Parts one and two of Chapter 11 is here! 
I’m seriously going to be leaving you guys hanging with this one…
Chapter Eleven
Part One and Two
When Alex finally showed up at McCrea’s doorstep, Eve was sure that McCrea and Mo were going to be upset with the idea of him coming along to search. But to her surprise, they set out as if they hadn’t even seen Alex walk in. Perhaps it was their determination to find WALL•E, but she wasn’t quite sure of that.
Mo and McCrea pulled out their flashlights and immediately began calling WALL•E’s name as Eve and Alex stood still in the doorway. Eve looked up at Alex, whose eye was intently set on the black night sky.
“Alex,” she softly said, causing him to look down at her. “You… you came at my call.”
Alex furrowed his brow. “Yeah… why does that surprise you?”
Eve bit her lip and hung her head for a few moments before speaking. “For a while I… I was actually beginning to believe that you didn’t love me.” Alex’s face fell and he lifted Eve’s chin with his hand.
“What made you think that, Eve?” he wondered, locking gazes with her. He noticed tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. Again, she was hesitant to respond.
“I mean, you…” She sighed and shook her head. “You… just, look at what we’ve done. No one told us that was wrong. You assured me everything was all right, and I went with it… yet when I reeled from the blow, I realized it was almost like I had become someone else for that point in time. But I kept wondering if you had felt the same way… or if you just…” She paused again, finally letting the tears spill over. “If you meant what you did, and didn’t care about how I dealt with the outcome. I had no idea this was going to happen.”
Alex’s eyes were wide as he listened to her speak. Slowly, he shook his head and reached out to place his hands on her shoulders. “No idea what was going to happen?”
Eve lifted her round, tearful eyes up to him once more. “A baby.”
Alex was silent. “…A baby?”
Eve nodded. “Five months along.”
For a long time, Alex wasn’t sure how to respond. He found that his mouth was hanging open, and in embarrassment he quickly closed it and cleared his throat.
“Eve I… I had no idea,” he choked. “I mean, I would have been right there for you sooner if you had only said something.”
“So you still love me?” she timidly wondered.
“Of course I love you!” he reassured her, gripping her shoulders. “Where did you get the idea that I didn’t?”
“Well, Mo hasn’t made things any easier,” she sighed. “He believes that just because of what happened, it gives him the right to call you a criminal. I mean, I have no idea what he’s talking about, but just because that happened doesn’t automatically make you a criminal!”
Alex fell silent after Eve spoke those words. Apparently, she still didn’t know the entire story of Alex’s strange recent past. How in the world was he supposed to explain it all to her now?!
Eve tilted her head. “Alex, are you all right? What’s wrong?” He hung his head and loosened his grip on her shoulders.
“I… haven’t really told you who I am… entirely,” he managed with hesitation. Eve furrowed her brow. Alex sighed and shook his head. “Look, it’s like this: you remember what I - erm, AUTO - did to transfer your memory from your robotic hard drive to Rylee’s body?”
Eve shook her head violently and took a few steps backwards. “Wait, wait - how do you know all this?!”
Alex advanced towards her and grabbed her shoulders again. “Eve, wait, I’m not finished!”
“But nobody knows that about me!” she cried. “The only ones who know are Brandon, Mo and WALL•E-”
“-And AUTO,” Alex interjected. “Right?”
“Well, yeah… I mean, he was the one who did the procedure.”
“Exactly. Now let me finish.”
Eve sighed and reluctantly looked up at Alex.
“Do you think maybe - just by a weird chance - that AUTO might have considered that for himself at one point?” he continued.
“It’s plausible,” Eve replied with a shrug.
“But what if he didn’t know the drunk, half-dead guy who stumbled upon the Axiom had an extensive criminal record, and without any permission from the unconscious man used him as a recipient for his robotic memory?” Alex took another pause and put a hand to his forehead. “I’ve said too much already…”
“Okay, but what are you trying to get at here?” Eve wondered, beginning to lose her patience.
“You haven’t figured it out already?!” Alex cried, staring desperately into her wide eyes. “I’m not really Alex O’Neill! I mean, how else could I have known that you used to be an EVE probe when you’ve never told me that before?” He gave a dry laugh. “I was there when it happened!”
As the words hung in the air, Eve stood still with a look of absolute shock on her face. She hardly blinked.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she eventually whispered, slowly shaking her head. Alex put a hand on her shoulder and began to lead her out the door.
“Look, I know it’s a bit much to digest right now, but let’s be shocked some other time,” he said, flicking on a flashlight he had brought with him. “Right now, we’ve got to find WALL•E. We don’t want anything happening to that little guy.”
