The 45th Parallel, page 1
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
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
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Book Club Questions
Author Bio
The 45th Parallel
Antipodes Book 6
Copyright © 2023 T.S. Simons. All rights reserved.
4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.
1497 Main St. Suite 169
Dunedin, FL 34698
4horsemenpublications.com
info@4horsemenpublications.com
Cover by J. Kotick
Typesetting by S. Wilder
Editor Jen Paquette
All rights to the work within are reserved to the author and publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please contact either the Publisher or Author to gain permission.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022945574
Paperback ISBN-13: 979-8-8232-0038-7
Audiobook ISBN-13: 979-8-8232-0036-3
Ebook ISBN-13: 979-8-8232-0037-0
Dedication
Caitlin, I was never fortunate enough to have a daughter of my own. You are a strong woman ready to take on the world. I can’t wait to see what you achieve in life. Reach for the stars and never settle for less than you deserve.
Acknowledgements
People come and go, but in a year of immense and tumultuous personal challenge, you learn who your genuine friends are. Those who stand by you when the going gets tough, who are always ready to listen on the other end of a phone or a message. The ones who check-in, for no reason other than they care—those are your people. I am truly blessed to have you in my life.
Four Horsemen- thank you for believing in me, and especially Jen- thank you for your edits. I love working with you.
Serafina, Chelle, Stevie, Deb—you ladies are all awesome authors in your own right, and I am so happy to call you friends.
BB—knowing someone has your back makes all challenges achievable. I can’t wait to see what the future brings. Love you.
To everyone who has bought, reviewed, or recommended one of my books—thank you. While I am an over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived, and overthinking night owl, knowing that someone eventually reads my books makes it all worthwhile.
Chapter 1
The steel band tightened around my chest as we lugged our possessions down the winding dirt path in the dim pre-dawn light. “Move, will you! Stop dragging your bony ass.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Sera hissed from the shadowy gloom behind me, “it is entirely because of you we need to run away like criminals in the middle of the night! If you hadn’t been stupid enough to play them off against each other…”
“I didn’t think they would actually do it,” I fired back, panting as I clambered through the access hatch in the dome, holding it open for my sister. “Who would have known that they were stupid enough to fucking duel? Where do they think we are? The eighteenth century?”
“Bloody men,” Sera muttered, dropping her bags through. “They will do anything to get in your pants.”
“I can’t help it. I didn’t want this,” I murmured, moving out of her way.
“Oh, who are you kidding, Caitlin?” she sniped as she stepped through behind me and closed the hatch. “You lapped it up. You love the attention, flaunting your curves and using your tits to your best advantage. You loved every second until they worked out you were shagging them both. I just didn’t think they would fight over you. Not physically, anyway.”
Stopping dead in the road, I exclaimed, “Hey! Don’t you think I am worth it?”
Sera grumbled. “Sometimes. Right now, out here in the freezing cold, carrying everything I own and not asleep in my warm bed, frankly, no. I don’t.”
“Fair call. Give me your laptop bag. I can carry it.”
As the pink gold of dawn tinged the edges of the horizon, we moved into the deadzone beyond, that bleak space where no one had lived for over thirty years, not since every living thing perished after water-borne protozoa rampaged across the earth. The only survivors were the people, plants, and animals carefully selected to live in protected, domed communities. Outside was a wasteland—death as far as the eye could see. The air outside the domes was thinning to almost unbreathable levels, although replanting projects were underway to restore the oxygen levels before they dropped to a point where we couldn’t travel between communities. The few of us who traveled needed to carry oxygen canisters, although most people were too fearful of being infected. With the lack of living vegetation, erosion had been devastating to the earth’s surface. Dust storms now battered the shells almost weekly, pitting the waterproof but breathable fabric surface of our home. The torrential pummeling had caused many communities to develop backup plans in case the domes were breached, exposing us to the deadly protozoa.
Unapproved travel between domed communities was prohibited, but since one of our mothers was Chief, we prayed she might make an exception for us, though we knew it was unlikely she would cut us any slack. Besides, we couldn’t exactly stay here. Being a former military officer, and now Chief of the Association of Collective Communities, Illyria was tough and treated us no differently than her team. Fair, but firm. Seraphine and I were full sisters; although we had never been told the complete story behind our conception, many of the files were redacted or missing. We knew from one of our regular attempts at accessing our medical files that our biological mother Freyja had donated her eggs, and they were modified by a team of scientists twenty years ago. Along with twenty-four other girls, we were immune to the protozoa that still existed in all water on earth. All water, except in the protected communities where we lived. Antipodes had once linked these communities, portals open only on the solstices and equinoxes, which joined a domed community with its partner at the opposite point on the earth. Fourteen years ago, those portals had been deactivated by our mothers, Illyria and Freyja, and Tadhg and Jake from the Newgrange community where we had lived for several years.
