by S. M. Lynch
“I’m not going to condone your trip across the Atlantic, if that’s what you’re here for.”
Arthur was surprised, his eyes betraying shock, before that smarmy grin spread over his face and he donned an expression of complete and utter nonchalance.
He swung his legs about but stayed in one place, like the urge to move was there, but he just wasn’t ready to show his hand yet.
“You’d deny what we are, would you?”
“I wouldn’t deny anything that’s true,” I retorted. “I’m not the one who’s in denial.”
“We’re American, Ari, it’s where we belong. The rest of the world is gonna go to shit. You know it, I know it. Come with me.”
“I won’t,” I said firmly, “and you know this. You knew it yesterday, like you knew it last year. My place is here. Where we were born. Where her heart belonged. And you know it.”
He grunted and swiped his hand out, a gesture of reluctance, not in agreement with me.
“What do you think you’re doing with that?” he said angrily, gesturing vaguely in Kyle’s direction.
I glanced briefly over my shoulder at Kyle, who looked calm but also ready to move.
“I’m happy,” I said, but even two words apparently had the power to rile my brother, because he shifted one step forward and I saw the ferocious jealousy inside his eyes.
“We’re never going to find anything with anybody else like what we have with each other.”
“And thank god for that,” I growled. “It’s bad enough dealing with just one of you.”
“Ugh, f—” Arthur cursed and twirled around, making peculiar faces, because I was the single, most astute person he knew.
He couldn’t coerce or manipulate me… and he knew it.
“You disgust me, you know?” he said glaring, lip curling. “You’re here, playing happy families, entertaining the freaks that called themselves her loyal partners in this war… and you’re just not ashamed, at all, are you?”
“I’ve not got anything to be ashamed of. Unlike some people.”
“Like that, is it?” He tried to sound repulsed, but just came off as pathetic.
“The war you talk of does not exist anymore. This world is doomed and we all know it. The end is inevitable. What could there be to fight over when there’s barely anything left? If you think you’re going to find savior, then go. Leave. But you won’t find it.”
His façade crumpled and he looked murderously annoyed with me. “You’re a spoiled brat and you know it, Ari.”
“Perhaps.”
He could try to insult me all he wanted, but he wouldn’t get a rise out of me.
“Whatever reason he’s here,” he said, gesturing at Kyle, “you can bet it’s something to do with this war.”
“There is no war.”
“No? Okay. Live in your little fantasy land.”
My brother clicked his fingers and many more men crept out of the shadows, crowding around behind the guys he’d already had guarding him—a display of looming aggression. Kyle was suddenly behind me, the shopping abandoned on the steps, his hot breath by my ear. He put his hand on my arm, encouraging me not to enrage Arthur any further.
But I already had my katana raised and pointed at my brother’s throat. Since I turned eighteen yesterday, today I thought it was time to start wearing it on my belt beneath my big black coat. Camille gave it to me. Once I’d turned eighteen, it became mine. She passed on the baton.
“Try something,” I said to Arthur, a trickle of blood running down his throat from where I had it pressed up against his Adam’s apple. “I dare you to try.”
“You’d dare cross me,” he said, smarting.
“You’d dare cross me,” I repeated. “Call them off. Call them all off. Or their murders will be on your head tonight. I swear, Arthur… if you don’t call them all off…”
“They’re all programed,” said Arthur. “I can’t call any of them off. They will fight for me. I will have revenge for our mother, and you will stand at my side, or I will have his head tonight.”
I felt their eyes meet over my shoulder, as Arthur looked past me to my lover.
“You’ve taken clones as your soldiers?” I asked, aghast.
“I’ve taken the lost… the discarded, given them purpose… given them a chance,” he said, like he really believed he was righteous in this.
I’d already altered my breath to fill my body with oxygen. My muscles were twitching in readiness and my body balanced on its toes as I stretched myself to full height. I glared at Arthur and reminded him again, “I’ll have the head of every last one of them unless you go now, fight your stupid war without me, and leave me and Kyle alone.”