Dawn had finally broken on the horizon, and still WALL•E was nowhere to be found. As McCrea and Mo searched, Eve and Alex had branched off on their own to keep conflicts at a minimum. Even being split up, they had not found any traces of WALL•E’s whereabouts in the vicinity. Eve dropped Alex off at his house on the way back through and met with Mo and McCrea at the house.
The three stumbled inside, nearly asleep by then, and all collapsed on the couch. Eve looked over at McCrea.
“Anything?” she wearily asked. McCrea slowly shook his head and ran a hand through his short hair.
“Nothing,” he replied, disappointment apparent in his dreary tone of voice. “We looked everywhere.”
Eve leaned forward a bit and noticed Mo had already drifted off to sleep. “And apparently, you looked hard, too.”
McCrea nodded. “We’re not giving up, Eve. We’ll find that little bugger if it kills us.”
The rest of the week didn’t provide any spare time to search for the missing garbage bot, and neither did the week after. With harvest season approaching, McCrea was busy getting his team ready and managing the work that needed to be done. Mo was going back to school, and Eve usually made money babysitting during the day. By the time evening came, McCrea and Eve were completely worn out and Mo had homework to finish.
A month went by without searching, then two months.
Eve found herself dreaming more than she ever remembered dreaming before, and most of her dreams involved the first time she met WALL•E and the adventures they had together shortly thereafter. Waking up from those memories wrenched her heart with the realization that the precious robot still hadn’t returned to them. Now more than ever, Eve felt terrible knowing that she had done nothing but ignore WALL•E up to that point, and if he never came back, she would never have the chance to apologize to him.
What if something’s happened to him, and the last thing he remembered was me ignoring his plea to see the baby pictures? she wondered to herself as she sat out on her favorite bench at the nearby park. Tears rolled down her face and she gulped on sobs as the horrible questions bombarded her mind. What if he remembered the times where I turned him away when I was upset and he only wanted to help? What if he remembered the days when we were together only to realize things will never be the same between us?
She wiped her eyes as dry as she possibly could and looked up into the overcast sky. It almost appeared as if it were ready to snow.
Then again, he may be perfectly fine, she reasoned. Maybe he ran away to get away from all of the tension. But if that were the case, wouldn’t he have come back by now to see if things were better?
As she sat still and processed these thoughts, she watched as the breath from her nose and mouth formed little clouds of water vapor in the brisk air. She buried her face into the fluffy striped scarf she was wearing and pulled her jacket closer to her body to keep the cold from seeping in any more than it already had. The faux suede, crisp white winter jacket she was wearing barely fit her now that she was seven months pregnant, and she looked down at her little round belly with a soft smile.
Looks like you’re going to be a winter baby, little mister, she thought as she poked at where she knew the baby’s feet were. She felt the infant recoil at the touch, and she let out a giggle. Ticklish, are you? Guess you got that from me…!
Her worries seemed to disappear in those few moments as she loved on the baby, as if for one fleeting minute she had slipped into a surreal reality free of the burdens and concerns she was experiencing. She was lost in that uplifting feeling she got from simply telling the child how much she loved him; assuring him that she didn’t hate him just because of the circumstances under which he was conceived. As she hummed a familiar tune to him, she felt a tiny snowflake grace her nose and quickly evaporate. Then another, landing on her eyelash. And yet another, melting into the soft cotton of her mitten.
Tears began to gather in her eyes as the snowflakes began falling more steadily. WALL•E loved the snowflakes…
A low whirring noise slowly melted into her thoughts as she closed her eyes and let the tears stream down her cheeks once again. At first it sounded like just another car going by, but as it neared it sounded less like a car and more like a robotic motor. It immediately made her think of WALL•E, and she bit her lip to keep from bursting into tears.
“Eeeeva…” That painfully familiar voice replayed in her mind, bringing her back to when the robot was hanging on for dear life down in the trash-filled basement of the Axiom. “Eeeeva… baaby…?”
She wiped her eyes for what felt like the millionth time and turned her head towards the voice, for it no longer sounded like it was in her head.
“WALL•E?” she instinctively called. There was that whirring again.
“Eeva…”
Cold metal brushed her arm, and Eve whirled around to see the little garbage bot clinging to the park bench, his head slightly hung, and with one of his hands on her arm. His eyes drooped and she could hear his processor barely making an audible hum. She leaned forward and took his camera eyes into her hands, lifting them up to meet her gaze.
“WALL•E, are you all right? Where have you been?” she hastily wondered, trying to keep his attention.
Without a reply or even an acknowledgement of Eve’s words, WALL•E’s eyes snapped shut, and Eve heard his processor enter standby.
Argh…! Why’d you have to make it so difficult for your characters? 
Nooo… you’re so ‘evil’! 
In a good way, but still! Expert-level prose…? Are you kidding me? I just… wow, I don’t even know how to handle all the awesome stuff you’ve said about my writing. Thank you. <3
, but I guess all great things have to come to an end eventually.