Eden (13 page)

The tent was dark as I
entered, the air stuffy and warm.

“
Tie it back, would you?”
Sarah said through the darkness as I entered.  “I think he’s
trying to suffocate me.  I feel like I’m living in a cave
these days.”

I tied the flap of the
tent back as she asked, light flooding the cramped space. 
Turning, I made my way to Avian’s bed and sat.

Sarah’s hair was tousled,
her dark curls sticking out in every direction.  Her eyes were
reddened and tired looking.

“
How are you feeling?” I
asked, hoping she didn’t notice the way I scrutinized every inch of
her.

“
I’d be better if everyone
would stop asking me that question,” she said with a tired
tone.

“
Everyone is
concerned.”

“
I know,” she sighed as
she lay on her back.  “I’m just tired of being the sick
one.  I’m as fine as I can be I guess.  I’m handling
it.  Avian thinks this is something I’ll probably deal with
the rest of my life.”

“
There’s nothing he can
do?” I asked, feeling suddenly sick.

“
If he had access to an
MRI machine, a pharmacy full of drugs, and a neurologist,
maybe.  But we just have to be careful now.”

“
We can get drugs,” I said
as I felt hope surge within.  “I can go on another raid. 
I got the shots Avian needed before.  If he tells me what you
need I can get it.”

Sarah shook her head, a
smile creeping onto her face.  “He would never ask you to do
that, to go into danger like that again.”

“
He wouldn’t need to ask
me.  He didn’t need to ask me before,” I said as my brow
furrowed, my blood boiling just a little.

“
He wouldn’t tell you what
to look for to prevent you from trying.  You’re too important
to him.  It would destroy him if you were lost.”

An awkward silence hung in
the after she stopped.  Things were changing between Avian and
I.  I was confused.  No one had ever behaved this way
towards me before and I didn’t understand what I was even
feeling.

“
Don’t be angry with him
for keeping the secret from you,” she said softly, her eyes
hesitating to meet mine.

“
You knew too?” I asked,
my voice slightly accusing.

“
No, but Avian told me
after you came back.  How are you handling that
information?”

“
The fact that I’m a
robotic-human hybrid?” I said sarcastically.  “Just
great.”

“
I’m serious,
Eve.”

I didn’t say anything for
a second as I looked down at my weathered hands.  “I’m trying
not to think about it too much.  The fact that my shoulder has
already healed up isn’t helping that much though.”

“
He said you were hurt
pretty badly.”

“
You should see the scar,”
I joked half-heartedly.  “I didn’t feel anything.  I
didn’t even know it was there until West told me.”

I felt it before I even
saw the sly grin that crept onto Sarah’s face.  “Running off
to the city with the new man in Eden, huh?  Never would have
pegged you for that type.”

“
What?” I asked, suddenly
feeling appalled.  “What are you talking about?  He just…
came with me.”

“
And you had no desire to
get a little close and cozy along the way with a face and body like
that?”

“
I’m going to go now,” I
said as I suddenly stood.  “Take it easy.”

Sarah just chuckled as I
stepped outside.

I shook my head as I
started back for my tent.  What was wrong with people? 
All anyone could seem to think about lately was holding hands,
unexpected kisses, and getting ‘close and cozy’.  We were in
the middle of our struggle for survival.  There wasn’t time
for things like that.

Evening settled and the
camp started to grow quiet.  The stars seemed more intense
than usual as they reflected off the surface of the lake.  It
looked like it could swallow everything up in the vastness of
space.

I had tried to insist on
taking the night guard but apparently Bill had already beaten me to
it.  A new watch tower had been erected and everything was
nearly back to business as usual.  With nothing else to do, I
found myself around the fire with Avian and Sarah.  Recalling
Sarah’s comments earlier and my new resolve to not be distracted by
anything or any
one
, I had sat as far away from Avian as I could.

“
Is Victoria alright?”
Sarah asked as she pulled her blanket tighter around her shrinking
frame.

“
It’s just a small
infection.  It just needed a little cleaning out.”

I heard someone approach
from behind me and turned to see West hesitantly approaching. 
“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked to no one in
particular.

Avian just gave a
nod.

With little elsewhere to
sit, he sat just to the right of me.  He was close enough I
could smell the earthy scent of him.

“
Have they seen any more
signs of the Hunter?” Sarah asked.  I was grateful for her
insight and tactic to keep awkward silences away.

I shook my head. 
“Not since we left our last site.”

“
Maybe they’re giving up,”
she said as she stared into the flames.

“
I doubt that,” Avian said
as he stared at the fire.

“
Will they
ever?”

No one said anything for a
moment.  That was what we had all wondered for the last five
years.

“
It’s something in their
engineering,” West suddenly spoke.  “The infection craves more
human flesh.  It was designed to spread.  It’s trying to
reproduce more.”

“
That’s why the Hunters
keep looking,” Avian said, neither a statement nor a question
exactly.

West nodded.  “It’s
looking to assimilate more.”

“
What happens when there’s
nothing left to assimilate?” I asked, feeling sick as I thought
about what my question implied.  That humanity would finally
succumb.

“
There would be no more
Hunters,” Avian answered, his eyes staring into the fire as the
wheels turned in his head.

“
And then what?” I said,
my brow furrowing.  “What will happen then?”

“
Whatever they’re standing
and waiting around for,” West said in a low voice.  That
statement hung in the air over our heads like a dark cloud. 
No one said it but we all wondered,
what
are they waiting for?
 

