“We didn’t know what it was. We watched you for weeks, looking for any signs that you were a Bane, sent to spy on us or something. We kept the CDU with us at all times, ready to use it should you show any indicator that you might turn on us.
“You started training with the scouts. You were nearly as strong as any of the grown men. You never got tired. You were so blasted tough and solid. But you never seemed to notice that you were any different. You lived among us. You didn’t turn against us. So Avian and I kept your secret. We never told the others in Eden, to protect you, and to protect them.”
“You’ve been injured before, Eve,” Avian spoke. “Never anything as serious as this, but you never even realized you were hurt. And I never had to fix anything. Your body just fixes itself.”
My heart pounded as I listened to Gabriel. I recalled everything he was saying, remembered the way the two of them had hovered over me at all times when I was younger. I had thought they were trying to protect me. They had been protecting themselves though. They had been ready to short me out at any moment.
Apparently there had been reason to.
I was still too strong, still too fast. And apparently my brain didn’t register pain.
“What the hell am I?” I said in a raged hiss.
“We don’t know,” Avian finally said as he looked up. “You’re human but part of you is cybernetic. You’ve been enhanced in a way we’ve never even heard of before.
“That’s why you didn’t change when the Bane touched you. You’re already part Bane.”
My breathing increased as my eyes dropped to the floor. It suddenly rushed up at me as I fell off the table and landed roughly on my hands and knees. Avian jumped to help me up but I pushed him away.
“No,” I said as I shook my head and stumbled to my feet. “Get away from me!”
I bolted out of the tent and stumbled through what was left of Eden without seeing or caring where I was going.
My tent felt safe and frightening all at the same time. This was my space, a place where I could be alone and try to think. And yet it was wrong. Sarah still wasn’t here. While I hid in my tent, Avian had come to tell me that she was starting to recover but was staying in his tent so he could watch her.
Eden was too quiet as darkness fell. It felt strange to have our colony split up like this.
The dirt stirred outside my tent as someone approached.
“Go away, Avian! I don’t want to talk to you right now!” I shouted as I lay in my bed and pulled my blanket up over my head.
“Good thing I’m not Avian,” a voice said as it entered my tent.
“What are you doing here, West?” I asked as I glared at him, pulling the blanket back down.
He stood there, staring back at me, refusing to be intimidated. He held something bulky and black in one arm.
“I brought something I hope might make you feel better,” he said as he shrugged.
“I just found out I’m the enemy I’ve been fighting against for the last five years. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to make me feel better.”
West rolled his eyes. “You could try not biting my head off. Get up,” he said.
“What?” I asked, my voice annoyed again.
“Get up so I can lay this down,” he said as he raised his eyebrows at me.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I did as he asked. He then rolled out the black mass and I realized it was a hide.
“The bear?” I asked as I rubbed my hand over the soft fur.
“Yeah,” he said as he looked at it on my bed with a half-smile. “I asked Bill if he could tan it for me. I wanted to give it to you as an apology for stealing your kills.”
“Well, I did take your buck that one time. I was the one who technically stole it.”
West looked up at me, a half smile coming to his lips. “See, it made you feel better.”
I realized that I was smiling too.
“Thank you,” I said, really meaning it.
West nodded then stood there uncomfortably as if he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.
“They asked you to watch me tonight, didn’t they?” I asked as I narrowed my eyes at him.
“And you’re not going to give me trouble about that, are you?” he shot back at me.
I just glared at him for a minute. I hadn’t forgotten the fact that we had spent two nights together, a little more intimately than I would have cared to remember, or the fact that in the moment he thought I was as good as dead, he had kissed me.
“You can sleep in Sarah’s bed, then. Don’t oversleep though; I’m packing up early in the morning.”
“Good,” he said as he went to lie on the other bed. “I’ve already packed up all my things. I would have been sleeping in the dirt if you kicked me out.”
I crawled into my new bed, surprised at how much of a difference the hide made. I balled my pillow up under my head and pulled the covers up to my chin.
“Goodnight, Eve,” West said quietly through the now dark tent.
“Goodnight, West,” I half whispered as I turned away from him onto my side.
TEN
The stiffness in my arm woke me as I tried to roll over. The bandaging had loosened up during the night but still prevented me from having full movement.
It was already very light outside. I must have been asleep for nearly nine hours. I then remembered what Avian had said about my body feeling pain, even if my brain didn’t register it. Apparently all of me had needed rest.
A soft snore reminded me that I wasn’t alone and I rolled over to see West sprawled across Sarah’s bed. He lay on his back, his arms spread out, his head lolling to the side facing me. I suddenly wondered where he’d gotten the scar on his neck from.
I noticed something on the floor that didn’t belong and reached across the cramped space for it. It was a notebook, its edges tattered and frayed. The cover had all kinds of writing on it, but most prominent were big bold letters that had worn down to just ATOR BIOT. I opened to somewhere in the middle of it, evaluating its shape and size, and realized this was the object West always carried on him.
