The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (9 page)

“We don’t know what
they did.” Marie is infallibly calm. It doesn’t help. “They might
not have done anything bad. All we know is you were in Underground
London Zone when you were younger and according to this file you
were part of a ‘program’.”

“And that you don’t
remember it,” Priya says, standing. “At the least they altered your
memories.”

“Why? Why the hell
would they do that?” I close my hands into fists, itching to punch
something. The wall. An Official.

Bran
finally meets my eyes. I only know I was expecting him to give me
some kind of hope, a shining ray of light in this fucked up
darkness, when his indifferent mask shatters to reveal heartbreak,
stark and hopeless. “I think,” he says, so so quietly, “it was to
make you a carrier.” My breath hitches. This isn’t happening. I’m a
carrier because of my
DNA
. It’s shitty and it’s made me an
unwitting killer, but I can’t help what I am. I was born with
it.

I can’t handle what
Bran is saying.

That I wasn’t born a
carrier.

That someone made me
this way. Made me a killer.

He says, “I think they
changed your biology so you carry infection.”

“What?
” Marie and Priya ask at the
same time. Bran didn’t tell them his theory. He saved it for me
because it’s about my life, my killing genes. That takes the very
edge off my rage. My next words emerge furious, instead of
murderous as they would have been.

“So they—they fucked
with my DNA to make me kill anyone I meet? What do they get out of
that?”

“No,” Priya gasps. “Oh no.” My eyes pin her with demands, but
she’s staring intently at Marie. “I said it made no sense.
I told you.
”

Marie picks up Priya’s
train of thought, explaining it to me with careless insensitivity.
“Why would the Officials want you killed so badly? It was never
because you breached the border. It wasn’t even because you were
the Unnamed’s son. How would that make you dangerous—when you never
even knew him? It was because they engineered you to be useful to
them and you got away. The President didn’t want to lose his
tool.”

Sharp laughter bursts
from my lips. It’s not funny but for some reason I can’t stop.
Before long I’ve dissolved into detached, hysterical laughter.

Everything makes
perfect sense now. Why things go badly when I try to be good. Why
I’m responsible for so many people being dead. Why I’ll never be
anything more than a bad omen, a curse on everyone I love.

I’m not The Unnamed’s
son. I’ll never be a rebel, or a motivator, or a bringer of
change.

I’m The President’s
weapon.

***

II

The Uncertainty of Now

***

Bennet

10:35. 14.10.2040.
Bharat, Delhi.

I exist in the
future.

My life has changed
more dramatically than I could ever have imagined when I lived in
London. Not only have I travelled halfway across the world but I
now live some hundred years in the future, in a world in the midst
of ending. I’ve seen the apocalypse right in front of me. The
earth, furious at the injustices wrought upon it by these people
and their advanced machines, has swallowed cities whole.

I know, in reality, it
was caused by the soldiers and their bombs, but I still think this
is Mother Nature’s way of punishing us, that the cities fall
because she allows it. I learn about the despicable ways humanity
has destroyed itself, obliterating half of the world in the
process, and I wonder how every other creature, every other form of
life no matter how miniature, doesn’t hate us. Maybe they do. I
wouldn’t blame them a single bit.

I tumble back to
reality with a frustrated sigh. No matter how wicked or hateful
this world is, it is mine now. I am part of it. Dwelling on its
awfulness won’t change a single thing; it will only make my mood
darker and my heart heavier. As much as I miss my home, I can find
no way to return—I have tried and tried to go back, pleading with
the bracelet, offering covenants with any devil that may listen,
begging all the Gods that remain in this rotten place. And what
have I received for all my efforts, for lowering myself to begging
on my knees? Not a damn thing.

I have no choice but
to remain here, and I won’t waste the rest of my life on moaning
and melancholy. Not when this City has so much to offer me.

