The lobby was a shifting mess of chaos and blood as everyone got back inside, just as the sky started to lighten. People ran in every direction, more than one life on the edge of being lost. Avian and I spotted a group of men in white coats hauling West’s twitching body into the elevator. We dashed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Avian stumbled behind me, blood dripping onto the steel stairs as we ascended.
We followed the shouting as we got to the blue floor, down to the extraction room. A doctor ran past us, back to the stairs. As we stepped into the room, it all finally hit me.
West was infected.
“How long?” I asked quietly, squeezing Avian’s hand all the tighter.
“Just over an hour ago, I think,” he forced the words out. “They kept coming at us as we tried to make our way back.”
A group of men and women forced West’s twitching body into the chair, clamping his wrists and ankles secure. He stilled for just a moment when he caught sight of me. “Eve!” he screamed, his eyes wide, terrified and confused.
Metallic veins were already growing in his left eye.
West gave a blood-curdling scream, squeezing his eyes closed as his chest surged forward, his body held back by the bands around his wrists. A pair of doctors rushed back into the room and I watched, horrified, as they injected something into West’s neck. He was instantly still.
I couldn’t look anymore as I turned into Avian and buried my face in his chest. I heard the doctors fussing around, bandaging his wounds with gloved hands, trying their best to stop West’s bleeding.
The hum of electricity alerted everyone that the Extractor was being powered up. Avian took two steps away from it, pulling me with him.
Avian suddenly stumbled, his skin pale and clammy. There was a pool of blood at his feet. “Eve, I…” he didn’t finish as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
“Avian!” I shouted as I clung to his sagging form. I slung him across my shoulders and dashed back down the hallway. Avian was totally limp as I took the stairs two at a time, too impatient to wait out the slow elevator ride down. The sound of my feet against the tile echoed off the walls as I ran toward the medical wing.
“Help!” I shouted as I neared.
As I stepped into the hall, I stopped, taking in the scene before me.
Avian and West weren’t the only ones who had been shot. Most of the floor was covered with a slick sheet of red. People rushed everywhere, panicked.
“Help him!” I shouted to no one in particular. Not a single eye turned in my direction. More blood continued to drip from Avian’s wounds. “He needs help!” I shouted at the closest person in white. He paid no attention to me.
“Please,” I said to a woman who rushed past me, reaching out for her arm. She barely glanced at me and shook her head.
“I already have four patients.”
Anger surged in my system and for the briefest moment, the room shifted with lines of black.
I drew my handgun and fired two shots into the ceiling.
Every eye in the room turned to me and every single body froze.
I lowered the gun and leveled it on a woman in those strange starched green clothes. “If you let him die I will not hesitate to kill you.”
She swallowed hard, her eyes twice their normal size. She gave one nod and pointed me towards a room.
There was already a blood-covered man in one of the beds but I didn’t really care as I laid Avian’s limp form in the empty one. The young woman followed me in, her hands shaking.
“He’s been shot,” I said, my voice calm and even.
She simply nodded and lifted Avian’s bleeding arm. “There’s no exit wound. The bullets are still inside. It could be a while before I can get the instruments to get them out.”
“It can’t wait that long,” I said as I shook my head at her. “He’s already lost too much blood. Can you sew him up? You’re a doctor, right?”
She shook her head. “I’m a nurse but I know how to suture.”
I grabbed a pair of gloves out of one of the boxes on the wall and pulled them on. “You’re helping me get them out now.”
The nurse watched me wide-eyed as I dug my fingers into Avian’s flesh and felt for the bullets.
They each gave a small ping as I dropped them in the sink. The nurse set to stitching his skin closed while I fished the bullet out of his thigh. I gave a hard swallow as I dropped the last one in the sink.
Once she was done with the stitches the nurse left the room for a moment and came back with a bag of blood. “He needs a transfusion, he’s lost a lot of blood,” she said as she punctured Avian’s skin and the blood started mixing with his own. I didn’t like the idea of some stranger’s blood mixing with his.
The soldier in the bed next to us limped out of the room, eyeing me as he walked by. “I would have done the same thing if it had been my wife bleeding to death,” he said as he met my eyes. I managed to give him a nod as he walked out the door.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” the nurse said as she peeled off her gloves and threw them in the trash. “He could start coming around any time now. I’ll be back to check on him in a while.”
“Thank you,” I said as she started for the door. I reached out and lightly touched her arm. She flinched. “I’m sorry about earlier.” She merely gave a short nod, her eyes betraying her fear, and walked out the door.
Just as I was about to sit on the edge of Avian’s bed, three heavily armed men walked into the room.
“You need to come with us,” one of them said. His eyes were hard, his brows drawn together.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said as I glared back at him.
“You’ve been deemed a security threat,” he said as he took another step toward me. “You fired two shots in the middle of a crowded room, threatened a nurse. You need to be secured.”
“I’m not leaving him,” my voice was cold and hard.
