Eden (43 page)

Maybe it was more than my
emotional blockers that Dr. Beeson had removed.

Between each gasping
breath, I couldn’t help but let out another agonizing
scream.

Men in white jackets
surrounded me as I was blinded by the lights on the ceiling of the
white hallways.  The only thing I could see was the pair of
blue eyes above me, trying to speak words to me that I couldn’t
hear.

My body exploded in
blossoms of pain as I was moved again, a hard board beneath my
body.

I heard only jumbles of
words.  My brain tried to sort everything out, trying to grasp
onto something that made sense. 

“…
transfusions…”

“…
skin grafts…”

“…
cybernetic
parts…”

“…
accelerated
regeneration…”

A strange thumping in my
chest startled me.  It didn’t come in even beats, it was
erratic, painful.  My breaths came in quick gasps.  Even
that hurt.  It hurt to scream.  It hurt to lie still, it
hurt to move.  It hurt to be.

Just as I slipped under, I
felt two hands close around each of mine.

Beeping noises surrounded
me as my eyes slid open.  The ceiling tiles slowly came into
focus, the sound of air blowing through a vent above me bringing me
awake as I blinked slowly.  A warm weight lay on top of me, a
soft pillow beneath my head.

I slowly sat up, my head
feeling like it was spinning.  I was back in a hospital room,
surrounded by the now familiar flashing screens, dripping bags, and
tubes sticking out of my arms.  The room was completely devoid
of life other than myself.

I ripped the lines out of
my arm, a small bubble of blood immediately forming on my
skin.  Shifting my weight, I slipped my legs out from under
the heavy quilt and off the side of the bed.

I barely suppressed the
scream as I took in my legs coming out from under my hospital
gown.  My right leg was a mass of crusted and wavy looking
skin, small pieces of black rubber melted into the heel of my
foot.  Despite the intensity of the burn, it looked like it
was already healing.

But my left leg scared me
the most.

The skin twisted and
deformed in disgusting ways, hardly identifiable as human
flesh.  But from mid-calf down, there was nothing left but a
gleaming metal skeleton.

I crashed to the floor, my
hands barely reaching out to catch myself before the ground came
rushing up at me.  I scrambled to my feet, not even noticing
how I once again felt no pain in my injuries.  The back of my
eyes burned as I heard the sound of my metal foot clanking against
the tile of the floor. 

The hall was devoid of any
life as I stumbled out.  I blinked hard several times, making
my vision refocus as it tried to fail me.  I held to the rail
along the wall as I drug myself down the hall.  I didn’t make
it more than ten feet before I collapsed to the ground, a mix of
terror, unregistered pain, and shock bringing me down.

As my head fell back
against the tile, a pair of boots came into view, followed by a cry
of shock.

“
Eve!” the shout
said.  The next moment I felt a pair of arms underneath me and
the ceiling came a little closer.  A few seconds later my bed
was back underneath me.

Slowly, the sight of
West’s brown eyes came into focus.

“
Can you hear me?” he
asked, his voice sounding so far away.

I gave a nod, blinking
hard.  When I opened my eyes again everything was
clearer.

“
You really shouldn’t be
getting up right now,” West said, taking one of my hands in
his.  He sat in a seat next to my bed, pressing my knuckles to
his lips.

I looked over at him, my
thoughts running a million places all at once.  “How long have
I been out?” I started.  It seemed like I was having to ask
that question so often lately.

“
Only about a day,” he
breathed, his eyes intense on mine.

I glanced back down,
catching the light as it gleamed off the skeleton of my foot. 
I lay back down, swallowing hard.

“
It’s a lot better than it
was last night,” he said quietly.  “There was nothing from
your knee down.”

“
How can you still look at
me?” I said quietly, laying my other arm across my eyes. 
“Seeing the what I really am?  I’m not far from being one of
them.”

I heard West stand,
letting go of my hand, he sat on the edge of the bed.  He
moved my arm from my eyes, placing his hands on either side of my
face.  “You are nothing like the Fallen,” he said seriously,
his eyes burning into mine.  “You keep proving that, over and
over again.  You’re more human that a lot of the people I’ve
known.  You give no second thought to doing all these insane,
suicidal things to save those around you.  Everything you do
is out of love.  You just don’t realize that.”

“
Please don’t say that
word,” I said as I closed my eyes, my insides quivering.  “I
have no idea what it means.”

“
You know what it feels
like,” he said more coolly as he sat back, releasing my face. 
“You just don’t know how to recognize it.”

I heard another set of
footsteps enter the room and opened my eyes to see Avian
enter.  His face was hard to read as he took in the sight of
West and I, so close together.  I felt myself hating
everything I was again.

“
You’re awake,” he said
simply.

“
I’ll let him catch you up
on everything,” West said quietly to my surprise and left without
another word.

As I watched Avian
standing there, my eyes stung and my lower lip started to
quiver.  I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

He crossed the room
silently and gathered me up into his arms, his face buried in my
mass of tangled hair.  His entire frame shook as he held me
tightly.  My lip continued to tremble, my eyes burning. 
The sob that escaped my chest surprised me.

“
How can you look at me?”
I barely managed to get the words out.  “My leg…”

Avian sat back a bit,
taking my face between his hands.  His blue eyes looked like
there might be flames burning behind them as he stared at me. 
“You will forever be the most beautiful creature on this planet to
me, no matter what happens.  I don’t care what you’re skeletal
frame is made of.  You’re still Eve.”

“
Avian, I want…” I dropped
off, not even knowing how to finish that sentence.  I was
tempted to put my head in that gigantic ring on the roof, just to
stop all the confusion I felt.

