The Icarus Project

by Laura Quimby

  We waited. His skin was warm to the touch, like he had been sitting under an electric sun or toasting on a beach. The warmth made him feel more and more alive. He had to wake up. He had to.

  “Wake up, Charlie!” I whispered. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear us. We heard you. We heard the messages.”

  Jake picked his camera up from the tripod and hovered around Charlie, trying to get a good angle.

  After about a half hour, Charlie’s eyes suddenly fluttered open and he sat up. His hair was down to his shoulders and was wavy and dark brown, almost black. His eyes looked like bright blue marbles, but they had a glassy look, like he had just woken up from a centuries-long nap—which is exactly what had happened. He tilted his head to the side and stared at me like I was the weirdest thing he had ever seen. Then he reached out and touched my hair.

  “Snow ghost,” he said.

  We all laughed at once. Charlie was alive! He was real and he could talk—he could even speak English! But underneath that, I shivered. How had he known about the snow ghost? I hadn’t called it that to anyone.

  “No, I’m Maya. I’m a girl, not a ghost.”

  Charlie’s lips parted. “Girl.” He moved his legs, pulling them free from the ice bed. His wings stretched out and lifted up off the wet, slushy table. He ruffled them and shook bits of clinging ice and water free. They were magnificent, better than I had hoped. He shook them like a dog would shake after a bath, and we all got a little wet. The gauzelike cloth was still covering his legs and middle.

  “Your wings,” I said. “Are they real?”

  Charlie just stared at me. I didn’t know if he fully understood what I was saying.

  I looked at his back. “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “Do you think he understands us?” Kyle asked.

  “Who knows? Plus, he just woke up from a deep sleep. Who knows where his mind went?” Jake said.

  “We still don’t know anything about him,” I said.

  After his first few words, Charlie wasn’t doing much talking. His eyes were wide, and he seemed to be taking us all in. I think we fascinated him as much as he fascinated us.

  “Let me get a shot.” Jake nosed his annoying camera closer to Charlie. The lens focused in and made a clicking sound that Charlie clearly didn’t like, because he swatted at the camera and made a weird noise and the camera shorted out.

  “Hey, what did you do to my stuff?” Jake looked at the broken camera. “Man, this equipment is sensitive. It’s not a joke.”

  Kyle and I smiled at each other. I wanted to high-five Charlie.

  “Maybe you should go and get another one. You don’t want to miss out on getting some good shots,” I said.

  “You’re right. I need to get as much footage as possible.”

  “We can’t stay in here. What if someone comes in and catches us?” Kyle asked.

  “You guys take him to one of your rooms and keep him hidden. I don’t want anything to happen until I can get more footage,” Jake said on his way out the door.

  “We should get him some clothes. He can’t walk around in a toga. He’ll freeze,” Kyle said.

  “He looks like your size, Kyle,” I said. “Can we borrow some of your clothes?”

  Charlie pointed at Kyle. “Clothes.”

  “Sure. I don’t mind.” Kyle motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”

  One thing I tried not to think about was what I was going to tell Dad. I could worry about that later. Charlie was awake, and even more important, he was moving around. He was able to walk and though he wasn’t exactly the chatty type, it was clear that he could speak, even if he just repeated the words we said to him.

  This meant that I was right. He wasn’t an old decaying fossil—he was something new. A surge of excitement filled me. I had acted on my instincts and taken a huge risk, and it had paid off. It would have been easier to play it safe and doubt myself, but I hadn’t. I hoped Dad would be proud of me, because I was practically bursting. I felt light as a feather.

  Charlie followed Kyle and me as we raced down the hall. I volunteered to keep him in my room. I had seen Dad and Kyle’s room, and believe me, unless we wanted to hide Charlie under a pile of dirty laundry, the room I shared with Karen was the better option.

  But getting Charlie into my room was a challenge. Everything caught his attention. He was like a little kid and a puppy rolled into one. He had to inspect everything, and I mean everything: the floors, the walls, the equipment, the windows. The fluorescent light fixtures that hung overhead were the most interesting thing Charlie had ever seen—or so I assumed. He reached up and tried to touch the glowing light until Kyle grabbed his arm. Charlie wouldn’t move until Kyle told him what it was. “Lightbulb,” Kyle said. “Hot. Don’t touch it. You’ll burn your hand.”

  “Lightbulb. Hot. Burn,” Charlie repeated. Satisfied with this exchange, Charlie walked on, only to be distracted by a fly that was going the other way. Charlie darted back down the hall, chasing the insect. “Stop!” I yelled. “This is going to take forever.”

