by S. M. Lynch
“That’s a shame,” I muttered, and Dad shrugged, though I could tell he agreed.
Who knew how much longer his mother had? Yet she’d decided to spend her remaining time exploring the planet rather than be with close family.
Camille stood up, brushed the crumbs off herself and back onto her plate, then took my father’s empty plate from him, too.
“You know? I feel like a bit of a workout. Why don’t you come and give me a hand, Kyle?” she asked, grinning lasciviously over at my boyfriend.
“What could I possibly help you with?” he said, worried about what he may be in for.
“Well, let’s find that out, shall we?”
“Go on,” I smiled. “Hardly anything will happen with this big idiot by my side, will it? And you could do with a proper sparring partner.”
He smiled from just one side of his mouth, a big dimple in his cheek that was so cute. “If you approve, then okay.”
While he and Camille disappeared upstairs to the gym, I waited until the door clicked shut before heading to the safe behind the painting over the fireplace. I took out the disc and handed it to Dad, sitting myself on the arm of the chair he was sitting in. He casually put one arm around my waist as he studied what I’d handed over.
“Like a rubber penny or something,” he muttered.
Being that I hadn’t ever seen a coin, because I’d been born into a cashless world, I had to take his word for it.
“I haven’t had it out of the safe since I last used it.”
“Then nobody would’ve been able to get a signal to it since.”
I took a deep breath and waited, the same as he seemed to be doing, for it to come to life or something. He flipped the disc over but you couldn’t see anything, at all—no discernable joins or patterns that showed you where it opened.
“Let me try something,” he said, reaching down to the floor for the rucksack he’d brought with him.
He took out his xGen, hooked it up to a relatively small glass cube, and stuffed the disc inside it.
“Small X-ray,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s absolutely safe. I use it for X-raying the nano chips they put in their heads. They’re all different, you know. Can’t figure out why.”
“That’s delightful. And by the way, you’re not cutting him open.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, let’s go, shall we?”
Before he could close the disc inside the X-ray cube, my father’s xGen received a call. It wasn’t a recognized number and we both looked at one another.
“Interesting,” he said, eyebrows raised, and of course pressed the green tick to answer.
Nobody was on the screen; the video was withheld.
“Who is this?” asked Dad.
“I think you know.”
Chapter Seventeen
MY FATHER AND I LOOKED at one another because it was clear who was on the other end of the line. So, I’d been right about that, then?
“Show yourself,” my father demanded. “You know who you’re talking to. Show yourself.”
A picture flickered to life. The man was a bit older than my father, had gray hair and a grizzled face.
“Cousin,” Dad said gruffly.
“Cousin,” Seth replied, trying to sound equally as manly.
There were a few seconds of glaring, then I interrupted.
“Did you not want us to X-ray your fancy gadget?”
“If you’d X-rayed that, your entire house and yourselves would’ve gone up in flames.”
I glanced at Dad who seemed cocky; perhaps he’d known this would force our caller to act.
“What do you want, cousin?” asked my father, and not with any warmth.
“How did you find out?” Seth asked. “I only found out on my father’s deathbed.”
Dad clucked his tongue, because he’d known for a lot longer. “Similar but not quite. We were hiding in the ground towards the end of 2063 and my dad told me about yours. Eve had told him. Pascal and your father were something of pals, apparently. Big pals. Anyway, Pascal told Eve, Eve told Nathaniel. Maybe she thought it’d help him to understand it wasn’t his fault… it was in his genes.”
“My father was practically teetotal. It wasn’t in his genes.”
“Nor my genes or my kids’,” my father admitted.
“Same.”
“You have children?” I interjected, interested to know if we had other cousins out there.
“Not that I know of,” he smirked. “And my wife passed a while back now.”
Seth didn’t give anything away; he certainly seemed numb about his wife’s death.
“My sisters are all married to their jobs.” He arched an eyebrow, and I couldn’t quite tell why we needed to know this. “They don’t use their real names out there, obviously. With someone like Roche, if she knew about the capabilities of my family, she’d want to know more. And if she knew about Robert, well… my intelligence machine is worth more than she has spare, but she’d not be above taking what she wants, anyway. We both know that.”
One minute he could sound ever so slightly Kiwi, then unmistakably American. It was very odd. He’d obviously been around.
“Well, you know I’m not going to tell Roche a thing,” my father said, suggesting there was no love lost there.
“I’m in a precarious position, where if I say too much, things could collapse. Robert reveals things to me that in anyone else’s hands would be dynamite. I can only tell you so much when it comes to Kyle.”
You had to give it to the guy… he already had my dad pegged as a sceptic when it came to Kyle.
“So, what the bloody hell can you tell us, then?” my father demanded. “Because if we’re in danger with this lad in our midst, then come on, spit it out why.”
Seth leaned towards the screen, put his hands together and thought carefully before he spoke.
“Your friend is one of several I have seen fall out of the sky. We’re not talking about alien intervention, which I assume is what you may have deduced or had thought of alongside many different theories.”
Dad and I looked at one another, not liking what we were hearing.
