A fractured mind. A corrupt utopia. And a hidden truth.
Jenna Marquez lost five years—and the woman she loved. Now she drifts through the wreckage of a world reshaped by solar catastrophe, a ghost in a society that no longer remembers her.
Then comes an offer: a chance to start over inside The Lake—an artificial paradise where the dead are preserved, the rich play god, and criminals deal in buried memories.
But The Lake is no utopia. Beneath its digital sheen lies a powerful AI core with secrets of its own—secrets others will kill to possess. And Jenna is not the only one chasing them.
With enemies behind her and a mystery ahead, she must face the hardest truth of all:
Will she protect her future… or the future of humanity?
A fractured mind. A corrupt utopia. And a hidden truth.
Jenna Marquez lost five years—and the woman she loved. Now she drifts through the wreckage of a world reshaped by solar catastrophe, a ghost in a society that no longer remembers her.
Then comes an offer: a chance to start over inside The Lake—an artificial paradise where the dead are preserved, the rich play god, and criminals deal in buried memories.
But The Lake is no utopia. Beneath its digital sheen lies a powerful AI core with secrets of its own—secrets others will kill to possess. And Jenna is not the only one chasing them.
With enemies behind her and a mystery ahead, she must face the hardest truth of all:
Will she protect her future… or the future of humanity?
Three enormous, rhythmic crashes against the front door sent Jenna’s phone skittering from her hand to the grubby carpet. She froze, cigarette dangling from her lips. Gripping the arms of the chair, her eyes settled on the sash window. If she was quick, she could be away before they even knew she’d been here.
Creeping around the patches of decaying timber beneath the filthy rug, she stooped to pick up the phone. It buzzed in her hand, sending another apprehensive jolt through her chest. Her heart beating louder than her breathing, she tore her eyes from the window to glance at the screen.
You going to let me in?
She heaved a grateful sigh as unlocked the door. Stepping back, narrowly avoiding another concealed hole, she let the towering, dripping hairball inside.
‘Nice place,’ he remarked, casting about the dilapidation. ‘I know rats who would think twice about sleeping here. I hope your rent is cheap.’
‘You think I pay for this?’ she asked, relief flushing out the adrenaline. ‘Clearly I’m house sitting.’
‘For whom?’
‘No idea,’ she admitted. ‘I just hope they don’t come back. And you scared me half to death, smashing on the door like that. You absolute bastard. What you doing here, anyway?’
He paused, turning to her with a dramatic glare.
‘I need your help.’
‘With what? What’s so important you drag yourself from Chiswick to Lambeth on a night like this?’
‘You will not believe it,’ Barnaby began, shrugging out of his enormous overcoat, which she could easily have fit into twice, with room to spare for a small dog. ‘But I will tell you, anyway. Sit and shush your little mouth.’
She retook her seat, offering the one across the coffee table with a gesture. His story would be ridiculous. She would believe it, though, because it was him, and absurd things happened to him daily.
‘I am on the fourth floor of this abandoned hotel,’ he opened, leaning forward. ‘It is dark, with the floodlights shining through the rain on the windows, making the shadows move on the walls.’
The rain hammering against the window, the low lighting, and the smoke hazed room all added their weight to the oration straight from the plot of some spy movie. His Lithuanian accent heightened the ambience.
‘I place my bag on the floor and wait, making sure I am silhouetted by the window. For effect. To make myself look big.’
‘You’re already big,’ she remarked, an eyebrow raised. ‘You look like you were lured down from the mountains with a piece of meat.’
‘Alright. Bigger,’ he conceded. ‘A figure emerges from the shadows, carrying a sports bag. “Baltakis?” he asks. I say nothing. I am not there to chat. And who else would I be?’
She nodded, reaching to flick her ash into an ex-Bakewell tart tray on the faux-wood coffee table. An odd choice, using his real name. As with everything he did, it was either genius or idiocy, with little in between.
