The Awoken (New Unity Book 1)

by S. M. Lynch

  For all his father’s military background, exploits and heroism, Arthur had not been able to understand why Ryken Hardy had faded into the background, given in and given up, rather than fight, after the horrific death of his and Ari’s mother.

  And Ariadne. His better sibling. The one they’d always loved more. She’d betrayed him, too. She’d refused to join him.

  Oh, their grandmother Eve had known which among her flock were extremists, but she hadn’t cared. She’d kept enemies and friends alike close, all those years. Why shouldn’t he take a leaf out of her book?

  The night he told Ari his plans… it felt like she no longer thought of him as her brother.

  Her eyes had filled with tears, and she’d looked at anything but him, refusing to meet his eye; plus, she’d gone stiff, like she was disgusted and could hardly bear to breathe the same air as him.

  They were in the Manchester house. Nice enough, you know? It was Granny’s place, but bought from Dad’s purse, another of his investments… a way of keeping people on side. Granny Connie was the person Arthur got on best with… only because he reminded her of Nathaniel Hardy.

  Anyway, there was nobody but them in the house that day. They stood in the hallway. The staircase was behind him, the wooden railings splitting off to a gallery landing upstairs. Built in the early Noughties. Kind of okay.

  “You can’t do this, Dad won’t allow it. You’re bloody sixteen, Arthur!” Ari had protested.

  “You know I hate to be called that,” he growled, staring at his own feet, just so he didn’t have to see the despair in her eyes. “They approached me. UNITY needs new leadership because Dad’s sure as shit not doing anything to find her killer, is he? Mom’s followers need someone to lead them, someone to avenge her death.”

  “Sycophants! Crazy people!” she exclaimed. “Flatterers, worshippers… telling you just what you want to hear, not what’s true!”

  “Oh, what do you know?” he snapped, turning in a circle and scratching his hands through his unruly light-brown hair. “If I don’t try to get justice for her, who will?”

  “Arthur, you can’t. You’ll regret this,” she shouted, as he made his way to the door, grabbing his packed bag from the floor. “Dad will never forgive you, I will never forgive you!”

  “Watch me.”

  She raced across the wood flooring, skidded, and barred the door with her body. He wouldn’t mess with her; she was training with Camille and already knew some moves that could take down several shitheads at once.

  “You’re sixteen,” she repeated, “you’re too young!”

  He shook his head, amused, until eventually he burst out laughing.

  “Look at you, Ari,” he mocked, their faces close. He saw he disgusted her. It almost dropped him to his knees, seeing his mother’s eyes on her, with that look. “Sixteen, too. And you think you know any better than me?”

  “Yeah, I do actually. Boys grow up slower than girls. And I think you’re being a little twerp.”

  “Twerp,” he said, gasping. “Nice. Reaching for the top shelf in terms of name-calling there, Ari.”

  “Think what Mom would say.”

  His face changed and she moved back against the door, preparing herself to move out of his way. He felt the storm surge inside him, the aggression building up, and because he couldn’t take it out on her, he punched through the wall instead beside the door, plaster coming away as he retracted his hand.

  “That’s the point, Ari,” he said, in a low voice that even scared him. “She’s not here, so I speak for her. And she’d want me to find out the truth.”

  “Dad and Camille would avenge her if they could, you know that.”

  “Do I?” he said, glaring.

  “You know they would.”

  “Dad’s pathetic, has allowed himself to be made puny because of her loss. I won’t fall to this same weakness. I’ll do what has to be done.”

  She stood aside, arms folded, and had that look in her eye.

  That look where he knew she was going to reach for that thing she didn’t want to say but had to.

  “She wouldn’t want you to do this. She knew she could be taken any day. That’s why she lived like she did. She wouldn’t want this for you. UNITY has been corrupted by people who want to become the antithesis to the new world. When does it end? We fought to break the evil, now we fight to break the good?”

  “Good,” he scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh. You and me both know Roche ordered her death.”

  “We don’t know that, nor do we know the context.”

  “Context, shmontext! Our mother didn’t deserve it. She could’ve been saved. You all look at me like I’m the wrong one, like I’m screwed up and deranged, but all of you have forgotten who our mother was. She was a rebel, not a bystander. She fought for what she believed in. None of us would be living if not for her… and you just stand there… looking at me like I’m the deluded one… and you just… do nothing? NO! I won’t do NOTHING!” he insisted, shaking his head and pacing the floor right in front of her.

  “What about the bigger picture,” she said, “there was always the bigger picture. Bigger fish to fry. A delicate balance to maintain. This world has already seen one regime fall in recent times, don’t incite the birth of a new one!”

  He gave her a filthy look, in fact a look so dark and evil, it made her reel backwards again.

  “This is about taking down Roche, nothing else! I’ll do what Eve did, manipulate these crazies for my own ends, and get her, once and for all. She’s only going to wreck everything and we all know it. Dad sacrificed what was left of Mom’s legacy the day he resigned as World President.”

  Ari stared at him like he was nothing but a menace. He wanted to be that. So why did it hurt?

