The Phoenix Project

by M. R. Pritchard

  “So we can say whatever we want?” I ask mockingly.

  “Well, within reason.” He smiles at me.

  I hear Lina’s little feet running across the room. “Adam! I thought you were never going to come.” Her sweet voice takes on a grave tone. “I’m starving.” She rubs her little belly dramatically.

  “Well that’s good. I brought all this food for you to eat. So, let’s show your mom how to make the world’s best spaghetti.”

  I watch as Adam helps Lina measure out spices and mix the sauce adding fresh spinach, onions and garlic. He pours out a box of dry spaghetti on a plate and has her break the long pieces in half before they go in a pot of boiling water. While Lina fills him in on the day of a five-year old, I set the table.

  “Supplies are starting to get low at the store so I picked up a few things for you. I hope you don’t mind.” Adam sets a lid on the sauce and empties out the remaining grocery bag. He’s brought us frozen vegetables, rice, pasta, milk, some canned fruit, and fresh bananas. Lina moves on to rearranging the silverware I set out.

  “Thanks. How low is the stock?” I ask as I move towards him to put the groceries away.

  “The shelves are still full, but I heard Morris and Alexander, they were at the store talking about how the last of the overstock had just been put out.”

  “But they said in the last meeting that we had enough food until winter.”

  “They must have miscalculated. I’m assuming Crane is going to start rationing out the food, until the fall harvest has been collected. Even then, I’m not sure there will be enough.”

  “What should we do?”

  “We need to get the Runner out of the District and get more supplies, soon.” He gives me a concerned look. The timer on the counter rings. “Dinner’s done.”

  We listen to Lina talk nonstop while we eat. She fills Adam in on her new classmate, Cashel. The boy who was chosen to be trained as one of the next District Sovereign with Lina. Ms. Black thinks there will be at least two more children of various ages joining them soon. Adam talks with Lina, asking her questions, telling her jokes. I watch them, completely absorbed in the easy way he interacts with her. He must notice because he stops a few times, making eye contact with me, smiling. I try not to let thoughts of Ian creep into my mind, the horrible dreams I’ve been having about him.

  When the sun starts to set over the lake I collect the plates and start cleaning up. And when I tell Lina it’s time to get ready for bed she gives me an exaggerated pout-face. I get her bathed and dressed for bed, noticing as she puts on her pajamas, that the legs end high above her ankles. She must have had a growth spurt recently, meaning the clothes I have from last winter are not going to fit her. The thought of having to find new clothes for her, when supplies in the District are already low troubles me.

  “Mom, I want to tell Adam goodnight,” Lina pleads with me.

  “Ok sweetie, be quick, you need your rest.” I watch her run out to the living area and throw her arms around Adam’s waist and tell him goodnight. I get her settled in the large canopy bed, with Stevie sleeping at the foot of it. She pulls the small white owl out from underneath her pillow and cuddles it close to her face. I kiss her and tuck her in, her eyelids already heavy with sleep. She rolls over and closes her eyes.

  “I love you, mommy,” she tells me before falling asleep.

  “I love you, my little Catalina.”

  Adam is waiting in the kitchen when I leave Lina’s room.

  “Is it okay for me to call you? You seemed distracted,” I ask him.

  “Crane was there. We were discussing the recruits who are being trained for the Runner position.”

  “How is that going?”

  I watch his face closely as he talks. He tells me that there are two recruits, one is a former army ranger, and the other was training to be a local Sheriff. They were both struggling with memorizing, the now secret, routes in and out of the District. Then he tells me that he is taking them on a trial run, outside the cement wall, to the chain link fence surrounding the District. “It’s going to take a few days. I’ll be gone.”

  “Why do you have to go?” I ask.

  “Because I’m a marine, this is what I’ve been doing for years, remember, this is going to be a dangerous job. The recruits have to be properly trained.”

