The world is fresh from humanity splitting in half – the BlankZone in the East and the Federation in the West. As an inevitable attack from the BlankZone looms, the Federation makes swift, mysterious, and unexpected moves to prepare.
James, a 17-year-old living in the Federation, is drafted by the military. He learns that he has been selected to join a group of skilled teens who will be transformed into elite human weapons. Follow James and his friends as they mature from teenagers to lethal warriors. Together, they will face life altering events as they navigate a new existence dedicated to protecting their friends, families, and humanity at all costs.
The world is fresh from humanity splitting in half – the BlankZone in the East and the Federation in the West. As an inevitable attack from the BlankZone looms, the Federation makes swift, mysterious, and unexpected moves to prepare.
James, a 17-year-old living in the Federation, is drafted by the military. He learns that he has been selected to join a group of skilled teens who will be transformed into elite human weapons. Follow James and his friends as they mature from teenagers to lethal warriors. Together, they will face life altering events as they navigate a new existence dedicated to protecting their friends, families, and humanity at all costs.
Chapter 1
James held his throbbing head, thinking he might be sick. His room was dark, but faint trails of light streamed inside around the corners of the heavy canvas covering his windows. He reached over to check his nightstand for his wallet. Still there, as were his HOLO and keys. Thank God, he thought, letting himself breathe.
James brushed the blue arrow glowing on his HOLO. He waved his finger and a transparent screen popped up, casting a soft light across his face. He crossed his fingers and scrolled for drunk messages he might have sent the night before.
His stomach unclenched when he saw nothing on his screen. He pushed his hand on the top of the HOLO, letting it fold into itself. James swung out of bed, his joints creaking. His body ached, and his head felt like a tiny man was in his forehead banging on his brain with a wrench. He sat back on the bed to deal with the sudden onset of vertigo.
I feel so old, he thought, cracking his neck. When he felt more stable, he pushed his body from the bed and propelled himself toward the door.
Poking his head out, James checked for signs of life. The last interaction he wanted was a run-in with a member of his family this hungover, his mind oatmeal, his tongue sandpaper, and his thoughts swimming above the fumes suffocating his brain. The hallway was all clear, and James darted for the bathroom.
Why don’t we have blinds in here? he thought grumpily, steadying himself on the windowsill. The sun pouring in only added to his pain. He battled his vampiric instincts and looked out the window at the late morning activities of the neighborhood as he enjoyed his morning relief.
Ms. Culver was walking her dog, searching for signs of life in the neighborhood to talk with her. Two middle school boys sped by on bikes while a younger boy rode behind them, struggling to keep pace, determination on his sweaty, red face.
James stared into the distance, last night was a blur.
He remembered his friends picking him up from school and stopping by his house to drop off his bag. James found a note on the kitchen counter. His mom was out with Michael picking up Caitlin and Mar from school. He was free, he thought, rushing up the stairs. He would have no problem leaving without questions, but he would have to act fast. He ran to his room, throwing his bag on the bed and tearing off his shirt. He grabbed a stick of deodorant from the top of his dresser and applied it quickly while looking for a clean shirt to wear.
Pulling the t-shirt over his head, he jumped the staircase in two hops and ran back through the kitchen, pulling a box of leftover Chinese food from the fridge.
James ate the sticky General Tso’s chicken with his fingers in the car while Ed drove them to the nearest energy station. They bought two thirties of cheap beer and headed to Joe’s house to celebrate James’s birthday.
The night started out the same as most. Jennifer and Carrie showed up with their wine coolers while James and his friends drank crappy beer, stopping occasionally for a swig of whiskey.
The night progressed rapidly as dozens more people arrived with cases of beer and bottles of booze. James’s eyes lost focus, his voice grew louder, and warmth spread throughout his extremities. Finally, they were too loud for the closely packed houses and the party migrated to the park nearby where James found himself walking with Kaylie.
He had no idea how he arrived in this situation and was thrown off by his confidence. Kaylie was a gorgeous, long-haired brunette with dark brown eyes. She was a midfielder on the soccer team and used to be a gymnast. They were friendly during James’s soccer season when she helped his coach manage the team, but she intimidated James. Now, while they walked together James glanced over, absorbing the full extent of her beauty from the corner of his eye.
