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

by Michelle Muckley

  “I'm sorry,” she said, as she began to withdraw her arms from around him. Immediately he felt colder.

  “Don't,” he said as he turned around. He reached up and ruffled his fingers through her soft mousey hair, and more splinters fell to her cheeks.

  “I have to shower. I have been to the hygienist for my weekly cut.” She brushed the shards of hair away from her skin, some of them falling onto him. He could smell the odour of the medicinal soap rising from her skin.

  “I have to shower too. Don’t back away,” he said, sliding his arms around her. “Don't let me go. Stay with me.”

  “Okay,” she said, reaching her arms around his back. She nuzzled her face into his chest and her head slotted in the shadow of his chin.

  “Don't let me go. Stay with me,” he said again as he squeezed her tight to his body.

  “I'm with you,” she said. “I'm here with you.” It was nothing more than a coincidence that she uttered the words that meant so much to him. The words he wished that he could go back in time and tell Samantha. It was perhaps only now that he understood what it was that he had lost when the bombs fell and his world fell apart. It wasn't his apartment, or his records, or the clothes that he used to wear. He loved his cat, as much as a person can love an animal. He had craved such comforts, but they were irrelevant. It was the connection to another person.

  After several minutes Sarah pulled away, a warm smile on her face as she reached up and touched the hair above his ear. She motioned him to sit and so he sat on the edge of the bed and she joined him at his side. She reached over and took his right hand in both of hers. She pulled it into her lap, and again he felt the warmth of her body.

  “I know you don't know me very well, Zack, but there are only a limited number of people in Omega Tower. We have to support each other. I never met anybody else that I would consider being with. I'm sure they put you in this room next to me for a reason.”

  “I wondered that too, Sarah. Simon keeps telling me that being part of a couple is heavily rewarded. He keeps telling me how important family values are in the Republic.” She was nodding in agreement. “But you're right. I don't know you at all.”

  “Is there somebody else that you have met? I have seen you with the other girl. Serena.” Zack shook his head, because for some reason, as weirdly beautiful as Serena was, he hadn’t once thought about her as anything other than a friend. But what he hadn’t expected was that Sarah’s question had made him think about Emily. He was desperate to see her again, and he didn't know whether that was because he wanted to find a way back to Delta to rescue Leonard, or whether it was just her that he wanted to see. He had tried to remember how it was when he met Samantha and how he had felt. It had been so long ago he couldn’t remember what it felt like to desire somebody. To want them as if they were a need. Did thinking about Emily now mean that he had feelings for a girl he had met only a handful of times?

  “No,” he said, hoping that he sounded convincing. “Serena is just my friend. She tells me about things that she sees outside, and she has been helping me adjust to life here.”

  Sarah smiled, pleased, it seemed, that there was not already competition for his affections. She stood up and picked up her teacup and finished the drink. “Then let's just be friends, for now at least, and see if we can't try to like each other. Or rather, to see if you can try to like me. I'm not so bad, really,” she said, giggling as she pulled her clean dress out from underneath him. “I'm going to take a shower, and if you are still here when I get out I'll take it as a good sign.”

  She walked towards the bathroom and opened the door. She flicked on the light revealing a replica bathroom to his. The tiles were plain white and there was a square mirror hanging on the wall over the sink in which he could see her face as she leaned down to remove her shoes. She caught him watching her and she turned back to Zack.

  “I'm not asking you to love me, Zack. I hope you realise that. There's no place for love in Omega Tower. Love isn’t something that you can agree upon like this. I'm just asking you to take a sensible decision that helps us both. Any feelings that we find along the way are just an added bonus.”

  She closed the door to the bathroom and Zack sat in silence until he heard the sound of running water. Outside he could hear life carrying on around him. There were children in the corridor and somewhere close by somebody was opening and closing a door. Greetings were exchanged as two people met.

