Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  I slowly and shudderingly released the breath I was holding. This was real.

  I had drawn attention to Marina; it was my fault.

  I wouldn’t stand by and do nothing. “Can you get her out?”

  “What?” His features were in almost complete darkness. He was no more than a silhouette in the evening dusk.

  “You helped get your friend out. Is there someone outside the walls who is helping him? Someone Marina could go to?”

  He looked at me measuringly.

  “Perhaps,” he said softly. “But I will need my tech back.”

  “Deal,” I said with alacrity.

  He laughed. “It’s not quite as simple as that. I’ll need help. Are you sure you want to be more involved than you are already, princess?”

  I was going to punch him the next time he called me that. I saw again the fear in Marina’s eyes, the worry in Oban’s.

  “What happens if she doesn’t get help?” I asked.

  “She’ll die.”

  “She can’t go to the hospital because the sentinels will take her?” I guessed.

  “They don’t take everyone, but if she’s as afraid as you say then she may suspect she is likely to be one of the unfortunate ones.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “Good girl.” He smiled a broad open grin I hadn’t seen before. “Give me her details and I’ll go and talk to her and see if she and her brother want our help. Then I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What we can do,” I corrected. I had got involved and I would see this through.

  Again his dark eyes measured me.

  “We’ll see. I’ll let you know if they agree to accept my… our help. Which means we’ll need to talk freely again, about things we don’t want anyone to hear. We’re okay here – the house is a clean zone. It’s been made safe.”

  “People can’t hear us?”

  “Not exactly, otherwise you screaming your head off wouldn’t have been a problem,” he explained. “It’s more that what you say can’t be picked up. Hang on a sec.”

  He got up, crossing to what passed for a kitchen, and pulled out a drawer. Setting it gently on the floor, he reached back in to the hole and pulled out a small package before returning.

  “Stand up for a minute, Cass. You need to wear this at all times.” He stepped behind me and placed a rose-gold chain with a plain disk hanging off it around my neck, his fingers brushing against the sensitive skin at the nape as I held my hair up out of his way. I could feel him standing there, his breath warm on my exposed neck, his touch lingering perhaps a moment longer than was necessary once he had fixed the clasp.

  He returned into my line of sight and leaned against the wall.

  “It’s important you remember to use it when we are together. We can’t let them notice any big change in your behaviour. Take the pendant between your forefinger and thumb before you say anything controversial, particularly if you’re going to use keywords that they monitor for dissidents.”

  “Are you telling me that what we say is being monitored, that somebody is listening to us all the time?” I knew the council could watch citizens and that there were cameras everywhere, but I thought the surveillance of the level seen in the Mete’s evidentiary real was only for those who broke the Code.

  “This can’t be news to you. The system tracks what you say to make your life as a citizen and, more importantly, as a consumer better, more efficient. When you walk into a shop, keywords are picked up, so that when you’re looking for that perfect pair of boots with the cute little strap”—he mimicked a teenage girl’s voice—“the shop assistant approaches you with a pair of boots in one of your favourite brands in your size. You know this, Cassandra.”

  “Sure,” I replied. “They use that technology to optimise our time when shopping. Personalisation is much more efficient.”

  Devyn snorted. “Don’t be so naïve. You think it stops there? You are monitored all the time. When you’re online with your friends, at classes, walking through the shops with Ginevra, they are always listening. They don’t record everything but every time you mention a brand name, ping, I want, ping, I need, ping, I must get, ping. We aren’t free citizens, we’re monitored consumers. Wake up.” His eyes were alive with contempt.

  “What’s so wrong with that? I like that I don’t have to waste time shopping. My clothes arrive with the right accessories and my outfits are adorable,” I preened, unable to help myself.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Devyn took a step towards me. His intensity compelled me to listen to him. “Nothing, as long as you continue to be a good little girl, keep up with the latest styles, listen to the latest packaged pop star, watch the trending bursts. What do you think happens when you don’t comply? When you’re caught saying something against the Code? When you’re caught breaking the Code?”

  I saw again the blood speckled across the sand.

  “All it takes is for them to catch you saying one thing that’s outside the lines of what the Code allows for them to focus in on you and start monitoring you and every little thing you do.”

  I put my hand to the delicate chain, worrying the pendant up and down it. This was my only protection against the city’s surveillance. An alarming thought occurred to me.

  “What about the last times we met? We spoke about the tech. What if they’ve already heard us?” I asked.

  “They haven’t heard anything,” he said, turning his wrist to show me that his wristband contained a similar disc embedded in the leather.

  “Why are we here then? We could have talked at the park.” He had relied on the protection offered by the disc before so what was different this time?

  “I wanted to see how badly you wanted this favour.”

  Just when I thought he wasn’t that bad, he had traipsed us all the way to the outer walls to test me. Right. Well, I had passed, I guessed.

  I had come to him to figure out how to cover up my mistake so I could smooth over a wrinkle in my usually seamless life. Not only was it now well and truly rumpled, but if I was to believe what Devyn was telling me, it wasn’t even my life. Not really. My life belonged to an elite citizen, not a –

  I shuddered. One problem at a time.