I follow the flow of a
crowd through the vibrant marketplace near the Guardians’ home,
politely declining offers to buy a bundle of scarf fabric.
Everything is available here for a small price, though most of it
is not of the greatest quality. Most of the fabrics are see-through
and the other things for sale—odd lanterns, twisted neon pipes,
queer pieces of foam with transparent, glittery straps that are
supposed to be shoes—can only be described as decidedly tacky.

But even if I wanted
to buy some pointless, cheap thing, I’m not here to indulge in
purchases today. The market is a place to blend in; with its
buzzing, rushing patrons and dense crowds of people, I’m nothing
but an anonymous face in an ocean of anonymous faces.

I weave through
bodies, determined locals and awed tourists alike, and leave Main
Bazaar Road and its vibrant colours behind, though it’s bitter,
pungent scents follow me on the wind as I make my way down a
perpendicular road. The Imperial Cinema sits on the end of the
street before me, gaudy and impressive and entirely out of place
among this batch of shabby, faded shops. Its red brick façade is
worn and rotting, but the cinema is still fully functional years
after its construction. A long line of people queuing to get into
the eleven o’clock showing snakes around the corner. I join the
back of it, pulling the purple silk of my head scarf further
down—it’s good practise to keep my face hidden, Vast told me,
because it prevents me being recognised—and I slip unseen around
the back of the cinema and into a nook just big enough for a person
to fit.

I straighten my orange
tunic and knock quietly on a neatly disguised doorway. Even though
I know it’s there, it is still mesmerising to watch the portion of
red stone fold back and reveal a long, brightly lit corridor.

A warm smile curving
russet skin greets me, hands reaching out to enfold me into the
building. The doorway slides back into place.

“Did you find it?”
asks Garima Dhawan. She’s eager, her black-rimmed eyes wide with
excitement.

“I said I would and I
have,” I reply testily. I may be of a different time but I’m not
incompetent. I’m tired of the people here assuming I’m
helpless.

“Show me it!”

Rolling my eyes at her
impatience, I remove the package from a hidden fold in my tunic and
unwrap the embroidered fabric to reveal a sealed vial. The liquid
inside glimmers gold and blue depending on how it catches the
light. I hold it up for Garima to inspect and she claps her hands
together, delighted, the light glinting off the painted gold tips
of her nails and the abundant rings on her fingers.

“I’m sorry I doubted
you.” She tows me along the hallway. “I wasn’t sure what to expect
from you because—because you’re from the past.”

“And I am tired of
that defining me,” I sigh. “I’m also a person. Why is it so
impossible to overlook my origin and appreciate who I am?”

Garima raises a thick
eyebrow at me, her endless, dark eyes twinkling with amusement. “At
least I don’t gawp at you.”

“I’m grateful for
that.” I smile at my newfound friend and she smiles back wickedly.
She huffs a tell-tale laugh before darting away, her feet pounding
against white tiles as she runs away from me. I release an
unladylike word Garima taught me and chase after her. She swiped
the vial right out of my hands.

I go straight to
Vast’s study, knowing Garima will have taken the vial to the
Guardians’ leader. As I suspected, Garima is leaning against Vast’s
desk, panting as she watches Vast hold the liquid up to the light.
In the blue hue of the office his ink-black hair is highlighted the
exact shade of the sky over Brighton beach, and the vial shines
silver-green and red. How could this thing have changed colour? It
was gold a second ago, out in the daylight. I think I’m imagining
it at first but Vast changes the colour of the lights above us and
the liquid transforms with them, not simply tinted the colour of
each bulb but altering entirely. Under yellow light it becomes pink
and lilac, under green it is orange.

I take an involuntary
step closer. “What is it?”

Vast looks at me with
all the patience of an eighty year old gentleman, despite being no
more than forty, so very young for his position. The bird tattooed
on his neck, white ink on mahogany skin, shines like a star in this
dimness. “A miracle,” he says in English and offers no further
explanation.

