The Phoenix Project (The Liberty Box Book 3)

by C. A. Gray

  When I’d finished, for some reason the chords of a song I’d heard on the radio as a child came back to me, called Only In My Dreams. After a few false starts, I played it from memory, singing the lyrics softly to myself:

  May the wind be always at your back

  And your face set toward the sea;

  Don’t turn back toward the shore,

  Don’t shed a single tear for me.

  I long to keep you by my side,

  But I know that can never be;

  Love must let go, must not hold tight,

  So I must set you free.

  Just as I was about to sing the chorus, about how my lover would come to me again only in my dreams, I stopped, feeling a pair of eyes on my back.

  “I’d say those lyrics are utter rubbish, and you should just come, if that’s how you feel about it,” Will said. “But somehow I don’t think you were singing that for me.”

  I turned, and he sat down on the bench beside me. I slipped my arm around him the way I’d done a thousand times before, and lay my head on his shoulder. It didn’t feel like it once did, though—somehow the gesture now felt as if he were Charlie, or my dad. I’m not quite sure how, but I felt that he understood that too in the way he squeezed me back.

  “You’ll become some prominent political figure there,” I laughed softly. “I’m sure of it. You’ll save the country, and the king will knight you or something afterwards.”

  He snorted a little. “I don't think they do that anymore.”

  “You’ll be the first. And then you’ll marry the princess.”

  “Is that supposed to be comforting?” He pulled back to look at me. “I suppose you think that’s the kind of woman I need—pampered and spoiled?”

  “I know what kind of woman you don’t need,” I murmured meaningfully, pulling back to look at him. “We’d make each other miserable as we are now, Will. You know we would. We’d be fighting all the time.”

  He sighed, and looked away from me. “Yeah, I know,” he said at last. Then he turned back to me with an expression of suppressed pain. “I suppose you’re hoping you’ll find him again, and that the two of you will live happily ever after when this is all over.”

  I started to contradict him, but I couldn’t. I knew in my heart that he was right—some part of me did still hope for that. Aloud, I hedged, “The chances that Jackson and I will both survive are almost nil. I know that.”

  “They are,” Will agreed, his voice flat. “But even if by some miracle you did both survive, I hope you know that a guy like Jackson could never forgive what you did to him.”

  I blinked at him, stung. “What do you mean, ‘a guy like Jackson?’”

  “Come on. He’s basically perfect,” Will spat, his voice infused with bitterness. “He doesn’t have weaknesses or struggles like the rest of us mere mortals. Face it, Kate—you failed. He never will, so he won’t be able to understand how you could, either. He’ll be kind to you, I’m sure. But he won’t love you. He could never be with you after what you did to him.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. He’s right. I know he’s right.

  Will reached over and took my hand.

  “I’m not saying this to hurt you, Kate,” he said, his voice gentler. “I just don’t want you to have any illusions or any regrets. I am offering you your only possible chance at happiness. Your only one.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him, tears slipping down my cheeks.

  “Some things are more important than happiness,” I whispered.

  I said goodbye to Will and Jean the next morning with little fanfare—we’d said all there was to say the night before. They packed up the car that Will and I had driven back from the palace. Jean hugged me and told me to be careful.

  When Jean left us alone, Will kissed me so hard it hurt. Then turned around, and never looked back.

  After that, I was alone. The house felt so very empty and quiet, and for a few minutes I wondered if I’d made the wrong decision. Just as I was about to cry from bitter loneliness and despair, Voltolini’s face floated before my mind’s eye, reminding me of my purpose. My teeth gritted like a reflex.

  The next phase of my plan was pretty simple, really: turn off my signal disruptor and allow myself to be found. I was a little skittish to just do it… but I had to flex my mental muscles a little, see how hard this would be. I sat down on the dilapidated porch outside, right where I’d found Jackson yesterday morning. I settled myself into a comfortable position with the signal disruptor in my lap, closed my eyes, and flipped the switch to off.

