Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1)

by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

  RESISTANCE

  DIVIDED ELEMENTS (BOOK 1)

  MIKHAEYLA KOPIEVSKY

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  MIKHAEYLA KOPIEVSKY

  In a future post-apocalyptic Paris, a rebellion threatens to upset the city’s perfectly-structured balance and plunge its citizens into anarchy.

  Two generations after the Execution of Kane 148 and Otpor’s return to Orthodoxy, forbidden murals are appearing on crumbling concrete walls – calling citizens to action. Calling for Resistance.

  The murals will change the utopian lives of all citizens. But, for Anaiya 234, they will change who she is.

  A Peacekeeper of the uncompromising Fire Element, Anaiya free-runs through city’s precincts to enforce the Orthodoxy without hesitation or mercy. Her selection for a high-risk mission gives Otpor the chance it needs to bring down the Resistance and Anaiya the opportunity she craves to erase a shameful legacy.

  But the mission demands an impossible sacrifice – her identity.

  Copyright © Mikhaeyla Kopievsky 2016

  All rights reserved.

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  KYRIJA

  North Arm Cove, NSW, Australia

  www.kyrija.com.au

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

  ISBN: 978-0-9954218-2-0

  Created with Vellum

  For Elijah

  PROLOGUE

  THE FEAR that strangles my heart is the only natural thing in this world.

  It wasn’t always so.

  My eyes have seen trees and golden sunlight and perfectly formed beasts free of mutation.

  Perhaps.

  I know, now, that some lies are easy to believe. Especially if you want to believe them.

  My fingers twitch at my side, remembering the texture of the fragile pages beneath them. I was not supposed to have discovered the book. It was not supposed to exist. Yet within its belly I had first seen real things, untainted things. Things that had long since disappeared by the time I was created at the Nursery.

  The book was dangerous – but only because it spoke the truth.

  Perhaps.

  I wonder if they have found it, hidden under stones and sand in the Edges. Destroyed it. Watched its frail parchment burn…

  It no longer matters. I will not get to touch it again, gaze upon the vivid images within. Read its truth laid bare for an unprepared soul.

  I shake myself back into the present. My feet beat out an insistent rhythm against the smooth stones of the Trocadero. I hear it, even above the excited whispering and escalating murmurs of the thousands below. They have come to watch me be cured. Watch me be punished.

  Watch me die.

  The Execution Pillar looms before me. Bathed in a harsh, white light, it is unyielding, invulnerable. What all Elementals should be. What I should have been. My arms and legs are roughly pushed into place, the click of shackles snapping and echoing against the smooth stone.

  “Kane 148.”

  The Announcer calls my name, but she does not speak to me. This macabre spectacle has nothing to do with me. And everything to do with them. This is all for the thousands below – the compliant citizens of Otpor, the witnesses to my Execution, the silent and transfixed. This is their moment. Their reconditioning.

  “Kane 148, a Peacekeeper and Fire Elemental of the thirty-sixth generation, is deemed damaged and Heterodox. He is anathema and a threat to us all. Tonight he will be cured. Tonight we will be saved.”

  It is a manipulated story, framed within a manipulated system, for a manipulated population. Yes, I am a Fire Elemental, but I am more than that. I am a person. And Heterodoxy is not a disease that needs curing, but a truth that needs discovering.

  That has been their greatest achievement. They have convinced us that we are not people. That there is no greater collective than the Element that defines and separates us, to which we are assigned and conditioned. That this Orthodoxy is natural, and right, and destined.

  It should bring me to rage, but I falter in finding a target for it.

  In truth, there is no “They” in the Cooperative of Otpor, no controlling government, no oppressive dictator. “They” have not manipulated us: we have manipulated ourselves.

  The buzz from below grows louder still. The crowd is now on the edge of an agitated frenzy. The Technicians have come to kill me.

  They approach with syringes in hand, the metal needles glinting in the white floodlights. I do not shrink away from them. Perhaps there is still some part of my Fire identity intact. Or maybe this small resistance comes from another place.

  It doesn’t matter. Nothing I do now will change what is to come.

  In the end, my life ceases with three small pricks of skin and a flood of warmth. There is some comfort in the liquid fire that flows and swells within my veins. A small comfort. Even after all of this, I still cling to my Element.

  And then there is nothing but blackness.

  And death embraces me.

  ONE

  USUALLY, she feels nothing. Not the impact of her feet on the fractured bitumen surface; not the tingling of sweat at her nape; not the heavy thudding of her heart. Usually it all disappears into a kind of weightlessness – a nothingness that comes only with pure focus. With flow.

  But tonight it’s different.

  Anaiya’s concentration fractures, thoughts of the Peacekeeper time trials pricking along the edges of her consciousness. Her times had been good, but her ranking had not shifted. Instead, the gap between second and first had seemed to lengthen. Solidify.

