The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5)

by Michelle Muckley

  “Mr. Christian, please.” He nodded his head to show acceptance. The woman had also stepped forwards, her features no longer visible. The cheers were already fading. He closed his eyes and took a breath. He didn't open them again until he heard the door being zipped up behind him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Mr. Christian, if you would like to step into the vehicle.” Zack was standing inside the orange tent, the material extending from the back of the van all the way to the outside of Delta Tower. He was somewhere on the outside of the tower, and yet still completely blind to the outside world. The material which surrounded him looked thick, and although it buckled as people moved around, it also looked very much as if it was being blown from outside. By the wind. He reached a hand forward with the intention of touching the tent, but the female Omega worker who had scanned his wrist reached out her arm to intercept him. “Mr. Christian, please.” She coerced him into the vehicle, and realising there was little point in making things difficult, Zack did as was asked. He placed his foot on a step, a small black metal panel with diamonds covering it, the black paint worn away by years of traffic. He ducked as he stepped inside, the van bouncing on the suspension as he held onto the edge to pull himself up. Inside he found that he could almost stand straight. Two workers stepped in behind him, and they were lighter on their feet, their movement fluid. The female of the two ushered him forwards.

  “I am sure you have plenty of questions, and there will be plenty of time for you to ask them later. But for now it is very important that we adhere to the programme.” Zack nodded as he watched the second of the new-style Guardians - that's what he had decided to call them - punch in a series of numbers onto a keypad. With both Guardians and Zack inside the van, the sound of ejected air whistled out from inside the tent. The material swirled in on itself, sucked into a central point like a whirlpool which sealed the van closed. He heard somebody slam the doors of the van shut on the other side of the orange membrane. Were they.....outside? The roar of the collective citizens of Delta quietened, and the van began to pull away.

  “Take a seat, Mr. Christian,” said the Guardian who was standing at the door. Both female, he thought. He hadn't seen a female Guardian in the whole time he had been stuck inside Delta Tower. Zack did as he was told and stumbled to the edge of a bench which ran along the side of the vehicle. His legs were unsteady like a baby deer. The two female Guardians sat opposite, and both of them fastened a form of seatbelt reminiscent of a racing car rather than any vehicle Zack remembered travelling in. “Your belt is behind you, Mr. Christian. Please fasten it.” Zack reached around and fiddled at the straps, his fingers shaking, making coordination difficult. He managed to pull both arms into the straps, and after several attempts fastened the belt. The inside of the van smelled of old metal, like dirty coins, and he could taste it on his tongue. As soon as they heard the click of the seatbelt the first of the Guardians struck her hand against the side panel of the van and the speed at which they were travelling increased. Zack had decided that it resembled a prison van much more closely than it did an ambulance, the vehicle normally used to rescue those in need. In the far corner, closest to where he assumed the driver to be, there was a metal cage. Freedom was a fiercely guarded luxury in New Omega. Was the cage for him if he got out of hand? What would they do if he tried to force his way out? They weren’t carrying Assisters. But why would he even try it? Freedom was after all, only as good as that which was to be found on the other side of captivity.

  “Are you both Guardians?” Zack asked in an attempt to concentrate on something tangible. He interlocked his fingers, stared at the two in front of him whom he could perhaps overpower if he wished to, but that he knew he wouldn’t. He decided that the cage was nothing more than an echo from the past. Yes, that was all, no more real than a reflection. At first they didn't say anything as he watched shards of light dance across their visors as it streamed in through the thin strip of windows that punctuated the highest corners of the vehicle. Perhaps they hadn’t heard him. The background rumble from the road was loud enough to hinder their hearing, especially through such heavy suits and visors. So he began to ask again. “Are you.....”

  “We are not Guardians, Mr. Christian,” one of them said. Zack had no idea which one had spoken, and decided not to ask anything else. He pulled his hands tight into his lap, and tipped his head forward so it didn't hit the side of the van as the driver negotiated the poor road.

  To travel in a wheeled vehicle after so many years felt both invigorating and surreal, and he could sense a smile inching onto his face. He felt it necessary to control it, to stifle it, as if excitement wasn't allowed or appropriate. The silence and apparent lack of friendliness from the two non-Guardians had made him uncertain of how he should react. They sat opposite him like two icebergs, seemingly visible and within reach, but with so much hidden beneath the surface any attempt to approach was a dangerous and senseless act. He was pulled from his thoughts by the rolling movement of travelling on wheels. It was unsettling his stomach and he could feel it somersaulting as if the contents balanced on the surface of a giant trampoline.

  “Are you feeling alright, Mr. Christian?” the first Guardian asked. His colour had drained. White as a sheet, people would have once said, but not like any sheet he was used to.

  “I feel a little sick,” said Zack, bringing his hand up to his mouth. He had started shaking, and began to sense an urge to free himself from the belt. Even to get out of the van. He started to fiddle at the belt buckle, using the weight of his body to pull at the straps.

