The Phoenix Project: Book I: Flight

by Katherine Macdonald

  As anticipated, Abe is in a terrible mood. He doesn't mention anything about the warehouse, but he snaps that he's got nothing going and to come back in a week. It's the longest time I've gone without a job from him in a while, but I'm relieved to be out of there. I head to the market to look at the notice board, to see if anyone's got an errand I could run. There's nothing that suits; plenty of stuff I could do, but too easily. I grudgingly leave those for someone who needs them more.

  My feet take me in the direction of the phoenix mural. I didn't tell Nick, when he asked, the entire truth about my name. I chose it the day we first arrived in Luca. We were ragged, half-starved, exhausted, aching, and broken beyond measure. We were all so choked up with grief it's a wonder we could even breathe. I thought life would just slip out of me. Surely, without Gabe by my side, I couldn't live. He was the skin of my soul. He held all of me together.

  And yet, air still filled my lungs. Blood still pumped around my body. It might have felt like I died with him, but I was still standing. Standing before an enormous fire bird, with the words emblazoned on the brick above it, “we will rise from the ashes”.

  I wanted to rise. I wanted to be reborn. Ashe rose from Eve.

  I didn't want to credit the Phoenix Project with inspiring my name. It felt a bit too sappy. Nick might have said it was fate, and I hate that. Nobody is pushing me in any direction but me.

  I'm still standing at the wall when a van screeches round the corner, crashing into one of the stalls. It's a sleek, pristine thing. Not one of Phoenix's, not one of any of ours.

  Oh, oh no...

  Soldiers pour out the front, dressed in protective gear and heavily armed. The back of the van is wrenched open, and three bedraggled people are yanked out. They are dishevelled, and covered in a blotchy, purple rash.

  Late-stage pax patients.

  I don't know how they managed to stay hidden for so long. I don't know what they were hoping to do, but I do know that something very, very bad is going to happen.

  The patients lie there in the dirt, too fearful or too sick to move; it's impossible to tell. One of the soldiers decides this isn't good enough. He starts to shoot.

  If he wanted them dead, they would be, but he fires deliberately at the ground, causing them to scatter like marbles.

  The crowd goes wild.

  Within seconds, absolute pandemonium has obliterated the morning. People are screaming, moving in every direction. Stalls are torn down. Bullets are firing. Bodies hit the floor. Blood explodes in the air. It worms its way into my nostrils.

  This is not the first time something like this has happened, and I have already shot up a building to escape the madness. Usually when there's a raid, I just run. As long as Mi and Abi and Ben are safe, I don't stick around.

  But not any more.

  Do I try to take out the soldiers? There are five of them, keeping close together, all armed, geared up, and clearly well-trained. I would struggle to take out all of them without risking injury, and I'd have to kill them. I couldn't risk them reporting back. No, taking them out is too risky, especially as I'm alone–

  But I'm not alone, am I? I snatch the device from my back pocket and press down the button. The radio hums into life.

  “Hello?” says a voice on the other end.

  “There's a raid at the market!” I rush. “Five heavily armed soldiers. One van. They've released three pax patients and are firing on the crowd–”

  There is an eruption behind me. A building is on fire. An abandoned one, I think, but cinder and smoke stream out onto the pavement. Fire spits into the sky, towards the neighbouring building...

  Oh God. The School. Abi. Ben.

  I shove the device away and vault down the side of the building, rolling onto the ground below and sprinting towards the school. The roof is on fire. A corner of it has been struck by debris–

  No, no, no–

  Kids are pouring out of the building, most white-faced but unhurt, a few coughing and covered in soot. Several are screaming, sobbing, shrieking. None of those could be Abi or Ben, they're both too tough. I check the silent ones, seizing their faces and almost shoving them away. Some parents have already arrived. I pass them over, moving further and further towards the building.

  “Mrs Brook!” I spot Ben's teacher. “Mrs Brook! Where's Ben?”

  “He... he was right behind me...” Her face is white. “I swear he was–”

  “Ashe!”

