The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2)

by Saruuh Kelsey

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I say to my reflection.

  Satisfied, the director depresses another button. He exits the elevator quickly—there’s nothing wrong with the way he walks; the cane is a show of status. The lift finally closes. With a hiss of air and antibacterial gases, we descend. They did the same thing with the gases when we entered the building, a woman droning on about decontamination and offending me in the process. Of course they would want to protect their laboratories—I would want the same—but it seemed to come from a place that assumed Plymouth’s locals were above us. That because we were from a Forgotten Town, we were lower. I’ve heard whispers of those words around us ever since we arrived.

  I suppose I finally know what it is like to be of a lower status. If I’d been suffering this derision and condescension my entire life I’m sure I’d be a shell of the person I am now. I’d have been reduced to nothing because that is what it feels like to have someone look at you as if you’re dirt—with their narrow eyed stares on me, I feel like I’m nothing.

  I couldn’t have been a servant in the time of Victoria’s reign—I wouldn’t have survived every insult and glare and hit that evidenced a lower status. I’m lucky I was born into wealthy family and didn’t have to work. I owe so much to our staff, to them caring for the important things so we didn’t have to. I reconsider the way I was at home, whether I have acted condescendingly to our extended family, whether I have looked at them as if they are lesser than me. I don’t think I have. I hope I haven’t.

  When I get back, if I get back, I have a lot of apologising to do.

  “Something wrong?” Samantha is contemplating me, winding a ringlet of golden hair around a finger. “Is it the tech? It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? For you?”

  I shrug, because it answers her question as best I can. I’m not sure if it’s the lab or the town or this whole world. I know what is at the core of my worries. It’s equal parts being out of place and worrying about Honour. I don’t know what is happening to him, or what is causing his hallucinations.

  For all my bracing myself, I slam into the wall when the lift stops cruelly. Ice cold air floods the small space as the doors snap back and release us. I might love the laboratories in this building but I hate that lift.

  I gulp huge lungfuls of air when we’re outside.

  “Can you do it?” Samantha asks, scanning the grey buildings, grey sky, grey pavement that greet us. The washed out colour is a small comfort, calling me to the dirty silver streets of home.

  “Do what?” I ask.

  Samantha pulls a hat over her hair, the indigo felt striking against the porcelain of her face. “The cloaking device.”

  “Oh. I think so, yes. It may take time, though. How long are we here for?”

  “Not long. Up here.” She takes me by the arm down a lonely street and into a busier thoroughfare. “A few days max’.”

  “That’s not long at all. I’m not sure I’ll be able to, in that case.”

  “You’ll have to work on the cloak instead of your bracelet.” She sounds apologetic, though I can’t tell if it’s genuine. “I know it’s important to you but if we don’t have a way to hide our crafts, we’ll be shot from the sky. Again.”

  “I know.” I barely hold back a frustrated sigh. I’m finally given the equipment to understand my father’s device and I have to put it on hold. How very awful of you, world.

  “They’ve got even better tech in Bharat,” she adds in an attempt to placate me. It works, but only because she’s right. Bharat is a City, more advanced and much wealthier than these remnants of lost towns. It will probably take me a day in Bharat to understand the bracelet.

  “What’d you think of their serum, then? Messed up, right?”

  “Yes.” The people of Plymouth, like everywhere else, have a unique approach to survival. Manchester thought extensive guarding would protect their town. Leeds stockpiled a vault of weapons (so I found out once they had been loaded onto the aircraft and I almost had a heart attack at the idea of sitting amongst explosives.) Birmingham assumed a humble, simple life would keep them alive. But here in Plymouth the scientists have been tasked by the ambassadors with ‘empowering’ the people, making them stronger, able to beat any Official who might come at them.

