EVELYN
"I think you're bleeding again."
"Oh yeah. Sorry," Jonathan said noticing, as if for the first time, the fresh blood from his shoulder seeping through his t-shirt. He looked a bit startled hearing the sound of her voice and she didn't blame him. She hadn't spoken to him or the man in camo, who had introduced himself as "Guy," since they'd arrived at the safe house. It was a quaint little farm property, just off by the river and buried in a forest of trees and unkept greenery. As it was one of Guy's primary residences, it had been rigged with a complex maze of nets and traps that kept the Soulless at bay. Apparently, this is where he and Jonathan had spent the last few days planning her rescue.
"What do you mean sorry?" She asked, "Sorry for what? Bleeding?"
"It's fine, I'm fine."
"You are not fine."
"I mean I'm a little dizzy, but I'll be—"
Evelyn was already pulling him into a chair. "Oh, give it a rest already. Don't be a hero and just sit down."
He looked as if he was about to protest again but Evelyn had gotten down to business and was up to her elbows rummaging through the backpack Jonathan had brought from River District. She decided it was better to work, to focus, to think about other things...to move forward.
"Take off your shirt."
"What?"
"We need to disinfect it and stuff, right?" she said as she pulled items out of the bag. "Put some pressure on that would you? Maybe try to stop the bleeding a bit."
"Oh yeah, right... sorry," He mumbled again using his hand to cover the darkening spot on his sleeve. Despite the shower and fresh clothes, he still looked like hell. She reckoned she probably didn't look much better, but she hadn't been inclined to check out her own appearance in a mirror. Amazingly there was still water running in the house, but having met Guy, this didn't come as a surprise. He seemed to have been preparing for the apocalypse even before the virus. They sat there for a moment, listening to Guy's off beat singing as he took his turn in the bathroom.
She glanced up at Jonathan again, "Stop apologizing for bleeding."
"Okay... Sorry."
"Sorry for what, now? being reckless? Or for tearing your stitches again?"
"Both?"
"Stop apologizing if you're just going to keep putting yourself in these kinds of situations."
"Sorry," Jonathan smirked, enjoying the fact that he knew he was getting under her skin, and she felt her desire to pick a fight with him diffuse, "But you know it kind of comes with the territory— living in the apocalypse and all. If it helps, I have a good excuse this time. I was rescuing you."
"Right... and that was brave but also incredibly stupid of you." Evelyn's hands stilled in their search through her bag. She looked away, hoping he didn't catch the look on her face, "but, that being said... thank you. It was... looking really scary there for a minute."
"Oh..." Jonathan's expression was an awkward mix of surprise and sincerity at her candor, "you're welcome, I guess. It seemed like the right thing to do... you did the same for me right?"
"Right..." She said.
They stared at each other for a moment, neither knowing exactly what to do or say.
"So... shirt?" she asked awkwardly.
"Oh right," he said.
Evelyn watched as he grabbed the offending garment by the back of his collar and pulled it over his head. Were all men taught to take off their shirts that way to look like that on purpose or was it pure coincidence that it was so incredibly fascinating to watch the way the fabric bunched in his fist and smoothly slid off his body to showcase the tensing muscles in his arms and back? Kevin would've probably fainted.
She pushed the intrusive thought from her head. She should not have been thinking it. Jonathan suddenly winced in pain and Evelyn's eyes went wide with concern.
"Where?"
"No, it's fine." He said, gathering the shirt in his lap and then moving a hand to clutch at the bruised bare skin at his midsection.
"Guess the ribs are still healing, huh?" Evelyn said, trying hard not to stare.
He nodded.
"I think I'm too stubborn to die." He quipped.
She could tell he was trying to make her laugh, but she simply leaned forward to clean the wound with a small flask of alcohol and a cloth she'd dug up from the backpack. After she'd dampened the cloth with the drink, she handed him the flask and he taken a sip as she got to work.
"Do you want some?" He asked, holding the flask out to her as she finished taping the gauze in place.
"No... thank you, I'm fine." She said, tucking the supplies back into the backpack. This was good. Normal. She just needed to focus on other things.
"Evelyn. You, okay?"
"I'm fine." She repeated. Did she not seem fine? She grabbed the flask from him and threw it into the bag perhaps a bit more forcefully than she'd intended. His expression was as indecipherable as ever.
