The Human (The Eden Trilogy) (9 page)

TEN

The ground was moving and it made my stomach sick.

A quick tug upward, and then a stomach dropping downward motion.  Repeat. 

Over and over I bobbed.

I was on water.

My eyes felt like sandpaper as I tried to pull them open.  Everything was black and blur.  And I couldn’t find my body.  I was aware that it was still there, but it may as well have been dead.  Nothing could move.

I could however hear feet shuffling.  They sounded like they were behind a door maybe.  Muffled.

Air couldn’t move past my dead lips, couldn’t cry out for answers.  Or help.

Suddenly, there were voices.

“You really think this doctor of yours can fix me?”

Something inside of me died when I recognized that voice.

West.

“He was the best heart surgeon there was on the West Coast before the Evolution.”

And instantly I was full of fire and wrath.

That was the girl he’d been talking to in the dining area.

“I just hope this wasn’t a mistake,” he said, his voice growing quieter.  “Cause I’m a dead man if he can’t take that scrap out.”

The pieces of the puzzle started sliding into place with only a few words.

I calculated in my head the amount of time West had.  I got the sense we’d left New Eden and were headed back to wherever these people were from.  I couldn’t gauge how long we’d been traveling.  But it had been just over a week from the time West came out of Extraction to the time before I got knocked out.

West only had about five days.  Seven if he was really lucky.

He really was a dead man if this supposed doctor couldn’t fix him.

Had my harshness toward him really driven him to do this?  To betray his family and look for an elusive fix?

But I also had to consider why I was here, drugged and bound.  I couldn’t imagine anyone else would have given away my secret.  Had West traded it for the surgery?  Had they tricked it out of him?  Had he let it slip?

“Don’t look so down,” the female voice said.  “You made the right choice.”

“I know I needed away from her,” West’s voice grew quieter.  “But I just feel weird about leaving everyone.  About leaving her.  I searched for her for five years, and now I’m just walking away.”

“You made the right choice,” she said again, her words starting to slur in my ears.

Shadows started climbing in my brain, heavy and thick.  I tried to keep them out, to find a door to close to them.  But they were fog and mist and they crept in through all the cracks in my head.

There was light dancing behind my eyelids.  It was dull and gray.  But it was light.

“A little too effective,” a voice said.  “Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes ma’am,” another responded, shame and fear in it.

“See if you can rouse her.”  The voice was female.

Something hard and cold whipped my head sharply to the left.  But the rest of my body held firmly in place.

My eyes flashed open.

The outsiders were gathered around me, Margaret at the forefront of them all.  Alistar stood at her side and another man with a gun stood just to the side of me.  It was him that had just woken me with the butt end of his rifle.

I was bound to what looked like a moving-dolly with heavy chains.  I tried jerking my arms, but didn’t move an inch.  I wasn’t going anywhere.

We were all on a boat.  A very large boat.  We were bobbing just twenty yards from the shore.

And sitting right on that shore was a massive, towering city.

“This doesn’t exactly look like the Redwoods,” I growled as my eyes met Margaret’s.

“We lied,” she said, that grin creeping across her face.  “Welcome to Seattle.”

“What about New Eden?” I asked, red hot coals building in me.

“Fine, for the most part,” she said, her expression going dark.  “Once we realized what a valuable asset you were, we decided to take what we could and cut our losses.  We don’t have the Pulse, but I’m sure you’ll provide some very interesting, very valuable information.”

“I don’t know anything about how to build the Pulse,” I said through gritted teeth.  “And I’m not telling you anything.”

“That’s not exactly what we’re after,” she said with that wicked grin of hers.  “And talking wasn’t the method I had in mind to obtain it.”

“Where’s West?” I demanded, again trying to jerk out of my bonds.

“He and some of the others headed for shore just before dawn on the speed boat,” she answered.  “He’s safe.”

“What did you promise him?”

“We’ll honor our promise,” she said, lifting her chin just a bit, as if I had insulted her integrity.  “He provided valuable information, even if he didn’t realize he was giving it and what we intended to do with it.”

“You tricked it out of him,” I said, hatred spewing from my every word.

The grin spread on her face and there was a manic look in her eyes.  “The poor boy was so starved for some female attention.  Tara was so attentive and such a good listener.  She was so willing to hear all about the emotionally broken girl who picked another man over him.”

“He doesn’t know you’ve taken me, does he?” I said, my voice growing quieter.

