“Need me to walk you back to your car?”
He smiles wryly. “I'll manage.”
Chapter 16
Ben sleeps with me that night, bunched under the covers, smaller than he has looked in a long time. Usually I quite like a snuggle with my boy, but the whole night is a struggle. I wake several times with his elbow in my eye.
Morning comes creeping in like a fog. We are all up the moment the sun slithers over the slums, none of us having slept well. We eat in almost silence. It goes without saying that there's no school today, but plenty to be done.
“I want to go the Phoenix headquarters,” says Abi. “I want to see what I can do to help.”
“Me too!” Ben chimes.
I nod solemnly. I may want to keep them out of there, I may want to keep them safe, locked up here in our crumbling concrete tower, but if yesterday showed me anything, it was that no where is safe. They will feel safer helping. Like I did.
Mi clears his throat. “Well, you know where I stand on the subject.”
“I know. Let's clean up and head out.”
The walk towards the market place takes forever. People are already back out, continuing with the work we started yesterday. The devastation spread far. Half of the school is little more than a blackened hull, the building next to it a pile of rubble. The school will be rebuilt, eventually. The building will be used for parts, or left to crumble into nothing.
I'm not entirely sure how to get back to Phoenix HQ. The back entrance is a bit far away for everyone else, so I'm thinking of the secret entrance, although my level one clearance is unlikely to get me very far. Luckily –or unluckily– I see Pilot assisting with the erection of a rebuilt stall.
“Hey,” I say.
Pilot groans. “Oh, it's you.”
It's a step up from 'super-freak.'
“My family wants to sign up.”
“Your family?” His brow crinkles as he takes us all in. We couldn't be less alike. “Right. Your fellow... um...”
“You can call us chimeras, if it helps,” says Abi pointedly.
“Yeah, sure. Well, Nick isn't here–”
“But I am!”
Scarlet appears, lugging a tool kit. She smiles at us, with far more cheer than a morning like this should really warrant. Her short hair sticks out like the petals of a daisy.
“Your family, huh?” she grins. “Nice to meet y'all. You lookin' to sign up?”
“Who's speaking?” Mi whispers to me, not particularly quietly. “She sounds pretty. Is she pretty?”
“Too pretty for you.”
Scarlet laughs. “Name's Scarlet, and I'm sure if Ashe and I had talked a little more, she'd have told me a lot about you.”
Names and pleasantries are exchanged, and she agrees to take us to HQ. We walk down to the secret entrance together.
“Fascinating,” Abi comments. “These tunnels must be part of an old railway line. You added the entrances yourself?”
Scarlet nods. “In days gone by, they led all the way to Luca, but they're fully blocked up now. Believe me, we tried. We do not have the resources to dig through them again.”
I know that the whole aim of the Phoenix Project is to make the world better, but I can't help but wonder how they hope to achieve that in the long run. What would they do, if they could tunnel into Luca? Would they burn the place down, like I said I would the Institute? Or are there things in the city worth saving?
Abi asks lots of questions as we walk, mostly about the construction and maintenance of the tunnels, how they've been lit, how long they've been using them etc. Ben holds my hand and asks if we're there yet. He's not too keen on the dark. Before long, we arrive at the main door; Scarlet swipes her wrist under a scanner, which leads to another slew of questions from Abi. Ben gasps when we enter the main arena.
“It's so big!”
“Hmm, bit bright for my tastes,” Mi says.
Abi elbows him in the side.
Scarlet leads us into the mess hall, where she locates Rudy and introduces us.
“Ah, your family came around to your outlook, then?” Rudy raises an eyebrow. “How fortunate.”
“Yesterday put a lot of things in perspective,” I say stonily. “And believe me, they have things to offer.”
He glances at Mi. “I heard about you from Dr Thorne. She seemed quite impressed with you yesterday.”
“I was glad to be able to help,” Mi responds, holding out his hand, “and I am keen to do so again.”
“Is that so?” Rudy takes his hand, the cold metal fingers gripping Mi's thin fleshy ones.
“Nice prosthetic,” Mi says. “Whole arm?”
“You can tell?”
“I can hear it. It goes all the way up to your shoulder?”
Rudy is wearing a jacket; it is impossible to tell from looking alone. Sometimes, I will close my eyes and try to imagine what it's like, to live with Mi's senses. My hearing is exceptional, but even I couldn't make that out.
“Impressive,” Rudy says, with a fraction of genuine admiration. “Well, you better get down to Harris, and then run along to Dr Thorne's. She is a very willing teacher.”
“I'd like to help too,” Abi says.
Rudy did not second-guess Mi when he saw that he was blind, but he does a slight double-take with Abi. I'm not sure if it's her age, her paint-splattered dress, or her wild curls stuck with a pencil.
“Oh? And what's your particular skill set?”
“I have a computer for a brain.”
He raises his eyebrow further. “1422 divided by 73?”
“19.4794–”
“OK, we'll assume that's right. Probability of it raining tomorrow?”
“Forty-three percent.”
“Time it will take to get the market square back to normal?”
