The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) (2 page)

But there was the breath of the truth begging to fill my lungs.  If I closed my eyes, I swore I could almost picture my room at NovaTor.  I could almost imagine Dr. Evans’ and Dr. Beeson’s younger faces.  I could almost reach out and touch my sister.

I had a sister.
  A sister I had no doubt was still alive.  She was out there somewhere.

I had family.  Blood family.

I recalled what I’d started to recover while at the Underground.  I had seen myself through a window.  West was reading to her, an arm draped over her shoulders.  He smiled as he looked over at her.  Her eyes lit up when she looked back.

And there was the conversation I’d had with her when we were transferred to Dr. Beeson’s care.  My sister liked West.  I had hated him back then.  It wasn’t a true hate, but it was a resentment. 

Just before I’d taken off to the desert, West had commented on how the truth about my identity explained so much about us now.  And it did.  Even as children we had fought.  I hadn’t liked or trusted him and he would lose his patience with me quickly.

It had been my sister West had pinned after for those five years we had been separated.  It was her in fact that he had grown up with, cared for, plotted escape for.

Not me.

I heaved a deep sigh, feeling something loosen around my heart.

West and I had, in fact, had something.  Something fast and hot and consuming.  It was positive and negative at the same time.  But in the end, it would have been something that would have destroyed us both if I had chosen him.

And now I had little doubt West could move on.

Because West was West and I knew he would do everything in his power to find my sister.

And I would help him.

The sun rose on the horizon.  Almost as if he couldn’t stand to wait another moment, Dr. Evans crossed to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.  I looked down at his mechanical fingers, both repulsed and fascinated by them.  I closed my eyes for another moment, took a deep breath, and finally rose to my feet.

I looked over the masses.  They circled around me, all with their eyes firmly fixed on my form.  There were so many bodies I couldn’t see any ground beneath them.  Off in the distance, I could see the mountains that separated us from New Eden.

There were so many Bane here gathered around me, all called by the Underground’s beacon.  There were probably over a million of them here, but there were still
billions
out there.

Are you ready to save this planet, Eve Two?
  Dr. Evans had asked me that impossible question.  I couldn’t answer it though until I understood who I was.  So he told me the truth.  All of it.

“How?” I asked, finally.

He opened up his old, tattered notebook to the last few pages.  The pages with the device Avian, West, and I had mistaken for an electromagnetic pulse.

“When you were abducted from NovaTor, they put what is essentially a kill switch in you.  A damn strong one,” he said, his voice hard and angry.  “You only had to get within fifty yards of the latest generation of TorBane and the signal you were emitting killed it off.  Completely destroyed.”

“Is that why I can control them?” I asked, my eyes turning out over the Bane that surrounded us.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “As soon as I realized what was going on I disabled it.  Or I thought I had.  Apparently the line wasn’t completely cut off.  You can still connect with TorBane.  You are still emitting a signal that they understand.  That’s why this,” he said, waving his hand around, “is possible.”

“Okay,” I said, shaking my head.  He was starting to get scientific and it was all about to go over my head completely.

“Do you not see?” he asked, the excitement growing in his voice.  “If we can turn that kill switch back on and amplify it…?”

“How is that any better than the Pulse though?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I looked at him.  “We can only reach so far with an amplifier.”

A wicked grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.  “You mustn’t be afraid to think a little bigger.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tucking the notebook under his mechanical arm, Dr. Evans crouched.  He drew a picture in the dirt with his finger.  It looked like a square with four skinny fingers extending from the sides.  Attached to those, he drew rectangular shapes.

“Am I supposed to know what those are?” I asked, my voice growing impatient.

“Satellites,” he said, looking up at me with a grin on his face.  “There are hundreds of them still up there floating above the Earth.  We send the signal up to those satellites, your kill-all signal, they bounce off each other, get amplified stronger than they were transmitted, and reflect the signal back to Earth.”

“Wiping out the Bane,” I breathed as I grasped his plan.

“Worldwide.”