  Zack looked towards the main door of Sarah’s bedroom and thought about leaving. He could take the stairs or the lift and travel up to the president's apartment and knock the door. He could ask to see Emily and tell her that he couldn't stop thinking about her. He could tell her that he was desperate to get her alone so that she could teach him how to get into Delta. He could tell her that the hopes he carried when he came to Omega hadn't been fulfilled, and that life here wasn't what he wanted it to be. He could tell her that there was a team of murderers that kill innocent people called Drifters who were only trying to survive. He knew that she would care about that, and that made her special. He just wasn’t sure exactly how.

  To walk up those stairs or take that lift and knock that door would take a huge amount of courage. It would no doubt threaten his position in Omega. Even thinking about doing it seemed ridiculous. It would be better to do that than stay in this room, more truthful and meaningful, but yet he couldn’t do it. Just like he couldn't help the girl under the bridge. By coming here he hadn't just traded Delta. He had traded his ability to do what he thought was right. In Delta he had picked up that dying boy and ran with him to the sick bay to save his life. Now sitting on the edge of Sarah's bed he couldn't even remember that boy’s name. He had promised to go back for Leonard, but he hadn't done anything to make that promise a reality. He had stagnated, forgotten his principles. Traded them for a selfish chance. He was no more likely to go and knock on Emily’s door than he was to walk away from Duke on his first day outside.

  The water stopped running and he could hear Sarah moving about in the bathroom. He edged himself back on the bed and kicked off his shoes. The Renunciation Pledge was working, and the green-eyed girl from ISOLATION ONE had been right. He had to renounce two lives in order to succeed in Omega. They were forcing him to forget the person that he used to be, and the person he had become in Delta. What surprised him the most was that he had barely questioned it.

  He didn't know who he was supposed to be any more. He thought he knew who he was when the bombs had fallen. Then to survive in Delta he had been forced to become somebody else. But in Omega it felt as if he was nobody, floating through different versions of life just waiting for something to stick. He figured that being nobody was easier when there was somebody else to do it with. At least that way he could pretend that being nobody was his choice.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  The Community Level was a hive of activity the following morning. There were three people waiting outside the physician's office, including Zack. There was a handful of people sitting nearby in the adjacent Refreshments Cafe. There were also four people waiting to donate blood in a separate waiting area which had a big red blood drop painted on the wall above the seats. These men were playing their part in helping the less fortunate feel like their Omega-selves as part of the Omega Transfusion Programme. Simon had told him that in two months time he too would be expected to donate, once his health was up to scratch.

  It was still early, and the clock was yet to strike nine. Zack was late eating breakfast and his stomach complained over the delay. He had woken up late in Sarah’s bed, and after running next door to his Unity Panel to check in, he had no time left even to grab a banana from his bedside locker. The light filtering through the tiny, almost transparent clouds, cast the whole area in the haze of late summer. It reminded him of being a teenager, when he would while away days in the meadows with his friends, swimming in the nearby river. Back then killing time was easy. With all the time in the world it was easy to do nothing. Doin
g nothing now seemed like a waste. He had spent ten years in Delta doing nothing.

  “It's a beautiful day, our good President.” The man at his side, probably somewhere in his mid-forties was talking to him. His eyes were on the windows, watching the clouds drift by as Zack turned to face him. A bird breezed past and the man chuckled to himself.

  “Praise our good President,” said Zack. His response satisfied the man, who nodded before reaching forwards to pick up a magazine. The health centre was like an old doctor's practice before the war. But the magazines had been replaced by copies of the Omega Manifesto. Even in the library there were no other books. No stories to read, no history to recap. Nothing but copies of the Omega Manifesto. There was a whole inventory of books that the library was supposed to offer. Brave New World. Slaughterhouse-five. 1984. Yet none of them were available. Zack had been there six, maybe seven times and not once had there been a single book available on the shelf.

  Just as Zack was about to ask the man at his side if he had used the library with success, a door opened to their side. A nurse wearing a white dress buttoned asymmetrically from the chest to the neckline stepped out. On the top of her head she balanced a white nurse’s hat.

  “Mr. Matthews, if you would like to follow me.” Mr. Matthews placed the copy of the Omega Manifesto back on the table, lining it up so that it did not disturb the neat pile. He smiled and nodded his head to bid Zack farewell as he followed the nurse into the room.

