Where am I?
In front of those monoliths, low, squat things made of wood and canvas boards huddle, splattered with colour in the form of powders, paints, and fabrics. So many, packed together in places where there isn’t nearly enough room for them to be there.
Where am I?
Surrounded by so much unsettling unfamiliarity, it takes me a full minute to realise I’m alone. No one followed me into the middle of the road, into the path of that vehicle.
I am here, in this new world of colour, but Branwell is not.
***
Honour
23:49. 01.10.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.
Dalmar and Hele are in the kitchen when I stumble through the back door of my empty house. I don’t ask why they’re here because the answer is obvious—and because my stomach roils and I’m going to be sick. When I leave the bathroom minutes later, Hele moves silently and holds me. Neither of them says a word.
“She knew,” I say eventually, my throat dry and raw. “She knew they were going to pick her.”
Dalmar watches me closely, his eyes sympathetic. “We know.”
“How?” My throat is tight, my head full of static where I used to have thoughts. “How?”
“We don’t know the details, but we know someone who does.”
I take a tight breath but it’s useless and thin in my lungs. “Who?”
“Timofei,” Hele says, rubbing my arm as if I have a chill. “He’s a friend of ours. He can help.”
“Why do I need help?” I look at Dalmar, his arm crossed over his chest, still wearing that sad look on his face. “Why do I need help?”
He meets my eyes. “Because the military will be coming after you. Horatia being picked wasn’t a coincidence, and they’ll come for you too.”
“I can’t leave,” I croak. “I need to stay here in case Wes comes back.”
“He’s gone, Honour.” Dalmar’s voice is careful, slow. “He was listed as dead yesterday.”
Hele talks to me like I’m a spooked cat. “You’re going to come home with us. You can stay at our house overnight, and we’ll take you to our friends tomorrow. Okay?”
I nod. I have to grab the counter to stay upright when the room tips. “I need to get some stuff.” I can’t leave—but I can’t stay, can I? And what reason do I have to stay, anyway, with everyone dead and Tia probably on an aircraft by now.
Hele brushes my shoulder as I move past her. “Take as long as you need.”
“Just not too long, alright? I don’t want them finding us here,” Dalmar calls down the hallway.
“What would happen if they did?” I hear Hele ask.
“I honestly don’t know.”
I swallow the emotion clogged in my throat and slip into my bedroom. Hele’s soft voice whispers down the hall and it reminds me of my sister, hits me dead in the chest with the force of betrayal and hurt and missing her already. I don’t think I can do this without her, keep going.
All I’ve ever known is Horatia. She’s always been at my side. We’ve been through more houses and homes and families then I can remember. We’ve been in squats and on the streets. We’ve even slept under a bar in a rundown pub and almost got shot when the landlord found us. But all of that was okay. We could get through it because we had each other. I had Horatia.
Now she’s gone.
I collapse onto the mattress, the hard floor under it sending a jolt up my spine. The pillow still smells like my sister. The tiny bear my father gave us is stuffed under it, abandoned like me. I clutch it close and curl up on my side.
I don’t know when I fall asleep.
Dalmar shakes my shoulder, gently rousing me, and I cough and choke and splutter, stumbling out of a dream. Too soon, I remember, Horatia’s last words to me loud in my head.
“Sorry, Hon,” he says, “but we need to get going.”
I swallow, ignoring the tears on my cheeks. As I push myself up my hand grazes something behind me. Paper. I know what it is without having to look, remember Tia writing when I came home from work, and I can’t deal with it now.
How long has she been planning to leave me?
Dal clears his throat. “I found this bag in the kitchen. You can put everything you want to take in it.”
I accept the bag and mechanically put things in. The envelope I’m not going to open. The tins of food for our futile future. The teddy bear. The ratty blanket, still smelling of her. My clothes. John’s research, from the bottom of the wardrobe. My small stack of books. The letter I found hidden inside the teddy, visible through unravelling stitches. My pathetic amount of possessions—my whole life.