There should have been unbearable relief or excitement that built up inside of me at his words.  He was claiming we could kill off the Bane, on all continents.  But too much had gone wrong in my life, the world seemed too far gone. 

I was simply filled with doubt.

“And how do we send the signal from me to those satellites?” I asked.

He grabbed the notebook again, pulling the pages open.  He drummed his fingers on one of the drawings.  “The design is almost complete,” he said.  “I ran out of time before I could finish drawing it up, but the rest is up here,” he tapped the side of his head.  “We just have to build the transmitter.  And if Erik Beeson is still alive, it won’t take long.”

“There’s also a man named Royce,” I said, looking back in the direction of New Eden.  “He was in weapons development for the government before we ended the world.  He’ll be able to help you.  He and Dr. Beeson were the ones that designed the Pulse.”

Dr. Evans’ eyes grew darker.  “Not that I have any trust for any former employees of the government, but we have to work with what we’ve got these days.  We need to get back home so we can get to work.”

I looked out over the Bane.  “I don’t see how that is going to happen any time soon.”

“You just told me how you commanded hundreds of thousands of them to jump off a bridge into the ocean,” he said, placing his hands on my shoulders.  “You really cannot think of a way to take care of them?”

I furrowed my brow at him before glancing out at the masses again.  Water was their greatest weakness, the only one I had ever exploited.  There was certainly none of that out here.

I thought of ways I’d killed them off before, aside from bullets and the Pulse.

You mustn’t be afraid to think a little bigger.

“You will leave this place,” I called over the masses.  Very few of them would actually be able to hear me, if they even processed sound, but I knew they would understand my nonverbal commands.  “You may head any direction but west.  Seek out others like yourselves.  And then kill them.”

Every one of the Bane around me stood a bit straighter and I heard feet shuffle as their legs snapped together.  A deadly army who would heed my every command. 

“You will never touch another human again,” I said, pushing my thoughts out to them.  I imagined the signal that poured from my body, feeding into every one of them.  “You may not even look at one.  But if they share your technology, you will destroy them.”

I stared out over the masses.  I noticed individuals as I observed them.  A boy my age with shaggy blond hair.  A naked older woman with wrinkly skin.  There were hundreds of children that were no longer children.  There were endless mechanical components mixed in with them, but still, the evidence that they’d once been human was there.  At one point, that older woman had been someone like Gabriel’s wife, Leah.  They’d been someone like Avian, or Tuck, or Lin.

Something pulled at the back of my heart.  I could end the existence of over a million former human’s right this very moment.  Had they been normal, flesh and blood, it would be genocide.

I hadn’t realized how long I’d stood there frozen until I felt a firm hand on my shoulder.  I looked up to Dr. Evans brown eyes.

How do you live with yourself?

“I don’t plan to much longer.”

I hadn’t realized I’d verbalized the question until he responded.

I wanted to hate this man for ending billions of lives.  But I couldn’t ignore the fact that if it wasn’t for him, I would have died nearly nineteen years ago.

“Go,” I breathed.

My army did not need any more command than that.

They broke into perfect formations.  Rows of tens of thousands formed.  Some marched north.  Many marched south.  Most headed east.

Their footsteps thundered with deafening volume as they walked in perfectly matched steps.  Massive clouds of dust rose into the air.

It took me a few minutes to realize Dr. Evans was no longer standing at my side.

“Dr. Evans!” I shouted, searching the masses around me.  It would take at least an hour for every one of the million Bane surrounding me to be able to move out, but they had all shifted, standing in formation.

Finally, I spotted his form ten yards from me.  He stood on the edge of a squad, eyes forward, awaiting his turn to march forward.

“Dr. Evans, you cannot go with them,” I said, my tone impatient as I forced my way toward him.  He started blinking as if to clear his head as I grabbed his mechanical arm and started dragging him back to my cleared circle in the middle of the army.

“I…” his voice broke off.  “I…am not…immune.”  His voice cut out and he attempted to step toward the army once again.  I pulled him back.  “Immune to your commands…it seems.”

