The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) (13 page)

He hesitated just a moment, his eyes locked on mine.  And then he rolled, making me roll with him, until I was lying flat on my back and he hovered over me.

“I would have swept you off your feet until you couldn’t stand to be away from me,” he said, dipping his head and brushing his lips along my throat.

“That’s true now,” I said, letting my eyes slide closed as his lips trailed slightly further south.

“I would have talked to your father or mother,” he said, his lips tickling the hollow at the base of my throat.  “Gotten permission.”

“Permission for what?” I whispered.

“To make you mine forever.”

A smile curled on my lips.  Even though I felt completely relaxed, my body was alive and hyperaware of every inch of Avian.

“And then I would have gotten a ring.  Something that suited you, but told the rest of the world that you were claimed.”  His fingers traced slow, careful patterns up my arm, and finally, his fingers linked with mine.  “Remember how I said when I did ask, it would be grand?”

I nodded.

“It would be,” he breathed.  The warm air from his lips sent a wave of goose bumps across my skin.  “And you’d be speechless.”

I bit my lower lip as his brushed the neckline of my shirt.  And I was speechless.

“We’d set a date for the wedding.  Make plans.  Invite people we loved to attend.  You’d find a dress.  There’d be flowers, and cake, and music.”

I tried to picture it all behind my eyelids.  But that was made difficult because of the way Avian was making my body feel.

“And on that day, you’d walk toward me and I would probably start crying.”  His voice suddenly broke into a chuckle.  There was emotion behind it though.  Avian could more clearly see this picture we would never quite have.  If it brought emotion out of Avian, it must have been beautiful.

“We’d say words that would last forever,” he now whispered.  He released my fingers to trace invisible lines on my chest with his own.  “Nothing to do with ‘till death do us part.’  Because I know love lasts much longer than that.  I believe in infinity—which never ends.  We’d exchange rings and then kiss for everyone in attendance to see.  And we’d be pronounced inseparable.”

As he spoke, I felt my own throat tighten and the back of my eyes stung.  While I didn’t care for the glitz and dress and attention, I wanted everything else Avian spoke of.  Forever.

I felt a change in Avian’s mood and he shifted himself so his lips could tease mine.  “And then it would just be us that night, and for many nights to come.  And I would have my way with you as my wife.”

I laughed and in the same movement, flipped him so I ended up on top of him.  I pinned his hands to the ground on either side of his head with my own hands.  “I think that it would be the other way around,” I said as I lowered my lips to one of his ears.

Avian laughed and growled at the same time.  He lifted his head to fiercely take my lips.

FOURTEEN

A fresh blanket of snow covered everything in the morning, three inches deep.  Thankfully, West had thought to keep clearing the snow from the solar tank’s panels throughout the night.  By the time we packed up the tents and had eaten, they were charged enough to get the vehicle going.

One hour.

That was all that separated us from the place where I was born and altered.

Avian took my hand in his when I stiffened and the air caught in my throat.

“It’ll be okay,” West said, looking over at me.  I didn’t miss the mixed emotions still behind his eyes.  But there was one that was unmistakable: support.

I could always use another friend in this dismembered world.  I was grateful for the peace we were beginning to form between us.

“This is the turnoff,” Dr. Evans said after thirty minutes.  I was impressed he even saw it.  Two log posts jutted up from the ground, unremarkable, roughly six feet tall.  One of them had two rusty metal letters nailed into it: NB.

NovaTor Biotics.

We had driven down a small, two-lane highway into the middle of nowhere and it looked as if our turnoff went further into nowhere toward a barren low mountain.

“You certainly wouldn’t have unwanted visitors out here,” Bill said, correcting the wheel when the dirt road gave a violent jerk to the right.

“That was the point,” Dr. Evans said, his voice muted from the glass box.  “Everything we worked on at NovaTor Biotics was highly classified.  We didn’t like to be disturbed.”

