Eden (14 page)

What he didn’t know was
that the sedation had taken longer than they had expected.  I
had relived that horrifying moment of paralyzation in my
dreams.  I had heard the sound of the drill, the feeling of
being unable to move my limbs.  Thankfully, I must have been
finally pulled under before they drilled into the back of my
skull.  Or if I hadn’t, I didn’t remember that
part.

Seven days
later:

Subject began to awaken
five days after surgery.  Eve was sluggish at first, appearing
confused and unsteady.  Coordination was obviously thrown
off.  Things changed rapidly by the next day.

An assistant went to check
on Eve and to give her the morning rations.  Subject was
startled awake and attacked the assistant.  We heard the
racket and opened the door to find Eve on top of the assistant,
fingers gripped tightly around her neck.  The assistant wasn’t
breathing and her lips were turning blue.  Upon seeing us
enter the room, subject leapt at us, attacking with force far
beyond what a four-year-old should be capable of.  It took
three of us to wrestle her onto the bed and secure her
down.

Aggression was extreme for
the next few days.  We waited for things to even out. 
The fusion of the chip and the human brain is bound to be
fought.  The implant is placed in an area of the brain where
emotion stems from.  The brain is trying to attack itself,
manifesting as aggression.  Programming will be adjusted to
fix the problem.

Problem.  That was
what my reaction to being altered was.  It was a problem that
I hadn’t liked what they had done to me, that I had tried to fight
back.

“
Eve?  Are you
alright?” 

I jumped violently when I
heard the voice from outside my tent.

“
Yes, Gabriel,” I said,
trying to steady my shaking voice.  “I just needed some time
to myself today.”  Was I lying?  What counted more as
time to yourself when you’re learning what happened to you in the
past that you can’t remember?

He hesitated, catching my
out-of-character response.  “Okay,” he said, drawing out the
word.  “Let me know if you need anything.”

“
Thank you,” I said,
shrinking into my bed.  I listened hard until I heard his
footsteps fade away.

My hands were shaking as I
looked back at the notebook.  I suddenly felt like I had to
keep this a secret, as much as West had felt he had to.  I
didn’t want anyone to know what was in here.  The past it
contained exposed what I was, what I was capable of.  It
exposed the fact that I wasn’t completely human.

But West had read it
all.  He knew everything that was written here.  And he
hadn’t been afraid of me.  He hadn’t run away.

I shook my head. 
West was a distraction I couldn’t afford.  I didn’t like to
admit it, but that’s what he was.  A distraction.

An entry from several
months after the chip had been implanted:

Thus far the chip has been
successful in overriding limitations as designed.  Endurance
has been increased.  Exhaustion has been overruled.  Tied
to this is increased strength. 

There has been talk about
approaching military officials.  This technology is something
they have sought after for decades.  We have created the
potential for the perfect soldier in Eve.  With an army that
never tires, doesn’t feel pain, and is stronger and faster than
everyone else, they would be unstoppable.

While I may have decreased
morals I am unwilling to allow this to get out.  Eve’s
experimentation is a means to another end.  Once the data
needed has been collected, I shall move onto the next phase of the
experiment.  I will not allow the world to be destroyed with
an army of beings like Eve.  Surely it would be the end of
humanity.

He had been wrong. 
It was with the intent to heal and save the world that he had in
fact destroyed it.

And that was when it hit
me.  West’s grandfather was the one who had created the
infection.  It was his research and his creation that had led
to the fall of humanity.  And I had been a part of that. 
He had created the infection using the data he had collected from
the experiments done on me.

I nearly
vomited.

My stomach rolled as I
forced myself to read through the rest of the pages.  It
didn’t seem important to read them in detail anymore.  I had
been experimented upon as a child.  And now here I was. 
I was the way I was and there was nothing I could do to change
that.

There were pages and pages
recording the endurance tests I had been put through.  They
continued to monitor my sleep habits.  It seemed I had
required little sleep my entire life.  I didn’t require as
much food as normal people but I still required it as I was mostly
human.

The shock of reading what
was continued on those pages should have worn off by then.  It
didn’t.  Things continued to get more twisted and
terrifying.

An unexpected side effect
of the chip implantation has occurred.  I have been aware of
the fact that everything Eve is able to do should be
impossible.  Her strength, her speed, her increased eyesight
and hearing capacities.  It’s just not possible with a simple
chip in her brain telling her to do these things.  This has
evolved beyond the capacity of what was expected.

The chip itself has been
evolving.  After sedation and a full body scan, hints of
cybernetic enhancements have been detected throughout subject’s
body.  It is not just Eve’s brain that has been altered
now.  It is her entire body.

I stared at my hand,
willing my eyes to see the metallic fingers I had seen on the
Hunters, searching for any signs of alloys bonded to my
bones.  My skin didn’t look any different than Sarah’s would
have, no different than Gabriel’s or Morgan’s.  It was all
inside.  That was the reason I was so much faster, so much
stronger.  That was how the Fallen where.  That was why
the infection had spread so quickly.  They were better than
us.  We had been overpowered so quickly.

An entry from when I was
eleven:

As subject’s brain has
continued to develop and evolve, adjustments have been
required.  Her emotions have been changing.  Fear and
anger started to surface this last week, indicating our previous
programming has been outdone.  As she continues to grow we
will need to make more adjustments.

