THE EVE
Book Three in The Eden Trilogy
Keary Taylor
Copyright © 2013 Keary Taylor
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
First Digital Edition: November 2013
Cover Design by Keary Taylor
Cover Image by Shutterstock
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Taylor, Keary, 1987-
The Eve : a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.
ISBN 978-1493696772
The Eve: Book Three in The Eden Trilogy is also available in paperback.
Also by Keary Taylor
THE EDEN TRILOGY
The Ashes: An Eden Prequel
The Raid: An Eden Short Story
The Bane
The Human
FALL OF ANGELS
Branded
Forsaken
Vindicated
Afterlife: the novelette companion to Vindicated
What I Didn’t Say
Once upon a time there was an intelligent, beautiful young woman. Her hair was blond, her eyes a cross between gray and blue. She had sharp features and a small but strong frame. But her intelligence outweighed all else. She excelled in the field of science. She studied hard in school and then she secured the job she had always dreamed of.
She was helping to save the world. They were engineering a technology that was going to save and improve so many lives. She believed in what she was doing.
There was a boy, outside of work. Whether it was like, lust, or love, she wasn’t entirely sure. Sometimes he was there, most of the time he wasn’t. Then she found out she was pregnant with twins.
This did not hinder her work. For a while. She told no one at first, kept it a secret so as not to risk losing her job. But eventually her stomach grew disproportional to the rest of her body. Everyone found out. And while she was scolded and looked down upon by some people, she kept her job. She kept working towards what she believed in. She had worked so hard to see this dream actualized.
There were complications with the pregnancy. Her blood pressure was too high, she was swelling. Things were happening too early. She shouldn’t have kept the babies; that was what she was told. But those babies were all she had in this world. She had no siblings of her own, her parents were long gone, and the father was out of the picture, this time for good.
So she kept those babies, let them grow inside her.
Their arrival was early and brutal. There was blood, there were tiny pink and blue slimy bodies.
The mother took her last gasping breath as she saw her two daughters for the first and only time.
She was laid to rest not far from the place she had dedicated her life to and the babies were watched over at all hours.
One baby, though small, seemed healthy.
The other, it seemed, would not live past her first week.
Her lungs couldn’t function. They were underdeveloped and weak. Her heart couldn’t pump fast enough to keep up with the demands of the world outside the womb. Each and every day she grew weaker.
But a Man of Science, one the child’s mother had worked with, had been watching her, knowing he had to do something to help. He had an answer but it had yet to be approved, to be cleared for official testing.
He couldn’t just let the tiny child die though.
So in the dead of the night, when the babies’ nurse was distracted, he slipped into the nursery and administered an injection.
Just a tiny dosage. Barely enough to be measurable.
The child was too weak to even cry at the sharp prick. A small twitch of the leg and that was all.
The Man of Science pressed a kiss to the child’s forehead and left the room. He didn’t sleep that night.
By morning, the infant’s vitals were improving. It was just fractionally, but she should not have been getting better. The nurses and doctors couldn’t explain it, but the Man of Science smiled from the back of the room.
The twin’s mother had helped him develop a way to save her child.
The following night he gave her another injection. And he continued them for the next two days. Four injections total.
Each and every day the child continued to improve.
She was going to live.
Others suspected what he had done but they knew better than to question. Questions would make the actions real and known, and for now what was done had to be kept secret.
He named each of the girls Eve. The child who had been born healthy would be known as Eve One, the other that he had saved was Eve Two. They were, after all, the first of their kind.
Two, who had been given injections, was studied, watched, and revered. And the technology that had saved her continued to creep towards approval.
The children grew, One more quickly than Two. They ate, they slept, they lived.
But there were complications that later manifested in One, the child that had been born healthy.
She wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t keep eye contact. She never smiled and she did not like to be touched.
The Man of Science’s son, a Man of Medicine, confirmed Eve One was autistic.
Questions started circulating. The technology had fixed Two. Could it help One as well?
Injections were given, once again behind closed doors and in hushed words. But she was given treatment.
It took a year to see the difference. But it was working, slowly. One improved. She learned to talk, learned to interact. She formed an inseparable bond with the Man of Medicine’s son. She still trusted few people, but always the Boy.
The Eve’s continued to grow and progress and to amaze and astonish. They were studied. And the technology continued to develop. Official testing was announced.
But then the government blackmailed the Man of Science and his course of direction was shifted.
The girls’ emotions and pain were stripped away.
They were given different kinds of tests.
Years went by and finally they were passed off to be kept and preserved when the blackmail money ran dry.
