by Keary Taylor
We walked to a large silver rectangle in the wall. The man pressed a button next to it and as it depressed into the wall, it lit up. A few seconds later I jumped, my hands grabbing my hand gun, when the silver wall suddenly opened. I calmed down slightly when Avian and Tuck both stepped inside the box that had opened. The rest of us entered as well and the man pressed another button inside. We started rising.
“It’s called an elevator,” Avian said quietly behind me.
The elevator made a dinging sound and its doors slid open again, revealing a different scene. A hallway stretched out before us, buzzing with the hum of electric devices behind closed doors. More bright lights filled the space.
We walked where the man told us to, stopping at a door midway down the hall. The man knocked, listening.
“Come in,” a voice called.
There were four people inside, gathered around a large desk, looking over some papers. A man with well-trimmed gray hair and a beard straightened. I assumed this was Royce.
“I found them on patrol,” the man behind us said. “They said they found one of our signs and came to take a look.”
“Are there more of you?” the man asked, his gray eyes showing hints of excitement that had given away the rest of them.
Avian nodded his head. “There are sixteen more of us waiting outside the city. The other half of our group is at our old camp. About 800 miles away.”
The man’s eyes widened. “You’ve traveled a long ways to reach us. How was the journey?”
“We made it,” Avian said simply.
“Forgive our unfriendly welcome,” he said as he walked around the table, his arms folded over his chest. “I’m sure you understand the precautions we have to take these days.”
“Of course,” Avian said. I heard the anxiety that was creeping into his voice.
“Come with me please,” Royce said as he stepped around us and out of the room. We followed silently.
Just looking at Royce, one would think he was a leader. His stature was tall and confident. His shoulders were sure, his gait unfaltering. He looked like a man who knew what he was doing, all the time.
Royce led us down the hall and into a room that had no windows and was totally empty of anything other than a leather case. He opened it up as we stepped inside. Others followed us in. I didn’t miss the weapons in their belts, in their pockets, and obviously in their hands. And I was very aware of the fact that they had closed the door behind us.
It looked different than ours but it was unmistakably a CDU. As if on cue, West, Avian, and Tuck adjusted their stances so they were standing just in front of me.
“This shouldn’t hurt gentlemen, and lady,” he said with a tight-lipped smile as he charged it up. The center of it glowed a brilliant blue. “Just a small shock.”
Avian stepped up first, pulling the sleeve of his shirt up and offering his arm. His arm twitched as the device was pressed to his arm. West went next, followed by Tuck.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Royce said, giving them that same tight-lipped, fake looking smile. “My lady.”
The three of them tightened around me. As they did, Royce’s eyes hardened and he stopped in his tracks. “You know all newcomers must be tested. She is no exception.”
“She is,” West said quietly.
“She’s different,” Avian said, trying to keep his voice calm sounding.
As if their words had opened up a book on their faces, Royce’s eyes widened and he took a step back, drawing a handgun out from the belt of his pants. As he did, the rest of the people in the room drew their weapons as well.
“Hold on!” Avian shouted as he backed further into me, holding his hands up toward our captors. “She’s not Fallen! But she has cybernetic parts in her. She’s different from them.”
“They’re all the same!” Royce shouted as he aimed his gun at my head. “She’s a danger being here. My scouts should have shot her before she came within a hundred feet of this building.”
“She can’t be infected!” West shouted at the man. “She was experimented on. My grandfather was Dr. Evans. She was his experiment before the infection was developed.”
“Dr. Evans?” Royce spat out. “That heartless scum bag created the infection. He wouldn’t have bothered with a hybrid. In his quest for savior status he destroyed the world.”
“Yes he did, but I assure you he was my grandfather. My father Fell early on and someone set Eve free after everything happened. She’s human but he did things to her. You can’t test her or it will kill her,” West’s voice sounded pleading.
“They are all the same!” Royce shouted as he thrust his gun in our direction again. “I don’t know how she’s tricked you into thinking differently but it’s a miracle she hasn’t infected you yet.”
At the same time, both Avian and West turned and each took one of my hands.
“She doesn’t carry the infection,” Avian said, his voice serious and low. “She’s been with me for the last five years and she’s never turned against us. She’s done nothing but protect us.”
The door at our backs suddenly opened and a very tanned looking face with jet-black hair popped in. I had to do a double take. I almost wondered if I had seen him before but brushed that off.
“What is all the shouting about?” he asked, his voice sounding slightly alarmed.
“She’s one of them,” Royce said, his voice cold. “They’re claiming she’s different.”
The new man’s eyes jumped to my face and his eyes narrowed at me. “Eve?”
“How do you know my name?” I spoke for the first time since we had been brought in.
“It’s really you,” he breathed as he stepped inside. “You survived.”
“Dr. Beeson?” West asked with uncertainty in his voice.
“You were the one who took over my observation,” I said as the name echoed in my memory from the notebook.
He nodded, his eyes still wide.
“So, you’re saying they’re telling the truth, Erik?” Royce demanded.
