even darker.  “Aren’t you?  You’re with that group from Seattle.”

Tristan stepped out of the hospital and hesitantly came to my side.  “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Apparently your old friends are back.”  I took a step forward.  “There were more of them just a few blocks from—”

My head must have split open for real this time.

A scream ripped from my throat and I collapsed to my hands and knees.  I was sure there had to be blood leaking from my ears and nose and eyes and mouth and every pore in my body.  My brain was dissolving into a trillion atoms being split and rearranged.

I opened my eyes to find a world washed in green, sequences of numbers flashing across my vision.

And I could feel them.  Hundreds of thousands of them.  Millions maybe.  Like a string was connected to me and ran to each and every one of them.

I could feel the Bane.

And the call that was going from me to them.

“Eve!” voices screamed.  My eyes searched for faces to attach the voices to.  But there was only green and numbers and the feeling that I was more Bane in that moment than I had ever been in my life.

The connections became stronger and stronger and I felt their dire need, their drive, their one reason for existence—to make the perfection spread.  To heal what was broken.  And what was broken was human DNA and tissue.  It was weak.  It aged.  It died.  It fractured.

We were strong.  We were perfect.  We were made to save.

And we had to spread.

We had to make the world perfect.

“Eve!” a voice called out to me again.

I blinked, trying to clear the numbers from my vision and the voices from my head.

We must spread.

We must perfect and heal the world.

“Eve!  This isn’t you!” the voice screamed again.

Another voice yelled.  And then a gun was fired.

I blinked again and my head jerked to the right as someone slapped me.  It felt like a fishing hook caught in my brain and the strings that bound me to the millions out there started breaking away.

“Eve!  Come on, you can pull out of this!”

Tristan.

“Tristan?” I moaned, the pain pulsing through my brain once again.  I opened my eyes, the numbers fading from my vision as the rest of the strings fell away.

“I’m right here,” he said.  His arms were around me and I was lying on his lap.  “Holy sh…  You were saying some pretty freaky stuff.”

And suddenly adrenaline burned through my veins.  I was on my feet and ready to attack the man we had captured when I froze.

There had to be fifteen of the people from the Underground surrounding us.  Guns were pulled everywhere.  Elijah’s team had assembled.  And there was a body in the middle of us all.

“You put the beacon in my head, didn’t you?” I growled at none of them in particular.  “It was never here and I was never the trigger.  You put it in me and sent me back!”

Most of them didn’t react in any way, but one of them had a tiny smile that tugged on his mouth.

I crossed the circle faster than I’d ever moved.  I yanked the shotgun from his hands and tossed it towards Tristan.  I grabbed the man’s shirt in my fist and pulled his face an inch from mine.

“You’ve just sentenced everyone to infection,” I hissed.

“That’s what the Pulse is for,” he said, his breath rancid.

“The Pulse is broken!” I bellowed, shoving him away from me, knocking him to the ground.  “And you set the beacon off two days early!”

“You put the beacon in one of our soldiers?!” Royce bellowed, rushing at one of the other men, knocking him to the ground, his fist crushing his cheekbone.  Within half a second everyone was yelling, fists flying.

I had just knocked one of the men out who rushed me when I saw movement from behind us.

There were more of them.

Another ten soldiers, men and women, rushed from behind other buildings, guns drawn.

This was about to turn into a blood bath.

We didn’t have to wait for the Bane to swarm the city in the next few hours.  We were going to kill each other off first.

Graye chased after two soldiers who fled down an alley.

Tristan stood with one of our soldiers, trying to keep them out of the hospital, guns drawn.

Elijah radioed for back up as he fought off another man.

I had to find Margaret.  If I could find Margaret, maybe I could keep this from turning into a death match.  I could convince her to call off her people.

Because I had no doubt that Margaret was here.

Tristan was right.  They had staged my escape.  They’d wanted me to get back to New Eden and quickly.

Because when they didn’t find the answer to curing TorBane, they planted their beacon inside of my head and waited for me to return.  And then they set it off.

Looking one last time back at my family, I set off down the street.

TWENTY-FIVE

Margaret would be waiting somewhere she could see all the action.  I just had to find her vantage point.

I checked the street level, anywhere she would be able to see from.  But she wasn’t a stupid woman and being out on the road would be too obvious.  She was hiding inside a building.

I was just about to duck inside one when a familiar voice called my name.

I turned left and found West jogging up to my side.  His entire body was bruised.

“We’re going to kill each other off out there,” he said, his eyes wild and fearful.  He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of view of the battle.

I hadn’t considered how I would react to West when I came face to face with him again after what he’d done, after what Avian had done.  Especially since Addie had turned my humanity down.

I should have expected the hatred and the burning that consumed me.

And he saw it all there in my face.

“I am so sorry,” he said, his eyes filling with regret.  “I never meant to betray you.  I was hurt and I was angry and I was pissed.  But I didn’t mean to tell them about you.  I thought you were safe back here with Avian when I went with them.  I couldn’t stay here anymore.  I didn’t think it would matter if I told them what you were capable of.  I wasn’t all that sure I’d ever see you again.”

I wasn’t even breathing as I listened to West apologize.  The back of my eyes burned and my throat felt as if it had totally closed off.

“Yell at me,” he said, his eyes desperate.  “Hit me.  Do whatever it takes to make you feel better.  I think it will make me feel a bit better if you break a couple bones or knock me unconscious.”

From past experience, I knew I was unpredictable when my emotions got away with me around West.

So I did the only smart, reasonable thing I could do in that moment.

I turned and walked away.

“Holy shit,” West breathed as I took two steps away from him.

And the way he said it, the way the very air changed around us with his words, made me freeze in place.

I turned to look back at him and found his face stark white.  His eyes had reddened and moisture pooled in them.

“What?” I demanded, my tone unsure.

He held a hand over his mouth and squeezed his eyes closed for a moment.  A tear streaked down his cheek.

“I have something important to do right now, so if you have something to say, you’d better say it quick.”

West finally opened his eyes, wide and disbelieving.

“Now, West!” I demanded, debating just running into the building to complete my task.  We could talk later, if we lived through the day.

“You know all those stories I told you?  About how we used to play together when we were kids?  The notes I left you?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“Is this important right now, West?” I said, my tone dripping acid.

He nodded his head.

“Fine, yes.”

He paused for a moment.  He took a deep, quivering breath.  “None of them were true.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my brow furrowing.

“It was your sister, Eve,” he said, more tears streaking down his cheeks.  His eyes rose to the heavens and he shook his head.  “It was your identical twin sister that I did all that stuff with.  Not you.”

I tried to ask what? but the words stuck in my mouth like it had been filled with cotton.  My thoughts swirled.  I’d seen myself talking to me in those fractured memories and nightmares in Seattle.  I’d been crazy, they’d broken my mind.  This couldn’t be true.

“That tattoo on the back of your head?” he said, his voice shaking nearly beyond control now.  “The roman numeral two?  You were Eve Two.  Your sister was Eve one.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, my insides quickly going numb.  “No.  That can’t be…”

West nodded his head.  “We hated each other as kids, Eve.  Some people just don’t get along.  You and I, we couldn’t stand to be around one another.  It…it kind of explains a lot about us now.”  His brow furrowed, as if reevaluating every moment we had spent together.

“You lied to me,” I said, my voice very controlled and very quiet.  “Again?  About something like this?”

Tears started leaking down West’s face again and he gave a slight shake of his head.  “I thought you were her, Eve one.  Because Eve Two was supposed to be dead.  My father was supposed to dispose of her.  Because she had been compromised.  Because she killed over fifty people.  Because Eve Two did this!”  He pulled on the collar of his shirt, exposing the claw marks on his neck.

“That was supposed to be me?” I breathed, not believing a word he said.

West nodded, coming one step closer.

“I never said anything about the twin sister because she was supposed to be dead.  You didn’t remember anything, and I thought that was for the best.  What was the good of bringing up a sister who had tried to kill me and was supposed to be dead?  I was going to let the past stay dead.”

I punched West in the face.  Hard enough he collapsed to the ground.

“I can’t take any more of your secrets,” I said, my voice shaking with rage.  “I hate you West Evans, and if we all live through this day, I never want to see you again.”

And I left him there on the ground.  I slipped inside the building and let the door close behind me.

The interior of the building shifted with lines of black.  My hands shook and my stomach rolled in an emotional hurricane.

There was coughing somewhere above me and a quick shh.  I shut out my personal garbage and took the stairs two at a time.

I was catching a break for the first time in what felt like a very long time.  I’d found them in the first building I tried.

Hushed voices came from behind a closed door.  Slipping my handgun from my belt, I leaned against the door.

“Do you really think it will work?” a young voice whispered.  “Do you really think it can kill them?”

“I don’t know baby,” a motherly voice said.  “We can only hope so.”

I pushed the door open, my gun poised ahead of me.

Margaret stood by a large window, overlooking the fight below her.

“I should shoot you right now,” I said loudly.  Every eye turned on me, including Margaret’s  There were muffled screams and whimpers.

“Then why don’t you?” Margaret asked.  There was just the faintest trace of fear in her eyes.  But not enough.  Not enough to classify her as human in my eyes any longer.

“Because I need to know how far that thing you planted in my head is going to reach.”

Margaret didn’t answer for a moment and I saw her gaze shift to those around her.  I noticed then that they were mostly women, children, and elderly.

“Not here,” she said in a hiss and stepped toward me.  She held her hands up when I didn’t lower the weapon and stopped.  Her eyes slipped down to the little girl on the floor just to the side of me who was crying and had her face buried in her mother’s shoulder.

“Out in the hall,” I said, waving her out with the gun.

The two of us stepped outside the door and I closed it behind us.  We walked halfway down the hall for privacy.

“Why?” I asked simply.

“Do you not remember what things were like in Seattle?” Margaret asked with narrowed eyes.  “We had to leave or we were all going to get infected.  The Underground has been totally compromised.  And soon it is going to be the entire world and we will be eradicated.”

Margaret actually had no idea how true her words were.  She had no way of knowing the sweeps the Hunters were conducting.

“Just so you know,” I said, my tone turning icy.  “You’ve condemned us all to infection.”

“I don’t understand your pride with this Pulse thing.  You have to use it!”

“We would be happy to,” I said, my teeth clenched so tight they might have broken if I were fully human.  “If it hadn’t been damaged in the earthquake.”

Margaret paused, her expression paling.  “What earthquake?”

“The one we had just a few days ago.  The one that dropped a concrete pillar on the Pulse, making it unusable.  And our head scientist, the one who developed it, the only one who can fix it, is sick.”

“I didn’t know,” she said.  She was trying to pitch her voice to be non-caring, but she was failing.

“We’re all dead now, thanks to you,” I said.  I grabbed her wrist and started pulling her down the stairs.

Maybe it was shock or guilt or some other unknown conscious that I didn’t know she possessed, but Margaret let me drag her out of the building without a fight.

Shots rang out and shouts rose into the air.  There were three bodies lying in front of the hospital now.  I couldn’t look at their faces just then to see if it had been any of ours that had fallen.

West was nowhere to be seen.

“Call your men off,” I growled in Margaret’s ear.  “Or I swear I will kill you right here.”  I pressed the barrel of my handgun into her ribs.

Margaret shifted uncomfortably, her arm going nowhere under my steel grip.  She cleared her throat.

“Cease fire!” Margaret yelled, her voice startlingly loud and filled with authority.  “Members of the Underground will assemble.  Now!”

Instantly the shots died out and slowly the soldiers, New Eden and foreign alike, gathered before the hospital.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” Royce growled, pointing a finger at Margaret.  He approached her, fast.  For a moment I was afraid he was going to plow her right over, but he stopped just an inch from her face, his finger pressed to her chest.  He was covered in blood and grime.

Avian suddenly came jogging through the crowd, followed by Raj.  I resisted the urge to rush at him and pull him into my arms.  But now wasn’t the time.

“I do believe we have some talking to do.”  She couldn’t hide the quake in her voice or the fear in her eyes.

“I should just have Eve shoot you right now,” he seethed.

“Trust me,” I said, my jaw clenched tight.  “It took everything I had in me not to.”

“Elijah,” Royce barked, turning.  Elijah limped forward.  There was a shirt tied tightly around his calf, no doubt stopping up a bullet wound.  “Watch her people.  I swear, if any of them makes a wrong move, shoot them.”

Protests were shouted and firearms were raised again.

“You will do as he says!” Margaret bellowed and instantly the contention died.  “You will stand down until I come out.  You will wait for my word.”

Eyes shifted and fingers remained poised on their triggers.  But they did lower their weapons.  Elijah and his team quickly surrounded the Undergrounders.

“Move,” Royce commanded.

Avian stepped forward as if to follow us and Royce immediately threw up a hand.  “Now isn’t the time to be the protective boyfriend,” he said, his voice quiet so the entire crowd wouldn’t hear him.  “I released you because you’re needed out here.  This right now is between the three of us.”

Avian met my eyes and for a moment there was pain and panic there.  I could only nod and try to assure him that somehow, everything was going to be okay.

There was a loud, large crowd just inside the hospital doors.  Guards, including Tristan, stood armed and ready with the masses behind them.

“Move!” Royce bellowed as we made our way through the crowd toward the stairs.  The tension inside of me built as we ascended.

How much time did we have before we were all dead?

As soon as Royce closed the door to his office he turned and shoved Margaret back into a chair.  Her eyes grew wide with fear as she fell back.

Good.

“What have you done?” he growled.  He placed his hands on each of the arm rests, his face again coming within an inch of hers.

“If you weren’t going to use that Pulse on your own, we thought we’d force you to see reason,” she started explaining in a shaky breath.  “It was all too easy to plant false information and stage a supposed escape.  We knew you’d listen to one of your own soldiers.  You would never suspect she was in fact the beacon.”

Royce slapped Margaret across the face.  The sound was sharp and startling.  Margaret jerked to the side, her hair whipping across her face.

“How far is that beacon going to reach?” he demanded.

Margaret faced forward again, her mouth slightly agape, her eyes not quite meeting Royce’s.  Her hand rose to her cheek gingerly.  “We had no certain way to test it.  But we estimated it would reach at least five-hundred-miles.”

Royce was silent for a moment.  I had little doubt he was calculating the size of the cities within that five-hundred-mile radius.

“There is about to be over a million Bane flooding into this city.  We were in the middle of an evacuation but there is no way we will get everyone out in time.  And we have no way to defend ourselves,” Royce said.  “What do you have to say about that?”

We heard a shot fired, followed by another.

Royce swore and we both sprinted for the stairwell.

“Do you have any idea how much time we have before they start arriving?” Royce asked as we ran.

I shook my head, tightening my grip on my handgun, wishing I had more firepower.  “We were clear for at least seventy five miles.  Three hours?”

Royce swore again as we sprinted through the lobby and back out the front doors.  There was the faint sound of glass shattering.

The crowd had disbanded again and the fighting resumed.

Elijah lay on the ground, pressing fingers into a bleeding wound in his chest.

Avian had another man pinned beneath him and his fist connected with the man’s face.  Even West was in the brawl at this point, scuffling in the dirt, his hands wrapped around a soldier’s throat.

Down the street another shot was fired.

A woman from the Underground tried rushing the entrance to the hospital.  I threw myself at her, knocking her to the ground.  We rolled to the ground and she hitched the barrel of her gun up into my stomach.

My breath caught in my throat and I froze on top of her.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said, my voice breathy.  “We are about to be invaded.  We don’t have time for all this fighting.”

“You’re one to talk,” she spat.  “After you just murdered Margaret?”

“What?”

The woman shoved me off of her and pointed somewhere just behind me.

There was broken glass everywhere.  And in the middle of it was Margaret.

She was dead.  There was no question about it.  Her right arm was bent back underneath her at an impossible angle.  Her neck was cocked sharply to the left, broken.  There were huge chunks of glass embedded into her skin and blood poured from her lifeless body.

“She jumped,” I said, my voice horrified and disgusted.  I’d heard glass shatter just before Royce and I had gotten back outside.

Royce told her how she’d killed everyone, and she jumped to her death.

“Don’t lie to me,” the woman said, her voice harsh and emotional.  She wedged the barrel of her gun back between my ribs.

“No,” I insisted, meeting her brown eyes again.  “I promise you, that wasn’t us.”

The woman’s features hardened and she shook her head as she cocked the trigger.

I spun quickly, grabbing her wrist as I did.  With a quick flip of my own hand, I pulled the gun from her grasp and completed the spin to turn and point both my own firearm and hers at her chest.

“I will not fire unless I have to,” I said quietly.  “But right now I am not your enemy.  There are about to be hundreds of thousands of Bane flooding this city and I am your only shot at staying alive and human.”

And then I knew exactly what I had to do.

Throwing the gun out of her reach, I turned east.

There was a wide open desert out there where no people would get hurt.  A wide open desert big enough to hold the enemy that would soon be arriving.

I scanned the fighting crowd for Avian but he was nowhere in sight.

There would be no time for a goodbye.

I dashed around the side of the hospital and dropped down into the garage.  I hopped on an oversized ATV.  It would get me through the mountains, over the rough terrain, and it would do it quickly.

The engine growled to life and I shot out of the garage.

The crowd parted as I ripped down the street.  Members of New Eden shouted after me as I moved.  But Royce, Gabriel, and Avian were nowhere in sight.

Spotting Bill, I slowed momentarily.  He caught sight of me and I waved him over.  He rushed the ATV and hopped on, grabbing onto the cargo rack.

“You’re going to head them off, aren’t you?” he asked, his eyes serious and dark.

“There’s no other way,” I said.  “We’re all dead if I don’t do something.”

Bill nodded, glancing back at the fighting crowd.  They had barely paused when I barreled through them.  “Hopefully there are still some of us left to save.”

And then West shot through the crowd, stumbling over debris.  He stopped next to the ATV, his hands braced on his knees for a moment as he caught his breath.

“I’m sorry I lied, again, Eve,” he said, looking up at me with regret on his face.  He straightened and pulled something from the cargo pocket of his pants and extended it towards me.

His grandfather’s notebook.

“The truth is in there,” he said.  “You’re going to hate me for hiding it, but it’s there.”

In that moment, there wasn’t anything to say.  I took the notebook and looked back at the fighting masses, my heart hurting.

“Tell Royce to figure something out,” I said.  “And tell Addie to be ready with the wireless transmission system.  I’ll keep them away for as long as I can.  But in case I can’t keep them all out of the city, continue with the evacuation plan.  Head into the water.  You’ll be safe there.  At least for a while.”

Bill held my eyes for a long while before he nodded.  He placed a hand on the back of my neck and pressed a kiss to my forehead.  “Good luck,” he said.

“Do me a favor,” I said, glancing briefly at West before meeting Bill’s eyes again.  “Tell Avian that I love him.  And that I’m sorry.”

“He knows that,” Bill said.  “But I’ll tell him.”

I nodded and Bill saluted me.

“I’m sorry,” West muttered again as he backed away.

Gripping the handlebars tighter, I revved the engine and took off down the street.

TWENTY-SIX

Even though I could no longer feel that connection to the Bane, I pushed my thoughts out to them.  I pictured the desert I had never actually seen.  I commanded them to go there and to wait for me.

I was just over an hour outside of New Eden, and had just left a canyon when my ATV sputtered and died.  I looked down to see the gas gauge dropping below the red line.  Leaving it on the side of the road, I walked.

The land opened up before me, revealing dry desert.  There were a few towns hugging the mountains, but after that, nothing but dry open desert.

I know you’re out there.  Come and find me.

The towns fell behind me and soon my boots crunched over rough, cracked ground.  The light breeze that brushed past me tasted stale and dry.  When I could no longer see buildings and the landscape was nothing but sage brush, I stopped.

A wind picked up, cool and arid, empty and lonely.  I turned my eyes to the horizon, blocking out the blinding afternoon sunlight with my hand.

A figure stepped into view and slowly approached.  Another was behind him.  Followed by another.

They gathered, one by one, ten by ten.  They walked slowly and even, in no hurry and perfectly controlled.

Come.

I shifted uncomfortably as they closed in around me from all sides.  Their metal parts gleamed in the sun, their eyes reflecting crazy colors in a prism of light.

The first dozen of them stopped just ten feet from where I was.  They stood perfectly still and stared at me.

I was queen of the Bane and these were my subjects.

Night fell and the Bane continued to flock around me.  They stretched as far as I could see, filling this desert.  There were thousands of them.  More than ten thousand.  And they all just stood there, facing me.

I sat on the ground eventually when my legs started shaking from standing for endless hours.  I commanded the Bane to sit as well, uncomfortable having them stand over me when the last five years I had been trained to fire or run whenever one of these things came in sight.

My eyes were heavy, but I didn’t dare fall asleep.  What if I did and my connection to them was lost and they headed into New Eden?  What about those who were still answering the call of the beacon and heading this way but had not arrived at our gathering place?

My eyelids tried to close, but I held them open until they burned, all through the night.

The sun seemed to rise all at once.  It was brilliant and beautiful and so cold all at the same time.

I stood, stretching my stiff limbs and looked out over the crowd again.

There had to now be a few hundred thousand Bane surrounding me.  All I could see around me was gleaming bodies that shone in the sun.

Something fell out of my pocket and I looked down to see the notebook.

Loose pages had fallen out of it and it lay open, facing the ground.

The truth is in there, West had said.  You’re going to hate me for hiding it, but it’s there.

Bending, I carefully picked up the loose pages and the tattered notebook.

It was open to a page I’d read before.

An unexpected side effect of the chip implantation has occurred.  I have been aware of the fact that everything project Eve is able to do should be impossible.  The strength, speed, increased eyesight and hearing capacities.  This has evolved beyond the capability of the military’s chip and TorBane.

The two technologies have intertwined with each other I believe.  The chip has given the TorBane technology the ability to spread and evolve.  After sedation and a full body scan, hints of cybernetic enhancements have been detected throughout Eve’s body.  It is not just the brain, lungs, and heart that have been altered now.  It is the entire body.

Test’s I and II yield duplicate results.

I and II.

It had really been there all along.

My eyes jumped to another entry.

As Eve’s brain has continued to develop and evolve, adjustments have been required in II.

Another:

They don’t want just one test subject.  But how can I in good conscious give them more than that?

The Eve project…

She’d been there too, the entire time.

My sister.

My identical twin sister.

I looked at the loose pages I held in my hand.  They were frayed and worn.  Like they’d been ripped from the notebook in a hurry.

West had wanted to hide something from me.

I unfolded one, tucking the rest of the pages into the notebook.

It’s been a month since my last entry.  Eve I has already shown improvements.  She’s been learning a few more words every week.  She is interacting a bit more.  Just yesterday we introduced her to my 3 year old grandson, West.  We took her to his playroom.  He tried to engage her in activities, but she seemed hesitant.  Though she did watch him for an hour.  She observed the things he did, the way he talked to his toys.

I cannot wait to see Eve I’s progress.  If she is able to fully recover, this opens up a whole new aspect to this technology.  I had never even considered the mental side of TorBane before.

And on the back of the page…

Eve I plays with West three days a week now.  She is taken to the playroom and she stays there with him as well as his nanny and her nurse for two hours.  She is allowing him to talk to her, though she still will not respond with more than a word or two.  But she does try to play with the toys.

It’s been eight months since Eve I was given the technology.  I don’t know if it is because it was given for a neurological condition, but it still seems to work more slowly than I would have hoped.  We may try to speed things up with the next generation of testing.  We should have it ready in about a year’s time.

My hands shook as I read about my sister.

I pulled out another page, dated more than two years prior, and read.

While I has started to stabilize, II continues to languish.  The department is fighting against it, saying that the technology is not ready to be tested on a human subject, I feel that I cannot simply let this infant die without trying.  It could, and I believe will, save her.

We had been given TorBane for completely different reasons.  Mine were physical.  Hers were mental.

The truth had been so close to the surface for so long.

I thought about the past, how West had always worded things so carefully when we first met.  And the brief look between West and Dr. Beeson when we had first gotten to the hospital.  A secret had passed between them then.  This secret.

Dr. Beeson.

He wasn’t innocent in this either.  He knew about my sister as well.  He had taken care of us for years!  And he never said a word either.

West must have talked him into keeping things quiet.

…let the past stay dead…

Movement across the masses drew my attention from the pages.

One of the Bane was moving closer, working its way through the crowd.  As if it had a purpose in reaching me.  The others surrounding parted to let it through, but their attention never wavered from me.

I took a step back, stuffing the notebook and pages into my pocket, suddenly unsure of my abilities, but there was nowhere to turn.  I was completely surrounded.  And there was no one here to save me.

The masses continued to part and I saw a gleaming figure coming through the crowd.

Everything inside of me froze when the Evolved figure finally stepped through the bodies.

“Hello, Eve.”

My voice caught in my throat.  The Bane no longer spoke and this figure before me was nothing but machinery from the neck down.

But his head was covered in some kind of helmet and the skin of his face was mostly intact.  His eyes were human white and West-like brown.

“Dr. Evans?”

He nodded, his eyes bright.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“And so are you,” he replied.

I shook my head, questioning everything I was seeing and hearing.  Maybe I was really lying unconscious on the desert floor from dehydration or something.  “I don’t know what is real any more.  I don’t even know who I am.  My entire life has been a lie.”

“I can tell you exactly who you are,” he said, his eyes softening.  “I can tell you exactly who your sister was.”

A lump formed in the back of my throat.  I tried to clear it, but it refused to move.  “It’s true.  I really did have a sister.”

Dr. Evans nodded.  “An identical twin sister.  The only way we could tell you apart was your personalities and the tattoos on the backs of your heads.”

I lifted a hand to my scalp, running my fingers over the place where I knew my II was.

“Then how can you tell which one I am?” I asked, my eyes narrowing at him.

“Because your sister never would have been able to do this,” he said, a hint of a smile pulling on the corner of his lips as he turned and waved a hand over the masses around us.  He faced me once more.  “You are capable of so much more than you know, Eve Two.”

I searched inside of me for the sound of my heart beating.  For my erratic breath going in and out my lungs.

I was conscious and this was real.

“Can you answer this,” I said, holding his unbelievably human gaze.  “Why did everyone think Eve Two was dead?”

He hesitated, regret on his face.  “Because you did something that wasn’t your fault.  Something that in the eyes of most everyone at NovaTor, in the eyes of my son, was unforgivable.”

“What?” I asked.  “What did I do?”

He shook his head, the fire building in his eyes again.  “It doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is that the reason you were able to do it, is the reason you are going to be able to save the world.”

I couldn’t answer him for a long moment.  His words were impossible, unspeakable.  Our world was too far gone.  There was no saving it when there was only half a percent left to save.  There was no saving it when I was surrounded by possibly millions of Bane.

“That’s impossible,” I practically whispered, shaking my head.  “I can’t save the world.”

“Oh, that is where you are wrong,” Dr. Evans said, a full, plotting smile curling on his lips.  “Like I said, you are capable of so much more than you realize.  And I had already started plans for the device that will clear our planet.”

And the pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t even realized where there suddenly fell into place.

“The notebook,” the words slipped over my lips.  My hand shifted to my pocket.

Dr. Evans nodded his head.  “So you’ve seen the plans.”

I reached into my pocket, and slowly, never breaking his gaze, pulled it from my pocket.  “West had it.  That’s how I learned what I really was.  We thought the plans were for an electromagnetic pulse.”

Dr. Evans broke out in a laugh and clapped his cybernetic hands together.  “Brilliant.  Just brilliant.  Isn’t it fascinating how fate works?”

“You’re a scientist,” I said, holding the notebook tight to my chest, feeling suddenly protective of it.  “You aren’t supposed to believe in fate.”

“Trust me, my dear girl,” he said, a gleam in his eye.  “In a world where you and I exist, one can’t not believe in fate.”

“The plans, the drawings,” I breathed.  “They’re not just for your average Pulse, are they?”

“The plans are for something so much bigger,” he said, his voice rising in excitement.  “And you are the key to making it work.”

Something rose up inside of me.  Something bigger than me, something that was more hopeful and daring than I.  Something that met the sky and the earth and the water.  Something that dared to dream of a normal life.

“How?” I asked.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Evans asked.  “Are you ready to save this planet, Eve Two?”

“I am.”

THE ASHES

An EDEN Prequel

It’s been three days since they brought any food.  From the shouts and banging that echo throughout the block I’m guessing that I’m not the only one starving.  The inmate in the cell next to mine lets out a string of cuss words you only learn when you’ve spent a few years on the inside.

“So this is how it’s going to be?” my neighbor shouts to no one in particular.  “You’re just going to let us starve?   What, did the red, white, and blue finally run out of flow or something?  Just gonna’ leave me here to rot?”

The guy next door always did have a loud mouth.

My stomach rumbles as I lie on my hard bed and stare up at the gray ceiling.

Where is everyone?

The schedule in here is clockwork.  No deviations.  But no one on D block has seen a single guard in three days, not since they brought dinner four nights ago.

Guards don’t simply disappear.

Something’s wrong.

42°6′20.1″N  71°17′23.9″W

Five days.

We’ve all had to dig into our stock piles of hidden food.  Some of us will be good for a week, some us for only a few days.

The hunger makes the violence and vile words grow worse.

Today we heard shots being fired somewhere out in the direction of GP.  Even more shots out toward Medical.  I didn’t think they were going to end when I heard them out toward Death Row.

42°6′20.1″N  71°17′23.9″W

Eighteen days now.

I ran out of food five days ago.

My hands are shaking and my eyes can’t seem to focus just right.  My body wants to be sick but there isn’t anything except water in it.

Never thought I’d be so grateful for the tiny sink and toilet combo in my cell.  Never thought I’d have to rely on it to survive.

I haven’t heard much from the guy next door in the last twenty-four hours.  He’s worn himself out and reduced his ranting and shouts to just the occasional pounding.  He’s getting quieter.

The whole block is.

42°6′20.1″N  71°17′23.9″W

Twenty-three days since we’ve seen anyone.  At least a week since everyone ran out of their food hoard.  And yesterday morning the water shut off.

It smells.  D block always smelled bad.

But not like this.

I don’t hear voices any more.  Occasionally someone gives a weak kick at their door.  Every few hours someone moans.  Or cries.

You don’t cry in here.  Not if you want to stay alive.

But if I’m guessing right, a few of us don’t carry the status of living anymore.

I don’t want to think that I might be headed in that direction soon.  I can’t even climb out of this bed.  I can hardly lift my arms or move my head.  I don’t even feel hungry anymore.  I just feel…

42°6′20.1″N  71°17′23.9″W

I hear something.

A door creeks open, or maybe closed.

And suddenly there’s the familiar buzzing sound of the cell doors sliding open.

“Hello?” I say.  At first my voice doesn’t work.  “Hello?  Is anyone out there?”

Feet shuffle somewhere out in the corridor, but they pause just outside my cell.  I sense their hesitancy, as if they’re debating just taking off and leaving me here alone to rot.

“Please,” I said, my voice sounding weak.  “Please don’t leave.  Get me out of here.”

They hesitate a moment longer, their weight shifting back and forth.

“You may as well stay here,” a voice says.  Something is tossed and lands on the floor of my cell.  “Everyone’s as good as dead out there.”

“What do you mean?” I say as I try and roll over to see what was thrown.

“Don’t let them touch you,” the voice says.  “Anyone.  Don’t let anyone touch you.  That’s all that matters.”

And then the footsteps retreat and I’m alone again.

42°6′20.1″N  71°17′23.9″W

I wake sometime later and find that I’m on the cold gray floor.  My arm is outstretched, reaching for something lying on the ground.  I can only assume I passed out earlier.

The man in the dark.  Something was thrown.

I make my way to my hands and knees and crawl to it.

It’s a plastic bag.  The kind you get at the grocery store.  Inside it is a bottle of water, half a loaf of slightly moldy bread, two Snickers bars, and a small cup of applesauce.

I’ve devoured half of it before my brain fully registers that I’ve eaten.

Massive stomach cramps immobilize me and soon I’m lying on my back again, staring up at the gray ceiling.  My eyes open and shut in pain.  But it’s a good pain.  It means maybe I won’t die today.

My eyes trail across the ceiling to the entrance to my cell.  The door is still open.

But I don’t even have the strength to crawl out it.

Seven years.  Seven years I’ve occupied this cell in the SHU.  D block is the segregated housing unit.  I deserve my stay.  But after seven years, my chance at freedom is right there, and I don’t even have the strength to get to my feet.

42°6′20.1″N  71°17′23.9″W

“You still alive?” a voice says.  Suddenly I’m blinded and I feel my eyelids being pulled open.

My fist connects with a jaw in fight or flight reaction.

Someone curses and stumbles away.  A flashlight hits the floor and rolls into the corner.  I shakily climb to my feet but nearly fall to the ground again.  My muscles seem to have forgotten how to work.

The figure in the dark is still cursing when the flashlight is turned back in my direction.

“Guess you’re still alive then,” they say.  “You’re the only one on D block.”

“Everyone else?”  Once again my voice is haggard.

“They’re dead.  Starvation and dehydration took ‘em,” he says as he walks closer to me.  His gray prison clothes match mine.  “Probably best.  Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

I don’t question him as we head out the door.  I grab the sack with the remaining food before we leave.

Out on the walkway, the smell is overwhelming.  Some of them must have died at least a week ago if it already smells this bad.

“The corridor leading to Medical’s blocked off,” the guy says and starts toward the isolation rec block instead of out toward GP.  The only way in or out of the prison is though Medical.  “Roof’s caved in.  I was hoping there’d be another way out in your neck of the woods.”

I don’t look into the other cells as we pass by.

The doors are open out to the isolation rec block that separates the SHU where I reside and Death Row.  I’m momentarily blinded as I look up at the barbwire-covered opening.  Out to freedom.

We’re both deathly quiet as we walk through the narrow block toward the next door.

This one is open too.

Death Row is silent and smells worse than the SHU.  I dare a glance into one of the cells.  There’s a man lying on the floor, flat on his back.  He’s staring blankly up at the ceiling, a bullet hole between his eyes.

Every single one of them was shot.

“Rough,” my companion says quietly as we work our way to the end of the block.

We luck out and find the door leading out to the main corridor open.

It’s as if someone decided we were all going to die anyway and just opened every single door.  Maybe they figured we’d kill each other off.

We step out into the main corridor.  I glance back in the direction of the SHU and GP and see the roof has indeed collapsed, blocking off the back end of the prison.

“What’s going on?” I ask.  The entire prison looks abandoned.  There are bullet holes and shell casings everywhere.  “What happened?”

“Not sure exactly,” my companion says.  “I saw something on the news before all this, something about zombies, I thought.  Didn’t pay attention cause I thought it was a joke or something, you know?  Haven’t you heard anything?”

“No,” I say simply, my jaw tightening.

“Oh, right,” he says, barely glancing back at me.  “D block.  Segregation.”

“There was someone else,” I say as we turn left down a hall.  “Gave me food, kept me from starving.  I think it must have been a guard since he opened the doors.  But he said not to touch anyone.  You know anything about that?”

He shakes his head.  “Nope, but by the looks of this place, I think it’s safe to assume that’s sound advice.”

And I see a body.  It’s lying across a table on its back.  It’s staring at me, its eyes wide open.  But they don’t look right.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s probably some pretty good advice,” he says as we pause.

The inmate’s eyes are metallic, with ridges that shouldn’t be there, its iris an opal-looking color, all shimmery in the wrong ways.

There’s nothing human about those eyes.

“Come on,” I say, glancing back once more at the body.  “Let’s get out of here.”

“You think it was some kind of disease?” the guy says.  “Think that’s what happened to the guards?  There was some kind of outbreak and so they took off?”

“I don’t know,” I say and shake my head.  All I’m thinking is that I need a way to defend myself.

We start checking doors and offices.  I see a sign that says “Warden” and duck inside.

We find three handguns in a drawer and a small handful of ammunition.

“Keep this one,” my companion says as we both look at the extra.  “I’m in for fraud.  I’m not exactly the type who knows how to use this thing.”

I can’t blame him for assuming I know how to use a weapon.  Fraud did find me in the SHU.

I take the extra ammo and slip it into my pocket after making sure both firearms are fully loaded.

We hear the sound of movement outside the office.

“Who’s there?” I shout, leveling both firearms.  I haven’t handled a weapon in seven years, but it all comes back in an instant.  Just like riding a bike.

No one replies, but I hear the sound of feet coming closer.

I pause for a moment when I see something on the warden’s desk.  There’s a letter.  And it has my name on it.

I grab it and tuck it into my back pocket.

“Come on,” Fraud says, a hint of fear creeping into his voice.  “Let’s just get out of here.”

I nod, my eyes still on the door.

I peek around the corner before we exit.  No sign of whomever, or maybe whatever else is out there.  But I can still hear it, just around the corner.

“Medical’s this way,” Fraud says as we turn a corner.

At the sound of his voice, our pursuer seems to catch onto our location.  Feet pound against the gray pavement underfoot.

“Move it!” I yell, shoving my companion from behind.

The sound of feet keeps getting closer as we dodge down halls and around corners trying to shake it off.  It disturbs me that I don’t hear anything else.  No hard breathing.  No one shouting at us.  Only the sound of running.

I dare a glance back.  There is a man in a doctor’s white lab coat chasing us.  His eyes gleam.

I suddenly stumble, something soft and lumpy bringing me down to the ground.  I’ve tripped over Fraud, taken down by all the debris on the floor.  We roll in a tangled heap for a moment and I know that thing following us is going to catch us.

Grabbing the guns that have fallen from my hands, I turn to take aim.  But I stop.  The crazed doctor has his hand around Fraud’s throat, lifting him a good six inches off the ground.

I consider running for a moment.  Medical is right behind me.  I could make it.  I could finally get out of here and be free.

But instead, I take aim and squeeze the trigger.

The doctor instantly drops my companion, his hand a bloody mess from my shot.  His eyes turn on me and without hesitating I shoot again.  Exactly where I aim.  Right between the eyes.

It drops to the ground in a heap.

“Come on,” I say, looking at Fraud as he places his own hands around his throat, coughing violently.

Don’t let anyone touch you.  That’s what the guard had said.  His warning echoes in the back of my head as I watch Fraud stumble through the door into Medical receiving.

“You okay?” I ask as I look around for the exit.  It isn’t difficult to find.

“Yeah,” he replies, his voice scratchy.

I push the door open and step out into the blinding light.  We stumble toward the Sally Port, through the open gate, and past the razor-wire fences and into a parking lot.  I check the abandoned cars but of course none of them have keys inside.

“What now?” Fraud says, looking at our surroundings.

“Hit the deck!” I bellow, raising the handgun.  The man behind Fraud drops to the ground in a heap of gray prison clothes.  His inhuman eyes don’t even close when he falls dead.

“Thanks,” Fraud says, looking up at me with wide, terrified eyes as he stands.

“Come on,” I say and take off into the trees that surround us.  My hands and insides shake from exhaustion.  I dig into my plastic bag and start in on the last of the food.

I’ve always had a good sense of direction and as we move through the trees I’m sure we’re headed the right way.  I decide to keep to the wooded areas.  They feel safer than traveling on the road, especially considering our attire.

“Where we headed?” Fraud asks.  He struggles to keep up with me.  He’s small.  The type that doesn’t usually last long on the inside, not without having to give up some of his pride and humanity.

“My aunt lives not far from here,” I say, checking my back pocket to make sure the letter is still there.  “I’ve got to check on her.  Maybe get some supplies there.”

“Supplies to go where?” Fraud says.  He seems to catch a second wind and his pace picks up.  He isn’t breathing so hard now.  “And won’t she be freaked out when you just show up on her doorstep?”

I don’t respond because I do not have an answer.

I get a bit of energy back as the food hits my system and we jog through the trees for a good hour and a half before we come to a highway that cuts through the trees.  I slow my approach, crouching behind a tree on the edge of the road.  Carefully glancing around it, I look both directions.

There is a police car about two hundred yards to the west.  It’s parked in the middle of the road, as if it was blocking off anyone from going into the city.  Its lights are flashing but the siren is silent.  The driver’s door is hanging wide open.  I watch it motionless for a full minute but don’t see any activity.  It looks as if the vehicle has been abandoned.

The entire highway is empty.

“I don’t think there’s anyone out there,” I whisper.  My hands tighten around my firearm.  “We’re going to have to cross this road, then travel parallel to it for about an hour.  We should reach my aunt’s house in about two.”

I notice then how deathly quiet Fraud has been since we approached the road.  I glance back at him, only to do a double take.

He’s staring straight at me, but he has this glazed over look.  He’s blinking rapidly, almost as if he’s trying to clear something from his head.

Or maybe the metallic veins that are spreading in his left eye.

I curse under my breath and shift my aim between his changing eyes.

“You okay there?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

Don’t let anyone touch you.

“I…” he stutters.  “I…don’t…”

A twitch starts above that left eye.  Within ten seconds it works its way down his left arm and soon his fingers are moving rapidly, flexing and twitching.

He’s lost all control of his hand.

“I’m going to go now,” I say, my voice calm and even.  “And you’re going to stay right here.  You’re not going to follow me or I will shoot you.  Got it?”

“I…” he stammers again.  “Must…  What…”

“I mean it,” I say, the warning tone in my voice rising.  “You stay here and don’t follow me.”

Fraud doesn’t even try to respond now and I see his jaw flex, his muscles grow rigid.  His fingers now curl into fists, the twitch dying away.

I curse under my breath again.

Slowly, I back up, never taking my eyes from him.

His left eye is now more metallic than human white.  I can see tiny lines forming in the other eye.

My heels meet the pavement of the highway.  I keep both fire arms leveled on him.

He takes one step toward me.

“Stop right there!” I shout.  “I will put a bullet between your eyes!”

He takes another step toward me.  He moves differently now.  Stiff, slightly jerky.  He looks disoriented and empty.

“This is your last warning,” I say.  I’m backing away faster now, across the first two lanes of the highway.

And suddenly Fraud sprints towards me, every trace of human reason in him gone.

I bury two bullets in his chest and one in his forehead.

The man who very likely saved my life collapses to the ground.  Blood pools around him on the pavement.

I pause and look at his body lying there.  I’m regretting that I never asked his name.  Surely it wasn’t Fraud.  Maybe it was Ted, or Giles, or Scott.  I feel as if I should drag his body off to the side of the road at least.  But the guard’s words come back to me once again.

Don’t let anyone touch you.

So instead I turn and jog down the road toward the police car.  Change of plans.  I’m not walking to Stella’s.

42°4’47.56”N  71°29’7.04”W

I hop out of the car as I pull into Aunt Stella’s driveway.  I glance back at it as I jog up to her front door.  There are dents on every surface of the vehicle.  The lights on top have been smashed beyond recognition and the back windshield shattered when one of those things bashed its head against it over and over.  I watched as its skull caved in the same time the window finally broke.

Somehow I made it alive.

I hesitate at the front door.  Stella knew what I was in for and that I shouldn’t be outside of the prison for the rest of my days.  But the way the lawn is overgrown, the way her tiny, annoying dog isn’t barking like a maniac tells me that whatever madness has touched the world had made its way into Stella’s house.

I push the ajar door open.

There’s a smell that hits me as soon as I walk inside.  It’s pretty hard to mistake the smell of rotting flesh.  Not something you encounter every day, but you know exactly what it is when you smell it.

The front foyer is a mess.  All the fancy vases and plates and whatever else it was Stella and Rich collected are smashed into tiny pieces on the marble floor.  The house is silent as I make my way across the debris toward the living room.

The main living area is devoid of any life, in the same state of broken chaos.  I find the kitchen empty as well.

It’s been nearly eight years since I’ve been in the house, so it takes me a moment to bring up a mental map of where I might find Stella or Rich.  Careful to make sure my feet are soundless, I make my way toward the back of the house.

The smell grows stronger as I approach the door to Uncle Rich’s office.  My weakened stomach threatens to lose the tiny amount of food I have in my system.

Finally, I step inside.

Uncle Rich is lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with red, wide, dead eyes.  He’s a strange blue gray mixture.  And there is a ring of bruises around his throat.

Someone choked the life out of Uncle Rich and left him here to rot.

I’m about to leave, but as I turn to go, I freeze in place.  Adrenaline burns through my veins.

Aunt Stella is standing just to the side of the door and she’s staring straight at me with metallic, empty eyes.

I take a step away from her, back into the office.  I’m careful not to step on Rich.

Stella doesn’t move.  She stares out into the room, completely motionless, like she’s frozen in place.

There’s a big section of skin missing from the lower left side of her face.  Where her jaw bone should be, there is a shiny metal plate gleaming in the evening light.

I don’t dare breathe.  I saw what those things did as I made my way to this house.  They’d tried ripping the police car apart and very nearly succeeded.  As soon as I got to the middle of town they were coming out of thin air, leaping at the car with their dead eyes, disoriented but aggressive.

But Stella is just standing there, frozen, like she’s not even real.

I brave a small wave, just a quick back and forth motion in front of her with my hand.

She still doesn’t move.

Holding my breath, I step out of the office, and make my way back toward the kitchen.

Every survival instinct in me screams that I should get out of this house and get back in that police car.  But the need to know what happened to my only living family pushes my hand into my back pocket and pulls out the envelope I found on the warden’s desk.  The letter addressed to me.

It was postmarked eight weeks ago.

NOVATOR BIOTICS WOULD LIKE TO OFFER YOU THEIR CONDOLENCES IN THE LOSS OF STELLA VERREL.  HER LOSS WAS A RESULT OF UNSEEN COMPLICATIONS OF HER TORBANE HEART UPGRADE.  ENCLOSED IS A COPY OF HER WILL.

There isn’t even a signature on the page.  Just one other page behind that states that I am to inherit everything.  It’s an old document.  Aunt Stella and Uncle Rich had it written up before I was convicted.

I knew Stella had been on a waiting list for years, hoping for a new heart to replace the one that had been failing her.  I didn’t know anything about an “upgrade” or TorBane but it sounds like she’d turned into a killer robot freak because of it.

A loud slapping sound just about makes me piss myself and the pages fall from my hands as I crouch behind a chair.  But I see that it was just a book, fallen off a shelf.  There is a pile of books slouching.  I dart over to them before any more of them call fall and possibly wake Stella.  If she’s really sleeping.  I have no idea what is going on with her.

Not waiting any longer, I dart up the stairs toward their bedroom.

My nerves are strung out, my hands are shaking, and I’m fighting back emotions I haven’t allowed myself to feel for seven years.  But I have to get out of here, and I have to prepare.

Rich was a bit smaller than myself, but his clothes will be better than the gray ones marked CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION.  I rifle through his closet, pulling on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.  As I’m digging through the back of his closet, hoping he’ll have a pair of boots that will fit me, my fingers brush something hard on a low shelf.

I pull out the rifle, careful to keep my finger off the trigger since the safety is off.  I check it and find it loaded.  The thing is ancient, but if Rich had it hidden and loaded with the safety disengaged, I have to wonder if he planned on using it on his wife.

If only she hadn’t choked the life out of him first.

I find a pair of boots that are tight but will do for now.  I also dig up a backpack and store one of my handguns in an easily accessible pocket.  Grabbing a few more items of clothing, I silently make my way back downstairs with the shotgun in hand.

No sign that Stella’s moved, I head back for the kitchen.  I don’t bother opening the fridge.  Anything in it will be long spoiled.  Instead I head for the pantry.

I load up on canned goods, anything that looks non-perishable.  I also shove in as many water bottles as I can.  All the while I’m stuffing my face with crackers, my stomach growling ravenously.  The backpack is heavy and solid feeling when I pick it back up.

When I flip the light switch in the garage, the lights flicker.  I jangle the keys in my hand for a second, debating.

There’s a flashy sports car and an SUV parked inside.

Speed would be nice, considering what I’ve just seen in the city, but I decide something a little more solid and dependable is what I need.

Opening the garage door makes me flinch.  It pops and groans as it lifts.  I don’t wait to see if it has woken Stella as I toss my pack into the passenger seat and start it up.  I back out of the garage and pull onto the suburban street.

40°6’30.28”N  71°32’24.79”W

Darkness falls, making the world outside feel all the more ominous.  I keep my headlights off, just to be safe as I drive down the highway.  I haven’t the faintest idea where I’m going or what I’m going to do.  I just know that I’ve got to get away from people.

Getting away from people means getting out of the city.

I flip the radio on.

The auto search scans through channels.  It finds some station playing oldies, but after listening for twenty minutes or so, I never hear a DJ come on the air.  It must be a recording.  I push the seek button again and listen to silence for a few moments.

“—recorded broadcast,” a voice blares through the speakers.  It’s scratchy and threatens to cut out.  “The outbreak has spread through all fifty US states.  Reports in Mexico, Canada, and many European countries—”  The radio starts to cut out.  “—ator Biotics is currently under investigation.  However, most employees have fallen to the infection.  It is being reported the war efforts in the southern United States have ceased, unresolved.  No reports on the war in Asia or Europe.”

The broadcast ends with the time and date the message was recorded.  Twenty-two days ago.

My guess is that there isn’t anyone left to update the broadcast.

I flip the radio off and stare at the dark road ahead of me.

It’s been years since I’ve driven in the area so I have to go off of my sense of direction and a mental map of the state to try and avoid the more densely populated areas.  But when you live out this direction you can’t avoid city.  When I see signs for the next town, I press hard on the gas, watching the speedometer creep up past the one hundred mile per hour marker.

There are cars abandoned on the sides of the freeway.  They’re mangled and crunched, just like the police car I left back at Aunt Stella’s.  Apparently I’m not the only one they’re attacking.

I keep an eye out for any movement.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I see anyone else out driving, or see anyone who looks like they might still be human.  I guess I’ll deal with that when the time arises.  But for now I’m just going to get out of the metro area as quickly as possible.

I drive for another two hours when a loud beeping sound from the car makes me jump violently.  I look down at the dash to see a red light telling me to refuel.  The needle on the gas gage is overlapping the empty line.

Pounding a fist on the steering wheel, I curse under my breath.  I’ve still got about two hours before I’m out of this crowded part of the country and into the beginnings of the cover of the mid-west.

I have no choice but to look for whatever exit has gas signs.  I keep my headlights off and I can barely see the road as I pull off the ramp and come to a stop at the intersection.

There are cars on the road everywhere, abandoned.  I look both ways, seeing only empty roads.  Spotting a gas station to the right, I turn the wheel.

I roll up to the station slowly.  Many of the street lights have been taken out along the road, but there are two still on in the overhead cover.  I debate for a second after parking, but end up pulling out one of the handguns and taking the two remaining lights out.  The moon is barely half full, but it provides just enough light to see by.

I grab Uncle Rich’s wallet from my pack and pull out his shiny silver card.  Praying the pump is still working, even with no one to attend it, I slide the card in and out.  Both to my relief and panic it beeps loudly and asks me to select a fuel type.

While the gas fills the tank, I take both the ancient rifle and a handgun to scope out the inside of the gas station.  Keeping out of full view of the windows, I peer around the corner and inside the building.

I can’t see anyone inside and there isn’t any movement.  Holding my breath, and keeping my eye on the sight of the rifle, I approach.  A bell jingles softly as I push the door open.  There are goods strewn across the floor, bags and crumbs crunching under my boots.  My eyes scan the walls, not having to travel far in the small space.

The building is empty.

I feel only a little guilty when I start gathering food up into a box.  I set it on the counter and walk around to check the till.  Considering the current state of the world, I doubt I’m going to need cash money for a very long time, but it couldn’t hurt to have it.

My feet stop just short of stepping on the body.

There is a man lying on the floor.  Through the dark I can’t really see many details, but I can tell he’s dead and not sleeping like Aunt Stella.  I’m pretty sure the dark halo around his head is blood.  He’s got a shotgun lying next to him.

Careful not to step in the blood and leave tracks that I was here, I cross to the register.  It takes me a moment to figure out how to open the cash drawer but it finally pops open.

I wasn’t the first to find the body.  The drawer has already been cleaned out.

I shake my head as I turn back to the dead man and relieve him of his firearm.  I find a box of ammunition under the counter.  When the world starts to go to hell, you always chose a weapon over money.

The tank is filled when I get back outside.  I hook the nozzle back in its place and set my new box of food supplies in the back of the SUV.  I’m about to hop back in when I notice the building across the street.

It’s a sporting goods store.

I’m torn as I look back toward the SUV and then back to the store again.  In the end I can’t resist and switch Uncle Rich’s shot gun for the newer one.  I check the ammunition and then silently cross the street.

The glass front door has been busted in and that’s nearly enough to send me unharmed back to my vehicle.  But like the man that makes too many mistakes that I am, I step through the broken glass inside.

It’s pitch black when I get more than fifteen feet from the front doors.  There are no windows in the building.  One of those warehouse types.  I head to the cash registers, and as I suspected I would, find two flashlights under the counter.

I switch one on, holding it level with my shotgun.

My blood drops to my feet.

There is an entire row of those things standing just feet behind the line of checkout stands.  Twelve of them.  They’re just standing there, their eyes open and empty.  Just like Stella.  They’re looking right at me, but I can tell they’re not seeing me.

I have to remind myself to breathe.  Breathe quietly.

I’m about to leave when I see the section where they have all the firearms.  It’s only about ten yards away.

My eyes never leaving the bodies before me, I take one cautious step to the right.  None of them move.  I take another two.  Still nothing seems to notice me.  Keeping the shotgun pointed in their direction, I slowly back towards the firearms section.

I wish I had more time to actually look at the labels and make sure I’m getting the right ammunition, but I don’t dare waste any time.  I grab a shopping bag from behind the counter and start grabbing anything that looks remotely correct.

Daring to dash another twenty yards away, I grab one of the largest hiking packs I can find.  After finding the key, I unlock the display case and grab two bigger handguns.  I slip the ammunition inside the pack after them.  Looking back toward the sleepers, I move silently toward the hunting knives.

I’ve packed up four of them when I hear the slightest sound.  Like clothing brushing against something.  My beam of light and the shotgun in my hand flashes back to the sleepers and I curse under my breath again.

There are only eleven bodies.

I click the flashlight off and I swing my new pack on, heavy but not as loaded as I’d like it to be.  I silently start backing toward the front door.

There’s that sound again and it takes everything I have to not flip the flashlight back on.  I’m only fifteen yards from the entrance.

My feet move quicker.  I’m walking backwards, my back to the door, my shotgun leveled before my eyes.  I feel totally blind.

The back of my heel catches something, and my finger accidently pulls the trigger.  The blast nearly deafens me in the silent building and it feels like all of my internal organs disappear.

I hear them all wake to life and there’s the sound of shuffling feet.  I make a full sprint for the door.

I just clear the glass, a jagged edge catching my left arm, ripping my skin open.  I stumble over the pavement of the parking lot, struggling to keep hold on the shotgun.  I hear crashing sounds as bodies slam into the metal framework of the doorway.  They’re all trying to get through it at once.

The SUV seems ten times farther away that it is as I steady my sprint.  I hear metal hit the pavement behind me and dare a single glance back.

Two of them have fallen through the door and are climbing to their feet.  Their metal eyes are locked on me.

I push faster.  My pack bounces up and down, one of the guns inside slapping against my spine painfully.  I hear more sets of feet hitting the road as I reach the SUV and yank the door open.  I shove the pack into the back seat and fumble for the keys.

The keys.  I can’t find them.

In one heart-sickening second, I look out the door and see they’re lying about ten feet from the car.  That first zombie robot is about twenty.

I fling the door open and start firing.  I see tiny holes appear in the first man’s shirt and he stumbles when I spray him with bullets.  I fire at the woman right behind him and knock her on her back.

My fingers close around the keys and I fire another shot at the first man who is recovering and fall backwards into the SUV.  I feel like my heart is going to rocket right out of my chest as I yank the door closed behind me just as he slams into the door.  His eyes gleam while I desperately try to get the keys into the ignition.

Glass sprays my face as the window shatters.  I slam the butt of the shotgun into his nose, sending him sprawling backwards into two of the others.  I yank the gearshift down into drive and stomp on the gas pedal.  The front driver’s side wheel runs over a body.

I’ve just turned left back onto the road when I hear something collide with the car.  The next second there’s something banging on the roof.

One of them is on top of me.

I slam on the breaks and hear the thing shift forward.  White blond hair flips onto the front windshield and I stomp on the gas once again.  The thing still hangs on.

I jerk the wheel to the right and then once again to the left.  More pounding on the roof.  The next second later, the window to the front passenger side explodes and a pale skinned hand is groping through the dark for my throat.

Stomping on the break, I jerk the wheel hard to the left.  The thing sails off my roof.

I’m back on the on ramp not five seconds later.

40°16’16.11”N  77°5’27.83”W

I drive for another six hours before my eyes refuse to stay open.  By now I’ve gotten to some fairly rural areas and I haven’t seen another moving being in at least three hours.  I find an exit that looks safe enough and pull off.  I’m so tired that I don’t even realize I won’t have enough gas to make it up the mountain pass I’m about to cross until I’ve gone past the last station.  I’ll have to back track into town for gas when I wake up.  But for now this small county road looks safe enough to rest on.

I pull a ways off the road into the brush.  I grab my pack, sling it over my shoulder, then walk fifty yards from the busted up SUV.  The vehicle feels like a beacon, announcing my location for anyone or anything that might come looking.  It feels safer to sleep with some distance between us.

The sky is just starting to lighten.  As much as I don’t dare sleep, I’m exhausted.  I’d starved nearly to death for weeks and then had the most intense day I could conceive.  My body is shutting down.

I rest my head on my pack, lying in the dirt, and close my eyes.

35°46’23.72”N  81°29’8.14”W

When I wake the sun is high.  I can feel it burning my skin.  It’s been a long time since I’ve spent any amount of time outside.  I sit up gingerly and look at my arms.  They’re already a healthy shade of pink.

I pick my pack up and start back toward the SUV.  I’m trying to mentally calculate how far back it is to the town to get fuel.  Shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to get there.

I realize I probably should have fueled up when it was still dark.  At least the one’s I had run into had been sleeping most of the time.  If there are any human tendencies left in them, they may still be more active during the daylight.

There is someone lying face down in the dirt right next to the driver’s side door.  I pull out my new handgun and lock it in on the man.  I debate with myself for just a moment.

I can shoot him right now.

I can simply walk away.

Or I can confront and investigate.

“Hey,” I say, my voice just loud enough for him to be able to hear me.  “You need to get out of here.  That vehicle belongs to me.”

The man doesn’t move.

“Something wrong with you?” I say.  I take two steps closer.  “Hey, can you hear me?”

He still doesn’t stir.

I cross the remaining space between us and kick his foot.  He lies still as a fallen tree.

I’m not stupid enough to touch him with my bare hands, so I use my foot and roll him over.

The man must have been living in the wild the last few weeks.  His skin is dirty, his hair tangled and filled with broken bits of leaves and twigs.  And he looks half-starved.  His cheekbones stick out in a gaunt way.  His eyes are sunken.

He is definitely dead.

He’d been looking for food, I’m sure of it.  I wonder why he didn’t just go inside the SUV.  He would have found my box in the back of it if he’d just gone inside and looked.  He must have collapsed before he got to that point.

