by Sarah Dalton
The Fractured: Elena
Sarah Dalton
EBOOK EDITION
Copyright © 2013 Sarah Dalton
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Also by the author:
The Mary Hades series – YA Gothic Horror
My Daylight Monsters (the Mary Hades prequel)
Mary Hades (Mary Hades #1)
Shadow (a Mary Hades short story) Featured in Celestial – FREE
Sister (a Mary Hades short story)
Possess (Mary Hades #2)
The Blemished series – YA Dystopia
The Blemished (Blemished #1)
The Vanished (Blemished #2)
The Unleashed (Blemished #3)
The Fractured: Elena (Blemished #2.5) (Fractured 1)
The Fractured: Maggie (Blemished #2.5) (Fractured 2)
The Blemished Complete Boxed Set
White Hart series – YA Fantasy
White Hart (White Hart #1)
Red Palace (White Hart #2)
Follow the author:
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Tsu
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
A Note from the Author
Also by the Author
About the Author
Chapter One
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Elena, wake the hell up.”
Loud guitar music screeched out of the alarm. Elena’s hand swatted down at the radio-clock by her bed, but before she could slap it quiet the damn thing jumped down from the bedside table and wheeled around the room singing nah-nah-ne-nah-nah can’t catch me-ee. Elena made a noise half-way between a groan and a growl before ripping the eye-mask away from her face and jumping ferociously out of bed. Her feet created a loud thud on the deep pile rug. She stomped around the room until finding the radio clock and flipping the “off” switch.
“Stupid thing.” She slammed it back down on her bedside table and stretched out her body, trying to wake up. Another bad night of tossing and turning. She was never a good sleeper, but this last week had been worse than awful.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Are you up yet? I can’t hear the shower.”
Elena groaned. “Yes, I’m up, Mother. Getting into the shower now.”
“You don’t want to be late for school,” said the voice behind the door.
“I know.” She did know. Elena knew very well that it would be a really bad idea to be late for school. It would be a really bad idea to draw any attention to herself at all. If she could get away with it, she’d stay wrapped up in bed right now, never coming out of the duvet again, but even not going to school would draw too much attention to herself after what she did.
She stopped in her tracks, halfway between her bed and the en suite bathroom at the end of the large room, and remembered what she did. The image of the blood on the gravel flashed before her eyes. The sinking feeling that she had done something terrible came back, churning her stomach all over again. Elena rubbed her eyes as she remembered running away and leaving the woman for dead. She dragged her fingers through her hair, from root to tip. What was the point of worrying about it now? She couldn’t change the past. She walked into the bathroom and clicked her fingers for light. A bright glow flickered on, and Elena squinted.
“Ahh! Dimmer. Dimmer,” she muttered.
The room obeyed.
“Shower medium-warm. Shower gel mint. Shampoo nourishing,” Elena said to the control wall. Behind her the water ran in a steady stream. A small tile opened from the wall to reveal a soap dispenser. Elena turned and approached the water, touching it with the tip of her finger. She recoiled. “This is boiling hot, you piece of crap.” She fiddled with the manual control until the temperature changed to something more manageable, before dis-robing and stepping in. She squirted some soap into the palm of her hand and sniffed it. “Oh great, you can’t even get that right? This is lavender. Jesus, is nothing going to go right today?”
After the briefest shower Elena could manage, and a quick blast of the hair-dryer, she pulled on tight jeans and a camisole, covered by a light cardigan. Elena didn’t bother checking her reflection or putting make-up on because she was beautiful and none of that mattered. Her face was perfection but she didn’t really care. It bored her. The world bored her with its perfect clones and symmetrical faces. Since Mina had left Area 14 she’d been obsessed with staring at the faces of the Blemished at her school. Every time she looked at them she saw something new: a birthmark above an eye, a scar above a lip, a nose out of proportion with thin lips. Then, she would look at her own reflection, the cream flawless skin, ice-blue eyes and down-turned mouth, and see nothing but a boring, if sometimes cruel-looking, face.
Elena lived in a world where the rich cloned their children. They called them “the Children of the Genetic Enhancement Ministry”. She was a GEM, created by her parents. In her world rich, privileged people with good genes lived in the nice parts of town with voice-controlled bathrooms and magnolia trees. The poor and inferior lived in the ghettos and the slums and were labelled the Blemished. They wore a uniform so that you only had to glance at them in the street to know their place in the world. Most GEMs didn’t even notice the Blemished, but since Elena had met Mina, everything had changed. She blinked and then put in her Plan-It contact lenses. She popped the small rectangle of her Plan-It control pad into the pocket of her jeans. No messages today, just like yesterday and every day since Clarissa decided she had it in for her.
