The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (16 page)

“Well,” I force out.
“I don’t care about that. You’re Yosiah, end of story.”

His chest deflates.
When he echoes my words I feel the same tidal wave of relief.
Minutes pass. Yosiah tugs on a lock of my hair until I look up at
him.

“We could stay here,”
he says. “The Guardians will leave but we don’t have to.”

I don’t see how this
place can be any worse than Forgotten London so I say, “Yeah, why
not?”

He half-smiles at me,
straightening my hair with his fingers. “I want to stay here,” he
tells me quietly.

“We’ve been here like,
two hours,” I point out. “You can’t know Manchester yet. What if
you hate it?”

“We’ll find somewhere
else.”

I look at him long
enough that he squirms. “What, in any random town we find?”

“Yeah.”

I let my eyes finally
close. “You’re wild, Yosiah.”

“Like you.”

I tilt my head,
acknowledging the truth. “Yeah. Like me.”

***

Bennet

15:12. 21.10.2040.
Bharat, Delhi.

I squint at the empty
glass dish, wondering how such a boring object should warrant me
having to wear plastic glasses despite the dish being trapped
behind a glass wall as thick as my arm. I’ve been staring at it for
three minutes now, the ticking of the wall clock just about driving
me mad. Finally something looks as though it’s going to occur when
a strange sort of mechanical arm whirrs to life. From the safety of
the lab in which I stand, the team of scientists control its every
move.

Garima has the
controller, standing impressively still for once. Waiting for
Vast’s permission, she moves the lever on the remote. The metal arm
responds to her slightest touch. I switch my attention between the
robot and my friend with every second, not sure which to watch.
Eventually, I decide to focus on the demonstration.

With a grating creak,
the arm tips a coating of an unnamed blue liquid into the dish. I
don’t know what it is—nobody is willing to tell me too many details
in case I, like the man who betrayed them before, turn out to be an
American spy.

It’s bizarre, I think,
that they’d suspect me when I am entirely convinced the government
in States is the Olympiae that haunted my past and killed my
father. Why would I work for the people who ripped my family apart?
I have only motive to do the opposite—to do everything within my
power to destroy them. I suspect that thirst for vengeance is what
convinced Vast to keep me here in the beginning, when I was only a
strange girl with a strange recommendation from Mumbai on thin,
rain speckled note paper. That message was all I had and I thank my
stars for what I’ve been given, for what this New Delhi home has
gifted me: friends, safety, purpose, and hope. Precious hope.

I never thought I
would find hope in a clandestine rebellion.

I shake myself out of
it and return my concentration to the experiment. The arm now holds
a tube of frothy green liquid. Vast does me the rare courtesy of
telling me something: it is a secret formula of chemicals and
intent. Honestly, everything that comes from the man’s mouth is
enigmatic. It’s maddening. He tells me to keep my eyes on the
mannequin they’ve placed in the corner of the demonstration room.
It’s supposed to represent a human, flesh and bone. It’s nothing
more than a faceless, formless brown blob to me but I take his word
of the resemblance to our genetic makeup.

The vial’s emerald
contents are carefully tipped into the dish. A second later, the
combined liquids have become a mass that is both liquid and gaseous
and rapidly expanding. I see it creeping slowly, a writhing cloud
of teal the size of a person now. Out of nowhere, the cloud
explodes to fill the room. I start back, a noise of surprise
escaping me. I can see very little but sea-green smoke pressed
against every wall of the demonstration area, searching, seeking a
way outside. I’m suddenly glad this demonstration is contained. I
didn’t know it would be this aggressive.

I can barely see the
fake man now, just a dark shape huddled among the viscous air. My
hand flies to my chest. It looks … as if the flesh is collapsing.
Melting, almost.

“Watch,” Garima
says.

She needn’t. I’m
transfixed.

The
smoke filters away, the liquid cloud dying down, until the box is
the same as it was—glass wall, singular petri dish, robotic
arm—with one major exception. The human replica has disintegrated.
The solid brown blob is riddled with holes, sunk to the floor in a
pool of soupy liquid that I assume was once ‘flesh’. A human … this
could have been a real human. Vast said its makeup was identical to
ours.
Heavens above.

