The Unseen (The Complex Book 0)

by A. B. Bloom

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Fou

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Prologue

  The Unseen

  A.B. Bloom

  Copyright 2017 Anna Bloom

  All Rights Reserved

  Thank you for purchasing this eBook. Please keep this book in its complete original form with the exception of quotes used in reviews. No alteration of content is allowed. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the internet without the author’s permission.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and storylines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Prologue

  “Eat your breakfast.” Mom slid the bowl towards me and I grabbed for it, clanging the rim of the spoon against the rough texture of the vessel with more force than necessary. Breakfast was an unappetising affair at the best of times, but today I was sure the ground oats were just a little thinner.

  I slipped the spoon back into the bowl watching the contents splash with satisfaction. “I thought the whole point of this venture was that we were supposed to be better off?” I raised my gaze to meet my mother’s worn face. Etched lines of worry and stress ruined what was otherwise a once beautiful profile. Deep grooves ran from her eyes to the edge of her grey hair. Once, they’d been scratched into the surface of her skin with laughter, but now it was the constant headaches due to stress that made her squint just so. None of us laughed anymore, not since the war had stolen any hope of laughter from us and left us destitute, hungry, and dressed in rags. It was how we’d found ourselves in the Complex, an experiment in Metas and humans living together, everything else had near on been destroyed. I told myself I couldn’t remember much about the war, that I’d been too young, but in truth I hadn’t been young enough and I could all too clearly remember the screams and horror that unfolded around us. That we’d lived was a miracle. And now, thanks to living, we were biding our days in a giant dome that offered a one stop planet society—and sleeping our nights away in small, cramped places from which there was no natural light. I missed the sun, more than I ever thought I would.

  As I pulled on my Uni provided clothes, the pale grey, rough cotton scratched over my skin and reminded me a little too closely of the prisoner of war uniform I’d once seen my father hauled away in, before he’d been returned to us a broken man.

  Mom clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and Anya sat with her eyes focused on the smooth plastic top of the table. “We are better off here, Delphine.”

  “Are we though?” I pushed back from the table, ignoring my thin porridge. This wasn’t the first time I’d bought this up, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last time Mom would try to brush away my concerns.

  “Yes, we are. The money is essential now your father can no longer earn. We don’t have a choice.”

  Frustration flooded through me and for the millionth time I edged my mind into the dark abyss that surrounded my family, hoping, just desperately hoping, for a glimpse of something, a glimpse of our future. But there was nothing. My Sight was like an elastic band, when it came to those I was close to, it rebounded straight into my face. I could only wish it would do the same outside the confines of our white-walled family apartment.

  Mom slapped a bowl of food down in front of my sister and I grinned as she groaned at the contents. Mom ignored her, and continued with me. “You’ve just got to keep your head down, Delly, we just need to get through. That money will set us up for life.”

  I pushed my chair back further and it scraped along the bare concrete of the floor.

  “‘Keep my head down’; it’s all I’m doing, but you don’t know what it’s like out there.” I dragged a deep, shuddering breath into my lungs. “It’s vicious in that place. Nothing is safe. They are looking, waiting for someone to slip up.”

  Mom made that clucking noise with her tongue again. “You are being paranoid. As far as everyone is concerned the Chip prevents Metas from being able to enter human minds—”

  I interrupted her. “But it doesn’t, it doesn’t stop me.” I bit my lip.

  “You aren’t in their heads, Delly, stop worrying. As far as the humans and other Metas are concerned, you don’t exist anymore. There are no other prophets left. No one will ever know, just so long as you keep your head down and don’t ever mention to others what you can see.”

  I rolled my eyes. What I could see? There was no accounting for what I could see. One flash of a human or a Meta’s aura could give me a glimpse into their future, near or distant. With one touch, I could tell that my lecturer at the Uni Academy was going to burn his dinner that night, or with one passing look I could tell that the blonde-haired human girl, the one all the boys lusted after, both Metas and humans, would fall that night and break her ankle.

  It was exhausting.

  But pretending it wasn’t happening was more so.

  Being a prophet sucked.

  Being a prophet while living in the Complex where Metas weren’t allowed inside human’s minds sucked a whole lot more.

  The alarm on the wall rang and I groaned. “Come on, we are going to be late.” I turned to Anya, who all too willingly pushed her breakfast to one side. We grabbed our black messenger bags off the floor, each of us checking the label because personalisation of Academy belongings was strictly forbidden, and it wouldn’t have been the first time we’d arrived at lessons with the wrong bag. I went to the man in the corner and pecked his cool cheek. “Have a good day, Father,” I whispered. If he heard me or not, he didn’t acknowledge it. Anya left after just giving Mom a squeeze as we made our way out of the living quarters and waited for the school Zipper to swing by on its hover route.

  Anya fluffed at her hair. “How do I look?” she asked as she tried to catch her reflection in a rare shiny surface.

  “Fine,” I grunted my response. “What does it matter anyway, no one is going to be looking at you.”

