The Forgotten

“People like John Norton?”

  “Yes. And his sister. Poisonous traitors, they were. So I killed them. Well … I didn’t kill the girl. I was clever with that one.”

  “Oh shit,” I say under my breath and tap Siah’s arm. I point to where Honour has walked into the room. He takes in the scene around him and then he sees Horatia. He looks so vulnerable I even start to feel sorry for him.

  Yosiah goes to Honour, saying words that I can’t hear. Honour shakes his head and eventually tears his eyes off his sister.

  Horatia looks like she’s gonna pass out. Against my better judgement, I nudge her shoulder. “You all right?”

  “I …,” she whispers. “I don’t know.”

  “So how come you’re not in States?”

  “Marrin,” is all she says. I’m about to ask her what she means but Marrianne lets out another cackle. She’s lost it.

  “I had a group of Officials undertake a house check,” she says. She finds Horatia in the crowd. “They took blood samples from all of you. By this point the brother was already dead. I killed him in his own room.” She laughs, remembering. “On the sister’s blood sample needle I had an Official put a sample of Strain Twelve. He didn’t question it, just followed my order like an obedient little dog. And she died.” She shrugs. “I’m proud of that one. They didn’t suspect a thing.”

  “You—you had Thalia killed?” Honour roars. His face gets angrier the closer he gets to Marrianne. Yosiah stays close beside him and he and I share a look. He’s worried because they’re his friends and he doesn’t like people he cares about being hurt. I’m worried because when the people Yosiah cares about are hurt so is he. I’ve already seen him at his breaking point once this week. I don’t want to see him at it again.

  If Yosiah gets hurt again there’ll be hell to pay.

  “Oh.” Marrianne smirks, looking at Honour. “It’s you. The problem child. I couldn’t work out what to do with you.”

  “But you worked out what to do with Horatia, didn’t you?” Marrin seethes. “Why? Why did you do it? Why did you make everyone think she had betrayed them?”

  “Because it was easy,” his sister drawls. “It wasn’t hard to get photos of you two together. That acted as my evidence. Besides, she was giving you all the information you wanted about her relatives. She might as well have been betraying them.”

  Marrin chuckles, his lips now smirking. “You idiot. She wasn’t giving me information about her family. Is that what you thought?”

  The smile falls right off of Marrianne’s face.

  “I was giving her information—about the military, about our father, about the Strains. I told her everything.”

  Marrianne’s glare could shatter stone.

  Marrin’s eyes glitter. “You messed that one up, didn’t you, sister?”

  “You traitor.” She spits in his face and he raises a hand to hit her—he stops himself with what looks like a lot of difficulty. I know the feeling. Marrin backs away from his sister and The Guardians flood around him and take hold of her.

  “I used to look up to you,” he says as Guardians bind her wrists together. “I used to want you be like you. Now, you disgust me.”

  He turns his back on all of us, storming down a corridor that goes towards the dining rooms. Horatia goes running after him and she catches him around the waist as he stumbles. He looks like he’s finding it hard to walk.

  I go after them. Something’s been irritating me. The Guardians all know him by name, but not by looks. And both Marrin and Marrianne mentioned their father. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that their father’s pretty important.

  “Hey,” I shout after him. Marrin stops dead and Horatia spins around. Her face is thunder until she sees me, then it softens. She doesn’t know me well, but she knows me enough to consider me all right. Or that’s what I’m guessing. Who knows what goes on inside her head—she did run off with Marrin and leave her brother behind after all.

  “Hey, who’s your dad?” I ask.

  Half of The Guardians’ base has followed me, followed Marrin.

  “The President,” he says tiredly. “My father is The President of States.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I exclaim.

  Marrin turns around with a smirk. “Son of a bastard, actually.”

  ***

  Honour

  12:24. 08.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.

  “Tia?” I call, following her down the corridor.

  She doesn’t stop or even turn around. She keeps on walking, with the Official from the Victory Day celebration leaning on her. “Horatia, for God’s sake,” I shout. “Listen to me!”

  She turns to look at me with eyes so full of anger that I stop in my tracks. “What, Honour?” she hisses. “What could you possibly want?”

  I demand, “What are you doing with him?”

  If possible, her eyes harden even further. “I’m taking him to get help. He’s injured. Not that you’d notice.”

  “The … the infirmary is at the other side of the base,” I say. I feel encased in metal—cold and weighed down, destined to drown like a stone in the Thames. “I’ll show you,” I rush out before I lose my voice. I turn on my heel and lead them away. The Official’s feet drag on the floor.

  It takes ten minutes to get to the infirmary. I wait outside while my sister and the Official go inside. A minute later Tia comes out, her dark hands clenching and unclenching. She drops to the floor and stares at the wall. I watch her for a while, as the anger slowly fades and a deep sadness fills her features. Pinned against her red dress, over her heart, is the sparrow brooch I bought her. I guess she didn’t completely forget me while she was gone. Some of my resentment wanes.

  “Do you trust him?” I whisper, sitting beside her.

  She nods silently.

  “Tia … is he safe? He’s an Official. Are you absolutely sure we can trust him?”

