The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  LAUREN NICOLLE TAYLOR

  Clean Teen Publishing

  THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the authors' imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  NO part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  The Wanted

  Copyright ©2014 Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by: Marya Heiman

  Typography by: Courtney Nuckels

  Editing by: Cynthia Shepp

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

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  This is for you.

  2023

  NADIR

  I was eleven years old when they decided to save the world.

  I stood pressed close to my mother, my sticky-with-sweets hand in her dry, calm one. Before the bombings, this wasn’t how things were done, but now the safest place for the prime minister’s son was under the watchful eye of the prime minister herself.

  Four leaders crowded around a mahogany table, sweaty hands making vapory prints on the rich brown surface, fading in and out. Bottles of valuable, pure water glistened, slick with tears of condensation. I licked my lips as I stood close enough to touch one. The other first families lined the wall, probably all thinking the same thing—what would our fate be, and should we place our faith in the strange man dancing around the table? Unfamiliar faces wore recognizable expressions. Masks of restrained fear.

  They listened to a man making big arcs with his arms speak in a grating twang. He gripped each and every one of them with his penetrating gaze and, I have to admit, I became entranced by his intensity. His deep blue eyes shone like sapphires. I broke from my mother’s grasp and crept toward the table, the music of his speech drawing me closer like the pied piper.

  “You see. It’s perfect! It’s the perfect opportunity. We have the chance to restructure society, all of it. Start fresh and stop all of this—” the man swung around quickly, “from happening again. Aren’t you tired of worrying someone will kill you in your sleep?” People nodded. “Aren’t you tired of worrying who you can trust?” They started to mutter.

  I took a step closer to the blueprints they were taking turns examining. It looked like a maze. No, there was no way out. It was a prison.

  “But why circles?” the black man asked, his deep voice rumbling like a marble in a barrel.

  “Circles, squares, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the gates and the understructure that are important. Imagine if you knew there was a disturbance in one ring or section? You could shut it down, like that.” The man clicked his fingers. “The perpetrators would be dealt with easily. No muss, no fuss. We will keep life above simple and keep all the messy, complicated stuff below.” He wiggled his finger as he pointed to the levels underneath the ground. “Each ring can run independently, so even if there are issues in one, a lockdown will not affect the others’ ability to run smoothly.”

  The complicated structure reminded me of plates spinning on narrow pieces of bamboo but on a much grander scale, rings balancing on long, metal supports, straddling the wide underground river that ran in loopy swirls underneath every town. “And see here, constant fresh water and easy waste disposal,” he finished with a wink.

  “I can’t imagine the need for such a complicated facility. It will cost too much to build.” The black man stepped forward, pointing at the various levels below the towns.

  The American almost galloped over to the African president. “Oh, you’ll want it. The population will grow, and waste disposal as well as the ability to isolate and control any disturbances will be an important aspect of this system. Besides, Sekimbo, money means nothing. Money is no object. This is about recreating civilization as we know it. Money is irrelevant.” He leaned in, and the black man backed away. “I can’t believe you even mentioned it.”

  Sekimbo grunted, stepping back from the table, and grabbed a precious bottle, taking a large sip.

  “Can you taste it?” the American asked. “That is the sweet taste of change.”

  My mother cleared her throat, holding up one of the bottles and shaking it. Usually a flutter of silt would rise to the surface, but not this time. “So you’re going to pollute what looks like one of very few pristine water sources left in this world?” She pursed her lips, a sign that she was unsure.

  He pressed his hands to his forehead like he was frustrated. “No, no, no. We will ensure that everything is biodegradable or recyclable. We will process the human waste here.” He pointed to a series of tanks hidden under the ground level. “These are details, details I’ve gone over, perfected and finalized. You don’t need to worry about them; you only need to worry about your own survival.”

  My mother removed her glasses and cleaned them with her sleeve, giving herself a second to ponder what he’d just said.

  The American paused for a few moments and then sprung into another speech, his eyes sparkling as if he were in love. “The rings, the circles, the Woodlands, it’s beautiful, it’s simple. It’s a symbol of growth and change. The towns of the Woodlands will be set out like the rings of a tree trunk. And like a great redwood, we will become strong and unyielding.” He made a fist with his pale hand.

  I wanted to point out to him that there was no ‘American Redwoodtown’. There were very few of his kind left.

  “And this manifesto, this All Kind philosophy, do you think it will work?” my mother asked.

