The Phoenix Project (The Liberty Box Book 3)

by C. A. Gray

  “Just for Joe,” said Charlie, “I’ll take back what he’s wearing. They’re my clothes anyway.”

  “We should keep the agent uniform, though,” I added, “just in case—wash out the blood in the shirt if we can. Never know if we might need it again.”

  Molly led us first into a bedroom with a musty closet in it, and handed me a pair of jeans that fit reasonably well with a belt at the waist, and a t-shirt designed for someone much smaller than I was. I could barely move my arms in it, but it was still far preferable to the bloody shirt I gladly discarded. Charlie took back the outfit from Joe, and Molly found another t-shirt and pair of pants the same size as the ones I wore to give to him. He looked almost as skeletal in those clothes as he had in Charlie’s. Molly clucked her matronly tongue at him.

  “We’re gonna need to get some meat on those bones! I’m working on supper, it’ll be ready in ten. Go on into the living room and introduce yourselves to the others.”

  In the living room, Nick, Jacob, Jean, Alec, and Roger sat around a cleared out hole in the center of the concrete floor. A fire crackled there, recessed into the concrete and protected with stones all around it. I headed over to greet Nick, expecting to find him jubilant. Instead he glared at me with a stony expression that I didn’t immediately understand.

  “Jackson,” he said, clapping me on the back once, his mouth set in a hard line.

  “I’m—glad to see you’re okay,” I said carefully, even as I embraced Jacob with one arm and shook Roger’s hand.

  “Glad to see you came back to us. Eventually,” was Nick’s cool reply. “I never expected to see you again.”

  Ah, I thought. He’s mad I went after Kate instead of staying to help the hunters in Friedrichsburg the first time.

  I waved at Alec, who also glared at me and didn’t bother getting up from his seat around the indoor fire. The extra smoke from the fire blew out the open window behind him, covered by a sheet which flapped in the wind. At least Jean leapt up to hug me.

  “Who’s this?” Alec gestured at Joe, scowling.

  “Jackson and I were in prison together,” he said, and I could tell he was choosing his words with care. “I am—also an enemy of Voltolini’s.”

  Alec turned to me with raised eyebrows. “Prison, huh? How’d you get out?”

  Before I could answer, Molly handed out a stack of plates, and we helped ourselves to shanks of raw deer meat to roast over the flames ourselves. She’d also apparently found several types of canned beans which she’d mixed all together. Charlie told his story and mine to the others while I settled next to Molly and Nick, gulping down water so fast that I splashed half of it down my new t-shirt.

  “So how did you survive?” I asked Molly, as Charlie told the others his story.

  “I was out in the woods trying to hunt when the blast came,” Molly said, her voice just over a whisper. “All the hunters were gone and we were out of food. I’d have sent Kate to hunt instead, since I knew you’d taught her how, but she was gone too, and nobody knew where she went. Nick showed me how to hunt once or twice, but I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was lost. I hadn’t shot anything and I’d been out there for hours, chasing one thing after another. I started panicking that I wouldn’t find my way back. I don’t know how close I was to Beckenshire, but close enough that when the blast came, it threw me—I landed on this side,” she indicated her left, where all the scrapes were, “and I think it knocked me out, but I don’t know for how long. When I woke up, I realized what must’ve happened.” Her expression cracked. “I should have gone back to see if there were other survivors, but I—instead, I just tried to get to Friedrichsburg. I wanted Nick.”

  “There were no survivors, baby,” Nick murmured, kissing the top of her head.

  “But what if there were? What if someone else was in the forest too?” she persisted. “You came all the way back to try to find me in Beckenshire, you obviously thought someone could have survived the blast…”

  He shook his head. “I was frankly a little insane,” he confessed. “And I thank God that all the hunters were gone, so you had to try and hunt yourself. Far more favor than I could have expected.” He kissed the top of her head again, wrapping one arm around her banged up shoulder and pulling her closer to him.

