Mom and I didn’t talk as we headed across the compound toward the special medical facility hidden on the school grounds, designed and outfitted specifically for Eve’s physiology. A soldier led the way while another walked behind us.
A handful of students were cutting across the quad, heading toward the cafeteria for lunch. Turned out Eve and I were the only students who’d been allowed to go home for Thanksgiving, probably because Winn and Company didn’t want the other kids telling their friends and family about Eve. Because everything here was about Eve.
“I still can’t wrap my mind around it,” Mom said, continuing the diatribe she’d started on the helicopter. “You think you know not only better than me, but better than the entire combined judgment of the US government.”
“I was trying to make Eve happy, so she’ll like us. Everyone says that’s all that matters. And the only thing that was going to make her happy was to buy some earrings. To go to the store and buy them herself.”
“Then you ask us. You don’t smuggle her out. She almost died!”
“If I’m such a disaster at being her nursemaid, maybe one of you adults who knows so much should have been doing it.” I would have said more, but we’d reached the entrance to the infirmary, an unmarked polished steel door in the back of a squat building on the edge of the compound.
Inside, Eve was separated from us by glass walls. She was lying in something that looked more like a cocoon than a bed, only her head visible. Her eye-ears were closed. Mom hung back, leaving me to go into her room alone.
I stood over Eve, not sure what to do. In movies, people usually said soothing things to people who were unconscious in a hospital bed, but I felt stupid talking to someone who obviously couldn’t hear me.
It wasn’t healthy to jolt a normal body with a ton of electricity, but for Eve’s body, it was much worse. Mom told me it had something to do with how her double hearts communicated using electrical impulses so they would beat in the right rhythm, and the jolt of the taser interrupted that communication. If the soldiers hadn’t shown up with a medic who understood how Eve’s body worked, she would have died on the floor of that Walmart.
I felt awful about putting Eve in danger. But everyone was leaving it to me to keep Eve happy, to watch out for her, when they wouldn’t tell me anything about her, not even that she had two hearts. It was too much. I felt as if I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. I felt like I should be more anxious than I was—I was pretty sure I’d reached what my psychologist called adrenal exhaustion. My body just didn’t have any adrenaline left to pump.
Two hearts. Was there any animal on Earth that had two hearts?
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jacket. My fingers brushed the butterfly earrings mounted on their plastic card that I’d shoved in there as the medic had worked on Eve. Technically, it was the first thing I’d ever shoplifted, but it wasn’t as if the soldiers would have waited while I paid for them. I carefully clipped them onto Eve’s strange, circular ear-eyelobes.
I turned and headed back out to Mom.
“What happens now?” I asked. “Do we have class tomorrow even though Eve won’t be there?”
Mom rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “I don’t know. We’re supposed to report to General Winn’s office after you visit Eve.”
I was in big trouble with Winn this time. The two soldiers assigned to us escorted us to the administration building.
Mom stayed behind as I headed into the building.
“Be good,” she called after me. “Make good choices.”
Winn, Colonel Spain, and Dr. Pierre were waiting for me in General Winn’s office. A few months ago (which felt like ten years ago), the look General Winn gave me as I entered might have made me wet my pants. He was furious, his face crimson. He also looked exhausted—sunken-eyed and unwashed. They all did.
I didn’t wait for him to start on me—I began my defense as soon as I sat down. “What should I have done, let her go to Walmart alone? Because one way or another, she was going. Maybe when she took off in the store, I should have tackled her and hoped she didn’t slice me to pieces.”
Winn threw back his head, closed his eyes, and huffed in frustration. “She never would have made it out of that compound without your help. You smuggled her out. You took her to a store. You didn’t follow her, you led her into an incredibly dangerous situation. Of all the kids she could have befriended. You have no idea what you risked.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I have no idea, because you won’t tell me.” I folded my arms across my chest.
Finally, Colonel Spain said, “He’s the only one she trusts. Maybe if he trusted us, we’d get somewhere.”
“I agree,” Dr. Pierre said to the general. “That’s two to one. Three to one.” He gestured at me.
“This isn’t a democracy.” General Winn growled.
Colonel Spain leaned forward in her chair. “General, we’re out of ideas, unless you have one we haven’t heard yet. And we are definitely out of time.” She gestured at me. “This isn’t the boy we thought we were recruiting, but he’s what we’ve got. If you don’t tell him, I will, and if we survive this mess, you can court-martial me.”
General Winn stood. “Lieutenant?” he called through the door.
One of the soldiers waiting outside opened the door. “Yes, sir.”
“Escort Colonel Spain to detention. She’s to speak to no one until I say otherwise.”
Colonel Spain’s eyes went wide. “Are you out of your mind?”
Dr. Pierre stood. “We need her.”
The soldier stepped close to Colonel Spain. “Ma’am, please come with me.”
Colonel Spain pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re just like Eve. Do you realize that? You don’t trust anyone either.” She stormed out, the lieutenant close behind.
General Winn turned to me. “If you defy me one more time, you’ll join her.”
Dr. Pierre grunted with disgust. “This is exactly why we’re in this mess. Arrogance. Yours, and the people you work with.”
General Winn glared razors at him. “Would you care to join her? I can arrange that.”
I didn’t say anything. I had no idea what to say. I was beginning to suspect General Winn was a little out of his mind. Not downright crazy, but not completely right in the head either.
He turned back to me. “When Eve wakes up, I want you to have a heart-to-heart with her. Tell her how the soldiers stormed in and saved her life. Explain how the adults protect you, how they know better, because they’ve had more life experience. Tell her how you’ve had to get dozens of vaccinations, how when you were small you didn’t understand why your mother would let people hurt you like that, but now you understand that it was for your own good, that she was protecting you from diseases much worse than the shots. Make up a story about a time you had to have surgery, and it hurt, but it saved your life. Do you understand?”
I glanced at the empty seat beside me, where Colonel Spain had been sitting. “I’ll try.”
“No, don’t try. Do.” He pointed at the door. “Go.”
I headed for the door. There was no way I was going to tell that made-up story about me having life-saving surgery, because Eve would sniff out the lie. But I could tell her the other stuff.
Something Colonel Spain had said in passing kept playing back in my mind: If we survive this mess, you can court-martial me.
If we survived what mess? They’d told me that many lives were at stake, but they’d never mentioned their lives were at stake. Just how many lives were at stake in this ‘mess’? Was mine one of them?