"Dammit, it's still bleeding," she said in frustration as she looked back up at him and noticed the blood soaking through the fresh bandages she'd just finished, "Where did I just put those? I just had it."
"Evelyn."
"I said I'm fine." She snapped, "Oh, here it is, okay, hold still—" She said, snatching the bandages out of the bag again and stretching it out to cover his shoulder.
"Evie." He said gently, "Stop."
She stopped. Her hands were shaking. She could feel his eyes watching her, but she knew she couldn't meet his gaze because she knew if she did, she wouldn't be able to keep herself composed.
"You are not fine." He repeated her words back to her, "You don't have to talk about it or deal with it if you aren't ready, but it's okay that you are not fine right now."
He placed his hands on top of hers, stilling them. His hands were large enough to cover hers completely. They were marred with signs of hard work. There was the trauma of life in the apocalypse and weather-related eczema, but she'd never noticed before that there was an odd little scar above his knuckle like the nick from a thorn and the thickened calloused skin that only comes from wielding a spade or trowel in the garden. It was something she recognized because that was the way her Popo's hands were too.
"I'm sorry for putting you in danger," she said, still unable to meet his eyes. "I'll stop now."
"Stop what?"
"Stop all of this." She said, pulling her hands away from his to gesture vaguely at him, her, and their general surroundings, "None of this would've happened, if I'd just listened to you and stayed put."
"Look, Evie, I—"
"No, I'm telling you that you were right. You find the first place that seems somewhat safe and you lockdown. I don't know who I thought I was leaving the bunker in the first place, thinking I could go on this whole adventure and find my family—I don't even know if they are still out there and now I've lost the one clue I had for finding them so now it's probably impossible—"
"But—"
"And if I hadn't left the bunker then, Adam—" Her voice caught on his name and she wasn't able to finish her sentence. It wasn't tears that came just a hollow, numb feeling. Guilt.
"If you hadn't left, I would be dead."
His words hit her like a smack in the face and she finally met his eyes. There was a gravity in them that pulled her in and held her in his gaze, steadying her. She should've said something. Told him that she didn't regret saving him. Both times.
"Well, well, well." Guy's voice was an intrusion on the moment and the two leaped so far apart that Jonathan nearly toppled the chair he was sitting on.
"You going to wrap that up or are you planning on bleeding all over my carpet?"
"Right," Jonathan coughed, trying to recover from the awkward moment with limited success. He quickly finished tying the bandage in place and then tugged his shirt back on, "All good."
Guy eyed them both suspiciously like he wanted to ask more questions than that, but then decided against it. Evelyn was starting to realize that Guy too was a difficult person to read, but mostly it was because his facial hair greatly impacted one's ability to gage any sort of facial expression from him.
"Did you show her yet?" Guy asked.
Jonathan shook his head, "I was just about to actually." He stood and circled around to Guy's desk which was buried under a messy pile of books, bottles, and other odd knickknacks. Evelyn immediately recognized the battered cover of the composition notebook when he lifted it off the pile and she felt as if her heart might burst in her chest.
"But how?" She asked in wonder as Jonathan returned her most valuable possession and she traced her thumb over her father's name.
"I saved it from the burning pile," Guy said proudly, "I've got sort of a knack for finding rare, collector's items."
Evelyn beamed at him, "Thank you! Guy, you have no idea what this means to me!"
"I might not, seems like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me but I think Jonny boy here does. In fact, he has some theories. I mean some of it sounds a bit far-fetched if you ask me, but I wouldn't put it past you humans."
She looked to Jonathan, who nervously ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. "Actually I was hoping you might know what this all means, but first, I'm sure you're tired. Do you want to get some rest or something?"
Evelyn shook her head, "No, after those hours in the grey room, I'm a bit desperate for interaction."
Guy nodded enthusiastically, "well that makes sense." She didn't tell them that it was also because she wasn't looking forward to being left alone with her thoughts and that she needed something to do to keep her mind focused.
"Evie, how much do you know about NeuroGen and Tranquilose?" Jonathan asked.
"NeuroGen?" Evelyn asked him curiously, "you mean the pharmaceutical and biotech company?"
Jonathan and Guy nodded.
"They developed a lot of stuff, but their big one was Tranquilose, the emotional suppressant for depression/anxiety etc., like you said already, and I guess, before it was bombed, they were working on using Serenozine as an ingredient to make a cure for the Sigma variant."