‘So the guy moves forward,’ he resumed, ‘but I still cannot make out his face. He opens the bag. There are bundles of banknotes in there.’
‘How many?’ she interrupted, curiosity elbowing her patience aside. Will she get a few of these notes? She needs notes.
‘Many,’ he replied, which appeared to be all he had to say about the cash. ‘He closes his bag slowly, then he lowers it to the floor, facing me all the while. I take the core from my backpack and show him. He—’
‘Wait, what do you mean, core?’ she interjected. ‘What core? You can’t drop something like that and move on.’
‘I am coming to that,’ he told her, waving a hand. ‘Anyway, he nods, so I place it back in the bag. Then…’
Now he paused. Three seconds would have been ample for effect. Five, and she’d had enough.
‘Then what? Come on, mate. Spit it out.’
‘He says the word,’ he intoned. Another overlong silence ensued as his features worked. A decision was being made in that giant head.
‘What bloody word?’ she asked at last. ‘You’re making me work way too hard for this.’
‘No, I am not telling you,’ he informed her, mind apparently made up, ‘but the moment he says it, I am running toward the window. It was only when I had crashed through, surrounded by shattered glass and plummeting toward a swimming pool, that I realise what I am doing. It was the most surreal experience. Then. Splash!’
He flashed open his hands for emphasis. Jenna leant her elbows on her knees. The culmination was close, judging by his wide-eyed glances around the room.
‘I drag my dripping ass from the pool, up four flights of stairs, but it is too late, of course. He has gone, taking the money and my AI core with him.’
So it was an AI core. Intriguing. They were used for transporting the seeds of artificial intelligence between The Lake’s data centres when the lights went out in 2054. They hadn’t been used in the nine years since.
‘Why is this core worth so much?’ she asked, leaning forward to put her cigarette out. ‘Surely they’re ten-a-penny these days? And pretty much worthless, since the infrastructure’s almost back where it was. They can just transfer them about over the net.’
‘It is… special,’ he conceded. ‘It is also a relic from the Reset. Since it is passing into a bad dream, there are those who would like a keepsake.’
He’d know she wouldn’t believe that was all there was to it. She leant forward, catching his eye.
‘So, if they hadn’t been able to hypnotise your giant ex-squaddie frame through a window, they would have shelled out a bag of cash for some defunct tech? What are you not telling me?’
‘Look, you are missing the point,’ he insisted, waving her question away. ‘They used some sort of mind control. I could have died.’
He wasn’t going to tell her, then. She wouldn’t push it. This thing was obviously significant, though. Intended to ferry the kernels of ancillary staff about, they had also been used to store and move the digitised essences of the undead as a last resort. There could well be a person in that thing. The hairy git holding out on her only heightened her curiosity. She’d wheedle it out of him in time.
‘It wasn’t the feat you think it was,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘You could be convinced to walk across lava for a doughnut.’
‘Oh, and you could have resisted?’ he asked, jabbing a finger at her. ‘The woman whose memory vanished overnight?’
‘I woke up in the hospital with a chunk of my life missing. It’s hardly the same thing.’
That deep, slumbering beast stirred in its sleep to claw at Jenna’s stomach. Five years. Gone. She tried not to think about it. When she did, a rising panic would pull at her, as though her mind was actively making her run from it. Not willing to walk that dark path again, she focused on her hirsute companion as he scratched at his thick, dark beard, producing a sound like a skirting board being sandpapered.
‘It is not so different,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Neither of us had any idea how we ended up where we did.’
She sat back as her tin foil ashtray began to judder across the table, auguring the foundation-shaking arrival of a Northern Line Tube train below. The dirty yellow glow of the wall-lights flickered. All other sound was drowned by the train as it thundered beneath them, convincing her the damn thing was about to come up through the floor. She might as well have lived on the platform. That it was temporary was a blessing in this respect, a curse in so many others. This dump was only marginally better than traipsing the streets looking for shelter. Could this AI core hold the answer she desperately sought? A way out?
