by S. M. Lynch
“He took over UNITY?” he asked, a sadness in his voice.
“He lost his way, that’s all I know. And I know he’s never allowed himself to feel Mom’s loss. He just wouldn’t let it in, Kyle. And I don’t know him anymore. He’s a threat. And I didn’t want to scare you, worry you… set you off or anything.”
And then Kyle did something most surprising. He put his hands around my face, warm and strong and reassuring, and he said, “I would never, ever let anyone hurt you… even him. I love you, Ari. I would die protecting you.”
I burst into tears and he held me close. And I believed him. I really did.
Chapter Twenty
IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR US the next day to keep our hands off one another. Even when we went outside for what Camille called “a traditional festive stroll” and we were in clothes designed for the Arctic, he kept trying to kiss me through the small gap in our hoods.
We’d all been so looking forward to the stew for lunch, but it lasted seconds. The smell had driven us all ravenous, and the slow cooking had made it melt-in-the-mouth. My father’s dumplings, of the traditional Lancashire variety—stodgy, fatty and delicious—also found their way to the bottom of our stomachs rather swiftly, and the beer and wine we’d managed to scrape together left us all with a slight buzz, even my father.
Camille and my dad played chess after that at the table in front of the living-room window, more to keep themselves awake, I thought. The small string of fairy lights around the window they were sat beside framed them and highlighted how, at even one in the afternoon, it already seemed to be getting dark. Kyle sat beside me and seemed sleepy, maybe he wasn’t used to alcohol, although we’d barely had a cup each. I was reminded how Mom’s favorite thing about Christmas was the opportunity to nap, either in an armchair or while she had her head resting on Dad’s lap. Maybe she’d have napped with Arthur and me either side of her, or even with our dog on the rug. This was when we lived in the mansion and had a fake fur rug in front of the fire… back when my brother was okay. The dog, a German shepherd, died when I was nine and it was the first time I knew loss. Dad had picked the dog up in Mongolia or somewhere and kept him. The stray had become his best mate and mainstay. We’d named him Growler because Dad never named him, ever reluctant to admit he cared about anything or anyone. He died with his chin resting on Dad’s lap, took his last breath as if it were a sigh of annoyance, because his job saving my father wasn’t done—but his life was at an end and he could rest, finally.
Kyle nodded off and I wrapped our knitted blanket around his front to keep him warm. I’d finished it that morning in bed after waking early and not being able to get back to sleep. My father had arrived with tea for me at seven a.m., grimacing when he saw Kyle beside me (fully clothed), but half-smiling when he saw he was correct—that I’d never been able to resist a holiday and was too excited to lie in. Dad gave me a wrapped present along with the tea. Something small. He’d placed it in my hand, winked, and left the room so I could open it alone. While Kyle still slept, I opened the parcel carefully and discovered a jewelry box inside. It was my mother’s string of pearls, which Eve had left to her, and now was given to me. It was a sign my father trusted me enough, and had decided it was time. I almost choked on emotion, but then Kyle rolled over, kissed me good morning and we cuddled tightly, the necklace sliding into my bedside drawer when he wasn’t looking—so I didn’t have to discuss it with him.
I hadn’t got anyone a present that year. I didn’t have any money. I’d been looking after Kyle for so long and my father hadn’t put any money in my account recently. I didn’t know whether he expected me to start earning my own money, or whether he’d just forgotten. My trust fund from Mom wasn’t due to pay out until next month… another bone of contention between Arthur and my father. Arthur didn’t understand why he couldn’t have had it two years ago, especially when he so desperately needed it (allegedly).
While they played chess, and Kyle dozed, I snacked on candy and watched some sort of Christmas film. I didn’t know what it was called, nor had I read the synopsis, and I most certainly didn’t recognize any of the actors. It could have been old or new, but I didn’t care. My mind was elsewhere as I pretended to be engrossed.
My birthday was coming up. I’d be an adult.
