The Awoken (New Unity Book 1)

by S. M. Lynch

  “And where is Mara now?”

  He had a lot of questions for someone who was supposed to be newborn. Did Kyle have his own mission… to detail our operations and send information back? I had to be on my guard and less open, though my tactic of ingratiation had worked thus far.

  “She’s on a research trip. She’s been gone a few months, but she’ll be back. She always comes back,” I lied, knowing full well she was in the US investigating Lucius’s death.

  I didn’t know if she would ever come back. A part of me hoped that if she did, she’d move back in with Camille and let me have this apartment long-term.

  “So, you might be here a while,” he decided.

  “Possibly.”

  “And where would you live if she came back?”

  I sighed, wondering if I was under interrogation, or if Kyle was trying to fill his empty head with information—anything to block out his own thoughts.

  “I don’t know. We were living with my paternal grandmother when we first came back here, but she and my father had a massive row and he moved out to live in one of the company apartments in the laboratory building. I stayed with her for a bit but she’s not easy to live with, either. Then there’s Camille, but she never stays in one place. Anyway, I will inherit some money when I turn eighteen… my mom put it in trust, and maybe with that I could buy my own place… but right now, I’m just… taking it day by day.”

  Kyle turned and stared at me, still with his hands in his cargo trouser pockets. I couldn’t read his expression.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked. “If you leave this place, what will happen to me?”

  I’d never made it to this stage with a clone before, so I didn’t know how to handle him. I looked at him straight on and said, “What to do you want to happen to you?”

  He looked at the floor and whispered, “I don’t know, but I’m beginning to feel afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” I said softly.

  “The unknown… what next… what will I do when you aren’t here? I feel safe with you, but I don’t know, with someone else… I don’t know… I don’t know.”

  Perhaps this was the whole reason why he’d come with me quietly. He genuinely liked me, felt safe with me. If I betrayed his trust, the consequences would be dire… but if I could just… maybe, just maybe, we could work together.

  I walked a few steps closer to where he was standing and reassured him, “We shall take one step at a time, or one task at a time, if you like. Tonight, all you need to worry about is having something to eat, washing and changing, then resting. That’s it. Tomorrow, we can talk more. Okay?”

  He nodded slowly. “If you say so.”

  “It’ll be okay. I’ll help you. I promise.”

  He blew out a breath. “Please could I wash and change first? I feel dirty and disgusting.”

  “No problem, I’ll show you where everything is.”

  At least I was pretty good at keeping the bathroom tidy. My mother always used to say if you at least keep your bathroom and kitchen tidy, don’t worry about the rest. I wondered if she had been as messy as me as a teenager. Certainly, I didn’t follow my father in that respect—his army career had only worsened his preternatural disposition towards order.

  I’D EATEN MY microwave meal at the kitchen island by the time he emerged from the spare bedroom washed and changed. It used to be my cousin Lucius’s room, so there were a few items of clothing lying around I’d told him he could have. He’d appeared in the hall earlier butt naked and I’d had to avert my eyes. Clones tended to have no concept of covering up except to keep their bodies warm. He’d needed help with adjusting the temperature on the shower—I’d set the water to volcanic, but he wanted it cooler. I supposed if you’d never had a shower before, it might be a shock to the system to feel especially hot water for the first time. I imagined him to be brand new… I didn’t know for sure… I still didn’t want to ask too many questions, in case it set him off and I had to slay him.

  “There are a number of meals in the refrigerator,” I explained, “help yourself and press the button on the microwave for one meal. It’s very simple.” He opened the fridge and looked perplexed. “You’ll see… it’s the clear trays.”

  “Yeah, I see them, but I don’t know what I like.”

  “I suppose you’ve got to try to find out.”

  “Yeah, but I liked those burgers earlier. They tasted good.”

  “Yeah, well everything tastes good with the right seasoning. Everything is plant-based these days. I’ve never had to get used to it because it’s the only thing I’ve known since I was four years old, when the mass slaughter of animals was banned.”

  He stared at me with a frown. “Would you recommend cottage pie or lasagna?”

  “If you’re very hungry, both?”

  “Okay. Let’s go for it.”

  I watched as he tried to put both meals in at once, one on top of the other. The microwave beeped to let him know it was fool’s talk. He eventually got the message and put the lasagna in first, his nose pressed to the glass door.

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” I warned, “it’s not good for your eyes.”

  “Oh… okay.” He pulled back immediately with a dejected demeanor.

  “If I tell you things, it’s not to make you feel bad, it’s to protect you,” I encouraged. “It’s tricky in a new place, I know, but we’ll get there.”

  “I understand,” he mumbled, and when the microwave pinged, he attempted to take the meal out without gloves on, almost spilling it everywhere. I’d anticipated him and was waiting with a tea towel to catch his food before it dropped to the floor.

  “Take a seat, won’t you?” I suggested. “I’ll wipe the spills and put the pie in next.”

  I put his lasagna on a plate and lifted the lid off, handing him a fork. “You blow on it if it’s hot.”

