I'd die before I let them take any one of us, but I might not have that option. I might be forced to watch while they 'scrap' Mi. I'd see them dragging Abi away, turning her back into a computer. I'd watch them turn Ben into a weapon, when I had fought so hard for him to be anything but.
And what would they do to me? How much of me would survive what re-programming they certainly had in store?
“I'm sorry,” says Nick eventually. His voice is tight, almost like he's seeing what I'm imagining. “I didn't think of that.”
“It's all right,” I tell him truthfully. “I try not to think of it either.”
The rest of the ride continues in stony silence. It's uncomfortable, but something in me is a little bit fearful when it draws to a close. I did not want longer of this, but I am not keen to say goodbye. That's new.
Nick slows the van and turns off the engine. He leaps out and opens the back. “Is this close enough for you?”
My building towers nearby. He couldn't get much closer. The inky black sky seems voluminous tonight. I feel like I'm being swallowed.
I nod. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Do you want me to walk you to your door?”
I think I'm going to miss that grin, silly and stupid though it sounds.
“Somehow,” I reply, “I think I'll be fine.”
He offers out his hand. “I'm Nick, by the way. I'm not sure I–”
“I know. Your buddy Pilot has a big mouth.”
“That he does. It... it was nice to meet you, Ashe.”
I take his hand. “It wasn't entirely horrible to be met, for a change.” I pull my hand away, whisper goodbye, and don't even wait for him to climb into the van before heading inside. I'm aware that his eyes are on me, and I don't care.
I don't think I've ever made so many mistakes in a single night.
I make one more going into the loft. It's completely dark, so I naturally assume everyone is asleep, and I don't think to scan for anything out of the ordinary, to listen to where my sleeping family are, for example. I march straight into my room, pull off my jacket, and switch on the light.
Mi is sitting on my bed.
“Jesus Christ, Michael!” I hiss, narrowly stopping myself from screaming. “Don't sit in the dark! It's terrifying!”
“Terrifying?” Mi seethes. “I've been terrified for hours! Where on Earth have you been?”
I quickly fill him in on the night's escapades. He chastises me for being reckless for a while, double-checks me for injuries, and then finally calms down.
“They asked you to join?” he asks eventually.
“Yup. Guess they saw my potential.”
“Well, who wouldn't? But you said no?”
“Of course I did. We can't risk that kind of exposure.”
“Right. Of course. Sensible.”
“Mi?”
“It's just... don't you ever wish you could do more?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it enough, just to live out our lives like this? Don't you ever wish things could be better?”
“I guess, but–” It's better than the Institute. Yes, we're often cold, and food can be a struggle, and the city is full of crime and disease, which isn't pleasant to watch even when you're immune to it. But am I willing to risk our freedom on a dream? “It's too risky.”
“I know. I know it is. But I just... I wish we could do something.”
“You can always join them. Be their court herbalist.”
Mi sighs. “You and I both know there's a limit to what I can do.”
“Mi–” I hate it when he talks like that. It's rare that he ever reminds us of his disability; it's rare that he ever shows it affecting him. He's not limited in my eyes, because there's no limit to how much I love my brother.
“But you... you've always been pretty much limitless.”
I cannot think of much to say to that, so I mumble something about riskiness and tell him I'm tired.
“Just... think about it, Ashe,” he says as he leaves the room. “What if these people could help us too?”
“What do you mean?”
“You always said you wanted to burn the Institute down. I hear they're pretty fond of fire.”
Chapter 9
When we were about nine, Gabe and I discovered a small vent in our room. It was not wide enough for a person to get through, but if we tampered with the cover, angling it a certain way, we could sometimes hear our masters talking in a connected meeting room nearby.
It became a form of entertainment for us, and another one of our little secrets that we kept from the others. After lights out, we'd creep out of our beds, press our ears against it, and listen as they compared our scores from the latest tests, talked about new plans, new experiments or new developments. They compared us to other units, other individuals. Summed us up in numbers.
It wasn't always entertaining. Sometimes, you'd hear what awful things they had in store for us next, and then had to creep back to bed and pretend you'd heard nothing. I remember them discussing whether or not to scrap Moona, and how each morning after, we wondered when they were going to do it. If they were going to do it.
One night, some weeks after Mi's accident, Gabe and I stayed up late listening to them.
“Alpha-1, AKA Eve, is still my preferred candidate,” said one. “She outperforms the others in nearly every respect. She appears to have been accepted as a leader, and she has a loyalty to the rest of her unit that is... commendable.”
“It is possible, however, that she is too emotional. The recent incident with her comrade–”
“True, but paired with Adam–”
“I believe some tests are underway there, already. We have samples from both of them?”
“Yes. I hear they are mixing well. The results look promising.”
“Keep us informed. What do the psychologists say, regarding Eve? Is she loyal to us?”
“She follows orders, usually without question. There have been a few incidents; she does not like to kill. She has asked us before, 'why did you make us do that?'”
“Was an answer given?”
