The Awoken (New Unity Book 1)

by S. M. Lynch

  “Why wouldn’t I pass airport security?”

  “Their sensors are stronger than ours. If they decide you are a clone, well, crap. S’all I’m saying.”

  He turned gray, nearly green. “The authorities kill clones on sight?”

  Camille and I hadn’t told him this aspect of clone life yesterday.

  “Roche doesn’t have time for clones. She has a kill squad that hunts them mercilessly. This one remnant of Officium’s legacy she is intent on eradicating. Clones are too easily controlled by her enemies. She even believes UNITY has resorted to sending clones on missions to kill her.”

  “Paranoid, much?”

  He made me laugh. “I’ll get us through, whether you pass or not. It would just be nicer if there’s less mess. So… if there’s anything you want to get off your chest now…”

  He held his arms outstretched. “I already said… I don’t know anything. And you scanned me… and I even checked last night. Nothing seemed to happen when I held your xGen near my head. Apparently, its energy pulse can set off the chip or the chip can set off the xGen.”

  I peered at him, shaken. “You took my xGen, while I was sleeping?”

  It was in my jacket pocket when I went to sleep and back there when I woke up. I never let that thing out of my sight… and how did he know about the xGen/chip thing anyway?

  “You were sleeping deeply and I was awake. I couldn’t sleep when we first got back to the car last night and I somehow knew trying it out might set something off. Is it not polite to hold someone else’s device near their head but not open it, use it or run off with it?”

  “No, it’s not polite,” I fired back.

  “Sorry,” he said, but it didn’t sound genuine.

  In fact, his sorry was the most robotic I’d ever heard. He didn’t sound sorry at all, but maybe that was because he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Maybe it was me doing it all wrong—trusting him too easily. I shivered at the thought of what else he could’ve managed while I was asleep, then pushed that image out of my mind. The thought of him… killing me in my sleep?

  No, I told myself, and pushed it way, way out of my mind.

  “Well, we’ll soon find out for sure, won’t we?” I said, and carried on cleaning up and getting myself psychologically psyched for what lay ahead.

  AT MANCHESTER AIRPORT, he didn’t set off the sensors. I wasn’t sure who was more surprised, and I almost messaged Camille, but she got there first: SOMEONE COULD’VE OVERRODE IT

  I’d known she would be tracking our progress and her words made me snicker. Not only was she so bloody blunt in messages, she always had to type in caps.

  I knew she didn’t trust this dude one bit, and I was also inclined to err on the side of caution, though he clearly didn’t seem to be afflicted by quite the same short lifespan of his fellow clones (if indeed that was what he was, beneath the cloak). Usually, if I didn’t stun them first, the authorities got to them instead. I never asked what my father did with them after I’d stunned them, and he never told me. I was sure glad I wasn’t going to have another failure on my conscience. Whatever my father had done with the clones I’d been collecting up to now, I couldn’t imagine it’d been pretty. It was probably no more humane than the World President’s tactic of firing squad, because in her eyes, clones weren’t even worthy of trial. They were nothing. What was I thinking, though? Nobody was less humane than she; at least I knew Dad would freeze them for research later on, or at least put them to sleep gently.

  We avoided the huge queues for commercial air travel and veered towards the private terminal. I flashed a diplomatic badge and was waved through, avoiding the usual check-in process. It had always sucked being six foot tall, except when I needed to appear older.

  “What the heck,” he said beside me, mumbling.

  “Not until we’re on that jet, then you can let it all out. Trust me.” I spoke under my breath.

  I’d been forced to grow up well before my time for a number of reasons, foremost being my mother’s death. It also hadn’t helped that being Ryken Hardy’s daughter, I’d been privy to the world’s problems from a very early age, and even when he was meant to be spending quality time with us, he’d never taken off that deep, furrowed expression and that air of heavy responsibility—even wearing it like a badge of honor, some would argue.