  “You told them didn’t you? What you did for the military? Do you think that was a good idea?” I feel like Crane is using him, just like he is using me. And I’m afraid of what he plans to do with us when we’re done. If the organization of the District fails, or if it prevails, under Crane’s control.

  “It was the best idea. You keep your friends close, but the Sovereign District Mediator closer.” he walks towards me, invading my personal space, filling it up with his heat and electricity.

  “Aren’t you considered a District Sovereign now, we aren’t allowed to leave, we decided in the committee meetings.” I repeat the rule to him, “a District Sovereign is responsible for watching over the residents of the District. If you leave, how can you do that?” I don’t want him to go beyond the cement wall. I don’t want him to leave me and Lina here, alone with Crane.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m the only one with intelligence training.”

  “You think Crane doesn’t have some intelligence crony hidden away somewhere, he keeps bringing all these people from Japan to help out here.”

  “If he does, he hasn’t told me.”

  “Are you coming back?” I’m afraid he will leave us, and never return. I’ve already lost Ian and I can’t bear the thought of losing Adam too.

  He reaches out, pulling me closer to him, touching his forehead to mine. “Don’t worry, Andie. I will always be back for you.” He wraps his arms around my back. When he gets to the rough scars from the wolf attack he stops, pulling away abruptly. “Do you still have those stitches in?”

  My face flushes with embarrassment. I pull away from his grasp. “I didn’t have anyone to take them out,” I tell him, walking away, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “Andie, they’ve been in for over three weeks-”

  “I didn’t want the wounds to pull open again,” I interrupt him, defensively. “And besides you’ve been busy, for weeks. I had to call you just to get you to visit. Who am I supposed to ask, Crane?” The thought of Crane touching me sends a chill down my back.

  He sighs, “You know better than I do that they can’t be left in. Go get your medical scissors. I’ll take them out right now.”

  “Fine.”

  I head for the bathroom, searching the drawers for the medical kit with the small scissors. My fingers tremble as I search. I’m nervous, not that Adam is the one taking them out, I’m nervous it’s going to hurt like hell because they’ve been in so long. I find the scissors and bring them to Adam.

  He snips at the threads, the same way he did so many weeks ago, after the first round of stitches. The skin has grown in around a few of the stitches and he has to pull hard to get them out. When he’s done he runs his thumb over the three thick scars that slash across my lower side and back. I can barely feel it. The nerves under the skin have been too damaged, and the scar tissue too deep from being stitched together twice. I can, however, feel his fingertips pressing into the sensitive skin near my hip. I pull away from him and let the back of my shirt fall into place. After what happened in the basement, I’m not sure I could stop myself if it happened again, or the intense feelings of guilt afterwards.

  I try and change the subject. “When are you leaving for this trial run?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What? I thought you meant in a few days. You’re leaving tomorrow. Were you even going to tell me?” I am suddenly furious with him and the fact that he waited until the last minute to tell me he was heading out into the forest beyond the cement wall.

  “I was going to tell you-” He stands up from the dining room chair he was sitting in to take my stitches out.

  “When?” I interrupt him.r />
  “Andie, I just found out today. Crane ordered it.” He steps towards me, his blue eyes pleading with me. “I told you, I need you to trust me.” He reaches out, brushing his hand across my cheek. “I need to see what’s out there, the train, how heavily guarded it is. I’m trying to figure out what Crane’s plan is, so we can get out of here. But I need you to stay here, where you’re safe, and wait for me to get back.”

  Oh how I want to trust him, part of me wants to let him be my knight-in-shining-armor, the one who can save us, who will help us escape. But I wonder how many private meetings he’s had with Crane and what else he may be keeping from me. He keeps telling me to trust him. And I want to. But I have this nagging feeling that while Crane keeps me locked up in this glass building, there is so much more going on with the creation of the Phoenix District, things that aren’t being discussed in the Committee meetings. Things they are keeping from me. So even if I don’t fully trust Adam, I can’t let him know. I need him, to get us out of here.

