by Simone Pond
I cannot have our son witness the demise of his father, so I’m taking him away to keep him safe. I know you can easily find us and bring us back, but I pray you’ll do the right thing—for your son. Move forward with your plans to rebuild the new city, but we won’t be a part of it. Your son and I will rebuild on the outside.
I trust you’ll do everything in your power to protect us from any present or future danger.
Our love,
Sarah & Phoenix
I refold the letter and place it on the nightstand. I’m numb—the only remaining reason to live has been taken from me. I could find Sarah and take back my son, but I know that isn’t right. Not until I get Pigface and the others out of the picture. No one is safe until then. A cold chill seeps into my skin and fills my insides. I walk down the hallway, passing Sarah’s empty room. I pass by the bolted door where Dru once stayed. I keep walking until I reach the elevator. I remember riding it with my father, trying to squeeze a few minutes of his precious time. I wanted him to see me, but he never did. He was a self-centered egomaniac, incapable of seeing anything beyond his will. I can’t become that man. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. I push the button and ride the elevator to the roof.
Outside a gray fog is pushing in, obstructing the view to the ocean. The sky, the air, the earth—everything—is bleak and void of color. June gloom. That’s what they used to say. Everything is different now. That world is long gone.
“You planning on coming down anytime soon?” asks Dickson.
The entire day has slipped passed me.
“I was just thinking about how crazy life is. How much everything has changed.”
“Nothing stays the same, William.”
“Sarah’s gone.”
“I know,” he says. “Are you going to go after them? You could, you know. They put a GPS tracker in Sarah.”
“Right now, I want you to get Pigface here.”
“Already done. He’ll be arriving in exactly two hours. Thought you’d want to get ready.”
“I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”
*
The helicopter lands on the roof at six o’clock. It’s still light out. I’m waiting by the elevator entrance. I don’t plan on this conversation moving beyond the rooftop. Pigface waddles his way out of the copter with the help of his security guards. He waves it off and after it’s a few hundred yards away I send out a mini drone to blow it up. The explosion knocks Pigface and his guards down. They scuffle around and I take out my pistol and start firing. I clip all three, maiming them. One of the guards fires back and I duck behind the giant chimney damper. Pigface scampers against the wall and curls up into a ball, trying to protect himself from the hail of bullets. I’m too far to hit him. I need to move in for a closer shot, but his security guys are relentless. I switch over to my shotgun and take aim. One of the idiots runs out of ammo and puts his hands up in surrender. I blast open his chest. He falls against the other guard, knocking him off balance so I take the opportunity to pump a round of buckshot into his chest also.
It’s just Pigface and me on the roof. He’s cowering in the corner and I move in closer.
“We can work something out, William.”
“I’m not working out anything with you. Get up.”
He pulls himself up and faces me. I stand near the edge of the roof and look down to the circular driveway. Years ago, my mother brought me home from the hospital and carried me up the brick steps leading into this house. In the distance I hear the caw of a seagull. I don’t want to shoot him; I want him to surrender to me.
“Jump,” I tell him.
He laughs and laughs and before I have a second to grasp what’s happening, he fires a round from his little snub-nosed revolver into my chest and I’m falling over the ledge. I plummet down to the pavement. It’s on the same steps my mother carried me up when I was a baby that I breathe my last breath.
Chapter 28
“Can you hear me?” a voice digs into my head. I want to answer, but my words are scattering like pieces of confetti in the wind. I’m suspended in blackness with nothing to latch onto. Along the perimeter of my mind I see flashes of lightning streak in and out. Lights begin to flicker and their glow burns brighter and stronger. The weightlessness begins to fill up and I feel the pull of density as air expands in my chest. I’m becoming conscious of gravity again. Electric pulses run through me, shooting awareness to every cell in my body. My eyes flutter open to a bright globe of light above. My vision is blurred and objects appear smeary and dim.
“Where am I?” My voice sounds different, lower and heavier.
“Do you know your name?” The man’s voice is familiar to me.
It takes less than a second for all the memories to rush up to the surface. “Morray,” I tell him.
“Do you remember me?” he asks.
“I’m not an idiot, Dickson.”
“Excellent!” He sounds thrilled. “This is monumental.” He stands over me, readjusting wires and probes and whatever else he’s inserted into my body.
My vision begins to sharpen as I come back to life. Dickson kept his promise and pulled through with the contingency plan. I’m alive.
“It finally worked. All those trials and errors, ample mishaps and failure. But today we have accomplished greatness.”
“Does anyone else know about this?” I ask.
“Just me and you,” he says with a big smile.