“Ten-point-four working hours until normal function can resume, based on past data and current manpower. I would need more information as the definition of 'normal' in order to–”
“All right, final question. What's the likelihood of one of you being some kind of spy?”
Abi blinks at him. I keep expecting her to answer –I would just say zero percent– but she's too stunned. Scarlet looks at Rudy, aghast.
“Scarlet, could you take everyone to Harris, please?” I ask, as calmly as I can. Scarlet nods, looking happy to be free of the situation. I wait until they've disappeared down the hall.
“What the hell do you have against me and my family?” I spit.
“I don't know you, or them.”
“So where do you get off on–”
“I've heard rumours about the place you came from. I think that sort of place could do things to a person. And I think it's strange you've been here so long and have only just decided to join, and that, one day later, there's a raid.”
“If you think we had anything to do with that–”
“I don't know what to think.”
“There's no way I would be in league with the Lucans. No way. They’re as bad as the Institute. They'd rather people like Mi were dead. They attacked my family, and they are going to pay.”
“Tough words for a rookie.”
“I think it's pretty well established that I've always been tough,” I hiss. “You better pray you don't get in my way.”
Chapter 17
By the time I get to Harris, Abi and Mi have already been given their passes, thankfully with more warning than I got. Harris declines, sensibly, to give Ben one, especially since he won't be staying at the base and shouldn't need access. The engineer is incredibly fascinated by Abi, and is asking her more questions than she did in the tunnel. She is equally curious about what he does. I can sense they're going to get along.
Scarlet takes Mi to the clinic, and Ben goes with them. I ask him to get Julia to give him a check-up. He seems fine, just a little bruised, but I don't want to take chances. I wander back to the mess hall, searching for something to do. The place is largely empty except for the younger members. I guess m
ost people are still out searching for the missing pax victim or cleaning up the city. I find someone with access and head to the garage to help with loading up vans and sorting out supplies. I wish Nick was here.
Things get a little busier around lunchtime, when people trickle into the mess hall for food, and my family materialises again. Ben has apparently been helping Julia organise her lab and has received an apple for his efforts. Abi has been assisting Harris with certain 'algorithms' and other words I don't know. Mi is so enamoured with Julia already, I half expect him to declare he's moving in. Julia smiles as he thanks her, assuring him that she's grateful to have such an obliging pupil.
When the others move away to clear their plates, she turns to me. There are dark circles under her eyes, and a weight to the sallowness of her skin.
“I hope they've not been a handful,” I say.
“Not at all,” she replies. “I meant what I said; Mi is an excellent pupil. I think he'll be a great asset.”
“But Ben?”
She chuckles. “He is a little enthusiastic.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Don't be. He's sweet. You've done so well with him.”
Before I can ask what she means, the others return, but quickly depart. Scarlet is going to give them a tour. I already have my bearings and decline to join. Julia asks to run a few more non-invasive tests. She wants to measure my speed, strength, accuracy. These are the kind of tests I actually enjoy. It's like a competition, one I know I'll win. We head to the gym rather than her lab.
There were a few places in the Institute I actually had fond memories of. One of them was the gym. I loved training. I loved testing myself. I loved fighting. And unlike when they'd let us loose in the woods surrounding the compound, things were controlled there. No one ever made me kill anything in the gym.
Julia measures numerous things, and I surpass her expectations in each. I even surpass my own. I remember every one of my personal bests from my time in the Institute, and I've gotten better since then. After about an hour of running, jumping, punching and climbing, I sit down and Julia hands me a glass of water while she ticks off things on her clipboard.
“Does it bother him?” she asks suddenly.
“Bother who?”
“Michael. Mi. Does it bother him, being... you know?”
I swallow, remember Mi's words. I was expendable. “More than he will admit,” I tell her.
“I'm surprised they couldn't fix him.”
“They tried. At first, they hoped that time would heal him. Most of us heal super quickly as it is. When it didn't, they tried other things–”
“A transplant?”
I shook my head. “They considered it, but they couldn't get a precise match. We're too unique. His body would have rejected it.”
I leave out the part of this story when Gabe begged them to take one of his eyes. I can still remember the exact sound of his fists hammering against the door. Mi was crying in the corner of the room in Abi and Ben's arms, and I stood between him and his brother, wondering who I should go to, and why they wouldn't consider it. One eye is a lot easier to adapt to than none.
“We escaped because they wanted to shred him,” I tell Julia, instead of telling her about Gabe. The entire story rushes out of me. “They kept him around for weeks at first, despite their creed that only the strong survive. I don't think they expected us to protect him. What the Institute failed to understand was that we were only following what we had been told: only the strong survive. Mi was strong. Perhaps the strongest of us all, because he got up every day when someone told him not to bother. It never occurred to us –not for a moment– that there was anything defective about him. He helped us realise who the defective ones were.”
My fists have coiled into tight circles, my short nails digging into my palms. I hate them with renewed vigour, and I hate the Lucans for echoing their sentiments.
Julia slides down beside me and places a hand on my shoulder. She gulps audibly, and then opens her mouth as if to speak. She doesn't. She cannot find the words.