  It's Abi. She's fine, not even dusted in ash. We clutch each other tightly, briefly.

  “I can't find Ben–”

  I nod, and we are both already moving into the building. We call his name. No reply. This should not shock us too much; Ben has never learnt to focus or filter out sounds as well as the rest of us. He probably just can't hear us over the screaming and the flames.

  We split. I take the corridor closest to the chaos, towards the fire. Ben is small, Ben is smart. He knows what to do if he's stuck and can't get out. He's safe, he's safe, he has to be.

  “Ben!” I call out. “Ben!”

  I switch my filters on. It's hard to do when I'm so close to panicking. For a moment, all I can hear is my heart pounding in my ears. It might as well be a siren. I pluck it out and shelve it, I turn off every sound I can. There is no screaming, no crying, no crackling of fire. There is only the sound of breathing.

  I follow it, still calling, and am rewarded when I hear a tiny voice.

  “Ashe! I'm here!”

  He's half under a wall, a huge metal beam crushed against his back. For a moment, I think he's trapped –why else would he be there?– but then I realise he's holding it up. I scream for Abi, hurtle forwards, and ram myself underneath it instead. Ben rolls away. I keep lifting, as hard and as quickly as I can, because I understand immediately what Ben was trying to do; he was trying to save the three kids trapped on the other side.

  Abi appears, shouldering the weight with me. Together, we heave it upwards. Ben pulls out the other three from the debris. Some of them are bigger than him.

  “Get them out!” I yell.

  It's not just the metal beam we're holding at this point. It's practically the whole damn building.

  I wait until the four of them are well clear before nodding at Abi. We drop it and race back to the entrance. Mercifully, the whole building doesn't collapse, but shrivels inwardly like a dying spider.

  Outside, the three other kids are safely installed in the arms of their families, and I immediately haul Ben into mine. I want to scream at him for being so reckless, but I can't. It's all I can do to stop myself from sobbing. Abi hovers close by and I pull her down too, and then we hear another voice, calling all our names so quickly they seem to slide into one.

  “Ashe, Ben, Abi!”

  It's Mi, slithering through the crowd, hands outstretched, searching for us. We've barely had time to open our arms before he collides into them, and we crash to the ground, a huge mass of limbs and tears.

  “Is anyone hurt?” he asks.

  “I'm fine, Abi's fine,” I rattle. “Ben?”

  “My back's a bit sore.”

  “He was holding up a building, Mi,” Abi gushes. “It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I ruffle his hair, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Don't risk your life again, bud. Come and find me and I'll put mine on the line instead.”

  “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “You know I always will.”

  The sounds of screaming have dissipated. I listen closely; there's no more gunfire, and the van is gone from the marketplace. I touch Mi's arm.

  “Look after them,” I tell him. “I have to go check on something.”

  I disentangle myself from Abi and Ben and head back to the square. It is a gutted thing. Not a single awning is still standing. Food is strewn across the floor. Fruit flesh lies in the gutter, sponging up the blood. There are several dead, more wounded. I spot Julia moving among them, helping them to
wards a not ill-equipped medical van. Millie comes out of her clinic, offering blankets and bandages. The people are being fixed, but there's little to be salvaged from the wasted food, the ruined wares. Lifelines.

  Scarlet and Pilot move those who are beyond medical care to the side of the market. Already people are coming forward to claim them. A tiny child sits beside the body of one man. Please God, let her have a mother. Don’t let her be alone in this world.

  One body lies completely ignored in the centre of square; one of the pax victims. No one is fully sure how long it takes for an infected body to be safe to handle once deceased, and no one is keen to find out. Being immune, I could just pick him straight up, but I don't want people to panic. I yank a ruined tarp out and wrap it around his body before moving him to the side. No one will weep over him. No one will claim him. His family, if he had one, will never get to bury him.