“I suppose that is a good thing,” I said.  I kept a strong hand on his shoulder as I looked back out over the masses.  Another wave of Bane marched east.  They didn’t get far before their forms disappeared into the clouds of dust.  “But what if my command doesn’t last?  Who’s to say they won’t forget what I told them to do when they get more than a mile away?”

“The Bane…” his voice cut out again and he took a stumbling step forward as he fought my command.  “Think like a…computer.  You give it a command and it doesn’t stop running it until you tell it to start running another.”

“You think they can be reprogrammed that easily?” I asked.  “Then why haven’t we been doing this all along?  Telling them to rip each other to pieces and leave us alone?”

“Yes,” he said, taking deep breaths even though he didn’t need to breathe anymore.  He rested what would be his palms against what would be his knees to keep himself from walking away.  “The Bane’s accidental program was to spread the infection.  But that couldn’t be changed by anything other than something compatible with TorBane.  Something that can transmit.”

“Like me,” I said, hints of a sigh in my voice.  I watched as another wave of Bane moved out.

“Exactly.  You are the only being capable of bringing about any sort of change,” Dr. Evans said as he stood finally.  “You, Eve, are the last hope this planet has.  You will be the savior of this world.”

I actually rolled my eyes. 

Dr. Evans must have seen it, because he brought the conversation back to where it had started.  “My point is that your command should last.  They won’t be able to forget it.  Until you tell them something different.”

Dr. Evans suddenly took two jerky steps forward again.  I placed a firm hand around his upper arm and pulled him back once again.  “Stay put.”

He instantly locked still.

“I could make you do anything, couldn’t I?” I said, giving him a sidelong glance.

“That’s a damn powerful influence you have,” he said.  His eyes were set hard on me, but I saw the twitch of a smile in the corner of his lips.

“You’re essentially one of them,” I said as we went back to watching the army disband.  “If your plan really works, if we can send my signal worldwide, what’s to save you?”

“Nothing,” Dr. Evans answered with a gritty voice.  He was quiet for a moment as he observed the masses.  Over half of them had marched out by now.  His shoulders were set hard.  For a moment, he almost looked human.  Except for the lack of flesh.  “I nearly ended the world; I will go with them when the time comes.”

I pressed my lips together and didn’t say anything.  Instead, I just watched as the Bane continued to march out.

In the end, it took over two hours for the Bane to leave the desert.  I was too afraid to turn my back and leave until I could see that every one of them had moved away from the city.

But finally the dust settled down and the horizon was once again empty.

We turned and headed back west.  After a while we passed the all-terrain vehicle that had run out of gas on me and died.

Finally, when we were about half a mile from the entrance of the canyon that led into the city, I spotted two vehicles waiting for me.

Royce, Bill, and Tristan were all there.  And West. 

There was Avian. 

My face broke into a huge grin as I started jogging forward, at the same time Avian and Royce did.

But then guns were raised.  Tristan fired off a shot that thankfully missed Dr. Evans by an inch.

I waved my arms, clambering in front of him, blocking their shots with my body.

“Wait!” I yelled as the group raced toward me, guns drawn.  “Wait, he’s not going to hurt anyone!”

Avian, Tristan, and Royce slowed not twenty yards from us.  But my eyes locked with West’s as he jogged the slowest, still recovering from his surgery and Avian’s beating.

As he joined the others, his face washed stark white.

“Grandpa?” he breathed.

“Hello, West.”

“Holy shi…” Royce said, actually stumbling back in fear.  His eyes grew wide and disbelieving.

“It talks?!” Bill bellowed, keeping his rifle leveled in our direction.

“He’s safe!” I said again, holding my hands up in front of him.  “Don’t shoot!”

“You’d better explain real fast,” Royce growled, recovering from his shock.  “It’s taking everything I’ve got not to shoot this thing down.”

“This here kept TorBane out of my head,” Dr. Evans shouted for himself, indicating his helmet.  “I’ve kept my humanity even though the rest of me Evolved.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” West said, his voice shaky.  There was no color in his bruised face.  “You Evolved in the beginning.  The guys who took me away, they said you were gone!”