From there, kills are quick. More bullets, knives, and Beth’s wicked rope.
Finally over, Eve is shaking and drenched. Her heart feels like it might burst, and her breathing is rapid and shallow. Maggie can’t stop looking between the field and her sister, unsure if she should call for help or congratulate the victors.
Relaxing, the Zappers gather in a rough circle and then break apart to repack their gear.
But something is wrong.
Martin starts to cuss, which he never does, and yells, “Trap! This is a trap! Get ready!”
Lightning starts to strike, lighting up the sky.
Looking out the window, Eve sees a swarming mass of what looks like birds, but as it approaches—fliers. Hundreds upon hundreds, they light up the sky and are headed directly toward them.
There is no time to run.
Maggie unbuckles her seat belt and hops from the car. Running to the second Humvee, she grabs her spear from the rear and sprints until she is next to West.
Their enemy isn’t only in the sky, but also coming from the ground as another swarm of jumpers and rollers barrels from around the power plant.
They are all going to die.
Eve feels every single one. She knows the mutants’ numbers without counting and their power without testing them. The irises in her eyes drain of color, replaced with solid black as her hair starts to rise in the air. She doesn’t remember leaving the car as she walks toward them.
Smoke and sparks trickle, and then flow from Eve’s hands. They start to spin, round and round, until Eve is in the center of an electrified tornado of her own making. Up and up, at least five hundred feet in the air it spins, with Eve serenely in the center.
Then it starts to move.
Eve is unharmed as it passes over and through her, ripping apart everything in its path.
“Move,” Eve whispers, but the whisper carries, and the Zappers scatter.
Only then does she really let go.
The speed shifts from twenty miles per hour to seventy as the twister charges toward the mutations. Entranced by the spinning cyclone, they make contact and instantly explode. Like fireworks on the ground, Eve lights up the entire valley in her destruction.
And then there are none.
She only feels the gentle thrum from the generators and the energy flowing through the power lines.
Eyes rolling into the back of her head, she slams into the ground.
Chapter 33
From within the Humvee, Eve can hear them talking. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the words are registering, but she is unable to move.
“Take her fucking cuffs off, you moron!” Maggie yells, followed by rustling. If Eve had to guess, West is holding her back.
“Just a precautionary measure,” Martin placates. Yes, Martin is speaking now.
“She didn’t attack any of us! She attacked them! Maybe if you stopped for two seconds and removed that huge stick out of your teeny tiny—”
“That doesn’t change the fact that we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“At least we know now why the solar cells didn’t take!” Rowan chimes in sarcastically. He must be somewhere in the front. Leave it to Rowan to be cracking a joke right now.
Eve’s head is in someone’s lap, and they are soothingly running their fingers through her hair. Not male, female. Has to be Beth. Eve highly doubts Sophia would be coming anywhere near her, especially now. At least her friend wasn’t scared of her.
Friend. Beth is good friend.
Next thing she knows, she is being carried from the Humvee. Thrown over a shoulder, the blood pools in her skull from her inversion. It tingles, sending heat to her icy skin. Ever since…whatever that was, Eve has been freezing.
“Way to go, freak,” a male voice whispers. Rowan.
She inversely spots the log structure, Evergreen, as he sets her carefully on a gurney. It starts to move. She can feel the different changes in light through her closed lids, hearing whispers from whoever they pass. She knows what they must be thinking.
What did Eve do this time?
She tries to smile but fails. Eve doesn’t even know what Eve did.
Everyone is okay.
Is she okay? Probably not. But everyone else is. That is all that matters. Everyone that she loves is okay.
The gurney stops and she manages to crack open one eye. Rowan hovers above her. He looks funny from this angle.
“You’re upside down,” she mumbles.
“Maybe I am downside up?” he snorts.
“Aren’t you scared of me?”
Rowan shakes his head, but Eve’s pretty sure he is lying.
“I’m scared of me,” she confesses, clumsily throwing her forearm over her face. The laboratory lights are obnoxiously bright.
“You’re going to feel a pinch, but we need to replenish your fluid levels.” Martin again. The laboratory. Eve thinks she has been spending way too much time in here lately.
“Rowan?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think my dreams were dreams….” Eve mumbles.
A few minutes pass and Martin checks her vitals, injecting a few more things into her arms. She trusts Martin.
“I don’t think they were either…” Rowan grates, his voice full of emotion.
The white room. Her gray skin. The tank, the shots, her parents. It’s like a slideshow, and Eve is starting to see the big picture. Slide after slide, memory after memory, it’s all coming together.
Eve has an inclination about what is wrong with her.
She hopes her theory isn’t right.
Chapter 34
It’s been five days. Five long, nerve-wracking days.
Eve is depressed. And bored. And angry that she is stuck in here, bored and depressed.
The Zappers have a prison of sorts. Accessible by yet another tunnel, leading to a cave, with four clear cells.
Eve is the guest of honor.
The other three are empty, but they are all identical. Cot. Sink with cold water only. A toilet. And that’s all.
She has counted, literally counted, the flagstone pieces in the concrete floor. There are 137. Using the flimsy plastic toothbrush she’s been left, she sticks it into her hair, tying up most of her greasy mane into a bun.
