The Collective

  THE COLLECTIVE

  Book 2, The Breeder Files

  Eliza Green

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  BOOKS BY ELIZA GREEN

  Word from the Author

  Connect with the Author

  1

  Anya

  Day One

  Anya woke to a gentle humming noise. She sat up too fast, kicking off a deep pounding in her head. The last time she’d had a headache this bad was... never? The pain eased for a moment and her hands sank into a too-soft mattress as she looked around the darkened room. The noise was definitely nearby.

  This wasn’t Brookfield, nor was it her bedroom. So where was she? Her last movements were but a distant memory. She’d been in Brookfield with her brother, Jason. Both of them had been violently ill, unable to keep anything down. Her parents...

  She pressed a fist to her mouth. Both murdered. The illness had followed some kind of explosion in the land beyond Brookfield.

  The skin lesions on her arms and face during that time, blotchy and red, would be etched on her mind forever. Her pallid skin had glistened with sweat. Food and water had acted like poison.

  Another memory hit her. Two men dressed in white protective suits waited by the door where she and Jason had collapsed. One of them had spoken in an icy tone.

  ‘Don’t worry. You’re safe now.’

  Had the men brought her here?

  Anya shook away the last thought, too unclear for her to say if it was real or a dream.

  The humming got louder, sounding more like a song with short breaks than a random occurrence. Her eyes adjusted to the dark. A deep-blue carpet covered the floor and a pair of thick red velvet drapes loosely covered a window.

  A sliver of brick peeked out from behind the curtains, and Anya shivered.

  She looked around at the walls, adorned with painted landscapes set in gilt-edged picture frames. Nobody in Brookfield could afford this kind of opulence. Castles or mansions didn’t exist in her world. So where the hell was she?

  On the other side of the room were two white doors with gold handles, set into two facing walls. One door had to be the exit.

  Her hands sank further as she shifted position on the squishy bed. The brick wall, coupled with her lack of knowledge as to where she was, sharpened her senses.

  She ripped back the covers and glanced down at her clothes. A soft breath escaped her lips. She wasn’t naked, but the leggings and camisole weren’t hers.

  She placed both feet on the floor. The details in the low-lit room opened up to her some more. A large chest of drawers was against one wall, and to its right, a chaise longue. A vanity table and a backless chair with a cream-cushioned seat and ornate edges sat between the drapes and chaise longue.

  The drapes reminded her of another room, a large open space split by a similar velvet covering. The sound of crying babies had dominated that space. Was it a real place? A real memory of the towns, or somewhere else?

  She walked over to the window and pulled the drapes back, feeling the weight of the fabric in her hand. Her fingertips grazed the brick wall.

  The only place she’d been to outside of the towns was Praesidium, to visit the library filled with books, not babies. Anya shook her head to dislodge the memories she began to doubt were even hers.

  The humming drew her attention away from the drapes. A chill shot up her spine as she searched for a floor lamp and groped for the switch.

  Then she saw it: a chair on the other side of the room. And a blond-haired boy sitting in it.

  Anya gripped the flimsy material of the camisole, which she was sure was transparent.

  ‘Who... the hell are you? What are you doing in my room?’

  The boy got to his feet and smiled at her.

  More of a smirk than a smile.

  He walked towards her forcing her to step back. He was a head taller than she was, with messy hair and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. She tried not to blush as his hot gaze ran over her body.

  ‘I asked you what you’re doing here!’ She backed up when he got closer.

  He held his hands up, eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Relax. I’m supposed to be here. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Were you here the whole night?’

  The boy’s smile transformed into a shit-eating grin. He was dressed in a loose pair of khaki trousers and white T-shirt—clothes that hid a lean body with a hint of muscle.

  He nodded at the bed. ‘You don’t think that bed’s just for you, do you?’

  Panic swelled inside her. What exactly had happened last night?

  Anya’s uneasy gaze settled on the boy, stood too close for her to feel in control. ‘Where are we? What is this place?’ She stepped back.

  The blond boy played it smart and stayed put, giving Anya the opportunity to claw back some dominance.

  She placed him at around eighteen; a year older than her.

  ‘You’re different from the others,’ he said. His grin dropped back to a smile.

  ‘Different? What are you talking about?’

  ‘They were more accepting of their fate. You, on the other hand, are feisty. I like feisty. It’s a challenge.’

  Anya hugged her body tighter. ‘I’m not here to challenge you. And I’m not going to do whatever it is you have planned.’

  The boy just looked at her.

  ‘Why am I here?’ Anya lifted her chin. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Well, Alex. It seems as if there’s been some kind of mistake.’ Her back hit the door and she groped for the handle. It opened into a large bathroom. ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ Alex didn’t move as she raced over to the second door.

  She tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open.

  ‘Oh, you’re supposed to be here,’ said Alex.

  She rattled it again. Nothing. ‘You don’t even know me. How do you know where I’m supposed to be?’