  “He’s a Captain,” she corrects. “And yes, we can trust him. You have no idea the things he has done for you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How do you think he got his injuries? It wasn’t for me. He already had me safe, but I—” She inhales a ragged breath and I grasp her hand. I’m surprised when she doesn’t rip her fingers from mine. “He went to the military headquarters to find information for The Guardians. He wants to help them. His father … he kept hurting him. He did that to Marrin’s leg—he hurt his own son. He … Marrin was just trying to be good.”

  She starts to cry, really cry, and I pull her into my arms without a thought. I don’t believe that the Official is on our side. I think he fed my sister a stream of lies to get her to trust him, but I can’t explain his injuries. There’s no faking them. There’s also no faking that his sister, Marrianne, told us all that Tia was a betrayer, and that he was livid because of it. Why would he care about what we thought of Horatia?

  I ask, “How long have you known him?”

  “I … about three weeks. Honour, he’s different to most military. He’s not like them.”

  “How do you know that, though?”

  “He risked his life to save me, and to get information for The Guardians to save you. He’s … I think he’s only doing it for me, but he’s still doing it. There’s a new Strain, one worse than Twelve, and Marrin found out that the military is going to infect all of Forgotten London with it. They’re going to kill us, Honour. Marrin brought us here so The Guardians could stop it. He knows—he thinks—that he has an idea about how to delay the Strain. That will … it’ll give you chance to get people outside the borders and away from here. And—”

  “Tia, stop.”

  She looks at me and I can’t say what I was going to say—that if she thinks he cares for her she’s wrong; he’s using her to get to The Guardians—because her eyes are filled with hope. “I believe you,” I say instead.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. I should have brought you with us, but it was the only way. I
couldn’t come with you to The Guardians because they don’t trust me. They think I’m the reason John and Thalia and Wes died. But I’m not, and neither are you. Their deaths have nothing to do with you going outside. I’m sorry I blamed you.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassure her even though it still hurts that she abandoned me. I remember, though, that I kept things from her as well. I didn’t tell her why I was trying to get past the borders and I should have. I should have trusted my sister. Maybe if I had told her, she wouldn’t have had to leave.

  “You know now—it was Marrin’s sister.”

  I nod, my chin ruffling her hair where her head rests against me.

  “I wish I could have stayed with you,” she whispers. “I wish I could have come here with you, but I needed them to keep you safe. I’m sorry, Honour.”

  The door to the hospital room opens and Tia stands so quickly that she sways. “How is he?”

  “Sleeping,” a young doctor replies as I stretch and push off of the floor.

  “Can I see him?”

  “He needs to rest. You can see him later.”

  “You’re not letting me see him?” Her voice is angry but not surprised. She only asked if she could see the Official out of politeness. She always intended to get into that room. She crosses her arms across herself, nails digging into her upper arms.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor says as he closes the door behind him. It clicks and a keypad on the wall lights up. There’s only one way into the room, and she’d need the key code to get inside.

  Tia’s voice is pleading. “But he can’t be alone! You can’t leave him by himself. What if he forgets where he is? What if he thinks I’ve left him? What if he—”

  “He’ll be perfectly fine,” the doctor says calmly. “His leg is healed, as are his other injuries, but he needs rest.”

  She shakes her head, swaying again. I put a hand on her back and stand close enough to catch her if she falls over. “No … that’s not right. His leg … it’s bad. It can’t be healed already.”

  “We have advanced medicine here. You don’t need to worry.”

  “But I have to see him!”

  “Tia,” I say calmly. “Let—”

  “You don’t understand what he’s been through to get here. He shouldn’t have to be alone!”

  “I’m sorry, but—” the doctor begins to say.

  I cut him off. “Do you love him?” I ask my sister.

  “Of course I do,” she breathes.

  “You don’t even know him. You’ve known him three weeks.”

  “Oh, shut up, Honour,” she snaps. “What would you know about love?”

  I open my mouth to fire out a reply, but all the fight goes from Tia at once and she sinks down the wall and begins to sob. I follow her to the floor. Her body shakes and her nails claw at her arms.

  The doctor slips a syringe out of his pocket and, before Tia can notice, he injects it into her arm. Her eyes close and her body slumps into my waiting arms.

  “Would you mind carrying her?” he asks me. I don’t know whether to be angry or grateful for this man. “It’s just that I think I’d better check her over and I’ll have to open a door. It might be stress, but she did seem quite …”

  “Messed up,” I finish sadly, bracing her weight against me as I get up. She’s lighter than I remember but that might just be because I haven’t held her in forever.

  I have missed her so much, but she’s someone new now that I have her back—someone that is my sister but not my sister at the same time. She seems older, I realise, as I lay her down on the infirmary bed. She’s older and different but she’s still my sister.

  I won’t let her leave me again, but I can’t tell if I’m glad to have her here or not.

  13:18. 08.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.

  I manage to persuade the doctor to let me see the Official but by the time I get there Alba is already sat with him. She looks up at my entry but lets me stay.

  “You know I’m right,” Marrin is saying. He’s a mess—nothing like his appearance on Victory Day. “And you know it makes sense to let me go aboveground and try to disable it. If I’m correct I should be able to stop the distribution of the Strain for at least a day.”

