Keary Taylor - The Human

“What?”

The woman shoved me off of her and pointed somewhere just behind me.

There was broken glass everywhere. And in the middle of it was Margaret.

She was dead. There was no question about it. Her right arm was bent back underneath her at an impossible angle. Her neck was cocked sharply to the left, broken. There were huge chunks of glass embedded into her skin and blood poured from her lifeless body.

“She jumped,” I said, my voice horrified and disgusted. I’d heard glass shatter just before Royce and I had gotten back outside.

Royce told her how she’d killed everyone, and she jumped to her death.

“Don’t lie to me,” the woman said, her voice harsh and emotional. She wedged the barrel of her gun back between my ribs.

“No,” I insisted, meeting her brown eyes again. “I promise you, that wasn’t us.”

The woman’s features hardened and she shook her head as she cocked the trigger.

I spun quickly, grabbing her wrist as I did. With a quick flip of my own hand, I pulled the gun from her grasp and completed the spin to turn and point both my own firearm and hers at her chest.

“I will not fire unless I have to,” I said quietly. “But right now I am not your enemy. There are about to be hundreds of thousands of Bane flooding this city and I am your only shot at staying alive and human.”

And then I knew exactly what I had to do.

Throwing the gun out of her reach, I turned east.

There was a wide open desert out there where no people would get hurt. A wide open desert big enough to hold the enemy that would soon be arriving.

I scanned the fighting crowd for Avian but he was nowhere in sight.

There would be no time for a goodbye.

I dashed around the side of the hospital and dropped down into the garage. I hopped on an oversized ATV. It would get me through the mountains, over the rough terrain, and it would do it quickly.

The engine growled to life and I shot out of the garage.

The crowd parted as I ripped down the street. Members of New Eden shouted after me as I moved. But Royce, Gabriel, and Avian were nowhere in sight.

Spotting Bill, I slowed momentarily. He caught sight of me and I waved him over. He rushed the ATV and hopped on, grabbing onto the cargo rack.

“You’re going to head them off, aren’t you?” he asked, his eyes serious and dark.

“There’s no other way,” I said. “We’re all dead if I don’t do something.”

Bill nodded, glancing back at the fighting crowd. They had barely paused when I barreled through them. “Hopefully there are still some of us left to save.”

And then West shot through the crowd, stumbling over debris. He stopped next to the ATV, his hands braced on his knees for a moment as he caught his breath.

“I’m sorry I lied, again, Eve,” he said, looking up at me with regret on his face. He straightened and pulled something from the cargo pocket of his pants and extended it towards me.

His grandfather’s notebook.

“The truth is in there,” he said. “You’re going to hate me for hiding it, but it’s there.”

In that moment, there wasn’t anything to say. I took the notebook and looked back at the fighting masses, my heart hurting.

“Tell Royce to figure something out,” I said. “And tell Addie to be ready with the wireless transmission system. I’ll keep them away for as long as I can. But in case I can’t keep them all out of the city, continue with the evacuation plan. Head into the water. You’ll be safe there. At least for a while.”

Bill held my eyes for a long while before he nodded. He placed a hand on the back of my neck and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Good luck,” he said.

“Do me a favor,” I said, glancing briefly at West before meeting Bill’s eyes again. “Tell Avian that I love him. And that I’m sorry.”

“He knows that,” Bill said. “But I’ll tell him.”

I nodded and Bill saluted me.

“I’m sorry,” West muttered again as he backed away.

Gripping the handlebars tighter, I revved the engine and took off down the street.

Even though I could no longer feel that connection to the Bane, I pushed my thoughts out to them. I pictured the desert I had never actually seen. I commanded them to go there and to wait for me.

I was just over an hour outside of New Eden, and had just left a canyon when my ATV sputtered and died. I looked down to see the gas gauge dropping below the red line. Leaving it on the side of the road, I walked.

The land opened up before me, revealing dry desert. There were a few towns hugging the mountains, but after that, nothing but dry open desert.

I know you’re out there. Come and find me.

The towns fell behind me and soon my boots crunched over rough, cracked ground. The light breeze that brushed past me tasted stale and dry. When I could no longer see buildings and the landscape was nothing but sage brush, I stopped.

A wind picked up, cool and arid, empty and lonely. I turned my eyes to the horizon, blocking out the blinding afternoon sunlight with my hand.

A figure stepped into view and slowly approached. Another was behind him. Followed by another.

They gathered, one by one, ten by ten. They walked slowly and even, in no hurry and perfectly controlled.

Come.

I shifted uncomfortably as they closed in around me from all sides. Their metal parts gleamed in the sun, their eyes reflecting crazy colors in a prism of light.

The first dozen of them stopped just ten feet from where I was. They stood perfectly still and stared at me.

I was queen of the Bane and these were my subjects.

Night fell and the Bane continued to flock around me. They stretched as far as I could see, filling this desert. There were thousands of them. More than ten thousand. And they all just stood there, facing me.

I sat on the ground eventually when my legs started shaking from standing for endless hours. I commanded the Bane to sit as well, uncomfortable having them stand over me when the last five years I had been trained to fire or run whenever one of these things came in sight.

My eyes were heavy, but I didn’t dare fall asleep. What if I did and my connection to them was lost and they headed into New Eden? What about those who were still answering the call of the beacon and heading this way but had not arrived at our gathering place?

My eyelids tried to close, but I held them open until they burned, all through the night.

The sun seemed to rise all at once. It was brilliant and beautiful and so cold all at the same time.

I stood, stretching my stiff limbs and looked out over the crowd again.

There had to now be a few hundred thousand Bane surrounding me. All I could see around me was gleaming bodies that shone in the sun.

Something fell out of my pocket and I looked down to see the notebook.

Loose pages had fallen out of it and it lay open, facing the ground.

The truth is in there, West had said. You’re going to hate me for hiding it, but it’s there.

Bending, I carefully picked up the loose pages and the tattered notebook.

It was open to a page I’d read before.

An unexpected side effect of the chip implantation has occurred. I have been aware of the fact that everything project Eve is able to do should be impossible. The strength, speed, increased eyesight and hearing capacities. This has evolved beyond the capability of the military’s chip and TorBane.

The two technologies have intertwined with each other I believe. The chip has given the TorBane technology the ability to spread and evolve. After sedation and a full body scan, hints of cybernetic enhancements have been detected throughout Eve’s body. It is not just the brain, lungs, and heart that have been altered now. It is the entire body.