I make a beeline for the window, but voices fill the space outside the door. I grab one of the canisters instead and hurl it towards the entrance. It collides with a weapon and bounces off into the corner, hissing.
Shots are fired. I dive behind the kitchen island, searching for something to use as a weapon.
A sulphuric smell uncurls in my nostrils. The gas canister! One of the guards shouts to stop firing, and then goes silent. They're doubtless planning to surround me, but at least they can't fire with the room filling with gas, and I've just found an old frying pan in one of the cupboards.
They emerge either side of the island as I spring on top of it, kicking one of them in the face and cracking the frying pan over the other's head. It's not strong enough to render him unconscious, only dazed. I wrap my legs around his neck and slam him into the counter, rolling away as he falls and going for his partner. I kick her legs out from underneath her and punch her squarely in the face.
A gun cocks near the door.
“Wait–” I shout.
I hold out my hand to stop him, and for a moment, time seems to slow. My fingers reach out as if to stop the bullet, but they seem to shake uncontrollably.
I do not hear the bullet. I do not remember much of the next few seconds. Everything is lost under the roar of the flames. The room erupts. Heat blisters into being. I am thrown back against the wall, dropping behind the counter, and blackness spreads across my vision.
Chapter 38
My ears ring. Something is crackling. Fire dances around the room. Still spinning, I force myself onto my knees.
What just happened?
I don't think I was out long. A few seconds at most. How can there be so much fire already? Why am I uninjured?
A bookcase topples over. A scream is cut horribly short, only to be replaced by several others, out in the hallway.
I emerge from behind the counter. The guard under the bookcase, who was standing right next to other canisters, is very clearly dead. His colleague is still breathing, although she won't be if she stays in this room much longer.
I should leave her. She wouldn't save me, if the positions were reversed, and the fire will probably make it easier to escape. I have a family to get back to. I have Nick to get back to. I'm not being completely selfish if I leave her here. But... she might have people to go back to as well, and I won't sleep easy knowing I left her.
“Oh, fine,” I say to no one in particular, and pull her over my shoulders.
The hallway is awash with flames. Part of the wall to the apartment has been blown away, fire spills out into the space, licks the ceiling. I do not feel heat as keenly as others –my skin is almost impervious to it– but I can feel this blaze and the smoke as it winds its way through the air.
People have flooded the corridors, but only a few are brave enough to attempt running through the flames towards the stair door. The three that have cannot open it; the handle has been welded shut.
Barely protecting my unconscious passenger, I stream through the flaming arch, kicking the door down at the other end and giving way to those waiting. I turn back to the nervous ones and gesture for them to follow.
“Quickly!”
The fire is getting worse.
They come, reluctantly, one after the other, only picking up the pace once they are clear of the heat. I rearrange the guard on my shoulders and hurtle after them, breaking out into the street.
In the chaos, the enforcement seems to have abandoned its search for me, perhaps assuming that I escaped in the confusion or perished in the blaze. Why would I stick around, after all? The few that remain unhurt are assisting with the evacuation or trying to put out the blaze. I deposit the guard in a waiting ambulance, turn to run–
The glare of a dozen small recording devices light up the street like fireflies. Of course people are recording the carnage. Why else would you watch? I should get out before anyone gets a good shot of my face, although at this point I'm close to abandoning the whole facade of anonymity entirely. Let them know it was me at the hotel, me who pulled a guard out the wreckage. I'll be Nick's stupid Firebird.
There's a cry from one of the floors, followed by frantic whispering, screaming. “Up there!”
The woman from earlier, the one with the two children, is standing on her balcony, trying to flag someone's attention. The little girl clings to her legs, the little boy... he's no where to be seen.
Someone goes to alert the guards, but I saw the inferno the stairs were becoming. There's no getting out that way, and the smoke–
Another siren howls in the distance.
Leave it alone, Ashe. It's not your problem. Let someone else save them. They'll be fine–
And if they're not?
Within seconds, I am running, not caring that a dozen eyes and screens are suddenly fixed on me. I leap into the air, flinging myself straight onto the first balcony and crawling up the building until I reach my mark. I drop straight in front of the mother and her child, holding out my arms to the girl.
“Come on,” I urge, as softly as I can manage.
The little girl buries herself further into her mother's legs.
“It's OK, sweetheart, I'm going to help you. I'm going to get you out of here and come back for your mother and brother. All right?”
The little face looks up at her mother, who nods desperately. The girl reaches out and wraps her arms around my neck.
“I'm going to need my hands. Can you hold on tightly enough?”
She whispers an affirmative in my ear. I lift her up, her tiny legs swinging around my waist.
I leap off the balcony, the mother screaming as I vanish, not expecting me to jump straight from the fifth floor directly onto the concrete below with her baby in my arms. But we land as safely as cats and within seconds I am springing back up the building, trying to gather her up.
“No!” she hisses. “Jase– my boy!”
In the panic, I had almost forgotten about him, but she leads me inside, into the bedroom, and points to the bed. “He won't get out!”
