Release date: October 23, 2018
Subgenre: Dytopian YA
About Machineries of Mercy:
It's a beautiful day in the village of Touchstone.
The birds are singing. Everyone is happy.
Everyone except Ethan.
The England he knows is broken and dangerous.
But perhaps Touchstone is more dangerous still.
Excerpt:
MERCY. The word hung in the air, riveted to the
arch of the wrought-iron gateway.
“You brought a mask or something, right?” Lex tugged
down her headscarf so that it covered the upper part of her face, then arranged
it so that she could see through the eyeholes cut into the blood-red fabric.
She watched as Ethan pulled a balaclava from the pocket of his duffel coat. “Don’t
just stand there holding it.”
The balaclava was bulky but too small for the kid. It
looked itchy too. Lex imagined that Ethan’s mum might have knitted it. Still,
one good thing about the balaclava being so thick was that it would muffle the
sound of shouting from the street. Ethan had actually been shaking as Lex had
led him here through the alleys.
“And do you have something for me?” She held out a
hand.
Ethan stared at her blankly.
“The card?”
Ethan patted each of his coat pockets in turn. Then,
with a guilty expression—he must have known where it was all along—he produced
the identity card from the breast pocket of his shirt. He cradled it
protectively before passing it over. Lex glanced at the photo above the strip
of patterned black blocks. Cecil Wright looked almost exactly like his son,
only more plump. He had the same worried expression.
“It’ll be all right,” Lex said. “He’ll never know.”
She swiped the card through the slot of a silver device attached to the
gatepost. The gate swung open. She smiled. “Don’t expect it all to be that
easy.”
Mercy’s headquarters was a tall, wide building in the
centre of the walled compound. Gleaming metal struts broke up the expanses of
tinted glass.
“Won’t our footprints give us away?” Ethan pointed
back the way they had come. They had left deep tracks in the snow.
“We’ll be long gone before anyone spots them. Anyway,
we haven’t broken in, so nobody will have been alerted. You don’t have a
criminal record, do you?”
Ethan gaped at her. It was clear that the idea horrified
him.
Lex noticed flickers of movement against the dark
walls of the building. CCTV cameras, adjusting their angle to observe them.
They wouldn’t have long, but Ethan didn’t need to know that.
The muffled yells, thuds and splintering noises from
the street increased in intensity. Bricks meeting glass. Ethan spun around in
alarm.
Lex gripped his shoulder, making him flinch again. “Cool
it. The only reason Mercy get away with having their HQ smack-bang in the city
centre is because nobody with any sense would come anywhere near.”
Nobody with any sense. She felt a sudden wave of
sympathy for Ethan. How old was he? Fourteen? Fifteen? Only a few years younger
than her—her nineteenth birthday had come and gone without her acknowledging it—but
he’d lived a far more sheltered life than she had. She felt twice his age.
“I had no idea it was this bad,” Ethan said, nodding
towards the sounds of rioting.
“Yeah. I blame the government.” Lex grinned. “I’m
guessing it isn’t like this behind the Gates.”
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Apple iTunes | Google Play | Weightless Books | ChiZine
About Tim Major:
No comments:
Post a Comment