The Gryphon Project

by Carrie Mac

  “You let him come and go, don’t you?”

  Willis stared at her, his lips parted, mid-thought.

  “Well, you do, right? How else would he get in and out?”

  He crossed his arms. “And if I did?”

  “Tell me what you know. Like, where he went—”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who he went with?”

  Willis paused. “His friends, of course. All good boys. All of them.”

  “And what did they get up to?”

  “You’d have to ask them that, kiddo.” Another pause, during which Phee watched his eyes shift away from her, fix nervously on a spot on the floor for a long moment before returning to meet her inquisitive gaze. “That would be a good place to start.”

  “Start what?” Phee was really alert now, and anxious.

  “Proving that this whole idea of him killing himself is ridiculous and unfounded.” Willis fiddled with the keys to his golf cart. “Let me take you home. Okay?”

  As Willis drove her home, Phee was full of questions she knew better than to voice. She eyed Willis out of the corner of her vision, curious about him for the first time. Normally she didn’t give him a second thought. He was just the kind, constant presence at the south gate, but now she knew he was much more than that. He knew something. And he wasn’t telling her.

  She was grateful to see him leave after he dropped her off. She was ready for a break from the mystery. Her father ran down from the porch to meet her, worry creasing his already tired face.

  “I was going to come get you, but Fawn—”

  “I’m okay, Dad.” Phee hopped out of the cart and let her dad fold her into his arms. “It’s just the media. I can handle them.”

  “You shouldn’t have to.” Oscar thanked Willis and then walked Phee up the steps and sat her on the porch swing. “I’m keeping an eye on your grandfather. Fawn too. She’s upstairs with Lana, playing. Your mother and grandma are down at Chrysalis. We managed to get them to agree to start things in motion for your brother’s recon.”

  “Fawn’s playing? With the neighbour kid? Like everything is normal?”

  “She doesn’t understand.” Oscar tightened his arm around her shoulders. “She figures he’ll be back soon as good as new.”

  “And he will, right?”

  Oscar was silent. He focused his gaze on the green, where a group of boys a little younger than Gryphon were tossing a football back and forth with the laziness that tends to accompany hot summer afternoons. Phee wished she was somewhere else. Far away. With Nadia and the boys. Back at the rave, when Tariq came to dance with her. Back when everything was normal and her crush on Tariq was her biggest concern.

  “Dad?” Her father’s silence unnerved her more than she could describe. It meant his hope was fading. “Daddy?”

  Finally, he spoke. “God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

  Phee felt herself tense up. “What are you saying?”

  Oscar took her chin in his hand and lifted her eyes to his. “You know what I’m saying.”

  “You’re right. I do.” Phee stood up abruptly, sending the porch swing shimmying backwards. “And you better not talk to Mom like that or you’ll be all alone in this house, and she and Fawn and I will be camped out at Grandma and Grandpa’s again.”

  As if he’d been listening in, Phee’s grandfather pushed the front door open and stepped out onto the porch. “Oscar? Phee?” he asked, as if trying out the names for the first time. “Where’s the kettle?”

  “It’s too hot to boil water, Granddad.” With a warning glance at her father, Phee took her grandfather’s arm. “I’ll make you some lemonade instead, okay?”

  “What a nice idea.” Her grandfather twisted away, though, and went down the steps, minding each one carefully. “I’ll go tell Gryphon to come in. He’ll know where the kettle is.” He headed off in the direction of the green, focused on the little boys kicking a soccer ball at the far end.

  “I’ll go get him.” Oscar gave Phee a sad smile. “You go make us that lemonade.”

  AS PHEE JUICED THE LEMONS, her phone beeped with a text message. From Saul. “Need 2 talk. Meet me @ arcade. Now.” She texted him that she’d be there in half an hour. She made up a story for Oscar about the ever-needy Nadia, and took off at a sprint for the train station. She was so eager to hear what Saul had to tell her that she didn’t think of Gryph being hit by the train, not even once while she was racing on one herself, heading for the shopping district. She pushed her way out of the train at her stop and took off running again, this time across the promenade to the arcade.