  “Nick says it was two days before he got to me,” Molly murmured, gesturing to her husband with her head. “We ran into each other in the woods. I’d just run out of water.”

  “And you’re otherwise okay?” I said, incredulous.

  She shrugged. “Except for the scrapes and the constant ringing in my ears. And a little PTSD, maybe.”

  Nick glared at me next. “Your turn, Jackson. Where did you go when you left us?”

  Charlie hadn’t gotten to that point in his own story to the others yet. So I explained to him about Kate’s plan to send the broadcast with Charlie’s help, then losing track of her, and then having to break her and Charlie out of the palace, along with her parents.

  “We’d just escaped from the palace when we saw the broadcast about Beckenshire,” I explained. I told them about Kate’s broadcast next, which I’m sure everyone in the Republic saw, but Nick and Molly would have been in the woods when it aired. I explained how Kate had been brainwashed again, and how Voltolini had taken her to the palace, even as I was imprisoned. How she’d visited me in secret a few times, and how she and I broke out on the same night, but not together. As I told my story, both their eyes grew rounder and rounder.

  “Charlie said Kate and Will escaped together,” I concluded. “We tried to find them, but there were too many guards and attack dogs on patrol—I had no idea what to track. I went back to get Joe, because—well, we’ll tell you his story soon enough. We finally just decided to get out of there on our own.” I took a deep breath, and figured I’d better address the elephant in the room. “Nick… I hope you’ll forgive me for leaving the rest of the hunters. I asked you to trust me when I left, that I was doing what was best for the cause. I still think I was. Kate’s broadcast made a difference—riots have broken out across the nation, in part, I think, because of her. But I understand if you feel I betrayed you, and if that’s the case, I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Finally Nick looked at his wife, and then at me.

  “Well,” he sighed, “come to it, when I had to choose between helping the rebel cause and going after Molly, even on the off chance that she was still alive, it was no contest. I have no right to judge.”

  I thought about arguing again that by helping Kate, I had also helped the rebel cause—but Nick was right. That was incidental; I went because it was her. So I let it go.

  “We need to tell you all something important,” Charlie said to the group, loudly enough that the individual conversations died down. He glanced at me, and sighed. “When Will and I went back to the palace, I insisted on taking my parents with us. I thought that would keep everyone safer—us and them.” He hesitated, and I knew it was difficult for him to say this out loud. “I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just spit it out. My mom betrayed us all.”

  “What?” Alec demanded, “What do you mean?”

  “She was with us, as you know,” he told Alec and Jean. “So she knows about the plan to break the repeaters. I suspected she was a liability, so my dad’s job was to guard her. But when he saw Kate on the palace grounds, I think he just got distracted. In those few seconds, Mom ran out to the guards.”

  Alec swore, pounding a fist into his palm. “I knew we should have just shot her!”

  “Alec!” Jean protested, just as Charlie said, “Hey! You’re talking about my mom here!”

  “That’s what happened to Grant and Michael, then!” Alec went on, leaping to his feet and crossing the distance to Charlie in a few strides, like he was about to pummel him. “Isn’t it? And how many more will go like them, huh?”

  “Hey, hey!” Nick cried, jumping up
too and running over to push Alec and Charlie away from each other before they could come to blows. “This won’t solve anything, all right? What’s done is done. Settle down!”

  With much heavy breathing and furious glares, silence fell around the fireplace.

  “Where are Will and Kate, then, anyway?” asked Jean, her voice tentative.

  “We last saw them on the palace grounds,” Charlie panted. “If they’re able, they’ll be here when they can. Will knows we’re here.”

  “Well, now what?” Alec burst out at last. “Breaking repeaters was the only idea we ever had that worked. Not only do we need a new strategy, we need to find a way to tell all the new converts out there not to keep trying that one, or they’ll be gunned down too!”

  We all knew it, but nobody had an answer for him.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “That’s why we’re all here, Alec,” Nick said at last. “This is our Council now. We stay here until we have an answer to both of those questions, and the less hostile we are to each other, the easier it will be to come up with them.”