  Alba rubs the bridge of her nose. “You say you came here for safety, but you want to go back outside. You’re not making any sense.”

  “No, you’re not listening. I came here to give Horatia safety, not myself. It was my intention to get your help, to tell you about the Strain and where the central computers are, and to go with some of your men to stop the damned thing. You are planning to evacuate everyone, aren’t you? Because when you start trying to get people out, the military is going to notice, and they’re going to retaliate. I’m telling you that they’ll detonate the new Strain as soon as they hear about the evacuation. If you want even the slimmest chance of getting anyone out, you need me to go up there and stop it.”

  “You know how to stop the Strain?” I ask. My voice sounds hopeful and it makes me angry. I don’t want to put my trust, or my hope, in him.

  “Yes,” Marrin says tiredly.

  “He thinks he knows,” Alba puts in. “He doesn’t know for sure.”

  “There’s been a steady influx of people going to the building. Put that with the military’s plan and it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. Add to it the fact that the building they’re using is in Underground London Zone, but aboveground, and it’s obvious that they’re going to control the pandemic from that building.”

  “How do they do it?” I ask. I’ve needed to know this for months. “How do they get the Strain into the town?”

  “It’s airborne,” Marrin explains, “so all that talk about the borders keeping out the Strains is bullshit. They have these machines; flat, round things about a foot wide. They spread them around the outer zones and it works its way to the inner zones by itself.”

  Alba narrows her eyes in thought. “Where do they put these machines?”

  “Sometimes they bury them but most times they leave them in the Underground stations. That way they spread through the tunnels and get aboveground through the air vents.”

  She whispers, “If you’re right, and they set off the new Strain when we’re trying to get people out …” She looks horrified. “Our evacuation plans involve the Underground tunnels. If they release the disease, the people we’re trying to get out will die.”

  “And that’s why you need me to disable it. I can’t go alone though—that’s the only issue. I’ll need Guardians to make sure I don’t get killed. And you don’t have much time. This place is going to be a wreck soon enough.”

  Alba is silent.

  I ask, with a sick feeling, “What does he mean ‘this place is going to be a wreck’?”

  “It’s been confirmed that Officials are planning to attack our base. Tonight. Thanks to Marrianne, our location is known and we’re no longer safe. Some of us will stay and defend our home, others will escort the civilians here to safety, but most of The Guardians are going to move somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, Honour,” she hisses. “I don’t have the answers to everything.”

  “There’s only one plan of action that makes sense,” a new voice says. Branwell is leaning against the doorway, dark circles under his sharp eyes. “You need to evacuate The Guardians because it is no longer safe here. You need to, soon enough, evacuate the whole city—sorry, town—because of this disease. If it were my decision, I would take The Guardians to wherever you mean to take everyone else, and evacuate both parties simultaneously.”

  “Outside the borders?” Alba taps her chin. “But the civilians here need to be evacuated today. That can’t be done.”

  “Can I say something?” Marrin asks and when Alba nods, he takes a deep breath and speaks solemnly. “When your base is attacked, destroyed, infiltrated—whatever you want to call it—the military will discover your strategy to get the citizens beyond
the town. It’s inevitable. That is, of course, if they don’t already know what you plan—thanks to my sister.”

  Alba’s quiet for a long time. When she speaks, her voice is resigned. “Tonight—that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  Marrin nods and I think I understand.

  Alba continues, “If we don’t act today, everything will go awry. The military will let out the Strain before we have the briefest chance to run, everyone will die, and our town will be lost.”

  Marrin stays silent but his expression confirms what Alba says.

  As she stands she says with confidence, “I’d better tell The Guardians to prepare themselves. We’re leaving tonight. All of us.”

  “I’m going to Underground London,” Marrin says and this time Alba doesn’t argue.

  “We’ll need all the help we can get. If you’re right, you might buy us enough time to be successful.”

  “I’m going with him,” Branwell announces, shocking us all. “The disease is controlled by a machine. I am gifted with machines. I might be able to lend my help. I’ll be more useful there than here, hopelessly trying to fight.”

  Alba looks at him for a long time and then she gives her consent.

  “It will also give me the opportunity to deploy a device I have created to disable the electricity of your border.”

  Alba stares at him. “What?”

  “You didn’t think I had wasted my time doing nothing, did you? I listened to your plans, and a major flaw seemed to be finding a way to safely cross the fence—without being electrocuted, I mean. There was the idea of Honour’s, but I came to the conclusion that it would take too much time and manpower and we will not have any to spare.”

  He takes a look at our startled faces. “So I set to making a duplicate of a device that I worked on at my home, and then I adapted it to better suit my requirements. It took me nigh on twenty four hours, but I am now confident that it will work.”

  “How does it work?” I ask.

  “It removes electric energy. If I deploy it on the border it will clear the fence of any and all electricity. And since the rest of the fence is on the same circuit—or so your technologists tell me—it will disable the border in the entirety of London.” He pauses, pulling at his sleeve. “I thought it was quite clever, myself.”