“Smart,” Susan said, nodding her head.
Karmen, sitting there so quiet and not saying anything, was strange and uncomfortable. I had no idea how much of our conversation she could understand. I didn’t want to ignore her, but it did seem somewhat pointless to include her in the conversation if she didn’t understand.
“You should be fairly safe getting the rest of the way there,” I said, turning back to Susan. “That doesn’t mean let your guard down, but we haven’t seen any Bane since we left New Eden.”
“Any?” she questioned.
I shook my head. “We kind of had a clearing of the city. And then…well, let’s just say they were sent away.” And I left it at that.
By now night had fallen and we all brought out the blankets and sleeping bags. Karmen and Susan would camp and eat with us until morning and then we would go our separate ways.
I had just ducked back into the van for more food, the night fully descending upon us, when I heard a moan from the back seat.
“Morga?,” I said, leaning over her seat from the back of the van.
“Eve?” she said, her voice weak. She raised a shaky hand to the tube blowing air into her nose, but it fell limp to her chest on its way. “What…where are we?”
I looked out the back of the van, back in the direction of the tents. I debated going after Avian. But this would very likely be my one and only chance to talk to her before she slipped away. I glanced up at Dr. Evans just once. He sat still and silent in his glass box in the passenger seat, staring straight forward.
It was unnerving. He looked remarkably like a Sleeper. I hoped he was just giving me privacy.
“Just outside of Las Vegas,” I said, resting my forearms on the back of the seat she lay on.
“What?” she asked, my eyes looking up at me in confusion. “Did you just say Vegas?”
I nodded. “We’re headed for NovaTor Biotics. We might reach it tomorrow. Maybe the next day.”
“Why?” she asked. She rubbed an absentminded hand over her growing stomach.
“There have been some recent developments,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Morgan, there’s a chance we can fix all this.”
“Fix what?”
“The world,” I said, barely more than a breath. The words still felt too unspeakable. It seemed cruel to say them if they couldn’t possibly be true. “There may be a way for us to kill them off. All of the Bane.”
She took a small, gasping breath, the air sounding as if it were trying to choke her as it went down. She swallowed, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “And you’re somehow the key to making it work,” she said, her eyes rising up to me. “Aren’t you?”
I didn’t reply for a moment. Everyone kept looking at me like some kind of savior. Like I had somehow been born into this destiny. Yet it was all just luck that it happened to work out that I could do anything. That I had anything to give.
“We’re going to give it a try,” I said, my throat feeling dry.
“Eve,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed once more. It was a long while before they opened again and she found the breath to continue. “Why am I here?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate in answering. “You know that I’m different from everyone else, but that I would do anything to protect those around me despite what I am, right?”
Her breath rattled again as she breathed in. “Of course.”
“I’m not good at dancing around things and articulating words gently,” I said as I laced my fingers together. Finally, I looked back at her. “You aren’t going to make it much longer.”
Morgan nodded. “I know.”
“And the chances of the baby surviving are very slim.”
Morgan nodded again.
“What if there was a chance that we could save the baby?” I said. The air around us seemed to grow still as my words caught in the space around us. For just a moment, it felt as if everything around us was weightless and anything was impossibly possible.
“What if by becoming like me, she could live?”
Morgan’s eyes grew steady as they locked on my face. For the first time in weeks, she seemed incredibly alive. Fierce. “I would ask you to do everything in your power to make sure it happens.”
Several times I had tried to imagine how this conversation might go, if I ever got the chance to have it.
I hadn’t expected the emotion that ripped through my body.
It felt like a shudder worked its way from my toes up, like cascading rain and electric lightning. It pushed its way up to my throat, closing it in, and up to my eyes. Pushing three single teardrops out.
“I’ll do everything I can,” I said, my voice quivering.
Morgan reached up a shaking hand and grasped mine. Together, our hands shook, but they were strong and determined.
TWELVE
Morgan slipped into unconsciousness soon after we talked. Avian spent the night in the van with her, monitoring her health. Bill, West, Karmen, and Susan slept in the tents while I kept watch. But every hour or so, I would see the flap of the tent open and Bill would look out at me.
Bill always had my back.
Not long after midnight, the rain let up and the air grew colder when the clouds moved on to the south. Dawn filled the air with unreal quiet.
I’d expected to have something happen in the night. I really had. We were so close to a city. The world had continued to Evolve. The Bane had grown more aggressive, not quieter. Given it had been night and some of them did still go into inactivity during the dark hours of the twenty-four cycle—still.
I was unnerved that we had yet to see a single Bane.
“What’s wrong?” Avian asked when he stepped outside the van in the morning. He looked both ways down the freeway, his hands going to the handgun in the holster at his hip.
“Nothing,” I said, my eyes scanning the silhouette of the city in the distance. “That’s what’s wrong. Doesn’t it seem strange that there aren’t any Bane around this close to the city? It’s too quiet.”
Avian nodded as he continued to look over our surroundings. “Yeah, this is too easy.”
“We’d be seeing bodies if my army had taken care of them all here. But there’s nothing so far. I don’t know that a fire would be enough to drive the Bane out unless it just completely leveled the city. But look at it,” I said, pointing ahead. “It looks like there are still plenty of buildings for them to sleep in. So where are they?”
Avian swore under his breath, looking toward the sun where it rose in the east. “We should probably get moving.”
“Yeah,” I said. The flap to the girl’s tent was pushed open and Susan stepped out. “Hey,” I said, turning toward her. “Did you come through the city before you got to us, or did you skirt around it?”
“We hung to the edges of the city,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “We needed food so we didn’t dare completely miss it. I knew it would be one of the last ones before we got to your people.”
“And were there any Bane?” I asked. My eyes jumped to the sky when a flock of birds suddenly started and flew over our heads.
“We were trying to avoid them, obviously,” Susan said, looking at me like I was stupid. “And there was the fire.”
“But did you see any? Were they inactive in any of the buildings? Did you see any of them scouting?” I asked impatiently.
Susan was quiet for a second, her gaze dropping to the ground as she reviewed their journey. “No,” she said, her brow furrowing. “Actually, we didn’t. There were tons of them north. We had to make a huge effort to avoid them. But none of the cities we have passed through yet have been as big as Vegas.”
“Something’s wrong,” Avian said as I looked at him.