  “You’ll never be Dad,” she reminded him, “nor would he want you to be that. He wouldn’t want the same heavy burden for you. You don’t know what they’re protecting us from. All I know is that she’s gone. We can’t bring her back—”

  “STOP!” he yelled, scratching the back of his head with both hands. “Stop talking about her.”

  “She’s not coming back. There’s no smothering that grief, Arthur.”

  “Watch me,” he argued, and stormed out.

  ***

  ARTHUR TRAINED HARD after that. He had some of UNITY’s wisest, most experienced martial artists teach him, and yet he knew, he would never measure up to his own sister. She was being taught by Camille, the legendary assassin… the one of a kind. The only person Eve Maddon ever trusted one hundred per cent.

  His father going weak and feeble he could understand, but not Camille. Not her. Why had she given up the fight, too?

  It’d been a year since his self-imposed exile from Manchester, when he’d discovered Camille had sequestered herself somewhere within York, hidden by old friends, protected by traitors among his own ranks, he knew.

  Let her, he decided.

  What could she do?

  While he was anguished she’d no doubt finished training Ari and hadn’t offered to do the same for him yet, he also knew if there were any trouble, she’d be there to save the day. It annoyed and comforted him in equal measure to know his mother’s best friend cared about the things Seraph Maddon had left behind, just not the fact she’d been murdered in cold blood, the crime left uninvestigated.

  So they had this dance where he gathered resources while she scuttled along alleys late at night, sneaking about, his father’s spy impossible to catch.

  And even when his cousin Lucius was murdered, they still did nothing, Camille and his father.

  He was proud when he heard on the grapevine that Mara Bradbury had set out on a mission to punish the culprit. He only wished she’d taken him with her. Now that would’ve been a perfect scenario. Escape York, the UK, his father, sister, the past… and get to kill some evil pricks in the process. But it was not to be. Mara was as broken as the rest of them, deep down, and didn’t take kindly to hangers-on. She worked alone, even r
efusing to take Camille, or Millie as Mara referred to her wife affectionately. So much for equality in marriage, though. It’d always been Mara saying jump and Millie replying, “How high, ma coeur?”

  Mara was his role model. He knew she was cold and mean, but if he could ever achieve that same level of ferocious intelligence and stupendous arrogance, he’d then know he’d satisfied all the measures of a cold-blooded killer that he so held in high esteem.

  While training in physical combat during his exile in York, he’d also trained his brain, too. Arthur had read books on military strategy. He’d researched the latest weaponry and how to do well from selling reconditioned arms. He’d discovered where he could invest money and make more; he’d learned about accounting and tax breaks and law. He now also knew about mathematics and code breaking and all the latest military-grade technology, thanks to his friends in UNITY getting him access. He was gathering all his strength for this one mission. This one task that would define him forever.

  As their eighteenth birthday approached and his task lay before him, his mind turned to Ari.

  He’d heard she was in Paris with one of the clones. Rumor was she was going to save it or something… and save the world. God love her, at least she was trying at something, right?

  If she didn’t come to him this time, he’d go to her. Because soon after their eighteenth birthday, he’d be leaving for the US and didn’t expect to return.

  Once you turned eighteen, you could change your name and he intended to change his legally and then apply for new ID which his father wouldn’t think to trace. He knew, after buying himself so many batches of fake U-cards over the years, his dad wouldn’t think Arthur might suddenly arrange a bona fide change of identity. With this new ID, he’d get into New York as a dual citizen and start his work out there… eventually bring his crew over… and destroy Roche, once and for all.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS DAY, which Dad called Boxing Day, I heard Camille and my father up and about, carefully moving around the house because it was still very early. I left Kyle sound asleep and caught my father alone in the kitchen as he was filling up his flask with coffee.

  “All set?” I asked.

  “Didn’t expect you to be up at this hour, go back to bed and stay warm,” he said, pretending everything was okay—when in fact he just wanted to avoid this awkward conversation.

  “I’m not going out of my way to fix Arthur. If he wants to see me, he’ll have to come here.”

  “That won’t happen and you know it,” he sighed. “He’s barred from leaving the UK.”

  “You say that but he must have a plan if he’s soon to be heading across the Atlantic.”

  “He will never manage it,” my father professed.

  “All I’m saying is, this isn’t on me.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he groaned. “It’s on me, your mother and the resistance. But Camille asked you to help, and you refused, so what can we do? Nothing. That’s that.”

  He was in one of those passive aggressive moods, so I turned to walk away. However, Camille was in the doorway, no doubt having heard everything. She came towards me in her fur suit and hugged me. She smelled of expensive perfume and snow, sort of metallic. It was one of those December mornings that didn’t make sense. Outside there was blue sky and sunshine, though the snow still sat frozen up to people’s thighs. It felt even colder with the air clear and not a cloud in sight. Better for flying, however.

  “How are you getting to the airport?” I asked, noticing she’d already been outside.

  “We’ll hike to the edge of Paris. We left a truck there, you see. It will have to be dug out now.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  “Be safe,” she whispered against my ear. “I’ll take care of Arthur.”