  I’m told it has worked, that the few stray Officials who wandered past the town boundaries have been killed easily. But I’d like to see their optimism in the face of an army like the one that policed the populace of Forgotten London. I would also like to see them not genetically modify their people in an attempt to make them stronger and faster since it hits entirely too close to home with what has happened to my friend against his will.

  Have you not seen what this has done to Honour Frie? I wanted to scream in their faces. Why would you willingly do this to yourselves? It will ruin them!

  I couldn’t shout that, though. We’re meant to be careful around them—Plymouth has the technology to put us down quickly and they won’t hesitate to do it, unlike the people in Manchester. I flash back to the dank cell where Honour was imprisoned, where he nearly died, where my heart nearly died with him. If that was Manchester hesitating to put us down, I’m not going to risk finding out Plymouth’s equivalent.

  Thankfully, the serum only lasts for an hour. Though there are people who inject themselves continually, whether because of the threat of States or because they’re addicted, I don’t know. I can’t help but wonder what the effects of prolonged use of the serum will be. Nothing like this comes without a price.

  We reach the building where Dalmar is holding his meeting, a white baroque cafe with vermillion doors and window frames, perched on the corner of a quiet street. I look up at the building as Samantha marches straight inside, my eyes sweeping the three stories, the stucco festoon above the windows, the words Café Rouge picked out in gold. Such a lovely building for a drab meeting.

  I make my way inside.

  The café is all dark teak and spindly furniture, the ceiling and walls a pale lemon that reflects light on the group of people sat in the far corner, papers and communicators sprawled across the tables in front of them. I take a seat beside a fair haired man with a serious expression. Dalmar nods at me in a silent thank you for coming and informs the council that we’re just waiting for Hele, Honour, and Tia before we can get started. This prompts some serious grumbling from Cell, though he’s quietened a significant degree by Saga’s heated frown.

  Honour bursts through the doors, rumpled and flustered and beautiful, a dark flush on his cheeks and sweat on his brow. “Sorry we’re late.” He’s breathing heavily, clutching a Guardians communicator. “But there’s someone that wants to talk to you.” He holds the device out to Dalmar.

  “Who?” Dalmar takes the communicator from Honour. “And why haven’t they contacted me on my comm?”

  “Something about signals and frequencies and—I didn’t get half of it. They said they’re from Bharat, Dal.”

  Dalmar abruptly loses his cool—as I’ve heard Honour say. He makes a quick gesture at the gathered council and disappears through a side door for privacy.

  “Are you sure it was Bharat, boy?”

  “Yeah.” Honour comes to stand beside me, resting his hands on the chair back. “I’m sure.”

  The Guardians murmur.

  I peer up at Honour. “Are you alright?”

  “Not sure.”

  I throw a glance around the table. Nobody is paying any attention to me. “Want to go outside?”

  He breathes, “Yeah,” as if escaping the building he’s only been inside for a minute is an enormous relief.

  We end up on a low wall in front of a church across the road, sat beneath an unlit street lamp that could have been abducted from my own time. I inspect the light, curious if it’s powered by gas or electricity, all the while trying not to crush the white may blossoms under my legs. The flowers add points of brightness on the grubby brick—I wouldn’t want to hurt them accidentally.

  “I just feel
like nothing I do is ever gonna matter,” Honour sighs. I now see that his relief came from being able to talk to me, not from going outside. “Whatever I do, I’m always gonna be cursed with this … this mess. Even if I do something amazing like save the world or cure the Strains or—or run a church.” He looks up at the weatherworn building behind us with a sad attempt at a smirk. “I’ll always have this hanging over me. I’ll always be the carrier, the boy who was made into a weapon. I don’t see the point in anything when I’ll always be what I am, not what I do.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yeah, well you have to say that.”

  “Do I?” I wait for him to look at me. “Do I really have to say that?”

  He looks at his feet, scuffs them against the pavement. “I guess you don’t.”

