The Forgotten

by Saruuh Kelsey

  “And you,” Hele says. She squeezes my hand and I’m grateful that she’s here with me. “You are kind too, Honour. More so than you realise.”

  I shake my head but that only makes her look at me with more pity.

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “I wish I knew how,” she laughs. “I feel so bad for you. You’ve grown up too soon.”

  “Doesn’t everyone here grow up too soon?” I mutter. Hele doesn’t reply, and she looks lost in thought so I start to read the book about my biological father. It’s not thick, maybe twenty or so pages, but it will distract me from thoughts about Tia and that’s all I care about right now.

  I know I have more important things to think about, but I can’t get away from the fact that she left me.

  ***

  Yosiah

  15:09. 04.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.

  We’re sat in one of the common rooms, watching as people mill about outside in the corridors. After a long time of being confused about the actual purpose of The Guardians base, we start writing a list.

  A home.

  A safe-house for people who have nowhere else to go, are hunted by the military, or want to train to become Guardians.

  A training centre.

  A school.

  A hospital.

  A gathering of pompous dickheads. “Miya, I’m not writing that!”

  A hiding place for things of both monetary and personal value. (They house not only extravagant furniture stolen from States itself, but knowledge and words in the form of books that the Officials have kept from us: words that hold the power to change us. I think that this is its most important purpose, and I hate to think what would happen to that knowledge if the base was ever destroyed.)

  A prison housing Guardian traitors, as well as people who are dangerous to not only themselves but others.

  It’s also an entertainment centre.

  My favourite purpose.

  Every night, in the large hall, people sing, or act, or recite poetry, or mess around being stupid. And, although it feels weird to laugh and dance, it’s a nice change from living on the streets of Forgotten London, always running from something or someone.

  Last night Miya even let me dance with her for half a minute. It was ridiculous, since neither of us can dance, and she ended up almost tripping over. I’m sure we looked like fools, but for half a minute Miya smiled and I didn’t care what I did or what I looked like.

  In the present, one of the school lessons has finished, which leaves students with a new purpose—to either get to their next class or as far away from it as possible. One of them, a nineteen year old blond Guardian called Josh Loren, drops onto the sofa beside me. So far he’s the only person who we’ve managed to form some semblance of friendship with. Not that it’s real friendship, or any sort of bond, but I’m glad we have an ally.

  “You are so lucky you don’t have to do schooling,” he says conversationally.

  I reply, “I remember school from when I was younger. I don’t think it was particularly bad.”

  “I never went to school,” Miya adds and Josh’s jaw drops.

  “Ever?”

  “Nope.” Miya smirks. Even she likes Josh. It’s a testament to him. Miya doesn’t like anyone.

  “You illiterate sod,” he jokes, leaning across me to shove Miya’s arm playfully.

  Flirting.

  Something cracks and a question I’ve had for months gets answered.

  I had thought that I saw Miya as a sister.

  Or a friend.

  Or a platonic soul mate.

  Or even a fellow fighter.

  But right now I want to rip Josh’s arm from his body to stop him touching her. It’s not that I dislike him, or that I think he’d be a bad choice for Miya if she decided to get with someone.

  It’s jealousy.

  So that’s what that feels like.

  “Oh my god!” Miya shouts and her voice is enough to drag me from thoughts of causing Josh bodily harm. She’s not looking at him, though, or at me I notice with bitterness. I follow her gaze and my mouth drops open.

  Honour.

  Honour stood here—inside the common room—safe in The Guardians base. I can’t believe it.

  “Oh Jesus,” Josh groans, “it’s boy wonder.”

  “Yosiah?” Honour questions, shuffling towards us. I stand and embrace him before he can even get to us. “What are you guys doing here?” he asks.

  I frown. “Long story.”

  “We were kidnapped,” Miya adds with a casual smirk.

  “What? Are you okay?”

  I sit beside Miya before Josh can get any closer. The jealously is surprisingly potent.

  She waves a dismissive hand. “Yeah. I mean, I almost lost my mind when I thought they’d killed Yosiah but I’m fine now. Free food—how can I complain?”

  Honour smiles with understanding. “And you, Yosiah, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He sits opposite us and rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “You don’t sound it.”

  I shake my head, force a smile. “I’m not sure that I can be any level of okay now. Not when I know what States and the Officials are capable of. Not when I know what humanity itself is capable of.”

  “Whoa,” Josh laughs. “That’s a bit deep for three in the afternoon.”

  Honour ignores him completely. “I know what you mean. I found out that my own sister has been giving information about us to the Officials. If she can do that, anyone’s capable of anything.”

  “Horatia?” I’m shocked. “I never would have imagined.”

  “She obviously had more important things to do than stay with me.”

  “Honour, she loves you. Her love for you is the first thing I remember knowing about her. Whatever she has done—whether it’s allying with Officials or getting in with them for some secret purpose—I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she did it for you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Honour laughs bitterly. “I don’t even know where she is now. Or what she’s doing. Or if she’s even still alive. God knows she’s in enough danger.”

