The Remnant

The Remnant

Book Two of The Ark Trilogy

LAURA LIDDELL NOLEN

HarperVoyager an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2016

Jacket layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Laura Liddell Nolen asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008113636

Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780008113636

Version: 2016-08-10

For Ava and Liam

I must walk without the sun, darkness must cover the path of my feet.

—The Pilgrim’s Progress

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Laura Liddell Nolen

About the Publisher

One

They came for me at dawn, and all I could think was, it is way too early for this.

And actually, it might have been. Adam’s programming tended to be erratic at the best of times, and downright scary at the worst. Looking back, I guess we should have been grateful. Surely any dawn at all, however cruel, is better than the endless night of space.

Hindsight, and all that.

“Charlotte Turner.” The judge glanced at me over the top of her delicate, silver-rimmed glasses. The crowd quieted down, just for a moment, in spite of itself, but when rough hands shoved me up onto the platform, giving the Remnant its first good look at me, the shouting cranked right back up again. Death to the traitor! and She’s a terrorist! Worse than the Commander! echoed through my mind. I stopped trying to make sense of the words, letting them roll over me like pebbles on a riverbed, until I heard one I couldn’t ignore: Throw her out the airlock.

Something like fear, or horror, made me tilt up my chin and square my shoulders. My tongue was nearly numb, so I turned up the corners of my mouth to keep from crying.

“I’m glad to see that we amuse you, Prisoner.” Her voice was warm and sure, like a kindly librarian, and sounded older than her face appeared. “You got any last words before we vote?”

“Vote?” I twisted around to look at her. Gray hair. Wrong side of forty, especially up here. Slightly heavy in her chair, but thin to the point of frailty around the shoulders. Nothing about her qualified her for a spot on the Ark. But then, this was the Remnant: the Earth’s last rebels. So she fit right in.

She returned the favor, sizing me up before responding. “On your sentence.” She raised her eyebrows, anticipating my reaction. “Life or death.”

From my new vantage point, I could see the upturned faces of the crowd, and I scanned them as fast as I could, a growing sense of desperation gnawing at my lungs.

No Isaiah, which stung. No Adam, thank goodness. There was the gardener, a withered old man who’d taught me how to grow potatoes, and maybe a couple hundred strangers, including a large group of feral-looking children whose faces I searched more thoroughly.

No West.

The thought of his face, his wide brown eyes, flared through my mind, and I felt a weird sense of disconnect, like trying to laugh and gasping for air all at once. It had been years since I’d seen my brother, and I was so close. I searched and searched, but the room grew smaller as my panic expanded, and I ran out of places to look before I found him.

I pressed my lips together. In my experience, these things tended to go a lot better if you dropped the act and showed a little vulnerability, but again, there was my brother’s face in my mind, so my ribs were like steel around my lungs.

The crowd shouted louder, and the sounds merged together in my mind, until all I heard was a single accusatory voice. I tried to imagine what that voice would sound like when it sentenced me to die.

I didn’t have to wonder long.

“Nothing at all?” The judge regarded me dispassionately. “Then I’m afraid it’s time for the sentence.”

“Your Honor, I never meant to betray the Remnant.”

“She speaks,” said the judge, and the other voice quieted to a low buzz. “Is it your position that your actions on the day of the Battle for Sector Seven were undertaken with the interest of the Remnant at heart?”

“I—no. But I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I only wanted to save my family. I’d just started to belong here, and my family, my blood family, was still living in Central Command. When I found out what the Noah Board was capable of I—”

“Was? Where are they now?”

It was a good question. “I’m not sure, Your Honor. My brother joined the Remnant, but I haven’t seen him since…” my voice caught, and I stopped talking for the space of several heartbeats. When I spoke, it was in a low, even tone, my face carefully composed. “I haven’t been out of my cell for six weeks. And my father is… somewhere in Central Command, I think.”

“And your mother?”

My throat tightened again, and my volume was reduced further. “She died. On Earth.”