She had high cheekbones with dimpled lips, a straight nose, and delicate features. Her eyes were deep pools, permanently set in a half-drowsy slit, uninterested in the rest of the world but undeniably intelligent. She came off as distant and edgy, but never standoffish. James caught his eyes trailing down to look at her chest before snapping out of it. Knock it off, he thought, looking at his feet.
“You having a good time?” he said, immediately regretting it. Stupid question, he thought.
Kaylie looked at him, smiling. “I am, actually! My friends and I don’t do this much, so it’s a nice change of pace.”
“Really? I thought you and your friends were always out,” James replied.
“Well, we’re not normally outside like this. It’s usually a party at someone’s parents or a college guy’s house, but this is a lot of fun.” She sounded sincere, and James’s confidence grew.
“Happy to have you along,” he said and raised his beer, tapping her drink as they walked.
She grinned and James’s stomach did a flip. “Cheers.”
When they arrived at the park, it was pitch-black, the only light coming from HOLOs popping up randomly in the darkness. James turned to Kaylie, “Do you want another drink?”
She shook the beer in her hand and drained the last sip. “I would love one,” she said. “Meet me by my friends. They’re over there.”
She pointed out her friends under the treetops talking with each other, their HOLOs illuminating their faces.
“Will do,” said James, nodding as he walked away.
James was ecstatic. The best-looking girl there was talking with him and seemed interested in him. Fuck, yeah, he thought, doing an internal fist pump.
A second later, two sets of arms grabbed him and yanked him aside. Ed and Conor pulled him into a circle of their friends. They were standing with a bottle of whiskey, passing it around and taking pulls.
“Drink up, boys!” crowed Ed, taking a deep gulp from the bottle and passing it off to James.
James tipped the bottle back in a swig. He wiped his mouth and turned to go meet Kaylie again, but Conor pulled him back.
“Not until we’re done,” Conor grinned, pointing at the bottle making its way back to them, while a second bottle started at the other side of the circle.
I’ll finish this quick and head back over to Kaylie, James thought. The bottle came around again, again, again, and on and on. The last moment James remembered was an upside down label blocking his eyes.
James finished his stream and looked down. He flushed, grimacing at the acrid smell of the gold fluid rushing down the toilet. Gross, he thought turning on the sink and looking in the mirror.
His usually bright green eyes were cloaked in a red haze, his chestnut hair plastered to the side of his face. He was not wearing a shirt and the prickly hairs on his chest were pushed flat, while lines from the folds in his bed sheets tattooed across his rib cage.
He pushed the longer strands of hair away from his face. “Crap,” he mumbled. There was a gash on his forehead, and dried blood stained his skin all the way to the neckline of his shirt. He turned the water back on and cleaned off the blood, soaking the scab with a wet towel.
James tried to recall a single memory of how this happened but had nothing. One memory is all I need, and I can get out of this alive, he pled with his alcohol-soaked recall.
Just gonna wing it, he thought, giving up, his head hurting from the brief effort.
He peeked out the door again. No one there. He sprinted to his room reaching the doorframe, thinking he was free when he heard a yell behind him.
“JAMES, SO NICE TO SEE YOU!” yelled James’s dad, grinning at the top of the stairs. He shook his head at James. “Fun birthday?”
James’s father was about his height with an athletic frame and strong jawline. His easy-going manner and endless energy combined to create a man with a charming, confident personality James strived to imitate.
James froze. “Yeah. Got some pizza, hung out with the boys. You know,” he said uneasily, playing it cool. His father was a tough guy to read, and his eyes had a mischievous glint. James remembered too many times interacting with his father, messing up the signals, and getting in trouble.
His dad walked closer, putting on a mock face of questioning. “Huh, you know, that’s funny. Did you take a brewery tour? Because the entire upstairs of the house smells like it.”
James looked down, knowing he was caught.
His dad was standing closer to him now. “Hop in the shower but get some Febreze first and try to get some of your new cologne out of the air. I’ll turn on the vents. Maybe we can get this stank through the filters. Hopefully, get it all done before your mom gets back home, and—Jesus, what the hell happened to your head?!” he said, taking a step back, noticing James’s gash.
