Wiped Read online

  Wiped

  Citizen Saga Book Five

  Nicola Claire

  Contents

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Free Download

  Also by Nicola Claire

  Dedication

  Description

  1. I’m Sorry

  2. She Was Not Going To Take This Well

  3. We Had A Plan

  4. His Back Was To Me

  5. Time To Remind The Elite

  6. Go, Go, Go

  7. This Was Lena

  8. They Are Coming

  9. And The Plan?

  10. What Have You Done?

  11. Let Us Help You

  12. What Now?

  13. To Where?

  14. You Heard Her

  15. No One Gets Left Behind

  16. Explain!

  17. Sometimes You Have To Hurt to Heal

  18. I’d Always Been In Awe Of Lena Carr

  19. I Am The Zebra

  20. Mark My Words

  21. Think Fighter Jet

  22. Star Anise

  23. This I Understood

  24. Let’s Go Crash The Party

  25. Well, That’s That

  Epilogue

  Review Request

  Free Download

  Copyright © 2016, Nicola Claire

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-473-35508-1

  Created with Vellum

  About the Author

  Nicola Claire lives in beautiful Taupo, New Zealand with her husband and two young boys.

  She's tried her hand at being a paramedic, bank teller and medical sales representative, (not all necessarily in that order), but her love of writing keeps calling her back.

  She has a passion for all things suspenseful, spiced up with a good dollop of romance, as long as they include strong characters - alpha males and capable females - and worlds which although make-believe are really quite believable in the end.

  There's nothing better than getting caught up in a compelling, intriguing and romantic book.

  When she's not writing or reading, she's out on her family boat at Lake Taupo, teaching her young boys to fish, showing them the beauty that surrounds them in nature and catching some delicious trout for dinner.

  Creating rich worlds with dynamic characters and unexpected twists that shock and awe has been pure bliss for this author. And just as well, because there's a lot more story yet to tell...

  For more information:

  @NicolaClaireNZ

  168567699926093

  www.nicolaclairebooks.com

  [email protected]

  Free Download

  Sign up!

  Get your free copy of Nicola Claire’s Starter Library!

  Three free books to get you started!

  Starter Library

  * * *

  Also by Nicola Claire

  Kindred Series

  Kindred

  Blood Life Seeker

  Forbidden Drink

  Giver of Light

  Dancing Dragon

  Shadow's Light

  Entwined With The Dark

  Kiss Of The Dragon

  Dreaming Of A Blood Red Christmas (Novella)

  * * *

  Mixed Blessing Mystery Series

  Mixed Blessing

  Dark Shadow (Coming Soon)

  * * *

  Sweet Seduction Series

  Sweet Seduction Sacrifice

  Sweet Seduction Serenade

  Sweet Seduction Shadow

  Sweet Seduction Surrender

  Sweet Seduction Shield

  Sweet Seduction Sabotage

  Sweet Seduction Stripped

  Sweet Seduction Secrets

  * * *

  Elemental Awakening Series

  The Tempting Touch Of Fire

  The Soothing Scent Of Earth

  The Chilling Change Of Air

  The Tantalising Taste Of Water (Coming Soon)

  * * *

  H.E.A.T. Series

  A Flare Of Heat

  A Touch Of Heat

  A Twist Of Heat (Novella)

  A Lick Of Heat (Coming Soon)

  * * *

  Citizen Saga

  Elite

  Cardinal

  Citizen

  Masked

  Wiped

  * * *

  Scarlet Suffragette Series

  Fearless

  Breathless (Coming Soon)

  * * *

  Blood Enchanted Series

  Blood Enchanted

  Blood Entwined (Coming Soon)

  * * *

  Lost Time Series

  Losing Time (Coming Soon)

  For: As always, this series is for my loving family.

  And my German one, who helped me to see.

  Description

  Freedom has a price tag…

  Trent Masters had always known he’d do anything to keep his Elite safe. He’d promised he would, and if there is anything the former rebel leader is good at, it’s following through with a promise.

  He’d just never realised his promise could bring so much pain…

  Wánměi is now free, but it is no longer alone. Allies and enemies encroach from all sides, but staying on the island that once lived behind invisible walls is impossible. In order to keep their freedom, and free those they once discarded, the Citizens of Wánměi must fight.

  Lena Carr has learned to roll with the punches, but having almost lost Trent, to the sadistic machinations of an oppressive regime from across the waters, she knows leaving the safe harbour of Wánměi could prove costly.

  But just how much is the Elite willing to pay?

  Citizen versus Wiped. The battle gets costly!

