The Last City Box Set

by Logan Keys

  An uprising.

  Me, facing the leader of the regime, Reginald Cromwell.

  And lastly … Jeremy.

  Purple eyes that smile at me across the green lawn, where he quotes poetry in our last days together.

  Our love shared, my music, him kissing me.

  And when I feel the bullets go in all over again, I clutch at my stomach and wail. He shot me!

  And I’d shot Reginald. I’d killed the evil man who’d fathered the one I loved.

  And still love.

  Cory’s there at my elbow, trying to console me as I choke on the pain of old and new emotions that collide.

  I shake Cory from my arm and glare at him. “You,” I say. “You used him to make me feel sorry for you!”

  He’d used the piano, the poetry, the purple eyes I love so dearly. He’d plucked memories from my brain to trick me.

  I reach for Spirit, feebly lifting her in my hands that shake from the fast beating of my shattered heart, and I turn toward the liar, pointing her sharp edge at him.

  Cory eyes Spirit like he isn’t sure whether he should take me seriously.

  “You knew someday I’d remember.”

  When I step closer, he backs away, hands up. “I’m a mind reader without even trying. I didn’t mean to abuse it; it was the only way to get you to trust me.”

  “You control people, manipulate them. I actually cared for you, but you’re no different than they are.”

  “I am.”

  “Then tell me you didn’t kill Tommy.”

  He can’t.

  We stand frozen.

  Cory tries to placate me, walking forward with an arrogant tilt of his head. I raise Spirit and, thinking of Tommy in his final moments, slash her down, her edge catching him in the face.

  Cory shouts and falls back, tripping over his feet.

  I’ve cut him from forehead to chin. Blood flows freely, and it’s a satisfying sight.

  What is Spirit for, if not for righting the wrong?

  Cory touches his face, and horror dawns at the flap of skin he feels flayed on his perfect visage. “You witch!”

  I push the sword’s edge up to his heart, easy to do with him flat on the ground. Cory’s eyes flash with fear when he realizes I’ll do it. “Wait! Come with me to Anthem. Don’t you see? We’re free now, Liza.”

  “Free? I’ll never be free. I’ve lost everyone now. If Simon doesn’t use me, someone else will. This whole time I’ve been payback for old vendettas—one between the scientists, and another between you and Tommy.”

  “That’s not true. I can help you, Liza. Just let me—” But he loses the false hope. “You know he never really cared about you, right? I can read minds, Liza. He just didn’t want to be alone. He couldn’t stand the thought of it—it terrified him! But when he got here, in a snap, Tommy was inches into that Asian girl. He wasn’t worried about you, not when he had her. Every. Single. Night. Why would he choose someone like you, Liza, when he could have a full woman? One whose body hadn’t been hacked away at by the Authority’s butchers.”

  Hands shaking, I press Spirit harder into his chest, and he shuts up.

  “You can’t make me hate him, you worm. No matter what you say.”

  With a sneer, Cory spits out the blood that’s gotten into his mouth. “How does it feel to be one of the only girls left in the world, and still be second choice?”

  The marks on my arm glow again, and my eyes grow blurry, a faintness makes me sway.

  Even my voice has changed; I sound as if I’m channeling something greater than myself. “Time will not be kind to you, Cory Prince. It’ll wear you down, make you old, long before you should be. Simon’s right about you.” I sense Cory’s fear, something Simon had said to him … what was it? The words paint themselves across the wall of my mind. “You’re a reject.” That’s it. Cory’s eyes widen with wonder. “The headaches will go on longer, worsen until you lose control of yourself, and someday, you’ll be unable to bear it."

  “And then what?” He tries to remain impassive, but he's rapt to my comments. Enthralled, but fearful. He knows something from beyond speaks for me.

  "You’ll end yourself.”

  A chill ricochets through me, but Cory’s the one who shivers.

  His eyes brim with tears, and he clutches onto me like a child learning to walk.

  “When?” he pleads.

  Disgusted, I yank away, and Cory rights himself, clearly embarrassed by such a display.

  I come to myself, still filled with anger to the point of breaking. “Perhaps you want me to end your life now?” I ask.

  Cory glares up at me, still on his knees. “If you try it, I’ll wipe your mind before you can blink.”

  We’re at a standoff.

  I lunge, aiming Spirit at his chest.

  Then there’s nothing.

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Liza

  I wake up beside the moat, puking and crying.

  And begging him to kill me.

  Cory watches me with a bored gaze until I see myself rising, as if I’m not even inside my body.

  My conscious slowly separates from her, that girl standing there, waiting for Cory to say what to do, while I’m becoming the tiniest creature, small enough to fit inside the particles of a water drop, floating away, through a mist, until lastly, I land in front of my old bed on the island.

  My bunk’s exactly the same. A breeze touches my scalp, and when I rub it, I find it’s shorn.

  “This seems the most comfortable, don’t you think?” Cory says.

  He’s not here.

  No one is.