The ever-present angst surfaced to goad her. The longing to haul herself out of this nomadic ocean onto any shore. This perpetual mould-ridden dilapidation, punctuated by blasts of panic as owners returned, was no life for a dog, let alone a service veteran. She was long used to pushing thoughts of her miserable subsistence aside, though, prioritising survival over the malaise of melancholy. Army training had been good for that, even if it had taught her to kill with the same detachment.
The rumble diminished to allow conversation. She relaxed back into the tattered chair with a sigh, draping her arms over the rests.
‘So, where are they now? Money, core, and buyer?’
‘I do not know,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘That is why I am here.’
‘Well, I don’t have them,’ she told him, raising her hands.
‘I know that, idiot. I am here because I need you to help me get them back.’
‘Oh, I’m the idiot?’ she asked with a wry laugh. ‘I wasn’t the one hypnotised into jumping through a window. Without a shadow of doubt, I’ve forgotten more in those lost years than you will ever know.’
‘You might be right,’ he conceded. ‘But until you can prove it, you are an idiot.’
She rolled her eyes, not even trying to suppress a smile. It really was good to see him again. Big, scruffy, and deeply cherished, so reminiscent of that well-loved teddy bear of her childhood—the provenance of his nickname. He was the driftwood she clung to as she felt herself being pulled under, when her mind was free of the distractions of staying alive.
‘Alright, whatever,’ she replied with a smile, resisting the urge to get up and give him a hug. ‘So you’re here because you want me to help you find this buyer and the core they stole?’
‘Yes. I will then sell it again, giving you a share.’
There it was. The carrot had been dangled. Having made his opening pitch, he watched her as she scratched her head, feeling the network of evenly spaced scars through her fluffy blonde pixie-cut projections—along with the wealth of thin lined scars that made her scalp look like a road map. Hidden by the haircut she hadn’t changed since she was fifteen, it was easy to forget they existed.
As she brought her hand down, the sparkle from her finger dragged the familiar, unfocused sense of deep loss from within. The delicate diamond ring, contrasting with the other cheap, chunky adornments beside it. She’d woken with it on her engagement finger, telling her she had loved and been loved in that chasm of the unknowable. The profound, undefined loss would bring her to the brink of tears in those quiet moments, without ever knowing who they were for. Sometimes she would wake up, convinced she was happy, healthy and loved. Until the world resolved around her to prove otherwise. That was what she wanted back as much as anything else, and she was kidding herself if she thought otherwise.
Money couldn’t buy that. But it was a start.
‘You in there, Marquez?’ Barnaby asked, an eyebrow raised at her silence. This foray into daydream happened occasionally, as though her mind insisted that she try to remember, then immediately demanded she not.
‘Sorry, mate. What did you say?’ she asked, reaching to fish another cigarette from the pack. ‘I was miles away.’
‘Yes, this I noticed. I was saying, we will meet tomorrow and go into The Lake to find this buyer.’
‘The Lake?’ she mumbled around the cigarette as she lit it. ‘No, no, no. Fuck that. Not a chance. I’m not going in there. People got trapped, slowly dying, believing they were living their best lives. I don’t trust it. They say people come out of there neurotic, you know. Like I need any more of that shit.’
‘Have you been living under a rock?’ he asked, frowning. ‘It is perfectly safe, and it is becoming the world we all live in. There is no more flying to your holiday, or halfway around the world to visit loved ones. You meet them in a café in Paris, or in Miami. Wherever the hell you want, but it is guaranteed to be better than the real world version. Why do you dismiss it?’
She didn’t know. Not exactly. A low-lying sense of foreboding would slink about in her stomach at the mention of the place, or when she saw those dazzling billboards blazing The Lake’s virtues from their dank surroundings. Was it a remnant from her missing past? Or a latent jealousy that only the wealthiest could get anywhere near it? Possibly both, but it sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.
