The Phoenix Project

by M. R. Pritchard

  He sputters something through my kisses. My lips pressed so hard against his mouth that I can feel the straight row of teeth behind his front lip. At last his arms are cross tight behind my back, carrying me. I can feel the tears streaming out of the corners of my eyes.

  “I love you, Ian.” I whisper between our kisses. “I was so scared I’d never see you again.” I tell him as he carries me back to our house, and up the front porch steps. I hear the door open then close behind us. He sets me down in the living room. I’m bursting with energy and joy, so happy to finally be home, to finally see him. “Ian what happened here?” I don’t give him a chance to answer. I’m asking him more questions and talking about our journey home on foot. I barely notice the front door opening and Adam stepping back inside the living room. I keep talking and talking, more than I have ever talked before. Then it hits me, Lina. “Ian? Where is Lina?” I ask. In my feverish rehashing of the past day’s events I barely noticed Ian was just standing there in front of me. Not talking or interjecting, or asking me questions like he normally would. “Ian!” I ask him again. “Where is Lina?” He stares at me blankly. I replay what just happened in my mind. There is complete silence in the living room, except for the heavy ringing in my ears. This is not right. I look behind Ian, to Adam. He’s just standing there watching us.

  “Ian! What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Why aren’t you answering me?” Then I realize I’m yelling at him, repeating myself over and over again.

  “They took her,” he finally answers.

  “What do you mean?” I can barely choke the rest of the sentence out. “They took her. Who?”

  “She’s not here anymore. They took her. They told me to tell you she is safe.” His response is robotic, monotone and sounds nothing like Ian. This is not the Ian I left a few days ago. This is not the Ian that would do anything to protect our little girl.

  “Ian!” I’m screaming at him now. “Where is she? Where is Lina?”

  “They took her-” he starts to repeat again, but I interrupt him.

  “No!” I yell at him. “What did you do? You let someone take her?” I fling myself across the room at Ian, and then I am hitting him, shaking him, pounding at his chest, trying to get him to wake up from whatever stupor he is in. “You are her father!” I choke out, frantic. I feel strong arms wrap around my stomach, picking me up, but I kick and scream and claw at Ian. “You were supposed to protect her! She’s just a baby!” I want to beat the answers out of him. I want him to wake up from this nightmare. I want things to go back to the way they were, the three of us, happy and together. Adam is dragging me away and I can see red marks across Ian’s face, on his neck. It doesn’t stop me from kicking and screaming more. Adam grunts a few times and I’m sure it’s because I have kicked him in my hysteria.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I can hear them talking, Adam and Ian, downstairs in the dining room. I sit at the top of the stairwell, barely able to make out what they’re saying. The deepness of both of their voices is too low for me to hear from this far away. It doesn’t help that I can’t stop crying. I can’t get over the fact that my little girl is missing. And Ian let it happen. I try to put the pieces together, the earthquake, the false reports of a nuclear meltdown, the fence and brick wall being built around the city, the strange way all the people seem to be acting, especially Ian. But I can’t make sense of any of it. All I know is this person in my dining room is not my Ian.

  It’s not the strong man I married right out of high school. I know this. We went through college together, we’ve been married for six years, and we’ve struggled since Lina was born, but he’s always promised that he would protect us. No, this is definitely not my Ian.

  The one thing I know for certain is that someone took my daughter, and I’m not sure I can ever forgive Ian for not stopping them and protecting her.

  Stevie is slowly walking up the stairs towards me. She must have regained enough energy to get out of her bed. She lies down next to me, nudging her muzzle under my arm. I can’t stop the tears leaking out of my eyes. I lean my head against the wall and listen to their mumbling talk.

  Sometime later, someone is carrying me. I don’t have the strength to open my eyes and I don’t much care. I feel the softness of a mattress beneath me, then the heaviness of someone lying next to me. At first I am afraid of whom it is, until I feel the rough tongue that licks my cheek, Stevie. A blanket is placed over us. It smells like detergent and lavender fabric softener. I know that we are in the empty guest room of the house. I keep my eyes closed, because I can’t bear to look at this new reality that has taken over my life.

  I dream of Lina. What she looked like as a newborn. How excited her face was every morning when she got up. Happy and brave and ready to experience more of this fascinating world I brought her into. I watch her grow to one, two, three, four, and five, bringing her to school, cooking, Christmas, Easter, remembering all of her milestones, her digging on the beach during vacation. I don’t want to wake up. I want to spend every second I can with her because I know she will not be here with me when I open my eyes. I will not see her smiling face, or her crooked baby toothed smile.

  But I do wake up. Stevie is there to lick my cheek. I roll over and see a figure on the floor. My vision is blurry, after a few moments I see that it is Adam sleeping on the floor, near the bedroom door. I stand up and tiptoe silently out of the room heading to the bathroom. Flicking on the light I stare at myself in the mirror. I have never known what it is like to feel numbness and stabbing, gut wrenching pain at the same time. I lean in close to the mirror. The reflection is still me, but my eyes are bloodshot and red rimmed. My hair is in wild disarray around my head. There is a crusted white trail of old tears dried by my left ear.

