The Phoenix Project: Book I: Flight

by Katherine Macdonald

  Three pairs of eyes stare up at me.

  Guess I'm involved now.

  The shooting has alerted the other guards. There’s shouting inside. Two are heading up the stairs to meet me on the walkways. More are heading for the doors. Crap. I clutch my side; at least I'm not bleeding badly, but I'll have to sweep the area for blood before I leave. This is one of the reasons I avoid dealing with Lucans; they have an actual police force. They have labs and scientists and resources. If my blood winds up on a crime scene, it's going to show some abnormalities. I don't know who that would get passed on to. I was never able to work out if the Institute was government-funded, or privately owned. I'm not sure where their links lie, and I never want to find out.

  But there's no time to check for blood now. I pull a handkerchief out of my pocket and stuff it under my jacket. A temporary measure.

  Two more guards burst onto the walkway. They only manage a few shots before I disarm them both. I throw their weapons down to the others. Usually I avoid guns, but this is an us-or-them situation. Scarlet didn't seem to be sporting a weapon at all, and this is turning into a bloodbath.

  I duck into the warehouse.

  Assuming that the walkway is probably safe from intruders, most of the guards have congregated around the entrance. It would be easy, very easy, to go back outside, grab the first guard's weapon, and finish them all in a haze of bullets. But I came here to save lives, not to end them. I don't want any blood on my hands tonight, even if they might be on the hands of the others. Still, I'd be a fool to drop down into the pit of guards as is. I can certainly handle four of them, but not when they're trigger-happy and I'm already injured. It's too risky.

  What are my options?

  I need something to distract them. Or blind them. Preferably the latter. I can't risk them opening fire. I don't have anything on me, but then it occurs to me I am in a warehouse.

  It's a large room, with huge industrial shelves stacked to the ceiling. Crates and boxes in abundance. Somehow, I doubt they all contain medical supplies.

  I leap across to the nearest shelf and tear open the first container. Some kind of tech. Useless without the skills. The next one contains assault rifles– not what I'm looking for. The explosives in the next crate might not be totally useless –although potentially lethal if I'm not careful– but the fourth is perfect.

  Smoke grenades.

  Not wasting any more time, I unpin one, hurl it to the ground, and watch the guards disappear under the haze. One of them lets off a string of bullets. There's a scream and one rolls out of the smoke, clutching his leg. What idiots.

  I drop down into the mass and wrench a weapon out of somebody's hands. I cannot see through the smoke. I'm as blind as they are. But I can feel their presence, their movements. I've sparred with Mi many times since we escaped from the Institute. It was only fair to do it blindfolded.

  Everyone is downed by the time the smoke clears and I swing open the doors. The guards outside are all out, too. Only one looks definitely dead. Nick looks across at me and smiles as he runs across the lot.

  “I thought you didn't want your contact getting suspicious?”

  “Trust me, this is not my style, at all.” I gesture to the piles of unconscious bodies. “I take it you remember what you're looking for?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Checking for cameras.”

  There was definitely one on the walkway, and one by the door. I can easily wrench them off the walls, but by that point the feed's invariably been sent to a back-up server. I need to make sure my face isn't on anything. This isn't just about Abe figuring me out. This is about something getting back to the Institute.

  A small station overhangs in a corner of the warehouse, filled with bluish light, like the sort you get from monitors. I leave Nick and the others to search for the goods and race towards the steps. A few leaps and I am up. As anticipated, it's a room full of monitors, each of them showing a different part of the base... and several are playing back my face.

  There is one single, solitary guard in the room, unarmed and trembling.

  “Look,” I say, “you've seen me in action. Can we just cut out the part where I threaten you and remind you what you've got to live for, and you just wipe everything?”

  I should probably kill him. Five years ago, I would have. He's clearly seen my face, seen my skills, and could identify me to Abe. But I'm hoping the fact I arrived with a group will throw him off if he tries to describe me, and Abe doesn't know about my abilities. As long as he doesn't see my eyes too clearly, we should be fine. I'm fairly ordinary-looking otherwise.