“Kyle,” he spat, and burst out laughing. “Don’t make me puke!”
It happened swiftly after that. My brother raised his gun and tried to shoot Kyle, but the bullet veered off and hit a lamp post as I clipped Arthur’s knee, sending him to the ground.
“Restrain him,” I said to Kyle, who nodded and pinned my brother face down in the ground, his hand holding Arthur’s arm at such an angle, if he tried to move, it’d break.
While my brother was squirming in the snow curbside, the brigade came towards me. Every single one of them was soulless. Walking meat. Not one of them showed a shred of humanity, spirit or purpose. They were all robots.
This was what I’d been trained for. What Camille had prepared me to become. The warrior I’d been holding back was now released and it felt good as I prepared to unleash her on these beasts.
“Care to dance,” someone whispered in my ear, before a shadow shot past me, then body after body began to fall.
She didn’t get all of them, and a couple came at me, trying to use my hair to force me to my knees. I had their heads rolling off their bodies before they could do anything remotely unsavory. My weapon, at one with my arms and hands and fingers, did not suffer fools and did not have sympathy. Their ways were old-fashioned, clunky and heavy-handed, whereas Camille’s technique had evolved over time, according to whatever enemy she was dealing with. Still, elegant and light-footed never went out of fashion, and there was proof of that as she stood over the bodies of more than thirty of those creatures, strewn across the street. Her weapons hung from her hands at her sides, more Mara’s weapons of choice, I thought—two scimitars.
“We’ll have a clean-up van, please,” she said into a wristband, in French.
She came back towards me, grinned, one eyebrow raised. “Too easy. No fun. But okay, I suppose.” She laughed haughtily and we high-fived. She had more blood on her than I had on me, but didn’t seem disgusted. She seemed to revel in it.
“I could’ve taken them,” I said, walking back towards where Kyle was holding Arthur.
“Yeah, but I was here anyway, so…”
“You’ll regret this,” Arthur complained.
“That’s nice,” said Camille, totally unfazed, and took out a roll of tape, tearing off a strip with her teeth and covering Arthur’s mouth. She then taped his wrists together.
“We’ll take him to the mansion,” she instructed, just as a gang of people dressed in black boiler suits arrived with a dump truck and began throwing the bodies into it.
Kyle got Arthur to his feet and wondered where the mansion was. Camille collected our discarded bags and met us again at the bottom of the steps.
“Follow me, then,” she said, unhurried and relaxed.
I shrugged and Kyle pulled a face, like he wasn’t entirely shocked, but was quite concerned.
We didn’t pass anyone else on the street, and even though it was cold, it was still odd; almost like Camille had put the word out there’d be trouble tonight.
We made it to the mansion and Kyle gazed up at all five floors of it, astonished. Just a huge limestone mansion in Montmartre, Paris. Certainly worth at least 100 million ED.
Arthur groaned, hating to be returned where he belonged, and the moment we got through the door of the house, Camille relieved him o
f all his gadgets and weapons and stuffed them in a lead-lined safety box.
“Ah, isn’t that better, eh?” she grinned, pinching his cheeks. “Bad boy had his toys taken off him.”
I caught sight of Kyle looking around the room. It was as though he’d never seen anything like it before. Our staff kitchen was large, nothing to write home about, but it did scream money. Everything in that kitchen was for convenience, and high-tech appliances were built-in, plus there were TVs in the walls and rows of microwaves. He gulped and raised his eyebrows at me, saying nothing.
“Have you got this little scrotum?” asked Camille, looking to Kyle.
“What do you want me to do with him?”
“We’ll join the others up those stairs,” she said, pointing to where she meant.
“Others?” I asked.
“You’ll see, Ari,” she said, almost apologetically.
I had no idea what she meant.
We took the steps that led through to the long hallway, and then Camille gestured at my father’s office. Kyle went in with Arthur first, and it was like I felt my brother’s pain, not only because I could hear his muffled voice ring out behind the gag, but also telepathically… and I had no idea what I’d be walking into.
