by Keary Taylor
“If you have four rooms,” West jumped in, not looking at Avian or I. I swallowed hard, unsure of how I felt.
A small smile crossed Royce’s face. “That one is available as well,” he said as he pointed at the door across from the other three. “Will you remember how to get back to the dining room in an hour for dinner?”
We each nodded our heads and Royce left our sides.
Before I would have to face any of the awkwardness between the two of them I let myself into one of the rooms and closed the door behind me.
The room felt so sterile, just like the rest of this relic of a hospital. The walls were all white, the bed made up with white sheets, white pillows. Even the wooden drawers and cupboards felt too clean and pristine.
I longed for my tent back in Eden.
I opened a door, finding what must have been a “restroom”. The hint of a smile tugged on my face as I saw the shower, remembering the one real one I had had in the cabin I had found.
A knock on the door startled me. “Who is it?” I called through the thick wood.
“I’ve brought you some things,” a female voice called from behind the door.
Hesitantly, I opened it. The girl behind it looked close to my age. Her eyes were narrow and dark, her hair jet black and perfectly straight.
“My name is Lin,” she said, giving me a smile. Her eyes seemed to almost disappear when she did so. “I brought you a few things.”
I then noticed the cart she was wheeling. She grabbed a gray colored blanket, a few items of clothing, and a few bottles of unknown liquid.
“What are these?” I asked as I opened the lids and took a wiff. They smelled nice.
“To wash your hair?” she said, her face looking slightly confused. The smallest of a chuckle escaped her lips.
“Thank you,” I said as I put all my new things under my arm. There was something about this girl I liked. She seemed… warm.
“If you need anything else, any help, I’m just a few doors down,” she said as she pointed down the hall. “My door is the one with the white lily painted on it.”
“Thank you, Lin,” I said again. She gave me another smile and crossed the hall to knock on another door.
I went back into the bathroom and after a few minutes figured out how to get the hot water to flow. My clothes felt crusted as I pealed them off, setting them and my pack on the floor.
A sigh escaped my throat as the hot water poured over my beat and scarred body. My muscles relaxed and even my insides felt cleaner as I breathed in the steam. The water ran brown for a while, the desert we had survived going down the polished silver drain.
I used the products Lin had given me on my hair. I ended up lathering it all over my entire body it smelled so nice. My hair felt so smooth after it all washed out.
I stood with my hands braced against the shower wall, the water cascading over my head. I didn’t want to go back out there, to where I knew people didn’t trust me. Facing Avian and West felt like too much to deal with right now. And what was going to happen now? It was all to exhausting to think about.
After almost an hour, I climbed out of the shower, dried off with the towel Lin had given me, and pulled on the stark green clothes. Grabbing the gray blanket, I curled up in my new bed.
I had finally hit my limit. Just a few seconds later I was out.
THIRTY-TWO
The ceiling above my head confused me when I first woke. Everything that had happened in the last day, in the last week, came rushing up at me with exhausting force. Dim lights glowed along the floor as I slid my feet off the edge of the bed. I walked to the now open window and looked out.
How strange, to live in this concrete jungle. Small patches of green cropped up but it was being choked out by the gray concrete, steel, and glass. And everywhere I could see eyes. How could they stand it, being in the middle of them all, all the time? How had they kept them out?
The lights glowed brightly overhead as I walked out into the empty hall. My steps echoed as I descended the stairs. I had to take a deep breath as I stood behind the steel door, gathering courage to go out into the unknown. Why was it so simple to go on a raid into the city, knowing I might not come back, and yet walking out among those strangers, among other humans, was so hard and terrifying?
I traced my way back to the infirmary, past the dining hall and kitchen, and out into the bustling lobby. I stood at the entrance of the hall for a while, watching as they moved around.
In a way, they were all like soldiers. They all had their orders, a task to execute. Some of them entered what I assumed was some kind of information into black boxes, a few cleaned the area, other’s brought in sheets of paper. The guard seemed to switch as a handful of armed men walked out those glass front doors. I wondered where I would fit into this hive.
I saw no signs of Avian, West, or Tuck and I felt awkward for a while, unsure of what to do with myself or where to go. And I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t know where any of my weapons had gone to.
“Eve,” a familiar voice called from behind me. As I turned, I recognized Dr. Beeson. His smile was bright as he approached me, his eyes always filled with awe. “I was just looking for you. You’re companion, Avian, said you were still resting.”
“I overslept,” I said simply as we stood together.
He gave the slightest of chuckles for a reason I didn’t really understand. “Would you mind chatting with me for a while? I’m dying of curiosity as to what has happened to you in the past almost six years.”
“I suppose,” I agreed. This man didn’t seem like a threat, and even without any weapons I was quite confident I could overpower him if I had to.
We walked to the elevator, a dozen pairs of eyes watching us as we did. He pushed the number seven button and slowly we began to rise again. When it slid open I was almost startled at all the brilliant blue lights that ran through the walls, along the floor, on the ceiling.
“We use a lot of power on this floor. This level has been specially wired to keep up,” he explained.
