Chrysalis

By Lisa Sturman

In a future devastated by war, district gangs run rife in the ruined city of Meridian. Fallon’s family seek sanctuary in the secretive settlement of Chrysalis, policed by the ambitious General Carter, and his loyal clutch of Enforcers. Fallon wins a coveted place on The Watch, which is tasked with defending the wall that guards their border from attack. It is Captained by the handsome, enigmatic Gabriel, who is haunted by a violent past that is about to catch up with him. The arrival of an intriguing newcomer has a potent effect on their enclosed environment, but is Jackson as innocent as he appears? Already facing enemies from within, when an attack from Meridian threatens the survival of Chrysalis, Fallon must fight for everything and everyone that she loves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mereo Books
• Release date: Oct 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781861511461

Book preview

PROLOGUE

As I waited for the first sounds of battle, I experienced a wave of doubt so strong I sank to my knees. Was I capable of leading this defence? Was I capable even of firing what I knew would be a killing shot? I quelled the wave of nausea rising through me, fuelled by my fear that I would be found wanting.

My thoughts drifted to my mother. Had she ever held me in her arms and dreamed of this life for me? Had she envisioned this warrior that I would need to become? I was seventeen summers old, in the first flush of life and love. I wasn’t ready to die, or to watch those I loved die. I was frightened, and afraid of failing, and terrified that our life in Chrysalis was coming to an end.

In the distance I heard a solitary explosion as their lead truck hit one of our traps, followed by muffled gunfire. Finally, from the woods came the piercing cries of falling men, and I imagined his arrows flying true from bow to target, with no hint of hesitation as he fought for the people and the land that he loved.

‘Fallon,’ Cleo hissed, looking down at me strangely. ‘They’re coming.’

It must have looked as though I was praying, hunched down on my knees with my head resting against my bow. I suppose I was in a way, but not to any God. I prayed to those I loved – that a little of their courage would find me, and mix with my own.

I took a final moment, then stood and turned to face our enemy. Below me the woods were already alive with smoke and flames, battle cries and death throes. Only a handful of attackers had emerged though, and for a long moment I thought his plan might have worked better than he’d hoped. But then the trickle of approaching men grew into a stream, and the stream into a tide that swept towards our barricade, washing away all hope.

He’s dead, a voice in my head whispered. It coiled malevolently through my courage, squeezing and crushing the life from it as I struggled to find the strength to breathe. I knew it was true. It had to be. There were just too many of them.

‘Fallon?’ Finn asked uncertainly, alternating his nervous glance between me and the approaching men. ‘What do we do?’

In a daze of uncertainty, I dragged my attention back to the danger in front of me. ‘On my mark,’ I yelled, my order echoing through The Watch, until it reached the end of The Wall.

I resisted raising my bow. Although I knew that my fellow Watchers and I would find our targets from this distance, once I let loose an arrow, so would everyone else. Although brave and willing, there were precious few amongst those who had answered our call to arms who could match us. Against so many, we couldn’t risk wasting a single, precious arrow fired in haste.

Finally, I drew in a deep breath, knowing that I would do whatever it took to save Chrysalis. I raised my bow and selected my target as he ran towards The Wall. I didn’t try to dehumanise him, as I’d previously thought might help. Instead I imagined him killing my friends, my fellow Watch… the man I loved.

I released the breath slowly, evenly, and then I let my arrow fly.

6 years previously

Transition

Chapter 1

It started with the oil wars. We lost a generation fighting that distant war, yet the civil war which followed was undoubtedly more devastating. The oil wars might have bankrupted the world’s economies, but with the civil war we were suddenly plunged into a fight for our very survival.

Locked out of the new oil treaties, our government had no means of maintaining the power grid. Once it failed, they swiftly lost control of the country, and the civil war began in earnest. At first it was government against rebels, but soon it became city against city, and town against town, until finally it was neighbour against neighbour. Our country became so fractured, that it simply wasn’t safe to walk the streets anymore. We lived with the constant fear of being caught in the crossfire between rivals, raped for the sport of it, or even murdered for the precious little we carried in our pockets.