Camille gestured I go in ahead of her, and the first thing I saw was my father’s back.
“You never left Paris, then?” I asked my father and Camille. “Of course, you were expecting Arthur, all along.”
Then my father moved aside, and I saw who was standing in front of him, hidden behind his massive bulk.
I didn’t believe it at first. Thought it was an apparition. A hologram.
But those eyes. Those same eyes. Her red hair, streaked with gray. Her tall, lean, strong body, her big, round shoulders, strength inside them… long legs. Black boots. Black cloak. An older version of me.
I fainted… but somebody caught me.
Part Three
The Awoken
Chapter Twenty-Six
I WOKE UP WITH MY head in Kyle’s lap. He was trying to give me water. We were in one corner of the long couch under my father’s office window, at the opposite side of the room to the big desk. I looked around and found only Camille’s eyes. She was sad, distraught, in disbelief… and had been the one who caught me before I hit the ground. She’d known the only person to calm me in this moment would be Kyle, who was stroking my hair, asking me if I was okay.
My father was behind his desk, head in his hands, and to my left… Arthur sat in the other corner of the couch, my mother in his arms, both of them crying. He was cradling her. I remembered when it was the other way around.
And I felt boiling anger seethe through me. “Why do you get to be all sorrowful?” I shouted in Ryken Hardy’s direction. “WHY DO YOU GET TO FEEL FUCKING SAD?” I yelled, and left the couch, ran to the desk, and pounded my fists on the walnut top. “YOU KNEW!”
“Ari,” my mother cautioned. “You don’t know the story.”
I turned on her next, the fire in my heart, lungs and eyes singing the air around me. She was her, but not the same. Much aged. Weathered. Battered. Not the same.
“How could you do this to us? How could you do this?”
My brother was inconsolable and unreachable. Arthur was clinging to Mom like he was terrified she’d disappear into a puff of smoke again.
I saw Kyle, then. He was looking down at the floor, hunched over on the edge of the couch, shaking his head.
“And you!” I said, pointing at him.
He looked up, frightened.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
“He didn’t know,” my father said roundly.
I shook my head, staring between my mother, father, my aunt and my boyfriend. I didn’t believe any of them.
Arthur and I briefly caught each other’s eye and it was as though, between the elation, sorrow and confusion, he was telling me, “I told you so… I told you… this is what they’re really like.”
But I wasn’t any of them. I wasn’t my mother, who flew off the handle at any given moment. I wasn’t my father, who raged inside until he needed to go off and kill something. I wasn’t my aunt who was so deceitful, she even despised herself. And I wasn’t my hot-headed brother, either.
I was me.
“I don’t want to see any of you tonight. You’ll leave me and Kyle be until I’m ready. I’m sick of the sight of the lot of you. You can all think on your sins…”
“Ari,” my mother begged.
“No,” I said, shutting her down. “No, Mother. No. You don’t get to do that. You left us motherless at thirteen. You don’t get to expect anything from us, all right?”
My father came at me. “Don’t speak to your mother like that.”
I pounded his chest with my fists and spat at him, too. I pushed him and yanked at his shirt, trying to fling him about, but he just stood there like the rock he was, taking it all, like the waves of a thousand oceans had tried to eat away at him, and yet he still stayed, solid, unbreakable, come what may.
“LOOK AT YOUR SON, FATHER! And think on your god damn sins!”
The room went deathly silent, then I ran out, Kyle following in hot pursuit. He gingerly put his arm around my shoulder as we walked through the city streets.
It was when we got inside the house and into the hallway, I sank down the wall and he sat with me on the floor as I bawled my eyes out.
Now he had to see what this was like. Being part of this family… wasn’t normal.
It was toxic.
I ONLY SLEPT that night after a lot of crying, a lot of the bad wine, and a lot of consoling from Kyle. When I woke up nestled inside his arms, it was like I’d never stopped crying, because just the smell and feel of him made me emotional—elated he was with me, shocked he was with me through this.