  I walk towards Adam and wrap my arms around his neck, standing on my toes to reach him. “I do trust you,” I whisper in his ear, “I just don’t want you to go.”

  He looks deep into my eyes and it’s only a second before his mouth finds mine. That worked a little too well. His hand cups my jaw while the other presses me closer to him. And suddenly, it’s like we’re back in the dark hallway. My skin tingles under his touch. My head feels full and dizzy, my heart starts pounding faster. I move my hands to his chest, intent on pushing him back, but I stop, feeling the hard muscle under his shirt. And then, just what I was afraid of, I can’t stop myself.

  Adam lifts me in his arms, in one swift movement, and carries me to the bedroom, setting me down near the large bed. I can feel the warm flush filling my cheeks, my heart racing. We’re both adults, who are obviously attracted to each other, but I didn’t intend for us to go this far, to wind up in the bedroom. The tension is thick and my heart races. I fumble with the buttons on Adam’s shirt, nervous, I’ve never been alone with another man like this, only Ian, my now lost husband.

  Adam covers my hands with his, stopping my feeble attempt with the buttons. He bends down, kissing me slowly. His lips move against mine, his tongue pressing into my mouth. I forget about the buttons and try not to let my knees buckle.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers in my ear, kissing my jaw. He steps back and finishes unbuttoning his shirt. I try to keep my eyes on his face, his eyes, his dark hair, his square jaw. He stops for a moment, just before taking his shirt off, looking at me, offering me the option to stop this. Part of me wants to run from the room and stop myself before it goes too far, but the other part wants to be with him, to get out all the tension I feel every time he’s near me. He pulls the shirt off his shoulders and holds it in his hand. I wish he would have prepared me, warned me, for what I was about to see. I knew he had a few tattoos. I’ve seen them peeking out from under his shirt sleeves. But I wasn’t prepared to see this. I wasn’t prepared for all the scars.

  There’s an entire barrage of them covering his upper body, his chest and abdomen, he turns around and I see they continue onto his back, across his shoulder blades. There are long slashes, small burn marks, large burn marks, and healed bullet pockmarks marring his body. There are deep purple marks with the tiny holes from a poor suture job across his ribs. They pull at his skin, skewing the natural outlines of where his muscle would be. He doesn’t say anything, he just watches me, waiting for my reaction, his eyes hopeful.

  “Oh my God, Adam, what happened to you?” I try to control my facial expressions, the shock that must be overly apparent on my face.

  “My job,” he replies, disappointment evident in his tone.

  Adam starts putting his shirt on, covering up the scars, buttoning it up so I can’t stare any longer. In only a few moments he is back to the handsome, dark haired man I’ve come to know. I stand still, unable to move, watching him. When the initial shock wears off I feel terrible. He exposed what must have been a painful secret to me and I just stood there, unable to move, like a jerk, a coward. He starts walking towards the door. And for a moment I’m filled with the sudden fear that he really is going to leave me. He is going to leave the loft and go for the trial run and never talk to me again and then I will truly be left alone under Crane’s rule, with no escape.

  Somehow I force my arms and legs to move and throw myself at him, just as he gets to the doorway of the bedroom. “Don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I clasp my arms around his neck, crushing myself to him.

  “There’s no way you could have known. No one knows. You’re the first person I’ve showed.”

  “Don’t go, please.” I pull him by his arm to the overstuffed couch. Both of us sink into its deep cushions. Adam reaches over and pulls me onto his lap. I rest my head on his chest, feeling the strong thud of his heart and I listen as he tells me the story of how he earned his scars.

