But not this version.
I’m sorry, I whisper to both of them.
When sleep comes, I dream of Nick, of the day I rescued him from the Birchwood holding facility. We curled up that night together, for the second time. I joked that the first night we spent together, in a fancy hotel room, was better. He mumbled something incomprehensible.
My mind makes up the things he could have said.
“Everything’s better with you.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Just… ssh.”
“I don’t care. Just stay with me.”
I am with you, Nick. I am with you. I am coming home.
Chapter 24
The following morning, we are back in the lower levels. Xaph has charted each of the shift changes and is planning on doing it again today to ensure there are no variables. Gabe starts scrubbing and I take over unblocking our exit. There is no time for talk, no time for anything but focusing on the task ahead.
By evening, we are nearly done.
“Tomorrow,” says Gabe, “we can’t risk leaving it any longer.”
It would be wise to chart the rotas for a few more days, double-check that the guards were always punctual, but Gabe is right. Any day could be our last down here.
I do not sleep well that night, and have to force the food down at breakfast time. I will need the energy.
Back downstairs, we go over the plan once more. The first shift change doesn’t leave us with much time to prepare. The second one, after lunch, might be a better option; we can take our own food for the journey and we’ll have plenty of prep time. The only problem is that there’s a slight inconsistency with the changeover times. Maybe someone was late coming back from lunch?
We opt for the final one, just before dinner. It’s close to our dismissal time and there’s a chance the alarm could be raised early, but getting out closer to dark might work in our favour. We have excellent night vision. If we can just evade them for an hour or so… we’ll have the advantage.
We finally manage to break through the outer wall before lunch. Cleaning anything seems pointless at this stage; our work has never been inspected midday before. We lean back against the rubble and try to conserve our energies. I hate this, this pointless waiting. I want to grab the uniforms. But once more, we cannot risk raising the alarm too early. Everything needs to be timed perfectly.
“Eva’s my daughter,” I tell Gabe. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
“What?”
“Eva. Beta-6. She’s my biological daughter. And… and Adam’s. That’s why I attacked him.”
“There’s plenty of other reasons to want to attack Adam…” Gabe leans back, thoughts reeling. “Wow. That’s…”
“Yup.”
“I knew she must be related to you somehow, but I never thought…”
“I know.”
I stew guiltily for a moment. “I… I haven’t spoken to her, since I found out.”
“Does she know?”
“I… don’t think so. But she knows there’s a connection between the two of us…”
I glance upwards, only briefly, thinking of her, of the others going about their routine… the ones that won’t be free by tonight.
“Don’t,” says Gabe.
“Don’t what?”
“Think about the others up there, the ones we have to leave behind. Most of them are loyal to the cause anyway. They won’t come with you.”
“Some would.”
Fee would. Fee wants to be with her family. And Gabe has another unit now– will he honestly miss none of them? He must know them well enough to know who desires escape.
Would Eva come with me, if I asked her to?
It’s unlikely. She’s loyal to Adam. I don’t even know how I feel about her, but abandoning her to this place does not sit easily with me.
“Some,” Gabe agrees, “but not all.”
He’s right, of course. I can’t get them all out. It just isn’t possible at the moment. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be back for them, and it won’t take me five years this time. I will get these manacles off. I will master my firepower. I will be back to free them all with a small army beside me.
Lunch comes, a welcome distraction from my turbulent thoughts. We eat half a roll each, no more. It may be our lifeline later. Xaph offers us a rat, but we decline. I’m not usually fussy about food but I draw the line at raw rodent. Cooked, on the other hand… Mi can make just about anything edible.
“What is it?” Gabe asks.
“I’m just thinking of Mi’s cooking and how much I’m looking forward to eating it again.”
“He cooks?”
Other than letting him know they were all right, I’ve had so little opportunity to tell Gabe about our family, to share them with him. I have time enough now.
“Yes, very well. He’s quite the caretaker. And Abi, well… she’s an artist.”
“An artist? That makes sense. Remember when we were on that tracking mission –she couldn’t have been more than four or five– and she just sat down and started drawing in the dirt?”
I do remember that. I also remember her being punished for it.
“Ben likes to draw too,” I continue, trying to swallow the memory, “he’s not brilliant, but I guess he’s still young. He makes a lot of cards.”
“Cards?”
“‘Get well’ cards. ‘Get happy’ ones. Once, ‘I’m sorry I broke your favourite bow’.”
“People… people outside give others cards with words written on them?”
“Yes. It’s a thing. It’s sweet when he does it.”
“Has your… did your person ever give you a card?”
“Nick,” I whisper. It feels good to say his name out loud again. Nick, Nick, my Nick. “No, not a card…” He drew a picture of me as a superhero. I suspect he drew more than one. It was way more intimate than a card.
“How did you two meet?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I really want to know you.”
“We both tried to steal the same package and I didn’t kill him.”
“Romantic.”
“He’s a member of a resistance group. He’s a very uniquely good person in a world that really isn’t.”