I did the adjustments
myself.  It is a complex procedure; the programming must be
done precisely.  Emotion is something not easily
blocked.  Modification must be dealt with carefully to not
harm the brain and therefore, the body.  After I had the
programming correctly written, the adjustments were interfaced with
the chip.  The change was instantaneous.  Amazing, the
control that is exacted through remote programming.

Subject is again devoid of
emotion.

I stared at the last line
for a long time, my insides feeling hollow and empty.  It was
as if this man had reached through the pages and yanked all my
insides out. 

Subject is again devoid of
emotion
.

It explained a lot. 
How I didn’t panic when others did.  How I didn’t understand
what was happening to everyone after Tye had died, how I didn’t
recognize their grief.  I didn’t feel things.

I forced myself to read
the last page that referenced directly to me.

All data needed has been
collected from experiments done to subject Eve.  Project is
being handed off to Dr. Beeson.  The next phase of
experimentation and testing is now ready.

And that was the end of
the entries about me.  The rest reverted to the language I
didn’t understand with diagrams of robotic parts and human
bodies.

The sun started to sink
into the western horizon and I still had not left my tent. 
Another plate of food had been pushed under the flap of my tent as
evening set but it remained untouched on the ground.

I imagined myself sinking
through the ground, of burying myself into the earth and
disappearing.  I had helped cause the end of the world. 
Whether it was by my choice or not, I was a means to the end. 
It would have been better if I didn’t exist.  I felt
meaningless, an experiment forgotten about, no longer needed. 
I was a hollow vessel with no reason for still being.  They
had gotten what they needed out of me and moved on.

Eden fell quiet, slumber
sweeping over its inhabitants.  And still I lay there, my eyes
staring up at the ceiling, yet seeing nothing.  My mind was
blank, my insides hollow.  It felt better that way. 
Should I fill back in, everything would collapse in on
me.

I barely even heard the
sound of feet outside before a dark figure entered my tent.  I
knew who it was, even if my eyes couldn’t see his face until he
raised the lantern and closed the flap behind him.

My bottom lip trembled as
I looked away from him and drew my eyes back to the ceiling. 
I felt my insides shake in a way I didn’t understand.

West stepped closer to me,
set the lantern on the ground by the wall and sat on the floor
facing me.

“
Here,” I managed to make
my throat work as I handed the notebook to him.  “Please take
it.”

He accepted it and set it
on the ground next to him.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered as his
eyes dropped to the ground.

I should have told him
that none of it was his fault.  He had been a child after
all.  It was his father and grandfather, not him.  But I
couldn’t do it.  It was his blood that had done what they
had.  I didn’t think I could make my voice work
anyway.

 “
You still don’t
remember any of it?” he asked quietly.

I barely managed to shake
my head.

“
I’ve thought about
it.  Dr. Beeson, the one who took over your care and research,
he was a kind man.  He didn’t approve of everything that was
done to you.  When things started getting out of control, when
the infection started taking everyone, I think he let you go. 
He made you forget somehow.  Probably with the chip.  And
then he let you go.  He knew you would survive, that you could
take care of yourself.”

I gave the smallest of
nods.  What had happened didn’t matter.  I was what I
was.  What had happened wasn’t going to change, no matter the
paths that had created it.

“
Please say something,” he
whispered as he raised his eyes to my face.

I turned my head slightly
to look at him.  Tears traced patterns in the dirt on his face
as they rolled down his cheeks.  “I don’t think I can even do
that,” I said quietly as I watched one of the tears drop into the
dirt beneath him.

West wiped his thumb
across his cheek, before slowly extending his hand to my
face.  His eyes burned and clouded at the same time as he
wiped his damp thumb across my own cheek.  Borrowed
tears.

“
I can’t feel anything,” I
spoke quietly through the dim light.  “I can’t feel
emotion.  I’m hollow.”

West shook his head. 
“You’re not hollow.  You feel things.”

I shook my head. 
“You’re wrong.  He blocked it all.  He made sure I didn’t
feel anything.  It became a
problem
.”

West scooted closer,
shifting himself forward.  He reached a hand toward me,
placing his palm on my cheek, his thumb traveling from my cheek to
my lips.  I closed my eyes as heat tingled on the surface of
my skin.

“
You feel things,” he
whispered again.  His hand trailed down the side of my neck,
down my arm until his fingers intertwined with mine.

A quivering filled my
stomach as I kept my eyes closed.  My entire body felt like it
hummed as I smelled West’s presence, so close to me.  It felt
as if I could sense every surface of his body, so acutely aware of
him it was if he was an extension of my own being.

West shifted again, the
one hand still intertwined with mine, his other one coming up to
the side of my neck.  And then his lips were on
mine.

It wasn’t crushing like
the first unexpected one had been.  This one saturated me
slowly, hesitant in a way that consumed me.  It smoldered at
first, heat rising with every passing moment, eating me up from my
stomach outward. 

A gasp escaped from my
lips as they parted and I didn’t even realize it as my free hand
knotted in West’s shaggy hair.  He shifted again, most of his
body lying on top of mine.

I didn’t understand what
was happing as I burned from the inside out.  My heart raced
in a way it never did, even when I had been running for
hours.  I wanted more but felt totally consumed by West,
getting everything I needed yet feeling that it was not even close
to enough.

He pulled away just a bit,
resting his forehead against mine.  His eyes were closed as he
tried to slow his breathing.  “You feel things.” He said
raggedly.  “I know you felt that.”