The Radical (Unity Vol.1)

by Lynch, S. M.

  Once on the fifth floor, I waited behind the stairwell door for all the staff that were floating around to get in the elevators and leave. When it finally seemed quiet, I emerged into the corridor and started walking from door to door, peering through each one as I went, trying to detect whether Ryken was inside one lab or another. I got to the end of one corridor when I decided to try the other around the corner. I rushed round to start checking each of the offices back there, but an arm came out of nowhere to halt my tracks and quickly pulled me into one of the rooms.

  The door shut and I desperately tried to escape my captor, but there was no moving out of his unyielding grasp. I heard his almost silent whisper, ‘It’s me. Stay absolutely still.’

  He held his arms around my body, with his back up against the wall. We would be just behind the door if anyone decided to open it again. I was immediately comforted by his presence and felt for his hand. Seconds later we heard noises out in the corridor; figures trudging in heavy boots, shouting voices and weaponry slinging about. Ryken and I both held our breath while we prayed for the emissaries to leave that floor.

  After several minutes of silence, I let my head fall right back against my would-be-captor’s chest to look up into his face. He bent his head down to kiss my forehead.

  ‘Did you get what we came here for?’ I asked hurriedly, turning to face him, still in his grasp.

  Ryken shook his head in disappointment. ‘I checked all three labs and they’ve all been stripped. They are all totally empty, nothing’s left. They’ve taken measures.’

  My nose was almost touching his and I saw no lie in his eye.

  ‘Fuck, Ryken, what the hell are we gonna do?’

  ‘Take a boat to a deserted island and never come back?’

  ‘Ha ha, yeah, let’s just waste all our efforts at the drop of a hat, after coming up against one little obstacle.’

  His eyes were bloodshot and darker than ever, while exhaustion paled his tanned face. ‘I have a horrible feeling our luck is about to run out okay. I say we cut our losses.’

  I shook his good shoulder and reminded him, ‘We can’t. We’ve come this far. Remember what is at stake.’

  ‘Our lives?’

  He was becoming slightly dejected, I could tell. I was exhausted and frustrated too, but something was driving me forward.

  ‘We’re missing somethin’ here Ryken, I can feel it in my gut. There’s something we’ve overlooked and I’m gonna get to the bottom of it. I don’t know what it is, but all this is just too weird.’

  ‘Look, Seraph, can we just get out of here? Get somewhere safe and talk this through?’

  ‘Okay.’

  With that, Ryken checked the corridor and we ran for the stairwell, pounding down the steps as quickly as possible. We got to the bottom and went out of a fire exit, slamming the door shut behind us as we left at the back of the building.

  We daren’t go back to the bike, and when the building was no longer in sight, we started running and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER 32

  After pounding the pavements for what felt like miles, we felt sure we were in Queens somewhere. We just didn’t know for sure because we had traversed the ruined suburbs for so long, that everything looked the same. Every house was a filthy brown color, every corner had a 24/7 on it, and every takeaway stank of foul, greasy food. Our bodies had only the energy to run, not to think anymore, and we had no idea where we had ended up. We had twisted and turned down dozens and dozens of backstreets, not really knowing where we were going, only that we needed to avoid being seen. I was developing a stitch and motioned for us to stop behind a shabby food outlet. I held my hands on my knees and caught my breath, working out the pain at the same time. Ryken tried to regain his strength too, but the pair of us were done for. It was starting to get dark and we needed to rest somewhere.

  He attempted humor, sniggering, ‘Two million and we can’t even afford a bed for the night!’

  ‘I know, right? This world is fucked. I can’t even spend my money without someone knowing where I am or what I’m doin’.’

  The strains of the day were starting to catch up with me and inside I was beginning to despair. I needed some comfort and he knew without me even having to say. He took me in his arms, holding my head against his chest, stroking my hair. I didn’t even have the energy to put my arms around him, limply falling against his body.

  ‘I wish I could take this all away, but I can’t,’ he told me.

