The Radical (Unity Vol.1) (25 page)

Ryken

My Tribeca apartment was six storeys up so it wasn’t long before I was pressing the fingerprint key to unlock the window. I leapt into my “cube”, furnished in hues of black and brown. A week or so previously, I had left this place one man – and returned another.

I stretched my body out on the leather couch, head in hands, and really had no idea how my life had reached this point. I had been carried off on this journey somehow ‒ recruited to the cause unofficially, then called to Manchester where I was derailed by a gamine goddess. They had most likely set Seraph and I up to bump into one another. UNITY had cunning, I had to give them that.

The past seemed blurry. Fuzzy. Dark corners and alleyways, weaponry and targets. Sadness and a longing to escape. They took me and shaped me, Officium did, not knowing how well I could bury the real me but still keep him in the picture. Having a violent drunk as a father had taught me that early on. The young man I once was told himself he felt sadness
for
his father, not any other emotion. I felt
sad
. Synonyms might run into the realms of pity, shame, sorrow… In fact, I convinced myself for years it was my father I felt sorry for, because he was the one with the condition.

In fact having spent time with Seraph and having heard her story, I laid there considering the truth I had buried for years
– I pitied the young man whose father beat him, broke open his skin, felt not only betrayed but abandoned, neglected. I wore the mask of pity for others for so many years not knowing it was my own start in life that I found most pitiable. Oh how Officium thought in training me in their ways, in indoctrinating me in their dark arts, they were irreversibly damaging me, bending me irrevocably to their will. They had not realized my hatred for my father did not extend as far as pity for myself and thus ‒ in that pity and the dispersal of it ‒ I had reached 38 years of age quite adept at hiding my screaming inner self in order to carry out the deeds they bade me do.

A calm lake on the surface, a swirling mass of black depths and destruction underneath. A
boy whose father was a violent drunk, yet told himself he was the least pitiable, knowing it not to be true. Ryken Hardy, the go-to guy. The alpha, that is what they called me, an actor they might never have seen coming. I spent decades putting on a front:
I am ashamed of my father and want nothing to do with him
. When sometimes, he is all I have thought of. Him and his destruction at the hands of Officium.

Despite all this, there was
something troubling my mind more than any other twisted trick. I knew I was in deep trouble. I was desperately and achingly in love. I knew where I would rather be at that moment in time and it wasn’t sat alone in my bachelor pad.

On that sofa
I closed my eyes and imagined her face, reaching out as if to stroke her porcelain cheek. I might have brushed her hair aside a little, then bent to brush her lips and smell the sweet scent of her – cotton and coconut. I might have felt her smile against my lips and the sensation may have set my heart on fire. It was true, I used women before. Only because they were all better off without me after getting the lust out of their systems. I knew with Seraph, I was better off with her. There had never been so clear a notion in my mind. Raining bullets and fiery skies couldn’t contain us and the combined strength of our desire to outrun the snakes at the heart of our mutual nemesis. Her opponents were mine and vice versa.

Vi
s unita fortior
.

I knew already that I would have to face certain peril on my own. Oh how I
inwardly groaned when I heard the words UNITY and “my aunt” breathed within the same breath. You couldn’t make it up. The irony of it all was that I wouldn’t have sought her out. Seraph wasn’t anything I had asked for and in fact, her reputation did precede her. I had imagined some cold, heartless harridan without the capacity to stand still and accept despair. She had proven me wrong, she certainly had that capacity, and my heart burst in its presence. Her body so strong, her mind and spirit too, but her heart so fragile it made me want to weep. How quickly I turned into a feeble dreamer, soliloquies dribbling with ease at the thought of how she made me feel.

I refused the ghosts and their allies access to my thoughts because darkness didn’t exist while she did. I
had killed and maimed and brutalized in Officium’s name. I knew I would have to tell her that once I knew about Mara and Eve, but I might never have done unless forced, it was true. It would have been easier not to. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would one day regret my actions of the past because of a woman…

Past

I was once just a young man desperate for adventure, full of ideas, testosterone and a burning desire for challenge. I had become one of the rare few given the opportunity to serve as an officer in the British Army. Rare because their numbers had been constantly dwindling since 2023, no longer needed in times of medical and drone warfare.

In 2055, I
was 30 years old and on a career break, taking three months’ holiday to reassess my life. I had trained in the medical corps and had done as much as I could within the bounds of my job. I began pining for bigger and better challenges. It was during this break that I was scaling the heights of Red Rock Canyon in Nevada. There was nothing more wonderful to me than climbing, pushing myself to my very limits in terms of both mental and physical exertion.

