Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  KYMIERA

  (Season 1)

  by Steve Turnbull

  KYMIERA (Season 1) by Steve Turnbull

  Copyright © 2017 Steve Turnbull. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-910342-70-1

  This novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without permission of the publisher.

  Published by Tau Press Ltd.

  Cover art by Jane Dixon-Smith (www.jdsmith-design.com)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Kymiera (Season, #1)

  Episode I: Purity

  Episode II: Poison

  Episode III: Flight

  Episode IV: Abyss

  Episode V: Reasons

  Episode VI: Utopia

  About the Author

  For Joss Whedon.

  - -

  Episode I: Purity

  Chapter 1

  Chloe

  ‘Freak!’

  The scream came from a voice Chloe recognised, a bully from two years above her. What was his name? She sighed and looked down at her empty lunchbox; she was still hungry. She was always hungry nowadays. Her dad had even made a joke about her having a tapeworm which he thought was hilarious. It really wasn’t.

  ‘So you’ll do my homework, yeah?’

  Chloe was distracted by the shouting behind them but turned her attention to Ashley. If there was Aryan perfection, Ashley was it: blond, blue-eyed, slim and not too tall for the boys. The fact the hair was dyed and the roots needed doing didn’t seem to mean much. She hadn’t lacked for male attention for years. Until recently.

  ‘My homework, you’ll do it, right?’

  It was late November; the sky was overcast and the air cold with damp. It was school lunch break. The girls were sitting on a bench at the corner of the wilderness facing the school building. The place had been old fifty years ago. And the vegetation behind them wasn’t much of a wilderness—a few trees backed onto a brick wall topped with razor-wire—but then St Gilbert’s wasn’t much of a school. The roof tiles were broken in a dozen places and rain leaked into the main hall even in a drizzle. Chloe wouldn’t have to put up with it too much longer.

  ‘Are you even listening?’

  ‘Why would I do your homework, Ash?’

  The cries of ‘freak’ were getting louder; sounded like the lynch mob was coming their way. Chloe looked off to the left, round Melinda who definitely wasn’t listening but just staring into the distance. Beyond her was sad Kavi. She had good reason to feel sad. The misfits and the outcasts.

  The mob of school kids, girls and boys, mostly thirteen year olds, some her age, but all following the bigger ones, grew nearer. She couldn’t see their victim, who was on the ground.

  ‘You have to do it because I won’t have time.’

  Chloe dragged her attention back to the conversation.

  ‘Why? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Really?’ Chloe ladled as much sarcasm as she could into the word. Ashley had the good taste to look embarrassed. ‘And where would you be going?’

  Ashley hesitated then the words tumbled out. ‘It’s about the Purity, and you know Kavi and I aren’t good at that stuff.’ Her eyes pleaded. She leaned forward and glanced at Kavi as if hoping she’d get some support. It wasn’t forthcoming. She focused on Melinda.

  ‘Mel? Chloe could do it for me, yeah?’

  Melinda did not even register that she had heard.

  ‘Mel!’

  She jumped but still didn’t respond; instead she looked at her watch and got up in a rush. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Go where?’ said Ashley. Her voice trailed off as Melinda headed away without looking back. ‘What crawled up her skirt?’

  ‘Appointment.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Wouldn’t expect you to notice, Ash.’

  ‘Notice what?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Chloe glanced at the open lunch box in Ashley’s lap. Her friend still had a whole sandwich, made from decent bread and what looked to be some lettuce and tinned meat. Chloe’s mouth watered. ‘You eating that?’

  Ashley looked down then back. ‘Homework?’

  ‘No.’

  There was another hesitation and then barely above a whisper. ‘Please.’

  Chloe’s hand flashed out like a blur and grabbed the sandwich. ‘I’ll help.’ She took a mouthful and added around it while she chewed. ‘But you write it.’ Chloe did not expect a thank-you from Ashley, and she was not disappointed.

  The sound of someone crying mixed with harsh laughter drifted through the damp air. Chloe leaned back and looked behind Kavi’s back. She caught a glimpse of red hair on the ground between shifting feet.

  She stood up and took another bite from the sandwich. She twisted her back to remove an ache. Her shoulders and back had a lot of aches and pains lately. Her father said she was training too hard. Her mother said it was just growing pains—which was amusing since she was seventeen and hoped she wasn’t growing any more.

  Her physio said it was just one of those things and managed to make it tolerable.

  The red-haired kid, it was a boy, young so probably new, had managed to get to his feet and the cries of freak had started up again. Now they were getting into their rhythm. They pushed him back and forwards in time to their abuse. The boy had heavy glasses; someone made a grab for them, pulled them from his face and dropped them under the boy’s feet. When he tried to get them they pushed him over again.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Oh god, Chloe, don’t start anything.’

  Kavi came to life. ‘She’s right; you’ll just get in trouble.’

  ‘Again,’ added Ashley.

  ‘Trouble’s already started,’ said Chloe and with sandwich in hand she walked steadily towards the mob.

