“Are you working on something?” I ask. My throat feels raw.
“You could say that.” He embraces me one last time and steps back into his room. “I’ll explain everything once I’m certain of it.”
“I—” I begin to say, but he closes the door against my words.
Carolina tuts. “Charming. Not so much as a hello.”
***
Honour
12:07. 21.09.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.
When I come out of the clothing factory after my shift, Dalmar is leant against the wall waiting for me.
“Do you have much time?” he asks, pulling on the sleeve of his dark jacket.
“About half an hour.”
“Come on, then. We need somewhere to talk without people listening.”
He leads me five minutes away from work, in the opposite direction to my home, to a small grassy area in a corner of Hammersmith I’ve never seen before. After a moment of deliberation, Dal lowers himself onto a damp bench. I think about standing but then sit next to him.
“Won’t people hear us?” I ask
“No.” He smiles knowingly. “Nobody comes here. People think it’s cursed with the spirits of Strains victims.” He rakes a hand through his hair.
“You cracked the encryption, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Even his voice is tired. “John was executed for treason.”
“Treason …”
“Yeah, I don’t know either. We don’t have royalty to commit treason against, and the exact act of treason isn’t even listed.”
“Should it be?”
“It’s all lies. I’m sorry, Honour. I wanted to find some real answers for you.”
My fingers grip the bench under me so hard they hurt. “No,” I say. “Dal … I killed them. I didn’t mean to. But I got past the border, I went out.” I look around us but there’s no one even close. “I went into the diseased lands, and then John died. And Thalia, his sister. It’s all my fault.”
He wrangles me into a hug. “I saw that. She’s listed as an accomplice.”
“But I killed them both. Why would it say treason when I killed them?” A though strikes me. “Oh God, I brought Strains in and all the people I’ve been around—Tia, shit, you, Hele. Dalmar, I’m so sorry, I—”
“Don’t.” He hugs me tighter. “It’s alright, calm down, Honour. I don’t think you did kill John and Thalia. I don’t think you killed them.” He pauses as that settles into my brain, as the tight grip on my throat lessens enough for me to breathe. “Everyone in the forgotten lands has a status. You know that. It’s usually listed as blank or insentient.”
I swallow, struggling to keep myself together. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“John’s wasn’t, and neither was his sister’s. John was down as dangerous: resolved. His sister was neutral: resolved. Everyone is usually blank but they had a status. That’s not something you did.”
“Then—me going out—”
“Was just coincidence,” he says gently. He squeezes my shoulder then lets me go.
I look at him, my thoughts wild. “What’s my status? And Tia’s?”
“Insentient. And mine and Hele’s. And before you ask, I don’t know what it means for us.”
“Can you find out?”
“I’ve tried. There’s no explanation.” He runs a hand over his face. “We’ll find out eventually. Or maybe we never will. I don’t care.”
I stare at him. This isn’t like him at all. “Dal?”
“I’m just fed up of all this.” He sweeps his hand towards our surroundings. “Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Always. I don’t stop being tired.”
He’s quiet for what must be ten minutes and I almost leave. I can’t think of anything to say to him, not with my mind still stuck on the word coincidence. It can’t be a coincidence. I’m not sure I even believe in them.
“What’s it like? Outside?” he asks. When I open my eyes, he’s staring into the distance. He’d been so quiet that his whispered words make me jump. I don’t think he notices.
“Empty,” I say. “Free.”
He sighs. “Would you want to get out, if there was a way?” He looks at me, serious and intent. “If there was a way you could live without all of this, would you?”
“Without a second thought.”
He nods and goes back to staring into space.
“Would you?” I ask.
He says, “I’m working on it.” He pats my shoulder and then he’s away before I can ask what he means. I go after him, but by the time I reach the center of Hammersmith, he’s lost to the midday crowds.
17:35. 24.09.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.
For the next week nothing happens.
And I hate it.
It feels wrong to carry on, to just get on with life after what’s happened this week—John and Thalia dying, the house check, Horatia’s broken sobs waking me in the night—but I don’t know what else to do. So I do everything as normal and don’t let myself think. If I catch a thought in my empty mind, I pinch my arm until it disappears.
I don’t think about how much I need to go somewhere, do something, to find out why my family was taken from me. I don’t think about how empty everything is now that they’re missing. I don’t think about why I have to make dinner when it’s usually Thalia or Wes making it. I just get on with it, pinch my arm, and don’t think. I definitely don’t think about the hollow, heavy feeling in my body, the lead weight in my bones, the gravity that is grief. I don’t think about the fact I haven’t seen Wes in days.
There’s a dark bruise constantly inked onto my skin.
Every day I go to work in the clothing factory and I spend each minute making dresses and shawls and camisoles out of wool and angora and silk. It’s like they’ve dropped the pretence that they give a crap about us—whether we have anything to wear or we freeze to death.
Every other day I spend my nights canning food—rice, beans, slimy vegetables, processed meat, and unknown fruit. I’m glad I’m only in canning; I’d hate to work in the place where they make this stuff. It’s all made in vats, grown especially for you.