I take a small stick, and with it, peel his eyelids open.  The whites are still white, his irises brown.  Still human.  He hadn’t been infected before he died.

I still don’t want to touch him so I use my boots to push him out of the way of the SUV.  I notice a pack ten yards from where he is lying.  He must have dropped it.

Robbing the dead isn’t something I’d normally be okay with, but nothing about these past few days has been normal.

The zipper on the pack sticks and it takes me a few good tugs to get it to open.  Inside I find a length of rope, a knife, and a thick book.  I’m about to leave the book with the tattered pack when I realize what it is.

An atlas.

I take everything he had and put it in the SUV.  I say a silent prayer for the man I could have helped if I had just found him a bit sooner, and pull back onto the road.

Re-entering the freeway, I start back toward the town.

I glance down at the gas gage.  I’m a bit over a quarter of a tank, but I don’t know how far this mountain range is going to stretch, or if I can count on there being any gas stations on it.

When I look back up I slam on the breaks.

There are at least five of those things walking around on the road about three-quarters of a mile down from where I am.  As I watch them a moment longer, I see two more walking up the on-ramp.

They don’t seem to know what they’re doing.  They look confused almost.  Like they know they’re supposed to be going somewhere or doing something, but they can’t think clearly to figure out what it is.  Their movements are jerky, unorganized.  But they’re still powerful looking.

Off in the distance I can see more of them stirring.

I turn the SUV around and start back toward the mountain pass.

I’m not going to make it very far up that mountain before I run out of gas.  But there’s no way I’m going to survive going back into that town for fuel.

35°33’0.37”N  80°28’27.71”W

Maybe I should have taken Uncle Rich’s sports car.  It probably would have gotten better gas and gotten me further up the mountain.  But then again, it probably wouldn’t have survived the attack by the zombie robots.

I drive up the mountain for just over an hour before the gas light comes on and the car beeps at me.  Thirty minutes later it shuts off and slowly rolls to a stop.  I park it in the middle of the road and just sit there for a minute.

One week ago I thought I knew exactly how I was going to spend the rest of my life: looking at the gray walls of a prison cell.  Figuring out how to survive the apocalypse wasn’t something I’d planned for.

Yet here I was, getting the second chance to fight for my life at the end of the world.

35°45’51.63”N  83°5’22.58”W

It takes me a while to pick a place but I need some kind of destination or I’m just going to wander aimless and get myself killed.  I stare at the map and try to recall old geography lessons from high school.

Where is going to be secluded?  What place is going to have the most natural resources?  Where do I stand a chance of not freezing to death when winter comes?

Unfortunately the last two considerations war with each other.

I finally pick a green place on the map and started plotting my route.

I’ll travel parallel to the main highways that would lead to it, but stay away from the busy freeways that would cut too close to the cities, and therefore the zombiebots.

Packing takes careful consideration.  I can’t fit everything in my pack.  The thing would weigh well over one hundred fifty pounds.  And I have a long way to walk.

In the end I pack enough food to last me a week and enough water to last me five days.  I’ll have to rely on the land after that, or dare raiding a house or whatever place I might find.  I pack two handguns and the better shotgun, and as much of the ammunition I can carry.  And then I tuck in the atlas.

Patting the hood of the SUV once, I start down the road.

35°45’51.63”N  83°5’22.58”W

I walk.

And I walk.

And I hide and sleep during the day.

Then I keep walking when it’s dark.

I walk for a very long time.

32°30’1.78”N  91°20’25.19”W

I have too much time to think.

But I can’t make sense of what’s happened to our world.

Whatever this company is, NovaTor Biotics, I can only assume they did something that caused all of this.  Aunt Stella was getting a new heart or something.  An upgrade.  The letter said something about TorBane.  And then she turned into one of those things.  It must have spread, taken over her body.

And they’re aggressive.  But not so much like they’re trying to kill me.  More like they’re trying to just get a hold of me.

That must be how it spreads.

It must be deadly effective if it spread this fast.

And something about the city must draw them.  There are thousands of them there.

But none of them out here on the back roads.

35°7’11.67”N  95°4’32.46”W

There’s mud caked on my boots, two inches thick on the tops of my toe.  My clothes are soaked through but I feel like I’m burning on the inside.  And the water just keeps coming down.

I survived the mountain.  I’ve started across the level ground.  I’ve kept out of sight of the zombiebots for weeks now.

And it’s the rain that threatens to kill me.

You never think you’ll forget what it feels like to be dry.  But after being in the rain for four days straight, I have forgotten.

My feet falter.  I stumble and let myself fall to my hands and knees on the pavement.  My insides feel stiff and hot.  My arms shake, not wanting to support my weight any longer.  Suddenly my stomach is touching the ground and my left cheek hurts from the rough surface of the road.

I don’t think I can get up.  But I’m afraid I may drown if I don’t.

But I don’t think I can get up.

37°9’5.61”N  97°53’17.46”W

I hear something in the distance.  Thunder?  A lawn mower?  A helicopter?  A plane?

I open my eyes just slightly, blinking drops of rain from my eyelashes.  I push myself up from the ground just a bit.  As I turn my head, I feel a stream of water run from my ear.  I really did nearly drown.  It was also the reason I couldn’t really hear.

Shifting my weight back, I now know the sound is a car.  Or more like a truck.  It sounds big.  And it is coming my way.

My insides don’t feel so hot and I don’t ache as badly.  My fever must have broken.  But my body still protests as I climb to my feet and look down the road.  I then realize that it has finally stopped raining.

There is a truck driving toward me, about half a mile away.

I consider darting back off the road, but there is no way they wouldn’t have seen me and there is nothing to hide behind out here in flat-country USA.  So I move to the side of the road, watching as they drive toward me.

The truck slows as it approaches.  Like the SUV I had to leave behind, most of its windows are busted out.  Its sides are dented and beaten.  I can actually see the form of a handprint in the driver’s side door.

The vehicle has barely stopped moving when two men jump out.  They’ve got shotguns leveled on my chest.  There’s a wild look in their eyes.  One of them has a long scar running down the left side of his face.  It cuts across his eye.  The eye doesn’t look quite right, like it was damaged pretty bad.  The other walks with a serious limp.

“Just hand over the pack and we’ll let you live,” Scarface says.  He takes quick, jerky steps toward me.  Gimpy takes one step forward.  He’s hurt pretty bad is my guess.

“How do you know I’ve got anything you want?” I say, raising my hands at my sides.  I wouldn’t have done that if not for the handgun I can feel weighing my left side pocket down.

Scarface laughs in a crazy way that matches his eyes.  “I ain’t playing games with you.  Just hand it over and we’ll let you walk away.”

“I don’t think so,” I say.  I take a step toward him.

“Hold it right there!” Scarface shouts.  “Don’t take another step.  You just toss that pack over.”

Never losing his eyes, I take another step forward, moving to his left, bad side, just a bit.

“I said stop movin’!” he yells, spit flying from his mouth.

“You hungry?” I ask as I take another step toward them.  We’re only five yards apart now.

“Course we’re hungry,” he growls.  “There’s no food left anywhere.  Not after the territory wars.”

I’ve never heard anything about the territory wars but I can guess what it means.  Guys like this will fight over anything.

“I can spare one can of beans but I can’t let you take anything else,” I say, taking another step.

He does that crazy laugh again, but I see something flash across his eyes.

I’m close enough to confirm what I speculated.

His safety isn’t pulled back.  The gun isn’t loaded.

My eyes flick over to Gimpy.  His is though.

“I’m not giving you my pack,” I say, keeping my voice calm.  I come to a stop.  “Like I said, I’ll give you one can.”

“I don’t think so,” Scarface’s eyes harden.  “Now hand it over or I’ll make a crater in your chest.”

“No deal,” I say.

And I don’t wait for him to react.  I drop my shoulder and run at him full speed.  I knock him flat on his back, swinging my elbow up as he goes down to connect with his jaw.

I turn toward Gimpy and duck as he pulls the trigger.  The shot grazes my left arm, splitting the skin open but not causing major damage.  I ram into him and knock him to the ground as well.  I grab his shotgun before either of them can recover and fling it far off the road.

Leveling my handgun on Scarface since he seems to be the one in charge, I tug my other gun from the side pocket of the pack.  Gimpy gets a good view of the inside of the barrel next.

“I’m going to let you get up, get back in your truck, and drive back the way you came,” I say, my voice quiet.  My insides are quivering from fatigue.  Whatever sickness that has been burning me from the inside isn’t ready to let me go just yet.

They look at each other, uncertain of what to do.

“I’m going to say this again,” I growl.  “Get up, get back in the truck, and go back the way you came.”

They share another look, then slowly start to get to their feet.  They raise their hands, and both take a step away from me.

And then their eyes flicker toward each other once more.  With a loud yell, they both rush at me.

I fire two shots and one takes Gimpy to the ground.  Scarface knocks me to the road.

With the pack on my back it’s difficult to maneuver.  Scarface locks a hand around my throat and lands a blow with his right fist to my cheekbone.

I jerk a knee up between his legs and he hunches over at the same time I connect my forehead with the bridge of his nose.  I flip over, pinning him down and landing one blow to his eye to return the favor.

Grabbing my fallen handgun from the pavement, I place the barrel right between his eyes.

“This one really is loaded,” I say, trying to steady my breathing.  “And I’ll shoot you if you try something like that again.  So you’re going to get your bleeding friend over there and leave.  Now.”

I can’t tell if the guy looks afraid or mad.  His eyes are five different kinds of crazy.  But he gives the smallest of nods.

Slowly, I shift off of him and we both get to our feet.  He walks over to Gimpy, who’s cradling a bleeding shoulder.  Scarface looks back at me once again.  I nod, and they slowly make their way back to the truck.

Scarface gets Gimpy into the passenger seat and walks around to the other side.  He opens the door and looks back toward me.

“I ever see you again, you’re a dead man,” he says with venom in his voice.

“Trust me, I don’t plan on ever seeing you again,” I reply, giving a flicking motion with the gun in my right hand, indicating that it’s time for him to leave.

He climbs in the truck and flips around.  A minute later I can’t see him anymore.

Calming my shaking breathing, I turn and start back down the road.

37°9’5.61”N  97°53’17.46”W

Everywhere seems the same.  Cars are abandoned, beaten and trashed.  Cities are to be avoided.  People are best to be avoided too if possible.

I keep walking.

I check the map.

I move toward the green area.

37°44’17.3”N  107°23’36.92”W

There is something comfortable about the trees that surround me.  They feel protective.  At first I didn’t like feeling blinded by them, but now they feel almost as if they’re guarding me.

I’m not sure about much these days, but I’m pretty sure none of those robotic freaks are going to find me out here.

Setting my pack down on the mossy ground, I pull out my sharpest knife.  I look at my reflection as I lean over the water.  My hair hangs down well over my ears and my beard barely brushes my chest.

I don’t even recognize the man I’m seeing.

That isn’t the man that accidently got all those people killed.  That isn’t the man who was sentenced to finish out the rest of his days behind bars.  It isn’t the man who was so angry and violent behind bars that he got stuffed in the SHU to live out his life in isolation.

But that man is a man who has survived.  That is a man that is still alive and still human.  That is a man who has gotten the chance to rise out of the ashes to be reborn again.

I hack off as much of the hair on my head as I can.  I look wild and beast-like.  After soaking my head in the water, I take my blade to my scalp and carefully shave away every bit of hair.  My skin doesn’t come out undamaged but I don’t look like a caveman anymore.

The beard is next.

It’s a relief to be rid of the excess hair.  It itches when it gets hot and frequently makes it difficult to eat.

There’s shouting behind me, maybe one hundred yards away.  My pulse instantly races.  I strap the knife to my belt and pull out my shotgun.  The pack is on my back and I’m moving through the woods a few seconds later.

It’s been weeks since I’ve seen anyone, bot or human.  I have no problem with solitude, but I am curious.  My instincts tell me I’m not going to run into any of those things out here so it must be other people.

They’ve taken care to hide themselves well.  It took me at least two weeks just to hike into these mountains.  I want to see who’s been as persistent as myself.

I can’t help every little noise my boots make as I close the distance between us, but I’m as quiet as possible.  I can hear voices talking as I get closer.  They seem relaxed.  Comfortable.  I wonder if I mistook laughter as shouting earlier.  As I get closer I can hear them talking about what I assume is some kind of garden.

The idea interests me.  A garden is something I would have never thought about.

I slip behind a tree and just listen.

“Tye and Hudson brought in the fencing this morning,” a younger-sounding voice says.  “They said they’re settling down out there.  They’re all going to sleep or something.  Just standing around.”

“I don’t understand,” an older, gruffer voice says.  “Are they dying out?”

The first voice pauses for a second as if they’re shaking their head.  “I don’t think so.  It’s like they’re going into hibernation.  For how long, who knows?”

“I brought food,” a younger female voice suddenly says.  “I shot it.”

“Well look at that,” the older one says.  “That is a fine fox.  He will be quite tasty for dinner tonight.  Well done.”

I dare a glance around the tree.  The only one I can see is a young girl.  She’s maybe fourteen, but I’d guess she’s even younger.  Probably thirteen.  She’s got her hair pulled back tight and she’s holding a hunting rifle.  It’s a bizarre sight to see one so young holding such a deadly weapon.

But the strangest thing about her is the look on her face.  Her eyes are alert, attentive.  But her expression is totally devoid.  Like she isn’t feeling anything behind the mask.  A kid that young shouldn’t look that hardened.  What had she been through to get that expression?

“May I go back out?  I’m pretty sure I saw a buck out there.  I can get it,” she says.

There’s another hesitance, like the two men are looking at each other.

“I suppose,” the older man says.  “Just be careful out there.”

The girl looks at what I assume is his face for a few moments and I can almost read the thoughts rolling behind her eyes.  This isn’t a girl who considers being careful very often.

She turns and walks away.

Without the girl to focus on, I observe the rest of the surroundings.  There are tents cropped together, seven of them.  I see a fire smoldering off in the distance.  I still can’t see the men who are standing behind one of the tents.

“We’ll get started on the fence in the morning,” the older of the two says and walks away.  I see his back as he retreats.  He looks to be a good ten years older than myself, at least.  His hair is longer, streaked with gray.

Taking one more look around my surroundings to be sure I’m not going to be seen, I retreat back into the woods.

37°44’17.3”N 107°23’36.92”W

I watch these people for two days.  And I can’t help but be fascinated by them.

They travel to a plot of land every morning.  It’s tilled, roughly, but obviously being prepped for planting.  They slowly work on putting up the fence.  It will take time.  It’s a big plot of land they’re working on.

They eat together at night.  They send out a scout every few hours, which I am careful to avoid.  And some of them train.  Train to fight.  Train to shoot.  Train to survive.

In all there are fifteen of them.

And they seem to live together in perfect harmony.

In this chaotic, unsafe world, these people seem to have found peace.

37°44’17.3”N  107°23’36.92”W

Something bumps my chest and I try brushing it away, wanting to just go back to sleep.  But whatever bumped me doesn’t go away when I swat at it and my hand hits something narrow, solid, and cold.

My eyes flash open and I’m staring in to the blue-gray eyes of that bizarre girl.

She’s got the barrel of that hunting rifle pressed to my chest.

“Are you spying on us?” she says.  Her voice is perfectly even and flat.

I slowly put up my hands to show that I am unarmed.  “Yes.”

She doesn’t say anything for a second and I can tell she’s debating what to do with me.  She is looking at my eyes closely.

“Are you going to hurt anyone?” she asks.  She presses the barrel against my chest a little harder.

“No,” I reply.  My heart is hammering in my chest now and I can’t take my eyes from the finger she rests on the trigger.

She considers for another moment.

“I’ll let you leave if you want.  You won’t ever come back.  Or you can come talk.”

I take a moment to answer.  I’d settled that I was just going to be alone for the rest of my existence and survive.  But this was also my green place on the map.  I’d walked months to reach it.

And there was just something that felt…right about these people, this very place.

“I’ll come talk,” I finally answer.

She pulls the barrel of the rifle away and points back toward the camp.  As I start walking towards it, I can sense that she’s got the rifle leveled on my back.

We don’t say a word as we make our way through the trees.  I see tents through the woods and adrenaline washes through my system.

People are unpredictable.  And I don’t like being unsure about situations.

When I hesitate at the edge of the tents, the girl shoves the barrel against my back and pushes me through into the middle of their camp.

Everyone is seated next to the kitchen area where there is a fire burning bright and hot.  They all look up at me in surprise and two younger men produce handguns that are instantly pointed in my direction.

“What are you doing here?” one of the demands.  He takes a quick step towards me.

“I…” I hesitate, knowing I have to be careful in what I say.  “I was just trying to get away.  I picked a rural spot on a map and headed towards it.  I didn’t expect to find other people in it.”

“He was sleeping in the woods about thirty yards away,” the girl behind me says.  “He said he was spying on us.”

“Is that true?” the old man with the gray eyes asks through a thick beard.

I pause, evaluating those before me for a moment.  I nod.

“And?” he says, never breaking eye contact.

“And,” I say, dragging out the moment as I make a final decision.  One I’ve been wrestling with the last two days.  “And I’d like to join you, if you’ll have me.”

A small smile spreads on the man’s face.  He climbs to his feet and starts toward me.  “And what can you offer the people here?”

I keep his eye as he approaches.  “I won’t be trouble.  I can hunt.  I can scout.  And I have a lot…” I hesitate, again raising my hands to show I’m not armed at the moment.  “And I have a lot of ammunition with me.  You’re more than welcome to it.”

The man chuckles.  One of the young men behind him walks towards us.  He’s lean and fit.  The way his hair is cropped short screams military.

The older man smiles to my surprise and extends his hand.  I cross the distance between us and I carefully take it.

“Congratulations on surviving the Evolution and the Bane,” he says, slapping a heavy hand on my shoulder.  It takes me a moment to realize the Bane must be the zombiebots.  “We’ve got to band together.  You’re welcome here if you mean you won’t be trouble.”

“I promise,” I say, feeling a weight on my chest lighten.  Not many people get a true fresh start.  The chance to start anew with people who knew nothing about my past or what I’d done.  But here it was.

“Then I’m Gabriel,” he says with a smile again.

“I’m Avian,” the soldier says, extending his hand.  I shake it.  “That’s my cousin Tye,” he points to the man who still has a handgun leveled at me.

“This is Eve,” Gabriel says, pointing to the girl behind me.  I turn to look at her.  She doesn’t try to shake my hand, just looks at me like she’s evaluating every little move I make.  I just nod to her.

“Bill,” I say, turning back to Avian and Gabriel and the rest of the group.  “My name is Bill.”

“Well, Bill,” Gabriel says, placing a hand on my shoulder again.  He takes a step back toward the group where they are eating breakfast.  I walk forward with him.  “Welcome to Eden.”

THE EVE

Book Three

Once upon a time there was an intelligent, beautiful young woman.  Her hair was blond, her eyes a cross between gray and blue.  She had sharp features and a small but strong frame.  But her intelligence outweighed all else.  She excelled in the field of science.  She studied hard in school and then she secured the job she had always dreamed of.

She was helping to save the world.  They were engineering a technology that was going to save and improve so many lives.  She believed in what she was doing.

There was a boy, outside of work.  Whether it was like, lust, or love, she wasn’t entirely sure.  Sometimes he was there, most of the time he wasn’t.  Then she found out she was pregnant with twins.

This did not hinder her work.  For a while.  She told no one at first, kept it a secret so as not to risk losing her job.  But eventually her stomach grew disproportional to the rest of her body.  Everyone found out.  And while she was scolded and looked down upon by some people, she kept her job.  She kept working towards what she believed in.  She had worked so hard to see this dream actualized.

There were complications with the pregnancy.  Her blood pressure was too high, she was swelling.  Things were happening too early.  She shouldn’t have kept the babies; that was what she was told.  But those babies were all she had in this world.  She had no siblings of her own, her parents were long gone, and the father was out of the picture, this time for good.

So she kept those babies, let them grow inside her.

Their arrival was early and brutal.  There was blood, there were tiny pink and blue slimy bodies.

The mother took her last gasping breath as she saw her two daughters for the first and only time.

She was laid to rest not far from the place she had dedicated her life to and the babies were watched over at all hours.

One baby, though small, seemed healthy.

The other, it seemed, would not live past her first week.

Her lungs couldn’t function.  They were underdeveloped and weak.  Her heart couldn’t pump fast enough to keep up with the demands of the world outside the womb.  Each and every day she grew weaker.

But a Man of Science, one the child’s mother had worked with, had been watching her, knowing he had to do something to help.  He had an answer but it had yet to be approved, to be cleared for official testing.

He couldn’t just let the tiny child die though.

So in the dead of the night, when the babies’ nurse was distracted, he slipped into the nursery and administered an injection.

Just a tiny dosage.  Barely enough to be measurable.

The child was too weak to even cry at the sharp prick.  A small twitch of the leg and that was all.

The Man of Science pressed a kiss to the child’s forehead and left the room.  He didn’t sleep that night.

By morning, the infant’s vitals were improving.  It was just fractionally, but she should not have been getting better.  The nurses and doctors couldn’t explain it, but the Man of Science smiled from the back of the room.

The twin’s mother had helped him develop a way to save her child.

The following night he gave her another injection.  And he continued them for the next two days.  Four injections total.

Each and every day the child continued to improve.

She was going to live.

Others suspected what he had done but they knew better than to question.  Questions would make the actions real and known, and for now what was done had to be kept secret.

He named each of the girls Eve.  The child who had been born healthy would be known as Eve One, the other that he had saved was Eve Two.  They were, after all, the first of their kind.

Two, who had been given injections, was studied, watched, and revered.  And the technology that had saved her continued to creep towards approval.

The children grew, One more quickly than Two.  They ate, they slept, they lived.

But there were complications that later manifested in One, the child that had been born healthy.

She wouldn’t talk.  She wouldn’t keep eye contact.  She never smiled and she did not like to be touched.

The Man of Science’s son, a Man of Medicine, confirmed Eve One was autistic.

Questions started circulating.  The technology had fixed Two.  Could it help One as well?

Injections were given, once again behind closed doors and in hushed words.  But she was given treatment.

It took a year to see the difference.  But it was working, slowly.  One improved.  She learned to talk, learned to interact.  She formed an inseparable bond with the Man of Medicine’s son.  She still trusted few people, but always the Boy.

The Eve’s continued to grow and progress and to amaze and astonish.  They were studied.  And the technology continued to develop.  Official testing was announced.

But then the government blackmailed the Man of Science and his course of direction was shifted.

The girls’ emotions and pain were stripped away.

They were given different kinds of tests.

Years went by and finally they were passed off to be kept and preserved when the blackmail money ran dry.

For two more years they simply existed, emotionless.  They were given to a Keeper to be maintained.

The development of the technology was finally continued.

It was stronger, better, quicker.  And required only a single dose.

The technology was finally ready for the public.

But not everyone agreed with what the Man of Science was doing.  Man was not supposed to be combined with machine.  Man was not to play God.

There was a plan laid under the Keepers nose.  A carefully plotted one that had been developing for over a year.  They infiltrated the company, gained trust, secrets, and information.   When the time was right, they took one of the girls.  She had trusted the traitor and went willingly outside.

The sun was so bright.  She had never seen it before.  The air was so fresh and cold.

She didn’t get to enjoy it for long though.  She was pushed into a vehicle and a needle was pressed into her neck.

Then there was nothing but blackness.

When she woke, there was a set of doors before her.  The world was fuzzy and too bright and there was something ringing in her ears that drowned everything else out.

The doors opened and people rushed outside to drag Eve Two back in.

When they reached the center of the building, shouts started rising into the air.  Other men of science came running out of rooms.

People were dying.  People who had been given the first dosage of the new, stronger technology.  The technology was shorting out, and as it did, it shorted out their very lives.

Eve Two had been tampered with.  The people who had taken her had put something in her head, something deadly to the technology.  And she was killing everyone around her who had just received it.

Everyone went crazy.  Eve Two was scared—one of the first emotions she had felt in years—and tried to hide, to escape.

And then her sister was there.  Eve One raged, holding her hands against her head as if trying to keep it from splitting open.  Maddened bellows poured from her mouth and her eyes were blood red from the damage being caused inside her body.  She did, after all, have only a slightly different version of the technology that was being shorted out.

The Boy, the one that caused hatred and rage inside of Two, but was the only friend of One, came into the chaos, and not being able to tell the difference between One and Two in such a disordered moment, tried to comfort the wrong girl.  Two tried to push him away as she attempted to hide.  And even though One’s emotions were locked away, the heightened moment brought out jealousy and rage.  She attempted to push Two away, but in the scuffle, nearly ripped the Boy’s windpipe from his throat.

Two got the blame because they looked exactly the same.

And as the chaos continued, alarms sounding, the Man of Medicine, father of the Boy, beat Two within an inch of her life.  She would have died if she’d been a normal human.

But the Man of Science understood what had happened.  He locked Two away when his son ordered her destruction.

Weeks later, the unspeakable happened.

His technology started evolving.  The first generation that had been upgraded with the new and better technology, the ones who had been cured six weeks earlier, started evolving.  They were losing their humanity and it quickly took over their bodies.  Soon it was spreading to everyone around them.

The company had just ended the world.

The Man of Science took precautions to save himself, hoping it wouldn’t be too late.

Once again there were alarms and chaos and people dying.

The Man of Science took Two by the hand and led her down the halls.  He told her not to say a word, to not reveal that she wasn’t really her sister.

Two realized then that everyone at the company thought the Man of Science had disposed of her weeks ago.

He took her to her former Keeper and even he could not tell the difference between her and her sister.

The Man of Science ordered the Keeper to make Two forget.  The Keeper questioned but did as he was told.

And then the girl didn’t know anything.  Didn’t recognize anyone.  Couldn’t understand what the panic and alarms were about.

The Man of Science took her to the back of the building and opened the door.  He was about to give her instructions when she was tackled to the ground.

The Man of Medicine had realized what had happened.  He knew One was hiding with his son.  He knew the truth when he saw Two with his father.  And still believing Two had nearly killed the Boy, he was filled with rage.

Once again, he nearly beat Two to death.

And even though Two couldn’t remember anything in the world, she had survival instincts.

Her strong hands wrapped around her attackers throat and soon he slipped into unconsciousness.

The Man of Science, with a shaking voice and hands, turned once again to the door and told Eve Two to run and to not stop.

Covered in her own blood and not knowing she should question, she ran into the desert mountains.

She didn’t stop until a pair of burning blue eyes met hers and asked her if she was okay.

The Man of Science found the sister, but having no time to save her from her horrible past, turned her out to the wild as well.

They would never know a normal life, but they would live, of that he was certain.  Because he had made those girls indestructible.

He soon sent his grandson away with the answers, the key to reversing what he had done in hopes that someday the Boy would understand how to use it.  In hopes that he would someday realize what the key to making it work was.  There hadn’t been time to complete the plans before he could no longer wait.

The Man of Science turned back to the building and waited for the end of the world to come.

But once upon a time, he found the girl who was the key to saving the world he ended and was given a second chance to right his wrongs.

ONE

The memories started floating to the surface as Dr. Evans recounted the truths of my past.  Like they were just under the water and I could see hints of them down there, but I couldn’t quite reach them.  Everything looked distorted and murky.

But there was the breath of the truth begging to fill my lungs.  If I closed my eyes, I swore I could almost picture my room at NovaTor.  I could almost imagine Dr. Evans’ and Dr. Beeson’s younger faces.  I could almost reach out and touch my sister.

I had a sister.  A sister I had no doubt was still alive.  She was out there somewhere.

I had family.  Blood family.

I recalled what I’d started to recover while at the Underground.  I had seen myself through a window.  West was reading to her, an arm draped over her shoulders.  He smiled as he looked over at her.  Her eyes lit up when she looked back.

And there was the conversation I’d had with her when we were transferred to Dr. Beeson’s care.  My sister liked West.  I had hated him back then.  It wasn’t a true hate, but it was a resentment.

Just before I’d taken off to the desert, West had commented on how the truth about my identity explained so much about us now.  And it did.  Even as children we had fought.  I hadn’t liked or trusted him and he would lose his patience with me quickly.

It had been my sister West had pinned after for those five years we had been separated.  It was her in fact that he had grown up with, cared for, plotted escape for.

Not me.

I heaved a deep sigh, feeling something loosen around my heart.

West and I had, in fact, had something.  Something fast and hot and consuming.  It was positive and negative at the same time.  But in the end, it would have been something that would have destroyed us both if I had chosen him.

And now I had little doubt West could move on.

Because West was West and I knew he would do everything in his power to find my sister.

And I would help him.

The sun rose on the horizon.  Almost as if he couldn’t stand to wait another moment, Dr. Evans crossed to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.  I looked down at his mechanical fingers, both repulsed and fascinated by them.  I closed my eyes for another moment, took a deep breath, and finally rose to my feet.

I looked over the masses.  They circled around me, all with their eyes firmly fixed on my form.  There were so many bodies I couldn’t see any ground beneath them.  Off in the distance, I could see the mountains that separated us from New Eden.

There were so many Bane here gathered around me, all called by the Underground’s beacon.  There were probably over a million of them here, but there were still billions out there.

Are you ready to save this planet, Eve Two?  Dr. Evans had asked me that impossible question.  I couldn’t answer it though until I understood who I was.  So he told me the truth.  All of it.

“How?” I asked, finally.

He opened up his old, tattered notebook to the last few pages.  The pages with the device Avian, West, and I had mistaken for an electromagnetic pulse.

“When you were abducted from NovaTor, they put what is essentially a kill switch in you.  A damn strong one,” he said, his voice hard and angry.  “You only had to get within fifty yards of the latest generation of TorBane and the signal you were emitting killed it off.  Completely destroyed.”

“Is that why I can control them?” I asked, my eyes turning out over the Bane that surrounded us.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “As soon as I realized what was going on I disabled it.  Or I thought I had.  Apparently the line wasn’t completely cut off.  You can still connect with TorBane.  You are still emitting a signal that they understand.  That’s why this,” he said, waving his hand around, “is possible.”

“Okay,” I said, shaking my head.  He was starting to get scientific and it was all about to go over my head completely.

“Do you not see?” he asked, the excitement growing in his voice.  “If we can turn that kill switch back on and amplify it…?”

“How is that any better than the Pulse though?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I looked at him.  “We can only reach so far with an amplifier.”

A wicked grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.  “You mustn’t be afraid to think a little bigger.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tucking the notebook under his mechanical arm, Dr. Evans crouched.  He drew a picture in the dirt with his finger.  It looked like a square with four skinny fingers extending from the sides.  Attached to those, he drew rectangular shapes.

“Am I supposed to know what those are?” I asked, my voice growing impatient.

“Satellites,” he said, looking up at me with a grin on his face.  “There are hundreds of them still up there floating above the Earth.  We send the signal up to those satellites, your kill-all signal, they bounce off each other, get amplified stronger than they were transmitted, and reflect the signal back to Earth.”

“Wiping out the Bane,” I breathed as I grasped his plan.

“Worldwide.”

There should have been unbearable relief or excitement that built up inside of me at his words.  He was claiming we could kill off the Bane, on all continents.  But too much had gone wrong in my life, the world seemed too far gone.

I was simply filled with doubt.

“And how do we send the signal from me to those satellites?” I asked.

He grabbed the notebook again, pulling the pages open.  He drummed his fingers on one of the drawings.  “The design is almost complete,” he said.  “I ran out of time before I could finish drawing it up, but the rest is up here,” he tapped the side of his head.  “We just have to build the transmitter.  And if Erik Beeson is still alive, it won’t take long.”

“There’s also a man named Royce,” I said, looking back in the direction of New Eden.  “He was in weapons development for the government before we ended the world.  He’ll be able to help you.  He and Dr. Beeson were the ones that designed the Pulse.”

Dr. Evans’ eyes grew darker.  “Not that I have any trust for any former employees of the government, but we have to work with what we’ve got these days.  We need to get back home so we can get to work.”

I looked out over the Bane.  “I don’t see how that is going to happen any time soon.”

“You just told me how you commanded hundreds of thousands of them to jump off a bridge into the ocean,” he said, placing his hands on my shoulders.  “You really cannot think of a way to take care of them?”

I furrowed my brow at him before glancing out at the masses again.  Water was their greatest weakness, the only one I had ever exploited.  There was certainly none of that out here.

I thought of ways I’d killed them off before, aside from bullets and the Pulse.

You mustn’t be afraid to think a little bigger.

“You will leave this place,” I called over the masses.  Very few of them would actually be able to hear me, if they even processed sound, but I knew they would understand my nonverbal commands.  “You may head any direction but west.  Seek out others like yourselves.  And then kill them.”

Every one of the Bane around me stood a bit straighter and I heard feet shuffle as their legs snapped together.  A deadly army who would heed my every command.

“You will never touch another human again,” I said, pushing my thoughts out to them.  I imagined the signal that poured from my body, feeding into every one of them.  “You may not even look at one.  But if they share your technology, you will destroy them.”

I stared out over the masses.  I noticed individuals as I observed them.  A boy my age with shaggy blond hair.  A naked older woman with wrinkly skin.  There were hundreds of children that were no longer children.  There were endless mechanical components mixed in with them, but still, the evidence that they’d once been human was there.  At one point, that older woman had been someone like Gabriel’s wife, Leah.  They’d been someone like Avian, or Tuck, or Lin.

Something pulled at the back of my heart.  I could end the existence of over a million former human’s right this very moment.  Had they been normal, flesh and blood, it would be genocide.

I hadn’t realized how long I’d stood there frozen until I felt a firm hand on my shoulder.  I looked up to Dr. Evans brown eyes.

How do you live with yourself?

“I don’t plan to much longer.”

I hadn’t realized I’d verbalized the question until he responded.

I wanted to hate this man for ending billions of lives.  But I couldn’t ignore the fact that if it wasn’t for him, I would have died nearly nineteen years ago.

“Go,” I breathed.

My army did not need any more command than that.

They broke into perfect formations.  Rows of tens of thousands formed.  Some marched north.  Many marched south.  Most headed east.

Their footsteps thundered with deafening volume as they walked in perfectly matched steps.  Massive clouds of dust rose into the air.

It took me a few minutes to realize Dr. Evans was no longer standing at my side.

“Dr. Evans!” I shouted, searching the masses around me.  It would take at least an hour for every one of the million Bane surrounding me to be able to move out, but they had all shifted, standing in formation.

Finally, I spotted his form ten yards from me.  He stood on the edge of a squad, eyes forward, awaiting his turn to march forward.

“Dr. Evans, you cannot go with them,” I said, my tone impatient as I forced my way toward him.  He started blinking as if to clear his head as I grabbed his mechanical arm and started dragging him back to my cleared circle in the middle of the army.

“I…” his voice broke off.  “I…am not…immune.”  His voice cut out and he attempted to step toward the army once again.  I pulled him back.  “Immune to your commands…it seems.”

“I suppose that is a good thing,” I said.  I kept a strong hand on his shoulder as I looked back out over the masses.  Another wave of Bane marched east.  They didn’t get far before their forms disappeared into the clouds of dust.  “But what if my command doesn’t last?  Who’s to say they won’t forget what I told them to do when they get more than a mile away?”

“The Bane…” his voice cut out again and he took a stumbling step forward as he fought my command.  “Think like a…computer.  You give it a command and it doesn’t stop running it until you tell it to start running another.”

“You think they can be reprogrammed that easily?” I asked.  “Then why haven’t we been doing this all along?  Telling them to rip each other to pieces and leave us alone?”

“Yes,” he said, taking deep breaths even though he didn’t need to breathe anymore.  He rested what would be his palms against what would be his knees to keep himself from walking away.  “The Bane’s accidental program was to spread the infection.  But that couldn’t be changed by anything other than something compatible with TorBane.  Something that can transmit.”

“Like me,” I said, hints of a sigh in my voice.  I watched as another wave of Bane moved out.

“Exactly.  You are the only being capable of bringing about any sort of change,” Dr. Evans said as he stood finally.  “You, Eve, are the last hope this planet has.  You will be the savior of this world.”

I actually rolled my eyes.

Dr. Evans must have seen it, because he brought the conversation back to where it had started.  “My point is that your command should last.  They won’t be able to forget it.  Until you tell them something different.”

Dr. Evans suddenly took two jerky steps forward again.  I placed a firm hand around his upper arm and pulled him back once again.  “Stay put.”

He instantly locked still.

“I could make you do anything, couldn’t I?” I said, giving him a sidelong glance.

“That’s a damn powerful influence you have,” he said.  His eyes were set hard on me, but I saw the twitch of a smile in the corner of his lips.

“You’re essentially one of them,” I said as we went back to watching the army disband.  “If your plan really works, if we can send my signal worldwide, what’s to save you?”

“Nothing,” Dr. Evans answered with a gritty voice.  He was quiet for a moment as he observed the masses.  Over half of them had marched out by now.  His shoulders were set hard.  For a moment, he almost looked human.  Except for the lack of flesh.  “I nearly ended the world; I will go with them when the time comes.”

I pressed my lips together and didn’t say anything.  Instead, I just watched as the Bane continued to march out.

In the end, it took over two hours for the Bane to leave the desert.  I was too afraid to turn my back and leave until I could see that every one of them had moved away from the city.

But finally the dust settled down and the horizon was once again empty.

We turned and headed back west.  After a while we passed the all-terrain vehicle that had run out of gas on me and died.

Finally, when we were about half a mile from the entrance of the canyon that led into the city, I spotted two vehicles waiting for me.

Royce, Bill, and Tristan were all there.  And West.

There was Avian.

My face broke into a huge grin as I started jogging forward, at the same time Avian and Royce did.

But then guns were raised.  Tristan fired off a shot that thankfully missed Dr. Evans by an inch.

I waved my arms, clambering in front of him, blocking their shots with my body.

“Wait!” I yelled as the group raced toward me, guns drawn.  “Wait, he’s not going to hurt anyone!”

Avian, Tristan, and Royce slowed not twenty yards from us.  But my eyes locked with West’s as he jogged the slowest, still recovering from his surgery and Avian’s beating.

As he joined the others, his face washed stark white.

“Grandpa?” he breathed.

“Hello, West.”

“Holy shi…” Royce said, actually stumbling back in fear.  His eyes grew wide and disbelieving.

“It talks?!” Bill bellowed, keeping his rifle leveled in our direction.

“He’s safe!” I said again, holding my hands up in front of him.  “Don’t shoot!”

“You’d better explain real fast,” Royce growled, recovering from his shock.  “It’s taking everything I’ve got not to shoot this thing down.”

“This here kept TorBane out of my head,” Dr. Evans shouted for himself, indicating his helmet.  “I’ve kept my humanity even though the rest of me Evolved.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” West said, his voice shaky.  There was no color in his bruised face.  “You Evolved in the beginning.  The guys who took me away, they said you were gone!”

“I told them what I had to,” Dr. Evans said regretfully.  “I needed to make sure you were taken to safety.  I had to take care of things at NovaTor.”

“I’ve believed you were gone for the last six years,” West said, his voice hardening even though it cracked on the word gone.  “And you were doing what this entire time?”

“Who is this?” Royce demanded as he looked between West and I.

“And where did you send all those Bane off to?” Avian questioned.

“I’m Dr. Reiss Evans,” he said as he stepped from behind me.  “The creator of TorBane.”

I had expected at least Royce to shoot him dead then, but instead, everyone simply froze.  All eyes remained fixed on his Evolved body and no one said a word.

“He has some designs,” I said, my voice coming out quieter than I meant it to.  “And a plan.  We all really need to talk.”

TWO

There was a different feel in the air when we rolled back to the hospital.  The buildings that surrounded it were riddled with bullet holes.  Windows were broken everywhere.  Empty shell casings littered the ground and the roads were stained with dark patches that could be nothing but blood.

How many lives had been lost in the battle after I left to head off the Bane?

We all stepped outside our vehicles as they rolled to a stop.  Dr. Evans climbed down from the roof of one.  Of course he hadn’t been allowed in it.

The streets were eerily quiet.  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

“We can talk about that later,” Royce said, looking Dr. Evans over warily once more.  His finger hovered over the trigger of his customized assault rifle.

As soon as we’d gotten three blocks from the hospital, Dr. Evans made a sound like he was dying, a choked off cry mixed with a grinding mechanical sound.  Royce reluctantly radioed in and told Addie to shut the wireless transmission system off.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t ready to mow Dr. Evans down at the slightest wrong move.

Royce understandably made us all wait outside the hospital while Bill ran inside to retrieve Dr. Beeson and a CDU.

“Dr. Beeson, he knew the truth about me and my sister too, didn’t he?” I asked West as we waited for the two of them to return.

West shifted from one foot to the other, his eyes dropping from mine.  “Yeah.”

I shook my head and turned my gaze back to the hospital doors.  Avian reached for my hand and gave a reassuring squeeze.  I gave one back to him mostly in an attempt to keep my fists from meeting West’s face.

We all stood across the street while we waited.  None of us said a word, maybe because there were too many words to be said, maybe because everyone was just afraid.

We were in plain sight of the doors to the hospital, so the moment Dr. Beeson stepped outside of them, we saw him freeze.  The color drained from his face.  And then his knees gave out.  He was looking at not just one ghost, but two.  Not that he knew I was one yet.

“Come on,” Bill said, hauling him back up.  “No time for that.”

“We’ve got some things to talk about,” Royce said as the two of them stumbled across the street.

“No,” Dr. Beeson said, shaking his pale head, his eyes locked on Dr. Evans.  “No.  You’re dead.  You were infected.  You are not supposed to be here.  My days at NovaTor are over!” he suddenly bellowed, his eyes growing wild.

“I’m afraid not, Erik,” Dr. Evans said, folding his mechanical hands in front of him.  “You and I, we need to fix what we created.”

“We?” Dr. Beeson spit.  “I had nothing to do with TorBane!  You used my research to amplify all of this.”

“I.  We need to fix what I created,” Dr. Evans said solemnly.

“Okay!” Royce shouted, raising his gun into the air to get attention.  “You need to do some quick talking so I can decide if I need to shoot you or not.  Can we please go inside and move things along?”  Frustration made his voice rise in volume.

He waved his arms for us to step inside the coffee shop that was directly across from the main entrance to the hospital.  There had once been bodies lying on the floor after the Pulse went off, but Tuck’s Bane Removal Crew had cleared it in the first week after it went off.

Avian and I stood at the back of the building, hands on weapons.  Royce stood next to the cash register, his firearms still gripped securely.  Dr. Beeson collapsed into one table with shaky legs.  West and Bill stood across the room.  Dr. Evans sat at the table as far from everyone as he could manage.  His actions were perfectly calm and relaxed, as if he didn’t need to worry about someone’s nerves getting too set on edge and blasting a crater through his half-human face.

“You can talk,” Royce started us out.  “But you’ll still spread the infection.”

Dr. Evans nodded.  “I would never allow any of you to touch me.  I designed this helmet to repel the technology, so it stays out of my head.  I’ve kept my humanity.  But yes, I still carry TorBane, the same as any of the other Evolved out there.”

“The Bane you mean,” Royce growled.  “Did you ever realize how appropriate your little name was?”

“The name of TorBane was fitting,” Dr. Evans sighed impatiently.  “That was precisely what it was: a biological and nanorobotic enhancement.”

“And the literal meaning of Bane is something that causes death and destruction.  Ruin.  You’re telling me that is just a coincidence?”

“Are you here to interrogate me about the past or would you like to talk about how to save our future?” Dr. Evans asked with hard eyes.

Royce scoffed and shook his head.  “You have some grand master plan to save us all?”

“Royce,” I cut in.  “You should listen to him.”

He looked over at me and held my eyes for a long moment, as if reevaluating if he could trust me.  I didn’t blame him for doubting me.  I’d made a nuclear mess of things the last few days.  I’d nearly gotten one of his original crew killed.  Avian had joked and said Royce was protective enough of me to be called my father.  Was that still true?  I wasn’t so sure I deserved that anymore.

“What do you have in mind, world-ender?” Royce finally said, turning back to Dr. Evans.

He held his hand out toward me and I hesitated for a moment.  He was asking for the notebook.  Suddenly I felt protective of it.  The information within its pages could be our last chance.

But what could I do with it on my own?

I handed it over.

“First you all need to know the truth about Eve here,” Dr. Evans said as he set the notebook down on the table he sat at.

“What does Eve have anything to do with this?” Avian asked, his brow furrowing.

“Everything,” Dr. Evans said ominously.  He turned to Dr. Beeson.  “I’m afraid I pulled the wool over your eyes all those years ago, Erik.”

Dr. Beeson’s expression grew serious and he shook his head.  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Eve,” Dr. Evans said.  “Show him.”

My stomach dropped into my knees.  I was so sick of the lies and the secrets and the revelations and the hard feelings and apologies.

But it had to be done.

“What’s going on?” Avian whispered.

Without answering, I turned my back to everyone in the room, revealing the tattooed II on the back of my skull.

“Two,” Dr. Beeson whispered.  I turned back around.  “No,” he said, shaking his head.  “No, Eve Two is dead.  You killed her after what she did to him!” Dr. Beeson shouted, pointing at West.

“No, my good man,” Dr. Evans said.  “I’m afraid I didn’t dispose of her as my son demanded.  And she remembered, Eve Two.  It wasn’t she that attacked my grandson.  It was her sister.”

“What?” West questioned.  He looked at me, our eyes locking.  A million nerve endings of hurt and betrayal were as fresh as ever between us.  “You…you remember?”

I shook my head.  “Not a lot of details.  But I remember being brought back to NovaTor after whoever it was took me.  I remember her melting down.  The kill code made her go crazy.  It was she that attacked you West.  You’d tried to comfort me, thinking I was her.  I don’t know if she was jealous or what, but it was her West, not me.”

His eyes glazed over, as if replaying the scene in his head.

“Okay,” Avian said, shaking his head and pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids.  “I’m totally lost.  Eve has a sister?”  He looked back up at me, his eyes wide and confused.

“An identical twin sister,” I said, my voice quiet.  Suddenly all the exhaustion I’d been staving off for the last four days hit me and my entire body sagged.

“And you knew?” Avian said, turning cold eyes on West and taking a step forward.

“Cool it,” Royce growled, pointing the barrel of his shotgun at Avian’s chest.  “Let’s not have a replay of the other day.  I can’t afford to have any other soldiers laid up.”

“Nick?” I suddenly asked.

“He’ll live,” Royce growled.  Avian had accidentally shot Nick when he’d tried to break up a deadly fight between Avian and West.

“The point is,” Dr. Evans interrupted as tensions grew thick.  “That because we have Eve Two, and not Eve One, we may be able to end this catastrophe I created.”

“Those are big claims,” Royce said, shaking his head as he relaxed his weapon.  “And while we’ve all been very impressed with Eve and especially her newfound abilities, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Eve Two was taken from NovaTor just as TorBane was released to the public.  She was tampered with.  She was given the ability to transmit signals.  When she was taken from NovaTor Biotics, they programmed her with a kill switch—if you will.  When they returned her to the facility, she killed off over fifty people who had just gotten TorBane.  She did this wirelessly.  I disabled the kill switch, but she obviously maintained the ability to send signals.  You saw what she did in the desert.”

Every eye turned to me and the air grew thick and heavy and desperate.

“Where did you send them?” West asked.

My eyes darted to his before sweeping everyone else.  “I told them to search out and destroy other Bane.”

“Nice,” Tristan complimented.

But I could tell everyone else barely heard what I’d just said.  They were still mulling over what Dr. Evans had revealed.

There had been a shift in each of their eyes.  It was small, but it was there.  I was no longer Eve, protector, in their eyes.  Unwillingly, I had just taken one step up.

“How do we end this?” Avian finally said.  I hated that he, too, was looking at me slightly different.

“What means of communication did we all use before the world came to a quick halt?” Dr. Evans asked, breaking the silence.  “What is still floating up in the sky above us?”

“Satellites,” Bill said from his corner.

“Exactly.”

“Holy shit,” Dr. Beeson breathed, his eyes growing wide as the wheels started instantly turning in his head.  “He may be right.  This could work.”

“You turn her kill switch back on and somehow transmit it to the satellites in orbit,” Royce said.  His voice didn’t betray excitement.  He was a smart man, but he was also a man who knew to keep his hope in check after living in a post-apocalyptic world for the last six years.  “The Bane can obviously receive signals since Eve can control them.”

“It will only take an instant.  Once they receive the kill code, they’ll be gone,” Dr. Evans said with a nod and a smile.

“The notebook,” Avian said, his eyes suddenly jumping to it.  “The plans.  That’s what they were for, a transmission device for Eve.”

Dr. Evans nodded again.  “She is the key to saving the planet.”

“Told you,” Tristan said quietly from the back.

That brought a twitch of a smile to my face.

“This is almost too much to process,” Dr. Beeson said, shaking his head, squeezing his eyes closed.  “She is not supposed to be alive, and there is not supposed to be hope for this scale of reclamation of our world.”

“What I want to know is why we can’t just create a signal with the same kill code and beam it up to the satellites?” Royce said, placing his hands on his hips.  His curiosity was stronger than his distrust of yet another Bane-human hybrid.  “Why does this all hinge on Eve?”

Dr. Evans shook his head.  “They would not be compatible.  Eve has TorBane, so a signal from her would be receivable.  Anything else wouldn’t be read.  And she is the only TorBane receptacle capable of transmitting.”

“So it’s Eve or nothing,” West said.

“She’s our last hope,” Avian said, slipping his hand into mine.

“I do believe so,” Dr. Evans replied.

Everyone was quiet for a long while, processing everything that had been revealed.  I looked around at each of them.  There was a mix of emotions spread throughout: hope, disbelief, unbelief, uncertainty.

“I thought those satellites had to be maintained?” West broke the heavy air.  “Without someone controlling their orbit, some of them will just be crashing out into space.  How do we know all of them aren’t completely useless now?”

I didn’t really understand what West was talking about, but everyone else must have because their eyes darted instantly to Dr. Evans.

“There is a chance that this won’t work,” Dr. Evans said, his eyes dropping from everyone else’s.  For the first time since I reunited with him, he didn’t seem confident in his plan.  “It has been nearly six years since the world fell apart, this is quite some time.  But, I do believe that since there were thousands of satellites orbiting us at one point, that there will be enough that will be functional to reflect the code back to Earth.”

“So this might not work?” Avian asked.

Dr. Evans paused.  He refused to look up which told me that whatever was about to come out of his mouth would be a lie.  “I have enough data to believe that it will work.”

“How long will it take you to build the device?” I asked, ignoring the lie.

“Difficult to say,” Dr. Evans said.  “Obtaining all the parts will take some time.  It needs to be done precisely.”

“We’ll have to scavenge,” Dr. Beeson said.  He was still shaking his head and blinking rapidly.  “But I can’t imagine it will be much more difficult than the Pulse.  And we did that when the city was still infested with millions of Bane.”

“How long?” Avian asked again.

Dr. Beeson looked at Royce.  “Seven weeks?”

Royce nodded.

“The challenge isn’t just in the amount of time it will take to build the device,” Dr. Evans said, his voice serious.  “We have to turn her kill switch back on.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Avian asked.

“I blocked the kill switch with another code,” Dr. Evans said with a heavy sigh.  “The code is long and complicated.  Not something I could memorize.  So I wrote it down, made backups.”

“We have to go back to NovaTor to get it, don’t we?” I asked, my insides growing cold.

“Yes.”

THREE

Royce, Dr. Beeson, and Dr. Evans had a lot of work to do and a lot of plans to lay out.  West had stood to leave when Dr. Evans insisted he stay.  West hadn’t fought the request, but did look hesitant.

But I had hit my information limit and needed sleep.  I could catch up later.  Avian, Tristan, Bill, and I stepped out of the coffee shop into the empty street.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“All of New Eden is still confined to the hospital,” Avian said as we stood in the street.  He slid his hands into his back pockets.  His shoulders were stiff, his brow drawn together.  “Everyone went into lockdown when we realized what you were doing, just in case.  So no one has been allowed outside the hospital for the past four days.”

“What about everyone from the Underground?” I asked, looking over at Tristan.

“They’re a bit more like refugees at the moment,” he said.  There were mixed emotions behind his eyes.

“What happened after I left?”

Tristan slung his rifle over one shoulder and folded his arms over his chest.  “The fighting died out pretty quickly after.  Everyone was so shocked by Margaret’s death that they weren’t sure if they were supposed to keep fighting or not.”

“Do they still think Royce and I killed her?” I asked.  I recalled Royce’s rough interrogation of her after the beacon went off.  We’d been up on the sixth floor.  And then shots were fired below.  Royce and I tore out of there.  Just before we exited to the building, Margaret jumped from the window, ending her own life.

Tristan nodded.  “They’re angry, and more than a little scared about what is going to happen to them.  About half of them are still convinced you and him pushed her.”

“How is there any peace here then?” I asked, again looking both ways down the silent street.  “How has the fighting not picked back up?”

“Separation,” Avian said, his voice sounding like his mind was far away.

Tristan nodded.  “We’re all staying in an old hotel three blocks from here.  Tuck and his BRC crew cleared it out a few months ago.  Until we figure things out, they stay there, you lot stay here.”

“And what about you, Tristan?” I asked, meeting his eyes.  “Where do you stay?”

There was hesitation in his response.  So Avian answered for him.

“Tristan has been the peacekeeper,” he said.  “The go-between.  He’s been doing an excellent job, I think, considering we haven’t gone back to war.”

I nodded, knowing how hard this must have been on Tristan.  He wanted to be a member of New Eden.  He’d never fit in at the Underground.  But you can’t escape your past.

“And you?” I asked, turning back to Avian.  “It looks like Royce hasn’t locked you back up.  Nick is going to live.”

Avian looked away from me and his entire countenance grew dark.  “He doesn’t need to put me behind bars.  My borderline exile is punishment enough.”

“Excuse me?” I said, my brows drawing together.

“I’ve been stripped of all duties and rank,” Avian responded, still not looking at me.  “Most people wanted all my firearms taken away.  Royce only let me keep them because of my marksmanship and he wasn’t sure what was going to happen while you were with the Bane.  Things are going to be different now, Eve.  I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to say.  Avian had made a huge mistake, one that had almost ended two lives just a few days ago.  He had accidentally shot Nick and threatened to kill West.  He’d had the gun in West’s face and everything.

“Good thing in this world, there are plenty of chances to prove yourself and gain redemption,” I said.

I slipped my hand into his and we started across the road.

Avian had never held my hand so tightly.

“How you holding up?” he asked.

“I don’t even know what I am right now,” I said with a shake of my head.  Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Tristan set off east, to where I assumed the hotel was.  “I feel a bit delirious right now.”  It was true.  As we crossed the lobby of the hospital, shapes and colors floated across my vision.  It didn’t even really feel like my feet were touching the floor.  I felt as if I were floating and drowning at the same time.

“Sleep deprivation can do that to you,” he said quietly as we started up the stairs.

“I don’t think it’s just the lack of sleep.”  We stepped out into the hall and started out toward my door.  We hadn’t gotten more than two yards though, when a man stepped out of his room.  His eyes grew wide when he saw me and a ridiculous smile spread on his face.

“Eve’s back!” he bellowed.  Suddenly he started clapping his hands above his head.

I was confused and taken aback by his loud gesture.  My face grew warmer and I started to grow irritated with his very loud display.  Doors suddenly opened and more than a dozen people stepped out of their rooms.  As soon as they saw me, they started cheering and clapping as well.

“Thank you!” some people shouted.  “We would all be infected if not for you,” others said.  There was a lot of other ridiculous praise being spouted off.

A disbelieving chuckle worked its way up my throat, and a smile actually tugged in one corner of my mouth.

Avian let go of my hand, took half a step back, and joined in the clapping, despite the dirty looks some people threw in his direction.

I shook my head to try to fight off the embarrassed smile that kept pulling at my lips.

Lin suddenly broke through the crowd and rushed forward to engulf me in a hug.

“You’re alive!” she laughed.  She placed her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.  “They didn’t rip you apart!”

“Nope,” I said, hardly able to hold back the laugh in my throat.  “It was actually pretty boring out there in the desert.”

“You’re an absolute idiot,” she said, shaking her head.  Tears pooled in her eyes even though she was smiling.  “Heading out there with all those Bane by yourself.”

“But it worked!” a man from just behind her said.  “We aren’t dead because she was an idiot.”

I finally did laugh.

And it felt so good.

Avian placed his hands on my shoulders and started steering me through the crowd to my bedroom.

“Eve hasn’t slept in four days,” he said.

“Let the poor woman rest,” Lin interrupted, pushing her way through everyone ahead of us.  “Let her pass!”

We made our way through the joyous crowd to my door.  I placed my hand on the knob and looked back at them.  The noise had calmed down and they all looked at me.

There was hope in their eyes.  And they didn’t even know about the plans that were to come.  But maybe that was what made New Eden special.  Against all odds, we had survived.  We still had qualities like hope and humanity.  We managed to love and to conquer against a world that crushed most of our kind like a tsunami.

I placed a fist over my heart and pressed my lips together.

The entire crowd placed their fists over their hearts as well.

“Thank you,” I said, barely loud enough for them all to hear me.

No one said a word.  They each just gave a small nod of their head.  Many of them tapped their fists to their hearts as if this simple gesture connected each of us in on a way that said: we are here, and we will remain.

I pushed the door to my room open and stepped inside.

FOUR

I slept a dreamless sleep.  It was dark and heavy and peaceful.  Arguably the best sleep of my life.

When I woke, the sky was fading to black.  With how rested and hungry I felt, I knew I hadn’t been asleep for only a few hours.  I’d slept for more than twenty-four.

My room was empty and for that I was grateful.  I wouldn’t want Avian sitting and waiting around for me to get rested up.  He had to have a lot of other things to do.  Well, maybe not.  He had said he’d been stripped of his duties.

The water felt rejuvenating as I took a shower.  Dirt trails slid down my skin into the white shower floor.  I recalled the first time I had showered here, after we discovered the hospital, after we fled the mountains when the Bane burned our gardens.

That felt like a lifetime ago.

I felt slightly overwhelmed as I got ready for the end of the day.  There was so much to do, so much we needed to talk about.  There were so many plans to lay.  I didn’t even know where to begin.

Thankfully, I was never alone and the fate of the world didn’t quite rest solely on my shoulders.

I pulled my clothes and boots on and stepped out into the hall.  This time there was no applause, no crowd to welcome me home.  It was quiet and empty, as it should be.  I descended the stairs and came out onto the main floor.

As I approached the medical wing, I spotted Gabriel, standing in the doorway, hands on hips.  His expression was grim, the kind of dark look that only comes with death.

I stopped at his side, looking into the wing.  There was a door open and inside, one of the doctors zipped up a black bag.  Dr. Sun closed her eyes and hung her head.

“How many died in the fight?” I asked.

Gabriel didn’t glance down at me; he just kept looking at the black body bag.  “Alac and Perry were both killed,” he said, his voice rough.  They’d both been members of security and, later, the re-homing crew.  “Elijah’s badly wounded.  It will be months until he’s back to normal.  Four of the refugees were killed as well.”

