The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 1
The Aberration of Eden Pruitt
Book 2
K.E. Ganshert
Copyright © 2022 by K.E. Ganshert
Cover Design by Courtney Walsh
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Courtney
* * *
If you weren’t such an amazing human, I’d probably be sickened by your level of talent. Thanks for giving these books such pretty, pretty faces!
ABERRATION
* * *
the act of departing from
the right course;
an error
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
About the Author
Also by K.E. Ganshert
1
Eighteen-year-old Eden Pruitt walked toward a set of stairs that weren’t hers, away from a father that wasn’t hers either. At least not in the way she’d always thought.
Seven days ago, her not-father almost died.
Seven days ago, she’d handed herself over to the enemy.
Seven days ago, that enemy got away, and she was reunited with the two people she’d always called mom and dad. In the process, that dad was shot twice. The first bullet hit his left thigh and grazed his femur, barely missing his femoral artery. The second entered his chest and exited his back, barely missing his heart. If not for the circumstances that led to the life-threatening altercation, one might call him lucky. For against all odds—thanks to a retired military doctor, the world’s most brilliant neurosurgeon, and the fast-acting instincts of a once-lethal fighter—he survived.
Eden pushed thoughts of that fighter aside. Feelings, too.
Behind her, Mom and Benjamin Norton, the retired military doctor, encouraged Dad to rest. Instead, he asked for his spirometer. Over the past hour, he’d been alternating between leg and breathing exercises, his frustration mounting every time he inhaled or flexed his quad muscle. Dad rarely swore, but the last sixty minutes had turned him into a sailor.
The real enemy had escaped, so he made fatigue his scapegoat. He seemed to be operating under the delusion that seven days was enough time to recover from a collapsed lung, extraordinary blood loss, cardiac arrest, and emergency surgery. A ridiculous assumption, even if he hadn’t been unconscious and on a ventilator for three of those seven days.
Her father was a regular man with normal human limitations. Unlike Eden, his composition didn’t include microscopic robots that made things like getting shot no big deal. And yet, he pushed himself like his body should be better, stronger. Eden suspected he wanted to be up and walking by the time their enemy stepped out of the shadows.
Mordecai.
He was out there somewhere, plotting and planning his next move. Eden knew this as certainly as she knew Erik spelled his name with a K. As certainly as she knew the Eiffel tower had one-thousand-six-hundred-sixty-five steps. He would not hide forever. Not when he’d gone to such great lengths to get her. Whatever plans he had, he wouldn’t let them go so easily—an unspoken understanding that had the tension in the home thickening by the hour. Not her home. But Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom’s, the brilliant neurosurgeon.
“When can I get out of this bed?” Dad growled.
“As soon as you’re okay with using that,” Dr. Norton replied.
Her father scoffed.
That was the wheelchair.
“You have broken ribs, Alaric.”
The name came like a jarring hiccup.
Alaric.
Her father’s given name. One she didn’t know until recently. To her, he was Alexander Pruitt—a fit, fifty-three-year-old accountant. But to Dr. Norton, who had known her father before he changed his identity, he was Alaric Taylor, a fellow soldier turned CIA agent.
Eden shook her head. How was this her life—gunshot wounds and parents with different names and an enemy lurking in the shadows? She was supposed to be in school. First period in the first quarter of her senior year. In Iowa. She thought the worst part of her senior year would be missing Erik. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined getting drawn into an illicit world of gamblers and fighters and hackers and terrorists. Not just any terrorist, but the most notorious of all terrorists. Karik Volkova. A man responsible for an incomprehensible number of deaths. Somehow, he was her beginning and because of that, she wasn’t in first period in the first quarter of her senior year. She was here. In the brilliant neurosurgeon’s home, trying not to think too hard about this new reality lest she lose her mind completely.
“You can’t support your weight with crutches or a walker,” Dr. Norton said. “Nor are you supposed to bear any weight on your leg. Not unless you want to impede your recovery. Which means it’s the bed or the chair.”
Dad swore.
Mom sighed.
Eden climbed the stairs, shifting her focus to the sounds above her. Concordia in the Morning played on the television, a show her father watched every day for as far back as Eden could remember.
“Time will bring it back,” a familiar voice said. It belonged to Brenna Lemming, one of the show’s most beloved hosts. “In my opinion, it’s not a matter of if, but when.”
“You think we'd let ourselves go back to that place?”