We walked down the hall a little bit, stopping at a large solid black door. Dr. Beeson entered a code into a number pad and it clicked open.
The room we entered into glowed with the blue lights, heavily contrasted by the darkness of having no windows into the starlit night. Screens glowed from the walls, flashes of information bursting across them.
“This is my office, my lab,” he said as he looked around the room with me. For some reason all the information flashing across his screens seemed familiar, like a language I had forgotten how to speak. “Please, have a seat.”
I sat in one of the two overly comfortable black chairs, sitting on the edge of it, my hands tucked between my knees.
“So I assume you know what happened to you?” he asked, his voice losing its cheeriness. “About the things that were done to you?”
I nodded my head. “I knew that West’s grandfather experimented on me. He placed some kind of chip in my brain but it didn’t just stay a chip. I was observed for years and eventually he used the information he gathered from me to create the infection.”
I stopped there, swallowing the lump in my throat.
Dr. Beeson nodded. “First, let me say that I never agreed with what they were doing to you. I was a young scientist then, working on my development of the capacity of the human mind to receive wireless signals. I was fascinated with the work he was doing on you. But you were just a girl. What Dr. Evans did was wrong.
“But, if we would have been able to control what happened, we would have saved millions of lives.”
“Instead billions were killed,” I said coldly.
“Unforgivable,” he said as his eyes dropped to the ground. “I first tried to remedy what I did by setting you free. I used the wireless capability of the chip in your brain to wipe your memory clean. No girl should have to remember the things you were put through. I assume it worked?”
“I have dreams sometimes,” I said quietly,
my eyes falling to my hands. “How much of it is purely nightmare and how much of it is something real, I don’t know.”
“The brain is a complex thing. I’m sorry I couldn’t spare you from everything.”
“Will those memories ever be recovered?” I asked.
“No,” he said simply. “They were permanently wiped, almost as if that part of your brain was removed. Would you really want to remember the rest of it though?”
I had to think about it for a while. “No.”
“There were only five of us that escaped that facility. Everyone else Fell so quickly. It’s a miracle that I made it out. That was when I first realized that you couldn’t be infected. I tasked one of the other men who made it out to take you out into the country and set you free. I never saw that man again.”
“Avian found me,” I filled in the empty blanks of the past. “Nearly naked out in the forest, covered in blood, but with not a scratch on me. They knew something was different about me. They just didn’t know what. I only found out a few months ago.”
“Tell me what you’re able to do,” he said, excitement building in his eyes again. “Has the programming evolved more? The cybernetics?”
I sat forward again, rubbing my hand over the thin scar that had already formed on the back of my hand from when I had punched a hole through the metal door at the Air Force base. “I heal quickly,” I started. “I don’t usually feel pain. Electricity is about the only thing I seem to feel. It’s made me pass out before though, pain. My brain still registers it I guess.
“I don’t require as much sleep as normal. I don’t get tired very easily. I don’t need to eat as much as normal people. I’m faster than everyone, stronger than most.”
“Have you ever been up against a Fallen?”
The smile on my face couldn’t be fought back. “More than a few times. I didn’t understand what was happening the first time one tackled me. I thought I was going to change. But I didn’t.”
“Amazing,” he whispered, a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Have you seen any traces of the cybernetic parts that have saturated your system?”
I nodded. “The Fallen had these metal barbs that shocked you. I grabbed some once, it burned away my skin,” I said as I turned my hand over, observing the scars there. “I could see all the gears and wires.”
“That must have been frightening for you,” he said.
“But you know that I’m not supposed to feel fear,” I said quietly as my eyes rose to meet his.
He didn’t say anything for a while as he held my stare. I wondered how he lived with himself, knowing he had helped bring about the end of the world and then survived to see the destruction. I felt sorry for him. “You’re right. You aren’t supposed to feel emotion. It was an anomaly that Dr. Evans chose to ignore, the fact that you were evolving past the programming. You had to be reprogrammed every few years. As you moved beyond it though, your emotions and reactions were so strong. When you got overwhelmed by your emotions a few times, you just blanked out. Just like those Fallen you see outside.”
I swallowed hard, my stomach knotting up. “It still happens.”
“Really?” he said, his eyebrows knitting together as he sat back in his chair.
“But only when I’m around one certain person.”
“And how do you feel about this person?”
“That’s the unanswerable question,” I said quietly.
“Do you have romantic feelings for him? Or maybe an extreme hatred?”
I gave a hollow chuckle. “I think both.”
“It’s one of the men you arrived with, isn’t it?” he said with a sly smile.
I nodded. “I didn’t feel things like this until he showed up at our camp. Something inside of me started waking up when I was with him. I don’t know how to handle it. He makes me feel alive and yet he can anger me so much I almost tried to kill him once. And then I just black out.”
“It’s probably overloading you, or rather the chip. Your brain and the chip can’t work together and it shuts you down in a way. I don’t think you will be a danger to anyone. It’s not like you’re turning into a Fallen, you just kind of… shut off.”
