The Beyond: Dystopian Survival Fiction (The Breeder Files Book 4) by Eliza Green (most popular novels TXT) 📗

thin and white. ‘I’m responsible for them. Charlie, Vanessa, Thomas, Jacob—even Carissa.’

Anya touched his arm. ‘It will be okay. Let’s keep looking.’

They continued their search, ending up outside the control room where Anya had caught Alex snooping last night. It was closed. She hadn’t told Dom about it or her chat with Sheila—or June. She didn’t want to worry him.

Another corridor led into an area she had yet to explore. Three guards appeared from a hidden room and stopped them from going any farther.

‘You don’t have permission to be in this area,’ one said.

Dom stepped forward. ‘We need to speak with Agatha.’

‘She’s sleeping.’

‘I don’t care. Wake her up.’

‘Go back to your dorm room.’

‘Why isn’t the door to the Region opening again?’

The soldier glanced at his colleagues. ‘Wait outside her office. She’ll be with you shortly.’

Anya and Dom returned in silence to the place they’d just come from. They climbed the stairs and sat on the top one. The area was void of life, the trucks below idle.

‘What’s going on here, Dom?’

‘I don’t know, but Agatha has some questions to answer.’

Five minutes later, a noise carried from across the walkway on the same level as Agatha’s office. They both stood as the leader exited through the door and crossed the walkway. Agatha was dressed in an electric-blue pant suit and looked fresh, not like she’d been woken from a sleep.

She walked past them and opened her office by pressing a chip in her wrist to a flat plate. Just like in Arcis. Just like in Praesidium.

Agatha entered the room first. Dom went next. Anya closed the door and took the remaining seat next to Dom. Agatha sat down in her chair opposite them.

Dom wasted no time. ‘When is the door to the Region opening, Agatha? Your guards seem to think it’s not.’

Agatha clasped her hands on the table. Her eyes were downcast. A sick feeling swirled in Anya’s stomach.

‘You never planned to open it, did you?’ she whispered.

Agatha looked up at her. ‘No.’

Anya’s chest heaved from the unfairness. ‘Why? There are people trapped on the other side.’

‘There are also synthetics on that side that cam harm us.’

Anya stood, too angry to sit. She would not lose another person to that place.

She pointed at the woman before her. ‘Open the door, Agatha. Or I’ll...’

Agatha eyed her. ‘Or you’ll what?’

‘I’ll open it myself.’

Agatha laughed. ‘The door is on a timer—that’s no lie—but I control it. You won’t open it without my authorisation.’

Anya folded her arms. ‘We came here believing this place was a sanctuary. But it feels to militaristic for that. What is this place for, Agatha?’

The woman’s expression darkened. She gestured for Anya to sit, which she did, but perched on the edge of her chair.

‘What do you two know about the Beyond?’

Dom said, ‘That it’s a place the Collective doesn’t control.’

‘And what do you know about the Collective?’

‘It’s a group of ten artificial beings who control Praesidium,’ he said.

Agatha lifted a brow. ‘Nothing else?’

Dom and Anya shook their heads at the same time.

‘Should we know more?’ asked Anya.

Agatha unclasped her hands and leaned back in her chair. ‘The Collective is just one individual, an artificial being gone rogue. Quintus—the Latin word for “fifth.”’ She released a hard breath. ‘It appears Quintus found a way to clone himself. From people who started arriving here, we learned that he created nine others, and that those others helped him to run the city called Praesidium.’

Quintus had contacted Carissa. Never the others. It made sense he would be the ringleader in all this. But something didn’t make sense.

‘How do you know he’s just one and not ten?’

Agatha’s lips thinned. ‘Because we created him.’

Anya’s mouth dropped open but no words came.

Dom had no trouble speaking. ‘Excuse me?’

Agatha stood and rounded the desk. In the space between them and the exit she paced, before stopping and turning to face them.

‘The Beyond is a military facility. I’m guessing you’ve already figured that out. Eighteen months ago we created Quintus to run this facility—an autonomous program, if you will. Except Quintus turned on us and locked us out of key systems. We struggled to rein him in; we had the best programmers working round the clock to hack his system. But he knew how everything worked. Only one choice remained.’

‘And that was?’

‘To contain him.’

Anya’s chest tightened.

‘In the Region?’ she whispered. Agatha nodded. ‘Where we live?’

Agatha’s gaze shifted to the floor a second time.

Anya wanted to be sick. ‘There’s more?’

Agatha walked back to her desk. But instead of sitting, she perched on the edge next to Dom. ‘The Region was designed to control him. We wiped his program as best as we could. But the Region had to look foolproof to give Quintus a purpose. So we sent families to live there.’

Anya stood up too fast, knocking over her chair. ‘That’s bull. It was our home for years. I was born there. Alex, the Breeder in our group, told me he’d been created twenty months ago. How is that possible if we were only there for twelve?’

‘Time became skewed for the people living there.’

Dom got to his feet. ‘Enough of your lies. Open the door or we will.’

‘It’s not a lie, Dom. It’s the truth.’

He laughed. ‘How can the Region be fake if we remember our lives there?’

‘In the same way that a group of teenagers had their memories wiped by a machine in Arcis.’

Bile rose in Anya’s throat. She swallowed it back down. ‘You’re saying... the people who lived in the Region... had their memories wiped?’

‘Not quite.’ Agatha held her hands up. ‘Let me explain.’

Dom was shaking. Anya tried to calm him with a touch, but it was she