  It’s the island, but it’s empty. Every which way I turn are the familiar hallways, bunks, and cafeteria, but it’s all been abandoned. Even the outside is without guards or prisoners.

  Voices echo through the camp, ones heard by my ears somewhere where my conscious is not.

  “What have you done to her!” Leo shouts. “She’s nothing more than a zombie.”

  “Leo!” I call, running uselessly through the halls.

  “She’s an insurance policy that’ll get me to Anthem,” Cory says.

  I pause to listen, and someone curses. Then Phillip’s yelling, trying to break up a fight, by the sounds of the grunts and the muffled words that cut off too sharply.

  The real world filters into this one, though only by sound.

  “Okay, all right,” he says, subdued. “Crystal won’t like it, but I’ll take you. I’ll do it.”

  “Hello?” I say when the voices shut off.

  Cory’s brought me to Phillip and has forced the Skulls to take us to Anthem.

  I fight a looming fear, telling myself Crystal will be there and she’ll know what to do.

  But here, all alone, I’m swiftly falling prey to the idea that maybe my life from Anthem to La La had all been a dream, that I’d remained stuck here instead, waiting to die from the cancer.

  That I never left.

  Even knowing it’s a trick, I can’t help curling up on the scratchy covers of my old bed and I close my eyes against the loop that starts all over again. The memories I’d wanted so badly before come rushing through, darker, more twisted than they’d truly been.

  Each time feels like the first—I lose everyone and everything.

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Crystal

  The doctor—I’ve never had another name for him—watches me watching him. His eyes are clearer than any sea, or sky, and as always, I’m brought full circle to the day I met this man—if he is even a man—when he saved my life.

  I’ve waited long months on the Island, and everything we’ve set into motion is blindly going on without me. Feels strange. I’ve sat still for so long, while my own revolution turns by itself.

  Either way, Phillip’s gone ahead to LA, and I trust him to get the job done.

  “I want to know the story,” I say.

  I’ve never asked him before, about the reasons behind all of this.

  The
doctor nods, looking as if he’s ready to tell me. “Simon and I were coworkers, scientists on the verge of discovery at a very early age. We found the machine together, along with other artifacts. At first, we thought they were old, and they were, as far as age went, but not like we think of artifacts—rusty, corrupted. The metal appeared new, untainted by time, and the engineering was none like we’d ever seen. We’ve always believed that ancient civilizations didn’t have vast technology, that we were the most advanced of humanity to date, but we were wrong.”

  I can’t help gaping at the idea of a technological age thousands of years ago. “What kind of technology?”

  “Magnets. We’d seen these before in artifacts, something other than simple rocks and wood machines. But they’d found a way to propel metal and create energy, all using the planet’s natural magnetism. Simple, yet so profound, and we soon realized the ancient race had actually been ahead of our advancements.”

  “Ahead?”

  “Yes, but then wiped out by some cataclysmic event. All but these items we found, one of which was a peculiar machine for travel. We weren’t the first to find it, though; it’s been unearthed many times, and it set off the dark ages before the finders were wise enough to toss it into the ocean. At these points in time, they were both given their names.”

  “What does it do?” I ask. “Time traveling?”

  His face remains unchanged by the story, though I sense the passion, the regret, and the sadness, even without voice inflections. Is this why the doctor is so changed? He’d “traveled” in this machine.

  “It does only what the traveler wishes,” the doctor says. “To go beyond? Certainly. But I saw it as a mind-opening experience, much how a naturalist had maybe felt on an expedition, finding new animals or creatures. For myself, I entered, only accessing the knowledge of our own world, past and future. I found new cures, ways to make genes healthier. Simon was more interested in the spirit world and its inhabitants. He ventured into places I felt we shouldn’t go. Not that we should have been ‘going’ anywhere, as it was. The people who created this machine didn’t live long enough to share their knowledge, either. But he wanted to use the resources to build super-humans, stealing energies. We argued to the point of physical fights.”

  “You didn’t want super-humans?”

  I sense the doctor softening. “I felt like I’d met so many of them already. My specialty was human health and biology. People fighting the diseases that worsened over time with the compound breakdown of our genes. These were superheroes to me. People who survived devastating diseases, our weather, wars that tore families apart, and eventually the zombies and the regime. This force of humanity, being unstoppable, the fact that life would find a way, was all I needed as proof of our strength. But Simon began his work anyway.”

  “Did Simon make the zombies?”

  “We both did.”

  In a flash, the first human emotion pools in his eyes—immense regret—and then it’s gone.

  “I thought if I helped him, I’d keep him from making the mistake I feared most: permanent corruption of the genetics. But more importantly, corruption of the spirit.”

  “The spirit?”

  “The soul can become very ill, and something spread—a thing we hadn’t seen a disease do alone: kill the human will, robbing it of its essence. Along with the disease, the zombie is twofold: one part biological, and one part something else. They’re like prisoners in their own minds.”

  This thought horrifies me. “You mean, deep down inside, these people might actually be thinking?”