  The guard reaches out tentatively towards the key pad. I watch him carefully, making sure he deletes everything.

  “Smart man,” I say approvingly.

  There's a voice from outside. “We've got it!”

  “If I were you, I'd let us get away before calling for back-up,” I warn.

  The man gulps. I take that to be a yes, and turn back to the door. I've barely stepped over the threshold before there's a hard, cold pain at the back of my head. I grab the railing, but it slips out of reach, and suddenly I'm launching towards the concrete floor below.

  Chapter 8

  “Is she still bleeding?”

  “Um... no.”

  “Why are you saying it like that?”

  “Because... there's no wound.”

  “No wound? She fell like thirty feet!”

  “I'm telling you, there's no wound!”

  I bolt upwards, cracking my head on a low metal ceiling before crashing back down. I'm in a van, hurtling along a road. Panic splits through me before logic takes over. I'm not strapped down. I'm not in a cage. I'm not going back to the Institute.

  “Hey, it's all right.” Nick is by my side, hands up, palms facing me. He approaches me like one would an injured animal. “You're safe.”

  “What... what happened?”

  “A guard hit you over the head with a fire extinguisher and you fell,” says Scarlet.

  “A fire extinguisher?” I cringe. “Oh, that's embarrassing.”

  “I don't know. You fell thirty feet and escaped apparently unscathed. That's pretty impressive.” She pauses, as though waiting for me to chime in. “How did you manage that, exactly?”

  “I'm made of diamonds and rubber,” I explain. “I neither break nor bruise.”

  “You've been unconscious for twenty minutes.”

  “I was installing updates.”

  Twenty minutes. It's a good thing they dragged me out. Who knows where I would be now if they hadn't?

  I bet Mi is worried.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to base. We wanted to have a proper doc check you out.”

  “Well, that's great, but I think I'm fine. If you could just pull over–”

  “You might have a concussion,” says Nick. “Or internal bleeding.”

  “Both doubtful.”

  “Um... head injuries like those should take days, even weeks to recover from,” says Scarlet pointedly. “You... you should not be this lucid. At all.”

  “Like I said, diamonds and rubber.”

  “And why is that, exactly?” The corner of Nick's mouth is twitching, as if he knows exactly why, or is halfway to it.

  “Hmm, what d'you think, Nick?” asks Scarlet. “Mutant? Alien? Bitten by a radioactive spider?”

  Nick grins at her, as if sharing some kind of private joke. “I'm thinking more chimera,” he says.

  My blood chills. Chimera. In mythology, it's a fire-breathing hybrid creature made up of multiple animals. In science, it's a single organism with more than one set of DNA. Technically, I am a chimera. They didn't often call us that, but the name was on all the documents. It was the Institute's full name. The Chimera Institute.

  He knows. Somehow, he knows what I am.

  Nick must see something in my eyes, because his grin immediately drops. “Hey, it's all right. I didn't mean anything by it–”


  “Let me out,” I say forcefully, “let me out right now!”

  The van jolts to a halt. I'd barely registered we were slowing down. Pilot hisses into the back. “Well, you can get out, but you're not going anywhere, Little Miss Super-freak. You're entering a classified area.”

  Nick slides open the van doors. He holds out his hand. “It's not as scary as Pilot makes out.” He smiles. “Promise.”

  I hardly need Nick's help getting out of the van, but for some reason, I take it anyway. I am lifted out into a gargantuan underground hangar. There are at least ten vehicles parked and ready, vans, trucks, range rovers, plus numerous motorcycles. Others line the walls at the side, propped up, engines exposed, being fixed and refitted and improved. There are people everywhere, moving with the same busyness and purpose as market-goers. The air is thick with fuel and engine grease, and the sounds of welding and bolting.

  Scarlet grins at the look on my face. “You ain't seen nothing yet, Supergirl,” she says, unloading supplies. “Come on, we'll give you the tour.”

