by Jenn Vakey
Tainted Plans
Book one of the
Tainted World Series
Jenn Vakey
Tainted Plans
Copyright © 2019 by Jenn Vakey
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ASIN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Other Books by Jenn Vakey
Bonus Chapters – Loving Danger
PROLOGUE
Our history lessons told us that war was always an inevitability. It had been happening since the dawn of time. That was just what happened when people were confined to a small place. Our planet, Earth as the historian’s called it, wasn’t very small. Still, people were never happy with what they already had. They always wanted more.
Somewhere during the twenty-third century, humans started fighting each other. They called it World War IV. When it began, the world split into two factions. People from different lands joined together to fight side by side against their enemies. But even the advanced weapons and technology wasn’t enough. That’s when it all changed.
No one’s really certain which side found them first. The creatures that had filled story books. Vampires, werewolves, dragons. The ones no one really believed in before they were found. Once one species was discovered, a race began to find more. Stronger ones that could be used as the ultimate weapons. Vampires were hard to kill and so fast. Werewolves had enhanced strength. Witches could harness magic and use it against their enemies.
When simply using these creatures didn’t seem to be enough, scientists started harnessing their genes and implanting them into their soldiers. The people they could trust to be on their side.
The war went on for several years before those very soldiers did exactly what their creators had been counting against. They no longer felt the allegiance toward their nations. So they banded together. That was the start of the end.
It was no longer the two factions fighting against each other. It was humans against the created. The Tainted. With their new abilities, we didn’t stand a chance.
So humanity did the only thing we could to survive.
People from both sides of the original war banded together and built the wall. It was two hundred feet tall, impossibly straight. There were no doors in and out. When it was completed, the remaining humans were trapped inside, just as much as the Tainted were trapped on the outside. They were protected, but left with only the materials and technology they had brought in before the world outside was closed off. It became perish or prosper.
Our ancestors couldn’t let that be the end of mankind. So they started to build. A new city, the last known one in the world that wasn’t in the control of the Tainted. A city that was named Eden.
That had been four hundred years ago. The land inside the wall that had originally laid baron was now covered in towering structures. Some nearly tall enough to reach the top of the wall. Nearly. No one was supposed to look beyond the wall. Only members of the Sentry, Eden’s guards, were permitted to walk the top of it. Keeping a constant watch for any Tainted that wished to enter Eden and do harm to our society.
The land throughout the entire city was thick and hard as stone. A giant man-made rock that protected us from anyone hoping to dig up through the ground. The only soil that remained in the entire city was in the farm lands. Expansive fields on both sides of the city that grew all of the food needed to sustain us.
Like all civilizations, our government was firmly in place. We had the royal family. Descendants of Zachariah Behrer, the man who brought our society together. The first King of Eden. Under the king was the council. One member from each of the seven sections that made up society.
There were the Healers, which handled every medical need. A special branch even worked on advancements for how we treated illnesses and injuries. The Growers worked the fields and tended to the livestock. Distributors delivered weekly rations to every household. That included food, clothing, and household goods. They also ran the trade stores throughout the city.
The Makers designed and built all of our machines and technology. Scholars ran the schools, teaching every child between the age of four and ten in basic education. Laborers were at the bottom of the social structure. These were the people who didn’t qualify for another vocation, so they did the jobs no one else wanted. Custodial work and construction were at the top of that list.
Then there were the Sentry. They enforced the laws of Eden.
Before our eleventh birthdays, our future vocation was chosen. When basic education ended, we were sectioned off to begin training in the fields we would spend the rest of our lives working in. That training continued until we reached our twentieth birthday. Then we were required to take the test.
Every civilization had their superstitions and ghost stories. Eden was no different. While the official reason given for the test was to determine if we were suited for the field we had studied in, there were whispers that it was really for something else. To weed out those in our civilization that weren’t strictly human. Those with Tainted blood that gave them special abilities. If a person failed this test, their whole family was exterminated. Even if only one member showed the signs of being Tainted, it was in the blood.
I had never believed in that. It was a ghost story that parents told their children to make them behave. Rumors to explain away accidents or incidents that killed an entire family. If there were really people inside the wall with Tainted blood, it would have been something we would have heard about. Something that would have surely been eradicated after four hundred years.
Or so I thought.
