The Awoken (New Unity Book 1)

by S. M. Lynch

  I smiled, looking down at my lap. “And I didn’t take a pill.”

  “You’re gorgeous, a natural beauty,” he said, and the words made my stomach flip.

  “Come on, god, stop!”

  He was making me blush furiously.

  “And your eyes, Ari… none of this crap on these VR games compares. Nothing man-made could ever compare to your natural beauty.”

  “Please, Kyle,” I begged, looking away from him and holding up my hands. “I don’t like compliments. Please, stop. It’s just me, okay? I’m just not used to them.”

  “Okay,” he said, “but it’s all true. One day, you might believe it.”

  I was going to start biting my nails, but told myself not to, overly aware of my bad habit now he’d pointed it out to me.

  “Do you want to make out?” he asked, and I caught him gazing at me, waiting patiently.

  “Okay,” I said, because in all honesty, I wanted to.

  He didn’t rush across the sofa towards me, but I saw the delight in his eyes nonetheless. He turned towards me and I lifted my hand to his jaw, feeling his bristles beneath my touch. He wore a small smile and searched my eyes. I was overcome because he was hot and cute and I couldn’t help it, I wanted to trust him, because I really liked him.

  He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and leaned in closer, brushing his lips to mine. When he pulled back and we locked eyes, my heart was clapping and my stomach full of butterflies.

  He moved in for a deeper kiss and I kissed him back. He groaned a little and smiled against my mouth, too. I couldn’t help but smile, as well.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said into my mouth.

  “So are you,” I whispered.

  I got tired of us twisting towards one another and moved off the sofa and onto his lap, my forearms draped across the back of the couch as we sat pressed together, his back reclined and my lips on his. His hands were on my waist, his fingers clutching the material of my black grandad shirt.

  It got hot really quick and his hand strayed to my ass and elsewhere, and that was when I knew it had to stop before it went any further. I practically left him scarred when I pulled my mouth from his and he sat there looking up at me, jaw slack, eyes wide.

  “You’re amazing,” he said staring up at me, hands still clutching my waist.

  “It’s too soon,” I stressed.

  “It’s okay. Do you want to cuddle?”

  His words took me aback. I couldn’t remember the last cuddle I’d had from a man. Dad hadn’t hugged me in years.

  “Okay.” And I tried really hard not to gulp, but I did, just a little.

  He moved into the deep corner of the sofa and I moved back against him, so my back was to his front. Then he wrapped his arms around me and I took the remote and found an old film we could watch. The 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. It was one of my favorites. A classic.

  “This seems familiar,” he said. “Is it a book as well?”

  “Yes, a famous book by Jane Austen. It’s set in the late seventeenth century. A different world.”

  “Okay, let’s watch it, then.”

  And as we watched the film, and he regularly bestowed kisses in my hair and kept his arms firmly around my waist, keeping me warm and safe, I could’ve wept because it was the first genuine affection I’d felt since Mom died. Everything since had been pity or whatever. Camille’s grief and my father’s had swallowed them whole and I knew it only pained them, whenever they saw me, because it was like she was still here, but wasn’t.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, as the film progressed.

  “I’m doing okay, but we could do with a blanket. What do you think?”

  “Yeah, let’s get more comfortable.”

  Instead, we lay down on the sofa and he spooned up behind me as we lay on our sides. We rearranged all the cushions and he was higher so he could still see the screen above my head. In the end, I felt ridiculously comforted.

  “If you fall asleep, I’ll carry you to bed. Don’t worry, Ari,” he whispered, “everything is going to be all right.”

  And I remembered…

  Dad always used to say that to Mum.

  “Everything will be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t.

  I only hoped she’d gone to her death swiftly, never knowing any pain at all.

  “Do you feel pain?” I whispered.

  “Pain?”

  I pinched the skin on the back of his hand.

  “Yes, I felt that,” he said, laughing slightly. “But that wasn’t real pain, no?”

