I almost laugh at the confusion in his eyes, but I’m focusing on staying calm. He knows why I hit him, and it wasn’t because he called me brash; it was for Siah. I know that he was goading me, that he wanted me to hit him—probably so Alba would force us out of the base—but I don’t care. It was never my choice to be here in the first place. Come what may, as Siah would say.
Timofei pushes off of the wall and prepares a needle before sliding it into my arm without warning. He draws two needles of blood, putting each in a vial which one of the doctors connects to the plastic tubes.
When he’s finished he nods at me and says, “You’re done. You can go now.”
“Not likely,” Yosiah remarks before I can speak a word. When our eyes meet he grins slyly. “You can’t separate us that easily.”
Timofei shrugs and prepares another needle for Yosiah. “This might hurt,” he says but Siah doesn’t reply.
Five minutes later and the doctors have two vials each of our blood hooked up to the machine.
Timofei watches Yosiah as he comes to stand beside me. “It’ll take an hour or so for the results to come through. I’ll come find you when we know,” he tells us.
Yosiah nods and taps me on the arm. “Come, Miya.”
We get halfway to our room before Timofei comes running down the corridor. “Wait,” he shouts. His voice sounds weirdly strangled.
Yosiah turns, an expectant look on his face. I’m confused. What else does Timofei have to say?
“They had my family,” he blurts. “The military had them locked in their cellars and they were torturing them because they were Guardians. They knew I was a traitor too, and that I was feeding information back to Alba. Alba agreed to help me free my family as long as I became a full Guardian. She … she knew I was immune.”
“Hang on a minute,” I butt in. “You’re immune?”
He nods, watching Yosiah. “And where do you think I got that from?”
“I don’t know,” Siah says quietly.
“From you. You’re like a magnet for immunity. I caught it from you, and so did she.” He looks at me for a second. “I don’t know how it works, but it does.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Yosiah’s voice is tight. “I’m not … it’s not even proven that I am immune. The test could come back negative.”
“It won’t,” Timofei says fiercely. “I know it won’t. And I’m sorry for what I did, but I needed to get out of the military—I needed to become a Guardian. I had to save my family, and faking my death was the only way I could. I didn’t know that it’d be you that—”
“You didn’t plan it beforehand? Find the best way to get rid of me and leave the Officials. Kill two birds with one stone?”
Timofei shouts, “No!”
“What, then?”
“I didn’t know. It wasn’t planned; it just fell that way. I’m sorry. I don’t know how many times I have to say it before you believe me.”
I look at Yosiah for a long minute before speaking. “He does believe you,” I tell Timofei, “and he understands why you did it. I think … he even forgives you.”
“Miya,” Yosiah whispers. He’s breaking.
“No,” I say. My voice comes out sharper than I meant it to. “I’m not gonna let you run from this. He’s your friend, or ex-boyfriend, or brother, or whatever, and you don’t hate him as much as you’re letting on.”
Siah lets out an angry, pained sound that shatters me, then he stalks down the corridor as fast as his legs will take him.
Impatiently, I ask Timofei, “Why did you leave him? Why didn’t you get into contact with him after you joined The Guardians?”
“Because it would have put him in danger.”
“So you ignored him to keep him safe?”
“Yes.”
“Go!” I command, grabbing his shoulder and shoving him down the corridor after Siah.
He looks at me incredulously over his shoulder. “What?”
“For God’s sake, go tell him that!”
“It won’t change anything.”
I shake my head angrily. “You don’t get it. Yosiah would never be angry with you for pretending to be dead because he’s done the same thing. He knew you had a reason as soon as he found out you were still alive. He’s upset because you left him behind.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth he’s sprinting after Yosiah. I lean against the wall and run my hands over my face. I’ve either solved the problem between them or made it worse. I still don’t know what relationship they used to have. Yosiah won’t say anything that isn’t extremely vague, but I could have asked Timofei.
I groan and walk back to our room.
16:07. 06.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.