Eve is starting to smell.
Or just starting to smell worse than she did by day three.
A change of clothes would have been nice. She is still sporting the stained clothing she was wearing during her ride-along. You know, the one where she annihilated hundreds of Snappers at once with a tornado of doom…. Eve saved their lives, and now they’re treating her like a murderer.
She is one.
But she murdered the bad guys. That should count for something.
Maybe she should be locked up, but it doesn’t make her feelings hurt any less at their mistrust.
The only person she’s seen is Beth. Quite literally, just seen. She brings Eve three meals a day, but keeps her head down, not uttering a word. Eve would rather be despised than treated like she’s invisible, especially by someone she’s close to. Beth won’t even tell her how Maggie is doing, or if she’s okay, so Eve stopped asking.
Left in this transparent cage, she has nothing to do but think.
One positive. The nightmares have stopped. Maybe they only have hit pause, but Eve’s gotten more sleep in the past five days than she’s had the entire year.
What must Luca think of her?
He wasn’t the one to bring her to the lab after she fainted, she remembered that much. That was Rowan. Luca probably hates her again, which really isn’t fair. He couldn’t possibly hate her more than she hates herself right now.
Or as much as she hates Adel and Orion.
What kind of parents experiment on their own child? Maybe Eve and Maggie aren’t even blood related. They could be some sort of test-tube babies…it would explain the physical differences between them.
Maybe Eve is a ticking time
bomb? Rigged to explode at the exact right moment? Scary thought. Riley and the rest are probably right, keeping her locked up in here. If she was in their shoes, she would have done the same.
These are Eve’s thoughts as the hours drag by.
Worrying about Maggie, wondering what everyone is thinking about her, and speculating about what has been done to her DNA.
And one more.
How good it felt.
When she got out of the car and pulled the energy from the air and the ground. She felt every molecule gathering. She felt every single Snapper, and she relished the moment when she overloaded their systems until they exploded. She enjoyed the massacre, and she would do it again, given the chance.
She wants to be set loose on those monsters, because she is a monster too.
It really takes one to know one.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back to the hallway between the enclosures, the walls surrounding her start to rise, disconnecting from the floor. Almost falling backwards, she catches herself and rolls to stand, ready to defend herself if necessary.
But then there is Maggie. And Tate, and Martin.
Making eye contact, the cell isn’t completely retracted before her sister ducks through and envelops her in a tight embrace.
“Oh my God, Eve, are you going to give me lice or something? What the heck!”
Stepping back, she inspects Eve’s current state and Maggie is appalled.
“Just a precautionary measure,” Martin justifies.
“Fuck your precautions. Look at her!”
Maggie stands in front of her protectively, daring Martin or Tate to approach. Noticing that Tate is holding something—it looks to be the high-tech cuffs, like the pair they placed on her in the car—Eve sighs.
She thought she was being let out, but Eve is apparently still a threat.
Stomping over to Tate, Maggie snatches the cuffs and marches right back to Eve.
“Hold out your arms. This is the only way they’ll let you leave here. Don’t worry, I have made all of their lives a living hell since they threw you in this shit bucket.”
The satisfied smirk on Maggie’s face lets Eve know that she isn’t kidding. Eve can only imagine what Maggie has been up to in her absence.
Apparently a whole lot, as she notices a certain silver moonstone ring on her sister’s right hand.
She has seen that ring before. As her sister struggles with her shackles, Eve can’t help but ask, “Isn’t that Lucia’s?”
“Yup,” Maggie replies, nonchalant.
“Did you steal it?”
“Nope.”
“Find it and not return it? Because that’s still stealing….”
“Wrong again.”
“Well, did she give it to you?”
At this, Maggie snickers, pleased about something that has transpired.
“She isn’t half bad, when you get to know her. And Lucia and Sophia have been kind of on your—our—side about Riley letting you out. Sophia ‘wasn’t ready to die’ and is ‘totally in your debt’ after you went Twister on those mutations.”
At this news, Eve’s jaw drops, the cold metal of the cuffs finally tightening around her wrists.
“I wouldn’t trust them just yet, they’re more ‘frenemies,’ but Lucia is trying to buy my love, and I’m letting her.”
Her task complete, Maggie turns to the guys and bellows, “Done, you idiots! Happy?”
She motions for Eve to start walking.
The cuffs are checked by Martin, who confirms they are indeed secured and activated. Only then does Eve follow the group away from the cells and through the way out. But instead of downwards, the way she was first led from Evergreen, Tate selects another tunnel heading up. Exiting, Eve squints from the morning sun as they step directly onto a flat outcrop at the base of a small mountain.
Eve can see Evergreen below.
Trying not to cry, she realizes that isn’t where they are headed. The big clue being the helicopter that is right in front of them.
As hurt and confused as Eve is, she would give anything to be back there. Back in her room with Maggie. Back in Luca’s arms.
“You have to be kidding me,” Eve blurts.
Taking two black handkerchiefs from her pockets, Maggie flips Tate and Martin the bird before taking one and tying it around Eve’s eyes. Blinded, she assumes that Maggie does the same to herself before the Quinns push them toward the helicopter. Instructing them when to step up, and when to duck their heads.
