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.
“How?” I asked.
“Are you ready?” Dr. Evans asked. “Are you ready to save this planet, Eve Two?”
“I am.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You all have no idea how scary this was to write this book. Committing to writing a trilogy takes guts in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve been there. But it was my readers who gave me the courage. This book never would have been written if you all hadn’t demanded it. And I am so glad that you did. So first and foremost, thank you to all of you readers.
Thank you to Jenni Merritt, as always for cheering me along and helping me to plow through messy sentences and scenes. Thank you to Dad, Tim, and Steven for reading this in its early stages and helping me to make it into something people could read.
Thank you to my husband and children who put up with my crazy writing habits. And thank you Heavenly Father, as usual, for giving me the love of writing and everything else.
About the Author
Keary Taylor grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now resides on a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two young children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night.
Please visit KearyTaylor.com to learn more about her and her writing process.
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Keary Taylor
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
First Digital Edition: June 2013
Cover Design by Keary Taylor
Cover Image: Shutterstock.com
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Taylor, Keary, 1987-
The Human : a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.
ISBN: 978-0615827704
Also by Keary Taylor
The Bane
The Raid: An Eden Short Story
The Ashes: An Eden Prequel
Branded
Forsaken
Vindicated