Lux and Lies (Whitebird Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Whitebird Chronicles Volume 2

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Meg Collett

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Whitebird Chronicles Volume 2

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Meg Collett

  LUX AND LIES

  WHITEBIRD CHRONICLES:

  Volume I

  MEG COLLETT

  Lux and Lies

  Copyright 2017 Meg Collett

  www.megcollett.com

  All Rights Reserved

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the authors, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Editing by Arrowhead Editing

  Cover by Najla Qamber Designs

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, to factual events or to businesses is coincidental and unintentional.

  1:

  A rust-colored spot marred the floor in the foyer of Wren Iver’s apartment building. If she looked close enough, and she did every day, she could just make out the shape of the person who’d died there. She wondered who the person had been before they were reduced to a smudged spot worn down beneath hundreds of pairs of feet. Before they were trodden over and forgotten.

  At the front door, she lifted the card from the lanyard around her neck and swiped the bent plastic across the reader. It clicked, and then the barred door beeped and unlocked. Using every ounce of her strength to open it, Wren pushed through.

  Like every day of the week, Mak Lourdes waited at the front of the building, posing against the rusted metal railing and picking out the pretty girls from the crushing river of people flowing upstream to work. She looked up, her short black bob swishing with the motion, as Wren stepped outside. “Hey, Wrenny. How’s it hanging?”

  The morning sun filtered through the smog, and the stink of sewage blasted Wren in the face. She choked back a cough as her cancer-pocked lungs quivered against her ribs. “Good. You?”

  Wren squinted into the sun to look up at Mak. Her friend’s eyes were hidden behind trendy electric blue sunglasses. Tattoos curled up from under Mak’s denim shirt collar and wound around her neck. Ink covered every stretch of her skin aside from her face, a picture of contradictions with her lush lips and strong jaw, long eyelashes and heavy brows.

  “Never better. Want the rest of my breakfast bar?” She offered Wren more than half of her nutrient bar. She was always offering Wren food. Wren took it, knowing better than to try to convince Mak she’d already eaten this morning. Mak could always tell when she was lying.

  “Thank you.” Wren peeled off the rest of the foil wrapper and tossed it into the trashcan. Steam hissed from the receptacle as the acid inside ate the refuse. The VidaCorp logo on the compactor’s front had been defaced with “DeathCorp.” She shoved the rest of the bar into her mouth and chewed quickly to avoid tasting the slightly rancid egg flavor all the ration bars contained.

  “Anything for you, Wrenny.” Mak’s smile faded, and her narrowed eyes flicked to Wren’s jaw. “Is that a new bruise?”

  “It’s fine,” Wren mumbled. She tugged the end of her thin, blonde ponytail across her shoulder, strands of dead hair tangling around her fingers, to cover the fresh bruise.

  “One of these days, we’re going to kill your father,” Mak said and strutted down the steps, thin hips swaying. “And it’s going to be a motherfucking blast.”

  Wren glanced around to make sure no one had heard Mak and then followed. A tram zipped by overhead, threading through the tall government housing, its roar rattling her bones.

  One and a half million people lived in this suburb outside of Hollywood. Sunshine Heights was a pop-up city built around the nuclear power plant. The plant had sung the siren call of jobs and fair wages, health care and dental insurance, and people had flocked to it like starved rats from the country’s other struggling suburbs. Between buildings that swayed in a stiff wind, the citizens of Sunshine Heights shuffled along the heat-cracked sidewalks lining the empty roads. No one could afford gasoline cars, and the risk of being stopped by a Link was too great on the less crowded path.

  Wren and Mak entered the human river of flesh and dull apathy. In this place, no one looked anyone in the eye. They just heaved through the throng of people, heading to work or school.

  “Did you get into any trouble last night?” Wren asked, already knowing Mak had. People bumped and brushed against Wren’s shoulders, but she just shuffled out of the way, a rote apology on her lips, unheeded and unheard.

  “Found a good poker game and won some extra rations for tonight’s handout. You can have them.” Mak watched the crowd around them for pickpockets and steered Wren around a homeless family. The youngest kid, perhaps three years old, banged on a bent pot with his dirty hands as he sat in his mother’s lap. The woman stared at the ground, her knobby shoulders slumped.

  A bead of sweat worked its way down Wren’s spine. There was no escaping the oppressive heat, even in the morning. “Those rations were some family’s food.”

  “Not anymore. They’re mine. And you can have them,” Mak shouted over another tram’s rumbling.

  “Give them to that family back there.”

  “They can win their own. Besides, I’d rather know you weren’t going hungry because your useless father got drunk and ate half your rations.”