  Before we headed for our hangar, I draped a lanyard around my neck with my fake pilot’s license visible. I scanned it before the hangar, and still, we didn’t incite a pack of wolves nipping at our heels.

  “No,” I reminded him, as he remained shocked and in awe, about to say something that the very many sensors around the airport might pick up.

  We made it to our craft and I keyed in a code at the cargo bay door. The ramp came down and we strolled onto the craft.

  Once we were on board and I’d closed the hatch, he looked at me, shaking his head.

  “You just… did that,” he said, eyes shifting, side to side.

  I crouched on the floor and opened my black bag. “Do you know how to shoot?”

  He got down beside me, agog at the amount of weaponry I’d brought with me.

  “How did this not set off the alarms?”

  “My xGen knocked out the metal detectors as we went through, and then at the X-ray machine, this special material,” I said, showing him the material on the inside of the bag, which was like plasma and made it look like other objects such as books and clothes were in my carry-on. Basic nano tech. “Anyone looking hard enough on the screen as this went through would’ve spotted it looked suspicious, but I was smiling so hard at the operator, he glanced at it, nothing more.”

  Kyle picked up an old-fashioned handgun and checked it was clean, loaded it, then readied it to shoot. He knew how to handle a weapon, clearly—but how telling he’d gone for the old-fashioned pistol.

  “We should be okay, but if we’re boarded suddenly as we taxi out of here, you’ll need to shoot everyone who attempts entry.”

  “But they’re innocent people?” he said.

  “So use my stun-gun, then. I’m not allowed to kill anyone until my birthday in January. That’s still three months away.”

  He peered at my stun-gun as I handed it to him. It didn’t seem to thrill him as much as the other weapons.

  “It’s easier than turning on a tap. You just point and squeeze. It even aims for you. You’ll see.”

  I left him examining the gun on the floor of the cargo area while I moved into the cabin and walked between the seats and up to the cockpit.

  Where to, Miss Hardy? the computer asked.

  “Paris, France. Whichever airport is least likely to get me into trouble.”

  There’s an old abandoned military base, just outside the city, to the north-west.

  “No, that’s where one of the cloning factories is.”

  Yes, the computer said. Isn’t it?

  Damn it, I thought… Camille was interfering. “Okay, set a course. I leave it all to you.”

  The engines burst into life and the craft steadily began making its way out of the hangar. I put on a headset and said, “Ari to cargo bay, are you receiving me?”

  “Uh, yeah, that you, Ariadne?” Kyle answered, through the intercom.

  “I’m in the cockpit. Come up front when I give you the all-clear.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “So far so good,” I said, as we turned towards the runway.

  There was nothing suspicious so far. No sign we were going to be unexpectedly boarded and asked a series of probing questions, which was often the case whenever a private plane left an airport such as this one. It was always, always commercial flights. Private aroused suspicion. I just wondered if Camille was sailing us through, somehow.

  Approaching runway, the computer said.

  “I’ll take the controls now,” I told her.

  Understood.

  She would, of course, still instruct me if I went wrong, but most of the hard work had already been done, by he
r. Planes in my time were like everything else—intelligent.

  “Kyle, come up front now,” I said, sounding urgent.

  He joined me within a few seconds, gasping, anxious.

  “Put your belt on,” I said, gesturing he take the co-pilot’s seat.

  We turned towards the runway, and I let her go as soon as we were pointing in the right direction, smoothly guiding her nose up into the sky and staying cool through a bit of turbulence, as we prodded our way up through the clouds. We were soon sailing happily at 30,000 feet.

  Permission to take over? she asked, now that we’d taken off and it was just a matter of keeping our course.

  “Thank you, yes, take the controls,” I told the computer.

  I took a deep breath and turned to him. “Do you want a drink?”

  He looked at me, bogeyed, scared, his response a squeak. “Sure.”

  “Sick bags are right behind you. First time for everything.”