  I glanced at Joe to see if he’d jump in here, but he just stared at his plate. It was almost like the rest of the room had forgotten he was there.

  “We have to find something else grass roots,” mused Roger, “something that wakes people up slowly so we’re not overrun with rioting and anarchy…”

  “But wasn’t there rioting and anarchy in every city where we broke repeaters?” demanded Alec. “Why do you think Voltolini himself got involved? Out of every riot came new rebels. That’s how the plan spread! We were on the ground floor, waiting to explain what was happening, right as people started asking questions.”

  “And more were asking questions than ever before, because we broke the repeaters right on the heels of Kate’s broadcast,” Charlie pointed out. “It was like confirmation of everything she’d said.”

  I nodded, and bit my lip. “I definitely wish we could do something slow and grass roots, Roger, but at this point, I don’t think we have that luxury anymore. A sudden wake-up call is probably the only idea we have left. Anything we do now is pretty much going to have to be—”

  “Explosive,” Charlie finished.

  Nick nodded at us both. “I fear there will be a high body count before the end of this. But I’m not sure we have any choice.”

  “Finally, we all agree we need a revolution!” cried Alec. “About damn time!”

  Chapter 23: Kate

  My heart started to pound once we got into Friedrichsburg. Who would we find there? Who had made it here alive?

  “It’s somewhere in this neighborhood,” Will muttered, once he got to the very outermost suburbs just before the forest. “This street or the next…” Most of the houses on the current block looked abandoned, and I could only see one more street before the forest.

  Will pulled over to park. “We’ll find it on foot. They probably don’t want a bunch of cars in the driveway anyway. It might attract attention.”

  Would there be a bunch? I wondered. Would there be anybody there besides us?

  Will and I walked in silence for a block or so. My chest almost physically ached from the anticipation.

  After what felt like a year, Will pointed to the very last house on the last street.

  “That one,” he said. “With the white van out front.”

  I didn’t reply, but walked toward it so fast that I almost ran. I reached the front door just before Will did, took a deep breath to steady myself, and knocked.

  When the door opened, I could hardly believe my eyes.

  “Molly?”

  Both of us cried out, and I threw my arms around her, laughing and crying at the same time. Seeing her set off some kind of an emotional release in me, and Molly squeezed me tight, opening another arm to bring Will into the hug too. She asked us a thousand questions at once, but already part of me strained to hear what was going on in the living room. There had been a din when we first entered, but it quieted now. Molly and Will and I stood in the kitchen, and after a few seconds, Nick poked his head in too. He let out a whoop.

  “Kate! Will!” he shouted, and ran over to hug both of us. If anyone else in the house had been in doubt as to who had just arrived, they knew now. Charlie came in next. I slipped out of Nick’s arms and ran to my brother, who enveloped me and clapped Will on the back at the same time.

  “Thank God,” Charlie murmured, for once totally serious. He took a step back and inspected me. “Are you… yourself again?”

  I nodded, wiping the tears out of the corners of my eyes which refused to stop flowing. “I’m still a little foggy and disoriented from time to time, but more humiliated than anything else—”

  I stopped when I saw who appeared in the doorway next. It was Jackson.

  He still looked pretty beat up, almost worse now that I saw him in the fluorescent light of the kitchen, rather than the filtered moonlight in the dungeons. One eye was still badly swollen. He didn’t approach me at all, nor did I approach him. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, or if the rest of the room suddenly grew quiet, too. In the eternal moment when we stared at each other, I saw the whole sequence again in my mind, only now with a clear head: the agents dragging Jackson away, and me doing nothing to stop it. Jackson, beaten and swollen in prison, and my own taunts that the Potentate kept him alive only so that I could be the one to do the voice-over at his execution.

