Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) by Milo Fowler (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📕

vehicle. Samson agrees, pausing at the door to bellow, "You may not like what you're going to see, Small Fry."

He winks at me, and I can't help but smile. I don't understand his good spirits, considering all that's happened to him. But his joviality is oddly contagious.

A broad smile spreads across Shechara's lips. "Maybe I'll have X-ray vision."

His expression clouds. "No. That wouldn't be good." He stomps away, thundering out onto the steel catwalk one metallic thump at a time until he comes to an abrupt halt. "Hmmm," he murmurs, loud enough for us to hear. "Ladder, huh?"

"We could put you on the conveyor," Milton suggests.

"Don't push it, kid," Samson growls. "You're all right. But don't push it."

Margo tells Shechara to lay her head back, to relax. I hold my sister's hand, and by the strength of her grip I can tell she's far from relaxed.

"These should work fine, but if they don't, or if you want them out for any reason, we can remove them even faster than we install them." Margo applies a muscle relaxant to Shechara's left eye socket. "They'll take some getting used to, though. You'll suffer from some bad headaches at first. But you will see again."

"How did you get them—the prosthetic limbs, the eyes?" I watch her work.

She remains focused on every move she makes, but she speaks to me as if we're having a friendly conversation. Are we? She's one of them, Willard's people—or she was. I don't trust her. I won't make the mistake of trusting a stranger ever again.

"Well, we're located beneath a trade sector. It's amazing what we've been able to lay our hands on."

"Like incubation equipment." My tone is spiteful.

She carefully clamps Shechara's eyelids open. "Yes," she replies. "Your eggs are in cold storage, along with Shechara's. The men's sperm is on ice as well."

She's so matter-of-fact about it. I would punch her right now if she wasn't in the middle of a delicate procedure.

"Why?" I demand.

She sanitizes the first metal orb with a clear lubricant. "Well, it all goes back to the shortwave radio. Everything changed after that. Willard had originally wanted to exterminate everyone who came into contact with the ash on the surface—the infected. But I was able to convince him we could change them back, reverse the process of their physiological transmutations. At the time, he didn't know I was one of them. An ash freak."

Where is this going? I asked a simple question. But I bite my tongue and watch as she places the first artificial eye into Shechara's gaping socket.

"You're doing great," I tell my sister, squeezing her hand.

She squeezes mine in return. "I don't feel anything."

"That's a good thing." Margo's hands are steady. Her head tilts toward me, but her eyes remain fixed on her work as she continues, "Willard was always concerned about our future, about Eden's next generation. We were sterile, of course. The government scientists didn't want us reproducing in the bunker, using up all of the food reserves. We knew you breeders would find us, eventually. We just had to be patient. Together, we would rebuild our species and its future. That was the plan, anyway." She sanitizes the second metal orb and glances at me. "But then Willard found the radio. He learned that the hope of this world's future didn't rest on his shoulders alone, that Eden wasn't the last bastion for humanity. He didn't have to keep the next generation safe from the surface and its demon-dust. Because the world—the rest of it, all we thought had been annihilated on D-Day—is still out there." She glances at me again. "Or so he thought."

"What do you mean?"

She goes on as if she didn't hear me, leaning toward Shechara to slip the second eye into place. "The North American Sectors are now a UW Forbidden Zone. Search and rescue teams were sent in at one point, years ago, but they became infected. The origin of the mutos, we assume. Willard was determined to let them know—whoever was still out there beyond our verboten shores—that we were safe and sound in Eden, uninfected. He wanted to figure out a way for the UW to rescue us and bring us back into the world."

"But the UW no longer exists," I murmur, noticing a ring of raw flesh around her neck, close to her throat, as if something she once wore had been too tight or had melted onto her skin and been torn away.

"We thought the same. And they don't, not to the extent they did prior to D-Day. The rebels didn't destroy them entirely, but they made a valiant effort and achieved some impressive results. Regardless, the United World—more or less—is still out there. Willard found this out when he made the mistake of contacting them, using a frequency adjacent to the looped quarantine message they'd been broadcasting for years." She activates one of Shechara's eyes, then the other. "Tell me what you see."

The metallic corneas stare blankly from behind Shechara's open eyelids. No iris, no pupil. She blinks once, twice, shifts in her seat, rocks her head to one side, then the other. She frowns, seeming to see something in a dark corner of the room.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"You...can see me?" A familiar voice—unfortunately—emerges from the shadows.

"Tucker?" Margo turns sharply. "How long have you been standing there?" She sounds perturbed, not startled.

I squeeze Shechara's hand and stare into the empty corner. "What do you want?"

He sniffs, shuffles an invisible step forward.

"Everything all right?" Milton leans in the open doorway.

"Is he armed?" I ask Shechara. She shakes her head.

"I was just wondering—" Tucker sniffs again. "How you managed to get your collar off, Margo. And if you could maybe..."

She blinks into the dark. Then she nods, reaching for an instrument on the cart at the foot of the bed. "Come here. Let's see what we can do about that."

Tucker's invisible feet move toward her. She reaches for him blindly. As soon as they make contact, she blinks