I have no patience for this. I lift the bed clean off the floor and drag the child out from under it, shouldering him despite his protests and leaping off the balcony a second time. He stops screaming shortly after we land.
I'm just about to return for the mother when another explosion tears through the building. The entire floor seems to sag, and before I've even moved from the boy's side, the woman is blown into the air and plummeting towards the floor–
Faster than the air, I follow the direction of her fall, leaping out and grabbing her before she can land. She utters a sound –a shocked kind of thanks– and then she is tumbling out of my grip towards her children.
It is then I notice all the cameras trained on me.
“What are you?” asks one bystander. “Are you... are you here to hurt us?”
I could sneer at her and point out I just rescued four people from a burning building –one of which had tried to kill me moments before– but maybe all my aggression is spent.
“I'm not here to hurt anyone,” I tell her. “I'd actually rather like to help, and if people could just stop shooting at me, that'd be great!”
“Why are they shooting at you?”
“Ask your government.”
“Wait, but... who are you?”
“My name is Ashe,” I declare.
Please, please... let this get back to Harris. Let him send someone for us!
More people are amassing, more cars, more guards and police. I need to get out now, before I can't get out at all. I give the girl a mock salute, and then stream off down an alleyway, up a fire escape, and away into the night.
Chapter 39
Back at the garage, Nick is still asleep. I clean myself up as best I can, scrubbing smoky residue from every inch and crevice. I look down at my hands; they tingle slightly, in a way I don't remember before. Did... did I start that fire?
I don't see how it's possible. Abilities were not unheard of at the Insti
tute, and there was always the inexplicable connection between myself and Gabe, but I've never shown any kind of pyrokinetic abilities before. If I was capable of it, they surely would have known. How many tests had they run on me at that awful place?
But then... I don't remember the guard firing.
I push the thought away, scrubbing my hands clean, and make myself something to eat. For the first time in days, I'm famished. After I've mopped up the remains of my powdered soup and crackers, I crash on the spare bunk, so exhausted that even Nick's coughing doesn't wake me up.
I don't know what time I wake. With no natural light, time has little meaning here. Nick is awake, looking worse than ever and trembling in his skin. He still tries to smile when his eyes meet mine.
“Hey,” he whispers hoarsely, “Where'd you go yesterday?”
“Oh, you know, out and about.”
“You smell of smoke.”
“Well, I am a firebird.”
His laugh turns into a hacking cough, which I try to ignore as I slip off my bunk and make him something to eat. His limbs are shaking so terribly that I have to hold the spoon to his lips, and he curls back up after managing only a few mouthfuls, seizing in his sheets.
I touch his arm. It's like burning iron.
“There must be something I can do...”
“Honestly... just... having you... here is... pretty good. Don't normally... get that.”
“Me?”
“Anyone.”
It must be very lonely, shivering on a bed, with only a few volunteers in hazmats around, if you're lucky.
“I can try to get hold of a transfusion kit. Our blood can ease the symptoms–”
“You hate needles.”
I hate this more.
“Small price to pay,” I say swiftly.
“Do you... do you even know how to use a transfusion kit?”
“I'm pretty handy. I could work it out.”
The truth is, I don't know. It can't be as simple as stabbing each of us with a needle and pressing a button. They'll be plenty of ways to do it wrong, and with my aversion to needles... oh god, what if I pass out in front of him?
Nick pulls on my jacket cuff. “What are you thinking about?”
“How mortifying it would be if I passed out in front of you from a needle.”
Nick chuckles feebly. “Because you're so tough and it's a tiny needle?”
“Because I am so tough, and it is a tiny needle.”
I inspect his rashes. They're starting to blister. This, at least, is something I can ease, cleaning them with hot water and bandaging the worse ones. Wounds I can do.
“Lucky you're immune, eh?” Nick coughs.
“If I wasn't, I'd probably still be here.”
“That's a dumb thing to say... dumb thing to do.”
“You make me dumb, but I don't mind as much as I should.”
“I knew you liked me.”
“I do,” I whisper, my voice almost as hoarse as his. “I do like you.” A lot, too much, enough to break me.
I tell him another story, about finding the loft and making it our home. It's one of the few nice stories I can think of. I try a few more, like making a birthday cake for Ben when he complained that all the other children had birthdays. It must have taken me a week to secure all the right ingredients, so much bartering and trading, all of it worth it to see the little look on his face. We played old-fashioned party games for hours after, and when he finally fell asleep, we three went up the roof and asked ourselves if we wanted birthdays. I said it was too much trouble. Mi could not have a birthday without thinking of the real, unknown one he shared with Gabe, and Abi said she thought she would like a date, to feel more normal, but not a party.
Nick does not talk much, but whenever I stop, he requests some other tale.
I am running out of happy ones.
I tell him about the first time we took Ben out on “a mission” –how we strapped him to our backs and shielded him from harm. It was a test, of course, everything was. We just didn't always know how we were being tested. Some things were obvious. “How fast can Eve run?” “Is she stronger than Adam?” “How quickly can she work out x?” “How fast does she heal?”
