PROLOGUE – YEAR 1

Eva just managed to guide the bike to rest under the fluorescent lights of the gas station overhang before the poor, overworked machine coughed and sputtered to a stop. She patted the thing's fuel tank with a fond smile like a cowboy stroking his trusty steed's flank; for riding since early evening without stopping for longer than an hour, it had done pretty well. So had the two newborns strapped tightly to her chest and back– they'd fussed every now and again, but surprisingly hadn't made their getaway too much of a hassle. They were sleeping soundly now, but who knows how long that would last.

Eva wasted as little time as possible hooking up her motorcycle to some much needed fuel, and as she went inside the gas station's store she listened above the obnoxiously pleasant jingling bell– it had been long enough, no doubt her former friends had already cooked up some news story about a crazy woman kidnapping two babies and making a mad dash out of there on her motorcycle.

She smirked; the best lies really were just half-truths.

The clerk had fallen asleep at his post, so Eva took her time looking through the aisles of the little rest stop for supplies. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth; there were slim pickings in the way of things she needed for the twins. She'd need to take a detour to a proper town and a proper convenience store. Was she far away enough that she could get away with that?

Was there even such thing as "far away enough" anymore?

Eva nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the word "motorcycle" from the television; her eyes (carefully hidden behind large, dark sunglasses) whipped to the screen– a wave of morbid relief washed over her; it was just a broadcast on an accident further down the highway.

But despite that, she couldn't tear her eyes from the screen. The camera lingered on the wreckage and panned so slowly over the mangled bodies of the cyclist and their passenger that she was certain someone was getting off to this. The EMTs struggled to separate machine from man without damaging the corpses even more, and the two bodies were so badly maimed Eva could scarcely imagine they were human.

The bundles on her chest and back suddenly felt like they were holding cinderblocks.

Eva shook the feeling off best she could; she grabbed a couple candy bars to keep her own energy up and tossed a couple twenties on the counter by the sleeping clerk's head. She didn't have the time to count out how much would cover her. Her tank was nearly full when she got back to it, and the remaining minute or so Eva spent putting her helmet on and checking to see if the boys were secure. When she was full up, she kicked up the kickstand and–

The baby on her chest started crying.

Eva's whole body sagged as she let out a loud sigh; every time without fail he'd started crying just when she was about to start the bike. And if she let him go for too long, that just set the other one off, and she'd lose up to an hour getting them to calm down again. This, the news… If someone was trying to give her a signal, they weren't being particularly subtle. Eva methodically did all the steps in reverse, then took the baby off her chest so she could better rock him– or more accurately sort of jiggle him awkwardly with one arm.

"Come on, Sweetie– We've still got a ways to go…" She sighed into his few wisps of white-blonde hair. He didn't smell like he needed changing, and when she went to feed him he didn't take to it, so Eva was stuck there jiggling him and muttering frustrated nonsense as she stared into the dark emptiness that was the New Mexico desert. It was all too easy to imagine some semi-truck hitting the three of them head on and turning them all into a red smear in the center of the road. Nobody would find them 'til morning, and that would be the end of the elusive Eva and the two Les Enfants Terribles.

She scowled– she wasn't used to this, worrying for someone other than herself. But she'd made her bed; she'd taken her children back and burned that bridge. Eva smirked slightly. Her children. What a surreal thought that was. She hadn't wanted them to be hers, not really. They were supposed to be John's. But after… she swallowed down the memory. What he'd said still burned.

"Christ," she whispered turning her eyes back down to the wailing child in her arms, "Why did I think I could do this? I can barely get one kid to stop crying…"

It took her a second to catch it– not what she heard, but what she didn't hear. Crying. The baby had stopped. She slowly looked down; he was still awake and playing with her hair, but he wasn't letting out that horrible earsplitting noise, and that was like a revelation to Eva's tired ears.

She grinned; "Hey… thanks for that…" Eva made a face, "Eli. Who decided to call you that? I mean– David's okay, but… No. You're not an Eli."

Eva pursed her lips in thought, then wondered, "James is a nice name. Do you like that? James?"

The infant boy giggled.

She snickered in turn; "Guess you do."

She sighed as she carefully took David off her back; "Who knows what they'll do to us three… But what they had planned for you…" She closed her eyes and saw the white walls of her charm school, the stern faces of the instructors, felt the pain of a task performed less than perfect, "… No. Not again."

Eva took a moment to just stare down at the twins, at David with his dark hair fast asleep while newly rechristened James pawed at his brother, eyes shining inquisitively under the too-bright lights.

She pulled them in close and whispered, "I'm not gonna lie to you– This is gonna be tough for all of us. But I promise I'm not gonna let anything happen to you. Nobody's gonna hurt you. Not Zero, not Adam… Not even John. We're in this together now, okay?"

She looked down again and couldn't hold in a laugh– James had finally gone back to sleep.

Eva shook her head; she said she'd only get off her bike if she fell in love or fell dead. Despite the fact that she felt more alone than ever, here in the one circle of light in a vast dark ocean and running from four people who were well on their way to running the world with two fragile lives in her hands, Eva had never felt more free, more alive than she did right now…

It was time to get a car.