  “Sure.”

  When the food looked cool, he finally began eating. He ate the lasagna and cottage pie interchangeably, stuffing himself full. I popped open a can of coke and offered one to him. He drank this down too. I split a bar of chocolate down the middle and gave him half. He gobbled it down. He seemed happy to spend time at the kitchen island with me, sat on a stool, eating whatever I gave him. When there was no more, he sat staring at me as I scrolled through messages on my xGen.

  “What is that?” he asked eventually.

  “It’s my xGen.”

  “An xGen?”

  “It’s a nickname, so-called because there cannot be another generation of device to surpass this one. You can get add-ons for this and whatever, but it cannot be bettered.”

  “It’s a cell phone,” he guessed, sounding so American.

  I could speak French and English as well as American English if need be. So far, I’d been keeping it to his liking so he could understand me. Whenever I was in France, I’d talk and think in French, but here I always reverted to the odd bit of northern English, sometimes even slipping into an accent similar to Dad’s Mancunian. Speaking with Kyle in American English took effort.

  “People started with cell phones, or mobile phones as they called them here. To begin with you could only make calls with them, send text messages. Then they got better. You could take pictures with your phone, and eventually, it became possible to connect to the internet through your phone. It got so that people couldn’t remember what it used to be like before and they got so reliant on these things. Eventually there was the smartphone which could perform all the functions of a computer: browse the internet, read documents, connect to social media platforms… download various applications.”

  “Social media?” he queried.

  “It’s basically where you can talk and connect with other people online, not in person. You can send messages, post pictures and updates. It connects everyone that has social media. You can’t really escape it. Everyone buys their shopping on it now.”

  “So, when did they create that… the xGen?”
r />   “After 2023, Officium introduced it. In fact, my grandfather developed the xGen. He was a genius.”

  I saw various thoughts run through his mind as he took in all I’d told him.

  “Ariadne, if you’re connected to everyone, doesn’t that pose a risk?”

  “Yes,” I explained, “it’s a blessing and a curse. You see, Officium used this level of connectivity to spread doubt, fear and discord. But my grandmother, and grandfather… they created an antithesis with this ultimate device.” I held up the xGen for him to see what I meant. “It’s how my mother broke the control, back in the 2060s. She connected the people by telling them the truth. She took great risks.”

  “And that’s how she died?” he asked, sounding excited to be getting closer to the truth about my mom, the great investigative journalist Seraph Maddon, who lived nearly every day of her life knowing she was in danger.

  “No, she died of natural causes, I am afraid.” I looked away from him, hoping he wouldn’t ask any more.

  “But she died young?”

  “Some people do, Kyle. Some people do.”

  “Okay.” He accepted my explanation and gestured at my xGen. “Do I need one?”

  “Perhaps one day, but not yet.”

  He nodded slowly. “I see.”

  I flipped it in my hand. “These things, you see, they enabled the evil creatures at the heart of Officium to track and trace anyone on the planet who owns one. They also enabled my grandmother to do the same.”

  “You’re from a family of polymaths and geniuses.” It was a statement from him, nothing more.

  “I suppose I am. Except I take after my father. We two struggle between our militant nature and our intellect. I already have a degree in chemistry and want to gain another in ecology. Or maybe botany, we’ll see.”

  His face screwed up with doubt. “But you’re seventeen?”

  “Like you said, I’m from an abnormal family. I skipped school years and studied here, in Manchester, after my mother died. It gave me something to focus on. Now I’m working for my dad, running errands. I’m just taking time out while I decide my next move.”

  I went back to studying my xGen while he stared into space, absorbing everything I’d told him. With someone like him, so new and inexperienced, it was easy to imprint on them and I had to hope that what I was doing was working. He had to trust me.

  “Am I one of those errands?” he eventually asked.

  “No. My father doesn’t agree with the things I do in my spare time.”

  “I’m a hobby then, am I?”

  For the first time he smiled and I liked the changes I saw—wider eyes and a softer mouth, brighter cheeks and shiny teeth.

  “You are research,” I told him. “And you’re a chance to make things better. Trust me, there is much you’ve yet to learn. Tomorrow, when we see Camille, you’ll almost certainly discover what I mean.”

  He nodded consistently for several minutes, then he stood up and tucked in his stool. “I’m tired, I shall retire.”

  He walked off without any pleasantries and it reminded me of someone else. I tucked that thought away and got to work cleaning the apartment before he woke up again.

  Chapter Five

  IF YOU WEREN’T A GENUINE inhabitant of the city, it wasn’t advisable to visit York—unless you were part of the UNITY organization. York and UNITY were practically one and the same, since my grandmother took control of the place in the 2030s and made this town UNITY’s headquarters, heartland… spiritual home… all that. UNITY resisted Officium for thirty years or so and ultimately brought down its evil director, but the truth was, UNITY now no longer resembled what it used to stand for. It hadn’t been the same for decades, since Eve Maddon, my grandmother, left the city behind to execute her final operation.