"Right, and your dad was a part of that research effort." Jonathan said, tapping on the cover of the book, branded with her father's name and the NeuroGen logo.
Evelyn shrugged, "I guess so. He always just said he was in research. They didn't let him practice medicine in Canada because his degree wouldn't transfer, but our family lucked out that somewhere was still willing to hire him. It was all number crunching and data entry though. I didn't know it was at NeuroGen until we found the journal but it would make sense. Beth and I both got into school on their scholarships. My mom couldn't even use her degree, she ended up working as a pharmacy assistant—"
"Right but do you know what this is?" Jonathan asked, turning the notebook and pointing at the combination of numbers and letters written on the top corner.
Evelyn shook her head, "employee code?"
"Okay, so this code is the same thing that's written on the new sedative capsules they've been dosing people with in River District. It's why I passed out in the marketplace, and then they tried to give it to me again after they caught me helping you escape. Turns out it doesn't just knock you unconscious or even make you emotionless. Apparently, when I thought I fell asleep, I was in some kind of induced blackout episode where they got me to be compliant."
"You didn't tell her about the aliens!" Guy interrupted. Evelyn stared at the Jonathan bewildered.
"I'm getting to that," Jonathan said patiently, "Guy has also been 'helpfully' keeping an eye on both River District and the Serenity Society for his 'alien overlords' and happened to notice that River District has been shipping this stuff in like crazy, basically ever since I got re-sanctioned from the storeroom. It seems to explain the relative compliance we've been getting; I mean our numbers of Serenity Society followers are still high but nowhere near as high as it was when my father and I first arrived there. Guy here apparently was also a security guard at NeuroGen and he says that the whole bombing was an inside job."
"Aliens," Guy nodded knowingly at Evelyn's visible confusion, "body possession."
Evelyn was quiet for a moment, "I have some information I guess I could share too. When I was in the Serenity Society Sanctuary, they denied being behind the bombing, but I remember very clearly that they reported on it in the news that it was the Serenity Society..."
Jonathan nodded, "They could have lied but also Guy was there, and he claims the Serenity Society was the scape goat. Evelyn, I have reason to believe your dad might have had a bigger role in this than he was letting on because you should have seen the way people in River District freaked out when they found out you left. They kept asking me where you'd gone and what you'd taken."
Adam's words suddenly drifted back to her and the thought of him was like burning iron in her chest but she ignored the feeling. "In the Sanctuary, someone told me that because of my father's research, they wouldn't have let him live after what he'd done. I guess they is... NeuroGen."
"But why would NeuroGen blow up their own cure operation?" Guy asked incredulously, "That makes no sense unless they were trying to cover something up! The truth about the aliens possessing someone makes way more sense!"
Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to remember what her father had said when he and her mother had closed the door to their office. "Oh my god," she whispered, "he isn't a part of the cure, is he? What if he was part of the problem? What if he helped cause this? What if he caused this?"
Both Jonathan and Guy looked dumbfounded.
"Jonathan, you said it yourself, the drug you took caused you to experience a blackout episode, it wasn't just compliance, you were like the Soulless. Maybe you didn't take enough for it to cause you to be violent but oh god, what if that's what it takes for the Sigma virus to go live? They were always advertising Tranquilose everywhere even before they started pushing it as the cure. Everyone was on it. All those students in my General Bio class. What if that's the one thing we've been missing?" She was hyperventilating now.
Jonathan had gone quiet and was just staring at the wall.
"Well say something!" Evelyn nearly screamed, "please just say something."
"I think that's the reason my father and I went to River District. Damage control. It's why they didn't have any other medicines and why he switched me to the records room, so I'd be in the dark. And what's worse is... He was... He was never the same after my mom died. We both dealt with what happened in our own way, but he found his remedy at the bottom of those little orange bottles of Tranquilose so he could throw himself into his work. When he was on it, he was a robot and when he was off it, he was... violent, angry and... unhinged. What if he's a part of that? The military's plan to use it to make people into cooperative soldiers?"
Evelyn didn't know whether she wanted to comfort Jonathan or to be comforted by him. They both looked shattered to their cores.
Guy let out a low whistle, "Wow guys, and I thought I had daddy issues."