Project Phoenix

by D. C. Fergerson

  “Tell me who you are,” she whispered.

  A tingle squirmed through Cora. A surge of magic coursed up her spine, only darker than anything she ever felt before. Like a fading dream, she tried to pull at the energy, to bring it back and see what took shape within her. A cold shiver chilled her and lingered. Her skin reacted with goosebumps. As she opened her eyes, a man stood over her in the corner of the room. Cora clamped her hand over her mouth and reeled back, slamming her shoulders into the wine racks behind her before collapsing on her rear.

  The man had a translucent, ethereal quality. She could see through him, as though he were a hologram. Worse, he looked just like the hologram in the chair. He wore a white business shirt and black pants, even the same brown hair. He held his hands out, pleading surrender, but his mouth moved without words coming out. As he stepped forward, his leg passed through the chair. Cora held back a scream. His face pained, his mouth moved, but still no sound.

  The chill persisted all over Cora’s flesh, as if the room would snow at any moment. Her breath visibly wisped from between her fingers. Horrified and wide-eyed, she watched the apparition. He slowed his frantic speech, and mouthed one word Cora could understand.

  Please.

  Cora read the desperation in his face and relaxed. For the time being, whatever she saw before her was benevolent. She released her hand from her mouth and took a breath. Magic took such focus to manifest and she was in uncharted territory. Never once in her training had Richard or anyone else had her cast something on a whim. Instead, she chased after the spell she was taught, and learned to bring it out through rote and ritual. This was different, but she couldn’t be sure whether it was the blood she touched, or the singular focus on getting answers.

  She shut her eyes and felt for the source of the cold within her. This spell felt incomplete. She had not traced arcane patterns, or spoke any words, and the result was a figure she could see but not hear. Her mind went to visions of cemeteries late at night and images of ghosts from holovids. In her mind’s eye, she walked through the graves without fear, and spoke to the spirits there as people. She channeled the cold within to walk among them, and in doing so she felt a burst of energy flow through her from the chill in her chest. It felt like a burden had been lifted from her heart.

  When she opened her eyes, the colors of the world around her were muted and less vibrant. Everything in the room, from the bottles of wine, to the walls, even the hologram washed out in gray. The only thing of any substance was the man standing before her.

  “Please,” he said.

  Cora stood up and met his gaze. “Who are you?”

  “I am,” he said, turning to the hologram in the chair behind him. “I was.”

  “Why do you remain here, in this place?” Cora asked.

  The spirit wringed his hands, pacing around the chair in the small space. “I can’t leave. I can’t be responsible.”

  Cora stepped forward. “Responsible for what?”

  “I know you, don’t I?” he asked, confused. He paused, grabbing the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Everything is so damn fuzzy now.”

  “We’ve never met,” Cora replied. “But I was supposed to be here with my team.”

  The man nodded emphatically. “Right, right. Of course. I was your handler. Richard was supposed to pass off the data on the way out. There was a problem, though.”

  “You mean Vulkan?”

  “No, before the first shot was fired, Richard told me about the data,” he said, struggling to recall the conversation. “It wasn’t what we thought it was. Lucius wasn’t looking for one thing, he was looking for hundreds. This might be bigger than us, than all of us.”

  “Please, tell me,” Cora pleaded. “What did Richard find?”

  The man’s shoulders dropped with a sigh. He thought about it for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m not sure I ever knew. Then everything happened so fast. I came down here to make a call to Washington, I heard the commotion upstairs, and then the shooting started. Then they came for me...”

  “Who did all this? Who hired Vulkan Group?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I know this - it wasn’t Lucius. The two men that were down here with me...when they were convinced I didn’t have the data...they were talking to a man on the phone. There was no respect. They talked down to him, kept asking if he was sure the data was here.”

  “They argued with the man on the phone?” Cora asked.

  “Yes. Then they found out on their comms that someone had escaped,” the man squatted down, rubbing his temples. “Everyone left, but they stayed behind. They apologized to me, one drew his pistol...and then nothing.”

  Cora hugged herself, fighting off the cold. She empathized with the man, tortured in death as he was before his life ended.

  “You aren’t responsible,” she said, locking eyes with him. “They never got it. I’m going to make sure the data gets where it needs to be. They’ll know you were a patriot.”

  “Excuse me,” Inspector Schulz’s voice called down the stairs from the bar. His voice startled Cora, snapping her head around.

  “Yes?”

  “I couldn’t help but hear you talking, Miss,” Schulz said.

  “I’m talking to myself,” Cora replied, shaking her head. “It helps me think.”

  “I see,” Schulz said. “I’ll have to check your call record to confirm that, of course.”

  Cora shut her eyes and sighed. The chill had left. The magic ebbed from her and blew away. When her eyes opened, she looked back to the chair. Only the hologram remained. Perhaps she lost hold of the spell, or maybe she gave the spirit peace. Either way, he was gone, and she had never felt so exhausted in her life. No workout, stress test, or magic training had ever left her so utterly drained.

