The Forgotten

By Saruuh Kelsey

When Honour breaches the fence around Forgotten London, he becomes #1 on the world leader’s hit list. To save his life, Honour joins an underground rebellion. But Honour is no fighter, and he may have just put himself – and his sister – in even more danger.

In 1878, when Branwell and Bennet’s genius father is murdered and an invention is stolen, the siblings discover his work is linked to the future destruction of the world. But when they’re transported to a derelict place far from home, how will they reclaim the stolen device?

The Forgotten is the first book in the Lux Guardians series, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller with a historical twist. If you like sinister plots, desperate survival stories, and world-changing revolutions, you’ll love this story of family, friendship, and rebellion!

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READ THE ENTIRE LUX GUARDIANS SERIES:
Book 1: The Forgotten
Book 2: The Wandering
Book 3: The Revelation
Book 4: The Riot, coming soon!
Book 5: The Union, coming soon!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saruuh Kelsey
• Release date: Jul 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301011490

Saruuh Kelsey

New Lux Guardians & Legend Mirror books will be released 2017!Sign up to be notified of new releases:http://eepurl.com/Yn1vnFind me online at http://saruuhkelsey.weebly.com/ or follow me on twitter at @saruuhkelsey for updates!~AVAILABLE NOW~The Beast of Callaire (The Legend Mirror)The Dryad of Callaire (The Legend Mirror)The Powers of Callaire (The Legend Mirror)The Forgotten (The Lux Guardians)The Wandering (The Lux Guardians)~COMING SOON~The Revelation (The Lux Guardians)The Divine of Callaire (The Legend Mirror)TBA (Pride & Joy)TBA (Pride & Joy)

Book preview

THE LUX GUARDIANS

Book One·

The Forgotten

Saruuh Kelsey

For my mum.

For everything.

Copyright © Saruuh Kelsey 2017

2017 VERSION

This book has been majorly edited and improved since its initial publishing in 2013. If you have downloaded The Forgotten before May 2017, tweet me (@saruuhkelsey) or email me ([e-mail]) and I’ll send you the new second edition!

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

The right of Saruuh Kelsey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo © istock

Cover and book design by Saruuh Kelsey

http://saruuhkelsey.weebly.com/

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About The Forgotten (The Lux Guardians, book 1)

When Honour breaches the fence around Forgotten London, he becomes #1 on the world leader’s hit list. To save his life, Honour joins an underground rebellion. But Honour is no fighter, and he may have just put himself – and his sister – in even more danger.

In 1878, when Branwell and Bennet’s genius father is murdered and an invention is stolen, the siblings discover his work is linked to the future destruction of the world. But when they’re transported to a derelict place far from home, how will they reclaim the stolen device?

The Forgotten is the first book in the Lux Guardians series, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller with a historical twist. If you like sinister plots, desperate survival stories, and world-changing revolutions, you’ll love this story of family, friendship, and rebellion!

Pronunciation guide

Honour - HON·ur

Horatia - Hoh·RAY·shee·ah

Branwell - BRAN·well

Bennet - BEN·it

Yosiah - Yuh·SIGH·ah

Miya - MEE·ah

Dalmar - DAL·mar

Hele - HEY·le

Olympiae - OL·im·pee·ay

Table of Contents

The Disappearance of The Lux

18.09

19.09

20.09

21.09

26.09

27.09

29.09

01.10

The Discovery of Origin

02.10

03.10

04.10

05.10

06.10

07.10

08.10

09.10

I

The Disappearance of The Lux

Honour

01:00. 18.09.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.

Tonight I’m attempting another escape.

My twin sister, Horatia, sleeps curled around a ratty cushion, her long limbs pulled awkwardly close to her chest. Behind the cushion, held against her heart, is the tiny stuffed bear our father gave us when we were born, before he gave us away.

Her dark hair is pulled into a French plait even in sleep but a mess of hair from her fringe has fallen into her eyes and I brush it back with my fingers, gentle and careful not to wake her. If she woke I know she’d convince me to stay, like she did last night and the night before.