It was a common story, but her voice softened. “Charlotte Turner. You placed every life in our sector in peril when you betrayed us to the High Commander. You’ve been found guilty of high treason.”

“Wait. Please.”

“Please what, Prisoner?”

“Please don’t… throw me out the airlock.”

“I’ve been a judge for over a decade. In that time I have never found any particular pleasure in ruining the lives of the young people who come before me. But in your case, Miss Turner, I fail to see what you gained from ruining us so thoroughly.” She shook her head. “In any event, that’s not how we’d execute someone, surely. Airlocks. Honestly.”

“I did bring you the Noah Board,” I said, hopefully.

“You brought us a strike team straight from the Commander himself,” she said, referring to Eren’s failed mission to retrieve the program I’d stolen. I had the sense not to point out that Isaiah, the blind King of the Remnant, hadn’t given me much of a choice about whether to steal it, or that Eren’s father, the High Commander, had known about the theft way before I confessed. “If I were a different kind of judge, and this were a different kind of courtroom, this is the moment where I’d tell you that you’re young.”

She paused, seeing my expression.

“You are. And if things were only a little different, I would remind you that there is still time for you to consider what kind of girl you want to be. What kind of woman.”

Back on Earth, I’d gotten the same speech at more than one sentencing, albeit for lesser crimes than treason. It was the juvy defendant’s cue to appear remorseful. At least, in my case it was. I had no idea what kind of speech they gave the kids whose parents weren’t doctors and senators.

But the judge was right. Things were different now. Besides, I already knew what kind of girl I was. It was hardly the first time the issue had come up.

“Unfortunately, things work a little differently up here. Look around, Turner. These are the lives you tried to destroy.”

I saw no softness in the faces of those gathered. I read the judgment in their eyes. I was as much to blame as the five governments who’d left them to die when the meteor destroyed the Earth. If the Commander had won the Battle for Sector Seven, what would he have done with them? With their children? Only Isaiah, their so-called King, had saved them, and he wasn’t here to speak for me.

“Citizens of the Remnant. Survivors of the Earth. How do you find the defendant?”

The voice of the Remnant grew terrible and loud, so loud that my ears could no longer bear the pain. But the judge maintained her stature, allowing the noise to swell through the room and settle deep in my brain before she spoke.

“Charlotte Turner. You knowingly betrayed your people to our enemy and actively sought to effect the downfall of the Remnant. You have been found guilty of treason and are hereby sentenced to death.”

Two

I’m sitting in the kitchen, watching my mom ice a cake. Her knife slides up and down the straight edges, creating a series of perfectly even waves of blue frosting. Her other hand is spinning the base of the stand with surgical precision.

It’s mesmerizing.

West thinks so, too, and joins me at the counter. I’m mad at him for some reason or another, but I’m thirteen now, and turning over a new leaf, so I choose to ignore him. Even though he shouldn’t be here.

The cake is for him, for his birthday, and it’s a complete violation of family rules for him to see it before we light the candles, but apparently I’m the only one who cares about tradition around here.

Mom offers him a little smile, just enough to show the first hints of recently formed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and he returns it in full force, his stupid teeth gapping in my face.

West loves birthdays. I guess all nine-year-olds do.

“Can I lick the spoon?” he asks.

Mom purses out her bottom lip, pretending to consider the request for maybe half a millisecond, and hands over the entire bowl of sugary, leftover goo.

I am given the knife.

My icing is gone in two licks, one for each side of the blade, and I shouldn’t care that West’s far more enthusiastic efforts have barely made a dent in his supply.

New leaf. I’ll focus on my mom instead. She’s arranging the piping tip over a plastic sandwich bag full of red frosting, and her face takes on a calm, easy focus as she pipes a series of perfect tiny stars around the top.

It’s going to be a beautiful cake.

“Want some of mine?” West asks.

I turn, mimicking my mom’s lower lip-pursing, and pretend not to care. “Sure, if you’re not going to eat it all.” I shrug a little, making the point. “Whatever.”