My family and I had little idea what was going on in the rest of the country, let alone the wider world. We had lost the Internet months ago, as the Government tried to quell the rebels, and although we still had a radio, we rarely put it on these days. We’d grown tired of listening to voices filled with static and hate, pushing their own opinions and agendas, whilst refusing to accept any of the blame. Perhaps other countries were coping better than we were, but they had too many problems of their own to care about ours. Maybe one day the army would regroup and come to our aid, providing the stability we so badly needed to start rebuilding our shattered lives, but for now we were alone.

We had recently lost my mother, and I was desperately trying to keep what was left of my family in one piece. It wasn’t easy, as we were all struggling to come to terms with our collective grief. My brother Connor was angry and hurting, and didn’t care who knew it. My father was simply distraught, wracked with loss and battling to overcome the complex layers of his guilt.

Much as I’d done when she was dying, I distracted myself from my own grief by caring for my family – trying to be strong enough for all of us. I did my best to keep our house feeling like a home, but far more challenging than finding food to cook, was defusing the increasingly frequent arguments that sprang up between father and son.

For a long time, whilst Father was away at the oil wars, and during the dark days of his early convalescence, Connor had grown accustomed to being the man of the house. Despite the fact that he had only just turned thirteen, now that Father was well again, Connor was struggling to re-adjust to the backward shift in boundaries.

He couldn’t begin to come to terms with his grief either, bitterly blaming Father for not being there when our mother first fell ill – when she’d carefully hidden her symptoms and refused to admit there was anything wrong. He believed Father had been so wrapped up in trying to save those nameless souls on the battlefield, that he had neglected to save the one person who should have mattered the most. My distraught brother couldn’t see that our father’s own heart was every bit as broken with grief as his was. Or that the fracturing of their own relationship, was just another weight to bear them both down.

It didn’t matter to Connor that Father had had no idea our mother was sick when he was sent to the oil wars, or that he was in no state to realise how ill she was becoming when he returned. Father had lost his leg and the use of his left hand, after being caught by a roadside bomb. After he was shipped home, his rehabilitation was painful and slow, and we put our mother’s weariness down to the stress of caring for her husband. Connor and I had had enough to deal with, she had told us later. She hadn’t wanted to raise the fear that we might lose them both.

That was just part of the guilt my father was carrying around with him – that he’d burdened our family so badly, that none of us had noticed her fading away from us. Then his helplessness had compounded his guilt, as he struggled to come to terms with being unable to stop the disease that was ravaging his wife. There were no medicines available any more, much less a doctor to administer them, so in a desperate bid to ease her suffering, my father had resorted to buying opiates from the city districts. These at least helped to mask the pain she suffered constantly, if never truly drowning it out. But I know the worst of his guilt, was reserved for the understandable sense of relief he had felt when she died – when her suffering was finally over.

Even though we knew that Connor was hurting, he wouldn’t talk to Father or me about it. Instead he got involved with a new group of friends from the city, although these boys had only one aim as far as I could see – to get Connor to recruit to their district colours. My father was too distracted by his grief to notice at first, but I didn’t think the changes I saw in Connor were good ones. He was sullen and unkind, purposely disrespectful, and increasingly antagonistic, especially towards our father.

Things came to a head when he didn’t come home one night. Connor had disappeared before, wandering off into the city to be with his new friends, but he had always made sure he was home well before dark. Although there was no-one around to enforce an official curfew anymore, for most people it simply wasn’t safe to be out after sunset, especially not in Meridian.

It could be dangerous at any time of day, but the city was especially so at night, when the district gangs were out in force. These gangs were run by the dregs of humanity – dangerous, pitiless souls, who prayed on the broken and the weak. These districts could be as compact as a clutch of high rise housing blocks, or sprawled out over several streets, but they were equally dangerous. Drugs, flesh and territory were the only currencies worth investing in, but it was a vicious, feral trade that often descended into barbaric battles for supremacy. There were still a few friendlier districts where they tried to live decent lives, but these were few and far between.

