“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 sobbing chokes 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.
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 caught a glimpse of another figure 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 just nodded, my brain trying to function again. Maybe I wanted Dr. Beeson to turn the emotional blockers back on. They felt so out of control right now.
“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 it takes a lot of power. It will be another day before the Pulse has generated 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 Fallen who were flooding the platform. But Avian jumped in front of West while he was helping me repair the line. He 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 chuckle escaping 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, two doctors rushing in behind me. I took the opportunity to duck out.
Avian was asleep when I returned to his side, much to my disappointment. He did need his rest though. 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 place? 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 white 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 white dress like that?
Finally, after four 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,” 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.”
I wasn’t sure what “page” meant but there was a big part of me that was itching to do something. This sulking, scared, unsure Eve was starting to get to me. “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. I didn’t like leaving Avian’s side but I vowed I would return as soon as he was conscious again. 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. A 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. Hopefully we won’t ever need them again.”
“And you’re sure the hospital is protected from the blast?” I asked as I looked at the beautiful, yet menacing device before me.
“We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure it is,” Royce said with a half-smile. “Trust me, no one here wants to lose all of our electricity or electrical devices. We all lived in the dark for too long. None of us want to go back.”
I nodded that I understood, starting to pace around the Pulse. The central ring of it was spinning rapidly, each of the outer rings moving steadily as well. It seemed like there were a million things that could go wrong in the next four or five hours. The device could just not work. It could reach no further than this building unexpectedly. The precautions to proof this hospital could fail. I could be dead in just a few hours.
But if everything went off without a hitch, life was going to change dramatically. We could go out into the city. We could start to rebuild. I dreamed of the outcome for the simple reason of being able to go back out into the sun freely.
I spent an hour, just looking at the beautiful blue glow of the Pulse, trying to not think of anything, to simply zone it all out. But before long I was advised to leave the Pulse room. As the power it held built, I could feel the sting of electrical output. I didn’t argue as I descended down the stairs. As I did, my pager started beeping. It actually startled me, the sound reverberating off the walls of the stairway.
The medical wing was quieter by then, all of the damage from the previous day’s mission taken care of. When I came back into Avian’s room I found him sitting up, tying the shoelaces of his boots.
“How do you feel?” I asked as I leaned against the doorframe, my arms folded over my chest.
“Like I’ve been shot three times,” he said with a chuckle. “But better.”
“You sure you want to be getting up now?”
“You sound like me,” he chuckled again as he stood slowly.
“Just worried about you.”
“Now you know the feeling,” he said as he took a few steps toward me, limping as he did, his eyebrow raising. “I see you lost your guard.”
“I think he got bored.”
Avian chuckled. “Everything almost ready?”
I nodded as we turned and walked out of the room, his hand slipping into mine. The familiar sense of calm started running through my system. “I think so. It’s a bomb of electricity up there. I had to leave.”
“I’d be lying if I said this whole thing didn’t scare me.”
“Royce assures me the hospital will be protected,” I said as we continued down the hall. We walked up the stairs to the second floor and went into Avian’s room. He kicked off his boots again and laid gingerly back on the bed. “I just needed out of that stuffy room,” he said when he saw the smirk on my face. I just shook my head and laid next to him, resting my head in the crook of his good arm.
“I’ve been thinking about something. If you don’t like it, just tell me. I will understand.”
“What?” he asked as he pressed his cheek to the top of my head.
“I think I should be in with West when the Pulse goes off. Even if he can’t hear me, there are a few things I need to say to him. Something doesn’t feel right inside of me. I think it’s because West has no idea what is going on here. It feels too unfair.”
Avian propped himself up just enough to look down into my eyes. “I think you should. We don’t know what is in his future and I think you should be there when this happens. I’ve been thinking about it too. I don’t like feeling like we’ve gone behind his back with this.”
I brought my hand to the side of Avian’s face, feeling such a strong rush of emotions. I didn’t know if I could handle it if Dr. Beeson removed all of my emotional blockers. It would be so easy to be totally overwhelmed. “I hoped you would understand.”
“Even if you say you don’t love him, he means a lot to you. He always will,” Avian said as he looked down at me. “I would never expect that to change. People affect you, some stay with you forever. West will be one of those people.”
I gave him a small smile, blinking several times before I pressed my lips to his briefly. “Thank you.”
“What do you want to do once this is over?” Avian asked, changing the subject, and lying back down. He may have been understanding but West being in the picture had still caused him pain in the past. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to talk about West anymore.
“Get out of this hospital,” I said immediately, settling my head back against his shoulder. “I just realized that I hate being here. The people are fine, and I will admit it is nice to feel so protected. But this place feels like a prison. I feel like I can’t breathe. I need some sun.”
“I wondered how you were handling being locked up in here,” he said with a chuckle.
“I want to see the ocean,” I said as I stared at the white ceiling. “West told me about it once. How big and intimidating it is. We’re so close to it I swear I can almost smell it at times. But yet I still haven’t seen it.
“What about you?”
