“Shit,” I swore, pounding on her chest as hard as I could. It didn’t flex one millimeter.
Moving back to her mouth, I breathed into her ten times.
“What the hell happened?” I bellowed at Royce, taking a break from breathing into Eve. “Dr. Evans said they were different generations of TorBane, that this kill code wouldn’t affect her!”
Royce shook his head, some of his sense seeming to return to him. “That’s what he’s always said,” he replied, looking up at the Nova. “He said otherwise she would have been killed the first time she transmitted the kill code.”
I looked up at Addie who stared at us from next to the Nova with horror in her eyes. “Well?”
She shook her head and glanced back at Dr. Evans’ body. “Dr. Evans always insisted it wouldn’t hurt her. I don’t know…”
“Something went wrong,” I said, trying once again to do chest compressions. Nothing. “But she has to recover. If that code couldn’t kill out her generation, the TorBane inside her will repair whatever damage has been done.”
“I think we’d better get her back to Dr. Beeson,” Tristan said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
Grateful that someone was thinking more logically than me, I stood and slung Eve over my shoulder. She hung limp.
“We’re coming down,” Royce said into his radio as we all started down the stairs. “Tell Dr. Beeson to meet us on the blue floor.”
My legs didn’t want to work and it was a struggle not to crash down the stairs as we stampeded down them. Royce continued to talk to the hospital over the radio but I wasn’t in tune enough to distinguish what he was saying.
Dr. Evans had been so sure that this kill code was completely incompatible with the first generation of TorBane. There was literal evidence that it wouldn’t kill her, since she had survived it before. Even Vee had survived it, though she didn’t come out unharmed. It had nearly melted her brain, but it didn’t kill her.
She couldn’t be…
She couldn’t be…
We broke from the building out the front door and I nearly tripped over the Bane Eve had ordered to stand outside.
They all lay in a crumpled heap. Every single one of them.
“It worked,” Tristan said, his voice disbelieving. “Eve did it.”
By now I was sprinting toward the hospital, leaping over bodies of dozens of other Bane who littered the streets. Eve’s arms bounced on my back, swinging up and down with each step I took.
“Take her in through the back,” Royce said as they all ran behind me. “Everyone’s bound to be gathered outside the front doors.”
I changed direction as we approached the hospital, headed for the underground garage. Darting through the lined up vehicles, I nearly collided with the steel doors of the elevator as I pushed the up button.
It opened immediately.
Bill, Royce, and Addie wedged themselves inside with me and everyone else shouted that they’d meet us upstairs in a few minutes.
None of us said a single word as we took the slowest elevator ride in the history of man up to the seventh floor.
Finally, it dinged, and we were immediately greeted by Dr. Beeson.
“She collapsed as soon as the transmitter went off,” I started explaining the second the doors opened. He ushered us down the hall to one of the labs. “I can’t find a heartbeat right now. I’ve been doing breaths. Chest compressions are impossible.”
Dr. Beeson nodded and held a hand out toward a door. We shuffled inside and I found a huge scanner. With his help, I laid Eve on the narrow bed. Addie strapped a breathing mask around her mouth and nose.
Eve felt so still and empty. Her muscles gave no resistance as I laid her left arm next to her side.
“The scan will show us what is going on,” Dr. Beeson said, placing an arm over my shoulder and pulling me toward the door. My feet didn’t want to move. They wanted to be in here with her. My instincts screamed at me to be by her side, to tell her everything was okay, because she would wake up at any moment.
“Avian,” Dr. Beeson said, pulling me a bit harder this time.
With dead feet, I exited the room and followed him to the next door down.
We watched from behind a glass window as Addie pressed a button and the table Eve lay on moved into the circular tube.
She started up the scanner and the room filled with clicking noises.
The screens before us jumped to life.
There was the solid outline of her skull, the shape of her brain, her eyes. The scan continued to move down.
I had seen plenty of scans before during my medical training in the Army. But nothing like Eve’s scans.
Her entire skeleton was nearly black looking, exactly how someone with screws or plates on their bones would look. The cybernetics in Eve’s body coated every one of her bones.
Eve’s body was a tank.
But as the scans showed other things, all the blood in my body seemed to exit out my feet.
“None…” Dr. Beeson started to say. He cleared his throat and glanced over at me. By this point, Tristan, Vee, Creed, and Bill were just outside the doors, observing the scan as well. “None of her organs are functioning right now.”
A steel band seemed to form around my throat and my vision blurred. “She’s been badly injured before. Her body has always been able to fix itself. TorBane will heal her.”
Dr. Beeson met my eyes and shook his head. His own eyes had reddened and there was moisture pooled in them. “That’s the thing. TorBane, it’s a live technology. A normal scan would show it immediately. It’d be brilliant white. You’d see it in her blood, in her organs, in her brain.”
Just like Creed’s scans had looked. But there wasn’t a single trace of that on the scans.
That high pitched sound started in my ears again. I didn’t have a body anymore. I was just a numb consciousness floating in unconnected space.