  “Danger?” Miya tilts her head. “What danger?”

  “States’s Ordering Body want us dead apparently. The President probably does too.”

  “Why would they—” I start to ask but something about the look in Honour’s eye tells me it’s not something he wants to say in front of strangers.

  “Why do they do anything?” Miya cuts in, covering up for me perfectly. She must have seen the look too. “They do what they want and hate anyone who goes against it.”

  “Exactly,” Honour sighs. I don’t miss the grateful look he gives each of us.

  Miya smiles. “Anyway, here’s an update on us. Alba thinks me and Yosiah might be immune to the Strains. We’re waiting for a test to be shipped here from God knows where, and then we’ll know.”

  “Bharat,” I provide.

  “Weird isn’t it? That we, of all people, would be immune.”

  “That is weird,” Honour says with a smile. “I wonder who else is immune.”

  “Who knows?” She smiles wryly. “Maybe you.”

  “No. That’d be too easy. The universe hates me.”

  “That’s true,” Miya says. She snags what we’re told is an ‘apple’ from the table in front of us. She twirls it around in her hand and takes a bite as I look at her sharply.

  She grins. “What? It is true!”

  ***

  Branwell

  10:17. 05.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.

  It is two days before I speak to anyone again, not taking into account the one word conversations I have with the people who bring me meals. I haven’t left this room, nor do I plan to—not until I have found a way to contact my sister.

  So far I have failed in every way possible.

  The bracelet will not take me anywhere but here no matter which way I twist it around my wrist. I can’
t for the life of me work out how it functions, but I assume that the mechanics of it must be inside the hollow of the metal—and the metal appears to be indestructible. It is the most frustrating thing I have ever come across. If I can’t get it open I can’t tamper with the mechanism that transports me, and I cannot make it take me to Bennet.

  A knock on the door is the only thing that stops me from further fiddling with the bracelet. It was taken from me when I first came here, but now that Alba believes my story it has been given back to me and I’ve spent every minute since compelling it to work.

  I expect a Guardian to enter the room with food, but it is a dark-skinned boy my age who I have not yet met. His eyes are wary but curious as he steps into the room.

  He sits on a chair beside the bed I am lounged upon and notices the bracelet in my hands.

  He asks, “Is that the thing that brought you here?”

  “It is,” I reply. I hope this isn’t another interrogation.

  “How does it do it?”

  “I don’t know.” I want to know the same thing.

  “I’m Honour.” He sticks out a hand; I shake it hesitantly. “I heard some people talking about you and that bracelet thing. I wondered if … if only you can use it, or if anyone can.”

  “Just me, I think. It has my name on it. I haven’t let anyone else try it.”

  “Could I—”

  “No,” I say sharply. “Certainly not. I don’t know if it’s safe to use. Or if it was safe to begin with. You could be harmed.”

  “That didn’t stop you,” he laughs. He sounds bitter.

  I’ve had this conversation three times already. “I was desperate.”

  “So am I,” he insists. “I need to find my sister. And you can’t understand, but she left me. She went off with some Official and now she’s in danger. I don’t know where she is or who she’s with but I need to get to her.”

  “I understand completely,” I sigh. “Believe me, I understand, but I cannot get the bracelet to work. It will not transport me anywhere now. Perhaps that is because right here is where I need to be, but it may also be broken. It’s entirely possible that it was designed for one trip and one trip alone.”

  He looks at me with pleading eyes. “Then let me try. If nothing is going to happen it won’t hurt, right?”

  His hands are clasped in front of him, his entire body angled towards the bangle, and his eyes are nothing but misery and fear. “Why? Why do you want this so desperately?”

  “Because my sister betrayed me, and left me, but I won’t do the same thing to her. I won’t let her die—and I think she might without me. People are looking for her and they want to hurt her, to kill her. I need to warn her. Please. I need to get her away from whatever mess she’s in. She needs me.”

  If I were in his place, I know that I would need to do the same. I unsnap the bracelet from my wrist and reluctantly hand it to Honour. His hand shakes as he takes it from me but he doesn’t waste any time in clasping it around his own wrist. We wait for three whole minutes but not a single thing happens.

  He takes the thing off and returns it to me with a wretched expression on his face. He looks like a broken man. I think I understand now.

  “That was your last hope, wasn’t it?” I ask.

  He nods glumly.

  “I’m sorry. We are in the same predicament. There were two of these bangles—my sister, Bennet, used the other. We expected it to take us somewhere quite different than here. We even anticipated the bracelets’ failure; that they would take us to the entirely wrong place. But we never, for a second, thought they would take us to different places, that it would separate us.

  “So I know precisely what you are feeling,” I go on. “Although, perhaps my situation is worse. Your sister betrayed you, but my sister was not meant to be here with me. The bracelet took her wherever she needed to be, and she needed to be apart from me. Your sister acted with her mind, with her reasoning, and that is what separates you—her conscious decision. What separates me from my sister is something in her soul, in her very being. She was not aware that she did not need me, but something buried deep inside of her was, and it tore us apart. Tell me which is worse.”