  “Calm down, Mr. Christian. There is a bin at your side.” Zack looked left and right, and found a small cylindrical drum. He leant to his right and as soon as he bent over his stomach lurched, bringing up a milky white froth into the cylinder. “It’s quite normal, Mr. Christian,” said one of the non-Guardians. “You have forgotten what it’s like to travel on wheels, and if you mix that with a bit of nervous excitement, well,” she pointed to the bin, “that is what you get.” Zack smiled, glad of something that resembled a conversation, a connection to humanity. He sat up straight, aware of an overwhelming relief in his symptoms, and he wiped his mouth on the back of his grubby overall sleeve.

  “Sorry,” he said, and the first non-Guardian handed him a tissue. He dabbed his mouth, wiping it clean by opening it wide as he pressed the tissue into the folds and corners. Even though he could still not see their faces, he felt in some way that his actions were rough, born of the Delta world in which he had existed for so long. It was how he had felt when he saw Emily in the sublevels, ashamed of the version of himself that he had been reduced to. He couldn’t have been expected to be anything else, but yet he felt that he should have been. Perhaps they were hoping for something better. Perhaps he was a disappointment to them. He pulled the tissue away, taking care to appear as if he hadn’t forgotten everything from the old world and his old life, including his manners. He folded it in half before dropping it into the bin to cover up the vomit. He sat up straight, adjusted the overalls and seatbelt straps before brushing his floppy hair away from his eyes. He felt better, less shaky. He didn’t want to disappoint them.

  “Thank you.” His thank you was for everything. He could have said it time and time again, for any number of reasons, and although this particular thank you stemmed from the simple act of sharing a tissue, it was so much more than that which they had given him. In the pandemonium that had occurred in the moments after the draw, the people of Delta had lost themselves. They had stopped obeying the regulations, forgotten the sixth creed of the Omega Manifesto, to conduct themselves with dignity and with regard for their neighbour. But this only applied if you judged them by the standards set by Omega Tower. In the old world being dignified didn’t mean silent. It didn't mean obeying the rules of the manifesto without question. There was no manifesto. Dignity could mean to speak, to express opinion, to protest. Individuality was celebrated. Even encouraged. But now dignity was not causing a sce
ne. To work without malaise. To work for the good of all. To become the Omega version of yourself. The citizens of Delta Tower would pay for their mistaken belief in freedom. They would nurse their wounds and as the Guardians tightened the noose of control, the memory of that night would fade like the bruises on their skin. It would become a legend, a distant idea, nothing more than a dull ache. The story of Zack's escape would change with each retelling until people would wonder if he was just a myth. It was memories that Delta Tower stifled, because it was memories that made you who you were and that gave you a future.

  Zack hadn't tried to forget the past. Delta Tower had been gnawing away at it, wearing it down layer by layer like the paint on the step of the vehicle in which he sat. In some capacity it had succeeded, because most of his memories had become fractured versions of what they once were. But with freedom came the power to reminisce. To remember. He had lost so much in Delta Tower, and so many bells had chimed to mark the unstoppable passage of time that he no longer counted. In the midst of his daily delirium, his old life seemed like a distant relic from the past, outdated, archaic, and no longer relevant. He could never allow himself to think of the people from his old life with fondness, certain that such joy was undeserved because of the indefensible mistakes that he had hurt them with. Nobody more so than Samantha. And then Delta did the rest. But now he realised those memories were still there, because he could feel them again. It had begun almost as soon as the numbers were drawn. New Omega had pulled him from Delta Tower, but his memories were here to give him life. They were his oxygen, his blood. Perhaps finding his Omega-self, was really just about finding the person he used to be.

  The van bumped over a large pothole, and he knocked his head against the metal panel behind him. It woke him from his daydream, flung him back to the moment like a catapult.

  “Some of the roads are still very uneven in surface, Mr. Christian,” said the first Guardian, her body almost motionless; only the faintest of rocking with the movement of the vehicle visible. “You will feel a few more of those until we make it home.”

  Home. Is that where he was going? Home to him was a cat and a girlfriend, a family who visited at the weekend. It was a place where his old records sat proudly on display and the turntable next to it was used every day. The hundreds of LP sleeves which he had collected over the years and flicked through daily. Home was a place where he belonged, a place of shelter, a place where he didn’t consider his safety because he could take it for granted. It was a place from which he had never wanted to leave, but had managed to destroy through his own failings. Even without the war, Samantha would have been lost to him. But the idea that he was going home, returning to familiarity after a great odyssey, was like a dream. Was it home he had found … had found him?

  He looked up towards the windows lining the highest corners of the van, windows like oversized arrow slits on a castle wall and built the wrong way round. They had been painted over, some sort of thick black paint coating the glass. He could see the streaks, the ragged edges where the job had been completed in a hurry. Perhaps it was special paint, something that helped block out radiation. Zack patted the wall of the van. It felt like a normal vehicle, thin and flexible even. He could feel the eyes of the non-Guardians upon him, observing him, watching his movements, so he returned his hands to his lap, interlocking his stained fingers to stop them from wandering. But he allowed his eyes to explore the walls. He was hungry for new details, the imperfections, the curves, the rusted regions of paint which he hadn't expected to see outside of Delta, and this was when he first saw it.

