The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) Page 12

  I never thought I would find hope in a clandestine rebellion.

  I shake myself out of it and return my concentration to the experiment. The arm now holds a tube of frothy green liquid. Vast does me the rare courtesy of telling me something: it is a secret formula of chemicals and intent. Honestly, everything that comes from the man’s mouth is enigmatic. It’s maddening. He tells me to keep my eyes on the mannequin they’ve placed in the corner of the demonstration room. It’s supposed to represent a human, flesh and bone. It’s nothing more than a faceless, formless brown blob to me but I take his word of the resemblance to our genetic makeup.

  The vial’s emerald contents are carefully tipped into the dish. A second later, the combined liquids have become a mass that is both liquid and gaseous and rapidly expanding. I see it creeping slowly, a writhing cloud of teal the size of a person now. Out of nowhere, the cloud explodes to fill the room. I start back, a noise of surprise escaping me. I can see very little but sea-green smoke pressed against every wall of the demonstration area, searching, seeking a way outside. I’m suddenly glad this demonstration is contained. I didn’t know it would be this aggressive.

  I can barely see the fake man now, just a dark shape huddled among the viscous air. My hand flies to my chest. It looks … as if the flesh is collapsing. Melting, almost.

  “Watch,” Garima says.

  She needn’t. I’m transfixed.

  The smoke filters away, the liquid cloud dying down, until the box is the same as it was—glass wall, singular petri dish, robotic arm—with one major exception. The human replica has disintegrated. The solid brown blob is riddled with holes, sunk to the floor in a pool of soupy liquid that I assume was once ‘flesh’. A human … this could have been a real human. Vast said its makeup was identical to ours. Heavens above.

  I take an involuntary step back. “I thought this was a cure.”

  “No. This is the cure.”

  I narrow my eyes at Vast. This weapon of theirs is exactly what I imagined it would be, times infinity. Why on Earth would they invent something with this sort of power? It was this mindlessness that brought the Sixteen Strains into existence, that killed countless people.

  The Guardians are supposed to be saving the world, not dooming it. I am furious.

  I direct my fury at the dark haired girl in a gold hijab who breezes past me with the liquid I retrieved from a shadowy ‘ally’ across town. The Miracle. I drop my glare with a sigh. It’s not the girl’s fault—I know nothing about her, nor is she likely to be behind the Guardians actions or plans. She’s nothing but a follower; she does as she is told. Like me. But my anger has to go somewhere, so it goes to her, whoever she is, whatever her name may be.

  With effort, I compose myself. The girl slots the Miracle into a hatch beside the glass room, placing it carefully. She steps back to Vast and a locking mechanism echoes through the tall laboratory. That makes sense—only one end of the hatch can be open at a time. Another measure put in place to keep us alive. I’m grateful, if begrudging.

  The mechanical arm retrieves the Miracle and the lock echoes again. I’m angry and disinterested now, desiring nothing but to return to my room for some quiet reflection. By which I mean quiet arguing with myself. I want to leave, to get myself away from these people. I know they mean well but they covet danger.

  But I can’t leave them. I need to tough this out to the very end, until I’ve done everything they need of me. For Branwell.

  Garima draws my attention by smashing a button on her controller. I flick my eyes back to the demonstration to watch the vial of cure somersault through the air, released from the arm’s grip. The tinkle of glass accompanies it shattering on the floor, the opalescent solution splashing onto the wrecked mannequin.

  “What in the world!” My heart leaps into my mouth. What was that? I can’t make a single lick of sense from what I’m seeing. I glance at the scientists but nobody else looks fazed. Not even Garima. I turn my dumbfounded expression back to the demonstration.

  “How many times is that?” Vast asks in English, still very much putting on a show despite my clear horror.

  “Four.”

  “Four successes.” He claps his hands together, pleased, and how can he not be? The fleshy blob that was reduced to a punctured mess is once again whole. Complete. No parts ripped open, nothing melted, no flaws visible. The only evidence that something was once amiss is the liquid it still sits in.

  “What you’re seeing here, Bennet,” Vast says, “is a weapon that can render our enemies incapable of a single attack on us, and the Miracle that can heal the damages and symptoms of this weapon, this new disease, along with the other seventeen. It can also heal burns both minor and major, internal bleeding, organ failure, and other ailments that were once fatal.”

  “So this can … save people?”

  “Save people?” He laughs. “Bennet, this can save the entire world.”

  I shake my head, still far from convinced. “I don’t see why you need the first one, the weapon. What good will it do?”

  Vast adjusts the fabric wrapped around his head, thinking. “To change for good, sometimes change for the worse is necessary. Good and bad … there has to be a balance. Nature demands it. I could not ask States’ Ordering Body to stop these atrocities without having something to counter them, to persuade them away from their ways to ours.

  “For them to see how unforgivable what they are doing is, they need to experience it. We need to reduce them to what they have reduced the rest of the world to. Change demands knowledge, and knowledge demands experience. They have to experience the lowest of lows.”