I don’t risk stealing anything this week. I figured life is bad enough without being executed for theft, and I don’t want to bring the Officials down on Tia.
Whenever Horatia gets home in the evenings, she shuts herself in our room and cries herself to sleep. I can do nothing but sit outside the door and listen. Helpless. John’s dead. Thalia’s dead. Wes is gone. It’s just us left, and even though I feel sick inside, I force myself to get on with things. I’m praying the glimmer of normality will bring Tia out of her shadow.
Wednesday I go to the Hydration Centre in John’s place and pick up our ration of water for the week. I manage to carry the tub home without spilling a drop, even in the busy streets. Wednesdays are like that. People walk with their arms by their sides, in straight lines. We do everything possible not to knock anyone else because we know what it’s like to be without water. Any other day people rush and shove but never Wednesday.
On Friday I see Hele in the Allocation Centre, as I follow the metal grid, gathering food and supplies. She works at the bakery table, handing out tiny loaves of bread. It’s not much but it’s bread; anyone would be stupid not to take it.
Hele offers me a small worried smile and pats my hand as she puts the bread inside my paper bag. “How are you doing?”
“Better than Tia.” My reply is worn down.
“She just needs time, Honour. Time and her brother.”
A laugh catches in my throat. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
She reaches across the steel table to squeeze my hand. “She might not want you around but she needs you.”
A boy behind me starts shoving, ripping Hele’s hand from mine, and I snap my head in his direction to glare.
“You’re above conflict,” Hele murmurs calmingly, catching my arm. I’m
not above conflict at all, and definitely not right now when I have so much anger and shame and desperation boiling inside of me. But Hele is here, and I wouldn’t feel right socking someone in the face in front of her.
I move on, through the steel sheets that form the walls of the Allocation Centre. This week I have enough credits to feed five people and only two mouths to feed. I buy everything I know Tia likes. I’m desperate enough to get her to talk to me again that I visit the outdoor market the next day and come away with a sewn brooch. It’s in the shape of a sparrow, embroidered in subdued, earthy colours.
Sunday, when I go to work with the sunrise, everyone is talking about the following day—the Victory Day celebration. There’s gonna be a float in F.L. this year, or so everyone insists, and States’s President himself is going to be riding on it. It’s supposed to go through all the major areas in Forgotten London, from zone 1 to 41, and finish in Watford Zone at the edge of town.
I don’t believe it for a second, but I guess I’ll find out; every citizen is required to be in the streets. For us in Hammersmith, Lyric Square will be set up. It’ll be packed full of people and three times as many Officials as usual, shipped in to make sure there’s no trouble.
On a big screen, we’ll watch a tediously long film about the history of our world. It never shows much of what the world was like before the Cities were formed because all our records and archives were destroyed by the flares, but there are reconstructions of the disaster. The rest of the film is made up of the President of States telling us what happened after the flares—how people were thrown into chaos and violence and States had to step in to save humanity. How things have calmed and improved since the world was contained within the borders. How The Sixteen Strains tore our population apart. How States saved us again. How they value our continued support and cooperation. How lucky we are to be cared for by States, their President, and their military.
Most importantly: how we should learn from the past. How we shouldn’t follow the example of the Unnamed—a man who resisted the borders and risked the lives of everyone in his town and, in turn, the entire world. A selfish, despicable man we should never talk about except on Victory Day when we celebrate his death.
It’s a waste of time.
At the end of the night, the President will speak to us, all the Forgotten Towns. He’ll praise how well we’re doing, how happy he is that our towns have survived another year of death and disaster. And then he’ll pause, as he always does, and announce the lucky citizen that’s granted access to life in States. It’s meant to be a show of faith, a great opportunity for someone to better their life. All I see are people being taken from their families and thrown into an unknown place halfway across the world.
Even my sister starts talking about the celebration after a while. I get sick to death of hearing about Victory Day. I’ll be glad when it’s done.
***
Bennet
09:47. 26.09.1878. London.
Five days after Branwell shut himself in his room Carolina decides she’s had enough.
I jump almost out of my seat when she forcefully closes the book she’s reading. A smatter of dust jumps into the air and I fear for the condition of those dear pages. “I’ve had it,” she hisses at the space in front of her. “He says he’s working on something, and that’s all well and good but he’s going to run out of food soon enough. And who is he to assume we women can’t aid him in his work? What are we—furniture?”
A laugh bubbles in my throat. Carolina’s attention turns to me. “We’re getting him out of that bloody room if it is the last thing we do.”
Carolina swearing never fails to shock me. Then again she’s never been one to conform to expectations of her.
Five minutes later and I don’t know how she did it, but Bran joins us in the sitting room.
“Father had reason to believe that he was murdered,” he says without preamble. “Poisoned.”
I sit upright, surprise beating through me. “Bran—what? Why?”
“The people he worked for weren’t good people. They wanted the Lux, one of his inventions.”
“The strange gun device?”