“I think it’s already happening. Look at the rising crime rate. Look at what happened at the SafePad compound right here in Chicago.” Brenna was referencing the place Mordecai had been imprisoning her parents. She was referencing the break-in and the dead guards. Eden hadn’t killed them. She’d rendered them unconscious. After Cassian left, the guards were killed. “Listen when you’re out and about. Just the other day, I overhead two people talking about approval ratings for our Board of Directors. Does that sound familiar to anyone? The whole point of having a Board of Directors was to avoid such nonsense.”
A debate ensued. All four of the morning show hosts broke out into a robust, short-lived argument, which proved Brenna Lemming’s original point.
Her voice rose above the others. “Look, I’m simply stating that human memory is short. History loves to repeat itself. And if we’re not careful, we could find ourselves in familiar territory. I think it’s safe to say that we can all agree—none of us want that.”
Her voice was familiar. Comforting. Mingled with one that absolutely wasn’t.
Eden stopped.
Intellectually, she understood that this voice didn’t belong to an enemy. But her body wouldn’t listen to intellect. Her body responded in the same visceral way it used to respond to Jack Forrester. Her body needed time to adjust to what her mind already knew.
Jack Forrester was on her side.
So was his wife, Annette.
The two people who arrived at Eagle Bend’s police station pretending to be her parents.
Earlier this morning, Jack had returned from Dr. Norton’s secluded cabin in the woods, several miles northwest of Milwaukee. He arrived beneath a cloud of frustration, reeking of cigarettes and sweating nicotine. While her father dove into rehab like a bull seeing red, Jack had been spending his time trying to crack into the networks of Subjects 003 and 004—a pair of eighteen-year-olds just like Eden. Freaks of nature. Experiments that shouldn’t exist.
Subject 004 was Barrett Barr, a boy whose face had been splashed across national news ever since his disappearance in July. Subject 003 had no name at all. She was an unidentified girl they were calling Jane Doe. Unlike Barrett, Jane wasn’t listed anywhere as a missing person. All they had was her face and the information in her file.
Her parents’ names were listed, but like Alaric Taylor, those names appeared to have been abandoned long ago—after receiving what must have been the most bizarre phone call of their lives. They had a child. A biological child. A frozen embryo stolen from an IVF clinic, then grown in a test lab. What kind of parents took that child in—put their safety in jeopardy—only to let that child go missing sixteen-and-a-half years later without filing a report?
Perhaps they had hired a private investigator to find
Cassian Gray.
A boy she hadn’t spoken with in seven days.
A fact that filled her with equal parts confusion and betrayal. Eden set her teeth against the unruly emotions and focused instead on Annette Forrester’s voice.
“When will that be?” she asked.
“When it’s safe,” Jack replied. “We’re working as hard and as fast as we can.”
“Ellery is struggling.”
Eden closed her eyes, her hearing so good she could practically see with her ears. Jack was on a video call, sitting on a chair in Beverly Randall-Ransom’s state-of-the-art kitchen. Eden could hear the unique hum his computer made whenever he connected via live video feed. She could hear the subtle creaking of wood as he shifted in the chair. The slice of skin against scalp as he shoved fingers into his thinning hair.
“It’s her senior year, Jack,” Annette said. “She wants to be with her friends. She doesn’t understand why we’re here. She doesn’t understand why you’re not with us. She keeps asking questions. I don’t know how much longer I can go before I give her real answers.”
“You can’t give her real answers, Annette. It’s too much.”
“Well, you’re going to have to talk to her then. I can’t lie anymore.”
“Put her on,” Jack said.
With a start, Eden crept up the remaining stairs. If Ellery Forrester was coming on the video feed, superhuman hearing would no longer do. Eden had to see her. When she reached the landing, she pressed her back against the wall and peeked into the kitchen, waiting with bated breath as Ellery took her mother’s spot on the screen. Eden had only seen her in a photograph. An age-progression photo. Now here she was in real time, with long, auburn hair and the same flawless skin and faultless symmetry as Eden. They possessed the kind of perfection other girls envied. And yet, Eden would trade hers in a heartbeat if it meant getting rid of the reason for it.
“Hey, Peanut,” Jack said, leaning toward the screen like a father who wanted to fall through to the other side, where he could hold his distraught daughter.
“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Ellery’s light brown eyes filled with frustrated tears. Eden’s were a combination of blues and grays with specs of green.
“I know, sweetheart. But you have to trust us. As soon as it’s safe for you to return, I’ll make sure you and your mother are on the first flight home.”
“What does that even mean, Dad? Safe from what?”
“Elle.” He spoke her name on a weary sigh.
“It’s my senior year! I was supposed to be going to the homecoming dance tonight.”