So would my brother.
It was the one day of the year he expected to see me, as though he had a right to me, even if it were just that one day.
But this year, there would be no cessation of hostilities, just so we could remember Mom together and he could bang on about how much he hated our father. Truth was, he didn’t hate our father so much as he hated himself because of how much alike they were.
“Damn you,” Camille groaned from the other side of the room.
My father had beaten her again. He always beat everyone. He liked to pretend he was just some huge big old dumb block of meat, but there was something else inside him… and Mom had seen it. Maybe she’d been the only one to really know my father. That’s why he was so forlorn all the time after Mom’s passing; he no longer had anyone who truly understood him.
I’d read books about love, of course. At university, to free myself from chemistry textbooks, I’d often read the slushiest romance I could find… and my education on this began at around fourteen or fifteen, learning about sex and love and… all that. Bearing witness to Mom and Dad’s bond, it’d always intrigued me… that thing between lovers. That secrecy and special ingredient… what was it? What had made them so close, so intimate… nothing could get between them?
Even now, I still didn’t know, but I wanted to find out if Kyle and myself could get that close. Sometimes when I looked at him, I’d find the indent above his mouth fascinating, or the way his lips moved when he talked. His hair had grown since he’d arrived and we’d clipped it to a more even length so it fell in thick waves around his ears. His big brown eyes were gorgeous and I loved his body, obviously. It didn’t seem like it was going to be straightforward, or easy… and there were still lots of questions… but I’d fallen for him and it didn’t seem like there’d be any going back on it.
“Do you want a game?” Dad asked, as he reset the board.
“Are you kidding? What chance do I have if you beat Camille?”
“Ugh, I let him win,” she scoffed. “We’d never hear the end of it if I won.”
I chuckled and Kyle raised his head, rubbing his face after a quick power nap.
“I’m game,” Kyle said, standing up and stretching.
“Are you sure?” I asked, warning him he was in for a bumpy ride.
“Absolutely.”
“Come, let’s go and make tea,” said Camille, gesturing we leave the room.
I grinned because I wondered if that’d been her plan all along—to get a few minutes alone with me in private. I looked over my shoulder and Kyle didn’t seem perturbed as they made their first moves. He even seemed… mildly competitive, like a poker player, giving nothing away. Served my father right.
“We should talk about Arthur,” she said, more or less as soon as we were alone with the kitchen door closed.
“Oh god,” I groaned. “Can we just not?”
“What did you tell Kyle?” She briefly glanced at me as she poured oat milk into a pan.
“Nothing much, just that my brother lost his way. He doesn’t know the details.”
She nodded she understood, that she believed me and was convinced Kyle knowing wouldn’t be a problem, after all.
“Arthur has plans to leave for New York. We send his U-Card data to border control to keep him in the UK, but he just keeps getting new cards. One day, he’ll slip through. I can’t be around all the time to keep tabs on him.”
“He’s going there to get Roche?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps, or maybe he’s on a recruitment drive. As we know, people respond much more to the real thing than an image on a screen.”
“Why are you telling me this, Camille?”
“He�
�s dangerous, we both know that, but he would never hurt you.”
“No,” I said firmly.
“Talk to him. Try to reason with him.”
I was ticked off and she knew it. “Okay, last night, you know… Dad starts on at me, asking if me and Kyle are using protection… and now what? You’re heading down this path, right? Telling me I ought to try and fix something else that is Dad’s fault?”
She looked at me, confused, her famously still expression crumpled. “How is Kyle something your father should fix? I’m not getting this comparison.”
“I’m saying Dad’s all like, ‘mur-mur-mur, use protection’ and he never stops to ask, ‘Are you emotionally ready, Ari?’ Or, ‘Do you love him, Ari?’ No. He did the typical Dad thing and asked if we’re using protection.”
“Oh, wind your neck in, girl,” she growled. “Give your father some slack.”