CHAPTER ONE
I sat in the middle of my bed, staring out at my room. It was small, as were all bedrooms in Eden, but there was still plenty of room to move around even with the two beds inside. It was one of the reasons that I was grateful for Dallin, my stepfather, being a Sentry. They were one of three vocations that sat at the top of the pyramid. The highest ranking. This meant a larger home, more rations, and less restrictions when it came to movements within Eden. But it wasn’t going to be our home much longer, and I was going to miss it.
Eden was sectioned off, with each vocation having their own area. It was similar to towns in the pre-war days. Before the wall. Children, even those who sought out vocations other than the ones held by their parents, were permitted to remain housed with them until the test. For people who married outside of
their vocation, they were allowed to live in the section of greater ranking between the two.
Had I received the vocation I wanted, Grower, I would have had to have moved to their section near the fields after the test. It would have been a step down from the way I was used to living, but there was something about being in the fields that I had always loved. The smell of it, the way the dirt felt.
Instead, I was given placement with the Healers. I enjoyed it, and I was good at it, but it just wasn’t the same. Not that it would really matter soon anyway.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” the nervous voice of my sister, Lillith, came from the door to my right. Hearing her so worried caused the pit that had been growing ever deeper in my stomach to churn unhappily. That was only amplified when I looked up to meet her big violet eyes, rimmed red where she had been crying.
I offered her a soft smile and patted on the bed beside me. “And let my baby sister go out there and have adventures without me?”
She shot me a sardonic look before rolling her eyes. “We’re twins, Leeya. When are you going to stop calling me your baby sister?”
I shrugged playfully. “When you find out a way to go back in time and come out first. And you just answered your own question with that one. We’re twins, Lil. That means I go where you go. Always.”
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
I nodded and wrapped my arm around her shoulder, pulling her toward me. I was scared too. I had been since the day that it happened. When Lillith started showing signs of those abilities that I had always believed to be fantasy. But they weren’t. It might have been exciting if I hadn’t also realized what it all meant. We were just two weeks away from having to take the test. The test that I now knew would reveal that Lillith was Tainted. The test that couldn’t be skipped.
Others might have seen it as a risk, but we did the only thing we could think of when it all started. We talked to Dallin. Sure, he was a Sentry. It was their job to make sure nothing Tainted existed inside of the wall. But he was the only parent we had. The only one we could trust.
That was a month ago, when all of our planning started. He told us what we were to do, and that might have been scarier than just holding our breath and hoping we were wrong about the test. Instead, we would have to leave. Not just our home. Eden. We would have to go outside of the wall.
“What if we’re wrong about being able to survive out there?” Lillith asked. “What if those stories about Alkwin are nothing more than stories?”
Planting a kiss on the top of her head, I pushed up and reached down for her hand. “They aren’t stories,” I said with a confidence that I wasn’t really feeling. It was a fear I also had, but I needed to be strong for her. “It’s been centuries, Lil. You aren’t the first person to discover they’re Tainted. They had to have gone somewhere, and we’re going to find them. Together.”
Like everything else about this, Alkwin was a thing of legends. A community set up somewhere outside of the wall that was a haven for the tainted that made their way out. A place that couldn’t even be reached by someone without Tainted blood. Someone like me had to have a sponsor to even pass through the threshold. Or so the stories said. I didn’t really care. Not as long as we were safe, and together.
“We have things we need to do,” I told her. “Paxton will never forgive us if we don’t say bye. He’s already mad he can’t tag along.”
Lillith pulled her long, straight blonde hair up in a tie and checked herself in the mirror before walking with me out of the room. That was the only difference between us. I never understood it. We weren’t just twins. We were identical twins. Same bodies, same facial features. Same purple eyes. But instead of the dark blonde hair she donned, mine was brown. Even the research I had managed in the Healer office hadn’t provided me with any answers. Maybe it happened for the same reason that only she was Tainted. Something I doubted we would ever have an answer to.
“That’s just because Pax will be miserable without us,” she said.
I hid my smirk, knowing very well that wasn’t the real reason. Paxton Meltzer had been our friend since we started school at age four. To me, he was like the brother we never had. The brother we never could have with the childbearing restrictions. Each family could only have two children. That is unless they received special permission. That was so rare that I could only think of one family that had a third child. Well, with the exception of the royal family. Before she passed baring their youngest child, King Phineas and Queen Zyva had three children. Two boys and a girl. Perhaps that was a blessing, because the middle son, Prince Evran, had died in an assassination plot four years ago. Not that the laws really applied to that family anyway. Most didn’t.