  Honour blinks and, bewilderingly, he grins. “I didn’t know this was a pity party. If I’d have known that I’d have come here days ago.”

  “What are you—”

  “Neither of us is meant to be with our sisters, we’re both depressed and melodramatic, and the bracelets won’t work for either of us.”

  “I don’t see your point.”

  He shrugs. “The universe doesn’t just hate me; it hates you too.”

  “Oh, charming.”

  “Misery loves company.” He laughs, then fixes me with a serious look. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll help you find your sister if you help me find mine.”

  I think about it for a second and nod my assent.

  “You know that thing you’re looking for—the energy thing?”

  Warily I say, “Yes.”

  “Well—and this is only a theory, don’t take it to heart—that bracelet brought you here because it’s where you needed to be, right? And you were looking for the energy thing when you put the bracelet on. What if it actually took you to it—but you didn’t realise?”

  A thousand scenarios run through my mind. “You think it is here in The Guardians’ base?”

  “Not exactly,” he says carefully, “but I reckon it’s in our time, and in our world. It brought you here for a reason, right? And you did need to find it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I still do.”

  “I think it’s here. You just haven’t looked for it.”

  “No,” I whisper, my heart sinking like an anchor. “No, I don’t need to look for it.” I clamber across the bed to the nightstand, upon which is a book about The Forgotten Lands that Priya thoughtfully gave to me. I thumb through it to a photo of the solar flare destruction. “That wasn’t solar flares. Damn my mind, I should have connected this sooner! I am already too late.”

  Honour doesn’t look disheartened. “Hey, maybe you can like … change the future. Change the present.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Let me finish,” he says impatiently, his brown eyes shining. “If you find the thing you’re looking for here, and you take it back to your time somehow … it could be completely different now.”

  “You’re suggesting I change history?” My voice is drawling.

  A devious look comes across his face and I decide that I rather like Honour. “Not completely. Rewrite it a little. It would be nice to think things could be different. You know, without most of the planet being a burned-out wreck. I could cope with that.”

  “I don’t think that is actually possible,” I say.

  “It’s worth a try. You’re gonna get the thing and go back to your time either way, aren’t you?”

  “I … I suppose I am. That was the original plan before this whole time jump travesty occurred. It is not as simple as taking the device back to my time, however. There’s more than one of them, possibly thousands. Hell—perhaps even millions at this point in time. God only knows enough time has passed.” I measure Honour with a look. “Do you truly believe I am capable of something as superhuman as collecting that many devices and travelling back through time to my home?”

  “I don’t know. I think you’d have a damn good try, though. Either way, that insane plan can wait. First we need to attempt Insane Plan Number One: find our sisters and try not to die.”

  “Try not to die?”

  “Yeah, haven’t you heard? States is going to destroy Forgotten London.”

  “Oh Lord,” I groan. “Not this again.”

  ***

  Yosiah

  11:28. 05.10.2040. Forgotten London, Edgware Zone.

  I lost Miya over half an hour ago. She ran down the corridor after Honour and I haven’t seen her since. I haven’t seen Honour either. I wander the halls, occasionally looking into a room to see pe
ople eating breakfast, teenagers having lessons, children in a play centre that I hadn’t noticed before, two boys having a strenuous arm wrestle.

  After a few minutes of walking I get the creeping feeling that comes over me when I’m being followed. I change my route so that it takes me back to my room but after a minute or so someone drops from above me and I hear their feet hit the marble floor. I don’t have to turn around to know who it is. I’ve been waiting for it. I also know who has a habit of hiding in the rafters.

  I stop dead, but I don’t turn.

  “I didn’t know The Guardians had perfected resurrection,” I say, my voice shockingly level.

  He speaks as softly as he used to. “What can I say, they’re exceptionally advanced.”

  I close my eyes against the bright electric lighting, against everything. “I mourned you. I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and at that I turn to face him with angry eyes.

  “You faked your own death!”

  “Not exactly. I had help.”

  “I thought you were dead, Timofei.”

  He says tiredly, “It needed to be done. You know the only way an Official can leave the military.”

  “Dead,” I whisper. He looks exactly like he used to; tall and dark, but something has changed about him and I can’t work out what it is. It starts to annoy me.

  “I kept a watch on you, you know? That’s how we knew you were being followed for your involvement with the Frie siblings.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes you do. That’s your problem.”

  I glare at him, my anger spiking. “I thought I had killed you! My own friend! And you let me think I had.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” he groans. “Okay, yes, that was my biggest mistake. My second biggest mistake was not bringing you with me, but you’re doing all right on your own. You have a girlfriend now, and you’re still alive, even after two years of being on the streets. You did fine.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. And I didn’t do fine. I caught a Strain not long after you died. It wasn’t bad and it didn’t kill me but that’s beside the point. I’ve almost been killed more times than I can remember, and most of those times were starving to death. Do you think that’s doing all right?”