Duplicities (Imaginations Book 2)

by Tara Brown

  “He said they have a sacred spot there on the water. It’s important to them.”

  She scoffed. “Living is important to most of us, usually more important than sacred water and lies like that. Did you tell him to take his offer and shove it in—”

  “No!” I cut her off. She had said that once before in front of me, and I had the most awkward imaginations from it. “I told him I would think on it.”

  She made an odd sound with her lips. “Why on earth would you consider such an idiotic idea?”

  I looked up at the darkening sky and smiled when I saw the stars. “Because Lyle wants to live there.”

  “Lyle again? Do you think maybe you should consider moving on?”

  “What? Until I see him dead, I will not move on and even then,” I turned to look at her, hoping my face didn't reveal anything, “I don't know how I feel about him. But I do know I love him in the way I love Amber and Greg. The way I love Bran and you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I told you how I feel about that.”

  It made me smile to watch her squirm. “He is a part of who I am. I have changed in small ways because I knew him. He influenced me and became family. And I refuse to let go of the possibility that I love him but am angry with him. Angelina was found and she’s eight. I will find him too.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You love overanalyzing everything. I think he loved you and you loved him, and you don't want to admit that because, deep down, your heart is actually broken into a million pieces, and you don't want to see it. You don't want to acknowledge that you are completely destroyed inside.”

  Her words sliced me but I held back any emotion. “You don't know what you’re talking about.”

  She smiled but it was fake, false, and full of a thousand bad things. “I do.” She didn’t finish the sentence. She left it there. Maybe also hiding her pain and tears.

  I shrugged. “There really is no point in feeling something so horrible. I think if I push it away long enough it will just go away.”

  Nan started walking toward our street. “Hasn't worked for me so far.”

  We didn't talk about it again. We walked in silence until I sighed. “It feels like it might snow.”

  “You had snow in The Last City?”

  I laughed. “We had snow, not too deep and not too much, but a light dusting.”

  She snorted. “The engineers could control the weather, couldn't they?”

  “I imagine they could control everything. They came from another planet after all. Surely a bit of weather control wasn't beyond them. I did notice I never burned inside of the city the way I did in the desert.”

  “What don't you miss about the city?”

  I had a list so long I couldn't possibly think of just one thing. The list of things I did miss was small so I said that. “I don't know, it’s too much to list. But the stuff I do miss is easier to see.”

  She looked unimpressed. “You miss things?”

  “I miss knowing where everyone and everything I needed was. I miss school and the feeling that I knew what I was doing and what was coming. I miss the excitement of the Club of the Unknown and seeing the notches on my bedpost that told me I had been there even if I couldn’t remember it. I miss the order of it all. No guess work. Life was planned and prepared for you and you got to coast through it with ease.”

  She looked even less impressed. “Sounds terrible.”

  “I miss the safety of it all.”

  Confusion took over her look. “You realize it was fake, right? That none of that was real, all an illusion of not knowing yesterday and not forming memories?”

  It made me smile that she summed up so much in so little. “Yes. We all see that now.”

  “This is the better life, Gwyn. You’ll see that.”

  I pulled my thin jacket closer around my body. “I do see it.” It just didn't feel better. I couldn’t explain to her that her city of free men and women was actually more frightening than the slavers to me. They were basic and simple, driven by want and desire. They were the epitome of why The Last City was superior. We never did anything based on want, only need. Our clothes were provided, our meals as well. Our houses and jobs were given to us. Our life was portioned to help us do a good job and be a happy person, satisfied with our lot in life as The Lost City people always said.

  But honestly, this city was frightening. Yes, you received a house as payment for the work you did. But you had to buy food and plan a meal and choose clothes and buy things with currency you were provided. My father made an amount of money he had to balance, buying us clothes and extras along with our food every week. His house was all that came with the job he did.

  People in this place could drink ale instead of buying their families food or clothes. They could use their money to do something called gambling. It was frowned upon and not discussed in social settings but the city had an underbelly that was dangerous in many ways.

  The difference here was that the criminals who committed crimes and were caught and expelled from the city were stripped of everything. That was the price one paid for breaking the few rules the city had. No work meant no house. Abuse was not tolerated in any form. If you laid a hand on another person or forced anything upon them you were expelled. It was harsh, and yet, not as effective as I imagined they had hoped it would be. The criminals were experts at hiding their misdeeds and many victims stayed silent of the crimes committed against them, in fear of having a cruel loved one expelled from the city.

  People were hungry here and yet asking for food was frowned upon. I didn't understand the system but it felt wrong. The Lost City of the Free People truly just meant they were free to be the type of citizens we had fought so hard not to be.

  Nan did not see that. She laughed when people were hurt or so drunk they stumbled and fell. She didn't believe anyone deserved a single thing they didn't earn and that included sympathy.

  Her opinion was a popular one here.