My breaths short, I unfold the letter and read through it three times. As the words blur through my mind, I forget that Dalmar is stood watching me and that we really really need to leave this house. Eventually, my breathing returns to normal.
I did the right thing. Everything I did was for my family, to get them to safety.
To my son and daughter, whatever names they give you.
I can’t tell you my name, or the name they’ve given me, only that I’m a wanted man because I know a secret.
States, or as I know it, America, is developing a new strain of their biological weapon. They’re going to use it to wipe out the problem that Forgotten London has become. You see, some of us know what States is really like, and we remember what they’ve done. They’re the ones behind the diseases that have killed most of our people, and they have more planned for release over the next twenty years. They can’t risk the rest of the world finding this out, in case that knowledge ignites disobedience and rebellion. I’m certain my death is inevitable, and imminent, but there are others like me who have gone into hiding. They will guard this world, and rescue it when the time comes for it to fight back. Find them.
You’re in danger. The latest strain in development will be so much worse than the others when it’s complete—a breakthrough in biological warfare they call it. Their plan is to allow London to grow to a designated population number, to live until a designated year so America can get the most from their factories and labour, and then they’ll wipe out the town with their new disease. Removal, they call it.
When you find this letter, at whatever age you may be, get out of Forgotten London.
There are diseased lands outside the town. Free lands. Go to them. Go north. There are still populated towns there at the time I write this. I pray the same applies to whenever you read this letter and you can escape. It’s true what America says, that there are diseases outside the borders—failed experiments—but there aren’t as many as they will have you believe, and they aren’t as fatal as they seem. If you catch a Strain, the people in the towns further north will be able to heal you.
Keep this letter safe. Let it remind you what States really is. And, for the love of God, evacuate London as soon as possible. So many people will die, but you two are important. You need to survive.
I don’t know the detonation date for this newest, worst Strain, but I know when it’s complete, Forgotten London will cease to exist.
Get out. And as soon as you are ready, and able, unite the Forgotten Lands. Unite the island you live on. Its real name is Great Britain, the United Kingdom, and it belongs to you. You are royalty. You are both Prince and Princess, and this island, no matter how small and ruined, is yours. Use this letter as proof to anyone who may question you. They’ll recognise my handwriting and its authenticity.
Stay safe, and protect each other.
I love you both.
Your father.
***
II
The Discovery of Origin
Honour
04:59. 02.10.2040. Forgotten London, Wembley Zone.
Thirty.
There are thirty of them, all lined in formation on the road where Hele and Dalmar live. They’ve found us—they’ve found me. It’s time to go.
Dalmar is packing the last of his equipment into a backpack. It somehow f
olds flat so that a whole room’s worth of computers fit into one bag. Once he’s done that we’re going to run.
Hele squeezes my arm. “It will be okay.”
Anything I say will sound bitter and angry so I keep my mouth shut.
Dal thunders down the stairs in a black jacket and heavy boots. A strap under the thick denim holds a gun that he insisted was necessary. I don’t want to think about why he’d need it.
Hele takes his drawn face in her hands and rests her head against his, whispering words too quiet for me to hear. I sling my bag of belongings onto my back and then we’re moving.
I expect to leave through the back door instead of the front, but we don’t use either. We go through an archway in the kitchen and down a set of worn steps that lead into darkness. I think it’s a cellar but I can’t see more than two steps in front of me—something that ends in me tripping over and slamming into the wall. Hele takes my elbow from then on, keeping me on the right track. It makes me wonder if she has better eyesight than me or if she’s walked this path so many times she knows it like she knows herself.
“Not much further,” Dal says from somewhere in front of us.
Another minute, and a blinding beam of light slices through the darkness as Dalmar shoulders a wooden board aside. I have to shield my eyes against the daylight. When our eyes have adjusted we slip into the narrow backstreet outside. Hele separates from me to grasp Dalmar’s hand as we round the corner into a residential road. I know it makes me look suspicious but I can’t help but glance around us, looking for Officials.
