Eden (47 page)

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.