  With my eyes closed, I focused on what I should see when I opened them: the same rotting wooden panels and water-damaged siding with yellowing windows that had been there before. I breathed, remembering every detail. I opened my eyes after a few minutes of this, and found my surroundings unchanged.

  “Yes,” I whispered, elated, getting up and jogging outside to the front of the house. This time I didn’t try to envision what I should see in advance—I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that everywhere I went throughout the Republic. But the front of the house still looked the same too. I stopped and tuned in to my own mind, listening for the lies: but I heard nothing.

  Am I too far outside of town? I wondered. Maybe the signals don’t reach this far.

  There were never any signals at all.

  I’m protecting myself against something that isn’t there.

  “All right, there they are,” I whispered to myself. Before I turned the disruptor back on, I pulled out my list of truths. As I did so, I heard, This is nothing but a paranoid delusion. My thoughts are my own and they’ve always been my own.

  “No they’re not!” I said out loud. “I refuse to accept that. I know the truth: Ben Voltolini is evil and he has created control centers to send out targeted signals to all citizens. There are even stronger signals targeting me personally. I don’t know how they seem to always know exactly what to suggest, but they do!”

  I had to be medicated in McCormick for paranoia and insanity. I relapsed recently. I must be relapsing again now.

  “Ha!” I laughed out loud, even though I didn’t feel like it. I felt the fear beginning to stir, but these thoughts were absurd, and I would treat them like they were absurd. “Ha ha ha! You’d like me to believe that, wouldn’t you! But I won’t. You aren’t going to convince me this time!”

  I’m talking back to the voices in my head. I’m insane.

  I flipped the signal disruptor back on. I couldn’t afford to leave it off for too long until I was ready anyway—after two hours, the control center sweep would locate me and agents would find me. My heart pounded, and I waited for the adrenaline to subside.

  This is going to be harder than I thought.

  Per Jean’s warning, I’d planned to just memorize and burn my list of truths, or leave them behind so they wouldn’t serve as my confession and get me arrested. But now I realized I’d be brainwashed again without them.

  Frankly, I’d rather die.

  So I ripped out those few pages from my notebook and folded them up, tucking them next to the swiss army knife in my bra—if anybody finds that, I’ll be dead anyway, I reasoned.

  I looked down at the signal disruptor in my lap, and took a deep breath. Then I flipped it off again, and waited.

  It took a few minutes. The next thought that came was, I’m imagining this. There are no control center signals—

  “That was a control center signal!” I told myself out loud. “And the house does not look like that. Show me the truth!” I spoke this latter command to my eyes, willing them to see what I knew was there. Not the cute little split-level home with manicured lawns, but… “Yes!” Like two images overlaid, I saw both what I knew was there, and what Voltolini wanted me to see. “I can do this,” I coached myself. “I can do this!”

  I turned the disruptor on again, and ran back inside, finding a mirror in the bathroom and inspecting my reflection. I did
n’t look good, per se, but I didn’t look as disheveled as I needed to if I’d recently escaped from a kidnapper. My hair was in a ponytail, so I pulled it out and instead twisted it around the ice pick, pulling strands out here and there to make it seem as messy as possible. I still wore the outfit Will had found for me in the house we’d stopped at along the way, the cargo pants and the oversized t-shirt. Too bad I don’t have the little ripped nightgown anymore, I thought. That would have been perfect for this, but what I had on would have to do. I carefully sliced the fabric of the pants and the t-shirt with the knife here and there, pulling the rip with my fingers to make them seem like they’d come from a struggle. Gritting my teeth, I sliced my own skin in a few places too. I didn’t think I had the courage to give myself a black eye, though that would have been nice from a disguise standpoint.

  I looked at the final effect in the mirror when I’d finished. Better. I took a deep breath.

  I can do this. I can do this.

  Chapter 29: Kate

  It was now or never.