  “Of course
it’s not the whole solution, but I think we can all agree it’s a start. It’s a new way of thinking that takes race out of the equation.” He swiped his palms across each other, as if he were slapping dirt from them.

  It sounded earnest, but it was too simple to even an eleven-year-old. Could we really leave all the prejudice behind?

  “See, if we embed people with ID, we can always keep track of them. We can control where they go and when. No one would get through a gate to the next ring without us knowing, without us specifically okaying it. And if we shuffle the races between each town, we can start healing the human genome. Slowly start to rid this world of the racial markers that only cause fighting.”

  I started to wonder if he was a scientist. He certainly tried to talk like one, albeit a lazy one who used buzzwords to get people interested but didn’t know much about the specifics.

  “I already have the go ahead from Este and Poltinov; I just need your signatures…” He looked to my mother and the black man. “And then we can get out of this hell hole.”

  I remember thinking I didn’t like the way he spoke to my mother, like they were friends, when really, they had been fighting each other for years. Killing each other’s citizens. But I also knew everyone was tired of the death.

  The American was energized, his hope and enthusiasm intoxicating.

  The black man spoke again. “So, who has control?”

  “That’s the beauty of it, we all do. We remove the notion of countries and races… and we rule it together.”

  The word ‘rule’ stuck in my mind long after the American had stopped talking. I knew that word. That word did away with democracy.

  The ground trembled, and people steadied themselves on furniture or each other. They didn’t pause their meeting. Even though a ceasefire had been negotiated specifically for this gathering, some renegade groups had ignored it and were carrying on. The window was a view to sunlight trying to penetrate clouds of dust. The pictures of a green, fresh world were tantalizing, almost impossible to resist.

  “How will you get people to come?” my mother asked distractedly as she held up a glossy photo of a stream running over rocks covered in moss, and giant trees shooting to the sky. I wanted to step into the picture and never look back.

  The American nodded solemnly but it was overly dramatic. You could tell his excitement outweighed any seriousness.

  “Well, you’ve all read the reports. Our planet can no longer support the current population. I’m sorry. I wish we hadn’t made such a mess of things, but now we have to think about the survival of the species. It’s too late to save everyone. We must look to the future.” He didn’t seem sorry, but he was right—the damage was done.

  My mother flicked through the report, running her finger along the black text until she found the part she was looking for and stopped.

  “But this number, President Grant, eighty thousand, can’t be right. Is that really all we can take? And how can we possibly select those people?”

  To think the world’s population had been in the billions. Now we were down to a few million, and he was asking us to reduce it further.

  “We don’t make the decision; they will be randomly selected. And as for your first question, if you were given a choice between life and death, what would you choose?” His mocking laugh made me angry, and I squeezed my toy until one of the side mirrors broke off.

  With that statement, everyone started arguing. The noise in the room was deafening as desperate voices collided with one another. I crouched down on the floor and played with my toy Transformer, running Optimus Prime into my mother’s advisor’s foot repeatedly. He didn’t seem to notice. I was used to the arguing. For months, they had been debating what to do. Then the American showed up in Brazil a couple of months back after escaping the Chinese bombing of the US. Now, they were just arguing about something different.

  They went on and on and round and round in circles, trying to push their own agenda, trying to say their people had more of a right to exist, to go on, than the others did. Finally, the American stood on a chair and told them to be quiet. And for some reason, they did. He seemed to have magnetism that made everyone listen to him.

  “People. People. I don’t mean to push you, but the decision’s already been made. We are going. Construction has begun. You can stay here, but I guarantee you won’t last a year. The world as we know it is over. The Woodlands embodies hope, a way forward. Join me, join us.”

  He spun a stack of papers towards my mother and President Sekimbo. And I watched as, with a deep sigh, my mother signed the death sentences of hundreds of thousands of people. All to save me. To save her family.

  We didn’t realize at the time that it was too late for us, and for most of our population. Radiation killed. Insipid, it ate at you from the inside out. My mother and father went first, my sister died shortly after, and now I was all that was left. The sickly and the dying were not permitted to migrate to the Woodlands. As I had been at a remote boarding school for most of the war, I escaped their fate.