  “Are we sure that's wise?” Pilot interjects. “We still have no idea who she is.”

  “We know she saved our asses tonight,” Nick says quickly, his eyes still tight on me.

  “Could be a trap. She could be a Lucan spy.”

  “She went to disable the cameras. Would a spy do that?”

  “A clever one would, if she were trying to throw us off the scent.”

  “I got knocked out by a fire extinguisher,” I say incredulously. “I think that counts as 'not clever'. Also, I told you to let me out. Make up your mind.”

  Pilot mutters something under his breath and then goes silent. Nick gestures towards a set of large, mechanical doors at the end of the hangar. “Shall we?”

  I nod, and follow him into another room. It is just as large as the first, but divided into a series of pods and platforms. The light feels more natural here, and it's cleaner, but all around is steel and glass. Huge pipes and vents criss-cross the ceiling. There is a constant whir of machinery, of a thousand voices speaking at once. How big is this Phoenix Project? I'd always thought it was a bit of a rag-tag group, a few dozen, a hundred at most. This place is like a city, a mechanical warren.

  “Welcome to the Phoenix Project,” Nick announces. “The dorms are that way, the mess hall's down there, engineering is at the bottom... but I think the medical bay is our first port of call.”

  Scarlet and Pilot follow after us, dragging the heavy supply crate. “Don't suppose Miss Super-freak would like to do the honours?” Pilot huffs.

  I smirk at him, taking it from them with ease and lifting it onto my shoulder. “Where to?”

  Nick laughs, mostly at Pilot, and says he'll take it from here. He pouts before heading off.

  “See you around, Supergirl.” Scarlet gives me a casual salute which I almost return.

  “This way.”

  Nick takes me to the medical bay. I'm expecting something like the Institute, something dark, cold, clinical. There's a little of that; the place is mainly white and glass and metal, and stocked with the usual medical supplies, but everything is somehow... softer, as if the room itself is at ease. There're a couple of patients with minor injuries being seen to, and they're laughing and joking as they're getting stitched up. There are kids' drawings taped to one of the cupboards, books and a potted plant. I won't deny the fact that my spine clenches when I see a tray of needles, but I'm able to calm myself down. This place doesn't feel very threatening.

  Nick walks me into a study off the main area, and points at a place for the crate. There's a woman sitting at the desk there, dressed in a white coat. She's pretty, brown-haired and bespectacled, a few lines of silver in her messy bun. She's slim as a rake, but there's a softness to her, especially when she turns around and sees Nick. Her face erupts into a smile.

  “Oh, thank the lord,” she breathes, getting up from her seat, “I was getting worried. Where have you been?”

  She looks like she wants to hug him, but then she sees me standing there and stops.

  “Hi, Julia,” Nick says. “This is... actually, I don't know your name.”

  “Ashe,” I tell him.

  Julia stands dumbfounded. “Ashe,” she repeats.

  “Yeah, she helped us get the supplies back. Turns out she's incredibly handy in a fight.”

  Julia crosses the room, and peers at me closely. Her eyes seep into mine. “You don't say.”

  “She got hit on the head pretty hard, I thought we should have her checked out. Her side's cut too, but it doesn't seem to be bleeding any more.”

  “Hmm? Yes. Quite right.”

  Julia gestures towards a bed in the corner, which I hop onto without being told. The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can go home. Julia runs a light over my eyes, and finds nothing untoward. She examines the graze at my side, cleans away the dried blood, and finds the spot almost healed. It still smarts a bit, but there's nothing she can do but slap on a bandage. Even that feels pointless to me.

  “You say she got hit on the head?” she asks Nick, moving apart my hair to check.

  Nick nods.

  “There's no injury.”

  “Yeah,” I tell her, “I'm pretty strong.”

  “But you did lose consciousness?”

  “I'm not completely invulnerable,” I add, a little crossly. I'm just so tired. “Shall we throw a fire extinguisher at your head, Doc, and see how you manage?”

  Julia looks flabbergasted.