  The steady soundtrack of electronic gun blasts and squealing tires was almost soothing to her. This place was so normal in the midst of all the recent strangeness. Teens crowded each machine, watching friends fire on terrorists or race rally cars. The smell of popcorn met her as she made her way to the back, where the little concession stand was, surrounded by a few tables and chairs. She expected to find Saul here, but didn’t. She made another circuit of the arcade, searching intently through the shadows and colourful bursts of light cast by the games. He wasn’t there. She stopped to reread the text message in case she’d gotten it wrong. “Need 2 talk. Meet me @ arcade.” She retraced her steps back to the concession to talk to the pimply-faced girl who worked there.

  “Have you seen Gryph or his friends today?”

  “Why you asking?” The name tag pinned to the girl’s orange polyester uniform said Shirley, but Phee knew her name was actually Melissa, and she was one of the one-pers who were transported in every day to do service jobs like this.

  “I’m looking for Saul. He’s the beefy one.”

  “I know who he is.” Melissa narrowed her eyes. “And I know who you are. You’re Gryphon’s sister.”

  Phee nodded. “And Gryphon is the reason I’m looking for Saul. Look, it’s important. Was he here or not?”

  “They say your brother isn’t going to be reconned—”

  Phee felt herself taking on the shape her mother took just before she was about to get into it with someone. “I am not having this conversation with you. Tell me if you saw Saul or not or I’ll get you fired.”

  “I couldn’t care less, princess.” Melissa helped herself to a gumball from the display and popped it into her mouth. She chewed it noisily between pops of a couple of obnoxiously large bubbles. “There’s always another scummy job for someone like me to slave away at for you scummy people.”

  Phee spun on her heel and stalked off before she could do something to “Shirley” that she’d get in real trouble for. She stopped at the deer hunter game and asked the group of boys there if they’d seen Saul.

  “Yeah.” A pudgy kid dressed all in black with matching makeup around his eyes answered without taking his gaze from the screen. “He just left.”

  “He did?”

  The kid looked at her now. “Oh. You’re Gryphon’s sister.” He paled. “I … he …”

  Phee didn’t want to hear more, so she took off into the mall, texting Saul as she walked hurriedly. “Where are you? I’m @ arcade.”

  The message sent. Which meant his phone was turned on. She called Nadia.

  “Where are you?” Nadia asked over the din of the mall coming from Phee’s end of the call. Phee told her, and then told her why.

  “That’s so strange,” Nadia said. “He just texted me, like a couple of minutes ago.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That’s just it. Hang on—I’ll read you it exactly.” A moment later, Nadia was back. “It says, ‘Whatever happens, know that I love you and always will, xoxo.’”

  A chill washed over Phee. That sounded like a very thinly cloaked goodbye.

  “Phee?”

  Phee took a steadying breath. “I’m here.”

  “It’s weird, right?” Nadia’s voice was small and scared.

  “Yeah.”

  “You think he and the boys are up to something about Gryph? Neko’s still h
ere.”

  “They’re always up to something.”

  “But now, even with the investigation and everything? Can’t you talk to Saul and get him to be realistic?”

  “If I could find him, I’d try.” Phee kept walking as she talked with Nadia. She scanned the crowd, not spotting Saul or anyone else she knew. “Look, you keep trying to get hold of him. I’m going to have a look around here. He has to be close.”

  “Maybe he went to the bathroom? The ones by the food fair?”

  Phee almost cried at the naivety in her best friend’s voice. Always the optimist to Phee’s pessimism. Always willing to give herself over to denial, whereas Phee was all too aware of how bad things were. Saul’s text to Nadia was ominous. Foreboding. Right now, Phee feared for the worst but didn’t want to share that gut-churning unease with Nadia. She said goodbye to Nadia and then sent a message to Tariq and Huy. It didn’t bounce back this time.

  She glanced in each store as she quickly made the rounds of the ground floor. Halfway through her circuit of the second floor she got a text from Tariq. “Go home & be with your family. You’re crazy to try to figure this out on your own.”

