The awakening, p.15
The Awakening, page 15
part #1 of Eve Series
patrolman of high rank. He was fair in complexion, his skin practically
blending in with his white-blond hair, and his eyes were fiercely blue like those
of a husky dog. But one glaring feature stood out from the others: a scar, deep
and textured, followed the left side of his jaw from his temple to his chin. The
man was glaring at Furst, pounding his fist into his palm as he spoke, while
Furst cupped his chin in his hands and listened intently.
“This was never supposed to happen,” the patrolman whispered.
Eve stopped in the center of the lobby, halted by the cutting nature of his words.
Her eyes fell on Furst—his gaze was cast down at the floor, his face drained of
all color—and she could immediately tell that something was
dreadfully wrong. A snap decision was made; hastily, she grabbed Armaan by
the wrist and tugged him around a nearby corner, pushing both herself and him
against the wall.
“What the—”
Eve pressed her finger against her lips, silencing Armaan instantly. Then she
cocked her head in the opposite direction—toward Furst and the patrolman—
and after a moment of confusion, he enthusiastically nodded, seemingly
excited for the task at hand. Together they peered around the corner, trying their best to eavesdrop on the remainder of the exchange.
“This is all so much worse than we thought,” the patrolman continued. “We
need to take action now.”
“And what sort of action do you propose we take?” Furst asked.
“We have to inform the students—”
“Absolutely not.”
“We’re losing, Furst.” the man growled. “They’re gaining momentum, and we
don’t even have a specimen— ”
“Then we’ll try harder.”
“Furst, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation.”
“I understand perfectly, which is why I called the faculty meeting so
urgently, but now is not the time for hasty decisions.”
“There’s no time to waste. They have everything: Fairon has everything. ”
“Colonel—”
Furst stopped short as his eyes landed on their unwanted spectator: Eve. The
colonel followed suit, turning abruptly to see what or who had caught Furst’s
attention. Eve‘s cheeks flushed and she quickly ducked back behind the wall, though her eavesdropping had already been made more than apparent.
“Follow me to my office, Colonel,” Furst mumbled, and the two men left the
ward together.
Eve turned toward Armaan. “Do you know who that guy was? The one in the
uniform with Furst?”
He shrugged. “No idea.”
They shuffled into the elevator and stood in silence. The image of Dean
Furst and the colonel—with his snow-white completion and his jarring scar—
filled her mind, and their words echoed in her thoughts.
They have everything.
Who were they? And who was Fairon?
As the pair reached the isolation wing, Eve’s musings on Furst and the
colonel were replaced by an overwhelming sense of anxiety. She couldn’t help
but groan aloud at the awful sight before her.
“Back for another tour of the ward, huh?” Heather barbed. She was sitting at the clerk’s desk with an arrogant smirk plastered across her face. “Don’t mind
me, I’m just observing.”
Eve’s face became hot. She looked at Armaan, who stared up at her with
blank, puzzled eyes.
“Don’t ask,” she muttered. Refusing to give Heather a second glance, she
hurriedly handed her ID badge to the security officer and grabbed at the
isolation wing door.
“Hey,” Armaan squeaked, halting her before she left, “I wasn’t trying to
make you uncomfortable earlier. You know, with all my talk about how
dynamic you are.”
Eve offered a reassuring smile. “No worries. We’re fine.”
“I just think we can really learn from one another.”
She could feel Heather ’s scathing gaze; it was almost too much to bear.
“Let’s discuss this another time,” she answered nervously.
“Oh, okay.” His tone was meek and discouraged, and Eve felt her heart break
for him just a little bit.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I promise we will.”
Armaan’s eyes lit up with his usual optimism. “We’re friends, right?”
Friends—it seemed like such a foreign term. Her first few weeks at
Billington had felt so lonely, not unlike the vast majority of her life, and despite her false camaraderie with Madison, Eve had yet to make a single
friend in so many years.
“Yes. Of course we’re friends.”
Eve sauntered into the isolation wing, her spirits lifted, if only for a moment.
Really, she wasn’t quite sure how she felt anymore—lately, her varying emotions seemed to blend together into a massive knot that she fought to
ignore. As she stood in front of Jason’s door, she thought about what might be
waiting for her on the other side: a dark room where Jason sat alone in his bed,
staring lifelessly at the wall. Shards of glass on the floor, or maybe blood dripping from his stapled chest. The possibilities seemed endless, and the lift that Armaan had given her began to ebb. She bit her lip and reluctantly opened
the door.
When she stepped into Jason’s hospital room, Eve’s mouth fell open, and she
was sure her surprise was plastered across her face. The room was bright, almost cheery, with the soft hum of the sound system lightly filling the space.