  The other person who had been waiting alongside Zack and Mr. Matthews was at the water fountain, looking out across the destroyed city through the nearest window. Zack wasn't fully orientated yet, but he thought that from this window he would be able to see Theta. It was one of the largest towers, near the river, and responsible for bringing the imports from Denmark. Zack assumed this was also where his crack team of assassins arrived when they first stepped foot onto the contaminated land of the Republic. Theta was the most obvious connection to the outside world.

  Zack reached forwards and picked up a copy of the Omega Manifesto, a ten-page booklet dedicated to the rules of Omega. He leafed through in the hope that he might see something that was unexpected, something that shouldn't have been there. Perhaps a piece of graffiti, or a tear that might signify an act of defiance. Any lack of perfection would have given him hope that somebody else saw what he saw. That somebody else saw this place for what it was; a shallow, charlatan of a society. When he held Sarah in his arms yesterday and lay with her on her bed, he realised that it was only human contact that could bring him comfort and help him move on from the past. Now when he looked around at the cleanliness and comforts of Omega Tower, he realised that it didn't offer him any more than Delta Tower ever did. All of the things he had craved for so long and had assumed would improve his life had been trivialised by Sarah’s touch.

  After having reached the conclusion that Omega Tower wasn’t the solution, his first thought when he woke up that morning was that he had to get back to Delta Tower. He imagined slipping back through the sublevels as if he had never been away. His mind was on Leonard, and the people he had left behind. Then, when that plan seemed futile he told himself that he would run. He would take his twenty seconds’ head start and charge over the bridge because his life depended on it. There had to be more Drifters out there, didn’t there? Either way, it was staying in Omega Tower which seemed like the last resort. And yet he was here, sitting in a doctor’s office because they had told him it was necessary. After ten years of very little else other his own company, he still had no idea how to convince himself that he was right. Sarah was right. Courage was something he had very little of.

  “Mr. Christian, would you like to follow me.” A second door had opened, this time on the opposite side of the three chairs. Another nurse was standing with a clipboard in her hand just like Dr. Watson on his first day in Omega. She was wearing the same uninterested expression on her face as the nurse who had called Mr. Matthews.

  Zack stood up and took a step towards the nurse. Realising he was still holding the Omega Manifesto in his hand, he stopped to place it back on the table. His first instinct was to line it up just as Mr. Matthews had. But just before his fingers left the edge of the magazine, without any conscious intention, he offset the edge so that it sat at an irregular angle. He stood up to face the nurse who was waiting for him in the doorway, staring at the deviously misaligned manifesto. He could feel the defiance building up within him as she stood firm in the doorway, waiting for him to rectify the fault. It was like a stand-off in the Wild West, two gunslingers waiting to see who would pull the trigger first. He wondered who it was he was trying to fight. Was the nurse his enemy? Omega Tower? The Conservators?

  He relented, and crouching down he edged the magazine back into the pile so that it lined up. Neat and orderly. Obedient. He stood back up and the nurse smiled, smug, like a mother who had won an argument with an obstinate child without raising her voice. “Very good, Mr. Christian. Very good.”

  He followed her into the small room. There was a couch running along one side of the wall, and a white glass-topped desk was positioned opposite to it. There was only one other cupboard, spotlessly clean, without a single item placed on the top.

  “Lie down on the bed and wait for the doctor.”

  She spoke in a brisk fashion. She was polite, but Zack could tell that she was irritated by him. He wondered if she was like this with everybody or if it was his actions with the magazine that had bothered her. There are believers and nonbelievers, Zack. That’s what Serena had warned him. This nurse was most definitely a believer. So he wasn’t just a coward. He was a stupid coward, acting up when he should know better.

  Another door opened behind him. “Good morning, Mr. Christian.” It was Dr. Watson. It was nice to see a familiar face. “How are we today?”