I shook my head, hatred and resentment boiling under my skin.  It all felt so meaningless.  We had a much bigger enemy to fight than ourselves.

Gabriel gave a big sigh, his thick shoulders rising and falling with the effort.  He turned and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a bear hug.

“Thank you,” he said, “for what you did.  You saved a lot of lives.”

I patted Gabriel’s back.  “I kind of wish people would stop talking about it.  It’s making me uncomfortable.”

He laughed, his large belly bouncing up and down as he released me.

“You’re the key to saving the planet but you’re still uncomfortable about it,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.  “Your humility is just one of the many things that make you special, Eve.”

I rolled my eyes at him and started walking back down the hall.  “You’re not helping.”

He laughed as I walked away.

Evening light spilled in through the front doors, warm and golden.  I saw others outside, going about their day, taking their rations for the next day home to their families.  Once I returned with news the Bane threat had been neutralized, they must have been allowed to return to their homes.

Their activities and lives seemed so normal—yet our lives were about to change once more.

I turned to see Graye heading back for the armory and jogged to catch up with him.

“Hey,” I called as he stepped inside the room.  “Have you seen West?”

“Probably at dinner,” he said as he set to cleaning his weapon.

“Thanks.”  I started to turn when I noticed he was using Elijah’s prized assault rifle.  “I assume you’re in charge now, since Elijah is out of commission?”

Graye grunted in confirmation, not once looking up.

Unsure of what else to say, I turned and started for the dining room.

A low hum sounded ahead of me, and I found the dining room full.  Scanning the room, I spotted West in one corner, sitting on his own.  I was about to start toward him, when Royce, Dr. Beeson, Addie, and a few of the other scientists stepped up to the counter to get their trays.

I changed course and made a beeline for Dr. Beeson.

“We need to talk,” I said from behind him as he grabbed a plate of steaming potatoes.

Dr. Beeson glanced back at me, and then looked over at Royce, as if hoping Royce would say he had more important things to attend to and that it would have to wait.

“This is your messy past, not mine,” Royce said, shaking his head as he forked some kind of meat onto his plate.  “Go deal with it and then we’ll get back to work.  You owe her that much.”

I hoped appreciation reflected on my face as I looked over at Royce.  He placed a solid hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.  I covered his hand with mine for a brief moment.

He gave a wink before walking away.  Maybe I was forgiven after all.

“I’d like a word with you and West if you don’t mind.”

His tray fully loaded, Dr. Beeson nodded, his eyes dark.

We made our way through the crowded room.  When West spotted us, his still slightly blackened eyes widened and he sat back in his chair as if preparing for another blow.

“I don’t think I’m going to hit you this time,” I said as I sank into the seat across from him.  “But I do want to talk.  It’s time for the truth.  All of it.”

As Dr. Beeson sat in the other chair, West’s eyes were hesitant.  He’d spun such a complicated web of shaded-truths and all out lies, could he dare untangle them all?

“This isn’t a choice, West,” I said, fixing my eyes with his.  “I can’t imagine there is much left to hide—well, there better not be.  This all ends, now.”

“What more do you want to know?” he finally asked.

“First,” I said, turning to Dr. Beeson.  “You knew I had a sister.  You never said anything either.  How did you not spill the beans?”

Dr. Beeson set down the fork he’d picked up and had yet to use.  “The first time I saw you, you were with West.  When Royce wanted to test you with the CDU?”

I remembered.  That was when our team had first arrived in New Eden, a mission to simply see if there was actually anyone alive in the city.  Royce ordered everyone to be tested for infection.  Everyone had gone into panic mode when he insisted that I was no exception for testing.  Until Dr. Beeson stepped in the room and confirmed I couldn’t spread TorBane.

“From the look on West’s face the moment our eyes met, I knew there was something he didn’t want said, so I said as little as possible in those first few minutes.  He came to find me an hour or so later and told me about keeping your sister a secret.  I didn’t have a hard time agreeing to keep it all buried either.  I screwed up big time before; not spotting the mole that took you and tampered with all your other programming and hardware.  All this time I thought it was my fault you were dead.  So, it seemed easier to just not say anything.”

“Like you were going to let the past stay dead,” I said, looking at West.

“Yeah,” he said with a roughness to his voice.  A long, heavy silence followed for a few moments.

“You have to understand, Eve,” Dr. Beeson continued, desperation rising in his voice.  “No one wanted you disposed of.  But we had no idea what you were capable of anymore.  We thought it was you that attacked West.  You shorted out and killed all those people.  Given that was in no way your fault, all mine, but we were on the verge of the biggest medical breakthrough in history.  I hate to say it, but you were a liability.

“You were supposed to be dead.  I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that you’re Eve Two and not Eve One.”

His honesty was brutal, but I appreciated it.  It was better than soft lies.  “My sister,” I looked back to Dr. Beeson.  “You only wiped one of our memories, right?  Mine.”

He nodded.

“So she’s still out there somewhere,” I said, imagining her running scared through the desert and forests like I had, on her own.  “And she remembers everything we went through at NovaTor.”

“I would imagine so,” Dr. Beeson said as he started picking absentmindedly at his roll.  “Your sister had an impeccable memory.  I’m sure she remembers every little detail.”

I nodded, processing the implications of that.  “Is it true?  That he and I hated each other?”  I felt West’s eyes jump to me, but I didn’t look back at him.

Dr. Beeson suddenly chuckled, his bright teeth in stark contrast to his darker skin.  “I don’t know that hate is the right word, but you two fought every time you were in the same room.  You always had to one up each other.  You each thought you were better than the other.  Given that toned down a bit once your chip was in place, but the animosity between the two of you never went away.”

I glanced over at West, just a moment.  His eyes were locked on mine, and I could tell the past, our childhood, was playing through his head.

“It does explain a lot between us,” I said, looking back to Dr. Beeson.  “The way I would black out every time we were together.  Too much emotion—hate and interest—going on in my head.  Even if I didn’t understand it or why.  But he and my sister, they liked each other?”

“Yes,” Dr. Beeson said, his eyes dropping to the roll he had now demolished.  “Your sister was very unattached to everyone at the facility, except West.  She didn’t always like to cooperate with us, she was colder and more removed than yourself.  But with West, she was different.”

I looked at West again.  His eyes were on the table, and there was moisture pooled in them.  He squeezed his eyelids closed and shook his head.

While West looked conflicted, I simply felt relief.  Half of the tie and pull I had felt toward West was because I thought there was history that grounded us together.  The weight and guilt I had felt was clipped away.  My entire body felt lighter.

“You see why I made the decision I did?” I asked quietly.  “What would have happened if I picked you?”

Dr. Beeson cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably.  “Is there anything else you wanted to ask me, Eve?  I sense that the rest of this conversation needs to be just between the two of you.”

“No, that’s all.  For now.  Thank you for your honesty,” I said as he stood.

He nodded his head, and turned and left with his tray of food.

West and I were quiet for just a moment after he was gone, neither of us meeting the others eye.

“So I guess this is where we finally have the non-break up conversation,” West said, twirling a salt shaker on the table with one hand.

“It’s just a lot more complicated and simple at the same time,” I mused, grabbing the salt shaker from his hand and setting it on the far edge of the table.  It required everything I had in me to take his hand in mine and calm his shaking.  He was instantly still.

My eyes locked on our hands together on the table and a hurricane of emotions whipped through me.  I hadn’t forgotten the passion he and I had shared last year.  Waking up emotionally like that would be something I would never forget.

“How much of your pull to me was based on the past?  On what you thought had existed between you and me?” I asked, still not looking up at him.

He hesitated a moment before responding.  I knew his answer, and knew he didn’t want to admit it.  “A lot,” he finally responded.

I nodded, rubbing my thumb over his.

“How different did I seem, all that time before I picked Avian?” I asked.  It wasn’t an easy question for me to ask, but I had to paint a very clear picture.

West slowly let out a big breath and sat forward.  He never let go of my hand though.

“Your emotions were a lot stronger than I ever thought you capable of.  Eve One was always so steady, predictable.  But you…” he trailed off.  “I guess that should have been a good indicator.”

A tiny smile suddenly came to my lips.  “I remember, when we were in the desert, heading here, you said something like ‘you used to be a lot easier to deal with.’  That I didn’t use to freak out over every little thing.”

Suddenly West gave a little chuckle.  “I was being an ass that day, wasn’t I?”

The smile on my lips grew.  “I deserved it.”

West pulled his hand out of mine and groaned as he rubbed his eyes.  “How did this all get so complicated?”

“I think we were both just born into a complicated life.”

West chuckled again.  “Yeah.”

We were quiet again for a moment as the air around us grew serious once again.

“So what would have happened if I’d picked you, West,” I said as our eyes met.  “And we learned the truth all these months later?”

He didn’t respond, and I could see it playing out in my head.  “You would have broken my heart, West.  My sister was always the girl you were looking for.  Not me.”

He chewed on his lower lip, his eyes once again dropping to the table.

“I know this isn’t easy,” I said, folding my hands on one another.  “But you know it’s true.”

He took a deep breath, and then his eyes rose up to meet mine.  “There was something real between us, Eve.  You know that.  We both felt it.  And you did break my heart, well, more than that, when you picked Avian.  But…”

“But I’m right,” I filled in for him.

He didn’t nod or say yes, or acknowledge it, but I could feel it.  He knew.

“So now you can start to move on.  To heal.”

“That doesn’t make it easy,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.

“No,” I said, shaking my head slightly.  “But it makes it possible.”

I heard footsteps behind me a second before I felt a hand on my shoulder.  I recognized the warmth and tenderness that came with it and knew it was Avian.  West looked up at him, and finally, the anger and hatred was gone from his expression.

I looked up at Avian and met his uncertain blue eyes.

“This is over,” I said, looking from him to West.  “The anger and the competition.  The fighting.  It’s done.  We’re in the business of saving the world together.  It’s time to move on.”

They both hesitated.  The distrust and hatred that had been building between the two of them the last few months wasn’t going to instantly disappear.

But I knew they were both going to try when Avian extended his hand.  West shook it.

“Friends?” Avian asked, his voice guarded.

“We’ll get there,” West answered.

FIVE

Dr. Evans couldn’t stay in the hospital for obvious reasons.  He was kept in a building half a block from the hospital.  It was another medical facility building and it had this glass room that worked perfect for keeping him separated from everyone.  Not that he was going after anyone, but if nothing else, our world had taught us to err on the side of caution.

Royce radioed for me and Avian and we made our way there.  When we stepped inside, we found Royce, Dr. Evans, and Dr. Beeson.

“All done with the plans yet?” I asked as I settled into a chair.  Avian stood just behind me, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Nearly,” Dr. Evans said, his voice muffled slightly because of the glass.

“I wanted to run some things by you before we finalized plans,” Royce said, opening a notebook and pulling a pen from behind his ear.  “So, according to our freakish friend here, he needs to get back to the NovaTor Biotics facility to get this code and a few supplies for the Nova—”

“The Nova?” I interrupted.

“The transmitter device,” Royce clarified.  He gave a sidelong glance at Dr. Beeson and Dr. Evans that said he didn’t love the name.  “Anyway, he needs to get some supplies for the Nova we won’t find around here.  I’m designing a solar vehicle with Dr. Beeson’s help, that will get him there quickly, but won’t require fuel.  We’ve been lucky in the past with gas, but luck doesn’t last forever.”

“Makes sense,” I said, nodding my head.  “How long will it take?”

“We have a single person vehicle we should be able to convert in a week, maybe two,” Dr. Beeson said, looking over some files.

“So a bigger vehicle is going to take a bit longer to convert, right?” I asked, sitting back in my chair, propping my elbows up on the table behind me.

“Excuse me?” Dr. Beeson asked, his brow furrowing.

“My sister is still out there,” I said, crossing my ankle over the opposite knee.  “She remembers everything that happened to her.  She’s probably alone, or someone could have found her and twisted her into who knows what kind of weapon.  I’m not going to not look for her.  I’ve got to start somewhere.  NovaTor seems like a good place to begin.”

The three of them looked at me for a long moment.  There was disapproval written all over their faces.

“We cannot afford to delay in setting the Nova off,” Royce said, shaking his head.

“And what are the odds that you will ever find her?” Dr. Evans asked.  “It’s a big country out there.   A big continent.”

I looked to Dr. Beeson.  His expression was conflicted.  But he understood.  I saw it in his eyes.

“I have to at least try.  She is my only family.  The only one who understands what it’s like to be what I am,” I said, my voice hard and firm.  “So I’ll be going too.”

They were all quiet again for a long while, arguments forming behind their closed lips.

“You know it’s pointless to argue with her,” Avian said.

“I wasn’t going to be the one to say it,” Royce retorted, shaking his head.

“Fine,” Dr. Evans said.  “A slightly bigger vehicle shouldn’t be too big of a deal, right?”

“I don’t think so,” Royce interrupted almost before Dr. Evans could finish his sentence.  “Eve just became the most valuable being in the entire universe.  There is no chance I’m sending just you and her out into the wild.  She’ll be going with an arsenal of back up.”

“That big of a team will require a fifteen passenger van!” Dr. Beeson protested.  “That will take three weeks to construct!”

“Then we’ll wait three weeks!” I said, my blood boiling.  I understood everyone’s points, but that didn’t mean the entire conversation wasn’t annoying.

“Were you not the one who told me about a particular Bane sweep?” Dr. Evans asked from behind the glass.  He was getting angry, and I’d never seen anything scarier than an angry Bane-human freak.  “What makes you think they won’t move faster than predicted?  What makes you think they couldn’t destroy the NovaTor facility tomorrow?”  By this point he was shouting, his cybernetic fists pounding on the glass wall.

Avian pulled a firearm and pointed it in Dr. Evans direction.  “I suggest you calm down, sir,” he said, his voice deadly serious.

“All of you just shut up,” Royce said, irritated, as he stood from his seat.  “We can’t control the element of time so we’re just going to have to hope that we can get there quick enough.  It seems smart anyway to send more than one person on this mission.  We’ll get the van ready, and you’ll leave as soon as possible, got it?” Royce yelled at Dr. Evans.

He didn’t give any kind of response except for a glower.

“You can take four guards with you,” Royce said, turning back to face me.  “Your choice, but I suspect I already know who you’ll pick.  The rest of the space in the vehicle will be needed for supplies and firepower.”

“Avian’s coming, obviously,” I said.  Avian finally relaxed and put his weapon away.  “I don’t care what anyone else thinks of him right now, I trust him and that’s all that matters.  I think I owe it to West to let him come too.  He wants to find my sister as bad as I do.”  He hadn’t said as much, but I knew it was true.  “And Bill.  We’ve worked together for so long, he’s part of my team.  I’ll let you know the fourth as soon as I decide.”

“Peachy,” Royce said, turning to the other two and giving an annoyed smile.  “So, we good?”

Dr. Beeson shook his head and looked slightly irritated.  “I’ll have my team start working on the vehicle tonight.  We’ll work as quickly as we can.”

“Great,” Royce said as he set to collecting his things.  He turned to Dr. Evans.  “Can I get you a magazine or something,” he said sarcastically as we all turned to leave.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Dr. Evans replied with just as much vice and chill.

Royce stalked out of the building, myself right in tow.

There was a group of refugees walking out of the hospital and toward the hotel and our paths had no choice but to cross one another.

There were two men; one in his younger twenties, another in his forties, and a woman who looked just older than me.  The two men glared at Royce and I, distrust and hatred in their eyes.

The entire time we walked past them, bodies stiff, fingers just a little too close to triggers, I kept telling myself to simply ignore them.

I was going a good job of it.  Until one of them muttered “murderers” once they were behind our backs.

“Okay, this is enough,” Royce growled.  He reeled around and moving faster than I thought him capable of, grabbed the younger man by the front of his jacket and had him pinned against the side of a building.

“I can deal with you wrongly accusing me of murdering that psychopath you all called a leader,” Royce hissed in his face.  “But I won’t tolerate lies about Eve.  After everything you lot did to her and after everything she’s done and will do to save your sorry asses, you ought to be bowing down at her feet.  Any of you says anything about her again, I’ll have every one of you escorted from New Eden in a very uncomfortable way.”

“Both of you just stop!”  The woman from their group was instantly crying and I actually felt sorry for her.  So many of the refugees just wanted peace.  But the two men were bristling with anger.  But when a man like Royce makes threats, fear overrules anger.

“Corbin,” Tristan suddenly called from behind.  “Do we have a problem here?”

Royce released the man, who shrugged his jacket back on straight and tried to look unbothered by the encounter.

“No problem,” Corbin said, his eyes burning into Royce’s.  “Apparently I’ve been put in my rightful place.”

“Good,” Tristan said, his finger resting just to the side of the trigger on his shotgun.  “Now, how about we get on home, okay?”

Without another word, the small group turned and started back for the hotel.

“I hope they weren’t too much trouble,” Tristan said, watching them retreat.

Royce’s jaw was set hard.  He shook his head once, hatred burning in his eyes as he stared after Corbin and the others.  Finally, he just stalked back in the direction of the hospital.

“We’ve got to start bridging this gap and animosity between us,” Avian said, placing a hand on my back.  “Or there’s going to be another war.”

Over the next week, Avian, West, Bill, and I made plans for our journey and departure.  We gathered supplies, carefully picked our firepower.  And we discussed who the fourth member of our crew should be.

Elijah was laid up and in bad shape.  He’d been shot twice in his left leg, and once in the chest.  If the bullet had hit two inches higher he would have died.  But even if he was at fighting readiness, he would be needed here in New Eden.  Graye was in charge as head of security detail until Elijah was healed up.  So Graye was out too.

Gabriel was still working with the civilians to carve out a normal life.  He was helping to keep the peace between the refugees and the members of New Eden.  Plus Gabriel wouldn’t have been my first choice on this kind of mission anyway.

Had we not had to deal with the refugees, I would have picked Tristan in a heartbeat.  But nerves were still on edge and a fight was ready to break out at any moment.  If not for him, we’d finish each other off like we’d tried to do two weeks ago.

So there were very few options left.  There were others on security detail, but none that I knew well enough to trust their skills on a mission of this importance.  I was considering Tuck, but he also had duties he needed to fulfill here in New Eden.

“Maybe we don’t even need a fourth,” I said late one night as Avian and I stepped into my room.  “We’ve got you, me, West, Bill; we all know what we’re doing.  Why do we need another?”  I pulled my boots off and tossed them into my closet cupboard.

“I think that’s totally up to you,” Avian said as he slipped his own shoes off and lined them up by the door.  He started pulling his firearms off and laid them on the counter.  “I think I’d rather work with a tighter crew anyway.”

“I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with how well you and West have been working together for the past week,” I said as I walked into the bathroom.  I turned the water on in the shower and leaned against the door, my shoulder pressing into the cold steel of the frame.

“He’s different now,” Avian said as he crossed the room.  He stopped just short of me.  He placed his hands on either side of the doorframe.  “Whatever you two talked about last week sure put him in a different state of mind.”

“I just pointed out a few things to help him move on,” I said.

“I’m certainly enjoying the benefits of it,” Avian said, a slow smile creeping on his face.  He leaned in closer.  “I haven’t seen you this relaxed in months.”

“Having a purpose will do that you,” I said as his lips met mine.

His arms wrapped around my waist and my hand ran over his once again shaven hair.  He lifted my legs and set me on the counter in the bathroom.

“Oh no, no, no,” I said, smiling against his lips.  I placed a hand on his chest and pushed him away.  “I’m supposed to get in the shower and then go for my last meeting with Royce.  If we get started in on this,” I said, waving a finger between the two of us, “I will not make it in time.”

“You will be the death of me, woman,” Avian teased as he nipped at my jaw.

I couldn’t help the ridiculous smile that spread on my face as he stepped away.  I very much didn’t want him to go as he crossed back to his shoes and bent to pick them up.  He looked back at me where I still sat on the counter.  He gave a low, playful growl, before opening the door and stepping out.

I climbed into the shower and turned the water freezing cold.

SIX

Over the next few days, a truce began to form between the residents of New Eden and the refugees.

Their six children were welcomed into Lin’s school room.  She insisted children were children, no matter where they had come from.  They deserved an education.  That was the first step.

At Tristan’s recommendation, two of their men joined security detail.  They were friends of Tristan’s and he was sure we could trust them.  Royce hesitantly allowed them to be assigned firearms.

Two of the mothers joined the kitchen staff.  It was the women who seemed to be making the biggest leap in bridging the enormous canyon between the two groups.  Victoria was among the first of them that made the intimidating journey to the hotel to try and make peace.  She’d formed quick friendships there.  Her first step invited others to do the same.

Maybe we wouldn’t go back to war after all.

It was dangerous getting people’s hopes up too high, especially in a world like ours.  Those of us in the know said nothing of our plans and about the slim possibility that this might work to anyone.  Most people knew something was going on, but they knew better than to directly ask questions.

That didn’t keep the rumors from spreading.

Some thought Royce was keeping at least one Bane holed up in the building that Dr. Evans was kept in.  Since Dr. Beeson frequented the building so often, people suspected we were experimenting on them.

Others speculated on why a vehicle was being worked on and why we were stockpiling supplies.  They thought maybe some members of Eden wanted to return to the mountains.

None of them suspected we were making an attempt to save the world and looking for a girl who would be almost impossible to find.

Royce and Gabriel made sure life went about as usual.  Security detail continued in the re-homing effort, without Avian as second-in-command.  The incident still left him stripped of trust.  He now had a more important mission to focus on though, as did Bill.

Nearly everything was back to normal after the death match between the refugees and New Eden.  Most everyone was healed, back to work.

Except one person.

She wasn’t a victim of the fight.  She was a victim of nature and Mother Earth.

I stepped into the medical wing and walked to her door.  I saw her still form through the window, looking as if she were simply sleeping.  I pushed the door open and sat in the chair next to her bed.

Morgan had been a member of Eden for almost as long as I had.  Since we had different abilities and interests, I didn’t know her well.  She had been the caretaker for our horses, until one died and the other we had no choice but to leave behind in the mountains.

Two years ago she married Eli in a makeshift wedding gown and a crown of daisies upon her head.  She loved him.

And now he was dead.

Now she was fighting for her life, and losing.

So was the baby.

During the earthquake just a few weeks ago, the roof had caved in on Morgan and Eli, killing him, and nearly killing her.

My eyes shifted from her pale face to her growing stomach.  How far along was she?  I was no pregnancy expert, but it seemed like I remembered Avian once saying that pregnancy lasted nine months.  She had found out she was pregnant just a few weeks before we left the mountains of Eden.  So, five months?

I myself had arrived into this world three months early.  I knew the child stood almost no chance if it arrived four months early.  True, we were in a hospital with some amazing doctors, but the odds were not in her favor.

“Eve?”

I jumped to my feet when Morgan spoke my name.  The word was weak and rough and totally unexpected.

“Yeah,” I said, backing up to the window, suddenly embarrassed that I was here.  “It’s me.”

“What happened to you?” she asked, concern breaking over her face as she looked at me.

I hadn’t seen Morgan awake since I had returned from the Underground.  She didn’t know that the top of my skull had been cut off and a device had been implanted in my head.

“You don’t think bald is a good look on me?” I tried to joke.  I was terrible at it.

A small smile pulled at her chapped lips.  “I didn’t say that.  And I wouldn’t call you bald.”

I tried to return her smile, unsure if I succeeded.  It was true; my hair had grown out to about two inches long.  I stood there for a long while, unsure what to say.

“Are you okay?” she asked, breaking the silence.  “You look terrified, like I might bite you.”

An awkward laugh bubbled out of my lips.  “Sorry,” I said.  “I’m not really sure what to say.”

“It’s okay to feel awkward, Eve,” she said with a warm smile.  “It’s part of being human.”

“Thanks.  I appreciate that.”

Morgan nodded and then a small grimace crossed her face.  Her hand went to her stomach and she crunched in on herself.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, jumping to the side of the bed.  “Do you want me to get the doctor?”

Morgan shook her head and rolled onto her side.  “No, there isn’t anything else they can do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.  All of the heat drained out of my body in an instant.

“You know what I mean, Eve,” she said, her eyes locking with mine.  “I’m dying.  I probably don’t have more than a few weeks left.”

“What’s wrong?” I croaked as I sank into the seat next to her.

“I don’t remember exactly what the doctors said, but it has to do with the damage done when the building came down on me.  Something about arteries being damaged beyond repair.  My heart can’t pump the blood to the rest of my body fast enough.  And with the pregnancy, it just makes it twice as bad.”

I took a hard swallow, feeling as if ice were coursing through my veins.  I imagined my mother, the babies inside killing her.

“What about the baby?” I asked, my voice almost too quiet to be heard.

Morgan’s eyes reddened and a bead of moisture slipped from her cheek.  “When I go, they’re going to try an emergency C-section, see if they can save the baby.  But the odds aren’t good.  The baby isn’t getting enough blood.  It could die any second.”

I took a deep breath, shaking my head.  “C-section, what does that mean?”

“They’ll cut my stomach open and pull the baby out,” she said, her voice wavering.  “That is if she doesn’t die before I do.”

“She?” I asked.

“What?” Morgan questioned, confused.

“You said ‘she’,” I said, trying to smile.  “It’s a girl?”

“Oh,” Morgan gave a small laugh.  “I don’t really know.  They’ve done ultrasounds, but they didn’t tell me what it is.  I guess I just think it’s a girl.”

“She’ll be beautiful,” I said, trying to think what Sarah might say in a situation like this.  She knew how to handle these very human moments.

“Thank you,” Morgan said, smiling.  She started coughing and soon she was moaning in pain.  A nurse rushed in and shooed me out.

Once in the hall, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

Half a percent.  That was all that was left of the human population on Earth.  In reality, it was probably far less than that now.

Morgan was only one person.  But when there is only half a percent left, or less, one person makes a huge difference.

And one baby lost was one less person to live in the hope of a restored future.

SEVEN

“I’m just now realizing that I have no clue where NovaTor is,” I said as I looked at the map.

Dr. Evans stood inside his glass room.  He had spread the map out on a table in front of him.  This was our final planning meeting.  The van would be ready in three days.

He placed his finger on the map.  The place was a few hundred miles northwest of the original location of Eden.  Made sense.  I had probably walked for weeks after he released me.

“NovaTor’s location is secluded.  Not many towns nearby, and the ones that were close are small,” Dr. Evans said, looking up at Avian and Bill.  Almost as if he forgot I had no idea what NovaTor was like either.  “That was on purpose.  We didn’t want to be disturbed.  But the climate there this time of year will be cold.  Arid.  There may or may not be snow to deal with.  Pack warm clothing that will keep you dry.”

“We can go scouting this afternoon,” I said, nodding.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Avian asked, placing a hand on the glass wall and leaning in for a closer look at the map.

“Since the vehicle we are taking is large and solar powered, it won’t travel all that fast,” Dr. Evans said, that annoyed tone back in his voice.  “We’ll be lucky to get to speeds of forty miles per hour.”

“So,” Bill calculated as he studied the map.  “Roughly twenty hours of driving time.”

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Thankfully, most of the trip is through desert, so there won’t be many towns, but we will still hit plenty.”

“Vegas could be fun,” Bill said, shaking his head.

“We’ll try to swing around it,” Avian said, studying the map.

“Shouldn’t take us more than two days to get there, right?” West said.

“Who knows,” I said, shaking my head.  “We could be walking out into anything.  There are likely to be more packs of Hunters.  They’re getting smarter, more aggressive.”

“Hopefully your army is quick at their job,” West teased.  “But if not, it’s a good thing we’ve got the queen of the Bane to protect us out there, huh?”

I punched him in the arm and tried not to smile.

“Damn woman,” he hissed through a laugh.  “Not all of us have cybernetic skeletons.  That hurt!”

“You’re not getting an apology out of me,” I said, shaking my head and letting the smile crack through.

Everyone in the room laughed, except for Dr. Evans.

“Do you really want to mess with Eve these days?” Avian asked, raising an eyebrow.

West just chuckled and shook his head.

“How is the packing of the supplies going?” Dr. Evans asked, back to business.

“The kitchens have two weeks’ worth of food packed for us,” I said.  “More of that last-forever crap, but we’ll survive off of it.  We’ve also got plenty of water.”

“I’ve put together an emergency medical kit.  Nothing too extensive, so don’t anyone go and get blown apart,” Avian said.

“We’ve collected firepower—assault rifles, grenades, the usual,” Bill wrapped us up.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Sounds like we’re ready to go.  Just got to wait on the vehicle.”

“You’ve become quite the traveler considering it’s the end of the world,” West said, elbowing me in the side.

“And whose fault is that?” I said, raising my eyebrows at him.  “Are you wanting me to knock you out today?”

A teasing grin spread on West’s face.  Avian chuckled as he slapped his hands down on West’s shoulders and steered him toward the door.  “Best not push your luck.”

After lunch, the four of us headed for an outdoors store.  We had looted all the ones that were closest to the hospital, so we hopped in one of the electric cars and crossed the massive city.  This was close to our Pulse perimeter.  About fifteen miles inside it, maybe a bit less.

Bill parked on the sidewalk, right in front of the building, and we all stepped out.  Avian checked the doors and found them locked.  Taking out his firearm, he shot it open.

The store was pretty dark, one of those double-storied, spiffed up warehouse types that only had a few windows scattered on the bottom floor.  But unlike most of the buildings around us, this one was completely free of bodies.

“Owners must have shut down pretty quick once the Evolution started,” West said, looking around the huge building.

“They were smart,” Avian said.  He pulled a flashlight out of one of his side pockets.  “Most of these big box stores stayed open until the Babies were ripping their faces off as they tried to sell them a shotgun.”

“Man, we haven’t seen any Babies in how long?” West said as he, too, pulled out a flashlight.

“Not many people left to infect,” Bill said as he headed for the clothing.  There were three classes of Bane: Babies—the newly infected, Sleepers—self-explanatory, and Hunters—those who actively sought humans to infect.  “There aren’t many babies of either species being made anymore.”

With that grim thought, we split off, the three men to the men’s clothing section, me toward the women’s.

And as I started browsing, I thought of the ability to have children.  If this really did work and we killed off all the Bane, it was going to take a very long time to rebuild any kind of population.  I knew of one other pregnant woman in New Eden besides Morgan.  Bringing children into this world felt too dangerous.  And there weren’t many people left to repopulate the planet with anymore.

My eyes drifted over to Avian, halfway across the building.

Did I possess the ability to bear children?  I’d never considered it before.  I’d honestly never even thought about being a mother.  I was only eighteen.  But when the time came, that I was old enough, when Avian and I followed tradition and that was the expected next step, would I even have the ability?

Somehow I didn’t think so.

I had cybernetic bones, a mostly cybernetic heart and lungs.  Why wouldn’t my baby making organs be cybernetic too?

Surely a fetus could not survive in a body like mine.

Pushing the thought aside, I tried to pay attention to the task at hand.

It didn’t take long to find some waterproof clothes, all skintight running clothes.  They would fit easily under my usual cargo pants.  I grabbed three pairs.  I also found two short-sleeved shirts and one long-sleeved of the same kind.

“You finding any coats or anything like that?” Avian called from across the building.

“Nope,” I replied, scanning the racks around me with my flashlight.

“It was late spring when the Evolution started,” Bill said.  “They would have stopped carrying that kind of stuff by that time.  Especially here where you barely need a coat in the winter anyway.”

“Let’s check the back room,” West said.  We all walked to the center aisle that cut through the building, leaving our findings in a pile on the floor.

There was a narrow hall that had changing rooms branching off of it, and at the end, there was a solid steel door.  Bill, at the head of us, pushed it open and stepped inside.  We had all shuffled in when Bill stopped short, covering his nose and reeling back.

The smell hit me.

I didn’t even see the source of the stench before I started gagging.

West lost his lunch to the side of me and I was just stepping out of the spray when I saw a tiny little foot poking out from behind a box.

“Avian,” I whispered when I heard a muttered moan.

We both leapt over the pile of boxes and then instantly froze.

There were two young boys lying in a nest of rags.  One couldn’t be more than ten years old.  His skin was ashen colored and covered in some kind of a rash.  His stomach was swollen and bulging.  There was a gaping bullet hole in his chest.  He was obviously dead.  He was the source of the smell.

And lying next to him, his chest barely rising and falling, was a child that looked about five.

Avian dropped to the younger child, pulling him into his lap.  He held his fingers to the boy’s neck, feeling for his pulse.  He too had a bullet wound, in the fleshy part where his arm met his chest.  It looked deeply infected.

“Pulse is very slow,” Avian said, gathering the boy up into his arms.  “He looks like he’s been starving to death, and infection has been eating at him too.”

It was true, the child was nothing but skin and bones.  I took Avian’s firearm, slinging it over my shoulder as he stood, the boy in his arms.

“We’ve got to get him back to the hospital,” Avian said, already headed for the entrance.  “He isn’t going to last much longer.”

“Bill, can you go with him?” I asked, watching Avian’s retreating form.

Bill simply nodded and followed.

By this point, West was on his hands and knees, dry heaving.

“Here,” I said, grabbing a shirt that was hanging out of a box.  I ripped the plastic off of it and handed it to him.  “Put this over your nose.  It will help with the smell.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice shaky.  He spit on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.  He climbed shakily to his feet and tied the shirt around his nose and mouth.

“Better?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded, taking a deep breath, hands on hips.  He turned away from the body.

“I wonder what happened to them,” I said, looking down at the dead boy once again.

“I don’t think he’s the only body in here,” West said, shaking his head, still not looking at the boy.  “The smell is too intense to be coming from just one small kid.”

I swore under my breath and started looking around.  I didn’t have to search for long before I found who I assumed was the mother in another alcove of boxes.  There was a hole blown through the side of her head and a handgun rested beside her.  But she also had a massive bruise mark on her decaying skin, a perfect mechanical handprint on her forearm.

“Shit,” I breathed.  “West!  She was infected!  Her boys could have been infected too before she shot everyone!”

“Come on!” West said, waving toward the exit.  “We’ve got to get back to the hospital.  Avian just picked him up!”

We darted back out of the building, gathering up the pile of supplies as we ran.  We paused outside momentarily.

“They’ve got the car,” West said.  “And we’re, like, seventy-five miles from the hospital!”

“Start checking vehicles,” I said, racing across the street to a parking lot.  “Maybe we’ll find something with keys.”

“Eve,” West said as we started yanking car doors open.  “You know if that kid was infected that it’s too late for Avian.  He’ll get infected.”

I shook my head, my jaw set hard.  “No,” I said as I checked another car.  No keys.  “There’s a chance the boy wasn’t infected.  And if it just barely happened, he won’t be able to spread the infection for a few hours.”

But even as I made my argument, I knew it wasn’t true.  Those bodies had been dead for days, maybe even over a week.  If the kid was infected, TorBane would be fully saturated into his system.”

“Got it!” West shouted.  He held up a pair of keys as a floor mat came tumbling out of the truck.  “Get in!”

I hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.  I tossed our supplies in the back seat.  “You don’t know how to drive,” I said, my voice breathy.

“Today seems like a good day to learn,” West said, shoving the key in the ignition.

The truck clicked and sputtered.  It had been a sitting, rusting dinosaur for six years.  We’d been stupid to think any of these vehicles might start.

“Come on!” West shouted, pounding the steering wheel.  He slammed one of the pedals with his foot and suddenly it roared to life.  “Yes!”

“That there puts it into drive, I think,” I said, pointing to the stick on the side of the driving column.

West yanked on it and the truck jerked backwards and slammed into the vehicle behind us.

“Okay,” West said, shifting the stick again.  “R stands for reverse.  So D for drive?”

“Let’s assume,” I said, my blood racing and pounding in my ears.  “Let’s go!”

D was indeed for drive and we rocketed forward, clipping another vehicle as we swung wildly out of the parking lot and onto the street.

“That woman was touched,” I said, bracing myself as we swerved madly.  “She had probably gone out to look for food or something when a Hunter must have found her.  West, this means they’re starting to come back into the city.”

The speedometer crept up to eighty miles an hour as we peeled back onto the onramp.  Just as we pulled onto the freeway, there was a figure ahead of us.  There was no time to stop and the truck plowed right into it.

The mechanical body broke right in half, completely cybernetic by this time.  The upper half of the body crashed into the windshield, shattering it.

We both screamed as the glass burst into tiny glittering pieces and an arm dangled between the two of us.

“Holy…” West bellowed as the truck swerved violently back and forth and we ran over the lower half of the body.

“Keep driving!” I shouted.  I was about to reach for the shoulders of the body, when its hand suddenly flung out at me, and wrapped around my throat.

West swore loudly.  “It’s still alive?!”

“Keep…” I gasped for air as West swerved in an attempt to put distance between himself and the Bane that was somehow still attacking.  “Driving!”

Wrapping my hands around the wrist, I squeezed until the cybernetic bones crumpled and bent and the hand let go.  Plowing the heel of my hand into what was left of where its nose should have been, its head whipped back with a sickening crunch.  The thing was instantly still.

But still carrying active TorBane.

I coughed violently, unbuckling my seatbelt.

“You okay?” West asked, wild fear in his eyes as he attempted to drive straight.  He leaned as far to the left as possible, attempting to put some space between him and the mangled Bane.

“Yeah,” I croaked.  My throat was probably bruised.  “Keep driving.  I’ll take care of this.”

I half stood as well as I could in the cramped space.  Placing my hands on its shoulders, I gave a good shove.  The body slid forward two feet and to the right.  But one of its arms slipped down the front of the hood and caught in the grill.

“Oh, come on,” West said, looking at the body in disbelief.

“Keep driving,” I repeated.  I used my boot to knock out the rest of the glass hanging around the frame of the window.  Crawling up onto the dash, I slowly worked my way out onto the hood of the truck.

As we drove over the bumpy freeway, the arm wedged its way tighter and tighter into the grill.  Finally, I simply snapped the arm off at the elbow.  The rest of the body crashed to the ground.  I tried yanking the rest of the arm free, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Get back in here, Eve!” West shouted.  “We can have it melted down later.  Sit down before I kill you!”

An amused chuckle worked its way through my lips as I carefully climbed back up the hood and into the vehicle.

“Well, this turned into an exciting day,” West said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I think the Bane are getting back into the city,” I said, pushing my windblown hair back off my forehead.  “That store was supposed to be fifteen miles inside our perimeter.  They’ll be getting back into the center of the city soon.  I thought I’d cleared all of them out for five hundred miles after the beacon went off.”

“Just another day in the world of the Evolution,” West said.  “Must have been a Sleeper that recently woke up.  It could have been inactive when you called them all out to the desert.

“For once, could the element of time just be on our side?” I said, exasperated.

“What,” West said, smiling at me as he swerved around a particularly large crack in the road.  “And make life simple and boring?”

I shook my head and laughed.  “Seriously.”

West was quiet for a moment as he continued to make our way back to the hospital.  “I’m really sorry for how I’ve treated you the last few months.  I’m glad we can be friends again.”

I looked over at him, a smile pulling on my lips.  “Me too.”

And I meant it.

“Avian!” I screamed as we burst through the front doors of the hospital.  I sprinted toward the medical wing, where I was sure I would find him.  “Avian!”

We collided with each other as I turned the corner, tumbling to the ground.

“What’s wrong?” Avian asked as we rolled to a stop.  He pulled me up to my knees and placed his hands on my upper arms.  His eyes started scanning me for injury.

“We found the mom,” I said, searching him over for any early signs of infection.  His eyes seemed normal, still burning blue.  “She had a hand-shaped bruise on her.  She was infected Avian.  She shot herself and her kids.”

“It’s okay,” he said, shaking his head furiously.  “I’m fine.  I had the kid tested with the CDU.  He wasn’t infected.”

I swore, my hands rising to knot in my hair.

“It’s okay,” he said, pulling me towards him into an embrace.  “I’m fine.”

I shook my head and took a deep breath.  My hands shook.  It was crushing when West got infected.  I wouldn’t survive it if Avian was taken from me.

“Okay,” I said, calming my nerves.  I pulled back and rose to my feet.  “Do you know where Royce is?  I need to talk to him.”

“Right here,” I heard him call from inside the medical wing.  I turned to see him talking with one of the doctors.

“Royce, they’re closing in again,” I said, walking toward him, Avian in tow.  “One of them infected the mother of that kid, and then West and I plowed into another on the freeway as we were headed back.  We were fifteen miles inside the perimeter.”

Royce swore, his hands interlocking behind his head.  “Well, we always knew it wasn’t gonna’ last.”

“How much longer until the Pulse is fixed?” Avian asked.

“Dr. Beeson’s crew has been so busy working on everything else, they haven’t had any time to devote to it.  They’ve been working on the solar tank nonstop for the past two and a half weeks.  And then they’re supposed to start in on the Nova.”

“Have Graye get security detail back on perimeter watch,” I said as I started pacing.  There was too much adrenaline coursing through my body and not enough space to do anything with it.  “We’re going to have to risk them staying on the outskirts for now.  You can’t turn the WTS back on until after we leave with Dr. Evans.  We’ve got to get that transmitter built.”

Royce gave a snicker and a smile pulled in the corner of his mouth.  “Well yes, ma’am.”

His sudden amusement broke through my nervous pacing and pulled a smile from myself.  “Sorry.  Didn’t mean to get bossy.”

“Hey, it’s good practice, kiddo.  You will be the boss in two days,” he said with a wink.  He then turned and started walking back down the hall.  “Leadership looks good on you.”

“How’s the kid doing?” I asked, turning back to Avian.

His eyes darted to a room, I assumed that was where the child was.  “Not good.  He’s extremely dehydrated, malnourished.  He’s basically starved to death.  That bullet wound is disastrously infected.  He’s got lice and all sorts of other critters living on him.  I’m pretty sure I need to go burn these clothes now and wash myself with bleach after touching him.”

He rubbed a hand over his head as he crossed the hall and peered through a window to the child’s room.  “We’ve got him on IV fluids and antiobiotics and they’ll wash him up as soon as he looks a tad more stable.  But I think he’ll live.”

That familiar pride I had so often felt for Avian back in the mountains returned.  Avian had little need to practice his doctorly duties now that there were three other physicians here, but this was one of his best elements.  He was so good under pressure.

“What?” he asked.  I hadn’t realized he’d looked back at me.

“Nothing,” I said with a smile.  “I guess I just miss seeing the doctor side of you sometimes.  It makes me miss home.”

He crossed the space and once again pulled me into his arms.  His heart thumped steady and peaceful.

Thinking once again of Eden made my chest ache.  I missed the trees and the cool morning air.  I missed my tent and our watch towers.  I even missed pulling weeds from the gardens.

A nurse stepped out of Morgan’s room.

“How’s she doing?” I asked, pulling away from Avian.

The woman’s face fell and she hesitated.  “Not well.  It looks like she’s going downhill fast.”

I gave a hard swallow.  “And the baby?”

“It doesn’t look good for the baby either, I’m afraid.  It will probably go when she does.”

I nodded.  “Thank you.”

The woman shuffled away.

“It’s not fair,” I said, standing there in limbo between the rooms of two fading people.  “People can’t just keep dying.”

“That’s why we’re leaving the day after tomorrow,” Avian said, rubbing a hand over his head again.  “It’s time to do something about it.”

I kept staring at the window to Morgan’s room and kept thinking about that baby growing in her stomach and how it didn’t have a chance of surviving.  I thought about how crowded it must have been inside my mother’s stomach with my sister and me in there.  I wondered if it felt like a relief as an infant to finally have some room once I was out, but that I probably wasn’t aware enough to feel anything.

I had been dying too, at that point, after all.

I suddenly gasped, feeling as if I had been punched in the heart with a ghostly, impossible fist.

“Avian, I need your help.”

EIGHT

Avian and I slept little more than a few hours that night.  We had a whole new list of things to collect.  We scoured the fifth floor for supplies, took what we knew could be spared from the hospital wing, and knocked on select doors of people we knew would help us and not say a word.

And I very carefully asked Dr. Evans some very careful questions about my past.

The plan was improbable, but not completely impossible.

I informed Royce that I hadn’t come up with a fourth member of our crew, but that I thought we could work just fine with the team I had come up with so far.  He didn’t fight me about it, but we were packed for an extra person.

The night before we were to leave, Dr. Beeson radioed to let us know the van was ready.  Bill, West, Avian, and I made our way to the back of the building to check out what they’d created for us.

We stepped out into the evening light, which reflected blindingly off the beast before us.

“Who-hoo-hoo!” West said, clapping and whooping as he walked toward it.  “That’s what I’m talking about!”

I couldn’t help but admire the vehicle as well.

It had indeed been a fifteen passenger van at one point.  But it looked as if it had the top of it chopped off and raised an additional three feet.  It also had a huge luggage rack on top of that that already held a great deal of our supplies.  And on top of the cargo rack, were six large solar panels.

The beast had been raised at least a foot and it sported massive, rugged-terrain tires.  A set of flood lights had been mounted to the front of the roof, and the entire thing was midnight black.  Even the windows looked blacked out.

“Is that a firing turret on top?” I asked, spotting the thick, long cylinder atop the solar panels.

“Indeed it is,” Dr. Beeson said, a grin spreading on his face.

“Hey,” Royce said, sounding offended.  “This thing was mostly my baby.  Don’t you go taking all the credit.”

“Excuse me,” Dr. Beeson said in an exaggerated voice, holding his hands up in mock surrender.  “It’s all yours to show off.”

“Thank you,” Royce said, his chin lifting, a coy grin cocking in the corner of his mouth.  “Come on, reclamation team.”

By this point, we were all grinning ridiculously as we followed Royce closer to the vehicle.  He threw the side doors open and held his arms out grandly for us to check out the inside.

“The solar tank is made to withstand raging Bane, looting humans, and just about anything else this apocalypse has to throw at you,” he said as I stepped inside first.

The last row of seats had been removed and was stocked full of weaponry.  The very middle of the roof had a hatch cut into it and opened up to the firing turret, just like a smaller scale version of our actual tanks.  Running alongside the hatch in the raised portion of the roof, were two very tiny, claustrophobic looking beds.  The front passenger seat was a glass encasement.

No one had to ask what it was for.

“If you can’t get there and back in this thing, you can’t make it anywhere,” Royce said, pride sounding in his voice.

“It’s a thing of beauty,” West said, settling into the driver’s seat.

“Your only problem should be if you get some particularly cloudy days,” Royce said, his excitement falling.  “Since this is such a beast, the batteries powering it get drained fast.  They don’t get to store much.  So if you can’t get access to sun, you may be stuck for a while.”

“I see now why you called it the solar tank,” I said, stepping back out and admiring it from the outside.  “You did good, Royce.  You did good.”

Royce laughed, a full-hearted, belly birthed laugh, and clapped a hand on my shoulder.

Avian met my eye knowingly as we took one last look at the solar tank, and headed back inside.

“You ready?” I hissed.

Avian seemed to materialize out of the dark, pack slung over his shoulder.  He clicked on his small flashlight and nodded.

Taking my hand in his, we slipped silently down the hall.

We descended the stairs, taking our time to make sure our footsteps would not echo on the concrete walls.  Pausing briefly at the door to the hall, we found it empty and slipped out.  Not a soul seemed to be awake as we jogged to the medical wing.

A few lights had been left on in the medical wing.  We paused around the corner, watching for signs of life.

“Is there anyone besides Morgan and the kid in there?” I whispered.

“Just them,” Avian said, looking around the corner again.  “A nurse comes to check on things twice a night, but no one will be around until morning.  We should be good.”

We darted forward into the harsh light.  Placing my fingers on the handle, I paused, looking up at Avian.

“I love you for doing this,” I said.

“Anything,” he breathed, a smile playing on his lips.

Taking care that the door handle didn’t make any noise, we pushed it open and stepped inside.

Morgan lay still and silent on her bed.  She had slipped into a coma the morning before and was given less than five days to live.  The baby’s vitals dipped, but not enough for the doctors to pull it from her stomach yet.

Grabbing the portable bed from the hall outside, Avian wheeled it into the room, right next to her bed.  He opened the cupboard across the room and pulled out the portable oxygen unit.

“Careful with the tubes,” he said as I helped him switch her oxygen.  Once replaced, we each took hold of the sheet beneath her and lifted her onto the wheeled bed.  “Grab the IV tower.”

Wrapping my hand around it, I carefully steered it as Avian rolled Morgan and the bed with the portable oxygen unit out into the hall.

“Hold on,” I said before we entered the main hall.  Avian stopped and I parked the tower next to him.  Slipping to the entrance to the hall, I peered around the corner.

One of the members of security detail walked across the lobby.  He paused, looking around, sweeping the area, before stepping out the front doors.

Royce had already started night patrol back up.  I could only hope this was the only man on duty.

“Let’s go,” I said when he was out of view.  Once again, Avian and I rolled quietly down the hall toward the back entrance.

The automatic doors opened with a whoosh of cold air.  The faintest hint of light was phasing into the eastern horizon as we rolled across the sidewalk and down to the side of the solar tank.  I opened the doors as wide as they would go and adjusted the pillows and blankets we’d stashed in the back row of seats earlier that day.

Avian, in the meantime, had unhooked the IV bag from the tower and laid it in her lap.  Shouldering the oxygen unit, he took the sheet at her feet, I grabbed it by her shoulders.  Together, as carefully as we could manage, we lifted her into the van and onto the back seat.

“I guess it’s a good thing she’s unconscious,” I said as Avian adjusted her, placing a pillow under her knees.  “This isn’t going to be a comfortable eight hundred mile ride.”

Avian didn’t respond as he hooked her IV bag over a catch on the side of the vehicle.  He double checked everything, setting the oxygen unit on the floor next to a box full of batteries and full oxygen tanks.

“Think she’ll be warm enough?” Avian fretted as he laid another blanket over her.

“We’ll be back and on the road in an hour,” I said, glancing back toward the hospital.  As I did, a light on the second floor flickered on.  People were starting to rise.  “She’ll be okay.”

He helped me shift bags of bedding around so both Morgan and the IV bag weren’t so visible.  We just had to hope Bill, West, and Dr. Evans didn’t notice until we were too far away from New Eden to turn back.

“Come on,” I said, pulling on the back of Avian’s shirt.  “We’d better get back or they’re going to know we’re missing.”

“Okay,” he said, looking her over one more time before he closed the doors and ran hand in hand with me back into the hospital.

I had just slipped into my room and set to gathering the last few things I needed into my pack when there was a knock on the door.  I opened it to find Bill.

“Time to get rolling,” he said.  Just then, West stepped out of his room from behind Bill.

“Okay, one second,” I said.  I ducked back into my room, shouldering my pack and placing my Desert Eagle into its holster.  Avian stepped out of his room the same time I did.

We were just walking past Lin’s room when she stepped out.  Her hair was sticking in every which direction and she was wearing bright pink pajama pants.  She looked very Lin.

“You weren’t going to sneak out without saying goodbye, were you?” she said, giving me the look of death.

I chuckled and crossed to give her a hug.  “Of course not,” I said, giving her a tight squeeze.  “I know the penalty for such would be a public stoning.”

“That’s right,” she said, patting my back before releasing me.  “You be careful out there.  You’re not immortal, you know.”

“I know,” I said, smiling back at her.  “Take care of Tristan for me, will you?”

She wiggled her eyebrows at me.  “You know I will.”

She quickly said goodbye to the crew and we made our way downstairs.

There was a small crowd waiting for us when we got to the kitchens.  Royce, Gabriel, Dr. Beeson, Graye, and Tristan were all there, finishing up breakfast.

“There they are,” Tristan said with a wide grin when we stepped into view.  “The reclamation team.”

I just shook my head and smiled.

The kitchen had already made us breakfast sandwiches with eggs and ham on them.  We each grabbed one and headed for the back entrance.  The others talked softly, going over details and plans and things I should probably be listening to.  But my mind was on the back seat of the van.

My hands started sweating as we stepped outside the doors.  My eyes darted to Avian’s.  He looked as nervous as I felt.

I spotted a soldier across the street, escorting Dr. Evans to the solar tank.  No one said a word as he climbed into the glass box in the front.  Closing the door, he rolled down the window.

“This feels like watching you leave Eden all over again,” Gabriel said as he observed the van.  “Not knowing if I’ll ever see you all again.”

“You saw what she did on the way back from the Redwoods,” Bill said, clapping a hand on my shoulder.  “We’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Gabriel said, but his eyes said he didn’t.

“Get that kill code and get back as soon as you can,” Royce said.  He shifted from one foot to the other.  It was hard for him to let go of control over something so important.  “Dr. Evans knows the stuff he needs for the transmitter at NovaTor.  Get ‘em back as quick as you can so we can end all this madness.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.  I was and wasn’t surprised when he wrapped his arms around me in a tight embrace.  He pressed a quick kiss to my temple before letting me go.  I considered briefly making some speech about how I didn’t need to know who my real father was or if he was still alive.  Royce was all I could ask for, even if I was all grown up now.

But all I did was say a quiet “see you later.”

“You have no idea how bad I wish I could go on this mission,” Tristan said as I turned to him.  He had a crooked smile on his face.  “To see this freaky place where you were cooked up.”

“I wasn’t ‘cooked up’,” I said in mock offense.  He just shook his head and pulled me into a quick hug.  “Besides, you’ve got Lin here.”

“True,” he said, backing away and shaking Avian’s hand.  “Fair trade I guess.”

“Bring them all back in one piece,” Royce said to Avian, shaking his hand next.  “And you two,” he said, pointing at Bill and West.  “I expect you to take the bullets for her, got it?”

The two of them both laughed, but I knew that they would, in fact, do it.  I hated that I was so important that I would have to let them do it if it came down to that.

And that was all the goodbyes we could say.

Avian turned and opened the side doors and strategically placed himself in the third row of seats to block everyone’s view of Morgan.  Bill climbed into the driver’s seat.  I sat behind him and West sat at my side.

No one looked in that fourth row.

I turned and watched everyone else wave goodbye as we rolled out of the parking lot and into the street.

“You all ready for this kamikaze mission?” West bellowed, pounding against the glass that surrounded his grandfather.

Bill nodded, Dr. Evans didn’t respond at all.

“Yep,” I said, looking back at Avian.  Both our eyes darted to Morgan’s still form.

I was ready for not just one impossible, crazy mission, but two.

NINE

“So, how much do you think will go wrong on this trip?” West said as he looked away from the side window.

“Given the last three months, I’m assuming everything is going to go wrong,” I said as I shook my head.  We were headed northeast and were just outside our one hundred mile cleared circle.  But there were no Bane around in these smaller towns, none of them rushing at us from the off ramps or chasing after us with helicopters.

Maybe the ones we’d seen just a few days prior were an isolated case.

Somehow I doubted that.  Their absence out here made me uneasy.

“Yeah,” West said, looking out his window.  “I think that’s probably a pretty safe assumption.”

“Things will go a lot smoother if you two would give up the ridiculous idea that we might find Eve One,” Dr. Evans said.  He didn’t bother to turn and look at us.  He simply stared out that front window.

“I have to try,” I said, my throat turning dry.  I knew our odds of finding my sister.  They were close friends with the number zero.  But we had no idea if she would be shorted out the instant the transmitter went off.  If we could, in fact, build the thing and set it off.  I didn’t want to risk it.  “She’s my sister.”

“Look inside yourself, Eve,” he said, still not turning around.  “When you think of your sister, do you feel anything?  Do you feel a bond, a pull?”

My eyes darted away from him back to the window.

“There isn’t anything there, is there?” he said, finally looking back over his shoulder at me.  Not that I was going to look at him.  “We kept you apart for a reason.  It was not beneficial to have the two of you bond.  Admit it; this is just another rescue mission for you.”

“You can still be the world’s biggest dick, can’t you?” West said, annoyance in his voice.

“It is not logical to attempt to find one person on this huge continent,” Dr. Evans explained smoothly.  “One person who took off almost six years ago.”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” West said, his voice not so defensive.

I took a deep breath and sat up straighter.  I shoved aside the grating nerves Dr. Evans’ doubt caused.  He wasn’t in charge of this mission.  At least not in the way that mattered.

“I need you to tell me everything that happened,” I said, my voice under control, “after I was brought back to NovaTor’s doors.  What happened with my sister, how you were supposed to dispose of me.  How you released us.  All of it.”

“We’ve already discussed this,” he said, though I could hear the resolve in his voice wavering.

“Not everyone has heard it,” I said, my voice hard but measured.  “Don’t underestimate the competence of my team.”

I saw a twitch of a smile on Bill’s face.

“Details bring clarity,” Avian said.

“Fine,” Dr. Evans said.  “Where would you like me to start?”

The tension in the solar tank started to ease back and everyone relaxed into their seats.  None of them would admit it, but they were all at least a little afraid of Dr. Evans and the freakish hybrid he was.  What if he decided to turn on them?  What if he lost the miraculous grip on his humanity?  He could infect them all before I could immobilize him.

“After I was taken from NovaTor and tampered with,” I said.  “They dropped me off and I started killing off those who had just been implanted.  You said it affected my sister differently.  Why?”

He took a deep breath, looking out the side window.  He rubbed his cybernetic hands together, as if contemplating all that had happened in the past.

“Your generation of TorBane and the generation we released to the public were different.  You could say they receive on a slightly different frequency.  While it immediately killed all the others off, it basically just scrambled Eve One’s brain.  It should have killed her, but your healing capabilities are unprecedented.  She was in bad shape, but she recovered.”

“I remember seeing her,” I said, looking over at West and then back at Avian.  “Sort of.  Like a muddy memory.  But her eyes were blood shot.  She went crazy.”

“And that’s when she attacked me,” West said, his hand rising to the scar on his neck.

Dr. Evans nodded without looking back at us.  “Her brain was basically being melted.  She’d never experienced pain, at least as far as she could remember.  Anyone would have reacted the way she did.  Coupled with the fact that my grandson thought she was you, Eve Two.  He tried to help you.  Eve One, I believe, was jealous.”

This brought a small smile to my face.  I looked over at West, who met my glance.  When the smile on my face grew fractionally bigger, he rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“My son, Lance, he got the two of you mixed up,” Dr. Evans continued.  “He had worked with Eve One extensively, knew how emotionless she was.  So when she did what she did, he couldn’t imagine it was her.  You, on the other hand, frequently had to be adjusted emotionally; you evolved.  It had to be you.”

“She was a very expensive, very valuable project by then,” Avian said.  I turned slightly in my seat to see his brow furrow.  “And he wanted her disposed of?  Why not just lock her up and fix her?”

“Do not underestimate the love a parent has for their child,” Dr. Evans said, looking back at us.  His eyes grew dark and severe.  “Or the lengths one will go to protect their offspring.  West nearly bled to death after Eve One accidentally attacked him.  My son wanted his attacker destroyed.”

“Okay,” I said, shaking my head.  That part didn’t really matter at this point.  I understood what desperation did to people.  “So you pretended to dispose of me.  You locked me up for a few weeks.”

“More than a few weeks.  I hid you for fifteen weeks,” Dr. Evans said, his voice heavy with the difficulty of his task.  “You were hidden for the entire time that TorBane supposedly saved the world.”

