The Radical (Unity Vol.1)

by Lynch, S. M.

  Seeing Shakespeare’s birthplace still intact, if a little renovated, we were absolutely in awe but couldn’t stop to stand and stare. I caught its mud-colored outer walls, plate glass windows and misshaped oak beams nevertheless. It was a relic that seemed to have been lifted straight out of another time zone, with even the gardens still maintained behind a six-foot-tall metal fence that looked as if it could be electrified. Still a museum after all these years! My eyes met Ryken’s at the mutual understanding that somewhere like that was sacrosanct. To knock it down surely would have been total sacrilege.

  I spotted a dispensary cart selling falafels and stopped, motioning for him to join me. I swiped my U-Card to open one of the plastic collection chambers, watching as Ryken took a couple for himself too before devouring them rapidly.

  ‘What do you see?’ I asked him, using the stop to assess whether we were already being followed. If we posted up, I knew someone else might.

  ‘Two behind you. Loitering at the corner of that Sanctuary,’ he nodded, cool as ice. I knew there was more to that man than he was letting on.

  Let me see you fight, soldier. But later…

  ‘I’m ready to kick ass, I don’t know about you. Let’s just hope I don’t lose my breakfast,’ I jeered, scrubbing my hands together to rid myself of the crumbs. ‘I will deal with them.’

  ‘You don’t know what–’

  ‘Kiss me, for luck,’ I whispered, tangling my hands in the hair at the nape of his neck, moaning into his mouth. He reached for my cheek and snarled, moving in. I hungered for his taste once more.

  While he placed his lips on mine and kept one eye trained on our enemies, I used our defiant show of lust to surreptitiously grab a weapon I’d spotted behind the counter of the falafel truck. I pulled back and pecked his gorgeous lips.

  ‘Let me wind them up a bit,’ I winked.

  ‘No way.’ He shook his head, his eyes swimming in desire, his grip on my waist urging me to stay by his side.

  ‘Stay right here. The resistance operates on these streets, I know it,’ I dropped my voice to a whisper, ‘I stopped at this cart to check for their mark, I found it,’ I smiled, patting my inside jacket pocket.

  I didn’t give him chance to say a thing else, turning on my heel.

  I strode toward the emissaries and didn’t look at my victims. I walked right past them and knew they would follow. Taking them with me into an alley, I knew they would prefer to capture me rather than kill me. Hearing them near me with heavy footsteps, I swiped the gun, cocked it and turned, shooting them both in the shoulder. I considered their kneecaps too but there wasn’t time. They were paralyzed enough for now and would survive. I wasn’t a killer, just a keeper of the darker side of peace.

  Now we had to hurry. I stole their guns from their jerking bodies and ran, full pelt, back towards Ryken. He began running alongside me and I tossed him the guns the emissaries had possessed.

  He readied them in his hands as we chased and we ran the length of the High Street towards the riverbank, until we were passing the deteriorating theatres that somehow looked more authentic in their wearied state.

  Shakespeare was still required, an eternal necessity.

  We came to a residence that was unmistakably Mara’s. It was like Eve’s bridal house; intact and untouched by the dreaded developers who loved to turn beautiful old houses into bastardized versions of themselves.

  Mara’s was a lone stone cottage looking out onto the River Avon, which though uncovered unlike the Ouse in York probably should have been, to prevent locals having to watch rotten bits of detritus and old mattresses float by their homes in almost black water. The building had a small garden at the front separated by a narrow footpath, two large bay windows and a wide, blue wooden door in the middle. It was surrounded by thick ivy and hanging baskets filled with geraniums of various colors. The smell of the flowers almost managed to mask the stench of the river. Almost.

  ‘It looks as if nobody is home,’ he guessed.

  I was thinking the same thing.

  ‘Do it,’ I nodded, knowing what he had in mind.

  He smashed in the fragile glass of the front bay window with his forearm, sending shards clattering onto the walkway slabs and into the house itself. He cleared it and stepped through, helping me inside too.

