THE HUMAN
Book Two in The Eden Trilogy
By 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: June 2013
Cover Design by Keary Taylor
Cover Image: Shutterstock.com
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 Human : a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.
ISBN: 978-0615827704
Also by Keary Taylor
THE EDEN TRILOGY
The Bane
The Raid: An Eden Short Story
The Ashes: An Eden Prequel
FALL OF ANGELS
Branded
Forsaken
Vindicated
Afterlife: the novelette companion to Vindicated
WHAT I DIDN’T SAY
ONE
Nearly everywhere I looked, there were bodies.
They lay limp in the streets. They were piled on top of each other inside buildings. They sat still and slumped over inside vehicles.
We were surrounded by over three million decomposing, cybernetic-infused corpses.
I closed my eyes as a sense of overwhelming vertigo seized me. Rubble fell from the roof, down into the street below, as I took one step back from the ledge.
There were so many bodies. They surrounded us on all sides. Silent and immobile. They were dead. They couldn’t infect us anymore.
But I had lived my whole life running from them.
Every instinct in me wanted to flee the city.
I opened my eyes, turning them east. I missed the mountains. I missed the trees. I missed the heat and the snow and the changing leaves.
I missed protecting my family. I missed staying up all night to make sure we were safe.
I missed having a purpose.
We were safe now. The Bane in the city were destroyed.
What purpose did I serve now?
I took two more steps back, bumping into the Pulse. Its sharp edges dug into my ribs, but I stayed pressed into it, hoping to feel something other than guilt and loss.
I’d had a purpose then. I’d helped to clear this city. So had many others.
But not all of us had made it out.
And my actions ate at me every day.
“Eve?”
Avian stepped out onto the roof of the hospital. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, a utility belt hanging low on his narrow hips. His eyes were serious and searching as he met mine.
I looked back out over the city to the east. His footsteps approached, slow but knowing.
He stepped in front of me, locking his eyes on mine. He placed a hand on either side of my face and pressed his forehead to mine.
“We can leave,” he breathed as my eyes slid closed. “You don’t have to stay here and torture yourself.”
I shook my head slightly and the air around me seemed to tighten and constrict around my chest and throat.
“I can’t abandon them,” I whispered, placing my hand on Avian’s chest. The only sure thing in my world, Avian’s heart beat back the echo of everything I had ever fought for. “I have to deal with the messes I’ve made.”
“You’ve saved them, Eve,” he said. His rough cheek brushed mine as his lips whispered next to my ear. “Maybe it’s time to save yourself.”
I didn’t respond because I would never be able to make him understand the weight and turmoil that burned through my veins. I simply pressed my face into Avian’s neck and crushed him into my chest.
“Come on,” Avian said after a long while, taking my hand. He pulled me toward the stairs that led back into the hospital. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
We made our way to the armory, finding it empty.
We didn’t really need weapons anymore, but not a single one of our scouts was going to walk around the city without a firearm.
Instincts don’t die quickly.
A rack of firearms lined one wall. There were labels below each shotgun or rifle. I had six firearms myself. Avian had five. And those were just the ones we kept in the armory.
My eyes hesitated on one name.
West.
His rifle and shotgun had sat untouched for weeks.
Static crackled over my radio, making me jump.
"It’s happening again! I need you up here, Eve! Now!”
Royce. There was unmistakable frustration and fear in his voice.
My teeth threatened to break as my jaw clenched. I placed my M4 assault rifle back on the rack and looked over at Avian. He hesitated for a moment, the pain of the past surfacing once more like a heavy, dark cloud. He finally gave an assuring nod.
“I’m on my way,” I said into the radio. I squeezed Avian’s shoulder, hoping it was reassuring. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
“Yeah,” was all he said. The muscles in his neck tightened and his eyes darted away from mine. He went back to cleaning his weapon.
My footsteps echoed off the walls. The hospital felt so quiet and yet so busy these days. In the two months since the Pulse went off, everyone had slowly started moving out. But the hospital remained the base of operations here in Los Angeles, now renamed New Eden. It was still the most secure location and all of our military supplies, food, and medical equipment remained stored within its walls.
I jogged up six flights of stairs and exited onto the blue floor.
"Eve!" I heard Royce bellow from down the hall. "Take your time. It's not like he isn't trying his best to kill us!"
I picked up my pace, sprinting toward the door I was becoming all too familiar with.
"For a robotic freak you sure can be slow," Royce growled as he helped Graye hold the door shut. Something slammed against it from the other side. They groaned as their feet slid back and the door jerked open a few inches.
"How long ago did he wake up?" I asked, pressing my palm flat against the door, pushing it back shut. I avoided looking thorough the tiny window made of reinforced glass.