Jack’s knee bounced beneath the table. The second this call ended, he’d probably let himself outside to smoke another cigarette. “You’re in Rome, Elle. Rome! Enjoy yourself. Go sightseeing with your mother. You don’t want to look back on this time and regret the missed opportunity.”
Rome.
Jealousy flashed like a bolt of lightning.
Eden tried to fathom it.
Being overseas with her mother—oblivious to the truth of who and what she was.
Her life swapped with Ellery’s.
If, instead of Eden, Ellery made a dumb choice on the cusp of her senior year. Ellery ended up with a rap sheet and a mug shot. And because of that, Cassian Gray found the redhead instead of the blond. Would Eden be somewhere across the Atlantic with her mom while her father helped the Forresters hunt down a high-stakes gambler who went by the name Mordecai? Would Eden care about missing her senior year if she was in Paris? Would she push for answers with the same ferocity that Ellery was pushing now, or would she take advantage of the unexpected opportunity and go sightseeing?
A stair creaked behind her.
“Good morning, Eden.” Dr. Norton stepped past her into the kitchen.
Eden cringed.
“Who’s that?” Ellery asked.
“Sorry, Elle. I’ve got to go. Talk soon.” Without giving Ellery any time to object, Jack snapped his laptop shut, as if the mere glimpse of Eden would be the death of his daughter.
Eden joined them in the kitchen.
If Jack was upset by her eavesdropping, he didn’t let on. Maybe he’d wanted to get off the call and her arrival had given him a reason. He leaned back in his chair. “How’s the patient?”
“Ornery.” Dr. Norton poured himself more coffee and tipped his chin at the laptop. “Have you made any insightful discoveries?”
He was referring to the networks. The ones that belonged to Subjects 003 and 004.
Before Jack could reply, Milly—the Randall-Ransom’s housekeeper—bustled into the kitchen, bringing their conversation to an awkward halt. While Milly loaded dishes into the dishwasher and wiped down the stovetop, Concordia in the Morning continued playing in the next room.
Another pipe bomb was sent in the mail. This one resulted in a casualty. According to Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom’s daughter—Cleo the Conspiracy Theorist—these bombs were a scare tactic enacted by their own government in an attempt to lull the stirring public back to sleep. Eden, who hadn’t yet reached that level of cynicism, had a hard time getting on board with the theory. She wondered what Brenna Lemming might say.
Milly pulled the carafe from the coffeemaker and held it up in the air, the black liquid swishing inside. “You want rest?” she asked in her thick Bulgarian accent.
Dr. Norton raised his mug. “I’m good, thank you.”
She shut off the machine and rinsed the carafe in the sink. Eden watched her work, wondering what Milly thought about her employer. Wondering what she thought about the swearing patient in her employer’s basement. He wasn’t the first patient to be treated here. Milly picked up a piece of mail from the counter and stuck it to the front of the stainless-steel refrigerator. She muttered something about Dr. Beverly needing to RSVP, then exited the room as abruptly as she’d come.
Eden glanced at the invitation.
Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom was invited to attend the Prosperity Ball on October the Fourth, the twenty-first anniversary of The Attack. The date was quickly approaching. Only a few weeks away.
“Is it me,” Jack said, running his hand down the length of his haggard face, “or is it starting to feel crowded here?”
Dr. Norton smoothed his mustache. “It’s not you.”
If Eden were to look up the word mansion in the dictionary, there might be a photograph of Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom’s home. A grand estate on the Gold Coast of Chicago. Five stories high, with meticulously manicured grounds. It didn’t seem possible for such a residence to feel crowded, but somehow, Jack was right. And sooner or later, the neurosurgeon’s hospitality would have to end.
“My place is better suited for rehab,” Dr. Norton said. “Fewer stairs, with the right equipment, too.”
“And privacy,” Jack added, eying the entryway where Milly had disappeared.
Dr. Norton took a sip of his coffee. “I imagine it will be easier to do your work with all three in the same place.”
Jack nodded.
The two men turned to Eden, as if she had the final say. The thought of leaving Chicago tied her stomach into knots. Not because it felt safer here, but because this was where Cassian Gray had left her. If she returned to Milwaukee, would she ever see him again?
She didn’t know where he was or what he was doing or why he hadn’t called. According to Jack, he was looking for Mordecai. But Jack hadn’t heard from him in a few days. A fact that tied Eden’s stomach into knots.
Cassian had been hired by the high-stakes gambler to find her and instead helped her find the high-stakes gambler. He betrayed a man who put a single, cold bullet through a bookie’s head like remorse was as foreign as Jupiter’s rings. For all they knew, Cassian had met the same fate.
