by Eliza Green
Jerome jerked away from her. ‘No I’m not. You’re from that place. I grew up in the towns.’
Her fingers grazed skin before the boy yanked his arm away. But it was long enough to sense what he was. She frowned. ‘They must have erased your memories, because you were made in Praesidium. I can tell.’
‘How?’ said Max.
She kept her eyes on a nervous Jerome as she tapped the side of her head once. ‘I can feel him. The biogel emits the same hum to mine at a low frequency, whether he’s been connected or not.’ She saw no NMC connection point. ‘He’s a newborn, never connected to the Collective, never officially a Copy.’ Jerome grew angry under her scrutiny. She said to him, ‘You must have completed the maturation cycle by giving yourself injections of biogel.’
Jerome’s anger gave way to shock. His gaze flitted around the room. ‘I had a bag full of syringes. The contents made me feel better. I don’t remember where I got them from.’
‘Someone please explain that to me,’ said Max behind her.
It was the Inventor who obliged. ‘The newborns require biogel to complete the maturation process before they can be connected to the Collective’s neural network. Without the biogel, the brain and organs won’t fully mature and function on their own. Without the biogel, the connection point allowing a neuromorphic chip to be added won’t develop. Their brains remain in a childish state. The Copies can’t be controlled without it.’
‘So, what you’re saying is, he’s technically a Copy but he was never under the Collective’s command?’ said Max.
Jerome squirmed under the intensity of Carissa’s gaze. She knew she was frightening him, but she’d only ever met one newborn before: Canya. Anya’s doppelganger, a dangerous girl who had almost ruined their plans to escape. Canya had been selfish and too focused on getting Dom at all costs—even if that meant giving up their location to the guards to get it.
Carissa had watched Jerome through the city feeds connected to Arcis. He’d come across as the most sensible of them all.
Newborns and Copies could survive on human food. But Copies needed a connection with the Collective, to make sense of the world. How could a newborn without an NMC function in the real world?
Max broke through her thoughts. ‘What other clues give the Copies away, Carissa?’
She turned around, detecting Max’s curiosity. Yet, his body language—arms folded tight across his body—told her he was not comfortable speaking with her.
She looked at Jerome then back at Max. ‘The Originals—I mean, the humans—say it’s our eyes that give us away. The Collective could never fit the right eye colour to the right Copy. The final result makes us look odd.’ She narrowed her eyes when Max nodded. ‘You already knew what he was, didn’t you?’
Max ignored her question and spoke to the Inventor. ‘We have two Copies, one of their wolf Guardians and a Breeder. And Dom Pavesi has so much tech inside him he might as well be one of them.’
‘The city’s medical records state that Dom has carried that tech from the age of seven,’ said Carissa.
Max nodded, as if he already knew that too. ‘You’re the inventor for the Collective, Jacob. What do we do with them all?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Let them choose what side to fight on.’
3
Anya
It was nice seeing her brother again, but their reunion didn’t ground Anya or bring her the peace she’d expected. Her missing memories had left a gaping hole in her experiences; she’d sensed the absence from the moment she woke up in Alex’s bed. Jason, her only remaining family member, was the last person she remembered. Growing up they’d been close. Yet, as they walked around the camp, something told her they had grown apart.
Despite her life being in turmoil, she no longer needed him.
She and Jason returned to the start of the camp to see Sheila emerging from the medical bay. She waved Anya over.
‘Talk later, okay?’ she said to Jason.
‘Sure thing, little sis.’
‘Not so little now.’
Anya flashed him a smile, pleased to have her brother back despite her feelings, and jogged over to where Sheila waited. Tiny wings fluttered against her heart for a reason other than Warren. She didn’t remember Dom, but something pushed her to ask about him.
She tried to pick up on his condition just from Sheila’s mood. But Sheila’s neutral expression and her casual lean against the wall made it impossible to read her.
‘How is he?’ she said.
Sheila nodded. ‘They’ve reversed the infection. He’s going to be okay.’