  “I'm not sure about you, Dr. Watson, but I'm fine.” Zack’s attempt at normality was lost somewhere between his lips and Dr. Watson's ears. Zack was the only one that was smiling.

  “Very good, very good. A problem with the pulse, I see.” Dr. Watson set the glass clipboard he was holding down onto the desk. He tapped his fingers against the desk in a way that made Zack believe that the Coordination Panel was set in it. Zack learned over to take a peek. He could see writing and images, and even his own picture. When did they take that? “Please rest back, Mr. Christian, and keep very still.”

  Zack slouched into the bed and let his arms and legs go floppy. The back of the bed began to recline and Zack was being lowered so that he was lying flat. At first he wasn't sure if it was the bed that was moving or whether something was moving towards him. Either way, it resulted in Zack being drawn into a cubicle lined with glass tiles, smooth like a mirror, the colour and texture of a tropical ocean. A series of orange and green lights flicked on an off above his head. A cool breeze and a gentle hum resonated from beneath him until the light inside the cubicle intensified to the point that he had to close his eyes. Zack opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so, and before he could get any of his words out he heard Dr. Watson telling him not to move.

  “Keep nice and still, Mr. Christian. Nearly finished.”

  Just a moment later the lights dimmed and Zack felt the couch on which he was lying slide out of the cubicle. He flipped himself over in a panic of claustrophobia to see a panel sliding to close off the cubicle in which he had been placed. The back of the couch rose up and Dr. Watson walked towards him. He reached over Zack and tapped the wall at the side of the couch. A series of measurements appeared, including an electrocardiogram, as if the wall itself was a screen. It a matter of seconds there were scans, x-rays, and moving images of what he assumed must be his heart.

  “That’s amazing,” Zack said, staring at the measurements and looping images. Numbers and automated interpretations were scrolling across the screen. “How do you get all that so fast?”

  “Well, Mr. Christian, medical technology is quite advanced nowadays. Plus, what is a bit more radiation
to the likes of you?” This time Dr. Watson laughed, but Zack did not see the funny side. “Everything appears to be in a reasonable order. I would suggest this is a simple case; that you still find the Renunciation Pledge a little strange. Which of course it is.” He approached the desk and with both hands touched the glass surface. He rotated one around the other as if he was turning the desk one hundred and eighty degrees. “In fact I would suggest that based on your blood results we are able to begin your donation program.” Zack reached down to the crease of his elbow looking for where they had taken blood to perform an analysis. His skin was smooth and intact. Dr. Watson turned and leaned against the desk, chuckling to himself as he folded his arms. “You think we take blood for a simple analysis? Goodness me, Mr. Christian. You are still living in the dark ages. We do however still use the primitive method of venipuncture for the donation process. We can do it now if you are ready.”

  Zack thought of all of those adverts that played on a continual stream on every television in Delta Tower. He could remember the special offers for the Omega Transfusion Programme. Start feeling like your Omega-self today.

  “So they actually take blood from Omega residents and give it to the other towers.” It wasn't really a question that Zack was asking, more exasperation that this was in fact the reality of their world. He was the same person that he was last month and now people would be using their hard-earned credits to get a sample of his blood. To feel like their Omega-self. Was that what he felt like now, his Omega-self? Was it this that he had been dreaming of for the last ten years?

  “Of course, Mr. Christian. I’m well aware that Simon prepped you for it so you don’t have to play dumb with me.” Dr. Watson pressed his foot against a tile in the floor and a sink appeared from inside the wall. He washed his hands and shook them dry. Zack heard the hum of a hand dryer from above the sink. “Anaemia. Cancer. Infection. All manner of reasons for a transfusion. You are much healthier now than you were when you arrived from Delta tower.” Dr. Watson released his foot from the floor tile and the sink disappeared into the wall. He leaned up against it and folded his arms. He was staring at Zack as if he was trying to make an internal diagnosis through some sort of telepathic communication. “There is one outstanding area which I am yet to check. Have you considered forming a partnership with one of the many single ladies available to you? You have been here close to a month now. What about that nice young biologist that I've seen you with in the lobby?”