“We thought it best with his…condition, if he remained cooperative and calm.  You wouldn’t want him making any rash decisions, would you?  We just might not be able to help him if he becomes unpleasant.  And you might not have picked him, but I am sure you still don’t want him Evolving.”

I knew then that I would have no choice but to cooperate with this witch.

She saw it in my face and I wanted to kill her when that smile of hers reached her eyes.

“Now then,” she said turning to look at the shore.  “We need your help I’m afraid.  This big ship didn’t move as fast as we would have liked it to.  We sent ahead some of our crew on the speed boat, including your West.  They should have gotten to safety before the Bane woke.  But it’s starting to get light, and they’re waiting for us.”

She pointed to the shore and I finally noticed the small details I had missed before.

Bane.

At least a dozen of them standing along the shore, watching us with empty eyes.

“From what your friend told Tara, you have the ability to control them,” she looked back at me with curiosity.  “We need you to keep them off us so we can get home.”

I chuckled and shook my head.  “I think you’re overestimating my abilities.  Controlling the Bane, especially that many, isn’t a sure thing.”

“I think you’ll manage,” she said coldly.  Suddenly she made a signal with her hand and the boat growled back to life and started to crawl forward.

It was going to be pointless to fight them, that much was obvious.

So all I could do was start thinking
stay away
.

The massive boat pulled alongside the dock, and with jerky movements, the Bane along the shore started moving toward us.

One of them had been standing on the boardwalk and was moving at a quick rate.  His legs moved at jerky intervals as if he were walking through tar.

“I suggest you make it stop,” Margaret said, turning cold eyes on me.  “Because if you can’t do what your friend West said you could do, we have no reason to try and keep you alive.”

“Just shoot it!” I yelled as I watched it make its way closer.  It stumbled as its legs froze.

“Call this a test,” she said.

By now the Bane had climbed to its feet again and was sprinting toward the dock.

“Stop!” I yelled, my heart pounding in my chest.

And it instantly froze in place.

“The water,” I said, my voice shaking more than I would have liked.  “Now.”

It jumped off the dock.  It hit the water with hissing sounds and a quick pop of light before it shorted out and sank out of sight.

I slowly met Margaret’s eyes.  That wicked grin was back.  “Now that’s more like it,” she said.  “Test completed.  Shoot the rest of them.”

The air was instantly alive with the sound of gunfire.  Their bodies dropped on the shore.

“Let’s move!” Alistar screamed.

The dolly I was chained to suddenly jerked to motion as one of the men grabbed the back of it and started pushing me out onto the dock.  And everyone was running.

When we got to the end of the boardwalk and out onto a road, I saw why.

A good one hundred Bane were climbing out of buildings, running down roads.  All called by the noise of their shots.

Stay back,
I thought, over and over.

“Stay away from us!” I yelled.

More and more bodies climbed out of buildings.

My connection wasn’t very strong with so many of them, but my captors fired as we ran.  And I was able to keep them far enough away to keep any of them from touching us.

We had run for less than a minute when one of the armed men pulled open a heavy door in the sidewalk.  A set of stairs dropped into the darkness.  Someone grabbed the metal plate beneath my feet, and the two of them lifted me and down we dropped.

Once everyone had clambered inside, the door was closed and I heard a lock slide into place.

The lighting was dim and it took even my eyes a few moments to adjust.

We were in some kind of tunnel.  Crumbling brick, stone, and wood walls stretched out before us.  Moisture was heavy in the air.  Everything tasted like mildew.  Gas lamps hung every so often, providing little light to see by.

They carried me down the tunnel.  As we moved, other’s popped their heads out from doors.  Each of them was as pale and sickly looking as the last.

I didn’t have to ask questions.  They survived in this city by never seeing the sun.

But that was only going to last so long.  The Bane were Evolving past that need.

We entered a large room.  The floor was dirty and dusty, just like all the walls and the crumbling ceiling.

The men carrying me set the dolly down and Margaret and Alistar stood before me.

“Welcome to the Underground,” she said.

“I think I’ll decline that welcome,” I growled.

“Then decline it,” she said, her expression going sour.  “But you’re not going anywhere.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said.  I wasn’t sure if I felt any better when her armed men started disbanding from the room.  “I mean, you’re human.  Aren’t we supposed to be helping each other survive?  Not kidnapping each other.”

“Exactly!” she exploded.  Her eyes blazed and she seemed to grow six inches.  “Those of us who are left are supposed to help each other!  Each of us has a duty to reclaim our world.  But your people keep their technology to themselves.  They let that weapon sit and rot on the roof when they could be using it to clear our country, our continent!”