Ground Zero: Prequel to Numbered Series

by Magus Tor

  Aurelia shook her head, disbelieving. It wasn't until she saw the pride in her mother's eyes that she knew she'd heard what she'd thought she'd heard. It was her. She was going to Lunar. She was being put on the fast track to success. It was everything she'd ever wanted. And Marnee was not here to celebrate with her.

  “It's time,” Marnee said, putting her hand on Aurelia's arm. “Please.”

  Trust. That's what it was. Marnee trusted her. And loved her. It would be the last thing she would ever do for her best friend. Swallowing hard, Aurelia picked up the syringe. Her hands were shaking.

  “Thank you,” Marnee said, quietly. “Thank you . . . for everything.”

  “I love you,” Aurelia said, hands trembling so much that she couldn't inject.

  “I love you, too,” said Marnee. “I'll miss you.”

  Slowly and carefully Aurelia placed the needle on the skin. This was the right thing. No, it wasn't. The world wasn't black and white. It was gray, and this was the best and most honest choice she could make. She pushed the plunger down, emptying the syringe.

  “I'll miss you, too,” she said, to the strange, quiet stillness filling the room.

  Her parents, trainers, and classmates crushed her in their congratulations. She seemed to go from one set of arms to another, as everyone tried to hug her at the same time. She was happy. Of course she was, but there would always be that little splinter of sadness in her heart. This was her chance. Even as she was being pushed into yet another hug, Aurelia vowed to herself that she was going to be the best med Worker Lunar Hospital had ever seen. Moreover, she was going to change things. Lunar City would be different—for Marnee.

  “Just believe in yourself,” her father whispered, pulling her close. “And you can do anything.”

  Aurelia smiled. She believed. She could change things.

  ***

  “Thank you for reading this book. I hope you had enjoyed Ground Zero. If you did, please kindly write a review about your experience with this story. It will be greatly appreciated.”

  Continue reading for a preview of

  WANT

  Book One in the Numbered Series

  ***

  Trust no one, no one trusts—that is the way of Lunar City.

  2085—The Earth has nearly been destroyed through global warming and the use nuclear weapons as WWIII begins.

  Two hundred years later and it is the Ruling Class in the Moon’s Lunar City who rule the five cities left on the barren planet. Careers are dictated, breeding is regulated, those who can’t work are made to disappear and everyone is known by a number. There is no time for fun and very little need for love. Lethal injections are brandished freely and an army of clones are bred for purely military purposes.

  Aurelia has left school with flying colours and will be flown to the Moon to work with the Elite race in the hospital. Kind-hearted, creative and intelligent, Aurelia is about to be launched into a life she could never have even dreamed of on earth, a life where power and politics are a dangerous combination and trust is hard to come by.

  With the help of new friends, Aurelia will learn whose side she is really on but the truth soon becomes horribly clear: on Lunar, you can trust no one.

  Aurelia tugged the tight-fitting uniform shirt down and took one last look into the mirror plate. Her long black hair was tied back, not a stray lock touching her collar as regulations dictated. She nodded at her appearance, recognizable even in her new uniform. Well, new in that it was different colors from her school uniform. Still, gray and red were a big improvement over the sickly yellow and black she'd been wearing for the last seven years.

  She shivered. Her blood still felt cold. It was a side effect of the coding, and she was more than familiar with it. At the end of every school year, the trackers injected all children with a genetic code update to embed new information into their genes. For some, it was purely because they'd actually passed the year's training; for others, it might include distinctions and prizes. For a minority it was the code that signaled they'd failed and training had stopped.

  Aurelia wasn't sure what happened to these students, since she'd never met any of them again. She assumed they were sent to do some form of low-level work, or possibly they'd been sent back a year to study again. In darker moments, she briefly wondered why in her seventeen years she'd never accidentally run across a Failure that she recognized, but it was best not to think about such things. She knew the elitists couldn't read her thoughts; that was forbidden under the convention, but she was never exactly sure what a tracker could tell from her twice yearly blood samples, so she did her best to behave herself.

  This year's coding had been different, though. Unlike other years when Aurelia had gathered with everyone else in her class on the last day of term, waiting in long lines in the gymnasium, talking and laughing and feeling reckless with freedom and the thought of a whole month of holiday, this year she had bidden goodbye to her schoolmates and received her official posting during the graduation ceremony. Because she was done. She'd to start work earlier than the rest.

  Traditionally, coding was done on the last week of holiday when graduating students waited so that their new employment information could be coded at the time as their graduation code in the tracker's office rather than in the school gym. Better to have one injection than two, after all. Aurelia already had her assignment, and damned if it wasn't a plum. Exactly what she'd wanted. Wanted for years. Except now, she had a wriggling in her stomach that made her doubt if she was really ready for all of this.

  “Aurelia!”

  Her mom's voice came through the intercom.

  “Coming.”

  She took one last look around her bedroom pod. It would be the last time she saw it. Once she left, the pod would be detached and sent elsewhere to someone who had been granted the permission to breed, and it would become some other child's home. When she came home to visit, a guest pod would be attached for the length of her stay. Aurelia took a deep breath.