Dickson elevates the bed to a sitting position. The room is stark and full of medical equipment and computer servers. He’s wearing his black lab coat and the grin on his face is almost more blinding than the surgical lamp heating my face. He looks exhausted. The creases around his eyes are deep, and his once thick dark hair is faded and thin. He must have been working around the clock to bring me back.
He hands me a mirror. I bring it closer in. The man looking back isn’t me. I look nothing like my old self. I marvel at the chiseled cut of my jaw and the smoothness of my skin. My face is perfectly symmetric—straight nose, strong cheekbones and wait—my eyes are a new color. They’re no longer gray like my father’s; they’re brown and match the color of my hair. Dickson picked an excellent body replacement to house my consciousness.
“Well done, Dickson.”
“You’re the first one I’ve successfully been able to upload and bring fully back to consciousness. Of course, we’ll have to do tests, many tests, to see how much memory was retained…”
My body, or whoever’s body this is, begins to tremble and seize up. Heat spreads across my chest and up my neck. It’s almost as if the body is rejecting me, trying to force me out.
“Can you fix this, Dickson? I’m in pain.” Everything seizes up like I’m having a stroke.
He injects me with something that slows down my blood pressure and settles my nerves. “We’ll have to be very careful during these next few days as you acclimate into the new body.”
“Whose body is this? It doesn’t seem to want me.”
“It will take a day or two to adjust. This is the first time I’ve been able to keep you contained for an extended period of time. I used only the highest quality bodies with the best DNA.”
“Bodies?”
“The procedure didn’t work on the first few tries.”
“How many bodies?”
“Twelve total.” He comes close and peers into my eyeballs with a light. He checks my heartbeat and my blood pressure. “The good news is we’re making progress genetically engineering new bodies. So eventually we won’t have to use outside resources.”
“How long have I been under?” I ask.
“Ten years.”
“What?”
His words echo in my head over and over as the walls close in on me. Dickson holds a mask over my face and instructs me to breathe deeply. I’m coughing and wheezing into the mask until the air gets lighter and I’m able to relax. I can’t gather my thoughts to string together a coherent sentence. There are too many questions to ask. Too m
any things to put together. My memories creep into focus and then I see his face—his small face and big brown eyes looking up at me. My son.
“Where’s Phoenix? Did they get to him?”
“He’s fine. I’ve stayed in contact with Sarah. They’ve been with Lillian and her people in Ojai. They’re actually doing quite well.”
“I need to see him.” I try to get out of bed, but Dickson sits me back down.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Sarah promised to keep us informed, but only if we keep our distance.”
“But she has no power. What’s to stop us from getting Phoenix?”
“The Outsiders have built up their forces. We won’t get anywhere near them.”
“We don’t have a military arm?”
“With making preparations for the birthing centers, managing the Planners, and trying to bring you back, I haven’t had much time to focus on building an army.”
“I’m going to fix that.”
“For now, let’s just get you acclimated to your new body. Something else you should know; it was too dangerous in the house. Rebels and marauders began attacking so we had to move our operation to the safest location.”
“We’re inside the City Center?”
“It was our only option. The labs were already set up and functioning.” He hands me a glass of water and observes his monitor.
He knows I’ve never been fond of the center, but I trust he made the right decision. It’ll have to do for now. “And the elites? Where are they?”
“I insisted they relocate to the center as well.”
“Smart move, Dickson. Keeping the enemy close.”
“We have them under lock and key. Now it’s too dangerous for them to leave.”
He finishes running his tests and leaves the room to give me some space. I feel myself adjusting to this new body, catching up with my memories. My thoughts fire off all at once. I’m much more advanced than I was before. It’s as though I’m able to open files inside my head and view all of the information simultaneously. I don’t know how things have been running inside the City Center, but I plan to make adjustments. First things first, I will build a defense arm. If the Outsiders have built up their forces, I’ll need my own. Strength in numbers. I think about Sam. I want my men to be indestructible and fearless. Once I have my men locked in, I’ll retrieve Phoenix. Together we will build a new society—one that maintains order and balance.
There’s one thing I must do as soon as possible.
“Dickson,” I call out.
He returns to the room and checks the monitor. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“Not yet. I need you to do something.”
*
I put on my black suit jacket and straighten my tie, then slip on my black shiny shoes like I mean business. It’s time. I leave my office and head toward room 101B.
Pigface is strapped to the table and looks up. At first his beady eyes glare into mine; he’s astonished and perplexed by my presence. He wonders who this man is peering into his soul. Then his entire face shifts into a catatonic state of fear as he realizes it’s me. I’ve come back from the dead—I’ve surpassed him now. He no longer holds the position of power.