“She is different, yes,” he said as his eyes glanced over at Royce. “She had a chip implanted into her brain that enhanced her. She was a preliminary experiment that lead up to the infection. If you use that on her, it will kill her,” he said as he indicated the CDU Royce still had clutched in his hand. “I cannot confirm though what she is capable of.”
“She’s fine,” Avian said through clenched teeth.
“If I turn on you, you can shoot me yourself,” I said to Royce with hard eyes. “I promise you that won’t happen though.”
He looked at me long and hard, distrust written all over his face. I didn’t blame him, I would have been the same way. I thought then, that under less critical circumstances, we might have gotten along very well.
“Remove her weapons from her,” Royce said. “I won’t have you walking around here armed like that.”
I saw West’s eyes flash to my face in momentary panic. I shook my head at him. I didn’t like it either but I also didn’t see any other way to get through this. Their men relieved me of my weapons. When one of them reached for my pack, I grabbed his wrist, shaking my head at him. His eyes grew wide and he withdrew his hand, backing away across the room. I almost smiled.
“You’re sure she’s different, Erik?” Royce asked again, his eyes narrowed.
“Quite,” he said as he opened the door and held it open for everyone.
Royce finally lowered his weapon. As he did, the rest of his men followed suit. “Forgive me if I’m not exactly welcoming,” he said as his face softened, though his eyes were still cold on me. “I’m not so keen on the reliability of a human-cybernetic hybrid I’ve never heard of.”
“I wasn’t so keen on the idea myself when I first found out what I was,” I said back, never loosing eye contact.
Everyone else in the room probably missed it, but my enhanced eyes caught the twitch in his cheek as a smile was fought back.
“Well gentlemen,” Royce said
as he started for the door. “And lady. Welcome to Los Angeles. This is our Sanctuary in the middle of hell on Earth.”
We followed him back out into the hall and Dr. Beeson broke off from the rest of us. “Our offices are on this level, as well as several of our labs,” Royce said as he indicated the doors down this hall. We followed him back where we had come from and reentered the elevator. My stomach felt strange as we started to descend. The door opened to a different level, this one bustling with people, opening up into a big lobby.
“This is our other headquarters,” Royce said as we stepped out and into the busy room. “Everything gets run from this room. All the scheduling for patrol, shifts in the kitchen, maintenance, it’s all made here. Everything is logged in, tracked. We keep a tight schedule but everything runs smoothly.”
And as I looked around, everything he said made sense. Everyone looked like they had a place to be, a job to fulfill. It was then that I noticed the solid steel shutters that covered the front door, all of the windows, and every other opening.
“Keeps out things we don’t want getting in,” Royce said when he noticed me observing them.
“You keep them out during the day, even in the middle of all of this,” I said, my voice impressed.
Royce nodded as we continued to follow him toward the back of the big front area. We entered into another hallway, this one wider and more open than the one upstairs. “Restrooms are right there,” he said, pointing to a pair of wooden doors. I wondered what he meant by “restroom”.
We turned a corner and came into another fairly large room with tables and chairs set up everywhere. Along one wall was some sort of glass case and beyond that I could see the strangest looking kitchen I had ever seen. It was all shiny steel and smooth surfaces.
“Back there’s the kitchen,” Royce said as he pointed in that direction. “Meals are served at nine PM, one AM, and seven AM. Pretty much all of us keep a nocturnal schedule here. Dinner will be served in about two hours,” he said as he glanced at his watch. “Most of us wake up around eight PM, just before the sun starts to go down outside. Bed is around ten AM.”
“Doesn’t this place start to feel like a prison?” I couldn’t help but asking. “You never even see the sun.”
“Our lifestyle isn’t easy,” Royce said as he met my eyes. “But it’s kept over one hundred people alive all this time.”
“There are that many of you?” West asked in amazement.
“For a few years we were gaining five or six new people a year. Then it started becoming fewer and fewer. There’s been no one for the last year. We figured there wasn’t anyone left.”
“We found two more people on our way here,” I said as we walked out of the dining room and back out into the hall. “In the middle of the desert.”
“We look forward to meeting everyone in your group. I’ve never heard of such a large group traveling so far. How did you manage it?”
“We drove,” Avian answered.
“I’m impressed,” he said as he raised his brows. We turned another corner and stopped at a desk where a man in a white jacket sat. He looked up at us with surprise in his eyes as we approached him. “This is Dr. Giles. He’s the head physician here. These people here traveled from back east,” he explained to Dr. Giles. After the introduction, Royce stepped into a side room. I heard another voice floating through the door.
“Congratulations on surviving,” the man with the shiny head said. His eyes were kind behind his glasses as he extended his hand to us. I watched as Avian and Tuck shook his hand, observing closely so I did it just right when it came my turn. The motion felt strange and foreign.
“You’re a real doctor?” Avian asked, longing and awe in his voice.
“Board certified,” he said with a smile. His teeth were astonishingly white. “Well, used to be before there was no more board to pass. There are three other medical doctors here as well.”
The amazement was obvious in Avian’s eyes as he shook his head.