“Open up,” he says, and I can’t help but match his goofy grin. He shoves an enormous glob directly in my mouth, and I bite down. It’s more icing than I can hold at once, and I’m starting to giggle in spite of my newfound maturity.

“You’re getting it everywhere,” I say, or try to say, and reach for a dishcloth.

West only laughs.

I’m scrubbing away a tiny speck of blue from the countertop when a thick splat hits the side of my neck. I swat at it in confusion, and my fingers come away covered in icing.

I’m glaring up at West, about to make sure Mom saw what happened, when I realize that he’s as shocked as I am. We turn to Mom, who’s suppressing a snort.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of my mom voluntarily creating a mess of any kind when West fires back.

The glob catches half on her cheek and half in her hair, just below the ear.

She gives a little snicker. “You’re asking for it, buddy.”

Suddenly, West is covered in a thin stream of sticky red buttercream, straight from the piping tip. It’s simultaneously the strangest and the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Without thinking, I reach into his bowl and launch the contents at my mother, who spares maybe one second to glance at her ruined blouse before reaching for the flour.

“Get down!” I shout, and we duck behind the bar together. The flour whispers by overhead, dusting us in a silent arc that ends on the floor far behind us, inches from the living room rug.

She has missed! We nearly choke with giddy laughter.

“We’re outta ammo,” I say, as soon as we catch our breath, and West nods seriously. “She’s got total access to the fridge, everything.”

“But we have the pantry,” he says.

“You sure about that?” our mother taunts us.

“Cover me,” I say, and roll toward the pantry.

I’m too slow. A blast of water catches me square in the back, and I’m completely soaked before I reach the door. I grab the first thing I can find, Cheerios, and rip open the bag in a frenzy. I toss it back to West, reserving a few handfuls for myself, and we begin pelting her in unison.

Some of the water has caught the cake, and for a moment, I regret everything. It was such a beautiful cake.

But then West goes flying over the top of the counter and jumps to land on the island, next to the cake.

“West, no!” I scream, but it’s too late. He shoves a fist way down into the delicate icing and lobs his sugary grenade straight at Mom. I follow him, grabbing for the flour at the same time as her.

The bag rips open, and the kitchen explodes into a feathery cloud of white.

Thin wisps of flour rain down onto the brawl beneath for several seconds. We are all grabbing at the cake, gasping with laughter.

Our mother is strong. Stronger than I expected, and I feel my face being shoved into the fractured remains of the lowest layer of cake. I’m powerless to stop it. My defeat is complete.

West is next. He emerges from the forced faceplant covered in cake and wonder.

She has won, she has won. There can be no question. We dissolve into helpless laughter, and the pain of the year lessens its vice around my heart, and the horror of my first stint in juvy shrinks and retreats into the darkest corner of my thoughts. For the moment, it is harmless. I breathe, finally. I smile even though I’m not laughing anymore. The sensation feels foreign.

My arm is around my brother for the first time in far too long. My mother is holding us both. I find that my skinny legs can still fold in far enough so that I fit entirely on her lap, and I am warm. West and I regard each other from twin positions under her chin.

No one speaks for a while, but my mother finally breaks the silence. “Things have been too tense around here lately. We had a rough year. I know that. But you’ll never stop being each other’s family. You can’t ever stop loving each other.” And she is squeezing us both, gently at first, and then more and more tightly, until it is too much, too tight, and I have to hold my breath, and still I do not try to stop her.

Three

The thing about war is that everyone knows where you stand. Lines are drawn; everybody picks a side, and boom. You’re fighting.

Except that for me, things were more confusing than ever. That morning, the morning of my sentencing, the four walls of my cell pressed in harder than usual. I was a prisoner of the Remnant, but only because I’d traded my freedom for Eren’s by turning myself over to the Commander, with the bright idea that he then hand me over to the Remnant to get his son back.

In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d needed to get back into the Remnant so I could find my brother, West, like I promised my father. Of course, I spent the next six weeks locked in a cell, and now, I was probably about to be executed. So my mission wasn’t exactly a rousing success so far.