I can’t let her stop me again. The past two attempts I’ve made to breach the border, Horatia has managed to stop me and bring me back to the small terrace house we share with three other families. Not this time, though. I’m careful to make my feet light and soundless as I tiptoe away from the mattress we share and slide my rucksack onto my shoulder. I take a small vial from my pocket and tip its contents over the door’s hinges. Oil—a luxury only the wealthy and people of high status in Underground London Zone can afford. I traded a set of overalls for this small amount of it, but it’s worth the price. I have to find a way through the electric fence that surrounds our town.

Two weeks ago I found a letter that told me to get out of Forgotten London, my home, and to go to the free, diseased lands in the north. And I intend to.

Horatia doesn’t know about the letter because I don’t know how to tell her, but I have to find a way to get her past the border before she questions my actions. At the moment she thinks I’m rebelling against the oppressed state that we live in and the restrictions on our lives. She’s wrong. It’s something more, something bigger. I have to get my family away from Forgotten London before States has a chance to do what they’re planning to.

The door opens silently, thankfully, and closes behind me with a minimal click. I make my way onto the dark streets outside without a sound.

There are patrols on the main streets, but I keep to the back roads and empty alleyways and come across no one. It takes me a full two hours to reach the closest border in Ealing Zone. It will take me two and a quarter hours to get back, since there are twice as many patrols after five a.m. I have forty five minutes to attempt to get through the fence and then begin walking back so I can get home before Horatia wakes up at six a.m. when the factory crates go rattling down the road.

My first problem with getting to the fence is the military guards—Officials, in their black uniforms—that stand every ten metres along the border, but I’ve got past them before. The last time I took advantage of a brawl that broke out in Hounslow, the neighbouring zone—an area that is almost completely made up of bars, pubs, and fight houses—but the zone is quiet tonight. I spend five minutes analysing my surroundings, taking my time down to forty minutes, but I come up with a plan.

Along the border are electric lampposts. The guards stand under them so that they won’t be caught off guard by a drunken civilian or an idiot attempting to escape. About twenty metres in front of me, twenty metres closer to the Officials, is an electric box. I don’t know the proper word for it, but I do know that inside is some kind of machine that keeps the lampposts working. All I need is a few minutes of darkness to hide me so I can see if it’s possible to break through the barrier. That’s all I’m trying to do: see if it’s actually possible.

I would have found out three nights ago if the Officials hadn’t returned to the border quicker than I thought they would. If I hadn’t ran I’d have been caught. Not tonight, though.

I take a deep breath, drop to my knees, and inch out from behind the building I’m hidden by.

The ground is rough and covered in dust and small, jagged rocks that cut my hands and knees as I crawl towards the box, but I ignore the sting and the voice in my head that says I‘ll have to sew the torn hole in my jeans later, and force myself forward.

The Officials don’t notice me. They don’t even blink. Three of them are gathered together in a group, laughing and joking about something I can’t hear.

Their raucous laughter would calm my nerves, would reassure me that they aren’t paying attention to me, that I’m not in any immediate danger, if I were scared. The nervous rush that goes through people when faced with danger; the hair standing on end, sweaty palms, hard breathing, heart pounding, hands shaking kind of fear is something I have never experienced. Not even when one of the machines in the clothing factory I work in veered in the wrong direction and took off the little finger on my right hand. Not even then did I feel scared or even a hint of nervousness. All I remember thinking was that I should use a scrap of fabric to soak up the blood, and that I’d definitely be arrested, or maybe even executed if the nearest Official felt that way out, for using the clothes we manufacture as a bandage.

So when I reach the electric box I don’t feel relieved that I haven’t been seen or caught or shot. I just feel irritated that my jeans are ripped and Horatia will know I’ve been out.

In my backpack I find a laser cutter that my friend Dalmar commandeered from the weapons factory he works in. It cuts easily through the steel lock on the metal box and I’m careful to catch it before it hits the ground. Fear or not, I don’t want to alert the guards to my presence.