I
reached the summit, breathing heavily and sweating profusely, a hard task getting my huge frame up the mountain. I took a bottle of water out of my climbing bag and started glugging it, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

‘Hello Ryken.’

How strange that someone should have been there despite me feeling certain nobody would disturb me. I had purposely brought myself to land where I didn’t expect to encounter humanity within a 50-mile radius. It was my entire reason for being there. Sometimes the loneliness of nature gave me peace like no other. The woman was dressed in the same manner as me and had seemingly come up the other side of the rock.

‘How do you know my name?’

‘I know a lot of things about you, actually. I’ve been searching for you everywhere.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is not important. I’m here because I hear you’re taking time out from your career? Tut tut. There must be something missing from your life for you to be out here all on your own… in the middle of the desert.’

There was something wicked about her smile.

‘Go on…’

‘I work for an
organization that is very interested in people like you who want to further their careers beyond the realms of anything they thought possible. I am here to ask you to join us, and everything you ever wanted will be yours. Money, success, power. We have it in abundance.’

‘What makes you think I care about money?’

‘Don’t we all Ryken? Don’t we all? Here is our card, think about it and let me know.’

She
began walking away. ‘We’ll be hearing from you. Call the number if you want a new challenge.’

I
looked at the card and saw at the top,
Dulwich Laboratories
. I could hardly believe my eyes. I had certainly heard of Mara Dulwich and was immediately flattered – and intrigued. I thought she had disappeared off the face of the Earth since her father’s death, but I assumed she had decided to re-emerge.

‘Hey wait!’ I called, but the
figure had disappeared out of sight. I called the number the next day, saying I was interested in a job, and was invited to interview.

T
hat’s how it had all started. I had been drawn in by a name. I had been asked where I would like to be stationed and New York was one place I had always wanted to live.

I
started a new life, progressing through my studies rapidly, soon becoming a qualified virologist rather than just a lowly Army doctor. For some reason, I was drawn to virology. Research into stem cells, cloning, growth hormones, cancer and artificial organs just didn’t cut it. To me, getting the lowdown on 2023 was the ultimate prize. The pinnacle.

I
wanted to pursue Mara’s ideas on total viral immunization. Her theory was that because the 2023 virus survived by attacking the immunities in its hosts, perhaps its antithesis would encourage immunity in humans to any and all future viral attacks.

In my research
, I was never able to turn up anything substantial enough. It had been too long since the disease had made its impression on the world and it seemed like achieving Mara’s theory was a pipedream. I also knew early on that my new “employer” was shy, shall we say, and it always struck me as odd that even though we were researchers so to speak, we were on performance related pay.

I
ended up having a fling with our unit’s head researcher Suranna. Though it didn’t last long, I learned a great deal from her including the fact that our employer was in actual fact Officium. I was horrified to discover the truth, so shocked to learn there wasn’t even one level of society they hadn’t managed to penetrate.

T
here was no way of getting out easily, especially after Suranna turned up dead. I had noticed she was becoming more distracted at work, more weighed down with something, started letting herself go. Her blonde hair had thick black roots showing through, she had stopped wearing make-up and her previously stylish wardrobe seemed to have been abandoned.

One day
I took her to one side for a quiet chat. She had a look of fear in her eyes and said, ‘Ryken, I made a discovery that I think is going to get me killed. They have vaccines for the 2023 virus.’

I was absolutely furious, but what could be done? They moved the freezers
. Two days later, she was dead. I knew that would be my fate too unless I did something radical. So, I let the world believe I had been fired – when I had actually taken on another job. In actual fact, I had arrogantly offered myself up as an emissary to my employers, telling them I knew what their organization really was. I made out I wanted to get back in the field. I made a lot of promises, claiming I missed the adrenalin rush of combat.

The bastards
had been skeptical at first, suspicious even, but I had undergone the training and passed with flying colors, excelling beyond anything any other emissary ever had done. I was a big guy already and hadn’t needed to undergo any of the enhancement trials, therefore retaining some sense of humanity. However, I had still sacrificed a lot of my beliefs and wasn’t very proud of some of the things I had seen and done in training.

A week prior to meeting Seraph, I was in my apartment when I
received a vis-call from an unknown number. I answered and recognized the person on the screen. I had seen her at Red Rock all those years ago.

She was a mousy looking woman, but you could tell she knew how to hold her own.
‘I hear you’ve managed to get yourself quite high up in the game, Ryken,’ she said, in an English accent mixed with a twang of French.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You took the bait, but you didn’t realize who had really thrown it to you.’

UNITY
was present everywhere you went, and yet just as Officium was, neither of them was ever mentioned, never talked about, only whispered amongst the people. They both existed silently, but eerily.