As we rolled through the snow into the wilderness, I felt something in my heart sink.  There were very little resources out here.  Little food to find or water to drink.  There was no way my sister was within a hundred miles of NovaTor.  She was still human enough to have to do what she had to in order to survive.

“She’s not going to be here, is she?” West said.  I looked over to see him observing the scarce terrain as well.

I didn’t answer him.  And thankfully, Dr. Evans didn’t either.

At first it was difficult to distinguish what was the rocky side of the mountain and what might be building.  Everything was covered in snow, which didn’t help, but I could see square edges and flat lines that indicated there was something there.

The closer we rolled, the more I could pick out the rock colored walls and occasional windows.

West had once told me of the size of this building.

I had underestimated him.

The bit I could see was larger than the largest of warehouse stores I’d raided.  And I had little doubt there was more that extended back into the mountain.

West swore under his breath as Bill slowed to a stop fifty yards from the building.  “This is too bizarre being back.”

He opened the door and climbed out, me right behind him.  I shielded my eyes from the sun as I looked up at the facility.

I once again had the feeling of memories dancing just under a watery surface.  I could tell they were there, but they were just down far enough that I couldn’t make them out clearly.  Even though I had only been outside of the building once in all my life, there was something familiar about seeing it.

“Welcome home,” Dr. Evans said as he climbed out of the tank.

I shook my head.  “This was never home.”

Avian slipped his hand into mine and then I was there.

“This is where it all began,” Avian said.  There was awe and fascination in his voice, accompanied with disgust.

No one said anything because nothing was needed.

I took three steps toward the building when Dr. Evans called my name.

“This is, indeed, where it all began,” he said when I turned back to him.  “While there were very few people who lived in the surrounding area, there were over one hundred employees who worked for and lived at NovaTor.  I’m afraid you might find many of its residents still occupying the building.”

“Right,” I said, nodding and turning my eyes back to the building.  “I’d like all you humans to get back into the tank while I get this over with.”

“Come on, Eve,” West said with a sigh.  “Seriously?  It’s been, like, eight days since I’ve killed a Bane.”

Everyone except Dr. Evans laughed.

“Fine,” I said, shaking my head.  “You ready?”

West, Avian, and Bill all held up deadly firearms. 

They should have been afraid.  Who knew how many Bane were inside that building.  If even one touched them, it was game over.  Especially being this far from the Extractor.

But they had confidence in me.

Maybe it was time for me to start trusting in their confidence.

“Get ready,” I said, turning back to the building.

Come out,
I thought.  My eyes squinted as I concentrated. 
Come meet your queen and your end.

Thirty seconds later, the main front door burst open and three bodies piled through.  They climbed to their feet as another fifteen filed out the door as well.

They moved towards us, now controlled and calm.  The sun gleamed off their mechanical parts, which considering this lot, was most of their entire bodies.  They were all very advanced.

There was a mix of doctor looking individuals, men of science.  Others had military looking clothing clinging in shreds to their skeletal forms.

“Fire at will,” I said.

My team unloaded at the approaching bodies and they dropped without hesitation or fight.  More and more bodies started filing out of the building and dropped when they were clear of the entrance.

I caught a glimpse of a familiar face two seconds before a bullet took her down to the ground.

The woman.

The one who had taken care of me, the one who had been in charge of my education and made sure I was where I needed to be when I needed to be there.

The woman I had never known the name of.

Now it really didn’t matter.

But it still seemed a shame I had never thought to ask it as a child.

By this point, I hadn’t realized that the shots had died out and there were no more Bane filing out of the building.  There were eighty-one bodies lying before us.

“You okay?” Avian asked, nudging me in the arm with his elbow.

“Yeah,” I said, snapping out of it.  “We good to go in now?” I asked Dr. Evans.

“If you’re sure you drew all of them out,” he replied.

I nodded.  “I’m sure.”  I walked toward the building and the rest of the team followed me.

