The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) (3 page)

“I told them what I had to,” Dr. Evans said regretfully.  “I needed to make sure you were taken to safety.  I had to take care of things at NovaTor.”

“I’ve believed you were gone for the last six years,” West said, his voice hardening even though it cracked on the word gone.  “And you were doing
what
this entire time?”

“Who
is
this?” Royce demanded as he looked between West and I. 

“And where did you send all those Bane off to?” Avian questioned.

“I’m Dr. Reiss Evans,” he said as he stepped from behind me.  “The creator of TorBane.”

I had expected at least Royce to shoot him dead then, but instead, everyone simply froze.  All eyes remained fixed on his Evolved body and no one said a word.

“He has some designs,” I said, my voice coming out quieter than I meant it to.  “And a plan.  We all really need to talk.”

TWO

There was a different feel in the air when we rolled back to the hospital.  The buildings that surrounded it were riddled with bullet holes.  Windows were broken everywhere.  Empty shell casings littered the ground and the roads were stained with dark patches that could be nothing but blood.

How many lives had been lost in the battle after I left to head off the Bane?

We all stepped outside our vehicles as they rolled to a stop.  Dr. Evans climbed down from the roof of one.  Of course he hadn’t been allowed in it. 

The streets were eerily quiet.  “Where is everyone?” I asked. 

“We can talk about that later,” Royce said, looking Dr. Evans over warily once more.  His finger hovered over the trigger of his customized assault rifle.

As soon as we’d gotten three blocks from the hospital, Dr. Evans made a sound like he was dying, a choked off cry mixed with a grinding mechanical sound.  Royce reluctantly radioed in and told Addie to shut the wireless transmission system off.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t ready to mow Dr. Evans down at the slightest wrong move.

Royce understandably made us all wait outside the hospital while Bill ran inside to retrieve Dr. Beeson and a CDU. 

“Dr. Beeson, he knew the truth about me and my sister too, didn’t he?” I asked West as we waited for the two of them to return. 

West shifted from one foot to the other, his eyes dropping from mine.  “Yeah.”

I shook my head and turned my gaze back to the hospital doors.  Avian reached for my hand and gave a reassuring squeeze.  I gave one back to him mostly in an attempt to keep my fists from meeting West’s face.

We all stood across the street while we waited.  None of us said a word, maybe because there were too many words to be said, maybe because everyone was just afraid.

We were in plain sight of the doors to the hospital, so the moment Dr. Beeson stepped outside of them, we saw him freeze.  The color drained from his face.  And then his knees gave out.  He was looking at not just one ghost, but two.  Not that he knew I was one yet.

“Come on,” Bill said, hauling him back up.  “No time for that.”

“We’ve got some things to talk about,” Royce said as the two of them stumbled across the street.

“No,” Dr. Beeson said, shaking his pale head, his eyes locked on Dr. Evans.  “No.  You’re dead.  You were infected.  You are not supposed to be here.  My days at NovaTor are over!” he suddenly bellowed, his eyes growing wild.

“I’m afraid not, Erik,” Dr. Evans said, folding his mechanical hands in front of him.  “You and I, we need to fix what we created.”

“We?” Dr. Beeson spit.  “I had nothing to do with TorBane!  You used my research to amplify all of this.”

“I.  We need to fix what
I
created,” Dr. Evans said solemnly.

“Okay!” Royce shouted, raising his gun into the air to get attention.  “You need to do some quick talking so I can decide if I need to shoot you or not.  Can we please go inside and move things along?”  Frustration made his voice rise in volume.

He waved his arms for us to step inside the coffee shop that was directly across from the main entrance to the hospital.  There had once been bodies lying on the floor after the Pulse went off, but Tuck’s Bane Removal Crew had cleared it in the first week after it went off.

Avian and I stood at the back of the building, hands on weapons.  Royce stood next to the cash register, his firearms still gripped securely.  Dr. Beeson collapsed into one table with shaky legs.  West and Bill stood across the room.  Dr. Evans sat at the table as far from everyone as he could manage.  His actions were perfectly calm and relaxed, as if he didn’t need to worry about someone’s nerves getting too set on edge and blasting a crater through his half-human face.

“You can talk,” Royce started us out.  “But you’ll still spread the infection.”