“Avian,” Dr. Beeson said quietly from very far away. “Eve is dead.”
THE END
PART THREE
--AVIAN--
There was a broken screen. And then another. Next there was a broken window. And then my skin was sliced open as I climbed through it to pull Eve out of the scanner. I shook her shoulders again, begged her to open her eyes.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t.
She wouldn’t open her eyes.
--WEST--
It didn’t take more than sixty seconds for everyone to pour out of the hospital. People ran into the streets with cheers and whoops and laughter. A few reckless members of the Underground fired off shots into the sky.
Idiots.
I stood just outside the doors, leaning on my crutches. I tried to search through the crowd, to pick out Eve and Vee returning from the Nova building.
Eve would give me a smug smile when she walked through the crowd, even though she’d be incredibly uncomfortable with the fact that she’d just saved the world.
Actually, no, that wasn’t how it would play out.
The second she came down from that building, back toward the hospital, she was going to be mauled to death by the celebrating crowd.
Vee would be scared out of her mind because of the way people were acting right now, but she’d never let that show.
Royce’s chest would puff out and his chin would be held high. He’d start making sarcastic comments and wouldn’t be able to wipe the smile from his face.
So I kept searching the crowd for them. Any moment they’d walk through the masses.
But as ten minutes rolled by, fifteen, twenty, they still hadn’t emerged.
While everyone else celebrated the end of the apocalypse, my blood started turning cold.
It had worked. The Bane were dead, so they’d at least made it up to the Nova unharmed, and set it off.
But where were they?
What was wrong?
I turned back into the hospital and threw the crutches to the side. Limping heavily, I took off with
out any real direction.
I was just about to push the up button for the elevator when it dinged.
The doors slid open to reveal Vee.
She held Creed tightly in her arms and everything about the sight seemed wrong.
I’d never seen her expression so vacant. And this was a girl born with autism who had then had all her emotions stripped away.
“Eve’s dead,” she said.
THE END
PART FOUR
--AVIAN--
There was a hard surface behind my back. There was something solid beneath my rear end, but it was so numb it almost felt as if I was floating. Most of my body felt dead, but there were places on my skin that felt afire. My forearms, my lips, the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure what that meant in medical terms, but emotionally, I was pretty sure it meant I was seared dead too.
I stared at Eve. She lay on the table, poking out from the scanner. She rested there perfectly still. Her hair was pushed back from her eyes, now just long enough to be tucked behind her ears. Her skin was pearl white.
She wore her favorite cargo pants and her sturdy boots. A comfortable, flexible jacket covered her arms. Her hands were dirty and calloused from the endless work she would never give up.
Eve looked like she was sleeping.
The door opened but I couldn’t look over to see who it was. They crossed the room slowly, bare feet limping across the tile floor. I could barely process West’s form as he stopped at her side.
He didn’t make any noise, not a sniffle, or a cut off cry, or a scream, or even a whisper. He placed a hand over her heart and stood there for a moment, not moving a muscle.
See you on the other side of the apocalypse, she’d said to him.
Finally, he crossed to the wall and sank onto the floor next to me.
We sat in silence for a long time.
“We’re getting reports back in,” he finally said after an unknown amount of time. His voice sounded dirty in this silent and numb place. “They’re four hundred miles south and there’s bodies everywhere.”
I think I nodded slightly, my gaze still fixed on Eve.
My eyes were dry and tired, but I couldn’t make them close. I wasn’t even sure when the last time I blinked was.
“It worked, Avian,” West said. He held his hand out, like he was going to pat my leg, or give some kind of reassuring gesture. But he withdrew it and let it fall back in his lap. “She did it. She saved everyone.”
I just kept staring at Eve.
“One more day,” I hissed. I locked eyes with Dr. Sun, my jaw set hard. I hadn’t realized I’d gathered the front of her lab coat in my hand and my nose was only three inches from hers. “It might not be too late.”
“Avian, I—”
“I said one more day!” I bellowed. My eyes grew wide when I realized how hard I jerked her. Horrified at my actions and harsh words, I immediately released her.
“Okay,” she said. There was fear in her eyes. “We’ll wait one more day.”
She backed out of the room and practically ran down the hall. I caught a glimpse of Royce and Gabriel behind her.
I turned back to Eve as the door swung shut and walked to her side.
I’d watched her for two days now. Yesterday I asked Dr. Beeson to do another scan.
There were still no signs of live TorBane in Eve’s system.
But I couldn’t…
I couldn’t…
The door opened, whomever it was not bothering to knock.
I looked up when they stopped beside the bed.
Vee looked at me, and I finally threw up. All over the floor.
It was Eve’s face. But it wasn’t Eve.
I stumbled from the room, down the hall, and into the stairwell. I came out on the fifth floor, the floor that housed all the supplies. I collapsed somewhere behind a stack of boxes full of ammunition.