  There was nothing here that was hers, she reminded herself. The self-healing skin of the pod meant there weren't even scuff marks to indicate someone had been here, let alone childish graffiti. Her belongings had already been sent to the cargo shuttle, so there really was nothing remaining to make this place her own. Except it had been hers. She sighed, but she was ready to go.

  “Coming, Mom,” she said again, loudly enough for the intercom to pick up.

  She closed the door behind her and took the corridor to the right towards the living pod where she knew both her parents were waiting. She'd always called them Mom and Dad, old fashioned terminology that her parents liked, though most of her classmates dispensed with this in favor of their parents' names or simple titles like “sir” and “ma'am,” depending on how formal their family living situation was.

  Her mom looked up and smiled as she entered. “Red definitely suits you better than yellow,” she said, nodding in approval. Mom was from City 04, and Aurelia had inherited her Asiatic features and long dark hair. Dad turned from the console he was sitting at and grinned at her. “Booked a transport pod to get us to the shuttle bay,” he said.

  “Cool!” Aurelia had only once before been in a transport pod, since Workers were forbidden to own them, and they were expensive to rent. Generally, she travelled by public transport as did nearly everyone else she knew.

  Dad shrugged. “You deserve it. We're proud of you, Aurelia.” He stood and gave her a hug.

  Dad was City 01 born and bred, and while Aurelia hadn't inherited many of his features, she did owe him her 165cm of height—nearly five feet, five in an old measure—and her slightly crooked eyebrows that arched to the sides when she smiled.

  “You almost ready?” Dad asked, pulling away.

  “Yep.”

  Mom stood, and Aurelia kissed the top of her head.

  “Call on the intercom when you get there,” Mom said. “And we are proud of you, Aurelia. Top of your class—we couldn't be happier.”

/>   Aurelia wanted to tell them that she couldn't have done it without them. Couldn't have done it without their constant help and advice and training, but she was still young enough for those sentiments to make her feel awkward, so she didn't. “I dunno if I'll have time to intercom when I land,” she said instead. “I'll have orientation, I guess. But I'll call as soon as I can, okay?”

  Mom squeezed her hand. “Okay.”

  “Come on, then, my little superstar,” Dad said. “There's a transport pod waiting for us, so let's hit the town.”

  Aurelia knew it was unlikely she would see her parents for some time to come. It wasn't forbidden to visit them, of course, but it wasn't particularly encouraged either. In fact, some parents completely cut contact after the child began to work, considering they had fulfilled their responsibilities and could now move on. Aurelia was sure her parents weren't going to abandon her, but there was still a sense of the end of things. She was no longer a dependent; her parents were no longer required to give her anything or to allow her into their home.

  Mom put her hand on Aurelia's arm. “Come visit?” she asked, as if she could read Aurelia's mind.

  Aurelia smiled. “Sure thing.”

  The main difference between transport pods and public transport was while public transport had to fly high above the buildings, swooping down only at designated stops, a transport pod was allowed to fly between the buildings. It was one of the main reasons Workers couldn't own them, since the congestion and danger of having so many transport pods trying to use the same air space would be disastrous.

  Aurelia thought as she climbed into the passenger seat, how nice to have transport right at your door. Her parents' home was on the forty-third floor of one of the many spiraling towers that shot up after the end of the war to accommodate the increased population. Elitists had permitted increased breeding during the post-war period, both to bring the population back to its equilibrium and because more Workers were needed to rebuild. Constructed as large double helices, these spiral towers were desirable places to live. Their structure meant windows were plentiful, and they had been built close to the center of cities to allow Workers shorter commute times and, not incidentally, longer working hours.

  Aurelia's father was staring at the programming console in the middle of the pod as Aurelia strapped herself into the three-point security belt.

  “Umm, you know how to work this thing, right, Dad?” she asked, only half joking.

  Her father was a tech Worker, but he was also extremely absent minded, and it was perfectly possible he'd forgotten to download the pod instructions before setting off.

  He looked insulted as he said, “Of course, I just . . .”

  Aurelia grinned. “Just what, Dad?”

  “Well, I've programmed the destination in and got a clear route.” He fiddled with a couple of icons shivering on the screen. “Just . . .”

  “Just what?” she asked again, biting back a giggle and fully aware of what the problem was.

  “Just can't get the damn thing to go anywhere!” he finally admitted, looking puzzled.

  “Er, you forgot something, Dad.”

  Aurelia leaned forward and pulled the security strap over her father's head.

  “Ach, that was pretty dumb.” He shook his head at his own stupidity.

  The transport pods had locks that wouldn't allow vehicle movement unless the security belts were tightened and fastened. As soon as both sets of straps were done up, the pod began humming. Aurelia felt a small vibration under her seat as the vehicle detached from the housing pod and lifted itself away. They slid down a level and glided out of the block.