  “Forever!” Charlie yelled back.

  Kyle pulled a comic book out of his pocket, rolled it up, and swatted the fly. He picked up the squished body and held it in his palm out for Charlie to see.

  “Dead,” he said. “Gone. No fly.”

  “Gone. No fly,” Charlie repeated, watching Kyle’s every move. They were obviously having some bonding time, murdering innocent insects.

  It seemed that Charlie was a natural mimic, picking up everything Kyle and I said and echoing it. He sent us dreams, and he could pick up language—what kind of creature was he? I had seen a film on octopuses that showed them crawling across the ocean floor, seamlessly mimicking the complex surface. The creatures were amazing and had a natural, magical ability to adapt. Maybe Charlie had something similar.

  “I’ll grab some clothes out of your room,” I said to Kyle. “You take Charlie to my bunk and keep him there until I get back.”

  “Deal,” Kyle said. “Let’s motor, Charlie.”

  “Deal,” Charlie said, and dutifully followed Kyle, with the dead fly still in his palm. As I watched them walk toward my room, I wondered how I was going to find a shirt to fit over his wings.

  I should never have left Kyle alone with a cool, magical, mystical creature.

  After I had grabbed some clothes from Kyle’s suitcase for Charlie to wear and made my way back to my room, I was faced with a terrible shock. There were comic books everywhere. Kyle and Charlie were sitting on my bed, with an open bag of cheese puffs between them. Charlie’s cheeks bulged, and a ring of orange powder surrounded his lips. Broken cheese puffs lay scattered across my sleeping bag like orange caterpillars. Kyle was using one as a pointer on a page in his comic book. It was a scene out of a disaster movie.

  I froze. My throat tightened, and my heart sank. No, that was an understatement. My heart crashed to the floor and broke into a million pieces, or more appropriately a million feathers, because that was what was covering the floor, the chair, the desk, and my bed—feathers. Beautiful, silky, creamy feathers.

  “What happened to his wings?” I shrieked.

  Charlie’s wings were all over the place. A huge piece of wing was draped over the desk chair and another piece was hanging from the door frame.

  “They kind of just fell off.” Kyle shrugged. He didn’t seem too worried.

  I picked up a piece, imagining that it must have been painful for Charlie to lose it—except that Charlie was engrossed in the comic book and didn’t look at all upset. “What do you mean, ‘fell off’? Wings don’t just fall off. They flap and lift and fly. They don’t fall.”

  “I just figured that Charlie was done with them. Or that he was molting,” Kyle said.

  “Shedding some feathers is fine, but not both of his wings.” I knelt down and scooped up an armful of wing bits. Tears filled my eyes. Dad was going to be furious. Somehow Kyle and I had just made a bad situation much, much worse. We had proved my
father right. When the ice melted and Charlie emerged, things happened, things changed about him. It was like the air was eating him up, destroying what was beautiful and special about him.

  Kyle noticed me crying and closed the comic book. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  “No,” I mumbled through my tears. “Those were his wings. And now they’re gone.” I fingered the silky feathers.

  Charlie reached out a finger and touched my face. He began to mumble until Kyle said, “Tears. She’s crying over the fact that your wings fell off.”

  “Crying. Wings. Off.” He patted Kyle on the back and said, “Clothes.”

  I sniffled and handed him the clothes. “Well, at least now your sweatshirt will fit him.” That was when I noticed that Charlie’s hair was shorter and lighter. Sitting next to Kyle on the bed, Charlie looked about the same size, but just a few minutes ago, back in the lab, I could have sworn that Kyle was taller than Charlie. Now the two looked more alike.

  I shook my head. I was probably just overwhelmed and imagining the similarities in their appearance.

  Charlie put on the long underwear, the pair of pants, and the sweatshirt. I had also grabbed some socks. Kyle dug through his mom’s bag of knitting and pulled out a hat and a scarf, which he wrapped around Charlie’s neck. They both laughed, since the knitted scarf was a seriously long Technicolor snake that Karen must have been working on for years.

  “My mom only knows how to knit hats and scarves,” Kyle said. “And I don’t think she knows when to stop.”

  I grabbed some gloves out of my backpack. “Here you go, Charlie. I packed an extra pair for Dad because he’s always losing his.” I handed him the gloves, and that’s when I saw his hand. “What happened?” I asked, kneeling down and cupping his hand in mine.

  Then it hit me all at once: the size, the hair color, and the wings falling off. Charlie was looking more and more like Kyle. Right down to his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Kyle asked.

  I pointed. “Look at his fingers.”