“And then the world started to fall apart,” Bill said quietly.  His eyes were fixed on the road ahead of us, but his knuckles turned white where they gripped the steering wheel.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Twelve weeks after the first fifteen hundred implants were given, we started getting calls that people weren’t feeling right.  That they weren’t quite themselves.  We told them it was just going to take some time to adjust to the technology.  It was, after all, a blend of machine and man that had never been attempted before.

“But then another week later we were getting some much more serious reports,” he said, his voice growing quiet.  “I took a look at the research again.  I had never considered until that point that the Eve projects’ spreading TorBane was just because of the technology.  We had always thought it was because of the chip.  We had ignored what was standing right before us for thirteen years.”

There was nothing but the sound of the tires rolling over the pavement for a few moments as we heard an account of the end of the world from the lips of the man who created it.

“Anyway,” he said with a heavy sigh.  “At that point, we were preparing the second round of TorBane recipients.  I realized what was happening and created this,” he said, tapping a finger on the helmet that covered his head.  “It’s nothing short of a miracle that the timing of it all worked out.  I’d been exposed many, many times, but it had yet to overtake me.  At that point, TorBane was still spreading slowly.

“NovaTor was invaded by the US government.  They came to take over our research, to destroy all the components that we used to make TorBane.  Things turned violent.  Once they realized what the Eve’s really were, they would have killed them without hesitation,” he said, his voice suddenly rough sounding.

“I had to do something about Eve Two.  So I took her, you, from the holding room, told you not to say a word to Dr. Beeson or anyone else about who you really were.  You were obedient.  You never said a word.  You know what he did.  He did it not having the faintest clue about who you really were.  He thought you’d been dead for months.  Everyone did.  So he wiped your memory and then I set you free.”

“But not before your son tried to kill me, again,” I said.

“What?” West choked on the word.  “Dad—”

“Your father was angry that I’d lied, he reacted on impulse,” Dr. Evans said, shaking his head.  “Eve Two defended herself.”

“That’s probably why you were covered in blood when you arrived in Eden,” Avian mused.  “You’d been attacked.”

I’d nearly forgotten that, one of my very first memories.  When I first walked into Eden, I was mostly naked and covered in blood.  But didn’t have a scratch on me.  Considering the distance between NovaTor and Eden’s location, my blood would have dried in the journey.  But it wouldn’t take much rain or sweat to make it look fresh again.  And my body would have healed in just a few hours.

“In all of the chaos that was happening that day, I did not plan as carefully as I should have,” Dr. Evans continued.  Regret echoed in his voice.  He folded his hands and placed them in his lap.  “I should have watched, I should have paid attention to what Dr. Beeson did to take away your memories.  But there was no fixing that.  The soldiers that took over the building were tearing things apart.  So I took your sister to the back entrance and told her to go.”

“And did she run?” I asked.

He shook his head.  “At this point, my son knew what I had done.  There was a confrontation.  And I had to worry about getting West out of that building.  But I told her to run and I have no reason to believe she wouldn’t have.”

“We’ll look,” I said, glancing out the window.  City areas started to fall behind us, dropping us into desert terrain.  “I understand we might not be able to find her.  We won’t lose focus on the bigger picture.”

West shifted in his seat and his change in demeanor grabbed my attention.

“What?” I said, turning my eyes on him.

“I understand that saving the world is more important,” West said, his voice unsure and uncomfortable.  “But I searched for her for five years.  I thought I’d found her, only to find out I’d found my nemesis.  How could I possibly stop trying to find her?”

Our eyes locked on each other and the silence was heavy inside the vehicle for several long moments.

“West,” I said, my voice quiet.  “Will you come back with us if we have to leave?  If we can’t find her?”

He didn’t respond for a beat.  “I don’t know,” he replied truthfully.  “I don’t think I’ll know the answer to that until we get to that moment.”

There was chaos behind West’s expression.  There was confusion and commitment and a million other things that I completely understood.  That didn’t make them easy to accept.  But West was his own person and this was his decision.

“Okay,” was my response.

“You do realize making the decision not to return with us is suicide,” Dr. Evans growled and the heat was instantly back in the air.  “After everything I did to make sure you survived, you’re going to throw it away?”

“Your efforts to get me out of NovaTor were not completely unselfish,” West said back in a low voice.  “I can make my own choices now.”

As the van grew quiet again, I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath.

My life was way too complicated.

There was suddenly a warm, comforting hand on my shoulder from behind and I breathed slightly easier.  I placed my hand over Avian’s and pictured trees and mountains.  I pictured scouting down unseen trails.  I imagined overlooking a valley and knowing that was where I belonged.

I imagined my life a few months down the road, if there was such a thing.

“That was the last major city until we get to Vegas,” Bill said quietly as the last of the buildings fell away and we rolled out into the desert.

TEN

I kept waiting for something to go wrong.  For something to happen.

But Avian was very good at keeping Morgan hidden.  He was inconspicuous in checking her IV line, in monitoring her breathing and pulse.  I dared imagine no one would discover she was back there until we got the entire way to NovaTor.

And out here in the desert, there wasn’t a trace of Bane, other than two demolished bodies we’d passed in the middle of the road.  Nothing could have destroyed them like that except for another Bane.  My army was out there somewhere.

So we had yet to have a need to fire even a single bullet.  Much of the drive reminded me of our journey from old Eden.  There was nothing to see for miles and miles except for dry clay and sand and rugged hills and small canyons.

But just as we passed a sign that read fifty miles to Las Vegas, the clouds started rolling in, threatening rain in the late January air.

Dr. Beeson had said once the sun was gone we would get about one hour of power before the batteries ran dry.  We would die just outside the city.

“How long do we try and stay on the freeway?” Avian asked as the sky grew darker.  “There are bound to be hordes of Bane in the city.”

“I still don’t see why we don’t just drive through the city,” Dr. Evans said, shaking his head.  “We’ve all seen enough evidence to know that Eve Two can handle anything that might come at us.”

“It’s never a bad idea to err on the side of caution,” I said, cringing as we hit a large pothole.  The road had grown rougher and rougher as we got further into the desert.

“My child,” Dr. Evans said, turning to face me.  “When will you stop doubting your capabilities and accept that you are more than the rest of us?”

I just shook my head and looked away from him.  We hit another hole in the road, making everything and everyone in the vehicle bounce violently to the left before being tossed back.

Morgan gave a whimpering cry.

My eyes grew wide and I instantly froze.

Bill and Dr. Evans gave no indication that they’d heard, but West whipped around in his seat, searching for the source of the noise.

Of course Morgan groaned in that moment.

“What was that?” West hissed, standing and leaning over his seat to gain a better view.

“Just our stuff getting shifted around,” Avian lied, his eyes darting to mine.

West didn’t miss that.

“I don’t think so,” he said, his voice hard.  He started to move toward Morgan’s hidden form.

“Sit down, West,” I said, my voice hard.  “It wasn’t anything.”

By now, Bill and Dr. Evans had started paying attention to what was going on.

“Then why are you two acting so weird?” West said, his voice growing louder and harder.  “In fact, why have you both been acting weird this whole day?  What’s back there?”

My eyes darted to Avian and we held each other’s gaze for a long moment.  We had both known the moment was going to come when we’d have to tell the truth about what we were doing.  But we had no way to know how everyone would react.

Especially Dr. Evans.

“I’m going to try and save the baby,” I said, my voice low.

“What baby?” West asked, his eyes growing dark.

By this point, Bill had stopped the solar tank and he and Dr. Evans were turned around looking at us.

“Morgan’s,” I replied simply.

There was a heavy moment before West pushed his way past Avian and leaned over the seat.  He shifted the carefully placed bags.  And then he saw her.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, never taking his eyes from her unconscious form.  “You did not bring a dying, pregnant woman with us on a possibly suicidal mission.”

“What is going on?” Dr. Evans demanded.  One of his mechanical hands curled into a steel fist.

I gave a hard swallow as I eyed his hands, knowing the unstoppable damage they could cause.

“Morgan is five and a half months pregnant,” Avian said when my words failed.  “She was injured in the earthquake, and she isn’t going to pull through it.  The baby is almost guaranteed to die with her.”

Everyone was silent as West turned and sank into the seat next to Avian.

“I was going to die once too,” I said, my voice even.  “I came into this world too soon to a mother who was dying.  You saved me, Dr. Evans.”

“That was a long time ago, my dear girl,” he said, his gaze falling away from mine.

“But you still have the formula for what saved me,” I said, not backing down even though, for one of the first times in my life, I was actually scared, in a way I couldn’t explain.  “And we’re already heading back to where you kept that formula and all of the things you needed to create it.”

There was a general, quick intake of breath as everyone in the solar tank sorted out the plan Avian and I devised.

“You want me to recreate that first generation of TorBane,” Dr. Evans said.  “And give it to the dying baby in that woman’s stomach?”

I shook my head and the back of my eyes stung.  “Not want.  I’m demanding it.  I won’t be your savior until you try to save that baby.”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Avian said, again placing his hand on my shoulder.  “You could do the same procedure to that baby that you did to Eve and eventually her sister all those years ago.”

Dr. Evans didn’t say anything, just shot daggers at me with his eyes.

This was not part of his master plan.

Suddenly, Bill pulled a handgun from the holster at his hip and placed it flat against the glass enclosure.  “Is it possible?” he said in a low voice.

Dr. Evans looked at Bill, not in the least bit afraid of the firearm pointed right at his face.  Everyone in the vehicle could see the gears turning in his head.  “It’s highly improbable that everything at NovaTor needed to create that first version of TorBane is still in usable condition.  But it is not impossible.”

“Seriously?” West said, glancing back at Morgan.  “You could create another baby like Eve?”

“As I said, it is improbable,” Dr. Evans growled.  “And a large waste of precious time considering how long it will set us back in returning to New Eden with everything we need.  But, it is not impossible.”

“Holy…” West breathed, running his hands through his hair.  “Eve, how long have you and Avian been planning this?”

I met his eyes, but suddenly my throat felt tight and unable to speak.  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted this plan to work, for Dr. Evans to be able to save the dying baby.  But what if it didn’t work?  What if he couldn’t get together the supplies he needed to recreate my version of TorBane?

And the child…

“A few days,” Avian answered for me.  “Eve came up with the idea and I agreed with her.  We put Morgan in the van early this morning before everyone was awake.”

“Morgan has been out for how long?” West questioned.  “Have you even asked her if she’s okay with this?”

“No,” I said, my voice surprisingly rough.  “But I don’t think she would want her child to die either.  Not if there was a chance it could be saved.”

“No offense,” West said, his expression suddenly sour.  “But are you sure she would want her child to spend the rest of its life as a hybrid?”

For the third time, Avian punched West.

Due to their extremely close quarters, he didn’t get much swing behind it, but it got the message across.

“Seriously, Avian!” West screamed, cradling his jaw in his hand.  “Enough with beating the crap out of me!  We get you don’t want anyone messing with your woman!”

“Quit acting like a dick and I wouldn’t have to,” Avian growled, his blue eyes ablaze.

“Ahh,” West groaned, opening his mouth wide and stretching the muscles.  “I’m sorry, Eve.  That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Trust me,” I said, my voice cold.  “I’m used to your crap by now.”

“Children,” Dr. Evans said, his eyes looking rabid.  “Let’s not fight now.  Although I hate to say it, they’re right, West.  That was uncalled for.  With the version of TorBane Eve had, she would have been almost normal if she hadn’t had the chip implanted in her brain.  I’m not agreeing to anything, but the child could have a fairly normal life if it was given the same treatment.”

“Other than she’ll basically be indestructible, like Eve, right?” Avian said, not relaxing in the least.

Dr. Evans nodded.  I had little doubt the suddenly glazed over look in his eyes meant that he was calculating everything out, making plans already.

I was banking on the fact that Dr. Evans was a man of science and curiosity.  I was offering him a chance to create one being that was supposed to be what he intended for the world.

One chance to get this right.

A few moments later, he finally met my eyes.  “I’m not saying yes, but I am saying I will consider it.”

“I’m not offering you the chance to consider it,” I said seriously.  “I’m saying you try it or I won’t save the world.”

“That sounds awfully selfish, don’t you think?” he said pointedly.

“Maybe I am selfish,” I said, my hands curling into fists.  “But that doesn’t change my deal.”

He was quiet for a moment and everyone seemed to be holding their breath until Dr. Evans gave an answer.

“Then I guess this trip is going to take us a bit longer than we planned.”

ELEVEN

With the tension and truth somewhat relieved, everyone got out of the solar tank for a few minutes to stretch and take a bathroom break.  Avian took the time to rearrange Morgan, in hopes she would be more comfortable.  Not that she was aware of his efforts.  He replaced the nearly depleted oxygen tank and started her on a fresh bag of IV fluids.

Her pulse and vitals were growing fainter by the hour.

Avian estimated she had another four days before her organs began shutting down.

That was if she didn’t have a heart attack first.

My eyes automatically swept the horizon around us, M16 in hand.

“You were pretty impressive in there,” Avian said, standing beside me, hands stuffed in his pockets.  “Dr. Evans is kind of intimidating, but you weren’t backing down.”

“We’ve lost enough people, if we can save one more, it’s worth it,” I said, absentmindedly drawing a line in the dirt with the toe of my boot.

“Eve,” he said, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.  “I fully support trying to save this baby, one hundred percent.  But have you really considered what will happen if this works, if the baby lives?  It will never be like anyone around it.  It will always feel different from anyone else.  Everyone but you.”

I didn’t look up at Avian as I pondered what he said.  The thought had danced around in the back of my head as I made my plans and dared to speculate that this might work.  But I had focused on this plan one step at a time.  First get Avian on board.  Get Morgan into the solar tank without anyone noticing.  Tell everyone my plan.

But it was stupid of me not to think this all the way through.

What would happen if this did work?

Who would take care of the baby?

I looked up at Avian, locked my eyes with his intense blue ones.

Avian was a rock, someone who still stood no matter how much the world had thrown at him.  He would still stand no matter what happened in the future.

He was the perfect father figure.

But could I ever fill the role of a mother?

I wasn’t so sure I had it in me.

“We better get moving again,” Bill said as he walked back to the tank from relieving himself.  As he did, the first drops of rain started falling from the sky.  “We’ve maybe got another forty minutes of juice before we’re stuck till the sun decides to come back out.”

I met Avian’s eyes once more, his unanswered question hanging in the air.

I couldn’t give him an answer when I didn’t have one.

“West!” I shouted.  He’d wandered off to stretch his legs and take a break.  “Let’s get going!”

He came jogging back to the van and we all loaded up.  Sixty seconds later we were rolling down the cracked road again.

The rain picked up in intensity until it was solid and drenching.  It wasn’t long until there was standing water on the road.  The sky continued to grow darker, and over the next half hour, the solar tank moved slower and slower.

“Ten miles to Vegas,” Bill said, looking down at one of his maps.  “We should probably take the next exit and make our way around the city.”

“Bill, watch out!” West suddenly shouted.

Bill slammed on the breaks and our tires rode on top of the water on the road for a moment before splashing to a stop.

Standing in the middle of the freeway were two women.  Both with very large assault rifles pointed at us.

Dr. Evans suddenly chuckled and shook his head.  “Oh, this is just precious.”

The two women kept their firearms leveled at us as they crept forward.

“Open the doors!” one of them yelled, tapping her firearm on the door just to the side of West.

He glanced over at the rest of us, unsure of what to do.  “Is she serious?” he said, his brows furrowed together in disbelief.

“Firearms ready,” I said, steadying my own gun in the direction of the door.  Everyone else pointed their own assorted weapons at the door.  I nodded to West.  “Open it.”

West placed his hand on the handle of the door and shoved it open.  As soon as the two women saw what was waiting for them, they dropped their weapons and held their hands up.

“Don’t shoot,” the same one who had spoken before said, shaking her head.  “We were just looking for some food and were surprised to see anyone else on the road.”

“What are you doing so close to the city?” I asked, still not relaxing my M16.  “There’s got to be hundreds of thousands of Bane just at your backs.”

The same woman, the one with the matted blonde hair that was pulled back in a messy bun at the top of her head, spoke.  “I don’t know about that.  I mean, I’m sure there are some.  But it looks like most of the city has burned down.”

“Burned down?” I said, my brows pulling together.  “Who’s left to bother?”

The woman shrugged, shaking her head.

“Might not have been anyone,” West said, his eyes turning toward the city as he lowered his weapon slightly.

“Could have been lightning,” Dr. Evans said.

And as soon as he spoke, the women took one look at him, screamed, and scrambled for their firearms.

“Wait!” all four of us shouted at the same time.  West leapt from the van, tugging their firearms from their hands.  The woman who had yet to speak swung at him and tried once again to recover her firearm.

She started shouting and screaming in a language I didn’t recognize.

“What are you doing driving around with one of them?!” the blond woman said, her eyes wild as she backed away from the vehicle.

“He’s safe,” West said, handing their firearms back to me.  He then held his hands up to show he wouldn’t hurt them and slowly started walking toward them.  “He’s not quite like the others.  He will infect you if he touches you, yes, but he still has his humanity.  He won’t hurt anyone.”

Both the women shook their heads, but they stopped their retreat.

“Not possible,” the blond one said.

Cracking his window just a tiny bit, because it was still raining, and he was mostly Bane after all, Dr. Evans looked out at them.  “I can assure you that it is indeed possible.”

“How does it talk?!” the woman shouted, nearly jumping out of her skin.  The other woman shouted words I didn’t understand.

It took a very long time to explain it all—how exactly Dr. Evans had kept his humanity, how he was different from the others.  Neither of them would come any closer to the vehicle and in the end, it was Avian and I who climbed out to talk to them.

“This seems crazy,” the blond one said.  “But I guess I can’t deny what I’m seeing with my own eyes.”

“What are your names?” Avian asked, wiping the rain out of his eyes.  We were all completely soaked by this point.

“Susan,” the blond woman said.  She was thin, the same body as the rest of us survivors had.  She looked to be in her mid-thirties.  She wore a thick winter coat covered by an enormous rain slicker.  She sported a large hiking pack.  “This here is Karmen, but she doesn’t really speak any English.  Just Spanish.”

Karmen looked younger than Susan, maybe twenty-eight.  Her hair was cut short, but in a way that still looked feminine.  She was also shorter than Susan and more petite.

“Where are you from?” Avian asked, folding his arms across his chest.  Avian had always seemed too quick to relax and trust.  He’d slung his rifle over his shoulder just after we climbed out of the van.

“Wyoming,” Susan said.  “My husband and I owned a ranch up there.  We were fine until about seven months ago.  My husband’s gone now.”  Her voice faltered for a moment, but her body showed determination and resolve.  This was a woman built to survive.  “I’d just returned to my house after burying him when I found Karmen in my barn.”

“What are you doing clear down here then?” I asked, my eyes scanning the roads behind her.  I had no way of knowing they were alone.  They very well could have more of them watching us, ready to commandeer our vehicle the moment we let our guard down.

“There’s no one else with us,” Susan said, suddenly tensing.  I realized then that I’d raised my rifle again and was pointing it at her lower belly.  “It’s just us.”

Scanning the road and the broken down vehicles again, I lowered it just slightly.  Susan eyed me warily for a few more moments before answering my question.

“About two months ago, we had the radio on,” she said.  “I’ve been checking it every few weeks, just to see if anything comes up.  Imagine my surprise when I heard a message saying Los Angeles had been cleared and that they were offering shelter and protection.”

The smile on Avian’s face was immediate.  “That’s where we’re from,” he said, nodding in my direction.  “It was Royce, our sort of military leader, who recorded the message.”

Susan’s face was suddenly filled with a mix of emotion.  First unbelief, then hope, then uncertainty.  “So it’s true?  There really are more people out there?  In the middle of such a huge city?”

Avian nodded as the comforting smile spread on his face.  “It’s true.  There are just over one hundred and sixty of us there.”

A laugh suddenly bubbled out of Susan’s throat and she threw her arms around Avian.  Her sudden movement caught me off guard, and I reflexively raised my rifle back to her.  Karmen started yelling at me in Spanish and I lowered it again.  Susan immediately released Avian.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still laughing and smiling.  “It’s just…wow.  I couldn’t really believe it was real, but I knew I had to try.”

“If we’re staying for a while, should we set up tents so you all don’t drown?” West called from the van.

“Doesn’t look like the sun is going to break any time soon,” I called back to him.  “May as well pull two of them out!”

West nodded and he and Bill set to setting two of them up.

By the time they were erected, the six of us were completely soaked.  Dr. Evans couldn’t step outside of the van without getting shorted out, so he stayed in the van with Morgan.  It was better that way.  Susan and Karmen were still terrified of him.

I couldn’t blame them.

“So if you all are from this New Eden,” Susan said once we were settled inside and drying off.  “Why are you out here?  Why are you leaving the safe zone?”

We each looked at one another, all of us unsure of what to disclose.  Finally, they turned to me, as if to say it was my call on how much to reveal.

“We’re on a mission, if you will,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.  I had always been a leader, but being the leader was going to take some getting used to.  “We think we might have a chance to fix things.  We’re investigating that.”

“Fix things?” Susan said, her brow furrowing.  “What do you mean by that?”

I shook my head, already wishing I hadn’t said anything.  “We can’t say too much, but we’re hoping we can make things better.”

“Hmm,” Susan said, her eyes still disbelieving, but leaving it alone.

“We’ll be leaving as soon as the sun comes back out,” Avian said.  “Our vehicle is solar powered.”

“Smart,” Susan said, nodding her head.

Karmen, sitting there so quiet and not saying anything, was strange and uncomfortable.  I had no idea how much of our conversation she could understand.  I didn’t want to ignore her, but it did seem somewhat pointless to include her in the conversation if she didn’t understand.

“You should be fairly safe getting the rest of the way there,” I said, turning back to Susan.  “That doesn’t mean let your guard down, but we haven’t seen any Bane since we left New Eden.”

“Any?” she questioned.

I shook my head.  “We kind of had a clearing of the city.  And then…well, let’s just say they were sent away.”  And I left it at that.

By now night had fallen and we all brought out the blankets and sleeping bags.  Karmen and Susan would camp and eat with us until morning and then we would go our separate ways.

I had just ducked back into the van for more food, the night fully descending upon us, when I heard a moan from the back seat.

“Morga?,” I said, leaning over her seat from the back of the van.

“Eve?” she said, her voice weak.  She raised a shaky hand to the tube blowing air into her nose, but it fell limp to her chest on its way.  “What…where are we?”

I looked out the back of the van, back in the direction of the tents.  I debated going after Avian.  But this would very likely be my one and only chance to talk to her before she slipped away.  I glanced up at Dr. Evans just once.  He sat still and silent in his glass box in the passenger seat, staring straight forward.

It was unnerving.  He looked remarkably like a Sleeper.  I hoped he was just giving me privacy.

“Just outside of Las Vegas,” I said, resting my forearms on the back of the seat she lay on.

“What?” she asked, my eyes looking up at me in confusion.  “Did you just say Vegas?”

I nodded.  “We’re headed for NovaTor Biotics.  We might reach it tomorrow.  Maybe the next day.”

“Why?” she asked.  She rubbed an absentminded hand over her growing stomach.

“There have been some recent developments,” I said, keeping my voice low.  “Morgan, there’s a chance we can fix all this.”

“Fix what?”

“The world,” I said, barely more than a breath.  The words still felt too unspeakable.  It seemed cruel to say them if they couldn’t possibly be true.  “There may be a way for us to kill them off.  All of the Bane.”

She took a small, gasping breath, the air sounding as if it were trying to choke her as it went down.  She swallowed, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment.  “And you’re somehow the key to making it work,” she said, her eyes rising up to me.  “Aren’t you?”

I didn’t reply for a moment.  Everyone kept looking at me like some kind of savior.  Like I had somehow been born into this destiny.  Yet it was all just luck that it happened to work out that I could do anything.  That I had anything to give.

“We’re going to give it a try,” I said, my throat feeling dry.

“Eve,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed once more.  It was a long while before they opened again and she found the breath to continue.  “Why am I here?”

Now it was my turn to hesitate in answering.  “You know that I’m different from everyone else, but that I would do anything to protect those around me despite what I am, right?”

Her breath rattled again as she breathed in.  “Of course.”

“I’m not good at dancing around things and articulating words gently,” I said as I laced my fingers together.  Finally, I looked back at her.  “You aren’t going to make it much longer.”

Morgan nodded.  “I know.”

“And the chances of the baby surviving are very slim.”

Morgan nodded again.

“What if there was a chance that we could save the baby?” I said.  The air around us seemed to grow still as my words caught in the space around us.  For just a moment, it felt as if everything around us was weightless and anything was impossibly possible.

“What if by becoming like me, she could live?”

Morgan’s eyes grew steady as they locked on my face.  For the first time in weeks, she seemed incredibly alive.  Fierce.  “I would ask you to do everything in your power to make sure it happens.”

Several times I had tried to imagine how this conversation might go, if I ever got the chance to have it.

I hadn’t expected the emotion that ripped through my body.

It felt like a shudder worked its way from my toes up, like cascading rain and electric lightning.  It pushed its way up to my throat, closing it in, and up to my eyes.  Pushing three single teardrops out.

“I’ll do everything I can,” I said, my voice quivering.

Morgan reached up a shaking hand and grasped mine.  Together, our hands shook, but they were strong and determined.

TWELVE

Morgan slipped into unconsciousness soon after we talked.  Avian spent the night in the van with her, monitoring her health.  Bill, West, Karmen, and Susan slept in the tents while I kept watch.  But every hour or so, I would see the flap of the tent open and Bill would look out at me.

Bill always had my back.

Not long after midnight, the rain let up and the air grew colder when the clouds moved on to the south.  Dawn filled the air with unreal quiet.

I’d expected to have something happen in the night.  I really had.  We were so close to a city.  The world had continued to Evolve.  The Bane had grown more aggressive, not quieter.  Given it had been night and some of them did still go into inactivity during the dark hours of the twenty-four cycle—still.

I was unnerved that we had yet to see a single Bane.

“What’s wrong?” Avian asked when he stepped outside the van in the morning.  He looked both ways down the freeway, his hands going to the handgun in the holster at his hip.

“Nothing,” I said, my eyes scanning the silhouette of the city in the distance.  “That’s what’s wrong.  Doesn’t it seem strange that there aren’t any Bane around this close to the city?  It’s too quiet.”

Avian nodded as he continued to look over our surroundings.  “Yeah, this is too easy.”

“We’d be seeing bodies if my army had taken care of them all here.  But there’s nothing so far.  I don’t know that a fire would be enough to drive the Bane out unless it just completely leveled the city.  But look at it,” I said, pointing ahead.  “It looks like there are still plenty of buildings for them to sleep in.  So where are they?”

Avian swore under his breath, looking toward the sun where it rose in the east.  “We should probably get moving.”

“Yeah,” I said.  The flap to the girl’s tent was pushed open and Susan stepped out.  “Hey,” I said, turning toward her.  “Did you come through the city before you got to us, or did you skirt around it?”

“We hung to the edges of the city,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.  “We needed food so we didn’t dare completely miss it.  I knew it would be one of the last ones before we got to your people.”

“And were there any Bane?” I asked.  My eyes jumped to the sky when a flock of birds suddenly started and flew over our heads.

“We were trying to avoid them, obviously,” Susan said, looking at me like I was stupid.  “And there was the fire.”

“But did you see any?  Were they inactive in any of the buildings?  Did you see any of them scouting?” I asked impatiently.

Susan was quiet for a second, her gaze dropping to the ground as she reviewed their journey.  “No,” she said, her brow furrowing.  “Actually, we didn’t.  There were tons of them north.  We had to make a huge effort to avoid them.  But none of the cities we have passed through yet have been as big as Vegas.”

“Something’s wrong,” Avian said as I looked at him.

“Avian, what if the sweep that I saw wasn’t the only one?” I said in a shallow breath.  “What’s to say that the first gens everywhere aren’t starting sweeps?  Why would it ever be limited to that one?”

Avian swore again.  He crossed to the tent and tossed the flap aside.  “West!  Time to get up.  We’ve got to go.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked from within, his voice groggy.

“Our time may have just run out,” Avian said, already disassembling the girl’s tent as Karmen stepped out of it.

With the world finally dry, Dr. Evans stepped out from his glass prison box.  Susan and Karmen started, stepping back several steps.  He just held his hands up and took a step away from them.

“Judging from you two, something is wrong,” he said, placing his hands where his hips should have been.  He was much more shapeless without any skin or fat to fill him out.  Just bones and mechanical organs.

“I made a huge mistake in assuming there would only ever be one Bane sweep,” I said, helping Avian pack up the tent.  By this point, West had rolled out of his tent and Bill returned to help him pack it up.  “Why aren’t there any Bane coming after us, Dr. Evans?”

He, like Avian and I had done, turned to the city.  “If it is a sweep, this is different.  The city still looks like it’s standing.”

“I don’t know,” I said as I shoved the tent into the back of the solar tank.  “But something isn’t right.”

“Karmen, Susan,” Avian said as we flew around packing and getting ready to go.  “You two need to get moving.  The road was clear our whole way here.  Be careful, but move fast.  We have no way of knowing if it will stay that way.”

“Find Royce when you get there,” I said, checking that my magazine was fully loaded.  “Tell him to have the scientists work as fast as they can.  Tell him we don’t have nearly as much time as we thought.”

“Royce,” Susan said, nodding her head as she pulled her pack on.  Karmen did the same.  “He’s the leader in New Eden?”

I nodded.  “By now he’ll have found out something we did without his knowledge and he’s going to be angry about it, but tell him we will be back as soon as we possibly can.”

“Okay,” she nodded as Bill slammed the back doors to the solar tank closed.  “Thank you for taking care of us last night.”

Bill and West climbed back in the van while Avian and I held back a moment.

“We were more than happy to,” Avian said with a nod.  “Those of us left need to help each other.”

“I hope we see you both again soon,” Susan said.

“Hasta luego,” Karmen said.  “Ser seguro.”

And while I didn’t know exactly what her words meant, I understood their sincerity.

Avian and I climbed into the van and waved goodbye.  Karmen and Susan started down the road we had come.

“You want me to start through the city?” Bill asked as he started the tank.  I breathed a sigh of relief when it fired right up.  The sun had risen and charged the solar panels.

“I don’t think we have any choice,” I said as I looked around to my companions.  Adrenaline was burning through the blood of everyone around me.  “We have to see what is going on.  If the Bane really are starting more sweeps…”

“Got it,” Bill said, nodding when I didn’t continue.

We rolled forward toward the city.  Within minutes we were passing gas stations and long abandoned roadside stands.

I stood when we started creeping into the city outskirts, and unlatched the hatch.  A gust of cold air blasted into the tank as I pushed it open.  I pulled myself up and over the lip.  I straddled the hole with my legs, my butt sitting on the very edge of the lip, my legs spreading across the hole and bracing the other side with my boots.  I reached across and placed my hands on the handles of the firing turret.

“You want any back up, up there?” West called from below.

“I’ll let you know,” I said distractedly as I scanned the roads around us.

Soon, the scattered buildings grew more compacted and the shops grew bigger.  But so far everything looked intact.

“You see any of them?” West called up.  I looked down to see him peering out his window, his rifle propped up in it.

“No,” I said, shaking my head.  “Not a single one.”

Windows revealed abandoned buildings.  There were no inactive watchers from within.  Not even one lone Sleeper.  No Hunters crashed out of buildings to rush us.

So far, the city was abandoned.

We drove with baited breath for another twenty minutes that felt like days.  We waited for movement, for a helicopter to swoop down on us from the sky, for the Evolved world to be recognizable.

As the city grew taller and more glamorous, the buildings showed their destruction.

So may had collapsed, had caved in on themselves and were nothing more than piles of rubble.  Others showed scorch marks.  Trees were smoldering stumps and the road was blackened in long stretches.

The air tasted very faintly of smoke and ash.

“How long ago do you think this happened?” I asked, surveying the destruction.

“A few weeks,” Avian said, though he didn’t sound too sure.

“Considering there are no more flames burning and how the air seems to be mostly cleared,” Dr. Evans said.  “I would estimate the blaze started over a month ago.  The city would have burned for weeks.  I would even guess that the rain we saw last night put out the last of the flames.”

By this point, Bill had pulled off of the main freeway and taken to a main road that led us right into the heart of the city.  We approached the highest buildings.

The buildings on both our left and right had once been beautiful.  I saw a row of white columns with beautiful detail carved into them.  Scorched trees and bushes hinted at what must have once been fantastic landscaping.  But now they were burned to the ground and crumbled.

We broke between the two half crumbled buildings and stopped in our tracks.

Everything on the east side of the road was a crumbled, destroyed mess.

“Ground zero,” Bill said.

My eyes scanned the rubble, but there was nothing to see.  The sweep had moved on.

I heard Bill click the tank into park and everyone stepped outside.

The road that had once separated the east from the west side was filled with debris.  Chunks of concrete were stacked fifty feet high, but there wasn’t the shape of even a single solid wall.  Steel beams rose out of the ground in abstract shapes, curving, some frayed and splintered.

The Bane had leveled this side of the city.

“You think their destruction caused the fire that burned the west side?” West asked.  He shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he took in the damage.

Dr. Evans shook his head.  “Impossible to say.  Could have been.  But it very likely could have been natural from lightning.  Everything is dry as a bone out here.  It wouldn’t take much of a spark to set everything afire.”

“Maybe that’s what started the sweep,” Avian said, his assault rifle sweeping the scene before us.  “Maybe lightning caused the fire on the west side of the city.  That could have woken up the Bane.  Driven them east, starting the sweep.”

I nodded.  It seemed possible.  But impossible to ever know for sure.  “Whatever way it happened, there’s no denying there are more sweeps happening,” I said, relaxing my grip on the turret.  There would be no Bane to shoot.  “We have no way of knowing how many have started.”

“The Bane,” Dr. Evans said with a sigh.  “Their brains all work the same.  Same generation of TorBane, same impulses, same way of thinking, if you can call what they do thinking.  I would say worldwide sweeps will start within the next two months.  It only took four months for TorBane to wipe out the world.  That first sweep you saw was about a month ago, Eve.  It’s probably safe to say the one you witnessed wasn’t the first one.”

“Worldwide,” West said in a disbelieving breath.  He swore.  “So you’re saying we’ve got about eight weeks to get this transmitter built, or we’re all dead.  That’s it for the human race?”

“Or less,” Dr. Evans said.  The pain and regret in his voice ripped through my own heart.

“Let’s get moving then,” I said, dropping down through the hatch so I was standing on my seat, my upper half still out through the hole.  “We don’t have any time to waste.”

THIRTEEN

The solar tank could not move fast enough, but at least the sun made it reliable.

We got back on the freeway, and we drove.  We did not stop, even when the Bane started showing up in small towns.

There were many destroyed bodies lying in the streets, piles of parts and gleaming metal.  My army had been here at some point.  Those that were left we either blasted away with the turret, or I turned them on each other.

From what we saw in Vegas and in our travels northeast, we could all guess that the Bane sweep had moved east.  According to Bill’s maps, there weren’t any big towns for them to hit for over a thousand miles.  If we could move fast enough, maybe we could save some lives.

We were lucky that we had found sanctuary where we did and even luckier that NovaTor was located where it was.  If both had been located on the east coast somewhere, we would never have made it out alive.  But we were fortunate.  There were only small towns, besides Vegas, between New Eden and the location of NovaTor.

Avian passed around the packed last-forever food when the sun reached its highest point in the sky.  Soon after that, we pulled off the main freeway and onto a highway.  The road was badly cracked and potholes forced us to slow.  We could drive no faster than thirty miles per hour.

So we were only forty miles from NovaTor when darkness enveloped us and the solar tank rolled to a stop.

Right as the first flakes of snow started to fall.

I set up our tent as Avian made sure Morgan was set for the night.  West had offered to keep watch over her and would get Avian the moment it looked like she needed him.  I appreciated this small gesture toward normalizing the relationship between the three of us.

I sat in the entry of the tent, my booted feet on the dirt, my rear end on the tarp floor of the tent.  The cold breeze pushed my hair off my face.  The air felt fresher out here, crisp and free.  Not like in the city.

A few snowflakes clung to Avian’s head and shoulders as he walked up to the tent.  He sat next to me, tucking his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

“Is it weird that I both do and don’t miss the snow?” Avian said.

I smiled.  “I know what you mean.  It reminds me of home, of Eden.  But I do not miss winters.”

“Do you remember two years ago, how much snow we had?” he reminisced.

I nodded.  “I think there was snow on the ground for ten weeks straight.  I don’t miss sharing a tent with fifteen other people.”

It had been a hard winter.  In an attempt to stay warm at night, we had packed as many people into one tent as possible, hoping body heat would be enough to keep everyone from freezing.

Avian chuckled.  “Tye hated that.  Did you know he slept up in the watchtower every night during that time?  By himself?”

“I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head.  “But it doesn’t surprise me.”

“I thought for sure I would find him frozen to death every morning when I went to check on him.  He was always so stubborn,” Avian said.  He leaned toward me, bumping my shoulder with his.  “I guess that’s where you learned it from.”

I met his eyes and smiled.  There were days when I missed Tye so much.  I couldn’t imagine how bad it must be for Avian.  Tye was his cousin and best friend, after all.  I wouldn’t be half the soldier I was if it hadn’t been for Tye’s instruction.

Avian wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his side.

“I miss them,” I said.  I knew Avian would know who I was including in “them.”  I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else.  Saying it to anyone other than him would have made me feel weak, too human.  But this was Avian.  It was different.

“Me too,” he said.

The snow continued to fall, soft and light.  The night grew darker.

Reaching for the lantern he’d set at his feet, Avian slipped his hand into mine.  We stepped inside the tent and I zipped the flap closed behind us.

Avian had set the lamp on the floor.  He sat on the sleeping bag and slipped his boots off.

As I looked down at him, I marveled at how I could have ever doubted I had loved Avian.  As I recalled the last year, it should have seemed so obvious.  The way no one had ever been able to understand me like he did.  The way no one could comfort me the way he could.  The way I could never stay angry with him, no matter what he had done.

I didn’t believe in soul mates, but I did believe in the better half of two wholes.

Avian was mine.

“Tell me what it would have been like,” I said as I knelt and straddled his lap.  I brought my hands to either side of his face, letting my fingertips barely brush his cheeks.  At that moment, I was drowning in his beauty.  “If the world hadn’t ended and you and I had fallen in love.”

He hesitated just a moment, his eyes locked on mine.  And then he rolled, making me roll with him, until I was lying flat on my back and he hovered over me.

“I would have swept you off your feet until you couldn’t stand to be away from me,” he said, dipping his head and brushing his lips along my throat.

“That’s true now,” I said, letting my eyes slide closed as his lips trailed slightly further south.

“I would have talked to your father or mother,” he said, his lips tickling the hollow at the base of my throat.  “Gotten permission.”

“Permission for what?” I whispered.

“To make you mine forever.”

A smile curled on my lips.  Even though I felt completely relaxed, my body was alive and hyperaware of every inch of Avian.

“And then I would have gotten a ring.  Something that suited you, but told the rest of the world that you were claimed.”  His fingers traced slow, careful patterns up my arm, and finally, his fingers linked with mine.  “Remember how I said when I did ask, it would be grand?”

I nodded.

“It would be,” he breathed.  The warm air from his lips sent a wave of goose bumps across my skin.  “And you’d be speechless.”

I bit my lower lip as his brushed the neckline of my shirt.  And I was speechless.

“We’d set a date for the wedding.  Make plans.  Invite people we loved to attend.  You’d find a dress.  There’d be flowers, and cake, and music.”

I tried to picture it all behind my eyelids.  But that was made difficult because of the way Avian was making my body feel.

“And on that day, you’d walk toward me and I would probably start crying.”  His voice suddenly broke into a chuckle.  There was emotion behind it though.  Avian could more clearly see this picture we would never quite have.  If it brought emotion out of Avian, it must have been beautiful.

“We’d say words that would last forever,” he now whispered.  He released my fingers to trace invisible lines on my chest with his own.  “Nothing to do with ‘till death do us part.’  Because I know love lasts much longer than that.  I believe in infinity—which never ends.  We’d exchange rings and then kiss for everyone in attendance to see.  And we’d be pronounced inseparable.”

As he spoke, I felt my own throat tighten and the back of my eyes stung.  While I didn’t care for the glitz and dress and attention, I wanted everything else Avian spoke of.  Forever.

I felt a change in Avian’s mood and he shifted himself so his lips could tease mine.  “And then it would just be us that night, and for many nights to come.  And I would have my way with you as my wife.”

I laughed and in the same movement, flipped him so I ended up on top of him.  I pinned his hands to the ground on either side of his head with my own hands.  “I think that it would be the other way around,” I said as I lowered my lips to one of his ears.

Avian laughed and growled at the same time.  He lifted his head to fiercely take my lips.

FOURTEEN

A fresh blanket of snow covered everything in the morning, three inches deep.  Thankfully, West had thought to keep clearing the snow from the solar tank’s panels throughout the night.  By the time we packed up the tents and had eaten, they were charged enough to get the vehicle going.

One hour.

That was all that separated us from the place where I was born and altered.

Avian took my hand in his when I stiffened and the air caught in my throat.

“It’ll be okay,” West said, looking over at me.  I didn’t miss the mixed emotions still behind his eyes.  But there was one that was unmistakable: support.

I could always use another friend in this dismembered world.  I was grateful for the peace we were beginning to form between us.

“This is the turnoff,” Dr. Evans said after thirty minutes.  I was impressed he even saw it.  Two log posts jutted up from the ground, unremarkable, roughly six feet tall.  One of them had two rusty metal letters nailed into it: NB.

NovaTor Biotics.

We had driven down a small, two-lane highway into the middle of nowhere and it looked as if our turnoff went further into nowhere toward a barren low mountain.

“You certainly wouldn’t have unwanted visitors out here,” Bill said, correcting the wheel when the dirt road gave a violent jerk to the right.

“That was the point,” Dr. Evans said, his voice muted from the glass box.  “Everything we worked on at NovaTor Biotics was highly classified.  We didn’t like to be disturbed.”

As we rolled through the snow into the wilderness, I felt something in my heart sink.  There were very little resources out here.  Little food to find or water to drink.  There was no way my sister was within a hundred miles of NovaTor.  She was still human enough to have to do what she had to in order to survive.

“She’s not going to be here, is she?” West said.  I looked over to see him observing the scarce terrain as well.

I didn’t answer him.  And thankfully, Dr. Evans didn’t either.

At first it was difficult to distinguish what was the rocky side of the mountain and what might be building.  Everything was covered in snow, which didn’t help, but I could see square edges and flat lines that indicated there was something there.

The closer we rolled, the more I could pick out the rock colored walls and occasional windows.

West had once told me of the size of this building.

I had underestimated him.

The bit I could see was larger than the largest of warehouse stores I’d raided.  And I had little doubt there was more that extended back into the mountain.

West swore under his breath as Bill slowed to a stop fifty yards from the building.  “This is too bizarre being back.”

He opened the door and climbed out, me right behind him.  I shielded my eyes from the sun as I looked up at the facility.

I once again had the feeling of memories dancing just under a watery surface.  I could tell they were there, but they were just down far enough that I couldn’t make them out clearly.  Even though I had only been outside of the building once in all my life, there was something familiar about seeing it.

“Welcome home,” Dr. Evans said as he climbed out of the tank.

I shook my head.  “This was never home.”

Avian slipped his hand into mine and then I was there.

“This is where it all began,” Avian said.  There was awe and fascination in his voice, accompanied with disgust.

No one said anything because nothing was needed.

I took three steps toward the building when Dr. Evans called my name.

“This is, indeed, where it all began,” he said when I turned back to him.  “While there were very few people who lived in the surrounding area, there were over one hundred employees who worked for and lived at NovaTor.  I’m afraid you might find many of its residents still occupying the building.”

“Right,” I said, nodding and turning my eyes back to the building.  “I’d like all you humans to get back into the tank while I get this over with.”

“Come on, Eve,” West said with a sigh.  “Seriously?  It’s been, like, eight days since I’ve killed a Bane.”

Everyone except Dr. Evans laughed.

“Fine,” I said, shaking my head.  “You ready?”

West, Avian, and Bill all held up deadly firearms.

They should have been afraid.  Who knew how many Bane were inside that building.  If even one touched them, it was game over.  Especially being this far from the Extractor.

But they had confidence in me.

Maybe it was time for me to start trusting in their confidence.

“Get ready,” I said, turning back to the building.

Come out, I thought.  My eyes squinted as I concentrated.  Come meet your queen and your end.

Thirty seconds later, the main front door burst open and three bodies piled through.  They climbed to their feet as another fifteen filed out the door as well.

They moved towards us, now controlled and calm.  The sun gleamed off their mechanical parts, which considering this lot, was most of their entire bodies.  They were all very advanced.

There was a mix of doctor looking individuals, men of science.  Others had military looking clothing clinging in shreds to their skeletal forms.

“Fire at will,” I said.

My team unloaded at the approaching bodies and they dropped without hesitation or fight.  More and more bodies started filing out of the building and dropped when they were clear of the entrance.

I caught a glimpse of a familiar face two seconds before a bullet took her down to the ground.

The woman.

The one who had taken care of me, the one who had been in charge of my education and made sure I was where I needed to be when I needed to be there.

The woman I had never known the name of.

Now it really didn’t matter.

But it still seemed a shame I had never thought to ask it as a child.

By this point, I hadn’t realized that the shots had died out and there were no more Bane filing out of the building.  There were eighty-one bodies lying before us.

“You okay?” Avian asked, nudging me in the arm with his elbow.

“Yeah,” I said, snapping out of it.  “We good to go in now?” I asked Dr. Evans.

“If you’re sure you drew all of them out,” he replied.

I nodded.  “I’m sure.”  I walked toward the building and the rest of the team followed me.

We carefully stepped around the bodies and toward the front doors.  Sparing just a moment to take a deep breath, I crossed the threshold.

We entered into a simple lobby.  There was one solid wall that was completely white and rose to the height of two stories.  In big, blue letters, there were the words NOVATOR BIOTICS.  In front of that was a desk.  To one side of the desk, there was a hall that stretched back as far as I could see.  On the other side of the desk there were two sets of elevators.  And tucked way back in the corner was a door with a sign for stairs.

Bill swore, sweeping the space with his rifle, even though I knew it would be clear.  “This place gives me the creeps.”

I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.  It wasn’t just knowing that the end of the world had begun here.  It was that there were bullet holes everywhere.  There were papers scattered across the floor, traces of glass littered every flat surface.  There were dark stains on the floor that could have been nothing but blood.

The chaos that had once taken place was obvious in every square inch of the building.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“The main floor is mostly offices for those who ran the company, meeting rooms,” Dr. Evans said.  “The upper level is residential units.  Everything of value took place underground.”

“How far down does this place go?” Avian asked as he took the building in.

“Five stories.”

One of the few memories I had recovered surfaced.  When I had been kidnapped, they took me outside the building for the first time in my life.  The sun had seemed so bright.  It was the first time I had ever seen it.

Because I had lived my entire life underground up to that point.

“Let’s get a move on,” I said, turning back to the group.  “We don’t have any time to lose.”

Dr. Evans nodded.  “This way.”  He crossed the lobby to the long hallway.  “There is a room full of generators and solar storage units at the back of the building.  We’re going to have to get them back up and running or we won’t be able to see a thing down there in the dark.”

It was a long walk to get from one end of the building to the other.  Finally, Dr. Evans opened a door and brilliant sunlight spilled through.  The door let out onto a flat landing, backing up right into the mountain side.

This was the back door Dr. Evans had shoved me out of after he had Dr. Beeson wipe my memory.

This was my true birth place.

On the other side of the landing, there was a door going into a separate section of the building.  Dr. Evans broke the door handle and pushed it open.

It looked like a garden of machines.  Rows and rows of them sat inside, filling the middle of the large room in aisles.  Along another wall sat tall, black boxes that hummed loudly.

“Energy storage devices?” Avian asked, indicating the black boxes.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Solar energy, to be precise,” he said in a raised voice.  “Being this far out we tried to be as self-sufficient as possible so as to not draw questions from the local utility companies.  The entire roof of the building is covered in solar panels.  These devices ran the majority of the power.”

“And these?” I asked, tapping one of the machines with the barrel of my assault rifle.

“Backup generators,” he said. He crossed to a large tank that was twelve feet tall and probably six feet across.  “This is fuel for them all.  Enough to last a few days.”

“Is the fuel good enough to get them back up and running?” Bill asked.  “Fuel only lasts so long.”

“Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh.  “We’re going to have to hope the solar power is just switched off and it can be easily turned back on.”

With that, he turned to a control panel on one wall and West crossed the room to help him.

I walked back out onto the landing, kicking at the snow.  It exploded in front of me in a big puff.

“Do you realize you walked about three-hundred fifty miles from here to Eden?” Avian said from behind me.  “We’re close if you were driving a vehicle.  But walking that distance…?”

“I wonder how long it took me,” I said as I leaned against the side of the building and crossed my arms over my chest.  Disappointment settled into my heart.  We weren’t exactly being quiet here.  First with the gunshots, and then our talking.  If my sister was here, she would have heard us by now.

I had to assume that since she hadn’t come out, she wasn’t here.

Of course she wasn’t.

Avian shook his head.  “You have always had impressive stamina, but your hiking was all through desert and mountains.  Even if you managed twenty miles a day that would have taken you a couple of weeks.  And I doubt you walked in a direct line to us.”

“Bill walked a lot farther than that, didn’t you?” I said, nodding to where he stood in the doorway.  His firearm was held ready in his hands as he scanned the mountains around him.

Bill simply nodded.

“You came from somewhere on the east coast, right?” Avian asked.

Bill nodded once again.  “Yeah, but I think I got out of there before it got real bad.”

“It was real bad from the beginning,” Avian said, though not in a challenging way.

Bill nodded for a third time and I knew that was the end of that.  The past was a place Bill didn’t visit and did not invite others to.

Whatever had happened in his past, I had a sense that the present was better for him.  Even if it was a post-Evolution world.

The door that had been left propped open leading back into the building suddenly illuminated, the lights flickering on in a line down the hall.

“Got it!” West shouted from inside.  He and Dr. Evans stepped back out onto the landing.

“This way,” Dr. Evans said as he stepped past us and into the hall.

We walked past offices and conference rooms and back into the lobby.  Dr. Evans crossed to the elevators and pushed the button to go down.  It illuminated.

“No, wait—” West started.

There was an ear-splitting clatter.  Bang—bang—bang.

The ground and walls shook and we all scrambled back as something behind the closed elevator doors plummeted into the depths of the building.

The doors dinged open just as the elevator crashed down the shaft.  A cloud of dust exploded out the open doors.

“As I was about to say,” West said, looking at Dr. Evans with stupidity in his eyes.  “The elevator is doubtful to work after all these years.”

Normally, this incident might have made me laugh, but at the moment, all my nerves were on high alert.  I’d crouched into fight mode, my finger poised on the trigger.  My eyes swept the area.

Avian and Bill were positioned exactly the same.

“Shall we take the stairs then?” West said.  I glanced back at him to see him shake his head.  He started toward the door with the “stairs” sign.

Slowly relaxing when nothing came rushing out after us, I turned and we all shuffled to the stairs and stepped into the dim light.

The air was old tasting, smelling all the more pungent since the ventilation system had just kicked back on.  The lights above us flickered after such a long time of being dark and cold.

We only went down one flight of stairs before exiting on the floor marked as 1UGL—first underground level.

The door opened up into a maze of hallways that had endless doors breaking off of them.

“This is where the important offices are,” Dr. Evans said, his voice sounding far away as if already living back in his days of glory.

“This is like freaking déjà vu,” West breathed, breaking off to the right before turning down another hall and disappearing out of sight.

An approving smile pulled on Dr. Evans’ cybernetic face before he started to follow.  “I think he remembers.”

Bill, Avian, and I lagged a bit behind, weapons ready, even though we all knew there were no more Bane inside.

“This is the freakiest place I’ve ever been,” Avian said, his eyes inspecting each doorway as we followed West and his scientist grandfather.  “Is anyone else feeling incredibly claustrophobic?”

Bill nodded and I internally agreed.  The halls were narrow and lined with door after door.  The lights flickered overhead, cold and white.  Maybe it was just a play of the lights, but it did feel as if the walls were closing in on us.

“I assure you the building will not, in fact, collapse on you,” Dr. Evans said impatiently.  I looked up to see him standing outside an open door.  West was gone; he must have already been inside.  “This building was built to withstand earthquakes and attacks.  It is as solid as the day it was built.”

“That’s not what’s freaking me out,” Avian muttered under his breath as we stepped inside the office.

The place looked ransacked.  A large desk sat in the middle of the room and the walls were lined with drawers and cabinets.  It looked as if all of them had exploded, papers flying everywhere.

“This looks like it could be fun,” West said sarcastically as he took it all in.

Dr. Evans crossed to one of the cabinets along the back wall.  He read the labels, bending at the waist as he went down.  He pulled the second to bottom one open.  Carefully, he thumbed through the few files and pages that were in it.

“Not in here,” he said with a sigh.  “Of course not.”

“What happened in here?” Bill asked as he looked around the room.

“When the investigation into NovaTor started, there were some very…aggressive men they sent out,” Dr. Evans said as he knelt and started looking through papers.  “Little did they understand the value of all the research in this room.”

“Is there any use in us trying to help you look through all this?” I asked.  My skin felt itchy, as if waiting for something to happen at any moment.  I couldn’t trust that nothing would.  “We could get Morgan settled.”

Dr. Evans looked up at us with dark and annoyed eyes.  He had no interest in trying to save that child.  But he did need my cooperation.  “Go ahead.  It probably isn’t the best idea for all of you humans to be in such close quarters to me anyway.  The medical labs are on the floor below this one.  Get her settled.  I’ll come down as soon as I find the code.”

“Unless you need me, I think I’ll stay and help Grandpa,” West said, glancing up at us as he knelt on the paper covered floor.

“No,” I said, giving him a small smile.  “You stay.”

He gave an appreciative smile back.

He’d thought beyond a shadow of a doubt that his entire family was gone, and now he’d found his grandfather.  They hadn’t gotten the chance to spend any time together yet.

I could give West this one small thing.

The three of us went back up the stairs, out the lobby, and back out to the solar van.  Avian opened the doors and leaned over the seat to check on Morgan.

Even I could hear her labored breathing.

It felt like losing Sarah all over again.  But this time there were two lives about to be lost.

“She’s not doing very well, is she?” I asked as I leaned against the door.

Avian looked back at me and shook his head.  “Her pulse is very slow and she’s running a temperature.  If it gets too high, she’ll basically cook the baby.”

“How long do you think she has?” I asked.

“Impossible to say,” he said.  “It all depends on if this fever escalates, on how good the medical equipment here is, if any of it still works.”

“We’ll do our best,” Bill said, stepping forward.  He and Avian carefully lifted her while I carried her IV bag and the portable oxygen unit.

It took us probably thirty minutes, at least, to get her inside the building, down the two narrow flights of stairs, and into the medical unit.  It would have helped if we’d thought to clear the way first.  There was debris everywhere.

But finally, with the lights on and a new oxygen tank hooked up, we settled Morgan into a hospital bed.  Bill and I stepped back while Avian bustled around, fiddling with her oxygen, hooking up a new IV bag and looking for other equipment we would need.

“I’m looking for a trach tube,” he said when I asked what I could do to help.  “She’s eventually going to give out and I’m hoping we can wait until the last second to pull the baby out.  We’re going to need a surgical room when that time comes.”

Avian suddenly stilled as he fiddled with Morgan’s wires.  His eyes slowly rose up to meet mine.

“It’s okay,” I said, swallowing the cotton ball that formed in my mouth.  “I can go look for one.  I’ll get things ready.”

“Eve,” he said, his eyes pained.  He needed help, but he couldn’t ask me to go looking for the room that was the cause of endless nightmares for me.  The room that would change my very personality forever.  “I can do it in a bit.”

“No, it’s fine,” I insisted.  I rubbed my palms against my pants; they were sweating despite the freezing cold temperatures.  “I’ll be back in a bit.”

I turned and exited the room.  Faintly, I heard Avian ask Bill to come with me.  He followed suit a moment later.

I didn’t mind.

“So how much of this place is familiar?” Bill asked as we walked down a hall.  There were endless rooms in this wing, all identical to the one we had placed Morgan in.

“All of it seems vaguely familiar,” I said, shaking my head.  My insides had started shaking.  “If we were to go to the floor I lived on I think I’d know certain places for sure.  I started recovering some memories when the Underground was studying my brain.”

Bill just grunted in acknowledgement, but didn’t push the matter further.

Sometimes Bill was so easy to get along with.

We reached the end of a corridor and, here, there were three sterilized rooms.

I definitely recognized them.

My head was cold.

My body was frozen.

There were voices behind me.

I blacked out.

FIFTEEN

I blinked awake to a dull light overhead.  The air was warmer now, but just slightly.  There was a heaviness pressing down on me.  I sat up to find myself on a hospital bed, a blanket tucked around my arms and legs.  My rifle was tipped up against the wall to the side of the door.

I was just about to climb out of the bed when Avian walked in.

His face said everything.

“Avian,” I jumped in before he could even start.  “It’s fine.  That shouldn’t have happened.  I’m rather embarrassed that it did.”

Avian shook his head, his eyes rising to the ceiling.  He didn’t come any closer which didn’t make me feel better.  Avian kept his distance when he felt he had something to be ashamed of.  “That was stupid of me.  And insensitive.  I feel like the world’s biggest jerk.”

“Stop it,” I chided, starting to feel a bit annoyed.

“Eve, this was exactly like before, when you had your blackouts,” he said, pain in his voice.  “You’ve gotten a pretty good hold on your emotions, but no one can expect you to overcome every fear.  That’s not an emotion easily blocked out.”

I had to consider that for a moment.  Fear wasn’t something I gave much thought to.  If anything, it was the emotion I was least familiar with.  Maybe it was logical that it was the one emotion that could still send me into a full blackout.

“I’m fine,” I said again, crossing the room to him.  I pressed a kiss to his cheek, but he just looked at me with doubt in his eyes.  “Seriously.  What do you need me to help with now?  Though it does seem best if I avoid the surgical rooms.”

“We’re set for now,” he said.  We started down the hall, but didn’t go far before we stopped outside a door.  I saw Morgan inside.  She was now hooked up to a machine that beeped and showed green lines that told us she was still alive.  There was a thick band around her belly and another monitor that gave small, quick beats as well.

The baby’s monitor.

“How long was I out?” I asked as I watched the green line jump and fall.

“About forty minutes,” he said, leaning in the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I have to ask that question way too often,” I said, shaking my head.  It was ridiculous.

Avian just gave a small smile.  “I’m supposed to send you to the lab when you’re ready.”

“Did he find it?” I asked, my heart suddenly jumping into my throat.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod and a suppressed smile.

