The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) (17 page)

Avian stitched her closed, using slow, precise sutures.  He was calm and collected as always.

I stood next to the infant, trying to focus on the fact that she might live, and was barely able to look away from her.

“I know I fought this,” Dr. Evans said.  He stood silently next to me as well, observing the baby girl.  “But it does feel good, to be able to save one last life with TorBane.”

“Feels like things have sort of come full circle, doesn’t it?” I mused quietly.  She worked a tiny hand from her blankets.  I reached for her, to tuck it back in, when she gripped my finger tightly and didn’t let go.

My heart skipped a beat.

She was so soft, so tender.  Nothing like my world.

“Yes, it does,” Dr. Evans said.  I looked over at him to see a small smile on his face.

“You did a good thing here,” I said, feeling truly appreciative inside.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.  “That’s nice to hear after committing fifteen years of wrong.”

Without another word, he turned and walked toward the door.  He paused in it, his hand on the frame.  “We’ll give her the next dose in twelve hours, and then another in twenty-four.”

Avian nodded as he covered Morgan up once again.  Dr. Evans left.

Avian walked to my side and smiled when he saw the child clinging to my finger.  He slipped his hand into my other.  I’d never felt more complete in any moment.

“How much does she weigh?” I asked, marveling that any human being could be this small.

Avian glanced down at a red digital number at the bottom of the bed.  “Two pounds, one ounce.”

“That’s almost nothing,” I said, shaking my head. 

“That’s probably about what you weighed when you were born,” Avian said, brushing his shoulder against mine.  “You weren’t quite this premature, but since you were a twin, you would have been smaller.  I, on the other hand, weighed almost ten pounds when I was born.”  We both smiled about that.

“She’ll be okay then,” I mused, brushing my thumb across her tiny knuckles.  “Won’t she?”

“Yeah,” Avian said.  He brushed his lips against my shoulder.  “She will.”

The baby gave another kick and the wire that led to her foot caught on her other, pulling the heart rate monitor band loose.  Using gentle fingers, Avian adjusted it.

“She is going to need a name,” he said quietly as he rewrapped her in the blanket.

I nodded as she let go of my finger and her hand disappeared into the blanket.  “It should be something important.”

“Like how you were called Eve?” he said, looking up at me.  “The first of your kind.”

“I guess,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.  “Except she’s more about the future of mankind.  She’s the belief and promise that we’ll do anything to make that future.”

“Creed,” Avian said quietly.

“What?” I questioned, turning my eyes on him.

He looked at me, a small smile pulling in the corner of his mouth.  “Creed.  It’s a set of beliefs, a guiding principle.”

“Creed,” I said, smiling as I said the word.  “It’s perfect.”

EIGHTEEN

We buried Morgan off to the side of the NovaTor building.  We wrapped her in a sheet and Avian and West gently lowered her in the ground.  There was a pang of guilt in my chest that because of my decision to bring her out here and save the baby, she couldn’t be buried next to her husband, Eli.

I just had to hope that it really didn’t matter and that they were together now in a way that actually did.

Few words were spoken, but they didn’t need to be.  None of us were close to Morgan, but she was human and that made us close enough in all the ways that counted.

Twelve hours later, Creed was given her second dosage of TorBane and five hours after that, her heart rate normalized.  The next morning, Dr. Evans suggested we do a scan to see how things were progressing.

She stayed solidly asleep as we laid her on the scan table.  She didn’t even wake as the machine made a racket and the scan started.

“There is her liver,” Dr. Evans said, pointing to strange green shapes on the screen before us.  “Her colon, kidneys.  Her stomach.”  The scan continued and then the screen suddenly showed something brilliantly white.  “And there would be TorBane at work.”

“That’s her lungs,” Avian said, tracing his finger along one of the lobe shaped objects on the screen.  It was littered with the brilliant white.  Like a fine, thin lace.  “And there’s her heart.”  We could see it pumping.  And with each beat, the white in it spread a little further.