‘Even if you’re right,’ she told him, squinting as she blew out a blue-grey plume. ‘I can’t afford the twenty-five grand minimum. You may have noticed I’ve had to get rid of the pool and one of the Bentleys.’
‘You do not pay,’ he clarified with a wag of his finger. ‘I pay for going in. You get paid for helping me when we are in there.’
She blinked at him, chewing her cheek as she mulled it over. Death trap or otherwise, the promise of money and the chance at building a life teased like a siren from The Lake’s digital shores. She shouldn’t get carried away, though. Barnaby had no money. He constantly got himself involved in daft antics like this, usually amounting to nothing and leaving him worse off. Anything he did earn, he could never keep hold of. So how could he afford this? And for what? Some relic from the coronal mass ejection that plunged civilisation into a technology-devoid wilderness nearly a decade ago? The world had moved on, not quite forgetting, but gently nudging it into history. Jenna took a long draw on the cigarette as Barnaby maintained his “well?” expression.
‘What?’ she asked, frowning. ‘I said no.’
‘Come on, Marquez!’ he persisted, slapping the arms of his chair. ‘You need money. I need help. All the pieces fit.’
As she stared at the table, vacillating, he moved to catch her eye.
‘Jenna. Please.’
‘Oh, so it’s Jenna now is it, Dmitri?’ she asked, eyebrows raised. ‘This must be serious. What do you need me for, though? I’m not special.’
‘Au contraire, little woman,’ he replied. ‘You are tough, small, and very good at taking what is not yours. I am still finding half my shit missing from when we were bunkmates. Which is another, more important reason I need you.’
His dark eyes stared into hers as he took a deep breath.
‘We served together. I trust you, and only you. I have no one else.’
And she trusted him. They had each other, and that was about it. Everyone anywhere close to a friend had disappeared, along with that half decade between ’53 and ’58. The five years since had yielded this one comrade-in-arms from her service. Before the memory hole had opened up, she’d had no friends and one brother. Now she had an indispensable friend, but no brother—a casualty of the CME “Reset”. A friend for a part of her soul was a totally unfair exchange, no matter how good the friend.
‘Will you help me or not?’ he asked, forestalling another melancholic reverie. He was right, of course. She did need the money. Desperately. But going into The Lake, facing that unknown dread head on? Yet it was the chance at a new life. Recapturing the old one, perhaps. Now that was a thought. Could she find the woman who’d given her this ring with his payout? Her eyes flicked to Barnaby.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she conceded.
‘There is nothing to think about. Just say yes. It is a simple decision. How about I sweeten up the deal a little? I will get you a date with my sister as a bonus.’
She rolled her eyes as she sat forward.
‘Listen, I don’t want to date your sister. Actually, that’s bollocks. I would date your sister in a heartbeat because, unlike you, you gargoyle, she’s gorgeous. But she’s straight, and far more importantly, she’s not yours to pimp out!’
‘Well, that is all I have,’ he conceded, throwing up his hands. ‘The promise of money, a date with my straight sister, and the pleasure of my company. And what do you have to lose? You have no job, no family, no money, no home—’
‘Alright, don’t rub it in,’ she cut in, leaning forward to flick ash. He was right on all counts, but she didn’t need it hammering home. It was enough that she had to live it daily.
‘I’m just saying you can only gain from this.’
The list of pros was crushing the cons beneath its significant bulk. Although getting stuck in The Lake was a concern, there were worse places to be stranded. An artificial reality paradise that was as real as anything out here, but tuned up and optimised to be the best it could be. This place, for example, would be a luxury city apartment, boasting views of the Thames. And not through the floor, as she suspected would be the case when she lifted the carpet in the bedroom.
The adverts boasted they had sorted it out after the events of ’54, anyway. Gone were the sub-standard, lower tiers responsible for the derogatory headlines. It was one expensive, luxurious size fits all now, with tiers of further decadence available as nickel and dime addons.