  “She's joking,” says Nick.

  “How would you know?”

  “I'm hopeful.” He smiles at me, and then he looks back to Julia. “So, Jules, what do you think?”

  Julia can barely take her eyes off me. “Where are you from, Ashe? You're... you're not from Luca, are you?”

  I shake my head. “Please,” I start quietly, “don't... don't tell anyone about me. I don't know what you know, but–”

  “You're a chimera,” Julia says promptly. “A genetically engineered superhuman, born and raised in a lab and bred to be the perfect soldier.”

  “How... how do you know that?”

  “There have been rumours,” Nick chips in, “but about five years ago, we found someone who confirmed it. A girl, a lot like you. Said she escaped from this place called the Institute, she and a couple of others.”

  Five years ago. So we weren't the only ones that escaped. Others did too. I wonder who?

  “Did she have a name?”

  Julia shakes her head. “Way I hear it, they didn't give you names.”

  “Not all of us,” I say quietly.

  This is unreal. There are more of us out there. More of us who made it out, made lives for ourselves. I feel a strange kinship with his unknown girl. I want to find her, or at least find out what happened to her.

  “Were you given a name?” Julia asks.

  “Yes,” I tell her, “but I got rid of it once I was free of that place.”

  Julia nods, as if she can understand perfectly why I did that.

  “Well, needless to say, I give you a clean bill of health, Ashe,” she concludes. “And... don't worry. We won't tell anyone about you.”

  There is an almost painful earnestness to her voice. Trust is a luxury I can barely afford, but I believe her. Or I want to, which is almost as good.

  “Thank you.”

  Nick claps his hands. “Right, well, I'll give you a lift back then.”

  “You can just let me go–”

  “Policy, I'm afraid. Shouldn't really let non-members see where we are.”

  I could probably work it out even if he blindfolded me, listening to what we pass, feeling every turn and bump in the road. But there's no need to tell him this. “All right,” I agree. “Thanks again, Doc.”

  “Just Julia, please. And... any time. If you ever need anything–”

  “I'm pretty good at taking care of myself, but I appreciate the offer. Shall we?”

  Nick leads the way back through the corri
dors to the hangar, and stops in front of the van we arrived in. He slides the back open. “You... you need to ride in here,” he explains. “Not allowed to–”

  “I get it,” I snap, although I don't relish the thought of being inside a small, enclosed space.

  “I promise I'm just going to–”

  “Please don't make me regret helping you.”

  I leap into the back and slam the door shut myself. Nick exhales, almost inaudibly, and climbs into the front. The van hums into life. There's a whir and a click of the big doors opening, and we slide out onto a road. It's gravelly, and I catch the scent of pine. We must be near the edge of the slums.

  “So,” Nick sounds into the back, “whereabouts do you live?”

  “Near the old wire gate, by the wildlands.”

  “That's far out.”

  “We like our privacy.”

  “We?”

  Shoot. “I have a family, of sorts,” I admit.

  “Like you?”

  “More or less.”

  All falls quiet for a moment. We hurtle along the roads, turning right at one point. Gravel turns to proper road. We're back in the city.

  “I'm sorry for putting you on the spot about the chimera thing,” Nick says eventually. “I didn't mean to spook you.”

  “I wasn't spooked,” I snap.

  “Unsettled then. Annoyed. Whatever. I was just... excited. You're like a real life superhero.”

  I chuckle hollowly. “I'm only one of those things.”

  “What if you could be more?”

  “What?”

  “What if you could be a real life, genuine superhero? Even more of a crime-fighting badass than you are now?”

  “It doesn't pay the bills,” I say simply.

  “There's more to life than money.”

  “Not if we end up starving because we don't have it.”

  “You've seen HQ. Do any of us look starving to you? We look out for one another.”

  “So do we,” I return. I bite my lip. “Look, you guys have got a good thing going, can't deny, and I won't get in your way. But you saw me tonight, with the cameras. I... I can't afford anything that might get me noticed. Because worse than starving would be going back there.”