  After 2063, when the truth came out, Mom and Dad began the work of rebuilding the world via conventional methods; my grandmother’s work was done; and the only people left to run the resistance organization were zealots… extremists… people who still believed an antithesis would always be needed. It’s the same really as believing nothing will ever get better (my mom used to say).

  I drove myself and Kyle to an abandoned multistorey car park just outside the city where there used to be an out-of-town shopping precinct. I hid the vehicle on the third deck, in a dark corner, where nobody would see it unless they were really looking—and none of the drones circling York would see it, not while on cursory security runs, anyway.

  Usually when I visited Camille for some girl time, she’d meet me on the edge of town where we’d encounter less heat if I were spotted, but today I wanted Kyle to see everything. He needed to know what life was like, but what he didn’t need to know was why Camille was in hiding here, sequestered for a reason. She wasn’t making a pilgrimage or anything; she was here to keep an eye on what was going on.

  Having dropped the car off, we went on foot across fields of dead earth and trash.

  “Everything is so different,” he said, “how do you live like this?”

  “It’s not living, really.”

  “It isn’t.”

  How strange a creature not of this earth and with a spurious allegiance had the capacity to call this what it was—an existence, not a life.

  “It’s so dirty,” he muttered, his eyes taking in the landscape and seeing only gray.

  “It’s cleaner than it was,” I chuckled.

  “Hard to believe.”

  “But true.”

  We had a couple of miles ahead of us to traverse on foot. Most visitors to York would arrive via train or car. However, that meant navigating U-card checkpoints and potentially various other security checks, too. We didn’t have time for that today. Nor could I trust Kyle’s U-card was anything remotely legit. His identity might have set off all the alarms for all I knew.

  “How could things have got this way?” he asked after a while.

  “What way?”

  “Wrong,” he said, his tone firm.

  “Camille lived through the 2020s. She can tell you. She was there.”

  “I sense you’re nervous,” he said, sounding nervous himself.

  I tried to check myself—more controlled breathing, less sweating and no more overthinking—but I knew what was ahead of us.

  “I could tell you the truth, Kyle but that might make you nervous, too. Perhaps you could put your faith in me and once we make it to Camille’s, we can discuss everything then.”

  “Is there danger ahead?” he asked.

  “If my plan works, then no.”

  “And your plan is good?”

  He was asking for reassurance but I was on my guard, waiting for him to turn at any moment. If only we could get past this stage, there was even more hope for the future.

  “My plan is always good. It’s just that in this age of humanity, technology rules and we can’t always predict technology.”

  “Well, just to let you know I am combat trained, and if necessary, I will retaliate.”

  I stopped in my tracks and turned to look at him. “Show me, then. Attack me.”

  He pressed his lips together and his eyes widened. “I don’t want to attack you.”

  “Pretend. Play fight. Please, amuse me. Show me your capability.”

  He looked down at the ground, made uncomfortable by my request, his shoulders hunched.

  “I don’t want to, Ariadne.”

  I was trying to prove a point but he wasn’t getting that at all.

  He would… eventually.

  “Come on, then. Let’s go.”

  I walked on at a pace and he followed. We made quick work of the ground beneath our feet.

  As we got closer, the true state of affairs became more obvious and I caught him staring as the hazy city came into view on the horizon. After President Roche took power, UNITY built a wall around York. The ancient Roman wall that once surrounded the old parts of the city had already been decimated, and in its place, a new wall had gone up. UNITY hadn’t
been this militant when Eve was here. She had controlled the entire city’s operations, sure, but she’d been clever about it… not so combative.

  I saw him staring, bewildered, and told him, “After 2023, cities like this in the north became renewable energy research hubs. People got paid a pittance basically, to work for a cause already lost. York was one of the lucky ones. My grandmother Eve Maddon managed to make Officium’s military presence here untenable. She made it so their communications devices scrambled every time they stepped foot in the place.”

  “Officium… the group that released the deadly virus?” he queried.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Through fear and deception, they changed the world into what it is now.”

  “How can York be so lucky, if that’s even how to describe this?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “Wait and see,” I told him.

  We walked closer and made it to the outer slums. I felt Kyle tense beside me as we began making our way through grubby narrow streets, many of which were beset by cardboard-box houses packed in wherever people could manage.

  “There’s a fact I have in my head,” he says.

  “Yes?” I asked, curious.

  “The world’s population… couldn’t it fit on the Isle of Wight?”

  “Mara used to say that to me. She’d heard it from my grandmother.”

  “So… why are people living like this?” He kept his voice low, knowing we’d be overheard.

  We stepped around people who were basically living and sleeping in small cardboard boxes on the streets. Sometimes, the smell would make me want to hurl, but it was Kyle’s eyes that appeared most affected, not his nostrils.

  “Many reasons,” I explained. “Fear of the countryside which people fled in the chaos of 2023. Safety in numbers. No direction. No appetite for freedom. No supply lines in the country. Often, people sleep on the outskirts of cities like this, just waiting for a job.”