For two more years they simply existed, emotionless. They were given to a Keeper to be maintained.
The development of the technology was finally continued.
It was stronger, better, quicker. And required only a single dose.
The technology was finally ready for the public.
But not everyone agreed with what the Man of Science was doing. Man was not supposed to be combined with machine. Man was not to play God.
There was a plan laid under the Keepers nose. A carefully plotted one that had been developing for over a year. They infiltrated the company, gained trust, secrets, and information. When the time was right, they took one of the girls. She had trusted the traitor and went willingly outside.
The sun was so bright. She had never seen it before. The air was so fresh and cold.
She didn’t get to enjoy it for long though. She was pushed into a vehicle and a needle was pressed into her neck.
Then there was nothing but blackness.
When she woke, there was a set of doors before her. The world was fuzzy and too bright and there was something ringing in her ears that drowned everything else out.
The doors opened and people rushed outside to drag Eve Two back in.
When they reached the center of the building, shouts started rising into the air. Other men of scienc
e came running out of rooms.
People were dying. People who had been given the first dosage of the new, stronger technology. The technology was shorting out, and as it did, it shorted out their very lives.
Eve Two had been tampered with. The people who had taken her had put something in her head, something deadly to the technology. And she was killing everyone around her who had just received it.
Everyone went crazy. Eve Two was scared—one of the first emotions she had felt in years—and tried to hide, to escape.
And then her sister was there. Eve One raged, holding her hands against her head as if trying to keep it from splitting open. Maddened bellows poured from her mouth and her eyes were blood red from the damage being caused inside her body. She did, after all, have only a slightly different version of the technology that was being shorted out.
The Boy, the one that caused hatred and rage inside of Two, but was the only friend of One, came into the chaos, and not being able to tell the difference between One and Two in such a disordered moment, tried to comfort the wrong girl. Two tried to push him away as she attempted to hide. And even though One’s emotions were locked away, the heightened moment brought out jealousy and rage. She attempted to push Two away, but in the scuffle, nearly ripped the Boy’s windpipe from his throat.
Two got the blame because they looked exactly the same.
And as the chaos continued, alarms sounding, the Man of Medicine, father of the Boy, beat Two within an inch of her life. She would have died if she’d been a normal human.
But the Man of Science understood what had happened. He locked Two away when his son ordered her destruction.
Weeks later, the unspeakable happened.
His technology started evolving. The first generation that had been upgraded with the new and better technology, the ones who had been cured six weeks earlier, started evolving. They were losing their humanity and it quickly took over their bodies. Soon it was spreading to everyone around them.
The company had just ended the world.
The Man of Science took precautions to save himself, hoping it wouldn’t be too late.
Once again there were alarms and chaos and people dying.
The Man of Science took Two by the hand and led her down the halls. He told her not to say a word, to not reveal that she wasn’t really her sister.
Two realized then that everyone at the company thought the Man of Science had disposed of her weeks ago.
He took her to her former Keeper and even he could not tell the difference between her and her sister.
The Man of Science ordered the Keeper to make Two forget. The Keeper questioned but did as he was told.
And then the girl didn’t know anything. Didn’t recognize anyone. Couldn’t understand what the panic and alarms were about.
The Man of Science took her to the back of the building and opened the door. He was about to give her instructions when she was tackled to the ground.
The Man of Medicine had realized what had happened. He knew One was hiding with his son. He knew the truth when he saw Two with his father. And still believing Two had nearly killed the Boy, he was filled with rage.
Once again, he nearly beat Two to death.
And even though Two couldn’t remember anything in the world, she had survival instincts.
Her strong hands wrapped around her attackers throat and soon he slipped into unconsciousness.
The Man of Science, with a shaking voice and hands, turned once again to the door and told Eve Two to run and to not stop.
Covered in her own blood and not knowing she should question, she ran into the desert mountains.
She didn’t stop until a pair of burning blue eyes met hers and asked her if she was okay.
The Man of Science found the sister, but having no time to save her from her horrible past, turned her out to the wild as well.
They would never know a normal life, but they would live, of that he was certain. Because he had made those girls indestructible.
He soon sent his grandson away with the answers, the key to reversing what he had done in hopes that someday the Boy would understand how to use it. In hopes that he would someday realize what the key to making it work was. There hadn’t been time to complete the plans before he could no longer wait.
The Man of Science turned back to the building and waited for the end of the world to come.
But once upon a time, he found the girl who was the key to saving the world he ended and was given a second chance to right his wrongs.