  His words made her so mad that she growled out loud as she deleted them and replied, “Don’t you dare tell me what to do.” She kept texting. “I want to know what’s going on! Where’s Saul?” She sent the message and kept on looking for him. On the third floor she stopped at the security kiosk. The two men were duelling on some handheld gaming thing and hardly looked up when she approached.

  “I need to page someone.”

  “Hang on.” The one glanced up and then, recognizing her, set his game down and gave her his full attention. “Hey. Hi. You’re—”

  “Gryphon’s sister.”

  “We’re so sorry about your brother’s … death.” He cast a look at the other guard to include him in his condolences. “It’s all over the news that they’re trying to find out what really happened. Any development?”

  “The page?” She knew she sounded cold, but she was far more worried about Saul than Gryphon right now. Gryph was being kept in stasis at Chrysalis. And as for Saul and his big fat, dangerous secret …

  “Sure, sure.” The guard fished a pen out of his pocket. “Who’re you looking for?”

  “Saul Morrisey.” Phee kept her eyes on the crowd coming up the escalator. Still no sign of him. “Get him to meet me here.”

  “You got it.” He smiled at her, a watery sympathetic smile that raised her ire.

  “I’m going to keep looking for him,” she said, turning to leave. “I’ll come back in a little while.”

  Not even a few steps away and the page sounded. “Saul Morrisey, please meet your party at the third-floor information kiosk. Saul Morrisey, to the information kiosk on the third floor.” Phee glanced back and gave the guard a thumbs-up. He was wise not to mention her name in the page. Countless people were bound to be curious enough to ask her about Gryphon.

  By the time she’d had a look on the fourth floor, she was sure she wasn’t going to find him. And worse, she was increasingly sure that something bad had happened. She had no idea what, but it was entirely unlike Saul not to get in touch. And that cryptic message to Nadia. Phoenix made her way back down to the information kiosk and was met with a wave by the guard who’d helped her earlier.

  “He hasn’t showed.”

  That was obvious, and Phee was already interested in something else. On the counter behind the guards was a cellphone that she recognized. Army cammo sleeve.

  “Whose phone is that?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Lost and found.”

  “It’s mine.”

  He raised an eyebrow and stepped a little to the left, blocking her view. “Describe it.”

  This was Saul’s replacement phone, the one he got when he’d dropped his other one that day that Gryph pulled the stunt on the train. Phee and Nadia had been with the boys when Saul picked it out. In this very mall, in fact. As soon as he’d purchased it, Nadia had grabbed it and carved a tiny heart on the back, into the plastic. Phee described it now.

  “Wouldn’t peg you for a cammo kind of girl.” The guard handed her Saul’s phone, his eyebrows raised in doubt.

  “Where’d you find it?”

  He checked his logbook. “Cleaners found it outside the Granville Street entrance on the ground floor.”

  “Thanks.” Phee rushed off, Saul’s phone clutched in her hand.

  When she was out of sight she stopped, her back against the wall, and examined the phone. It was still powered on, and the screen reported that Saul had eleven new messages. That would’ve been between when he’d texted her and she’d collected the phone. Phee did a quick count. She’d left him five, Nadia a few more. Without another thought, she retrieved the text messages, skipping the ones from Nadia.

  Along with hers, there was one each from Tariq and Huy, wondering where he was.

  There were a couple of voice messages too. Phee listened to the first one.

  “We’re out of time. Get back here. It’s happening now. We can’t wait for you.” She didn’t recognize the voice. Female. Older? She checked. It had been sent from a blocked number.

  The next one was also from a blocked number. There was noise in the background, an industrial sort of grinding, a metallic creak. Her voice more urgent. “Code blue! I repeat, code blue!”

  Phee played the message again, and then a third time, trying to discern what was in the background. She couldn’t concentrate, though, unnerved as she was by the woman’s message. She’d sounded terrified, panicked. The same way Phee felt now.

  There was one more voice message. This one from Neko. Sent from his home number. Twenty minutes ago.

  “Saul? I just wanted to tell you … I just … I’m just really, really sorry about everything.”