“Avian has been our doctor for the last five years,” I said, feeling an odd sense of pride in him.
“Ah, wonderful,” Dr. Giles said. “Where was your practice before the world Fell?”
“Uh,” Avian stumbled over his words. “I actually never attended medical school. I had two and a half years of medical training when I was in the Army. Since I had the most experience I became the doctor. I learned most of my knowledge through experience.”
“Very good,” Dr. Giles said, something in his eyes changing. It took me a moment to realize what it was. It was the loss of respect. I suddenly didn’t like the doctor half as much. I’d like to see this man treat a bullet wound in the middle of the forest with next to no supplies.
“Do you mind if I take a look around your quarters?” Avian asked, unbothered by the man’s rudeness.
“We have a few open rooms you’re welcome to examine,” he said, his friendly demeanor back. “And so is our surgery room. We have patients in a few rooms so I’ll ask you to keep quiet.”
He led us into a room that was so sterile I hesitated in the doorway with my dusty boots and dirty clothes.
Avian walked into the room alone as the rest of us waited in the doorway. His eyes were alight as he observed the strange bed with the rails on the side of it. He ran his hands over a piece of equipment that stood as tall as him, all kinds of buttons and screens on it. He opened and closed drawers and I could just imagine what he would have done for all of these supplies.
I realized then what the fact that there were four doctors here meant. If we stayed here, moved the rest of Eden into this city, Avian would never have to be tied down because of his medical knowledge again. He would be free to do whatever he wanted. He could go anywhere.
Dr. Giles took us to the surgery room, but only let us look in through a window. As I observed the steel blades that lay out, gleaming in the light as it shone through the window, my breath caught in my throat. I saw the steel table in the middle of the room and my dreams flooded my thoughts.
The sound of the drill and the cool against the back of my shaven head were all I could process.
“Come on,” West’s voice said from somewhere and I felt him take my hand and lead me back out into the hall.
I saw nothing as I stood with my back against the tall desk, holding my arms around me. West stood to the side of me, his arm draped around my shoulders, squeezing me into his side.
Avian finally walked back out into the hall and stopped in his tracks. He looked at me, glanced back in the direction of the surgery room, and his face blanched white. “Eve, I’m so sorry,” he said, his eyes looking panicked.
I just shook my head, my eyes glued to the floor. Avian was suddenly standing right in front of me, his hands on either side of my face. As I looked up into his blue eyes, I felt my insides loosen up. I still felt sick though.
“You shouldn’t be touching her,” Avian said, his voice cold as he looked over at West. “Having something happen here is not going to help Eve’s case.” He spoke quietly enough only the three of us could hear.
West only looked at Avian coldly as he took two steps away from me. All three of us glanced over at Royce who had just stepped out of the room and Dr. Giles who watched us with hesitancy.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” Avian said as he stepped away from me slightly. “Just bad memories for some of us.”
They both gave slight nods, though they still looked at me warily.
“I’ll show you our sleeping quarters,” Royce said, dismissing the awkward moment. He walked back out into the main hall and continued down. As we followed, West slipped his hand into mine. I shook it off, remembering what Avian had said to him. It was too great of a risk, having West send me into overload here. West should have understood that.
We entered another hall that was lined with doors. These ones were different however. They had names written on them, some written in clear, precise letters, others painted in colored fonts that I could hardly read.
“These are the living quarters,” Royce said as we walked past personalized doors. “Of course they were once just normal hospital rooms. We’ve converted them into living space. Each of them has their own restroom. They’re not large but they’re big enough to keep all of your personal effects in and get some sleep.”
“What’s a ‘restroom’,” I whispered to Tuck as we walked.
He gave a slight chuckle and whispered in my ear. My brow furrowed. “If that’s what it is why do they call it a restroom?”
Tuck just chuckled again and shrugged his shoulders.
We came to the end of the hall and opened a door that revealed a set of stairs. As we came out on the next floor up, we discovered another hallway of personalized doors.
“Would you like rooms for this afternoon?” Royce asked as we stopped in the middle of the hallway. “I hope you plan on staying with us. Of course you’re free to leave whenever you like but I would encourage you to stay. We can offer you protection, food, comfort.”
Comfort. I was pretty sure I would be more comfortable out in the woods than I would be in this boxed-up prison.
“We’re not sure what our plans are honestly,” Avian said as he glanced at West, Tuck, and I.
“We weren’t even sure if we’d find anyone alive, or if we were walking into a death trap,” West said.
“I’m sure we could all use some sleep though,” Avian continued. “I know at least I would like to stay for another day, explore your facility more. I’m fascinated by how you’ve managed to thrive in the middle of a city.”
Royce nodded. “Of course. This way.” He led us further down the hall. “You can use these three rooms, they’ve recently been made empty.”
“Three?” I questioned. “There are four of us.”
Royce looked confused for a moment. “I’m sorry, I assumed the two of you would want a room together,” he said as he indicated Avian and I. I then remembered how he had watched as Avian had held my face between his hands, how close our faces had been together.