  “No. There is different pain, though. Sometimes grief can feel like pain. In the heart. In the soul.”

  “I feel I have a spirit,” he said, “like when I look at you. It hits me in the chest.”

  “Does it?”

  “Yes, I felt it the moment we met. It overtook me.”

  And that was when I knew what had made him different from the others. He’d fallen for me, the moment we met. I’d fallen a little for him too, since we’d spent time together, anyway.

  “But what about physical pain, Kyle? Do you feel achy in the morning before you get up? Do you feel tired at night? Do you feel a crick in your neck sometimes?”

  I could feel him shaking his head before he said slowly, “Not since that first day I got here. I felt you pinch me then, but it was just a tickle.”

  Mom knew pain. Lots of pain. She knew the pain of watching my dad struggle. She knew the pain of childbirth. Of periods. Of creaky bones and tiredness. She knew my brother would be trouble and she knew I’d struggle to integrate, having been locked away for most of my life and possessing a shy bearing, anyway.

  What I was sure of, was that Kyle wasn’t a clone… he was something else. Not android, I told myself… but something… newer.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  I turned my head and looked at him. “I don’t know, Kyle.”

  We stared at one another, then he gave me a shy smile, and I went back to watching the film. He brushed his fingers through my hair, stroked my hands and just let me be. Eventually, as the film went on and his touch became so calming, I dropped off to sleep.

  When I next woke, I was in my bed. Still in the same clothes I’d worn all day. Except Kyle was sleeping with me, holding me, and it was okay.

  “You’ll be safe with me,” he murmured. “I promise. I really promise.”

  “Do you swear?” I asked softly.

  “Hand on heart,” he said, and I rolled over towards him, laying my head on his chest, over his heart.

  Its beat sounded pretty normal, and genuine, to me.

  He sighed as I curled up against him, teasing my hair with his fingers. I let myself drop into oblivion, all over again—somehow trusting him, in spite of all that was telling me not to.

  WHEN I WOKE up in the morning, it was just like it’d been when I fell asleep. He was still holding me, teasing my hair, and steadily breathing against the back of my head.

  “Did you sleep?” I whispered.

  “A little bit.”

  I decided he may have barely slept at all.

  “I want to ask you something,” I continued to whisper, because it was so quiet, and it felt peaceful, and I didn’t feel threatened.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you find the name Buchanan familiar?”

  “Buchanan?” he said softly. “Can’t say I do.”

  “Nathan Buchanan. Or a Seth.”

  “They’re not familiar,” he murmured, sounding perplexed, as if he couldn’t tell if I were testing him. “What’s the significance?”

  “I think they may have been involved in Officium, in the early days, when it was probably called something else. Well, at least Nathan was. Seth is his son.”

  “They’re not people I know anything about.”

  “I thought so, but just wanted to check, in case you might have something useful in your memory, you know?”

&nb
sp; “Sorry I can’t be of any help.”

  “It’s no bother. Do you want to get breakfast?”

  “In a little while. I’m just happy to stay here, holding you, a bit longer.”

  “Okay.”

  It was nice, and warm, and I felt safe. I hadn’t recognized how unsafe I’d felt, all this time.

  After a while of us being silent, he drummed up the courage to say, stammering slightly, “There is something, Ari.”

  I rolled over to face him, intrigued and trying not to seem overly excited.

  “What is it?” I asked, pushing back his unruly brown hair.

  “I feel like I’ve been sent here to protect you. The feeling grows stronger each day. It’s separate to how much I like you. And I do like you. And yet, this feeling, it’s like… if I don’t keep you safe… my purpose is null and void. I’d become surplus to requirement if anything happened to you, and that is not a nice or pleasant feeling. And it’s growing. All the time. It’s like…” He worried his lip and sighed. “It’s this feeling that’s growing more every day and I have no control over it. I was sent here to protect you, I know it. I just don’t know who by.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said, a little flatly.