We faced one another and frowned.
“I think I prefer the Camille who’s Parisian and ready to argue about everything and anything and get passionate about all the injustices in the world.”
“Hey. Though I’ve been back and forth, I’ve spent more time over there now. I’ve become more Brit that French and that’s not my fault. That was fate’s fault. Besides, you should be thankful he cares at all. He doesn’t always know how to show it, but he does.”
“No,” I retorted. “He’s all up in my face because he doesn’t like Kyle. He’s never stuck his nose in before and he can’t just start caring after all these years. Doesn’t he know there’s been a lot in my life to deal with? And stocking up on condoms hasn’t exactly been a priority.”
I saw in her eyes she knew it was upsetting me… all this talk… and she let it go for a few minutes.
She stirred the milk slowly, bent over the pan, and said softly, “Where Kyle is concerned, I trust you to make the right decision. But Arthur is an entire other problem. He won’t listen to anyone but you, and you know it.”
“He rescinded his right to my help.”
“I know,” she sighed.
“You know what he’s into,” I reminded her.
“I know. I also know, if he ends up getting himself killed, you’ll regret that you didn’t do something.”
“That’s what you think? He’ll get himself killed?” That she was worried about his life was news to me.
She turned to look at me, letting the milk cook for a moment. “He corrupted our purpose and has since drawn too much attention to himself. Roche will not stand for an upstart. He thinks he’s got protection, but against her forces, he doesn’t stand a chance.”
“I can’t rescue everyone. I can’t even rescue myself.”
“Rescue yourself? From what?” she laughed. “You’re the most together person I know.”
I pouted and waited for her to admit she knew what I meant. She kept shaking her head, like she had no idea.
“I know he’s gonna get taken, eventually, and I can’t help myself, can I?”
“Ah,” she said, “so that’s why your dad’s words hurt.”
I folded my arms. It was annoying, because Dad was always right.
I stood to hurt the most… again.
“Like I said, I trust you,” she reiterated. “And I trust you’ll do the right thing… and go see your brother on your birthday.”
I said nothing and pulled down my poker face on top of my normal one.
Still, we both knew that was never going to happen.
Not this time.
MY FATHER BEAT Kyle at chess, too and it was almost as if Kyle couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it coming—like he’d studied strategies himself in the past, and thought he had it all covered, but honestly didn’t have my father’s ability to step outside the game and imagine moves before they ever happened. My father always, always protected his queen, but when he was playing against someone he didn’t like, he always sacrificed her from the off. And it never ceased to amaze me how that crazy recklessness seemed to put people off their stride. Kyle being one of them.
For the rest of that day, we roamed the house like cabin-fever-crazed kids. I was glad it’d already been established that my father and Camille would head home in the morning. There were several heated conversations they engaged in together in the kitchen while Kyle and me sat in the living room, looking at each other, not brave enough to guess at what they were talking about. Kyle also never mentioned if my father had tried to bully him, and I never asked.
Camille went out at nightfall for a smoke. A filthy habit she detested, and one she rarely indulged in, I think mostly because it revealed she had one weakness, after all, and only turned to it during times of stress.
Over a game of Monopoly, which I didn’t have to teach Kyle the rules of, we discussed the strange dynamic between Camille and my father as she smoked outside and he made sandwiches for supper in the kitchen.
“They’re just very different,” Kyle told me.
“I always thought the opposite.”
“Oh, no. She’s a libertarian, he’s a soldier turned authoritarian. They’re opposites.”
“Libertarian?”
“Of course,” he said, like it was as obvious as me having black hair.
“How so?”
He stuck out his lip. “She’s incorruptible. Didn’t you say that? I also read it in Eve’s journals, too. They’re in Camille’s wardrobe upstairs. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I sit and read them.”
I covered my mouth with shock. “You’re joking.”