Dr. Evans nodded.  “I would never allow any of you to touch me.  I designed this helmet to repel the technology, so it stays out of my head.  I’ve kept my humanity.  But yes, I still carry TorBane, the same as any of the other Evolved out there.”

“The Bane you mean,” Royce growled.  “Did you ever realize how appropriate your little name was?”

“The name of TorBane was fitting,” Dr. Evans sighed impatiently.  “That was precisely what it was: a biological and nanorobotic enhancement.”

“And the literal meaning of Bane is something that causes death and destruction.  Ruin.  You’re telling me that is just a coincidence?”

“Are you here to interrogate me about the past or would you like to talk about how to save our future?” Dr. Evans asked with hard eyes.

Royce scoffed and shook his head.  “You have some grand master plan to save us all?”

“Royce,” I cut in.  “You should listen to him.”

He looked over at me and held my eyes for a long moment, as if reevaluating if he could trust me.  I didn’t blame him for doubting me.  I’d made a nuclear mess of things the last few days.  I’d nearly gotten one of his original crew killed.  Avian had joked and said Royce was protective enough of me to be called my father.  Was that still true?  I wasn’t so sure I deserved that anymore.

“What do you have in mind, world-ender?” Royce finally said, turning back to Dr. Evans.

He held his hand out toward me and I hesitated for a moment.  He was asking for the notebook.  Suddenly I felt protective of it.  The information within its pages could be our last chance. 

But what could I do with it on my own?

I handed it over.

“First you all need to know the truth about Eve here,” Dr. Evans said as he set the notebook down on the table he sat at.

“What does Eve have anything to do with this?” Avian asked, his brow furrowing.

“Everything,” Dr. Evans said ominously.  He turned to Dr. Beeson.  “I’m afraid I pulled the wool over your eyes all those years ago, Erik.”

Dr. Beeson’s expression grew serious and he shook his head.  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Eve,” Dr. Evans said.  “Show him.”

My stomach dropped into my knees.  I was so sick of the lies and the secrets and the revelations and the hard feelings and apologies. 

But it had to be done.

“What’s going on?” Avian whispered.

Without answering, I turned my back to everyone in the room, revealing the tattooed II on the back of my skull.

“Two,” Dr. Beeson whispered.  I turned back around.  “No,” he said, shaking his head.  “No, Eve Two is dead.  You killed her after what she did to him!” Dr. Beeson shouted, pointing at West.

“No, my good man,” Dr. Evans said.  “I’m afraid I didn’t dispose of her as my son demanded.  And she remembered, Eve Two.  It wasn’t she that attacked my grandson.  It was her sister.”

“What?” West questioned.  He looked at me, our eyes locking.  A million nerve endings of hurt and betrayal were as fresh as ever between us.  “You…you remember?”

I shook my head.  “Not a lot of details.  But I remember being brought back to NovaTor after whoever it was took me.  I remember her melting down.  The kill code made her go crazy.  It was she that attacked you West.  You’d tried to comfort me, thinking I was her.  I don’t know if she was jealous or what, but it was her West, not me.”

His eyes glazed over, as if replaying the scene in his head.

“Okay,” Avian said, shaking his head and pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids.  “I’m totally lost.  Eve has a sister?”  He looked back up at me, his eyes wide and confused.

“An identical twin sister,” I said, my voice quiet.  Suddenly all the exhaustion I’d been staving off for the last four days hit me and my entire body sagged.

“And you knew?” Avian said, turning cold eyes on West and taking a step forward.

“Cool it,” Royce growled, pointing the barrel of his shotgun at Avian’s chest.  “Let’s not have a replay of the other day.  I can’t afford to have any other soldiers laid up.”

“Nick?” I suddenly asked. 

“He’ll live,” Royce growled.  Avian had accidentally shot Nick when he’d tried to break up a deadly fight between Avian and West.

“The point is,” Dr. Evans interrupted as tensions grew thick.  “That because we have Eve Two, and not Eve One, we may be able to end this catastrophe I created.”