There’s a circuit board inside, like one I saw inside Dalmar’s computer one time. It took him almost an hour to explain to me that it was the thing connecting all the components, keeping the computer working. Technology isn’t something I understand, or ever will. I’m still not completely sure what the word component means.

I think about cutting through all of the wires on the board with the laser, but a second thought makes me realise that the Officials would know someone had tampered with it. I can pass off the missing lock as one of the guards forgetting to put it on, but cut wires would be a dead giveaway.

I go for a large wire that splits off into seven smaller wires, plugging into seven holes on the board, and I yank out the bigger end. For three seconds nothing happens, and then the area sinks into complete darkness. I can still see by the moonlight, but the guards are confused and angry if their loud voices are anything to go by. Momentary chaos. I try not to smile.

I don’t waste any more time. I run to the large area of fence that was left unguarded by the three Officials grouping together. There’s a guard fifteen metres to my right, and three twenty metres to my left. If any of them see me, I’ll go for the right. I reckon I can take on one guard and then run back to the coverage of the zone’s buildings before the others catch on. I’ve been in a few bar fights when we were really low on money and I won three of the five fights I fought in. That must mean I’m not bad at using my fists. Definitely not Official standard and probably not enough to knock one out but maybe enough to distract one. I hope I don’t have to find out.

I don’t get close to the fence, since being electrocuted by its powerful current isn’t part of my plan, and that’s when I notice something odd about the low thrumming that always surrounds the metal mesh—it’s gone. I must have turned the fence’s electricity off when I cut the lights. Well that’s good to know. I never managed to get past the electricity before.

I guesstimate I have twenty five minutes until I have to return, and about five minutes max’ before one of the Officials stumbles upon me. I act quickly.

Cutting through the fence with the laser, I’m careful to hide the red glow with my body. Tentatively, I touch the barrier with a finger. I was right. It’s not powered. My hands are shaking now, and a rush of adrenaline shoots through me. I take a deep breath and hesitate. Dangerous, with Officials nearby, but this is a life changing moment and I want to make it last. I run my hand fully across the fence, just making sure, and then slip my body through the split I created with the laser.

For a minute it feels like time has stopped, but I realise that’s just my breathing and then my breath comes out all at once. I roll my sleeve up to get to my watch—an old, rusty thing that I had to trade a lot of stuff for—and move my wrist until a beam of moonlight falls on its face. Twenty minutes until I need to turn around. Enough time to walk a little way into the wilderness of the diseased lands.

I put one heavy, numb-feeling foot in front of the other and walk around an area that a fortnight ago I never dreamed of being in. This is crazy. Horatia won’t believe me when I tell her, but I’m actually here—actually outside. For a while nothing matters and nothing moves. And then I remember that Horatia is going to kill me when I get back and I wince.

In the moonlight I can make out grass, endless grass. In the distance there are buildings. Deserted, definitely, but if my family and I manage to get out the way I just did—unnoticed—then it’s somewhere to hide for the night. I laugh suddenly and accidentally, and clap my hand over my mouth. I turn to see if the Officials heard, but I’m too far away now for them to hear anything.

I grin once reality sinks in, and I stop walking and stare at the open field. The quiet is the first thing I notice. All my life I’ve been surrounded by noise—the groaning of old houses, the churning of machinery, the choreographed thuds of boots on gravel, the rabble of voices—that I’ve never really experienced true silence. Everything hums and thrums, and whirrs and clicks, but here it’s simple, complete silence. I like it. It makes me feel calm, and free.

I feel unrestrained, and weirdly peaceful.

I spend a long time thinking about what to do with this knowledge, but eventually I know there’s only one thing I can do. I want to tell everyone, to gather every single person in Forgotten London and tell them that there is a way outside of the town, that there’s a way to live outside of Officials and rations and forced work placements and fear. But I can’t do that. I would risk everything if I did that. I would risk my family, my sister.