  “Clean yourself up.” I whisper to myself in the mirror. I repeat the steps to myself: Get a washcloth, run the water, wash your face, brush your teeth, wash your hands. After a few minutes I look a little better, but the terrible feeling inside my heart still lingers. I leave yesterdays clothes on.

  When I open the bathroom door Adam and Stevie are standing in the hallway, both leaning against the wall. I say nothing to them. Instead I turn and head downstairs to the kitchen. I turn the coffee pot on, then off, remembering that there is nothing here except canned mystery sludge. I walk out the back door and sit on the back porch swing. Stevie and Adam follow me without a sound. The swing squeaks a little as I rock it. Stevie walks off the porch to check the corners of the yard. She does her doggie business and returns to my side. I stare off at the early morning clouds; I watch the birds flirting in the tall oak trees. From the corner of my eye I see that Adam is at the garden bed, picking something. The back door closes and opens again a few moments later. Adam sets a bowl of baby cucumbers and strawberries in my lap.

  Eat, I tell myself.

  Finally Adam breaks the silence. “I talked with Ian last night, for a long time.” I don’t respond. I keep watching the birds high in the trees. Adam must know I’m listening because he continues. “He’s not right. Eventually he started to talk about what happened, and he said that they would find us,” he pauses for a moment. “Then he ate that canned food, devoured it like it was a steak dinner. Afterwards he went back to his flat affect and minimal words act. I don’t know what to think of it. But I definitely wouldn’t eat whatever is in those cans. Then he just got up and went to bed. And this morning he just got ready and left, like nothing happened, like we weren’t even here. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  I’m remembering how Ian would kiss me goodbye early each morning while I slept. I’m using all the energy I have left not to burst into tears again. I stare at the songbirds, I eat my breakfast, my gaze shifts to a neighbor’s garage and that’s when I see two ravens standing on the roof. They’re watching us, cocking their heads to the side, blinking their beady black eyes.

  --

  We remain on the porch until afternoon. This is the first day that we haven’t heard the train
whistle, or helicopters in the sky. We sit, mourning the family members that we’ve recently lost. Stevie perks up her ears and starts whining, looking at the door. Adam and I both get up and walk inside. There is a heavy knocking on the front door, it crescendo’s over a few seconds, turning into a full blown pounding.

  “Don’t answer it,” I tell Adam. Reaching out to stop him, but it’s too late. His hand is already on the doorknob turning it. He stops for an instant to look at me and someone shoves the door open from the outside, hard, knocking Adam back onto the floor. He lands with a loud thud on his side, shaking the pictures on the wall. Suddenly, there is handful of men in my living room. They’re all dressed in dark gray uniforms, pistols strapped to their hips. The last to come through is a large dark man, with a silver pin on his lapel, in the shape of some kind of a bird. He looks straight at me.

  “Andie Somers.” It is not a question. He knows who I am. “You’re coming with us.” His voice is deep, slow and southern.

  I’ve heard his voice before, in the basement of the hospital.

  A few men head towards Adam and some start walking towards me, panic and fear and the uncontrollable urge to run consumes me. Stevie starts barking, a vicious bark, which I have never heard her utter before.

  “Control the mutt or we will put it down for you.” The large man with the bird pin commands as he reaches for the pistol at his hip.

  “St... Stop,” I stutter out. “Stevie, go lay down.” She looks at me and then back at the men, whining. She listens, leaving the room. As I watch her lay down on her dog bed I feel the grasp of hands around both of my upper arms.

  I’m not sure if these men intended for me to walk, but I am mostly dragged to the waiting black SUV’s in front of my house. They drag me towards the first SUV. I turn to see the other group of men leading Adam towards another SUV.

  “Wait, where are you taking him? Stop!” I start to struggle against the hands wrapped around my arms, but the door to the SUV is open and they are shoving me inside. I land on my side and kick the window as they close the door. There’s a caged partition separating the front seats from the back. Two of the men get in the front. I turn to see the SUV behind us where Adam is, the large dark man with the pin is getting into the passenger side. “What are you doing with us?” I ask the men in the front. Neither of them answers.

  The streets are empty once again as they drive me through town. We pass the park where I would bring Lina after school. No children play at it today. But there is one man near the swings, dressed in dark red, with a hat, and rummaging through a toolbox. Similar to the people we saw working on the great wall at the outskirts of the city.

  We are the only vehicles on the road. The first running vehicles I’ve seen in days. They drive us down Main Street, across the larger of the two bridges which pass over the river, dividing the city. I see more people in red uniforms, working at the bridge, taking down street signs, pulling weeds from the cracks in the sidewalks. They drive to the west side of town, to the edge, almost outside of the town limits. Then they turn onto the long road leading to the State University that sits on the lake shore. I haven’t been here in years. Not since I graduated. Everything looks familiar still, but there are two new buildings, and some of the older ones have been painted. The driver pulls up to the main entrance of Culkin Hall which is the main campus building and the tallest. It houses the offices of the president and vice president, the financial aid offices and admission offices of the university. I turn around and look out the large cargo area window, the SUV that Adam was in, is no longer there.