  A clock. The second hand ticked silently, counting time without prompt. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. It was a simple model. Black casing, white face, and thin black hands with rounded corners. The typeface was plain. He sat transfixed for a while, watching the black hand move around the clock face with purpose. There were no clocks in Delta. Only bells. How much time had passed? How many seconds and minutes and hours had been counted by this clock from the moment that, for him at least, time had stopped? But that was the thing. Time had never stopped. The clocks had been ticking all along. But even if they hadn't it didn't matter because the clock was just the vessel, a human construct for something more elusive. Time, or rather the passage of it. Watching the clock on the wall, as inconspicuous as a speck of dirt, he remembered the phrase; time waits for no man. It had been passing just as it always had, second by manmade second. In the old life people knew this. They placed clocks on walls, watches on wrists, trying to capture it, make it their own. As if by knowing it placed it somehow under one's control. Have you got the time, people used to ask. But nobody ever really had the time. You could never have it. You couldn't buy it or own it. It was a beast beyond taming. Wild and dangerous, there one minute and gone the next. Birthdays, anniversaries, new years; people counted it as if they had the ability to restrain it. In the old world there was a time for everything. In Delta, time had elapsed. Now it was back. Just like that.

  “The clock,” he said, turning to the non-Guardians and pointing up at the device, mounted on the wall between them and the driver. “The clock works.”

  “Yes, Mr. Christian.” The first Guardian.

  “But if the clock works,” he said, swallowing hard, his mouth too dry and sour tasting from the vomit, “then you know the time. And therefore you know the date.”

  “Yes, Mr. Christian.” Still the first Guardian. “We know the date.”

  His thirst to know pushed him to ask what the date was, but to know that seemed an overwhelming concept. To know something so simple, but which had simultaneously become something so unrelated to his life for so long seemed such an unrewarding possibility. Suddenly he had the chance to know not how much time he had lived, but lost. Perhaps he had been in there for ten, maybe twelve years. Maybe it was only three. He imagined it was like waking up from a coma and learning that you had been out for years rather than hours. The joy fades, and the focus becomes the loss.

  “It’s three o’clock,” he said, his gaze wide and mouth limp. “It’s three o’clock.”

  “There will be lots of changes to get used to, Mr. Christian.” Their covered faces remained still. At times it was hard to make out who was talking. They seemed one and the same underneath their suits. They barely even moved. They were almost without identity, like the Guardians but somehow worse. But yet the voice that first said Welcome to Omega would forever be the voice of his future. It would be the voice of his lifetime. All memories from now on would play to the soundtrack of her voice, a simple three word statement that changed everything. Then he heard that voice again, right before he was about to ask the date. “We are here.”

  Instinctively he looked at the clock. Five further minutes had passed. How easy it was to start counting again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The surface over which they were travelling smoothed out, and the van came to a halt.

  “Stay seated, Mr. Christian,” one of the non-Guardians said as they both unfastened their belts to stand up.

  Zack sat on the bench seat, his belt strapped across his chest, the smell of part-digested porridge wafting towards him. The two female non-Guardians shuffled towards the back of the van and one of them punched in another series of numbers. The tenting retracted like a reverse whirlpool, and beyond it he saw a set of doors. They were opened from the outside, and two more androgynous non-Guardians appeared. Zack glanced past them to see others dressed in the same uniform scattered about the room performing various tasks. All of them had their faces covered by a black visor.

  “Mr. Christian, welcome,” said one of them. A man's voice, warm and kind. The two female non-Guardians who had accompanied Zack slipped into a separate room on the far side of the wall. The door was almost invisible, seamlessly set into the concrete. Zack arched his neck to get a better look, but his view was limited. He could see that the walls were white, clean, and bare without marks or dirt. They looked intact, and the floor too was spotless. No bomb damage.
The person behind the mask was leaning into the van, waiting for Zack's attention. If the man hadn't been wearing thick black gloves, he might have clicked his fingers. Zack snapped back into the moment. “Would you like to step down, Mr. Christian?”

  Zack unclipped his seatbelt, his fingers steadier than before. He began to stand up but his knees felt week, and his belly grumbled. There was a swimming sensation rolling around his head, pushing at his eyes from the back. It made him feel like they were bulging out, fish-like. As he dragged his hand away from the van, the gritty surface of the bench seat scraped at his skin, leaving just the slightest fraction of himself with his last journey from Delta. He told himself that now was the time. The first moment of the future. He breathed it in, sucking in the antiseptic smell of the white room in which he found himself. There was also an undertone of fresh paint. He stepped onto the highly polished concrete floor, and steadied himself by holding onto the back of the vehicle. The nearest wall had B1 painted on it in bright daffodil yellow. The colour of spring. Of new beginnings.

  “I’m ready,” Zack said, as if they had afforded him a moment to acclimatise.

  The non-Guardian held up a small pancake-flat probe attached to a long arm, wafted it left and right like a magician might command a wand. It reminded him of an airport. Travel. Holidays. In his other hand he held a small box which he brought up close to his eye level to read. Zack could hear the sound of static, like running your hand across an old bevelled television screen. The non-Guardian flicked a switch on the box and the sounds stopped.