“How long before it takes full effect?” I asked, mesmerized by the slowly spreading white particles.

“Like you, it will take years to spread throughout her body,” he said.  The miracle that was TorBane seemed dampened when he mentioned it spreading throughout her body.  “But it will stabilize her heart and lungs within two weeks would be my guess.”

I nodded, my eyes still transfixed on the monitor.

With the scan done, Avian returned to Creed’s side and transferred her back to her portable incubator.  No one was allowed to touch her besides Avian, in an attempt to keep sickness and germs to a minimum.

Bill knocked, and entered one second later.

“You may want to see this,” he said, looking at me and then Dr. Evans. 

I glanced back at Avian, and then Creed. 

“It’s okay,” Avian said.  “Go.  I can take care of her.”

Nodding, I turned to Bill, and Dr. Evans walked out with us.

“West and I were getting bored,” Bill explained as we started up the stairs.  “So he was showing me around the building.  He showed me his old apartment and we found something.”

We came out onto the main lobby floor and started up the next flight of stairs to the top one.  We started down a hall that didn’t look much different from the one on the floor below, but the doors were more spread out, indicating bigger spaces behind them.  We reached the end of one hall and took a left, only to stop at a door to the immediate right.

West was inside, looking through things.

It reminded me of the simplest of residential units we had started to set up in New Eden.  There was a simple kitchen, a simple, small dining table.  A simple couch.  Three doors split off at the back of it, opening up to what looked to be two bedrooms and a bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, stepping inside.  I searched for any signs that looked out of the ordinary, but everything seemed normal.

“Just before Grandpa had me transported away,” West said, meeting my eyes, “this place was a mess.  I had to gather things in a hurry.  There was stuff everywhere.  There was next to no food in the apartment.”

“I never returned here after you left,” Dr. Evans said with a doubt in his voice.  His brow furrowed as he looked around the space.  “Neither did your father.  He turned quick.”

West nodded and crossed over to the kitchen.  He opened the cabinet doors.  They were all stocked full of non-perishable food.

“Someone’s cleaned the place up and stocked it full of food,” West said, his expression uncertain.  “There’s been someone living here.  Recently.”

“Most likely whoever went through the solar tank two days ago,” I said, pulling my handgun from its holster.  “They’ve probably been watching us this whole time.”

“But why not say anything?” West asked, his brow furrowed.  “I mean, they’re well stocked up here, so I see why they didn’t take anything from our van, but why just watch us this long and not speak up?”

I shook my head, not having an answer.  Something cold leaked out into my blood, inviting my adrenaline to draw everything into focus.

“I think we should sweep the whole building,” I said.  “We may be playing a game of hide and seek in such a big building, but we’ve got to check things out.”

West nodded, adjusting his grip on his handgun.  Bill unslung his assault rifle from his shoulder.

“I know this building better than anyone,” Dr. Evans said, standing a little straighter.  “Come on.”

We carefully searched through every single apartment, finding each and every one empty.  All of them were in the state West had described.  Ripped apart, a mess, torn to shambles.

The offices on the main floor were empty as well and we quietly descended into the lower first floor.

The first and second underground floors were clear.  We told Avian to lock himself and Creed in a room until we gave the all-clear.

I had hoped to avoid the lower floors all together.  I’d accepted my past—and the fact that I couldn’t remember it.  I didn’t need to have the memories stirred up when I had moved on.  But as we descended a floor lower, flashes of memory danced just under the surface of my conscious.

We checked the room that held the treadmills.  I had spent hours and hours here.  A window faced the line of three treadmills, where long ago chocolaty brown eyes had watched me.

We checked a weight training room where I lifted amounts a person three times my size couldn’t have handled.

Still, we descended another floor lower and I knew exactly where my room was from the time I stepped out of the stairwell.

“Familiar?” West asked, his eyes flickering from the line of his handgun to my face.

“More than a little,” I said between clenched teeth.

We passed the playroom, the one where West and I fought, the one where he and my sister spent hours bonding.