  Scarlet and I lock eyes. “One of the pax victims,” I tell her, assuming by now everyone knows how this whole thing began. “There were two more–”

  “One safely escorted to the infirmary, another in the wind,” she tells me. “I imagine she's holed up somewhere, terrified. People are out searching now. Good people.”

  People who won't just gun her down.

  Finally, I spot Nick. He's administering first aid to an old woman. He looks up before I'm at his side, as if he can sense me approaching.

  “Ashe–” he stands up.

  “Tell me we're going to do something,” I demand, “Tell me there is a plan to get back at them for this, that we're not just going to let them–”

  “There is,” he says. “Or there will be.”

  “Let me be a part of it.”

  He nods, not even bothering to say he'll have to ask Rudy or anything like that. He must be able to feel the fury radiating from me.

  “Are you all right?” he asks instead.

  “They attacked the school,” I hiss. “My kid was in there–”

  “Your kid?”

  “My... Ben. He's... he's not my baby, not really. He's just a kid and he's mine. Those bastards could have killed him today.”

  “Ashe is very protective,” Mi materialises at my side. “You should have seen what she did to the guy who–”

  “You’re supposed to be looking after Ben and Abi!”

  “They're fine, I gave Ben the once-over. Figured I could do more good here.”

  “Fine,” I say through gritted teeth, “Nick, this is Michael. Mi. He's basically my brother. Mi, this is Nick.”

  Mi reaches out to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you. Is there a doctor here I can lend my services to?”

  “Um, sure... do you need any help finding her?”

  “Nah, just tell me what she looks like.”

  Nick blinks incredulously.

  “He's joking, he does that,” I explain. “He enjoys making people uncomfortable. She's at your three o'clock, Mi. Twenty feet.”

  Mi mutters his thanks and wanders off, leaving me alone with Nick. The devastation swells behind him. So much ruin.

  “Why do they do things like this?” My voice is a lot softer than I'm used to, a lot more helpless.

  Nick sighs. “To remind us that we're not really free. That they have more power. And to curb our population. Our numbers have been getting a bit high lately. They don't like it.”

  What had Abi said? That there were eight thousand people, living here? And Luca wasn't alone in the world. There were other glittering cities and their terminal city slums. We could get to another one, if we wanted, if we could steal the fuel or find a mode of transport that didn’t need it. Another eight thousand a few miles away. An army, if we mobilised.

  I wonder if any other cities got hit today.

  “Ashe?” Nick reaches out, his fingers stretching towards me. He doesn't quite make contact. “What are you thinking about?”

  I turn my thoughts back to the issues at hand. “I'm thinking there's a lot to be done,” I tell him. “And this place isn't going to clear itself.”

  Chapter 15

  I've never helped clean up after a raid. I stay wide clear of any affected area, as if it is infectious. I might run supplies for people who ask, but I've never helped move away the wreckage. I've never boarded up shop windows. I've never prepared a body for burial.

  We do this first, digging the graves far out of town and transporting the bodies in the vans. No one will touch the pax victim but me. Even Nick seems cautious.

  “You should be careful,” he says, when he sees me heading towards him. “He might still be–”

  “I'm immune,” I say sharply.

  Nick's brow furrows. “No one's immune to the pax.”

  “A happy by-product of my spliced genes,” I explain. “Too much cat in me.”

  “Did... did anyone use you to engineer a cure?”

  “No, funnily enough, in the thirteen years they had of cutting me open, they never thought of that!”

  “Sorry,” Nick says. “I just–”

  “It's fine. I get the curiosity. Yes, they tried, but they could never create a vaccine, or a cure. We're only immune because of our genetic make-up, which is pretty darn hard to replicate.”

  Nick falls quiet, but he helps me unload the victim, very carefully. We place him next to the others in a mass grave. A few family members have brought down trinkets to be buried with them. Someone scatters them with petals. A priest of a kind arrives to say a few words.

  I have never been to a funeral, and my immediate thought is that I would be quite happy never to go to another. The grief in the air is palpable, a thick miasma of misery. It is far more catching than the pax. I did not know these people, but I mourn them. I stand by Nick's side as the dirt is piled, and I almost want to take his hand. It feels a little like I'm falling.

