Love/Hate (Aspects Book 1)

by L. C. Mawson

  Madame Borde knew all of this. And yet she liked to keep up the pretence that Claire needed to pass her class.

  “Madame, I’m just not good at remembering all of these facts. My brain’s not wired for it.”

  “Nonsense. You remember plenty of things just fine.”

  Claire did her best not to sigh. Sometimes it seemed as if people deliberately misunderstood her whenever it suited their needs.

  “I want you to retake this test.”

  “But Madame,” Claire protested, “I don’t need to get a higher grade. I’m happy with this D and I still have a C overall in this class.”

  Madame Borde shook her head. “Now, come on, Claire. It’s not admirable to settle when you’re capable of more.”

  Claire wanted to spit and argue, but she knew that it would do no good.

  “All right, I’ll take the test again. Please may I be excused now?”

  “You may.”

  It took everything Claire had not to storm up to her dorm room.

  “SHE JUST DOESN’T UNDERSTAND how little I care!” Claire yelled at the terminal in her room while standing off to the side, out of the view of the camera, as she stripped off her restrictive uniform.

  “She sounds awful,” Hate agreed from the other end of the call.

  “It’s like, I honestly couldn’t care less and she’s all ‘you can do it’ and I’m like, yeah, sure, technically I could, but then I’d probably drop a grade in Maths or, you know, a subject that actually matters.”

  “She probably thinks history should be easy for you compared to maths.”

  “What, because of my dyscalculia? You’re probably right... It’s like, she doesn’t get that I’m only good at remembering special-interest-y stuff. Which, right now, is elaborate cakes. Not exactly helpful to studying the Fall.”

  “I don’t know. Did the Rena not introduce new cake styles when they arrived?”

  Claire grinned as she pulled on a soft, red linen dress over soft black leggings. It was much less obtrusive than her uniform. She moved back into view of the terminal, dropping down onto her desk chair. “Even if they did, I don’t think it will be on the test.”

  “Urgh...”

  “I know, right? Be glad you don’t have to do school anymore. It’s the worst.”

  Hate’s smile seemed to fade a little and Claire was suddenly gripped with panic. Had she said something wrong? What was it? How could she fix it?

  “Hey,” Hate eventually said, her smile back, “can you leave the Academy right now? We can meet up and have a study date. I’m sure, between the two of us, we can figure out how to make the Fall interesting.”

  “I don’t know... I’m thinking about purposefully failing this time, just to show her,” Claire joked. “But, sure. I probably can’t afford the trouble.”

  Hate grinned. “I’ll meet you at the cafe in ten. Bring your textbook.”

  CLAIRE ENTERED THE cafe to see that Hate already had a table. In front of her were two cups of coffee, one plain black while the other was covered in whipped cream, and a selection of sandwiches, cakes and scones.

  “Are you planning on feeding an army?” Claire asked as she put her bag down.

  Hate shrugged. “From what I remember of it, studying makes me hungry. Also, I wasn’t sure what you’d want. At first, I just bought a few cakes, but then I realised that you might not have had anything for tea, so I got a bunch of savoury things as well. I don’t know what your sensory things are when it comes to food, so I just got a bunch of things.”

  “I don’t like tomatoes,” Claire said as she sat down. “Or anything mushy. It has to be either solid or liquid.”

  “What about thick liquids, like custard or ketchup? Or does ketchup fall under tomatoes?”

  “Ketchup is fine. Custard’s fine too, as long as it’s not lumpy.”

  Hate nodded. “Good to know. So, what’s this test on?”

  “Everything to do with the Fall.”

  Hate sighed. “Do you think in another two hundred years people will stop caring about it?”

  Claire shrugged as she pulled her textbook out of her bag. “Only if we reclaim the Wastelands.”

  “Never going to happen.”

  “Aw, really?”

  “There are too many creatures out there now. We’d lose too many Aspects and any land we did reclaim would be indefensible without walls like the cities have.”

  “They could build walls.”

  “Not fast enough.”

  Claire sighed. “Well, that’s a downer.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why we’re not too open with that estimation,” Hate said before eating a tiny treacle tart. “Mmm, you should try one of these.”

  Claire did as Hate suggested but found the small treat a little too sweet for her. She drank some of her coffee to drown out the sugar. “The test was a couple of questions, followed by an essay on the impact the Fall had on economic practises.”

  Hate frowned. “Okay, I know nothing about that.”

  Claire shrugged. “It’s something to do with taxes and socialism...”

  “Socialism?”

  “Yeah, I have no idea either. Apparently the remaining cities became more socialist after the fall, but I have no idea what that means. There was an essay question on the exam I failed asking me to compare it to what happened to the economic recovery of some old place called Britain after a different war. Double-U, Double-U, I, I?”

  Hate frowned. “That might be World War II, but you lost me with Britain. I never learned the old country names.”

  Claire sighed. “I know, right? Why bother? Everything works now, so why do I need to know how it got this way?”