Instantly, my heart was sprinting in my chest and my ears suddenly started ringing.

He’d found it.  For real.  He’d found the code to unblock my own kill code.  We really did have a chance at winning this thing.

“I hardly believe it,” I said, shaking my head as my brows furrowed.  “The world just seems too far gone.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes turning back to Morgan.

“Where is the lab?” I asked, pulling back into the present.

I had to take this one step at a time.

“Down the hall, a right and then a left.  West is with him, so call for him and he’ll lead you there.”

“Okay,” I said, reaching for Avian’s hand.  I gave it a quick squeeze and then turned down the hall.

The walls reached out to my muscle memory.  There was something about this hall, these turns, the doors I passed, that seemed familiar.

I couldn’t deny that I had been here before.

I heard Dr. Evans and West talking before I reached the door, alerting me to the lab I was looking for.  I stepped into the room and held my hands behind my back.

“You found it then,” I said.

West jumped violently, dropping a file on the floor.

“Yes,” Dr. Evans said, turning to face me.  He grabbed a paper from the counter he had been standing at and held it up.  “It is a very lucky thing I was as old fashioned as I am.  Most of NovaTor and its workers had switched to an all-digital system of keeping records.  I always thought it safest to make a backup hard copy.  We wouldn’t be able to save the world if I hadn’t.”

I crossed the room and took the page he held.  It was a sequence of numbers and letters, and for some reason, it seemed like a language I had forgotten how to speak.  It was the same feeling I got whenever I observed the crazy sequences that flashed across Dr. Beeson’s monitors for the Wireless Transmission System.

“Memorize it,” he said.  “Should anything happen to our copies, I want at least one person to know what it is.”

I read through it three times, all fifty-six letters and numbers, and knew it would be branded into my memory.  I handed it back to him.

“Your sister would have had it memorized just by glancing at it,” Dr. Evans said as he took the paper and turned back to the counter.

I wasn’t sure if I should be offended by that or not.  He’d said it offhandedly, like it was a statement, as if the sky was blue, and grass was green.  But still.

“She had an amazing memory,” West muttered as he finished straightening the papers he’d knocked off the counter.

“She’s not here,” I said quietly.  I shifted from one foot to the other.  The situation had become uncertain from here on out.

“Yeah,” was all West said.

“These are the formulas for your generation of TorBane,” Dr. Evans said, ignoring the situation he didn’t want to deal with.  He indicated another file.  “There are four doses that you and Eve One received.  The first dosage was the weakest, most diluted, and they got increasingly stronger.”

“How long will it take you to remake it?” I asked, feeling anxious again.  This was another uncertainty in our plan.  We could try to help the baby, but it was unknown if it would work.

“I have yet to check the freezers to see if the cybernetic base elements are still any good.  And then it will take me a bit to gather all the chemicals and stem cells needed.”

“How long?” I repeated.

“I may have it ready by tomorrow evening,” Dr. Evans said, his voice sounding annoyed once again.  “It would be wise to let it sit for a day and study it, to make sure it does behave like the first generation.  If all goes as planned, we could give it to the baby in forty-eight hours.”

“And we just pray that Morgan and the baby don’t die before then,” I said with a nod.

“Yes,” Dr. Evans said as he flipped through some pages.  “TorBane can heal just about anything, but I do not believe it can bring someone back from the dead.”

“How long before the entire course of treatment is finished?” West asked.

Dr. Evans didn’t even hesitate in responding.  I had little doubt the process of the beginnings of TorBane was etched in his brain.  “The first two doses are given twelve hours apart.  And then two more once every twenty-four hours after that.  I would like to space it out a bit more than that, but we don’t have that kind of time.”

West looked at me, and I could see the conflict on his face.  There were so many timelines going on right now and so much riding on us moving as quickly as possible.

“That’s all we can do then,” I said, making it easy.

I left them to their work, and walked back down the hall.

SIXTEEN

Avian continued to attend to Morgan, so I decided to make myself useful.  We were going to be here for five days, so I headed back up the stairs to bring in our things.  When I walked back outside, the sun was high in the sky and the snow had started to melt into slushy puddles.

I paused and pulled my assault rifle out when I saw that the side door of the solar tank was sitting wide open.

Sweeping the immediate area, stepping over the bodies of the Bane, I found no one.  Visually searching the mountains and desert around us, I found them to be empty as well.

“Bill?” I called, my rifle ready, my finger hovering over the trigger.

But Bill didn’t respond.

Taking quick, silent steps, I crossed the rest of the way to the tank and pointed the rifle inside.

The space was empty, it didn’t take more than two seconds to determine that.

But someone had gone through our things.

The bedding was spread everywhere.  A tent was unraveled and hanging over the back seat.  The tubs of food were open, though it didn’t look like any of it had been taken.  The medical supplies we’d brought were strewn over the floor.  A box of bullets had been spilled over a seat.

I swore and backed out of the tank to scan my surroundings again.  There was no one in sight, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone out there watching us.

Locking the vehicle, I darted back toward the massive building.  I sprinted across the lobby and threw open the door that led down below.

“Bill!  I need you up here!”  I faintly heard a reply.  I turned and crept forward with my rifle trained ahead of me.  I’d alerted anyone who might hear me, but now it was my turn to listen.

Bill burst from the stairwell less than sixty seconds later, his own rifle at the ready.

“What’s going on?” he said, as he swept the area, finger on the trigger.

“Someone snooped through the tank,” I said, creeping forward toward the front door.  “Doors were wide open.  They’ve gone through everything.”

“They take anything?” he asked.

I shook my head, pausing in the doorway, my rifle poking through.  We had a good vantage point from here.  The desert spread out in front of us for miles.  And there wasn’t a soul out there.

“No,” I shook my head, taking a step outside.  Bill followed suit.

“Let’s get the vehicle brought inside,” I said, nodding towards it.  “They didn’t take anything this time, but I’d rather not risk them coming back for something later.  You got the keys?”

Bill reached into his pocket and produced them.

I nodded.  “There’s a large door around the south side of the building,” I said.  “I’ll go around and find a way to get it open.  You drive around and meet me there.”

Bill nodded and jogged out to the tank.  I darted along the side of the building, all the while scanning my surroundings.  I tucked around the south side of the building.  This was the longest side, one of the sides that eventually disappeared into the side of the mountain.  Finally, I reached the tall, wide metal door just as Bill pulled around.

There was a simple keypad that kept the door locked.  I was debating shooting it out and hoping that would override it when Bill hopped out and joined at my side.

He pried the faceplate off, exposing an assortment of wires underneath.

“Here,” he said, handing off his rifle.  “Hold this for a second.”

Carefully pulling certain wires away from the wall, he took two of them and yanked them from their places.  Coming out with two exposed ends, he held them together and the large door suddenly creaked and popped as it started rising.

“How’d you know how to do that?” I asked, turning impressed eyes on Bill.

He just took his rifle back and climbed inside the tank.  Watching our surroundings as he pulled in, I backed in behind the vehicle.  Bill closed the door, casting us in darkness.

This building was no longer secure, but we’d be able to defend ourselves more easily from inside.

“Come on,” I said as I started jogging through the large metal and concrete room toward a door.  “We’ve got to get a security sweep set up.”

We burst out into the hall to see West about to step out the front doors.  I called out to him and explained what was happening.

“Who do you think it is?” West asked as the three of us surveyed the area from the front doors.

I shook my head.  “It has to be human.  I cleared out any Bane that would be around here.  Unless it walked into us in the last few hours.  It’s possible they’d think to go through our things but I’d guess this was another human.”

“Seems unlikely they wouldn’t take anything.”

I nodded in agreement.  It didn’t seem logical that they would find something as valuable as the contents of the van and not take a single item.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said.  “But let’s set up a perimeter.  West, you got these doors?”  He nodded.  “Bill, you take the side entrances.  I saw another door just to the side of the big one we drove through.  I’ll take the back doors, keep an eye on the mountains.  You see anything, you yell your brains out.  Someone will come running, got it?”

They both nodded and Bill and I broke off to head to our posts.

I pushed the back door open and swept the platform and immediate mountainside.  No one to be seen.

Below the mountain stretched endless desert.  In the horizon there were other low mountains.  The sky was gray, the sun blocked out by the dark winter clouds.

For five hours, until the sun set in the early evening, I kept watch at that back door.  Nothing outside moved, and nothing within was disturbed.

It seemed whoever it was that had gone through our things had moved on without a trace.

Feeling lazy and inadequate, I closed the door and locked it.  Turning down the hall, I popped into the south entrance wing.

“I’m voting we hole up in the lower floors until morning,” I said.  “I don’t like abandoning post, but there’s been no other traces of a visitor.”

Bill nodded and followed me.  We made our way to the east main doors.

“Seen anything?” I asked.

West didn’t turn his eyes from the desert before him.

“Want to take a break till morning?”

“I thought Eve Two never gave up on her post?” West said, turning back to me with a sly grin on his face.

“Eve Two is getting bored fast,” I said, rolling my eyes as I turned away.  “Lock the doors up.”

I headed down the stairs, to the second underground floor.  I walked down the hall to the medical unit and into Morgan’s room.

As expected, Morgan was unconscious.  This time though, she had a large, clear tube going down her throat.  There were still numerous tubes running from her body, lines that ran to monitors saying she was still barely alive.

Avian was slumped over a chair, his head resting in his hand, fast asleep.  There were deep, dark circles under his eyes.  His right hand twitched where it hung limp over the arm of the chair, as if he was having a nightmare.

And standing across the room, hands held behind his back, was Dr. Evans.  His eyes glanced over at me before returning to Morgan’s sleeping form.

“I assume, because you’ve been gone so long, there was a reason,” he said quietly.

I nodded and explained what happened.

“There is still a fractional portion of the human population left,” he said.  “It is entirely possible that there is someone wandering out here in the desert.  Though it is…” his voice trailed off for a moment.  But just a very small one.  “Strange they didn’t take any of our supplies.”

I nodded, my eyes flickering over to him.  His pause in speech was…odd.

He wasn’t saying anything we hadn’t already discussed above ground.  “How is Morgan?  I’m assuming things aren’t better since Avian looks completely exhausted.”

Dr. Evans sighed and shifted position, from one foot to the other, even though I knew he couldn’t feel any discomfort.  He didn’t have enough pain-receiving human nerves left.  It must have been a ghost of human tendencies itching at his subconscious.

“Her heart stopped twice earlier,” he said, still staring at Morgan’s unconscious form.  “Avian managed to revive her, but he thought he was going to lose the baby the second time.  He had his tools ready in case he needed to cut the mother open.”

I hadn’t noticed the shiny silver table just to the side of Avian’s chair.  On it was a tray with gloves, scalpels and other medical things I didn’t have names for.

The thought of him actually cutting her open and pulling a human being out made my stomach turn sour.

“How much longer until you get the TorBane ready?” I asked.

Dr. Evans straightened, as if about to leave the room.  “It’s done.”

“Really?” I asked, not quite believing that it might, in fact, have come together.  “You really have a batch ready?”

He nodded.  “Luck seems to be following you the last week, my girl,” he said, and almost attempted a smile.  “I’ve started a test with some cellular samples Avian provided to make sure it doesn’t overtake, but if things look fine in the morning, we’ll administer the first dose as soon as the mother passes.”

“Which looks like it won’t be long?” I said, forming it as a question because I didn’t want it to be fact.

“No,” Dr. Evans said, his voice turning grave.  “I will be surprised if she lasts through the night.”

Bill and West finished the job I had tried to do.  They brought down our sleeping supplies and food.  The three of us ate a meager meal, and then Bill wandered off to find a place to sleep.

I wadded up the wrapper to my packaged meal and tossed it across the room into a long forgotten about trash can in the corner.  West and I sat on the floor in the hall outside Morgan’s room.  Avian was still asleep in the chair.

“Is it weird to think there might be another person like you in the morning?” West asked.  He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve.

“There already is another person out there like me,” I said, leaning against the wall.  I drew my knees up and rested my forearms on them.  “Exactly like me, if I understand identical twins correctly.”

“Not quite exactly,” West said as he mirrored my position.  “Your sister was born with autism.  I did some research once, a long time ago, before the Evolution.  The chances of you being born autistic too were seventy percent.  There was only a thirty percent chance you’d be born without the modification.”

I nodded as I processed the information.  “I can’t decide if that sounds like a pretty good chance, or if I’m really fortunate.”

West looked down at his hands and he linked his fingers together.  “Not that it matters,” he said.  “After Eve One got TorBane, she started normalizing out.  It took quite a while, but she did.  There were small differences between you and her, sure, but she was normal.”

“Is,” I said.  “Let’s say she is.”

West nodded.  He was quiet for a long while.  “If you were her, and you had your memories of everything that happened here, had the skill set you have, where would you have gone?”

I considered this.  Where would I have gone?  My memory had been wiped, so I just stumbled around until there was someone to tell me to stop.

“I honestly don’t know,” I said, shaking my head.  “NovaTor was all we ever knew.  I can’t imagine how disorienting the outside world must have been for her when your grandpa set her free.  I remember somewhat how I felt when I was kidnapped and saw the sun for the first time.  But that’s all I remember.  The sun.  I can’t imagine how intense the entire world must have seemed.”

West was silent again and chewed on his bottom lip as his head sagged forward.  “She had nowhere to go.”

“West,” I said quietly.  “I don’t know how we’re ever supposed to find her.”

He suddenly sniffed and wiped the back of his sleeve at the corner of his eye.  It took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t going to say anything.

“How is it, getting to spend time with your grandfather again?” I asked.  Change of topic.

West gave a breathy chuckle and I saw a small smile spread on his face.  “It’s…interesting.  I mean, I haven’t forgotten what he was like growing up; driven, smart, focused.  Just like he is now.  He was never your typical grandpa.  Back then he always assumed I’d become a doctor or scientist.  That hasn’t changed.”

“Seems like he’s been keeping you busy ever since I brought him back,” I observed.  “I kind of feel like this is the first time we’ve talked since we talked about…Eve One.”

West glanced over at me, knowing in his eyes.  What I meant was the conversation we’d had about why it would have never worked between us.

“Yeah,” he finally said.  “He’s been trying to keep me involved in the scientific side of things.  I think he resents me acting like a soldier.”

“Soldiers are important too these days,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said through a yawn that suddenly overtook him.

I climbed to my feet and extended a hand to him.  He took it and I pulled him to standing position.  I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held him tight.  He took a deep, shaking breath before letting me go.  Eve One was still heavy on his mind.

“Goodnight,” I said.

He gave me a small, appreciative smile, and turned down the hall.

I stepped back inside Morgan’s room, collapsed into another chair, and fixed my eyes on Morgan.

A steady but slow beeping rhythm filled the room.  Beep beep.  Pause.  Beep Beep.  Pause.  And then the quicker one.  Beep Beep.  Tiny pause.  Beep beep.

Two faint hearts.  Only one that had a chance of continuing.

Avian’s hand suddenly twitched and his head slipped off the side of the chair.  He jerked up just before he fell.  He bolted upright in it, looking around the room with bloodshot eyes.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him.  I crossed the room and sank onto my knees next to him.  “I’ve been keeping an eye on her.  Everything has seemed normal.”

He rubbed his eyes.  “Thanks,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“Why don’t you take my sleeping bag and get some more rest,” I said, nodding my head to where it sat rolled up in the hall.  “I can stay up with her tonight.”

“No, I’m—”

“No, you’re not okay to stay up,” I said, cutting him off.  I stood and grabbed the rolled up bag.  I opened it up along the farther wall where Dr. Evans had been watching from earlier.  “Get some sleep,” I insisted.  “You’re going to have an intense day tomorrow.”

He glanced over at Morgan and looked at her for a long moment before his eyelids slowly dropped closed and open again.  He was barely even awake.

“Okay,” he said in a slurred voice.  “But you wake me up the second anything changes.”

“I will,” I said with a nod.

Avian shuffled across the room and collapsed into the sleeping bag.  He was asleep before I even zipped the side up around him.

Like time always does, it rolled by slow and quiet.  I thought about seeking out Dr. Evans to see how the TorBane doses were coming along, but I didn’t particularly enjoy his company or his comments about my sister or the baby.

So I watched Morgan, watched Avian, and watched the clock.

At exactly 3:49 AM, there was a faraway sound.  Far enough away sounding that I knew it was loud in its location.

The location was the door leading to the underground levels.

Checking Morgan’s monitors, I ducked out of the room, shotgun in hand.  The light in the hallway was dim and the ventilation system had just kicked on, dulling my sense of hearing.  I paused at the bottom of the stairway, looking up to the landing that led to the scientist’s offices.

No traces of an intruder.

Silently, I made my way up the stairs, to the door that opened up into the main lobby.

It was closed, just as it should be.

I tried to reason with myself as I made my way back down to the second underground level, that it was nothing but an old building settling down for the day after being disturbed.  But I couldn’t deny that my ears had heard something.

When I got back to the second floor, I scouted the halls, checking Bill and West’s rooms, but there was no sign of disturbance.  Finally, I got back to Morgan’s room and stood vigil in the doorway.

SEVENTEEN

There were no more misplaced sounds until 5:08, and then there was the high-pitched flat-line buzz.

“Avian!” I yelled as I darted to her side, but it wasn’t needed.  Avian was on his feet already.

“Her heart’s stopped,” he said, placing his hands on her chest and starting chest compressions.  “See those paddles over there?”  He nodded toward them.  “Flip that switch and charge it up to two hundred.”

I did as he said and handed the paddles over to Avian.  He placed them on her chest and turned them on.  Morgan’s chest surged up off the bed before falling flat against it once again.  The heart rate monitor blipped once and flat-lined again.

“Charge it again!” Avian yelled.  Just as I did, Bill and West appeared in the doorway.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” West asked, his eyes wide as he watched Morgan’s chest surge up off the bed again.

“Go get your grandfather,” Avian said as he nodded for me to charge it again.  “I have a feeling this is it.  I give her two more minutes before we have to get the baby out of her.”

West darted out of the room and down the hall.

“If she goes, I’m going to need both of you to help get the baby out,” Avian said, tossing aside the paddles and starting chest compressions again.  “Bill, you’ll help me roll her into the surgery room.  Then you’ll both help me cut her open.  I hope blood doesn’t make you squeamish.”

The both of us just nodded.  In a world like ours, it was difficult to be turned off by the sight of blood.

Avian glanced up at the monitor that tracked the baby’s heart.  It had slowed significantly.  He swore, while continuing to press on her chest.

“It’s been two minutes, Avian,” I said, looking up at the clock above the door.

“Okay,” Avian said, backing away from Morgan and pulling the lines from her body.  “Time of death is 5:14.”  He unhooked the large tube that spouted from her throat.  “Let’s get her to the operating room.”

Tunnel vision threatened to overtake me as Bill and Avian pushed Morgan’s bed down the hall to the surgical room, but I focused on the roundness of her belly and told myself I had no place blacking out at a time like this.  I held the door open for them and stood to the side as they wheeled the bed in.

I had a feeling that in another time, this surgery would not go as it did.  It would be far more sterile, more organized, less chaotic.  And the mother wouldn’t be dead.

But we had precious seconds and a doctor who had never performed this type of surgery before.

“Bill, you take this here,” Avian said, handing him a small, ghostly white tube.  He flipped a switch and it started sucking air.  “Keep the blood and fluids out of the way so I can see what I’m doing.  I’m going to make the incisions and Eve, when I tell you to, you’re going to help push the baby out from the top of her stomach.”

I felt the blood draining from my face as I nodded.

Avian lifted the hospital gown Morgan wore.  He opened a package and pulled out a pair of gloves that rose up to his elbows.  Bill and I followed suit.

Picking up a scalpel from the shiny silver tray next to him, Avian placed it on her skin.  A heavy line of blood beaded up as he made a twelve inch incision along her lower abdomen.  Adequate at his job, Bill suctioned the blood away.

It took longer than I expected, for Avian to cut through the layers of muscle and what little fat was on her body.  My stomach started turning, seeing the inside of a human body like I never had before.  This was much different than seeing a bleeding bullet wound.

Avian had me use clamps that looked a lot like scissors to hold the layers back as he continued to cut.  My hands shook and started to sweat beneath my gloves, but I did as he asked.

And finally, he got to what looked like a latex glove inside of her body.  As soon as he very carefully sliced it open, fluid started gushing out.

“That’s the amniotic sack,” Avian said, making the incision larger as Bill sucked the fluid away.  The fluid covered Morgan and splashed down onto the floor.

My stomach gave another sea-wave twist.

“Okay,” Avian said, using his fingers to stretch the entire hole bigger.  “This is it.  Eve, I need you to use your hands to gently push the baby down and out.”

Avian reached a hand inside the hole he’d cut just as West and Dr. Evans burst into the room.

“West, I need you to get that oxygen going,” Avian said, nodding toward a tiny bed that sat in one corner of the room.  There was a dome over it that covered the whole thing.  Attached to the side of it was an oxygen tube.  “Now, Eve.”

I placed my hands on the top of Morgan’s stomach, at the bottom of her ribs and gently started pushing.  The child inside squirmed against me.

That was the first moment I pictured the future of this tiny human being.  How we had a chance of giving it a tomorrow, a tomorrow free of Bane, a future that was actually a future and not just a daily fight for survival.

As what felt like a tiny fist punched against my hand, I knew I would do anything—anything—to give this child a chance at that future.

Avian’s left hand came free of the opening with a teeny tiny foot.  He swore under his breath.  “The baby’s breech,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve.  “Coming feet first.  Back off on the pushing until I can get the other leg free.”

I relaxed my hand on Morgan’s stomach.  The trapped child within punched against my hand once again.

“How’s the TorBane looking?” I asked, darting a look over at Dr. Evans.  He stood two feet back from Avian, observing.

“No change on the test cells.  They look like they’re behaving correctly,” he said, his eyes fixed on Avian’s hand inside of Morgan’s stomach.

A moment later, another tiny foot broke free of the opening.  “Now, Eve,” Avian breathed.  “Gently.”

I applied pressure once again and five seconds later, the entire baby was free of Morgan.

Avian was a flurry of activity, moving so fast I could barely process what he was doing.  In one movement he set the baby on the bed between Morgan’s legs, in another he cut the strange looking cord that ran from its stomach back inside of Morgan.  In the next, he whisked the baby to the tiny bed with the strange dome.  A second later he had a tiny oxygen tube down its nose and was rubbing its entire body with a soft blanket.

“If you think that concoction is ready,” Avian said as he continued sucking gunk out of the baby’s mouth and nose with a strange blue bulb-shaped tool.  “Let’s get it started now.  This isn’t exactly a newborn intensive care unit.  Let’s get her all the help we can.”

Her.

Morgan had been right.  It was a girl.

I stood frozen next to Morgan, as did Bill.  Dr. Evans crossed the room, and very carefully handed two syringes to Avian.  “One needs to go directly into her lungs, the other to her heart,” he said, moving to one side of the bed.  He stood back a foot, his hands held firmly behind his back.  “It will be painful for her, but at this point, it might be good for her.  It might get her adrenaline system in gear and speed things up.”

Avian nodded.

I had to look away as he held up the first syringe.

Instead I looked down at Morgan.  All eyes had turned away from her.  She just lay there on the table, her stomach a deflated, open maw.  She looked wrecked.

Gathering the sheet that had been pushed to the bottom of the bed, I drew it up.  Pressing a brief kiss to her forehead, and whispering a goodbye, I covered her face.

“How long until we see if she starts improving?” Avian asked from across the room.  Certain he had put the needles away, I crossed back to the tiny bed.  Bill joined us as well.  Everyone was gathered around it, staring at the child Avian worked on.

She didn’t open her eyes as Avian hooked all kinds of monitors to her.  One on her chest, one strapped around her foot.  She opened her mouth in a silent cry, but no sound came out.

“By tomorrow morning we may start seeing small improvements to her heart rate and breathing,” Dr. Evans said.  “It will probably be a few weeks before she is breathing on her own, but we may be able to manage travel in five days.”

“You think she might survive the trip?” I asked, my brow furrowing.  She was so tiny, so fragile.  I couldn’t even imagine her surviving being moved from the bed.

“It won’t be easy, but infants are resilient.  Especially when they’ve been given TorBane.  You survived.”

I gave an absentminded nod as I looked back at the child.  Her entire body was wrinkly, like she hadn’t quite grown into her skin.  She was a strange mix of purple and red.  Beneath her blanket, she gave a small kick.

Avian threaded another tiny tube down her nose.  “It’s a feeding tube,” he explained.  “We don’t have an ideal mixture, but we’ll do our best.”

“I have to say, I am very impressed with your coolness and work, Avian,” Dr. Evans complimented.  “You would have made an excellent physician if I hadn’t ended the world.”

“Thanks,” Avian chuckled.  “I guess it would have been nice to actually attend medical school.”

“How does it feel, looking at a mini you?” West asked.  He placed a hand on my shoulder.  “You’re not alone anymore.”

And suddenly my throat tightened and the back of my eyes stung.

I had never felt lonely or isolated or different in a way that made me sad.  But in truth, I had always been very different.  No one would ever fully understand what I had gone through in my life, and the one person who would understand was nowhere to be found.

As I looked down at this tiny infant who would have to fight for her life as I did, I vowed that I would never let her feel alone or different.

“Like nothing I ever expected to feel,” I breathed.

Avian looked over at me, his eyes catching mine.  Despite the craziness that had just happened, there was warmth and love in his eyes.

I didn’t have any more words, so I simply smiled and looked back down at the child.  By now, she had started to calm down and was still once more except for the tiny rise and fall of her chest.

With nothing more he could do at the moment, Avian returned to Morgan.  A tightness closed around my throat as I finally accepted the fact of what I was seeing: she was dead.  We’d just lost one more member of Eden.

West and Bill went back to the surface and set to digging a place to bury her.  They hadn’t said a word, but I knew they were dealing with their grief in their own ways.  Even if they hadn’t known her well, she was one of us.

Avian stitched her closed, using slow, precise sutures.  He was calm and collected as always.

I stood next to the infant, trying to focus on the fact that she might live, and was barely able to look away from her.

“I know I fought this,” Dr. Evans said.  He stood silently next to me as well, observing the baby girl.  “But it does feel good, to be able to save one last life with TorBane.”

“Feels like things have sort of come full circle, doesn’t it?” I mused quietly.  She worked a tiny hand from her blankets.  I reached for her, to tuck it back in, when she gripped my finger tightly and didn’t let go.

My heart skipped a beat.

She was so soft, so tender.  Nothing like my world.

“Yes, it does,” Dr. Evans said.  I looked over at him to see a small smile on his face.

“You did a good thing here,” I said, feeling truly appreciative inside.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.  “That’s nice to hear after committing fifteen years of wrong.”

Without another word, he turned and walked toward the door.  He paused in it, his hand on the frame.  “We’ll give her the next dose in twelve hours, and then another in twenty-four.”

Avian nodded as he covered Morgan up once again.  Dr. Evans left.

Avian walked to my side and smiled when he saw the child clinging to my finger.  He slipped his hand into my other.  I’d never felt more complete in any moment.

“How much does she weigh?” I asked, marveling that any human being could be this small.

Avian glanced down at a red digital number at the bottom of the bed.  “Two pounds, one ounce.”

“That’s almost nothing,” I said, shaking my head.

“That’s probably about what you weighed when you were born,” Avian said, brushing his shoulder against mine.  “You weren’t quite this premature, but since you were a twin, you would have been smaller.  I, on the other hand, weighed almost ten pounds when I was born.”  We both smiled about that.

“She’ll be okay then,” I mused, brushing my thumb across her tiny knuckles.  “Won’t she?”

“Yeah,” Avian said.  He brushed his lips against my shoulder.  “She will.”

The baby gave another kick and the wire that led to her foot caught on her other, pulling the heart rate monitor band loose.  Using gentle fingers, Avian adjusted it.

“She is going to need a name,” he said quietly as he rewrapped her in the blanket.

I nodded as she let go of my finger and her hand disappeared into the blanket.  “It should be something important.”

“Like how you were called Eve?” he said, looking up at me.  “The first of your kind.”

“I guess,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.  “Except she’s more about the future of mankind.  She’s the belief and promise that we’ll do anything to make that future.”

“Creed,” Avian said quietly.

“What?” I questioned, turning my eyes on him.

He looked at me, a small smile pulling in the corner of his mouth.  “Creed.  It’s a set of beliefs, a guiding principle.”

“Creed,” I said, smiling as I said the word.  “It’s perfect.”

EIGHTEEN

We buried Morgan off to the side of the NovaTor building.  We wrapped her in a sheet and Avian and West gently lowered her in the ground.  There was a pang of guilt in my chest that because of my decision to bring her out here and save the baby, she couldn’t be buried next to her husband, Eli.

I just had to hope that it really didn’t matter and that they were together now in a way that actually did.

Few words were spoken, but they didn’t need to be.  None of us were close to Morgan, but she was human and that made us close enough in all the ways that counted.

Twelve hours later, Creed was given her second dosage of TorBane and five hours after that, her heart rate normalized.  The next morning, Dr. Evans suggested we do a scan to see how things were progressing.

She stayed solidly asleep as we laid her on the scan table.  She didn’t even wake as the machine made a racket and the scan started.

“There is her liver,” Dr. Evans said, pointing to strange green shapes on the screen before us.  “Her colon, kidneys.  Her stomach.”  The scan continued and then the screen suddenly showed something brilliantly white.  “And there would be TorBane at work.”

“That’s her lungs,” Avian said, tracing his finger along one of the lobe shaped objects on the screen.  It was littered with the brilliant white.  Like a fine, thin lace.  “And there’s her heart.”  We could see it pumping.  And with each beat, the white in it spread a little further.

“How long before it takes full effect?” I asked, mesmerized by the slowly spreading white particles.

“Like you, it will take years to spread throughout her body,” he said.  The miracle that was TorBane seemed dampened when he mentioned it spreading throughout her body.  “But it will stabilize her heart and lungs within two weeks would be my guess.”

I nodded, my eyes still transfixed on the monitor.

With the scan done, Avian returned to Creed’s side and transferred her back to her portable incubator.  No one was allowed to touch her besides Avian, in an attempt to keep sickness and germs to a minimum.

Bill knocked, and entered one second later.

“You may want to see this,” he said, looking at me and then Dr. Evans.

I glanced back at Avian, and then Creed.

“It’s okay,” Avian said.  “Go.  I can take care of her.”

Nodding, I turned to Bill, and Dr. Evans walked out with us.

“West and I were getting bored,” Bill explained as we started up the stairs.  “So he was showing me around the building.  He showed me his old apartment and we found something.”

We came out onto the main lobby floor and started up the next flight of stairs to the top one.  We started down a hall that didn’t look much different from the one on the floor below, but the doors were more spread out, indicating bigger spaces behind them.  We reached the end of one hall and took a left, only to stop at a door to the immediate right.

West was inside, looking through things.

It reminded me of the simplest of residential units we had started to set up in New Eden.  There was a simple kitchen, a simple, small dining table.  A simple couch.  Three doors split off at the back of it, opening up to what looked to be two bedrooms and a bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, stepping inside.  I searched for any signs that looked out of the ordinary, but everything seemed normal.

“Just before Grandpa had me transported away,” West said, meeting my eyes, “this place was a mess.  I had to gather things in a hurry.  There was stuff everywhere.  There was next to no food in the apartment.”

“I never returned here after you left,” Dr. Evans said with a doubt in his voice.  His brow furrowed as he looked around the space.  “Neither did your father.  He turned quick.”

West nodded and crossed over to the kitchen.  He opened the cabinet doors.  They were all stocked full of non-perishable food.

“Someone’s cleaned the place up and stocked it full of food,” West said, his expression uncertain.  “There’s been someone living here.  Recently.”

“Most likely whoever went through the solar tank two days ago,” I said, pulling my handgun from its holster.  “They’ve probably been watching us this whole time.”

“But why not say anything?” West asked, his brow furrowed.  “I mean, they’re well stocked up here, so I see why they didn’t take anything from our van, but why just watch us this long and not speak up?”

I shook my head, not having an answer.  Something cold leaked out into my blood, inviting my adrenaline to draw everything into focus.

“I think we should sweep the whole building,” I said.  “We may be playing a game of hide and seek in such a big building, but we’ve got to check things out.”

West nodded, adjusting his grip on his handgun.  Bill unslung his assault rifle from his shoulder.

“I know this building better than anyone,” Dr. Evans said, standing a little straighter.  “Come on.”

We carefully searched through every single apartment, finding each and every one empty.  All of them were in the state West had described.  Ripped apart, a mess, torn to shambles.

The offices on the main floor were empty as well and we quietly descended into the lower first floor.

The first and second underground floors were clear.  We told Avian to lock himself and Creed in a room until we gave the all-clear.

I had hoped to avoid the lower floors all together.  I’d accepted my past—and the fact that I couldn’t remember it.  I didn’t need to have the memories stirred up when I had moved on.  But as we descended a floor lower, flashes of memory danced just under the surface of my conscious.

We checked the room that held the treadmills.  I had spent hours and hours here.  A window faced the line of three treadmills, where long ago chocolaty brown eyes had watched me.

We checked a weight training room where I lifted amounts a person three times my size couldn’t have handled.

Still, we descended another floor lower and I knew exactly where my room was from the time I stepped out of the stairwell.

“Familiar?” West asked, his eyes flickering from the line of his handgun to my face.

“More than a little,” I said between clenched teeth.

We passed the playroom, the one where West and I fought, the one where he and my sister spent hours bonding.

“I hate that room,” I said.  My past feelings crept up inside of me, whispering to my memory like a ghost.

West chuckled.

“This was her room,” I said as we stepped inside a simple room that contained a narrow bed, a dresser, and a nightstand with a cracked lamp.  “Right?”

West nodded.

It was empty.

She really wasn’t here.  And it looked like she hadn’t been here in a very long time.  Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

“Let’s keep moving,” Dr. Evans said.  His voice sounded tight and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

We dropped down the hall, checking doors as we moved.  All empty.

And I knew this was my room when I stepped into it.

Exactly like my sister’s room was, this one was covered in dust and forgotten.  No longer needed.

I ran my fingers along the gouge mark in the wall where I had thrown a lamp just before I had gone in for surgery to get my chip.  The lamp had shattered and scraped the paint and drywall off.

“This is still too weird to accept the truth that you aren’t her,” West said, shaking his head as he looked around.  “I avoided the girl from this room as much as humanly possible.”

“Still wise advice sometimes,” I said, trying to make a joke.

It wasn’t a good one, but West smiled anyway.

“Let’s keep moving,” Bill encouraged.  He fidgeted in the doorway, not wanting to step into my past when he couldn’t even dwell in his own.

The rest of the fourth floor was clear and it would be difficult to tell if the fifth and final was hiding anyone.  It was packed full of storage supplies.  Someone could hide there and we would have a very difficult time ever finding them.  We even checked the back elevator and found no traces of anyone.

“Maybe they moved on,” I said, knowing any number of possibilities could be viable.

“Maybe,” West said, looking around one more time before he and Bill headed back up.

I was just about to start up the stairs after them, when Dr. Evans called out to me from behind.  I turned to see him walking toward me, a box in his hands.

“What is that?” I asked.

But he didn’t have to answer the question before I read the single word written on the front of it.

Emma.

“My mom?” I asked.  My eyes darted up to Dr. Evans, questions and uncertainty in them.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Any of her research, files, scientific notes were taken by NovaTor, but she left behind some personal effects when she…” his voice cut out once again, just briefly, like it had before.  I wasn’t sure if it was pain in saying what happened to her, or if his voice simply failed.  “I boxed her things up myself and brought them down here.”

Considering my purpose before the Evolution, I was quite certain I was never intended to inherit this box.  But the world had changed.  Now the contents of that box would matter to me.

“It belongs to you now,” he said, extending it toward me.  “If you want it.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice coming out breathy.  “Thank you.”

In a way, it felt like reading his notebook all over again.  There were secrets within this box, secrets to my past and my origins.  Secrets to a woman I had never been able to meet.

Secrets to my mother.

NINETEEN

As badly as I wanted to immediately tear into that box, I couldn’t abandon my duties.  Undeniably there was someone else around.  We hadn’t seen them yet, but they were toying with us.  West and I kept constant watch the rest of that day.

Creed got her third dosage of TorBane just before bed.  Very slowly, her vitals were stabilizing.

Finally, the evening fell into night and I asked Bill to keep watch.  It was a selfish move.  But he agreed without hesitation.

Eagerly, I went into Creed’s room, where Avian checked her tubes and wires one last time before we let her settle for the night.

He met my eyes as soon as I walked in and then they quickly fell to the box on the floor, right next to the door.

“Is that…” he hesitantly asked.

I stood stiff and nervous in the doorway and nodded.

“Do you want to do this alone?” he asked.  “Or would you like some company?”

A small smile tugged in the corner of my mouth.  “You’re my family, Avian.  Of course I want you here.”

A crooked smile crept onto Avian’s face and his eyes seemed to brighten.

I stepped in the room and quietly closed the door behind me.  I scooped the box up and went to sit on the sleeping bag that was rolled out along the far wall.  Avian sank down next to me, his shoulder barely brushing mine.

Avian handed me a scalpel which I used to cut the tape.  Taking a deep breath, I pulled the flaps open.

There wasn’t much inside the box.  Two leather bound books, an envelope, and two framed photographs.

The first framed picture showed a snowy black and white image.  I could make out a few shapes, an oval here, a circle there.

“It’s an ultrasound,” Avian said quietly.  “It’s a picture taken of the inside of a womb.”

“Me and my sister?” I breathed.  I ran a finger over the image as I started making sense of the shapes.  A tiny arm.  Three visible feet.  Two round heads.  The shape of a spine.

“I would guess your mother was about half way through her pregnancy when this was taken,” Avian said.

I nodded, simply staring at it.  It was eerie, all that was tied to this image.  A sister I hoped to find, knowing I was a different kind of creature when this was taken—fully human.  Knowing the woman whose stomach I resided in would die just a few short weeks later.  The fact that this image had been taken in this very building.

Blinking hard several times, I set the photograph aside and picked up the next.

The girl in the picture looked just like me.  I would have thought it was me, except for the pre-Evolution world around her, and the bronze colored glasses perched on her nose.

My mother held some kind of certificate in her hands with scrawling print on it.  On either side of her stood two people who both resembled her.  They all bore smiles.  Emma wore an odd set of robes and a square hat on her head.  Draped around her shoulders was a golden scarf.

“That must have been her graduation when she got her bachelor’s degree,” Avian explained.  When I didn’t understand, he continued.  “When she first finished college.  People have multiple milestones when they’re at university.  She must have been top of her class to get those,” he said, tapping the golden scarf.

“I wonder what happened to her parents,” I said, looking them over.  “Dr. Beeson has always said that she didn’t have any family.”

“They must have passed away sometime between when this picture was taken and when you were born.”

I observed their faces.  These were my grandmother and grandfather.  My family.  I thought about stories Sarah had told me, about her own grandparents.  How they went fishing and hunting with their grandpa.  How her grandma had tried to teach Sarah to sew.

My life could have turned out so differently if only a few things had changed.

I set that photo aside as well and opened the envelope.

Inside was a small stack of photographs.  Every one of them featured two people: my mother and a young man.

His hair was a light brown, bordering on dirty blond.  His eyes were gray.  His features were strong and pronounced.

In some pictures they were kissing, in some they were simply smiling at the camera.  In others they appeared to be in a school setting.

“Is that…?” Avian started to ask.

I nodded, my hands feeling stiff and half numb.  “I think so.”

I laid the pictures on the floor and pulled out the books.

They were journals.  Emma didn’t write often, but seemed to write when milestones happened, the first entry being when she graduated high school.

I scanned the pages, not reading them in detail.  She started college immediately after she graduated, had a heavy school load.  She worked a few shifts at a diner waiting tables for the first few years.  She graduated with her bachelor’s degree, as depicted in the picture.

Nine months before graduation though, a boy’s name started popping up.  Rider.

They had classes together.  Chemistry, molecular biology.  Other scientific studies.  They started dating.

Then they’d break up.

Then they’d get back together.

Eventually, they both got jobs in their fields while going through graduate school.  She started at NovaTor, he took a government job.  It was family tradition apparently.  All of his family had worked for the United States government for generations.

As they headed to their separate destinies, their relationship continued to decline.

But there was one weekend before they both had to return to their prestigious school.  One weekend when they thought they could make things work again.

“Oh wow,” I said, flushing as I read.  I turned the journal over in my lap and held it away from me.  “This is embarrassing to read.”

Avian chuckled.  “I guess most people don’t get to read about their conception.”

I cringed at Avian’s stark words as I hesitantly turned the journal back over.

As the weekend drew to a close, there was a fight.  Emma recorded that it started as something trivial, but escalated into something bigger.  The long distance was just too much.  Their highs and lows in the past were stacking too heavy.

They finally called it quits.  This time for real.

Emma returned to NovaTor and continued her work.  She threw herself into it, working harder and longer hours than ever.

At first she thought she wasn’t feeling well simply for how hard she was pushing herself in the lab.

But then she finally took a test.  And it came back positive.

She briefly considered telling Rider.  But she had her career and he had his.  As bad as it made her feel, she knew what this pregnancy was going to do to hers.  It could possibly end it.  If she told Rider, it would affect his career too.  He had worked so hard for it, had so much pressure on him from his family to succeed.  She couldn’t imagine how he could be happy about this.

So she kept it a secret.  And a few months later, she found she carried not one child, but two.

In a moment of weakness and emotion, she tried calling the number she had for Rider.  Someone else answered the phone—Rider’s brother.

“Holy…” I breathed.  “Avian, look.”

I pointed to the end of one page.  It only said the name once, and talked about him for only one sentence to say he answered the phone.  But it was there, blazing from the page.

Royce.

“Avian, Royce is my uncle,” I breathed.  The air in my chest caught, and the back of my eyes stung.  Two moments later, my vision swam as moisture pooled in them.  “It has to be him.  My mom said Rider’s entire family worked for the government.  Royce worked for the government as a weapons specialist for years!”

“Eve, you know what this means?” Avian said, looking over at me.  He took one of my hands in his.  “You have family.  You’ve had family for the past five months.  I mean…” a breathy laugh bubbled up from his chest.  “No wonder you and him have had this bond.  You’re blood family, Eve.  You’re his niece.”

I covered my mouth with a hand and realized I was trembling.  With my other hand, I grabbed one of the pictures from the floor.  Rider was looking right at the camera.  He had the same grey eyes as Royce.  The same strong jaw.  The same piercing look.

Royce and I had always gotten along.  Sure, we’d had a few ups and downs, but I’d always known he supported me.  And even though I didn’t throw the word around often, I loved Royce and did think of him as a father figure.

He was pretty damn close.

TWENTY

I didn’t say anything about my new discovery the next day.  As Avian would have so nicely put it, I was still processing that information.  Instead, Bill, West, and I kept watch again, not saying much of anything all day.  No intruders came.

Dr. Evans helped Avian take care of Creed from afar, making sure the ingredients that went down her feeding tube were right, that they’d give her the best chance of surviving.  They started gathering the supplies they would need to get her back to New Eden.  And they gave her the last dosage of TorBane.

On our fifth day at NovaTor we were all stir crazy to get moving.  This was our final day.  We were giving TorBane twenty-four hours to settle into Creed’s system.  Her vitals were good.  She was still fragile and underdeveloped, but Dr. Evans said she was comparable to what a one month premature baby would be like instead of one that was over three months.

While Bill continued to watch for unwanted visitors, West and I started packing the solar van.

“These are the supplies we’ll need to finish off the transmitter,” Dr. Evans said, handing a box off to me.  “Careful with them.”

I imagined if he had more flesh and hair on him, he might have raised an eyebrow at me and given me a “look.”  Just like West often did.

I nodded and turned toward the stairs.  West followed, oxygen tanks under his arms.

“We’re supposed to leave in the morning,” I said, my voice echoing off the walls.

“Yeah,” West said.  His voice sounded dead.

“I’ll understand if you stay,” I said as I stepped out into the main floor.  “If you have to go look for her.”

“Where am I supposed to even start?” West said, his voice harsh, even though I knew it wasn’t me he was mad at, for once.  “I don’t know what I expected.  I didn’t really think she’d be waiting here, but I…”

“I know,” I said as we walked into the garage.  I pulled the back door to the solar tank open.  “I think I kind of thought the same thing.”

West set the oxygen tanks in the fourth row of seats, the one Morgan had occupied on the way out.  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said, leaning against the vehicle and crossing his arms over his chest.  “I don’t think I can decide that until we’re heading out tomorrow morning.”

I nodded, closing the back doors again.  I leaned against the van and stuffed my hands into my pockets.  “Your grandfather says this transmitter won’t kill off the first generation of TorBane.  That the coding works different, or something.  If this really works, you’ll be able to spend as much time as you like looking for her after it goes off.  There won’t be any danger of getting attacked by the Bane.  You can take this,” I said, knocking my knuckles against the side of the solar tank.  “And drive for as long as you’ve got sun to power it.”

West nodded, a small smile curling in one corner of his mouth.  “I guess that’s true.  I mean, I can hardly picture having that ability, to just go out in the country and look.  Without the fear of getting infected.  Without the possibility of it.”

“It’s a pretty amazing looking possibility, right?” I said, returning his smile.

“I’d ask you to come with me, ‘cause I know you want to find her too,” West said, catching my eyes.  “But I’m pretty sure you’ll be too busy helping with Creed and restoring society.”

A full smile spread on my face.  I shook my head.  “I don’t really know how this is going to work.  We’ll try to find a family to adopt her.  I know nothing about caring for a baby, a kid.  But I think it’s my responsibility.  And I think I kind of want to help her find the right family, have some small part in helping her find a normal life, if that makes any bizarre sense.”

West nodded.  “It does.  She’ll be like you.  You’ll understand each other”

I gave him a small smile, and we walked back into the belly of NovaTor.

The last night at NovaTor Biotics, West had night watch.  I needed to be fresh for our journey back home tomorrow, to keep any Bane we might happen upon away from us.  But I couldn’t sleep for more than ten minutes at a time

I stared up at the ceiling of Creed’s room, running through all the things we needed to bring back with us in my head.  The code, other files, supplies, medical things.  I pictured the journey back, wondering if we would run into any Bane along the way or if we had somehow stumbled upon a rare part of the country that was clear.  It wouldn’t stay that way, since the Bane were gaining more and more sweeps, but for this small window, were we, and any other humans survivors safe?  I hoped Susan and Karmen made it to New Eden safely.

A small cry rang out through the room and I startled in my sleeping bag.  I looked over to see Avian asleep on the floor, his head buried under his pillow.  Smiling, I climbed up and walked over to Creed’s tiny dome bed.

She had kicked her blankets off and was swinging her tiny arms and legs wildly in the air.  She continued her soft cries.  Trying to remember how Avian had so skillfully wrapped her tightly, I tried to mimic his technique.

But she continued to cry and I started to feel panicky.

“She probably needs her diaper changed,” Avian said in a groggy voice as he stood from the floor.  He straightened his back, favoring it like it was stiff from sleeping on the hard floor.

“Oh,” I said lamely.  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“It’s okay,” Avian said with a small smile as he grabbed a diaper from the shelf next to the bed.  He silently showed me how to do it and discarded the soiled one in the trash in the corner.

She had needed a change, but Creed continued to cry.

“Is she hungry?” I asked, my brow furrowing in concern.

Avian checked the bag that slowly fed the mixture into the feeding tube.  “No, she’s getting a constant supply.  That shouldn’t be the problem.”

He wrapped her snuggly once again and adjusted the tiny cap on her head, but her cries grew louder and more intense.

“I’m…” Avian fumbled, letting out a big breath through his nostrils.  He wasn’t sure what to do.

Creed had once again kicked her blankets off, exposing her mostly naked body.  Even the premature diapers we had brought with us looked enormous on her.  She gave another wail and a tiny tear fell from one eye and slipped down her face.

Touching her for the first time, other than when she held my finger, I wrapped my hands carefully around her body and lifted her.  Careful not to disturb all the chords and tubes attached to her, I nestled her against my chest.  As soon as her skin connected with mine, she was calm.

I looked up at Avian, a triumphant smile crossing my lips.  Avian returned it, admiration and love shining in his eyes.  He grabbed her blanket from the bed and covered her back with it.  With his help with the chords, I eased down into the chair.

“She just needed some love,” Avian said quietly as Creed drifted off to sleep once again.

“She’ll have plenty of that,” I whispered, pressing a light kiss to the top of her soft head.

TWENTY-ONE

I handed Creed off to Avian sometime around five in the morning.  I’d slept with her on my chest for about two hours, but my internal clock must have sensed it was nearly morning and there was much to be done.

I grabbed my assault rifle from the side of the door, as well as a bag of my things.  All of my mother’s belongings were inside it.  I silently slipped out the door and made my way up the stairs.  I found West sitting at the front doors, his head starting to nod.

“Hey,” I called.  His head jerked up and over to me.  His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.  “We don’t have to go for another three hours or so.  Why don’t you get some sleep till we do?”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his eyes.  “That’s probably a good idea.”  He stood, slung his firearm over his shoulder.  He patted my shoulder twice before descending into the lower levels.

I scanned the desert before me.  It was empty except for sagebrush and the occasional dehydrated looking tree.  They sky was grey and drops of rain on the verge of turning into snowflakes started falling from the sky.

Great.  Just the kind of weather we needed to get the solar tank running.

I made my way back to the garage.  I placed my stuff in the back seat.  Opening the big door, I found the keys inside the van and, after a minute, figured out how to back it outside.  If we were more trusting, we would have had it sitting out all day yesterday powering up.  But we couldn’t risk another break in.

Now we risked losing time.

I walked back in the building and down the hall that led to the back door.  I pushed it open and walked across the platform to the power storage room.  I scanned the massive room, hoping to find anything that looked like a battery.  We were going to need some extra juice.  But there were only the energy storage devices for the solar panels, which were massive, and the generators.

I stepped outside onto the landing, closing the door behind me.  Looking back up at the grey sky, my brow furrowed.

The sky wasn’t just a grey color anymore.  There was a faint taste of brown to it as well.  Like there was dirt in the sky.

Watching my step, I went from the concrete platform, onto the rocks that became the mountain.  I climbed higher, clinging to rocks and hoisting myself up, until I could see what was causing the desert to stir.

My grip on my rifle slipped as I turned my eyes east.

The landscape was moving.  It came towards us in a slow, shifting avalanche.  The very ground shook in small vibrations.  A cloud of dust rose around the avalanche, darkening the skies behind it all the more.

About five miles out, there was an army of Bane.

Headed straight for NovaTor.

I squinted as I spotted something small in the distance.  A single dot racing out ahead of the crowd.  It moved different than the Bane though.  It was focused, determined.  And it was probably less than a mile out from us.

I leapt down that mountain back onto the platform.  Yanking the door back open, I plowed through and sprinted down the hall.  I threw open the door that led down into the underground levels.

“Bane sweep!” I bellowed.  “Five or less miles out!  We’ve got to get out of here, NOW!”

Turning back to the front doors, I stepped outside, my rifle trained ahead.

A figure sprinted towards us, less than half a mile away.  Long tendrils of hair bounced around narrow shoulders.  Leather and military clothes covered a lean body.

There was a bird circling above the figure, following it precisely.

And the Bane sweep behind the figure steadily marched forward, darkening the sky behind them.

My blood ran cold as the figure came into focus.  I recognized the face that belonged to it.

She recognized me at the same moment I did her and she skidded to a stop just fifty yards from me.  Her eyes were wide, disbelieving.  She took two uncertain steps toward me and then stopped again.

Eve One, my identical twin sister had just run out of the desert like a ghost from an urban legend.

The sound of the millions of bodies behind her grew in intensity.  She threw a look over her shoulder and sprinted toward the building once again, leaping over the bodies of the Bane I’d killed off.

“You’re alive,” I was about to say when she plowed right into me.  We rolled across the floor as her hands wrapped around my throat.

“What are you doing?” I tried to choke out.  My hands clawed at hers but she held tight.  She sat straddled over my body.

“My home,” she growled.  “Trespassing.  What you doing here?”

She spoke in broken, savage words.

I couldn’t answer because her hands were still wrapped around my throat.

I swung my legs up and hooked one around her neck and threw her back.  Her eyes were wild with rage.  A howling growl ripped from her throat as she scrambled to her feet.

“Stop!” I bellowed as I sprang up.  “What are you doing?!”

She instantly froze, her hands outstretched toward me.  Confusion filled her face and she tried to take another step toward me.  She fell to her hands and knees in the process.

“I am not your enemy,” I said.  A hand rose to my throat, even though I didn’t feel the pain I knew I should be experiencing.  “I am your sister.”

Her harsh expression faltered and her focus seemed to draw inward for a moment.  And then her eyes narrowed on my face.

It was as if she didn’t recognize me.  We looked exactly the same, but she didn’t know my face.

How long had it been since she had looked in the mirror?

“It’s me,” I said, taking a slow step toward her.  “It’s Eve Two.”

Her eyes darkened for a moment, as if she didn’t want to remember the past where there were references to us as numbers more than people.

“I thought…” she stumbled over her words.  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I know,” I said.  My eyes darted back out the door.  The sky was growing darker.  The sweep was getting closer by the second.  “Look, there isn’t much time.  We have to get out of here.  How long until they reach the building?”

Her eyes darted to the door as well.

“I saw them…”  She struggled to form sentences once again.  I wondered how long it had been since she’d talked to another human being.  “About hour ago.  Ten miles out?”

She stood erect once again.  Her eyes had calmed by this point, leaving only confusion.

“Thirty minutes,” she continued.  “Probably less till they are here.”

I nodded, shuffling from one foot to the other.  I needed to give so much more time to this moment, to this reunion, but we didn’t have it.

“They’re going to destroy this building the moment they get here,” I said, fixing my eyes hard on hers.  “We have to leave.  Now.  You need to gather your things and we have to leave.”

“That was your vehicle,” she said.  “No?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, inching toward the stairs that led to below.  “It was me, and I have a few others with me.”

She tensed at this, and I saw the animal instinct inside of her preparing to run.

“Go get your things,” I said, my muscles prepping for a fight.  “We have to leave.”

We were not much different than the Bane.  I hadn’t meant it as a command, but she couldn’t fight my bidding.  She turned for the stairs and went up.

It had been her living in West’s old apartment.

Not wasting another second, I dropped down into the stairway.  I nearly crashed into Bill on my way down.  His arms were loaded with supplies.

“Everyone ready to go?” I asked, still darting down the stairs as he went up.

“Almost,” he said, popping out onto the main floor.

Dr. Evans came running out onto the landing from the first floor, a box of things in his hands.  “They’re really outside?”

I nodded.  “About three miles away by now,” I said.  “And she found us.”

“Who?”

“You know who,” I said over my shoulder as I dropped down toward the second floor.

I found Avian and West hectically gathering things up from Creed’s room.  West had a backpack over his shoulders, stuffed to the point of exploding.  He held the portable oxygen unit under one arm, and a monitor and bag of food in the other.  Avian was just picking up Creed when I burst into the room.

“We’ve got to go,” I said.  Adrenaline was burning through my veins, giving urgency to every beat of my cybernetic heart.

“’K,” Avian said, nodding and looking around the room.  “I think I’ve got everything.  You grab the sleeping bags.”

I nodded and scooped them up.  All three of us started filing out of the room.  “West,” I said, my words catching in my throat like cotton.  “She’s here.”

“She—?” he dropped off when it clicked in his head.  “Upstairs?”

“Yep,” I said as we began ascending.

West swore, and then apologized as he looked back at Creed in Avian’s arms.

When we exited out on the main floor, Eve One was standing at the front doors, rifle aimed at the approaching dark cloud.  There was an overstuffed bag at her feet and that bird circled above outside.

“Eve?” West breathed as we stopped in the lobby.

She froze.  She didn’t look back immediately, almost as if she were afraid.  But slowly, she turned, and her eyes locked on his.

A smile cracked on one side of West’s face, and his eyes reddened.

“There will be time for explanation and reunions later!” I shouted, pulling on the back of West’s jacket.  “We’ve got to get out of here or most of us are going to be dead!”

But Eve One stood rooted by the front door.

“Go!” I shouted to everyone else.  “Get things loaded up.  We will be there in a second!”

They knew they didn’t have time to sit and argue with me.  They dashed down the hall.

“I know how scary this might seem to you right now,” I said, taking a hesitant step toward her.  “Or maybe not.  I know what your emotions must feel like.  But none of us are going to hurt you.  We need to get back to our home.  To safety.  I want you to come with us.”

“And if I say no?” she struggled with her words again.  Her face was determined, hard.  “Will you force me?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head as I took a step closer.  “I will.  And I’m not ashamed to admit it.  You’re my sister and I won’t walk away from you again.”

She hesitated.  My eyes flickered out the door again.  I could see the army now, on the horizon, moving toward NovaTor.

“We’ve got to get out of here!”  West suddenly popped into view.

Eve One’s eyes flickered to him and I saw her resolve weaken.

“If not for me, do it for him.”

There was only a moment’s hesitation.  And then she lowered her weapon, picked up her bag, and we both sprinted toward West.

Everyone was loaded in the solar tank just to the side of the building.  The three of us dove inside and the doors weren’t even closed before Bill slammed on the gas.  He fishtailed around the front of the building.

I unlocked the top hatch and popped up through it.  We were going to have to drive a little over a quarter of a mile toward the Bane to get around the mountain and back to the road.  Bill was cutting through the sage brush to give us as much space as possible, but this wasn’t a mountain climber with all our extra weight.

Eve One popped up next to me, her eye leveled with her rifle.

“How’d you find them?” I asked, looking down my sight as well.  They were only a mile away and we had a quarter of a mile before we could cut around this mountain.

“Scavenging a little town just east of here,” she said, cocking a bullet.  “Almost there last night when I heard destruction.  I watched them tear the buildings apart all night.  Realized they were heading this way.”

“How did you not know we were still in the building?” I asked.  My heart hammered as we finally rounded the mountain enough to start heading away from the Bane army again.  As we started climbing in elevation we watched them grow closer and closer to the building.

“I don’t go down,” she said, her voice tight.  “I didn’t know if you were still there, but I wasn’t going down there to find out.”

“Why don’t you go down?” I asked.

Finally, it was like watching a multicolored cloud collide with the NovaTor building.  The entire front end of it crumpled and exploded in a cloud of dust.

“I just don’t,” she said simply.

The building disappeared from our sight before I could see it fully engulfed in bodies, but I knew there would be nothing left standing when they were done with it.  But we would put enough distance between us and them to be safe, even with how slow the vehicle was moving.

Sure we were far enough away that we wouldn’t get snuck up on, my sister and I dropped down through the hatch and locked it.

“That was a little close,” Bill said, shaking his head.  He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.

I looked around to see everyone staring at Eve One.

No one said anything for several long moments, because where were we supposed to start?

“I never left,” she finally said.  She turned her attention to Dr. Evans.  “You told me to leave NovaTor.  You said things were bad and dangerous.  But I couldn’t leave.  I had nowhere else to go.  So I stayed around the building until there was no one left who would try and tell me to leave.”