The bed was empty, its blue sheets messily flopped across the mattress, as Jason stood in front of his desk, his back facing her and his broad shoulders hunched over his scratchpad. He rubbed one foot against the opposite ankle, fidgeting with the hem of his flannel pajama bottoms as he flipped through the
pages of his digital textbook.
As the door clicked shut behind Eve, Jason turned to greet her. His hair was
combed, his face was clean-shaven, and he wore a somewhat unexpected smile
that seemed to illuminate the room a bit more.
“Wow,” Eve chuckled, her eyes wide with shock. “You shaved. You
showered. You actually got out of bed…”
“Hey, in my defense, the nurses don’t want me standing or walking around,”
Jason said, leaning against the desk behind him. “They don’t want me to ‘exert’
myself. You’re looking at a rebel right here.”
Eve took a seat in her designated folding chair. “I’m looking at a changed man.” She raised her eyebrows and stared him up and down. “Now, if only you
could invest in a shirt.”
He looked down at his chest and back at Eve. “The cotton rubs against the staples—it’s itchy.” He ran his hand lightly across his chest as if suddenly self-conscious. “Does it make you uncomfortable? The scar?”
Eve glanced over his scar: the incision was healing day by day as if weeks
had passed. And beneath the scar, Eve couldn’t help but notice the outline of Jason’s firm chest and abdomen. Unlike the massive hulks in Eve’s combat
class, Jason was long, lean, and carved, with strong shoulders and a narrow waist. She hadn’t noticed before; perhaps she’d been too distracted by the scar,
or by the unpleasant ambiance, or possibly the initial tension between them.
“Don’t be stupid,” she quipped. She fiddled with her shoulder bag in search
of a small object to manipulate. “Have a seat. We’ll start where we left off last
time.”
A slight rustling caught her attention; she took a look at the corner of the room
and saw Jason’s pile of presents shaking as if it were coming to life.
Suddenly, a small blue gift—the same one she had controlled during their first
meeting together—darted from the mound and promptly landed in her lap. She
looked back and forth between the gift and Jason, who met her gaze with a smug, toothy grin.
“Have you been practicing? ”
“Maybe I have.” He winked.
“Well, Mr. ‘This-Gift-is-a-Curse,’ you’re certainly full of surprises today.”
Jason took a seat on his bed and bowed his chin, jokingly paying his respects
to his new tutor. “Just tryin’ to make you proud, Teach.”
Eve smirked. “All right, showoff, you’ve got the basics—rather quickly, by
the way—but that doesn’t mean we’re going to take it easy. You’ll be melting
everything in this room today, starting with that, over there.” She nodded
toward his desk. “Your desk drawers—you’ll be opening them one by one until
you can drift into your melt without even thinking about it. And don’t
concentrate too hard like you did last time. The more relaxed you feel, the more control you’ll have over your gift.”
She turned her attention to Jason, expecting to see him preparing to melt, but
instead found him staring back at her intently, his face donning a slight smirk
as if he had a secret.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I remember you.”
Eve wrinkled her nose. “Well, you should remember me. You saw me
yesterday and the day before. The Interlopers dissected your chest, not your brain.”
“No, I mean before all of this—I remember you. We bumped into each other
on the first day of classes.”
“Oh.” Eve’s mind wandered to their encounter in the halls of the business
building. “Actually, if you want to get technical, you bumped into me—
gracefully, might I add.”
“Ah, there it is: that familiar cutting sarcasm.” He smiled. “You certainly know
how to put someone in their place. Not sure how I could’ve forgotten you.”
Eve looked away uncomfortably. “Well, you’ve been more than a bit
preoccupied since then, what with being cut open by aliens and all.”
“Wow. You put it so delicately.”
“It’s a gift.”
“Seems like you’ve got a lot of gifts…”
“Speaking of which”—Eve ignored Jason’s retort and snatched the package
from his mattress—“you’ve got work to do.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Eve let out a long, irritated sigh. “Are you going to keep stalling, or are we
going to get to work?”
Jason laughed. “Come on, relax.” He leaned back in his bed, propping his
neck against the headrest. “I’m just curious. Why are you tutoring me? I mean, you said it yourself: you didn’t sign up for this.”
Eve’s shoulders stiffened. “Does it matter?”
“No, not really. Do you always get this tense when people ask you questions?”
Of course not, Eve thought, though she knew she was lying to herself. She exhaled loudly and gave Jason a disgruntled look.
“I didn’t have a choice. Dean Furst called me into his office—he said it was
my job to train you, and that was that.”
“Damn, an order straight from Furst himself?” Jason stopped short,
distracted by a new idea. “You know, the man doesn’t waste his time with just
anyone.”
“Yes, well, you’re not just anyone. You’re the son of a senator.”
“I wasn’t talking about me.”
“Then what were you talking about?”
“Why you?”