  We dashed around but the whole place was empty. Cleared out completely.

  ‘I’ll check upstairs,’ he said.

  I let him run up and watched as he took three steps at a time in his haste. I heard heavy footsteps above me while watching out of the windows to check for any emissaries determined to take us down – or out.

  ‘Seraph, you better come up,’ he shouted down.

  I heard the urgent tone and raced in his direction. He showed me into a pink bedroom at the back of the property. It was empty like the rest of the house except for the walls, covered in drawings. A little girl had lived here.

  ‘Mara must have kids,’ I guessed.

  ‘That is not what I got you up here for…’ He motioned to the window looking down on the backyard.

  It was beginning to swarm with emissaries.

  ‘They are medial. The first were just primers sent to scare us. Easy losses.’

  ‘You mean…?’ I watched him with new fear.

  ‘If these ones don’t take us, they will send heavier artillery in.’

  ‘What do they want with us? What can we bargain with?’ I wondered out loud, thinking through the situation. We had little ammunition and next to no chance of escape. I ran to the front and saw several vehicles on the road outside, packed with larger bodies. ‘There are the big fucks.’

  Ryken and I reconnoitered the entire upstairs and found no furniture to shield us, no secret cupboards to hide ourselves in either.

  A message from my eye in the sky, Atlas, arrived on my xGen: ‘Scanning underground – escape tunnel under the pantry.’

  ‘What kind of woman is Mara?’ Ryken demanded.

  ‘One woman who knows something; one woman desperate to evade their control,’ I offered. It was a guess.

  ‘And is he tracking you the whole time?’ Ryken demanded, his eyes wide.

  I shrugged. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t cool with me either that someone constantly had me under their watchful eye. However, Atlas AKA the Rascal had saved my hide many times.

  ‘We will never get down the stairs. They will shoot us through the letterbox.’

  ‘Let’s think.’ I knew we were running out of time and luck, but what else could we do? ‘Pantry off the kitchen, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he panted, his eyes darting around, seeking a way out.

  ‘Below this room?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded frantically.

  ‘They just wanna scare us, take us, not kill us, otherwise they would have done it already?’

  ‘They want me more, trust me. I know it. Don’t ask how, but I do,’ he told me fearfully. ‘This isn’t about you.’

  ‘Hell it isn’t. Fuckers want me too, Ryken.’

  ‘Then we are fucked. We are both bait for the other.’

  I shook my head, half amused, half unable to believe I was still in an unsafe country where I didn’t belong and where I felt uncertainness as a foreigner out of her comfort zone.

  When voices became louder and doors started opening and closing, we knew we had very little time indeed. Ryken turned to me, taking my elbows in his hands. ‘What do you weigh?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  He frowned with deadly seriousness.

  ‘One eighty. Maybe a bit more. I need the muscle,’ I argued.

  ‘My asking was not an exercise in physiology,’ he muttered, taking out his climbing pads to show me. ‘My Clever-Grips hold up to 35 stones. Plenty of room for error.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted over the sound of gunshots now ringing through the house. They were right beneath us. ‘I don’t do heights, yeah?’

  ‘You wanna fall through the floor instead? Just get on,’ he demanded, turning and motion
ing for me to piggyback him.

  I contemplated it for seconds before I jumped onto his back and wrapped my arms and legs around him. He shuffled the gloves on and kicked the window out of its frame, my awe intensifying with every moment I watched him work his way out of the situation we had backed ourselves into.

  He attached us to the brickwork outside, the emissaries now all either indoors or out front, no longer in the backyard. He didn’t seem bothered by my weight or he didn’t show it. He whispered, ‘We drop now.’

  I heard the gloves power up with the press of a button and the ground met us suddenly as we slid with the power of his quick hand movements and the suction pads working in unison.

  We hid ourselves against the wall. My heart was pounding. We could be dead any minute or worse, captured. He took a brave look inside the house, whipping his head back.

  He pointed as if to communicate the kitchen was a no-go.