“Oh, I… it… it’s nothing,” James said, looking away, his relief vanishing instantly as he pretended to go open his windows.
Please, let it go, he thought.
“Well, whatever it is I hope you come up with a way to explain it to your mom otherwise I can’t do anything for you,” his dad warned, walking away. “And happy birthday!”
“Thanks,” James said in a wilting voice.
James spent his shower reviewing a series of questions he thought his mom might ask. Where were you, who were you with, what’d you eat, where did these people come from earlier in the night, adding on layers of complexity asking names, people’s parents, siblings, and so on and so forth. It was a simple game they played, but James had yet to win.
The garage door opened and his mom yelled, “Now get inside. I’ll make you lunch. An entire diet consisting of McDonald’s would taste good, but it will kill you one day.”
He heard the groans of his siblings as they were shepherded through the door.
James walked downstairs carefully, not wanting the steps to sound like someone with a pounding hangover.
His sister Mar ran up the stairs. Mar was a year younger than him, and they ran into each other frequently at parties, an occurrence they both despised. She sported hazel eyes like his mother and curly hair she kept behind her head with a ribbon. Recently, she changed her look trying different styles throughout the year. Their faces indicated a clear familial relation, Mar keeping all the softer female characteristics of his mother’s looks mixed with the physical traits, sharp cheekbones, and smile of his father.
“Hey, we won our game!” she said, smiling. “Score was three to zero. They had the crappiest offense I’ve ever seen.” Her normally bouncy hair was matted with sweat.
“Awesome.” He gave her a thumbs-up, moving past her.
“James?” his mother called from the kitchen. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, Ma, it’s me.” James gave Mar a nervous look and she grinned, shrugging knowingly.
I hate her, James thought.
He finished the last few steps and entered the kitchen seamlessly. Nice, he thought, congratulating himself. Easy entry—way to go.
“Well, come in. How was your night? And happy birthday!” his mom said, turning around to hug him. His mother was a short woman with shoulder-length hair influenced by the seasons, dark in the winter and light in the summer. Her face had soft edges and high cheekbones accompanied by strong hazel eyes with the potential for a lethal glare.
James noticed her eyes break for a split second as she glanced at the gash on his head, but she erased any indication of interest. James pretended not to see.
“Soooo, how was last night?” his mom asked as she cooked a grilled cheese for his younger brother, Michael.
“Fun.”
“Who was there?”
“The usual. You know, the guys.”
“And what’d you do?”
“Got some pizza, hung out at Joe’s,” James said vaguely. They had gotten pizza and hung out. There happened to be several cases of beer and a couple of bottles of whiskey present as well.
“Anything else?”
“Watched a movie.” Partial truth, a movie played on in his friend’s next-door neighbor’s house, and they watched it, trying to figure out what movie it was.
“Which one?”
“Gangs of New York.”
“Was it good?”
“Yeah, not bad.” He acted nonchalant as he bent over in the fridge, letting the cool air relieve his headache for a split second. “Really long.”
“Huh, I should watch it.” His mom paused as she finished the grilled cheese and delivered it to his younger brother who was oblivious to the conversation.
“Any girls show up?”
“Yeah, a couple.” James’s mind flashed back to ditching Kaylie and guilt panged in his stomach.
“Oh, which ones?”
“The guys’ girlfriends and their friends.”
James’s mom lost interest in the conversation and was distracted getting Michael to stop eating his sandwich with no hands.
James’s dad ambled into the room. His attempt to eavesdrop was obvious.
Jerk, thought James. He can’t even set up a distraction?
James grabbed a Fresca and walked tentatively over to the couch, mindful of his mom’s presence. He sat carefully, leaned back, cracked open the Fresca, and took a sip. He picked up the remote and began flipping through the channels. He was in the clear.
“James?”
“Yeah, Ma?”
“What happened to your head?” His mother was standing over him. He had not noticed her approach.
“Um… I… uhh…” James stumbled, thinking of an excuse. “Tripped this morning getting out of bed. Hit my head. But don’t worry, I’m fine. Cleaned it with rubbing alcohol.” He gave her a thumbs-up, hoping she would walk away.