  “You’re disappointed.”

  “I’m… I just thought you’d been sent… for some higher purpose.”

  “Maybe this is a higher purpose. Maybe you’re important, to secure people’s future. You know?”

  I shrugged because I didn’t believe that. All I’d been doing was trying to find the person or persons who could change the world.

  Yet I knew I’d been right not to tell him about Arthur yet. If I had, he’d have struggled to handle the fact that my brother was a murderer and should not be trusted, at all—and also that there was no way I would fight back if it came to it. Telling Kyle about Arthur could destroy everything, I’d known that all along. My brother wasn’t just someone else he’d have to compete with for my affection, but a genuine threat, too. And it was entirely plausible that somehow, Arthur had been the one to try and warn me off Kyle. Via other people. But entirely plausible. I couldn’t rule anything out.

  “We should lay low,” Kyle suggested, “that’s what I believe, anyway.”

  “Do you know what?” I sighed. “I actually agree with you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. We should largely stay indoors. Unless we go out for groceries.”

  “Okay,” he said, sounding a bit choked up.

  I leaned up and gave him a soft, chaste kiss. His stare was intense when I pulled back and all I knew was that, well, why not?

  Why not?

  I’d been fighting for so long, why not, for a change, just hang back and chill for a while?

  “I’m really hungry now,” I giggled.

  “Me too!”

  FOR THE REST of that day, we stayed home. I introduced him to the gym on the third floor next to Camille’s other bedrooms and he got busy showing off how physically powerful he was. We also just sat sometimes talking. He asked questions about my parents, such as where they grew up, what things did they like… why didn’t they have more kids if they were so into one another? Sometimes I’d have answers for him, other times I really didn’t.

  He enjoyed computer games and seemed to get the hang of them very fast, like he’d been a gamer in his past life. Sometimes whenever we got to a tricky part on a game, I’d suggest we look up a cheat on the internet, but he refused to entertain this notion.

  Kyle was big, bigger than my brother, and certainly bigger than my cousin Lucius had been, given how he was filling my cousin’s old clothes. He wasn’t quite as big as Dad—nobody was—neither did I need him to be, but he was big. Broad. And I liked that for once, I wasn’t the biggest, scariest person in the room. I liked it that we seemed to be equals.

  This notion of my grandfather and Nate Buchanan sharing the same dad still bothered me and I tried to keep it all under wraps. Little wonder Kyle kept asking me if I was warm enough, happy enough, fed enough… my mind had a tendency to wander at the best of times, and I could seem distant, not present and distracted.

  Arthur and I were practically the same height, but through childhood, he’d always been behind me. Physically and intellectually. While I was doing a degree at fourteen, he was getting thrown out of private school. Dad gave up eventually and sent him to a military academy where he excelled but quickly started trying to take over the place. I warned Dad, but he didn’t listen. The problem was, Arthur took Mom’s death worse than anyone… and he’d already shown tendencies to aggression and aversion to rule. He was the one desperate to control other people. But Dad needed somewhere he could stow Arthur and not be bothered by him. Dad had given up on his wayward son. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe Dad caught Arthur doing something that was bad, even by Dad’s standards, and I was kept in the dark. I just knew Dad didn’t want the hassle, wanted to be able to get on with his research, and couldn’t be bothered teaching Arthur himself.

  When Camille accorded me the honor of teaching me her martial arts, Arthur was furious not to be invited along. Camille’s words at the time were, “I would sooner train a dragon how to murder, than teach Arthur what I know.” A strong sentiment, considering her spirit animal was the dragon—her back boasted a gigantic dragon tattoo—though my interpretation had always been that Camille’s dragon was a companion more than a true reflection. The dragon she once had been was tamed by her master, Toshiro… and what was left behind was the silent, sleeping panther type… ready to strike at will. The dragon… perhaps a reminder. I had never seen Camille’s true capabilities, but I knew from my father, he would rather fight anyone else on earth than she.