  ‘I know your name is Anya Macklin. You’re from a town called Brookfield and you have one brother, Jason. Your parents were killed recently, by the rebels.’

  Anya spun around to face Alex. He stood near the vanity table, arms folded, and with a look that needed to be slapped off his face.

  ‘How do you know all of this?’

  ‘I’m supposed to know everything about you.’

  Anya gave a short laugh. ‘Yeah? You sound like a stalker.’

  ‘Had I known you’d fight me on this, I’d have woken you up earlier, not let you sleep in. You looked so innocent with your eyes closed. You even snored a little.’ Alex cocked his head to the side. ‘If I knew there was a beast hidden beneath your vanilla exterior... This will be fun.’

  ‘Stop talking to me like I’m up to speed. What will be fun? Why am I here?’

  ‘Over the next week, you and I will get to know each other very well.’

  Anya scowled, but her heart thrummed at the innuendo. ‘Whatever you think is going to happen... well, it isn’t. I don’t even like you.’

  Alex laughed. ‘That’s the beauty of this place. You don’t have to like me. But you’re attractive, so that helps.’

  His gaze made her feel naked. She glanced at the chest of drawers. ‘Helps with what? What do you think I’m here for?’

  Alex took a step towards her, cutting off her means of escape. She pressed her back up against the locked exit.

  He lunged for her and a scream bubbled up into her throat. She prepared to hit him when he grabbed her fist and pulled her into the centre of the room. She stumbled a little as he twirled her around.

  ‘Welcome to the Breeder programme. You and I are going to have sex, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  Anya yanked her hand from his. ‘Sex? In your dreams.’

  ‘It’s not my dream. It’s theirs.’

  ‘Who?’ When Alex didn’t answer, she demanded, louder. ‘I said, who?’

  ‘We’ve been genetically matched to create the perfect child. It will happen whether you want it to or not.’

  Alex’s insistence stirred a memory of a boy forcing himself on her. Strawberry-blond hair and freckles; nobody she recognised. But it felt real. She would not let Alex intimidate her in the same way.

  ‘I’m not having sex with you, Alex. So you can forget about it.’

  ‘You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Says who?’

  The fire in Alex’s eyes died a little. ‘Says Praesidium.’

  Anya’s gaze roamed the room. ‘Is that where we are? Why is the only window boarded up?’

  ‘We’re deep underground. Nothing to look out at. There’s no point.’

  A short laugh escaped her. ‘Breeder programme, though? You’re joking, right?’

  ‘Nope. It’s why I’m here.’ Alex stroked her arm. She shivered a
nd jerked away from him. ‘You and I are literally perfect for each other.’

  The pain in his eyes hit her like a punch to the gut. This was real. Her shallow breaths winded her as her back touched the exit.

  ‘I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be part of a Breeder anything.’ She locked eyes with Alex. The thought of kissing him, of having sex with a complete stranger, made her feel sick.

  Alex followed her to the exit and leaned against it. His mood turned sombre. ‘Like I said, you don’t have a choice.’

  Anya hugged her middle. ‘So you’re going to force yourself on me? Is that how you get girls to like you?’

  ‘Not force.’ Alex’s cockiness wavered for a moment. ‘The programme, it’s designed to make us fall in love. At the end of the week, you won’t have a choice.’

  ‘I always have a choice and so do you.’

  His jaw clenched.

  Alex’s vague answers irritated her. ‘So what’s this Breeder programme for, exactly?’

  ‘To create a genetically perfect child. I told you.’

  ‘I am not having a baby. And I won’t to be part of some stupid Breeder programme that forces me to.’

  Alex’s tone softened. ‘I wish it were that simple. It’s not about what you want. It’s about what the city needs.’

  She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. ‘There are other ways to do that. Artificial insemination, test tubes. These days, you don’t have to be present for the task.’

  ‘All fine examples. But the Collective is addicted to learning, and it has already learned everything it can from test tubes, from laboratory conditions. Now it’s after results. It wants to see what happens when two genetically compatible people fall in love and conceive. It wants to learn how a baby created from love differs from one created in a lab. But what it really needs is the babies. So it can create something new. That’s why you’re here. You’re not the first to be in this room and you won’t be the last. The results vary from subject to subject.’

  The Collective. She’d never heard of them, yet the name sounded familiar.

  ‘So you’re saying the Collective’s watching now?’ Alex’s gaze lingered on her covered chest. Anya folded her arms higher. ‘I’m not here to be part of some pervert’s experiment. And falling in love takes longer than a week, you know.’

  Alex laughed. ‘I’m not a pervert, but thanks.’

  ‘Maybe you are. I haven’t decided yet.’ She stepped around him and went to the chest of drawers, looking around. ‘Are there cameras in the room?’

  ‘Just one.’ He followed her and leaned in close to her ear. ‘But I’ve worked out where the blind spots are.’