“
There’s got to be a way
to stop them,” Sarah said as she shook her head, again killing the
silence.  “Like making a large CDU.  Why haven’t we done
that, Avian?”

“
We don’t have the
resources,” he said as he too shook his head.  I knew he’d
thought about this idea before.  We all had.  “Everything
we need is in the city.  And we can’t just take it and bring
it back here.  We’d need massive amounts of electricity to
make it work.  And besides, none of us know how exactly the
CDU even works, how it’s engineered.  It’s some very complex
technology.”

West shifted his
position.  His eyes flickered from Avian’s face, to mine, and
back to Avian’s.  I wondered what he was thinking.  He
remained quiet though.

“
So basically, we’re all
just waiting around to be infected,” Sarah said, her voice
falling.  “As long as there are still people out there, the
Hunters will keep coming.”

“
And we’ll keep fighting,”
I said harshly, my tone coming out more sharply than I thought it
would.  “We’ll never give up.”

Sarah looked at me with
cold eyes that surprised me.  Without her even saying it, I
knew what she was thinking. 
I didn’t
have to worry about being infected.  I was already immune by
being part of them.

“
Maybe we should all get
some rest,” Avian said, feeling the tension that was building
around the fire. 

Without saying anything,
Sarah stood and walked back inside the tent.

“
Good-night,” Avian said
as he gave me a small smile and then gave West a nod.

I stood, pushing my hands
into my pockets as I stared into the fire.  West stood too,
and together we slowly walked away from Avian and Sarah’s
tent.

The way West had shifted
uncomfortably when the topic of creating a device to short out the
Fallen stood out to me.  He knew something he wasn’t
sharing.  I wasn’t going to pry it out of him just yet. 
Maybe he just needed a while to think about it before he would
divulge what he knew.  I wouldn’t wait too long though before
I pressed.

“
I want to look through
the notebook,” I suddenly blurted out and stopped walking. 
West stopped walking too and I stood watching his back, my hands
still pushed into my pockets against the cold.

He didn’t say anything for
a while as he stood with his back to me.  I could almost see
the gears in his head turning as he considered my request and what
it would mean.

Slowly he turned and took
three steps toward me to close the gap.  He stared into my
eyes, intensity burning in his own.  He reached his right hand
into his jacket and pulled the tattered notebook out.

“
Only read the parts that
are in the middle,” he said, keeping his voice quiet.  “Those
are the pages about you.  And don’t lose it.  If you do…”
he squeezed his eyes closed, his lips forming a thin line as he
considered the horrifying possibility.

“
I won’t,” I promised as I
went to take it.  West opened his eyes, holding on for another
heavy moment before finally letting go.

“
Good-night, West,” I said
as I stared back into his eyes. 

“
Good-night, Eve,” he
whispered.  He brought a hand up to my cheek, softly brushing
his thumb over it.  It only lasted a moment, however, before
he stepped away and ducked into his tent.

Armed with the answers to
my past, with the keys to what made me what I was, I returned to my
own.

ELEVEN

The ceiling seemed to
flash images before my eyes as I lay awake in the dark.  The
notebook lay on my chest, my fingers clenching it tightly.  I
hadn’t been able to will myself to open it.  All the things I
couldn’t remember, all the dreams that haunted me, the answers were
all inside and I couldn’t make myself look at them.

Why couldn’t they just be
dreams?  They were chilling but the fact that they were more
than just dreams was terrifying.  I squeezed my eyes closed as
I remembered smelling the steel beneath me, of hearing the
drill.  Feeling my head and realizing all my hair had been
shaved off.  I remembered dreaming of running endlessly. 
Dreaming of a pair of earthy eyes watching me through an
observation window.  It was West, I knew that now.  He
had seen everything they had done to me.  The only person I
had actually known my whole life, and I couldn’t remember
him.

I didn’t sleep that
night.  I just stared up at the ceiling, trying to dredge up
memories I couldn’t recall, memories that were recorded by someone
else’s hand on the pages I held.

Morning came, casting a
grey hue to the space around me.  I didn’t leave my tent,
couldn’t make myself even get out of my bed.  But it was one
of those very rare days I didn’t have any duties.

As I heard Eden begin to
stir, a plate of food was pushed under the flap of my tent and then
I heard footsteps retreating.  I reached for it, eating what
was there without realizing what it even was.

The food in my system
seemed to boost my commitment to unlock the past and I finally
opened the pages.

West was right, the pages
about me were located in the middle.  The notes in the
beginning of the notebook may as well have been written in another
language.  It was scientific and talked about a lot of
different alloys, programming, words I didn’t understand.  I
could only guess that they were about the design for making me what
I was.

The first entry was dated
from when I would have been roughly
four-years-old. 

Test subject Eve has been
observed for 1,128 days.  She has shown optimal health,
vitality, and intelligence.  Procedure is scheduled for this
coming Friday.

So there was my
answer.  They had been watching me since before I was even a
year old.  Had I been with my family before that?  Had I
even had one, ever?  Maybe they had picked me out of an
orphanage.  They could have found me in a dumpster for all I
knew. 

The next entry was dated
for two days after my surgery was supposed to take
place.

Operation was a success as
far as we can tell.  Subject was sedated and Dr. Rothenberg
assisted my son in the procedure.  Chip was implanted and
subject transferred to recovery room and is being closely
observed.  She is being sedated for the first three days and
then we shall see what happens.  Under normal circumstances,
recovery could take up to a month, maybe longer.  Vitals are
showing signs of recovery already.  Brain activity is steadily
increasing.