“Officium’s way of thinking, and doing things, survives,” Seth said, and my father’s grip on the sofa arm could have taken the upholstery right off, if he’d suddenly stood up in that moment. “The remnants survive, Ryken.”
“What are you saying, Mr. Buchanan?” I asked, teeth clenched. “They’re launching a new phase? What are you… what are you saying?”
I didn’t like what I was hearing, not one bit.
“I don’t know what happened to Seraph, truly. But Lucius? As a rather ambitious and conscientious New York City cop, he caught wind of Officium’s resurgence and the enemy took him out. Mara is systematically killing any emissaries she comes across, but she will have a fight on her hands to catch the big players. They’re hiding, up there, you see.”
I grabbed Dad’s hand and squeezed it. He turned and looked at me, like if I could just lessen my grip a touch…
“You’re not playing this down, are you?” my father asked, sounding scared.
“You don’t know the half of it, Ryken. My father was there in the beginning. Do you even know about Panacea?”
“Panacea?” Dad questioned, not finding the name familiar.
“It’s an island, not far from where your mother-in-law used to hide out when the world got too much. She knew, you see, that something had happened not far off Easter Island in the 2020s. And she was interested in it.”
“You went there?” I gasped, second-guessing.
“Your instincts serve you well,” Seth said, nodding. “As children, my sister, Lola and myself went there with my mother and grandfather, Bill Fleming. Ah, you know the name?”
He was looking at my father, who’d turned gray.
“Yes, I know the name.”
“It’s a long story, but Panacea was going to be the modern-day version of Noah’s Ark. Except with a domed roof… and medical
advances that even since its demise haven’t been brought to the masses, though they exist. Absolute cures for cancer, neurological diseases, you name it. Even the power to halt ageing, reverse it even. Plus, it’s where they first started cloning. They’d pay women to birth them. A tightly kept secret. A ghost world, a shadowland, perfect for hiding secrets. There were no laws they had to abide by, no ethics, they just did what the hell they wanted to do. People had been promised a place on this island and hadn’t known better. But Beatrice, my mother, wasn’t easily persuaded. She led a rebellion. Hundreds of us escaped and she got a message to my father, and he destroyed that place. It was obvious it was all connected: the virus, the cloning, the assault on anybody who dared speak out after the outbreak. It all went back to the director.”
“I killed him,” Dad said, forcefully.
“You killed one version… maybe two. Who’s to say there weren’t more?” Seth argued.
“Why now?” said my father.
“They’ve now got teleportation under their belt, what’s to stop them? The craters form in the earth because they’ve developed a primitive version of quantum transfer. But they won’t stop there and you know it. They’re going to take back control, eventually. Unless we do something.”
“And Kyle,” I said, looking right down the camera at Seth. “He’s not a clone, I swear it. I’ve spent time with clones. He’s not only different, he isn’t chipped.”
“You still can’t trust him,” Seth asserted. “How could we ever know what he’s really been through? That he’s not some kind of upgrade? You will never know for sure, Ariadne… until perhaps it’s too late. You must take all precautions despite what you may feel. I know you’ve bonded, but please… remember what people before you died for. Remember they didn’t die just for you to die, too.”
“He’s right,” growled my father, “I shouldn’t leave you alone with him. He should come back to Manchester with me. I’ll put him to work.”
“That’s also the wrong tack,” said Seth. “He’s settled with Ariadne. You don’t want to risk the balance. Keep him in play, that’s all I’m saying, but also… don’t forget, okay?”
I stepped away to pace the room because I didn’t want to listen to what he was saying, not because I was a brat or didn’t believe him, but because it was all true. We still didn’t know for sure where Kyle had come from.
“What about Seraph?” The pain and desolation in my father’s voice brought water to the surface of my eyes. “Was it Roche who hunted her to death? Or was the WP under pressure from someone, dare I say, higher up than her?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Seth said.
“Who pulled the trigger?” my father demanded.
“Dad, stop punishing yourself,” I begged, cutting in.
“I want to know what he knows. How could he know more than me?” Dad ranted, pointing at the screen. “If I’d known Officium was back in the game!”
“I’m not part of the fight, and I don’t want to be,” Seth said coolly. “I’m on the fringes, apparently no threat to Roche. Or Officium. And that’s how we’ve all survived here, my family and me. That’s why Dad kept us here and didn’t intervene in world events. Because he knew there’d be a time, but it wasn’t back then.” He went quiet, but I could hear him clicking his fingers or something. “Anyway, I’ve already said too much. This conversation must never leave this room. Not Camille, nobody else in fact, must know what we three know. Keep to the rules. Nobody outside us three, and we will hopefully succeed. Understand?”
“Succeed at what?” my father gasped. “Watching everyone we’ve ever loved die?”
There was silence from Seth, then a breathy, “A better outcome, I hope. But we must wait.”
“You think Kyle is the key?” I asked Seth quickly, sensing he was about to hang up though I was no longer looking at the screen.
“He’s the key to everything, and no harm must come to him,” Seth insisted.
