Awaken (The Awaken Series Book 1)

by Maggie Sunseri

  The layout of the city revealed the Council’s priorities and rankings of importance. If the wall was ever breached, the people would be the first to go, and the Council would be the last.

  My muscles ached. I had already lost sight of May on multiple occasions. A series of lucky guesses kept me on her trail. My suspicion was proving to be accurate: May was heading for the exit.

  I had never been so close to the walls before. They seemed to be made of a kind of metal, and they stood at least fifty feet tall. May slowed her car to a stop, parking it where the road ended and cutting the engine. There were no more houses beyond this road, just dirt and nothingness—then the wall. The houses lining this road looked completely abandoned, yards filled with weeds and overgrown grass, and broken or shattered windows.

  Suddenly aware of the lack of cover, I spotted a crumbling brick mailbox. I pedaled over to the mailbox and dumped the bike. My legs, worn out from the frantic ride through town, screamed in protest as I crouched behind my brick hiding spot.

  Aunt May exited the parked car. She turned right and disappeared behind the row of houses. I jogged to the end of the street, peering in the direction May had gone. She was moving along the dirt stretch of land next to the wall, getting closer and closer to the wall’s lone opening.

  I had to know where May was going. I had to know the reason behind all of the mysterious phone calls and cryptic goodbyes. I had to know why May was leaving me, and how she was planning on doing it. If she really was planning to walk through Oportet’s gates, I needed to see her do it with my own eyes.

  Aunt May reached the gate. She stood on the road that led to the huge metal doors—doors capable of opening with the single command from the guard stationed in front of her. It was a single guard seated within the operating station next to the gate, and he was staring right at May.

  Afraid of being seen, I ducked behind the last rundown house before the main road. I peered around the side of the house so that only my head was visible, ready to run if trouble arose.

  “Tim,” Aunt May said, moving to stand directly in front of the glass box. “Thank you for doing this.” The guard just looked at her, unresponsive. “Tim?” she repeated.

  My ears registered the sound of wheels against pavement—multiple vehicles from the loudness of it, moving toward May from the road behind her. May spun around, her face lit up with fear.

  “What did you do?” she screamed at the guard. “We trusted you!”

  Three black vans came to a stop facing Aunt May, and guards poured out to surround her. I held my breath, as if any sound I made would alert the guards to my presence.

  They were dressed in all black, infamous silent pistols tucked in each belt. These guns were the only weapons permitted in Oportet, and only the guards and the Council could possess them. They were said to be a special kind of gun that emitted no noise when fired. A black helmet covered the entirety of the guards’ faces, the tinting so heavy that even up close their eyes were not visible.

  Aunt May stood, in her beautiful red dress, her hair flying all around her as she faced a considerable display of Oportet’s law enforcement. Even then, she was absolutely stunning.

  The guards all took position, and I watched in horror as they pointed the silent pistols directly at my aunt’s forehead, the red lasers coming together as one.

  You can’t kill her! I screamed in my head. It went against the central tenets of Oportet: life had meaning and it should be protected.

  My feet were cemented in place, and I couldn’t pull my eyes away for even a second. A final van pulled up behind the others, and I recognized Councilman Tomlinson stepping out along with two more uniformed guards.

  “May Ashford,” Tomlinson said, standing behind the line of guards. They parted before him, creating a gap between him and May. “I can not in good conscious call this a surprise. Your friend here made certain of that.” Tomlinson gestured to the petrified guard inside the gate’s command center. “I need you to come out here, Mr. Garfield.”

  The guard came out of the center, and Tomlinson motioned for him to stand next to May.

  “But I did what you said,” he sputtered as half of the guards moved their lasers to his forehead. “You said I would get my reward and come away free!”

  “You sold us out for money?” May blurted, her face contorting at the magnitude of the man’s treachery.

  “I love how situations like this illustrate humanity’s true nature,” Tomlinson proclaimed. “Don’t worry, you’ll be free from all of this very soon.”

  “The rules forbid murder,” May pleaded. “How can you take away a life that you profess has meaning and purpose?”

  Tomlinson waved a hand dismissively to silence her. “You don’t understand, do you? Your life has no meaning. Your life lost all of its meaning the day you decided to turn away from the rules. I wouldn’t call this murder; that would imply that I was going to kill you. You, my dear, are already dead.”

  “You’re insane!” said the guard next to May. “How the hell have you stayed in power for this long?”

  The guards tensed at the outburst, and I was caught by surprise at his bluntness. Then I realized that if there was ever a time to question anything, it was now. There was nothing more he could lose.

  “Because I understand how a successful government should operate,” Tomlinson answered simply. He spoke as if he was having a casual chat with an old friend rather than a man he was planning to execute. “There needs to be enough freedom to give the people the illusion of free will, and enough control to keep the masses from questioning and thinking too much. When this balance is reached, you have a society that finds meaning in following the rules and obeying their leaders.

  “A citizen will cling to these beliefs because it is only through them that he will acquire his own delusional since of self—his meaning and purpose—and only through them will he feel he is a part of the powerful whole of the society. Outsiders are hated for not having these same values and beliefs, and any freethinking is despised for its possible destruction of the previously mentioned sense of self.