Luckily, the door opens. Nick enters, breathless and dishevelled. He smiles when he spots me, and I feel hot.
“Ah, Jules,” he says. “You've got a patient. Nothing too serious, but–”
Julia bolts upwards. “I'm on my way. Would you mind–” she gestures to her equipment.
Nick nods, and she sweeps out of the room with nothing but her clipboard. He diligently begins to tidy everything away.
“How are you?” he asks.
“Fitter than ever, according to Julia.”
“I meant, how are you... after yesterday?”
I hold up my hands. They're still a little pink, but the wounds are closed and barely visible. Nick seizes one. I generally don't like people touching me without warning, but there's something about his fascination with me that excites me.
“That's amazing,” he says, turning it over. “You can barely tell–” He lies out his own in comparison, and then becomes conscious of what he's doing, of my skin on his. He drops his hands away and mutters an apology.
“It's all right. For some reason, I don't seem to mind when it's you.” The hotness in my cheeks ripens. “Are there any showers here?” I ask, suddenly aware of the sweat I've worked up.
“Y-yes. Of course. The dorms. This way.”
He leads me off down a narrow corridor. We pass a series of rooms, made up for sleeping. I expected something cold and clinical like the Institute, but the resemblance is minimal. The beds are mismatched and the sheets are an explosion of colour. There's clothes strewn about the floor, over chairs and headboards and chests. The rooms are packed with gear, books and stuff. Some even have drawings pinned to the walls.
“Which one's yours?” I ask Nick.
He smiles. “I've got my own. I've been here a long time.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. You?”
“Eighteen, I think.”
He cringes slightly at I think. I remember being told I was thirteen before I escaped the Institute, but I have no notion of when my birthday might be.
“How long have you been here?” I ask, to save him from any awkwardness. “Doesn't seem like it can be too long, if you're only nineteen.”
“I was ten, when I came here.”
“Ten? That's young. You got any family?"
Nick smiles, jerking his head towards the mess hall. “Sure. Out there.”
“C'mon. I shared my story with you,” most of it. “'Fess up. What's the tragic backstory?”
“I lived the first ten years of my life in Luca,” he explains. “Middle ring. My mother was a doctor. From what I remember, she was a good person. I remember her arguing with dad once, about them needing to do more. Said it wasn't enough to hide the suffering.”
“Why would he argue with that?”
“Because she kept going to visit the slums. He said it was dangerous. Turns out that they were both right; she brought the pax home with her. Truck picked us up at the first sign of a rash and ditched us here. They were dead within weeks.”
“But not you?”
“No, not me.”
It's unusual, someone surviving the pax in a family. They must have been extremely careful not to touch him during their infection. It must have been a lonely time for him. Lonely, and terrifying.
“How... how did you wind up here?”
“Julia. She was the doctor –the only doctor– that would come anywhere near us. She did everything she could to help them, and me. Afterwards, she brought me here with her. I couldn't do much as first –I was a soft ten-year-old who'd grown up in luxury– but I trained. Learned how to fight, how to help. There were worse ways to grow up.”
So Nick is from Luca. I would never have guessed. I know I hate Lucans, but he isn't one of them. He's like me, a person without a home or a family, carving one out of a world that doesn't want us, or wants us to be something we're not.
Nick directs me to the sho
wer block and goes to find me some new clothes. It's only when he's gone and I've stepped under the steaming water that I realise how strange that this. He is like me. My entire life, I've only counted a handful of others to be like me in any way shape or form, and now, within a matter of days, I'm letting someone else into that same space.
What is happening to me?
I let the water flow over my skin, washing away the dirt and grime of days of toil. I can almost feel my body shifting, like the shape of my shell reflects a change inside. My thoughts spiral, turning like the liquid against a drain. I think I am becoming something better, but I am not sure that I like it. Empathy is harder than carelessness.
I do like a challenge, though...
I turn off the water and stand there in the steam, blissfully clean. The experience is almost enough to make me want to move in. I wonder if they could hook us up with hot water once I've won them over?
“Ashe?” Nick's voice calls from outside the cubicle. “I've found some clean clothes for you.”
“Thanks.”
I step out, clutching a towel to my face, and find him only a few feet away. His face shoots to red.
“I, er, um–” He turns sharply on his heels.
“Calm down,” I say, whipping the clothes from his arms, “It's only skin. You've got communal showers. You never seen a naked woman before?”
“Not so... unexpectedly.”
I gather that a lot of people are not so free with their bodies, but I grew up in fairly tight quarters and it's never been an issue for me.
Nick gulps loudly. “So, perfect body, huh?”
“That's what it says on the tin.”
I pull on the clean clothes and towel down my hair. “You can turn around now.”
“Oh good.” Nick stares at me, and I feel the flicker of a blush rise in my cheeks, too.
Here's one of the other weird things about being a genetically-engineered superhuman who grew up in an isolated lab to be turned into a human weapon; you don't understand dating rituals. I've never read about them, I've never observed them up close. I've never even had a conversation with someone about their relationship. All of this is very new, very uncharted waters. What am supposed to say? What I supposed to do?
The Phoenix Project: Book I: Flight Page 8