A Guardian finds me in our room and hands me an envelope. My immunity test came back as positive, which means that I’m immune to The Sixteen Strains. I guess that explains why I didn’t die on the streets when the people around me were dropping left right and centre. I ask about Yosiah’s results but the doctor refuses to tell me.
He gives me another envelope for Yosiah, warns me that he’ll know if I tamper with it, and hurries back to wherever he came from.
I find Yosiah easily. He’s in one of the common rooms that we go to a lot. I don’t expect to see Timofei attempting to kiss him, though. I don’t expect to see Yosiah hesitate for at least three seconds before pushing him away either. I duck behind the wall so they don’t see me and take a deep breath.
I’m not sure why it bothers me that Timofei would kiss him. Maybe because he’s clearly bad for Yosiah. But why did I get them back together? I wish I knew.
When I walk into the room, they’re sat far apart and in silence. I drop the envelope in Yosiah’s lap and sit on a sofa across from them with a forced grin.
“Looks like I’m immune,” I tell him. “Now it’s your turn.”
He nods, reading the paper in his hands. “Me too.”
“I told you.” Timofei smirks as he gets up. He slips out of the door and I’d bet that the smirk has fallen right off his face.
“Are you all right?” I ask as soon as we’re alone. Yosiah’s biting his lip again.
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I watch him again, this time openly. “You don’t look okay.”
He repeats, “I’m fine.”
“Why didn’t you kiss him back?” I ask without meaning to. I swear at myself in my head.
“You saw?”
“I didn’t mean to … but yeah. I thought you were interested in him.”
He laughs once; it’s a twisted, miserable thing. “Impossible.”
“Because of everything he’s done?”
He starts to say something but closes his mouth. “Yeah, because of that.”
“You can tell me. I know you’re lying.”
“I can’t tell you, Miya.” He sounds exhausted. I sit beside him. “I don’t even know myself, and this is me … feeling this.”
I can’t work out what to say to that and we fall into a silence that isn’t exactly comfortable, but isn’t awkward either. It’s the kind of silence that comes with years of knowing each other.
Without a word he holds his arm out and I know what he needs. I curl my fingers tightly around his wrist and his breath comes out in a quiet sigh.
“I expected things to change when I woke up here, but I never expected this degree of change,” he whispers. “I don’t know if I can handle this not knowing. I want to know.”
“Know what?”
He fixes his eyes on his arm, on my hand. “I can’t say. Not until I know.”
“Siah, if something’s wrong tell me. You’re not sick are you? I know you can’t catch a Strain but you used to talk about other illnesses. You haven’t got one of those have you?”
“No. I’d tell you if I did.”
“Then what is it?”
He says, barely audible, “It doesn’t matter.”
He rests his head on my shoul
der. I want to press the matter but I’m too distracted. I’m always distracted when this happens … the physical contact thing. I don’t mean to touch Yosiah’s hair but when I do he looks at me through his eyelashes and smiles. Not a half-smile, but a real one.
“You’re the best friend I could ever ask for.”
I say, “I know,” and he hides his smile in my shoulder as I carry on stroking his hair.
I don’t mean to fall asleep on the common room sofa, but somehow I end up doing just that. I don’t think Siah means to fall asleep beside me either.
***
Branwell
16:58. 06.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.
I stand beside Honour as Alba and a group of Guardians move in a flurry about the room. It’s a large storage chamber, with all manner of food and supplies in towering heights of cardboard boxes. In the corner, padlocked, is a cupboard that holds weapons. Each item has to be recorded in a book when it’s taken out, which Alba monitors vigilantly. This is why it takes us almost an hour to get prepared.
As soon as I had heard about the diseases being stored in a vault in an underground city I volunteered to go with the party; in the most part my curiosity is to blame for it. I am intrigued by the machine they are going to use to filter the Strain. I am also curious about the many people who never venture aboveground and how similar or dissimilar they are to The Guardians. Honour has explained to me that the place we’re going to is like some parts of London I would be familiar with—the markets and shops and such—but that everything is beneath the ground.