  “Well, you know what they say. Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”

  “I’m doomed to repeat the changes in economic policy following the Fall?”

  “Well, not you. But, you know, people collectively.”

  “But not me. Learning this doesn’t help me to become a better ballerina. It doesn’t even help me pass this year of school.”

  Hate gave her a reassuring smile. “Come on, between the two of us, we can probably figure it out.”

  Claire gave a hum of reluctant agreement as she smothered a cheese scone with strawberry jam. It was the only sweet thing she liked. “In all honesty, I’d much rather learn about the arrival of the Rena and the Aspects. That would be way more interesting.”

  “Ha, yeah, probably. But it would also be way more depressing.”

  “Depressing?”

  “Well, yeah. It’s not as if Aspects have particularly long lifespans or anything. Or, well, average lifespans, even. It’s all a lot of death, followed by more death.”

  Her tone was bright, and she was still smiling, but there was something not right about it. Claire tapped her hand against her thigh as she tried to figure out what it was. “It can’t all be that bad,” she figured.

  Hate shook her head. “Sorry, just ignore me. Things have been weird back at the Tower ever since Love died. Serenity in particular has been...” She shook her head again. “Sorry. You don’t want to listen to me complain at you.”

  Claire gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s not as if you haven’t been listening to me complain about my History test all afternoon.”

  “Yeah, I know, but that’s just... It’s normal. It’s a normal, everyday complaint that most people our age have.”

  “And you think yours isn’t?”

  Hate let out a soft laugh, though there was no humour in it. “Claire, one of my friends was ripped in half by a monster. While I watched.”

  “You’re not the only one who has lost people to the monsters,” Claire admitted, her voice barely above a whisper as she stared at her coffee.

  Hate frowned at her a little. “Who did you lose?”

  “My mother.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Claire shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It was five years ago and I don’t even remember. The pol
ice found me after the Aspects had been and gone. They took me to the hospital and looked after me while they sorted through my mother’s will.”

  “Her will? Where was your father?”

  Claire made a humming noise to indicate that she didn’t know. “I don’t just not remember the attack. I don’t remember anything before it, either. Some kind of response to trauma or something. The police tried to find my father but there were no records anywhere. My mother’s will just left money for tuition and board at St Cecilia’s.

  “Anyway,” she continued, finally lifting her gaze from the coffee in front of her, “my point is that you might be an Aspect, but we all live with the monsters. You just see them more often than most.”

  “Yeah, no... I guess you’re right...” Hate said with a smile, shaking her head, as if to indicate that she just wanted to forget how silly she'd been.

  “So, you guys haven’t found the new Love yet?” Claire had intended it to be a change of subject, but realised too late that it probably wasn’t far enough.

  Hate shrugged. “Not yet.”

  “How long does it usually take?”

  “The average is about a week, but sometimes it’s longer. It’s a really complicated process, so I don’t usually get involved with it. I just meet the new Aspect when they bring them to the Tower for the first time.”

  “What do you think they’ll be like?”

  “Hopefully they’ll be older.”

  “Yeah, I have been thinking...”

  “That I seem a little young?”

  “Well, yeah,” Claire admitted. “I thought you’d all be in your twenties, or at least close to it.”

  “Well, I mean, Justice and Vengeance are twenty-one, but they’ve been Aspects for three years now. And the rest of us are younger. I’m not even the youngest at our Tower.”

  “Really?”

  “Empathy and Pain are only thirteen, and they’ve both been at the Tower longer than the rest of us. They were just kids when they were chosen.”

  “Is that allowed?” Claire had to admit that she was shocked. She'd always assumed that being chosen as an Aspect was something that happened to adults, with the occasional exceptional teenager. She’d never considered that children might be chosen.

  Hate shrugged as she drank some of her coffee. It must have been going cold by that point, Claire thought to herself.

  “Whoever is chosen is chosen,” Hate explained. “Age isn’t taken into account, only potential.”

  “That... sucks.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Though our Tower has skewed younger recently compared to the others. I just hope that the new Love will balance that out.”

  “Hopefully,” Claire agreed.

  Hate smiled for a moment, but it quickly faded as she started staring at her drink.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Claire asked, concerned.

  Hate responded with a defeated sigh. “I just... It’s not just how different our lives are that bothers me, Claire. I just... I’m not even supposed to be here right now. How long before you get sick of me having to sneak out to see you? I don’t know... I just... Part of me thinks that all we’re doing is causing ourselves pain in the future.”

  Claire couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Hate, hon, we’re teenagers. Just thanks to the fact that neither of us are fully developed yet, I would never have assumed that we were in this for the long haul or anything.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Claire was honestly confused. “I mean, all relationships end badly. They either end with a breakup or when one of the partners dies. Why are you worrying about the inevitable when we’re just starting out?”

  Hate considered that for a moment or two. “That’s actually... A really good point.”

  Claire grinned. “I’ve been known to make those occasionally.”

  Hate grinned back at her. “Okay then. No more worrying from me. Let’s do this.”

  Claire raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I thought we’d been doing it for the past week already.”