  Wandering around the cramped space a moment longer, her thoughts remained on the spirit. She didn’t understand how she contacted him. She heard of Native American lore, talking with spirits and the like, but she hadn’t imagined a place like that. It was as if the spirit was trapped in a space between Earth and whatever came after. More frightening than the spirit, however, was her newfound ability to reach out to him. The magic was dark, it made her squirm to recall the feeling of it moving through her, like an injection of a painkiller, filling her veins with ice.

  She looked around the room for anything else she may have missed, but found nothing, not even a ghost.

  Branching Paths

  Cora walked back up the stairs, grateful to be free of the confined space. Richter was on the phone, talking and gesticulating to the air near the door. Schulz waited for her beside the bar. With a few taps on her wrist computer, she opened her phone and showed him her empty call record.

  “You’ve made no calls?” he asked in disbelief.

  “I sent a text to Lucius,” she replied. She motioned to the wrist computer. “But no, I just got this one. It’s the XT-10, doesn’t even come out for a month yet.”

  Schulz nodded, impressed. “Very nice. They still make us use the T-7 for work. Damn things are so slow since the last update.”

  Two beeps went off in Cora’s earpiece. She looked down at her wrist computer, but there was no sign of activity.

  “Excuse me, I just realized I need to check something,” Cora said with a respectful nod. She walked over to the left side of the restaurant and pretended to study the splatter patterns of the blood on the walls.

  “You can hear me, right?” Gideon’s voice came through her earpiece.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Cora replied as quiet as she could.

  “I know you’re indisposed, so just listen,” Gideon said. “One of my avatars approached someone on UnderNet. That’s the shady part of NeuralNet where information is traded like currency. The guy claims to have a line on the buyers for Vulkan Group. I used that picture you took of the guy in the walk-in freezer to confirm, and it’s the real deal. They want to meet you specifically. Our man thinks it’
s a trap, but the Italian wants to pose as you and go for it.”

  “Hmm,” Cora said, loud enough for Schulz to hear her. She turned to Weber at the bar. “I have a hunch about something. Herr Weber, can you activate the emitters outside?”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  A solid beam of light appeared on the other side of the room, beginning from where Richard sat. It drew a line to the shattered window and outside. Cora headed for the door.

  “You should be careful,” Weber said. “The trajectory came from the roof of the coffee house across the street. There’s a fire escape around the back, but the sun makes the hologram difficult to see.”

  Cora nodded. “I’ll watch out, thank you.”

  She marched through the line of Bauer guards and crossed the street. She went around the corner of the coffee shop, down an alley behind the building. A fire escape zig-zagged up the back. Comfortable that she was out of ear shot, she leaped up and grabbed the first rung.

  “That’s a negative,” she said. “If they want me, they can have me.”

  “Now you’re just being stupid, patatina,” Giovanna’s voice came in. “It has to be Vulkan trying to finish the job.”

  Cora jogged up the stair sets for the roof. “Probably. But one inkling that it’s not me and they’ll put a bullet in you and keep looking. It has to be me.”

  She stepped onto the roof, the bright orange sun at her back. The light made the hologram ahead distort and disappear from certain angles. She huffed and walked to the sniping position.

  “Are you stuck where you are?” Johnny asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Cora replied. She looked over the edge of the roof to the restaurant across the street. Bauer soldiers lined the building, with some looking right at her. “Lucius wanted me to investigate the massacre. He’s definitely up to something, but I don’t know if he had anything to do with this.”

  “Well, you can’t be in two places at once,” Giovanna said. “So if I can’t meet them as you, I could hold down your position at the restaurant while you leave.”

  “Wait,” Cora said.

  Footfalls against metal rungs. Someone was coming up the fire escape. Cora kept her mouth shut. Inspector Schulz was still a gopher for Lucius, even if he was the lead investigator. He had more interest in keeping tabs on her for his dragon master.

  Cora waited and knelt down where the bullet trajectory line ended. This was the spot the shooter waited from. Across the street, the frosted stained glass made the interior impenetrable to the eye. The sniper had to be using a thermographic lens, and just took the shot based on heat signatures. He would have known where they were sitting. Cora looked to the right, in the parking lot. There was a clear view all the way to the back. Richard’s car was still there. That was how the sniper had done it. He waited here and watched them come in, following their entrance. He watched the exchange take place.

  The heavy boots behind her drew closer, clanging on the stairs and breaking her concentration. She turned around to find a Bauer soldier climbing onto the roof and approaching her. He wore a cloth face mask and helmet with his gray body armor. Cora stood up and put her hands on her hips, feigning irritation.

  “I am trying to do my damn job,” she said. “It’s a little difficult with all these interruptions. What do you need?”

  The solider squatted down low and took off his helmet. Thick black hair dropped to his shoulders.

  “Well, that haircut isn’t regulation,” Cora said sarcastically.

  Giovanna pulled the mask from her nose and mouth. “I need your clothes. I couldn’t find any homeless people on the way here that matched.”

  Cora sat down and started pulling at her boot. “Har-har. So we’re just going to go bras-and-panties right here on the roof?”

  Giovanna unbuckled the armor on her chest and began stripping. “When are we getting another chance?”

  “There’s a hole Giovanna has opened in their perimeter,” Gideon said over the comm. “I’m going to direct you. In the meantime, brief her with everything she needs to know.”