  She tore her ear away from his hot breath. ‘You’re disgusting. Don’t think I’m sneaking off with you so you can do what you like. I told you, I’m nobody’s experiment.’

  A vague memory of an atrium and a camera blind spot surfaced in her mind. She was standing beside a different boy, one with dark hair.

  Alex’s eyes darkened. ‘Soon you won’t have a choice.’

  ‘Yeah? You keep saying that. And I keep telling you it’s not going to happen. There will be no conception. I’ve no interest in touching you. And you won’t touch me without my permission.’ She opened one of the drawers and let out a breath when she saw a grey hoodie with a zipped front. She put it on and yanked the zip up fully before turning back to Alex.

  His smile, sad not cocky, both surprised and disarmed her. ‘I like your optimism and I’ve tried to fight them but when they inject us with Rapture, we won’t be able to keep our hands off each other.’

  2

  Carissa

  Carissa shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare using the book in her hand. The Peculiar Child with the Curious Eyes didn’t make much sense. It was just a series of black marks on paper. She knew how to read but not how to put words into context.

  What was Vanessa thinking, giving her the book, knowing her limitations as a Copy?

  She tossed the book away; it hit a tree with a soft thud. Had Carissa known reading would be so hard, she’d have downloaded a summary instead.

  The paperback with a fresh mark on the cover lay on the ground, an innocent victim of her frustration. There wasn’t even that much to the story. A girl had encountered a peculiar child with curious eyes in the woods behind her house. But what she couldn’t understand was why the girl had met the child daily and lied to her mother about it.

  She pressed her back against the gable of an apartment block in Zone D, where the Originals lived. She liked the quiet of the zone during the day. With so few people around, she could sort through her memories and erase the ones that didn’t fit with the Collective’s impression of her. Memories like the one of the book. Her orb zipped playfully around her head then circled the tree. Carissa didn’t have time for games.

  Why had the girl in the story lied to her mother? The tale mirrored her own because Carissa had also lied to her own creator: the Collective.

  Being connected to the Collective had its advantages. Carissa had known about the arrival of the five participants from Arcis just over two hours ago. She also knew that Quintus had ordered decommission of Essention and the other urbanos in the region. He’d said the programme in Arcis, designed to identify the most suitable females for the Breeder programme, had served its purpose. But a far more likely reason was because the rebellion had rattled the Collective. Rebels had bypassed Arcis’ impenetrable defence system to attack the facility. Now the ten masters were accelerating their plans for the Breeder programme.

  The real reason Carissa hid certain memories was to mask evidence of her growing empathy. She’d ordered the Inventor to delay decommission to give the people in Arcis and Essention time to escape. Quintus, the Collective’s spokesperson, could never find out. The Inventor, her friend, would never betray her secret.

  Her Original’s sister had been one of the five brought to Praesidium. She’d watched their time in Arcis, feeling a connection to more than just June.

  ‘Miss, I’ve been so misled by this place, I never even noticed. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for one of you to finally develop a conscience.’

  It was what the Inventor had said to her, after she’d ordered him to delay decommission. Carissa didn’t know what a conscience felt like, or why the Inventor thought she had one now. But seeing how Anya and June, her only link to her dead Original, had been mistreated had kicked her into action.

  Connection to the Collective’s network had its disadvantages, too. The daily uploads shared her thoughts, experiences and feelings with the ten masters. Copies had been created to experience life, but how could Carissa live a full life spent under the microscope?

  The Inventor regularly called the Ten an oxymoron.

  ‘The Collective insists its Copies experience humanity first-hand, yet it monitors their activities to make sure they don’t stray outside their original design parameters. Ridiculous.’

  Carissa couldn’t agree more.

  She looked at the book with a mark on the cover that contained a story close to her own. Why had the girl risked her safety to meet a girl she knew nothing about?

  Because that’s what humans do.

  Carissa wanted to be more human. As a Copy, she could process information, but a deeper understanding of life was always out of reach.

  That’s what the newborns were for; newborns like the one copied from Anya Macklin’s DNA and under Vanessa’s guidance at the library. Carissa’s neuromorphic chip allowed her to detect other Copies in Praesidium. But newborns without a chip were unconnected and undetectable.

  The newborns were made of biogel, which covered a supporting skeletal frame and a functioning synthetic brain. During maturation, the biogel created hearts, lungs and entire systems, from cardiovascular to endocrine. The final stage created a connection point to receive a neuromorphic chip. To ensure a newborn reached maturation, they received regular infusions of biogel.

  Carissa no longer had her original biogel heart. Hers was made of titanium, replaced because of a flaw in the copy process. Maybe her imperfect body meant an imperfect brain, and explained why she hid so much from the Collective.

  She stood up and collected the damaged book. She tucked it into the waistband of her leggings, hidden under her long white dress, then snapped her fingers for her orb to follow. It hovered by her side while she called up old footage of her playing with it. She used this footage to overwrite her thoughts of the book and anything else incriminating.