  “Okay, tell me what to do.”

  Chapter Seven

  Devyn told me little about what he needed to do to get Marina out of the city. My main task turned out to be helping him track the patrols on the river. He was fine on his own while walking the riverbank but preferred to be in company when we hung around for hour after hour in the coffee shop, insisting that we were less conspicuous as a pair dawdling over what was an expensive pastime.

  Even without the hardware I had hidden away, he was able to do incredibly advanced things. I had stood guard at the basilica a couple of times when he had accessed a terminal to check on any activity around Marina or Oban. Despite the absence of the chaos device, he was able to creep around at the higher levels of what should have been impenetrable systems. The speed with which he’d been able to get in and out had been jaw-dropping.

  Coffee was imported from the Americas, with whom we did little trade, and from beyond the furthest reaches of the Empire to the south, so I was pretty sure we spent our time in that shop watching the patrols around the wharves less because of the advantageousness of the view it offered and more because Devyn adored the drink. His eyelids slid closed every time he took his first sip, a moment I watched for, his bliss at the taste one of the few signs he ever gave of enjoying anything.

  It was on one such evening that he noticed me take my daily pill and snatched the bottle out of my hand.

  “What is this?”

  “Uh, mine.” I went to grab it back but he pulled his hand out of reach.

  He frowned, sniffing the bottle.

  “No, really, what is it?” he insisted.

  “They’re just for my dizzy spells.”

  “What dizzy spells?”

  “I don’t have them now obviously,” I said w
itheringly. “That’s why I take these.”

  He glared at me in frustration which made my lips twitch. Not so much fun being on the other side, huh.

  Devyn leaned forward, his hand reaching for the disc on his wristband.

  “I… please… describe them.”

  I smiled. “Since you asked so nicely, I used to suffer from vertigo and fatigue when I was younger.”

  His brows drew together as he fiddled with his wristband after surreptitiously checking if we were within hearing distance of any other customers.

  “I’ve never felt anything from you. Even a late bloomer would have shown some sign by now. I thought maybe you might just be a latent, which would serve their purpose if not mine. But perhaps you are a bit more than that,” he said, inspecting the little bottle again.

  I huffed. “Is there any chance you’re going to explain that little chat with yourself?”

  Devyn looked up, his eyes intent.

  “You’ve never asked me anything further about not being a citizen,” he commented, his voice low, taking no chance that he could be overheard by the customers sitting at the nearer tables. “Have you decided whether or not you believe me?”

  “I’m not sure.” To be honest, I’d done my best not to think of it at all… not entirely successfully. Something like that was hard to unhear. “I don’t know how you can be so certain.”

  “I’ve spent a great deal of time investigating your birth and adoption. Even for someone of my skills seeing through the lie was… a challenge. Someone went to a great deal of effort to conceal your origins. I thought for a time you might even be a full-blood Briton.”

  That wasn’t possible. A Briton?

  No, it didn’t make any sense. They weren’t even allowed inside the city. The only time full-blooded Britons were permitted entry was during the Treaty Renewal when a heavily guarded contingent of Britons were escorted inside the walls to the Governor’s Palace and then escorted out by sundown of the seventh day. Outside of that week, which only occurred every four years, they were never permitted inside the walls. No exceptions.

  “Why would you think that?” I put a hand to my hair.

  “Your history is fully documented, all nice and neat. Who your parents were, their parents, their siblings, school records, work history for generations. But if you know what you’re looking for, the Code reeks of newness.” He frowned. “I’ve crosschecked thousands of records. Even in the stews all births are accounted for. However the Sheltons got you, it wasn’t from within the walls.”

  “Are you sure?” He gave me an affronted glare. I had seen enough of his programming skills to know that his information would be solid.

  I couldn’t breathe. My birth, my background, were fake. I had been born outside the city walls.

  He tilted his head in acknowledgement that my impending panic attack was warranted. And we were having this conversation out in the open. I gripped my pendant like my life depended on it. Which it might. Not to mention his. He had risked his life to hack into those records. The nightmare of that man’s blood flecking across the sand flashed before my eyes.

  “You… did that… it must have taken…” My mind boggled at the amount of time he must have spent behind the firewalls scouring the records to be so confident. “Why, in the name of Caesar, would you do something so reckless?”

  His lips twisted at my invocation of the ultimate authority.

  “I told you I was looking for someone. The more I investigated you…” He shrugged. “It seemed worth the risk. I needed to be sure. But I’ve been watching you for years. Even those who don’t manifest until late show some signs by adulthood. I was so sure, but then you turned eighteen and still nothing. I couldn’t give up though, so I gave it another year, and another.”

  He was almost speaking to himself.

  “In the end, I wasn’t sure if I was here because it might be true or because I just couldn’t give up hope. You’ve never shown even the smallest sign, whatever your origin; your blood doesn’t appear to be even a latent carrier. But perhaps…”

  He weighed the pill bottle in his hand contemplatively.

