“What’s the matter?” he pushed.
I shook my head again. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” I had to know for sure first if West really was my brother before I could drop that bomb on him. And I still couldn’t wrap my head around the possibility.
He didn’t get a chance to respond to that as we entered the medical wing and Avian came walking out of a room with a doctor I had not seen yet.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” the new doctor said. “I’d love to give it a try sometime.”
“When we have more time I’ll tell you how I removed a tree branch from a man’s chest cavity in the middle of the forest with no medical supplies. Without killing him,” Avian said with a chuckle.
“Okay,” the doctor grinned back. He shook Avian’s hand and walked into another room.
“There’s something I’d like to show you,” Royce said when Avian turned his eyes on us. He looked momentarily surprised to see me. A few moments later, we were rising in the elevator toward the third floor. I was very aware of Avian’s keen eyes on the back of my head.
We stepped out into the blue glowing hallway, surprise filling the other three’s faces. Unease crept up in me as we approached the door to Dr. Beeson’s lab. We stopped just outside the door.
“I understand your hesitancies in joining us,” Royce started. “Living here has its challenges. But I want you to understand the benefits that come with a place like this, besides the obvious of electricity and running water.”
He opened the door and we crowded into the room, Dr. Beeson staring at the flashing screens before him.
“Erik has developed technology to interface with the Fallen,” Royce started explaining. “Trust me, there are endless Hunters out there who would have ripped this building apart, bit by bit, if not for his research.”
“You can control them?” West asked.
“What we can do is very limited,” Br. Beeson said as he tore his eyes away from the screen before him. “It’s difficult to transmit any information to such a large amount of receptacles. If we could focus only on one Fallen we could do probably just about anything to them. But with so many, pretty much all we can do is tell them to keep away from this building.”
“So in a way, you make this building invisible, or make them forget that it’s here?” West questioned. He eyed the information on the screens closely. I wondered if he understood any of it. “It’s kind of like when Eve controls them.”
“You can?” both Royce and Dr. Beeson exclaimed at the same time.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve just made them stop what they were doing before. All I did was tell them to get away. For some reason they listened.”
Dr. Beeson nodded, his eyes excited again. “The chip in your brain is set up for wireless transmission. That’s how we made adjustments to the chip. We never would have guessed that you could send signals though.”
“So, could I be controlled with that?” I asked hesitantly, pointing at the screens. Dr. Beeson looked back at them.
“I don’t see why not. The technology is virtually the same. But this computer is password protected so that only myself and my assistant have access to it. No one is going to hijack your brain,” he said with the hint of a smile.
“So you see why we are safe here?” Royce said. “In the four years that we have had this set up, we have never had a breach, or anything even remotely close.”
“It’s impressive,” West said, his eyes still studying everything before him. “Would you mind if I came back later and talked to you about this some more?” he asked Dr. Beeson.
“Of course,” he said with a smile and a nod.
“I have one question for you,” I said. My voice was hoarse sounding. Dr. Beeson nodded. “What are they waiting for?”
“The Fallen?” he asked. I simply nodded. Everyone in the room stiffened slightly, recalling the bodies we had all seen, lined up inside the buildings.
“The end of the world,” he said, his eyes looking dead suddenly. “You have to understand that the technology was designed simply to assist people in living. It doesn’t have any desire to do anything but spread. Once it has finished doing that, it will simply exist. It isn’t waiting for anything but the end of time.”
No one said anything as Dr. Beeson looked back at us with hollow eyes.
Hollow. That was a good way to describe the way the world was becoming. The way I was starting to feel again.
“Excuse me. I’ve got to get back to work,” Dr. Beeson said, his voice tight.
“Thank you, Erik,” Royce said as we walked back out into the glowing hall and closed the door behind us. “This way. There’s something else I want you to see.”
We walked further down the hall and opened another heavy black door. The room we entered into was largely dominated by a terrifying looking steel chair in the center. Bands for securing a person’s hands were welded to the arms of the chair, another set of bands for the ankles. The entire chair was surrounded by metallic arms that rose from the ground, curving in a bowl shape, giving the slight resemblance to a terrifying bird cage. They shone in a menacing and primal way.
“We’ve been lucky to have the best scientists who survived at this facility,” Royce said as he approached the contraption. It almost seemed to glow under the blue lights. “We worked on this for five years before they got it right. We started work on it before this facility was even fully developed.
“I worked in weapons development and warfare research for the United States government for seventeen years before the Fall happened. It was my concept but I couldn’t have done it without the entire team.”
“What is it?” Avian asked.
“It’s an extractor.”
“For what?”
“The infection.”
We all stood in silence for a moment, processing what Royce had just said. It hit us like a punch in the gut.
“It extracts the infection?” West said, his voice doubtful. “As in takes the cybernetics out?”
Royce nodded and started circling the extractor. “It isn’t always successful. The person who has been infected must start treatment within an hour of being touched. After that time frame it seems to always be too late.”
“And it’s worked?” Avian asked in awe.
“On one man. We’ve tried it on two others but it was not successful. They had been infected for over two hours though. The process, however,” Royce paused, looking us in the eye as he rested his hands on the back of the intimidating chair, “is very, very painful.”
“These are magnetic, aren’t they?” West asked as he approached the extractor and touched one of the rounded arms. They were taller than he was.
Royce nodded. “Surgery could never find all the tiny parts. And you could never operate fast enough. They’d turn on the table and heal before your eyes. And then they’d infect you. With this method, it gets every little piece. And pulls it right out through your skin.”
“But how could anyone survive that?” Avian asked, his brow furrowing. “The process would kill you just from the pain you would feel.”
“Anyone going through the treatment is placed in a medically induced coma. It’s a slow process. If we pull too fast, all of the person’s insides will be shredded to bits. We have to extract everything slowly, allowing the body to heal as everything is being pulled out. And then this,” he said as he pointed to a round disk in the ceiling above us, “keeps it from spreading. It’s an electrical pulse that contains it. It’s not strong enough to wipe everything out. If we crank it up too far, it would kill the person too fast.”
“You wanted to see me, Royce?” a voice from behind us said. We all turned at once to see who had joined us.