  “When being a dutiful citizen is all you are, and all you wish to be, it makes a leader’s job quite simple. How do I censor and shelter my people from anything that might disrupt this sense of self?” Tomlinson paused, looking back and forth between May and the guard. “Do you understand?” he asked. He wore a slight smile now, a smile of pride.

  “The only thing I understand is that we had a deal,” the guard spat.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t let me pass through to the Outside,” May said, ignoring the man next to her. “If my life is really so meaningless, why can’t I go live it outside of Oportet?” she rushed on. “You let disorderly Outsiders out of Oportet all the time,” she added, her eyes pleading.

  Tomlinson shook his head, the same prideful smile on his lips. “Oh, May. No reason to be so naïve. Not now.”

  “What are you saying?” Aunt May cocked her head. Her voice shook with fear.

  “No one leaves Oportet. That isn’t how it works.”

  His words took a moment to sink in. I sucked in a breath, thinking about Alex. He deserved a life of solitude, maybe, but death?

  “We want to paint a picture of a utopia to the Outsiders, and that cannot be done with any failures. If we have a stream of people leaving this society, then it is not a utopia, now, is it?”

  A look of resignation crossed May’s features. She was done fighting.

  “There are no other options, Ms. Ashford.”

  I could not tear my eyes away. I could not turn my head and refuse to witness, even as Tomlinson signaled the guards, even as tiny clicks sounded, even as my beautiful aunt fell to the ground, dead before making contact.

  A scream was building in my throat, and I was powerless to stop it. Just as it made its way to my lips, a large hand clamped over my mouth.

  “Shh. Don’t scream. They’ll kill you if you scream.” A gruff voice I didn’t recogni
ze whispered in my ear. “I told her to wait. She should have waited,” the man choked out.

  Tears were falling down my cheeks, and the hand lifted from my mouth. My mind was too preoccupied with keeping my eyes locked on Aunt May’s lifeless body as it was carried to one of the vans to even consider the stranger behind me.

  My whole body trembled with rage. How dare those monsters touch my aunt like she was a meaningless shell of a person. It took all I had not to scream, fight, punch, and kick until my body and voice ached.

  I owed it to May to hold myself together, to live for what she believed was right. If I died, then we would both die in vain.

  “Are you Luna?” the man asked. I finally turned around to face the man who had just saved my life.

  “Yes.” My voice came out in a choked whisper, and I almost didn’t recognize it as my own.

  The man had a soft, handsome face and was dressed in a lab coat. He was wearing glasses, and his blue eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Dr. Gary Reynolds,” he said softly, staring into my eyes. “You look like her.”

  “You’re the one in love with my aunt,” I said. I was finally beginning to see the whole picture, and this man was the final piece. He was responsible for all of the mysterious phone calls. He was supposed to be leaving with Aunt May today.

  I could not stop a strangled sob from escaping my lips, and I could feel a huge wave of sobbing and heaving building up within me. I was being torn apart.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said, awkwardly placing a hand on my back in an effort to comfort me.

  I looked once more into the man’s eyes, and I could see two reflections of myself: one was my pained face on the lenses of his glasses, and the other was in the two orbs of blue beyond them. His eyes did not contain my face as the glasses did. Rather, they contained the brokenness and all-consuming void that was eating me away inside. It was the kind of darkness that made me wonder if there was ever any light. It was the kind of emptiness that yearned for my submission. His reflection of my mind’s state was making me wonder if there was anything at all to hang on to, or if everything was fated to succumb to oblivion.

  I owed it all to lost hope. Oportet stripped us of our hope for something more. The something more was a nameless thing: a breath of an idea, a whisper of a thought, or a hum of spontaneous action.

  It would have been so easy to look into this man’s eyes and admit defeat—to do what was expected of me, and to accept the reflection of myself as I saw it—but I wanted that something more. I wanted to give it a name, and be where I could wear it for all to see. I did not want to be the girl in the reflection. I wanted to be more.

  I wanted to be more than an obedient citizen. I wanted to be more than a girl who blindly followed the rules. I wanted to be more than the daughter who only held value when she did as she was told. I wanted to be more than the Council’s deliberately engineered sociology project.