Dr. Evans didn’t say anything, just stared at her with his brown eyes.  That was the first time I realized they weren’t so brown looking anymore.  Their coloring was a bit grayer now.

“Those things tried attacking me at first,” Eve One said, blinking and looking over at me.  Her words seemed to be flowing a bit more easily now.  “But when they realized I wasn’t going to become like them, they left me alone.  We mostly try to avoid each other.  For however long it’s been.”

“Six years,” West said, his voice shaky and rough.  “It’s been six years.”

She looked over at him and nodded.  Her eyes locked on him.  “I always thought you’d come back.  This was your home too.”

West’s chest rose and fell quickly and his eyes darted away when moisture pooled in them.  “I looked for you, for a long time.  I never thought…”  His voice failed him.

“He did,” I filled in when he couldn’t.  “He looked for you.  And he thought he found you just under a year ago.  But he found me.”

It was awkward and uncomfortable, revealing the truth, about how West found me, and thinking, I, Eve Two, was dead, could only assume it was her, Eve One.  We explained how he never said anything about my sister, because I didn’t remember and he thought it was easier.  We told her about the pain I caused West and how we both made poor choices that led to the lives of everyone around us being put in danger.

She asked about the scars that covered West’s entire body, and we explained how he had been infected, and then cured.

Eventually, we told her about the things that mattered most.  How Dr. Evans was still somewhat human.  Why we were back at NovaTor.  What we were going to try to do now.

She was very quiet when we were finished and no one dared say anything.  While I waited for her to process everything, I observed her.

Her face undeniably looked exactly like mine.  Down to our narrow noses and sharp jaw line.  She had the same exact blue-grey eyes.  However, while my hair was short, hers was extremely long.  It had formed into thick tendrils and looked a bit like snakes to me.  The top half of them were pulled into a loose bun at the crown of her head, the bottom half hung lose down to the middle of her back.

At the back of her head, I could make out one small black line that I knew was a roman numeral one tattooed to the back of her skull.

She was more ragged than I was, more savage looking, but she was my identical.

“So you’re going to save the world…from what we helped create?” she said.  Her face was blank now, devoid of any feeling one way or the other.

I nodded, thinking about how emotionless I was just a year ago, how I had such a hard time processing everything I felt.  She would be just as bad as that, but probably worse considering how she naturally was.  Added to it all was the fact that she hadn’t spoken to another human being in nearly six years.  I wasn’t sure how she was sane at all.  “We’re going to try.”

“And you live with a colony of a hundred and sixty other people?” she asked.  “Including Dr. Beeson?”

I nodded once again.

“You don’t feel like a freak there?” she asked, her voice even and calm.  “They accept you?”

Her harsh question caught me off guard.  “Yes.  I mean, they know I’m different, and I know I make some people uncomfortable, but we all get along fairly well.”

“Hmm,” she said, turning and looking out the window.  The first solid snowflakes started falling to the ground.

“That bird’s still following us,” Bill observed.  He ducked his head slightly so he could see up higher.  I saw it swoop around us from up above out my window.  “Is he your pet?”

“He’s my hunting companion,” Eve One said, looking out the window up at him.

“What’s his name, Eve?” Avian asked.

“Bird,” she replied simply.  “And I don’t use that name anymore.  You can call me Vee now.”

“Vee,” I said.  It took me a second to get it.  She still clung to her past identity in a small form, but she wasn’t just going to be a project anymore, she was her own person.  Shift the letters around.  I never would have thought of that.

“So, this vehicle,” she said, looking around.  “It runs on solar power, yes?”

“Yeah,” I said, relaxing back into my seat a bit.

“What are we going to do when the snow covers the panels and the sun?”

Everyone looked back outside.  The sky had continued to darken and the snowflakes were falling quicker.

“We’ll keep driving for as long as we can,” I said.  “Hopefully if the vehicle dies, we’ll be far enough south to stay clear of the Bane sweep.”

Creed suddenly cried out, piercing the awkward air.  Avian laid her on the seat next to him and set to changing her diaper.

“Why did you bring a baby with you?” Vee asked, her brow furrowing.  “I know she can’t be yours, because of how we are, and I don’t understand why you would bring a child all this way.”

Everyone looked at me, as if waiting for me to answer the question.  We didn’t know Vee or how she would react to things.  She could take this any way.

“Her mother was dying,” I said, taking the honest approach.  “The baby wasn’t ready to be born yet.  So I told Dr. Evans that I wouldn’t help him unless he helped the baby.”

Vee was quiet for a while, her eyes jumping from me to the baby.  “You gave her what he gave us?”

I nodded.  “She would have died without it.”

“Just like us.”

“Yes,” I said.  I held her eyes, watching for any signs of a violent reaction.  I had no idea if this news would upset her or not.

“She won’t be exactly like the two of you,” Dr. Evans said, turning in his seat.  “She’ll never have the chip so she’ll never have the pain or emotional blockers.  She’ll always be stronger and faster than everyone else around her, but for the most part, she will seem normal.”

“Vee,” West said quietly.  He reached forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.  She twitched violently.  I wondered how long it had been since another human being had touched her.  “This was a good thing we did.”

She turned and met his eyes and was still for a long moment.  As I watched them look at each other, I imagined that connection that had been between the two of them, and then how awful it must have been for West, seeing Avian and I together, thinking it had been he and I that had shared such a connection.

No wonder he’d lost it like he had.

“Okay,” she finally said.  And that was it.

The snow continued to fall heavier and faster over the next hour.  We were only two hours away from NovaTor when the solar tank started to slow to half speed.  Twenty minutes later, it stopped in the middle of the road between two small towns.

Vee, Bill, and I climbed out of the tank and observed the sky.  It was dark clouds to the north, south, east, and west.

“This isn’t going to let up any time soon,” I said.  “What is the weather normally like this time of year?”

“You’re looking at it,” Vee said, checking out our surroundings.  “Snow will come and go all winter long here.  We’ve had a dry spell the last ten days or so, but I knew it wouldn’t last.”

“And how long will the snow stay for?”

She shrugged.  “It’s winter.  It could last a few hours, but likely it will last for a few days.  Maybe a few weeks.”

“But will the sun come back out?” Bill asked.  “We can drive through snow with these tires, but without a charge, we aren’t going anywhere.”

“Probably by morning,” Vee said, still searching the sky.  I realized then she was looking for Bird.  It came into view, circling us twice before settling on the branch of a scraggly tree just to the west of us.  “Unless this is a major storm.”

“Still, we have to make it until morning,” I said, looking northeast, the way we had just come.  “I don’t know that we’re far enough south to be in the safe zone from the sweep.”

“We can walk,” Vee said.  “We can carry the vital supplies.”

“But then we’ll just have to walk back to the vehicle,” Bill said, folding his arms over his chest.

“So we move it with us,” I said, walking back to it.  I took a look inside.  Avian had just laid Creed on the seat, fast asleep.  “Everyone out, except you Dr. Evans.  Don’t want your nice and shiny gears getting fried.  We’re pushing instead of driving.”

We took two ropes and secured them to the front tow hooks.  Avian and I pulled from the front, while Bill, West, and Vee pushed from behind.

We slowly rolled down the road.

Once we got momentum going, it wasn’t that hard to maintain it.  Except for the snow that slowly started piling up on the road.  My pants became soaked through and snow collected on my shoulders.  Our feet slipped in the slush.

“I guess lady luck got tired of following you around,” Avian said through gritted teeth as he pulled on his rope.

“I think the last few weeks have been the only time in my life she’s wanted to be around me,” I answered, adjusting the rope over my shoulder.  “I couldn’t ask her for any more than saving Creed and giving my sister over without a massive, countrywide search.”

Avian chuckled, sending a cloud of hot breath into the air.

The terrain around us was arid.  A few trees were scattered about, but mostly it was jagged desert and sagebrush.  Mountains clustered in the horizon and the frigid wind blew in from the north.

We pulled through the snow and cold for two hours, until there was too much snow on the road and the tires stuck.

“Think this is far enough?” West asked as everyone met on the side of the van.  His face was red and splotchy.  Sweat started freezing in his growing beard.

“It’ll have to be, I suppose,” I said, looking back the way we had come.  A billow of hot air clouded around me as I spoke.  “But I think we’ll be okay.”

“Let’s get some tents set up then,” West said.  “Before we get buried in the snow.”

We decided that Bill would stay in the van with Dr. Evans.  West and Vee would take one tent, Avian, Creed, and I would take the other.

I couldn’t help but smile as I watched West and Vee interact.  He handed her the poles and she quickly and effortlessly assembled the tent.  She was stiff and somewhat awkward, but you could easily see on her face that she trusted West.  That bond was still there.  West asked if she was hungry, she took the food from him with a hint of a smile.

The tie that was obviously still there wasn’t mature as it might have been if they’d known each other longer as grown people.  It was more childlike, but it was there.

Provisions were split, and then everyone burrowed into their tents.

“How’s she doing?” I asked as I zipped the tent closed.  Even in the tent the air smoked around my mouth as I spoke.

“She’s breathing pretty well and her heart rate is steady,” Avian said as he pulled his coat tighter around him and Creed.  “But she’s cold.”

I set to zipping our sleeping bags together and then Avian and I both stripped our coats off, laying them on top of the sleeping bags.  It was doubtful they would actually dry before morning, but we’d freeze to death sleeping in them.  We got down to the barest of layers, slipped into the sleeping bags, and laid Creed between us.

“Body heat is about all we’ve got to offer you right now, little one,” Avian said as he tightened the blanket around her.

I looked down at Creed, running a finger across her incredibly soft cheek.  She blinked twice before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.

When I looked up at Avian, I found him staring at me.  A smile spread on his face, reaching his eyes.  I couldn’t help but return it.

As he leaned forward and pressed his lips briefly to mine, I couldn’t help but feel peaceful.  There was so much going on in my life at the moment.  So much was on the line that stress was becoming a constant in my life.

But it was small moments like this that reminded me why I kept fighting the daily fight.

TWENTY-TWO

A gunshot rang out and I sprang from our tent in nothing more than my t-shirt and waterproof running pants.

Bill stood just outside the solar tank, his shotgun still poised in front of him.  A puff of smoke hung heavy in the air.  Lying just in front of him was a man with a dozen bleeding holes in his chest.  Red started seeping into the snow underneath him.

“What is going on?” I demanded, crossing the snow with bare feet.  I crouched next to the man and looked him over just as the rest of the crew stepped out of their tents.  The man was dead.  “Bill?” I said, looking back at him when he didn’t respond.  “This guy is human.”

“Trust me, he’s not,” Bill said with clenched teeth as he finally lowered his shotgun.

“Yeah, I’m pretty positive he is.”  I looked back at the man.  His eyes were closed and there was blood splattered all over his face.  A heavy scar ran down one side of his face, crossing over his eye, and dropping down his cheek.

He had a cruel face.  The face of a man I wouldn’t want to cross.

“What was he doing?” West asked, confusion in his eyes.

“Snooping around,” Bill said, slinging the firearm over his shoulder.  “This man is a thief and a thug.”

The things Bill was saying, these were details.  Details he couldn’t have gathered in the last few minutes.

I had a feeling a ghost had just walked out of Bill’s unspeakable past.

“Take care of the body,” I said, my jaw stiff as I glanced down once more at the dead man.

“Looks like the clouds will burn off in an hour or so,” Vee said as she helped me clear the snow from the solar panels.

Bill was off burying the man he’d shot, and everyone else was cleaning up the tents and bringing out breakfast.  The snow in the middle of us all was still scarlet red.

“We could probably head out about an hour after that,” I said, dusting my hands off.  “If this thing wasn’t so completely drained, it wouldn’t take quite so long.”

Vee nodded, looking around, as if distracted.  Bird suddenly swooped in, flapping his wings as he hovered above her shoulder for just a moment before landing.

“He’s a beautiful creature,” I said, observing his honey brown feathers mixed with the white.  A hawk if I wasn’t mistaken.  He had powerful talons and a killer beak.

“He’s been my only companion for the last three years,” she said, looking over at him.  “I found him when he was just hatched.  He was abandoned.  Just like me.”

I met her eyes for a moment.  It was still strange, like looking in a mirror but with altered hair and less expression.

“Did it drive you mad, being so alone?” I asked.  I had known we would need to talk sometime, but I wasn’t sure what to say.  We had never been close and I hadn’t even known of her existence until a few weeks ago.

She shrugged her shoulders.  “Before everything happened, they said it was because of the way I was born, my disconnect with everyone.  I started to get better after they gave me TorBane.  But then they gave me the chip and took it all away.  I didn’t mind being on my own.”

“But you did miss West,” I said plainly.

She hesitated.  Gave me a serious look.  “I did miss him.”

“Was it nice to be with him last night?” I asked, feeling awkward doing so.  “Did you talk much?”

I thought I saw a hint of a smile cross her face.  “Some.  I think he is embarrassed he didn’t realize the difference between you and I right away.  It should have been obvious.”

“Maybe not when he thought I was dead,” I said, nearly smiling myself.

“You nearly tried to kill him,” she said, her smile growing.  “Twice.  That should have been a good indication.”

A laugh erupted from my throat.  “Yeah, I guess it should have been.  Was it really that bad between him and me?  I don’t remember more than a few snapshots.”

She started to smile before it broke off her lips.  She just nodded.  “West always liked to be the best at things and you always tried to show him how you were better.  He didn’t like that.  You didn’t like that he tried so hard.”

I looked out toward the tent, the one she and West had spent the night in.  He was disassembling it.

“It’s a little odd to be around you two and not have you fighting,” Vee added.

“It’s a recent development.”

“You’ll be by my side, won’t you?” she said, her change of mood instant.  “When we get back to your people?”

“Of course,” I said.  She didn’t know how to vocalize it, but I could imagine the idea of being around so many “normal” people after so long in isolation had to be overwhelming.  For a brief moment, I considered reaching out and giving her a reassuring squeeze on the arm or something.  But she was like me, and that kind of contact wasn’t exactly reassuring to us.  We weren’t normal.  “I’ll be there as much as you want me to be.”

“And West?” she said, looking back at him.  “Will his duties permit him to be there when I need him as well?”

A smile once again crooked in my mouth.  “I think that could be permitted.”

As predicted, two hours later we were moving once again.  The snow on the ground was about three inches deep, but our tires were large and the sun was shining.

Bill drove, Dr. Evans sat in silence inside his glass box.  Vee was mostly quiet and I could never quite figure out what she was thinking.  West watched Vee and kept looking from her to me and I could tell he was still having difficulty processing everything.  Creed cried and slept and many times wouldn’t calm down until I held her, her wrinkly cheek pressed into my chest.  Avian did his best to keep her alive.

The miles fell behind us and the few small towns we came across had few Bane in them.  I stood at the opening of the hatch and commanded them to destroy one another.  I wouldn’t risk any more of them joining the Bane sweep.  At this point, it felt like every single one of them counted.

I hoped the army that I had sent out into the country was making even a slight dent in the Bane population.  Honestly, I just hoped that they were still doing as I commanded.  I couldn’t live with myself if they’d gone back to their main objective and were infecting people once again.

By nightfall we were just outside of Las Vegas.  Or what should have been Las Vegas.  The snow was gone and the temperatures had risen fifteen degrees.  We all appreciated that.  It was frighteningly quiet once more when we camped and we slept right next to the solar tank.

We rolled out as soon as the sun came up and charged the solar panels.  Bird circled above us, never tiring of the skies.  Everyone but Vee grew restless, anxious to get home and to see what was to come.

“How far can they get with the construction of the Nova without the supplies you collected?” Avian asked.  He was in the middle of changing Creed’s oxygen tank.

“They can get all the framework structured,” he said, not looking back at us.  “And the main motherboard isn’t too complex.  We should be able to finish it off in about two weeks.”

“That seems like a lot of time,” I said.  “If it’s mostly the fine tuning of it that is left, why would it take more than a few days?”

“My dear girl, do you claim to know how to build a transmitter that will reach every still functional satellite and how to fine tune it?”  His voice was patient, but it was dripping with condescension.

“I think your tone is a bit unnecessary,” Vee said, her brow furrowing.  “She was asking a valid question.”

I would have made an appreciative gesture to my sister for defending me, but I was too occupied balling my cybernetic-boned hands into fists, and using restraint not to connect them with Dr. Evans’ face.

“My apologies,” Dr. Evans said, shaking his head.  “I must admit, I’m feeling a little less…understanding these days.”

The interior grew quiet at that, each of us considering what he was really meaning by his comment.

“Do those of us without TorBane have anything to be worried about, Dr. Evans?” Avian asked.

“Not for the time being, you don’t.”

Tension and uncertainty threatened to choke each of us out for the next six hours.  Adrenaline constantly burned through my veins.  I kept going over plans in my head, just in case Dr. Evans lost his grip on his humanity.  But the truth was simple: if he decided to turn on us, I had no chance of immobilizing him before he could infect everyone.

I just wanted to be back in New Eden.  Now.

“See if you can get anyone on the radio,” Bill said, grabbing it off the dash and handing it back to me.  I took it from him and pressed the talk button.

“This is Eve and the reclamation team, can anyone hear me?” I said.

There was radio silence for all of five seconds before it crackled.  “Welcome back, Savior.”  Royce.  “Everyone still alive?”

I hesitated.  “Not exactly sir, but our numbers are plus one.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”  Crackle, out.

“Sir, we saved the child.  She’s going to be okay,” I said, looking back at Creed.  She slept in a nest of blankets and sleeping bags.  “And we found Eve One.”

Silence for a long moment.  I had a feeling Royce took that moment to swear.  “So there’s two of you now, huh?”

“Twice the fun, sir,” I said with a grin.

I faintly heard him chuckle.  I imagined how the fine lines would grow around his eyes when he smiled.  Exactly how my father’s eyes looked in all those pictures.

My demeanor grew more serious and I glanced back at Avian.  “Royce, did you have a brother named Rider?”

He paused again for a moment.  I could imagine the way his brows would pull together and his gray eyes would question.  “Yes.  Why do you ask?”

My chest swelled and I started blinking rapidly when something bit at the back of my eyes.

“We’ll talk about it later.  See you soon.”

“We’ll all be waiting for you.”

TWENTY-THREE

I didn’t expect to feel relief when we pulled into the parking garage at the hospital.  This place had never felt like home, and being trapped there had made me start losing my mind just a few months ago.  But it was the place that had housed all of the members of my family.  Literally, now.

Royce, Tuck, Tristan, and Gabriel, as well as Lin were waiting for us as promised.  As soon as I stepped from the solar tank, Lin was across the garage and was squeezing me so tight I thought even my ribs might crack.

“You’re alive!” she said in a delighted squeal.  “And in one piece!”

“We hardly even ran into any Bane,” I said, mocking her.  “It was actually a fairly boring trip for the large part.”

“Whoa,” Lin suddenly said, looking over my shoulder.  “You two really are identical.”

I turned to see Vee step from the tank.  She looked uncertain, but not afraid.

“Everyone,” I said as the rest of the welcoming crew came forward at a more acceptable pace.  “I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Vee.”

She nodded at them, without the courtesy smile most people would have worn on their face.  Tristan reached forward to shake her hand, but she didn’t know what to do with it.  He withdrew it awkwardly.

“Vee, this is Royce,” I said, indicating him.  I wondered if it would mean anything to her, the fact that he was her uncle.  “He’s sort of our military affairs leader.  This is Gabriel, he’s the more personal level leader.  He’s been working on rehoming everyone after we cleared the city.  And this is Tuck, Tristan, and Lin.”

“Apparently we’re not important enough for explanation,” Tristan teased, raising an eyebrow at me.

“You’re all still alive, that means you’re important,” Vee said in a very logical voice.

“I like her,” Tristan said, giving me a sly smile.

“And who might this stowaway be?” Royce asked.  I turned to see Avian step from the vehicle, Creed wrapped in a blanket in his arms.  Royce looked up at me with incredulous eyes.

“This is Creed,” Avian said, lightly bouncing from one foot to another.  West stepped from the tank as well, carrying her oxygen unit.

“And she’s…” Royce said, unsure how to finish his sentence.

“She’s like us,” I finished for him, fixing him with a hard stare.

“You didn’t need to abscond into the night with her mother like that,” he said, his voice bordering on scolding me, and being offended that I’d sneak behind his back.

“You wouldn’t have let us take her,” I said, never breaking his gaze.  “And it was my operation.  I didn’t need your permission.”

He didn’t respond but held my eyes in a way that said no, he wouldn’t have given his permission.

“Get her upstairs to Dr. Sun,” Royce suddenly said, looking away to Creed.  “No need to make her freeze down here.”

Avian shouldered the oxygen pack and feeding tubes and slipped inside.

Dr. Evans stepped from the tank.

“Won’t be long and there will be no traces of human left on you, huh?” Royce said, cringing slightly as he looked at Dr. Evans.  I observed him too.  He had, indeed, changed over the last two weeks.  The small amounts of flesh still on his face were being slowly overtaken.

“Won’t be long and it won’t matter anymore,” he growled as he went for the back of the tank.  He pulled the doors open and produced his precious box of supplies.  “Shall we get back to work?”

Royce didn’t say anything, just nodded his head back to the opening of the underground garage.  I opened my mouth for a moment, about to ask Royce for a minute to talk.  But saving the world was still more important.  I’d find a better time later.

“Is Graye still in charge of security detail?” I asked, turning back to Tristan, Tuck, and Lin.

“Yeah,” Tristan said as we all turned back to the doors leading inside the hospital.  “Elijah’s still laid up.  His leg got infected pretty badly.”

I nodded.  “I’m going to ask him to have a guard watch Dr. Evans at all times.”

“Yeah,” West said, following us, Vee in tow.  “What was his comment about earlier?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  But it’s true; he’s losing more of his human traces every day.  How long before he loses grip on his humanity?”

TWENTY-FOUR

“My room is just next door,” I said as Vee walked around her new room.  She ran a hand over the hospital bed, a look of detachment upon her face.  “West and Avian are just across the hall if you need either of them.”

“These people lived here when there were still Bane in the city?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

I nodded.

“Their odds of surviving for five years that way, in a city of this size, they’re miniscule, nearly nonexistent.”

“I know,” I said, leaning in the doorway, crossing my arms over my chest.  “I fought it when our colony made the exodus west.  I thought everyone was going to get infected if we came into the city.”

“It is a miracle that they didn’t,” she said, raising an eyebrow.  She absentmindedly pulled a drawer open.  It was empty.  She closed it again.

There was silence for a moment as Vee continued to wander the room for a moment before settling uncomfortably on the bed.  Her back was ramrod straight, her hands placed lightly on her thighs.

“I’m sure Dr. Beeson will want to meet with you soon,” I said.  I was getting back to not knowing how to fill these uncomfortable silences.

“Will he want to fix me like he fixed you?” she asked.  She looked up at me with hints of uncertainty in her eyes.

“That is entirely up to you,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets.  “I asked him to do my emotion blocker adjustments.  I was evolving past them, but the chip and my emotions were still combating.  Everything that I was feeling was becoming dangerous to me and those around me.  Blackouts.  Mood swings.  It was ugly.”

Vee nodded.  “Maybe someday.  But not yet.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“You ready?”

I turned to find West and Lin standing behind me.  Lin held several bottles of hair products and a metal comb.  West had an armload of towels and clothes.

“Yeah,” Vee said, trying to smile.  This was going to be a difficult life adjustment after nearly six years in solitude.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking quizzically at Lin.

“She wants the dreadlocks out,” Lin said, a crooked smile curling in her lips.

“Is that even possible?” I asked, looking back at Vee’s hair.  It was long.  Longer than I had ever worn my hair.  The tendrils hung more than halfway down her back.

“We’re about to find out,” West said, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Good luck with that,” I said, smiling as I ducked out of the room.  I heard the three of them head for the bathroom as I worked my way down the hall.

“Eve,” someone called out to me as I approached the stairs.

I turned to see Susan stepping out into the hallway.

“You made it,” I said.  A smile crossed my lips.

She nodded.  “We actually just got in yesterday.”

“Did you have any troubles getting back?” I asked.  I stuffed my hands into my pockets and leaned against the wall.

She shook her head.  “We didn’t see a single Bane, just like you said.  Which I think was almost scarier than if we had seen them.  I kept expecting them to jump out at us any second.”

I chuckled and nodded.  I understood the feeling.  “How’s Karmen?”

“She’s good,” Susan smiled.  “There are a few others here that speak Spanish, so that’s nice.”

I nodded once more.  “I’m glad you made it okay.”  She smiled and then turned to walk the opposite way down the hall.  I headed back for the stairs.

There were two weeks between now and knowing our future.  What was I going to do with myself for two weeks until the transmitter was finished?

That would put us to the end of February.  The gardens wouldn’t quite be ready to till.  I would be too on edge to go to my tent out at the beach.  I supposed I could join security detail, now that there was a need for it once more.  I wondered how much further into the city the Bane would have gotten in the two weeks we had been gone.

I was just about to head down the stairs to the main floor when I ran right into Avian.  He tripped backwards and I reached a hand out and gripped the front of his shirt just in time to keep him from tumbling back down them.

Pulling him back into standing position, he started laughing.  “That would be just my luck, getting within two weeks of the apocalypse ending, and meet my demise by falling down the stairs.”

“I’ll have to wrap you up in layers of blankets to get you there,” I said as he turned and walked down the stairs with me.

We exited into the hall of the main floor and walked together toward the dining area for dinner.

Everyone sat at tables, quiet and so seemingly unaware of the changes that were about to descend upon our already crazy world.  They smiled and talked, and if someone from before the Evolution were to observe them, they wouldn’t think anything had happened to end their way of comfortable living.

“Things seem too calm,” Avian said as we sat at a table with our meals.  “Don’t they?”

I nodded and forked the canned green beans into my mouth.  I swallowed.  “The last year has been so crazy and life-threatening, this almost seems scarier.”

“The calm before the storm, maybe,” Avian said.

“Things are falling into place too easily.”  I ate half of my roll in one bite.  “It feels like we’re missing something.  Like we’re overlooking an important detail, or something is brewing just under the surface where we can’t see it.”

Avian grunted in agreement as he finished off his own roll.  “Maybe the world has just made us paranoid.  We’ve had to fight so hard for so long, that when things get easy, we start getting suspicious.”

“I don’t know,” I said, wiping crumbs off my hands.  “I think maybe everyone is too confident that this machine is going to work.  What if it doesn’t go any further than New Eden’s borders?  No farther than the state this used to be?  What if they can’t even get it to go off?  What if there isn’t a single satellite up there that will work?  What if I can’t really connect with the Bane?”

“It will work,” Avian said, looking up at me from his plate.  “It has to.”

“I guess that’s the storm, isn’t it?” I said, picking up my fork but not grabbing any food with it.  “If this doesn’t work, that’s the end of the human race.”

Avian reached across the table and covered my free hand with his.  I met his eyes again.  “It will work,” he said.

TWENTY-FIVE

THIRTEEN DAYS UNTIL SET OFF

First thing in the morning, Royce called a meeting.

Every member of New Eden, including the refugees, and now Karmen and Susan, gathered in the auditorium, facing Royce with expectation.  Gabriel stood to his side, hands crossed behind his back.

“First, as I’m sure you’ve all already seen, our solar crew has returned safely,” Royce said, clapping.  Everyone followed his lead and clapped loudly.  My face grew red and I was glad I was in the second row of seats so I didn’t have to look at anyone.  West, who was just to my side, smirked down at me.  Vee, next to him just stared forward at Royce.

“Most of you have wondered what their exact mission was,” Royce continued.  He held his hands behind his back and paced across the stage.  “You’ve heard that the man who created TorBane is still alive.  Eve and her chosen crew went with Dr. Evans back to NovaTor Biotics.  They were on a mission to get a certain code.”

The room had grown silent and I could almost feel everyone leaning forward, on baited breath, waiting for him to continue.

“A kill code,” Royce said.  As if on cue, everyone inhaled sharply.  Several shouts of what does that mean? were thrown into the air.  Royce held his hands out as if to push their questions back at them.  “It is exactly like it sounds.  This is a kill code that will instantly wipe out the Bane.  It is difficult to fully explain how it works.  There is a lot of mixed up history to it, but our own Eve is the key to making it work.”

Instantly, I felt hundreds of eyes on the back of my head.  Avian shifted beside me and I could tell he was fighting the urge to wrap a supportive arm around me.  Instead, he discreetly slipped his hand into mine.

“You know she can communicate with the Bane, control them.  She already has this kill code programmed inside of her,” Royce said.  He didn’t look down at me, which I appreciated.  His eyes were fixed firmly on those before him.  “This code she and her team went after unblocks it.”

Royce placed his hands behind his back again and paced toward the other end of the stage.  “While they were gone, our scientific teams have been working on a device that will amplify this kill code.  It will send a signal up twenty-three-thousand miles above us to an orbiting satellite.  This satellite will transmit the code to all other satellites that are still in orbit around planet Earth.  There are hundreds of them up there, floating around the entire globe.  Not all of them will be useful after so long with no attention and maintenance, but there should be enough to carry the signal around the globe.”

Another intake of breath, followed by loud murmurs.  Royce paused for a long time, letting everyone draw their own conclusions.

“Yes,” Royce said, stilling in the middle of the stage.  He stood with his legs in a wide stance, his arms grasped firmly behind his back.  “If all goes as planned, it will do what you all are thinking it will:

“Wipe out the Bane.  Worldwide.”

The room erupted.

Some were saying it was impossible.  Some burst into tears of joy.  Others opened and closed their mouths, not knowing what to say.

I turned in my seat, observing their disbelief and hopeful, cautious dreaming.

“Prepare to be worshiped,” Avian said quietly.

“I am not finished,” Royce bellowed.  Not in an unkind way, but a way that demanded attention once more.  The room quickly grew quiet once more.

“There is no guarantee that this will work,” Royce said, his voice grave sounding.  “Any number of things could go wrong.  I do have every confidence that it will work.  However, if it doesn’t, you all need to know the conditions of the world outside of our safe haven.”

He held their attention with a hook and line once more.

“I am sorry to say we have kept information from you,” he said, his eyes falling from the crowd around him.  “Once again, our information is linked to Eve.  When she was taken earlier this winter, she came back with reports of a Bane army.”

Cries and chaos once again threatened to overtake the room.

“Yes,” Royce shouted above the din.  “They are collecting.  They are moving.  And they are wiping out cities, forests, towns, anything that might be hiding humans.  They are looking for more flesh as they starve in their drive to spread TorBane.

“Eve and her team have come back with reports of more than one army.  They saw the aftermath of one that started in Las Vegas and headed east.  They barely escaped one that demolished the NovaTor Biotics building.  As we speak, they are probably ripping San Francisco apart.  We can only conclude that these sweeps are taking hold worldwide.”

Shouts and questions and cries erupted once more.  What does that mean?  How will we survive?  What if this device does not work?

Royce put his hands on his hips and his head hung for a moment.  Gabriel, who had been silent up to this point, put his hand on Royce’s shoulder in a supportive gesture.  Royce was not an emotional man, but I did not envy him for having to deliver this end-of-the-world news.  That took courage.

“This—” he tried to speak, but his voice cut off with a choke.  He cleared his throat, placing a fist over his lips.  He took a moment as the room started to quiet again.  His eyes had changed two shades toward red when he looked back up at everyone.  “This is our last chance.  I will not sugar coat it.  If this doesn’t work, it may only be weeks until the Bane fall upon us and—” his voice cut out once again.

There was a heavy silence that hung in the air at his unsaid words.  Words that had to be said.

I stood from my seat and climbed over the one in front of me.  I pulled myself up onto the stage and stood beside Royce.

“By the time they reach us, even the Pulse will not be able to save us,” I said.  The room was so deathly quiet, I could hear myself breathe.  Little particles of dust swirled in the air and the lights shining down on the stage seemed to intensify.  “There will be nowhere left to run.  We could go out into the water, but we will only survive for so long without being able to replenish supplies.  Once the Bane get to the city, they will destroy everything.  There won’t be any supplies left to come back to.”

Gabriel stepped forward, placing his bear paw of a hand on my shoulder.  “We tell you this not to panic you, but to ready and inform you.  You all have a right to know what we are facing.”

“We ask that you prepare yourselves,” Royce said, his voice recovered, but quieter.  “Get your affairs in order.  Live your lives and maybe pray a little harder.  Meanwhile, Dr. Evans, Dr. Beeson’s team, and I will be doing everything we can to make sure this device is perfect.”

Before anyone could say another word, Royce hopped off the stage and exited out the side door.

The room remained silent and I felt every eye turn on me.  I looked out over them.

The pressure on my shoulders was intimidating.  More than that—it was terrifying.  Before it had just been a few people who had known the potential I bore in saving what was left of the human race.  But now it had been announced and every one of them knew.  I couldn’t bear the thought of letting them down.

Because of the bright lights, I couldn’t see more than silhouettes, but I knew all of these people.  They were mine, and I was theirs.  We were quite possibly the last remaining human beings on Earth.  We might be eradicated in the next few weeks, but for now, we were here and we were together.

I placed a hand over my heart and then extended it out toward all of them, my fingers spread wide.

Each and every one of them mimicked my gesture.

We were few, but we would stand together until the end.

TWENTY-SIX

TWELVE DAYS UNTIL SET OFF

Things could never go back to operating the same after that day.  When you’ve been told the world will either be saved or ended in twelve days, how could it?

With the threat of a Bane sweep falling upon us at any time, we were vigilant.  The old security detail was resurrected.  Graye remained in charge with Bill as his second, and Avian as his third.  It seemed that with the end of the world nearly at our doorstep, he was forgiven.  West, Tristan, and almost every one of the able-bodied refugees joined the ranks.  Their job was to watch the perimeter, to keep an eye out for any approaching sweeps.  They also kept an eye out for any lone Bane wandering too close into town.

The WTS had been turned off only briefly when we returned from NovaTor and Dr. Evans unloaded his supplies.  Now it was operating once again, which meant Dr. Evans couldn’t come within three blocks of the hospital.  He stayed with the Nova at all hours.

We were cautious about any Bane being back in the city and everyone was ordered to stay within two blocks of the hospital at all times.  Most everyone chose to move back within its walls full-time.

Gabriel headed up a team that prepared for an emergency water evacuation.  They organized boats, big ones that would house all of us.  They hoarded food, and most importantly, water.  They gathered supplies to evaporate ocean water to use for drinking.

But there were so many of us.  It would buy us maybe three more weeks on the water, but eventually we would run out of supplies.  I didn’t want to picture what things would turn to when the supplies did run out.

Regardless of all the panic and preparations for the worst, Royce and Dr. Evans remained confident that their device would, indeed, work.  Just as soon as they finished building the transmitter, they would run a test to see if they could get any response from the satellites above us.

Despite my protests, I was not allowed to join security detail.  I was on call.  They would allow me to come out and contain a Bane situation if needed, but until that arose, I was to be kept safe and sound.  Because if anything happened to me, it was instant game over.

I wasn’t sure how to handle being so important.

I stepped out of my room on day ten just as Vee came out of hers.  She gave me a small smile as our eyes met.

“Lin did a really nice job with your hair,” I observed.  It laid in a neatly done braid over her shoulder, a good foot shorter than it had been in the dreadlocks.  It was thinner, like much of it had broken off in the attempt to untangle it.

“It took four hours to get it all out,” she said, her hands rising to touch the frayed ends of it.  “I kept telling her to just shave it off, but Lin was insistent I needed it.”

“It’s stranger than you’d think, having no hair,” I said as we started for the stairs.  I reached up and rustled my own hair.  It was growing rapidly.  It came down to my jawline by now.  Lin had cut and “styled” it for me the day before.  She had said I looked like a boy and that if I wanted Avian to continue to be attracted to me, something had to be done about it.

Avian protested that wasn’t true, but he couldn’t stop smiling when it was done.

“This place is so quiet now,” I said as we walked out into the main lobby.  It was empty.  A few people walked back toward the kitchen areas for breakfast, but the tones they spoke in were hushed, almost reverent sounding.  “It’s almost eerie feeling.”

Vee nodded, even though she didn’t really know any better.

I felt as if I were in a holy place.  Perhaps I was.  This could be the final walking grounds of the human race.

“I’m going to see Creed,” I said, stalling in the hallway that led to the hospital wing.  “Do you want to join me?”

Vee hesitated, glancing in the direction of the kitchens, where she knew West was.  “I was thinking of asking Graye if I could join his security detail today.”

“That’s fine,” I said, nodding and taking a step back.  “You don’t have to come with me.”

She looked back in the direction of the kitchen, and then back at me.  “I suppose it could wait one more day.”

I shouldn’t have felt like smiling.  Security detail was an important job.  Maybe the last important job ever.  But I was lonely, even if I’d never admit it.  I wouldn’t mind having her company.

She followed me down the hall and very quietly, we pushed open the door to Creed’s room.

The baby was nearly naked, except for a diaper.  She lay under a light.  I’d been told it was to somehow help her liver fight off something premature babies often had a hard time with.  She had a tiny mask over her eyes.

Vee and I had just stopped at the side of her tiny bed when someone stepped into the room.  We both turned to find Dr. Sun enter.

“Oh,” she said, looking up at us from a chart.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize anyone was here.”

“It’s okay,” I said, smiling at her.  “How is she?”

Dr. Sun made a sound that was like a mix between a laugh and a sigh as she approached the bed.  “Incredible, actually,” she said.  She quickly changed the bag that led into Creed’s feeding tube and threw the empty one in the trash can.  “Her lungs are ninety-two percent functional.  We can take her off of her oxygen in a few days.  Her heart is pumping blood efficiently.  Heart rate is stable.  The jaundice is nearly gone.  She’s more like a three week premature baby, not a twelve week one.”

“How long until she no longer needs to be in the hospital wing?” I asked.

Dr. Sun hesitated in the door, all ready to leave.  “I would say in about ten days.”

Her face paled slightly as she realized what else was to happen in ten days.  We might all be dead within ten days.  Not knowing what to say, she turned to leave.

“Dr. Sun,” I called out to her.  “What happened to the boy we found?  The one from the warehouse?  I don’t see any other rooms occupied in the hospital wing.”

She turned sad eyes on me and instantly I didn’t want to hear her answer.

“He was doing better for a while.  He was conscious.  We thought he would recover.  But then he passed away suddenly one night.  We think it might have been an infection in his blood.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage.

Her eyes falling to the floor, she turned and left without another word.

I kept staring at that door, long after Dr. Sun left, feeling hollowed out.  Vee, however, turned back to Creed and looked at her.  I finally turned and saw as Vee lifted a hand and ran a finger over the back of Creed’s tightly gripped fist.

“She’s so soft,” Vee mused.  “I know she’s like us, but she seems so different.”

“She is different,” I said, pushing away emotions I didn’t want to deal with right then.  “She’ll be able to feel things easier than we did.  If she gets the chance, life won’t be so confusing for her.”

Vee made a sound of acknowledgement and gave a nod of her head.  She continued to stare at the baby.  “What did it feel like, when you were close with West?  When you are with Avian?”

She didn’t look over at me when she asked and her out-of-the-blue question took me off guard.  But the way she had asked it, she hadn’t meant it to be uncomfortable for me.

“Um,” I struggled.  “I mean, at first I guess I just felt alive.  Confused, but awake in a way I didn’t really understand.  I hadn’t really felt much of anything before that.  It was…complex.”

Vee nodded and crossed the room.  She sank into a chair and sat there.  More ridged than anyone else would have sat.

“While West was helping Lin with my hair, his hand brushed the side of my neck,” she said.  She didn’t quite meet my eyes, as if she was uncomfortable sharing this information with me.  “It felt…nice.  And at dinner yesterday, I kind of wanted him to do it again.  But I don’t know why.”

A smile started to curl in the corner of my mouth, but it wasn’t an amused one, or one like other girls might have smiled.  It was almost sad, sad because there were two females in this world that had to have these kinds of reactions explained to them.

“Emotions develop,” I said, sinking into a chair across the room from her.  “Very slowly for us, even more slowly for you I suppose, because of the way you were born.  Sometimes they’re shallow feelings, like sadness, or anger.  But sometimes they develop in your belly and try to eat you from the inside out.”

“Is that what happened with you and him, in the beginning, when West found you?” she asked.  She fixed me with this expression that wasn’t quite blank, but wasn’t quite filled with the right amount of curiosity or jealousy.

It took me a moment to nod.  “Yeah,” I said.  “But it wasn’t just…regular romantic feelings that woke me up.  I didn’t trust West in the beginning.”

“Understandable,” Vee said.  She almost smiled.

I almost smiled too.  “But there was something about him that drew me in.  The only way I can explain what I felt towards him is fire and ice.  He woke emotion back up inside of me, both good and bad.  But it was Avian too, not just West.  What I felt for Avian was deeper, slower.  It took me longer to recognize that emotion was love.”

Vee nodded and her eyes glazed over slightly, as if thinking about how that applied to her.

“Do you have those kinds of feelings for West?” I asked.

She took her time in answering, but I was willing to wait.  I felt bad for even asking the question.  I hated how everyone had demanded it out of me before I made my decision.  But she was asking for advice and I was pleased it was me she came to.

“I feel as if there is something under my skin,” she finally said.  She looked up at me.  “Like it’s buried deep inside of me.  Sometimes it floats to the surface a bit and lets me almost touch it.  But most of the time it is so far down there that I can’t even consider that it exists.”

“Do you want to feel more of it?” I asked simply, locking my eyes on hers.  I had asked her this question before, but something felt different now.  Something had changed with Vee in the last few days.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “How can I know that when I don’t have anything to compare it to?  Which I think is my answer there,” she added after a moment of thoughtful hesitation.

“I think you owe it to yourself to at least try it,” I said, lacing my fingers together and leaning forward to rest my forearms on my thighs.  “If you don’t like it, or can’t handle it, Dr. Beeson can always revert the programming.  He had to do that with me once.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes jumping to mine once more.

I nodded.  “I couldn’t handle it.  I was on the verge of a breakdown.  I would have hurt someone.  I did hurt someone.  You and I, we will never be normal.  That was stripped away the moment we were born too early.  But we can be somewhat closer to normal.”

Vee kept my gaze for a long time.  I knew there were thoughts swirling in her head.  She was weighing her options and searching inside for what her gut was telling her.  But none of that showed in her eyes.  I just knew.  Because I had been like that once too.

“I think I’d like to give it a try, if you save the world,” she finally answered.  “But if you can’t, I think maybe it might be nice to not feel the weight of it so heavily.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

FIVE DAYS UNTIL SET OFF

Day nine, day eight, day seven, and six rolled by excruciatingly slow.  I could feel the darkness trying to creep back in on me.  The darkness that had pushed me to my breaking point before the Underground had taken me.  The constant urgency in the air meant adrenaline was trying to burn nonstop in my blood, but there was nothing I could do to use it up.

I had to stay protected and safe inside.  And it was pissing me off.

Finally, on day five, I demanded to see the Nova.  I didn’t need to demand, but I was too on edge to say it with a please or thank you.

Avian was out with security detail, along with West and Vee.  So Graye had returned to take me to the building where they were constructing the transmitter.

“How is the perimeter holding up?” I asked.  The vehicle we rode in was electric, which meant it felt too quiet inside.

“We’ve been getting a few Bane coming inside the borders,” he said, not looking away from the road in front of him.  “Nothing extreme, but there’s getting to be more.”

“How long until they start coming in larger numbers?” I formed it as a question, but knew there was no way Graye could answer it.

“This is it,” he said instead, bringing the vehicle to a stop.  I looked out and up.  We’d driven five blocks and stopped at a towering building.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.  I climbed out and Graye drove away.

This was the highest building for a long ways around.  The very center of the city had the tallest buildings, but this was the tallest within five miles.  I opened the doors and walked across to the elevator.  I glanced over at the door to the stairs and debated on which option to take.  Deciding I had nervous energy to burn off, I opted for the stairs.

All thirty floors of them.

I was annoyed that I wasn’t even breathing hard or sweating when I reached the roof.  Even more annoyed when I got there and it started drizzling.  There was a massive cone-shaped object sitting to the side of a tent.  There were a dozen other cone-shaped objects spaced evenly all across the roof.  I crossed the space to the hulking tent that sat in the middle of everything.

Throwing the flap aside, I stepped in.  No one noticed I was there for a while.  Dr. Beeson, Addie, Royce, and half a dozen others worked in murmured voices.  Dr. Evans stood off to one side, standing in a glass box.

There were three panels standing in a circle.  They were shiny silver on the inside and flat black on the outside.  Several boxes were stationed on the outside of the panels—controls and monitors.

Thin bands connected the three panels, except for one side, and I could only assume that was where I walked into it.  Atop each of the three panels was a rod, and the three of them connected into a point.  That had to be where the big dish attached.

On a table to one side of the tent, lay Dr. Evans notebook.  But now it had been torn from its spiral binding.  The pages were smudged with grease and pencil dust.  They were well used.

Dr. Evans looked over at me then and I saw thin metallic veins fractionally growing in his left eye.

As soon as he saw me, the others turned their attention to me as well.  They shifted to the side, giving a clearer view of the device.

“So this is it?” I asked, looking once again at the Nova.  “This is the thing that’s going to save the world?”

“Technically you’re going to save the world,” Dr. Beeson said, looking at me intently.  That was when I noticed the reverent looks on each of their faces.  Like I really was their savior.  “But yes, this is the amplifier and transmitter.”

“Will you show me how it works?” I asked.  My voice came out quieter than I wanted.

“Of course,” Dr. Beeson said.  The other scientists shuffled back from it and watched with nervous attention.  Royce stood to one side, his arms crossed over his chest.

Dr. Beeson held his hand out, inviting me to step inside.  I did.

“It’s quite simple, really,” he began.  “You stand inside here.  When we take the block off your kill code, these panels both absorb and amplify the signal.  They’ll be sent up here,” he said, pointing to the rods that connected at the top.  “And in a day or two we’ll connect the transmitter.  Each of those other transmitters outside is connected to the Nova.  They will all then send the signal up to the receiving satellite above us.  From there it bounces off to every other satellite still floating above this planet.  They reflect the code back to Earth ten times stronger than we sent it up.  And then…”

“And then they’ll be dead,” I finished for him.

Dr. Beeson nodded.

My eyes flickered to Dr. Evans.  He’d be dead too.

“And there is no chance that Vee and Creed will be affected by it?” I said.

Addie stepped forward, a clipboard in hand.  “We’ve never said they wouldn’t be affected in any way.  This has happened before, after all.  It did cause major damage to Eve One the first time, but it did not kill her.”

“We’ve built a lead box,” Royce spoke up.  “You probably didn’t notice it when you came up, but it’s here on the roof as well.  Nothing can penetrate its walls.  It’s effectively a dead zone.  They’ll be perfectly safe inside.”

“And the outside of these panels,” Addie said as she indicated the black coating on the outside of them.  “They will stop the signal from coming back at you.”

“It didn’t affect me at all the first time,” I pointed out.  “Is it even necessary?”

“It’s just a precaution,” Royce said.  There was complexity behind his eyes that told me he was the one who had insisted on this.

“Okay,” I said, nodding as I scanned everything once more.  “It looks like you have everything under control, right?”

Dr. Beeson, Addie, and Royce nodded.

But I looked at Dr. Evans.

There was no way he could guarantee that the satellites in orbit would still work.  And if they didn’t work, all of this was pointless.  It would be the end.

“Everything has come together exactly as I planned it all those years ago,” he responded.  Everyone but me probably missed the way the veins in his eye grew fractionally, even as he spoke.  “There are just a few more minor details to attend to and check.  We are on schedule to set it off in four days.”

“Four days,” I breathed.  That should have felt like no time at all.  We’d survived over two-thousand of them since the Evolution happened.  But that was four entire days we had to hold our breath.   We just had to hope a Bane sweep didn’t fall upon us before those four days were over with.

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWO DAYS UNTIL SET OFF

“I think we’ve missed one important detail.”

Royce jerked awake, his arms twitching where they had lain over his eyes.  He rolled over onto his stomach and glared at me with groggy eyes.

I’d actually never been in Royce’s room before.  It was on the sixth floor, just down from his office.  He had a real bed, a big one.  Heavy drapes were drawn over the windows.  The only light in the room spilled in from the hallway behind me.

“I should have you detained for waking me at this hour,” he growled, his eyes fluttering back closed.

“It is nine in the morning, sir,” I said simply.

Royce gave a heavy sigh, the sigh of knowing the weight that was upon his shoulders, the work that was required of him, and the consequences of what would happen if he couldn’t meet the high expectations.

He rolled into a sitting position and sat on the edge of his bed.  I looked away when I realized he was only in his underwear.

“And what is this detail we’ve overlooked?” he said as he started pulling on a pair of jeans.  I could finally look at him again.

I had never seen Royce with his shirt off, and I was impressed with how fit he was.  Royce was closing in on fifty, but he was just as muscled as Avian, perhaps even a bit more.  He had a heavy scar on the lower left side of his abdomen and I wondered where he’d gotten it.

“We are going to want to know quickly if the transmitter works,” I said, meeting his steel gray eyes.  I wondered if my father’s eyes had been the same color.  My own eyes were blue-gray.  “I think we ought to have two test subjects close at hand when this device goes off; otherwise we’re going to have to drive who knows how long to look for fresh bodies, or Bane who still try and attack us.”

“You’re doubt is a bit insulting,” he said, giving me one of his steely looks he was so practiced in.  “But you are right.  It’s a smart idea.  Our scientists are getting rusty in that they didn’t think of this themselves.”

“I’d like to take a vehicle and go out and catch two subjects,” I said.  I placed my arms behind my back, holding my left wrist with my right hand.  “Can you quickly create a holding cell of some sort for them?”

I was somewhat annoyed when Royce delayed in responding.  I could see the thoughts turning behind his eyes, debating whether or not to let me do this.  He knew the stakes if anything went wrong as I attempted capture—but he also trusted me.

“We can get something together,” Royce said.  “And it shouldn’t pull away any of our scientists.  We’ve got an old prison transport vehicle you can take.  The Bane will probably beat the tar out of it, but it should be able to hold up long enough for you to get back here.”

“I’m going to try and find some Sleepers,” I said.  “Seems a little less…dangerous than trying to tackle a Hunter or two.  I have less chance of having to kill a Sleeper.”

“Makes sense,” Royce said.  He opened a drawer and pulled out a well-worn long sleeved t-shirt.  He pulled it over his head and next set to lacing his boots up.  Suddenly, his brows furrowed and his hands hesitated.  He looked over at me.  “Remember when you asked me about my brother the other day?”

Everything in me froze at that, except for my heart.  It broke out into a sprint.

“How did you know his name?”

I swallowed hard.  My palms started sweating.  “It’s not important right now, sir.  We can talk about it later.”

He looked at me for another moment, and then turned back to his shoes.

I was a coward, that was the honest truth of it.  I was too scared to delve into something this personal.  It was easier to focus on the end of the world for the time being.

That didn’t mean my hands weren’t shaking when I shoved them into my pockets.

Thirty seconds later, Royce and I were walking to the stairs and up to the blue floor.  He unlocked a door I had never been behind.  He opened it up to what was little more than a closet.  Inside, there were shelves lined with all kinds of menacing looking devices.  Royce grabbed one and closed the door once more.

“You really meant it when you told one of the Undergrounders those months ago that he didn’t want you digging into your closet,” I said, smiling.

“I don’t often kid,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.  A smile curled on his own lips.  “Now this is a cybernetic diffusion unit,” he continued.  It was different than the others that I’d seen.  It was smaller, small enough to be easily held in one hand.  A digital keypad lit up when Royce turned it on.  It instantly hummed, a quiet yet high-pitched sound.  “But this one is adjustable.  You can crank it all the way up, enough to short even the most advanced Bane out.  Or you can dial it back so you’ll just give them a nice jolt that will basically put them into shock.”

“When have you ever used this, Royce?” I asked, looking up into his eyes.

Something in his demeanor changed and there was regret and pain in it.  “In the beginning, six months or so after we settled the hospital, I wanted to study the Bane, to see if there was a way of reversing what TorBane did.  I made this to try and capture them.  I would have gone out and used it myself, but something came up.  My then right-hand man took it out instead.  As you can guess, something went wrong.  We started development on the Extractor the next day.”

He didn’t need to explain further.

He quickly showed me how to adjust it, all without me touching it.  We found a thick pair of rubber palmed work gloves, which I was to wear at all times when handling the device.

“Where’s Avian?” Royce asked as we walked down into the garage.  He walked me up to a large, boxy vehicle and handed over a set of keys.

“He’s out with security detail,” I responded as I pulled the driver’s door open.

“He doesn’t know about this mission of yours, does he?”

I hesitated.  “I didn’t think of it until after he’d left this morning.”

“No complaint here,” Royce said, a hint of a smile pulling on his lips.  “That boy tends to do stupid things when it comes to your safety.  I think that means he loves you.”

“Something like that,” I said, smiling back.

“This thing isn’t too difficult to drive,” Royce said, turning his attention to the vehicle’s interior.  “That’s the gas pedal, that one is the brake.  Shift it into gear here.  The back transport box locks from the outside with this key.  Other than that, pretty simple.”

“Okay,” I said, taking the keys from him.  “I think I can handle it.”

I climbed into the massive vehicle and started the engine.  I waved to Royce as I pulled out of the garage.  I was just about to turn left to head south when I spotted Vee heading back into the hospital.  I slowed and rolled down the window.

“Feel like trapping some Bane with me?” I asked, squinting against the bright morning light.

Vee didn’t hesitate as she walked around the vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat.  She didn’t ask for an explanation as we headed southwest.

It took us twenty minutes to get to where the ocean was directly to our right.  It was a sunny but gray colored day.  The ocean waves crashed to the shore softly, with only the two of us to notice.  It was hard to imagine that at one time, these beaches had been packed with thousands of people.

Eventually the silence grew heavy in the air and I had that urge to fill it.

“For five years I didn’t know that I couldn’t be infected by the Bane,” I said, grasping at anything to fill the quiet.  We had the windows rolled down, despite the cold.  It blew our hair around but it made me feel alive, alert.

“It probably would have made your life a lot easier if you’d realized sooner,” she said, looking out toward the ocean.  She hadn’t looked away from it since we got on the road.  I realized this was the first time she had seen it.

The first time I saw the ocean was the first time I’d ever cried.

“Yeah,” I said.   “It would have.”

We were quiet again and I felt that human pressure to fill the dead air with something.  But I didn’t have anything to say.

“I really don’t know what to say to you,” I said.  “I feel like we’re supposed to do all this catching up or talk about…things.  But I don’t really know what to say.”

She looked over at me.  “Why do you have to say anything?” she asked.  “What is there to say?  I remember your childhood.  They never allowed us to be close.  You were supposedly dead.  And then I find out that you aren’t and we’re all grown up.  You have your duty and your man and I am fine with simply existing.  I’ll be here for you when you need me, and I’m pretty sure you’ll do the same.  What else is there?”

I couldn’t have said it any more perfectly myself.

Our past had made it so we would always be slightly distant to each other.  The bond of sisterhood that those who were not TorBane-infused knew would always be just out of our reach.

But she was here now, helping me with what was required, and that was more than enough.

We were seventy miles from ground zero of the hospital when I pulled off the main highway and into smaller streets.

“Keep an eye on the buildings,” I said.  “We might get lucky and find some Sleepers instead of Hunters.”

I drove slowly, inspecting the buildings and shops on the left side of the street while Vee inspected the ones on the right.  But everywhere we looked there were just dead, destroyed bodies.

We continued south.

We had driven another ten miles when something slammed into the back of the prison vehicle.

“I got it,” Vee said.  To my surprise, she pulled a hefty handgun from a holster at her hip.  She hauled the upper half of her body through the window and aimed at the back of the vehicle.  She fired four shots and I heard something scraping the pavement behind us.

“Guess that means we’re getting closer,” I said as I turned right down a shop-lined street.  Vee dropped back into her seat.

“Why don’t you just call them out and tell them to get into the back of the vehicle?” Vee asked as we slowly rolled forward.

Honestly, the idea hadn’t even occurred to me.  “Where’s the fun in that?” I said.  Just then, I saw two figures standing motionless inside an old ice cream shop.  They stared blankly out at the world.  “It’s been a while since I’ve been able to physically kick some Bane ass.”

When I glanced at Vee as I put the vehicle into park, I had hoped to see the hints of a smile on her face.  But she just looked calm and collected.

We climbed out of the vehicle and I unlocked the back doors.  Inside there were benches lining either side of the vehicle.  Other than a reinforced vent at the back, it was a steel box.

I just had to hope it was enough to keep the Bane contained until we could get back to the hospital.

“How do you want to do this?” Vee asked.  Her fingers twitched at her side, hovering over her firearm.  A screech from the sky drew my eyes upward.  Bird was once again circling us.

“I honestly hadn’t thought about it all that much,” I said.  “I take one, I guess, you take the other.  Blunt force sound okay?”

Vee shrugged her left shoulder and cocked her head to that side slightly.  I supposed that was a yes.

“Don’t kill them,” I said.  “We need them good and alive.  If they get to be too much, Royce gave me this nice little toy.”  I held up his modified CDU.  “Let’s go.”

Maybe it was that twin bond I’d heard about, or just adrenaline surging through both our systems, but we both broke out into a sprint at the same time.  I kicked the door open, shattering it into a thousand splinters.

One of the two Sleepers twitched, its head jerking up slightly.  I went directly for that one, wrapping my arms tightly around its chest.  Not hesitating a moment, I swung us back in the direction of the door.

I was half way to the vehicle, dragging the struggling body behind me, Vee just about out the door, when the body I grabbed twisted, yanking from my hold.  It swung, its fist barely missing the side of my head as I ducked.  I spun low, kicking my foot out and knocking it from its feet.

I threw myself on top of it, but in that instant, its eyes opened, staring at me with its metallic and too sharp surfaces.  Its hands wrapped around my throat and rolled, pinning me to the ground.

Despite my position and the air being choked off, I felt more alive in that moment than I had in months.  I was back in Eden, conducting a raid and fighting to protect a small colony of thirty people.

A smile actually spread on my face as I curled one leg up, hooking it around the male figures neck, and throwing it back onto the pavement.  I sprang to my feet before the uncoordinated machine could recover.  Pinning both its hands behind its back, I threw it into the back of the vehicle.

Vee and her Bane were in a similar scuffle and I turned to see her grab it by the throat, lift it, and throw it into the back as well.  We slammed the doors closed and I locked it behind us.

The metal siding suddenly dented out toward us, followed by another dent, and then another.

A laugh suddenly broke from my chest as I looked at Vee.  She just stared at me emptily.

“That felt really good,” I said, placing my hands on my hips.

“Yeah,” she said.  She tried smiling, but I could tell it was forced.  “I suppose.”

“Let’s hurry and get these two back to Royce before they break free,” I said.  We both climbed back into our seats and I started the vehicle.  I had just pointed us back in the direction of the highway when Vee looked out her side view mirror.