The only thing I can do is make sure I get Horatia out of Forgotten London before it’s too late. I don’t know if it’s possible to live out here, or if we can even survive, but I have to try. We can’t stay in Forgotten London anymore. It’s not safe to stay a minute longer than necessary. I can’t tell her how I know that or why I believe it so much, but she trusts me enough to trust what I believe in. I just hope our surrogate family, the people we live with, will trust me enough too.

Today I’m going to get all of our things together. I’m going to tell my friends goodbye. And then I’m going to tell my family.

I’m going to tell them that it’s possible to get through the fence. That we can start a life outside of the border we’ve always known.

After a while I’ll come back for my friends and I’ll lead them to safety too. I’ll save as many people as I can without being killed. But I won’t risk Horatia. I won’t let her die. And that’s why we’re going tomorrow night.

Tomorrow we’re going to leave everything behind. We’re going to escape Forgotten London.

***

Branwell

06:01. 18.09.1878. London.

My father has come into possession of the blueprints of an electric-powered streetlamp and has locked himself in his attic, tinkering with glass and filaments with abandon and no care for trivia things like eating and sleeping more than two hours a night. Inevitably, I have spent the past week with him almost constantly, aiding his investigation and invention as much as I can—which mostly involves offering a pair of hands, since my knowledge lies in biology, not mechanics and invention—and reminding him that mealtimes exist. He’s trying to improve the technology of the lamp, to fuse it with the limitless power cell, named the Lux, that he invented last year. He won’t tell me or even Benny, his darling daughter and my twin sister, what higher use he has in mind for the power; only that it is fundamental to some purpose.

At mid-morning I venture down from the attic and come face-to-face with my furious sister. She’s been waiting for me.

Can’t you leave the attic for a single day, Branwell? Her mottled green eyes shine brighter when she’s angry, and her face flushes a dark red. She almost never uses my Sunday name. That’s all I ask, she continues. To spend one whole day with you on our birthday.

I’m sorry. I really am sorry, but father needs me more than Bennet does.

Well? What excuse is it this time?

I lower my head. He’s close to a breakthrough. He needs my assistance.

"What if I need you?"

I can’t think what Benny would need me for—unless she’s attempting to bond with the horse father bought her for her last birthday again. You could ask Edward to help with Dolly. I’m sure he won’t mind.

This isn’t about the damned horse, Bran! My head snaps up in shock and I falter when I see tears forming in her eyes. She cries even less than she says my full name. This is about us. You’re spending less time with me each day. You’re making a point to avoid me in the corridors and at mealtimes. You never read to me anymore. All you ever do is lock yourself in the attic with father.

Benny—

I don’t want your excuses, Bran. She sounds resigned. My heart gives a painful tug.

I want to spent time with you. It’s just that father…

Yes, he needs you more than I do. You’ve said that a few times already.

It’s not that, I say loudly. I take a steadying breath and lower my voice. I am helping him finish his work—the work he’s been doing since before we were born, Benny—because I don’t want him to leave it unfinished.

Her face shifts, something between comprehension and denial. She knows. She’s too smart to not have figured it out.

Her voice quietens. Why would he leave it unfinished? He’s spent his entire life on it. He would never just leave it.

I whisper, He doesn’t have very long left.

Her voice shoots high. "Left until what?"

"He’s dying. My voice cracks but I keep going. And you know it. I know you do—I can see it in your eyes."

I… She shakes her head, eyes misty. "I didn’t know. I suspected he was ill, but not dying. He can’t die. He’s our father." She scans my face, desperate for agreement. I lower my eyes.

He’s not immortal.

He’s strong. He can fight it. He can—

"Bennet. I reach out and draw her to me. She’s shaking, unsurprisingly. It’s progressed much too far. He did fight it, for a whole year, but now…"

He can get better. Her voice is muffled by my shirt. It’s a wonder she hasn’t scolded me for discarding my waistcoat again.

"He might get better. He might make a miraculous recovery. I swallow the lump in my throat. But that’s what it would be—miraculous. He’s dying. His body has fought it, but the illness has won. I don’t think there’s anything we can do."