We carefully stepped around the bodies and toward the front doors.  Sparing just a moment to take a deep breath, I crossed the threshold.

We entered into a simple lobby.  There was one solid wall that was completely white and rose to the height of two stories.  In big, blue letters, there were the words NOVATOR BIOTICS.  In front of that was a desk.  To one side of the desk, there was a hall that stretched back as far as I could see.  On the other side of the desk there were two sets of elevators.  And tucked way back in the corner was a door with a sign for stairs.

Bill swore, sweeping the space with his rifle, even though I knew it would be clear.  “This place gives me the creeps.”

I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.  It wasn’t just knowing that the end of the world had begun here.  It was that there were bullet holes everywhere.  There were papers scattered across the floor, traces of glass littered every flat surface.  There were dark stains on the floor that could have been nothing but blood.

The chaos that had once taken place was obvious in every square inch of the building.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“The main floor is mostly offices for those who ran the company, meeting rooms,” Dr. Evans said.  “The upper level is residential units.  Everything of value took place underground.”

“How far down does this place go?” Avian asked as he took the building in.

“Five stories.”

One of the few memories I had recovered surfaced.  When I had been kidnapped, they took me outside the building for the first time in my life.  The sun had seemed so bright.  It was the first time I had ever seen it.

Because I had lived my entire life underground up to that point.

“Let’s get a move on,” I said, turning back to the group.  “We don’t have any time to lose.”

Dr. Evans nodded.  “This way.”  He crossed the lobby to the long hallway.  “There is a room full of generators and solar storage units at the back of the building.  We’re going to have to get them back up and running or we won’t be able to see a thing down there in the dark.”

It was a long walk to get from one end of the building to the other.  Finally, Dr. Evans opened a door and brilliant sunlight spilled through.  The door let out onto a flat landing, backing up right into the mountain side. 

This was the back door Dr. Evans had shoved me out of after he had Dr. Beeson wipe my memory.

This was my true birth place.

On the other side of the landing, there was a door going into a separate section of the building.  Dr. Evans broke the door handle and pushed it open.

It looked like a garden of machines.  Rows and rows of them sat inside, filling the middle of the large room in aisles.  Along another wall sat tall, black boxes that hummed loudly.

“Energy storage devices?” Avian asked, indicating the black boxes.

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Solar energy, to be precise,” he said in a raised voice.  “Being this far out we tried to be as self-sufficient as possible so as to not draw questions from the local utility companies.  The entire roof of the building is covered in solar panels.  These devices ran the majority of the power.”

“And these?” I asked, tapping one of the machines with the barrel of my assault rifle.

“Backup generators,” he said. He crossed to a large tank that was twelve feet tall and probably six feet across.  “This is fuel for them all.  Enough to last a few days.”

“Is the fuel good enough to get them back up and running?” Bill asked.  “Fuel only lasts so long.”

“Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh.  “We’re going to have to hope the solar power is just switched off and it can be easily turned back on.”

With that, he turned to a control panel on one wall and West crossed the room to help him.

I walked back out onto the landing, kicking at the snow.  It exploded in front of me in a big puff.

“Do you realize you walked about three-hundred fifty miles from here to Eden?” Avian said from behind me.  “We’re close if you were driving a vehicle.  But walking that distance…?”

“I wonder how long it took me,” I said as I leaned against the side of the building and crossed my arms over my chest.  Disappointment settled into my heart.  We weren’t exactly being quiet here.  First with the gunshots, and then our talking.  If my sister was here, she would have heard us by now.

I had to assume that since she hadn’t come out, she wasn’t here.

Of course she wasn’t.

Avian shook his head.  “You have always had impressive stamina, but your hiking was all through desert and mountains.  Even if you managed twenty miles a day that would have taken you a couple of weeks.  And I doubt you walked in a direct line to us.”

“Bill walked a lot farther than that, didn’t you?” I said, nodding to where he stood in the doorway.  His firearm was held ready in his hands as he scanned the mountains around him.