The Phoenix Project (The Liberty Box Book 3)

by C. A. Gray

  I shivered, wishing I’d remembered to bring a wrap or something with me instead of just my thin blue silk nightgown which Ingrid had dressed me in for the evening. I should have remembered it was chilly down here from the last time.

  Jackson’s breathing seemed labored tonight, too. Had he really been hurt? I grabbed the bars and pulled my face through them, trying to get a closer look.

  He must’ve felt my eyes on him, because he jarred awake. Before even looking around, I saw him grimace. No doubt about it, he was in pain.

  “Kate,” he groaned.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  With obvious effort, he sat up. “In some of the districts the control center signals aren’t working anymore,” he told me. “The Potentate wanted to know if I knew why.”

  I blinked, waiting for him to explain more, but that was all he said.

  Control centers. Those were the ones that tracked the movement of citizens so that the government could anticipate the needs of the individual. If they weren’t working, that would mean people might go without help when they needed it. But… was Jackson implying they’d beat him up for the information? That didn’t make sense.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re saying… Ben… tortured you?”

  “Not personally,” Jackson muttered. “He had a guy named Hurst do his dirty work for him. I didn’t even know humans came that large. But yeah. Voltolini was standing there directing the whole thing.”

  I thought of the rioting in the Republic that Ben wouldn’t tell me about. Was this related somehow? I repeated, “Ben wanted to know if you knew why the signals weren’t working?”

  “Would you please quit calling him Ben?”

  “What should I call him, then?”

  “Anything else.”

  Jackson and I watched each other for a long moment. A flash of memory came to me: waking up on a bed of heather, inside a cave. He’d brought me a plate of root vegetables and berries.

  “Do you know why the signals weren’t working?” I asked him.

  He bit his lip, and didn’t answer for a long time. “Hurst and his cronies eventually decided I didn’t know, and left before they beat me to death.”

  It wasn’t an answer. He doesn’t trust me, I thought.

  “I told Ben—The Potentate,” I corrected, “that I wanted to leave the palace, and go back to my old apartment and my old job and my old life. He said I wasn’t allowed to leave.”

  “I’m shocked,” Jackson muttered, though he sounded anything but.

  We both fell silent. Then Jackson turned and looked out the window of his cell, his expression mournful.

  “They murdered someone tonight,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Apparently she was the Potentate’s Chief Technology Officer. Barrett was her name. She couldn’t figure out why the control center signaling stopped working either, so Voltolini had her executed.” He pointed at the hill outside the window. “Right there.”

  I shook my head. “That can’t be.”

  “I watched it,” he said. “At sunset.” He heaved a great sigh. “There was nobody to save her.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I stammered. “You… you’re making that up!”

  He shrugged, his expression unchanged. My accusations didn’t seem to bother him as much this visit as they had the last time; either that or he expected them. “It’s easy to verify. Ask the guy in the cell next to me.” He jerked his thumb to his left, and I followed where he pointed, confused. “His name is Joe. Incidentally he’s also the one who built the control center technology and programmed you to turn against me.”

  I stared at Jackson, not sure whether I was supposed to believe this or not. He said it indifferently, like he didn’t expect me to believe him. I glanced at the man in the cell beside Jackson’s: he looked like he was asleep in the corner anyway. I was glad of that—whoever he was, if he saw me there, he might report it to someone.

  Jackson went on, “You can ask anybody in the palace about Barrett tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll tell you she turned out to be an Enemy of State and a danger to the nation.” He gave a hollow laugh. Then he turned back to me. “Why are they letting you in here to visit me, anyway? I’d have thought that would be the last thing your precious Potentate would want.”

  I bristled at the sarcasm, but told him, “They aren’t ‘letting me in’. They don’t know I’m here. There’s a secret passage that runs along the inside walls of the entire palace.”

  Jackson looked up sharply. “What?”

  “Well, I’m sure you can’t get to it from inside a cell,” I pointed out. “But there are rotating doors in the walls of some of the rooms in the palace. The seams are hidden by wallpaper. When you get inside, there’s a lighted walkway. I just follow it down here.” Jackson bit his lip and stared past me, thinking about something. I probably shouldn’t have told him—but what could he do with the information, locked up in here? I rushed on, “You’re right that Ben—the Potentate doesn’t want me talking to you, though. He told me so.”

  Jackson snorted. “I’ll bet he did.”

  “He said he didn’t think I was stable enough yet. You’re too dangerous.”

  “And yet you’re here.” He fixed his one good eye on me and waited.

  I took a deep breath, and said all in a rush, “You said the Potentate brainwashed the Republic to believe they’re affluent even though they’re not. They’re really starving, and barely getting by, while he’s benefitting from their labor. That’s what you said, right?”

  “That’s what you said,” Jackson corrected me. “In your broadcast a few weeks ago.”

  “Right, but that idea originally came from you.”