Without warning, we heard a tone that announced Seth had hung up, but I could also see the dissatisfaction in my father’s eyes that demonstrated as much. He had more questions than answers.
“Welcome to my world,” I said, flailing my arms about.
We both dwelled on what we’d just learned, me pacing the room, Dad biting his nails. The sight of him biting them made me want to gnaw my own.
“Nothing, whatsoever, leaves this room. If Camille knows about Mara chasing emissaries, she will go after her and she’s too fragile, Ari. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” I said, biting my lip. “I wished I’d asked him about Arthur now. Damn.”
“Bloody Arthur,” said my father. “But you know what? I half want him to get Roche, after hearing all that.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “She must be aware of this resurgence. She’s in New York. She’d have to be blind, deaf and brain-dead not to have heard something!”
Before long, we heard the door to the gym open and close. Interested to find out what may have transpired, I waited with bated breath, cupping my elbows.
Kyle appeared in the doorway first, sweaty and out of breath. Camille was behind him, not a bead of sweat, nor a breath out of its normal rhythm.
“I understand now,” said Kyle, and after he grabbed a drink, he gestured he was going back upstairs to shower.
Once he’d gone, Camille folded her arms, one eyebrow raised.
“What did you do to him?” I laughed.
“Oh, I didn’t fight him,” she said, “he just couldn’t catch me.”
“You terrorized the poor lad?” my father barked.
“Oh, you know me. They didn’t call me the shadow for nothing. Anyway, I’m going for my nanna nap. I’ll see you both later.”
She climbed the stairs and I looked at my father, who was also wearing laughing eyes.
“You believe that?” I asked him.
“I do. She’s a psycho.”
“Two minutes ago, you said she’s fragile.”
“Yeah, when it comes to Mara she is. Especially when—” My father looked behind himself and closed the door for good measure. “On the grapevine word is Mara has a new lover, a bloke this time.”
“Shit, poor Camille.”
“Mara’s one of those given to impulse, you know?”
“No, I don’t know… I’m not a mind reader, nor someone given to generalization…”
“I understand and believe she fell in love with Camille. I really do. But she’s not gay, Ari. And it just kills Camille.”
“Like it kills you Camille isn’t straight, right?”
My father shrugged and rolled his eyes, looking defensive. “Oh, come on, Ari. That’s not fair. She’s my best friend, that’s all.”
“Keeping telling yourself that, Padre. Ain’t nobody who believes it.”
“Pah,” he said, rubbing his knees, the cold still in them it seemed.
When Kyle returned to the room, I refilled his flask for him and he downed another liter of water.
“What did she do to you?” I asked, hardly believing it.
“She’s a ghost,” he whispered, “a shadow. She moves too quickly.”
My father folded his arms, pleased about the whole thing.
“You didn’t get in even one blow?” I asked, because she’d let me get in a couple while we were training.
“Nope, not one,” said Kyle.
My father looked down his nose at me. “Camille’s a trained killer, Ari but she’s known you since birth. She’s hardly likely to show you her true self. She knows it’d scare you, make you see her a different way.”
“It scared me all right,” said Kyle. “But I’ll feel much safer tonight, knowing she’s under this roof.”
To that, we all laughed, and decided there was never a truer thing spoken.
WHEN THE HOUSE WAS SILENT late at night, Kyle crept into my room from his and got under the covers with me. We’d had to go to bed earlier under the pretense of still having separate beds.
“Though
t you were never going to come,” I mumbled.
“Had to wait for them to fall asleep,” he groaned, just above a whisper. “He crept into her room and they were talking for ages.”
“It’s like they’re married or something.”
“Well, it certainly sounded intense, whatever they were discussing.”
“Please tell me he returned to his own room.”
“Yes, and when I heard him start to snore…”
“Oh, so you’re not as scared of Camille as you are of my dad?”
“Something like that,” he snickered.
We were fully clothed and he had his arms wrapped tight around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder. I felt better already, just having him nearby.
I didn’t care what Seth Buchanan thought—Kyle was my boyfriend and he wasn’t a clone. He was a good person and had been with me for two months, never having wronged me at all.
His hand crept under my shirt to touch my bare stomach and I turned and pecked his mouth.
“I’d like to, but they’re just up there. It’s weird.”
Kyle had been getting excited lately because my eighteenth birthday was finally approaching and I’d agreed we could make love after that. While the date got closer, we’d been exploring one another more and more, and I could tell he was eager for the same that night—even with our guests upstairs.
“No fun,” he complained.
“I know.”
He pulled down my shirt and went back to hugging me. Truth to tell, I couldn’t wait for us to be together. We’d almost done it several times already, but I just knew the moment we finally made it official, I’d be committed and if someone came to try and take him from me, I would kill them. And Dad had made me promise: no killing before I became an adult.
“I think you know something you’re not going to tell me,” he whispered, “but it’s okay. I understand you have family bonds… secrets you can’t reveal.”
My heart started pumping, adrenalin coursing through me. Was I that transparent?
“One day, there will be no secrets, Kyle. I promise.”