  One

  I’m Sorry

  Lena

  It was nothing like the poster. I’m not sure why I thought it would be. There was no crystalline blue waters snaking through the centre. No gleaming structures with sunlight glinting off thousands of window panes. No tree-lined avenues with colonial architecture so similar to that which we had in Wánměi.

  No overlarge wheel like our Pherres. But I could see where one had perhaps once been.

  I stared out over a landscape that seemed vaguely familiar and yet so very different from what we’d expected. They’d warned us, of course. Their reconnaissance had prepared them for the inevitable. But I’d seen what this world should have looked like. What it had looked like once upon a time. I’d seen the wide paths and narrowed alleys. I’d seen the domed churches and ornate cathedrals. I’d seen the incongruous bullet-like glass structure. The tall spires. The bold bridges. The big clock up in its tower.

  There’d been so much to see in that poster. So much to hint at. So much promise. It’s what had kept Trent going. It’s what he’d looked at every day. A reminder that there was more outside of our borders. There was something out there at all. That poster had been everything.

  And I’d fallen for its allure, as well.

  I pulled my stunned gaze from the cityscape before me and took in the stoic look on Trent’s face. Hard lines defined an almost otherworldly handsome face. Bright eyes mired in darkness. His mouth was slightly open, as if he wanted to say something, but the words were simply gone. His brow was furrowed, small lines bracketing each corner of his temples. He seemed a shadow of the
man I knew.

  They’d told us. They’d warned us. But like me, Trent didn’t trust our companions at all.

  How could we? Their existence was based on lies. Their presence here based on deception.

  I slipped my hand into Trent’s, felt the reassuring warm squeeze of his fingers, then turned back towards the truth, the reality… and wished I had an answer. I didn’t. None of us did, even if Irdina would have us believe they knew things and my father would have us think that he had a plan.

  Even if the world wasn’t a broken, desolate, unforgiving wreck of what we once had been.

  Wánměi had forgotten its past. Lunnon still lived it.

  “Are there people here?” Alan asked off to the side. His gruff voice was subdued, much like the atmosphere on board the boat.

  “If there are, they’ll be in hiding,” Irdina advised, as she busied herself with ropes and fender pads and a plethora of other things she’d enjoyed telling us about.

  Our ignorance astounded.

  “Do we even know where we’re going?” Simon questioned.

  “We have an idea,” she replied, jumping over the side of the vessel in an acrobatic movement that would have impressed at any other time. I watched on numbly as she tied off the ropes that would secure our only means of escape from this island.

  I knew that now. That Lunnon was on an island. Like Wánměi but so much bigger. My eyes were drawn back to the devastation before me. Like Wánměi could have been.

  “We’ll leave a contingency of guards on the boat at all times,” my father suddenly said from behind us. He’d remained below deck most of the journey, his presence now made me stiffen. “From what we’ve seen on surveillance images, this part of the city has been abandoned. Too close to the radiation, I’d hazard a guess.”

  “Radiation that we should be avoiding,” Cardinal Beck offered.

  “We will,” my father cheerfully advised. I’d come to dislike his optimism.

  “Easy,” Trent murmured, only loud enough for me to hear. “We’re here now. One step closer.” The unsaid being we wouldn’t be here at all if not for Calvin Carstairs.

  I nodded my head and turned toward what was left of our rebel army. Now reinforced with several trustworthy Cardinals under Beck’s command. The Cardinal met my eyes steadily, his whole demeanour at the ready. Waiting for instructions just like any good soldier.

  I found it amusing that he took them from me.

  “Are we set?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered in that clipped way of his.

  “All our supplies?” I pressed.

  “Si’s got it,” Trent replied, rushing to answer before Beck could, I think.

  “Well then,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at what awaited. “Let’s do this.”

  “Standard formation,” Beck ordered his team. All of them had abandoned the white pressed uniforms and red flowing cloaks that depicted a Cardinal of Wánměi. Instead they were dressed in black, similar to the Merrikan soldiers who accompanied my father. The tell-tale difference was the Wánměi flag across their breast pocket and the zebra on their right upper arm. The Merrikan’s had a bird, an Eagle they’d told us. And a flag I’d once seen in a book on Trent’s table, as I’d stared up at a poster of a lost city.

  Chills skated down my spine as we made our way down the gangplank and onto the wharf. The ropes creaked. The piles sounded wounded. The air had a distinct scent of decay. I didn’t hesitate as my foot found solid ground. The first time in my life that I had stepped on any land other than Wánměi’s. It should have been monumental. It should have meant something.

  All I could feel was a depth of loss so unfathomable that I swore my heart had stopped beating.

  I couldn’t see them, but I felt them. The ghosts of this once bustling city.