  He takes a deep breath, catching his impassioned rant before it gets out of control. “That is what the disease is for. It will not be used on their foot soldiers, who only do as they are told for fear of their own lives, but on the people who control and command without repercussion.”

  The Dark Soldiers … fear for their lives? But aren’t they the evil ones, the people I’ve been told are wrong? Those propagating the world’s ills? I massage the pain in my temples. When will this world begin to make sense?

  “It’s a karma of sorts,” Vast says, and his tone signals the end of that conversation.

  Farewell answers, I think, it was nice knowing you.

  “I’ll show you out.” He covers the lab in long strides before I have chance to follow. I scurry across the shining floor after him, squeezing through the glass partition and across the outer laboratory. Looking around, I wonder how many people this lab was built to hold. I think of the hallway where my room is, full of spare, empty rooms and wonder how much larger the Guardians’ numbers should be. And if this base was once full, what happened to the others? Where did they go?

  “I hope I have answered several of your burning questions,” Vast comments as he secures the outer door behind us. I think this will be the first and last time I am permitted entrance to the labs.

  “Yes,” I say, polite, though inside I am restless. Some questions may have been answered but a hundred more have sprung up in their place. The loudest of which is one simple word, echoed again and again.

  Seventeen?

  What did he mean by ‘the other seventeen’? Sixteen Strains. The other seventeen.

  What other nightmare have they unleashed?

  ***

  Bennet

  09:58. 22.10.2040. Bharat, Delhi.

  I have a busy day today and I’m glad of it. I can’t entertain a single thought about the Miracle or the Guardians secret disease. I can’t decide whether I’m repulsed or relieved that they both exist and until I do, I’ve resolved to think of neither of them.

  Armed with hidden knowledge, weighted with the task of persuading valuable individuals to our cause, and with Rasmi at my side, I step onto the busy market street. I lose myself in the chaotic rhythm of snaking my way around rickshaws and people with their arms full, children dawdling and others sprinting from one side of the street to another.

  The
heat today is blazing, sapping my energy almost as soon as I’m under the full weight of it. I pull my scarf closer around my face and lower my head. I never knew weather could be this blistering before now. “Why is it so hot today?” I ask. “It’s October. Shouldn’t it be colder?”

  Rasmi shrugs. “The weather does what it wants. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Maybe I can convince it to rain. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be.”

  “I hope so.” Rasmi takes my arm, bringing me out of the path of a group of rampaging women.

  With Rasmi’s hand on my elbow I’m removed from this place for a suspended moment and jolted back to a different time and a different city. My memory conjures the precise memory of Hyde Park in summertime, the scent of the crisp grass, the fresh blooms and their delicate sweetness. It was hot that day and even though a hundred ladies were parading in their thick skirts and crinoline, as if the temperature didn’t bother them, the heat bore down on me so hard I had to find a precious seat on one of the benches.

  Joel’s hand didn’t waver from my elbow, concerned though he had no right to be. He wasn’t a suitor, or a brother, or anything at all. Not to the gentlemen and high society women strolling past, their eyes keen and ears greedy for any piece of gossip. Joel was my valet, and a valet my age at that. He should not have been looking at me in that way, with concern and something else altogether.

  Thinking back on it now I wonder how that small point of contact made the suffocating heat and loud buzz of voices fade to nothing. I can’t imagine a touch lessening the effects of the heat now.

  “Bennet!” Rasmi halts me just as I’m about to step into the middle of a busy road. I shake my head to clear it and apologise, eyes sweeping the Delhi street to ground me in the present. The colours, the noise, the liveliness manage to bring me back to myself.

  I’m not that foolish girl anymore. If Joel were here, escorting me around this town, I wouldn’t blush at his attention and steady gaze. I’d remove his hand from my elbow and tell him to ask permission to touch me in future, because the women of this age can protest, can argue, can speak. And then, very plainly, I would tell him that I loved him. Because I do, and this new age has emboldened me.

  That was why he brought me comfort on that long ago sunny day, why I didn’t spare a single thought to what those higher class ladies thought of me spending time with him—because I believed, without a shred of doubt, that I would marry Joel. And I suppose I would have, had I not been caught up in the mystery and murder of the Olympiae Club. If I hadn’t been brought to the future. Social scandal be damned, Joel Andrew Sparks should have been mine.

  I suspect his heart belonged to me as much as mine belongs to him, but what good does that do me now?

  I run my thumb over the scratched surface of the bracelet around my wrist, the one I have yet to remove. It’s darkened and dulled now, worn by dirt and scrapes. I bet if I went home nobody would believe what I’ve been doing. Well, that’s not quite true—a wry smile twists my lips—Carolina would believe what I have to tell her, I’m sure.

  “Do you think you could pay attention?” Rasmi enquires as we walk. “Should I get someone else to do this? You seem busy.”

  I smile at her, sweetness and venom. “Forgive me for being preoccupied. It’s not as if I’ve travelled hundreds of years into the present and lost everything I hold dear, is it? I suppose I have no reason for being distracted.”

  She drops her gaze to the floor.