“I hate that room,” I said.  My past feelings crept up inside of me, whispering to my memory like a ghost.

West chuckled.

“This was her room,” I said as we stepped inside a simple room that contained a narrow bed, a dresser, and a nightstand with a cracked lamp.  “Right?”

West nodded.

It was empty.

She really wasn’t here.  And it looked like she hadn’t been here in a very long time.  Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

“Let’s keep moving,” Dr. Evans said.  His voice sounded tight and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

We dropped down the hall, checking doors as we moved.  All empty.

And I knew this was my room when I stepped into it.

Exactly like my sister’s room was, this one was covered in dust and forgotten.  No longer needed.

I ran my fingers along the gouge mark in the wall where I had thrown a lamp just before I had gone in for surgery to get my chip.  The lamp had shattered and scraped the paint and drywall off.

“This is still too weird to accept the truth that you aren’t her,” West said, shaking his head as he looked around.  “I avoided the girl from this room as much as humanly possible.”

“Still wise advice sometimes,” I said, trying to make a joke.

It wasn’t a good one, but West smiled anyway.

“Let’s keep moving,” Bill encouraged.  He fidgeted in the doorway, not wanting to step into my past when he couldn’t even dwell in his own.

The rest of the fourth floor was clear and it would be difficult to tell if the fifth and final was hiding anyone.  It was packed full of storage supplies.  Someone could hide there and we would have a very difficult time ever finding them.  We even checked the back elevator and found no traces of anyone.

“Maybe they moved on,” I said, knowing any number of possibilities could be viable.

“Maybe,” West said, looking around one more time before he and Bill headed back up.

I was just about to start up the stairs after them, when Dr. Evans called out to me from behind.  I turned to see him walking toward me, a box in his hands.

“What is that?” I asked.

But he didn’t have to answer the question before I read the single word written on the front of it.

Emma.

“My mom?” I asked.  My eyes darted up to Dr. Evans, questions and uncertainty in them.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Any of her research, files, scientific notes were taken by NovaTor, but she left behind some personal effects when she…” his voice cut out once again, just briefly, like it had before.  I wasn’t sure if it was pain in saying what happened to her, or if his voice simply failed.  “I boxed her things up myself and brought them down here.”

Considering my purpose before the Evolution, I was quite certain I was never intended to inherit this box.  But the world had changed.  Now the contents of that box would matter to me.

“It belongs to you now,” he said, extending it toward me.  “If you want it.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice coming out breathy.  “Thank you.”

In a way, it felt like reading his notebook all over again.  There were secrets within this box, secrets to my past and my origins.  Secrets to a woman I had never been able to meet.

Secrets to my mother.

NINETEEN

As badly as I wanted to immediately tear into that box, I couldn’t abandon my duties.  Undeniably there was someone else around.  We hadn’t seen them yet, but they were toying with us.  West and I kept constant watch the rest of that day. 

Creed got her third dosage of TorBane just before bed.  Very slowly, her vitals were stabilizing.

Finally, the evening fell into night and I asked Bill to keep watch.  It was a selfish move.  But he agreed without hesitation.

Eagerly, I went into Creed’s room, where Avian checked her tubes and wires one last time before we let her settle for the night.

He met my eyes as soon as I walked in and then they quickly fell to the box on the floor, right next to the door.

“Is that…” he hesitantly asked.

I stood stiff and nervous in the doorway and nodded.

“Do you want to do this alone?” he asked.  “Or would you like some company?”

A small smile tugged in the corner of my mouth.  “You’re my family, Avian.  Of course I want you here.”

A crooked smile crept onto Avian’s face and his eyes seemed to brighten.

I stepped in the room and quietly closed the door behind me.  I scooped the box up and went to sit on the sleeping bag that was rolled out along the far wall.  Avian sank down next to me, his shoulder barely brushing mine.

Avian handed me a scalpel which I used to cut the tape.  Taking a deep breath, I pulled the flaps open.

There wasn’t much inside the box.  Two leather bound books, an envelope, and two framed photographs.