“Looks like we drew some company,” she said.  This time she pulled out her assault rifle.  She positioned herself so she was sitting in the window.  I looked out my side mirror just as she started firing.  There were three Bane sprinting down the road after us.

When I looked back in the direction I was driving, there was a Bane standing right in the middle of the road.  I drew my Desert Eagle and put my hand out the window.

I only had time to fire two shots, but it wasn’t enough to take it down.  The transport vehicle was, however.  Metal crunched against metal and there was a slight bump as we drove over the body.

Vee fired five more shots before we turned a corner and she slipped back inside.

“Four Hunters,” I said.  “At least two Sleepers.  All within the circle of the Pulse.  How many others are there that we haven’t seen?”

“We’ve shot and killed at least a dozen others, that I know of, on security detail,” Vee said.

I nodded.  Avian had been bringing home similar reports.  They were closing back in on us.

Vee looked back in the side view mirror.  Her expression was serious, her eyes distant.

“You don’t hate the Bane, do you?” I said, glancing over at her.  “Not like the rest of us do.  You don’t necessarily fear them.”

“It was different for you,” she said, looking forward again.  There was another heavy bang, just behind us.  The metal divider between us and them dented inward.  “You were raised as a normal human.  You were taught to fear them.  You didn’t know you were like them.”

She absentmindedly rubbed her chin, before resting it in her hand, her elbow propped up by the window.  “But I always knew I was close cousin to them.  The Bane at NovaTor, they were all I had for company.  They weren’t the best company, but they probably kept me from going completely insane.  I never feared them because I knew I couldn’t become like one of them and I knew they wouldn’t try and kill me.”

“Do you pity them?” I asked, looking over at her again for a moment.

She hesitated, evaluating feelings she wasn’t sure how to feel.  “I don’t think I really feel anything toward them.  Does that make sense?”

I looked forward down the road again.  “Yeah,” I said.  “I think it does.”

TWENTY-NINE

TWO DAYS UNTIL SET OFF

We had only been gone for three hours when we rolled back in front of the hospital.  Yet Royce had already gotten a holding cell ready for the Bane we had captured.

A glass one.  Right in front of the hospital.  Where everyone could see them.

The two Bane had calmed some when we got back, but considering the higher risk now that we were back among humans, Vee and I used the modified CDU to knock them out and then move them into the cell.

They lay slouched on the concrete sidewalk.  The entire framework of the cell was solid steel and ran right into the ground.  The walls were glass and allowed you to see everything going on inside the cell very clearly.

How Royce managed to pull it together so quickly was beyond me.  But this was Royce.

“Well,” Avian said as he walked up from the trucks that transported security detail to and from our borders.  “If you had to go catch a Bane, I’m glad you had help.”  Avian smiled at Vee as he stopped at our sides.

“My sister is a very effective Bane hunter,” I said, nudging her with my elbow.

She gave an uncomfortable smile and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“She just barely gets the chance to get away from the Bane and you already have her tracking them down.”  West walked up from the truck as well, an assault rifle lazily lying across his shoulders, his wrists hanging over the sides of it.

“I was happy to be useful,” she said, giving him a genuine smile.  One spread on West’s face as well, lighting his entire face up.

I glanced over at Avian and the look he gave me said he saw it all there too.

“This is the most bizarre experience,” West said, walking to the prison box.  He stood in front of it, just looking at the two of them unconscious on the ground.  “Seeing them this close without the threat of getting infected.  Again.”

Avian walked over to it as well and crouched on the ground to observe them.

The one was a male, fairly young if I had to guess.  He couldn’t have been infected for long.  The tips of his fingers were worn away, exposing patches of metal bones and wires.  For the most part though, he looked human.  His skin was light and his hair was a brilliant red like Wix or Victoria.

The girl looked a bit more advanced.  Her dark-as-night skin made for sharp contrast to her exposed innards.  Her left arm was shredded, like she had maybe tried to claw something off of it.  Or out of it.  She had fought against her infection.  Her face was damaged too.  She looked a bit farther along, maybe two years infected.

Sleepers sleep for a long time.

“How far out were they?” Avian asked without looking back.

“About eighty miles,” I responded.

Avian nodded, running a hand over his shaved head.

“We came across six Hunters today,” West said.  “Up in the northern borders.  Only sixty miles out.  Graye’s got twenty-four hour patrols going.  He’s having Royce call everyone back into the hospital indefinitely.”

I swore under my breath.  “That’s dangerously close.”

West nodded.  “We need the brainiacs to finish that device now.”

“Yeah,” I said as I turned to go find Royce.  “We do.”

Royce and his teams swore the device would be finished in less than forty-eight hours.  I doubted any of them would sleep until it was completed.

“I should be out there,” I said.  I stood at the front doors of the hospital, looking out as the evening light faded.  Somewhere outside these walls were Tuck, Tristan, and many others keeping our borders safe.  The Bane were getting smarter.  Eventually they were going to figure out how to get past them or infect them.

“You’re doing a good job of doing as you’ve been asked,” Avian said as he walked up from behind.  He leaned in the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest.  He looked out at the Bane that were now back to standing in the glass box.  They had fought at first, tried to get out.  They’d broken their flesh and revealed more of what was beneath the surface.  But they were both back to sleeping now.  They only had so much energy at this stage.

I took a deep breath.  It felt like it shook my interior, rattled my heart, my lungs.  Once again, a sense of urgency burned in my blood.  “The wait is killing me.”

“You’re covered in grime from your Bane wrestling match earlier,” Avian said, running a finger down a particularly dirty streak on my arm.  “Why don’t you take a shower and try to relax?”

“I don’t know that relaxing is possible when the world is about to end in just a few days,” I said.  My words were annoyed, but my tone was not harsh.  This was Avian, after all.

“Come on,” he said, taking my hand.  I didn’t fight him as I was grateful for any distraction.  He led us up the stairs and down the hall to my room.

He closed the door behind us and suddenly his hands were on my hips, steering me around and pressing my back against the door.  His lips were at my throat and his body molded to mine.

“I feel as if I barely get any alone time with you anymore,” he growled into my neck as his lips traced their way down.

My eyes slid closed as everywhere his body met mine, leapt to life.  His hands slid up and pinned mine against the door.  In the same movement, his lips rose to mine, taking them with urgency.

Avian smelled like hard work and gun powder and I tried not to think about why he smelled like he’d had to shoot at something.  Instead, I pulled at his lower lip with my teeth.

His hands once again on my hips, he hoisted me up until my legs wrapped around his waist.  He reached back and pulled my boots off and kicked his own into the corner.  Somehow we made it to the bathroom and Avian twisted the water on in the shower.  Clothes still on, he stepped the both of us inside.  He once again pinned my back against the shower wall as lukewarm water cascaded down on us.

I pulled at his shirt until it finally came over his head, exposing his bird tattoos and beautiful chest.  A wicked grin spread on Avian’s lips as the water clung to his eyelashes.  The water cascaded down on us like raindrops in the summer.

His hands were hot and cold at the same time as they slid under my shirt and slowly worked their way up.  Not thinking about it, I unsnapped my pants and let them fall to the floor of the shower.  I kicked them free as Avian’s hands came to either side of my face.

His lips devoured mine as my hands came to his sculpted chest.  My fingers met the raised scars from where he’d been shot that night so long ago on the transformer.

The world might end in days, really at any moment, but I could stay here forever and die happy.  Screw the rest of the world.

Avian’s fingers rose to the clasp of my bra, his face buried in my neck when one moment the door to my room burst open, and the next West swore and was shielding his eyes.

“What the hell, West?” I exploded as I reached for a towel.  Avian turned the water off.

“Seriously?” Avian growled as he took a menacing step toward West, water dripping everywhere.

“I’m seriously freaking sorry,” West said, his face violently red.  “But a Bane slipped past security detail and they can’t find it.  We need you to track it down, Eve.  Vee’s downstairs, ready to help if you want her to.”

This time I swore and quickly set to drying off.  Dropping the towel, I darted out of the bathroom and into my room.

“You could look away,” Avian growled from behind.  I looked back at them to see West clear his throat and look at the ground.  The redness of his face was spreading to his ears and neck.

“Which direction did it come in from?” I asked as I pulled a dry set of pants on over my wet underwear.  Next, I tugged on a long sleeved t-shirt and set to lacing my boots back up.

“South,” he said, still not looking back in my direction even though I was fully covered.  Avian had toweled off and was looking for dry clothes.  He had quite the stash in my room.

“No,” I said, crossing the small space and placing a hand on his still bare chest.  I shook my head as I looked up into his burning blue eyes.  “You are not coming out there.  I’m not risking you.”

“Eve, I—”

“I mean it,” I said, giving his chest a small shove, just enough to show him I was serious.  “You’re staying here.  West,” I said, looking over at him.  He finally met my eye again.  “I mean this; do not let him outside this hospital.  You owe me a big one and I’m cashing in on it today.”

“Eve!” Avian protested as I turned toward the door.

“I’m not kidding about this, Avian,” I said as I pulled the door open and looked back at him.  West had stepped forward, placing himself between Avian and I.  “That storm we’d talked about is coming and I’m not letting you become a victim of it.”

I slipped out the door and sprinted for the stairs.

When I got to the ground floor, I found a flurry of soldiers in the lobby.  Bill crossed to my side as soon as he spotted me and handed over a fully loaded assault rifle and a utility belt stocked with grenades and more ammunition.

“There are two of them now,” Bill briefed me as I walked swiftly toward the front doors.  “Both from the south.  Four others seem to have caused a diversion and they got through our perimeter.”

I nodded and spotted Royce on the radio just outside the doors.  Vee stood to the side of him, armed as I was.

“And you’re sure about that?” Royce said into the radio.

“Yes, sir,” someone crackled back.

“What’s going on?” I asked.  Bill handed me a radio which I secured to the utility belt.  He handed Vee one as well.

“The two Bane that got in seem to have split up, or there’s more of them,” Royce said.  He pulled out a set of binoculars.  Night vision I had to assume considering how dark it was.  “One of our people said they saw one ten blocks west of here.  Someone else said they saw one about two miles south of the hospital.  They’re moving fast.”

“Get everyone inside,” I said, looking back at the crowd that was gathering inside the lobby.  “I’m assuming you’ve got a guard up at the transmitter?”

Royce nodded.

“Good.  Lock things up.  Don’t open the doors until I radio in that we’ve taken them out,” I said, scanning the roads before us.  “Keep in contact with our men and women out there.  And Royce,” I said, looking back at him.  “You’d better be ready to get that Extractor powered up just in case.”

The look on his face told me he’d already thought of this possibility.

Two other soldiers suddenly buzzed around the side of the building on ATV’s.  They hopped off and Vee and I climbed on.  Bill started explaining how it worked to Vee.

“Go get those bastards,” Royce said with darkness in his eyes.  I just nodded back.

“You head south,” I said, looking over at Vee.  “I’ll head west.  If we don’t find them in the next fifteen minutes, I’ll call them out to the water.  I don’t want to have to do that though unless I have to.  Who knows how many I’ll call into the city doing it.”

“Got it,” Vee said.

We both peeled away from the hospital.

The night air whipped my hair back and made my eyes water as I ripped down the street.  The very last of the day’s light disappeared behind the tall buildings, casting me in darkness.

I’d only gotten three blocks away when I was suddenly engulfed in headlights one second before the truck slammed into me.

For one freeing moment, I was airborne, sailing through the night.  And then the next I was skidding over the concrete.  My skin grated away like cheese and my vision flickered in and out.  The pain my brain didn’t allow me to feel threatened to knock me out.

Snatching my rifle up, I climbed to my feet and fired at the truck as it started racing toward me once more, driving right over my crushed ATV.

Five—six—seven shots and the tires were blown out.

The glass of the front window shattered as the Bane within erupted through it.  It landed on top of me, its hands wrapping around my throat as we rolled over the pavement.  It had just pinned my head to the ground when I saw another truck go barreling down the road.

Straight for the hospital.

“Get off me!” I screamed and the Bane didn’t hesitate in climbing off.  Grabbing my rifle once more, I pointed it at the Bane and the next second its head shattered into a thousand metallic pieces.

Darting back into the road, I caught sight of the raging truck.  One block from the hospital.  Our soldiers were firing at it.

Turn around, I thought.  Turn around now!

The tires screeched and skidded as the back end of it suddenly whipped around.  It tipped up on two wheels for a moment before slamming back down.

Hatred and fury burned through my veins as I focused once again.

The truck picked up speed, racing back in the direction it had come.  And then plowed right into the side of a concrete building.

The explosion of fire was brilliant.

So was the amount of Bane parts that exploded from it.

I darted across the street, careful not to get too close to the flames.  The back of the truck had burst open and within, I could see at least half a dozen demolished bodies.

They’d tried to sneak an entire truck full of them into the city.

I picked up the radio and held it up to my mouth as I started sprinting back to the hospital.

“Royce, you copy?”

“Loud and clear.  What the hell were they trying to do?”  His voice was full of fury.

“I believe they planned on ramming that truck into the hospital to get in,” I said as I closed in on one block.  “The back of that truck held half a dozen Bane.”

By this time, I’d gotten back to the hospital and tucked my radio back into my belt.

“Bill, Raj, Banner!” Royce was shouting.  “Bring out the tanks!  I want one positioned on this side of the hospital, the east side, and the west side.  Alexa, you take the solar tank to the north side!”

“Vee, you copy?” I asked into the radio.  My breathing came out harder than I expected.  Hot acid burned through my veins.

“One second,” her voice came through.  Two moments later we all heard a faint boom and the sky lit up with flames ten blocks from the hospital.  “The threat has been exterminated.”

“You don’t see anything else out there?” I asked.  I snatched Royce’s night vision binoculars from him and held them up to my eyes.  I scanned the streets.

“Nothing,” she said, and I heard her ATV growl back to life over the radio.  “I’m coming back in.”

Royce swore under his breath.  “You get to the medical wing,” he said, glancing at me.  “You’re freaking me out.”

I glanced down at my left arm.  My shirt and jacket hung in tattered shreds.  My mechanical bones shone from underneath.  I reached up and felt my jaw.  Most of the flesh there had been ground away.

“What if there are more of them out there?” I asked, handing his binoculars back.  He took them and resumed scanning the streets.

“I’ve checked in with our other soldiers, no more reports of activity,” he said, but there was something in his voice that didn’t sound right.

“What is it?” I demanded.

He glanced over at me, his eyes unsure and regretful.  “We haven’t heard back from Jeb yet.”

It took me a moment to remember who Jeb was.  He’d been one of the members of the Underground.  He’d joined security detail a while back.

“Where’s Vee?” I said, turning back toward the street.  “She wasn’t that far out.  She should be back by now.”

Suddenly there were shots fired, no more than two blocks from our location.  There was a scream at the same time.  And when the shots stopped, someone started shouting, frantic and panicked.

“Vee!” I shouted.  I was about to dart back out when Royce grabbed my wrist.  I looked back at him.  He shook his head with grave eyes.

“That’s enough for tonight,” he said.  “I shouldn’t have let you out in the first place.  We can’t risk you getting killed.”

“But Vee—”

Just then she shot out into the road on her ATV.  And on the back of it was Jeb.

“He’s been touched!” she shouted as she rolled up.  She came to an abrupt halt and Jeb fell off like a rag doll.  “I’m not sure what’s wrong with him,” she said as she climbed off and just looked at him.  “The Bane grabbed him, but he isn’t injured.”

“Probably in shock,” Royce growled as he and another woman darted forward to grab him.  “Let’s get him up to the Extractor!”

They disappeared through the door.  Just then, Graye rolled up in a truck, followed by Tuck and Tristan.  The majority of the soldiers that had been out with security climbed out.  Almost all of them darted inside the hospital.

“What are you doing?” I asked, nabbing Tristan with my good hand before he could duck inside.  “What if there are more of them out there?”

“Holy…” Tristan jumped, stumbling back from me two steps.  “What happened to you?”

“What do you think?” I said, glaring at him and feeling annoyed.  “What are you all doing back here?”

“Graye’s ordered us to tighten the perimeter,” Tristan said.  There was fear in his eyes.  More than I hoped to see.  “We can’t watch such a wide circle close enough.  He’s closing it off to a five block radius.  We had to come back for more ammunition.  There are still a few of us out there.”

I nodded, and let him go.

“How many did you run into?” Vee asked as she walked to my side.

“Two trucks,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other.  My body was still ready for action.  “There was just one Bane in the first.  The other was loaded.”

She nodded.  “There were two in the truck I took out.  I found another on foot.  And then that one who got your soldier.  The soldier was headed back for the hospital when it tackled him.”

I swore, my fingers tangling in my hair.  “I don’t dare try to call them out,” I said, shaking my head.  “I’ll just draw more of them into the city.”

“Eve!” Avian suddenly called from behind me.  I turned to see him running up to me, rifle in hand, West behind him.

“I told you to keep him inside tonight!” I shouted at West, pointing a finger at him and taking two aggressive steps forward.

“Sorry,” West said as the two of them stopped beside us.  He was eying my injuries.  Avian was asking what had happened but I was ignoring him for the moment.  “Royce’s orders sometimes have to overrule yours.  He asked Avian to keep you inside for the rest of the night.”

“What?!” I bellowed, looking up toward the blue floor.  But I couldn’t see through the windows.  They were covered once again by steel security doors.  “But they’re likely to keep coming at us.”

“I’ve got it covered, Eve,” Graye suddenly growled as he came marching back out of the hospital.  “We’ll watch the perimeter and we’ve got the tanks in place.  You get inside and stay alive.”

“This is ridiculous,” I said, my jaw tightening.  “I am needed out here.”

And as I turned my eyes back to the road leading up to the hospital, I saw a figure.

A Bane was standing in the middle of the road, just staring at us.

I brought my rifle up and fired a shot that missed by an inch or two.  The Bane turned and ran in the opposite direction.

“Bane don’t run away,” I shouted as I darted after him.  “This is a diversion!  Be ready to fire!”

I was a block away before I realized that Avian was racing alongside me.

“I’m not letting you go out without me again!” he said before I could try and argue.

And I did want to argue, but all I could do at the moment was smile and shake my head.

The Bane took a quick right and as we rounded the corner after it, I saw it scaling a ladder up the side of a building.  I launched myself at the ladder, catching hold of the rung ten feet off the ground.

The Bane scrambled over the ledge as we climbed, disappearing from my view.

Avian called out as he slipped.  I looked back at him just as I crested the side of the building.

I shouldn’t have gotten distracted.

An iron fist gripped around my throat, lifting me from the ladder.  It held me extended out at a perfect ninety degree angle, dangling me over the side of the building.

Instinct brought my hands to my neck and I could have killed myself for dropping my weapon.

“Eve!” Avian screamed from below me.  His rifle clanged against the ladder as he swung it around and pointed it in our direction.

“Shoot it!” I tried to scream but it came out as a strangled gurgle.

“I can’t get a clear shot, not without hitting you!”

“Just shoot!”

There was a moment of hesitation.  I clawed at the Bane’s hands, staring into its dead eyes.  Avian wouldn’t be able to shoot me in order to kill it.  The Bane would throw me off the edge of the roof and then it would infect Avian.

Blood sprayed in my face.  I felt a hole tear through the fleshy under part of my right arm.

Metal exploded in my face as the bullet caught the Bane in the chest.  Its hand released me as it fell back.

I was falling.

“Eve!”

And then my chest caught the concrete ledge of the building.

More of my skin was scraped away as I clawed to gain purchase.  I slipped back and down, my shirt catching and being pulled up.  A chunk of rebar that was exposed in the side of the building caught my stomach, shredding my skin and drawing blood.

I couldn’t catch myself in time.

The air whooshed around me.

And then my arm felt as if it was yanked out of socket.

“Hang on!” Avian shouted.

His long, strong fingers were wrapped around my wrist.  Thankfully my good one.  The one that was still covered in skin.

A smile crossed Avian’s lips as he looked down at me, and a second later, a laugh bubbled up out of him.

I couldn’t help but laugh too.  I was dangling twenty feet in the air, my skin shredded and torn, bleeding like crazy, but I felt alive.

“Eve,” Avian said, his eyes dancing.  “Will you wear that dress for me the day after you save the world?”

Metal scraped concrete as a hand smacked the ledge.  A moment later the mangled figure of the Bane appeared over the ledge.

“Avian!” I screamed.

His eyes turned up to the roof just as the Bane started climbing over the ledge.

With a primal scream, Avian swung me up with enough force to throw me a few rungs over his head.  I slammed into the ladder and scrambled the rest of the way up.

I exploded into the Bane, knocking the two of us back onto the roof.

This time my hands wrapped around its throat.  Not wasting a second of momentum, I spun the both of us in a circle before flinging it off the side of the building.

It exploded into a hundred pieces when it landed on the sidewalk far below.

Avian let out another slightly hysterical sounding laugh as he looked up at me and met my eyes again.

“You still didn’t ask the question quite right,” I said with a lopsided grin.

The smile that crossed Avian’s lips was crooked and sly.  He finished scaling the ladder and stood before me, no more than an inch of space between us.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out something tiny.

It was a plain, simple band, shiny silver colored.

“Eve,” Avian breathed.  I looked up into his eyes.  They were blue, and burning so bright.  “Will you fight by my side until the end of our days?  By my side—not with me standing behind you or locked up in the hospital.  Side by side.”

I licked my bottom lip just once as the smile spread on my face.

“Now that is the right way to ask the question,” I said as I leaned into him.  His lips brushed mine, sending electricity that should have killed me through my entire body.  “Yes.”

Avian’s free hand came to the small of my back, crushing my body into his.  His lips engulfed mine and for a moment I could have sworn we were both flying.

He had promised me that when he did ask the question, it would be grand and that I would be speechless.

It was grand.  But the words had come without a second’s thought as to what my answer would be.

It had always been Avian.

THIRTY

ONE DAY UNTIL SET OFF

There had been many long nights over the course of my life.  The night the Bane burned our gardens in the mountains.  The night Sarah died.  Being tortured in Seattle.  I wasn’t sure if that night was the longest, but it certainly made the top five.

After Avian’s proposal, he and I returned to the hospital.  Graye was angry that I’d run off, but it was nothing compared to Royce’s fury.  He’d pointed a gun at Avian and told me to get inside and stay there.

I surrendered my radio because I knew if I kept hearing the updates I would break someone until they let me out again to help.  I left the lobby because Royce commanded me to.  I took a hot shower to try and ebb back the action that demanded to be let out from my body.  I sat and watched my skin heal beneath my new ring, trying to zone myself out.

Nothing helped, but thankfully, time continued to pass despite my suffering.

In the morning, it was exactly the same story.

The soldiers rotated.  Everyone was still alive, no one had been touched by the twelve other Bane they found that night.  West and Vee came inside, and Avian went out.

Maybe I really would die before I could send out that kill code.  It was bad enough worrying about West and Vee and all the other soldiers I cared about.  Avian was a whole different cause of panic.

“Were they on foot?” I asked, following West and Vee as they headed for the kitchen.  They were filthy, covered in sweat despite the cold temperatures outside.  They both smelled of gunpowder.  “Did they get any more trucks?  How close to the perimeter did they get?”

“Yes, all on foot,” Vee answered without looking at me, but her voice was perfectly calm and even.  “No more trucks.  They were about seven blocks out.”

“There was a lot of gunfire last night, but everything went off without a hitch, Eve,” West said as we stepped into the kitchen.  He grabbed a tray and handed it to Vee before getting another for himself.  “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack before you can set off the Nova tomorrow if you don’t calm down.”

Tomorrow.

Finally.  But still, so far away.

The woman working at the counter dishing out food looked at me expectantly, but I shook my head.  I was too on edge to eat.

“The trucks were pretty bad,” I said, shaking my head.  Vee and West, trays now loaded with food, went for a table.  I followed them.  “But I can guarantee that won’t be all the Bane will come at us with.”

“Eve, we’ve got tanks positioned on all sides of the hospital,” West said as he shoved half a roll in his mouth.  “We have about twenty guards outside.  We only have to survive another twenty-four hours and it will all be over.  Any update on Jeb?” he abruptly changed the subject.

“Things are looking good so far,” I said absentmindedly.  “It had only been a few minutes from when he was touched to when he started the extraction process.”

“Well that’s good,” West said, his voice still sounding slightly annoyed.

Seeing there was no use arguing with him anymore, I shut up.  I looked up at Vee, and her expression told me she was as unsure about this working as I was.

I sat back and watched the others around us as West and Vee ate.  Almost everyone in the dining room had been on security detail last night.  Tristan, Graye, Raj.  They all looked exhausted.  But there was a frantic determination in their eyes.

Less than five months.  That was how long the Pulse’s clearing had lasted.  And even those five months of ease had been marred.

Suddenly I was exhausted too.

I looked back at West, only to find his eyes locked on my left hand.  I glanced down and realized he was staring at my freshly placed ring.

“He proposed,” West stated simply.  He didn’t look up at me.

“In a way,” I said, feeling my insides grate and slither at the same time.  “But I said yes.”

West raised one eyebrow and then returned to his meal.

“The metal of the ring seems odd,” Vee observed.

“Avian had the ring forged from the bullets I pulled out of him,” I explained, straightening my fingers and looking down at the ring.  “That night you both went to the transformer.  The night you got infected.  He kept them.  He made the ring and then had them covered in white gold.”

“How romantic,” West said flatly.

“Knock it off,” I said, fixing him with a steely glare.

“Sorry,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.  “Habit I guess.  I am happy for you.”

“Hmm,” I said, still glaring at him.

Vee shifted uncomfortably.  And then I felt horrible.

Finished with their breakfast, Vee and West returned their trays.

“We’re going to be on night duty again tonight,” Vee said, standing next to West, her shoulder brushing against his.  I saw his fingers twitch slightly, as if he debated taking her hand in his.

“I think we’d better go get some sleep while we’ve got the chance,” he said.  He looked at me with genuine concern in his eyes.  “Try to relax, Eve.  There’s nothing you can do right now.  Avian can take care of himself.  He’s one of the best marksmen I’ve known.”

I nodded, my stomach turning sour as I did.  West placed what he meant to be a comforting hand on my arm for a moment before he turned and walked back down the hall.  Vee followed after him, looking back over her shoulder once.

Standing there with my shoulders slumped, it felt as if I were both hollow and filled with a million sharp rocks at the same time.  The world was too loud inside the hospital and too quiet from the outside.  Except for the occasional shot fired.

“You look like someone should put you out of your misery.”

I turned to see Tristan walking toward me, brushing crumbs off his hands.

“This is wrong,” I said, shaking my head.  “It doesn’t feel right.”

Tristan took a breath as if to speak, and then seemed to think better of it.  He fiddled there for a moment and then finally started walking forward.  “Come on.”

Eager for something to do, I didn’t question him.

He led us straight for the armory.  Opening a locked storage container, he brought out a wicked looking weapon.

It had three balancing legs, so this was not a weapon to be walking around with.  A deadly accurate scope was attached to the top of it.  Jutting out the front was a thin barrel.

I’d heard of one of these before, but never dreamed I’d get to handle one.  A DSR 50 sniper rifle.

Tristan handed it over to me before picking up a bag of ammunition.

“Let’s go,” he said with a grin.

He carried the bag of ammo and I followed him silently to the elevator.  We stepped out on the blue floor.  Walking to the end of the hall, Tristan punched in the code to the door that led to the roof.

Tristan had really gained Royce’s trust if he knew this code.

“Not much need for a guard here,” Tristan said as we stepped out into the bright sunlight of mid-morning.  We walked past the broken Pulse to the edge of the roof.  “Everyone else is too busy on duty down there.”  He nodded with his chin off the side of the building.  Looking down, I could see one of the tanks.  The firing turret swept from the east side of the building to the west.

“Royce doesn’t have time to babysit you and make sure you don’t get outside,” Tristan said, smiling.  “He’s right in not letting you out there.  But maybe you can still do some good.”

“It’s times like this that I remember why we got along so well from the first moment we met,” I said, smiling back as I grabbed a magazine from the bag.  I snapped it into place.

“Hey,” he said, giving a shrug and a crooked smile.  “The feeling’s mutual.  Even then I knew you’d save my rear end sometime.”

I glanced over at him before looking back down the thin barrel of the sniper rifle.  I could see over a mile out with the high powered scope.  What surprised me was that the red targeting dot in the middle flashed.

“The scope is different,” Tristan said.  “One of Royce’s creations.  It’s designed to scan for cybernetics.  If a Bane comes within your sights the flashing will stop.”

“Fantastic,” I said through a smile.  I didn’t think I’d ever used that word before in my life.

Tristan lingered, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Are you supposed to be my babysitter today?” I asked.  “Avian’s out on duty right now and West’s a dead man walking with how tired he is.  Does that leave you?”

Tristan laughed out loud, a sharp barking sound.  “Technically yes, but I’m feeling a bit delirious myself.  I’m going to get some shut eye and hope you can behave yourself.”

Lowering the DSR 50, I turned to Tristan.  “Actually, I think I’m good now.  Thanks for this.  I don’t feel quite so useless anymore.”

He gave another smile before turning and going back down the door into the hospital.

Facing the edge of the building once more, I brought the rifle back up to eye level and looked down the scope.

I crossed to each side of the building, checking every road.  We had a guard positioned in the middle of every street that led into the hospital, exactly five blocks out, just as Graye had ordered.  Each of those guards paced.  They held their assault rifles at the ready, fingers hovering.  There were eighteen ways to get access to the hospital directly.  Men, women, and even two teenagers from the Underground, stood guard.

That was a quick way to get over the tension that had built between the two colonies.  When your existence as a human being is about to be wiped out, you tend to get over your differences and work together.

This surge of Bane once again had been good for something.

Seeing that we had all the entrances covered, I searched out Avian.  Gabriel was positioned on the northeast side of the building.  Even Wix was out there with a gun.  It looked bigger than him.  He helped watch the west side.  I smiled at that.  That was the least likely direction an attack would come from.

I finally found Avian at the south side of the building.  The direction the Bane were most likely to come at us from.

He stood tall and sure.  He held an assault rifle in his hands, but unlike some of the others, his was leveled at his eyes, ready to fire at any half-second.  His knees were bent slightly and where the others paced between buildings, across the roads, Avian held perfectly still, pivoting at the waist slightly to scan the roads.

I smiled as I scrutinized him.  I’d never gotten the chance to watch him work from afar, when he didn’t know I was observing him.  Avian was an impeccable soldier.  When he wasn’t worrying about my safety.

I was glad he couldn’t see me up here on the roof of this building.

The sun crept to its highest position in the sky and started sliding toward the west.  From my perch, I watched as Bane came in on foot or again attempted to barrel their way through by truck.  My breath would still in my chest and my finger would hover at the trigger.

I created a set of rules for myself:

I had to let the soldiers around me take care of the Bane that were within seven blocks of the hospital.

But the second I spotted any further out that that, I took them out.

The first shot I fired drew eyes.  Avian met mine, and a slow smile curled on his lips.

I wasn’t leaving the hospital, I was perfectly safe up here.  But at least I was useful.

This continued all day long.

I could feel each and every one of the seconds passing like another stitch in my skin.  Time sewed me tighter and tighter, until I felt as if my insides were squeezed too hard, my hair even felt too tight, my eyes too compressed.

How many hours were left until we knew if this would work or not?

So my finger nearly pulled the trigger by accident when my radio crackled to life.

“Eve, it’s Dr. Evans.”

“Go ahead,” I said into it.

“Everyone else up here has gone home to the hospital.  Can you come over and talk for a bit?”

“Give me ten minutes.”

I stashed the sniper rifle in a corner where it wouldn’t be seen and slipped quietly downstairs.  Since the building we had built the Nova on was barely within our five block perimeter, it wasn’t too difficult to sneak behind the guards.  Their attention was turned the opposite direction.

I took the elevator this time, climbing all thirty floors.  I stepped out onto the roof and took everything in.

Dr. Evans stood facing the Nova, his cybernetic hands clasped behind his back.  As soon as he heard the door, he turned.

I stilled instantly, though, when I saw the look on his face, or what was left of it.  His left eye no longer showed any traces of ever looking human.  But his right was still mostly white and brown and expressed enough emotion to compensate for the rest of his mechanical body.  His shoulders were held high, as was his chin.

“It’s done,” he said.

It took me a moment to nod.

It’s done.

“The energy storage devices will require about eighteen hours to charge,” he said.  His voice didn’t sound right.  Almost like he was talking into a tin can.  It was rough, very not-human sounding.  “Like your Pulse, this device requires an enormous amount of energy to be set off.  Power must be built up for a few hours.  And then we can set it off.”

I calculated the time in my head.  We would set the Nova off at noon tomorrow.

It stood behind him, beautiful and shiny and brilliant.  The dish was mounted to the top, pointing up and slightly east.

“I wish we could do a test first,” he said, his eyes turning up to the sky.

“To see if the satellites in orbit respond?”

He nodded.

Everything in me said this wasn’t going to work.  It had been six years since anyone cared about those chunks of metal and technology floating up in space.  How could we ever expect them to work?

“But we will only get one shot at this, before we drain our power source.”

I swallowed hard.

“Are you ready?” he asked.  His eyes fell to me again.  His words were heavy and full of meaning.

It took me a moment to reply, because I wasn’t sure how to answer.  I hadn’t really allowed myself to picture what life would be like if this did work.  I had become depressed months before, when I had felt like I had no purpose because we had no Bane to fight off in this city.

Soon, that’s how the entire planet would be.

This would be different though.  If it worked.

“Let’s hope so,” I replied.

THIRTY-ONE

SIXTEEN HOURS UNTIL SET OFF

There were less than twenty-four hours until we knew if we were going to live or die.

Some people celebrated.  They laughed and spoke loudly and dared to discuss how they would live their lives tomorrow and the next day and the next.

Some people sat in the background, staring blankly ahead, too overwhelmed to think about the future when there might not be one.

Others went to bed to stare restlessly at the ceiling above them, afraid of the too hopeful dreams or the too near future nightmares that were sure to haunt them.

Twenty-two men, women, and teenagers went back outside for the night guard.  Royce was among them, now finished with the device.  So were West and Vee.

I sat in a chair in the middle of the lobby, facing the front doors that were blocked off with reinforced steel.  I could hear voices just outside them, speaking harshly and loud.  Every once in a while I would hear a gun fire.

Avian paced the space before me, gently bouncing Creed, who lay wrapped up in a blanket against his chest.

Lin sat next to me, a stack of magazines sitting in her lap.

“I think this style would look really flattering on you,” she rambled, holding a magazine in front of me.  I didn’t bother to look down at the bridal pictures she was trying to distract me with.  “But then again, you might be too tall to pull off that look.”

She shuffled a few more pages and then I heard her drop that magazine to the floor and pick up another.  “Ooo,” she said.  I could tell her eyes had widened without even looking at her.  “Look at this cake!  Doesn’t that look amazing?”

But I couldn’t make myself look at the amazing cake.  I could only look at the steel doors and imagine what must be going on out there.

So far, in the last three hours since security detail had switched, I’d heard no fewer than eighteen gun shots and one blast from the southern tank.

And it was barely midnight.

Another shot was fired and Creed burst into hysterical cries.  Avian adjusted his hold on her, placing her against his chest and increasing the depth of his bounce.  He did manage to drag my eyes away from the door for a moment.

But they snapped back when three more shots were fired.  Two people shouted and then I heard the tank fire.

Creed wailed harder.

Lin put her hands over her ears and twitched into a ball for a moment as another blast went off.

“It sounds awful out there,” she said.  She looked up, slowly relaxing back into a sitting position.  Her expression showed her fear openly.  Tristan was out there.

The shooting ceased, but Creed didn’t stop crying.  Avian patted her back and spoke soothing words to her.  She continued to scream.

Springing to my feet, I crossed the lobby and took her from Avian.  He looked up at me with slightly surprised eyes but handed her over, her blankets coming unwrapped from her tiny body.  I don’t think he thought anything could pull me from my anxious zoning in.

I had worn a low cut shirt that day, exposing much of my chest.  It was loose fitting and comfortable.  Creed’s wrinkly cheek met the skin of my chest and her cries calmed to a small whimper.  She kicked one of her feet and turned her head so the opposite cheek touched me.  She calmed.  Her left fist came up to her mouth and she started sucking it happily.

“Wow,” Lin said, standing and walking over to us.  “You sure have the magic baby touch.”  She reached out to brush her finger against Creed’s other cheek.  Creed twitched against the unexpected touch and pushed her face into my chest.

“Eve’s always been the one who could calm Creed down,” Avian said, looking at the both of us with love radiating off of him.  I actually managed to smile a bit.  “I think she somehow understands that they are alike.”

“Once you two are married, you’ll have a proper little family here,” Lin said, placing her hand on Creed’s back.  It covered it completely.

“I don’t know about that,” I said, resting my cheek on the top of her head carefully.  I spotted one of the families from the Underground watching me.  Their eyes were wary, but not hostile.  Things between the two colonies were still uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t really call them tense any longer.  “I will always be here for her, but I don’t know that I can be her mother.”

“Well,” Lin said, her voice growing quiet.  “She’ll never be lacking for love.”

“Never,” Avian and I both said at the same time.

THIRTY-TWO

FOUR HOURS UNTIL SET OFF

My eyes slid open to see the light gray tiles of the ceiling above me and instantly everything felt different.

Every breath I’d taken the last nineteen years, every gunshot I’d fired, every seed I’d planted, and every scrape that had drawn blood led up to this single day.

The day everyone thought I would save the world.

I sat up and looked around the lobby.  Sometime during the sixth longest night of my life, I’d fallen asleep.  I lay on the floor, my jacket wadded up under my head.  I spotted Avian sleeping in a chair not far away.  His head was tipped back, his mouth slightly open.  Creed lay on his chest, fast asleep as well.

Lin was asleep on the floor, not far from me.  Her cheek rested on her stack of bridal magazines.  Her neck was kinked, causing her to snore softly.

Just as I was quietly climbing to my feet, the steel doors burst open and people stumbled through them.  Graye and Tristan supported one of our soldiers, Lex.  He coughed violently and there were bruise marks already forming around his throat.

I didn’t even have to ask what happened as the three of them dashed for the stairs and headed for the blue floor.

A woman I knew to be Lex’s wife came running down the hall, a young boy on her hip.

“Lex?” she cried frantically.  “No, this can’t be happening.  Not now!”  She scrambled up the stairs after her husband.

But Jeb was already in the Extractor.  In a race to get the cybernetic scraps out of him before I killed all of TorBane off.

Avian and Lin had been startled awake by this point and Creed started crying again.  I took her from Avian as he asked the returning soldiers what happened.

“There were probably fifty of them,” Bill said.  A heavy sheen of sweat covered his skin and there was a gash above his right eye.  He wasn’t the only one who looked injured.  “They started throwing explosives at our line.  Most everyone made it okay, but three of them broke through the perimeter.  Lex was attacked in the process.  They got him.”

“There’s already someone in the Extractor,” I stated.

Bill nodded, his face grim.

“It’s early,” Avian said.  “He hasn’t been infected long.  If we get the Nova set off soon enough, there’s a chance he might survive the TorBane in his system being killed off.”

I nodded, but knew the chances were very slim.

“Is the perimeter contained?” I asked, my brows furrowing together as I held Creed a little tighter to my chest.

Bill’s eyes fell and he shook his head.  “Graye and Royce ordered everyone back inside the hospital.  Dr. Beeson’s turning the wireless transmission system on full blast.”

“How many of them are coming would you guess?” Avian asked as a second wave of soldiers came in before the steel doors slid closed again.

“There will be hundreds of them outside our doors by noon,” he said.  “At least.”

I looked and saw Vee walking towards us slowly.  West had an arm draped over her shoulders and he limped heavily.  Avian and I rushed over.

“I’ll be…” West trailed off, his face exhausted and slightly delirious sounding.  “Fine.  I’ll be just fine, before anyone freaks out.”

“He’s been cut,” Vee said.  I saw something stirring behind her eyes.  Panic.  Fear.  Her emotions were begging to be let loose.  “A window exploded when one of the grenades went off and he was caught by the shrapnel.”

Avian bent and pulled up West’s shredded and bloodied pant leg.  His calf down to his ankle was a ragged mess.  There were large chunks of glass embedded into his skin.

“Let’s get you to the medical wing,” Avian said, looping West’s other arm around his shoulders.  We slowly made our way down the hall.

“This is it,” West huffed as he attempted to walk.  He left a solid trail of blood on the floor behind him.  “If this doesn’t work today, we really are done for.  That isn’t exactly a Bane sweep out there, but they’re coming faster than we can wipe them out.”

“They’re being smart about their attacks too,” Vee said.  “They’re using vehicles, trying to sneak around us.  Using weapons.”

We stepped into a room and Avian eased West down onto a bed.  West leaned back and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.  He hissed in pain as Avian cut away the rest of his pant leg.  “This isn’t like before,” he said, looking up at the ceiling while Avian started picking shards of glass from his leg.  “When Royce and everyone holed up inside the hospital.  They’re too Evolved now for steel doors to keep them out.  They’ll come at us with bombs and go straight through the concrete walls.”

So this was the point where we couldn’t fight them off anymore.

It was time to kill them off or be killed.

“Vee,” Avian said as he pulled the last of the glass from West’s leg.  “Can you hand me a suture kit from that drawer?”

She turned and rummaged through the drawer.  Avian set to cleaning the wound with alcohol.  West screamed, his entire body locking up.

Creed screamed too, and I stepped out into the hall.  Royce and Lin came hurrying down it.

“We need you, now,” Royce said.  Behind him stood Bill, Elijah, who limped along, and Tristan.  Lin rushed forward and took Creed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.  I glanced back at Avian nervously.  He was stitching West’s leg up.  West’s jaw was clenched tight, his entire body stiff from the pain.

“We need to set this thing off the instant it’s charged,” Royce said, handing me an assault rifle.  “Since the Nova is five blocks away and how many Bane are closing in, I thought it best to head out right now.  Dr. Beeson will take care of things here with Graye and Gabriel’s help.  Addie’s coming with us.  But you need to come now.  Dr. Evans is already there getting things set up.”

I let out a slow breath and turned back toward the room.  Everyone was looking at us.

This was it.  It was time to see if we could save the world.

“That’s going to have to do for now,” Avian said, clipping off the ends of the threads.  “Lin, could you call for Dr. Sun to finish cleaning him up?”

“Of course,” she replied.

West hissed and pulled himself up into a sitting position.   Avian took the rifle Bill handed to him as he stepped out of the room.

“Give Creed to Vee,” Royce said, looking at Lin.  Vee looked nervous about holding Creed, but took her with careful hands.  “I’m going to need everyone else ready to help get us to the transmitter.”

“Wait,” West said, attempting to stand from his bed.  “I’m coming too.”

“You can’t walk,” Vee protested, taking a step back toward him.  “You’re still bleeding.”

“Sorry,” I said, meeting his eyes.  “Not this time.”

He met my eyes and all our history squeezed at my insides.  The lies, the passion, the hurt, and the pain.  And the friendship that had finally replaced it all.  “I’ll see you on the other side of the apocalypse.”

It took him a moment to nod, his eyes seeming to study my face.  “See you on the other side.”

“Let’s move,” Royce said.

The crowd that had started gathering in the hall behind us, parted.  None of them said anything as we made our way to the front doors.  But every one of them held their hands over their hearts and then raised their fingers up in salute.

I could feel their gazes as we passed them.  They didn’t know if we could do this.  They knew the consequences if we failed.  But they were looking at me with hope.

Searching for Avian’s hand, I slipped my fingers into his and held tight.

When we approached the front doors, Royce nodded to a woman off to the side, and the doors ground open.

The air outside was perfectly still after all the chaos that had taken place.  The sun shone brightly and I could see little particles of dust floating in the air.  The scent of gunpowder hung heavy over the city.

There were at least twenty Bane standing just outside the door.  They all stood in a semi-circle, staring directly at me.

Royce stepped out first, his rifle held up to his eyes, ready.  Bill followed.  I stepped outside, my chin held high.

“Go find the others,” I said.  “Don’t leave any of them alive.”

They each turned and darted out into the city.

We headed west, toward the building that had the Nova.  The streets were suddenly alive with noise as those I had commanded started destroying those who rushed us.

Just let us get to the building, I thought.  Just clear the way.

There was a screech from up above, and I looked to see Bird circling us, calling as if in a war cry.

We had gone half a block when a batch of three Bane stepped from their hiding places.

They approached slowly, their eyes intently fixed on me.  Two more came up from ahead of us.

“You got this?” Royce said quietly, his rifle pointed at the ones before us.

I nodded, even though he wasn’t facing me.  “I’ll keep them away from us.”

“Just one more block,” Royce said, picking up the pace.

Six more came out of their hiding places.  Soon they had formed an oval around us, walking alongside us, staring intently at me.  They kept a distance of ten feet from us on all sides.  Just outside our perimeter, I saw another of the Bane I had commanded, rip the head off another.  It collapsed into a heap.  My soldier darted away to look for another Bane to destroy.

Finally, we got to the building.  Royce pulled the door open, and held it for the rest of us.

“You will stay here,” I said, addressing the Bane that surrounded us.  They all froze on the spot.  “You will not move from this spot.  Ever.”

They stood still as the buildings around them.

I wanted them to stay here because if we managed to make the Nova go off, I wanted to immediately see if it worked.

“Keep moving,” Royce said, waving us forward with his hand.  Vee and Creed ducked inside, followed by Addie, Bill, then Avian, then myself.  Royce and Elijah took up the rear.

“We’ve got one more hour until the batteries are fully charged,” Royce said as we climbed stairs.  “But I’m hoping by the time we get up there, Dr. Evans will give us the go ahead to set the blasted thing off.  I don’t want to wait one second longer than we have to.”

All the full humans were sweating by the time we reached the door to the roof.  They breathed hard but I knew it wasn’t just the steep climb that had them huffing.

This anticipation could kill a person.

Vee stepped aside, letting me do the honors of opening the door.

Placing my hand on the cold metal push handle, I leaned my weight into it, and stepped out into the sun.

THIRTY-THREE

LESS THAN ONE HOUR UNTIL SET OFF

Dr. Evans stood on the edge of the roof, staring out into the distance.  The wind blew around him, hitting me in the face with an arctic blast.  Too afraid to call out, too unable to break the sacred silence of what was before us, I crossed the roof and joined him.

I knew what it was Dr. Evans was staring at the moment I saw it.  It was far off, far enough out that it was simply a landscape of dark color that moved in a way that was almost imperceptible.  But it steadily progressed from the east to the west.

A Bane sweep.

They consumed the buildings before them like a swarm.  Explosions lit up the early afternoon sky.  Grey dust filled the air.

They had to be less than five miles out.

All ten of us lined the roof of the building, looking out at it.  Avian’s hand slipped into mine and squeezed tight.  To my right, Royce’s hand gripped my other.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

I could feel this wave surging upon us and the breath within me was being drawn out.  The wave would crush down upon me before I would have the chance to draw another in.

This was it.

None of us had to say it, but everyone shared the universal thought.

All those creatures that were rushing toward our city to tear it apart had been people once.  They’d been wives and fathers; they’d been students and workers.  Billions of normal people living normal lives.  They’d felt anger, sorrow, joy, love.

For a moment, I felt sorry that I was about to end what remained of their lives.

I was about to kill off seven billion former people.

I opened my eyes again and a single tear leaked down my cheek.

But now they didn’t feel anything but the drive to spread TorBane.

“Can we set it off now?” Avian asked.  His voice was filled with emotion and determination.

Dr. Evans didn’t answer and his silence was like being hit in the face with cold water.  We all turned and looked at him.

He stared out over the cityscape.  His eyes were open and blank and he stood completely motionless.

Avian, Bill, Elijah, and Tristan backed away automatically, drawing their weapons.  Royce stayed put and swore under his breath, drawing his own rifle.  Addie just stood there frozen.

“Dr. Evans?” I said, stepping toward him.

He still didn’t respond.

I took another step forward and placed a cautious hand on his arm.

His instincts, impossibly fast, took over and he lashed out, wrapping a hand around my throat.

“Dr. Evans,” I choked out.  Everyone stepped forward, their weapons steadying on his form.  “It’s me.  Eve Two.  We need you right now.  We need you here, with us.”

His hand did not tighten, but it did not relax either.  His fully cybernetic eyes were fixed on me and I couldn’t tell if there was still any emotion behind them or if he was gone to us forever.

Vee stepped forward, Creed held securely in her arms.  “Dr. Evans,” she said, her voice calm and even.  His eyes shifted over to her.  “It’s Eve One.  I know you can’t hold on much longer, but it is almost over.  Just help us with this last thing, and it can end.”

He stared at her for a long moment.  Fractionally, I felt his fingers relax.

When his hand released me, I rubbed at my throat and suppressed a cough.  His eyes slid back to me and he took two steps back.

“I…” he tried to speak.  “I…am…sorr…sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, but I didn’t take my eyes from him.  “But I don’t think we can wait any longer.  It’s time to do this.”

He looked over at the rest of the group gathered around him and something told me there would be shame in his expression if he still retained any human qualities to express emotion.

“Yes,” he said, stepping forward to the device.  “I suppose…it is.”

I turned to Vee and Creed and had the urge to hug them.  I wasn’t sure why.  She and I didn’t have the sisterly bond people talked about.  But I felt like doing it anyway.

She stiffened a bit when I wrapped my arms around her, but she didn’t push me away or act like she didn’t want me to do it.

“I’m glad you are here for this,” I said quietly into her long hair.

“I think I’m glad too,” she said back.

I released her, a small smile upon my lips.  I pressed a kiss to the top of Creed’s head.

It was time to give her that future I’d promised her mother before she’d died.

Royce opened the door to the lead box and the two of them stepped inside.  He sealed it behind them.

I turned to Avian.  His eyes were terrified yet determined.

“I meant to show you this,” he said as he took my left hand in his.  “But things just kept happening.”  Taking my ring between two of his fingers, he slid it down my finger just a bit.  There, indented into the skin of my finger was what looked like a number eight, turned on its side.

“What is it?” I asked.

“An infinity symbol,” he said.

He didn’t have to explain any more than that.

I placed my hand on his rough cheek and tried to smile.  His eyes were intense and hopeful and scared.  “Infinity.”

“Infinity,” he breathed back.

A low hum drew my eyes back to the Nova.  Dr. Evans was pressing buttons, fiddling with something on a digital screen.  I looked up at the satellite, pointed up and to the right just a bit.  Somewhere, up above us so far that it escaped even my eyes, there was another satellite orbiting us, partnered by hundreds of others.  But we had no idea if any of them were still functional.

If they weren’t, we were all dead.

The sweep was at our doors.  There would be no time for the emergency water evacuation.

I walked to the Nova and stepped between two of the panels.  I looked up, studying the three bars that connected to one.  The dish sat high above my head.

Addie and Dr. Evans fiddled with the controls.  She kept looking over at Dr. Evans warily and kept her distance as best she could.

I looked up at the others, who stood twenty feet away.

Avian.  Bill.  Tristan.  Elijah.

They all stood as stony faced as I felt.

“I will input the code…here,” Dr. Evans explained to Royce with difficulty.  He sounded every bit like a machine.  “You will push…the initiate button…and then immediately the transmit one.”

Royce nodded, his eyes studying the screen before him.  His face was pale white.

Dr. Evans pulled a piece of paper out.  His fingers hovered above the keypad.  And he suddenly seemed to freeze.

“Dr. Evans?” Addie said, her voice quaking.

Dr. Evans didn’t respond.

His fingers crumpled around the paper in his hand.  The one with the kill code written on it.

“Dr. Evans,” Royce demanded.  “I need you to enter that code.”

But he didn’t move.  His finger remained poised above the keypad, his other hand locked around the paper.

Royce swore under his breath.

“It’s okay Royce,” I said, forcing myself to take a deep breath.  I then rattled it off to him.  Each and every letter and number.  “He had me memorize it back at NovaTor, just in case.”

Normally, Royce would have made some sarcastic or annoyed comment at this, but he just gave a single nod as he entered the code.

The thought that I’d never talked to him about how we were family crossed my mind just as shots were fired below us.

An explosion sounded and then I could make out the pounding of footsteps on concrete below us.

The sound of the air changed immediately after that, more rapid and choppy than it should have sounded.

It was a sound I knew well.  A sound that ended lives and changed the course of futures.

“They’ve got a chopper,” I breathed.  I turned to search the skies for it, but saw nothing.

Avian, Bill, Elijah, and Tristan ran to the side of the building, scanning the skies and the streets.  But they suddenly backed up, guns drawn, bullets firing.  The sound got louder and the wind picked up in intensity.

The chopper came up to eye level.

I was staring directly at the two Bane who piloted it.

“Now!” Royce bellowed.

An electric charge ripped through my skin and the air was sucked from my lungs.

There was a sharp ringing sound, so high pitched and intense I was sure my eardrums had burst.

The sound of crashing metal and breaking glass erupted through the ringing, the ground beneath me shook, and then—

THE END

PART ONE

--WEST--

I could only recall a small number of times the intercom had come on in the hospital.  It sounded into every room and into every corner of the building.

“I need every able-bodied person to the armory, now!” Graye’s voice bellowed throughout the building.

Screw what Dr. Sun and everyone else had said about me resting.  My hands still worked.

There was a set of crutches leaning against the far wall of the infirmary room I was told to recover in.  I hopped across the space on my good foot and grabbed them.  Next I slung my rifle over my shoulders and made my way down to the armory.

The halls were loud and chaotic.  Everyone ran around with a firearm.  As I glanced into the dining area, I saw that the steel, protective window coverings had been drawn back a few inches.  Two teenage girls were firing shots out them.

“What’s going on?” I asked as soon as Graye came into view.

He was standing just inside the armory and was handing out weapons like candy.

“There’s hundreds of them out there now,” Graye said, not even glancing at me as he tossed a handgun to a boy that looked no older than twelve.  “I think Eve told some of them to destroy other Bane, cause some of them seem like they’re fighting, but most of them are trying to get inside the building.”

Finally, I noticed a noise over the chaotic sound of our residents heading to firing posts.

A pounding.

“They’re trying to break through the walls,” I said.

Graye nodded.

“If this doesn’t work, we’re all dead within a few hours, aren’t we?”

Graye finally looked at me.  His eyes were cold and determined.  Reaching into his pocket, he produced something flat and square.

I’d seen enough movies as a kid before the world went to hell to know what it was.

“A detonator?”

Graye stared at me with hard eyes again before glancing both ways to make sure no one was watching us.  “If Eve can’t save us all I’m not letting any more of us fall to those demons.  I’d rather die.”

“What gives you the right to make that decision for everyone?” I asked.

Even though his actions disgusted me, I didn’t condemn him for them.

I’d rather die too than get infected again.

“I need you at the west side of the building, if you can still fire that thing,” Graye said, ignoring my question.

I glanced back at him one more time before heading to my appointed post.

The west side of the hospital housed a few offices and I headed into one.  Using the hand crank, I drew the steel covering back four inches.  I drug a stool over and knelt on it with my bad leg, propping myself up.  Positioning my rifle, I observed the layout before me.

From my position I had a clear view of the top of the building the Nova had been built on.  The hospital was far enough away, though, that all I could make out was the form of the gigantic transmitting dish.  And Bird circling the building.

The roads around the hospital were a mess.  Destroyed Bane lay in the streets, their mechanical parts sparking and shining in the sun.  Graye had been right, Eve commanded some of them to destroy other Bane.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, one Bane tackled another to the ground on the sidewalk, right in front of me.  It ripped the others left arm clean from its body.  And then it pummeled the rest of the Bane into a scrap pile of metal.

Behind it, a group of four Bane started running toward the hospital, like a rabid pack of wolves.

I fired.

Two of them dropped to the ground.  The others continued to rush directly toward me.

One of the Bane drew something small and oval shaped and in a tiny movement, seemed to pull something out of the object.

A grenade.

I emptied a magazine firing at it.  It finally dropped to the ground, as did the other one, just a block and a half from the hospital.

The explosion from the grenade was brilliant.

Gleaming parts flew into the sky.  Two cars that had been in close proximity blew sideways, rolling and crashing into the surrounding buildings.

Movement to the far west caught my eye again and the breath caught in my chest.

Rising to level with the Nova building was a helicopter.

I saw tiny explosions as Eve’s team fired at it.  But I knew their odds of taking it out before it could fire and destroy every one of them and the Nova.

“Vee,” I breathed.  “Eve.”

My hands flew to my ears and my eyes squeezed closed as a sharp ringing shot through the air, high pitched and painful.

I could have sworn my ears were bleeding.

This was it.

Through the ringing, even from this far away, I could hear the crash.

My eyes shot open just in time to see the blades of the chopper slicing into the Nova building.  It disappeared from view and then there was another explosion.

Twelve Bane.  That was how many of them I could see from my position.

And that was exactly how many bodies instantly dropped to the ground.

One second they were fighting, rushing the building.  And the next they were limp and still.

I couldn’t move for an unknown amount of time.  My eyes fixed on one body that had collapsed.  It must have been a female at one point.  It had longish brown hair that covered its face completely when it collapsed.

It was going to move.  This was only a temporary thing, Eve would only be able to make them collapse, knock them out for a short while.

They had to get up and try to infect us once again.

But they weren’t getting up.

Cries and screams and cheers erupted from the halls.

Finally, my eyes broke from that body.  I looked back toward the lobby.  People were gathered there, staring out into the streets.

It took a lot of willpower to turn from the window.  There was no way I could relax enough to leave my weapon, so I somehow managed to use the crutches and hold it at the same time.

I pushed my way through the crowd to the doors.

Tuck stood before us all.  He held a radio in his hand.

“Today is a day to move forward.  Let everyone have their moment to celebrate.”

It was Royce’s voice.  And every syllable he spoke said something was wrong.

THE END

PART TWO

--AVIAN--

I fired seven shots.  The first two shattered the front window.  The fourth bounced off one of the chopper blades.  The rest disappeared into the body of the helicopter.

Countless other shots were fired, but the helicopter continued to rise over the side of the building.

The adrenaline burning through my system brought everything into focus.  I watch as a cybernetic thumb hovered over a trigger.

The moment before it fired, Royce yelled something I couldn’t understand.

A piercing ring cut through the air.  I wasn’t one to put down my firearm, but I couldn’t fight the instinct to drop my weapon and cover my ears against the sound.  Bill, Tristan, Elijah, they all did the same.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dr. Evans crumple to the ground and then the building shook.  I looked over the ledge just in time to see the helicopter explode as it hit the ground.  The building shook tremendously and all of the windows below us exploded.

Out in the distance, the slight movement of the landscape stopped.  A giant cloud of dust rose into the air.  The Bane sweep ceased.

I looked below us once more, and saw dozens of bodies lying still on the ground.

“It worked,” I breathed.  A startled, disbelieving chuckle rose up from my chest.  “It worked!”

I turned back to the Nova, ready to cheer and celebrate with our team.

And my internal organs disappeared into oblivion.

“Eve!” someone screamed and I would later realize it had been me.  One second I was standing at the edge of the building, the next I was at her side.