The three of them took another step, their hands twitching on their firearms.
“I suggest you don’t come any closer if you like your nose the way it looks,” I warned, balling my fingers.
He merely gave a cocky little smile and took another step forward.
A scream of pain leapt from his throat as my cybernetic-boned fist met his face. One of the men behind him raised his firearm, leveling it at my head. In the same movement I spun, knocking it out of his hands with my heel. The third man turned and ran out into the hall for backup.
“I told you I’m not leaving,” I said calmly as I extended a hand to the man with the now broken nose. He simply glared at me and got to his feet on his own, holding his bleeding nose. “You can take these,” I said as I handed over my firearms. “But I’m not leaving.”
He took my weapons, surprised at my cooperation. “We’ll be keeping watch over you. Isaac, you take the first shift. Watch her like a hawk.”
Isaac looked at the first man hard, like he might want to hit him too.
“I won’t bite,” I said as I turned and walked back to Avian’s side. The first man left in a hurry, the second stationed himself outside the door.
Not many things scared me but seeing Avian lying there like that did. Now that I finally understood who it was that I needed, was I going to lose him? Was I to only get a few glorious but horror-filled minutes now that I had finally made my choice? I might be losing both of them at the same time. Maybe this was my punishment for taking so long to figure my feelings out. For doing what I had done to them.
But 2,634 seconds later, Avian’s eyes blinked open. I jumped back to his bed, after pacing back and forth for what felt like an eternity. I balanced on the edge of the mattress as I took his hand in mine, pressing my lips to the back of his hand. He blinked several times before he turned his head and his eyes found mine.
“Hi,” I said quietly, kissing his still clammy skin.
“Hi,” he said back, the life coming back into his eyes.
“For a while there I thought
I was going to lose you,” I said, closing my eyes. “You lost a lot of blood.”
“So I didn’t just imagine everything that happened?” he asked. “West being infected? You telling me that you loved me?”
I shook my head as I kept his intense gaze. “Are you sure?” he asked very quietly.
“Without a doubt,” I said as I pressed my lips to his again briefly.
“When did you finally decide?”
“When we heard over the radio that someone had been infected,” I said. “I realized then that there was only one person I couldn’t survive loosing. I’ve lost Tye, Sarah, everyone in my past that I can’t even remember. But I knew then that I couldn’t live through losing you.”
Avian brought his hand up behind my neck, bringing my lips to his again for just a moment. “I love you, Eve. I promise I always will.”
“I love you,” I breathed, relishing in the warmth that radiated into every corner of my body. I finally understood what it meant.
“Eve,” he said as his eyes shifted to the doorway. “Why is there an armed guard standing just outside the door?”
I glanced in that direction, seeing Isaac standing there with his back turned to us but his automatic weapon in obvious sight. “I may have used a little more force than needed to get someone to help you,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes.
“You didn’t hurt anyone did you?” he said with a hint of a sigh.
“There are just a couple of new bullet holes in their ceiling…”
Avian suddenly laughed. He brought my hand up to his lips, pressing a brief kiss there. “That’s my Eve.”
I gave him a small smile, everything inside of me loving being called “his.”
“Have you heard anything yet?” Avian asked as he lay back on his pillow. “About West?”
I shook my head as I sat back, my hands falling into my lap. “I haven’t left you since you collapsed upstairs.”
“You should go find out what happened,” he said, his eyes sad and serious. “See if we were too late.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, my brow furrowing. I didn’t like the idea of leaving him here like this alone.
“It’s just a couple of bullet holes,” he said with a small smile. “I’ve patched enough of them to know that I’ll survive.”
I held his eyes for a long moment. I didn’t want to lose the peace that we’d formed, even if it was in the middle of all this chaos. But I had to know what was going to happen. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said as I stood. I glanced back at him one last time before I walked out the door.
THIRTY-EIGHT
My guard wasn’t going to let me leave the room. I argued with him for a good five minutes and finally convinced him that he could follow me.
A sense of dread knotted in my stomach as I started up the stairs. The blue floor was abuzz with activity as I entered the hall. People went in and out of the stairwell that led up to the Pulse, Dr. Beeson’s door was wide open, people coming and going. But most of the activity was coming from the Extraction room.
I held my arms around my midsection as I stepped into the room. It felt like everything inside of me was about to crack and fall apart, like I’d been filled with too many strong emotions and then someone had taken a sledgehammer to me.
A group of people surrounded West’s limp body. Bandages were wrapped around half of him but even I could tell the blood had stopped flowing. His wounds were already healing themselves.
Those who worked on West stilled when they noticed me in the room. I fidgeted under all their eyes, not knowing how to deal with their attention.
“Is it going to work on him?” I asked.
A man with flaming red hair glanced at the others before stepping away from the group towards me.
“The extraction process has begun but we are unsure of the exact time frame of when he was touched and when he was brought in. Some are guessing it was only forty minutes, others thought it was an hour and a half.”