  A wisp of guilt moves through my stomach—I know I’m in an unkind mood—but I reason it away. She should feel ashamed. I do not, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, need to be here. I have the whole world ahead of me and nothing to tie me to Bharat, let alone Delhi. I help the Guardians because I believe in their cause and I want to do some good with my life—but I could as soon do good elsewhere. I’m sure there are Forgotten Lands that would accept me with open arms, grateful for the help.

  If these Bharatians continue to punish me for missing my home, for remembering the times I spent with my loved ones, for yearning for the familiar earthy scent of the one who had my heart, they will soon lose my commitment. I will go somewhere I can reminisce and mourn my lost life as much as I desire, where the people are understanding and grateful enough for my aid that they don’t reprimand me.

  If Mumbai’s God is true, after all, I am a saviour. A bringer of change and summoner of light to the dark world. They ought to be careful not to anger or upset me, or this summoner of light will take her rays to the opposite side of the world and resume her own quest. She will find her brother, wherever he is, dead or alive.

  Maybe I should do that anyway. Abandon this righteous assignment, get Branwell—no matter how many years I have to search—and go home—no matter how many scientists I must bribe to accomplish it.

  But I can’t do that. Of course I can’t.

  I wrap my fingers around the silver handle and pull the glass door aside. I leave my past on the cracked black road outside, in the hands of yelling mothers and groaning teenagers.

  There are people relying on me, desperate for the freedom they have only ever heard rumours of. Whispers. Promises no one would surely believe lest their hopes prove false. Children in the Forgotten Lands who struggle for food and water, who have become shallow versions of themselves, held back, held silent, for fear of consequence. For fear of death.

  The Dark Soldiers rule everyone with vows to slaughter lest a single voice be raised, a thought be spoken, an action taken. And I—Bennet Josephine Ravel, a girl of sixteen years, daughter of a genius father and a charity founder mother, sister to a boy whose scientific experiments would have changed the world, could still change the world—am the Dark Soldiers’ downfall, the people’s redemption.

  I slide into a shiny orange bench in the diner, folding my hands together atop the table, and I breathe and breathe and breathe until I’m resolved.

  No more doubts.

  No more choices between the past and the present. Between one person—no matter how ferociously I love my brother, no matter how much he means to me—and a whole population oppressed.

  I sit straight as I was taught to, long ago, by my aunt in place of my mother, and I wait for the Guardian ally I’m meeting.

  ***

  Honour

  10:41. 22.10.2040. The Free Lands, Northlands, Manchester.

  Something bad is happening to me and I don’t know what it is. A side effect of being a carrier? Something the Officials did to me when I was in Underground London Zone and then wiped my memory of?

  I’m starting to wish I had some of that stuff myself, whatever drug made me forget. I wish I could forget I was a carrier, a killer of God knows how many people—people I’ve bumped into on the streets of F.L., men I’ve hit in bar fights for money, random acquaintances who died without warning. How many of those were burnt on a mound in Hyde Park because of me?

  Not knowing anything would be better than this. Being a carrier was one thing but being altered, changed to States’s design … that’s something else. Why is anyone letting me live? What’s the point?

  A new bruise is blooming on my arm, my fingernails dug into skin that looks pallid despite the sunshine that’s decided to show its face. On any other day, in any other life, I’d turn my face up and bask in the warmth—nice weather, who would have guessed it actually existed? But not today, not this year, not this lifetime. I’m a killer of innocent people and I’m miserable. I don’t want the sun. I lower my head, staring at the ground as I walk. Little stones push their way through the crevices in my boot soles to cut into my feet. I ignore the pricks of skin being scraped open.

  I pull my jacket closer around my chest. Not because it’s cold but because it might lessen my carrier threat. Might, because I have no idea what can stop it. Nothing, probably. It’s in my blood and I can’t get it out. We don’t have enough time or equipment to strap me to a table and find out what’s really pumping through my veins. Blood or po
ison? It’s anyone’s guess.

  I pinch my skin harder and the flare of pain chases away my hectic thoughts. I shouldn’t be turning to pain for clarity—God knows how messed up that is—but compared to the rest of my existence it’s a blip of an issue.

  “What the hell?” I hiss, ducking behind a building. Eyes narrowed, I peer around its edge to the street beyond it.

  Two teenage guys, one in jeans and a hoodie, the other in a green button down shirt and shorts. No uniform, but they’re obviously guards. They patrol the road, walking lazily from one end to the other, carrying a conversation across the distance. I see guns slung haphazardly across their shoulders, and relaxed postures—clearly they’re not expecting a threat—but their presence still makes me uneasy. What are they blocking? Is it something in one of the buildings just past them, or are they Manchester’s barrier? The town boundary?

  Are they keeping us in?

  Do they tell Manchester’s people it’s for their safety, like the Officials did?

  I flatten myself against the dirty wall, laughing bitterly. Nothing ever changes does it? We might have left Forgotten London behind but I see evidence of all its bad parts in every place we go. I thought we left to escape being trapped but now these soldiers are trapping us in pretty much the same way.

  Do humans even know how to live without barriers and rules, or is this just our natural state? I guess the question I really want to ask myself is this: will we ever be free?