Anya released a breath she’d been holding. Why did she care so much for this stranger? She’d met him less than a day ago, and talked to him for half a second.
Sheila nodded at Jason. ‘That your brother?’
Anya turned to see Jason disappear down a side street behind the training equipment room, where he said his workshop was. ‘Yeah.’
She turned back to Sheila.
‘It’s good you two found each other.’ Sheila paused, playing with the end of her braided golden-brown hair. ‘Dom’s asking to see you. He knows you’re here.’
Sheila was the only one of the female survivors to get her memories back, courtesy of her Copy. Anya felt lost without hers. Alex was the only person she shared any connection with right now.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t remember him.’
‘But he remembers you. Can’t you just drop in? Max has called a group meeting. It begins in ten minutes. We can be in and out in a flash.’ Despite her hard stance, Sheila’s eyes betrayed her worry. ‘I really think it would help his recovery, knowing you’re okay.’
Anya nodded. If her health really mattered to a stranger, she’d do it. Besides, it was another way to distance herself from the selfish Canya. She followed Sheila inside the building.
The medical bay was a large, open-plan area with a cluster of beds and equipment at the back, including IVs and monitoring machines. Dom was sitting up in one of the beds, his right arm connected to an IV. Anya hesitated by the door. She thought of Alex, the Breeder she’d come to know in the city and for whom she’d developed feelings. Alex who she’d almost... What would he think about her being here?
She sucked in a hard breath and stepped forward. A quick visit and she could leave.
‘I’ll wait outside,’ said Sheila, one hand on the door.
Anya nodded, grateful for the privacy, and walked towards Dom’s bed.
When she neared, Dom turned his head. A pair of soft but cautious eyes trapped her in his gaze.
‘Anya?’
She sensed his hesitation.
‘Yeah.’ She folded her arms and stood a foot away. This was close enough. ‘I heard you’re feeling better.’
‘It’s really you?’
His caution surprised her. What had transpired between him and Canya to make him doubt what he saw? Flutters of jealousy irritated her stomach. She ignored her irrational feelings for a guy she didn’t even know.
Dom stood up and grabbed hold of the IV stand, his intense gaze never leaving her. His height matched that of Alex and his approach made her as nervous as Alex’s had at the start.
This was a bad idea. She almost turned and walked out, but she’d made a promise to Sheila.
Anya closed her eyes, hyper aware of Dom’s proximity to her. His musky scent sparked a vague recognition that made her skin hum.
‘They say you still don’t have your memories of Arcis. And that you don’t remember me.’
His voice, deep and familiar, soothed her.
Anya opened her eyes, only to get trapped by the intensity of his deep brown gaze. His expression was different to Alex’s flirty one; it was like Dom had no off switch.
She kept her arms folded to control her quivering limbs. ‘I’m sorry. I really want to remember what happened there. But I don’t.’
His stare unsettled her, not cruel or demanding, but too familiar to allow her to relax. S
he dropped her gaze to the floor.
He pulled her into a hug. The move shocked her and she almost wriggled out of it, but she gave in to the feel of it with a sigh. With her arms still folded, she rested her head against his broad chest. It felt good. Comforting.
Right.
Wrong. She thought of Alex and pulled away.
‘I’m sorry for doing that,’ said a clearly nervous Dom. ‘I just needed to be close to you.’
She caught the hurt in his voice and wanted to make it better. But instead she fixed her gaze on his chest, concentrating on its slow rise and fall.
‘Do you remember what I said to you when you stepped through the portal in Arcis?’ he said.
Anya shook her head, refusing to look up.
‘I said, “Don’t forget me.”’
The eyes she couldn’t see taunted her. She lifted her curious gaze up to meet his secret-filled one. The words sounded vaguely familiar, like they’d been uttered in a dream.
‘But I did forget. I keep having these fragmented flashbacks.’
