We walked to the elevator, a dozen pairs of eyes watching us as we did. He pushed the number seven button and slowly we began to rise again. When it slid open I was almost startled at all the brilliant blue lights that ran through the walls, along the floor, on the ceiling.
“We use a lot of power on this floor. This level has been specially wired to keep up,” he explained.
We walked down the hall a little bit, stopping at a large solid black door. Dr. Beeson entered a code into a number pad and it clicked open.
The room we entered into glowed with the blue lights, heavily contrasted by the darkness of having no windows into the starlit night. Screens glowed from the walls, flashes of information bursting across them.
“This is my office, my lab,” he said as he looked around the room with me. For some reason all the information flashing across his screens seemed familiar, like a language I had forgotten how to speak. “Please, have a seat.”
I sat in one of the two overly comfortable black chairs, sitting on the edge of it, my hands tucked between my knees.
“So I assume you know what happened to you?” he asked, his voice losing its cheeriness. “About the things that were done to you?”
I nodded my head. “I knew that West’s grandfather experimented on me. He placed some kind of chip in my brain but it didn’t just stay a chip. I was observed for years and eventually he used the information he gathered from me to create the infection.”
I stopped there, swallowing the lump in my throat.
Dr. Beeson nodded. “First, let me say that I never agreed with what they were doing to you. I was a young scientist then, working on my development of the capacity of the human mind to receive wireless signals. I was fascinated with the work he was doing on you. But you were just a girl. What Dr. Evans did was wrong.
“But, if we would have been able to control what happened, we would have saved millions of lives.”
“Instead billions were killed,” I said coldly.
“Unforgivable,” he said as his eyes dropped to the ground. “I first tried to remedy what I did by setting you free. I used the wireless capability of the chip in your brain to wipe your memory clean. No girl should have to remember the things you were put through. I assume it worked?”
“I have dreams sometimes,” I said quietly, my eyes falling to my hands. “How much of it is purely nightmare and how much of it is something real, I don’t know.”
“The brain is a complex thing. I’m sorry I couldn’t spare you from everything.”
“Will those memories ever be recovered?” I asked.
“No,” he said simply. “They were permanently wiped, almost as if that part of your brain was removed. Would you really want to remember the rest of it though?”
I had to think about it for a while. “No.”
“There were only five of us that escaped that facility. Everyone else Fell so quickly. It’s a miracle that I made it out. That was when I first realized that you couldn’t be infected. I tasked one of the other men who made it out to take you out into the country and set you free. I never saw that man again.”
“Avian found me,” I filled in the empty blanks of the past. “Nearly naked out in the forest, covered in blood, but with not a scratch on me. They knew something was different about me. They just didn’t know what. I only found out a few months ago.”
“Tell me what you’re able to do,” he said, excitement building in his eyes again. “Has the programming evolved more? The cybernetics?”
I sat forward again, rubbing my hand over the thin scar that had already formed on the back of my hand from when I had punched a hole through the metal door at the Air Force base. “I heal quickly,” I started. “I don’t usually feel pain. Electricity is about the only thing I seem to feel. It’s made me pass out before though, pain. My brain still registers it I guess.
“I don’t require as much sleep as normal. I don’t get tired very easily. I don’t need to eat as much as normal people. I’m faster than everyone, stronger than most.”
“Have you ever been up against a Fallen?”
The smile on my face couldn’t be fought back. “More than a few times. I didn’t understand what was happening the first time one tackled me. I thought I was going to change. But I didn’t.”
“Amazing,” he whispered, a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Have you seen any traces of the cybernetic parts that have saturated your system?”
I nodded. “The Fallen had these metal barbs that shocked you. I grabbed some once, it burned away my skin,” I said as I turned my hand over, observing the scars there. “I could see all the gears and wires.”
“That must have been frightening for you,” he said.
“But you know that I’m not supposed to feel fear,” I said quietly as my eyes rose to meet his.
He didn’t say anything for a while as he held my stare. I wondered how he lived with himself, knowing he had helped bring about the end of the world and then survived to see the destruction. I felt sorry for him. “You’re right. You aren’t supposed to feel emotion. It was an anomaly that Dr. Evans chose to ignore, the fact that you were evolving past the programming. You had to be reprogrammed every few years. As you moved beyond it though, your emotions and reactions were so strong. When you got overwhelmed by your emotions a few times, you just blanked out. Just like those Fallen you see outside.”
I swallowed hard, my stomach knotting up. “It still happens.”
“Really?” he said, his eyebrows knitting together as he sat back in his chair.
“But only when I’m around one certain person.”
“And how do you feel about this person?”
“That’s the unanswerable question,” I said quietly.
“Do you have romantic feelings for him? Or maybe an extreme hatred?”
I gave a hollow chuckle. “I think both.”
“It’s one of the men you arrived with, isn’t it?” he said with a sly smile.
I nodded. “I didn’t feel things like this until he showed up at our camp. Something inside of me started waking up when I was with him. I don’t know how to handle it. He makes me feel alive and yet he can anger me so much I almost tried to kill him once. And then I just black out.”
“It’s probably overloading you, or rather the chip. Your brain and the chip can’t work together and it shuts you down in a way. I don’t think you will be a danger to anyone. It’s not like you’re turning into a Fallen, you just kind of… shut off.”
It was a relief to have it so plainly explained to me. And to know I wasn’t going to try and attack anyone. If only the other parts related to it all could be so easily explained.
“Do you know what love is, Eve?” he asked as he leaned in close to me.
I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “Please don’t ask me that question. Everyone wants to know and I don’t have an answer for any of them.”
“There’s something else I need to tell you, Eve,” he said, his voice low and serious again. There was something in the tone of his voice that told me this conversation wasn’t going to be a good one. “I knew your mother.”
At his words, my eyes flew open. My mother.
“She worked at the facility with me, with West’s father and grandfather. She was an incredibly beautiful woman, she looked a lot like you. She had your same blond hair, your same exact nose.
“There’s no easy or polite way to put it,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “Your mother and Dr. Evans had an affair about nineteen years ago. The younger Dr. Evans.”
As I pieced together the things he was telling me, my insides grew cold. My mother and Dr. Evans. An affair. Nineteen years ago. West’s father.
Could also be my father.
My stomach gave a lurch and I barely suppressed the gag that ripped up my throat. Stars formed on the edges of my vision. Dr. Beeson guided my head down between my knees.