But you’re a genius. She pulls away from me with excited, feverish eyes. You can figure something out. She takes a hold of my arm and begins towing me down the corridor. You can invent a cure. You can find a way to stop it, to save him. I know you can. You’re brilliant at everything. You’ll find a way.

I stop in my tracks, planting my feet on the floor. Bennet lurches forward a few steps, and then turns to me with a heart-breaking, bewildered expression on her face.

Bran …

I have tried. Don’t you think I’ve tried? I did every test I know, every experiment, every trial, and others besides them. I have done everything. It is too advanced.

Her expression hardens. "What is it?"

I frown, not understanding.

The illness—what is it? Is it a fever? A disease?

I stare at a chipped wooden board in the floor. I’ll have to ask Joel, our valet, to patch it up. He’s the person we go to whenever something needs fixing. He can repair anything from a china cup to the complex pipe maze of the heating system my father invented for our home.

Branwell! Bennet yells and I still completely. Further along the corridor, near the stairwell, I hear a clattering noise that sounds like porcelain smashing and then an exclamation. My sister doesn’t seem to notice.

It’s an advanced form of poison. That’s all I could discover. It must be the result of a chemical he’s worked with. It has grown progressively worse as time’s worn on. And now … the doctor says there is little hope for him.

He went to a doctor?

The doctor says he has weeks, I continue, some wild animal writhing under my skin, and I can find nothing to help him or even ease his pain.

Bran, stop, she whispers. Her face had paled.

"Nothing works, and every second he lives he is burning from the inside. Is that everything you wanted to know, Bennet, or do you desire to know the scientific details of the poison eating away at our father?"

There are tears on her cheeks. Just please stop talking.

I’m done.

I walk away from her, past damp stone walls into the cellar that is my room. In the cold, comforting familiarity of my room I find it impossible to hold onto the anger and everything slowly dissipates into hopelessness. I don’t know why I shouted at Bennet.

For the remainder of the day I ignore all of the calls from the ground floor for me to go for dinner, and the ache inside my chest that urges me to return to the attic and make the most of the time I have left with my father.

At what I’d guess is five in the evening, Bennet comes down to my basement. I don’t see the crack of light she lets in from above but I hear the soft click of her shoes on the stone. She crawls onto my bed and holds me while I fail to fight the tears. I gasp an apology and she shushes me, tightening her hold on me, always the protector, always the sensible, strong one.

I fall asleep eventually, cradled between the cold blanket of my wall and the warm reassurance of my sister, safe from thoughts about losing my father.

*

At some point during the night a commotion upstairs jolts me awake. Benny sits up, startled, and we both strain our ears.

I’ll go see— She never finishes the sentence; Florence, our housemaid, glides quickly down the stairs. In the gloom of my room I can see that her hair has come loose from its normally impeccable bun and that her face is etched with anguish. I jump out of bed with a sinking feeling that I know what she’s going to say.

Oh, thank the Lord, Florence breathes. It’s your father. He’s had a bad turn and he’s asking for you.

How is he? Bennet asks, clasping her hands together. Even in the faint light I can see her eyes are dark with dread.

Ill, Bennet. Very ill.

I don’t hear Benny’s reply; I’m already on the steps and running for the attic. My father should be resting in bed but I know he’ll be in the attic, stubbornly refusing to leave the side of his life’s work.

When I get there, panting for breath, I find him laid out on the floor with two blankets over him and a pillow under his head.

Bran, he says upon seeing me, his voice so weak that my stomach drops right out of me. He fumbles for my hand and I kneel, gripping his tightly. He’s worse than when I left him, worse than he’s been all week. You have to hide it.

I pull the blankets closer around him, fighting off tears. Hide what?

Bury it. Hide it inside the earth. Keep it safe.

His mind is deteriorating too. Oh God, he’s going to—I can’t—

I swallow against the lump in my throat, battling to make my voice normal. Keep what safe?

The Lux—my energy device. My inventions. All of them. Hide everything. Bury them deep underground. Keep them safe, keep everyone safe.