It was a relief to have it so plainly explained to me. And to know I wasn’t going to try and attack anyone. If only the other parts related to it all could be so easily explained.
“Do you know what love is, Eve?” he asked as he leaned in close to me.
I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “Please don’t ask me that question. Everyone wants to know and I don’t have an answer for any of them.”
“There’s something else I need to tell you, Eve,” he said, his voice low and serious again. There was something in the tone of his voice that told me this conversation wasn’t going to be a good one. “I knew your mother.”
At his words, my eyes flew open. My mother.
“She worked at the facility with me, with West’s father and grandfather. She was an incredibly beautiful woman, she looked a lot like you. She had your same blond hair, your same exact nose.
“There’s no easy or polite way to put it,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “Your mother and Dr. Evans had an affair about nineteen years ago. The younger Dr. Evans.”
As I pieced together the things he was telling me, my insides grew cold. My mother and Dr. Evans. An affair. Nineteen years ago. West’s father.
Could also be my father.
My stomach gave a lurch and I barely suppressed the gag that ripped up my throat. Stars formed on the edges of my vision. Dr. Beeson guided my head down between my knees.
“There was another man involved,” Dr. Beeson continued quickly. “I didn’t know him, he didn’t work with us but your mother wasn’t sure who the father really was. But there is a fifty percent chance that Dr. Evans is not your father,” he said as he rubbed circles into my back. It wasn’t comforting. “I’m sorry to be the one who has to tell you this. I just thought that enough secrets have been kept from you, it wasn’t fair that there was one more.”
“He… West…” I gasped. “Could be my… brother.”
“It was very public, that your mother and Dr. Evans had had an affair. His wife found out and basically announced it to the whole building in her rage. Your mother had to come in to work every day, baring the shame of what she had done.”
I continued to take gasping breaths, my head spinning. No, no, it couldn’t be true.
“Your mother had no family, no real friends. Her work was her life. She gave birth at the facility. Dr. Evans delivered the baby himself. Your mother, she didn’t make it. There were complications.
“We weren’t sure what to do with you. There was no family to send you to and we all knew what foster care was like. It was the senior Dr. Evans that decided that you would be raised at the facility. It was as you neared your first birthday that we realized what his real plans were for you all along.”
I wondered if this was what shock felt like. I remembered Avian talking about it once. I wanted to tell Dr. Beeson to stop talking. But I had to know. I had to understand where I had come from.
“The younger Dr. Evans had a paternity test done, to see if he really was the father. His wife had just had a baby around the time of your conception. He’d been left with West almost as soon as he was born. Now he might have two babies on his already busy hands.
“He kept the results to himself. None of us knew if the toddler we were experimenting on was his. Everyone lost a lot of respect for him though, after that. Even if you weren’t his, what he was allowing to be done was wrong in so many ways.”
I gulped down air, willing my vision to focus. My head still spun as I sat up and tried to focus on Dr. Beeson’s face. I was also fighting the urge to vomit.
“We have samples of Dr. Evans DNA. We have managed to recover some things from the old facility,” he said very quietly as he looked intently into my face. “We can easily run a test and prove or disprove Dr. Evans was your father. Would you like me to do that?�
��
I could only look at him for a long time. I would have no doubts if he ran the test. I always craved the truth, especially after all the lies I had uncovered. But what if West really was my brother? Would it be better to not ever really know?
My instincts took over as I nodded my head.
“Alright. Do you think you can walk down the hall with me?” he spoke very slowly. I stood and followed him on shaking legs.
We walked into a small room, filled with beeping equipment and flashing lights. It was the epitome of a lab.
Dr. Beeson fussed at a drawer, pulling out items and snapping on a pair of gloves. “Make a fist,” he instructed. Mindlessly, I obeyed. I didn’t even feel it as he tied a rubber band around my arm and sank the needle into the crease at my elbow. He filled a small vile with my blood. He pulled the needle out and capped the vial.
“We will run this as soon as we can. Hopefully we can get the results back the day after tomorrow,” he said quietly. He watched me closely, always the observer. “I really am sorry to drop this on you.”
“He doesn’t know, does he?” I asked, my eyes fixed on a blinking red light before me.
“No, West doesn’t know about everything that happened,” he almost whispered. “I thought you should know, Eve. I know how complicated emotions can be. I just thought you needed to find out before it became a painful regret.”
“Thank you,” I whispered as I turned back to the door and stumbled out. The next thing I knew, the elevator doors were sliding open and I slumped against the wall after pressing the number two button. It dinged and I walked emptily back towards my room.
THIRTY-THREE
For an entire day I shut myself off. I stared at the wall through the dark, not allowing myself to feel anything, not thinking anything. I was empty.
It was easier to feel hollow.
I think Avian and West and maybe even Lin knocked on my door. I just locked them out with no intention of letting any of them in. I just couldn’t deal with them right now.
But eventually my survival instinct kicked in. I felt dried up and starved. I hadn’t eaten since we had left the first group of Eden in the national forest.