  When Camille trained me, she half-starved me, turned my teenage puppy fat to twitching muscle and febrile sinew. I learned to smell the world differently, taste it, hear it… breathe in different patterns according to whatever situation I faced.

  She pushed my body to its limits and I found out just what I could achieve. Strength, yes, but speed, agility and a master over air, space and gravity, even. She told me I was her greatest pupil, above Mara, even. Certainly, greater than my father could ever have been in terms of artistry, though she didn’t like to mention that to him, now he was getting older, more vulnerable. Her fear was the military had made him too clunky, overly reliant on weapons and hard tactics. I’d been trained to be a ghost when I needed to be, not a killer. A ghost. Though I certainly knew I could do it, if pushed, given how hard she’d trained me, how eerily I could move with a sword in my hand, and how lightning fast my reflexes had become under her tutelage.

  And I wondered at Kyle’s theory… had he been sent to protect me, because I was the future? Could it be true?

  I wasn’t sure, didn’t want that responsibility, couldn’t have it… didn’t want it!

  But what if it were true… that we were living some new version of The Terminator and I was Sarah Connor, he my Kyle, sent to ensure my unborn baby somehow lived to save the future!

  I laughed inside at those thoughts. This was ridiculous.

  It was time to stop thinking… start just trusting him, see where it could go.

  Although, one thing I did suspect to be more than a bit true…

  Camille had taught me, so I might become Arthur’s antithesis.

  While she was starving me and putting my body through intense circuit training, she would take me to the streets and show me real poverty. She would hold up warm food to my nostrils… ask who needed it more. I would always give it to the poorer, though my mind was breaking as I ached like hell.

  I knew I wasn’t the worser off. Not compared to others. Her teachings about being human, accepting the corporeal form, overcoming it… were what had impacted me most. She’d taught me how to take myself to the edge of what I could take, and still be generous and kind. And how that shred of thankfulness from another could mollify all that pain. Because that’s what it is all about. Doing better. Being better. Enacting and exacting better.
Understanding what takes someone beyond the human experience to achieve higher… like she had… it was all about mastering the mind, at the end of the day. Not making myself thicker or stronger. It was about toughening up my mind, to overcome anything.

  And I did wonder about her decision to train me and not him…

  A lot.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WE WERE WORKING ON A jigsaw puzzle in the sunroom the next day. It was getting cold for October and I wondered at how cold a winter we were going to have, given we hadn’t had what meteorologists would call a real cold snap in ten years—so maybe we were due one. The sunroom was heated by the glass panels above and meant we didn’t have to sit in there with the heat on or wearing layers. Kyle didn’t feel the cold as much as me, but sometimes if we’d been sat still a while, he would begin to share my shivers.

  “You’re starting to remember,” I murmured, while I had my head down, focusing on a small square of the jigsaw I would slot into the main puzzle once I’d pieced this part together.

  “Why do you say that?” he said, seemingly calm.

  “People would meet you now and take you for one of them. You’ve mellowed so quickly. You barely even draw attention in public. You’ve learned fast… or…”

  “I still don’t remember much, Ari,” he stressed, and when I glanced at him, he was coolly sure of himself. “I remember fragments… pieces. Feelings rather than images. In here.”

  He touched his heart and I felt myself wanting to touch it, too… see if it was genuine.

  “You do know that when Camille dies, I’ll be the one to take up her mantle, don’t you?”

  He flushed as I stared at him, begging him to challenge me.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m her finest student. When she dies, I will be the foremost fighter in the world. I’m her successor, her legacy. I’m good now but the older I get, I will get better. There’s a price to that, of course.”

  “Price?” he asked, frowning.

  “I can’t get close to anyone. My aunts didn’t marry until they were in their late fifties. Camille couldn’t hold down a relationship because of her work.”