  Wearily I admitted, ‘I know… this feels like an impossible situation.’

  There was nowhere to go, nobody who could help, no way of getting out of the situation without having to fight for our lives yet again. We were thirsty, hungry, tired and aching all over. Ryken still suffered from the previous day’s encounter with the emissaries and was running on empty. He looked like he might happily crawl into a hole and never come out.

  He shook my arm and pointed across the street. We watched a man bound out of his hydro-car, a Peugeot 9008, leaving it running as he dashed into a Mexican takeaway.

  ‘Quick, we’re getting out of here.’

  Ryken pulled me with him in the direction of the vehicle and I cottoned on to his plan. We quickly got in and slammed the doors shut. Inside it stank of body odor and cigars but as our escape route – it was priceless.

  Ryken sped off and we heard the hollering of the vehicle’s owner echo behind us as we shot off into the darkness of the ensuing blackout. I let my head fall back against the headrest. I was exhausted and just needed to be away from it all.

  Ryken

  I relied on my instincts alone in a bid to drive east and kept going until we reached the Long Island Expressway. I kept to a steady 60 to conserve power and avoid getting noticed. Seraph fell asleep in the passenger seat, but I continued on, hoping to find somewhere to stop for us to rest.

  I pulled off the Freeway when the fuel gauge beeped with a warning, and I just drove, without any thought of where we might go next. We hit Blue Point, an abandoned seaside type place. I drove through hoping to spot somewhere we could rest, not at all certain that anywhere would provide any decent kind of shelter. The landscape was barren and unforgiving, covered in darkness. There were loads of houses lining the beaches that looked ruined, battered by the rising waters. The fuel level was running ever lower, however, and I knew we would soon run out. I made a decision to pull into a white wooden beach house that looked totally abandoned.

  I pulled up the gravel driveway and the engine gave out as soon as we reached the house. I couldn’t have timed that any better. Seraph was still asleep, resting her head against the window, exhausted from the day’s toil and our all-night lovemaking. I thought back to that and smiled, recalling how soft and gentle she could be. Also, how wild she could get too. She was totally different to the person people thought of her as.

  I got out of the car and went to the passenger side, unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled her body out of the vehicle. She stirred and tightened her arms around my neck, hiding her face in my shoulder.

  I reached a door of the property and kicked it in. It was flimsy at best. We walked into a kitchen to survey the scene. There were broken pots and pans thrown around, twigs, stones and bits of hay spread on the tiled floor, plus the smell of a house unlived in for decades. I saw a lounge off the kitchen and walked through, placing Seraph on a dusty couch covered in rubbish. I saw no better option at that moment and needed to have a look around.

  There were tins of food in the cupboards but they were well out of date and the taps didn’t produce any water. I gripped a banister to pull my weary body upstairs and found several bedrooms, but none of them looked as though they would be any good for sleeping in. Some had plumes of fungi growing from the ceiling and black mould everywhere. The stink almost made me puke. I went back out to the vehicle, popping the trunk to see what might be hiding in there. I discovered bottles of beer, boxes of cigars, a tartan blanket and a bag full of dried snacks. I took them all inside and
saw Seraph sat up on the couch, wondering where I had got to.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Somewhere on Long Island. The car died just as I pulled up the drive. Here, I found these in the boot.’

  I handed her a beer and a packet of chips. She snapped the lid off and drank almost the entire bottle, before tucking into the snacks. I didn’t normally drink but knew beer was the most sanitary thing we had right then.

  We didn’t speak for several minutes while we munched and drank. The bleakness of our situation was apparent. We couldn’t travel, or go back to our apartments, and returning within even a yard of the city would be dangerous. It felt like we were alone without a single resource in the world.

  We were both on our second bottles when she broke the silence.

  ‘Ryken, you’re holding out on me. I can feel it and see it in your eyes. Why weren’t the samples there if Eve told us they would be?’