  Cora slid out of her black jeans. “Okay, Inspector Shulz is the big one with mustache. Richter is the thin guy. Herr Weber is in the back on a rig, he’s holographic forensics. I found your guard in the walk-in, and I went through the hidden basement already.”

  “Got it,” Giovanna replied. “And you’re up here checking the sniper position. I’ll linger around here for a little bit until they get antsy and tell me to come down.”

  Cora looked at Giovanna’s body. She was so flawless it was repulsive. Every curve, every inch of her skin was smooth, unblemished olive. Cora peeled off her shirt and threw it into Giovanna’s toned stomach.

  “I wouldn’t be too jealous, patatina,” Giovanna said. “You’d look like this, too, if you could look like anyone you wanted. Now, hurry up and get that on. I need to study your face.”

  Cora pulled on the black bodysuit and combat boots. Her feet were swimming in them. Walking was going to be a chore to look natural. She clipped on the last of the body armor and strapped an Apex M-24 rifle over her shoulder. She grabbed up the helmet and face mask and nodded to Giovanna.

  “This is going to be weird,” Cora said.

  “For both of us, let me tell you,” Giovanna replied. “Hold still.”

  Giovanna held Cora’s face in her hands, moving her head around, studying every detail. Cora never noticed before, having never watched her eyes so intently, but behind her dark chocolate eyes were tiny servos.

  “I didn’t know you had ocular implants,” she said.

  “I had to,” Giovanna replied, her head moving around and looking at her from different angles. “I need it to control the nanites. Didn’t matter, anyway. I was blind in the left eye, back then.”

  “You really need to tell me that story someday,” Cora said.

  “Someday,” Giovanna said. She tried to smile, but it was weak and hid sadness. “Okay, here we go.”

  Giovanna continued holding Cora’s face. A swarm of color washed over her fingertips, down her hands, and up her arms. Her complexion and skin tone shifted to Cora’s reddish-tan. Her face rippled and adjusted, eye shape first, then cheekbones, then lips. As entrancing as the transformation was, from Giovanna’s expression, it looked like it hurt to shape-shift. She bit at her bottom lip and winced, struggling to keep her eyes fixed on Cora. Her hair grew another few inches and hung past her shoulders.

  Looking into a living mirror was a strange experience. Cora weaved around, looking at the contours of her own face.

  “Good enough?” Giovanna asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Cora said, stunned. “I’m not even sure what to say.”

  “Say nothing. Just go,” Giovanna replied.

  She grabbed the face mask and pulled it over Cora’s head, brought it to her neckline, then tugged and lifted until it covered her mouth and nose.

  “You speak Mandarin, right?” Giovanna asked.

  Cora shook her head. “No, Japanese.”

  “Even better,” she replied. “If anyone stops you, reply in Japanese. It will hide your voice a little and these Bauer goons are mostly former UNS and Confederacy soldiers, so they don’t speak anything but English.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Cora said.

  Giovanna shook her head and stood up. “I’ll hold out as long as I can. Get out of here.”

  Cora jogged for the fire escape, adjusting to the big boots. As she made her way down, Gideon chimed in over the comm.

  “Alright, this is your navigator speaking. Continue down the alley away from the restaurant and break right onto the next street.”

  Cora turned off her brain, her body obeying each direction Gideon provided. Down this alley. Wait for this vehicle to pass. Around that store. Through that back yard. It felt good to have someone else in the driver’s seat for a few moments. The scant rest she’d gotten in the past twenty-four hours was far exceeded by how much magic she had to use. Richard often had her rest without using spells
for days leading up to a mission, keeping her in top physical shape in case of a day just like this one.

  One and a half kilometers of travel finally brought her out of the perimeter of Bauer and the Polizei. Gideon led her to a closed-up warehouse in a run-down part of Marzahn. She looked around the area. She hadn’t seen a car pass or a person walking the streets for the last five minutes.

  “How remote a place am I in?” Cora asked.

  “Well, it’s the weekend, and most everything in that area is closed,” Gideon replied. There’s also a serious lack of security, not a lot of cameras.”

  “How are you holding up?” Johnny asked.

  “I’m alright,” she sighed. “I still have a ways to go.”

  “Well, you’re early,” Gideon said. “The meet shouldn’t be for another ten minutes, so take a second to relax.”

  The click behind Cora’s head was an unmistakable sound. A person need only hear it once to forever identify it. A pistol cocked. Her first instinct was to grab for the rifle on her shoulder, but a second person she never heard approach took it off of her. A third removed her helmet and the earpiece from her ear. Cora sighed and raised her hands to surrender. They still tossed a black cloth bag over her head anyway.

  Children of Earth

  Cora tried to meditate several times, but the floor of the van had terrible suspension. She bounced or slammed against the floor with every imperfection in the road. Within the first few turns, she had lost her sense of direction and abandoned tracing their path. She thought about using magic to release the zip ties holding her, but she had no idea who she was up against, or how many. Meditation to restore her exhausted mind to magic-casting condition was the only thing left to do, and that was proving impossible. Twenty minutes of getting batted around the floor of the vehicle ensured she did not rest.