Against billions of Bane.
This should have felt like a triumph.
But the cost still felt too high.
“Are you alright?” Vee asked.
I looked over my shoulder to see her standing in my doorway. I’d been staring out over the city, out my window, not actually seeing anything.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.
It was easy to be honest with Vee.
She crossed the room and sat next to me on the bed. She looked outside as well.
“Everyone from your colony is so excited,” she said. “But they’re also so sad.”
I nodded, my eyes glazing over once again.
“You’re sad,” she said. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
Her fingers laced with mine.
And for a moment, I wasn’t quite as sad.
Dear Avian,
I am sure at this point you are wondering exactly what went wrong.
The simple answer is that everything went exactly according to plan.
I knew from the moment I started plans on the Nova that Eve Two could never survive the transmission. The level the kill code had to be amplified to was astronomical, something none of you could have comprehended. Had her sister not been in that lead box, she and the baby would have been killed too.
I am sorry to say that Eve Two was never going to survive saving the planet. But that was her greatest calling and purpose in this life. I never should have saved her all those years ago. I should have let her pass with her mother, should have taken Emma’s death as a sign to let the TorBane project die as well. But I didn’t.
This may feel as if the world has ended. I have seen the way you look at Eve Two and no one can doubt that you love her more than human words can describe. But even if it seems impossible, try to keep perspective. Her death has bought the freedom of the human race.
Never forget Eve Two, and never let planet Earth forget what she did for it.
THE END
PART SIX
“I need a car,” I said as I walked up behind Royce. The letter I’d found from Dr. Evans was crumpled in my right hand. Royce turned to look at me. He’d been talking to someone and I’d interrupted him mid-sentence.
Royce swore. “Avian, you look like hell. Have you slept since…?”
I shook my head.
Sleep? How was I supposed to sleep?
“We’re supposed to have the—” the word stopped up in my throat. “Tomorrow, and I need to find a place to—” My voice cut off, and I couldn’t make myself finish that sentence. I cleared my throat. “I can’t do it here. She hated the city. So I’m going to go scout for a place to—”
Royce put a heavy hand on my shoulder and nodded. “Come on,” he said.
I was given a small vehicle, one that wouldn’t require much gas. Not that there was much gas left in the world. Or many engines that hadn’t been destroyed by the corrosive kind we still had.
So I headed out of the city. I skirted around the destroyed section of Los Angeles, the part of town that the Bane sweep had leveled. There were millions of Bane there, piled six feet deep.
I couldn’t let Eve’s final resting place be within the city she so badly wanted to escape. The one she was only confined to because of the threat the Bane posed to those she loved. Because of her sense of duty to her family.
I looked for green. I looked for trees. I looked for water. In this area of the country, that wasn’t so easy to find. But I kept driving, and I kept searching.
Until I found a place.
It wasn’t really a town. More like a recreation area or a pit stop. There was a gas station that had been completely looted. Across the street from it was a diner. The road that led between the two drove almost right up to a lake. One that was about twice the size of the lake in Eden. There were five cabins on this side of the lake, and I could see a few others scattered around the edge of it. The road curved around the lake for a bit before breaking off into the mountains. On one side of the lake, next to the first house, there was a grass field.
I parked the car at the edge of the lake and climbed out.
The trees that surrounded the lake and the little lakeside town weren’t giants. They were barely green. But they were trees. They were under the wide open blue sky.
Eve would approve of a place like this.
I climbed back in the car and headed back into the city.
I looked over Dr. Beeson’s shoulder, staring at the screen before us. West peered around me. Vee was there as well. So was Royce. And Gabriel.
There was her skull again. There was her brain. Her eyes.
Her shoulders, her spine. Her heart.
Her stomach, liver, hip bones. Femurs, tiny foot bones.
A cybernetic skeleton and still organs.
No traces of TorBane.
Three nights and three and a half days now, Eve had lain there. Still and—
Dea—
She really was—
“Okay,” I said, the word trying to stick in my throat. “It’s time. Thank you for doing the scan.”
Dr. Beeson nodded, his eyes locked on me. West placed a hand on my shoulder, but it sat there as limp and lifeless as she was.
I walked into the room, shadowed by the crowd that had hovered around me for the past three days. I placed my hands on the top of the bed, just above Eve’s head. Gabriel took the bottom of the bed and we wheeled it out of the room. Down the hall, into the elevator and to the first floor. On the way down, Vee pulled the sheet up and over Eve’s face.
The only way I would make it through this day was to be concrete. I hardened to the torrential emotions that threatened to shred me from the inside out. I moved, doing things from one second to the next. One foot in front of the other all the way to the medical wing.
A group of women washed and cleaned her body. I hovered in the doorway, watching emptily. West stood at my side, never saying a word. Vee watched from behind us, her face as empty looking as I felt.
They dressed her in her favorite clothes. Her boots, her cargo pants, a soft white cotton shirt. They brushed her hair and laid it nicely around her face.
When they were finished with her, they all exited the room.
“Do you need someone here?” West asked.
I shook my head. “I think I need to say—” my voice faltered. “I think I need to say it on my own.”
West nodded and patted my shoulder twice. Turning, he and Vee walked down the hall.
It took me a long time to step inside the room. I felt like I was crumbling inside. Like when that concrete interior I’d been trying to put up fell apart, there would be nothing left and I would cease to exist.
Taking a quivering breath, I stepped over the threshold.
I pulled a seat up to the side of the bed and, my hands shaking, I took one of her hands in mine. Her left one. The one that bore the ring I had given her. It was cold and limp. There was a cut on the inside of her palm that hadn’t healed. She must have gotten it when she collapsed after the Nova went off.
I stroked my thumb over the back of her hand and brought her knuckles up to my lips. A tear slipped over my cheek and a quivering breath gasped from my lips.
“You can’t go,” I breathed. I shook my head and squeezed her hand harder than I should have. “You can’t leave me, not now. Now when I’m finally able to give you everything you needed. Not when it’s safe to leave this place and go home. Not when I can show you what life together should have been like.”
The dam broke. A gasping cry ripped from my chest. My face rose to the ceiling, the tears freely flowing now. I squeezed her hand harder.