Keary Taylor - The Human

But when I parked the motorcycle next to the beach, I saw it, sitting battered and sideways, but still there.

My boots sank into the wet sand. The shoreline looked different, as if the water had in fact rushed in, dragging the granules away. The tide had pulled my tent down the beach. It sat only two feet from the water.

I righted two of the poles before I stepped inside.

The floor was soggy and my clothes that had been stashed under the cot were soaked. But when I checked underneath my pillow, I found the picture of my mother, undamaged.

I held it to my chest, taking a deep breath.

My past.

Had I been remembering it back at the Underground? Were those scenes and images real? Or had I just been going crazy? Had they broken my brain enough to make me see things that just mimicked reality?

I looked down at the woman who looked just like me.

If she hadn’t died giving birth to me, the world might still be recognizable. She might have stopped Dr. Evans from giving me TorBane, let me die the natural death I should have died, and TorBane might have just stayed a theory in a file.

But these thoughts weren’t going to change the past. So I put them away.

Tucking the picture in my pocket, I rescued a few of Avian’s books and tucked them into my pack.

I took my time emptying the tent. I broke into one of the houses that sat on the beach, storing my clothing, cot, pillow, sleeping things, Avian’s belongings, and eventually, the tent, inside.

I was doomed to live forever inside prison walls.

When I was finished, I stood with the tips of my boots in the water. I closed my eyes, breathing the ocean air in. Before me was freedom and peace. At my back was the real world of destruction and endless, crushing work.

“Goodbye,” I whispered to the water as my eyes opened. I knew that it would be a while before I would see it again.

Straddling the bike, I pointed it back in the direction of the hospital.

I wove between bodies that lay on the streets, all Hunters that had been outside when the Pulse had gone off. It seemed unreal that that had only been three months ago. So much had happened since then.

I was three blocks from the hospital when something caught my eye.

A movement. Something darting behind a building.

I stopped the motorcycle on the side of the road and killed the engine. I pulled my Desert Eagle from my back pocket. Peeking around the corner, I slipped silently along the wall.

My handgun was held steady when I popped around the corner, only to find an empty alley.

Something hit my shoulder—dirt—and my eyes jumped up just in time to see a foot disappearing over the edge of the roof.

I scaled the fire escape, making sure my feet were silent as I did. And just as I got onto the roof, I saw two figures jump off the side of the building.

I sprinted across the roof. Bodies hit something solid with a clatter and a curse below me and then feet were running.

I looked over the side of the roof just as they disappeared around a corner.

Darting back to the fire escape, I slid down the ladder and ran back to the motorcycle. I pushed it to close to eighty miles an hour in the three blocks I had left.

When I rounded the final corner, I saw a crowd of people in front of the main entrance of the hospital and stopped the bike on the grass there.

Elijah had his foot on the back of a man who was handcuffed and on his knees. Graye held a gun to the man’s head. Royce stood before him, his arms crossed over his chest.

“What’s going on?” I asked, joining them.

“Graye found him spying about fifteen minutes ago,” Elijah said. “He’s not saying what he’s doing or where he’s from.”

“I highly suggest you start talking,” Royce said, squatting right in front of the man. “You see, when I worked for the United States government developing weapons of war, I got a contract to develop a few nasty items for a more individual base of destruction. You do not want me digging in my closet. But I will if you don’t tell me what I want to hear.”

Fear shook the man’s body, but he was trying hard to keep his face blank.

“Is it ready?” he asked, his voice shaking slightly.

“Is what ready?” Royce asked, narrowing his eyes at him.

“The device.”

“What…the Pulse?”

The man nodded.

“You’re with them,” Royce said, his eyes growing even darker. “Aren’t you? You’re with that group from Seattle.”

Tristan stepped out of the hospital and hesitantly came to my side. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Apparently your old friends are back.” I took a step forward. “There were more of them just a few blocks from—”

My head must have split open for real this time.

A scream ripped from my throat and I collapsed to my hands and knees. I was sure there had to be blood leaking from my ears and nose and eyes and mouth and every pore in my body. My brain was dissolving into a trillion atoms being split and rearranged.

I opened my eyes to find a world washed in green, sequences of numbers flashing across my vision.

And I could feel them. Hundreds of thousands of them. Millions maybe. Like a string was connected to me and ran to each and every one of them.

I could feel the Bane.

And the call that was going from me to them.

“Eve!” voices screamed. My eyes searched for faces to attach the voices to. But there was only green and numbers and the feeling that I was more Bane in that moment than I had ever been in my life.

The connections became stronger and stronger and I felt their dire need, their drive, their one reason for existence—to make the perfection spread. To heal what was broken. And what was broken was human DNA and tissue. It was weak. It aged. It died. It fractured.

We were strong. We were perfect. We were made to save.

And we had to spread.

We had to make the world perfect.

“Eve!” a voice called out to me again.

I blinked, trying to clear the numbers from my vision and the voices from my head.

We must spread.

We must perfect and heal the world.

“Eve! This isn’t you!” the voice screamed again.

Another voice yelled. And then a gun was fired.

I blinked again and my head jerked to the right as someone slapped me. It felt like a fishing hook caught in my brain and the strings that bound me to the millions out there started breaking away.

“Eve! Come on, you can pull out of this!”

Tristan.

“Tristan?” I moaned, the pain pulsing through my brain once again. I opened my eyes, the numbers fading from my vision as the rest of the strings fell away.

“I’m right here,” he said. His arms were around me and I was lying on his lap. “Holy sh… You were saying some pretty freaky stuff.”

And suddenly adrenaline burned through my veins. I was on my feet and ready to attack the man we had captured when I froze.

There had to be fifteen of the people from the Underground surrounding us. Guns were pulled everywhere. Elijah’s team had assembled. And there was a body in the middle of us all.

“You put the beacon in my head, didn’t you?” I growled at none of them in particular. “It was never here and I was never the trigger. You put it in me and sent me back!”

Most of them didn’t react in any way, but one of them had a tiny smile that tugged on his mouth.

I crossed the circle faster than I’d ever moved. I yanked the shotgun from his hands and tossed it towards Tristan. I grabbed the man’s shirt in my fist and pulled his face an inch from mine.

“You’ve just sentenced everyone to infection,” I hissed.

“That’s what the Pulse is for,” he said, his breath rancid.

“The Pulse is broken!” I bellowed, shoving him away from me, knocking him to the ground. “And you set the beacon off two days early!”