  The victim was on his feet again. His face was streaked with lines of mud and tears. There was blood on his hands. He managed to push his way out through the crowd. They almost let him escape but a foot caught round his ankle and tripped him. He went flying once more and landed at Chloe’s feet. She moved forward and stood beside his prone form.

  She met the eye of the leader and took a bite out of her sandwich. There was a murmuring. ‘Chloe Dark.’ Most of them knew her.

  She maintained eye contact, chewed the sandwich and swallowed.

  ‘Out the way,’ he said. She said nothing. ‘Are you deaf or stupid?’

  She took another bite from the sandwich.

  ‘You don’t look tough,’ he said. He broke eye contact and forced a laugh, staring at his cronies so they joined in. It was not convincing.

  Some of the younger ones on the periphery were already breaking away and returning the way they had come. The ones closest to Chloe pulled back. She had a reputation. She was not afraid to get into trouble.

  But when you try to steal the prey from a pack of hyenas, they’re going to fight for it.

  She remembered now; his name was Hancock, and with a name like that you either become victim or bully. He’d chosen the latter route. He had the lowest brow and the thickest arms of his gang, though he wasn’t the tallest, but he still topped Chloe by several inches. His school uniform strained to hold him in. She could see the reluctance to tackle her in his eyes but he had no choice. There was no way he could withdraw and save face. His position as the leader of the gang was at s
take.

  ‘Give me a bit of space,’ he said with a smile on his face. The others laughed and took a step back. ‘Last chance to back off. I wouldn’t want to mess up your face.’

  She swallowed and stuffed the remains of the sandwich into her pocket. No point letting it go to waste.

  And then he did the stupidest thing he could possibly have done. He grabbed the left lapel of her school blazer with his right hand. She did not think. It was the first thing she had ever learned. The years of training her father had insisted she do just engaged, the way they always did.

  ‘It’s a dangerous world, Chloe. Freaks round every corner. You have to be confident. You have to be able to look after yourself.’

  Her right snaked up. She placed her thumb in the middle of the back of his hand and reached round his palm with her fingers then simply peeled his hand away. She twisted it and applied more pressure. His face held a look of astonishment as he sank to his knees in front of her. Powerless.

  ‘You are such a dick, Hancock,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not hurting me.’

  ‘You want me to hurt you?’ she said and applied more pressure. His face reddened.

  ‘Get off me, you bint! Get her!’ His command to his followers was met with silence. They were moving away. There was movement beside her as the victim got to his feet and ran.

  ‘It’s people like you make it hard for the Purity to do their job properly, Hancock,’ Chloe said in a relaxed tone. ‘But let me explain: Having red hair is normal. Wearing glasses is normal. Being a Neanderthal moron like you is also disappointingly normal. You need to find something more constructive to do with your time and more appropriate to your limited intellect. Like making paper doilies.’

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  Chloe applied more pressure. He squeaked with the pain.

  ‘All right, I’ll leave him alone.’

  ‘Chloe Dark!’

  Chloe dropped Hancock’s hand and turned to face the approaching teacher. ‘Yes, Miss Kepple.’

  Miss Kepple reminded Chloe of diamond: pretty but hard and sharp. She liked Miss Kepple and she thought it was mutual. Miss Kepple taught the Purity class, which also happened to be Chloe’s favourite lesson.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘She nearly broke my arm, Miss,’ whined Hancock. Chloe would have quite happily pummelled his pathetic face into the ground. ‘She’s a bully.’

  Miss Kepple gave him an appraising look. ‘Really, Hancock? Is that the best you can come up with? You’re in detention for the next week.’

  Chloe gasped. Pain like a red-hot poker slammed through Chloe’s back slicing across both shoulder blades. It was so intense she went rigid and slipped to her knees.

  ‘Chloe!’ Miss Kepple was at her side and holding her hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The pain subsided as fast as it had arrived but every muscle in her back ached. She sagged, holding tight to the arm that supported her.

  ‘She’s just putting it on,’ said Hancock but even he didn’t sound convinced. It was as if he was simply mouthing the words.

  ‘Chloe?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said. She rotated her shoulders and the tension faded to a tolerable level.

  ‘You go see the nurse, right now.’

  ‘I have English.’

  ‘Now.’

  Chapter 2

  Melinda

  Melinda Vogler walked away from her friends and crunched along the gravel path to the small exit at the rear of the school.

  She knew they were concerned about her—well, Chloe and Kavi were. Ashley wasn’t really a friend; she had only recently been given a reason to join the club of outcasts. Before that she had been one of the bitches who made their lives hell. Though not as much hell as it would have been if Chloe hadn’t been there. She always stood up for them. Protected them.

  ‘But she can’t do it all the time,’ Melinda said to the damp air.

  She stopped at the steel gate. Unlike the rest of the school these were hi-tech.

  ‘Melinda Vogler. I have a note,’ she said out loud. She did not need to speak. There was no one there to hear her except the machine. And somewhere in Manchester, maybe in the town hall, a wirehead. Melinda shivered; wireheads gave her the creeps.

