I still wasn’t ready to decide if anything I was feeling was love.
It was difficult to adjust to the schedule they kept at the hospital. We slept during the middle of the day, woke around eight at night, had breakfast, and once it was dark outside the scouts went out on patrol. Lunch was served in the middle of the night and dinner was served a an hour after dawn. It felt so off, but only if you paid attention to the actual times. Night and day looked pretty much the same in the hospital considering the windows were only open when it was pitch dark outside.
I sat eating my breakfast alone when Royce and a few of his other men approached me. I could tell from the looks on their faces that they had business on their minds.
“Do you have a few minutes to talk, Eve?” he asked. I could see a strange look of excitement on their faces.
“I was planning on going out on patrol but I think I have a few minutes before they’re ready to leave,” I said as I stood. They followed me to the counter where I returned my tray and we headed for the elevators. “What’s this about?”
“I have one last thing to show you,” he said, excitement in his tone.
We exited on the blue floor, the lights glowing bright as ever. I followed them down the hall, to the very end. A thick black door was closed, heavier and stronger looking than all the other ones. Royce punched a few numbers into the keypad attached to the handle. It beeped twice and I heard it unlock before he pushed it open.
Almost immediately inside the door was a set of stairs. All three of the men glanced back at me before starting up them, making me feel a little uneasy.
Even if they were planning to take me to some secluded area of the hospital and try and attack me, I was pretty sure I could take all of them if I had to.
My eyes grew wide as we got to the top of the stairs. They opened onto the very top floor of the hospital, one big room. There were no walls or ceiling, just windows. It was almost as if we had just walked out onto the roof of the building.
Dominating the center of the room was a ring. A fifteen foot ring, balanced on five steel legs about four feet off the floor. Inside the ring were more rings, gears, mechanical devices I didn’t even have names for. But I knew what it was. I’d already seen a smaller version of it.
“It’s a CDU,” I breathed as I took it in.
A small smile crossed Royce’s face as he looked at me and nodded. “Yes it is.”
“It’s massive,” I said as I started to circle it.
“It’s taken us a long time to build it,” Royce said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “We not sure exactly how far the blast will reach but we are certain it will at least clear the city.”
“Why haven’t you used it yet?” I asked as I ran my hand along the smooth metal surface. I immediately withdrew my hand, remembering what it would do when it was live. It would kill me immediately.
“It’s not quite finished,” he answered. “It still needs a power source.”
I nodded as I stopped, coming back around the gigantic ring. “I suppose you can’t just plug it into any normal outlet.”
“The amount of power this thing requires is astronomical,” Royce said, his eyes fixed on me. “Even directing all the power that runs to the hospital wouldn’t be enough to charge this thing and set it off. We need to tap directly into the power plant that is three blocks from here.”
“Then why haven’t you done it yet?” I asked, my brow knitting together.
He looked at me for a moment before he replied. “Because it is crawling with Fallen. Even at night.”
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. The Fallen flocked to places with power. It made sense that a power plant would be saturated with hundreds of Fallen.
“You need me to go in,” I said as I put everything together. “I’m the only one that can’t be infected.”
He simply nodded, his eyes fixed on me.
I looked back at the Pulse, thinking of what it could mean if it really did work. This entire city, and all the ones around it, clear up past the forest we had hidden in for a short time, free of any Fallen. We could likely live the rest of our lives in peace.
“If I set this off, what’s to keep it from shorting me out and killing me?”
Royce adjusted his stance, pushing his hands in his pockets. “We’ve been working on proofing the entire hospital for the last two years. This room was added a while ago, completely sealed off from the rest of the building. The glass is all going to blow, but the rest of the hospital won’t be effected. You’ll be perfectly safe inside, along with all of our other electrical equipment.”
“And how do I get into the plant without being torn apart, limb from limb?” I asked as I stuffed my hands in my pockets as well.
“Heavily armed,” he said, a sly smile tugged on his face.
“No,” a voice suddenly said from behind us. Both Avian and West stepped into the room, looks of rage and fury on their faces. “You can’t send her right into a power plant. She’ll never make it out alive,” West said through clenched teeth.
“You can’t ask this of her,” Avian said, his eyes dark.
“Apparently Lex forgot to close the door behind us,” Royce said as he glared at one of the armed men behind him. The man just gave a shrug.
“You realize what this device will do for us? For humanity?” Royce asked, turning his eyes on Avian and West again. “We will never have to worry about the Fallen again. We can live like normal people again, start to rebuild.”
“But not at the cost of losing Eve,” Avian said, his hands forming fists.
“We will not be sending her in there naked. A tank will drive her as close as possible, our men will take out as many as they can without risking infection. She will be armed.”
“No,” West said, shaking his head. “It’s too great of a risk. There will be hundreds of them there, maybe even thousands.”
The three of them stood like that for a long moment, staring at each other with unrelenting eyes.
“I’ll do it,” I finally spoke. “When will everything be ready?”
“Tomorrow,” Royce said.
“No, Eve!” West hissed at the same time.
“You can’t do this!” Avian chimed in.
“Yes, I can and I will!” I nearly shouted back. “Neither of you are in charge of me. I’m the only one that can do this and I am going to do it. For all of us.”
“Wonderful,” Royce said as he clapped a hand on my back. “I’ll let them know and we will get things prepared for tomorrow night.”
Avian looked at me with cold eyes and I read a million words of shock, hurt, and betrayal in them. Without another word he turned and walked back down the stairs.
“You can’t do this Eve,” West said, closing the gap between us. He took my hands in his, his brown eyes staring into my blue gray ones. “You most likely won’t walk out of this. Don’t kill yourself to make life a little easier for us.”
“Maybe you’re underestimating me,” I said quietly, slipping my hands out of his. “I am doing this.”
Before he could say anything else, I stepped around him and walked down the stairs.
I hurried out to join the rest of the patrol group. It was then that I noticed how they kept a wide berth around an entire block. As I looked through the dark in that direction, I saw them, rows and rows of them, surrounding the complexities of the power plant.
As we patrolled that night, I thought of the dozens of ways I could die in twenty-four hours. I also thought of what the world would look and be like after the Pulse was set off.