After stuffing her books into a bag and running a comb through her luxurious dark hair, Elena trotted downstairs to the breakfast table; although she didn’t feel like eating. Her parents were already there. Her father had his face buried underneath a large newspaper. You could have the news directed to your Plan-Its and read it across the lenses, but her dad was so old that he still preferred the dinosaur way of receiving the news. Clare, Elena’s Blemished nanny, placed the toast and orange juice onto the breakfast bar.
“Clare, where is the smoothie I asked you to make?” said Elena’s mother, a woman in her late thirties with chestnut hair and hazel eyes. She was a beautiful woman and one of the first clones in Britain.
“The smoothie, ma’am? I don’t…” Clare got that glazed look in her eye that Elena had seen more and more of recently. She was a skinny woman with pale skin. She wore the black tunic and headscarf of the Blemished, with the symbol – a cross inside a circle – on her right breast. Elena worried that Clare was suffering from the after-effects of the Operation, like so many other Blemished women did. When sterilised, many women seemed to lose their way, and often their mind.
“I said specifically that Elena needed her goji berry smoothie this morning. She needs to go on a juice cleanse.” Elena’s mother sighed.
“It’s okay, Mother, I’ll have orange juice this morning,” Elena chipped in. She gave Clare a reassuring smile.
“That’s really not the point though, is i
t? Tell her, Benedict.” Elena’s mother looked over to her father, who had not yet lowered his newspaper.
“Yes, dear,” he answered.
Elena took a sip of her orange juice and tried to ignore the way her mother’s eyes were twitching around the corners. She was suddenly glad that she looked nothing like this woman. There was a rule in the GEM led society that all parents must share a percentage of genes with their cloned children, yet Elena had overheard her father bragging to his high-powered friends that he had paid extra to ensure that Elena didn’t have any of their genes. He hadn’t wanted a clever or talented child. He’d just wanted someone to be pretty enough to get a good husband. He had never wanted a son. He couldn’t stand the competition – someone to steal his position in society. A son-in-law was someone he could control and manipulate for his own gains. The venerable Benedict Darcey liked control.
Clare shuffled out of the room, sensing Mrs Darcey’s likelihood of explosion. Elena gulped down a few more mouthfuls of orange juice before getting up to go to school.
“Are you driving me, Mother?” she asked.
Mrs Darcey raised an eyebrow towards her daughter. “Yes, of course.” She stood up from the breakfast bar. “Goodbye, Benedict.”
“Goodbye, Daddy,” said Elena.
Mr Darcey didn’t reply. He stuffed another piece of buttery toast into his mouth and turned the page of his newspaper.
*
Someone bumped Elena’s shoulder and she fell face first into her open locker. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled herself out of the locker and turned to face the cackling girls behind her. Clarissa Highbury, her former best friend and big boobed blonde, stood in front of the two other girls who used to form Elena’s old group: Arabella Blighty – a caramel skinned girl with bright red hair, and Georgiana Fitzgerald – a very tall and skinny girl with pale skin and black hair.
“What do you want, Clarissa?” Elena snapped. She had no time for them anymore. Clarissa thought that Elena had bad-mouthed her around modelling agencies in town, but she hadn’t. She suspected Georgiana might have though, if she’d managed to rub those two brain cells together. “I don’t have time for you.”
“Why not? Missing your little Blem friend?” Clarissa cocked her head to one side and grinned.
Elena felt a chill along her arms but she tried to ignore it. She turned around and slammed her locker door shut, twisting the key in the lock. “What are you on about?”
“Your little Blem friend, the one who escaped out of Area 14, the one Murder-Troll was after. What was her name again? Mona? Dina?” Clarissa said with a voice dripping with malice. “Oh, that’s right – Mina. I saw her help you with your books once. Isn’t that weird after we flushed her head down the toilet that time?”
Elena composed herself and turned around. “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about. How is it my problem if the little psycho picked up my books for me – once?”
Clarissa stepped forward, getting into Elena’s face. “I don’t know, you tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Elena met her eyes, refusing to blink.
“So it wouldn’t worry you if I went to Murgatroyd and told her all about how Mina helped you with your books that time? It wouldn’t worry you if I told her you were friends––”
“We weren’t friends,” Elena said with force.
Clarissa smiled. “That isn’t the face of someone who isn’t worried.” She stepped back and turned to her friends. “It was so weird how Mrs Murgatroyd had Mina at gun point before she got hit around the head. Who would help the pyscho Blem escape and leave our beloved teacher for dead? Who would do such a thing?”
“Why are you telling me this? I’ve seen it on the screens, Clarissa, I know all about the escape and what happened. It just has nothing to do with me.”
“They reckon it was an inside job.”
Elena rolled her eyes. “They were in the Blemished ghetto. There were hundreds of people who could have done it…” Elena trailed off as her attention was caught elsewhere. The door of Mrs Murgatroyd’s office opened from across the corridor and she stepped into the hallway.