  There was no response as the machine scanned her riffy. Melinda touched the side of her head, self-consciously imagining the signals between the machine and the RFID chip embedded in her skull. You couldn’t really feel anything but she always imagined she did. The gate motors ground into action, the barrier slid back and she stepped out into the street. She pulled out her phone and glanced at it. She had to be at the doctor’s in forty-five minutes. The Metro stop was a fifteen minute walk.

  She set off across the road into the street opposite flanked by the derelict and boarded up terraced houses. No one even bothered sticking up signs here. There weren’t enough people around living in the area to make a difference.

  One panel of a fence had been plastered with twenty copies of the same circus flyer. There was no year, just the date ‘August 20th-25th’. The posters had been there as long as she could remember. There weren’t any circuses anymore. Too dangerous. She had never been to one, so she wasn’t missing anything and didn’t want to risk her life.

  A bright orange stain on a window further down caught her eye. That was new. It was on the opposite side of the road and as she came alongside it she read the words daubed on with a brush in bright paint ‘SID WILL GET YOU’.

  She shivered again, shoved her hands in her pockets and walked on.

  The road curved slowly to the right. The junction at the far end of the street came in sight. She relaxed. The houses were sealed tight but you never knew what might be lurking inside. If she had been anyone else, like Ashley used to be, and with friends, they would have joked about the imaginary threat. But the outcasts didn’t make jokes about freaks.

  There was a dirty white van, veined with rust, parked a few yards into the street from the junction.

  It looks hot, she thought and then shook her head as if trying to dislodge the thought. How can it look hot? She tried to argue sense into herself but she knew it was pointless. For weeks now every cable, every light, everything with power running through it had looked ‘hot’.

  She hadn’t told anyone—she wasn’t stupid. But then she’d had her annual medical scan and now she had to go back. The letter had said it was routine; something had gone wrong with the heart monitor, apparently.

  Her dad had insisted it wasn’t anything important. Machines went wrong all the time. Of course they did; a lot of the equipment was old and wearing out. But he didn’t know she had seen the EEG go very hot and then cold shortly after the nurse had attached the sensors to her head.

  It was just a coincidence. The brain monitor hadn’t broken because of her. Just coincidence.

  The van got really hot as its electric motor spun into life. Melinda froze. It did not race towards her, but pulled gently away from the kerb. It moved sedately down the road and past her. She listened to it retreating into the distance and headed off towards the junction again, cursing herself for being a baby.

  That’s when she saw the man walking along the other side of the road, looking at her. Perhaps he was just curious to see a schoolgirl out in the middle of the day. He was clean-shaven and quite young, perhaps in his twenties, and not bad looking. She realised she was staring and looked away.

  Then someone grabbed her arms and forced them back into a painful double lock. Terror flooded through her. The air cracked and a grunt came from behind. She felt light headed and dizzy. A smell of burning filled the air: clothes and something else. Whoever grabbed her fell back, pulling her as he went. She stumbled backwards, lost her balance and collapsed on him.

  The man beneath her swore and she was thrown to the side, out onto the street. She rolled over and hit her head. She lay face to the tarmac. Something hit her hard in the side kn
ocking the wind out of her.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ said a strained and angry voice close to her head. Someone kicked her in the side again.

  ‘No damage!’

  ‘I’ll give them no damage,’ said the angry one. She was kicked again. She could not breathe and her ribs on that side were in agony. Melinda felt rather than saw the van return. Her ears were filled with the grinding of the side door sliding open.

  ‘Come on, get her inside.’

  ‘I’m not touching her!’

  ‘Not you. Him.’

  Something snapped around her upper arm. She cried out with the intense pain. It felt as if it was going to be broken off. The air cracked again with the same dizziness. Ozone and burning wafted by her. Her arm was pulled up, dragging her body with it. Something in her shoulder gave way as she was tossed into the back of the van. Her head smashed into metal.

  ‘No damage?’ said the angry voice almost as if he was laughing, but his voice came from a long distance away. The door slammed shut and she felt the motor beneath her glow as the vehicle pulled away.

  ‘Hold her down.’

  Something pressed hard in the middle of her back, crushing the breath out of her. A hand gripped her wrist. She felt a surge and the world flashed white behind her eyelids.

  ‘Jake? Jake? Shit,’ said one them.

  Something stabbed into her leg and her muscles relaxed beyond her control. And the world faded away.

  The dirty white van streaked with rust lurched out of the side road and took off towards the centre of the city. Ellen Lomax turned to watch it go. There was a flash of light from inside it and the motor choked for a few moments before recovering.

  She shook her head and checked the road carefully before crossing. There wasn’t a lot of traffic nowadays. Once upon a time it would have taken ten minutes or more to get across the road and over to Southern Cemetery.

  She ambled across the first set of lanes, keeping an eye out for cars, and then the second set. She glanced up at the riffy pylon. Hundreds of graves must have been cleared away to make space for it. The pylons made a grid across the whole city—every city, every town and every village. Even the countryside had them, though not so many.