Avian was thoughtful for a while. “I just want freedom to go wherever I want. I have no complaints about how things ran in Eden. In a way it was a utopia. But I couldn’t ever leave. I was limited to this mile radius of wherever the people of Eden were. After the trip out here, of having the freedom to move around even the hospital as I wish, it’s been freeing. I want to just take off into the mountains if I want, to go, I don’t know, explore if I want to, without having to worry about someone dying if I’m unavailable.”
“You’ve been a prisoner in a way for the last five years,” I said as I nuzzled all the closer. I’d reinforced that feeling multiple times, telling Avian that he couldn’t leave. Everyone had needed him too much. He’d saved so many lives. “Now you’re not the only doctor.”
He gave a nod, pressing his lips briefly to my forehead. “And I just want to spend time with you.”
FOURTY
The blue floor was a buzz of activity again, people rushing in and out of every room. Such chaos before the storm. It was easy to feel the excitement that coursed through their veins but you could almost touch their nervousness as if it were a tangible thing. I felt my own heartbeat pick up a few paces.
There was only one doctor in the Extraction room when we walked in. He entered something into a computer as we approached, glancing up at us. “I’m almost done, then you can be alone with him.”
“How is he doing?” Avian asked. As he spoke, I remembered what Royce had said about what he had done for West. Despite everything, Avian had risked his life to save West’s.
“No change yet,” the doctor said as he stepped away from the computer, ready to leave. “It hasn’t been very long though. We won’t know any different for about a week, probably more.”
Avian gave a nod and the doctor stepped out.
We walked up to the Extractor silently, each lost in our own thoughts. I knew Avian felt no sense of relief at now having West out of the way, no longer a distraction to me. That was just Avian, always pure-hearted and a good man.
“I hope he responds soon,” Avian said quietly as we stopped five feet away from the curved arms that rose around West, circling him in an open bowl. “He is a good soldier.”
I simply nodded, unable to say much. My throat felt all tight.
Avian’s hand slipped into mine. “Say what you need to say to West. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be waiting for you when it’s all over. Take as much time as you need.”
He pressed a quick kiss to my forehead and left without another word. I glanced at the clock as he closed the door behind him. Fifteen minutes to activation.
My thoughts raced through my head in a mixed up jumble of words and emotions. Where did I start and where did I stop? Was this totally pointless if West couldn’t even hear me? I had already been told that West was in a medically induced coma.
But I wasn’t sure if I could move on in my relationship with Avian until I said the things I had to say to West. I grabbed a chair and sat in front of him.
I hated seeing him so broken. West had always been so strong, he had always survived and could take care of himself. He had proven that over the last five years. And here he was, after such a long battle, right as our enemy was about to be wiped out, his system infected.
A horrifying thought occurred to me then. If this didn’t work, if it was too late, West would be the only body left around that was still actively infected. They would only try for so long. They could only keep his body around for so long. As it was now, they could no longer touch his skin with their bare hands without getting infected themselves. Eventually, if he didn’t respond, they would have to destroy his body.
“You have to pull out of this,” I started. “You’re too strong to go down like this. I need to say this to your face, to tell you what has happened these past few days. This is too easy and too hard all at the same time. But in case I don’t get that chance, I’m going to tell you now and hope that you can somehow hear me.”
I swallowed hard, my eyes falling to my hands, my fingers interlocked. “You woke something up inside of me. I had no desire to experience the human flesh in the way you showed me. I didn’t crave touch like I do now. And despite how terrible my past is, I’m glad you had the answers for me, most of them anyway. I don’t think you can fully understand who you are until you know where you’ve come from.
“You have made me feel things West. But I’ve realized now that something was missing. Loving someone isn’t just about feeling passion, or whatever it is. You got under my skin, you drove me insane. And I could have gotten over those things. You learn to deal with people’s quirks. But I
never felt like I could trust you, West. You deliberately kept things from me, with no intention to ever tell me the truth. I can’t have a relationship built on lies. You carry too many secrets.”
I paused, taking a few deep breaths, unsure if I would ever be able to give this speech again if West did wake up. It felt like I was ripping myself to shreds. And yet I felt so relieved, to finally understand how I felt. To be speaking the truth.
“I love Avian,” I said quietly, my chest swelling with my words. “I have for a while, I just didn’t realize it. Maybe I fought it, knowing that there will be a lot of people who won’t approve, knowing that you certainly didn’t. But I love him. He accepts me for who I am, always has, even when I didn’t know what I was. He doesn’t try to lie to me.
“I’ve made my choice West.”
As the words escaped my lips the building suddenly shook and I faintly heard glass shatter.
This was it.
The lights flickered as all the electricity was directed to the roof. The air seemed to ripple as immeasurable amounts of electricity pulsed through the air. Just as the first wave died away another blast could be faintly heard. The building shook again, frightening moans echoing through the walls. A third blast sounded, the air surging. And then all was quiet and still.
I was still alive.
Royce had been right. They’d protected the hospital.
The noise I heard echoing throughout the hall outside the door confused me at first. It was cheering. Feet pounded the floor as people ran toward the stairs and elevator.
“Good-bye, West,” I whispered. Without looking back, I walked out the door.
Most everyone had cleared out of the top floor by then and I took the stairs two at a time to find them. As I sprinted into the lobby, I saw them standing at the front sliding doors, the protective steel doors retracted, looking through the thin glass out into the sunlight.