“You should hear them out today,” he said softly. “It might alleviate your pain, if you know the truth.”
“I’m not ready.”
“That’s how you feel, and you’re entirely entitled, but you’re saying that because you’re afraid of what they may have to tell you.”
“I hate every last one of them.”
If there was one thing I had over them all, it was stubbornness. I had that in spades, more than the rest of them put together. It was what had led to me meeting Kyle, after all.
“Who sent you?” I asked him. “And don’t bullshit me, because I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime. Who sent you?”
“I truly do not know, but what I do know is that you need to speak to your mother, Ari. I swear, I think it’ll all make sense afterwards. I hope, anyway.”
“No,” I said, throwing myself back down into bed, facing the other way.
“They’re downstairs already. I heard them come in around eight. It’s now ten. They’re waiting for you.”
“Right, that’s it.”
I threw myself out of bed, donned my robe on top of my pajamas, and launched downstairs so fast I nearly skidded down.
They were all in the kitchen and Kyle wasn’t far behind me in his pajamas, too. My mother and father were together at the table, laughing over coffee. Camille had her back to the counter, holding a mug of tea, tickled by something.
My brother was rummaging through the fridge, complaining there wasn’t anything to eat. I looked at them all like this was utter lunacy. How could they be like this?
“You could’ve been seen,” I accused my mother, and smacked the fridge door against Arthur as I walked past him.
“Ow,” he complained.
I reached into the top cupboard for pop tarts. You could only get them on the black market. I’d been saving them for some special occasion. Like maybe Mara returning home, having caught Lucius’s killer, or my brother having seen sense off his own back. I threw the box at him and he caught them. Quick reflexes.
“Do you want some, pal?” Arthur asked Kyle.
“Sure. What are they?”
“Hot sugary shit.”
Kyle’
s eyes lit up. “Great.”
Arthur filled the toaster, Kyle grabbed the OJ, and they were standing with their backs to the counter as they waited for the toaster to pop, sharing OJ like last night never even bloody happened. My brother wasn’t a caffeine hound, either; he and Kyle had that in common.
Camille passed me coffee as I stood in the middle of the room, wondering what to do with them all.
“You’re better when you’ve had coffee,” she whispered, and I took the mug without thanking her, or even letting her think I was happy about it.
“Are you ready to hear the truth, then?” said my father, who still had a bit of a bruised cheek from where I’d smacked him by accident last night while flinging my fists in his general direction.
“None of you are forgiven, especially you,” I said, grunting in Camille’s direction. She cowered into a corner of the room and supped her mug of tea like she was at the altar, begging for redemption, or something. “And you,” I said, turning to stare at Arthur. “I haven’t forgotten about your stupidity. I’m not done with you.”
Kyle and Arthur looked at one another, like they’d both encountered my wrath before and understood it wasn’t nice to be at the brunt end of it. The toaster popped then, and I was handed a pop tart by Arthur, who offered it before moving back quickly, frightened. I nibbled a corner, because it was still too hot. Then I tentatively took a seat at the table, stared into my coffee, and waited for her to start talking.
“It was five years ago,” she said, pausing.
I looked up and saw her, for the first time in five years—really saw her—and knew she’d aged a lot more than five years. Her face was lined. She’d never had gray in her hair before.
She touched the side of her head, tapping her skull. “It began like a dull, faint whisper, then it got louder. I knew something was trying to reach me… and I was right.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
IN 2024, BEATRICE FLEMING BUCHANAN led a mass exodus from Panacea, the island complex where it all began. Hidden in the South Pacific, cloaked from the outside world, Panacea had been the cause and the solution—but Nathan Buchanan, and his estranged wife, wiped it out—believing the island’s hidden secrets were a crime against nature. Beatrice helped thousands of islanders board a boat and escape, before a bomb flattened everything… at least, above ground, anyway.