  Anya grinned. “That Fae boy has been looking at me.”

  I pulled her by the arm as the Zipper came into view. “The Fae always look at everyone because they are trying to work out what they can get from you.” I was sure that it wasn’t me who was going to throw our family’s chances of surviving the Complex into dispute, it was more likely to be my younger sister and her flagrant disregard for the rules.

  Anya tinkled a laugh that I knew she’d been practicing under the confines of her wooden quilt at night time, I think she was aiming for that flirting sound the human girls could generate. Instead it came out like a high-pitched squeak. “That Fae can have whatever he likes from me.”

  “Anya.” The doors of the Zipper whooshed open and I yanked her up the stairs by her elbow. The Zipper could only hold ten passengers and I was thankful there were still spaces as we made our way down the back of the Academy transport and settled into the seats that had been deemed worthy of us, right at the back where the humans wouldn’t have to lower themselves to look at
us.

  One by one we filed into the Uni Academy. Even after two years of going through the morning ritual, I still found it highly intrusive to be searched by security on the way through the doors. As with every other day, I held my breath as the wand that predicted the level of threat I contained was waved over me. With my muscles coiling like rusted springs I waited for the human guard to nod me through. Anya slipped through after me and I told myself not to notice the fact her security check took less painful moments to pass than mine. Turning my head to the left I saw the humans’ snake through their security line. Their own guard—a Meta, just to make things fair—sitting with his feet propped on the security booth’s desk, his eyes barely scanning the readings from the humans’ entrance.

  Anya gave me a cheery wave and walked towards the lower hall, while I turned for the upper. Adrianna, the only other Meta I’d made friends with, waved me over from where we’d carved ourselves a little space in the Meta area of the lecture hall. I slid into the desk next to ours. “I thought you were going to be late,” she whispered. Talking was prohibited inside the hall, but a loud shout from the humans at the front told me this rule was only enforced in certain circumstances. All the Metas in my row craned their necks to see what the commotion was about—it was the blonde-haired girl hobbling on crutches, a group of human males assisting her. The need to bang my head on the desk swelled within me. If I focused on the aura around her, I knew only too well that later that evening she would be dancing within the confines of her room, now that the medical staff had healed her fractured ankle. I also knew that two separate bouquets of rare flowers would be delivered to her door with two separate cards wishing her well. I knew that one bunch of red tipped rarities would end their life discarded in the bin, while the other would be put on proud display where everyone could see them.

  “What are you doing?” Adrianna nudged me with her elbow, breaking my trance-like reading. “Delly, you mustn’t.”

  Of course, Adrianna knew about my untameable gifts that couldn’t be controlled by Meta-blocking computer chips. We’d been friends for nearly a year when I’d begged her not to go to the eastern farm that evening with her then crush because I knew there was going to be a fire. Of course, I didn’t know this from prophesising her future, we were friends so I could no longer see it. But, the crush I wasn’t so keen on, and his future was crystal clear.

  “She pisses me off.” I scowled towards the humans and the racket they were making.

  “She pisses us all off.” Adrianna winked and settled down in her seat, her skin shimmering in the artificial daylight being reflected into the large space around us. An empath with a subtle ability to feel emotions, she looked more like a descendent of an angel. She was more beautiful than the girl with the fake injury and blonde hair who was still creating too much noise on the other side of the hall, but human enough that she would have fit in more with the humans than the Metas if such things were socially acceptable.

  Which they weren’t.

  I looked human too, but I wasn’t. Nowhere even close.

  “What’s up my bitches?” Adrianna and I both rolled our eyes as Frankie fell into his seat behind us. His name wasn’t really Frankie, but as the product of one steamy night between an ogre and a wood sprite, we’d fondly nicknamed him Frankie for the ancient human novel we’d studied: Frankenstein, rather than stick to his all too boring birth name of Arnold. Who calls a child with green skin and turquoise eyes Arnold?

  He didn’t really look like Frankenstein, well apart from the green thing. He was attractive in a ‘own the Meta within you way’ a way which I couldn’t embrace, mainly because I looked like the plainest of plain humans. Mom had explained that this was a good thing, that it would keep me under the radar. When she’d first accepted to join the Complex on Lorn, she believed it would be a place safe for Metas. But, what we’d found out was that it was a safe place for Metas who could be controlled, and when I’d come into my gift and the Complex technology hadn’t been able to prevent me dipping into the minds and futures of those around me we’d realised that my gift was uncontrollable. Since then we’d been living on the sharpest knife edge, and my mom’s remaining hope was that if I looked human then I wouldn’t be noticed by the authorities.

  Mom didn’t really know what went down on the Complex. She believed this was some new Eden sent to save us and as she spent all her time nursing Father within the confines of our limited apartment, when she wasn’t working her shift in the kitchen to keep our place here, there was little chance of her finding out.

  All I knew was that this was nothing like Eden and that my kind, the Metas, were persecuted for what they could do.