I take an involuntary
step back. “I thought this was a cure.”

“No. This is the
cure.”

I narrow my eyes at
Vast. This weapon of theirs is exactly what I imagined it would be,
times infinity. Why on Earth would they invent something with this
sort of power? It was this mindlessness that brought the Sixteen
Strains into existence, that killed countless people.

The Guardians are
supposed to be saving the world, not dooming it. I am furious.

I direct my fury at
the dark haired girl in a gold hijab who breezes past me with the
liquid I retrieved from a shadowy ‘ally’ across town. The Miracle.
I drop my glare with a sigh. It’s not the girl’s fault—I know
nothing about her, nor is she likely to be behind the Guardians
actions or plans. She’s nothing but a follower; she does as she is
told. Like me. But my anger has to go somewhere, so it goes to her,
whoever she is, whatever her name may be.

With effort, I compose
myself. The girl slots the Miracle into a hatch beside the glass
room, placing it carefully. She steps back to Vast and a locking
mechanism echoes through the tall laboratory. That makes sense—only
one end of the hatch can be open at a time. Another measure put in
place to keep us alive. I’m grateful, if begrudging.

The mechanical arm
retrieves the Miracle and the lock echoes again. I’m angry and
disinterested now, desiring nothing but to return to my room for
some quiet reflection. By which I mean quiet arguing with myself. I
want to leave, to get myself away from these people. I know they
mean well but they covet danger.

But I can’t leave
them. I need to tough this out to the very end, until I’ve done
everything they need of me. For Branwell.

Garima draws my
attention by smashing a button on her controller. I flick my eyes
back to the demonstration to watch the vial of cure somersault
through the air, released from the arm’s grip. The tinkle of glass
accompanies it shattering on the floor, the opalescent solution
splashing onto the wrecked mannequin.

“What in the world!” My heart leaps into my mouth.
What
was
that? I
can’t make a single lick of sense from what I’m seeing. I glance at
the scientists but nobody else looks fazed. Not even Garima. I turn
my dumbfounded expression back to the demonstration.

“How many times is
that?” Vast asks in English, still very much putting on a show
despite my clear horror.

“Four.”

“Four successes.” He
claps his hands together, pleased, and how can he not be? The
fleshy blob that was reduced to a punctured mess is once again
whole. Complete. No parts ripped open, nothing melted, no flaws
visible. The only evidence that something was once amiss is the
liquid it still sits in.

“What you’re seeing
here, Bennet,” Vast says, “is a weapon that can render our enemies
incapable of a single attack on us, and the Miracle that can heal
the damages and symptoms of this weapon, this new disease, along
with the other seventeen. It can also heal burns both minor and
major, internal bleeding, organ failure, and other ailments that
were once fatal.”

“So this can … save
people?”

“Save
people
?” He laughs. “Bennet, this can save the entire
world.”

I shake my head, still
far from convinced. “I don’t see why you need the first one, the
weapon. What good will it do?”

Vast adjusts the
fabric wrapped around his head, thinking. “To change for good,
sometimes change for the worse is necessary. Good and bad … there
has to be a balance. Nature demands it. I could not ask States’
Ordering Body to stop these atrocities without having something to
counter them, to persuade them away from their ways to ours.

“For them to see how
unforgivable what they are doing is, they need to experience it. We
need to reduce them to what they have reduced the rest of the world
to. Change demands knowledge, and knowledge demands experience.
They have to experience the lowest of lows.”

He takes a deep
breath, catching his impassioned rant before it gets out of
control. “That is what the disease is for. It will not be used on
their foot soldiers, who only do as they are told for fear of their
own lives, but on the people who control and command without
repercussion.”

The Dark Soldiers …
fear for their lives? But aren’t they the evil ones, the people
I’ve been told are wrong? Those propagating the world’s ills? I
massage the pain in my temples. When will this world begin to make
sense?