“Did you hear what happened?” Paxton asked on a struggled breath, running up to greet us when we walked outside. I wished my sister had been able to see what was really going on there. I might have seen him as a brother, but he was in love with my sister. Deeply so. I had always known, but I could see it in his eyes when he found out that she was Tainted. When he knew that nothing could ever happen there.
Paxton had my dream vocation as a Grower, and he had the body to show it. He had rich, dark skin and dark brown eyes that always lit up when Lillith was around. Those bulging muscles that were barely contained by his standard green Grower jumpsuit always made me question the limits of just how much he could pick up. It wasn’t just from working in the fields and orchards. Paxton had been granted special permission to train with the Sentry. That was only because his father was the Sentry representative on the Council.
Lillith and I looked at each other before turning back to Paxton and shaking our heads.
He stopped just short of us, pausing to catch a breath. When he straightened, I could see the concern in his eyes. My thoughts instantly jumped to our plans ahead, but I quickly brushed it off. That definitely wasn’t something he would be talking about in the open like this.
“Gryffin is dead,” he said, shifting his gaze between us. Though his eyes passed to me, they spent the majority of their time on my sister.
I was smiling to myself at that before I really took in what he had said.
“Wait, Prince Gryffin?”
He nodded so quickly I feared his head might just pop off. “Murdered last night.”
I stumbled back a step, absorbing the depth of that. There wasn’t murder in Eden. At least not often. And this wasn’t just someone who had gotten caught up in a bad situation. This was Gryffin, eldest son of King Phineas. The heir to the throne.
“Are you certain?” I asked, the news seeming so unreal.
Pax took a breath and nodded again. “Father told me after the meeting this morning. He was found in his room. It wasn’t good.”
I was glad when Lillith took over the questions, because I didn’t know if I could any longer. “How did someone get into the palace to kill the prince? I didn’t think that was even possible?”
“No one has an answer to that,” Paxton answered. “Some are thinking that it was a member of the staff. Someone that’s just been waiting for the right time. Others are saying that it was an attack by Tainted.”
A fresh knot started building in my stomach, twisting over on itself. Now, more than ever, I was glad we were leaving. If they believed that Tainted were involved, they would only crack down on them more. We weren’t safe here.
“Are you sure tonight’s going to be a good night?” Paxton asked, looking more nervous now. “Maybe you should wait for a week or two for the pressure to die down.”
Lillith looked like she was considering it, but I quickly shook my head. I started walking down the walkway toward the road. They followed. “We can’t risk them moving up the test dates. Especially since the council knows what they’re really for. If they think that it was done by a Tainted inside the walls, they’re going to start searching. We need to get out before that happens.”
Paxton let out a whining groan, but he didn’t argue. I had questioned Lillith’s
decision to tell him what was happening with her. Our stepfather might have been a Sentry, but his was the head of them. It would only take one wrong statement before everything came crashing down. Before we were in danger. Not that I should have. Paxton was our best friend. He would never have done anything to endanger Lillith.
“Do you have everything you need?” he asked softly. “I can get some more food for you.”
“Thanks, Pax,” Lillith responded. “But you can’t look like you had anything to do with this. The bags are packed, and the plans are set. Dallin already has the story ready to go for the Sentry when they question what happened to us. And the contact has assured us that our deaths will be backed up and shown as a result of Pulse.”
Pulse was one of those things that parents feared when it came to their children. Like Tainted genes, it was something that lived dormant in our bodies and would strike without warning. The official explanation for what happened when someone succumbed to it was that the pulse would speed for no known reason until the heart eventually gave out. Or that was what we had always believed.
After learning of Lillith’s abilities, we discovered the truth. Pulse wasn’t real. It was something dreamed up by the group secretly working within Eden to get Tainted out of the city. That explained why it would strike before adulthood. Before the test. Lillith and I were lucky that we were twins. With the same DNA, the Healer writing the report could just claim that it hit us at the same time because our bodies were build a like. It was a little more difficult when whole families would leave. From what Dallin told us, the reports there said that the kids had died and the parents, grief stricken, took their lives and those of their remaining children. Suicide was so looked down on in our society that no one would even request to see the bodies. It was something no one liked to think about. So they pretended it never happened.