For a moment I just stare at him. But … bury them? Why?

They cannot fall into the wrong hands, Branwell. If the wrong people were to possess them … He stares at me with an empty gaze, his train of thought gone.

I whisper, What? I’m leaning closer to him to catch every strained utterance. He gets quieter with every word. What would happen? Who’s going to find them? Please. Please explain it to me, all of it, your entire thought process. Please keep talking and don’t leave me, please don’t leave me behind.

His fog in his eyes clears for a heartbeat. The world … would be destroyed, unrecognisable. What they want…

I’ll hide it, I vow, my voice thick. I promise. I won’t disappoint you.

He tries to raise his hand to my face but it falls limply at his side. I know you will.

Father! Bennet cries, reaching the top of the stairs. She’s out of breath and her eyes and cheeks are red. I wonder how long it took her to calm down, to bring herself out of the panic that traps her breath in a cage and immobilises her body. I should have stayed and helped to calm her. I shouldn’t have just run out. But father and his weakness and—

Bennet, our father rasps with a thin smile. His eyes are almost closed now but he must be able to see us. "My girl. My children. Keep each other safe. Promise me. Don’t run after danger. Promise me."

What are you saying? Benny whispers. Her voice is shaky, her jaw clenched. "Father? Do not talk as if you’re dying. We won’t let you die. Will we, Bran?"

I can’t find words. I’m a second away from my composure cracking in half and tears pouring out of the gap. I have tried so hard to keep him alive but I’ve failed him.

Keep each other safe, father repeats, his breathing so faint I struggle to hear it. No matter where you are. You have a dangerous path in your future. If you separate, one of you will lose something vital.

What? Bennet says at the same time I say What does that mean?

We both lean towards him, waiting for a response fails to come. It is too late. Our father is gone, along with any hope of understanding the things he told me.

For a moment it feels as if time has stopped its steady, constant procession in sympathy for our father, the steady, constant, love holding the remnants of our family together. He may have been infatuated with his work, he may have been absent, but we always knew he loved us. We always knew he was here. And now he’s …

My composure doesn’t simply crack. It shatters like a gunshot through glass. My chest rises and falls so fast I can’t separate one breath from the next, my vision a veiled mess of tears.

When Bennet and I were eight years old we lost our mother in a train disaster. A year later our brother of two years died of an unknown illness. And now …

Will we be next? Will I never wake up one morning? Or will the world be cruel enough to take Benny first, leaving me to suffer the rest of my life without my twin?

It takes eternity for the lump in my throat to shrink, for my eyes to clear, but I’m left with a solid, all-encompassing ache behind my rib cage. When I’ve stopped crying, it’s as if everything in me had stopped too. As if I’m no longer made of sinew and bone but empty air.

Bennet watches me with red, tear-filled eyes. Her face is so pale that I can see the freckles across her nose that are usually disguised by her olive skin. When she crawls to me, I hold her shaking form, and she holds mine, and we both watch the still figure of our father as if expecting him to flutter his eyes and come back to us. But the memory of him pleading with me to bury The Lux is too real, too loud in my thoughts. So is the memory of him imploring me to keep Bennet safe, for her to keep me safe too.

We stay there until night falls outside the single window of the attic, until darkness descends like a cloak over our hunched, huddling bodies, the tables full of elements and metal scraps and glass tubes, and inventions that will never be touched again, never be completed. My father never opens his eyes again.

***

Honour

06:03. 18.09.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.

By the time I get back to my room it’s three minutes past six. The factory float has already gone rattling down the road, and my sister is sitting bolt upright in bed. Her eyes narrow at me when I slide into the room and I know I’m in for it.

Have a nice walk? she asks scathingly.

I wince. Just down the road.

"You ever do that again and I swear to God I will castrate you, Honour Frie."

I won’t. I don’t have to. I know all I needed to—it’s possible to get outside the barrier, to follow the instructions left to me. I lower myself onto the mattress.