  I went to the back of the cockpit for the aeronaut rations and passed him a couple of pouches containing juice. I pressed the hot drinks machine for coffee and dispensed it into my own flask.

  “What is this craft?” he asked, after he’d got over the shock of take-off.

  Or maybe it was the shock of me taking off.

  “It’s one of the planes we commandeered after the fall of Officium. These things don’t really need a pilot. It’s actually a disguised fighter jet really, but without missiles… and using a runway instead of launching straight up draws way less attention.”

  “And we won’t be tracked? How do they not know…?”

  “My parents kept me hidden from public view all my life, so nobody outside my family actually knows what Ariadne Hardy looks like. Up until now, you’re the first person to drop out of the sky that’s lived long enough to learn my full name.” He gave me a suspicious look. “I completed my education remotely. Ever since my seventeenth birthday, I’ve been travelling as Rebecca Warton. She was a diplomat who worked for my father and we never reported her death. I’ve been travelling as her ever since. She had dark hair like myself.”

  He looked shocked and irked by all my revelations. “But this is the enemy’s plane, right?”

  “It was,” I admitted, sipping my coffee. “It’s ours now. Reconditioned and claimed for private use. They do spot checks on craft like this, of course. All I can say is that we were lucky back there, or had a hand.”

  The craft started to subtly start its descent and Kyle looked at me like something must be terribly wrong.

  “We’re heading to Paris. Well, the outskirts. Another thing about air travel these days… it’s exceptionally quick.”

  He gulped and checked he was still buckled in tight. I grinned and watched the computer screen, as the craft plotted our course towards the military base. Any over-zealous air traffic controllers would be taken care of by this craft’s computer systems, too. She’d been re-programed to manage everything. Even pesky, suspicious humans.

  “I knew you weren’t average, but please tell me that of all the above-average, you’re right up there,” he said, with a nervous chuckle.

  “If you’d known my mother, you’d understand. Which is funny. She hated flying. But my aunt is a killer flier. See, my mother always knew how to get what she wanted. She passed that trait onto me.”

  “Would you say it’s your father or mother that shaped you?” he asked, in all seriousness.

  I turned and grinned. “My genes are his, my heart is hers. The rest, you can figure out for yourself.”

  He smiled and nearly jumped out of his skin when we began juddering through turbulence on our way down.

  “Come on, don’t piss off the passenger,” I said to the computer.

  Apologies, ma’am. It’s clear he’s not a frequent flier.

  He gawped and looked at me like none of it was happening.

  Second by second, I grew more certain he was from the past.

  And I felt sorry for him. People always hark back to their past as being better than the present. I’d never understood that, because my mother taught me the opposite. She said your present is no better than your past and your future no better than the moment. We must live in the very second we’re in. Otherwise, can we even call ourselves alive?

  “Will you be okay if I drive the next mode of transport, too?” I asked.

  He gave me a sideways glance as the ground rose up to meet us, and the computer let me believe I was in control as we approached our landing spot.

  “What the heck’s next?” he said, wiping his brow.

  “Oh, you have no idea,” I laughed, right as we hit the ground with a jolt, then smoothly moved across the tarmac, until slowing right down.

  He looked out of the window and saw we were in a derelict place. He’d not seen anywhere like it yet.

  “You must brace yourself,” I said, and he didn’t look especially excited about what was next.

  Chapter Nine

  THE AIRFIELD WAS IN THE barren wilds west of Paris, ten miles from Versailles. Weeds were pushing through the concrete everywhere, and the tarmac hadn’t been used in decades, I could tell. The tires on our craft had left an imprint in the dirt and dust. The computer took us into a hangar that was just one storm away from complete collapse, but would have to do. Kyle disembarked first to stare at our surroundings outside the hangar, hands on hips, looking like he’d been dropped somewhere completely foreign.