“Maybe, you should have gotten us into this contraption, and then had us put on these. Wouldn’t that have made more sense?” Maggie snaps, but noise-canceling headphones are slid over their ears, and for the rest of the flight, both of the Abbott sisters only feel and hear a faint rumbling. The pressure changes as they drop elevations and smoothly land.
Being guided by what must be Tate’s brutishly large hands, Eve exits the helicopter. Their headphones are removed and their blindfolds, but the cuffs on Eve remain in place.
At first, she thinks they are in the middle of the forest near Evergreen, where she and Rowan had gone running. She thinks she recognizes this small clearing. Her gaze starts at the base of the trees, and then rises toward their branches.
And what she notices, in the trees, instantly changes her mind.
They aren’t anywhere near Evergreen.
This place is something else entirely.
Chapter 35
“A treehouse? Really? Isn’t this a bit excessive, even for you guys?” Maggie shields her face, studying the structures, partially hidden by the foliage.
“And Evergreen?” Eve asks, disappointed. While intrigued by the structures that seem to be floating between the massive trunks, part of her wants to go home.
Evergreen felt like home, even more so than Seattle ever did.
A home in which she is no longer welcome.
“Whatever. So, how do we get from down here to up there? Stairs? Tate uses his big hairy arms to toss us as high as he can, and it’s up to us to grab onto something?”
Noticing some signal that Eve and Maggie must have missed, both Tate and Martin nod their heads and move forward, beelining for a gargantuan oak. Arriving at where the trunk meets the soil, sure enough, a rectangular section of the tree opens, revealing a modern-looking elevator.
“Tree elevator? There’s actually a tree elevator? Nice….” Maggie snorts, stepping inside first.
It’s a tight fit with all four of them, and Eve can tell her fragrant aroma is causing issues. She tries not to fidget as everyone but her takes turns holding their breath.
Ding. The group reaches the only floor the elevator goes to, and the door opens. Stepping out, they are in the center of a large, pentagon-shaped room. The tree’s trunk extends to the top and up through the roof, reaching even higher into the sky beyond.
Within this room there is a full spotless kitchen to the left. Couches, loveseats, and an actual large flatscreen TV on the right. Completing it, three round tables with chairs in the back for dining.
Eve forgets everything for a moment, taking in the wizardry of this place. An adult tree fort but with modern amenities. Noticing the second, wrap-around level with a rope railing, she wonders how you access it until she spots the wood ladder, attached to the tree trunk on the opposite side of the elevator, that connects to a short bridge.
“Can we remove the cuffs now? Big bad Eve here needs to be drowned in soap,” Maggie requests.
Plopping on the tan leather couch, Maggie grabs a remote from a stand, and flips it on. She squeals, realizing what channel is playing.
“HBO! Eve! They have HBO! I’m never leaving here….”
Martin approaches Eve, holding a black tablet.
“Your cuffs are disabled, you can remove them, but a chip has been implanted into your spine. If you go beyond fifty feet of this spot, you will be terminated. If you show any irregularities that I or my team deem a threat, you will be terminated. Clear?”
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Grabbing for her neck, Eve feels a small, tender spot right at the top of her first vertebrae. Great. Like she needed one more scar.
Exhaling, she shrugs, removing the cuffs and handing them to Martin. He takes them, heads back to the elevator, gets on, and it shuts, leaving them alone with Tate.
“Are you our babysitter?” Maggie inquires, laser focused on the cable channels as she rapidly flips between them.
“Yup.”
“Sorry about that,” she mumbles.
And then Tate moves to sit in one of the loveseats next to Maggie. His joints crack as he bends and plops down. Pulling a lever on the side, the footrest rises, and he sighs in contentment.
“I volunteered, actually,” Tate offers, causing Maggie to hit the mute button.
“Not upset that you did. Better you than Martin. But can I ask what you guys plan on doing with us in this tree castle?”
“Martin will be back soon. Talk to him.” Tate brushes Maggie off, watching the silent baseball game as a pitcher throws his third strike.
Eve doesn’t want to interrupt. In her time in solitude, it feels odd to speak at all. But she really does need to find the washroom, if only to stop the itching.
“Is there someplace I can bathe?” Eve asks softly.
“Yeah, see the door next to the kitchen? Walk out, and across. Next building over….”
The baseball game is un-muted, and Maggie and Tate are entranced. It seems that Tate has been devoid of television for even longer than they have.
Turning the handle, the wind assails her, rocking the bridge from side to side. Her stomach turns as she takes her first step onto the swaying structure, reminding herself to not look down. A woven netting has been installed around the bridge, so there really is no way of accidentally falling, but still. Powering her way over to the smaller pentagon-shaped building it leads to, she steps through the entrance. Finding a sliding panel hidden in the doorframe, Eve rolls it closed, locking herself inside.
The room is basic. A giant tub in the wooden floor and a cabinet stacked with towels. Water running from a hole in the ceiling on the left into a drain on floorboards must serve as the “sink.”
Saintsville Page 17