  Even Rodin, who was finally pairing with Maria since he helped in reuniting the family with Angelina, seemed to think that the weak of the city deserved whatever they got. I had eaten in Nan’s home many times, listening to the arguments around the table. They were animated and heated over simple subjects I seemed to have an answer for. I never voiced my answer. It always seemed to be too simple and sensible to have actually worked in a city like this one.

  Back home, even with the memory reset every day, we never would have done things in such a hard way. The people of this city struggled against a current they made for themselves, and yet, complained when they didn't understand what was wrong in their life.

  And to me and people like me that was what the kingdom had over this city and any city. The simple ways in which life blended without the chance for corruption.

  We walked to my house, both strolling up the front steps and entering. She didn't kick her boots off in my house. She took them off politely, the way I did.

  My house didn't smell of food and heavy conversation the way hers did. It was always quiet and stale. My father was at work still, even though it was evening, and my mother was in the kitchen staring out the window into the dark or her own reflection, I couldn't tell which.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She turned, smiling weakly. “Gwyn, Nan. How are you girls?” she asked out of duty.

  “Very well, Mrs. Caddie.” Nan slumped into a chair in the kitchen.

  My mom’s pale cheeks flushed with color. “What time is it?”

  I bit my lip before answering. “Late.”

  She paused, not sure of herself. “Did we eat dinner?”

  I shook my head. “I was with the king.”

  “Did you eat there?”

  I shook my head again.

  She sighed and walked to the fridge. They were very small and not very efficient, not like the ones we had back home. She looked defeated before she even started so I grabbed the door to the fridge and smiled. “Me and Nan can make you dinner.”

  Nan
gave me a look like that was the greatest lie I had ever told. My mom nodded and walked into the sitting room. She snuggled into a blanket and looked out the window there, starring at the dark again.

  Nan saw the look on my face and got up, looking in the fridge with me. “Yikes,” she whispered.

  I glanced inside and realized what she was talking about. We had a loaf of bread, some eggs, and an apple. I slumped, wondering if my father had bought food or if he’d asked her to and she had forgotten.

  The front door opened and instantly I sighed in relief. My dad came in with several cloth bags of food. His face when he looked at my mother was one of disappointment. I hated that she was so weak and pathetic and lost. And I hated even more that it was all he saw in her. Every day a little more love was lost, blown out the window or forgotten about, during a dream of what it was once like.

  I hadn’t forgiven her for the thing she had said to me, the truth she had spoken in the healers building. I also hadn’t told him she had said it. I didn't want him to think it too.

  “Gwyn, put a pot of water on. I bought some potatoes and some pheasant breasts.”

  I did as he asked as he and Nan put the food away. He rubbed the pheasant down with oil and herbs he had also bought and put it in the oven to roast. I boiled the potatoes and Nan peeled carrots and beets to toss in another pot of water.

  My dad leaned against the counter. He didn't stare out the window or at himself. He stared at her and I could see there was so little patience left in him. Finally, he spoke, just barely making a sound with his words, “I might take her back.”

  I scowled. “To where?”

  He swallowed hard. “Some of the others have been discussing their desire to be back with our people.”

  “The city is burned to the ground and they are killing anyone with genetic mutations.” It was the wording Rodin had used and we agreed it made the most sense for what we were. It was better than droid.

  He nodded. “But there are two others very close by. They are a few day’s ride away from here. I have heard of a few people going and sneaking back there. There is a man who will do the reset. He isn’t far from here. He can take your memories away. Cure you from remembering all of this. He does it for food and drink.”

  “Like how Murphy did that to me?”

  My father gave me a look. “Exactly.”

  “You would go back there and live that way?”

  His eyebrows drew together and I realized what he meant. He would take her back. She would become part of that world, part of the system of another Last City. But he would stay here. He would return to this life.

  I wanted so badly to tell him no, to tell him she would get better. But I couldn't. She was a shell of the person she had once been. She wanted nothing like she did death. She wanted to be free of this place. And why should he live the way he had for so long, dealing with her inability to remember anything and now remembering everything and not coping at all. Did he deserve that as a fate?

  I would have wanted more.

  I looked down at the floor, wishing I had the power to change all of this. “I will take her.”

  He scowled. “You cannot. This is my job.”

  Nan wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I will help her. I will take your wife back with Gwyn and free her. You shouldn't miss work anyway.”

  He didn't fight us on it. He nodded once and smiled completely weak in his resolve to take her himself.

  We ate in silence, no one talking. My mom didn't talk much now anyway. She finished her meal and walked back to the couch, not even cleaning the kitchen. Dad closed his eyes at the table and sighed but I put my hand over his. “Go to her, I will clean the kitchen.” I didn't have a job anyway.

  My father took a pen and paper and wrote out firm instructions on how to meet the man in the shantytown not far from here who would do the procedure and fix my mother so she would reset when she fell asleep in the Last City we took her to. He left it on the counter and kissed the side of my head before taking my mom’s hand and taking her to bed.

  Nan was silent, eerie silent. Not the type of quiet you expected from her after a moment like that one. She helped with dishes and left silently with a comment about meeting me in the morning.