  “No, it didn’t, Kate! You fled from the Republic because you figured that out long before you even met me—”

  “Whatever,” I cut him off, annoyed. That wasn’t the point anyway. “It doesn’t matter who said it when. Let’s just say it’s true, for the sake of argument. Is that so bad, if they’re happy?” I looked down at my beautiful imported silk nightgown. “I mean… maybe I’m really wearing threadbare cotton instead of silk every night—”

  “You’re not,” he interjected, his tone stiff, and waved a hand at me as he said, “You’re Voltolini’s personal… whatever. Your luxury is real.”

  “But my point is, does it matter, if I think it’s silk? Who cares if it isn’t? If the people don’t know they’re miserable, is it even really wrong?”

  I expected him to get mad. But instead, Jackson took a deep breath and sat down on the other side of the bars from me, wrapping his hands on the bar just below where I’d wrapped mine. I flinched, but didn’t move away.

  “I had a conversation about this with my Uncle Patrick once,” he said. “Uncle Patrick said, many people think of religion as a personal choice—you can believe what you want and I can believe what I want, and no one person’s choice is any better than any other’s.”

  “Of course,” I nodded.

  “That can only be true if everybody is wrong, though,” Jackson said. “Then my wrong belief is just as good as your wrong belief. But if, on the other hand, the idea of God and the afterlife corresponds to reality in any practical way, then by necessity, we can’t all be correct if we hold contradictory beliefs. Doesn’t mean we should persecute someone who disagrees with us, of course not—it just means, from a logical standpoint, an atheist and a theist can’t both be correct.”

  I wasn’t following how this was relevant. “Okay…”

  “So what I’m saying is, perhaps there is a question regarding whether or not truth is even knowable in some situations. But if the truth exists, and if the truth is knowable, then inherently, truth must be the highest good.”

  “But why?” I asked, “Isn’t happiness the highest good? Isn’t subjective experience more important?”

  “I asked him the same question,” Jackson nodded. “An
d Uncle Patrick asked me, if a schizophrenic believes himself to be a great king, but he lives in a padded cell, and commands those who bathe and feed and clothe him as though they were servants rather than caretakers… would you trade places with him?”

  “Of course not!” I said at once.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s delusional!”

  Jackson nodded. “So in practice, you agree that truth is a higher good than happiness, even if in theory you’re not sure.” He paused, and added, “There’s another reason aside from the inherent one why that is the better choice, too. Only the truth we know can set us free. In that example, if the schizophrenic could accept his actual reality, he’d have a chance of changing his circumstances for the better. He could, quite literally, get well and gain his freedom. But as long as he continues to believe the lie, he remains ‘stuck.’”

  I blinked at him as this sunk in. “Okay,” I tried again, “but… what if there’s no such thing as objective truth at all? Or if there is such a thing, is it even knowable?”

  “You mean, what if the schizophrenic is also a great king?”

  I huffed for a minute. “I don’t like that example. I just mean, what if you say the world is one way, and I say it’s another, and Ben says it’s another? Couldn’t all of our truths be right for us, and thus in a sense, all right? Who can prove they’re not?”

  Jackson stared at me. “You mean I kidnapped and brainwashed you, and I also didn’t?”

  I blushed and looked down. “Saying it like that makes the idea sound ridiculous.”

  “Because it is. No, I mean no offense, but unless there is no physical world and we all only exist in our minds, then that idea can’t be right. If there is a physical world, then in that world, contradictory physical truths cannot coexist. Whether or not truth is knowable in every respect might be a different question. People may disagree on what they think those more obscure and less testable truths might be, but let’s not have any of this nonsense about multiple contradictory truths. At that point, logic itself breaks down.”

  I closed my eyes. He’s right. The thought gave me a spark of hope, like there was ground beneath my feet again.

  “Okay, so if there is such a thing as truth…” I began, “how do you find out what it is then? If all you have is one person’s word against another’s?”

  “Well,” he shifted his position, “I think you have to start with what you do know. That’s why I always begin by paying attention to the physical reality around me, right now.”

  “But what if you can’t even trust your senses?” I whispered.

  “You can, if you concentrate,” he whispered back—and one of his hands almost rested upon mine, but he seemed to think better of it, and pulled it away again, pointing around us. “Look carefully.”

  I looked down at the thick red carpet where I sat. Flash—just for a split second, it became hard concrete with a slippery sort of film on it. Then it was back to thick carpet again.

  Immediately I felt the vice close down upon my chest again. I started to gasp for breath.

  Jackson sat up straighter, wrapping his hands on the bars and pulling his face as close to mine as it would go. “Close your eyes, Kate,” he said. “Tighten every muscle in your body, from your toes… your feet… your calves and thighs… your hips, your abs and chest, your arms and shoulders, all the way up to your face. Squeeze as hard as you can.” A few seconds later he added, “Now… release.”

  I did as he said, and felt the vice break off of me. I looked at him, vulnerable, hoping for more instructions.

  “Breathe in to the count of eight,” he commanded, and counted for me. When he got to eight, he said, “Exhale,” and counted back down. We did that three times. When he finished, I started to cry.

  Jackson reached a hand through the bars toward my face. I flinched away from him, before I realized that he was only trying to brush away my tears. His hand hovered in midair, rejected, before settling back on the bars.