She took a breath, glancing at his eager expression. How much money was on offer? She needed a decent payout to set her going again. Enough to pull herself into the world of the people whose lives she both ridiculed and envied. With safety and stability, perhaps she would find herself a decent girl and do the relationship thing. Or finally find that one girl she somehow loved, but knew nothing about. Her eyes dropped to the dainty diamond ring, her mind made up. Almost.
‘Alright. You’ve nearly convinced me. How much are we talking?’
‘Oh, I do not know,’ he muttered with a shrug. ‘How about five fifty?’
‘Get fucked,’ she retorted, hurling herself back with a derisory laugh to mask the stomach-lurching disappointment. ‘What good would five hundred and fifty quid do me? It’s not even enough for a couple of packs of your black market cigs.’
‘No,’ he replied, meeting her gaze. ‘Five hundred and fifty thousand.’
Her heart, only recently settled from its adrenaline overdose, began to pound once more. She searched his features for mockery, unsure how to react, with her cigarette paused midway to her mouth. She drew deeply on it when it completed its journey.
‘Are you serious?’ she asked, releasing the smoke, poorly suppressing her excitement. ‘As in, five hundred and fifty thousand Great British pounds?’
Barnaby’s smile twitched into life.
‘Yes. Well, maybe the euro or dollar. Pound is not worth a crap these days.’
This was her shot. She had to do it. Didn’t she? Regardless of her proud reluctance to entrust herself to the technology. The alternative, the prospect of being found a frigid corpse in one of those doorways. There could be only one answer. The grin spread as she reached across to slap his arm.
‘Why didn’t you lead with that, you dick? I would follow you into hell and nick the devil’s trident for half a mil. I’m in. Of course I’m in.’
‘Aha! And there we have it. The decider. Come. Drink with me. Celebrate our partnership.’
He reached down, producing a bottle of vodka from his battered rucksack. She didn’t recognise the brand, so it had to be better than the cheap stuff she knew intimately. Another unexpected expense by the big man, yet no less welcome. A concern about this newfound wealth flickered, only to be extinguished by the sound of liquid hitting glass.
‘Now we’re talking,’ she announced, rubbing her hands together. ‘See, this is something else you should have front loaded into the conversation.’
‘No, no,’ he replied, handing her a glass, which he’d also produced from his seemingly infinite bag. ‘I needed to know I was getting a friend, not a mercenary alcoholic.’
‘The two are not mutually exclusive,’ she replied, eying his rucksack. ‘What else you got in there, Hairy Poppins? A mini-fridge? Ice?’
He raised his glass, chuckling.
‘Better. I have our future. To The Lake,’ he toasted.
‘The Lake,’ she agreed, raising her own glass, adding with a frown, ‘Although I’d still prefer to wait until they came out.’
He shook his head as he rammed his glass onto the table to refill it.
‘They practically live in there. It is a haven for those with an excess of both money and unscrupulous enemies. You cannot die and are in a location unknown. Not what they had in mind for the place when they started out, I am sure.’
She nodded at him through the helical column of smoke rising from her defunct cigarette. If it was as safe as they said, the worst that could happen was a mini break in the lap of luxury, which she was long overdue. Assuming she could repress this inconvenient dread of the place for long enough to enjoy it. If it was good enough for crime bosses, though…
‘I have just one more question,’ she announced, recalling his brush with his own criminal gang as she downed her shot.
‘Go on.’
She leant forward, serious.
‘What was it?’
‘What was what?’ he asked, frowning.
‘The word that made you jump through a window.’
‘I cannot tell you that,’ he cried, sitting back, laughing. ‘What if it still works?’
‘Come on,’ she persisted, her lip curling into a half-smile. ‘Whatever they did to you must have worn off by now. Even if it hasn’t, I won’t say it. I only want to know so I can avoid saying it by accident.’