  I knew this was coming and yet had hoped she wouldn’t press me.

  ‘They really weren’t there, I searched that place high and low.’

  I was sitting on a coffee table positioned right in front of the couch she occupied. I avoided her gaze, looking down at the floor, when I said, ‘Eve may have believed the samples were there, but they have obviously been moved. Most likely Officium is scared enough to have made the decision to move them elsewhere. You know it’s not unheard of for viral teams to just up and leave one lab for another, they do it all the time, at a moment’s notice.’

  She disbelieved me, I knew. She moved closer and lifted my chin with her index finger, looking me in the eye.

  ‘Ryken, tell me. I trust you, please trust me.’

  My lip twisted as I fought the urge to speak. I was fighting a desperate internal battle to tell her the truth, but knew I needed to protect her, knew there were much larger things at stake. I kept looking her in the eye. I wouldn’t budge on this, she knew. What she didn’t know was that it was entirely for her safety.

  ‘Fine, that’s just fine,’ she growled, standing up to walk away, before opening a door to go outside.

  She stood on the decking at the front of the house and looked out. I watched the wind rush through her beautiful hair, an auburn swirl amassing behind her. I knew she felt exactly the same as me. My heart hurt with a mixture of despair, new love and emptiness.

  I had watched her this past week and had seen something crushing her fiery spirit under its heavy, irrefutable weight. She was trying to be so strong but I could see the need in her eyes. It was a desire I felt too. Neither of us wanted to be alone anymore.

  It was obvious that Eve would never have led us into danger to complete a fruitless task. Seraph wouldn’t and couldn’t believe it. Her intuitions were always right. Yet, I held back what I knew because it could spell my lover’s complete self-destruction otherwise.

  The reality was that we could never really be together unless this situation resolved itself properly. We needed that evidence. So many factors relied on getting that proof and the enormity of its importance was hurting us both. The one thing she had spent years trying to get, and the one thing she could never obtain. I wondered how she hadn’t gone insane.

  I heard her gasping against the wind with tears and beckoned her back in with a hand on hers. ‘It’s cold, please come inside.’

  I led her back to the couch and pulled her into my arms. ‘If you trust me Seraph, then you will let me keep my silence for now. If you love me, you’ll just stay here with me tonight, and we’ll make our plans in the morning.’

  She turned to look at me with several emotions crossing her face. I knew she just didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. She fought back sobs and breathed heavily, ‘I trust you with my life.’

  I pulled her into my chest and held my arms around her. I hoped she might hear my heart whispering a reassuring chant to calm her nerves. There was so much I was unable to say, so much I couldn’t say, and other words I could barely let myself think for fear my heart might actually shatter. I loved this woman more than life.

  ‘I would die for you, Seraphina.’

  Seraph

  Seven the next morning. I woke with a mouth that felt like sandpaper and tried to suck some spit forward to bring my tongue back to life. I suddenly remembered where I was and opened my eyes to survey the decaying house. I was still covered by the blanket that Ryken had tucked around me the night before as I had cried myself to sleep in his arms.

  A terrible feeling overwhelmed me. The blanket was still around me, he wasn’t. I shot up to look around and couldn’t see him anywhere.

  ‘Ryken, Ryken, where are you?’

  There was no response. I jumped off the couch, ran around the house, and couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked outside and saw the car was still there so I ran out with the vain hope of finding him loitering nearby, but he wasn’t. I started shouting his name over and over again. He was nowhere to be seen. I screamed while burning tears streaked my cheeks, but there was no reply. I looked out at the grey waters and spun around surveying the barren landscape. He had gone.

  I fell to my knees and yelled at the top of my lungs. Hot, salty tears continued to burn my face. I pulled my hands into tight fists in fits of anger and despair. I had feared this would happen.

  After gathering myself, I got up and went back inside, hoping he might have left a note or something. There was nothing. I didn’t know when he might have left so couldn’t figure out how far he would have gone.