Dom lifted her chin up with one finger and pressed his lips to hers lightly. Something stirred in her core, like it had with Alex. While Alex had stoked her curiosity, this new feeling with Dom terrified her.
Her cheeks flushed and she stepped back from him. To her relief, he let go.
‘I have to go. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.’
Her guilt backed her towards the door. She turned and walked at a fast clip.
Dom shouted after her, ‘I’m not giving up, Anya. I’ll make you remember me.’
She stumbled outside, where she found Sheila leaning against the wall.
‘How was he?’
Anya shook her head, refusing to look at her. ‘Why did he affect me like that? I don’t even know him.’
‘Because you were a pair of lovesick puppies in Arcis.’
Anya met her gaze. ‘If we were so happy, surely I’d remember him above all else, memory wipe or no memory wipe.’
‘Look, I don’t know how powerful that machine is. All I know is that when my Copy touched me and gave me back my memories, it was like a floodgate opened. Before, everything was vague, unimportant. Happening to someone else. Then everything came back, clear as if it had occurred yesterday.’
‘But Canya is gone, and she took my memories with her.’
Anya’s eyes pricked with tears at the loss of them.
‘There has to be another way to get them back,’ said Sheila. ‘Look, if you want to know anything, all you have to do is ask.’
Anya wasn’t ready to know, but she forced a smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘And don’t forget about Carissa. She was watching us in Arcis.’ Sheila shuddered. ‘Creepy, if you ask me. But still, she might be a good person to talk to. Robot, machine, whatever the hell she is.’
Anya nodded.
‘Boys are stupid,’ said Sheila.
Anya grinned, feeling better. ‘They are.’
‘Girls are better.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Trust me. I’m an expert. But Dom’s a good guy, so don’t give up on him.’ Sheila tossed her long braid back and linked arms with her. ‘Come on, Max is expecting us. Let’s see what he has to say.’
Anya followed Sheila past the training courtyard to a red-bricked building that used to be a town hall, according to the hand-painted sign stuck to its exterior, and to a room at the end of a corridor. Vanessa, Jacob, Carissa, Alex and Jason were there, along with several others from Max’s group whom Anya didn’t know. June and Jerome stood next to each other in one corner.
Her pulse pounded in her ears when she spotted Warren in another corner. He gave her a quick nod. Her stomach tightened as she sucked in a discreet breath and tried to push past the noise in her head to hear what Max had to say.
Sheila gave her arm a squeeze and leaned in close. ‘Don’t worry about Warren. He won’t get within a hundred feet of you. Dick.’
She wanted to say he already had, that he was in her head thanks to Canya’s partial return of memories to her. But in that moment Sheila’s offer gave her some comfort.
Max spoke to a couple of his soldiers and an older man in his seventies who looked like his father. He turned to the group and made quick introductions all round. The older man was called Charlie.
‘I’m glad to see all of you here, and I’m even more glad that Sheila, Dom and June, our soldiers, and Vanessa, a friend of ours, were returned to us safely. As you know, we have some newcomers to our compound. Some of you are wary of the Copies among you and the wolf machine that Jacob brought. But Jacob assures me the creature is under his command.
‘These people have escaped from Praesidium, the one place that is impossible to enter or leave without the city’s order. But with the help of a Copy, our people were able to do just that. We never thought it possible that we would play host not only to a Copy but a newborn too, along with a Breeder and a mechanical wolf that Praesidium calls a Guardian.’
Charlie stepped forward. ‘As my son has already mentioned, we have a rare opportunity here. There are others stuck in Praesidium who did not escape. We have the chance to rescue them, but more important than that, to take down the city and destroy the Collective, a scourge upon this land. A tyrannical ruler that none of us wanted.’
He motioned for Carissa to join him. She hesitated and glanced at Jacob, who gave her a quick nod and a smile. Then she shuffled forward, her tight posture relaxing a little.