As I swat branches out of my face I swear I see black shapes moving in the park on the other side of the narrow path. I don’t manage to gasp out a warning before I hear the distinctive whirr of electric guns. A blue light tears past us, taking out a large proportion of trees and leaving the smell of burning wood in its wake.
Without communication we break into a desperate run at the same time. We turn down a road lined with a rainbow of pristine terrace houses—red brick, grey brick, an orange shade of terracotta, a faded yellow, white with mahogany brickwork. It all blurs past me as I run. My chest is heaving by the time we reach the end of the row but we can’t stop for breath. The blue beams of ammunition and the high pitched whirrs that deafen my ears are constant reminders of why we cannot stop running.
We stagger onto the high street of Wembley, with its eerily colourful shop fronts; remnants of a time when retail was an everyday thing that people took for granted. Their glass windows are long since trashed, and their contents confiscated or looted back when Forgotten London was first established. The signs, however cheerful and bright, have lost some of their letters. They now read “Bots”, “99p sr”, and “Tsco” as opposed to whatever their original names were. Down the road a yellow ‘M’ is hanging dangerously from metal rope, promising to fall on unsuspecting passers-by.
In the Tsco shop, a few kids have made their homes nestled behind refrigerators and debris. They won’t last long. Officials don’t tolerate trespassers, and all the shops are their territory. By this afternoon the kids will either be moved or dead. They should have hidden themselves better.
I can’t waste another thought on dead kids. If I don’t keep running I’ll be a dead kid.
I struggle to keep up with Dalmar and Hele as they run hand in hand down the empty pavement. I don’t look behind me now. It will only slow me down and get me shot.
A blur of blue comes down in a diagonal from above. My eyes dart to a tall, angular building as a beam of light arcs past us, reducing a lamp post to powder in the air. Hele ducks inside one of the shops, dragging Dal to take refuge behind the wall, and I clamber after them. This is a bad idea. We haven’t slowed down, we’ve stopped altogether, and the Officials are still moving.
It isn’t just guns I can hear now, but distant steps as well. We need to move. We should pass right through this shop and find a way into the street behind it. We need to move.
“Dal,” Hele whispers and when her voice cracks I realise why we’ve stopped.
“I’m fine, Hele,” he replies through clenched teeth. The arm of his jacket is scorched. The skin underneath is badly burned, bubbling, and seeping with blood and a yellow liquid I try not to dwell on. I am going to be sick. Hele’s hands shake as she jerks a knife through the bottom of her shirt, ripping a wide ribbon of fabric to tie around Dalmar’s arm. Her hands are shaking too badly, though, and she drops the knife.
I take the material from her and hold my breath as I wrap it around my friend’s arm, tying it tightly. Dal grunts and closes his eyes but he doesn’t complain once. The end of the frayed cotton is already starting to turn red but I need it to be enough to stop the bleeding. I am not letting my friend bleed to death.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Dal murmurs, closing both of his hands around Hele’s shaking fingers. “And we need to be moving again. They can shoot me all they like, but I’m not having them damage a single freckle on your skin.”
“Through the back,” I say. He nods in agreement.
Hele whispers, “It’s quiet. I don’t like it.”
Dal drags himself up, bringing Hele against his side with his good arm. I turn and pick my way through the store, sticking near to the wall and out of sight. We make it to the back door right as it opens and five Officials spill into the old store room. I hesitate, freezing up. Hele’s hand snakes under Dal’s jacket, and without hesitation she shoots each Official in their right leg with deadly precision.
“Not. Again,” she says through gritted teeth. Dalmar and her lock eyes for a second before we’re moving forward again. The Officials lay, kneel, and sit on the floor, scrabbling for their weapons, none of which are functional for some reason.