  He, I think, has been to a few. There is a stalwartness in his shoulders, a tightness in his cheeks. He is someone who has learned how to look, how to behave, but his eyes brim nonetheless. His body betrays him, as does mine.

  After the dead are taken care of, we return to the square and sort through the debris. A lot of young people, some children even, help to sort what can be salvaged. Someone from Phoenix tries to work out what belongs to who. The awnings are pulled out of the wreckage, at which point a flock of old folk appear out of nowhere, armed with needles and thread. They take them to the side, sit down for the long haul, and stitch what can be stitched.

  I work tirelessly. Others come and go, but I do not stop. I don't need to. I board a dozen windows, fix a dozen stalls. I carry boxes, load vans, fetch and take supplies. As long as I work, I don't think. I'm less angry.

  “Here,” Nick pushes a hot bowl into my hand. “You should eat.”

  “I'm not hungry.”

  “You've not eaten all day.”

  “It's only–”

  I stop. The skies are darkening. Daylight has almost faded entirely. I’ve worked away the entire day.

  Nick smiles wearily. “You've done all you can today. Sit down for a moment. Let me look at your hands.”

  “My hands?”

  It takes me a minute to realise what he means, but they are red, raw and blistering. It'll heal quickly, of course, but they're still a mess now.

  Nick directs me to upturned crate and I slurp a couple of mouthfuls of the lukewarm, flavourless broth, while he goes to fetch something. The food is unappetising, but welcome nonetheless. I hadn't realised how hungry I was. My stomach rumbles and unfurls.

  “How can someone not realise they're hungry?” Nick chuckles, returning to my side. He pries one of my hands away from the bowl. “Or hurt?”

  “I'm very good at compartmentalising,” I explain. “Focusing. Filtering everything else out. I'd go mad otherwise, everything I can hear and smell and see.”

  He spills a cold, stinging liquid over my cuts. It's like sticking your hands in fire. “Ow, ow, ouchie!”

  Nick splutters with laughter. “I'm sorry, did the big, tough, badass superhero
just say ouchie?”

  “I wasn't expecting that!”

  “Just... filter it out!”

  I stretch my hand out in front of me, and fix my thoughts on the skyline instead. I think about other parts of my body; my ears, my toes, the tip of my nose. I draw the focus away, and the pain dissipates. Nick starts on the other hand and I feel almost nothing.

  “What's it like, feeling as much as you do?” he asks, as he slowly cleans away the dirt and grime.

  No one has ever asked me that, not unless it was part of some experiment.

  “It's... overwhelming,” I tell Nick quietly. “Or it can be, if I don't keep a lid on it. It was awful when I was little. At times...” At times, it got so bad that I wanted to claw it out of my brain, or crawl out of my body. I didn't want to be me any more. I didn't know what I was, or what I was supposed to be, but I didn't want to be either. I wanted to slither away, slide out my skin. Stop seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking.

  “But would you trade it?” he asks.

  “For what?”

  “For a chance to be ordinary?”

  No. Of course not. Not here. I need my abilities. They're my armour. “Here?” I ask.

  “Anywhere. If you could trade your abilities and live in Luca, and never have to worry about anything ever again... would you?”

  But I wouldn't be me, and that's not what I want any more.

  “No.”

  “No? Just like that?”

  “I can't imagine me in any other shape but this,” I explain. “However easy it might be to be otherwise.”

  Nick finishes with the gauze. “Strange, isn't it, how we cling to our troubles?”

  “Maybe we just like the fight.”

  He reaches down for some bandages.

  “You won't need those,” I tell him. “It's a waste. I heal too quickly.”

  “Won't it hurt, to have them exposed?”

  “I'll manage.”

  His hands are still cupping mine. “Ashe?”

  “Yes?”

  He coughs suddenly. “Never mind,” he says, straightening up. “It's pretty much dark now. We should head home for the night.”