  My father kissed me on the cheek and hauled their bags over his shoulders, then followed her out of the house. They disappeared amid the whiteness and never looked back. I felt alone again, and even though I knew I had Kyle upstairs, I realized I had missed that sense of community… because family is family, at the end of the day.

  I drank a few dregs from the bottom of Dad’s coffee pot and felt more than a chill as I climbed the stairs back up. Kyle was still resting so I pushed the door closed on the en suite and began running the bath. I’d filled the tub and lowered myself beneath the bubbles by the time Kyle gingerly pushed open the door, squinting and scrubbing his hands through his hair.

  “Did I, like, sleep all day? You don’t bathe in the morning, do you?”

  “Not normally,” I giggled. “I waved them off and felt cold, so I ran the bath. I’ve probably exhausted my bath tokens now for the next month.”

  I’d filled it deep and had heard the pipes in the walls hissing, what with the temperature outside the house being so different to inside.

  “How’s about I get in with you?” he asked. “If we’re gonna be out of tokens now, I mean?”

  He was standing there in his flannel pajamas, rubbing his arms, pleading his case. I’d seen him naked a few times already and we’d both been semi-naked in bed together, but never had we been fully naked together, yet. However, it seemed like he was asking so he could get warm, too.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  I averted my eyes as he stripped, but when he climbed into the other end of the bath, I briefly saw a flash of pubic hair and his abdominals. His snow-white skin gleamed in the early-morning light and looked heavenly. I’d never had to bother sunbathing because I stuck my head out of the house for five minutes a day and had a tan, being my father’s daughter and all, blessed with Granny Connie’s skin.

  It was typical of Camille to adorn her house with beautiful things, including this enormous porcelain tub cum swimming pool in her master en suite. I should’ve given up our room to her while they were staying but she didn’t mention it and anyway, any room in her house was luxury compared to the shack she’d been occupying in York.

  Camille was at least a millionaire, that much was clear, and yet she wasn’t showy. She had classic, elegant taste and could’ve had property anywhere, yet the only house she kept for herself was this one in Paris. And she hadn’t even bought it. Lawfully, she’d inherited it from her parents after their deaths, but was only able to reclaim it from the squatters who’d moved in during the crazy years after 2023 once she was Eve’s assassin and had the goods to back up her claims.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing’s the matter.”

  “Something is bugging you, don’t lie.”

  “Nothing’s bugging me.”

  “Hmm.”

  He kept staring at me so I obviously hadn’t convinced him. It was a little odd that I was sharing a bath with a gorgeous naked man whose legs were touching the outsides of mine and yeah, all I could think about was other people.

  “What is it your brother has done precisely that is quite so bad?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “I’ve not even been thinking about him,” I muttered. “I’ve been thinking about Camille and my father.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re two of the richest people on Earth. My dad, especially. So why are they hiding? Why are they not doing more?”

  “Doing more?” he asked, confused.

  “I’m just rambling, ignore me,” I said.

  “No, it’s clearly something on your mind. What do you mean, doing more?”

  “Stopping Roche,” I said, and he cottoned on. “She’s got all these plans for America that don’t involve the rest of the world. There’s also a chance she had a hand in my mother’s death… and yet, Dad and Camille do nothing. I don’t get it.”

  “Is that why your brother went rogue?”

  “Yeah, in part, but mostly… he just couldn’t accept her death.”

  “What do you think killed her?” asked Kyle, and I sighed, because somehow my foot had ended up on his chest and he was rubbing it.

  “I think it was the thi
ng in her brain. I think someone was trying to hack a way in. I actually think she did it herself.”

  He stopped rubbing my foot and looked shocked, not moving, at all. “Suicide?”

  “I think she knew if she jumped off that bridge, it would be instant, and there’d be no way to reverse it. They couldn’t revive her in any way because it’d be ages before they found her, and it was. You see, they’ve got these mad techniques now for bringing people back to life. And yeah, part of me wonders… if it had been me… and I’d known my enemies might try and use me as a weapon against my own family members… would I have done the same thing? Yeah, I would, and not only that… she mailed me her xGen two hours before the event. Nobody knows but me that she did that. Camille knows I have the xGen now, but for months after Mom’s death, I told nobody I was in possession of it and never switched it on for them to realize.”

  “Oh, god,” he said, a hand over his mouth.

  “Even now, Camille thinks I just found the xGen by chance or something. I don’t know. We never discuss it. But what I know for sure is that I knew Mom like I know myself. She would’ve defended herself, of course, but what if she knew she was outwitted and decided she would rather take her own life than let them take her? Perhaps, Dad and Camille know she took her own life, too. Maybe we all know but just don’t wanna admit it. They came that day to take her, but she wasn’t willing. There was no gunshot wound found post-mortem. People just assumed she’d been thrown from the bridge and that’s what had killed her.”

  “That’s so awful, but would explain why your dad and Camille have mourned the way they have and haven’t sought to avenge her in any way.”

  “Exactly,” I said, feeling sorrow well through me. “But Dad just doesn’t have it in him to spell it out to Arthur, who was a mommy’s boy through and through. Maybe Dad doesn’t even know for sure, although I would’ve thought he went through the xGen readouts from Mom’s security team.”