“It’s a karma of
sorts,” Vast says, and his tone signals the end of that
conversation.

Farewell answers
, I think,
it was nice knowing you
.

“I’ll show you out.”
He covers the lab in long strides before I have chance to follow. I
scurry across the shining floor after him, squeezing through the
glass partition and across the outer laboratory. Looking around, I
wonder how many people this lab was built to hold. I think of the
hallway where my room is, full of spare, empty rooms and wonder how
much larger the Guardians’ numbers should be. And if this base was
once full, what happened to the others? Where did they go?

“I hope I have
answered several of your burning questions,” Vast comments as he
secures the outer door behind us. I think this will be the first
and last time I am permitted entrance to the labs.

“Yes,” I say, polite,
though inside I am restless. Some questions may have been answered
but a hundred more have sprung up in their place. The loudest of
which is one simple word, echoed again and again.

Seventeen?

What did he mean by
‘the other seventeen’? Sixteen Strains. The other seventeen.

What other nightmare
have they unleashed?

***

Bennet

09:58. 22.10.2040.
Bharat, Delhi.

I have a busy day
today and I’m glad of it. I can’t entertain a single thought about
the Miracle or the Guardians secret disease. I can’t decide whether
I’m repulsed or relieved that they both exist and until I do, I’ve
resolved to think of neither of them.

Armed with hidden
knowledge, weighted with the task of persuading valuable
individuals to our cause, and with Rasmi at my side, I step onto
the busy market street. I lose myself in the chaotic rhythm of
snaking my way around rickshaws and people with their arms full,
children dawdling and others sprinting from one side of the street
to another.

The heat today is
blazing, sapping my energy almost as soon as I’m under the full
weight of it. I pull my scarf closer around my face and lower my
head. I never knew weather could be this blistering before now.
“Why is it so hot today?” I ask. “It’s October. Shouldn’t it be
colder?”

Rasmi shrugs. “The
weather does what it wants. There’s nothing we can do about
it.”

“Maybe I can convince
it to rain. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be.”

“I hope so.” Rasmi
takes my arm, bringing me out of the path of a group of rampaging
women.

With Rasmi’s hand on
my elbow I’m removed from this place for a suspended moment and
jolted back to a different time and a different city. My memory
conjures the precise memory of Hyde Park in summertime, the scent
of the crisp grass, the fresh blooms and their delicate sweetness.
It was hot that day and even though a hundred ladies were parading
in their thick skirts and crinoline, as if the temperature didn’t
bother them, the heat bore down on me so hard I had to find a
precious seat on one of the benches.

Joel’s hand didn’t
waver from my elbow, concerned though he had no right to be. He
wasn’t a suitor, or a brother, or anything at all. Not to the
gentlemen and high society women strolling past, their eyes keen
and ears greedy for any piece of gossip. Joel was my valet, and a
valet my age at that. He should not have been looking at me in that
way, with concern and something else altogether.

Thinking back on it
now I wonder how that small point of contact made the suffocating
heat and loud buzz of voices fade to nothing. I can’t imagine a
touch lessening the effects of the heat now.

“Bennet!” Rasmi halts
me just as I’m about to step into the middle of a busy road. I
shake my head to clear it and apologise, eyes sweeping the Delhi
street to ground me in the present. The colours, the noise, the
liveliness manage to bring me back to myself.

I’m
not that foolish girl anymore. If Joel were here, escorting me
around this town, I wouldn’t blush at his attention and steady
gaze. I’d remove his hand from my elbow and tell him to ask
permission to touch me in future, because the women of this age can
protest, can argue, can
speak
. And then, very plainly, I
would tell him that I loved him. Because I do, and this new age has
emboldened me.

That was why he
brought me comfort on that long ago sunny day, why I didn’t spare a
single thought to what those higher class ladies thought of me
spending time with him—because I believed, without a shred of
doubt, that I would marry Joel. And I suppose I would have, had I
not been caught up in the mystery and murder of the Olympiae Club.
If I hadn’t been brought to the future. Social scandal be damned,
Joel Andrew Sparks should have been mine.