“I was the person to
retrieve it. I carried it all the way across the city, from the
fringes to this building. You told me the task was dangerous, that
to be caught in possession of it would be fatal, but I did it
anyway. Don’t you think I deserve to know what it is?”

His mouth quirks up at
the corners, gaze sweeping the room as his attention drifts away.
By the time his eyes have returned to me, I see a decision. “Okay,”
he concedes, “but you must not tell one person.”

“I won’t.” I close the
door to his study and lean against it, my palms flat against the
engraved wood.

“It is the beginnings
of redemption.” Wonderful. Yet more vague answers. “The basis of a
cure.”

“A cure?”

My focus is drawn to
Garima, who is positively beaming, her fingers bunching up the
fabric of her sari and her bare toes wiggling on the waxed floor.
“Tell her,” she urges the old man.

“This is a cure for
the diseases that run rampant in our City and in the rest of the
world. You have brought us hope in a test tube. Salvation in its
rawest form. The Miracle.”

Despite the hope in
his voice, the words fill me with something unfamiliar—expectance,
apprehension, and the inevitability of doom.

When it’s clear Vast
is finished with us, Garima squeezes my shoulder and leads me away.
The corridor to my room is as cold as my mood, frosty air pumped
through holes in the ceiling, but Garima doesn’t seem to mind the
chill. She dances from one side of the hallway to the other,
spinning every few metres, the embroidered white fabric of her
skirt belling around her. She fills the bland hallways with bursts
of vibrancy, her laughter a much needed cure for the quiet.

I wish I could find it
within me to match her happiness with my own.

***

Yosiah

21:47. 13.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands.

For some reason when I
imagined sailing past the coastlines of the island, I thought
there’d be lights. I saw the towns as lit up, their buildings like
embers. I made the stupid mistake of assuming there’d be signs of
life, when of course there aren’t because everyone is dead. That
death is painfully obvious in the dark swathe of land. I can only
see it as a blacker slash against the horizon than the sky and the
sea. If it was lit up I might be able to see better but I’m having
to use the light of the moon and the distant stars to read by.

The
book is equal parts fascinating and horrifying. Fascinating because
it’s about the past, the history of ‘Great Britain’, and horrifying
because it is evidence of what we’ve been robbed of. I can’t
imagine what would it have been like when they had these
things—governments and elections and choices. When the people
could
decide
who
was in charge of the country.

Country.

That’s a word that is
taking a lot of getting used to. I’ve heard it before, when I lived
in a barrack and followed orders, saving lives on a battlefield we
made for ourselves. But I never knew what it meant. None of us did.
All we knew was this was an island, States and Bharat were the
Cities, and Forgotten London was a town. But even that’s a lie.
They’ve twisted everything.

I rub at a point of
pain in my temple.

It’d be a lot easier
if I could just let things lie, if I didn’t have to know the truth.
But I’ve never been like that. I never could just go along with
something without knowing the details and now that I have access to
information about Great Britain and the rest of the world, I want
to know it all. I’ve been reading ever since I got on this boat and
found the Guardians’ storage. They don’t know I’ve been taking
their books but they have other things to worry about.

The paperback in my
hands is about India, the country Bharat used to be before
everything went bad. I wonder how much of this has changed. Do
Bharatians still dress the same? Eat the same foods? Are the cities
mentioned in this book still standing or have they fallen apart?
There’s too much I don’t know, too much an ancient book can’t tell
me—but I’ll be able to see it for myself. Bharat is our eventual
destination. Soon I’ll be able to answer my own questions.

It’s exciting and
daunting at the same time.

A hand closes around
my shoulder; I let it stay there. I caught Tim’s scent on the wind
a couple of minutes ago, a spike of citrus. He’s been stood
watching me for minutes. Thinking of what to say, I’d guess. I turn
to him with a guarded expression.

“You alright?” I won’t
ask him outright how he’s dealing but he can talk to me if he
wants. I think I’ve finally moved past my resentment of what he did
to me, of what he made me think. I’d do the same to protect my
family if I had any left.