by Keary Taylor
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 unti
l 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.”