The Phoenix Project (The Liberty Box Book 3)

by C. A. Gray

  Each night I saw the Potentate—Ben—for dinner. He was too busy to spend time with me during the day, and in the last two days he’d been away even in the evenings on business—something about rebellions in pockets of the Republic? He sheltered me from the news, ironically enough, so I didn’t know any more than that.

  Me. Sheltered from the news.

  In a way, I disliked his company too. He was always the perfect gentleman, yet his presence seemed to increase my anxiety. Every afternoon I looked forward to seeing him at dinner, but then every evening I couldn’t wait to get away from him. I could never understand why.

  I got up from my bed, which was covered with an exquisite brocade of pure gold thread, probably hand-sewn by a seamstress somewhere in Europe. I wandered into the hall, not going anywhere in particular. I wore lovely silver silk slippers which sank into the thick red carpet. The halls were filled with paintings of Tribunal members, some of whom had recently died at the hands of Jackson MacNamera.

  Jackson. His very name made me break out into a cold sweat, so I tried not to think of it. I knew I’d been there that day, along with my brother Charlie—the day Jackson murdered all of those noble men. I’d thought he was doing it for me at the time, trying to set me free. I think I was actually trying to escape to be with him. I was so close to freedom from his influence, and yet the very first chance I got, I ran right back to him. How could I have been so stupid?

  Stop it, Kate. Stop it right now.

  This kind of thinking, the disconnect between what I thought was true and what was actually true, was what brought on the panic attacks.

  What does ‘actually true’ mean, though? I wondered again. I learned in school about a philosophy called postmodernism, that essentially argued that there was no such thing as objective reality. One person’s truth is as good as any other person’s. If that was the case, wouldn’t that mean that what Jackson told me and what Ben told me were both simultaneously true? Even if they were contradictory? At that point, wouldn’t the concept of truth lose all meaning?

  How can I know anything at all?

  That did it. I grabbed on to the wall, feeling my chest constrict and my vision narrow. After a few seconds, I started to feel the numbness in my fingers. I put my head between my knees and waited for it to pass, gritting my teeth and trying not to scream.

  It felt like I was dying, or going crazy, several times a day.

  When the attack did finally pass, I stood up, trembling, and gripped the wall to prop myself up. I pushed myself along by clinging to the wall. Just so I wouldn’t be without its support for the entire length of a doorframe, I traced the wall into the room beside mine. I hadn’t been in there before, just because it somehow seemed rude to wander uninvited into other parts of the palace, but at this point? Oh well.

  The room was done all in green: green striped wallpaper, green carpet, darker shades of green upholstery. The furniture was a dark mahogany, though. I continued to claw my way across the wall, until suddenly I felt something give way under my fingers.

  I froze, not sure if I’d imagined it.

  I pressed again, and a section of the wall noticeably receded. I pushed harder. I hadn’t even seen a seam in the wall where a door should have been—but then, the striped wallpaper made it hard to see details like that. Sure enough, the wall opened up and rotated, revealing a hidden door granting me passage into a small room beyond. My heartbeat quickened: at last, something worth exploring! I didn’t know if I wasn’t supposed to find this or not, but the idea that I wasn’t exhilarated me. Maybe it wasn’t wise to seal myself into a small enclosed space without telling anyone where I was going, but for all my fears, I wasn’t that concerned for my own safety. My sanity, yes; my safety, no. I went in.

  When the door shut behind me, I found that I wasn’t in the dark: small LED lights lined the walkway. So it isn’t just a room…

  I followed the walkway, and found that there were exits about as often as there were rooms in the palace. The paint on each exit implied the room on the other side of it, I assumed: most of the palace must be color-coded. My room, for instance, was mostly gold, so the exit to my room was painted with a translucent sort of gold, though not as rich as the gold in the wallpaper on my walls or the brocade of my bedspread.

  “How many of the servants even know about this?” I murmured to myself. Why had the Potentate built it? I’d have to ask him at dinner tonight.

  No, I thought better of it. I didn’t know why, but at least for the time being, I didn’t want him to know that I knew.

  “Where do I want to go that I don’t think he’d approve of?” I asked myself, knowing the answer immediately.

  The dungeons.

  While wandering the grounds, I’d poked my head inside the front gate of the dungeons—only to be turned away by the guard with gentle firmness. “His Excellency does not wish to traumatize you, Miss Brandeis,” was the guard’s explanation. “He wishes you to experience only the lovely side of the palace.”

  I hadn’t been all that intrigued by the dungeons until I discovered I wasn’t allowed in there. But now, that was the place I most wished to go. Also, I vaguely recalled that my brother Charlie and I had been held there at one point in the not too distant past. Why would I have been in the dungeon before, and in the palace now, though? I had no answer. I couldn’t remember the specifics. Maybe I’d never been there at all—perhaps I’d dreamt it.

  I could go now, I thought. Surely within this inner maze I could bypass the guards at the front of the dungeon. But they’d discover me and usher me out right away, and I wanted to take my time there, to really find out what it was that I wasn’t supposed to see.

  I made up my mind—I’ll go at midnight.