  “Remember the first conversation you and I ever had, in the caves—when I told you that emotions serve a purpose?” he asked me. “Negative emotions tell you something is wrong in your circumstances, in your body, or in your thoughts. The question is, which one is it?”

  I tried to stop the flow of tears, but they wouldn’t staunch. “I don’t know, that’s just it,” I choked out.

  “I bet you’ve been having a lot of those since you got to the palace,” Jackson guessed. “Panic attacks.”

  My eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “Because there’s a disconnect between your circumstances and your thoughts. Your brain is trying to understand what’s real: what it sees and what it hears from the control center signals, versus the real Kate that’s still in there somewhere. When they come in conflict and you don’t know which to believe, panic results.”

  “That’s why I wanted to get out of here and go to my apartment!” I whispered. “Ben won’t let me, though. He says I’m a patient and a patient can’t just leave the hospital whenever she chooses!” I wiped my cheeks. “The Potentate, I meant. Sorry.”

  He pursed his lips and gave me a shrug.

  “I’d hoped…” I trailed off, looking down the hallway. Deep red carpet still. “I’d hoped if I could get into a familiar environment, things would start to make more sense.”

  “I’ll bet you wake up in panic pretty often, too,” Jackson murmured.

  “Every morning,” I whispered. How does he know all this?

  He nodded. “Your subconscious keeps trying to tell you the truth.” He was stroking my hair now. And I let him.

  I shivered again, wrapping my bare arms around myself. What Jackson said made so much sense. But was that only because he was brainwashing me right now? Was I a fool?

  “Why did you come here tonight, Kate?” he asked.

  I bit my lip. “I had to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” I searched for words, and then wondered how much I should tell him. The real reason was because Ben had been keeping me in the dark about the riots and about my family… he wasn’t telling me what was going on beyond vagaries and platitudes.

  “Because I needed answers,” I said at last.

  “You already knew the answers I would give you before you came here.”

  It was true. I did already know. But the difference was, Jackson’s answers felt complete, unlike Ben’s. I didn’t feel like he was holding back—except maybe about knowing what had happened to the control center signals.

  “Why didn’t you tell them what they wanted to know?” I asked, reaching my hand through the bars and gesturing to his bruises. “Why did you let them do this to you?”

  He very slowly touched my fingers, and wrapped his hand around mine. I felt a swooping sensation inside of me, and my heart sped up. The reaction was visceral and outside my control, and it scared me a little. I almost pulled my hand away, but fought the urge.

  “Because,” he told me at last, “what’s happening out there is bigger than me.”

  I held his hand tighter. “Would you die for it?”

  He gave me a sad smile. “I expect to.”

  Chapter 13: Kate

  My heart pounded in my chest like it was trying to escape.

  I don’t know what time it was when I finally left Jackson’s cell. The more time I spent with Jackson, the more involuntary feelings he stirred up in me, and that frightened me. Ben made me feel frustrated, because he refused to give me the whole truth—frustrated and occasionally nauseous for some reason. But Jackson made me feel… out of control. In a way, that was worse. Yet I knew I’d keep going back. And if I kept going back, eventually I’d do something rash—something I’d live to regret, if it turned out he was as dangerous as Ben said he was.

  I closed my eyes and stopped walking in the secret passage somewhere between the dungeons and the rest of the palace. I tuned in to the pounding in my chest,
like Jackson would have told me to, counting the beats. The adrenaline meant I was about to do something rash right now, but I didn’t know what it was until the thought finally materialized:

  I can’t take this anymore. I have to get out of here.

  Yes. It was rash, but it felt right. I had to get away from Ben’s influence, but away from Jackson’s also. Each of them caused me to doubt the other. I just needed to be someplace neutral, to try and distinguish real from not real.

  But Ben said I wasn’t allowed to leave.

  Well… he’s not awake to stop me, is he?

  I opened my eyes to re-chart my course, mentally rehearsing the exits in the castle to decide which might be best to take. There was no point in even returning to my room, as none of the things I had in there were actually mine. I didn’t want to be accused of stealing anything other than the nightgown I wore. That couldn’t be helped. I’d have changed into my own clothes, but I was pretty sure Ben had ordered the blue dress I wore when the agents picked me up to be destroyed. After all, we’d only found it the day before in an old abandoned house, and it had been full of holes and smelled of moth balls then…

  Flash. I was standing in a warehouse bathroom, a single light bulb glaring from the ceiling. Jackson was in there with me, my head pressed against his chest. He’d just handed me the dress, and held me as I cried. I’d thought I was about to die the next day. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wished and hoped he’d finally do what he did next: he lifted my chin and kissed me…

  “Stop it!” I told myself out loud, crouching down and putting my hands over my head.

  The nearest exit was the garden, from the main eating hall. Fine. I emerged from the inner passage and into the hall, barefoot.

  Last time I’d fled I’d been barefoot too, hadn’t I? Padding down the alleyway behind my apartment…

  I slipped out of the banquet hall out into the garden. Wow, it’s cold. It probably wouldn’t be long before I’d regret not at least returning to my room for a wrap of some kind, but I was out now. I didn’t want to risk backtracking.