by Keary Taylor
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 cyberneti
c 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 hi
m.”
“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.