  That was my hope. That was how I would honor Aunt May, and that was how I would escape the reflection of emptiness in Dr. Reynolds’s eyes.

  ~~~~~

  We had skirted around deteriorating houses until reaching a silver car a block from Aunt May’s abandoned vehicle. I looked away, unable to even cast my eyes in the direction of the sleek, red car left by an owner who would never return.

  The car and I had a lot in common. I almost found myself sympathizing with the vehicle, somehow forgetting that it was an inanimate object that lacked the capacity for emotion. That was where our similarities came to a halt. We might have both been abandoned, but I was the one who had to endure the pain that came with it.

  “I’ll take you home,” Dr. Reynolds said gruffly.

  I nodded. My brain was not producing enough coherent thoughts for me to really assess my current situation. I only had one thing on my mind: change.

  I needed to stop running from change. I needed to finally admit to myself what I wanted and pursue it. I had no other options—something needed to change.

  Leaving my bike behind, I slipped into the passenger’s seat and recited my address monotonously. Dr. Reynolds had shielded his emotions in record time, his face now resembling a kind of stone sculpture.

  “Why were you there?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

  I asked myself the same question. I had no idea what had possessed me to trail my aunt on a bicycle for three miles. Something drew me to the gates, and I had a feeling it was the same force that compelled me to keep my eyes open through the entirety of my aunt’s murder.

  It was the pull from within to seek the truth and to awake from the blanket of unconsciousness that covered Oportet. I trailed my Aunt because I needed to. Everything that had happened to me since August had been for a reason: Meeting and falling in love with an Outsider, defending my beliefs and choices at school, facing the darker side of humanity through Alex and the Council, receiving guidance from May, and learning what really happens to those who oppose Oportet.

  It was all leading up to a final event—a final choice that would decide my eternal fate.

  “She was acting strange, so I followed her,” I mumbled finally.

  “You were at her house?” Dr. Reynolds asked with raised eyebrows.

  “Yeah. I guess she meant it to be a final goodbye,” I choked out, losing it again. The tears escaping me were uncontrollable, and I almost felt embarrassed in Dr. Reynolds’s stony presence.

  “She loved you so much. She never stopped talking about you,” he said.

  I didn’t feel like being comforted. It seemed like such an unbalanced exchange, a loved one’s death for a bunch of meaningless words. Nothing anyone said would make any of it okay, so what was the point?

  I answered Dr. Reynolds with silence, and it suited us better anyway.

  We were now in front of my house, and I cast a glance in the direction of the driver’s seat. Dr. Reynolds opened his mouth, but I was out of the car before he could throw at me more clichéd mutterings about my loss. My rudeness was lost to the jumbled anger, sadness and determination swirling within me.

  I slammed my front door closed behind me and mindlessly moved in the direction of quiet voices. My family was sitting at the dinner table in a tense silence when I entered. Mother and Father stood at the sight of me.

  “Where have you been, young lady?” Mother asked at the same time Father yelled, “How dare you disregard our wishes and miss family dinner!”

  “I could care less about your family dinners right now,” I snapped. I felt like I was in some kind of lucid dream. I had somewhat control of my actions amidst a completely surreal environment. Words just kept forming on my tongue, and I did little to stop them from escaping my lips.

  Father started speaking, but I cut him off. “They killed her!” I screamed. “You work for—and are governed by—monsters! They’re murderers! Don’t you care at all?”

  “Luna, you’re hysterical. Go to your room and collect yourself,” Mother said, her face paling with every word I uttered.

  Before I could speak again, the phone began to ring. Mother moved to grab it from the wall while Father stared me down, red-faced. A vein in his forehead was protruding, and his fists were clinched at his sides.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  The sound of the phone clattering to the floor seemed to resonate throughout the kitchen, all eyes returning back to me.

  “It’s May,” Mother murmured. A cross between horror and disbelief crossed her features. “There was a car crash. She didn’t make it.”

  Megan began to sob in my peripheral.

  I shook my head violently. “Bullshit!”

  “Luna!” Father roared. I had never heard him so angry. “Go to your room. You are upsetting everyone here.”

  “You know what’s upsetting?” I asked, more composed than before.

  Mother reassumed her position next to Father. Her body shook as she watched me.

  “Tomlinson commanding a set of guards to gun down my A
unt,” I said. “Seeing what happens to those who oppose a bunch of corrupt, brain-washing old men is what’s upsetting.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” Father said quietly.

  My breath caught. Did he know about the executions?

  “David!” Mother choked out, finally breaking through her initial shock. “May’s accident had nothing to do with her misguided conspiracy theories,” Mother said, hints of hysteria finally shining through the cracks of her usual contained disposition.

  “Of course. My apologies, dear,” Father said solemnly. “It was not my place.”

  I had a feeling that if Father knew anything about the executions, Mother didn’t in the slightest. “Fine. Don’t listen to me. It’s obvious that you would rather stay comfortable than to face reality.”

  Mother looked at me like I was trying to convince her of the existence of fairies and unicorns, Megan was too busy letting out waves of tears to listen, and Father was too set in his loyalties with the Council to fault them for killing an unruly citizen. My family was a hopeless cause.

  “Jasper,” I breathed, barely emitting a sound. The weight of my actions were now fully upon me, and I had to act quickly before any damage could be done.

  “What did she say?” Mother asked in between muffled sobs as I sprung into action.

  I ignored the rising voices behind me as I darted for the front door. My selfishness could send Jasper to his death.

  ~~~~~

  I pounded on Jasper’s door, my fist’s momentum almost causing me to punch him in the face when he answered.

  Jasper caught my fist in the air, his fingers gently wrapping around it. He raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m not losing my hearing, you know.” He released my hand, and I let it drop to my side. “Um, come in, but I have to leave soon for that, well, you know,” he stammered.