I’m told there are different boroughs of housing in the zone, along with an industrial area where the residents of Underground London Zone work. It all sounds bizarre and undreamed-of to me—an underground city! I want to see it for myself. This is one of those situations in which an account of the events will not be good enough. I need to see this awesome city with my own eyes.
It took me millennia to convince Honour to take me along with him, and even longer for him to convince Alba to let me go. In the end it was my expertise in machines and inventions that worked in my favour. If anything goes wrong I may be able to help the tech … techno—the people who work with machines and devices like I do.
I haven’t a clue how Honour persuaded Alba to let him go.
Eventually the seven Guardians who are going on this vault endeavour are organised and they stand in a loose circle, all white and armed. They each have a circular emblem on the breast of their jackets, embroidered in a violet thread; the focus of which is a bird in flight. I ask one of the Guardians, a young dark haired woman, about it and she explains to me that it is a dove—a symbol of purity, promise, and hope. She tells me that it’s like The Guardians’ colour white which also has connotations of purity, but more importantly—rebirth. I am not convinced that white does mean rebirth but I don’t voice my thoughts as I’m sure that would be rude of me.
Instead, I watch as Alba gives the group final instructions. I gasp in shock as my eyes acknowledge her uniform. Like the others she is in white, but the emblem on her chest is not a dove but a triangle, and inside that triangle is a key. It’s the double-edged key of my father’s wooden box. I yearn to ask her about it but she approaches Honour and I, purses her lips, and there is no time for me to talk.
“You two … try not to get yourselves killed. Outside the base you’re responsible for yourselves. Come back alive.”
I nod. I’ve got better things to do tonight than die.
“We will,” Honour replies, sounding more determined than I’ve heard him before, even more than when we were discussing the search for our siblings.
I think that perhaps this is the true Honour, beneath his angst and humour—this unyielding will to survive, the resolute part of him that fights tooth and claw to live. This is what Honour is, I think: a machine that undergoes countless battles each day just to survive, but a machine that is steadfast and strong and undefeated all the same. He is fierce and devastated. Admirable and pitiful. Unwavering and doomed. I think that’s why I like him so much so soon after meeting him—because we are the same.
*
I sit in a contraption Honour calls a car. It’s shiny, slim, and it purrs as it glides through the streets. It is nothing at all like the vehicles we had at home. The one time I saw an automobile—when my aunt and uncle came to visit, recently back from acquiring a business in China, and with all manner of expensive possessions—it made an awful racket, but this one is practically soundless.
I worry aloud that people—those everyone calls the Officials—will see our car and we will be caught, but a Guardian assures me that the vehicle is registered to a rich gentleman who lives in Underground London Zone, who is a Guardian ally and a man authorised to have such a vehicle passing through the town. It confuses me when they refer to London as a town when it is in fact a city, but I’ve come to notice that the only place they call a city is America, or rather: States. It’s peculiar, but then again everything I have come across in this new world has been peculiar.
I am curious about what happened to all of the other cities, the ones that existed in my time. I wonder what became of my cousins’ home of Oxford, and if Norham Gardens where they live still exists today, or if, like London, it has been changed beyond recognition.
As we pass through the different zones of London I feel that this is a world that has been forsaken by everything good and prosperous. It is a world without hope, brightness, and opportunity; things I had taken for granted in my own home.
Everywhere is dust and dirt. Everywhere are people pushing past each other. Rushing and running, none of them stop to chatter on the street. Not a single person pauses to converse with a neighbour or acquaintance.
This is a place without friendship as well, I muse. It is as if someone has removed the things that make us human—our hope, our futures, our companionship—and left a bare version of humanity.
These people do not rush because they have somewhere to be, or because they are late. They rush because they do not want to be on these dusty, despondent streets any longer than necessary. Their homes are their only havens, but even those look beaten down compared to the buildings of the London I know.