  I went outside again, wracking my brain for options, and wondered whether I might find anything in the garage. I searched like a lunatic, snapping cupboards open and shut, but there was nothing. No vehicles, no fuel, nothing. There was only one thing I could do.

  I powered up my xGen and called Camille, who answered within seconds.

  ‘Seraph?’

  ‘I need help. I’m stuck on Long Island and Ryken’s gone. He left me here and I’ve no idea how to get back, or where to go, or what to do. I’m just stranded, and I feel lost, Camille. Please, help me.’

  I was rambling manically and felt panic set in.

  ‘Seraph, my love, calm down, please, calm down. Are you on a secure line?’

  ‘I don’t know, I think so, I can’t tell.’

  ‘Listen very carefully, I’m going to call you back in a moment, but until then I want you to get back indoors and wait. Wait there, Seraph.’

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed and hung up, going back inside to wait.

  Several minutes passed and I was starting to panic again when my xGen sounded. I was impatient for the image to come into focus and shouted, ‘Camille, Camille?!’

  She appeared on the screen, looking weary and sad. She would do nothing about this, I knew. Ryken was doing the bidding of someone outside of our jurisdiction. I would have to take matters into my own hands.

  She spoke quickly, ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m sending someone to come and get you.’

  ‘What about Ryken?’

  ‘Seraph, just wait there. I’m sending someone for you. Send your co-ordinates to me at once and we’ll find you. Just hang in there, angel.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll do that. But Camille, please find him for me. Please.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, my love. Stay there, stay there my darling.’

  With that, we hung up. There was nothing I could do. I fell on my knees and sank into the blackness of my anger, storing it up for the fight.

  CHAPTER 33

  Ryken

  I held Seraph in my arms until she fell asleep and tucked a blanket around her body as she lay on the dilapidated couch in the beach house. I sat in an armchair, willing sleep to come. However, no matter how hard I tried, I could not rest. I knew what lay ahead.

  I seemed to go in and out of sleep for a little while, until at 6am, I was shocked into life by the vibrating of an xGen in my inside pocket. Seraph stirred a little, but didn’t wake, so I looked at the screen and read the message: ‘The Plaza. One hour. Come alone.’

  It was
time. I felt a sinking feeling of dread wash over me. I would have to yank myself away from Seraph, for who knows how long, and yet I knew it had to be done. Ultimately, there was no other choice. If I didn’t do this, there would be no future for either of us.

  I crept over to where she was sleeping and kissed her mouth ever so delicately, so as not to wake her. I stroked her hair and stared at her face, imprinting it on my memory. I would need her image to keep me going. I took a deep breath and soundlessly went out of the house.

  I hunted through a number of garages nearby to see if there was any spare fuel, but eventually found something much better. A Ducati Tornado. It was unloved and would probably break down, but I had to give it a shot. I pushed it out of its hiding place, out of the driveway and then further down the road so that Seraph would not be woken by the sound of me starting it up.

  I caught sight of myself in a rearview mirror and what stared back nearly scared the living daylights out of me. The reflection was a shadow of myself, his face was black and blue, his eyes bloodshot, his skin a pallid green and his mouth contorted with torment at leaving behind the woman he loved. The woman who had saved me. I almost didn’t recognize myself.

  Once out of earshot of Seraph, I started the machine. It took a few efforts but I eventually got it going and hopped on, heading back to New York with the engine spluttering along.

  As I rode the bike, thoughts of Seraph filled my head. Remembrances of our lovemaking, her bravery and her spirit. I loved the way she lingered on my lips, her teeth nibbling the corners. I loved the way she felt in my arms, like no other partner had ever been more right for me.

  I nearly turned around and went back, but I didn’t. I could have kicked myself, but instead I let the wind lash at my eyes, tears streaming down my face as I rode on. I felt sick to the core; every inch of me knew that I may never see her again. Even the sky overhead seemed to mirror my somber mood, with grey clouds tinged by brown dust and dreariness.