  The door opens and hands reach in to pull me out. I try slapping at them, but one of the men grips me hard around my upper arm and jerks me from the vehicle. A pain in my shoulder shoots upwards, towards my neck, and I am afraid he will dislocate it if I keep struggling, so I stop and let them drag me inside the main doors. They take me to the elevator and push the button for the ninth floor, where the presidential offices are. I try to walk fast and keep up with the men at each of my shoulders. But I have to keep skipping steps. I can feel their hands already leaving bruises on my upper arms.

  There are dull grey cubicles on each side of the large office, all empty, except the last row, where two men and two women sit at computers. They are engrossed in whatever they’re doing, not bothering to look up as we pass. We enter a long office at the end of the hallway where there is a small conference table and some chairs. The men deposit me in an office chair and place Velcro straps around my arms. They leave me and I am alone for only an instant before the door opens again and an old man walks in. He’s carrying a metal box, which he sets on the table next to me, clicking open the clasps on the sides he pulls out straps and wires and feeds lined paper into the side of the box.

  I have watched enough TV to know that this must be a lie detector machine. The old man looks at me, smiling kindly; he seems out of place with these people, he wraps the straps around my arms and chest. Working diligently, without talking, he sits across from me when he is done. I hear the hum of the machine as it’s turned on, the soft clicks of buttons being pushed, the faint scrape of ink being etched across rough paper.

  The door opens and more people enter the room, the large dark man with the bird pin. Behind him, two more people enter the room, a short man with wild orange hair and…

  Adam.

  He’s wearing the same gray uniform as the men who took us from my house. And he too has a pistol on his hip. I glare at him, trying to get his attention, but he won’t look at me. I feel betrayed, angered beyond belief. As the guard standing outside pulls the door closed, my heart thumps loudly, in the silence of the large room.

  “Ah, you must be Andromeda.” The short man with orange hair walks towards me holding his hand out to greet me. When I don’t move my arms he looks down and see’s that they are strapped to the chair. “Well this isn’t very pleasant.” He bends to undo the Velcro straps from my arms, leaving the detector leads in place. His hair is so bright it looks as though it has been dyed, and when he bends in front of me I can see the tight cork screw curls which give his hair the fluffed appearance. He releases my arms, and holds his hand out to greet me again. He smells sweet and musky, it makes my stomach churn.

  “Who are you?” I ask. I make no attempt to raise my hand and greet him.

  “My name is Burton Crane. We will be spending a lot of time together. That is, if you participate. Now, please, answer my question. I’m sure you know we need to set a baseline for the detector.” He smiles. I watch him, furious. His skin is pale, dotted with red freckles. He’s dressed nicely in a black suit, wearing an obnoxious bright yellow tie. Finally he drops his hand. “Are you Andromeda Somers?” He repeats.

  “Yes.” I respond through gritted teeth. I glare at Adam, finally he looks at me. I’m not sure why I bothered to trust him in the first place. But I did, and look where it got me. The man with the orange hair runs through a deluge of questions. Stating where I live, where I work, who my parents were, how they died, he knows entirely too much about me.

  “Are you married to Ian Somers?” he asks.

  “Yes.” I look at the floor trying to hide the pain of yesterday.

  “You have a daughter, Catalina Somers?” I glare back at him. He must know where she is, and I have a feeling he is about to use her to get whatever information he wants out of me.

  “Where is she? I want to see her now!”

  “She’s safe. Let’s continue.”

  But I don’t want to continue. I want to know where my daughter is. I want to see her. “I want to see her now!” I demand.

  “In time, Andromeda,” He continues. “You hold degrees in genetics and nursing?” I glare at him, squeezing my lips together, refusing to talk. “If you chose not to participate, Andromeda, I will have to place you in a holding cell. It’s unfortunate really and I’m sure neither of us wants that. Now, answer the question.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a strange combination don’t
you think?” He pauses. “You were one of two people to graduate from Phoenix University. You even secured a research job before you graduated, in a genetic research lab. Why did you leave?” His demeanor is starting to change; he’s playing some strange good cop, bad cop game. “Andromeda?”

  These are exactly the type of questions I dislike, why I usually don’t bother telling anyone about my other degree. “I left because I was tired of being managed by pompous bigots who didn’t think a woman belonged in the lab.” I remember their snide remarks, their leering gazes, their constant arguments over my findings and reports. It still makes my blood boil.

  “Did you know that they were never able to fill your position after you left?” he asks, raising his eyebrow.

  I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Anyone could have done that job.”

  “Do you know that the lab lost all their funding, not long after you left?”

  That was a surprise. I shake my head no.

  “You are not as easily replaced as you may think. That lab was never able to find another person who could do what you did. You taught yourself how to manage genetic array programs created by the government, you taught yourself programming, and you had your own system that no one has been able to duplicate.” He starts walking towards me, pushing a chair. “And somehow your theories, the genetic pathways you discovered and theorized about, they all happened to be correct. We’ve been using your data for years now, since you left the lab to become a nurse, of all things.” He sits right in front of me, our knees almost touching. “We need your help, Andromeda.” He leans forwards looking closely into my face, his own pale green eyes boring into mine.