Keary Taylor - The Human

Test’s I and II yield duplicate results.

I and II.

It had really been there all along.

My eyes jumped to another entry.

As Eve’s brain has continued to develop and evolve, adjustments have been required in II.

Another:

They don’t want just one test subject. But how can I in good conscious give them more than that?

The Eve project…

She’d been there too, the entire time.

My sister.

My identical twin sister.

I looked at the loose pages I held in my hand. They were frayed and worn. Like they’d been ripped from the notebook in a hurry.

West had wanted to hide something from me.

I unfolded one, tucking the rest of the pages into the notebook.

It’s been a month since my last entry. Eve I has already shown improvements. She’s been learning a few more words every week. She is interacting a bit more. Just yesterday we introduced her to my 3 year old grandson, West. We took her to his playroom. He tried to engage her in activities, but she seemed hesitant. Though she did watch him for an hour. She observed the things he did, the way he talked to his toys.

I cannot wait to see Eve I’s progress. If she is able to fully recover, this opens up a whole new aspect to this technology. I had never even considered the mental side of TorBane before.

And on the back of the page…

Eve I plays with West three days a week now. She is taken to the playroom and she stays there with him as well as his nanny and her nurse for two hours. She is allowing him to talk to her, though she still will not respond with more than a word or two. But she does try to play with the toys.

It’s been eight months since Eve I was given the technology. I don’t know if it is because it was given for a neurological condition, but it still seems to work more slowly than I would have hoped. We may try to speed things up with the next generation of testing. We should have it ready in about a year’s time.

My hands shook as I read about my sister.

I pulled out another page, dated more than two years prior, and read.

While I has started to stabilize, II continues to languish. The department is fighting against it, saying that the technology is not ready to be tested on a human subject, I feel that I cannot simply let this infant die without trying. It could, and I believe will, save her.

We had been given TorBane for completely different reasons. Mine were physical. Hers were mental.

The truth had been so close to the surface for so long.

I thought about the past, how West had always worded things so carefully when we first met. And the brief look between West and Dr. Beeson when we had first gotten to the hospital. A secret had passed between them then. This secret.

Dr. Beeson.

He wasn’t innocent in this either. He knew about my sister as well. He had taken care of us for years! And he never said a word either.

West must have talked him into keeping things quiet.

…let the past stay dead…

Movement across the masses drew my attention from the pages.

One of the Bane was moving closer, working its way through the crowd. As if it had a purpose in reaching me. The others surrounding parted to let it through, but their attention never wavered from me.

I took a step back, stuffing the notebook and pages into my pocket, suddenly unsure of my abilities, but there was nowhere to turn. I was completely surrounded. And there was no one here to save me.

The masses continued to part and I saw a gleaming figure coming through the crowd.

Everything inside of me froze when the Evolved figure finally stepped through the bodies.

“Hello, Eve.”

My voice caught in my throat. The Bane no longer spoke and this figure before me was nothing but machinery from the neck down.

But his head was covered in some kind of helmet and the skin of his face was mostly intact. His eyes were human white and West-like brown.

“Dr. Evans?”

He nodded, his eyes bright.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“And so are you,” he replied.

I shook my head, questioning everything I was seeing and hearing. Maybe I was really lying unconscious on the desert floor from dehydration or something. “I don’t know what is real any more. I don’t even know who I am. My entire life has been a lie.”

“I can tell you exactly who you are,” he said, his eyes softening. “I can tell you exactly who your sister was.”

A lump formed in the back of my throat. I tried to clear it, but it refused to move. “It’s true. I really did have a sister.”

Dr. Evans nodded. “An identical twin sister. The only way we could tell you apart was your personalities and the tattoos on the backs of your heads.”

I lifted a hand to my scalp, running my fingers over the place where I knew my II was.

“Then how can you tell which one I am?” I asked, my eyes narrowing at him.

“Because your sister never would have been able to do this,” he said, a hint of a smile pulling on the corner of his lips as he turned and waved a hand over the masses around us. He faced me once more. “You are capable of so much more than you know, Eve Two.”

I searched inside of me for the sound of my heart beating. For my erratic breath going in and out my lungs.

I was conscious and this was real.

“Can you answer this,” I said, holding his unbelievably human gaze. “Why did everyone think Eve Two was dead?”

He hesitated, regret on his face. “Because you did something that wasn’t your fault. Something that in the eyes of most everyone at NovaTor, in the eyes of my son, was unforgivable.”

“What?” I asked. “What did I do?”

He shook his head, the fire building in his eyes again. “It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that the reason you were able to do it, is the reason you are going to be able to save the world.”

I couldn’t answer him for a long moment. His words were impossible, unspeakable. Our world was too far gone. There was no saving it when there was only half a percent left to save. There was no saving it when I was surrounded by possibly millions of Bane.

“That’s impossible,” I practically whispered, shaking my head. “I can’t save the world.”

“Oh, that is where you are wrong,” Dr. Evans said, a full, plotting smile curling on his lips. “Like I said, you are capable of so much more than you realize. And I had already started plans for the device that will clear our planet.”

And the pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t even realized where there suddenly fell into place.

“The notebook,” the words slipped over my lips. My hand shifted to my pocket.

Dr. Evans nodded his head. “So you’ve seen the plans.”

I reached into my pocket, and slowly, never breaking his gaze, pulled it from my pocket. “West had it. That’s how I learned what I really was. We thought the plans were for an electromagnetic pulse.”

Dr. Evans broke out in a laugh and clapped his cybernetic hands together. “Brilliant. Just brilliant. Isn’t it fascinating how fate works?”

“You’re a scientist,” I said, holding the notebook tight to my chest, feeling suddenly protective of it. “You aren’t supposed to believe in fate.”

“Trust me, my dear girl,” he said, a gleam in his eye. “In a world where you and I exist, one can’t not believe in fate.”

“The plans, the drawings,” I breathed. “They’re not just for your average Pulse, are they?”

“The plans are for something so much bigger,” he said, his voice rising in excitement. “And you are the key to making it work.”

Something rose up inside of me. Something bigger than me, something that was more hopeful and daring than I. Something that met the sky and the earth and the water. Something that dared to dream of a normal life.