Horatia looks like she could kill me if she tried. You went somewhere you shouldn’t have, didn’t you? she hisses. What’s wrong with you lately, Honour. You used to be sensible. After everything— She swallows the reminder of our suffering—homelessness, scavenging for food, almost freezing to death. You can’t keep risking things like this. Just stay inside until it’s time to work. She pins me with a scowl. And come straight home. I don’t want anything to happen to you. If it did— She shakes her head, eyes haunted.

It won’t, I say gently, my heart twisted up with guilt now. I’m sorry, Tia. I won’t go out again.

She nods, glancing through the pathetic covering over the window into the street where people have slowly begun to rise and leave for early work positions. "You’d better not. Honestly, if I didn’t know this was just you being a complete idiot, I’d think you were trying to catch one of the strains. Anyone out there could have one. We agreed—straight to work and straight back again. Do you actually want to catch one of the strains?"

No. I look at my hands, the coarse blanket clenched in my fingers.

The Sixteen Strains is the collective name given to the diseases that are slowly wiping out all signs of life in the Forgotten Lands. According to States, one of the two major Cities of our world—the rest of which is made up of scars and ruins and disease, the paltry remains of the world’s population clustered into Forgotten Towns to stay alive—there are even more Strains outside the borders. That’s why we live inside the fence: to keep out the spread of even more diseases. Well, that’s what I used to believe. Now I’m not sure what I believe.

States is the most powerful City in the world. They’re the richest and because of that, because the rest of us are so needy and dying, they control everything. They provide food and protection from their military and make sure production of clothes and purification of water and everything else the world needs to cling to survival keeps running. Without them, we’d have no food, no homes, no clean water, and we’d probably have been wiped out by the strains. I used to think they were benevolent, even if the Officials scared the crap out of me and were too rough and violent with their punishments.

The other City is Bharat; a wealthy place on the other side of the planet that I know next to nothing about. Even though Bharat is bigger and has a higher population, States is the City every Forgotten Town answers to. It’s their money that funds our development and provides the ‘opportunity’ for work. (In a place where not working is punishable by death, opportunity is a laughable word.) It’s their doctors that help us when we’re in need of care, even if most of the people who go for help are never seen again. It’s their people who organise education for kids aged five to thirteen. It’s their military that polices our streets and keeps us safe from violence and free from disease. Apparently.

They haven’t done a great job of stopping The Sixteen Strains inside the borders from spreading. A hundred people still die each week twenty years after the first outbreak. That’s why Horatia is so angry with me. She’s scared I’ll die before the life expectancy catches up to us at twenty.

She sighs, running a brown hand over her face. Her anger has begun to fade. Will you be a bit more careful? And have some sense, for God’s sake.

I nod, rubbing my eyes. Going out before a full day of work wasn’t smart but I hardly have any free time. I’ll try.

You have twenty minutes before you need to get ready for work. Do you want me to set an alarm?

I yawn yeah and roll over. Within seconds I’m out for the count.

12:27. 18.09.2024. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.

By the time I get home from work that evening, after weaving my way through the quieter back streets and avoiding the shortcuts Officials frequent, Horatia’s already left for her late shift.

She works five hours a day, at the factory at the bottom of our road, weaving wool on the looms. It’s one of the less dangerous jobs in the factories—one that I begged her to do instead of working at The Allocation Centre like she intended to—but it has one of the highest risk factors because you’ll be executed on the spot if any of the supervisors catch you stealing. Wool is a prized luxury; apparently it’s popular with the rich people in States’ Ordering Body, those who make the big decisions for the rest of us.

Sometimes I end up turning the wool Tia and her co-workers weave into clothes; cardigans and jumpers and socks. None of it is for us of course. God forbid we wear anything that feels nice against our skin. I’m stuck wearing the same old shirts of faded, worn-bare cotton and jeans in a canvas-like material.

Thalia’s in the kitchen when I stumble through the back door, the exhaustion catching up to me from my trek last night. I smile as I remember stepping through the fence and onto the open plain that sits beyond our town, just waiting for someone to go out and make it their home. There might be certain death coming for F.L. but it won’t