“Those are big claims,” Royce said, shaking his head as he relaxed his weapon.  “And while we’ve all been very impressed with Eve and especially her newfound abilities, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Eve Two was taken from NovaTor just as TorBane was released to the public.  She was tampered with.  She was given the ability to transmit signals.  When she was taken from NovaTor Biotics, they programmed her with a kill switch—if you will.  When they returned her to the facility, she killed off over fifty people who had just gotten TorBane.  She did this
wirelessly
.  I disabled the kill switch, but she obviously maintained the ability to send signals.  You saw what she did in the desert.”

Every eye turned to me and the air grew thick and heavy and desperate.

“Where did you send them?” West asked.

My eyes darted to his before sweeping everyone else.  “I told them to search out and destroy other Bane.”

“Nice,” Tristan complimented.

But I could tell everyone else barely heard what I’d just said.  They were still mulling over what Dr. Evans had revealed. 

There had been a shift in each of their eyes.  It was small, but it was there.  I was no longer Eve, protector, in their eyes.  Unwillingly, I had just taken one step up.

“How do we end this?” Avian finally said.  I hated that he, too, was looking at me slightly different.

“What means of communication did we all use before the world came to a quick halt?” Dr. Evans asked, breaking the silence.  “What is still floating up in the sky above us?”

“Satellites,” Bill said from his corner.

“Exactly.”

“Holy shit,” Dr. Beeson breathed, his eyes growing wide as the wheels started instantly turning in his head.  “He may be right.  This could work.”

“You turn her kill switch back on and somehow transmit it to the satellites in orbit,” Royce said.  His voice didn’t betray excitement.  He was a smart man, but he was also a man who knew to keep his hope in check after living in a post-apocalyptic world for the last six years.  “The Bane can obviously receive signals since Eve can control them.”

“It will only take an instant.  Once they receive the kill code, they’ll be gone,” Dr. Evans said with a nod and a smile.

“The notebook,” Avian said, his eyes suddenly jumping to it.  “The plans.  That’s what they were for, a transmission device for Eve.”

Dr. Evans nodded again.  “She is the key to saving the planet.”

“Told you,” Tristan said quietly from the back.

That brought a twitch of a smile to my face.

“This is almost too much to process,” Dr. Beeson said, shaking his head, squeezing his eyes closed.  “She is not supposed to be alive, and there is not supposed to be hope for this scale of reclamation of our world.”

“What I want to know is why we can’t just create a signal with the same kill code and beam it up to the satellites?” Royce said, placing his hands on his hips.  His curiosity was stronger than his distrust of yet another Bane-human hybrid.  “Why does this all hinge on Eve?”

Dr. Evans shook his head.  “They would not be compatible.  Eve has TorBane, so a signal from her would be receivable.  Anything else wouldn’t be read.  And she is the only TorBane receptacle capable of transmitting.”

“So it’s Eve or nothing,” West said.

“She’s our last hope,” Avian said, slipping his hand into mine.

“I do believe so,” Dr. Evans replied.

Everyone was quiet for a long while, processing everything that had been revealed.  I looked around at each of them.  There was a mix of emotions spread throughout: hope, disbelief, unbelief, uncertainty.

“I thought those satellites had to be maintained?” West broke the heavy air.  “Without someone controlling their orbit, some of them will just be crashing out into space.  How do we know all of them aren’t completely useless now?”

I didn’t really understand what West was talking about, but everyone else must have because their eyes darted instantly to Dr. Evans.

“There is a chance that this won’t work,” Dr. Evans said, his eyes dropping from everyone else’s.  For the first time since I reunited with him, he didn’t seem confident in his plan.  “It has been nearly six years since the world fell apart, this is quite some time.  But, I do believe that since there were thousands of satellites orbiting us at one point, that there will be enough that will be functional to reflect the code back to Earth.”

“So this might not work?” Avian asked.

Dr. Evans paused.  He refused to look up which told me that whatever was about to come out of his mouth would be a lie.  “I have enough data to believe that it will work.”

“How long will it take you to build the device?” I asked, ignoring the lie.

“Difficult to say,” Dr. Evans said.  “Obtaining all the parts will take some time.  It needs to be done precisely.”

“We’ll have to scavenge,” Dr. Beeson said.  He was still shaking his head and blinking rapidly.  “But I can’t imagine it will be much more difficult than the Pulse.  And we did that when the city was still infested with millions of Bane.”