  “Mak, you h
ave to stop—”

  “Link alert!” she interrupted and twisted Wren away from the main road police bots patrolled.

  The humanoid Links, with their glowing United States Police Department badges on their chests, marched by with only the mechanical thump-thumping of their smooth stride announcing their presence. Their long arms with clear plastic joints remained motionless, their torsos immobile. They hummed along so quietly that Wren sometimes didn’t hear them until they’d drawn up right beside her.

  With practiced casualness, Wren turned her head at just the right moment—not too early to appear suspicious, and not too late; otherwise, the Links’ laser-point eyes would already be scanning the bone structure of her face.

  She pretended to look up at a billboard advertising the upcoming reality show Glass House. The old screen’s broken pixels and rusted frame displayed the entire cast. Sloane Lux, the star, stood center, signature sexy smirk in place, blonde hair caught in an imaginary breeze, and piercing blue eyes mocking all those passing below. Roman Wade, her costar and real-life boyfriend, stood beside her, expression wolfish and distant, arms crossed over his chest.

  “The Whitebirds are at it again,” Mak said, eyes on the billboard too. She used her body as a shield as they walked farther past the marching line of Links.

  Overnight, the Whitebirds, a local gang, had sprayed graffiti over one cast member: Beaumont “Beau” Montgomery, a popular candidate for the upcoming presidential election. In tall block letters, they’d written “VidaWhore” across his face. Workers were up on the sign’s ledge scrubbing at the paint.

  “Hmm,” Wren murmured. She really didn’t want to get Mak started on how much she hated VidaCorp, the mega pharmaceutical corporation responsible for inventing the chemicals that purified the nation’s water supply. Mak was one of a handful of citizens in Sunshine Heights who scoffed at Montgomery’s campaign commercials promising everyone below the poverty line—nearly every soul living in the suburbs these days—a free dose of Pacem once he passed a bill to legalize it in the United States. VidaCorp claimed their revolutionary gene therapy pill could cure any disease, and the country’s citizens were clamoring for its legalization.

  Pacem, if legalized in the United States, would change the world. Even Mak had to admit that. A simple daily dose of Pacem for the rest of her life could cure Wren’s cancer. With Pacem, Wren could live without the constant tick-tock of a death clock chiming in her head, keeping her from living life to the fullest. Wren’s mother had lived for years with her lung cancer ticking down her days. She’d cooked dinners and handed out lunches at the door to Wren and her father as they’d left for school and work, and she’d been there, smiling, when they returned home in the evening. She’d died without giving Wren any hint she’d been sick.

  Wren wasn’t as strong as her mother. She couldn’t live with the clock gonging in her head every time she coughed. She was nineteen, and she’d never even been kissed.

  “Man, they’re so cool.”

  “Who?” Wren asked, distracted by her imaginings of a life on Pacem.

  “The Whitebirds.”

  Wren hushed Mak. “Don’t let anyone hear you say that!”

  “So what if they did? People should support the Whitebirds. Do you see the Links doing anything to stop the other gangs’ activities in Sunshine Heights? No, because they only care about the Whitebirds. Probably because VidaCorp pays local police officials to be extra vigilant when it comes to gangs that target them all the time.”

  “Please not your conspiracy theories again,” Wren groaned.

  “You’re too trusting. Not everyone is a saint like you.”

  “And you’re too cynical.” The last of the Links passed, their footsteps perfectly in sync. Wren relaxed her shoulders and glanced back at the police bots, just to be certain. “That was closer than I’d prefer.”

  Mak bumped her shoulder against Wren’s. “You can’t blame them, you know. You really do look like her. It’s no wonder their scanners catch on your face all the time.”

  “I do not,” Wren argued, but her eyes flicked back to the billboard where Sloane presided over dirty, little Sunshine Heights like a queen. “Besides, I can’t afford any more tardy marks at work because of those silly scans.”

  As Mak launched into another one of her conspiracy theories regarding Glass House and its presidential nominee cast member, they rounded the corner of a taller apartment building, and Wren’s eyes skirted sideways. She slowed, just like she did every day.

  The edge of Sunshine Heights loomed ahead, where the abandoned streets faded into a barren expanse of land covered in shifting sand. The desolate space between cities was dangerous, deadly. If exposure or dehydration didn’t kill a person, the gangs certainly would. Rumor had it that the underground gangs living in the old subway system used dead bodies to transport serk into the city.

  Serk was the latest drug craze. Even Mak had done it at a party once. It made people go berserk while high. Mak said it was like losing yourself in a feeling so deep and dark you couldn’t find the light until the high had passed. The next morning, Mak couldn’t remember a thing she’d done, though her knuckles had been raw as hamburger meat. She’d hated it.