Wearing your district colours was seen by many as a badge of honour, but once recruited you were marked for life. You couldn’t change your mind, or back out of one of the frequent fights over territory. You couldn’t refuse to get involved with the drugs, the intimidation, or the flesh markets either – not if you valued your life. If your own gang didn’t beat you to death for your cowardice or your defiance, then another gang wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to pick off a straggler.

It was a turbulent, dangerous life, but for young boys who saw no real future elsewhere, it was a means of survival. The gangs offered a sense of belonging and community in a disjointed, lost world. My beloved, troubled brother was beyond lost – he was easy prey.

All of this was weighing heavily on my father’s mind as he waited anxiously for his errant son to saunter home. I’d seen photographs of him when he was younger, and he’d been a handsome, vibrant man; tall and dark with a bright, ready smile on his lips, but time and circumstance had dimmed him somehow. Left in its place was a sadness that I doubted had much to do with the physical injuries he bore.

When Connor still hadn’t turned up by first light, my father was faced with a difficult decision. He didn’t want to have to go chasing into Meridian, but the prospect of losing Connor to one of these gangs, was a risk he couldn’t afford to take. He considered leaving me at home, but even our isolated village wasn’t immune from attack anymore. So far they had been content with raiding the growing number of deserted homes as people fled for safer places, but once these were looted would they stop there, or would we be next? In the end, he decided to take me into the city with him. It was dangerous, but at least he would be with me if trouble started.

As usual when he had to navigate the districts, my father wore a pair of cropped trousers to show off his prosthetic limb. Veterans of the oil wars were still more likely to be treated with respect – even by the district gangs – and you had to use whatever advantage you could. In addition, Father had brought things to exchange in return for our safe passage, although there were never any guarantees that either would be enough.

Meridian wasn’t safe for young girls, so I wore jeans and a shapeless t-shirt that masked my frame. My hair was shoved under a baseball cap, and I wore an old pair of Connor’s trainers on my feet. So early in the morning though, we met few people as we picked our way through the outskirts, and those that we did pass had scant interest in us. Everyone seemed to be wearing their own set of worries on tired, anxious faces – too consumed by their own troubles to worry about us.

The city was eerily quiet, with no hum of background noise as had once greeted our arrival. Father’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the cracked pavements, no longer swallowed by the sound of traffic, or the plaintive cries of the street vendors as they hawked their wares. Even the zealots that had popped up on almost every street corner, each offering their own particular version of salvation, had all disappeared. Instead there was an unnatural calm as we walked those debris strewn streets – a sense of the city holding its breath, in expectation of threat.

There were plenty of obstacles along the road to slow us down; burnt out cars, rubble from bombed out buildings, and purpose built barricades marking district boundaries. We constantly had to climb over them, or else double back to look for an easier route. The shops we passed had all been looted during the civil war, but they had become even more neglected since my last visit. They seemed faded somehow, as though their lack of use had somehow sapped away their inner strength, leaving nothing but empty husks to be blown away on the next strong breeze.

We slipped as unobtrusively as we could through the unwelcoming streets, but the risk of confrontation was everywhere. I was beyond scared, pressing down hard on my father’s hand as we walked deeper into Meridian. He tried his best to re-assure me with a comforting squeeze in return, but I could feel the tension radiating from him in waves, and I was afraid my heart might literally burst through my chest with the fear of it all.

I jumped at every raised voice cutting through the eerie quiet, and footsteps crunching over a carpet of broken glass brought nausea curdling into my throat. In shadowy doorways, I watched the glowing red embers of cigarettes being sucked voraciously, aware that just above them sharp eyes were following our every move. To my young mind it was terrifying, and only my worry for Connor was carrying me through.

Father knew where his son would be. His new friends were junior members of a gang that held several streets near the centre of Meridian. Sure enough, we spotted them almost as soon as we walked into their territory, lurking near a long abandoned supermarket. With their tough expressions, they were all trying hard to look older than their thirteen or so years, and all but Connor were dressed in the garish colours of their district.

