I unlocked the top hatch and popped up through it. We were going to have to drive a little over a quarter of a mile toward the Bane to get around the mountain and back to the road. Bill was cutting through the sage brush to give us as much space as possible, but this wasn’t a mountain climber with all our extra weight.
Eve One popped up next to me, her eye leveled with her rifle.
“How’d you find them?” I asked, looking down my sight as well. They were only a mile away and we had a quarter of a mile before we could cut around this mountain.
“Scavenging a little town just east of here,” she said, cocking a bullet. “Almost there last night when I heard destruction. I watched them tear the buildings apart all night. Realized they were heading this way.”
“How did you not know we were still in the building?” I asked. My heart hammered as we finally rounded the mountain enough to start heading away from the Bane army again. As we started climbing in elevation we watched them grow closer and closer to the building.
“I don’t go down,” she said, her voice tight. “I didn’t know if you were still there, but I wasn’t going down there to find out.”
“Why don’t you go down?” I asked.
Finally, it was like watching a multicolored cloud collide with the NovaTor building. The entire front end of it crumpled and exploded in a cloud of dust.
“I just don’t,” she said simply.
The building disappeared from our sight before I could see it fully engulfed in bodies, but I knew there would be nothing left standing when they were done with it. But we would put enough distance between us and them to be safe, even with how slow the vehicle was moving.
Sure we were far enough away that we wouldn’t get snuck up on, my sister and I dropped down through the hatch and locked it.
“That was a little close,” Bill said, shaking his head. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.
I looked around to see everyone staring at Eve One.
No one said anything for several long moments, because where were we supposed to start?
“I never left,” she finally said. She turned her attention to Dr. Evans. “You told me to leave NovaTor. You said things were bad and dangerous. But I couldn’t leave. I had nowhere else to go. So I stayed around the building until there was no one left who would try and tell me to leave.”
Dr. Evans didn’t say anything, just stared at her with his brown eyes. That was the first time I realized they weren’t so brown looking anymore. Their coloring was a bit grayer now.
“Those things tried attacking me at first,” Eve One said, blinking and looking over at me. Her words seemed to be flowing a bit more easily now. “But when they realized I wasn’t going to become like them, they left me alone. We mostly try to avoid each other. For however long it’s been.”
“Six years,” West said, his voice shaky and rough. “It’s been six years.”
She looked over at him and nodded. Her eyes locked on him. “I always thought you’d come back. This was your home too.”
West’s chest rose and fell quickly and his eyes darted away when moisture pooled in them. “I looked for you, for a long time. I never thought…” His voice failed him.
“He did,” I filled in when he couldn’t. “He looked for you. And he thought he found you just under a year ago. But he found me.”
It was awkward and uncomfortable, revealing the truth, about how West found me, and thinking, I, Eve Two, was dead, could only assume it was her, Eve One. We explained how he never said anything about my sister, because I didn’t remember and he thought it was easier. We told her about the pain I caused West and how we both made poor choices that led to the lives of everyone around us being put in danger.
She asked about the scars that covered West’s entire body, and we explained how he had been infected, and then cured.
Eventually, we told her about the things that mattered most. How Dr. Evans was still somewhat human. Why we were back at NovaTor. What we were going to try to do now.
She was very quiet when we were finished and no one dared say anything. While I waited for her to process everything, I observed her.
Her face undeniably looked exactly like mine. Down to our narrow noses and sharp jaw line. She had the same exact blue-grey eyes. However, while my hair was short, hers was extremely long. It had formed into thick tendrils and looked a bit like snakes to me. The top half of them were pulled into a loose bun at the crown of her head, the bottom half hung lose down to the middle of her back.
At the back of her head, I could make out one small black line that I knew was a roman numeral one tattooed to the back of her skull.
She was more ragged than I was, more savage looking, but she was my identical.
“So you’re going to save the world…from what we helped create?” she said. Her face was blank now, devoid of any feeling one way or the other.
I nodded, thinking about how emotionless I was just a year ago, how I had such a hard time processing everything I felt. She would be just as bad as that, but probably worse considering how she naturally was. Added to it all was the fact that she hadn’t spoken to another human being in nearly six years. I wasn’t sure how she was sane at all. “We’re going to try.”
“And you live with a colony of a hundred and sixty other people?” she asked. “Including Dr. Beeson?”
I nodded once again.
“You don’t feel like a freak there?” she asked, her voice even and calm. “They accept you?”
Her harsh question caught me off guard. “Yes. I mean, they know I’m different, and I know I make some people uncomfortable, but we all get along fairly well.”
“Hmm,” she said, turning and looking out the window. The first solid snowflakes started falling to the ground.
“That bird’s still following us,” Bill observed. He ducked his head slightly so he could see up higher. I saw it swoop around us from up above out my window. “Is he your pet?”
“He’s my hunting companion,” Eve One said, looking out the window up at him.
“What’s his name, Eve?” Avian asked.
“Bird,” she replied simply. “And I don’t use that name anymore. You can call me Vee now.”
“Vee,” I said. It took me a second to get it. She still clung to her past identity in a small form, but she wasn’t just going to be a project anymore, she was her own person. Shift the letters around. I never would have thought of that.
“So, this vehicle,” she said, looking around. “It runs on solar power, yes?”
“Yeah,” I said, relaxing back into my seat a bit.
“What are we going to do when the snow covers the panels and the sun?”
Everyone looked back outside. The sky had continued to darken and the snowflakes were falling quicker.
“We’ll keep driving for as long as we can,” I said. “Hopefully if the vehicle dies, we’ll be far enough south to stay clear of the Bane sweep.”
Creed suddenly cried out, piercing the awkward air. Avian laid her on the seat next to him and set to changing her diaper.
“Why did you bring a baby with you?” Vee asked, her brow furrowing. “I know she can’t be yours, because of how we are, and I don’t understand why you would bring a child all this way.”
Everyone looked at me, as if waiting for me to answer the question. We didn’t know Vee or how she would react to things. She could take this any way.
“Her mother was dying,” I said, taking the honest approach. “The baby wasn’t ready to be born yet. So I told Dr. Evans that I wouldn’t help him unless he helped the baby.”
Vee was quiet for a while, her eyes jumping from me to the baby. “You gave her what he gave us?”