  He was on a mission in Iraq, there was a breach of security, and someone had released a list of all the agents that were currently working in the Middle East. Since Adam was their best man he was sent in to recover the list and find out who sold it. He was heavily disguised, but it wasn’t good enough, they knew who he was, he was captured, imprisoned and tortured for information regarding U.S. Intelligence. The leaders of the Middle Eastern countries traded him for months, each trying new techniques to try and get information out of him. Eventually they gave up, dumping his body outside of a U.S. Embassy in Turkey, as a warning against further infiltration. His deployment to Germany was a guise for his family so they wouldn’t have to see his battered body. There he received medical attention for his wounds, a thorough debriefing of what he saw, who he saw, and to undergo post traumatic rehabilitation. Then he got word of the accident and that his entire family had died. Finally, two months later they gave him leave to return and mourn.

  When he’s done I don’t know what to say. My heart aches for all the pain he’s endured. We sit in silence. Eventually both of us fall asleep, wrapped around each other on the couch. It’s the first night I have slept in the loft and not been woken up by nightmares.

  We wake early enough to get Adam out of the loft before Lina is awake.

  “Come back to me,” I tell him before he turns to leave.

  And then Adam is gone, and I have no idea when I will see him again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We have been held in the Chemistry building for over a month now. All of our lives, changed dramatically. From this isolated building I don’t get to see any of the town or speak with its residents. I only have the information from the past committee meetings, because I’m quite certain that Crane isn’t disclosing all of the details.

  Crane doesn’t call any Committee meetings. Instead he shows up at the lab, always unannounced and unexpected. He watches the lab workers, talks with Kira; he tries to talk with me. I can’t help but be standoffish with him. I know there are things he is not telling me. He chose us as District Sovereign, subsequently, I feel like he should be telling us everything. Finally, after his third visit, I give in and show him some of the data I’m working on. Mostly out of fear that he will take Lina from me, again. Crane seems pleased with my progress and for that he relays a bit of information to me: The helpers from the Japanese District have been slowly dwindling out of our town since most of their duties are complete. The Phoenix District has now entered the phase where it’s running smoothly on its own.

  When Crane finally leaves he stops in the atrium to watch Ms. Black as she teaches the children. Another child has joined the group. Another boy, this one older, he is eight. Lina seems to get along well with them. Ms. Black takes them on guarded fieldtrips around the District. One day I went with them to the park by the docks. They were allowed to play with the other District children. This trip didn’t seem as lonely as our last trip to the park, when all the mothers stood away from me, staring. This time I had Ms. Black to talk to. She tells me that the boys were taken
from their families; they live on campus with her now. They will be allowed to visit their families on the weekends. Their parents have been told that they are studying at a boarding school for advanced children. They don’t know that their sons have been chosen as the next generations District Sovereign. I feel sad for them, and grateful, that Lina is allowed to stay with me. Still, I wonder what Crane has told Ian about us, or if he even remembers us.

  --

  I work, patiently waiting for Adam to return from the trial run. The first day was the longest, dragging on, each minute feeling like an hour. I wanted to know what was happening, what he was seeing, what it looked like beyond the cement wall Crane is building around our town. Adam had told me he would only be gone a few days. Instead he is gone a full week.

  Adam returns on the seventh day. After he debriefs with Crane, a Committee meeting is called. The heat of summer is starting to dissipate and we walk to the headquarters under Volker supervision. I control the urge to pick up Lina and run to the building to find Adam, so I can hear everything first-hand.

  It’s the first time I’ve arrived to the conference room before Crane. Morris and Alexander are there, they greet us kindly and we sit and wait. I watch the clock tick, slowly. Crane clears his throat loudly as he enters the room. Behind him follows Adam and an older man with grey sideburns, wearing a Volker uniform. I stare anxiously at Adam, but he makes no attempt to look in my direction.

  “Welcome District Sovereign,” Crane greets us all at once. “I would like to introduce our District Runner, Remington.” Crane claps and gives us an expectant look.

  We all take notice and clap our hands, greeting the man. I watch the man named Remington, he stands proudly with his arms behind his back. There’s a bruise under his eye, a crack of blood in the corner of his mouth. And a small bandage on his upper arm, fresh blood has already saturated the thin pad, showing a dark stain against the plastic film that sticks to his arm.