"It’s been about twenty minutes," Graye answered. "He was pretty out of it for a bit, then he freaked out."
I nodded, feeling everything in me tire. This whole process exhausted me mentally and physically, and it just kept repeating.
"I've got it," I said. "You two can leave now."
"You sure you can handle him?" Royce asked. "He’s raging today."
I wasn’t ready, at all. But I wouldn’t tell Royce that. “Yeah.”
Finally he nodded.
"Count of three?" I asked. "One, two, three!"
They jumped away as I yanked the door open, stepped inside, and slammed the door closed behind me. I broke the door handle off, locking the both of us inside until I could get him to cooperate and help me force it open.
I heard him freeze behind me.
It took a long time to turn away from the door. The last seven weeks had been painful. I'd been preparing myself for a bad situation, because there was no easy way for this all to end. But I hadn't expected this to end like it did.
"Eve," he breathed behind me. I heard him take a step closer and everything in me wanted to retreat, to not have to go through all of this, again and again. "What’s going on?"
Collecting myself, I turned, and looked at West.
He wasn't as bad as Elijah. He'd at least kept both his eyes. But the skin was bubbled on the right side
of his face, the left had a few scattered scars. His face was in bad shape, there was no question about it. His entire body was covered in marks and scar tissue. I could barely distinguish the claw marks on his neck—which had once been so prominent—from the new scars.
He was broken, but he was still West.
Even if he wasn't my West.
Even if he couldn't remember that.
"What happened to me?" he asked for the third time. "What is this?"
My eyes dropped to his bare chest. A device was implanted there, just above his heart, and small barbs disappeared into his skin. Components swirled, ticked, and spun, casting a pale green glow, keeping it charged at all times.
Keeping me away at all times.
"It's keeping you human," I said with a hard swallow. I didn't know how many times I could keep doing this.
West stared at me for a long time, like he couldn't quite make sense of my words. He looked back down at the device, his fingers touching where it went into his bare chest.
"I..." he stuttered. "I remember... I remember going to the plant, all the Bane. I was helping Royce repair the line. A gun fired… I don't remember how I got back here."
I recalled the night I had been at the power plant myself. My mission had been to connect the power line for the Pulse to the power source. There had been hundreds of Bane gathered around it. There were flashes of light, gunfire, explosions. I’d nearly lost my legs that night. But it had been for nothing.
The Bane had pulled the line, and West went with a team to try and fix it.
I shifted from one foot to the other, again fighting the urge to run. I was having a hard time meeting his eyes. "You were attacked," I explained. "The Bane got you. You were infected."
"Infected?" he said, his voice breathy with shock and disbelief. "No, I couldn't... I can't... I made it this long!"
"I know," I said, debating if I could walk away from the door or not. West was unpredictable when he forgot. He had a tendency to break things—and sometimes people.
I finally stepped away from the door and crossed to the small metal chair in the corner, opposite of where West stood. On the nightstand next to me, West’s grandfather’s notebook rested so innocently on it.
"The night you all fixed the power supply to the Pulse, you were infected. No one saw the Bane that was hiding. Royce and his men got you back here and put you under the Extractor. We weren't sure if you were going to make it or not. No one was sure how long it had been since you were touched.”
"Royce said it had to be under an hour," West said. He rubbed the device in his chest absent mindedly. "That was the magic number."
I nodded. I pressed my palms flat against each other between my knees, rubbing them together slowly. "We watched you for a long time, waiting to see if we could get all the cybernetics out. Normally the process takes about ten days. We waited fifteen."
I’d fought Royce the final three days. He wanted to dispose of West, certain it had been too late to save him. The only living TorBane in the city was trapped in West’s body and Royce wasn’t willing to risk the safety of our people over one man.
In the end, Royce gave West a few more days. West had woken up just in time.
"So they fixed me, right?" West said, his voice full of hope and fear at the same time. "I mean, I'm alive. I don't feel like infecting everyone, so that means it worked?"
I tried to nod, to reassure him that he was going to be okay. But that glowing inhibitor was right there in front of me.
"Not exactly," I said, my palms turning white as I pressed them together harder. "They thought they had everything out. But Dr. Beeson did a scan, and saw one small piece left. A half inch long, an eighth of an inch wide. That's all that's left. It’s relatively tiny. But it's formed in your heart. They can't get it out, not without killing you."
West stared at me, almost like he hadn’t heard me. I wondered for a moment if he was lapsing again.
"And this?" he finally said, so quiet, even I almost didn't hear him. Then he glanced down at the device.
"Like I said, it’s keeping you human," I started explaining. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, just wanting to skip the rest of this day and go home to bed. "That scrap inside of you is still TorBane. It still wants to spread throughout your body. That inhibitor is keeping it from spreading. Well, slowing it down."