  Block 3358 was where Aurelia had spent all seventeen years of her life so far. It was exactly like any other: It contained ten buildings, each structure comprised of a hundred floors, each with twenty-five living pods, each pod with one family made up of either two Worker adults or two Worker adults and a single child. Each living pod had a designation number made up of its block number plus its building, floor and pod number. In Aurelia's case it was 1-3358-7-43-22. Each inhabitant of had his or her own unique identification number, so Aurelia was 1-3358-7-43-22-3, her father being number 1 and her mother number 2. The 1 at the beginning of the number indicated they were members of City 01, rather than any of the other four Earth cities still in use.

  Aurelia had something preying on her mind for several weeks. As the transport pod navigated itself out of block 3358 and into block 3357 and her father settled back into his seat, she decided now was probably the only opportunity she was going to get to ask him.

  “Dad?”

  “Mmm?” He was studying the control panel, making sure their marked route was going to get them to the shuttle bay in time.

  “Have you and Mom thought about having a 4?”

  He looked up at her, surprised.

  “I mean, I know it's not my business or anything, and I don't know if it makes any difference, but you'd have a fair chance of being approved, and, I-I wouldn't mind or anything,” she stuttered.

  All paired Workers could apply for breeding permission whenever they liked, which was generally known as requesting a 3, since any child would naturally become a number 3 as their parents were numbers 1 and 2. A child's 3 didn't advance until they paired, at which point a boy 3 would become a 1 and a girl 3, his pair mate, would become a 2. Very, very rarely Worker parents would be permitted to have a second child, a 4. This was so unusual that Aurelia had only ever known one 4. However, due to her extreme success in training and the fact that she was being given a top work posting, Aurelia was relatively sure if her parents requested it, they would at least be considered as potential 4 parents, since they had bred so successfully and created a high-class Worker.

  “Aurelia,” her father sighed. “If your mom and I were going to apply for a 4, don't you think we'd have told you?”

  Aurelia shifted uncomfortably. “I guess.”

  “Of course we would have. And of course we've thought about it. We're still young enough to request, and you're so very special and brilliant. But we decided that since you've given us so much pleasure, it was only right to allow other pair mates the chance to breed. It didn't seem fair to ask for a 4.”

  She smiled. One of the reasons she was so close to her parents, more in tune than many children were, was because they were both such nice and generous people. “Won't you miss having a child around, though?” she asked.

  Her father raised his eyebrows. “Miss that awful racket you call music, and the panic every year come exam time?”

  She laughed, and her father patted her hand and went back to examining the transport pod's console.

  The pod was gliding through blocks now, keeping to its designated floor level to avoid other pods taking the same route. City 01 was big—huge, Aurelia knew. But she was only familiar with a ten-block area or so, since that was all she needed to know to go from home to school and back again.

  Even the vacation center was within that ten-block area, so during holidays when Aurelia and her parents had been given a week to go into the holo-program and see sights, she had never had to leave her home district. There would have been no point, anyway; Aurelia knew that the majority of the places loaded into the holo-programs no longer existed. The beaches and historical cities had all been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable eons ago, and they survived only as programmed holographs where Worker families could spend seven days every year. Still, when you felt the sun beating down on your skin and the sand creeping up between your toes and smelled the rich, salty tang of the sea air, it was kind of hard to remember that all of this was simply a collection of 1s and 0s programmed into a code that resembled a place long gone.

  Through the transparent roof bay of the transport pod, Aurelia could see the soft pale shadow of the moon. Pollution fans blew the smog out of most of City 01, leaving the sky relatively clear. The moon was visible even during the day, a silent, lurking shadow watching over the city. Aurelia shuddered and turned h
er eyes away from the moon, her eventual destination. It wasn't that she didn't want to be there. She very much did. It was all she'd ever wanted; all most Worker kids wanted was to be posted to Lunar City, the Elitist capital. It was she didn't want to think about leaving, not right now, not when it was so close. She wanted to remain earthbound as long as possible, eking out every last second of her time here.

  Her father sensed she was feeling nervous. “Ready for the big time?” he asked her.

  She sighed. “Yes, I think so. I mean, I'm not sure.”

  “It's a giant step,” he said. “It's natural to be nervous about starting your posting.”

  Aurelia looked down at her hands. “I'm not anxious over work,” she said, which was true. Lunar City Hospital would hold no surprises for someone who had graduated top of her class at medical training school. “I'm just a bit, well, sad I guess, about leaving.”

  Her father patted her knee. “It's normal not to want to leave a place, but remember this isn't an end . . . it's a beginning. With your skills, it could be the beginning of something big.”

  Aurelia knew what he was referring to, but she preferred not to talk about it. Whether it was because she was afraid of what the future could hold or because she didn't want to jinx herself, she wasn't sure. “It's a big opportunity,” was all she said.

  “It is,” her father responded. “Very big. An enormous responsibility.”

  To continue reading,

  WANT

  is available now at your favorite ebook retailer…

  ***

  Thank you all my friends who supported me in my crazy endeavours.

  ***

  Magus Tor was born and raised in Singapore, by his hardworking parents who sent him to medical school. In contrast, he is lazy and frequently escapes reality by reading or writing.