  He lip-read my words, ‘Let’s run for it.’

  He replied in barely a whisper, ‘You first. I will cover you. Over the fence. Back the way we came.’

  I nodded. We both took a deep breath.

  I moved close to him and bit his bottom lip, while his hand grasped my ass and pulled me close.

  ‘Go,’ he instructed.

  Chaos broke out as soon as I was spotted crossing the large expanse of long grass behind Mara’s house.

  I heard shots behind me and ran for my life. I thought I felt a couple of bullets fly over my head as I ducked at the sounds of gunfire. I also heard some punches being thrown and some bones breaking. I didn’t know exactly who was taking them or giving them. I knew I just had to get myself away. I saw the fence and considered how I would jump it before I got there. As I approached, I saw how old and splintered it was, knowing a sharp kick would have it down.

  It crushed under my foot easily. I looked behind me once I was out in the back alley and saw he was running towards me, with two pistols in his hands and a barrel he had obviously stolen from one of the many bodies now littering the lawn.

  ‘Take it!’ he shouted, throwing what I presumed to be a lightweight explosives device at me.

  I caught it and pulled the pin, throwing it back with everything I had into the house, through the busted-open back door.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted.

  With the consequent explosion blasting out behind us, we chased away with everything we had, taking street after street, turning sharply at every opportunity.

  We found sanctuary behind an empty, rundown tobacconists’ and held our breaths against another flimsy fence that offered only temporary safety.

  We thought we might be free but then heard pounding feet somewhere in the distance, the premium-grade emissaries I imagined. Officium’s last resort; the ones that would ensure we didn’t get away.

  Ryken had the same thought, by the looks of him.

  ‘Shit,’ he panicked, ‘we’re screwed now.’

  We set off again at speed, not knowing whether it was adrenalin or fight or flight making us work for survival. We just didn’t have any other option but to keep running.

  Our lungs began to burn from the constant stopping and starting, but we still continued on, venturing further toward the edge of Stratford, twisting and turning from one residential street to another.

  I looked over at Ryken to see if he knew where we were going, but his eyes were darting about as if he were madly searching for something. Despair was slowly starting to creep into my mind too, knowing he didn’t have a clue where we were heading.

  Then we hit a dead end.

  Ryken was in complete despair, with more than the fear of death or capture rocking him. He was trying to protect me, I knew.

  I felt a drain lid under foot and an idea hit. I pointed and he knew. He immediately started grabbing at the corners to pull the cover up, and together, combining our strengths, we managed to heave the lid open. Within seconds, we both dropped into the sewer, replacing the entrance as quietly as possible.

  Stood in near darkness, a few moments later we heard the expected voices and footsteps across the drain lid above. Ryken seemed more unnerved than me and I knew we couldn’t afford any knee-jerk reactions.

  I held a finger at his lips to silence and calm him, staring into his eyes. His arms wrapped around my waist while we waited to discover whether this was it.

  His head dropped on my shoulder and I held my hands around his neck, an embrace having crept up on us quite unexpectedly.

  After the foreign voices up above went away, and heavy footsteps marched into the distance, we caught our breaths against each other’s shoulders.

  ‘You were right. I am sad, alone, afraid. If I have anything, I have somethin’ to lose. Somethin’ they can use against me.’

  ‘I feel exactly the same, trust me,’ he moaned, burying his nose into my hair and growling. One more move and I had no doubt he would have me, even in that sewer. I felt the need too but my body was crying out for rest more.

  I fell against the sewer wall, watching him when he did the same thing. I was spent. Totally and utterly exhausted.

  ‘Why did they speak like that?’