  I left the signal disruptor in the house. I needed to leave it off anyway, and I didn’t want to be tempted to turn it back on again.

  Another slight problem: I had no car. I couldn’t let the agents find me in a hotwired car anyway, if I were really an escaped captive. With a sudden stroke of inspiration, I kicked my shoes off and ran into Friedrichsburg barefoot, as if I were being chased. It was a few blocks before I saw more than one or two citizens at a time, but once I did, they all began to point.

  “Is that Kate Brandeis?”

  “It can’t be!”

  “Kate! KATE!”

  A few of them tried to run after me, but I pretended not to see them, running flat out as if my life depended on it, working myself up into a frenzy on purpose. It took less than twenty minutes for the agents to appear, which meant someone must have called them when they saw me—either that, or the agents had already been looking for me and seen my brainwaves appear in the house when I’d first turned off the signal disrupter. I counted five agents as I ran straight for them.

  “Help me! Help me, please, you’ve got to help me!” I panted, frantic. I saw the confusion on their faces—one of them started to draw a gun, presumably because they expected me to fight back. But when he saw the state I was in, he hesitated, and put the gun down.

  “Kate Brandeis, by order of the Potentate—”

  He was probably about to tell me I was under arrest, but I cut him off, gasping out my story. “Jackson MacNamera! Kidnapped me. Took me from the palace, took—advantage of me!” I started to cry, and perhaps because of the combination of adrenaline and fear, I actually managed to squeeze out some real tears. I grasped the agent’s arm and clung to it for dear life.

  That did it. The agent—Jeffries, I read on his nametag—forgot his gun altogether, and took me by the shoulders. “Where is he now?”

  “I—killed him!” I sobbed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was impressed with my own performance. “With his own gun! Out in the woods. I just escaped. Please, take me back to the Potentate, all I want to do is get back to the Potentate!”

  “That is what he wants, too, Miss Brandeis,” said Agent Jeffries in a soothing tone, and I saw him exchange a glance with the other agents. “We’ll take you straight to him. MacNamera—are you sure he’s dead?”

  “I—think so. I shot him in the chest,” I sobbed. “He wasn’t moving, and there was a lot of blood. I just ran. Maybe he’s not, maybe he got away, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out!” I added this part in on the fly—it suddenly occurred to me that if they caught a glimpse of him before I managed to carry out my deed, it could throw my story into question. I had to introduce just a bit of doubt.

  “Well, that is excellent news,” said Agent Jeffries, putting an arm around me. “We’ll need you to take us to the body, of course. To be sure.”

  I swallowed the panic that rose up in my throat. Somehow I hadn’t anticipated this, though now it seemed absurd that I hadn’t. “No! I—can’t. I—what if he’s not really dead? What if he sees me and…”

  “If that’s the case, he’ll still be seriously wounded,” Agent Jeffries reasoned calmly. “And he can’t be too far away, since you ran all the way here, didn’t you?”

  “Y-yes…” Even as I said it, I wondered if this was the wrong answer. Should I have claimed he was further away than that? “But I’ve been running for hours and hours…”

  “We’ll be able to cover that distance by car much faster, though,” said Agent Jeffries. “I promise, if he’s not dead, I will protect you.”

  “You can’t protect me, not against him!” I was hysterical now, desperate to find some way to prevent this. “Haven’t you heard what he did to the Tribunal? He’s unstoppable!”

  “He hadn’t been shot then.” Agent Jeffries was calm, but firm, as he grasped my upper arm and began to guide me away. Before we left, he leaned over to one of his fellow agents and whispered, loudly enough for me to hear, “Radio headquarters and update the Potentate. Tell him I’m going to verify the story. Find out what the Potentate would like us to do next, under the circumstances.”

  Agent Jeffries guided me to his black sedan by himself, leaving the other agents behind him. At my direction, we drove almost back to the house where the rebels had met, because I panicked and couldn’t think where else to take him. I was pretty sure no one would ever go back there anyway, but at the last second, I redirected Agent Jeffries toward the forest edge a block away from the house. Just in case.