“Oh, God— ”
“Out of all the chimeras at this school, you were asked—no, forced—to be
sitting here with me right now,” he interrupted. “You must be special.”
Eve pursed her lips, aggravated. “We need to get back to work.”
“Eve, would you believe me if I said that I’m just trying to get to know you?
Because like it or not, that’s the truth.”
She couldn’t help but notice his eyes: he had a disarming stare that left her
anxious, and yet she felt that maybe, possibly, he was truly being honest with her.
“You don’t need to get to know me. I’m just your tutor.”
“You’re the only person I’m allowed to see—besides my nurses and doctor.
Forgive me if I’m craving some genuine conversation about something other
than sutures and antibacterial ointment.”
Eve sighed; Jason was a pain in the ass. Unfortunately for her, he was a pain in the ass with a sound, logical argument. It couldn’t hurt to tell him the truth—
after all, he already knew her true identity, and it was an identity they both shared. If anyone could be trusted with this information, who better than a fellow chimera? And yet, all of the rationalizing in the world didn’t make the
words any easier to say.
“Apparently, I’m really… good at what I do.”
“Why do I have the feeling that that was a significant understatement?”
“Because it was.”
“So, were you planning on elaborating?”
Eve grimaced, stalling for a moment. “I’m kind of…”
Jason raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Basically—”
“Just say it.”
“I am saying it.”
“Not really.”
“I’m the strongest chimera in the world,” Eve spat, annoyed by his
badgering.
Jason stared at her in disbelief. “What?”
Eve faltered. “God, it sounds so weird even to me. There’s no way to say it
without, well, saying it just like that.”
“You’re the strongest chimera in the world?”
“Yes,” Eve hissed, her cheeks rosy with embarrassment, “and it doesn’t sound any less weird coming from you.”
He smiled, his eyes still lit with the same fire—the same sincerity.
“It’s not weird. It’s incredible.”
His reaction surprised her: incredible, he’d said. It was incredible, truly, but to hear it from someone else was so strange and unexpected. Try as she might,
she couldn’t think of the right words to say to him, so instead she stared at her
hands as she always did when she felt uneasy.
“So, if you’re the strongest chimera in the world, tell me: what can you do?”
“Can’t we just melt already?”
“Eve,” Jason groaned, “come on. Please?”
Eve grumbled. “Well, I’m fast. Really fast, actually. And strong, though I
know I don’t look it. Looks can be deceiving with chimeras.”
“And your gift?”
Eve kept her gaze pointed at her cuticles. “I can move stuff, obviously—
pretty much anything you could think of. A book, a couch…” She smirked. “A
bus…”
“What else?”
“I can manipulate things. Anything you can do with your hands, I can do with
my gift. You know, turn light switches on and off, open doors, tie shoelaces, hammer a nail.”
“What about living things? What about people?”
“You sure are nosy.”
“The correct word is intrigued.”
Eve sighed, still resolute in her irritation. “Takes a lot more practice, but yes, I can move people. In fact, I could move a whole crowd of people—if I wanted
to, at least. That’s actually the hardest skill to master: melting multiple
things at once. It took me years to get that down.”
“Maybe an easier question to answer would be what can’t you do.”
Eve sat quietly, still fussing with her fingernails. She thought about his
questions—his incessant, pestering questions. She didn’t have to answer them;
after all, this was none of his business. She was there to teach him, and nothing
more. And yet, something inside of her, or possibly something inside of him,
urged her to open up. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him watching
her, waiting for her answer with large eyes that looked so unthreatening.
“If it’s rooted to the ground, I can’t melt it. Like a tree or a building.”
“Makes sense.”
She hesitated for a moment, still staring down at her lap, avoiding his gaze.
“I can’t fly.”
Jason furrowed his brow. “Huh?”
“Let me rephrase. Right here, right now, I could make you levitate. I could
have you soaring through the room doing flips and loops like it was nothing.
But I couldn’t do that to myself.” She frowned. “Lord knows I’ve tried a
million times.”
“Anything else?”
Eve stopped. The answer was there, resting on the tip of her tongue, and yet
it was so very hard to utter. It was a gamble—she knew this—but despite her greater sensibility, she decided to say it anyway.
“There are limitations,” she began, slowly. “I mean…” She sighed. “I don’t
think you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
She growled slightly, aggravated by his resolve, but continued regardless. “I
can do a lot of things with my gift. It used to scare me, how much I could do. It
doesn’t seem right, to have so much power trapped inside your mind.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like my dad.”
“You really don’t get it.” Their eyes met. “I could hurt people with my gift if I wanted to. I could hurl you against the wall, throw you high into the air and
let you fall to the ground. I could melt a knife into your chest. It’s sick, the thought of it.” She stopped for a second, stirred by her own words. “But to answer your question, I can’t just think about breaking your legs or your back