The exterior of each building is crumbling, worn away by things I cannot even imagine. I wonder if the houses are so decayed because they have been through wars so long ago that the people here can’t even remember them. I also, reluctantly, consider the possibility that this place, this former city of glory and prosperity, has come to be in this state because of The Lux and The Weapon.
Maybe this is what The Weapon does. Maybe it strips away the very things that make us people and the very things that make a city a city. I think that I understand now why these are called The Forgotten Lands, and why this is Forgotten London. I had presupposed that someone, somewhere, had forgotten that London existed—that this world lived inside a vacuum of isolation and nobody in the world knew of it any longer. But I was wrong. It is not the world that has forgotten these people; these people have forgotten the world.
It takes an eternity to reach the entrance that will grant us access to Underground London Zone, and when we come to it my mind boggles. We are going to drive into the ground itself! A section of the street slopes downward, graduating into pitch darkness, and the car glides along the route and inside the ground. We’re immersed in a darkness only broken by the streams of light the car throws out. I sigh forlornly, thinking to myself that, even in the car, if I had The Illuminum we’d be able to see yards in front and behind of us. I then consider the possibility that I do not want to see the things that surround us, buried in the earth as they are. I have images of dirt and rot and insects burrowing.
We descend on a gentle slope for five minutes—maybe more or maybe less—before the car glides into a long, narrow area, lit above by tubes of illumination. Several vehicles are scattered about the area like specs of dust in the grey light. I’d wager that even I look grey and ghastly under thi
s lighting, much as everything else does.
A Guardian inclines his head towards Honour and I. “We only have two rules: stay together, and don’t hesitate. If you think someone might try to hurt you, get our attention. If you think we might have been seen or suspected, get our attention. We have ways of rendering people unconscious without harming them. It’s safer for them, and for us, that way. Don’t wait around to see what happens—that’s the thing that gets people killed.”
I take his words seriously, murmuring my acquiescence. Hesitation is what got me injured by Morelock. My shoulder gives a dull throb as if to punctuate my thought, but I know it is only an echo caused by my remembrance. A ghost pain. The real pain has faded by now, with the aid of The Guardians’ wondrous medicines, and this is nothing but a creation of my mind.
Honour asks, “Ready?” and I reply, with confidence, that I am. Ready for what, I’m not precisely sure, but I am thriving with readiness for something.
The nine of us exit the car silently, and we walk as one to a door painted black to blend with the darkness. I don’t notice the entrance until one of the technology Guardians slips a gadget from his belt and holds it against the handle of the door. The locking mechanism clicks a second later; the door opens and we close it behind us without a sound.
Nobody speaks but I sense determination from The Guardians and nervousness from Honour as we move down a shadowy staircase. I think the walls may be damp but I can hardly see. They smell damp.
It worries me that The Guardians wear all white, that they will stand out amongst the people that live down here, but even as we emerge into a low tunnel we do not encounter anyone. I want to enquire about the whereabouts of those who dwell here underground but I don’t dare to disrupt the silence, and my question answers itself a minute later.
The tunnel ends abruptly, and before us rises a wide passageway with glass-fronted shops on either side of a sort of courtyard. It’s an arcade, I realise. An arcade of shops.
The colours here are mostly muted—blacks and whites with greys in between—but weaving amongst them, contained in treasure troves of trade, are the occasional flashes of orange and emerald and gold and scarlet. Each of the shops are fronted with glass windows that run from the arched ceiling to the floor, and behind them glitter a great number of trinkets and opulent-looking wares. In one of them I see a grand piano. In another I see a display of snowflakes fashioned from clear gem stones. Another has racks of rings and necklaces twinkling in the golden light. In another an impressive wooden nutcracker, almost eight feet tall, stands in the doorway, a toy steam train weaving between its feet. From all of their ceilings hang sparkling garlands, and decorated trees stand tall and proud beneath them. They are preparing for Christmas already. Or perhaps it has already drawn close to December—I have lost track of time’s passing, though I cannot imagine months have flown past me.