  Out there, the birds were tweeting and there was no other sound but the wind. He stared at everything like it didn’t make sense. While he was coming to terms with the landscape, I pulled my motorbike out of the cargo hold and left it at the edge of the hangar, ready when he was. I grabbed our stuff and shoved it into my saddlebags. Kyle was still there, sort of unable to move. I shut down the aircraft, set the security systems and let the computer know she could implement tactical maneuvers if someone came to try and steal her within the next couple of days.

  I walked up beside Kyle and tossed a few bits of bread to the ground—crusts left over from Kyle’s breakfast, which I’d brought along in my pocket to prove a point. Within seconds, a horde of birds landed, fighting over the scraps. Once the food was all gone, they flew off again immediately, and there was just one tiny bird left behind—suffocated to death.

  “What is this place?” Kyle asked, his chest heaving up and down.

  “This used to be a military airbase, but then after the outbreak, the army started working out of here to guard the city.”

  “Why did they force people into the cities, when it would have been better to spread out in times of pandemic?” he said, like it had obviously been the wrong tactic.

  “Control,” I said, sighing. “We don’t know much about what happened to the country escapees. There are no records, nothing, because it was like civilization split into two distinct groups: one technological, the other the opposite. The country folk would’ve had to fend for themselves, like those birds. The delicate balance of eco systems, you see. The bird populations in the countryside are thriving, but that’s because they don’t have competition. They’ve become a lot more vicious, less tame, because there aren’t any humans out here now. Worms are aplenty but bread is a rare treat for them now. One they’d kill for, even.”

  “I saw that,” he said, staring at the dead bird.

  “Some people did return to the country after 2063, but most had become so conditioned to the city, it’s not like you can just forget everything you’ve ever known your whole life.”

  “Understandable,” he agreed.

  “My grandmother’s first husband, Tom Bradbury escaped to Stratford for a while after 2023. That’s where he brought up my aunt, Mara. In seclusion and isolation. The town had been abandoned by Officium, left in the hands of the survivors brave enough to stay behind. He used to grow vegetables and things, but he’d have to go out into the woods to hunt if they wanted meat. Across the world, rampant climate change, unchecked hunting and lack of care and attention
has seen the food chain narrow. In 2023, there were no farmers left in the country to tend sheep, cattle, pigs… and few wild animals actually provide good meat. That’s why the world’s main source of food is now plant protein. Grown in huge polytunnels, up and down the land. They said that farming animals was bad for the environment because of greenhouse gases. But even now that most of the planet is vegetarian, the damage seems irreparable. Our world is at crisis point. The time to change was decades ago, and those changes were not made when it counted.”

  “Is this why you think I’m here?” he asked, turning suddenly to face me. “This is a point in time where things could go one way or another, and up there, could be answers?” He pointed up at the heavens, where he’d come from.

  I blinked a few times, getting to grips with his suggestion. “I think everything happens for a reason, and yes, there must be a reason you’ve been sent down to us at this particular point in time.”

  He nodded in understanding before he looked around, then spotted my bike.

  “I don’t know how I know this, but I know I can ride one of those and that I used to enjoy it.”

  “Be my guest,” I said. “But let me do the talking at the checkpoint.”

  “We’re going into Paris?” he asked, shocked.

  “Yes, but… oh, there’s one other thing first.” I’d almost forgotten… but the aircraft computer had told me to bring him here for a reason.

  We climbed onto the bike and I told him where I wanted to go first. It was an electric bike and not as fun as my dad’s old-fashioned petrol engine, nor as fast, and Kyle rode it like he was waiting for some sort of button to appear that would give the engine a boost… but it never came.

  Half a mile from the hangar, we pulled up outside a big medical facility. We left the bike just outside and I assured him, “Nobody ever comes here anymore. Trust me. It’ll be fine.”

  We walked up a grand marble staircase into the building and between white pillars. In the atrium right inside, moss and trailing ivy was everywhere. It had long been abandoned.