by Keary Taylor
“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 wou
ld 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.”
“Have
n’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.