His face creases into a smile. “No, that’s the Cure. The Lux is different. It looks like the lead-acid batteries that father sometimes used but it’s coated in a shell of pure titanium. It could generate enough power to provide electric energy to the whole world for a year—in under a minute. Well, if used in the correct way, that is.”
“You cannot be serious,” Carolina whispers, her eyes large and awed. “Such a thing can’t exist.”
“It does. And now they have it.”
“Those men,” I say, remembering. “They came to take our father’s work for a tribute.”
“I tried to hide everything.” Bran sounds miserable. “I failed. They have all of our father’s inventions. His whole life’s work.”
“What will they do with them?” I lean forward on the sofa.
“Father says it will do unfathomable things—that it could end our world.”
“That’s all very melodramatic if you ask me,” Carolina puts in, brushing a crease from her skirt. “What do those men want with it in the first place?”
“In father’s journals he said that they have some kind of a weapon, but they need an energy device to power it with.”
“Oh,” she says, understanding. “And that is why they want the…”
“Lux,” Bran provides. “Yes.”
Carolina’s eyes narrow. “But nothing of that explains why you think he was killed.”
I nod, grasping at anything. “Exactly. Are you sure he was poisoned, Bran? Surely it’s a mistake. You must be wrong—”
There’s no fire in Bran when he sighs, “Do I ever tell you anything I’m not certain of? He refused to give them the Lux because he found out about the weapon they have. He wanted nothing to do with it. He even filed his resignation but they wouldn’t let him leave.”
I feel sick.
Carolina has gone pale. “And then what?”
“Then they just let him go. I … I think they had poisoned him by then, and they were waiting for him to die.” Bran drops his head into his hands.
Without conscious thought, I get up and sit beside him, holding his hand tightly. “How could someone do that to our father? He was the nicest, most generous—” Without any warning signs, my breathing grows wildly out of my control, stopping any words I might have said. Not now, I think, not now.
“Benny?” Bran sounds far away. “Bennet! It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay, I promise you.”
His words usually comfort me but the hysteria gripping my chest already has its hold on me. My breathing spirals further out of my reach, my shaking hands sit in my lap, useless, and my thoughts are a swirling mass of despair. My father is gone—gone for good. Buried. Murdered.
And then Branwell is embracing me, holding me tightly, and it takes minutes but the strong beat of his heart is enough to bring me back to reality.
Carolina is knelt in front of me with a wet towel and a frightened expression. I don’t know how much time has passed in my panic. “Will this help?” she asks.
It won’t help at all, but I accept it anyway and she smiles in relief. Bran holds my shoulders in a tight grip. “I’m alright,” I rasp.
Carolina murmurs, “I don’t mean to return to the subject again, but we really need to know who those men were.”
With great effort I pull myself together and give my brother a weak smile to tell him I’m alright. All the tension drops from him.
Bran says, “They presented me with a message when they came for the inventions. On the bottom of it was a symbol—a lion with a bird on its back. There were some words underneath, something about humanity, perhaps, but I’m not sure.” He frowns at the wall. “I can’t remember.”
Carolina rises with a determined look on her face. “I’ll ask Jeremy if he knows anything about it. In the meantime, get dressed for outd
oors and I’ll ensure the carriage is ready.”
I ask “Are we going somewhere?”
“Branwell?” Her voice is steady and clear—business-like. “I trust you know the location of the offices your father worked in?”
“Yes,” my brother replies, still frowning.
“Good.” She squares her shoulders. “Then that’s where we’ll begin.”
“Begin what?” I ask. Knowing Carolina, it could be anything.
“Begin the investigation to find the missing device, of course. William would have wanted the thing found and safely out of harm’s reach.”
I shake my head. This is a bad idea.
Carolina raises an eyebrow at me and my brother. “What on Earth are you waiting for? Go change your clothes, both of you.”
I don’t have the energy to protest.
12:14. 26.09.1878. London.
Carolina raises her voice to be heard over the noise of midday London and the rattle of the carriage wheels beneath us. “Have either of you any idea what kind of offices we’re going to?”
I shake my head.
“All I know,” Bran says, “is that he worked for the Scientific Developments Department of the government.”
“But what did he actually do for them? What kind of work did his job entail?” Carolina sits straight-backed in her seat. Beside her, a large hat with burgundy flowers waits to be reacquainted with her head.
“He never told me. It doesn’t say anything about it in his journals either.”
I gaze out the window, my stomach in knots “Have you read all of them?”
“Only most of them. You should read them too, both of you, in case I’ve missed something.”
“A good idea,” Carolina agrees and then we settle into a tense silence.
I don’t know the name of the driver, but he takes us into an unfamiliar area and down a street lined with dull terrace houses and dim, dirty buildings. Some of them have wooden planks nailed over their doors and windows; others have no windows at all. Most have men on their doorsteps, beggars upon the cold, hard ground. I shiver involuntarily. I don’t see any sights I’m familiar with. I get the feeling we’re going to a place we would never have visited outside these circumstances.
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