  Frankie was leaning over, sliding his wide arms along the back of our chairs, his vivid turquoise eyes alight with gossip, when the lecturer walked in. Professor Stickler, we called him, the ancient human who acted like the font of all knowledge, but only of that he deemed worth knowing. Frankie grumbled under his breath and slumped back down in his seat. I knew he would be burning for the next two hours, waiting to tell us whatever titbit of information he was saving up for us.

  And I wasn’t wrong. As soon as the lecture was over and the humans had filed through the doors first, their faces turned away from our seats, he fell onto us.

  “Ow,” I dug myself out from his grasp. “You’re too heavy for this.” I reprimanded. He’d grown so much in the last year. It was unreal to think he’d turned seventeen and then whoosh, the small boy with green skin and black spikes, had suddenly started towering over everyone. Apparently, it took longer for the ogre gene to kick on.

  “Sorry, Delly,” he flashed me his cutest grin and I stuck my tongue out at his wily charms.

  “Come on then, out with it.” Adrianna placed her hands on slender hips.

  “What?” he tried to look innocent but couldn’t even manage that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you don’t, Treebeard,” Adrianna wiggled her eyebrows at him and his face folded into a mask. He could handle being called Frankie, but he couldn’t contend with being named after a walking, talking, tree from another one of the old human texts we’d been made to read. The experiment in the Complex was dedicated to extending the knowledge of both races to encompass that of the other. We were learning a lot about humans, but what they were learning about us I wasn’t so sure of, other than the fact the cattle on the farms were treated more fairly.

  “Don’t call me that,” he snapped and Adrianna lingered a placating hand on his arm. He physically relaxed at her touch and I wondered yet again if her empath skills went two ways and not the presumed one.

  “Cool the fire, Mister,” she cooed and he almost batted his long, dark lashes at her. “What did you want to say?”

  He took a deep breath and then exploded with the news he’d been holding for two long hours. “There’s going to be a party tonight, out on field eight, and they are saying Metas can go.”

  Adrianna and I cast cautious glances in each other’s direction and I watched as her face squinted into a ball, knowing that mine was doing the exact same thing. “Frankie, you know we can’t, right? It’ll be a trick, just like last time.”

  He shook his head long enough that I was worried it was going to dislodge from his shoulders and roll down the stairs of the lecture hall. “No, I’ve had it on good authority.”

  “Uh, huh,” Adrianna and I said at the same time, making us grin.

  “No, it’s true. Lenny told me, who heard it from Vaz, who heard it from…”

  I held my hand up to stop him. “Lenny? You’re listening to Lenny now?”

  Frankie straightened up to his full seven feet. “Lenny’s solid.”

  There was nothing solid about Lenny, a petty human thief who was shunned by the other humans almost as much as they shunned the Metas.

  Frankie folded his arms across his chest and for a moment looked more intimidating than my friend ever should. He loomed over us, tall and proud. “Well, I’m goin
g.”

  I wished I could have given him a reason not to, but because he was a friend, his future was as dark to me as how I remembered the night to look. Not that I’d seen the darkness of night for two years. Adrianna stepped in between us, linking her arm through mine and reaching for Frankie’s hand, pulling it down to her level which made him give a strange growl in the back of his throat which she studiously ignored. “Come on, let’s go and get some lunch before we are left with the slops again.”

  I was going to look for Anya, but I knew it would be a waste of time, she’d be off. She had submerged herself thoroughly in the limited lifestyle the Metas had here and she seemed oblivious to the restraints and injustice that seemed to be shackled around our existence. But, then I guess she wasn’t the one with a dangerous gift that could see their family turfed out of the Complex and left destitute and broke for the rest of their lives. That was my lot to bear.

  The dining zone was crammed with a combination of Metas and humans eating, a gentle murmur of talk swirling through the air like an unsuspecting breeze. It still surprised me that the dining times hadn't been segregated, but those in charge were still maintaining the pretence that this was a free and classless society. My eyes swept along the rows of diners. Table after table of humans. And then table after table of Metas. Lush foliage hung overhead like a vibrant, emerald-green canopy and the twitter of exotic, green-winged birds filled the air as they took to flight above the dining tables. The trickle of water from the constructed waterfall at the northern end of the domed atrium filled the air with a relaxing hum. A fairy was throwing crumbs of her baked biscuit to the birds, who were swooping and racing through the air to catch them as they fell, while the humans looked on at her, consternation turning their mouths down at the corners.

  I went to the Meta serving hatch with Frankie and Adrianna trailing in my wake. Mother looked at me with flushed cheeks, her grey-streaked hair swept up under a white cotton hat. “How were lessons?” She beamed with her words. Her pride that we were being educated to a level higher than one we could have anticipated even back on our own planet before the war, was limitless. Back then, in a world where my Meta gift was still unknown, she wouldn't have known the future I could have had as a prophet, but the war had destroyed that future before it had ever had a chance to begin.