I tell Gabe a little bit more about Luca and the slums. I don’t want him to think we’re walking into a paradise, and, if I’m honest, much as I want to talk about Nick, I don’t want to talk to him about Nick. It isn’t fair.
It’s going to be awkward when they meet. A price worth paying, an obstacle we will face, but awkward nonetheless. Nick knows what Gabe was to me. Is.
Before we know it, Xaph is knocking on the wall, holding the giant clock. “Maybe time?” he says.
We still have plenty –Gabe tries to convince me to hold off a little longer– but I’m keen to get moving. Xaph hops up into the tunnel and I crawl up after him, shuffling off into the dark.
Chapter 25
I keep close behind Xaph, eager as anything to reach my destination despite knowing I should perhaps wait off. This is likely why I pause when the tunnels fork.
Xaph stops, glancing backwards. “Ashe?”
I can hear something, a distorted noise, like the rush of fire, coming from the other passage. Fire, and… screaming. I tell from the quality of the noise that it’s a recording, but a chill crawls down my spine. The scream sounds familiar.
“Give me a minute…”
I shuffle away from him, along the line, following the noise and faint echoes of dim light. A short while later, I reach another vent. It’s a lab of some sort, all sleek and technical. A scientist is watching something on a large screen, studying every frame carefully. It’s a room on fire, and in the centre… someone is squirming.
He winds it back. The picture focuses on a girl in a smaller version of the room they kitted out for testing my firepowers.
Only the room is lined with explosives.
“Do it, Eve,” a voiceo
ver commands.
Wait– what? Is that… is that me? I adjust my focus, peering through the vent as the girl turns towards the voice. She does look like me. Impossibly so, but her hair is longer than mine is at the moment. It wasn’t all crisped off in a fire.
What… what is going on?
The video continues to play. The girl refuses, shouts. They send in someone to tase her.
“Come on, Eve. It’ll all be over soon. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m not fireproof!”
“You may well be.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not test that theory.”
Oh God, she even sounds like me. Not just her voice, but the way she speaks. But it can’t be me. She can’t be me because I don’t remember this and–
“I imagine your unit might disagree…”
If I needed any more evidence that this person wasn’t me, the next thing that happens confirms it. They drag in Moona, my old sister, only she’s not a child any more, she’s older, Abi’s age, not a corpse in a tank with a bullet mark in her temple.
They throw her on the floor and tase her until she’s run out of energy to scream, and only my own –the other Eve’s– reverberates around the chamber.
“Stop! STOP! I’ll do it!”
The guards let her go. She crushes down on her knees, pulls Moona off the floor and squeezes her tightly. She whispers something inaudible in her ear. Moona cries, and seconds later she’s being wrenched away.
Eve is alone once more.
She turns towards the camera, and nods grudgingly. Then she clicks her fingers and the entire room goes up in flames. The feed cuts out shortly afterwards.
“Subject EVE no.3 did not survive the experiment.”
Eve no.3. Eve number 3.
All of my life, I was told I was the first success, the first creation that worked as designed. I was Alpha-1.
But was I?
On my wrist, my small binary brand prickles. I’d always assumed it said something “one”, like a make and model number. What did it really say? Was I the first at all? The other Eve looked the same age as me, but she could easily have been older.
And they killed her. They killed her because of me, because I survived and they wanted to know if I was the only one who could. I don’t need to see a date to realise that.
This is too much. Too much–
“Ashe,” Xaph nudges my ankle. I hadn’t even noticed he was next to me. Did he see any of that? “We need to go.”
We do. We really do. I have to get out of here, although the image of that other Eve will never escape me. No wonder I couldn’t destroy the Institute. It’s a hydra. Too many heads.
I slide down into the locker room in some kind of blur, barely conscious of my own body. I feel separate, numb, disjointed. I break into each locker one after the other, quiet as I can but not mindful of damage. It’s not until there’s half a dozen on the floor that Xaph pipes up.
“Um… Ashe? Enough?”
I look down at the pile, quickly selecting two that look about the right size for me and Gabe. It’s only then I realise another problem.
“Xaph– there’s nothing small enough for you!”
Xaph shrugs from inside the hole. “Can’t go.”
“No, no, there has to be another way–”
“No uniform. Not enough guards.”
“Not enough–”
“Only two come and go. Three strange. Three raise alarm.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right. We can’t risk taking him. Why– why didn’t I think of this earlier?
Because I was obsessed with going home. Because I wasn’t thinking of anything else.
“It’s OK,” he continues, “been alone long time. Be alone again. Little longer.”
I snatch up the two uniforms and scurry back to the hole. I grab his hand. “I’ll come back for you,” I promise him, “as soon as I can.”
We don’t waste any more time. I clamber in and scuttle along, back down to the tunnel. Gabe is waiting for us, painfully glancing at the clock.
“I was starting to–” He stops. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I say quickly. “How long have we got?”
“Ten minutes.”