  A wave of self-loathing washed over me, and I wished the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

  Nevertheless, Jackson finally entered the room. He passed me by and shook Will’s hand first, saying something I didn’t hear as I stood rooted to the ground, attempting to collect my thoughts. His slight felt like a punch in the gut.

  He’ll never forgive me, I realized. Of course he wouldn’t. I’d known this before seeing him, but it was an abstract idea then. Now I had the proof in front of me.

  “Hi, Kate,” Jackson said at last. He stood before me again now, but he didn’t hug me or touch me in any way.

  “Hi,” I whispered back, unable to look at him.

  Molly cleared her throat and saved me.

  “There’s some deer meat if you two are hungry,” she told Will and me. “We were just in the middle of what seems to have become a war council.”

  “Damn straight,” said Alec, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Will and I filed into the living room. I waited until I saw where Jackson sat, and situated myself on the opposite side of the room as Molly served me. Charlie settled in next to Will and me, filling us in on what had already happened. I only half-listened, noticing for the first time the excessively skinny man in the corner whom I’d never seen before. Most of my awareness still centered on Jackson, though I purposely avoided his eyes.

  “I told them Mom betrayed us,” Charlie told Will, and I looked up sharply, “and that we need another strategy besides breaking repeaters. Plus we need to find a way to get the word out across the Republic to the other rebels, telling them the repeaters are a death trap now.”

  “What happened to them?” I cut in. “Mom and Dad. Are they okay?”

  Charlie looked at me quizzically. “Don’t you remember? Mom ran out to the guards while you were still with us, and Dad went after her.”

  I blinked at him. “I remember, but—” I couldn’t quite explain. The memory was fuzzy, like waking from a dream. I hadn’t been sure it had really happened until he’d said it. “I don’t know what happened next.”

  “The guards took them into custody,” Charlie growled. “I tried to get Jackson to help me break them out, but he said it would be suicide. Not like it wasn’t when he came after you and me the first time, though.”

  I felt a pang in my chest, and involuntarily glanced at Jackson, who was watching me too. I looked away, blushing.

  “What ideas are on the table for telling the rebels to stop breaking repeaters?” Will asked him.

&nbs
p; Charlie shrugged. “None, so far, although I keep thinking Joe might come in handy somehow.”

  “Joe?” Will repeated, pointing at the stranger I had just noticed, who sat more or less in a corner by himself.

  Charlie nodded, but rather than explain, he called across the room, “Hey Jackson. Think now is a good time to introduce Joe to everyone?”

  All eyes turned to Jackson, and then to Joe.

  “We have to sometime,” Jackson agreed, with a darkness to his voice that I’d never heard there before. “Joe, the rebels. Rebels, Joe. Creator of the Liberty Box technology.”

  Dead silence followed this announcement. Then Alec said, “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “You heard right,” Jackson confirmed, and then glanced at Joe, whose eyes widened until they appeared almost half the size of his face.

  Nobody moved for a long moment. Nobody seemed to know what to say or do. At last, Molly cleared her throat. “I’m sure we’d all be glad to hear what Joe—”

  “You bastard!” Alec cut her off, leaping up and lunging at Joe, who raised his hands above his head protectively. “You bastard! I’ll kill you with my bare hands!” Within seconds, Alec had hoisted Joe up to his feet, fastened his hands around his throat, and pinned him against the wall. Joe’s face turned purple. Shouts erupted, and a cluster converged upon Joe and Alec both, though whether to aid Alec or Joe, it was unclear. But somehow, one voice emerged above the fray.

  “Do it!” Joe seethed through his teeth, “Go on, do it! You'll be doing me a favor!”

  “Let him speak!” cried Nick, thrusting Alec away but keeping a firm hand on Joe’s shoulder so he couldn’t escape.

  Joe’s hands flew to his throat once Alec released it, gasping as his face subsided from purple to red. “Let him kill me, why don’t you!” he lashed out at Nick. “I deserve to die! Don’t you think I know it? Don’t you think I’d have done it myself long ago, if I’d had the chance?”