  “There will always be people who see you that way.” I tip my head back to look at the sky. Overcast, I notice with disappointment. Plymouth is nothing but bleak days and torrential downpour. I’ve discovered a new hate for the seaside. “Someone will always think you are dangerous, or can’t be trusted, but you cannot listen to those people or think like them. If you think only of yourself as a villain that is what you’ll become.” I lower my gaze from the sky. “But you can’t be only darkness, Honour. I know you. You have so much love—for your family, for your friends. I think you should let a little of that light into your own heart. The horror you’ve witnessed … there has to be some goodness to balance that. I think the world owes it to you.”

  I’m looking Honour directly in the eye so I see the gradual change in him, though I can’t interpret it. He dips his face towards mine and I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t. Beneath the dark shadow of the lamppost, with the scent of sweet flowers wrapping around us, Honour kisses me. It’s quick and feverish, as soft as the petals that brush my fingers as I lean back, Honour’s body following the movement.

  He jerks away a moment later, sliding a safe distance away. “Sorry,” he says. “That was … impulsive. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Crushing disappointment weighs heavy on my heart but it’s accompanied by the slightest bit of relief—relief that I don’t have to acknowledge this energy between Honour and I because it was nothing but a spontaneous mistake.

  “That’s alright,” I say, standing. I don’t get the chance to tell Honour not to dwell on it because Dalmar comes sprinting out of Café Rouge shouting my name. He dashes across the thin ribbon of a road and grips my shoulders hard enough to send pain along my neurons. “What is it?”

  My heart rate hasn’t slowed from the gallop it took to when Honour kissed me. It exacerbates my rapid panic.

  “That signal from Bharat,” Dalmar pants, “was our first contact in months.”

  “And? What’s that to do with me?”

  “They have a new Guardian. In the rebellion centre of New Delhi.”

  “I don’t see—” But Dalmar cuts me off before I can finish, anything I might have thought or said or been dispersing at the words that rush from Dalmar.

  “She’s calling herself Bennet Ravel. It’s your sister, Branwell, we’ve found her.”

  ***

  Miya

  02:10. 07.11.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.

  Yosiah is trying to sneak out without waking me. It might even have worked if I hadn’t been awake for the past three hours trying furiously not to think about my dead mother. I don’t follow Siah because he clearly needs time to himself. Instead I open the window and sit on the balcony outside our room, pulling my knees to my chest.

  I’m bonier than I was in Forgotten London. I thought it was because I wasn’t eating properly, at first—which is stupid, since I’m eating better now than I ever was—but I think it’s all the walking we’re doing. Or the stress. I’m slowly wearing my body down to nothing.

  I hear the front door open below and shrink back against the railing, not wanting Siah to see me as he walks past. But he doesn’t. His footsteps stop somewhere below the window, where the tiny yard is. A girl’s voice has me bolting upright, grateful that being barefoot means I’m silent.

  Yosiah is sneaking out to meet someone?

  “Mel?”

  I listen to their conversation, not caring how intrusive I’m being. I remember him crying out that name in his sleep. Mel. He sounded so scared. If she’s someone from his past, why is he being so secretive about meeting her? I don’t care about him having friends—I even pushed him towards Timofei so I clearly don’t care about him dating. But keeping it secret is what riles me up.

  “Excuse me?” Mel’s response is venomous. If she attacks him I’ll swing right over this balcony and take the two story drop. I’d love to see her hurt him with me beside him.

  “You don’t remember me?” My anger sinks instantly at Siah’s tone. It’s his lost voice, the one he uses when he’s hurting and doesn’t know what to do.

  “Should I?”

  “We met when I was younger. We shared a … a room. You saved me.”

  She whispers, “Vian?” and then there’s silence. They could be hugging. They could be kissing. They could be doing absolutely anything. She could have killed him. My fingers make fists on the metal railing.

  Eventually Yosiah says, “You didn’t forget me.”

  “Of course I didn’t—I couldn’t forget you if I tried. And I’ve tried to forget.”

