by Keary Taylor
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 pa
in 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.