I clear my throat. “This would be the part where I’d say, ‘relax, this won’t hurt a bit.’…” I smile. “But we both know that’s not true.”
Ava
The last rays of sun stream through the window and land across Ava’s face. She remains in the chair, watching the sky shift to a soft silver—not quite ready to leave Morray behind. The intensity of the journey sits on her chest. The knowledge of Morray’s past gives Ava a better understanding of his behavior and insane desire for control, but she’s not any closer to knowing his whereabouts than when she started going through the archives.
Joseph puts away the equipment, not saying anything to Ava. Their relationship has been strained these last few weeks and she knows she’s been neglecting both her husband and Grace. She slips out of the chair and goes over to the cradle where Grace sleeps. Her beautiful daughter. She can’t imagine losing her.
“Anything to report?” asks Joseph.
“I don’t think we’re going to find him this way. He could be anywhere.”
“It was worth a try,” he says, forcing a smile.
“I need to get back to the journals,” says Ava.
Joseph stops working and turns around. His eyes are sapped of their usual vigor, having grown weary of this assignment. “Enough is enough, Ava.”
“I need to know what happened to his son.”
“That’s irrelevant to this assignment. Our objective was tracking his virtual footprints so we could locate his identity matrix. Besides, you already know Sarah and Phoenix returned to the woods. We read that in the journal.”
“But we don’t know if Phoenix stayed for good, or went to live with Morray.”
“Why does it matter?”
“It just does.” Ava can’t put words to her attachment to Morray, or her overwhelming sense of obligation to uncover as much information as possible. Knowledge means safety. It’s not about knowing the details of Morray’s life; it’s understanding his psyche and patterns of behavior to better predict possible scenarios. He will be back, in one form or another, Ava is certain about that.
“I think you need to take a break. Rest your brain,” he says.
“I don’t want to rest.”
“What about Grace? She needs her mother.”
“I’m doing this for Grace. For all of us. You don’t want to go back to the way things were, do you?” She has a flash of Morray’s memory: he’d said the exact same thing to Sarah. She shivers at the realization that she has some of Morray in her…
“By continuing, you’re still in his prison.” Joseph’s turns away and finishes cleaning up.
Ava remembers a time not too long ago when Joseph’s life was in danger and she helped him escape the City Center. She remembers the war Morray waged to get her back. Never again does she wish to experience that fear.
Joseph stops and looks at Ava. “When we were in the tunnels, running for our lives, we had very little light to guide us. But we didn’t need to see the entire tunnel. We got through just fine.”
“What’s your point?”
“Digging yourself deeper into Morray’s life isn’t going to stave off future threats.”
“You always say it’s best to know your enemy.”
Graces begins to cry. Ava lifts her out of the cradle and holds her close to soothe her. Ava knows her daughter’s life is nothing short of a miracle. She was the first City Center resident to have a natural childbirth. Grace represents freedom. Ava will not let that be taken away.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Joseph watches Ava nestling her face into Grace’s head of brown curls. It’s hard not to smile.
“Have I ever let anything go with ease? Even Morray’s powerful technology couldn’t remove my memories. I’m a little stubborn.”
“A little?”
The three exit the Administrative building and head back to the village as this day’s sun has set. The hunt for Morray will continue. Whatever it takes to ensure a safe future.
About the Author
Though Simone loves writing about the future, she lives in current-day Los Angeles with her husband and their Boston Terrier.
The New Agenda is the second book in the series and is the prequel to The City Center.
If you haven’t read The City Center yet, be sure to check it out on Amazon.
The next book in the series, The Mainframe, will be available late 2014.
For more information, visit simonepond.com.
If you enjoyed this book be sure to share your review on Goodreads and Amazon.
BOOK CLUBS: If you're interested in having Simone attend your book club either in person (depending on location), phone or Skype - please contact her through her website. She'd be honored to join the discussion.
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owledgments
I’d like to thank my wonderful husband, writing partner and personal shrink, Peter Stier Jr., for being with me every step of the way. I love you.
Special thanks to my incredible editor, Scott Tipton.
Much love and gratitude goes out to my family and friends for the endless support, love and encouragement—you guys are my heroes.
Thank you, dear readers, for allowing me to share my words with you.
As always, my deepest gratitude goes to God—without His grace I’d still be scribbling on bar napkins.
“My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth. A bird that will revenge upon you all . . .” William Shakespeare, King Henry.
Table of Contents
Ava
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Ava
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Ava
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Ava
About the Author
Acknowledgments