  “Here,” I said, improvising. “That looks familiar, that lamp post there. I think I might have run past that.”

  As he parked, I thought as fast and furiously as I could. I had two options, at least that occurred to me right at this moment. The first was that I could claim I didn’t remember where I’d left the body—I was too emotionally distraught and just ran without seeing where I was going.

  The second option was that I could claim to know exactly where I’d left him, but that he’d gone, which would prove he was still alive. I ruled this out. It would destroy what I at least attempted to do to protect Jackson, and the manhunt would resume. A lie might also be exposed in ways I couldn’t anticipate. Could I choose a random location in the forest where there was no visible sign of a struggle, and no blood? Wouldn’t there be some evidence of my story, if it were true?

  No, I’d have to go with the first plan. If I could muster enough hysteria, it would be believable, too. I’d just escaped from an attacker. I couldn’t be expected to attend to little details like exactly where I’d left him, could I?

  Jackson brainwashed you. This was all his idea.

  The thought occurred to me out of nowhere. For a split second, I almost believed it.

  No. That’s a lie. I reminded myself, He followed me all the way from Friedrichsburg to the palace to protect me. He risked his own life to keep me safe. He would never send me on a dangerous mission like this one. This is all me.

  Agent Jeffries parked the car, and to appease me, he drew his gun in anticipation of what we might find out in the woods. But he insisted I walk on ahead of him, to show him the way.

  “I’m sorry, I—I just can’t remember!” I burst out after we had wandered probably a quarter of a mile in. I started to tremble for real, fearful that he’d see through my story. “I can’t even think straight. I just wanted to get away—I didn’t pay attention to where I was going! The woods look the same in every direction!”

  “How far into the forest did you leave him?” asked Agent Jeffries. His voice was still patient and soothing. At least there was that.

  “I don’t know, I—maybe twenty minutes running? I didn’t time it!” I focused on my trembling, willing it to become stronger. Since it was there, I might as well use it. “I have to get out of here, please! I can’t stand being here again, he could be anywhere!”

  “I thought you said he was dead.”

  “I
did! But what if he isn’t?” I could feel my hysteria mounting.

  “All right, all right.” Agent Jeffries took a step toward me, as if intending to put his arms around me. I froze and retreated instinctively, and he held up his hands, the universal gesture of I meant no harm. “At least we have a ballpark, then. I’m sure the Potentate will want to send in a squadron of soldiers to investigate within a few square miles of here. If he’s dead or even significantly wounded, we’ll find him.”

  I nodded, my breathing slowing down now. “Okay,” I whispered. I just had to hope I could do what I planned to do before those soldiers reported back to the Potentate—that there was no Jackson, no blood, and no evidence of my story whatsoever.

  “Please, just take me to the Potentate. All I want is to see the Potentate!”

  Voltolini didn’t send the chopper for me this time, which might mean he didn’t believe my story… but neither was I taken into custody officially. Instead, the agents escorted me to the bullet trains. Agent Jeffries ushered me on board and sat beside me, and I felt the train lurch to life, zooming past the countryside I knew so well. My heart pounded in my chest, and my labored breath began to slow.

  That’s when the thoughts came again.

  They were the same as before: that it was all in my head, that the Potentate was good and the rebels had brainwashed me, especially Jackson. In a strange way, though, my story helped me. The control center signals tried to convince me that Jackson was evil and had brainwashed me, and that was exactly what I was telling the agents—only with details that I knew hadn’t happened, because they had no corresponding memories to go along with them. The dissonance between my own intentional lies and the control center’s lies was just enough to remind me of what I was doing and why. I shifted in my seat on the bullet train, leaning my head against the glass as the countryside whizzed by so fast I only saw a streak of green, brown, and gray, and felt the warm sheathed blade pressed against my breast.