  And with that had come an unfamiliar emotion: a hard, spiky insistence she could not shake. Even now, she feels it – an itch she cannot scratch, a cut that threatens to fester.

  Distracted, she stumbles against the uneven road. Pain, sharp and insistent, blooms in her ankle and races up her calf. She winces, but does not cry out – Fire Elementals are bred to be hard.

  Correcting her stride, she accelerates to make up for the error, f
rowning as tonight’s patrol partner pulls ahead. Niamh moves effortlessly, his speed a natural extension of the power within him. He is faster than her.

  The pain in her ankle ratchets higher, growing in synchronicity with the spiky feeling at her core. Ignoring them, she pounds her feet against the crumbling bitumen, pushing herself harder to pick up the pace. To catch him.

  Focus, Anaiya.

  Regulating her breathing, she strips her mind of pain and memories, forces herself to surrender to the free-run. Slowly, her muscle memory takes over. Aerials segue into wall spins; vaults and backflips stretch her body into long, languid curves. The movements consume her, until the pain recedes and details blur and there is nothing but the white noise of being in motion. As it should be.

  And then she enters Precinct 20. Sensations crash into her consciousness, splintering her focus and pulling her out of flow. Tall apartment buildings, ten and twelve storeys high, line up along the edges of the street like sentinels. They amplify the noise that spews out of open windows from the identical units – sounds generated by wallscreens on full volume, by rough sex and drunken parties.

  The Fifth night is always the worst, its twilight hours providing an easy junction between the two great loves of all Earth Elementals – hard work and easy living. Anaiya has witnessed it on countless patrols before, the migration en masse from factories, construction sites and retail counters triggered by the setting of Otpor’s brown sun.

  She assesses the scene before her. Earth Elementals of all generations sprawl in narrow laneways – engaging in idle gossip, drinking cheap synthetic alcohol, and erupting into raucous parties that will inevitably descend into drunken orgies. Or violence.

  Or both.

  Frowning, she shakes her head and pulls her gaze away from the debauchery to locate her partner. Niamh stands a few metres away, silhouetted under a lone fluorescent street light. Head bent and fingers pushed to his ear, he is speaking into his wristplate, but the words are lost against the dense wall of noise that surrounds her. She could walk over to him, hear what he is saying, but she knows Niamh. Knows he likes doing things his own way. In his own time.

  The spiky feeling threatens to resurface. It sings to her, calls for her attention. Instead, she returns her gaze to the Earth Elementals and waits for Niamh to finish his call.

  Seconds later he joins her. “Suspect is likely intoxicated but unarmed. We have approval to subdue with necessary force.”

  Anaiya nods and strides towards the main entrance of the target apartment building, but Niamh grabs her by the arm before she can get too far. Shaking his head, he points towards a service door on the side wall.

  “We don’t have clearance to enter via alternate access points,” she says.

  He doesn’t respond, heading towards the door regardless. The spiky feeling returns, tingling in her core – a slight bristle, a flare of frustration. She shakes her head to clear the emotion and follows him.

  “We don’t need clearance,” he says, reaching the door and testing its strength.

  With one sharp kick, the door shudders away from its hinges, coming to rest awkwardly against the stained wall inside. Anaiya hesitates, uncomfortable at breaching even minor protocol. Niamh, as always, has no such reservations, entering the stairwell with a calm confidence. Sighing, she clenches her fists and reluctantly follows him.

  In the cavernous space, the random mashup of high-decibel noises seems to grow, bouncing and reverberating against the polymer walls. Ignoring the distraction, the two Peacekeepers ascend the stairs at pace. It is only when they reach the fourth floor of the building that the sound of screaming becomes discernible.

  Sprinting up the final level, they arrive at the unit of interest. Niamh, his lifeline already unravelled, jams it into the small access terminal fixed to the wall, unlocking the door with a loud click.

  As the heavy steel slides away, the sound of screaming snaps to silence.

  Anaiya and Niamh enter the unit wordlessly and are confronted with harsh light and sharp smells. A large male, two generations older than Anaiya and Niamh, stands over a diminutive female. The female lies prostrate on the floor, the left side of her skull bleeding profusely. At the sound of their entry, the male spins around clumsily, his eyes wild with hydroxyphen.

  Anaiya grabs one of the syringes secured at her belt, her mind future-searching – rapidly identifying and exploring the possible outcomes of her available actions. In a moment she has risk assessed them all, weighing up the potential dangers and evaluating their range of success.

  She charges at him – her feet light on the tarnished floor, her grip on the syringe secure. The dull roar of her target assaults her ears, but she ignores it.

  He crouches, wobbles, throws his arms out defensively. The incoherent roar switches to profanities, something about “crushing your skull”. It skims the surface of her focus, never taking hold.

