by Keary Taylor
“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, s
he 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 slowl
y 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.”