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.”
FORTY
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.