Mrs Murgatroyd was a formidable teacher at St Jude’s Comprehensive school. She taught both Blemished and GEMs, but everyone called her Murder-Troll. She had a full head of red curls that spilled over her shoulders. Today she had half of those curls wrapped up in a protective bandage. At the sight of her, Elena felt the blood drain from her face. Clarissa watched with interest.
Mrs Murgatroyd looked over to Elena and the others, and Elena felt her stomach flip. The woman narrowed her eyes at them. “What are you doing lingering in the corridor? Get to class.”
Clarissa and the others smiled sweetly before moving on. Elena tried to smile but felt as though her face was forming something more like a grimace. Her throat went dry when she tried to swallow.
This was too much, she thought as she made her way to double maths. She couldn’t carry on like this, with this fear that she would be caught. How did Clarissa know about the escape? She shuffled past the notice board, which was filled with pamphlets about modelling agencies and diet supplements. A single sheet fluttered to the floor. Elena bent down to pick up the poster and something about it grabbed her attention. It featured a young woman wearing a crown and a sash that said “Miss Area 14”. Underneath the image there was a closing date – which was tomorrow – and a venue. Then underneath that there were details of the winning prize – a year-long modelling and acting contract in London.
Chapter Two
The line of girls snaked all the way around the town hall and outside the door, continuing down the paved path and onto the street. Elena stood halfway down the path, clutching a sheet of paper. She checked her Plan It for messages, wondering where her mum had got to. She was supposed to be with her, and God knows her mum loved this crap. Elena generally couldn’t be bothered with modelling competitions, it was all “look this way and pout, I mean really pout, don’t duckface! Now stick your arse out more” and she found it demoralising.
But this time she would gladly suffer the humiliation to get the hell out of Area 14 and away from Clarissa and Murder-Troll. It had been her sixteenth birthday last month and so much had changed since then. Back then she’d been popular, and had a few of the hottest boys in school sniffing around her. But she’d also been a bully, picking on the Blemished girls to help keep her popularity in school. It was only when Clarissa turned on her that she realised what it was like to be bullied. Now, she stood in line for a modelling competition just so that she could escape. She’d never wanted to escape so badly in her entire life.
Up ahead she saw Clarissa with her two followers – Georgiana and Arabella. They were fanning themselves with their application forms. Elena glanced down at hers, wondering if she’d sounded enthusiastic enough about modelling. She knew that in order to win this stupid competition she would have to fake an entire personality. From now on she was a lovable airhead. Everyone loved a lovable airhead. She had to learn to smile and inject some life into her icy eyes that everyone told her looked cruel. She smoothed her royal blue dress that complemented her skin tone.
Of course she had a small advantage over some of the girls. There was the rumour that spread around Area 14 – the rumour that Elena’s genes had been taken from a famous actress from the turn of the century. There was nothing else to make her stand out from the crowd. Since she’d started noticing the Blemished, she’d also noticed how all the GEMs looked the same, including her. How was she supposed to know who the hottest guy in school was when they all had perfect skin and shiny hair? She’d kissed a couple of boys but never really stuck around for anything more. They bored her. All of the GEMs bored her. The line bored her. All the same: mini-skirts, lip gloss and curls. Boring. Just a load of genetically perfect clones walking around looking like each other.
Elena’s earbud buzzed. She took the small Plan It rectangle from her pocket. It was her mum. She pressed answer and then replaced i
t in her pocket. As soon as she did her mother began to talk through the earbud, as clear as if she was stood right next to her.
“I’m so sorry, darling, I really am.”
“You can’t make it.” Elena rolled her eyes, wishing her mother could see it.
“I really tried, darling. But the surgeon hasn’t done with my left eyebrow yet. I just can’t be seen at a place like that right now. You do understand? Don’t you? The way those mothers judge…” Mrs Darcey trailed off.
“I understand, Mother.”
“Perhaps I could send Clare?”
“I’m fine, Mother. Good luck with your eyebrow.”
She disconnected the call with a small button on her Plan It. The line shuffled forward a few feet and a voice called out over some speakers: “Hold onto your hats ladies, only twenty minutes to the desk!” This was followed by a number of “woops” and “ooohs” from the crowd. Elena threw in a half-hearted “yay” and clutched her application form grimly.
*
“Smile, darling!”
Elena forced her mouth to smile, so hard that the corners felt like they were about to crack. She blinked more life into her eyes and then pushed her hands into her knees and leaned forward like the photographers in her last portfolio shoot told her to. In the background, past the lithe little photographer man in a scarf and sunglasses, right at the back of the room after the cameras and lighting equipment, she could see Clarissa and the cronies watching her. Clarissa glared at her with her hands on her hips.
“Okay, we’re going to turn the wind-machine on now.” The photographer sounded bored. Not a good sign. Clarissa turned and smiled to her friends.
Elena’s hair whipped up as the wind machine blasted into her face. A chunk of hair blew straight into her mouth and she had to spit it out as the photographer clicked his camera.