  Chapter 6: Jackson

  Most of the cells in the dungeon were empty, I noticed as the guards dragged and shoved me toward mine. I heard a faint whimper that sounded like a woman, and someone pacing, but I never got a good look. When I tried to slow down to get a read on my surroundings, the guard shoved me so hard I stumbled.

  “Don’t worry,” the guard sneered at me as he unlocked my cell and rolled the door open. “I’m sure you won’t be in here for very long.” With that ominous pronouncement, he slammed the iron bars shut. He uncuffed me through the bars, and then strode away. I heard his shoes, the same ones the agents wore, click-clacking all the way down the hallway as he resumed his post.

  The day turned to night, and then to day again. I don’t know if I slept, but I must have, because the time seemed to pass quickly. At first, each time I heard the click-clack of agent shoes upon the dank concrete outside my cell, I assumed they were coming for me for the last time. But sometimes they passed me by altogether, and other times they brought me food—if you could call it that.

  I spent most of my days and nights somewhere between sleep and waking, where I allowed myself to indulge in the bitter luxury of self-pity, having nothing better to occupy my time. I thought wistfully of home, of Grandfather and Uncle Patrick and Aunt Vivien. They’d never know what happened to me. I thought of all the conversations I’d had with Grandfather and Uncle Patrick over the years, of coming to the Republic one day and doing something “great” and “important.”

  What a joke that turned out to be.

  “Psst.”

  For the first time in days I sat up, sharpening my senses upon my surroundings. But I didn’t see where the whisper had come from.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  “In the wall. To your left. There’s a trick brick, lean up to it.”

  I crouched down, pressing my hands against each brick as I searched for the culprit. I found one protruding, presumably pushed out from the whisperer’s side. I pulled it the rest of the way, crouching down to peer through.

  In the moonlight, I saw a gaunt face—he might have been younger than he appeared, but the shadows were deep and unkind to him.

  “Haven’t had a cell mate in years,” h
e whispered, his voice hoarse. “I’m Joe.”

  I hesitated, but I don’t know why. Still trying to take the measure of him, perhaps—or else trying to orient myself to a conversation with a human again.

  “Jackson,” I whispered back.

  “What’d you do to him?” asked Joe.

  I realized he must mean Voltolini. I gave a hollow whisper-laugh. “I’m a convicted terrorist.”

  I saw Joe’s face shift, as if he sat up straighter. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’m the public face of the rebels, or one of them.”

  Joe blinked. “Rebels? Are you serious? There are rebels?”

  I started to tell Joe my story. I’d gotten as far as the cave community and our discovery of the Liberty Box technology that kept the citizens brainwashed when a strange look contorted Joe’s face.

  “You do know about those at least, don’t you?” I asked. “I assume you haven’t been in here that long.”

  “I… yes,” Joe said at last. “I know of them. Go on.”

  Then I told him about Kate, and actually found it was kind of cathartic to do so. I gave him far more details of our relationship than I would have under any other circumstances. It might have been a bit of wishful thinking on my part—pretending he was Uncle Patrick or something. I told Joe about Kate’s dead fiancé who turned out not to be dead, but then probably died in the Beckenshire bombings anyway. I told him about the signal disruptors which we had created in Beckenshire to shield us from the control center sweeps, and that these had allowed us to go back onto the grid without alerting the agents to our presence. I told him of breaking Kate and her brother out of the palace once, and how we managed to escape because the Potentate’s guards only used Deep Impact bullets at that time—which could kill only if you believed they could. With the jammers, our little group could see the truth, and their bullets couldn’t hurt us. I told him of the kiss the night before Kate’s broadcast. That she’d told me she loved me. That I hadn’t said it back when I should have. But then during the broadcast, she somehow got brainwashed a second time, even though she knew about the government signals and I’d taught her how to control her mind and guard against them. Charlie had suggested the signals were somehow specially created for Kate, stronger and more personal than the usual signals. When I said this, even in the moonlight I thought Joe seemed to pale. He looked away, haunted.

  Before I could finish my story, he said, “Let me guess. She suddenly thought you were the one who had brainwashed her, instead of Voltolini. Everything she had been working for, everything she’d been believing, was all your doing.”

  I paused, taken aback. “How did you know that?”

  For a long moment I wasn’t sure if he was going to answer me. At last, he said, “Because I’m the one who programmed her.”

  I stared, not comprehending. “Sorry… you… what?”

  Joe heaved a heavy sigh. “You heard me. I’m the creator of the Liberty Box technology.”

  This still didn’t compute. Is he insane? “That doesn’t make any sense. Then why would you be in here?”

  “Too valuable to kill,” Joe said, bitterly. “When it breaks, they need me to fix it. They cart me out of here when they need me, and dress me up to look professional so the rest of the IT staff doesn’t know I’m a prisoner. I do my thing. They bring me right back.”

  It took a few minutes to digest this. “But—why? Why would do you do that? Why are you helping him?”

  “Does it look like I’m willing participant at this point?” Joe gestured to his surroundings with his eyes.

  Hot fury boiled inside of me. “You should refuse, then! Or do it wrong! You made it, you should know how to do that!”