Barnaby shook his shaggy head as he stood to pace to the opaquely grimy, rain-streaked window.
‘You will say it, you mischievous little rat.’
Jenna put on her best injured expression.
‘Of course I won’t! I don’t want you smashing this window. It’s pissing down and blowing a gale out there. I don’t want all that in here. So, what was it? Give me a hint.’
He picked at the drooping wallpaper as he mulled it over, turning back after a moment.
‘Alright. But you must swear not to say it. I mean it.’
‘I won’t, I swear to god,’ she vowed, sitting straight, holding her hand to her chest.
‘You do not believe in god.’
‘Oh, just tell me!’
He studied her for a moment, then took a breath.
‘Alright. It is the pattern you see in the sky when it rains and it is also sunny.’
‘What, rainbow?’ she asked, stifling a grin. Barnaby stared at her for a moment, panic widening those dark eyes that now flicked around the room, his hands out before him. When nothing happened, the fear gave way to a broadening, beardy smile.
‘You little bastard! I knew you would say it. What if I had smashed myself through your window?’
Jenna laughed as she clinked glasses with him.
‘I would have come out there to help you. Right after I’d stopped pissing myself.’
The deal was made. A pact, to be sealed with a vast quantity of vodka, confirming that, should she need to, she would follow him into hell to get that trident. He would do no less for her. Especially for a life-changing half a million.
An irregular spatter of rain against the window caught her attention as she swallowed another shot, her smile waning. Technology could be behind her lost years. The thought had occurred often. If so, was placing herself back in its care unwise? Possibly, yet it was now unavoidable if she wanted her life, and love, back. The weight of that loss scattered her doubts. The Lake, a mirage promising her the life she’d lost, beckoned.
Newborn is a fast-paced thriller that follows Jenna Marquez into the heart of a high-tech dystopia as she seeks to save her best friend, Barnaby, from ruthless loan sharks after his attempt to sell a highly valuable piece of technology goes disastrously wrong. At Barnaby’s behest, she immerses herself in a virtual reality paradise known as “The Lake,” intent on retrieving the stolen item from the Colombian crime boss responsible for robbing him. But things take an unexpected turn when she begins to develop feelings for her intended target.
Christian Blackwell does a masterful job of depicting a gritty London ravaged by economic inequality. The city’s wealthy elite isolate themselves in the Lake, reveling in the opulence and hedonistic pleasures that it has to offer while leaving the working masses to fend for themselves in the grim reality of the outside world.
Jenna’s alienation from her upper-middle-class roots leads her to identify instead with the city’s vast underclass. When seen in this light, every act of skullduggery that she engages in becomes an act of rebellion against the city’s predatory economic system, endearing her to readers who share her sentiments about the stark disparities that increasingly characterize contemporary global society.
As the narrative progresses, Jenna’s amnesiac mind finds itself increasingly haunted by fleeting, fragmented memories of Clara, her former fiancée. As everything progressively unravels around her, Jenna’s love for Clara remains intact, impelling her to seek redemption. This is perhaps the most appealing aspect of the story, as Jenna struggles against her childhood trauma and dire economic circumstances to become a better human being.
Moreover, the novel also explores a pertinent topic, contemplating the type of ethical obligations that humans might owe to sapient lifeforms brought into existence by advanced AI.
Nevertheless, the background context against which the story unfolds is insufficiently detailed. Jenna and other characters constantly allude to a cataclysmic event known as ‘‘The Great Reset.’’ However, its consequences are only cursorily described, providing only a partial insight into the type of world the protagonist resides in. I also found it unsatisfying how the most pivotal parts of Jenna’s past remain a mystery for much of the story and are only hurriedly revealed towards the end.
Ultimately, Newborn is a welcome addition to the dystopian genre and will appeal to readers who enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy as teens and are now craving a more mature heroine whom they can relate to.
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