I wasn’t one to invade another’s privacy and was about to close the notebook when some of the writing caught my eye.
Block capabilities of chip X73I implanted in project Eve seem to be successful.
I read the line twice to be sure I had read it correctly.
Quickly, I looked up at West to make sure he was still asleep.
Suddenly I had to reevaluate everything I had ever known or thought about him.
Unable to keep from doing so, I turned my eyes back to the pages. I continued from the line I had started with.
Subject Eve I was tested on treadmill for two hours straight with no indicators of tiredness. Vitals remained stable, peaking little during fastest speed. Tests have yielded similar results for the past five days.
Eve continues to show lessened need for sleep. After close monitoring for the past four months, we have recorded subject sleeps for little more than five hours a night, at times less.
Tomorrow weight endurance testing will begin.
I stared at the scribbled words for a full two minutes when I came to the end of the page. My stomach knotted. I realized I had been holding my breath.
My eyes focused on the page again and I noted the date written in the top right corner. I would have been roughly seven years old at the time.
I flipped through the pages, seeing words and equations and endless things I couldn’t comprehend, but taking nothing in really. All I saw was my name. Subject Eve, tests done to Eve, problems with Eve.
“What are you doing?!”
The notebook was suddenly ripped out of my hands and I looked up to see West glaring at me with burning eyes.
“What is that?” I asked as I stared at the notebook in his hand. “Where did you get it?”
He didn’t say anything for a second, just continued to look at me. An internal debate warred behi
nd his eyes.
“Don’t you dare lie to me, West,” I said, my voice turning cold. “I will hurt you if you lie to me.”
He continued to look at me for a minute. A mix of emotions played out behind his eyes: fear, agony, regret, among other things I wasn’t so sure about.
“I told you my grandfather was a scientist,” he said, his voice hoarse sounding. “Those are some of his personal notes. About a third of them are about you.”
I couldn’t make my throat form my loss of words. My chest felt oddly hard as West confirmed what I had had assumed.
“He experimented on me,” I finally managed. “For how long?”
“I remember you always being there. Since you were a baby.”
“You remember me?” I said slowly, my eyes never breaking from his.
“Like I told you, my grandfather was the scientist. My father was the doctor who monitored you. We lived at the testing facility. Sometimes they would let us play together.” His voice trembled a little as he spoke.
“I don’t remember you.” I forced myself to speak. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“Someone released you after the infection started. I think they wiped your memory.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice suddenly shaking with rage. “Why didn’t you tell me right away? I had no idea who I was, but you knew!”
“I wasn’t sure,” he said, the tone of his voice picking up with defense. “It’s been nearly six years since I’ve seen you, Eve! You’re a woman now, not a girl with a shaved head! And I thought you must have died a long time ago! It wasn’t easy for me to think you were dead. You were my best friend! My only friend!”
I glared at West. I wished he hadn’t said that. I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to throw him out and to tell him to leave Eden and never come back. But a part of me wondered if what he was saying was the truth. Maybe West had been my friend at one time.
But I couldn’t remember any of it.
“I trusted you,” I whispered as I glared at him. “You should have told me sooner. Were you ever going to tell me?”
He was quiet for a second as he looked back at me. “I don’t know.”
“Well at least you’re being honest about that,” I said coldly. “You should leave now. I have to get ready to move.”
“Eve, I’m…”
“Get out!” I shouted.
He stood and went to the flap of the tent. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly as he walked out.
I set to packing my things.
I had just finished putting my clothes away when the flap of the tent was pushed aside. Avian stood there, his expression open, waiting for me to attack him again.
I just kept gathering all of my stuff.
“Sarah told me to come get her things. She’s strong enough now we can move her. The allergy pills that you brought back are what finally did it I think. Maybe.”
I just glanced at him so he would know that I had heard him. I rolled the bear hide up, vowing to give it back to West later. I didn’t want it anymore.
Avian set to gathering Sarah’s belongings, stuffing them in a bag the same way I did. Within a few minutes we had everything cleared out of the tent.
“I can get this myself,” I said as we stepped out and Avian started taking down the tent.
“I know,” he said simply as he untied a tether.
We worked quietly as the tent came down. We then packed the poles into their bag and set to rolling the canvas up.
“We wanted to thank you for what you did,” Avian said as he worked at my side. “I wanted to thank you. It was incredibly dangerous but you did it anyway.”
I just held the bag open and Avian slid the bulk of the tent in. I tied the opening after the poles went in and set it on the ground.
“The wagon should be back in just a few minutes,” Avian said as he looked out to the east. “Sarah went this morning with Bill. West set out on his own a little while ago. It’s just the two of us now and our things.”