  Hate gave her a sheepish look. “Yeah, but I spent that entire week swinging between thinking that I should call it off, and remembering how nice it was when we kissed.”

  Claire pulled at her hair a little, dragging it across her face. “Nice, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Hate replied with a blush. “Nice.”

  CLAIRE REALLY WISHED that St Cecilia’s didn’t have a curfew.

  No, she really wished that she could have Hate come up to her room with her, instead of having to say goodbye at the gate.

  But, alas, that was never going to happen. Claire wondered how they would ever figure out time alone.

  “That your girlfriend?” Madame Hilton asked as Hate turned the corner down the street, startling Claire, who hadn’t seen her approach.

  “Yeah,” Claire replied, struggling to keep her voice even and utterly failing at keeping a large, ridiculous grin from her face. “She is.”

  “She seems nice.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  Madame Hilton nodded, seemingly happy with Claire’s response. “Sanderson was looking for you. She seemed up a height. Not that that’s unusual for her, but I wouldn’t keep her waiting.”

  “I won’t,” Claire promised, running across the grass to reach the front entrance more quickly, despite Madame Hilton’s yell of protest.

  Madame Sanderson was waiting in the foyer with another woman, who was tall and thin, with olive skin and black hair tied up in a bun. She was wearing a dark red dress with a black blazer and her silver eyes were covered by thick, black spectacles.

  “Claire!” Madame Sanderson called, a little frantically, as she saw her. “I was getting worried. Where were you?”

  “I met a friend to study,” she explained. “I signed out all afternoon.”

  “I know, I saw, I just...” She indicated to the other woman. “This is Mademoiselle Bennett. Mademoiselle Bennett, this is Claire Misra, the student we were talking about.”

  “Mademoiselle Misra,” Mademoiselle Bennett greeted, bowing her head a little.

  “Mademoiselle Bennett.” Claire repeated the gesture, glad she hadn’t gone in for a handshake.

  “As I said,” Madame Sanderson continued, turning back to Mademoiselle Bennett, “Claire’s mother left strict instructions. She is at this academy due to her extraordinary skill and her unique accommodations, that only we could meet to her mother’s satisfaction. Claire has opportunities here she would not have elsewhere.”

  “Be that as it may,” Mademoiselle Bennett told her, though her eyes were seemingly stuck to Claire, “Claire is still the most viable candidate and I have the right to conscript anyone I see fit. Even a minor.”

  “Excuse me,” Claire said, hoping she wasn’t being rude, “but what exactly is going on here?”

  Mademoiselle Bennett gave her what seemed to be a sympathetic look. “My apologies. I am from the Aspect Program. You have been chosen, Claire. Our systems tell us that you are the most viable candidate to take Love’s place.”

  Claire was sure that her auditory processing was messing up and that she'd misheard. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that, please?”

  “You’re going to be the next Aspect of Love,” Mademoiselle Bennett told her.

  “Right... But I don’t want to be.” Claire hoped that wasn’t rude. Her eyes were wide, she knew, and she hoped that was taken as a sign of innocence, rather than her usual frown being taken as a sign of rebellion.

  Mademoiselle Bennett didn’t seem phased. “I suspected as much but I would ask you to at least consider it. No one else can be Love while you still live and if no one takes Love’s mantle, the rest of the Aspects will fall out of balance. The monsters will most likely overrun what we have managed to preserve and rebuild.”

  Claire nodded, her words lost. The very thought of facing monsters terrified her. She'd managed it before because she'd focused on helping others. She couldn’t guar
antee that she would always be able to do that. Signing up as Love was a death sentence. But then, if she didn’t, she would be dooming the whole world.

  “Okay,” Claire eventually managed.

  Mademoiselle Bennett smiled. “Good. I’ve had your things packed already. There’s a car waiting outside for us to take you to your new home.”

  Claire just nodded numbly as she followed the woman in front of her, unable to even think of an alternate course of action.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Claire had never seen the Aspect Tower up close before. It was on the edge of town and no one was allowed near it. The Rena hadn’t been welcomed by all of humanity, and some element of resistance still remained. Now, however, the large, white tower was more than a little intimidating as the car pulled up to it.

  Mademoiselle Bennett opened the door once the car stopped, getting out and indicating for Claire to follow her. As they approached the front entrance of the building, the doors opened without any security measures and Claire wondered if the perimeter security was enough to make them feel secure.

  She realised that wasn’t the case as they approached the front desk, a white machine vaguely resembling a woman behind the desk. The white surface, which seemed to be where the face should be, lit up with the familiar green light of biometric scanners as they approached.

  “Mademoiselle Bennett. Love,” a robotic female voice greeted.

  Claire couldn’t help but be slightly unsettled at the fact that they already had her biometrics. And the fact that the computer referred to her as Love.

  “Would you like me to alert the Aspects to your arrival?”

  “No thank you, Lita,” Mademoiselle Bennett said as she headed right past the desk, to the lift. “I want to settle Love in first.”