My brother and I shared our mother’s almond eyes, heart shaped face, and rich chestnut hair, but right then I almost didn’t recognise him. I studied the sullen anger in his dark, liquid eyes, and realised that it wouldn’t be long before he openly defied our father in favour of these new friends.

Father wasn’t intimidated by them – little more than kids, they were just posture and talk. Their only threat in his eyes was the fact they were targeting Connor for recruitment. The real gang members were a different story – vicious and unforgiving – but they were night people, and at this time of day would be lying low.

‘Get here, Connor!’ Father called angrily, swearing under his breath when he was ignored. ‘Connor!’

Connor took his time high five-ing his mates goodbye, before acknowledging our father. He walked towards us with the slow, swaggering gait they all seemed to have adopted as proof of their kinship – resentment in every step. ‘What’s the problem?’ He asked defiantly.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Father demanded angrily. ‘I had to bring Fallon into the city looking for you!’

Connor shrugged indifferently, glancing back to see if his mates were watching. They were, lounging back on the bonnet of a burnt out car, hollering insults and laughing at our father, who simply ignored them. ‘I lost track of time and it got too late to walk back,’ he lied easily. ‘I can take care of myself you know. You didn’t have to drag yourself out here.’

I wasn’t sure if Connor was being purposely cruel or not, and neither did Father, whose eyes narrowed accusingly, although he let it drop for now. ‘Do I have to lock you in your room? I’m trying to let you have some space here, but you’re constantly taking the p…’

Father gave up as my brother rolled his eyes disinterestedly, instead pulling Connor by the arm and forcing him towards home. ‘Any of those lads back there involved in that trouble the other night?’ He asked, annoyed when he was answered with yet another shrug. ‘A girl your sisters age was gang-raped a couple of streets from here. Is that what your new mates call fun?’

‘It wasn’t them!’ Connor retorted hotly.

‘Maybe not this time,’ Father replied. ‘But that’s where they’re headed, and they’ll expect the same from you, if you keep hanging around with them.’

‘You’re so bloody dramatic,’ Connor groaned. ‘We’re just having a laugh!’

‘Mind your language, son,’ Father warned, again ignored except for a roll of Connor’s dark eyes.

We were suddenly alerted to the sound of a mass exodus taking place behind us, and Connor immediately swung his attention back towards his mates. They had all disappeared within seconds – with no word of warning issued to Connor, I noticed – and I felt a jolt of panic as we heard the hum of an approaching motor.

Within seconds a jeep was cruising around the corner at the far end of the street, and we all froze with indecision. It was an old army one, with camouflage detailing and a hefty machine gun mounted on the rear. Vehicles were increasingly rare, as fuel was all but impossible to find these days, and never good news, even without the weapon.

‘What have you done, Connor?’ Father hissed, as the jeep moved menacingly in our direction.

‘Nothing,’ Connor insisted, looking unsure for the first time that morning. ‘I’ve never seen them before!’ He shook his head in bewilderment as they approached. ‘Jeez, who the hell are they?’

The men inside the jeep were all young, and smartly dressed in identical uniforms of black button down shirts, ties and trousers. There was a motif on the breast pocket of their shirts, a stylized letter C in silver braid. Their eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, and their hair was cut military short. They each wore a condescending scowl on their lips too, completing an overall appearance designed to intimidate.

The front passenger leapt nimbly from the jeep the moment it stopped, and I clung nervously to my father’s hand as he approached us, feeling sick with apprehension. ‘You live round here?’ He asked Father curtly, looking him up and down appraisingly.

‘No.’ Father never gave away more information than he had to, no-one did anymore – trust was one of the first casualties of the civil war.

‘Then what’s your business here?’ He demanded.

‘Just looking for food,’ Father lied.

The man nodded slightly, his expression unreadable behind the mirrored glasses. He turned his attention to Connor. ‘No gang colours,’ he pointed out unnecessarily. ‘Not recruited yet, kid?’

Connor shifted uncomfortably, ‘no,’ he mumbled.

‘No?’ The man echoed disbelievingly.

‘Targeted,’ Father offered reluctantly, ‘but I’m trying to keep him out of it.’