“Yes. She was told that he was weak and she was strong. That that was the natural order of things. She appeared to accept that, but later responses appeared to suggest that she was questioning that logic. She responded better when told that the targets were a threat, or bad people.”
“A sense of morality. How very interesting.”
“Or self-preservation. It is difficult to be sure.”
“Let's review the other applicants... Alpha-2A is also very promising...”
I do not know what they were comparing us for, what mission they had in store. We never stayed long enough to discover it, and this was not what we were listening for. We were waiting for them to discuss Mi.
He was the final item on their agenda. An afterthought. They spoke about him as if discussing who would be cleaning the room after they left. It was so brief. No, he didn't seem to be healing as they hoped. Bionics weren't an option. Transplants were unlikely to work with his genetic make-up.
“Well,” said the Director eventually, “we'll give it another week or so, just to be sure. If nothing improves, we'll have him scrapped. A pity, it was interesting having two of them. No matter. Now, shall we–”
Beside me, Gabe fell into an utterly silent, almost invisible, dark, cold rage. He would have crushed anything in his hands to death.
We started planning our escape that night.
We didn't tell the others at first. Ben was too young to understand, to keep a secret. Mi, we feared, might tell us not to try. That he wasn't worth it. Abi figured out what we were doing. We should have told her from the beginning, but we were scared. Perhaps she would turn us in. Perhaps the odds wouldn't support it. But she never told us those odds, and we could not have done it without her.
If we'd had more time, perhaps we could have done it better. Perhaps I could have saved everyone. Maybe Gabe wouldn't be dead.
/> Mi is right. We never get to know 'what if', but I cannot stop myself from wondering.
Chapter 10
I'm not joining the Phoenix Project. I'm not putting my family in danger. It's not worth it, not worth it.
“Are you all right?” Abi asks, looking up from her painting. We are up on the roof, and I'm pummelling our make-shift punch bag with way too much energy for this early in the morning. It spins around hopelessly on its chain. “You seem a little tense.”
“Fine,” I hiss, and then punch the bag so hard that the seams split and the sand begins to spill over the floor. “Dammit!”
Abi tosses me a small sewing kit.
“Wow, are you still telling me you can't actually predict the future?”
“I calculated that there was approximately a 95% chance of you splitting the bag this morning.”
I unclip it from its chain, scoop up what I can of the sand and funnel it back in with my hands. “That's high.”
“Given the fact that your strength increases rapidly with your fury, and coupled with the bag already being damaged from–”
“OK, OK, you don't need to explain it!” I stuff the bag with a bit of foam, fold the seams back, and begin to thread the needle. This proves tricky with my current lack of patience. Abi could probably give me the odds on me doing that successfully, too. I sigh. “I ran into the Phoenix Project last night and they asked me to join.”
Abi just nods. “Makes sense.”
“I'm sorry, what?”
“Well, the odds of running into them at some point, given your general activities, were fairly high. Slightly lower were the odds of you revealing your abilities to them, but they were still up there. I don't even need a calculator for a brain to tell you that the odds of them not asking you to join after that were pretty darn slim.”
“Could you have warned me?”
“Would you have changed anything based on my prediction?”
She's got me there.
“You said no, I take it?”
My silence is all the answer she needs.
“Shame.”
I groan. “Not you too.”
“Mi agrees with me? That's nice. I wasn't sure on that front.”
“It's too risky, Abs.”
“Yes, for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are approximately eight thousand people living in the slums,” she explains. “Eight thousand people living and dying in the dirt, in this city alone. Luca isn't alone in the world. Think about how many people we could help, if we put our minds to it.”
“We?”
“Well, I wouldn't let you do it alone.”
“It's... we'd... we'd never help that many!”
“We'd help more than four, which is all we are. That's almost a certainty.”
I swallow uncomfortably.
“I know you think we're the most important things in the world, because we are, to you. But everyone else feels the same about their people.”
“I know that.”
“When we escaped from the Institute, there were sixty-four other children that didn't,” Abi continues. “They're our people too.”
I don't want to think about them. I don't want to think about the rest of Luca. I don't want to open the door to the big moral, philosophical question: what are our lives worth? Because I know it's selfish not to fight, and in some ways I know it's selfish to want to protect Mi, Abi and Ben, especially when two of them so clearly want to help others themselves. But I lost Gabe, I lost him, and there would be nothing, nothing left of me if one of them was ripped from me too.
I abandon our punch bag.
“Whatever,” I tell her. “I'm going to the market. These needles are wrecked. Anything else I should pick up there?”
“You should call in on the Doc. Check he has what he needs.”
I don't bother to thank her. I head down the fire escape, grab my jacket, and then spring down the outside of the building. It's still early. There's a damp mist clinging to every concrete surface, amplifying the greyness and the grime. The market is the wrong place to be going. I should head out into the woods, away from people, away from swirling thoughts of responsibility and danger. I should go and shoot something. That would make me feel better.
