“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!”
“You put the beacon in one of our soldiers?!” Royce bellowed, rushing at one of the other men, knocking him to the ground, his fist crushing his cheekbone. Within half a second everyone was yelling, fists flying.
I had just knocked one of the men out who rushed me when I saw movement from behind us.
There were more of them.
Another ten soldiers, men and women, rushed from behind other buildings, guns drawn.
This was about to turn into a blood bath.
We didn’t have to wait for the Bane to swarm the city in the next few hours. We were going to kill each other off first.
Graye chased after two soldiers who fled down an alley.
Tristan stood with one of our soldiers, trying to keep them out of the hospital, guns drawn.
Elijah radioed for back up as he fought off another man.
I had to find Margaret. If I could find Margaret, maybe I could keep this from turning into a death match. I could convince her to call off her people.
Because I had no doubt that Margaret was here.
Tristan was right. They had staged my escape. They’d wanted me to get back to New Eden and quickly.
Because when they didn’t find the answer to curing TorBane, they planted their beacon inside of my head and waited for me to return. And then they set it off.
Looking one last time back at my family, I set off down the street.
TWENTY-FIVE
Margaret would be waiting somewhere she could see all the action. I just had to find her vantage point.
I checked the street level, anywhere she would be able to see from. But she wasn’t a stupid woman and being out on the road would be too obvious. She was hiding inside a building.
I was just about to duck inside one when a familiar voice called my name.
I turned left and found West jogging up to my side. His entire body was bruised.
“We’re going to kill each other off out there,” he said, his eyes wild and fearful. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of view of the battle.
I hadn’t considered how I would react to West when I came face to face with him again after what he’d done, after what Avian had done. Especially since Addie had turned my humanity down.
I should have expected the hatred and the burning that consumed me.
And he saw it all there in my face.
“I am so sorry,” he said, his eyes filling with regret. “I never meant to betray you. I was hurt and I was angry and I was pissed. But I didn’t mean to tell them about you. I thought you were safe back here with Avian when I went with them. I couldn’t stay here anymore. I didn’t think it would matter if I told them what you were capable of. I wasn’t all that sure I’d ever see you again.”
I wasn’t even breathing as I listened to West apologize. The back of my eyes burned and my throat felt as if it had totally closed off.
“Yell at me,” he said, his eyes desperate. “Hit me. Do whatever it takes to make you feel better. I think it will make me feel a bit better if you break a couple bones or knock me unconscious.”
From past experience, I knew I was unpredictable when my emotions got away with me around West.
So I did the only smart, reasonable thing I could do in that moment.
I turned and walked away.
“Holy shit,” West breathed as I took two steps away from him.