‘Not so easy these days,’ the man agreed. He walked back to the jeep and pulled out an envelope, which he offered to my father, ‘this might help.’ He looked around, and then said almost to himself, ‘this is no place to try and bring up kids.’ He nodded in parting, then jumped back into the jeep, which threw a tight U-turn, before disappearing back the way it had come.

None of us spoke for a long moment, relief diluting the tension that had thickened the air between us. Father stood there with his gaze fixed on the envelope, as though he couldn’t decide whether to read it, or throw it away. In the end he did neither, stuffing it into his jacket and then grabbing Connor’s arm firmly. ‘We should get back home.’

***

The envelope wasn’t mentioned again for several days – not until Connor pulled another disappearing act. I woke up in the pre-dawn gloom with a sense of something being amiss, and wandered through the house until I finally found my father sitting at the kitchen table. He was keeping another sleepless vigil for my brother, the letter smoothed out in front of him as he mulled over its contents.

He looked up as I sat down opposite him, smiling wearily as he passed me the letter to read. ‘There’s a place, a little way north of here. It’s a new settlement they’re calling Chrysalis. They’ve been building it for some time, and they say it’s almost ready. There’s something called Transition happening in a couple of weeks, and they want families like ours to join them. They say it’s a safe place, no gangs or trouble. They’re offering us the chance to start again.’ He sighed heavily, as he swept his tired eyes around the room, ‘but we’d have to leave all this behind.’

He didn’t say it, but I knew what he meant. We had little of any worth left, as Father had traded almost everything we possessed in exchange for the drugs my mother had needed. The value lay in the precious memories invoked by sitting in a certain chair, or seeing a favoured rose bloom in the garden. The way the light sifted through the voile curtains on a sunny day, and you could almost see her bathing in its dreamy light. Moments such as those were priceless and irreplaceable.

‘I think we should go,’ I told Father though, pushing my memories firmly aside.

‘We could wait it out here,’ Father suggested, ‘hope the army regroups and someone takes control of the country again.’

‘I think we’ll lose Connor before then,’ I replied quietly.

‘Always looking out for your brother,’ he smiled affectionately. ‘You’re so old headed, Fallon, you’ve had your childhood stolen from you. This place could be good for all of us – you’d maybe get some friends your own age.’

‘Really?’ I brightened.

I was definitely lonely, as opposed to being a loner by nature, and the idea of there being somewhere out there filled with children, was utterly intoxicating after so long in isolation. The schools had all been closed down during the oil wars, and although Father had educated me well, I’d missed out on the friendships that school would have offered. There hadn’t been any other families in our village for the longest while now, either. Many had left to try their luck further south, although there was nothing to say it would be any better than life here. Others had moved to be closer to their relations, relying on strength in numbers in such troubling times, but our family didn’t extend beyond the three of us anymore.

I watched my father weighing up our options in his mind, until he eventually came to a painful decision. ‘This isn’t living Fallon, it’s barely survival. We really don’t have a choice.’

Chapter 2

Connor wasn’t happy with Fathers decision, but that was no more than we had expected. We didn’t tell him until the morning we left, and he wasn’t quite old enough to have the courage to defy Father to his face – not without his mates there to egg him on. Instead he collected his things together in a violent sulk, slamming his bedroom door and pounding down the stairs in a show of displeasure, but that was as confrontational as it got. For my part, I was equal parts excited and terrified – and just a tiny bit heartbroken – as we closed our front door for that final time.

We left our village far behind, taking a circuitous route through Meridian to avoid the district Connor’s friends belonged to. We weren’t the only ones taking the chance on this new settlement, and as news reached the gangs that people were moving through the city, they seized on an opportunity to profit. We faced confrontation at almost every turn, bartering and persuading our way through until finally, with a breath of relief, we reached the outer barricade.

During the civil war, most of the routes in and out of the city had been mined, to minimise the direction of any attack. Only one main artery northwards had been left untouched, and it was this road we walked along as we left Meridian far behind us. We were heading up towards the mountains, part of a steady stream of migrants