On the other hand, it’s not like I had anywhere better to be. Because of my illegal status on the ship and my ties to the Remnant, I was a fugitive from Central Command. And although I’d saved his son in the hostage exchange, I was pretty sure the High Commander still wanted me dead in all possible haste.

I couldn’t judge him for that. The feeling was mutual.

The silver lining was obvious: he’d have a heck of a time trying to kill me in here, and I doubted the Remnant would give him the satisfaction anyway. The Remnant controlled its sliver of a sector with an iron fist, guarding the dark space that separated Sector Seven from Central Command as though their lives depended on it.

Which was absolutely the case.

I made myself focus on the slow, even breathing of Helen, my cellmate, until the time passed more easily.

Helen was a lifer, and over the course of several decades, prison had made her in its image. Convicted of one thing after another back on Earth, she’d had the criminal connections to find her way to the Remnant without the difficulty the rest of us had suffered. You’d think illicit organizations dedicated to saving the dregs of Earth would have higher standards, but no. The Remnant left the sorting of humanity to Central Command, which had dedicated itself to the task with an admirable fervor, which is how Command ended up with all the young, straight-and-narrow scientists and doctors.

By contrast, if you were alive, the Remnant believed you should have a shot at survival. All you had to do was find them.

Which is how the Remnant ended up with all the criminals.

Suffice it to say, no one around cared how Helen had gotten here, let alone whether she’d done hard time. The Remnant were way past that line of thinking. They’d been willing to overlook every mistake she ever made in her life, right up until they found out that she was fencing meds from the sickbay. I suppose everyone has to draw the line somewhere.

The dawn broke bright and cold, as though Adam, Isaiah’s pet computer prodigy, had designed it just for this occasion. I shook out my arms, imagining a thin film of dew clinging to the sheets. At least, I thought I’d imagined it. Erratic or not, these climate programs were getting more advanced every day.

The thought was not comforting.

I fiddled absently with my hair before tying it into a knot just above my neck. There’s only so much a girl can do without a hairbrush.

“So today’s the big day, huh? You want me to work on it?” Helen’s voice was sharp and clear, and in the short weeks I’d known her, that had been the case at all hours of the day and night. I struggled out of sleep, and into it. But Helen was like a light that switched on and off as needed. I envied her that.

“No, it’s fine. No one cares what it looks like, anyway.”

The door to my cell opened, and I stood. What else could I do? The guards’ hands were rough, and I understood, then, that I was their enemy. I was naïve enough to feel a new kind of pain, something akin to betrayal, like this moment was the death of the strangeness in my heart that had, until now, kept me from rushing the nearest guard and turning his gun on myself.

Instead, I let him force me into the wall.

Helen let out a string of pain and bitterness disguised as profanity and rage, and I was reminded of another woman, just as hard, who’d had enough hurt for ten lifetimes and hadn’t let it break her. But I tried never to think too long about Meghan.

“I’m fine, Helen. Wish me luck.” I tugged at my yellow prison scrubs, trying to make them lie straight, before finally feeling the cuffs lock into place.

Helen’s voice faded into the stark corridor as the cell door slammed shut behind me. “Girls like us make our own luck, sweetheart.”

The guards didn’t speak. Their silence throttled the intervals between clanging locks and scuffing boots.

Guns. They were everywhere. I figured my old friend Isaiah had distributed them to every guard in the Remnant. I wished I could feel sick over it, the end of all our hopes for peace, but instead, I felt relieved. Central Command would be fully armed by now, too. There was too much at stake for the Remnant to retain its innocence.

So maybe I was hard like Helen. There was a time I’d wanted to be like Meghan, a woman who’d saved my life back on Earth. She was strong, in her way, because she was able to love a stranger, to die for one, but I didn’t think I could be like her anymore.

Rough hands made dents in my upper arms. I let them. You betrayed us, they seemed to say. I was guided around a corner so hard my feet left the ground. The pain felt right. We took you in. You didn’t have to become one of us, but you were.