  The reek of alcohol is stronger.

  Eyes twitching, he pushes an unsteady leg forwards. He thinks he can get to her. A smile flickers across her face. She feels it pull at her lips.

  Feinting left at the final moment, she catches him off-balance. It is the opening she anticipated. He stumbles. She leaps. Swivelling mid-air, she lands behind him. Stabs the needle into the bulging vein in his neck.

  He slumps to the floor immediately, the restraint serum rendering him unconscious.

  “Clear,” she yells, glancing down at the incapacitated male before shifting her focus to Niamh.

  Niamh looks up from his place kneeling beside the motionless victim, her shattered skull still leaking blood onto the grey linoleum floor. He shakes his head, plugging his lifeline into his ear. Anaiya takes in the blood spatter patterns, the globs of grey matter and fragments of bone, while Niamh calls it in.

  “Peacekeeper 2021949 calling in a Code 25. Victim, Earth Elemental, Female, seventh lustrum, deceased. Perpetrator, Earth Elemental, Male, seventh lustrum, restrained. Requesting Forensics and Detainers.”

  Pulling the cable from his ear, he stands up and looks around the unit. His eyes are bright, betraying the thrill that mirrors her own. Like all Peacekeepers, they thrive in moments like these – as if their bodies are naturally attuned to the energy of the situation.

  Anaiya turns her attention back to the perpetrator. Plugging her lifeline into the Elemental’s wristplate, she records the incident to his file, looking down at her own as she finishes.

  It is 2230 hours. The Forensics and Detainers will not arrive for at least another half an hour. Thirty long and uninterrupted minutes stuck within four cheap polymer walls. Thirty minutes with nothing to do but keep vigil over two lifeless bodies.

  Anaiya’s feet shift and she paces a tight circle around the scene. Peacekeepers are not meant to stay still.

  “Sit down, Anaiya.”

  The command is issued with Niamh’s trademark exasperation, raising Anaiya’s hackles. Her first instinct is to retort, but instead she forces her feet to still. The tension in her tonight, in her reaction to Niamh, is distracting and unsettling. And unwanted. She pauses, lets it fade a little, and finds a seat on one of the tattered vinyl dining chairs.

  “Do you think he’s attacked her before?” she asks.

  “Maybe. Check him.”

  She scoots the chair closer to the unconscious male and leans down to access his wristplate. Downloading his incident file, she scrolls through the list. “Three prior assaults in the last twelve months.” She looks over to Niamh, who is ejecting his lifeline from the deceased’s wristplate.

  He reads out a list of dates. “Sixteen eleven, seventeen eight, twenty-three four?”

  Anaiya checks the dates of the assaults, the same numbers appearing in the log of incidents. “Yeah.” She looks over at the dead body at Niamh’s feet. “Why do they stick around?”

  The question is directed more to the female than to Niamh. She has seen it too often before – female Earth Elementals who stay in unnecessary domestic relationships, enduri
ng months and years of abuse and violence until it ends in permanent detention, disability or death. It is not unfamiliar to Anaiya, only unfathomable.

  “Why do Air Elementals pray? Why are Water Elementals so boring?” Niamh replies. “It’s who they are. It’s what they do.”

  Anaiya regards the dead victim bled out on the grimy floor. She feels no pity for the pathetic creature: she feels nothing but the boredom of waiting and a slight curiosity bubbling to the surface of her mind. “But, surely it isn’t conditioned in them – It’s not like it’s part of their Elemental alignment.”

  “Obviously it’s not conditioned,” Niamh says, rolling his eyes. “Just like Unorthodoxy is not conditioned. Some Elementals just make bad decisions. Their alignment only determines the type of bad decision.”

  * * *

  THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES LATER, the Detainers and Forensics arrive. Anaiya lets Niamh take care of protocol as the unconscious male is pulled from the ground and hauled down the stairs into a waiting vehicle. The female is similarly removed from the apartment, the Forensics gleaning no more evidence from her broken body.

  Anaiya and Niamh leave the building a few minutes later. Outside, the haphazard congregation of Earth Elementals has swelled. The two Peacekeepers move silently through it, scanning the crowd for any signs of disturbance or unrest. The lights from the retreating detention vehicle cast a red glow over everything.

  A twin beeping pierces the noise. Anaiya looks down at her wristplate.

  Code 545. Precinct 3. Two Air suspects. Aggressive. Unarmed.

  “Let’s run.”

  Niamh doesn’t need to say anything else. Her body wants to run and his words launch her into a full sprint without question or hesitation. A lightness seeps into her psyche as she free-runs through the dilapidated streets of Precinct 20, its details blurring as her heart rate spikes with anticipation and exertion. She doesn’t look behind her for Niamh; she knows he is following.