  “Perhaps I should, perhaps I should,” Joe acknowledged. His noncommittal tone infuriated me even more.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  He sighed, and said at last, “Because I’m a coward.”

  “You’re not a coward, you’re a selfish bastard is what you are!” I was shouting now—it might attract the attention of the guards, but I didn’t care. “Do you realize how many deaths you’re responsible for? How many lives you’ve destroyed? Thousands of people starved to death or died of preventable diseases, all while worshiping their captor, because you programmed them that way! And Kate—” I caught my breath, unable to go on. This self-professed coward had not only made Kate turn against me, he’d most likely cost me my life, too.

  I saw the large eyes watching me through the brick hole, impassive, taking my rampage without complaint. It was too much. All I knew was, if I were him, I’d have gladly faced torture and execution, if the alternative was to sell my soul.

  Infusing my voice with as much venom as I could muster, I spat, “Never talk to me again!” Without waiting for a reply, I slid the brick back in place, eager to be rid of Joe.

  Chapter 7: Kate

  Ingrid brushed my hair and helped me slip into a different satin nightgown than the one I’d worn every other night. Tonight’s gown was a white halter top, flowing down to my toes. Like a ghost, I thought. How appropriate.

  I lay awake that night, watching the stars through my window. I’d purposely left the curtains open so that I could see when the sliver of moon reached its pinnacle. I had no other way to tell the time. When it was high in the sky, I crept out of bed, fingering the wall of my bedroom where I’d found the rotating door the night before, looking for the seam. I had found it earlier in the daytime, but it was harder in shadow. It was very subtle, and I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if I didn’t know what I was looking for. Once I found it, I pushed. At first nothing happened. I wasn’t sure what I’d done special the first time, so I found the seam on the opposite side of the wall just to gauge the size of the rotating door. I pushed on the extreme left, and that worked. The door rotated, and I found myself trapped inside the inner maze.

  “Don’t panic,” I whispered to myself aloud. “Do not panic, Kate.”

  I tried to envision where the dungeons must be from my room. They were connected, but the land dipped down to accommodate them almost like a basement. I’d found a set of inner stairs, so I headed for those, my bare feet making almost no noise on the cold stone. When I came to them, I descended until I couldn’t descend any further. I just headed west in the general direction of the dungeons. For a long stretch, there were no doors at all. This was as I’d expected… this section might be subterranean before the land evened out again.

  What if the door opens up into one of the cells? I suddenly wondered, and stopped cold. Would I find myself face to face with a murderer or a rapist, at midnight, totally defenseless?

  No. No way the Potentate would have built in an escape for criminals. Surely if there was a door into the dungeons at all, it would only lead to the main passageway, on the other side of the cells. I remembered that passage… two versions of it, in fact. In one, the carpets were as thick and lush as in the rest of the palace, and the air smelled faintly of baking bread. In the other, there was only mold, slime, and the smell of human excrement.

  Which was real?

  There was that question again. Maybe they both were. Or maybe the question itself had no meaning.

  I came to the entrance I sought: the LED lights faintly illuminated an outline of bars on the wall. I paused and took a deep breath before I pushed on the extreme left of the outline.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I entered the dungeons and found that my first memory had been correct: plush carpets, and the inviting aroma of baking. Of course. Ben was not an unreasonably cruel man. He would treat even his prisoners with dignity.

  It seemed strange that there were no guards around; perhaps because there were no prisoners. I didn’t see any in the first few cells, so I stopped to peer inside of them. Each cell was decorated like an intimate sitting room, with comfortable-looking beds in the corners and a nice view of the Potentate’s lovely grounds. That was interesting, because I couldn’t see into t
he cells from the grounds—perhaps that section was walled off somehow.

  “Kate.”

  I whirled around, startled. In the cell behind me, a man stood up from his bed, and walked up to the bars. I stopped breathing when the moonlight fell on his face, and felt a swooping sensation in my stomach, though whether this was from excitement or fear, I could not tell. There were bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in a long time, and he wore a prison jumpsuit… but it was Jackson.

  He killed my family, I reminded myself. He killed Will. He brainwashed me and held me prisoner.

  “You look beautiful,” Jackson said.

  I tried to find my tongue. “You… you abducted me.”

  “No, I didn’t!” His vehemence caused me to take a step back. He held the bars with both hands, so I kept my distance. “You are the most headstrong woman I have ever met, Kate. There was never a time when I was even leading and you following, let alone me kidnapping you! Most of the time it was the other way around—you going off on a mission while I followed to make sure you didn’t die!”

  I blinked at him, trying to feel whether or not his words were true. But I can’t trust my feelings. “You—brainwashed me,” I stammered.

  “No, Kate!” Jackson pushed the bars away from him and paced. “You have been brainwashed, yes, but not by me. Remember what I taught you? That you can tune in to something real? Pay attention to the sensations from your body; that is real. It’s your baseline. From there you can start to distinguish real from not real.”

  I shook my head. “That’s how you hypnotize me. That’s what you’re trying to do now.” A flash came to me, of my mom, dad, and brother on a roof with Jackson, all with eyes closed, following along with his instructions. I realized, “That’s what you did to my family too! That’s why they’re dead! You hypnotized them!”