  I couldn’t hear them, but I turned to listen for them. I couldn’t decide if what I was feeling was fanciful or foretelling.

  I’ve never believed in the fairytales. Chew-wen made sure of that. But I had hoped, when I’d seen that poster. I had allowed myself to dream.

  And with one step onto solid ground, the dream had shattered.

  I sucked in a breath of air as Trent came alongside me. If he was feeling as lost as I was, he wasn’t showing it. The rebel leader was here.

  I drew on his example and straightened my shoulders, wondering where my Elite armour had fled.

  I was no longer Elite nor Citizen. I’d never been an Overseer. I glanced towards Cardinal Beck, but even he was not a reflection of me. Tall and imposing, his dark hair was cut in a military style. His face shaved smooth, his eyes dark chips of alert aggression. He’d kill if he had to. I would too. But he was not me.

  He’d been trained to be a Cardinal. Raised to exacting standards, bred, some would say, to fill that lofty height.

  I’d just been born Elite. And forged into something else entirely.

  I looked to my left and watched Irdina. Gone was the mask that had depicted her as a caste that was not. In its place was someone I couldn’t categorise. Someone neither Elite nor Cardinal nor of Wánměi. She had been once, but she was more Merrikan than Mahiah now.

  And yet, I still didn’t know what to make of me.

  The sound of my father’s wheelchair turning on the dust strewn concrete of the wharves had me forcing my shoulders to relax. I should have accepted him by now. I should have forgiven him by now, too. There were so many things I should have been able to do.

  And now I stood on foreign soil. Looked into the heart of a dead world I had at one time thought might still exist. And wondered where I had been. Who I had been.

  Who we would all have to be to see this through to the end.

  Because if Lunnon no longer existed. And Urip wouldn’t stop until Shiloh lived. What hope was there for us? The u-Pol officer who had taken Trent had said it.

  “You are adolescents on the road to adulthood. Children with new toys. You neither comprehend what you have nor protect it. When it doesn’t suit your feeble ideals, you throw it out.”

  He was right, in a way. We’d been a disposable society. A country that replaced, rather than fixed. We’d even thrown our Citizens away.

  And Urip had taken them. As had Merrika, but for far more acceptable reasons my father would have us believe.

  I looked out at what lay before us, saw what Urip had taken from this place.

  Yes, Wánměi may have been reckless. May have ignored our past and replaced our future. We may be but children in the face of these larger more experienced countries.

  But because of that naivety, because of that youthful outlook on life, we could change.

  We were one step closer to Urip. The closest we could get without being seen. One step closer to change. I glanced up at the sky, wondering if their jets would fly over this broken city at some stage. Wondering if we’d have to start dodging them so soon.

  Were we ready?

  Lunnon was not our final destination, just a step on the road to redemption. A step closer to changing. We were nowhere near ready.

  “Come on!” my father called. “Night’s not far away in this part of the world.”

  We moved out, leaving the safety of the ship behind us, and entered the broken heart of a once forgotten city. I shifted away from the others, moved ahead as if to accompany the Merrikan soldiers who led the way. Let Trent and Alan and Simon and my father follow.

  Then whispered, for his ears only, “Are we heading the right way?”

  “Yes, Lena,” Calvin replied, isolated in my earpiece. “We are heading the right way.”

  “Good,” I breathed.

  “Are you sure about this?” my Shiloh asked me.

  I was more sure about this than I was about Hammurg. More sure about this than I was that we had a hope in hell of saving what was left of Wánměi’s Wiped.

  I wasn’t accepting their loss, throwing them out as sacrifices for a bigger theme. Far from it.

  No. I grieved them. I’d still fight for the
m. But Wánměi wasn’t the only one who had to change. We all did.

  “They’re coming,” Calvin said in my ear a short while later. Just for me, but even though I’d planned it, I couldn’t allow those at my side to not be prepared.

  “On guard!” I shouted, pulling a laser gun from its holster and firing it up. The electronic whine of several others automatically followed. Cardinal Beck trusted me, even when he shot me a look of question.

  “Lena?” Trent queried, his laser gun in his hand but not powering up.

  I looked towards the man who meant everything. I looked towards the person who represented Lunnon - the old poster version of Lunnon - to me.

  This was for him.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and then laser lights were dancing.

  Two

  She Was Not Going To Take This Well

  Trent

  “What the fuck?” I shouted. Various sounds of agreement met my words.

  They’d come from nowhere. Been waiting all along. No doubt they’d even known we were on our way. I stared across the small space between us and watched Lena fire her laser gun calmly. None of the shock I felt displayed on her serene but determined face.