ONE
The memories started floating to the surface as Dr. Evans recounted the truths of my past. Like they were just under the water and I could see hints of them down there, but I couldn’t quite reach them. Everything looked distorted and murky.
But there was the breath of the truth begging to fill my lungs. If I closed my eyes, I swore I could almost picture my room at NovaTor. I could almost imagine Dr. Evans’ and Dr. Beeson’s younger faces. I could almost reach out and touch my sister.
I had a sister. A sister I had no doubt was still alive. She was out there somewhere.
I had family. Blood family.
I recalled what I’d started to recover while at the Underground. I had seen myself through a window. West was reading to her, an arm draped over her shoulders. He smiled as he looked over at her. Her eyes lit up when she looked back.
And there was the conversation I’d had with her when we were transferred to Dr. Beeson’s care. My sister liked West. I had hated him back then. It wasn’t a true hate, but it was a resentment.
Just before I’d taken off to the desert, West had commented on how the truth about my identity explained so much about us now. And it did. Even as children we had fought. I hadn’t liked or trusted him and he would lose his patience with me quickly.
It had been my sister West had pinned after for those five years we had been separated. It was her in fact that he had grown up with, cared for, plotted escape for.
Not me.
I heaved a deep sigh, feeling something loosen around my heart.
West and I had, in fact, had something. Something fast and hot and consuming. It was positive and negative at the same time. But in the end, it would have been something that would have destroyed us both if I had chosen him.
And now I had little doubt West could move on.
Because West was West and I knew he would do everything in his power to find my sister.
And I would help him.
The sun rose on the horizon. Almost as if he couldn’t stand to wait another moment, Dr. Evans crossed to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked down at his mechanical fingers, both repulsed and fascinated by them. I closed my eyes for another moment, took a deep breath, and finally rose to my feet.
I looked over the masses. They circled around me, all with their eyes firmly fixed on my form. There were so many bodies I couldn’t see any ground beneath them. Off in the distance, I could see the mountains that separated us from New Eden.
There were so many Bane here gathered around me, all called by the Underground’s beacon. There were probably over a million of them here, but there were still billions out there.
Are you ready to save this planet, Eve Two? Dr. Evans had asked me that impossible question. I couldn’t answer it though until I understood who I was. So he told me the truth. All of it.
“How?” I asked, finally.
He opened up his old, tattered notebook to the last few pages. The pages with the device Avian, West, and I had mistaken for an electromagnetic pulse.
“When you were abducted from NovaTor, they put what is essentially a kill switch in you. A damn strong one,” he said, his voice hard and angry. “You only had to get within fifty yards of the latest generation of TorBane and the signal you were emitting killed it off. Completely destroyed.”
“Is that why I can control them?” I asked, my eyes turning out over the Bane that surrounded us.
Dr. Evans nodded. “As soon
as I realized what was going on I disabled it. Or I thought I had. Apparently the line wasn’t completely cut off. You can still connect with TorBane. You are still emitting a signal that they understand. That’s why this,” he said, waving his hand around, “is possible.”
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head. He was starting to get scientific and it was all about to go over my head completely.
“Do you not see?” he asked, the excitement growing in his voice. “If we can turn that kill switch back on and amplify it…?”
“How is that any better than the Pulse though?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I looked at him. “We can only reach so far with an amplifier.”
A wicked grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. “You mustn’t be afraid to think a little bigger.”
“I don’t understand.”
Tucking the notebook under his mechanical arm, Dr. Evans crouched. He drew a picture in the dirt with his finger. It looked like a square with four skinny fingers extending from the sides. Attached to those, he drew rectangular shapes.
“Am I supposed to know what those are?” I asked, my voice growing impatient.
“Satellites,” he said, looking up at me with a grin on his face. “There are hundreds of them still up there floating above the Earth. We send the signal up to those satellites, your kill-all signal, they bounce off each other, get amplified stronger than they were transmitted, and reflect the signal back to Earth.”
“Wiping out the Bane,” I breathed as I grasped his plan.
“Worldwide.”
There should have been unbearable relief or excitement that built up inside of me at his words. He was claiming we could kill off the Bane, on all continents. But too much had gone wrong in my life, the world seemed too far gone.
I was simply filled with doubt.
“And how do we send the signal from me to those satellites?” I asked.
He grabbed the notebook again, pulling the pages open. He drummed his fingers on one of the drawings. “The design is almost complete,” he said. “I ran out of time before I could finish drawing it up, but the rest is up here,” he tapped the side of his head. “We just have to build the transmitter. And if Erik Beeson is still alive, it won’t take long.”