I allowed Avian to help me carry the three bags that had once been mine and Sarah’s tent toward the pile that was his belongings and the medical supplies and tent.
“I don’t want you to be angry with me forever,” Avian said as we stood there, side by side. “You have no idea how many times I wanted to tell you, how many times I knew I should have told you. I’m sorry, Eve. It was wrong.”
I gave a nod, as close as I could get to accepting his apology at the moment. Right then, it felt like everyone I knew had betrayed or lied to me.
The sound of wheels on the hard ground alerted us to the return of the wagon.
There had been two horses kept in Eden, until about eight months ago. The older of the two had broken its leg and Gabriel had to put him down. We managed with the smaller wagon with just one horse.
A woman by the name of Morgan and her husband, Eli, drove the wagon and helped us to load our things into the small space. With everything that had to be hauled, there was no room for anything else. Avian and I would be walking.
That was fine with me. I would have walked anyway.
Little was said as we finished loading. The couple told us that no one had seen any signs of Bane and that the new location for Eden was the best we’d had yet, located right next to a lake. Everyone was getting settled in just fine.
The wagon made good pace and we let them go ahead of us. It didn’t take long before it was out of sight, leaving Avian and I alone.
We walked silently for the first few minutes. But Avian kept glancing over at me with this look like he just knew something was wrong.
“He knew who I was,” I finally said. “West. He knew me before I came here. His grandfather experimented on me. He’s the reason I can do the things I can do.”
“He told you this?” Avian asked, his brow furrowed.
I shook my head. “No, I found a notebook filled with the things he did to me. West said I had been at this facility for as long as he could remember. Since I was a baby. He told me we used to play together as children sometimes.”
“I have a hard time imagining you playing anything,” Avian said. I noticed a smile tugging on his lips.
“I can’t imagine I was very good at it.”
A chuckle suddenly broke from Avian’s chest. I couldn’t help smiling too.
We walked quietly again for a while. My ears listened to the sounds of the woods around us, searching for any sign of alert. My eyes scanned the trees. I even smelled at the air, being alert for any scent of exhaust from an ATV or a helicopter.
I kept the handgun West had given back to me tucked into the back of my pants. I was ready to pull it out at any moment and unload it, grab Avian, and run for our lives.
“Why did you ask Graye to get the necklace for me?” I asked as I searched the trees with my eyes.
Avian hesitated for a few moments. “I wanted you to have something special for your birthday,” he said as he looked at me briefly. He stiffened slightly. “I thought you should have something a woman would normally have. I hoped you would like it.”
I looked away from him, fixing my eyes on the trail. I couldn’t think of anything that seemed less fit for me as a gift. I’d never owned any other piece of jewelry nor had I ever had the desire to own any.
“You shouldn’t have asked him to,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t worth it.”
“I know,” he answered me even more quietly.
I regretted my words instantly. Tye’s death had been hardest on Avian and I kept bringing it up. Now I was pointing it out that in a way it had been Avian’s fault he was dead.
Not really knowing what I was doing, I reached over and took Avian’s hand in mine. I wasn’t sure if it was an apology, an attempt at comfort, or just what exactly. But it seemed to work. He squeezed my fingers, his shoulder brushing mine.
“I was out of my mind,” Avian said, his voice tight as he looked down at his feet. “When you left. I didn’t know what happened to you, what w
as going to happen to you. You’re tough, but you’re not indestructible. If it hadn’t have been for Sarah I would have come after you.”
“You can’t do that,” I said as I furrowed my brows, looking back up at him. “They need you here.”
Avian slowed, pulling me to a stop with him, our hands still clasped together. “Don’t do that again, Eve. Don’t run off on me.”
I looked up into Avian’s face, surprised at the intensity that burned in his eyes. His face was closer than I expected it to be.
“I’ll do what I have to,” I finally managed to say. My heart was pounding in my chest in a way that was foreign. “I’ll protect them, always.”
He continued to look at me for a long, intense moment. He brought his other hand and softly brushed a thumb across my cheek for just a moment. My skin tingled as his hand went back to his side. He started walking back down the path, my hand still in his.
“Tell me what it was like, what it would have been like, if the world hadn’t fallen apart,” I said, moving on when I wasn’t sure how to handle Avian’s intensity or the intensity that was building up inside of me. “What would my life have been like right now, if I wasn’t a cybernetic human hybrid?”
That brought a sad little smile to his face. “Let’s see, it’s early May. You would have been in your last year of high school. You’d be dying to get out of school. The last few months of your senior year are agony. All you want is for it to be over.
“Prom would probably be around this time. You would have had a dozen different guys ask you to go with them. You would have had your pick.”
“What’s prom?” I asked.
Avian laughed. “It’s a dance. It’s probably the biggest event of the school year. Girls buy fancy dresses and guys wear tuxedos. People rent expensive cars and pick up their dates. Then they go to the dance and just have fun.”