“And the magic time frame is an hour or less, right?”
“Exactly,” the man said, his eyes regretful looking. “Under such stressful circumstances, no one is sure how long it was. If it really was less than hour, he stands a good chance of recovering. If not…”
I nodded, understanding what his trailing thoughts meant. “How long until we know?”
The man glanced at West. “When it worked before, we didn’t see any results for over a week. Within a week and a half we started to see positive signs that he might recover.”
“So we just have to wait?”
He simply nodded.
I couldn’t take any more then. I turned and walked back down the hall without another look back. My breaths were coming in choked sobs before I reached the end of the hall. It felt like someone was trying to squeeze me from the inside out. As I stepped into the stairwell, I leaned against the cold cinderblock walls and slid to the floor. When the guard saw me, he stepped back out, his discomfort obvious. I heard him walk away.
It took me far too long to get myself back under control. The image of metallic veins sprouting in West’s eye kept playing over and over behind my eyelids.
I used every ounce of strength I had to force myself off the floor and go back down the stairs.
As I walked numbly back into the medical wing, I saw a man lying on a hospital bed in another room. In my panic of the previous hours, I hadn’t noticed that he was injured.
“Royce?” I said as I stepped into his room a few feet. “Are you alright?”
He just gave a shrug, brushing it off. “I’m fine. Just a few bullet holes. Nothing I haven’t lived through before.”
I nodded.
“I really am sorry about your friend,” Royce said, his eyes studying my face. “He seemed like a good man. We all hope for the very best.”
I nodded again, my eyes glued to the floor but not really seeing anything. Even though no one had said it, I heard it in the tone of their voices. They might have been hopeful, but they didn’t expect a positive outcome.
“When do you plan on setting off the Pulse?” I changed the subject.
“With the Extractor running a lot of power will be diverted to it. It will be another day before the Pulse has gathered enough power to go off.”
I nodded, stuffing my hands into my pockets.
“He tried saving West, you know,” Royce said quietly. “Avian. Everyone was firing at the Bane who were flooding the platform. But Avian jumped in front of West while he was helping me repair the line. West probably would have died right then if not for Avian.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, imagining the horrific scene behind my eyelids. “If I’d been there they both would have been fine.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten infected.”
“Maybe.”
I turned to leave when Royce spoke again. “Eve, if I ever hear about you firing a weapon in this hospital again I will have Dr. Beeson make you think you’re a three-year-old little girl for the rest of your life.”
I glanced back at him, a smile creeping onto my lips. “It won’t happen again, promise.”
He gave a twitch of a smile. Something started to beep on one of his medical devices and two doctors rushed in from behind me. I took the opportunity to duck out.
Avian was asleep when I returned to his side, much to my disappointment. The doctors said they were giving him antibiotics to keep infection out but other than that there was little more they were going to have to do to him.
As I sat with Avian’s hand in mine, I thought about what was to come. If the Pulse really worked and we were able to freely roam, what would that mean for Avian and I, now that I had finally made my decision?
I imagined taking him hunting with me, intrigued by the total mystery of it. I’d never seen him out in the woods like that, free to do and go as he pleased. I had little doubt he would be good at it. Avian seemed to be good at everything.
Where would we live once we were let out of this hospital? What would it be like to live with Avian, the way Gabriel and Leah lived together, Morgan and Eli? The thought was strange yet exciting.
Three years ago I watched with everyone as Morgan and Eli stood before everyone, she dressed in a makeshift wedding dress. They spoke words to each other that I didn’t understand then. Now they made perfect sense. Would Avian and I ever speak words like that to each other? Would I ever wear a dress for him?
Finally, after two hours of restless sitting, Royce limped into Avian’s room, accompanied by his regular armed men. The man with the broken nose was among them. He glared at me with blackened eyes.
“We’re getting everything prepped for tomorrow,” Royce said as he leaned on his crutches. “I thought you might want to come see before it goes off.”
I glanced from Avian’s still form and back to Royce. “We can have the doctors page you when he wakes up,” Royce said.
“Alright.”
The doctors on duty gave me a small black box to carry around and they informed me that it would beep loudly when Avian woke up. Already feeling slightly more like myself, I followed Royce’s group to the blue floor and up the locked stairwell.
I had to blink furiously as we reached the top of the stairs, to the old roof of the building. The sun shone with burning intensity. It felt like forever since I had actually seen the sun. I had missed it.
The Pulse had a blue glow emanating from its core already. The loud hum was a testament to the amount of electricity that was being poured into it.
“Those are energy storage devices,” Royce said loudly as he pointed to five hulking, black boxes. They were as tall as I was and wider than four of me. “When it’s time, all the power stored in them will surge into the Pulse. They’re going to be blown to high-heaven when the thing goes off, but hopefully not before they’ve been completely drained. With any luck we won’t ever need them again.”
“And you’re sure the hospital will be protected from the blast?” I asked as I looked at the beautiful, yet menacing device before me.