‘Carissa has agreed to work with Jacob, Jason and Thomas to unlock the secrets of the Collective ten, a group of artificial intelligent beings that controls Praesidium and the Copies,’ continued Charlie. ‘We will speak to the rescued and add their knowledge to our own. It will take time to figure out our next move in this war against the machines. But in the meantime, we have a bigger problem. Praesidium will no doubt be looking for their Copy and Breeder, and possibly their wolf.’
Anya studied Carissa, so innocent in appearance, yet one of the deadliest entities alive, except for the Collective. She was a Copy. Whether she was capable of change and living outside of Praesidium’s control was yet to be seen.
But all was not lost. She had witnessed change in a Copy: in her medic, who had helped her and Alex to escape.
‘They will be coming,’ said Max. ‘We must prepare for the first wave of attack. We must be ready for the machines.’
4
Dom
‘Looks like your infection has cleared up,’ said the military medic.
With his gown pulled up to his neck, Dom waited for him to finish his examination of his scars. Max sat on the edge of Dom’s bed. Jacob, the inventor from Praesidium, stood back and watched.
Dom looked down at the scars where Praesidium had inserted its tech, when he was seven years old. It disappointed him to see he still bore the reminders.
‘I thought you might have fixed those,’ he said to the medic as he fixed his gown back into place.
The medic shook his head. ‘I don’t have the right equipment here to remove them, only the infection. I wasn’t even sure I could reverse that. Jacob helped me out.’
Jacob stepped closer to his bed. ‘The Collective experimented on you in the city. The tech you carry inside you now is the newest that’s available to Praesidium. But the problem with the tech is it’s not compatible with the makeup of human genetics.’
The pain from the infection that had lit his bones on fire twenty-four hours ago had convinced Dom he was a dead man. ‘So, what did you do to fix it?’
‘Rover helped,’ said Jacob with a smile.
Dom vaguely recalled the Guardian that had accompanied them when they escaped from the city. It bothered him that he’d been at the mercy of another of Praesidium’s toys.
‘The hound from hell came with us?’
Jacob’s smile dropped away and he gave him a tight nod. ‘I built him to be loyal to me, not the Collective. But, more important, he carries the same Fifth Gen tech ins
ide him that’s also in you. Difference is his organic structure has natural immunities to Praesidium’s tech. It’s teeming with self-repairing nanobots. I injected the artificial antibodies from his system into yours to force it to accept the new material.’
Dom glanced down at his now covered belly. ‘If the tech is self-repairing, why do I still have my scars?’
They served as a daily reminder of what his worthless, piece-of-shit father had done to him.
‘It repairs the metal, but not skin and muscle,’ said Jacob with a shake of his head. ‘We don’t have anything here, but I know the city does. They have machines to repair the skin of their hybrids after they operate on them—for flawless, undetectable results.’
Dom recalled a machine in the first-aid prefab on the second floor of Arcis that did just that. He’d only used it for a short time before the supervisors had taken it away.
‘When we win this war,’ said Max, ‘we can take all of their equipment from them. You don’t ever have to look at those scars again.’
A smiling, nodding Jacob appeared to back up Max’s claims.
But Dom wanted to go one better. He looked up at the Inventor. ‘Can you remove this tech, give me back my humanity?’
Jacob’s disappearing smile didn’t fill him with confidence.
‘I’m not sure it’s possible. Your body has come to rely on the tech. I’m worried that if we try, your body could break down.’
He didn’t care. He refused to live his life as half machine. ‘But we can try?’
Jacob pursed his lips. ‘Yes.’
Dom placed his feet on the floor, prompting Max and the military medic to help him stand. But despite their caution, he felt strong.
‘Just because you’ve been given the all clear from the medic doesn’t mean you can push yourself,’ said Max with one hand on Dom’s elbow.
Dom eased him off and stood without help. ‘With the threat of the city’s search hanging over our heads, I’d say you need all soldiers on duty.’
Max gripped Dom’s shoulder tight. ‘Charlie and I almost lost you. It’s my right to worry. I order you to be careful.’