  “I believe so. When Simon made progress with the first Special, he had little worry about the ‘rejects.’ Until they got out and began to feed on people.”

  “But not even then did he quit. He began a quest to get a perfect Special, two of them, to restart the genetic issues in our world. He was obsessed. But then, of course, it backfired. The Authority grew out of fear of the zombies, and sick people were blamed with a false science that claimed they had a higher risk of turning. Someone had to pay, and when they took them here I felt responsible. I left him to his madness. I’d traveled too many times by then and was starting to lose which existence was reality—here or there.”

  “And you work here to counter his?”

  “We need balance.”

  I silently absorb everything he’s said. He’s never shared with me his plans before, or this story.

  Finally, I look over at the figure on the bed breathing steadily, health returned to his face and eyes moving rapidly beneath the lids.

  “Will he remember?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

  “I’ve done all I can. I think I’ve repaired most of his memory, but he might be different, Crystal.”

  I stare at the fluttering eyelids, until they spring open. I place a hand to his scratchy cheek, and he focuses on me, seems to remember, but his mouth isn’t working yet.

  “Jeremy,” I say. “Can you hear me?”

  To Be Continued….

  Author’s Notes

  01/011/2019

  Dear Readers,

  Thank you for reading the first book in my young adult dystopian The Last City!

  This was one of my earliest novels ever written and I still have a load of nostalgia for the characters in this world! The journey has just begun so you can continue this saga with book three that is now available right here: CLICK HERE

  If you want to stay in touch with me you can follow me on amazon here: CLICK HERE

  Please sign up for my mailer to keep aware of releases and deals: CLICK HERE

  My website: LogansFiction

  I am always open to discuss my books with you on facebook or email me at logansfiction@gmail.com

  Cheers,

  Logan

  Lies and Legends

  The Last City, Book 3

  LIES AND LEGENDS

  By: Logan Keys

  Copyright 2017

  This book is dedicated to my husband. Love you, TT.

  Dedicated to the fans who have managed to stick with the ups and downs of the series. You are awesome.

  Chapter One

  Liza

  I am Liza Randusky.

  It is so easy to lose your way when your life is not your own. A sense of who you are can fade when some other force controls you. Whether that be a person, a thing, a past, even an idea---all of it can change the core you… if you let it.

  Time is a construct based on the fact that we will eventually die. All of us. No exceptions.

  The earth will embrace our bodies and we will not rise again. But since humans have found ways around certain limitations, is time still a factor?

  Here in Bodega I was dead. They say for four whole minutes.

  But I came back.

  And since then I have relived that moment at least one hundred times. Cory has seen to that. A man who espoused kindness to trick me into his lair of madness, he holds me captive body and soul. Time is meaningless when inside this world where Cory Prince has placed me. It could be days or centuries, and I would never know.

  It’s only when he gives me a taste of freedom that I realize life has been going on without me.

  But this mind trap is reciprocal I am finding. We’re bound together inside of his game, and we share more than I wish. Perhaps more than he’d like as well.

  It is far more intimate than carnal knowledge to join thoughts. He knows my deepest fears. And since the bond has been overlong, a thing I’d wager is new to him as well as me, I am also learning the things that terrify Cory.

  I study them.

  I pocket them for later.

  For instance, he doesn’t like people staring at him. He projects the fear onto me, making it as if I, too, am bothered by it, or as if it will scare me. These are slips, cracks in his imaginary existence, and I see him in every single mistake. Even here on my bunk, the fake people of Bodega flowing by are robotic and slightly different from memory.

  Cory fails at times to get them right.


  Empty eyes.

  Empty smiles.

  That part is the same.

  But he’s missed the quiet dignity with which these prisoners faded into their end.

  These people dying, they were full of life.

  Cory forces me to relive my death but not my rising in the same mechanical way. But I did not die. I must remind myself of that because each time despair takes hold freshly.

  Despite waking over and over on Bodega Island, and sometimes other places (often we go to my other memories too, things plucked from my mind like making a musical selection), with all this repetitiveness, I am able to think and think.

  That part is actually not so bad.

  Contemplation is not my enemy with so much having happened.

  No, my own mind will never be my enemy. I won’t let it.

  I know exactly whom to hate.

  Being able to repeat things does that to a person. It reveals truths that otherwise might be overlooked, and I am to pull at a single thread that begs the question: Who am I?

  I am not like Jeremy. Ambitious. And I am not like Tommy. Still believing in the goodwill of mankind.

  Neither a zealot who blindly follows the cause, nor a good-natured soul leading by example: and thus, returns us to: Who is Liza Randusky?

  It is a desperate plea now, a mantra. So much so that it’s even written on the walls of this imaginary place.

  The first time I saw it, I’d figured Cory had placed it there to taunt me.

  But the second time I discovered the words chiseled neatly into the walls of Bodega, I touched the rough edges and realized an important thing. That I was the one who’d written it.

  With my mind.

  And if I can control this, it could lead to other things.