"Slowing it down?" West asked as he sank onto his bed. "Not fully stopping it?"
I shook my head. "It keeps it at bay for about two weeks at a time, but no. It doesn't stop it permanently. You have to go back in the Extractor every two weeks."
West stared at me in disbelief for a moment. "How do you know all this? How... How long has this been going on?"
"Just short of two months," I answered him hollowly. I sat back in the chair, my arms crossing over my chest. "You've undergone extraction three times now. And every time you come back out, you don't remember what's happened."
West shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed tightly, like maybe he could shake the memories into focus.
"You should probably get some rest, eat some food," I said, climbing to my feet. "I will walk with you to the kitchen, let them know you're okay."
"Did I hurt anyone?" he asked. “They’ve got me locked up. There must be a reason for that.”
I stilled by the door. The first time he had woken, Dr. Beeson had been there, as well as some of his team. He had broken three of Dr. Beeson’s fingers and the arm of his assistant, Addie. “It doesn’t matter,” I said after too long of a pause. “We just need to focus on getting you better.”
West turned toward the mirror that hung on the wall. Or what remained of it. He had thrown a book at it the second time he woke up and broken it pretty badly. His face paled when he saw his reflection. One of his hands rose to touch his skin.
"Come on," I said uncomfortably, trying to draw his attention away from what he was seeing. "Let’s get you some food."
"I'm not hungry," he said, still studying his reflection.
"Fine," I said. "Help me get the door open?"
West didn’t respond. His head whipped to the right, toward the small window that looked out to the sunny street below. He crossed to it, looking out.
“It worked?” he breathed. “Didn’t it?”
I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “Yeah, the Pulse killed them all off. We’re safe, for now.”
West took a deep breath and continued to stare out the window for a long moment. “I can’t believe I missed it.”
It was my fault he had. He’d been trying to protect me when he got infected.
Finally, he turned. With his help, we forced the door open. I stepped out into the hall.
"Are you going to terrorize anyone, or do I need to send up an armed guard?" I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets. It might have sounded like I was making a joke, but I wasn’t.
"I feel okay. Freaked out, but okay." He shook his head when he looked out into the hall, realizing he was on the blue floor and not the residential second floor.
"Good," I said, turning to go.
I'd only taken two steps away from West when he called out to me.
"You chose Avian, didn't you?"
I hesitated mid-step, a sharp, biting cold spreading through my veins. I had hoped we could avoid this part for just a little while longer this time around.
"Yes," I answered simply. Without waiting for his reply, I kept walking down the hall.
TWO
“Are you okay?”
My eyes jerked to the right, finding Lin walking out of room 104. The room behind her was filled with children. They sat in a circle, reading books and coloring pictures. Lin was the new-age elementary school teacher.
I’d been standing in the lobby, zoned out, trying not to think about West or cybernetics or Bane or the complexity of love. She stopped at my side, her arms folded across her tiny frame. “West woke up, didn’t he?” she asked.
I nodded, pressing my lips tightly toget
her. My eyes searched the lobby.
“I think Avian went back to his room,” Lin said as she too scanned the space. It wasn’t as busy as it had been a few weeks ago. The day-to-day operations of New Eden had changed. We didn’t have to worry about the Bane falling down on us. For now.
“West was pretty calm this time,” I said, looking back toward the classroom. Parents came to collect their children. Wix took Brady by the hand and led him out into the sun outside. “Once I got there anyway.”
“Are you okay though?” Lin asked. Her eyes searched for the truth I knew she’d find.
My eyes rose to the ceiling and I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “He asked about my decision almost immediately.”
“It’s still fresh for him,” Lin said.
“It’s always fresh for him,” I said, wrapping my arms around my midsection. “That’s the problem. I keep trying to move on, to let go of the guilt I feel. But him forgetting every time makes that impossible.”
“You don’t need to punish yourself,” Lin said, placing a tiny hand on my arm. “You deserve to be happy, Eve. You can’t save everyone and you can’t always fix every problem.”
I met her gaze again and I felt an immense sense of gratitude toward her. Lin was one of the most understanding people I had ever met. I couldn’t comprehend how she could always take things so calmly and evenly. But she always said the right things when I needed to hear them.
“Thanks,” I said, attempting a bit of a smile.
“Any time,” she said before wrapping me in a hug that was surprisingly strong, considering her size.
“I think I’m going to go find Avian now,” I said when she released me.
“I think that’s a good idea,” she said with a wink before she walked back to the remaining students.
Climbing the stairs, I turned down the hall. I knocked on Avian’s door once. No one answered so I peeked inside, only to find it empty.
I opened the door to my own room to find a small package sitting on my bed. I crossed the room and gingerly picked it up.