We change into our uniforms, stuff the food into our pockets, and try not to stare at the seconds passing. Leaving too early will risk rousing suspicion. Leaving too late risks running into the guards, or someone heading back into the locker room and discovering the mess. The hands tick torturously.
We stand by, ready.
I look to Gabe, and he nods.
“Good luck,” says Xaph.
Gabe gives me a leg up out the hole and I haul him out afterwards. My heart thumps wildly in my chest at the mere feeling of fresh air, the suggestion of freedom. My skin trembles, and I fight to stay calm. We brush down our uniforms and turn around the corner, cutting across the door that the other guards will exit from in a matter of minutes. We walk briskly, but are careful to monitor our speed. No one must think anything is amiss.
Walking towards the guard tower, I forget that I’m dressed as a guard. I forget that I am a trained soldier. I don’t even feel like an adult. I feel like a trembling child, and I want nothing more than to take Gabe’s hand and spill into him like I used to.
Gabe, of course, feels exactly the same.
The tower rises above us. We can almost lock eyes with the guards manning the battlement. One waves to us. Gabe waves back.
I do not know if this is some kind of signal, a signal that we fail. I do not know when they realise something isn’t right. But the next thing I do notice is when one of them seizes the machine gun in the tower and aims it at us.
Gabe and I split, dividing the guard’s focus, still heading for the wall. We’re quickly out of his firing range, but an alarm is blaring in the main compound. The two guards we were trying to replace are streaming towards us, rifles at the ready. We’ll soon be within range, and more will follow.
I look up to the top of the tower, and then back at Gabe, sandwiched against the wall. We lock eyes and do not need to speak. He readies his hands. I take a running jump and he catapults me into the air. I grab the ledge and swing myself up before either guard can react, swiping the legs out from under one of them. The other dives for the machine gun, but I punch him squarely in the face and kick him over the ledge. It’s a survivable drop, but I don’t stop to check. The guard I downed is back on his feet, rifle raised–
I grab the muzzle and pull it over my shoulder. It fires into the air. A swift kick to his stomach and he’s back on the ground, the weapon lynched from him. I smack his face with the butt and shoulder it; I usually get rid of weapons, but not today.
“Gabe!”
He’s on the ground, fighting against four armed guards. I let loose a series of careful shots; shoulders, arms, legs only. As soon as they’re down, Gabe is running towards the tower, grappling for my hand. I haul him onto the platform, swing the rifle onto my back, and we both leap from the other side.
We’re out of the compound, but we’re far from safe. The doors are opening behind us. Vehicles are sliding out. We abandon the road and race into the trees, but the sound of motorcycles tears through the air behind us.
We don’t know the terrain. We don’t know about cover or shelter. We only have a vague direction of where to run. I cast out my senses, searching for some sort of clue. I focus my hearing; Gabe focuses his sight.
“There’s a river!” I hiss at him through the trees.
He nods, re-focusing on that and changing his direction. We’re still being shot at, but we can’t stop. We run sporadically, in zigzags as far as we dare. I feel bullets tearing through the air beside me. One narrowly misses, striking a tree to my left. Tiny splinters of wood dust my cheek. I chance a look at Gabe, remembering another bullet, in another wood. One that nearly ended his life… and mine.
Not again, not again. We’re both getting out this time.
>
Pain rips through my side and I crumple to the floor. The motorcycle soars overhead, cutting me away from Gabe. I scream at him to run, and roll behind a tree as the bike turns and starts to fire again. It stops moving; the ground is knotted with tree roots. I press against them, one fist clenched around my middle. I can’t let the pain in. I have to focus.
I swivel the rifle around in my arms and ready it. The best tactic for the two guards on the bike to employ would be to split and come at me from either side. I twist out of my spot, sticking close to the floor, and fire at the ground. I strike one in the leg, but the other is way out of reach. Another bullet hits the bike. Air hisses.
On the bright side, they won’t be using that as an escape route. On the downside, we can’t use it either. I crawl to my feet, aiming for the remaining guard–
Two arms wrap around his neck. There is no struggle, nothing. In a short jerk, Gabe snaps his neck and he crumples to the floor.
No.
“Ashe…” Gabe steps over the body as if he’s no more than debris, and races forward to catch me as I stumble. “You’re bleeding–”
“It’s all right, it’s just a graze–”
“There’s a lot of blood for a graze.”
I can’t stop to look. We can’t stop to look. We’re still being chased. We have to keep going.
“Come on,” I tug his arm, pushing him ahead, “we’re not far away from the river.”
I ignore it as best I can, but I can’t move nearly as fast as I was. I’m dripping blood everywhere. If I get to the stream, at least I can hide the trail, but how long can I genuinely keep going like this?
Gabe emerges from the trees way before I do. He stands on the bank, a blank slab of dread.
“It’s… not exactly a river..”
It is a river. It’s a river with a sixty foot drop and fast-moving rapids.
“We can make it. It’s deep enough.”
Resurrection Page 9
