Read Gene. Sys. for Free Online Page A

look
keeps me silent. He speaks sternly. “Go tell Ev.”
    I don’t want to leave but if Grant tells you to
do something, you do it. His anger is not something I want to deal with, so I
go.
      I
pass Hawk and a group of scientists along the way. He avoids eye contact with
me. His chin is starting to bruise badly. I feel so bad about what I did. I’m
about to apologize to him but I hear Grant yell from behind me.
    “Ev!” That’s all he says. Hawk looks at me
briefly and I shoot him a smile but it’s not reciprocated.
    I walk out and weave my way through the maze of
doors and hallways. I pass many armed drones on the way to her room. The door
swings inward when I knock so I slowly push it open. Ev is lying on her bed
staring up at the ceiling.
    “He’s alive,” I say as I sit on the corner of
her bed.
    “Thanks.” She doesn’t budge. There are so many
questions that I want to ask her but I know now is not the time. She’s a bit
too emotionally unstable to deal with what I want to ask and I’m not in the
right place to receive the answers to those questions. I stand and she turns
her head to look at me. “Will you please stay for a little bit?”
    I smile and sit back on the corner of her bed.
“Sure.”
    She moves her feet and I lay back at the foot of
the bed, perpendicular to her. My feet hang off the edge of the bed and I can’t
help but swing them slightly. I feel comfortable next to her; she calms my
nerves.
    We lay in silence for a few moments and then she
asks me something that hadn’t graced my mind yet. “Do you think they attacked
because of us?”
    I know Grant said that the outsiders came over
to stop them from destroying the world, but Rene also told me that I was
created because of the end of the world. Am I the reason the world is ending?
Is Ev?
    “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t like not knowing.
As we lay in silence all I can think about is how much has been kept from me. I
think about the lies and deceit that have been spent on me. I’m filled with an
overwhelming desire to find everything out. There will be no more secrets kept
from me and, if Rene doesn’t want to tell me, I will find out on my own.
    I stay with Ev until she falls asleep and then I
sneak quietly out of her room. The library is the first place I want to go to.
I feel I need to learn more about the outsiders. Brianna is probably the person
I should talk to, but she’s probably with the other scientists in the medical
ward. Right now the library will have to do.  
    The number of drones in the hallways is much
less in this part of the compound. As I walk towards the wing that houses my
room and the library, a drone approaches me. “Is Dr. Anfang okay?”
    A drone has never initiated a conversation with
me. They usually only speak in response to a question I have asked them. “He
will be,” I reply.
    “That’s good.” He smiles. Another thing I
haven’t really seen but once.
    “80?” I pry. I know I’m probably just making a
fool out of myself but he’s the only one I’ve seen smile.
    “You remembered? How?” he asks.
    “I guessed. You are the only drone who’s smiled
at me before.” I smile back at him.
    He drops his head in shame. “I know. I’m sorry.
I won’t do it again.”
    “Why would you be sorry?” Everywhere I go it’s
nothing but questions.
    He doesn’t look at me when he answers. “We
aren’t really allowed to engage with anyone but our own. If they knew that I
asked you a question without you talking to me first I would get in trouble
again.”
    “That’s horrible. Who made those rules?” I’m
getting angry.
    “Dr. Anfang,” he says apologetically.
    I stop walking. That can’t be right. Rene would
never do that. At least the man I called my dad wouldn’t. Rene, however, seems
capable of as much evil as good.
    “Why would he do that?” I’m asking myself as
much as I am asking him.
    Before he can respond, he shoves me behind him
as an outsider jumps out of a door down