  Despite the dangers the empty desert around Hollywood held, it always caught Wren’s wandering imagination. She squinted, hoping to see the city’s gleaming outline through the smog. It was almost fifty miles away, but the lights were so powerful they could be seen on a clear day. Not today, though.

  “Hollywood is on the beach, right? I wonder what the ocean looks like.”

  “Black tar full of bloated, bobbing bodies. Not even VidaCorp could make that water safe to drink.” Mak laughed, and Wren expected her to go on another tangent about VidaCorp using chemicals to make the city water drinkable, but she surprised her. “Come on or we’ll be late for work.”

  “What do you think is out there? Zombies?” Wren joked to lighten her mood and finally dragged her gaze away from the space beyond the fence.

  Mak snorted. “Zombies will only be in the cities if Montgomery legalizes Pacem.”

  Wren bit her lip. The latest debate about Pacem was its potential side effects. Some scientists theorized the gene therapy pill had the capability to alter gene expression to the point where people couldn’t feel emotions while on the drug. Even if Wren could afford the astronomically expensive environmental taxes of the city, she could never afford Pacem. But if she could, she would gladly become a zombie if Pacem cured her cancer. One last time, she glanced at the fence.

  Mak caught her look. “What is it, Wrenny? Thinking ’bout running away again?”

  Wren laughed, but she thought about running away every single day.

  A tram shuttered past, causing pinpricks of white light to dance in front of her eyes. The sound was so close and so loud, it felt as though her head had turned inside out, exposing all her squishy bits to the razor-edged, blaring world. Once the transport had whooshed away on its dirty rails, Wren breathed easier, her skull back in its right place.

  A group of guys walking by on the other side of the road hooted at Mak, distracting her from seeing the way Wren wobbled. Mak flipped them the bird, though it only encouraged them to catcall louder. None spared a glance at the little barnacle stuck to Mak’s side. Wren glowered at them. If she truly were as beautiful as Sloane Lux, she would’ve gotten her fair share of attention from guys too.

  Not that she needed it. No one wanted to fall in love with a dying girl.

  To divert Mak’s attention before she got into a fight, Wren said loudly, “I still think about it a lot, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  “About running away.”

  “Oh, yeah? Daydreaming of joining the underground gangs again?”

  “I wouldn’t join a gang.” Wren whispered the last word in case any of the other commuters overheard and cared to report them. “You know me better than that. I’d live next to the ocean.”

  “The Pacific Ocean?” Mak feigned s
hock, raising her eyebrows at Wren and grinning widely.

  “Certainly not the Atlantic. I heard it glows at night,” she said, joking back.

  “You would run away, even though it’s illegal”—Mak waggled her brows with mock seriousness—“for a ward to leave their caretaker?”

  Wren nodded, her eyes darting around. Her fear was real, but she wasn’t lying. She’d run away and leave this life behind, but she could never do it by herself. “I really want to, Mak,” she said, truly excited now. “Remember in middle school when we used to draw plans for the house we’d build?”

  “Come on,” Mak said, her smile slipping as she took in Wren’s feverish excitement. “We were stupid scruffs back then. No one lives out there. They can’t. It’s beyond civilization for a reason. If it weren’t, the government would have expanded the ’burbs so we wouldn’t have to live on top of each other. You’d die from the heat, if the gangs didn’t get you first. Besides,” she added, her voice softening, “you’d miss me too much.”

  “I could draw your face on a rock and keep it with me.”

  Mak’s chiming laughter rang out as they walked along the sidewalk. Wren kept her face averted to hide her disappointment while Mak kept up a continuous stream of commentary on the various pretty girls they passed.

  “Shit, Wr—”

  She heard them then, their telltale whir mingling with Mak’s alarm. Mak tried to block Wren from view, but she was too late. The Links’ scanning gazes heated Wren’s face as their intelligence machines caught on her the way they had a hundred times before.

  Mak muttered a solid string of curse words that would have made Wren blush under different circumstances.

  “It’s okay,” Wren said as the Links swiveled and walked over, their red laser eyes scanning her repeatedly. She had time to talk her way out of the mix-up and still make it to work on time—hopefully.

  “Pedestrian.” The word broke apart into four long chirping syllables as it came through the Link’s audio speakers. “Stop.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mak huffed, hands on her hips. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Step aside, secondary pedestrian.” Another Link put a mechanical hand on Mak’s arm and propelled her out of the way. In front of Wren, the Link’s laser eyes scanned her, and its flat, expressionless plastic face terrified her.