“Eve said she chose Camille because she straddles two different trains of thought. She’s creative, expressive, ultimately for freedom and individualism. That’s her innate, true self. But because she was orphaned, she and discipline became firm cohorts. It changed her forever, and then, of course, when she trained with Toshiro, she became a weapon. She accepts herself for who she is, but also that to get revenge, she had to become something else. Yet even now in apparent retirement, she cannot fully let go of her killer instincts. She is two. The assassin and the creative.”
“He’s right, of course,” said Camille, from right behind him… like she’d fluttered in without us noticing, a ghost.
She held a blade to his throat. One with calligraphy across the shaft.
“Who said you could read her diaries?”
“Nobody,” he whispered, not moving. “But I knew they would hold more information than the internet… and the xGen Ari gave me is restricted. All the good stuff is off limits.
He wasn’t scared of pain or death, I could tell. He was only scared it would mean leaving me.
She whipped the blade away and tucked it into a sheath hidden lengthways on the belt of her jeans. She still smelt of menthol, didn’t try to hide it, and wasn’t ashamed. He’d reminded her of this constant war she lived with all the time. Fighting to be her natural self, while also knowing she’d been carved into something else… two sides. Same coin.
She stood by the fire, hand on top of the mantlepiece, clicking her heeled boot against the edge of the fire surround. Camille was thinking deeply, and looked troubled, staring into space.
“Eve knew I could never be corrupted because ultimately I am on the side of freedom. And she promised me we would achieve freedom. I didn’t want money, or fashions, or trophies… or men.”
“And what about Dad? Was he corrupted?” I asked, and when her eyes shot to mine, that’s when I knew.
He once had been. Maybe not entirely. However, he’d been tempted, and had almost… almost…
Arthur wasn’t at fault, not explicitly. I knew it. However, I just couldn’t… I wouldn’t…
“What is it my father and you keep arguing over?” I asked Camille straight.
She took a deep breath and looked entirely unimpressed. “He wants me to throw your brother into a cage and lock him up until he behaves.”
“And that’s not your way,” said Kyle, like he’d known that could be her quandary.
“I believe in freedom, yes,” she s
aid, “but I also believe in chances. I once was tasked with following Nathaniel Hardy around, and believe me, there was a man of simple pleasures who became quickly corrupted up to his eyeballs. I once thought as everyone else did that he, least of all, could be turned to see things another way. However, in the end he did redeem himself, utterly and completely. And that’s why I don’t believe locking Arthur up will help. It will only make things worse.”
That’s when Dad walked in carrying a plate of sandwiches, killing the conversation dead in its tracks. Still, as Camille painted on a smile and he said, “Someone’s guilty… someone’s been smoking!” … it was the perfect cover for what we’d really been talking about.
And I had to agree with Camille… locking him up wasn’t the way.
Chapter Twenty-One
ARTHUR WAS BORN A FEW minutes after Ariadne and had never got over it. Not only was he the younger, he was the smaller, nor as smart… and not as kind. As they’d grown up, he’d overtaken her in terms of height only. Never had he ever been kind, and he certainly hadn’t completed a degree by the time he was seventeen. He’d only ever had one ambition—to be a warrior like his father, yet living up to that was like trying to fit a three-ton truck through the eye of a needle. Nobody could match Ryken Hardy. He would go down in history as The Man. Never had Arthur seen that his father had done nothing but try to protect his only son, absorb the blows on his behalf, and save him from the same fate as him. All Arthur could ever think about was being better than Ryken Hardy.
Nor did Arthur Hardy ever have the same ring to it as his father’s name. That’s why, when he’d broken from the family on his sixteenth birthday, three years after their mother died, he’d renamed himself Art Maddon. His guys called him Art, or Maddon. Nobody in UNITY referred to him as a Hardy anymore. He wasn’t sure his father knew about this, but was sure it would hurt if he did. In fact, he wanted him to know; wanted the big man to know that Arthur Hardy was no more, replaced by someone new.