But sometimes I'm not even in the mood for following my own advice, so I head to the market instead.
The sharp edges of the city are sharper this morning, and everything is harder to ignore. My mind is stabbed repeatedly with a thousand images of gaunt children, the hollow eyes of starving men, the dark circles of women who have gone too long without food to feed their babies. There is a haunting eeriness to the old abandoned play park, the final solitary swing screeching in the breeze. By the side of the road sit a dozen deserted cars, picked at like carcasses. There's a whisper of another murder last night, a theft gone wrong, of course. Two kids left orphans in the process. The thief's or the victim's? Does it matter?
I tell myself this place is better than the Institute, mainly because I can leave it any time I like. Go somewhere else, just as awful, or try and make it in the woods. We could, of course. We could survive the harshness of winter. We can defend ourselves from anything out there, and we can hunt. We wouldn't starve.
These people would. These people have no choice.
It is almost a relief to get the market. It's barely open yet, but that's all right. I decide to follow Abi's advice and call in on Doc.
The Doc is actually heading out. He's loading up his bike with his medical bag, which seems a little fuller than usual... are those clothes sticking out of it? His wife is standing at the threshold, quietly sobbing. Why doesn't he go to her?
I have a terrible, sinking feeling, especially when he stops packing, and turns around to look at her. His fingers twitch. He wants to reach out and hold her... but he can't. He doesn't dare.
“Oh, Doc...” My voice slips out.
When he turns around and faces me, I see the glimmer of a rash on his neck.
“Ashe,” he says softly. “Thanks for the supplies, by the way. We got them this morning, but by then...” He gestures to the marks on his neck.
“This is my fault.”
“You couldn't have done anything to prevent this,” he says. “This was inevitable. But it's all right. I've still got a bit of time. I can help out at the infirmary before... before. And Millie here will take over the business.”
In all the time I've known the Doc, I've never really spoken to his wife. I didn't know her name was Millie. I'm not even sure I know what his real name is.
“I... I'm sorry.” What else can I say?
“It's all right, Ashe,” he repeats, mounting his bicycle. His words are for himself rather than me. “It's all right...”
“It... it doesn't feel all right,” I reply blankly, trying not to look his wife in the eyes. “What... what can I do?”
He smiles weakly. “In this world?” He shrugs. “Just do a little bit of good, wherever you can. That's what I've tried to do.”
His wife immediately begins to wail, and her cries crawl into my bones. Suddenly, I am running. I have to get away from this noise, this all-consuming sound that infiltrates my very being. I try to filter it out, like they taught me back at the Institute. I focus on the beating of my heart instead, but my pulse is racing and presses against my eardrums like water in the lungs of the dying.
Doctor Herb may be right when he says I couldn't prevent this. But he could be wrong. Don't wonder the what ifs. I cannot save him. I cannot know if I could have saved him if I'd done something long ago, but what I can do is move forward, and try to do something good for the next person.
This doesn't sound like me, but it doesn't sound like Eve, either.
I am on top of the rooftops, heading out of the city, flying through the air and half-wishing I could just splatter on the concrete and stop feeling everything that I am feeling. But every time it rushes up to greet me, I roll against it, springing up and over and go
ing on.
There are only a few points in the city where gravel meets road, and only two on the western side. Only one includes a right turn. I drop down the final building and sprint out of the slums, into the undergrowth, up the gravel path. It's well-maintained for a road outside of the city, or even in it. Of course, it would have to be.
I do not know how long I run for, but eventually, I see it: an abandoned railway tunnel. The entrance has been supposedly boarded up, but a quick inspection reveals the facade; a metal door underneath wooden boards.
Knocking isn't going to do the trick, but it occurs to me that an operation like theirs probably has cameras. Sure enough, I spot one squeezed in between the bricks, carefully concealed but visible to anyone with super-sight. They probably aren't going to respond to a stranger unless I do something to grab their attention. I could write “take me to your leader” in the stones, but that could be seen as a threat. Only Nick –or possibly Scarlet or Julia– would let me in.
I pick up a stick and begin to part the gravel. The doors click open not long after I finish my message.
Get Nick.
He stands in the dark arch of the hangar, trying not to look too smug. “You really have a way of getting my attention,” he says.
Chapter 11
“I have a few provisos,” I tell Nick, as he escorts me back inside.
“Shoot.”
“Anything happens to me, you protect my family.”
“Standard. What else?”
The next one is a much, much bigger ask. If I was the sort to tremble, or choke, I probably would. “If... if there's ever a chance to destroy the place that made me,” I start, “I want your help to do it.”
Nick stops moving and stares at me.
“Only if it's safe enough,” I continue, “I don't want to put anyone in unnecessary danger, but the Institute needs to go down. I don't know entirely what their long term game plan is, but I can't imagine it'll align with yours, and you'll probably end up with several superpowered allies in the process, so it's a win-win for us all.”
He nods shortly, and continues moving. “All right.”
The Phoenix Project: Book I: Flight Page 5