Tears started to freely flow from my eyes, pooling in my ears as I lay on my back. A howling cry leapt from my lips, rattling my entire chest with it. My fist beat against the boxes, knocking one of them over and scattering bullets across the floor.
“Eve!” I cried, my voice gutted and bone-rattling. “Wake up, Eve. You have to wake up!”
But as I lay there, letting all of the things I hadn’t allowed myself to think about up until that point come flooding in. I knew.
I knew.
Eve wasn’t going to wake up.
THE END
PART FIVE
--WEST--
Phoenix. Denver. Dallas.
The Bane were dead in every city we came across. Every one of them.
This should have felt like a triumph. We’d nearly lost the world. Point one two percent. That was what was left of the human population, according to Dr. Beeson’s team. Probably even less. We’d been whittled down to that small of a number and then we’d won.
Against billions of Bane.
This should have felt like a triumph.
But the cost still felt too high.
“Are you alright?” Vee asked.
I looked over my shoulder to see her standing in my doorway. I’d been staring out over the city, out my window, not actually seeing anything.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.
It was easy to be honest with Vee.
She crossed the room and sat next to me on the bed. She looked outside as well.
“Everyone from your colony is so excited,” she said. “But they’re also so sad.”
I nodded, my eyes glazing over once again.
“You’re sad,” she said. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
Her fingers laced with mine.
And for a moment, I wasn’t quite as sad.
Dear Avian,
I am sure at this point you are wondering exactly what went wrong.
The simple answer is that everything went exactly according to plan.
I knew from the moment I started plans on the Nova that Eve Two could never survive the transmission. The level the kill code had to be amplified to was astronomical, something none of you could have comprehended. Had her sister not been in that lead box, she and the baby would have been killed too.
I am sorry to say that Eve Two was never going to survive saving the planet. But that was her greatest calling and purpose in this life. I never should have saved her all those years ago. I should have let her pass with her mother, should have taken Emma’s death as a sign to let the TorBane project die as well. But I didn’t.
This may feel as if the world has ended. I have seen the way you look at Eve Two and no one can doubt that you love her more than human words can describe. But even if it seems impossible, try to keep perspective. Her death has bought the freedom of the human race.
Never forget Eve Two, and never let planet Earth forget what she did for it.
My deepest apologies,
Dr. Reiss Evans
THE END
PART SIX
--AVIAN--
“I need a car,” I said as I walked up behind Royce. The letter I’d found from Dr. Evans was crumpled in my right hand. Royce turned to look at me. He’d been talking to someone and I’d interrupted him mid-sentence.
Royce swore. “Avian, you look like hell. Have you slept since…?”
I shook my head.
Sleep? How was I supposed to sleep?
“We’re supposed to have the—” the word stopped up in my throat. “Tomorrow, and I need to find a place to—” My voice cut off, and I couldn’t make myself finish that sentence. I cleared my throat. “I can’t do it here. She hated the city. So I’m going to go scout for a place to—”
Royce put a heavy hand on my shoulder and nodded. “Come on,” he said.
I was given a small vehicle, one that wouldn’t require much gas. Not that there was much gas left in the world. Or many engines that hadn’t been destroyed by the corrosive kind we still had.
So I headed out of the city. I skirted around the destroyed section of Los A
ngeles, the part of town that the Bane sweep had leveled. There were millions of Bane there, piled six feet deep.
I couldn’t let Eve’s final resting place be within the city she so badly wanted to escape. The one she was only confined to because of the threat the Bane posed to those she loved. Because of her sense of duty to her family.
I looked for green. I looked for trees. I looked for water. In this area of the country, that wasn’t so easy to find. But I kept driving, and I kept searching.
Until I found a place.
It wasn’t really a town. More like a recreation area or a pit stop. There was a gas station that had been completely looted. Across the street from it was a diner. The road that led between the two drove almost right up to a lake. One that was about twice the size of the lake in Eden. There were five cabins on this side of the lake, and I could see a few others scattered around the edge of it. The road curved around the lake for a bit before breaking off into the mountains. On one side of the lake, next to the first house, there was a grass field.
I parked the car at the edge of the lake and climbed out.
The trees that surrounded the lake and the little lakeside town weren’t giants. They were barely green. But they were trees. They were under the wide open blue sky.
Eve would approve of a place like this.
I climbed back in the car and headed back into the city.
I looked over Dr. Beeson’s shoulder, staring at the screen before us. West peered around me. Vee was there as well. So was Royce. And Gabriel.
There was her skull again. There was her brain. Her eyes.
Her shoulders, her spine. Her heart.
Her stomach, liver, hip bones. Femurs, tiny foot bones.
A cybernetic skeleton and still organs.
No traces of TorBane.
Three nights and three and a half days now, Eve had lain there. Still and—
Dea—
She really was—
“Okay,” I said, the word trying to stick in my throat. “It’s time. Thank you for doing the scan.”
Dr. Beeson nodded, his eyes locked on me. West placed a hand on my shoulder, but it sat there as limp and lifeless as she was.