  I wonder if Siah would tell me what’s between him and this Mel if I asked. Before this, I’d have said yes without question. But now I’m not so sure. I know this is his past and that it’s his choice to keep me and it separate but—we’ve started telling each other our histories. He knows my name and I know his. I know about his parents—who were even worse than my mother—and he knows about my own family, how Thomas almost died when he fell down the steps when he was three, how Livy got arrested by an Official for talking to her imaginary friend, how I bribed him to let her go. I’ve told him personal things. There’s nothing I’ve kept from him but he still has secrets from me.

  I feel like I have a right to them, which is wrong. I lower myself to the floor and push my forehead against the cold bars of the railing. Their voices dip for a minute, so I miss half a conversation.

  “—didn’t know what happened to you,” Mel says. She paces below, which is good for me because she moves into my view.

  I bite into my cheek. I know her. She’s not someone from Plymouth like I’d assumed. She came from Leeds. I can’t remember the name she gave us but it sure as hell wasn’t Mel. Honour knows—she’s been hovering around him like a fly around shit. Honour probably knows the most about her.

  I haul myself from the balcony and go back to the room, my thoughts fighting themselves. I check on my brother and sister, listen close because Livy is a sneak and wouldn’t think twice about pretending. But both their breathing is deep and genuine. I close the door behind myself and pad down the hallway to Honour’s room, cursing a twinge in my ankle. I thought it’d healed days ago. I knock quietly on the door with the back of my knuckles. It opens half a minute later and Tia peers down at me with worry.

  “I need to talk to Honour,” I say without explanation.

  He stumbles into view, bleary eyed. “I’m here.”

  “Can we go downstairs?”

  He rubs his mussed hair. “Yeah, sure.” He drops a kiss on Horatia’s head and says, “Be back soon.”

  I go to the kitchen, not turning on a single light—I don’t want Yosiah to know I’m here. The moonlight’s enough to see by anyway.

  “Secret meeting in the dark,” Honour says warily. “Should I be worried?”

  “No.” I sit at the table, rigid. “There’s a girl that came from Leeds. She’s done nothing but stalk you. Who is she?”

  “Cat?” He pulls out a chair, serious now. “I don’t know much about her. She was living with John in Leeds for a while. She said she came from Underground London Zone. She’s looking for someone—that’s why she was with John. I wasn’t supposed to know tha
t but I listen to people.” He shrugs unapologetically. “She doesn’t like to talk but she watches everything. And she has a strange eye. She creeps me out.”

  I don’t comment on Honour’s eclectic description, though I am curious about Cat/Mel’s weird eye. “She’s outside,” I tell him, “talking to Siah. Or at least she was.”

  Honour’s face scrunches up.

  “They seem to know each other.”

  “Alright, that’s suspicious,” he admits. “You hear what they were saying?”

  “Not much. She didn’t recognise him at first. I don’t think they’ve seen each other in a long time, and it’s gotta be before I met Yosiah because I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Wow, that’s … years.”

  “Yes. Deep into Yosiah’s past. So you get why I want to know who she is.”

  “Well, not really.” I throw a glare and he holds his hands up. “I mean, maybe they’re just old friends.”

  “Old friends who sneak out in the middle of the night to meet each other and don’t acknowledge each other during the day.”

  “Yeah …”

  “If she has something to use against him—”

  “Miya, if she’s bad I’ll find out.”

  I’m comforted for some stupid reason by Honour’s determination. “Do you always see people that way? Good or bad?”

  “Sometimes,” he admits.

  His honesty coaxes a smirk from me. “What am I, then?”

  “A dark grey.”

  I laugh, long and low. I can’t help it.

  Before silence is given the chance to settle in between us, Honour blurts out, “I kissed Branwell!”

  “Holy shit. Really?”

  He drops his head into his hands. “I don’t know why I did it. I just really wanted to. And then right after I felt like an idiot.”