  He explained in whispers, ‘They have their own language, a secret code that only their kind can decipher. They operate outside of the law, they can navigate their way around the world unchecked, and they are trained, ruthless killers with only one purpose – to prevent secrets leaking out that pose a threat to their employers. Before the flu even, Officium began recruiting the strongest men and women for their own global police force. Experimental drugs and stem cell experiments made them physically superhuman. However, there were side-effects. They became unthinking, amoral creatures of particularly dark habits. They follow orders that might lead them straight to death because they know nothing else. Officium are hell-bent on protecting their secrets because if they were exposed, it would certainly spell catastrophe for the world as we know it. Honestly, you are better off not knowing what I know. I wouldn’t want you burdened with the knowledge I have on these people. Knowing would only endanger you further.’

  I glared at Ryken with suspicion. ‘I wonder how you know so much? You talk as if you were one of them. You’re not, are you? It would make sense though, given your background and the way you maintain your physical fitness.’

  He looked demonic. I had touched a nerve, obviously.

  ‘Why haven’t I killed you already then?’ He shouted so loud and fierce, the sewer shook with the reverberations of his defiant exclamation.

  ‘This was the dumbest idea. Coming to Stratford was a big mistake! I don’t know how I ended up in this situation!’

  I grabbed my hair and pulled, shielding my face with a hand to avert Ryken’s gaze. The adrenalin was wearing off and the severity of the predicament kicking in.

  He reached over and put a hand on my shoulder but I shrugged it off.

  ‘Look, Seraph, I apologize. But I’m just as frustrated as you are. We just need to get back home, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, we do.’

  ‘Then coming here was not a total loss. We can use this chance to go off grid. We won’t get out of this country any other way now. We have to disappear from their sights.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I wearily agreed.

  I assessed our surroundings, my mind settling. Thankfully there was no sewerage at our feet. I reasoned that it must be pumped elsewhere – probably to the poly-tunnel fields. However, the drain still had an awful smell about it, a dank stench, and it was completely dark the further you looked down the tunnel.

  ‘So how do you suggest we get out of here? Will they be roaming the streets for us now?’

  ‘We can’t go back to the car now. I think we need to stay underground for a bit,’ he decided. ‘Let them tire themselves out looking for us. We both need to turn off our xGens in case they’re watching for user spikes, and any other devices that might drop onto their radar.’

  We both turned off everything and I noticed Ryken’s xGen with
admiration – it was a heavy, rectangular slab with a metallic silver coating. Probably had the capability of a supercomputer.

  After he turned it off, he popped something out from a cavity underneath – a small torch. ‘I had this in the Army, if you were wondering.’

  He must have seen me regarding his device. For some, an xGen was the only piece of individuality they could have in this world – me included. Lack of choice, sparse human interaction and fear had crushed us. An xGen was the closest thing to freedom; the thing they might also use to control our every move.

  ‘Shall we see where these tunnels lead us?’ I asked.

  Ryken nodded, leading the way into the darkness, the light of his emergency torch illuminating our path.

  CHAPTER 16

  Some time later we got out of the sewer, emerging from beneath ground toward the outskirts of Stratford, where we found ourselves in a barren field of dead earth. It was drizzling with rain and the air was highly oxygenized, making us both lightheaded. It was pitch-black and we had no idea where we were, only that the town seemed far away. We could see the dim lights of the town in the distance, glittering against the swelling River Avon, protected by great concrete flood barriers set against the almost indestructible black waters. I nodded when he asked if I was alright and we decided to start walking, neither of us willing to take rest.

  We picked our way between white, unlit poly-tunnels that were just bright enough against the light of the moon to show us the way. The ground underneath was damp and boggy, making it much harder to travel on foot. We were both getting breathless when we left the poly-tunnel field and arrived at what seemed to be an old tractor trail. We followed it, hoping it would lead somewhere. Neither of us had the energy to talk, we simply knew we had to keep going. We couldn’t stop. Stopping would mean certain defeat.

  We followed the trail and ended up at the signpost of a deserted town, Warwick, one of those small settlements that had been completely abandoned in 2023. Everything was in total darkness, thankfully reducing the chances of visual detection. We walked along the tarmac road, full of potholes, mud, grass and bits of rubble. We passed empty houses that were falling into extreme disrepair and then spotted something very sad.