The Human (The Eden Trilogy) (22 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

The plan was this:

In forty-eight hours the vast majority of New Eden would evacuate the hospital.  They would pack their necessities and head for the harbors and everyone would take off into the water.  Special teams would pack as much food and provisions as possible in those forty-eight.  They would all have roughly eight hours to get to safety.

I would stay at the hospital as well as a handful of the scientists while they repaired the Pulse.  We would have the wireless transmission system on full blast and would keep the hospital on lock down, just how they’d all survived before the Pulse went off.  Royce would stay with us and Gabriel would go with everyone else to the water.

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.