  President Grant flapped the papers in front of my face, urging me to hand over control to him. Although he wasn’t really president anymore, his country was gone and he wanted to adopt mine. He promised me he would take care of my people, but I didn’t believe him. There was no ‘my people’ or ‘his people’, that was the point of the Woodlands. But I was only seventeen. I would do as I was told because, although it broke my heart to do it, I couldn’t lead. I couldn’t do anything.

  How did I get here?

  It wasn’t a miraculous stroke of luck. Some pointed finger that knocked us into our places and forced us to walk forward.

  Every minute I gained, I fought for.

  I slogged out this life through a lash of ice and drag of pine. I swam to the other side of the river of blood and kept myself.

  Everything that’s happened to me, good or bad, I earned.

  I am not wanting.

  I am wanted.

  Which scares me most of all.

  ROSA

  The lost ones are holed up inside me. They might want to be free of my pocked and scarred chest. But right now… I need them more than their right for peace. They give me the strength to carry out my very simple plan.

  …to live.

  The too-bright light rustled me, my consciousness struggling to keep up with my surroundings. The unfamiliar feel of cold metal pressing into my back, a coffin full of my own breath, and the drag of blood on the glass shoved me to alertness.

  One word floated around inside my new brain—pills. My thoughts flew aimlessly like someone had opened a case of live butterflies into my skull… if… you don’t do… something… in the next… fifteen minutes… you’re going to… die… again.

  I pulled the words together and my hand tightened around the powder-crusted pills that burrowed into my palm like they knew, just as well as I did, what my fate would be if I didn’t find a way to swallow them in the next few minutes. I clenched both my fists tightly, trying not to look suspicious. But how do you do that when a Superior is peering at you with sharpened eyes? When you appeared from death?

  My eyes flitted from his face to his wheelchair and back again quickly, but he saw me taking in the surprising detail. Superior Grant was in a wheelchair. The small muscles around his mouth and jaw tightened slightly. He looked off sitting there lower than I was. Uncomfortable. I squirmed under his gaze like a rock was on my chest, pinning me under his stare and his authority.

  I struggled because my energy was still wrapped around the being dead part. It wasn’t quite awake or responding. I moved my hand to the glass surrounding me as if it were tied to my side with elastic, tracing the bloodied handprint above me and avoiding Grant’s black expression. I needed to ignore the enormity of my predicament for one more second. Drawing my finger over each part of the large, reddish brown-painted hand, I wondered if it were my blood or someone else’s. Was it yours, Joseph?

  My eyes darted towards the wheels
of his chair as they squeaked with movement, and Grant bent his head down to catch my gaze. “They’re dead,” he said flatly as he pressed back into his chair and awaited my reaction. Something squelched inside me, a splitting, but not all the way. I watched his countenance, the way he stared at me, his lips twisting like they weren’t sure what face to make. The splitting stopped like a half-undone zipper. My heart didn’t explode inside me because I could see the twitch in there, the irritation. His fist tight as an un-budded pinecone. I bit down on my lip to stop myself from smiling. He was a liar. They got away.

  I let out all the air I didn’t realize I’d been holding onto, so overjoyed that I almost forgot I was minutes from dying. My body jerked, my toes pointing straight down and my head hit the table. I closed my eyes slowly and tried to hang on. Be far away from here, I prayed and added, just be.

  Grant wheeled back a little, almost as if he were afraid of me, then shook his head and grasped his jaw in his hand. Our eyes slid to the vacant, open window letting the wind blow the fluorescent light around like a solitary swing in a playground. I pictured Deshi and Joseph climbing out that window, Joseph’s expression as he looked back at me lying there, dead, and I gulped air that stung like a mouthful of thumbtacks.

  Grant ran a hand through his neatly cropped, greying hair.

  “Let’s get you out of there,” he said in that awful twang like rubber bands over violin strings. The sound was muted through the glass, but it still smarted. I nodded in reply.

  The pills stabbed into my skin. Grant seemed unaware of the urgency of my situation. He moved in a considered, slow manner. Unless he was just playing with me and waiting for me to die.

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking in seconds, because that was all I had left. If Grant didn’t know about the pills, there may have been a reason. And if that was the case, I couldn’t let him see me take them.

  I rolled to my back and stared at the ceiling; shiny, tinfoil pipes wound their way out of the room like worms. Escape was next on my list, but living was first priority. Grant wheeled backwards to the control panel, eyeing me like a bug pinned to a corkboard, my wings spread painfully wide, never to flap again. Not a butterfly—more like a dull, tatty moth with uneven coloring.