  Neko’s voice was thick, as if he’d been crying. He was just a kid, really, despite how hard he tried to appear older around the guys. He’d convinced more than a couple of girls that he was older than his years, but his message now made him sound about ten. Phee grinned at the memory of him with his ears sticking out and his gangly limbs growing so fast that a month after he’d get new clothes they’d be too small for him.

  Enough about Saul for today. Clearly, Phee wasn’t going to find him here. And by the sound of it, both Nadia and Neko could use a friend. She slipped the phone into her pocket and headed for the exit, every cell of her being vibrating with worry. She took the Granville Street exit, glancing around, not expecting to find anything to do with Saul, but hoping nonetheless. The fresh air was a godsend, clearing her head enough for her to shake just the tiniest bit of the unease weighing her down. What had happened to Saul? And what had happened to her brother? What was happening to them all?

  The whoosh of the trains speeding by overhead only served to pin her focus on Gryph’s death, and the shape of Saul’s phone in her pocket on his sudden disappearance. Phoenix tucked her earphones into place and scrolled the index on her phone for what she was looking for. Within seconds, the pulse of music was taking her away. She’d downloaded everything she could find from that DJ who’d been at the rave. She closed her eyes and let the rumble of drum and bass lift her out of her life and into an easier place. When she opened them, the music was still with her as she climbed the stairs to the station, and even though the stairs were steep and stretched up farther than she could see, the music made the trek up all that much easier.

  STRANGER

  Saul was gone. His ominous message to Nadia was the last anyone heard from him. After Phee gave up looking for him at the mall, she went to Nadia’s house, only to find that Neko had forced his way past his sister and had taken off. The two girls had sat with each other, silent with anxiety, waiting. For something. Anything. Any small piece of news to move the wretched day forward, out of the quagmire of disquiet. It never came. Hours passed, and no one heard from Saul. Nadia’s parents came home from work and Neko still hadn’t returned, so Nadia
had to admit that he was gone. Nadia’s parents had told Phee to go home, so she did, leaving Nadia behind to get lectured and likely grounded for not being able to keep her little brother home.

  That night, no word came from Chrysalis. No word came from Saul. Neko showed up in the wee hours, silent and unrepentant. The next day, still no word about Saul. When her parents left for another meeting with Chrysalis, Phee took the chance to go to Saul’s house and talk to his parents. It was odd that they hadn’t called to see if Phee knew where he was, but maybe they didn’t want to impose with their seemingly trivial worries compared with Oscar and Eva’s worry about not getting Gryph back.

  Saul lived in the Lions, which was a suburb on the other side of the city centre. The houses there were bold and angular, all designed by the same avant-garde architect, Geneva Simard. Even the green space was artfully situated, forming a graphic puzzle from an aerial view. Put together, the shapes of lawn and garden formed a pair of lions, although the suburb itself was named after the mountain to the north, which featured two peaks commonly referred to as the lions. A certain kind of three-per lived in the Lions. People who were newly three-per after having grown up in lesser families, artists whose acclaim had won them honorary three-per status, musicians whose fame demanded their upward bump, professors and politicians of the left-leaning sort. Oscar and Eva had put an offer in on a house there just after Fawn was born, but it hadn’t worked out. They did want to live there, but with Eva’s father’s dementia progressing as it was, they didn’t want to leave him with only his aging wife to deal with him.

  On the train to the Lions, Phoenix had been listening to her pod, hoping the music would distract her from her reality, which at the moment was fairly unbearable. It hadn’t worked, though, no matter how many playlists she’d scrolled through. She’d even tried playing The Princess Bride, the old movie that usually worked to calm her. Her apprehension was consuming, and as the train neared the Lions, Phee gave up and tucked her earphones and pod into her pack.

  It was a weekday, but because the Lions was populated by an eclectic group of people who didn’t necessarily work Monday to Friday, nine to five, it was more bustling than other neighbourhoods. People were out on bicycles, others were walking their dogs, and parents and kids played in the park. The laughs and splashes from the water playground were harsh to Phoenix’s ears.