“
Don’t,” he said, pressing
a finger to my lips.  “You can’t make any decisions right
now.  You just need to finish healing.”

I took a deep breath,
finding some sense of my normal self, and nodded.  Slowly, I
felt the calm start to spread itself through my system again. 
“How bad was it?”

Avian sat back, close to
the foot of the bed.  “The skin on your left leg was totally
burned away up to your knee,” he started.  I saw the terror he
had felt then in his eyes.  “Traces of metal could be seen in
your right leg, most of the skin was gone, and a lot of the muscle
had been burned away as well.  Your backside had been burned
but not too horribly.  It healed pretty fast.  You lost a
few inches of hair.  You were bleeding profusely from the
bullet wound in your arm and all your other injuries.  You
needed a blood transfusion.  But within hours you were already
healing.  I would expect your left leg will look totally
normal again within three days.”

“
Guess you were right
about being wary about letting me go to the plant,” I
said.

He chuckled.  “Like I
could have stopped you.”

“
You couldn’t have,” I
said with a small smile.  “Now find me some pants and boots so
I don’t scare the town folk away.”

He just chuckled again and
shook his head.  

It took him a few minutes
but Avian found me some clothes and we walked down the hall
together.

“
They haven’t set the
Pulse off yet, have they?” I asked, a strange sense of missed
anticipation filling me.  My boots were too big without any
flesh to fill them and the metal foot slid around inside it. 
I walked with a slight limp.

“
No,” he answered, his
always serious eyes forward.  “Royce said it takes about two
days to build up enough power to set it off.  It’s charging
now though.”

“
Two days,” I
breathed.  “Do you really think it will work?”

Avian shrugged.  “The
technology seems right.  They have the brains here to do
it.  It sounds like it is just a matter of building enough
power to set it off.”

“
I can’t even imagine what
life is going to be like if it works.  No Fallen.  No
more running, or scouting to do.  Everything I’ve known will
be changed.”

“
It will be better,” Avian
said quietly as we entered the main lobby area.  “You’ll see
how life should have been, in a post-apocalyptic way.”

I gave him a small smile,
already feeling comforted, even after everything that had
happened.

By now the lobby was
emptying out, everyone preparing for sleep at mid-day.  I
suddenly missed my days of free scouting, of roaming through the
woods, free without any walls barricading me in.  Hopefully
all that would end in just a few short days.

I followed the others up
to the rooms, feeling like everyone could see through my pants to
my cybernetic leg as I limped along.  No one bothered me
though, didn’t ask questions or pull my pant up to see.  I
made it to my room without being exposed for what I was.

The ceiling greeted me as
I lay down, knowing I wasn’t going to be getting any sleep for the
next eight hours of silence.  Images started to slide across
my mind, the blinding light from the explosion that had tried to
take my legs, the blue eyes that had tried to call out to me when
my brain couldn’t handle it all.  Flickers of row after row of
Fallen.  The flash of light from my firearms.

So much
violence.

I turned my head when a
crack of light started growing on my wall.  The silhouette of
a man appeared in the door before he closed it behind
him.

“
Hi,” I breathed as he
hesitated next to the door.

“
Hi,” West said through
the dark.  I could feel the mixture of feelings that were
rolling off of him.  I knew what it was like to feel like an
emotional wreck.

“
I won’t bite you,” I said
as I scooted to one side of my bed.

“
You sure?” he said
light-heartedly as he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the
mattress.

We sat there in silence
for a while, each unsure of what the other had on their
mind. 

“
Are you going to tell me
why the sight of me made you sick the last few days?” he asked
quietly. 

I felt myself tense up,
the sick feeling creeping up in me again.  I wished he had
just left it alone.  I would have rather forgot all those
feelings I had been fighting with.  “No.  You don’t want
to know why.  Just know that it’s over.”  This was one
secret I would carry with me to the grave.  I vowed that West
would never have to go through what I had gone through.

“
You sure?”

I gave a nod.

West trailed his fingers
softly across my forehead, brushing stray hairs off my face. 
He didn’t look in my face as he did so, his eyes lingering on my
ears, my shoulder, my neck, as he struggled with how to form the
words he had in his head.  Hesitantly, he picked up the wings
Avian had carved and held them lightly in his hand.  I
wondered if he knew Avian had made it for me, and the sacrifice he
had given for me to have it.

“
I thought you were going
to die,” he said quietly.  “When they brought you in after the
explosion you looked so broken, I wasn’t sure they could put you
back together.  You heart barely kept going.  For a while
I think I’d fooled myself into believing that you couldn’t
die.  I knew I was wrong then.  I didn’t know what I
would have done if you’d died.” 

“
Good thing I’m not dead
then,” I said as I placed my hand over his as he stilled it on my
cheek.  The coals started to burn as we touched.  A sense
of anticipation started to ignite in my belly.

“
I wanted to give you
something,” he said quietly as he finally met my eyes.  “One
last thing before I stop this.  It won’t happen again until
you make your decision.”

He leaned forward then,
his eyes holding mine all the way until his lips met mine.  My
own eyes slid closed as I kissed West back, feeling the fire leap
to life inside of me.  West’s lips moved with mine, parting as
gasps were inhaled.  I blazed to life from the inside out, the
flames licking along my veins.

Could I ever give up this
heat?  If I were to choose Avian would I ever feel the blaze
again that I craved so much?  Would I ever feel so alive
again?

I had worried that I might
not ever feel the same about West again, after thinking he might be
my brother.  It should have been clearer that he wasn’t. 
We looked
nothing
alike.  It wasn’t bothering me now…