One of them swipes at my leg as I run and I kick the hand as it wraps around my ankle, but he only grips harder. Hele points her gun at his chest. The hand retracts and he shies away from her. Turns out the military aren’t so brave without their weapons.
The light is a pale shade of purple against the dark brick of the buildings when we emerge. Rays of the sun reflect from the glass windows like beams of Official guns, but no military is here. Yet.
Dal breathes, looking at Hele with unhidden adoration, “That was brilliant. Shooting them in the leg to stop their movement, and hitting close enough to their guns that you snap the trigger. But to keep the sensor intact …”
“Because a broken sensor sends out an alert.” She’s blushing a dark shade of pink. “It wasn’t that brilliant.”
“Guys,” I say urgently. “Shouldn’t we be running?”
Three roads later and the buzz of shooting has come back but it’s outside and we are almost inside. In the side of a smooth, white building is the slightest crack. We slip through it and I find that it’s bigger than it looks; more than wide enough to let a person slide through. When we’re off the street it takes me a moment to orient myself. It’s the metal grate that gives away where we are—an Underground station.
“Are we waiting it out in here?” I ask. I don’t say that I think that will get us killed as much as being outside will. I don’t say that the Officials will use their guns to crumble the wall to get to us.
Hele replies, “No, we’re—Dal, will you stop wriggling?” She sighs as her nimble hands unwind the fabric around Dalmar’s arm. She doesn’t seem to be as worried about the military as she was when we were on the streets. Dal’s jaw clamps down on a pained sound and Hele presses a thousand kisses to his forehead as we both refuse to acknowledge the mess that is Dalmar’s arm.
“They can heal me,” Dalmar says. “We just need to get there.”
Hele doesn’t look reassured. She keeps touching him as if he’s made of cracked glass.
I pull my hands through my hair. “What now?”
“Now,” Hele sighs, “we go through the tunnels.”
***
Yosiah
??:??. ??.??.2040. Forgotten London, (?) Zone.
I don’t know how long I
’ve been asleep. It feels like forever.
My head is pounding.
My heart is beating fast in my chest.
I’m inside a white room—
I’m out of bed as soon as I register the unfamiliar room around me, instincts screaming at me to get out, get somewhere I know. My eyes roam the white, cushioned walls while agitated energy buzzes along my bones. I turn, assessing every wall, the ceiling, the floor, the furniture, but find now weakness. I’m trapped.
A cell. I’m in a cell.
My mind flashes between here and another, grey and cold stone. Not again, please not again. But in this cell, the bed, the covers, the table beside it, the worktop that runs along a whole wall—they’re all white. Clinical and clean, not austere and featureless. And it’s warm here, heated air piped in from somewhere even though I’d have noticed a grate or vent and taken advantage of it by now.
I’m shaking. I’m wearing some kind of flannel pants and a long T-shirt. Both white. My feet are bare. Someone dressed me, touched my skin—they found me, they found me.
Trembling head to toe—more fear than anger now—I stand stiff, surveying a collection of food trays pilled on the worktop. I take deep, steadying breaths, and cross to the worktop, distaste cutting through my panic at the food piled there. Cheese, meat—actual meat, not dried—a sugary confection, a white foamy drink. Luxury foods. Where the hell am I?
Not there, I realise, sagging in relief. I’m not back there, I’m somewhere else.
There’s a door set in one of the four walls, camouflaged so well that I’d missed it in my survey of the room. I only notice it now because it slides open and a tall, white haired man enters. Old—he’s old, a man, like those who—
I shut that thought down, needing to focus on this new threat. My bones shake harder but it’s readiness now, not terror, that holds me. I draw myself to my full height, draw on Official training to hide any sign of weakness as I assess the man. His clothes are clean, devoid of any colour, and I can tell straight away that he’s a doctor by the way he moves, assesses my body. He reminds me of a doctor I worked with as a medic, but this man has an unexpectedly kind face.