Leaving Callie and Tadhg made tears spring to my eyes, especially running away in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. Jake and Makayla, too. They had treated us like family since we arrived to undertake our apprenticeships. Even though Sera and I had our tiny cottage on the outskirts of the main township, Callie insisted we come for dinner weekly, or she would drop off meals at our place several times a week when we had a deadline. Initially, I thought she was monitoring us to send reports on our welfare to Cam, our Dad. Since they first met in Melbourne at the initial selection testing, she had remained one of his best friends. But over time, I realized Callie was one of the most genuine and kindest people I knew. Much like Aunt Di, both were Australian, wholesomely good people, making everyone feel welcome within minutes of meeting them. Callie was open and honest, with never a bad word to say about anyone. With every meal she served, she made us feel at home and special.
After living in our own place for so long, I wondered where we would stay when we got home. We had been raised by two mothers and a father in a joined home with our various siblings and a menagerie of pets. “The madhouse,” Illy had called it. Our biological father, Luca, had been murdered before we were born. But we were loved and nurtured by all our parents and siblings. Sera and I were born a few days apart, to different surrogates, but had learned that we were full siblings after our seventh birthday as we had been returning from a cross-world journey to Australia, and my parents felt I needed something positive to outweigh the trauma I had experienced. We had always been close: best friends. But now, we were inseparable. Illy often teased that we were as close as
We clambered aboard the vessel, and I untied the craft as Sera started the engine. I cringed, listening to her starting it, the grinding shuddering down my spine, wishing she would let me manage the more mechanical aspects. We had lived in Newgrange, apprenticed to Jake, Callie, and Tadhg for the past three years, and it was an odd feeling knowing we were leaving for good. They had trained me as an engineer, primarily tasked with ensuring that we maintained a stable power supply for our burgeoning communities, using a variety of solar, wind, hydro, and algal bioreactors, though I often meddled in other aspects of engineering, finding power generation limiting. There was so much I wanted to learn. Seraphine was a technical genius and had not yet discovered a challenge she could not conquer. Throughout our apprenticeships, we learned all the skills the experts offered across technology, communications, satellite, and engineering. But for the past year, Sera and I had been bored witless and continually looked for new projects to keep us entertained, waiting for our teachers to admit that they had no more to teach us. We had learned to access file shares and databases and open top-secret encrypted files. There wasn’t much we hadn’t read in the Collective’s extensive file repository.
Tadhg had worked as Technical Lead for the Collective for fourteen years and had access to every file. As a result, so did we. While we started by learning his password, we soon learned to bypass the security protocols and avoid detection as we hacked every level of the Collective’s files. It was a game, and it gave us both a thrill. Sera’s skills were more technical; mine more equipment based. But combined, our talents allowed us to achieve most goals. Every Monday, we would set each other a task to accomplish, setting the bar higher each time, timing ourselves and trying to better our score. The loser was forced to wash the clothes for the week.
Not wanting to return to our rural community of Lewis, Sera and I had agreed to stay quiet about our boredom and remain here. Everything had been great until I had stupidly started dating both Finn and Reilly about a year ago. Finn was dark, super-intelligent, and specialized in electrical engineering, although when I could get him to engage in conversation, his expertise spanned all technical fields. Living at the remote far end of the community, he was tall, muscular, and quiet. He let me do all the talking when we were together, which suited me just fine. I didn’t want him for conversational skills. Finn was the best kisser I had ever been with and made me go weak at the knees just at the thought of those rugged, muscular arms wrapped around me. Although naturally quiet, he was dominant at night and loved to please me, which every girl secretly desires.