“Are you okay?” his mother said, bending for a closer inspection.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It looks a lot worse than it is.”
“What about your leg? Did you hit that, too?” She was speaking more sternly now.
“My leg?” He had no idea about his leg. His mom’s eyes were focused directly on his. No more excuses. He was done for.
“Uh… I don’t know,” he said feebly. “Didn’t feel it happen but may be from something else.”
“I heard a loud crash down the stairs at three in the morning. I know it wasn’t you because you were safe in bed, considering it was four hours after your curfew. I woke up because I was worried about intruders, and you know what I found?” Her voice rose sharply, and her face became an angry mask James knew well. “I found my newly seventeen-year-old son sprawled out at the bottom of my staircase, bleeding from his head and leg, LOOKING LIKE A TRAUMA PATIENT IN THE ER.”
Damn it, James thought.
“Why don’t you go upstairs? Because we all know what actually happened last night.”
He had lost.
His dad came into view behind his mom with a look as if to say, “What the hell, man?”
James got up meekly from the couch and headed to the stairs.
In his room, he flopped on his bed. Great birthday, he thought pulling the blinds closed. He took off his pants to check his leg and there it was. A long cut stretching from the length of his calf. One deft slice with a slight turn in the end when he must have rolled off whatever cut him at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well,” James said, resting his cheek on his hand, “happy seventeenth, I guess.” He pulled up the screen on his HOLO when a message from a tag he didn’t recognize appeared. The profile picture was Kaylie’s face.
He opened the message with a pit in his stomach. God, what had he done, and how had he done it? he thought, prepared for the worst.
He steeled himself and opened the message.
Happy birthday! I thought you ditched me last night but heard you got pulled away by your friends. We should hang out again soon. I had fun.
James closed the HOLO, stunned.
He lay back on his pillow and grinned at the ceiling, closing his eyes despite the sound of his impending punishment, storming up the stairs.
Four decades ago, an event called The Melt ripped the world into two; The Federation in the Western Hemisphere, covering mainly North and South America and The Blankzone in the Eastern Hemisphere, covering Eastern Asia and some of Eastern Europe. After a period of poverty and unrest, The Federation is able to renew itself, joining the two continents of The Americas together under one flag. Life is relatively normal there; teenagers go out and get drunk, go to high school and try to avoid their parents when hungover. Adults go to work and have families and own homes. They have cars, they have Holo's (equivalent to a cell phone), they have fun and they gather around their TV to watch films and the Presidents' speeches. But in the Blankzone? Well, no one knows for sure; there is too much radiation, and no communication has been had from within the area since the events of The Melt. One evening, a few weeks after James' 17th Birthday, he and his family are gathered around their TV to watch the latest speech from the President of the Federation. After it's finished, his parents tell him that he's about to drafted into the military, as he's achieved the highest markers in the area on Federation statutory tests. From that moment on, his life is going to go on a trajectory that he'd never dreamed of.
While Cut From Stone was an interesting trope, it's one that is somewhat reminiscent of K. A. Riley's The Resistance Trilogy and the following books. The East is cast as a shadowy, unknowable terror encroaching on the Free World, and the government is happy to keep pushing that narrative. Teenagers are recruited at age seventeen to become super-human-weapons to be used against the East. But not everything is as the government tells them. Cut From Stone is eerily similar in this regard, with James and his cohort of new friends developing skills that are almost preternatural. As they go through more and more brutal training, James and his friend become more and more disaffected with the Federation's treatment of them.
There are many plot points of Cut From Stone that seem to be a bit extraneous to the story; characters who are featured quite a lot who then make no further appearance. Some of the characters from initial training, who are mentioned multiple times, who James seems to develop a small relationship with, disappear with nary a thought further on. Although, the one person that merits an early appearance and not much mention further on would be Kaylie; her mentions and appearances shows how James' apathy to his old life increases throughout his time in the military. How he has become conditioned to concentrate only on his team of fellow teens who now rely on him, as much as he relies on them.
In all, OMeara's novel is a good dystopian tale, although occasionally somewhat pedestrian and with a confusing and huge cast of characters.
S. A.