Others were stranger. We were given philosophy books as we got older. They would present us with scenarios. “Who should you sacrifice to save the rest?”
Questions that had no right answer, something I angrily spat at them once.
I remember the Director was there for that one. He found something amusing about my reaction. The others didn't, and Abi's wails as they hauled me off for punishment still crawl around my insides.
I spoke my mind less, after that. Gave them any answer that would do. I didn't want her –or any of the others– to cry over me.
“Strange questions, for a soldier,” Nick wheezes.
“Strange questions for anyone.”
“Are you sure... are you sure that... that's what they wanted you to be?”
“Pretty sure,” I whisper. “Why else would they make me kill?”
Nick goes very quiet for a moment. “I'm sorry. That they made you do that.”
“Have you ever taken a life?” It's a silly question, of course. I've seen him holding a weapon before. He fired on those guards at the warehouse. It seems unlikely he's survived this long if he keeps missing.
“Yes... when it was absolutely necessary.”
“It wasn't always necessary, for me.”
The first time I killed someone I knew was human, I was ten years old. He was Adam's second, Beta-2. We just called him Beta. We were not friends. He did not like me. He hated that I was better than him and I disliked him because he wouldn't accept that. One day, during a match, he just kept going. Every time I knocked him down, he got back up. Every time I disarmed him, he kept punching. Eventually I realised he wasn't going to stop until I made him. I got him in a headlock, trying to choke him out. He did not go down easily.
“Stop struggling,” I told him, “just drop down. Let's finish this.”
Only he wouldn't.
I do not know his last words. He couldn't say anything, his throat was being crushed by my arms. He just flailed, making choking, guttural sounds. Time and time again, I replay that moment in my head, trying to remember if he said anything during the match at all, if I overheard him talking to his comrades beforehand. I cannot recall.
“Finish the match, Eve,” the Director called.
I tightened my grip. He still didn't stop.
“Finish him,” was my next instruction.
I knew what was expected of me. Perhaps they had decided that Beta wasn't strong enough, or smart enough. Perhaps they didn't like that he couldn't follow orders. But I suspect differently. I suspect they just wanted to know if I'd do it.
And I did.
I wanted the match over. I was tired, I was bored. I was angry at him for not listening, for being silly. So I snapped his neck.
For one fraction of an awful, blissful second. I enjoyed it. The power, the control. The winning.
But then his body hit the floor. One of his comrades –Beta-4– started to scream, and Adam looked at me in a way he never had before. In that moment, I was no longer his competition, his rival. I was the monster who had taken away his friend.
Afterwards, they interviewed me. They asked me how I felt. I told them nothing. I was just following orders. I seemed callous, cold, unfeeling.
When night came around, I screamed soundlessly into my pillow and wept as quietly as I could. That morning, when I woke, I had been ordinary, as far as I knew. Now something inside of me was different. My soul was damaged, stained, fettered. I was not the same. That act had twisted me into something awful and ugly.
What had I done?
Gabe crawled into my bed. He held my shaking hands.
“You had to do it,” he whispered.
But I didn't. They would not have killed me, me, their golden girl, if I had refused. They might have beat me, but I could
handle a beating. If I had refused, a life would have been spared. I would not be a monster.
Eventually, I learned to recognise the real monsters from the victims, to place the true blame of his death on those that ordered it and manipulated a small child to carry it out. If there was a monster in me, it was one of their making, and I didn't have to let it loose.
But I have never forgotten the feeling of his life in my hands, the scream that cut into my flesh, and the look of horror on Adam's face.
Never again would I be a monster.
“Tell me something else,” Nick asks quietly.
“About what?”
“Anything. When are you happiest?”
“When I'm in the wilderness,” I say quickly. “Or... or when I'm with Ben.”
“He really is your baby, isn't he?”
I nod. “Which is just as well, 'cause–”
I stop abruptly. This is something personal, something I've not discussed with anyone else, apart from Abi, just the once, because it applied to her too.
“Because what?”
“We can't have children,” I say shortly. “At least, Abi and I can't. I don't know about the boys.”
“How... how would you know that?”
“When I was about eleven, they did something to me. I didn't know what, at the time. I was used to experiments. This one was different. I woke up from surgery with cuts across my hips. It was only when we escaped I realised what that probably meant.”
“They... they did the same to Abi?”
“She doesn't remember any surgery, but neither of us have ever had periods and we've clearly hit puberty–”
“Clearly,” Nick agrees.
I go quiet for a moment. “I've never told anyone else that.” I look back at him. “Does... does that bother you?”
“Am I bothered you shared a secret with me? Quite the opposite!”
“I mean... does it bother you, that I can't have kids?”
Now it is Nick's turn for silence. “Does it bother you?”
“No, no really. I've got Ben still. I think he could be enough for me.”
“Then it doesn't bother me.”
I wonder if he's lying, lying to be kind. I'd love to have a family, he'd said. Maybe he'd envisioned settling down one day and having a couple of sproglets, and now has to come to terms with the fact that if he wants me, that won't be a part of a future we share.
The Phoenix Project: Book I: Flight Page 18