Reilly was fair-haired, a teacher, and lived near town. Charismatic and charming, Reilly was a born storyteller with a wicked sense of humor. While not classically handsome like Finn, he regularly had me in fits of laughter, regaling me with tales of his students and their antics. Reilly had a knack for helping me to stop dwelling on my thoughts, making my brain slow down, at least for a time. For different reasons, I genuinely liked them both. They were lovely guys, but neither was long-term relationship material. I enjoyed their company, and Sera had often teased me that if I could splice their DNA into one person, I would be happy. While I thought I had the situation under control, I hadn’t realized the depth of their feelings, which was brought to a head when Finn, quite unfortunately, proposed in a very public setting. At twenty, I was nowhere near ready to settle down with only one guy for the rest of my life and get married. There were far too many choices, and I was having too much fun. I also suspected that they only wanted to be with me knowing that I was immune and any children I mothered would also be immune. Who wouldn’t want that legacy for their own family? Reilly had bristled and counter-proposed in an even more outlandish fashion. As a result, Finn’s wonderfully romantic but mortifyingly public declaration of love had led to a humiliating spectacle outside my home with the two men shirt-fronting each other. Embarrassed by my lack of ethics put on public display and expecting a brawl, I had called them out and mockingly suggested a duel, thinking they would realize I was joking, and they would storm off, leaving me to slink inside, horrified that I had been busted, planning a way to avoid them both for the rest of my life. They hadn’t. Reilly, ever theatrical, had boomed his acceptance, puffed out his chest, and challenged Finn to a fight with staffs at dawn, as there were no swords on Newgrange.
“May the best man win the fair maiden’s hand,” he had bellowed at the gathering crowd. To my utter astonishment, despite being the gentlest man I knew, Finn had bowed solemnly and accepted. They pledged to fight for me and went away to train. The crowd took some time to disperse, and I fled. Barricading myself in my home, I fervently hoped one would come to their senses, and it would blow over, or Kevin, the leader of the Newgrange community, would hear the community gossip and put a stop to it. Unbeknownst to me, Kevin had left for Clava that morning with Jake and Tadhg, and no one else felt it was their place to intervene. It hadn’t been until Sera had seen them practicing that she had hastily packed and bundled me up and out of Newgrange in the dead of night, leaving an apologetic note on Callie’s doorstep, knowing that she was off babysitting grandchildren awaiting an imminent new arrival. Callie alone would have halted proceedings had she known.
“Will you miss them?” Sera asked, glancing back at me in the dim light. She had just started seeing someone herself, a lovely guy from the medical team, and I felt terrible ripping her away before it developed into something special.
“They were nice boys, just … simple.”
“They aren’t simple, Caitlin. Finn is a genius. He would never usurp him, but he knows more than Tadhg. They are just no match for you.” Sera sounded forlorn as we watched the shadowy coast of Ireland pass, the glow of the golden orange dawn light shining off the wet rocks. “You are a firecracker, and they will never tame you.”
“Maybe.”
“They would have bored you soon enough. You need someone who completes you. Like Dad does for Mum.”
“But when will that be? I’ve met plenty of nice boys, but I don’t want nice. I want someone who challenges me.”
“Do you think your Dad does that for your Mum? Di for Aunt Sorcha?”
I pondered that for a moment, splashing waves echoing around the deck. “Dad isn’t stupid, but he isn’t the same as our Mums. Both of them are brilliant. No one takes them on.”
“But she adores him,” Sera pushed. “Maybe intelligence isn’t everything. Maybe it is enough to find someone you love unconditionally.”
“But I would be so bored!”
“Look at my Mum. She is crazy, stupid smart. Even Summer and Ally said she was the more intelligent one between her and Dad. Dad was great at his job, but Mum had the academic smarts. They also said they were the happiest couple they had ever seen.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
At least once a month, we had this conversation. Although I had never said so to Sera, I had long suspected that Illy’s traumatic loss of Luca, her great love, was why Sera and her sisters were relationship-shy, fearful of meeting someone special, making them a central part of their life and then losing them.
Sera released the breath in her lungs. “Me too. Mum still talks about him; I know it is for us to know what he was like. But all it does is make me envious that Summer and Al got to meet him, and I didn’t. Then I feel bad. I am so lucky to have two Mums and your Dad, but…”
“I know. I feel it too. I am pleased that I had three parents, but I couldn’t help but feel that I missed out on something the others got. Alasdair never met him, and Thorsten doesn’t remember, but the twins do. Bits and pieces.” I sighed. “Twenty years. Your poor Mum. I can’t believe she never met anyone else.”
“She says no one ever came close. She had her one great love, and that was enough. But it wasn’t enough time. One day when your Mum was cranky at your Dad for something, I overheard her advise Freyja to cherish each moment because you never know when it will be your last.”
“The thing was, I don’t think I felt that way about any boy I have met.”