Eve was half in, half out of the Nova in a crumpled heap.

I rolled her over, pushing the hair out of her face.  “Eve,” I said again, tapping the side of her face.

Her eyes remained closed.  Her mouth hung just slightly open.

Her entire body was limp in my arms.

“Eve?” my breath barely came out.

“What’s wrong?” someone behind me questioned and others gathered around.  “What happened?”

Tristan knelt next to me, his hands extended but not knowing what to do with them.  Royce stood above us, a radio held in his hand, like he knew he was supposed to be doing something with it.  But it just hung limp in his hand as he looked down at his niece.

It must have been muscle memory or instinct or some other force of nature that made me raise my hand.  My skin felt dead as I pressed two fingers to the side of her neck.

Her skin was as still as the rest of her body.

“Eve?” I said, giving her a shake.  “Eve?  Come on!  Open your eyes!”  I shook her again.  Rougher than I should have.  Something was birthed in my stomach and clawed up in my skin.  A rabid beast that wanted to escape that very instant.

“Eve!” I growled, shaking her again.  “Open your eyes!”

Her head lolled back as I stilled her, her mouth falling open once again.  My hands felt numb.

Royce knelt next to us, and placed two fingers against her neck, just as I had done.

His hands shook worse than mine did.

His radio crackled and then a voice rang over it, loud and true.

“The test subjects are dead, sir.”

No one moved.  The air around us hung dead and stagnant—no one breathed.  Every pair of eyes was transfixed on Eve, who lay in my arms.  No one took notice how the shooting had ceased.  How the plundering footsteps of the invading Bane had died away.

“Is she…?” a voice from behind asked.

We all turned to see Vee step out from the lead room.  Creed slept peacefully in her arms.

The breathing I hadn’t done up to that point suddenly kicked into overdrive.  My chest started rising and falling rapidly and my entire body broke out into a cold sweat.

“No,” I said shaking my head and looking back down at Eve.  “No, she’s fine.  She’s just unconscious.  The transmission just took a lot out of her.”

I shook her again.  “Eve,” I said, my voice calm but urgent.  “Wake up Eve.  Come on.  It’s over.  It worked.  You need to open your eyes!”

“Avian,” Bill chastised and I realized how hard I was shaking Eve.  “She’s not—”

“She’s going to be fine, Bill!” I bellowed, glaring back at him.  “It isn’t like she doesn’t have a reputation for blacking out!  Just give her a minute.”

I met each of their eyes with red in my own.  They all backed up half a step, resignation in their faces.

“Sir,” a voice crackled over the radio again.  “We’re mobilizing the solar tank with a long range radio to see how far the transmission worked.  But every Bane we can see is dead.”

Royce cleared his throat and gave a sniff.  “Very good,” he responded.  His voice sounded like gravel.

“Is everything okay up there, sir?” the voice cut through the radio again after a moment.

Royce squeezed his eyes closed for a moment and turned his face up to the sky.  His composure broke for a few seconds and his shoulders shuttered.  He took a sharp breath and wiped the back of his hand across his nose before raising his radio to his lips again.  “Today is a day to move forward.  Let everyone have their moment to celebrate.”

I’d been numb these past few moments.  Finally, I looked back down at Eve.

Her chest wasn’t rising and falling.  She was pale as a ghost.

My medical instincts went into fight-or-flight mode.

Covering her mouth with mine, I puffed five solid breaths into her.  Positioning myself over her, I placed my hands on her sternum and tried chest compressions.

Except I couldn’t make her chest rise and fall to squeeze her heart into working.

Her cybernetic lined body wouldn’t let her bones flex.

“Shit,” I swore, pounding on her chest as hard as I could.  It didn’t flex one millimeter.

Moving back to her mouth, I breathed into her ten times.

“What the hell happened?” I bellowed at Royce, taking a break from breathing into Eve.  “Dr. Evans said they were different generations of TorBane, that this kill code wouldn’t affect her!”

Royce shook his head, some of his sense seeming to return to him.  “That’s what he’s always said,” he replied, looking up at the Nova.  “He said otherwise she would have been killed the first time she transmitted the kill code.”

I looked up at Addie who stared at us from next to the Nova with horror in her eyes.  “Well?”

She shook her head and glanced back at Dr. Evans’ body.  “Dr. Evans always insisted it wouldn’t hurt her.  I don’t know…”

“Something went wrong,” I said, trying once again to do chest compressions.  Nothing.  “But she has to recover.  If that code couldn’t kill out her generation, the TorBane inside her will repair whatever damage has been done.”

“I think we’d better get her back to Dr. Beeson,” Tristan said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

Grateful that someone was thinking more logically than me, I stood and slung Eve over my shoulder.  She hung limp.

“We’re coming down,” Royce said into his radio as we all started down the stairs.  “Tell Dr. Beeson to meet us on the blue floor.”

My legs didn’t want to work and it was a struggle not to crash down the stairs as we stampeded down them.  Royce continued to talk to the hospital over the radio but I wasn’t in tune enough to distinguish what he was saying.

Dr. Evans had been so sure that this kill code was completely incompatible with the first generation of TorBane.  There was literal evidence that it wouldn’t kill her, since she had survived it before.  Even Vee had survived it, though she didn’t come out unharmed.  It had nearly melted her brain, but it didn’t kill her.

She couldn’t be…

She couldn’t be…

We broke from the building out the front door and I nearly tripped over the Bane Eve had ordered to stand outside.

They all lay in a crumpled heap.  Every single one of them.

“It worked,” Tristan said, his voice disbelieving.  “Eve did it.”

By now I was sprinting toward the hospital, leaping over bodies of dozens of other Bane who littered the streets.  Eve’s arms bounced on my back, swinging up and down with each step I took.

“Take her in through the back,” Royce said as they all ran behind me.  “Everyone’s bound to be gathered outside the front doors.”

I changed direction as we approached the hospital, headed for the underground garage.  Darting through the lined up vehicles, I nearly collided with the steel doors of the elevator as I pushed the up button.

It opened immediately.

Bill, Royce, and Addie wedged themselves inside with me and everyone else shouted that they’d meet us upstairs in a few minutes.

None of us said a single word as we took the slowest elevator ride in the history of man up to the seventh floor.

Finally, it dinged, and we were immediately greeted by Dr. Beeson.

“She collapsed as soon as the transmitter went off,” I started explaining the second the doors opened.  He ushered us down the hall to one of the labs.  “I can’t find a heartbeat right now.  I’ve been doing breaths.  Chest compressions are impossible.”

Dr. Beeson nodded and held a hand out toward a door.  We shuffled inside and I found a huge scanner.  With his help, I laid Eve on the narrow bed.  Addie strapped a breathing mask around her mouth and nose.

Eve felt so still and empty.  Her muscles gave no resistance as I laid her left arm next to her side.

“The scan will show us what is going on,” Dr. Beeson said, placing an arm over my shoulder and pulling me toward the door.  My feet didn’t want to move.  They wanted to be in here with her.  My instincts screamed at me to be by her side, to tell her everything was okay, because she would wake up at any moment.

“Avian,” Dr. Beeson said, pulling me a bit harder this time.

With dead feet, I exited the room and followed him to the next door down.

We watched from behind a glass window as Addie pressed a button and the table Eve lay on moved into the circular tube.

She started up the scanner and the room filled with clicking noises.

The screens before us jumped to life.

There was the solid outline of her skull, the shape of her brain, her eyes.  The scan continued to move down.

I had seen plenty of scans before during my medical training in the Army.  But nothing like Eve’s scans.

Her entire skeleton was nearly black looking, exactly how someone with screws or plates on their bones would look.  The cybernetics in Eve’s body coated every one of her bones.

Eve’s body was a tank.

But as the scans showed other things, all the blood in my body seemed to exit out my feet.

“None…” Dr. Beeson started to say.  He cleared his throat and glanced over at me.  By this point, Tristan, Vee, Creed, and Bill were just outside the doors, observing the scan as well.  “None of her organs are functioning right now.”

A steel band seemed to form around my throat and my vision blurred.  “She’s been badly injured before.  Her body has always been able to fix itself.  TorBane will heal her.”

Dr. Beeson met my eyes and shook his head.  His own eyes had reddened and there was moisture pooled in them.  “That’s the thing.  TorBane, it’s a live technology.  A normal scan would show it immediately.  It’d be brilliant white.  You’d see it in her blood, in her organs, in her brain.”

Just like Creed’s scans had looked.  But there wasn’t a single trace of that on the scans.

That high pitched sound started in my ears again.  I didn’t have a body anymore.  I was just a numb consciousness floating in unconnected space.

“Avian,” Dr. Beeson said quietly from very far away.  “Eve is dead.”

THE END

PART THREE

--AVIAN--

There was a broken screen.  And then another.  Next there was a broken window.  And then my skin was sliced open as I climbed through it to pull Eve out of the scanner.  I shook her shoulders again, begged her to open her eyes.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t.

She wouldn’t open her eyes.

--WEST--

It didn’t take more than sixty seconds for everyone to pour out of the hospital.  People ran into the streets with cheers and whoops and laughter.  A few reckless members of the Underground fired off shots into the sky.

Idiots.

I stood just outside the doors, leaning on my crutches.  I tried to search through the crowd, to pick out Eve and Vee returning from the Nova building.

Eve would give me a smug smile when she walked through the crowd, even though she’d be incredibly uncomfortable with the fact that she’d just saved the world.

Actually, no, that wasn’t how it would play out.

The second she came down from that building, back toward the hospital, she was going to be mauled to death by the celebrating crowd.

Vee would be scared out of her mind because of the way people were acting right now, but she’d never let that show.

Royce’s chest would puff out and his chin would be held high.  He’d start making sarcastic comments and wouldn’t be able to wipe the smile from his face.

So I kept searching the crowd for them.  Any moment they’d walk through the masses.

But as ten minutes rolled by, fifteen, twenty, they still hadn’t emerged.

While everyone else celebrated the end of the apocalypse, my blood started turning cold.

It had worked.  The Bane were dead, so they’d at least made it up to the Nova unharmed, and set it off.

But where were they?

What was wrong?

I turned back into the hospital and threw the crutches to the side.  Limping heavily, I took off without any real direction.

I was just about to push the up button for the elevator when it dinged.

The doors slid open to reveal Vee.

She held Creed tightly in her arms and everything about the sight seemed wrong.

I’d never seen her expression so vacant.  And this was a girl born with autism who had then had all her emotions stripped away.

“Eve’s dead,” she said.

THE END

PART FOUR

--AVIAN--

There was a hard surface behind my back.  There was something solid beneath my rear end, but it was so numb it almost felt as if I was floating.  Most of my body felt dead, but there were places on my skin that felt afire.  My forearms, my lips, the back of my neck.  I wasn’t sure what that meant in medical terms, but emotionally, I was pretty sure it meant I was seared dead too.

I stared at Eve.  She lay on the table, poking out from the scanner.  She rested there perfectly still.  Her hair was pushed back from her eyes, now just long enough to be tucked behind her ears.  Her skin was pearl white.

She wore her favorite cargo pants and her sturdy boots.  A comfortable, flexible jacket covered her arms.  Her hands were dirty and calloused from the endless work she would never give up.

Eve looked like she was sleeping.

The door opened but I couldn’t look over to see who it was.  They crossed the room slowly, bare feet limping across the tile floor.  I could barely process West’s form as he stopped at her side.

He didn’t make any noise, not a sniffle, or a cut off cry, or a scream, or even a whisper.  He placed a hand over her heart and stood there for a moment, not moving a muscle.

See you on the other side of the apocalypse, she’d said to him.

Finally, he crossed to the wall and sank onto the floor next to me.

We sat in silence for a long time.

“We’re getting reports back in,” he finally said after an unknown amount of time.  His voice sounded dirty in this silent and numb place.  “They’re four hundred miles south and there’s bodies everywhere.”

I think I nodded slightly, my gaze still fixed on Eve.

My eyes were dry and tired, but I couldn’t make them close.  I wasn’t even sure when the last time I blinked was.

“It worked, Avian,” West said.  He held his hand out, like he was going to pat my leg, or give some kind of reassuring gesture.  But he withdrew it and let it fall back in his lap.  “She did it.  She saved everyone.”

I just kept staring at Eve.

“One more day,” I hissed.  I locked eyes with Dr. Sun, my jaw set hard.  I hadn’t realized I’d gathered the front of her lab coat in my hand and my nose was only three inches from hers.  “It might not be too late.”

“Avian, I—”

“I said one more day!” I bellowed.  My eyes grew wide when I realized how hard I jerked her.  Horrified at my actions and harsh words, I immediately released her.

“Okay,” she said.  There was fear in her eyes.  “We’ll wait one more day.”

She backed out of the room and practically ran down the hall.  I caught a glimpse of Royce and Gabriel behind her.

I turned back to Eve as the door swung shut and walked to her side.

I’d watched her for two days now.  Yesterday I asked Dr. Beeson to do another scan.

There were still no signs of live TorBane in Eve’s system.

But I couldn’t…

I couldn’t…

The door opened, whomever it was not bothering to knock.

I looked up when they stopped beside the bed.

Vee looked at me, and I finally threw up.  All over the floor.

It was Eve’s face.  But it wasn’t Eve.

I stumbled from the room, down the hall, and into the stairwell.  I came out on the fifth floor, the floor that housed all the supplies.  I collapsed somewhere behind a stack of boxes full of ammunition.

Tears started to freely flow from my eyes, pooling in my ears as I lay on my back.  A howling cry leapt from my lips, rattling my entire chest with it.  My fist beat against the boxes, knocking one of them over and scattering bullets across the floor.

“Eve!” I cried, my voice gutted and bone-rattling.  “Wake up, Eve.  You have to wake up!”

But as I lay there, letting all of the things I hadn’t allowed myself to think about up until that point come flooding in.  I knew.

I knew.

Eve wasn’t going to wake up.

THE END

PART FIVE

--WEST--

Phoenix.  Denver.  Dallas.

The Bane were dead in every city we came across.  Every one of them.

This should have felt like a triumph.  We’d nearly lost the world.  Point one two percent.  That was what was left of the human population, according to Dr. Beeson’s team.  Probably even less.  We’d been whittled down to that small of a number and then we’d won.

Against billions of Bane.

This should have felt like a triumph.

But the cost still felt too high.

“Are you alright?” Vee asked.

I looked over my shoulder to see her standing in my doorway.  I’d been staring out over the city, out my window, not actually seeing anything.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

It was easy to be honest with Vee.

She crossed the room and sat next to me on the bed.  She looked outside as well.

“Everyone from your colony is so excited,” she said.  “But they’re also so sad.”

I nodded, my eyes glazing over once again.

“You’re sad,” she said.  Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

Her fingers laced with mine.

And for a moment, I wasn’t quite as sad.

Dear Avian,

I am sure at this point you are wondering exactly what went wrong.

The simple answer is that everything went exactly according to plan.

I knew from the moment I started plans on the Nova that Eve Two could never survive the transmission.  The level the kill code had to be amplified to was astronomical, something none of you could have comprehended.  Had her sister not been in that lead box, she and the baby would have been killed too.

I am sorry to say that Eve Two was never going to survive saving the planet.  But that was her greatest calling and purpose in this life.  I never should have saved her all those years ago.  I should have let her pass with her mother, should have taken Emma’s death as a sign to let the TorBane project die as well.  But I didn’t.

This may feel as if the world has ended.  I have seen the way you look at Eve Two and no one can doubt that you love her more than human words can describe.  But even if it seems impossible, try to keep perspective.  Her death has bought the freedom of the human race.

Never forget Eve Two, and never let planet Earth forget what she did for it.

My deepest apologies,

Dr. Reiss Evans

THE END

PART SIX

--AVIAN--

“I need a car,” I said as I walked up behind Royce.  The letter I’d found from Dr. Evans was crumpled in my right hand.  Royce turned to look at me.  He’d been talking to someone and I’d interrupted him mid-sentence.

Royce swore.  “Avian, you look like hell.  Have you slept since…?”

I shook my head.

Sleep?  How was I supposed to sleep?

“We’re supposed to have the—” the word stopped up in my throat.  “Tomorrow, and I need to find a place to—”  My voice cut off, and I couldn’t make myself finish that sentence.  I cleared my throat.  “I can’t do it here.  She hated the city.  So I’m going to go scout for a place to—”

Royce put a heavy hand on my shoulder and nodded.  “Come on,” he said.

I was given a small vehicle, one that wouldn’t require much gas.  Not that there was much gas left in the world.  Or many engines that hadn’t been destroyed by the corrosive kind we still had.

So I headed out of the city.  I skirted around the destroyed section of Los Angeles, the part of town that the Bane sweep had leveled.  There were millions of Bane there, piled six feet deep.

I couldn’t let Eve’s final resting place be within the city she so badly wanted to escape.  The one she was only confined to because of the threat the Bane posed to those she loved.  Because of her sense of duty to her family.

I looked for green.  I looked for trees.  I looked for water.  In this area of the country, that wasn’t so easy to find.  But I kept driving, and I kept searching.

Until I found a place.

It wasn’t really a town.  More like a recreation area or a pit stop.  There was a gas station that had been completely looted.  Across the street from it was a diner.  The road that led between the two drove almost right up to a lake.  One that was about twice the size of the lake in Eden.  There were five cabins on this side of the lake, and I could see a few others scattered around the edge of it.  The road curved around the lake for a bit before breaking off into the mountains.  On one side of the lake, next to the first house, there was a grass field.

I parked the car at the edge of the lake and climbed out.

The trees that surrounded the lake and the little lakeside town weren’t giants.  They were barely green.  But they were trees.  They were under the wide open blue sky.

Eve would approve of a place like this.

I climbed back in the car and headed back into the city.

I looked over Dr. Beeson’s shoulder, staring at the screen before us.  West peered around me.  Vee was there as well.  So was Royce.  And Gabriel.

There was her skull again.  There was her brain.  Her eyes.

Her shoulders, her spine.  Her heart.

Her stomach, liver, hip bones.  Femurs, tiny foot bones.

A cybernetic skeleton and still organs.

No traces of TorBane.

Three nights and three and a half days now, Eve had lain there.  Still and—

Dea—

She really was—

“Okay,” I said, the word trying to stick in my throat.  “It’s time.  Thank you for doing the scan.”

Dr. Beeson nodded, his eyes locked on me.  West placed a hand on my shoulder, but it sat there as limp and lifeless as she was.

I walked into the room, shadowed by the crowd that had hovered around me for the past three days.  I placed my hands on the top of the bed, just above Eve’s head.  Gabriel took the bottom of the bed and we wheeled it out of the room.  Down the hall, into the elevator and to the first floor.  On the way down, Vee pulled the sheet up and over Eve’s face.

The only way I would make it through this day was to be concrete.  I hardened to the torrential emotions that threatened to shred me from the inside out.  I moved, doing things from one second to the next.  One foot in front of the other all the way to the medical wing.

A group of women washed and cleaned her body.  I hovered in the doorway, watching emptily.  West stood at my side, never saying a word.  Vee watched from behind us, her face as empty looking as I felt.

They dressed her in her favorite clothes.  Her boots, her cargo pants, a soft white cotton shirt.  They brushed her hair and laid it nicely around her face.

When they were finished with her, they all exited the room.

“Do you need someone here?” West asked.

I shook my head.  “I think I need to say—” my voice faltered.  “I think I need to say it on my own.”

West nodded and patted my shoulder twice.  Turning, he and Vee walked down the hall.

It took me a long time to step inside the room.  I felt like I was crumbling inside.  Like when that concrete interior I’d been trying to put up fell apart, there would be nothing left and I would cease to exist.

Taking a quivering breath, I stepped over the threshold.

I pulled a seat up to the side of the bed and, my hands shaking, I took one of her hands in mine.  Her left one.  The one that bore the ring I had given her.  It was cold and limp.  There was a cut on the inside of her palm that hadn’t healed.  She must have gotten it when she collapsed after the Nova went off.

I stroked my thumb over the back of her hand and brought her knuckles up to my lips.  A tear slipped over my cheek and a quivering breath gasped from my lips.

“You can’t go,” I breathed.  I shook my head and squeezed her hand harder than I should have.  “You can’t leave me, not now.  Now when I’m finally able to give you everything you needed.  Not when it’s safe to leave this place and go home.  Not when I can show you what life together should have been like.”

The dam broke.  A gasping cry ripped from my chest.  My face rose to the ceiling, the tears freely flowing now.  I squeezed her hand harder.

I took a deep breath and pressed my forehead into the back of her hand.

“The thing is, I think somehow you knew this was coming,” I breathed.  “You knew something with saving the world was going to go wrong.  But you went forward anyway.  Even if you knew…”  Another sob escaped my chest.  I squeezed my eyes closed, forcing a river of tears down my cheeks.  “Even if you knew it was going to take everything you had to give to end this…you still would have done it.”

My breaths came in jerky gasps, stopping and catching in my chest, and then in and out so quickly I was in danger of hyperventilating.  I soaked her hand and the bed beneath it.

“I love you, Eve,” I quivered.  “I’ve loved you for so long, in so many ways.  I just wanted to protect you at first.  I wanted to help you.  And then you didn’t want me to help you and you were determined to help yourself.

“And then you were this woman and you were amazing and incredible and you had no idea.”  I surprised myself when a little laugh bubbled up out of me.  “And you were beautiful.  Inside and out.”

I couldn’t speak for a long while as the tears consumed me.  “And then you saw me the way I was seeing you.  It took you a while, but you said it back.”

I sat up and placed my hand on her cheek.

Please open your eyes.  Please.

I let my head fall, my forehead resting on her stomach.  My shoulders shook as my emotions pummeled me.

There was no wedding the day after the Nova went off.  Eve would never wear a white dress for me.  There would be no us starting a new home together or setting up another tent.

Infinity had been cut too short.

Lifting my head up once again, I leaned forward and kissed her lips.  They had curved around mine so many times, I couldn’t comprehend how they were just lying there so still.

“I love you,” I whispered against her cheek.  “And I will see you again when it comes to be my time.  Please wait for me.”

THE END

PART SEVEN

--WEST--

I waited outside Dr. Beeson’s office.  My back was pressed against the cold wall.  I pulled at my tie, feeling like I was being choked.  I looked down at my feet, covered in dress shoes.

The outfit felt insane.  I couldn’t run in these shoes.  My shirt was too tight to have movement to fire a weapon.  There was no way I’d be able to breathe if my blood got pumping.

I’d die in this get up if a Bane came after me.

But that was never going to happen again.

Dr. Beeson’s door suddenly opened and Vee stepped out.

She wore a black skirt and a simple white button up shirt.  Her hair was pulled up into a simple bun and her feet were covered in a pair of simple black dress shoes.

Lin had given her a lot of help this morning.

She looked beautiful.  And nothing like the little girl with the shaved head who had been my best and only friend.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice breathy.

Dr. Beeson stepped out from behind her, closing his door behind him.

“So?” I asked.

Dr. Beeson looked down at Vee, as if to say it was her choice on what she wanted to disclose and commit to.

“Next week we’ll start the process of lessening my blockers,” she said, holding my eyes the entire time.  She looked uncertain.  But hopeful.

A small smile curled on my lips.  It was the first one I could remember wearing in what felt like a decade.

“I think we should all get going,” Dr. Beeson said.  He stood there uncomfortably, knowing he was required to be a part of a very personal situation.

“Yeah,” I said.  “We should.”

I extended my arm out to Vee.  She stood there, not knowing what to do with it.  So I took her arm and looped it through mine.  Together, the three of took the elevator downstairs.

Everyone was dressed up, at least as dressed up as we could be considering the circumstances.  Every one of us made our way to the underground garage.

Many eyes darted to Vee’s face as we joined the masses.

She was walking around with Eve’s face.

But she wasn’t Eve.

--AVIAN--

The entire colony of New Eden made the hour long journey to the burial site I had picked.  Someone had gone out ahead of us and dug a hole in the field.

Six feet down.  Even that didn’t change when the world ends.  Even when the world comes back from the end.

I appreciated that everyone had dressed in their best as they gathered around the grave, but I knew Eve wouldn’t have understood why they did it.

I carried Eve from the car.  We had wrapped her in a beautiful linen and tied it up with silk ribbon.  And with West, Tristan, Gabriel, and Royce’s help, we lowered her into the ground.

There were words spoken.  Many of them.  It went on for two hours.  Anyone who felt they had something to say came forward.

They spoke of her bravery mostly.

They spoke of her unselfishness.

They spoke of her uniqueness.

They spoke of miracles.

There wasn’t a dry eye among the one hundred sixty-seven of us.

The light started to die in the evening and the clouds began to roll in.  The first of the rain drops started to fall as Bill and Graye shoveled the first scoops of dirt on top of her.

“Please wait for me,” I whispered.

THE END AND BEGINNING

PART EIGHT

--AVIAN--

The house I chose was comfortable.  Three bedrooms, two bathrooms.  Not that the water was running.  But the walls throughout the house were a soft yellow, warm and inviting.  The bed was comfortable.

I finally slept for what felt like the first time since…

It was quiet out here and infinitely dark.  When morning came, I looked out the window, over the lake.  I could see the field from here.  Pulling some clothes on, I slipped outside.

Clouds hung low over the lake and mountains.  Moisture was thick in the air.  I stopped outside the house, picking a single wild daisy that had grown up between the grass and the concrete footing.  I crossed to the field and the mound in the middle of it.

Someone had carved her name into a flat stone.  EVE.  Simple, solid letters.  Just like her.

I placed the flower on top of the mound.

I was drained, with nothing left to feel.  This was just me, standing outside, next to a mound and a body that had been returned to the earth from whence she came.  These were just facts.  No emotion involved.

Perhaps this was how the Bane had felt.

Lucky, dead bastards.

The next morning, I got in the car and drove back to New Eden.

I was going to need supplies.

It seemed like the drive went by in an instant.  One second I was seeing the lake in my rear view mirror and the next I was in the underground parking garage.

I went up to my room.  No one saw me since almost everyone had moved out of the hospital again.  I filled bags with my clothes, boots, coats, everything I would need.  I set my two bags out in the hall and crossed to Eve’s old room.

I collected my things that had been left in here, trying not to look at her belongings that lay about like she would return for them at any moment.  Someone else would have to take care of them.  That was something I just couldn’t do.  Lin would take care of it.  Lin loved Eve like that.  Like Sarah had loved her.

Swallowing hard, I went back out in the hall and grabbed my bags.

After putting them in my vehicle, I went back inside.  I was almost to the armory when Royce called out to me from behind.

“How are you holding up?” he asked, a wary look in his eye.

“Please don’t ask me that question,” I said, my eyes darting away from his.

“Of course,” he said with a nod.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I responded, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.  “What are the reports coming back?”

“We’ve gotten two thousand miles out so far,” Royce said, stuffing his hands in his pockets.  “They’ve come across three armies.  All dead.  Reports are the same everywhere.  They’re all wiped out.”

I nodded and swallowed hard.

“She did it, Avian,” Royce said.  “She saved the planet.”

“Yeah,” I replied as I stepped into the armory.  “I knew she would.  Just not at this cost.”

He didn’t respond as he watched me collect my firearms, as well as Eve’s.  I placed them all in a long canvas bag.  I started stacking up boxes of ammunition.

“What happened with Lex and Jeb?” I asked.  The soldiers who had been infected just before the Nova went off.

“Jeb is fine,” Royce said.  “The Extractor pulled enough out of him that when the Nova went off, he was fine.”

“And Lex?” I asked when Royce stopped talking.

Royce just shook his head.  I could only nod.  And think about his poor wife and son.

“So,” he said, dragging out the word.  “What are your plans now?”

I picked up the bag and slung the strap over my shoulder.  My eyes didn’t meet his right away.  “I promised Eve that when everything was over that I’d take her out of the city.  That we’d find a place that felt like home.  I’m keeping that promise.”

I saw it in his eyes, just for a moment, that he wanted to argue with me.  That I didn’t need to fulfill a promise to a dead woman.  But he had more respect for me than that.  For Eve.

“You’re moving out to where you buried her,” he stated.

I nodded.  I was about to walk out the door when I paused, turning back around.

“Royce, there’s something you need to know,” I said, meeting his gray eyes.  “Eve was waiting to tell you until after the Nova went off, she knew your work was more important at the time.  But well…  I just, I think you should know.”

“What is it, Avian?” Royce asked with furrowed brows when I started rambling.

“The reason she asked you if you had a brother named Rider, was because she found out that was her father’s name,” I said.  “You’re Eve’s uncle.”

THE END AND BEGINNING

PART NINE

--WEST--

Dust clouded the entire loft when I pulled the sheet down from the window.  Brilliant sunlight spilled through, illuminating the dusty floor.

We weren’t far from the hospital.  Really, no one had moved far yet.  I think in a way that meant we were all still slightly afraid, still not quite ready to accept the fact that the Bane were dead.  We all felt we had to still be within running distance of the place that had kept us safe for all this time.  So we had only gone seven blocks from the hospital.

Vee wandered the loft, observing things in the way that she did.  The loft was large, old.  There was something comforting about the combination.  The entire space was open except for the bathroom.  Wooden posts supported the roof.  The loft was located on the top level of this eleven story building.

The floors were rough wood, polished to a somewhat smooth surface.  A simple kitchen lined one far wall.  The bathroom was large and done up in an interesting combination of brick and white surfaces.

There was something about this space that just said home to me.

The girl who studied the extensive library on the opposite far wall helped in that.

She read the titles on the spines of books, not in any kind of hurry.  She was absorbing.  That was what Vee did.  She absorbed it and it never left her.

Much like me.

We had yet to leave one another’s side for more than a few minutes at a time since we learned Eve’s fate.  Neither of us had anyone else to cling to, so it just felt natural.  We fell back into our patterns of protective comradery.

There was something else behind it as well.  I couldn’t say it was romantic feelings, at least not yet.  I knew that it might come, later on down the road when we both finally figured out who we were again in this reclaimed, heavily changed world.  But for now, we needed each other in a way that just was.

“Do you like it?” I asked.  My voice echoed off the walls.  Other than the books, the loft was completely empty.

She turned to me and I was pleased to see a smile on her lips.  “I think I will like living here.”

“I think so too.”

We came and went all day long.  I’d been assigned a truck and told I could use it as long as it would still run.  Considering how corrosive all gas was becoming, it wouldn’t be long.  But Vee and I climbed in and out, loading furniture, carrying it up to the loft.

Bird constantly circled us from above.  He was never far from wherever Vee was.

She seemed lost each time we went into the long abandoned furniture store.  She didn’t care about colors or patterns or any of that other stuff women so often used to put up a fuss about.  So I did all the picking.  And then she helped with the carrying.

By the time the sun started setting in the evening horizon, we had a small table with two chairs.  We had a couch and an overstuffed lounge chair.  There was a bed for me and a bed for her, set up four feet apart from each other.

It was going to take us a while to gather all the supplies we’d need to establish an actual house, but for now, we had a small bit of food and some candles to see by.

Vee had just lit one of them when there was a knock on the door.

Her eyes darted to it and I saw her bend her knees slightly, as if preparing to run or fight.

“It’s okay,” I reassured her.  Honestly I couldn’t really know that, but considering the greatest threat to mankind had just been eliminated, I knew we could survive anything else that came to our door.

I opened it to find Royce standing there, who was about the last person I expected.

“Everything okay?” I asked, looking out into the short hallway behind him.

“Yeah,” he said.  I noticed the way his eyes darted about just a little too fast and the way his fingers seemed to be flicking inside his pockets.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen Royce look nervous.

“What’s going on?” I asked warily.

“Can I talk to Vee for a while?” he said, finally looking me solidly in the eye.  “You’re welcome to listen in too.”

“Um,” I stuttered.  “I guess.  Come on in.”

He crossed the threshold and I closed the door behind him.

“Royce,” Vee greeted him.

“Hey, Vee,” he said, standing in front of one of the many windows that faced west.  “I…I wanted to talk to you about something, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay,” she said, still eyeing him with caution.

Royce was acting very weird.

He finally stood still and crossed his arms over his chest.  His eyes didn’t meet anyone’s when he started talking.  “Apparently Dr. Evans gave Eve a box of your mothers belongings when you all were back at NovaTor.  There were some journals inside, and some pictures.  Eve read the journals.  In one of them, it talked about your father.  She talked quite a bit about how he worked for the government.”

Royce shifted from one foot to the other.  He reached a hand into his pocket and drew something out.  I thought it was a piece of paper at first, but then realized it was a photograph.

“In your mother’s journal she mentioned how your father’s family had a tradition of working for the government,” Royce’s eyes finally rose to meet Vee’s.  She stood ten feet from him, her arms resting limply by her side.

She had no idea what this was leading up to.

But suddenly everything started clicking into place in my head.

“My brother, Rider, worked for the department of defense.  We both did.  So did our father, so did our grandfather.”

“Rider,” Vee said, her brows drawing together slightly.  “Eve asked about that name when we were driving back here.

Royce nodded, his eyes serious and sad.  He held up the picture in his hand and extended it out to Vee.  She took it gently.

“That is my brother Rider, just before he graduated college,” Royce said.  “And that was his girlfriend, Emma.  Your mother.”

Vee’s eyes studied the picture for a long time and she didn’t say anything.  I knew how smart Vee was, how things just seemed to click for her.

But this was a matter of family and emotion.  And those things were far from her.

“Vee,” I said.  Her eyes darted to me.  “That means Royce is your uncle.  You’re family.  Blood family.”

Again, her brows drew slightly closer together and she held my gaze for a moment.

Royce took one hesitant step toward Vee.  I looked over to him to see a single tear clinging to his eyelashes.

“Vee,” he said, his voice hoarse.  “This means you are my niece.”

He tentatively crossed the space between them and even more carefully pulled Vee into a hug.

She didn’t hug him back, not right away.  She stood there stiff and awkward for a long moment.

But then her fingers curled tightly around the picture and she drew her arms up and behind Royce’s back.

Her eyes slid closed and they stood like that for a long time.

Well how about that?  Eve had had family all along.

THE END AND BEGINNING

PART TEN

--AVIAN--

I took firearms with me, my clothing, basic toiletries, two days’ worth of food.  And Bill.

He didn’t need to tell me that he couldn’t stay in the city either.  Bill and Eve had shared a connection from the moment she found him spying on Eden in the woods when she was just a girl.  They’d been a team for years.

He and I rode out to the lake in silence that was, in a way, comforting.

The two of us worked quietly that day.  He took his things into the house next to mine.  It wasn’t far away, but enough distance that we would have privacy from one another.  We spent a few hours apart.  I put all of my clothes in the empty closet and in the empty dressers.

Settling into a new house.  The movements felt so normal and so foreign.

When I’d put my things away, I went outside to find Bill already chopping wood with an axe he’d found.  I helped him stack the wood, a pile on my porch and a pile on his.  By then the sky had grown dark.

We went our separate ways for the night.

I was resigned that I would have dreams about Eve every night until I could dream no longer.

Thankfully, the ones I had that night were not of the torturous sort.

I dreamt of the night I had given her the necklace I had carved.  The black stone wings.  How we’d watched Eden that night, just the two of us in the dark, the stars twinkling above us.

It was the first time I’d attempted to show her how much I cared about her.  Before West showed up with his notebook full of truth.  Before Eve knew what she was.  Before the world spiraled out of control.

The following day Bill and I chopped more wood.  We stacked it.

Bill went hunting while I made a list of more things we would need.

Medical supplies.

Matches.

Water containers.

And so many other things.

Bill came back with two foxes.  We cooked them in the open fireplace at his house and ate a silent meal.

On our third day since moving out of New Eden, Bill and I decided to head back into the city for the provisions we needed.  He added a few items to our list I hadn’t thought about.

We parked in front of the hospital instead of pulling into the underground garage.

There were people going in and out of the hospital, moving things out.  We’d started to set up so many homes before Eve had been taken.  Before she had returned.  Before the Beacon had gone off.  Before she’d contained an entire army in the desert.  Before we returned to NovaTor.

Before she died ten days ago.

This was going to be my life from now on: separated into before and after.

Bill and I climbed out of the car and walked into the hospital.  Two women gave me sad, compassionate looks as they carried boxes outside.

“Avian.”

I turned to see Lin sitting in a chair in the lobby.  It looked like she had been watching everyone as they moved.

“Hi,” I said, trying to manage a smile as she walked over to me.  Bill disappeared down a hall.

“Hey.”

“Have you already finished moving out?” I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets.

She shook her head.  “You know, I grew up here in Los Angeles, among millions of people.  But after everything we’ve been through the last six years, I can’t bring myself to go back out there.  It scares me too much.  I know they’re dead, this time they won’t be coming back.  But I just can’t do it.”

I nodded my head.  It was understandable.

“Which is why I wanted to ask if Tristan and I could move out of the city, with you?” she said with an uncertain look on her face.

This took me by surprise.  “Really?” I asked.  “I mean, it isn’t really the most cheerful place to be right now.”

She nodded her head.  “I understand that,” she replied.  “But, I don’t know, it would be nice to still be near Eve, in some form.  And the lake seems like a good place for…a new beginning.”

I looked to my left as Tristan stepped into the lobby.  He crossed to us and put an arm over Lin’s shoulders.  “I’m guessing she just asked about moving out with you?”

“She did.”

“If it’s an intrusion, that’s totally understandable,” he said.  “I know you’re going to need some time, but, well, we want to be there to support.  I think it could be a good way for some of us to move on with life.  Start our own new society.”

They looked at me expectantly, hope in their faces.

“I’d be happy to have you,” I finally said, trying to smile.

“Really?” Lin asked, a hopeful, appreciative smile spreading on her face.

“Really,” I said, this time actually managing a genuine one.

Lin leapt at me, crushing me in a huge hug.  “We’re all going to be okay,” she said quietly.  “We’ll keep living and moving on.  It’s what Eve would have wanted.”

“Yeah,” I said.  My throat felt tight.

A shrill wail sounded through the lobby and Lin released me.

“Poor Creed,” Lin said as she returned to Tristan’s side.  “No one has been able to calm her down since the funeral.”

“Is she okay?” I asked, my brows furrowing.

“Dr. Sun can’t find anything wrong with her,” Lin said, concern in her eyes.  “She seems perfectly healthy, especially all things considered.  But she’s just upset, all the time.”

I nodded, knowing exactly what was wrong.  She knew Eve was gone too.

“I’m going to go check on her,” I said, taking a step toward the medical wing.  “You two get packed.  We’ll head out in the morning.  Bring clothes, supplies for your house, food to last a while.”

They both nodded and I set off down the hall.

Creed cried and screamed the whole walk to the medical wing.  I stepped in her room and found Dr. Sun and another woman inside, frantically checking her.

“Oh, Avian!” Dr. Sun jumped violently when she saw me, placing her hand over her heart.  “You scared me!”

“Sorry,” I apologized.  “Is Creed okay?”

Dr. Sun gave a heavy sigh.  “Yes, as far as I can tell.  She’s not even colicky, and she’s been taking a bottle on her own.  I don’t know why she’s so upset all the time.”

“May I?” I asked, holding my hands out toward her.

The woman who’d been frantically bouncing her up and down quickly handed her over.

Creed furiously kicked her tiny legs and arms for a moment, giving uncomfortable grunts.  But I placed my hand on her cheek and guided her head to my chest, softly rocking back and forth.  I wrapped a blanket over her back and tucked it around her sides.

It took her a moment, but she slowly calmed, and a minute later, her eyes slid closed and she started breathing evenly.

Dr. Sun smiled and shook her head.  “Amazing,” she said.  “She’s been screaming for three days straight, and you get her to calm down instantly.  Poor thing must be exhausted.  She’s slept very little.”

I swayed side to side slowly, letting my lips rest against the top of her head.  Holding her, it brought a stillness to my heart I hadn’t felt since before the Nova went off.

“Avian,” Dr. Sun said, a question in her voice.  “We have not found a family for Creed yet.  I know you’ve suffered a terrible loss, but…would you consider…?”

She knew what she was asking but didn’t quite have the guts to finish asking it.  It was a heavy question, one that didn’t ask for a light answer.

“Yes,” I said, after only a moment’s hesitation.  “I’ll do it.”

I’d only occasionally entertained thoughts of being a father before.  Yes, I was twenty-six now and that was indeed an appropriate age to become a father, but I was raised in a very traditional family who had done things in the traditional order.  Becoming a father was something that would come after the wife and other things did.

I’d gotten close.

But I’d lost the person I loved more than breathing and that was going to leave a very large gaping hole in my soul.  But holding Creed, breathing in her faint baby scent, feeling her tiny cybernetic infused heart beat against my chest, that repaired the hole just a little bit.

I wasn’t quite ready to join the others for dinner that night.  Instead, I ate it in my room while Creed slept in the portable crib at my side.  I looked up when the door was pushed open.

“May I come in?” Gabriel asked, hesitating in the doorway.

“Of course,” I said, setting my plate aside.

Creed gave a soft coo, turned her head to the other side, and went back to sleep.

“I’m really glad to hear you’re adopting the child,” Gabriel said, sitting on my bed.  “It seems fitting.”

I just nodded, brushing crumbs off my hands.  “How is the rehoming continuing?”

“Well,” he said.  “About sixty percent of the residents have been moved into new homes.  We’re moving forward with the regulation store.  Terriff is getting set up for planting next week.”  It was impressive Terriff was still alive.  He was Gabriel’s father-in-law, mute, half blind, but a master gardener.

“It has started to get warmer,” I mused.  We would need gardening equipment and seeds outside the city.  We would need to start planting our own garden soon.

Gabriel sighed, leaning back on his forearms.  “I will admit, I’m not exactly looking forward to setting up the new garden.  Do you remember how much work it was the first time?”

I chuckled and nodded.  “It took us over a month just to get the fence up.  It had taken us weeks to till the ground by hand.”

Gabriel laughed too, his chest bouncing up and down.  “Do you remember how angry Eve would get every night when we had to take a few hours to sleep?”

This drew a smile from me as I recalled.  “She would have stayed up all night, every night, if we would have let her.  She was a stubborn, determined little thing, wasn’t she?  Right from the beginning.”

“That she was,” Gabriel said.  His eyes rose to the ceiling and his stance relaxed further.  “I still can’t quite believe she’s gone.  I never thought that would be possible.  To be honest, I often wondered if she’d live forever, considering what her insides were made of.”

That was something I had pondered as well.  Now we’d never know.

“Have we gotten any more reports from the outside?” I asked, needing to change the subject.

Gabriel sat forward, rubbing his hands together.  “Our teams got out as far as Chicago, not that there is anything left of the city, before the radios lost contact.  But as far as they’ve seen, they’re all dead.”

“Have they found any survivors?” I asked.

Gabriel shook his head, pressing his lips together into a thin line and they disappeared into his thick beard.  “None.”

“We probably are the last human colony out there,” I said, leaning forward as well.  “Aren’t we?”

Gabriel stood.  “Impossible to tell, at least any time soon.  But it seems likely.”

I nodded, my eyes falling to Creed’s sleeping form in the crib.

Gabriel crossed to the door and hesitated with his hand on the knob.  “Don’t be surprised if more people end up wanting to move out of the city with you.  Even with all it stood for, New Eden holds a lot of bad memories for quite a few people.  A fresh start is an appealing interest for a lot of people.”

“What about you, Gabriel?” I asked.  “Will you be leaving the city?”

“Not any time soon.  For now, I’m needed here.”

We did still have our duties.  Even when the apocalypse was over.

THE END AND BEGINNING

PART ELEVEN

--WEST--

The fog was starting to burn off by the time I got out of the shower.  The power wasn’t running in our building yet, but the water was.  Even if it was freezing cold.  I dressed silently so I wouldn’t wake Vee.  She slept peacefully, buried under a mountain of blankets.

I left Vee a note and walked the seven blocks back to the hospital.  I entered through the front doors and listened for any signs of life.  It was dead silent.

Figuring the only place I might find anyone awake was the dining area, I headed in that direction.

The area was completely devoid of life, except for one figure.

He sat at a table, his arms crossed on it, his eyes pressed into them.  He looked exhausted, beaten.

“Avian,” I said.

His head jerked up and he looked at me with bloodshot eyes.  “Hey,” he said.

I pulled out one of the seats at the table and dropped into it.  I was still limping pretty bad from the damage done the day the Nova went off.

“I hear you have a daughter now,” I said, raising an eyebrow at him.

A small smile pulled at the corner of Avian’s mouth.  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes.  “Leah offered to watch her for a while so I could get some food gathered for the next few days.”

“So it’s true,” I said, feeling my chest tighten.  “You’re leaving New Eden permanently.”

Avian met my eyes.  There was weight behind them, tired and broken.  “I can’t stay here.”

I nodded.

A long moment stretched between us, filled with silence and history.

“I want you to know that I’m glad you and Eve smoothed things out before…” he stumbled on his words.  I had yet to hear him vocalize that Eve was dead.  “She hated how things got between the two of you.  And I’m sorry for how I was back then.”

“Hey,” I said, looking away uncomfortably.  “It doesn’t really matter now.  It’s in the past.  It’s time to move forward.

“Yeah,” Avian said, emotion creeping into his voice.

Leah, Gabriel’s wife, stepped into the dining hall, bearing a fussy Creed.

“I think she’s tired,” Leah said, handing the baby off to Avian.  She was wrapped in a fuzzy blanket and wearing a bright red jacket.  It was so tiny I smiled.

“Thanks, Leah,” Avian said with a smile as the plump woman shuffled off.  Avian held Creed cradled in his arms and softly swayed from side to side.

“This is a really brave thing you’re doing,” I said, surprising even myself with my words.  “Deciding to raise a kid by yourself after everything you’ve lost.”

Avian glanced up at me once before looking back down at Creed.  Her eyes fluttered open and closed.  “I think at this point I needed a gain.  She’s a big one.”

The clock on the wall drew Avian’s attention.  “Well,” he said with a sigh.  “It’s time for us to go.”

I nodded and moved out of the way.  Avian started down the hall.  I placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“I’m never going to stop missing her and I’ll never forget her,” I said.  “I promise.”

Moisture rimmed Avian’s eyes when he met mine.  He pressed his lips together into a tight line and gave a small nod.  “Thanks,” he said.

And then I watched him retreat down the hall.

I could feel her slipping away then.  Eve.  Until that point, I hadn’t realized how much of her lingered around Avian at all times.  They really were two pieces of one weird, but puzzle-like person.

With Avian gone, the last traces of Eve would leave with him.

“Goodbye,” I whispered.

And I finally let that last grip I had on Eve, go.

THE BEGINNING AND END

PART TWELVE

--AVIAN--

I tried not to bump Creed as I lifted the bags containing her things into the back of the truck.  She wouldn’t let me put her down ever since Leah handed her back to me so I’d been packing her around everywhere on my chest in a baby carrier someone had scrounged up for me.

In the later morning, I’d gone on a major shopping—or rather looting—spree at a baby store.  Thankfully Victoria had come along and instructed me in all the things I was going to need.

A crib.  Clothes.  Blankets.  Diapers.  Bottles.  So many things.

I didn’t mind the chaotic nature of it all.  It was something that gave me focus.  That kept my hands and my mind busy.  I needed something to work towards, and everything that was before me would provide for an occupied mind.

I finished loading the last of our things into the truck.  Creed and I would be fully stocked for at least two weeks before we would have to return for more supplies.

“Are you about ready?” I asked.  I turned to where Lin and Tristan were loading up their own car.  Tristan managed to slam the trunk closed.  The back seat was fully loaded as well.

“I think so,” Lin said.  She pulled a list from her back pocket and ran over it one more time.

“Think carefully,” I said.  “We’re going to be lucky if we get all the way there before the vehicles die on us.  All fuel is pretty corroded by now.  We may even want to look for some horses until Dr. Beeson’s team gets more solar vehicles up and going.”

Tristan laughed and shook his head.  “Back to the day of the horse and buggy, huh?”

This managed to make me smile as well.

Bill stepped into the garage and tossed a bag in the back of his truck.  He looked over at us, his hands braced on the side of it.  “We ready to head out?”

“Let’s go.”

I led the way.  Creed slept in her car seat in the back, wrapped up in a soft, green blanket.  I rolled past towering buildings, past shops, and megastores.  Past abandoned homes and apartment buildings.

Then there was desert and open skies.  We pointed ourselves towards the mountains and the trees that weren’t quite as majestic as I would have liked them to be.

The canyon was comforting as we drove through it.  I could feel something still inside of me.  This felt like the fresh start, today.  The day that I felt like somehow, life was going to move on.  We would not be smothered out.  We would build a future.

And in that future, I would make sure that everyone knew Eve’s name and what she had done for the human race.

I turned off the narrow highway and onto the small winding road.  The trees grew a little thicker and a bit taller.  The sun flashed in and out of view from behind them.  I looked down at the dash, at the temperature reading.  Sixty-one degrees.  It was then that I realized it was the first day of March.

Things like temperature and months and days were going to start mattering again.

I wondered what day of the week this might be.

A Saturday, I decided.  Today seemed like it should be a Saturday.  We’d work hard at moving into our homes today, and tomorrow we would kick back and relax and try to enjoy each other’s company.

The sun gleamed blindingly on the lake up ahead of us.  I held my hand up to block out the light.  I felt the anticipation of coming home.

Home.

The light grew more intense the closer we came to the lake.  We drove past the gas station and the diner and by this point I could hardly see anything, the reflection off the water was so intense.

So I was only twenty feet away when the figure in the middle of the road came into view.  I slammed on my brakes.  Instantly, I could smell rubber burning the pavement.

The figure took a few steps toward the truck.  I could see dirt falling to the ground, but the light behind them was still too bright to make out a face.

I opened the door and stepped out.

My heart expanded to the size of my body and my emotions exploded.

“Think you could have buried me any deeper?”

EPILOGE

SIX MONTHS LATER

A shot rings out and I look up from the row of potatoes I’m tending.  I wait sixty seconds and see Avian walk out of the trees with a fox in hand.  He holds it up and smiles.

I smile back before returning to the potatoes.

“No, no, no,” I chide Creed.  I lunge forward and pull the clump of weeds and dirt she is trying to put into her mouth from her hands.  I grab one of the many baby toys in the basket beside her and give her that instead.  “Better keep that stuff out of your mouth or it’s back into the cage for you.”

It’s not really a cage, but that’s what the play pen looks like to me.

I’d much rather have her down here, experiencing things with me.

Just not eating the dirt.

“Are we trying to get extra minerals again?” Avian asks playfully.  He drops the fox and his rifle in the grass a safe distance away and bends down to scoop Creed into his arms.  He holds her high above his head, and for a moment it looks like she’s trying to fly as she flaps her arms happily.

I watch it almost as if in slow motion.   A drop of drool escapes her mouth and hits Avian square in the forehead.  Avian makes a noise of playful disgust and wipes it away.

“I think that means ‘I love daddy’ in baby-non-talk,” I tease him as I pull up another weed.

“I’ll take what I can get.”  He sets Creed down on her blanket again.  He crosses to me and presses a kiss to my forehead.  “It’s better than her trying to gnaw my finger off again.”

“I wish that tooth would just pop through,” I say, looking back over at her.  “She’s been miserable.”

“At least she has the crawling to distract her,” he laughs.  She’s pulled herself forward onto her stomach and is trying to army crawl back to the clods of dirt and weeds.

“Have either of you seen Tristan?” Lin calls from the porch of her home.  She runs a hand over her slightly rounded belly.  I turn to look at her just as her three students dart outside and run toward their homes.

“He’s still out hunting,” Avian responds, blocking the sun from his eyes with his hand.  “Bill’s out there too.”

Lin nods and walks back inside.

“I’m going to go take care of this.  Come inside soon?”  Avian places a hand on my cheek and stares at me intently.

“Of course,” I say, smiling at him.

He returns it, and pulls himself away.  He picks up the fox and his rifle, and makes his way to the back of our house.

It is still so hard for him to walk away each time.

Understandable, when he had to bury me once before.

I recall the absolute confusion I felt when I woke in the dark.  I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.  Panic had started to set in.  It had probably taken me over an hour to dig my way out of that grave.

My cybernetic lungs had never been tested to that extreme.

I owed my life to my identical twin sister.  If we didn’t have the same DNA, I would have stayed dead.

At a time when Avian was out of the room, Vee had cut my hand as well as her own.  She’d shared blood with me, attempting to put her TorBane into my system.  Because every bit of the TorBane in my body had been destroyed when the Nova went off.  If she’d done this to any other human being, she probably would have slowly turned them into a Bane.  But because we shared the same DNA, because TorBane didn’t know the difference between her body and mine, it stayed under control and acted as it did in her body.  It sought out injury and went to work.

But because it had to start with such a large amount of injury, it took days.

Vee had watched me for seven days, and had to assume that it wasn’t going to work.

So for five days, I had lain in the ground.

Until my eyes shot open, only to meet darkness.

It had taken me a few days to recover.  I was weak for a while.  I was disoriented and confused.  Avian had immediately taken me back to the hospital to undergo scans.

Everything was exactly as it had been before.

If I hadn’t found my sister at NovaTor, I would have stayed dead.  Dr. Evans once said that he did not think TorBane could bring someone back from the dead, but he was wrong.

As soon as Avian was convinced that I was, indeed, still alive, and as soon as he saw I was just fine, he brought me home.

Home.

This place fits the word.

I look up from the garden and scan the area.

What had once been a cemetery with a single, now empty, grave, is now an overflowing garden.  It had been a lot of work in the beginning.  It had taken every spare hand to coax the plants out of the ground toward the sunlight.  But it would feed our little colony with no trouble.

Others followed us out to our new home, called Resilience.  Wix and Victoria—who is pregnant again, nearly due with her second child.  Tuck joined our ranks.  And so did half a dozen others.  We are fifteen members strong.

But most everyone has stayed in the city, ready to have life return to the way it was before the Evolution.  Royce works with Dr. Beeson’s team to rebuild our technology, with a strong lesson learned to not try to play God.  They have been building a fleet of solar vehicles, and are currently working on getting electricity restored to our little community.

Royce and I finally got to talk about my father.  I felt like I knew him now.  I know how he did love my mother.  I know how much he loved his work.  I know that he had a passion for running and archery.  I know that he was stubborn and proud.  He’s long gone but I have a better understanding of who I was and who I am.

I know who Rider is, but Royce will always feel like my father.

People have been given jobs in New Eden.  They run a fully operating store.  Gabriel continues to develop a system of order in New Eden.  He has taken on the role formerly known as mayor.  The thought is funny to me.

West and Vee remain in the city as well.  For now.  Dr. Beeson had slowly been deprogramming her emotional blockers.  Very slowly.  Baby steps, smaller than I’d taken.  Every adjustment has been a challenge, but West is there for her every step of the way.  He finally has what I’d never been able to give him.  Trust.  Need.  It was obvious that it had been them that were supposed to be together all along.  I wouldn’t call them a couple just yet, but they’re slowly moving towards that.

And five days after I returned from the land of death, Avian and I were married.  While I understood the commitment, the ceremony hadn’t held the same meaning for me that it did for Avian.  I’d already made the choice to be with him forever, saying the words in front of everyone didn’t make it any different for me.  But I could tell it meant a lot to Avian.  He was glowing with love and pride as he held my hands before everyone.  Well, I had probably glowed too.  I’d never been so happy.

Now we have a family.  Me, Avian, and our daughter Creed.  I never imagined that for my future.

But this is indeed the future.  One that is going to stretch on before us for a long time.

It will take us generations to get back on our feet.  I won’t see humanity restored to its former glory.  But who is to say that the way things were run before was the full glory?  Maybe there is a brighter, better future ahead of us.  There has to be value in learning from the biggest mistake in human history.

“We’d better get inside for some lunch,” I say, dusting my hands off and standing.  I am about to pick Creed up when something from the trees draws my eye.

I pull the handgun from my belt on instinct and level it before me.  A figure steps from the trees.

“Hold it right there!” I bellow.

The person holds their hands up to show they are unarmed, but takes a step forward so I can have a clear view of his face.

“Tom?”

He chuckles, hints of a smile barely showing through his wild beard.  He walks forward, savage and dirty looking.

“Imagine my surprise when I was observing a Bane sweep in Charlotte and they all suddenly collapsed to the ground.  Not a wink of life left in them.”

A smile crosses my lips and I lower my firearm.

“And then I find this sweep isn’t the only one.  Every one of the Bane I come across is dead.”  He stops fifteen feet in front of me.  He is still dressed in camouflage clothing.  He is carrying a massive hiking pack on his back.  He looks exactly like he did when he first found me after I escaped the Underground.  When he told me about the sweeps.

“I figured now I really was alone,” he says, his eyes growing dark for a moment.  “No more humans, no more Bane even.  And then I remember this girl with a shaved head saying there is a colony of humans in Los Angeles.  So I came looking for you.”

“Took you long enough to get here,” I taunt him.

“It’s a long walk,” he chuckles.  “I went looking for you in the city, they sent me out this way.”

I bend down and pick Creed up, holding her on my hip.  She grips the front of my shirt in her hand.  It immediately goes into her mouth.

“Welcome to Resilience,” I say.  “Come on in.”

Creed coos and tries to talk to Tom over my shoulder as we walk back home.  No one would ever guess she isn’t just like any other baby.  No one would know that her heart is thirty-five percent cybernetic, or that her lungs are forty-one.

No one will ever be able to tell she’s different.

Tom follows me inside the home Avian and I call ours.  Soft light comes in through the windows.  We don’t have electricity out here yet.  But we’ve returned to Eden.  To the place where we are safe.  Where we are a family, all of us.  Where we will band together and die for one another if we have to.

We will continue to rise and to fight for what we want and deserve, knowing there will be endless tomorrows.  And we will never take advantage of that fact.

I am Eve, and I’ve finally fulfilled my creed to the future.

Keary Taylor grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now resides on a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two young children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night.

She is the author of THE EDEN TRILOGY, the FALL OF ANGELS series, THE MCCAIN SAGA, and WHAT I DIDN'T SAY.

In 2009, after being rejected by over 100 literary agents, Keary decided to give self-publishing a try. Since that side of the industry had yet to really blossom, Keary had a lot of learning to do since she didn't know anyone else who was self-publishing and made a lot of mistakes in the beginning. But she continued to better her work and her means of publishing and it paid off in a big way. In 2011, she was listed in The Wall Street Journal as a “Self-Published Bestseller;” every one of her books has made it into a top 100 category, and her books have had over three-quarters of a million downloads. She now makes a very good living continuing to self-publish.

Table of Contents

- THE RAID
- THE BANE
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- Chapter Thirty-Six
- Chapter Thirty-Seven
- Chapter Thirty-Eight
- Chapter Thirty-Nine
- Chapter Forty
- Chapter Forty-One
- THE HUMAN
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Eighteen
- THE ASHES
- THE EVE
- Prologue
- Part One
- Part Two
- Part Three
- Part Four
- Part Five
- Part Six
- Part Seven
- Part Eight
- Part Nine
- Part Ten
- Part Eleven
- Part Twelve
- Epilogue
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR