by S. M. Lynch
“When you picked up Kyle, I believed in you, Ari,” she continued. “I believed you’d finally get through to one of them and that you might help change the game. But he didn’t see that, at all. Seth worried Kyle couldn’t be trusted, but I trusted you, Ari. Anyway, he and I had a difference of opinion… and I left New Zealand. It’s taken me a few months… I had to sneak through Asia, then Europe. But I’m here now. To help in any way I can.”
I stood up and moved around the room, as much as I could do anyway, with all those bodies standing around. Arthur caught my eye. He was thinking exactly the same thing I was.
“None of this explains why Kyle was sent here,” I exclaimed.
“It doesn’t. But I have a theory,” said Mom.
“Go on,” asked Camille.
“He might be recalled soon and asked to give a report of his findings on Earth. Perhaps because of you, Ari… they could be convinced the human race is worth saving. We have to hope so.”
“What if they don’t send him back?” I said under my breath.
“We can’t be sure,” my mother admitted. “But I can’t see why they would hold him. As long as he tells them what they want to know.”
“And why was Seth so vehemently against Kyle?” I said, staring into Mom’s eyes.
Mom looked at my father, then he gave a nod, and she opened her mouth to speak but deliberated over it for a while before she said, “Because we can’t account for his missing years, of course. Anything could’ve happened in that time. He could’ve been brainwashed.”
There was only one thing I felt in that moment.
Used.
I’d been used.
Kyle had been used.
We’d all… just been… used.
Even Arthur, who stood there feeling like they didn’t trust him… didn’t want to include him in any way.
However, I was most used. Nobody had warned me I might really lose Kyle. Nobody had told me to go slow and not fall for him. Nobody had put their arm around me and tried to convince me I wasn’t ready for love. Was there ever a good time to fall in love? Probably not. But they could’ve warned me all the same that it might be for nothing I’d give my heart away.
I especially looked to my mother, most guilty of all.
“I wish I could forgive you, Mom, but it’s going to be so hard.”
“I knew that, and I’ll take it on the chin,” she said, looking between Arthur and me.
Arthur didn’t look very forgiving, either, though he was definitely glad she was alive.
“I’ll never forgive her,” muttered Camille, who was looking down at the floor and wiped her eye, then folded her arms tight. “This cruel Maddon streak… it certainly does not extend to Ari, though. That’s my one consolation.”
“I totally agree,” said my mother. “Ari, whatever pain and suffering we’ve all been through, you can make it worthwhile. All they need to know is that there is something here worth fighting for. Something pure. That there are people like you Ari, who will carry us into a better time. You are the future, your father’s successor. We all know it.”
I slowly turned my head and could see Arthur didn’t agree with this, not one bit. My father saw the exchange and gave my brother a warning look. Arthur was controlled by the hot-headed Maddon genes, whereas I was my father’s daughter, through and through. Level-headed, calm. Fair. Brutal… only if I needed to be.
“I don’t want there to be any delay. Kyle and I will have our last day together here, today… and he’ll go tomorrow. That’s all there is to it. Either these other life forms help us, or we get busy helping ourselves… in any way we can. That’s all there is to it. We don’t have time to waste. What must be done, must be done.”
My mother nodded and looked relieved she’d picked the right child to see out this task.
Yes, a child, barely an adult.
Everyone stood up. Mom and Dad shuffled off rather guilty, Camille gave me a big hug and a tender kiss, a sorry expression and a shrug. Arthur was the last one to leave.
All he said was, “This is bullshit,” and he sneered at Kyle as he passed.
Then, it was just us again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
KYLE CAUGHT UP WITH ME in the bathroom sometime later. As soon as they’d all left the house, I’d run upstairs and set the water running, sinking myself inside the tub’s warm cocoon, trying to soothe my broken heart.
He looked pensive and fearful when I looked up to meet his eye, my chest tight just thinking about how extraordinary he was.
“You’re entitled to hate me, and that’s fine, but know this… I did not remember any of my old life when we first met… and it was only when your mom said the word… that I remembered Panacea.”
I’d been crying but I didn’t know if he could tell. I’d been splashing water over my face continually, to wash away the bitter saltiness, and now because he was in the room, I couldn’t cry anymore.
“You have to tell me the truth. Do you really not remember what happened after you went into hibernation?”
Kyle knelt by the side of the bath and kept his eyes on mine. “No.”
“And you don’t remember the ship? You don’t remember anything?”
“No.”
He took a deep breath and searched my face, seemingly enamored. But how could I believe anything that came out of his mouth anymore?
“It was five whole years!” I gasped, still finding it hard to believe she was back. “I’ve lived five years without her. It’s felt like an age to me. I don’t know how she could’ve left me for so long.”
He reached out and brushed his fingers over my cheek. I didn’t recoil because I still loved him, maybe even more now I knew his story.
“Time’s funny, Ari. I should know. Dreams seemed endless. I lived a thousand different lives in my dreams. But life… speeds up the older you get. Five years hanging around his place in New Zealand might’ve seemed quick to her.”
That made me smile. How naïve of him to say so. “She would’ve hated it out there. The city is in her veins. She hates the country.”
“Listen, maybe you just have to trust your mother, Ari. You’ve trusted me thus far… and I’m a nobody. Trust her, the woman who bore you. Your father seems to… and he trusts nobody, does he?”
I sighed with exhaustion and annoyance. “You’re right.”
“You don’t hate me, Ari?”
“No, I don’t,” I said, shivering.
I wished I knew about the sixty years in between he couldn’t account for—and how he even got up to that ship in the first place.
“Let’s get you out,” he said.
I pulled the plug while he fetched a towel, and once I was out, he wrapped me inside it and rubbed his hands up and down my body, over the towel, to dry off my damp skin. I wasn’t particularly cold, I was just coming down from the shock and feeling strangely relieved.
Eventually once I was inside his embrace and he was staring down at me, he said, “I’ve lived a hundred years and I only just found my purpose.”
“Yes?” I squeaked, drowning in his intense, deep brown eyes.
“It was all meaningless before, Ari. Nothing made sense. But you’re my purpose now. I was a waste of space before… drifting… going with the flow. Nothing meant anything, and I can’t quite explain it, but now I feel like I mean something… because of you.”
What he was saying made me feel emotional and took my breath away. I didn’t know what to really think or feel or say. I just knew my feelings were growing stronger for him all the time.
“I used to think it was pointless they’d saved me from the cancer only for me to be living a non-life, stuck on Panacea, never moving forwards… and I have to say, the past couple months have shed light on everything I suffered… on the boredom, the lethargy, the static way of life there… because it all brought me to you, and I will never, ever regret any of it… because of you.”
“Kyle,” I blurted, shaking and feeling weak.
It was the sweetest and most loving, sensual and passionate kiss of my life and my stomach blazed to life with yearning in exchange, desperate for him.
We broke apart, both of us panting, flame-cheeked and aching. We had each other’s entire attention and I thought he was the only person I would ever love for the rest of my life.
“I need you, Kyle,” I whispered, “I love you.”
He carried me to the bedroom where the towel fell to the floor. He pulled his shirt over his head as he climbed onto the bed after me, and I pushed down his joggers and underwear. Without foreplay or anything, he pushed into me and I moaned, and in an instant, he was buried inside me, because we needed one another so badly.
“Is it because you’re from the past you’re so good at this?” I asked.
He shook his head and smiled. “No, it’s because of you that this is so good.”
And it was so good.
After my first orgasm, he went down on me and it was the first time really that I’d not been embarrassed about it and we had eye contact throughout. He wanted to taste me and he did that, then he made me orgasm again, and I was shaking and happy when he grabbed my thigh and jerked me onto my front, nipping his teeth into my butt before licking slowly along the length of my spine. Then we made love with him on top of me from behind, and he said, “Touch yourself, Ari.”
“I—I don’t do that.”
“For me,” he asked.
I learned quickly what made everything feel even more intense and we both cried out as we neared a piercing, intense shared orgasm. Afterwards, I was so surprised how much I’d grabbed onto him and squeezed, I was a little shy.
Kyle held me tightly and nuzzled into my neck in the aftermath. I felt like I needed another bath. Then he brushed his nose to mine and I stroked my hands through his hair, feeling so in love.
He gave me a lopsided grin and said, “You’d never touched yourself before?”
“What? No,” I whispered, like it wasn’t something people did—or even talked about.
“What about—”
“About what?” I asked, giggling.
“Did any boy get you off before?”
“No,” I exclaimed.
“Really?” he asked, proud of himself.
I wrapped my legs tight around his hips and squeezed hard, making him growl with delight and a little bit of pain, too.
“Ari,” he groaned, and moved in, kissing my throat.
My pelvic floor fluttered in response and I laughed, wrapping my arms around him and letting him take what he wanted from my neck.
“What more could you possibly want?” I laughed, loudly.
“Oh, well, where do I start?” he groaned, nipping his teeth into my earlobe.
“You’ve had lots of women then?” I asked, seeing as though he’d lived so long.
But my question wasn’t met with ease. He pulled back a little, seemed put out and didn’t like the insinuation.
“I was only with my first, Lissa a handful of times. I didn’t really like doing it because she’d trapped me into doing it the first time, then threatened if I didn’t do the decent thing, she’d tell my father I’d forced her or something. Then, after that, I felt she would try to trap me before the marriage with a baby, seal the deal sort of thing. I never loved her. She was so shallow and vain and it was only because our fathers were partners.”
“Oh, I see.” That sounded heavy. A bit much for a teenage kid.
“On Panacea, people would fuck different partners, night after night, because what else was there to do? But I didn’t get involved. I was just an experiment, an outcast… there was no-one I found a connection with. And I’m not soulless, Ari… no matter what Arthur says… I always wanted it to be real, you know?”
I moved him onto his back and looked down into his eyes, resting my chest across his slightly. He looked up at me, serious-faced and defensive.
“But there must have been someone else you practiced with? You’re the only guy who’s ever given me an orgasm and I’ve been with two others and they were both crap.”
One had been a scientist on my father’s staff. I think it was the forbidden aspect, more than anything. The other had been Granny Connie’s gardener. Now, he was gorgeous… but entirely uncreative.
“Just two?” he asked.
“Why, did you think it would be more?”
“With all the medicine available nowadays, what’s to stop people having several lovers per night?”
“Partners, maybe… lovers is different. Lovers is us. People are rarely lovers now. They’re just… stand-ins, I suppose, for the real thing.”
He grabbed my ass and grinned with a dark, filthy look in his eye I adored.
“Us, huh?” he said, reaching up to plant a quick kiss on my lips. “Gotta say, I was jerking off a lot before you and I got into bed. Something to do with the hormones they give you, your dad mentioned. So, don’t you think if I’d wanted, I could’ve escaped your house and gone out at night? But I didn’t. I think I knew the moment I set eyes on you that I loved you. And now nothing but what we have could ever measure up. I love you, Ari. I’ll always love you.”
“You can’t leave me, Kyle. I don’t want to be parted from you. We need to get out of here tonight and go. Come with me.”
He pressed his nose to mine, nodding his head. “Yes.”
“Yes?” I gasped.
“Yes,” he said chuckling, and kissed me.
And we made love again.
THE NIGHT CAME and the weather was clear, for a change. The snow had ceased, the streets had been cleared and though it was icy, it was looking likely we would get free—together.
We’d packed our stuff and were ready to leave. There’d be no stopping us. We were going to stay together and they wouldn’t take him from me. No way. After we had probably our last steak dinner for a while, I set up one of my burner devices on the kitchen table and got to work.
When we’d flown to Paris, two and a half months before, I hadn’t trusted Kyle then—but now I did—and he was going to find out what else I could do.
I set a few things in motion that would paralyze everyone else’s devices in Paris for the night. My parents thought I’d only been studying chemistry while doing my degree—they were wrong.
In my spare time, I’d studied how to write viruses and tonight’s would be a big one—and I knew even Seth Buchanan would struggle. It was going to be a tricky, spiky little jerk they wouldn’t find easy to contend with. I was going to use the back-up systems Camille still had dotted around Paris and piggyback onto those. Nobody would get around all of them before the virus had done its damage. If the people who thought they could control me believed they’d seen everything, they were deluded. They hadn’t seen me yet or what I was capable of.
Leaving the burner xGen running on the kitchen table, I nodded to Kyle it was time to go.
“There’s going to be some freaky shit, but let me deal with it, just follow my lead,” I told him, taking a deep breath.
“I trust you,” he said.
He pulled a heavy backpack onto his shoulders and tightened the straps. We were both dressed in leathers beneath fur coats—our helmets were waiting by the door.
“It’ll be seconds. We’ll have seconds,” I reminded him.
“I know. You told me, Ari.”
“Okay. Okay.”
I took a deep breath and we walked into the hallway. Using my mom’s xGen, which for the night I’d cloaked with a different ID, I sought the interface I needed and remotely powered up my bike. The camera on the machine showed me the streets as it travelled on temporary stabilizers towards us—and the coast was clear.
While I was bringing the bike to us, Kyle checked his guns and nodded he was ready. The sword was once more beneath my coat but I also had a pair of stun-guns tucked inside my breast pockets. Only if I had to kill, would I kill. We
donned our helmets and got ready.
The bike got closer, and closer, to our street… and when it was almost at the corner just before turning towards us, I made it stop. I swallowed thickly and bit my lip. He stared at me with no fear. He was ready.
“On three,” he said.
“One… two… three…”
We launched from the house and I brought the bike careering around the corner. It stopped right by the sidewalk outside of the house and we were peeling away just as I heard the front door slam shut.
We tore away from Montmartre at speed, careful not to succumb to the frozen cobbles as we escaped.
Nothing seemed to be following.
I’d put my open xGen on the bike console in front of me and there were no bogies in the vicinity. I saw the countdown, however… watched as the virus was let loose. People would know as soon as it was unleashed… we were getting out of here. But better to weaken their chances of pursuing us, should any of Camille’s spies spot us tearing away.
Rather than risk the slippery downward slope back into central Paris, I headed up the hill, higher and higher. It got tiring swinging around one corner after another… but when we were finally on a faster road, I let the bike do the talking.
“There’s nobody following,” he yelled, tension in his throat.
“It doesn’t feel right,” I agreed.
We continued on anyway. I’d already sent instructions to the jet and it was currently hovering above Paris. I’d let it know where to land once we got where we were going and it seemed safe.
After we’d navigated the outskirts of Montmartre, we hit the A86 and I throttled that baby like there was no tomorrow. This was our best chance of getting through a checkpoint without getting arrested. The former toll on this road was sprawling and had been converted into a checkpoint. We’d be able to pick our escape route at this time of night.
Sure enough, the checkpoint began to meet us pretty fast and I felt him remove his guns from inside his coat.
“Ready,” he said.
We sped up to a row of booths and he picked one in the middle that was unmanned. I kept the bike at speed while he put his arm on my shoulder to aim steady, hitting the barrier in the middle, splitting it in two. We shot over the splintered wood and raced through. It was so quick, if anyone was even manning those booths, he or she might not have seen us—that is if they were even still awake in their warm cabin while it was so cold outside.