  I curled up in the chair my mom had been sitting in and watched the stars. I hoped and prayed that Bran and Greg were watching out for me.

  The magic man

  The road out of the city was frightening. It was lined with people who had been kicked from the city, selling wares on the road from tents. They were dirty and seedy looking, a word I had learned from Nan. Seedy to her meant that the person was shifty and not to be trusted. To me it was a term used for fruit with too many seeds.

  We walked, me clutching my mother’s hand as I explained to her she was going home. She didn't look worried. She had kissed my father goodbye and told him she would have dinner ready when he got home from work. She believed he was coming too when he could. I wasn't sure if she believed or if she just didn't care anymore. She wanted to go home and that was that.

  The steamy City of The Lost People held no interest for her. She refused to leave the house and hardly ever got out of her pajamas.

  But today she was ready to go early, excited about what my father had explained was happening.

  Nan gave me a look as we walked along the cold road made of beaten down dirt. It was hard as concrete but actually made of footsteps. Every person who walked the path would push it down a little more. The city was well past five hundred years old, once having been called something that started with a P, but I always forgot the name. The history books went back a thousand years. It was beyond fascinating.

  When we got far enough away from the city we jumped on the back of the horses Nan had been walking. She had said it was the polite thing to do, not stir up the dust in the faces of the expelled. Then with a wicked grin she said it was easier to execute the beggars on the outskirts if you were on the ground ready for them. Otherwise they would pull you off your horse and kill you.

  They hadn’t seemed to want to kill us when we had walked by though. They just really wanted to push the things they were selling in a most annoying way.

  I was half crazy by the time we climbed on the horses as my mother had tried to stop at every tent. She didn't understand the term buy.

  We rode in the direction my dad had said. It was west and apparently something Nan understood. As we galloped my mother clung to me, completely frightened of the horse.

  The shantytown came into view and I wondered how close we were to the place Michael had brought us—the underground lair that had the tunnels and the recording of Lisabeth the alien. It seemed to me the area was quite similar, only much colder this time.

  My mother gripped to me as I rode behind Nan, following her toward the small cluster of tents and small buildings. She stopped before we got too close and shouted, “These people are criminals. All of them. They are the rejects of The Lost City. So let me do the talking.”

  I nodded, feeling my insides swirl with fear and my mother’s fingers tighten their grip on my waist. I winced at the spot that had once been my wound. It was still tender, even this many months past.

  Nan nudged the horse, getting him to run again. I did the same a few times before our horse followed.

  When we reached the town’s limits she jumped down, walking to a man with a gun. “I need to see the magic man,” she shouted.

  He smiled wide, nodding his head toward the town. She tied off her horse to a pole. I walked behind her, doing the same and then helping my mom off the horse.

  The wind whipped my hair around me as it blasted us with cold air. Garbage and other things blew around the cold ground of the town. Everything here was dirty and barren. As we walked past a man I noticed a black triangle on his wrist. He picked at the scab that surrounded it. I grimaced but moved along quickly, pulling my mom with me.

  “Where are we?” she asked, her voice filled with worry.

 
“The place we have to come first, before we take you back,” I whispered as the wind tried to carry my words off.

  Nan walked to a man standing outside of a metal building of sorts. It was more of a lean-to and reminded me of the slavers’ homes. She leaned in close, speaking to him softly.

  He nodded toward a building down the dirt path they must have called a street. The few trees on the back side of the shantytown that looked more like a sand story than anything else, protected them from the wind better than the entrance to town, which was fully exposed to the desert.

  Nan’s face was cruel and genuinely frightening. I would have run in the opposite direction of her. She might have looked young but that didn't stop her from appearing like she would slit your throat in a heartbeat.

  She walked to a door and banged on it. My stomach was a ball of knots and anxiety. The way the metal door echoed made my breath hitch but the person who opened it made me instantly run for him.

  Murphy’s jaw dropped as he pushed Nan aside and wrapped himself around me. I closed my eyes, silently sobbing but not crying. I was still too scared to cry. “Gwyn, what in the name of the world are you doing here? How are you alive? They said you’d died, been captured.” He pulled me back, looking me over. “Not really worse for wear then, huh?” He kissed me fiercely, taking all of us by surprise.

  “Is this Lyle?” Nan asked.

  My mother shook her head. “Murphy Collins.” She remembered him.

  Nan looked confused but I ignored them both. “Where is Lyle? Is he inside? Is he hurt? Is that why you didn't come to The Lost City? Can I see him?” I tried pushing past him but stopped when I saw the look in his eyes.

  Murphy glanced down, his brown eyes darkening almost as he furrowed his brow. “He’s gone.”

  I instantly started to shake. My whole body, heart, and maybe even the thing they called a soul, had been expecting him to somehow be alive. I expected it. In my weakest moments I feared his death, assumed it even. But deep inside of me I expected I would find him alive. “But I—No! No! He can’t be gone!” The whole world ended. I had lost everything. My love for him exploded through my body, forcing me to see that denying it hadn’t saved me any heartache.