  “Perhaps what?” I asked. Honestly, who could deal with this level of cryptic nonsense on a daily basis? Once this was done, I would be happy to see the back of Devyn. Totally.

  “Perhaps what?” I repeated when no answer was forthcoming.

  Devyn smirked, pocketing the pills.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  “I need to check something.”

  “That involves stealing my pills? Have them.” It was my turn to smirk. “I have plenty more at home.”

  That wiped the smile from his face. Devyn took my hand, his face serious, his expression intent.

  “Please, Cass, I need you to stop taking them. I think you may have been suppressed.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “I was so sure that you were at least a Shadower latent, but maybe you are more. I can’t be sure unless you stop taking them.”

  More? What did that mean? Was he suggesting I didn’t just have Briton blood but I might have actual magic?

  I shuddered. The Empire loathed magic. For good reason. In the early days of the Empire the balance of power in Britannia had lain with us against the unorganised warring tribes of natives. Under Governor Hadrian, Roman rule had gone almost as far north as Alba. The territories south of Hadrian’s wall had never stopped resisting though, their ranks swelling over time from regions long subdued, Saxons, Danes, Normans, Basques, all fleeing the reach of the Empire.

  The turning point came when the Lady of the Lake appeared and joined forces with the kings of Mercia and Anglia, and the druids. The Rose Kings had united with the Celtic tribes and by the time the Tewdwr dynasty rose to power, the Britons had the Empire pinned in Londinium and a handful of other walled cities in the southeast. But the Reformation empowered the citizens behind the wall and they had stunned the Britons with a surprise attack.

  With the Tewdwrs gone, the Briton alliance had fallen apart. Yet their magic had held off our superior forces in a series of fierce battles that had raged across the Chiltern hills for the next two hundred years.

  The magic of the Britons and the disruption of the ley line on the border managed to keep us confined in the southeast. At the same time, the pure magic of the ley lines beneath the sea prevented the Empire from deploying mass forces and attacking from the north, a geographical impediment the neighbouring island also utilised.

  Eventually, technological advances had levelled the playing field; both sides were tired of war and finally agreed to terms. The 1772 Treaty established the territory ruled by the Empire and kept the Britons firmly on their side of the border, running along the May ley line, which sliced through the land, aligning with sunrise on the 8th of May.

  Now we stood at a détente that kept us confined in the province of the southeast, or the Shadowlands as they were commonly called, sitting as they did in the shadow of our great walled cities. While Shadowers farmed the countryside in between those strongholds, their lives were hard since modern technology often failed outside the walls, the cars and trains that transported citizens around the city being replaced by more traditional modes of transport.

  The power the Britons wielded was what kept Roman citizens confined behind the walls. That and the magical energy lines that ran below ground that made advanced technology unstable, limiting the means by which both the sea and the land could be crossed. It was easy to repel an attack that moved slowly across the heavily wooded countryside when it could only move as quickly as its slowest mule and cart as opposed to the hovercraft that skimmed across the river and high in the upper streets here in the city.

  The thought filled me with unease and a growing sense of certainty. That was what he had watched me for all this time… for years, in my classes in college, and now in citizenship prep at the forum. He believed the ability to touch that power might be in my blood.

  “Will you think differently of me i
f nothing happens?” I wasn’t sure why, but this was important.

  Devyn looked at me in surprise and I glimpsed a flash of something so intense I couldn’t even begin to identify it.

  “No, of course not. You’ll always be the same perfect princess to me.”

  “If there is something the pills are hiding, could that mean I might be who you’re looking for?”

  A more decipherable look passed over Devyn’s face, a reluctant bruising sliver of hope quickly damped down before he looked at me blankly.

  “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” Discussion closed. But I was becoming increasingly curious about this mystery girl he so badly wanted to find.

  Despite his refusal to tell me more, I did what he asked and stopped taking any more of the pills. It was the least I could do given the risk he was taking to help me.

  My parents started paying more attention than usual to how I spent my time. My mother wasn’t so easily persuaded that what she’d seen the night of the party was as innocent as I made out. My behaviour since then probably also fell into a less recognisable pattern. I spent more time out of the house and was always careful to have a cover to explain my absences. I used them rarely but I was also less forthcoming about what I was doing and who I was with than I used to be as a result of Devyn’s advice: never offer too much information. It only adds to the lies you have to keep track of.

  I had spent most of this hidden time with Devyn. He had met Oban and Marina – the toughest twelve-year-old I had ever known – and saw that her brother watched her all the time for signs the illness was getting worse.

  I paid more attention now to the rare reports that showed up about the strange illness that was increasingly striking people down. The illness was rare in my circles but more cases had been surfacing elsewhere. On the couple of occasions I had managed to slip across town to bring Oban and Marina extra food supplies (against Devyn’s express command) I noticed more people in the stews with glazed eyes and jerky movements, which I now recognized as early symptoms. There were still only occasional sightings, but the way people moved in the street to give them a wide berth made them relatively easy to spot.