  “Weird.” Kyle placed his hand next to Charlie’s.

  The last two fingers on Charlie’s hand were missing, just like the fingers on Kyle’s hand.

  “I have a feeling this isn’t a coincidence,” Kyle said, curling up his fingers.

  “I don’t think so, either. I think Charlie is mimicking you,” I said.

  “Mimicking me? But how?”

  “Maybe that’s how Charlie adapts. He’s starting to look like you. And he’s picking up our language,” I said.

  Charlie mumbled something through a mouthful of cheese puffs.

  I continued hypothesizing. “He shouldn’t even be alive. He’s survived being frozen in a block of ice and look at him now. He doesn’t even have freezer burn. Anything’s possible.”

  “We could ask him,” Kyle said.

  “Ask him what? If he’s a magical creature, an angel, or an alien being?” I asked.

  “Maybe we should just teach him how to talk first.”

  Jake raced into the room, camera in tow, panting. “Finally! I didn’t know where you guys went.” His eyes widened at seeing the mass of feathers. “Whoa,” was all he said, and then he began filming.

  The three of us decided that the best classroom for Charlie was the rec room, and so we spent the next few hours teaching him how to play Ping-Pong, throw darts, play card games, and arm-wrestle with Kyle. Then we taught him how to make a bologna sandwich, because no one could live off cheese puffs alone. Jake filmed everything and even seemed to be having fun for once. Then, since it was getting late, we decided to hide out in my room until the scientists got back.

  I plopped down on the bed next to Charlie. Under one arm, he squeezed Karen’s stuffed polar bear. I reached over and petted the bear. Charlie handed it to me.

  “Polar bear,” I said, stroking its fur.

  “Grrrr,” Kyle said. I smiled. Kyle growled like a bear again, and I pretended to attack him with the stuffed bear. “Tough bear,” Kyle said.

  “He’s strong.” I handed the bear to Charlie. “Polar bears live on the ice. They have to be strong to live in the Arctic.”

  “A strong bear.” Charlie nodded. He went back to reading the comic book and stuffed another cheese puff into his mouth. “Lives on the ice.”

  “But you’re strong, too,” I said. “You lived inside the ice.”

  “I was no alive.” He squinted up his face, searching for words to express what he was thinking. “I was asleep.”

  “You were sleeping,” Kyle said. “How did you get there? Frozen in the ice?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No, no.”

  “Did you fall?” I asked, but he ignored me. “You had wings, so it’s natural to think you might have fallen while flying.”

  Charlie grabbed some more of Kyle’s comic books. “More stories,” he said. “More powers.”

  “He likes the superpowers.” Kyle shrugged and smiled.

  Charlie didn’t realize that of all of us, he was the one with the closest thing to superpowers.

  “What kind of powers do you think Charlie has?” I nudged Kyle, wondering if the thought had occurred to him.

  “Well, he doesn’t have superhuman strength, if his arm wrestling was any indication. I beat him easily.” Kyle smirked.

  “But he can change his own body. He mimicked you, didn’t he?” I smiled. “And the dreams! He can create visions and dreamscapes.”

  “Dreamscapes…” Kyle said. “Yeah, that’s a cool way to put it. He builds dreams. That’s an awesome power.”

  The two of them went back to reading comic books.

  As evening approached, the others returned from the dig site. It was really hard to hide when everyone in the station was looking for us. I knew that escape or evasion was pointless, so basically we waited to be found. Karen saw Charlie first, and it took her a while before the shock wore off and she could form sentences. Between the room being covered in feathers and Charlie being dressed in Kyle’s clothes, I think she was a little overwhelmed.

  She paced back and forth. “This can’t be happening. He can’t be here. He can’t be alive and well and walking around.”

  “I’m alive now,” Charlie said. “No more sleeping.” He laid his head on the pillow that was in his lap and made snoring sounds. Kyle and I laughed.

  “He talks,” Karen said. She made a nervous bark sound in the back of her throat. “He speaks English.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she practically hurdled Kyle and me to get over to Charlie. She ran her fingers through his hair the way a mom would do.

  “Well, sort of,” Kyle said. “I’ve been teaching him stuff. Important stuff. Like the entire history of the X-Men, and all their superpowers.”

  “That’s nice. I think.” Karen’s eyes went really wide, and she practiced taking deep breaths. “I’ll go get Jason. He’ll know what to do. I’m afraid that Randal will be furious.” Karen eyed Jake, but he just shrugged and kept filming. “Katsu is going to flip out, and so is Ivan. I have no idea how he’s going to handle this. His sanity’s already holding on by a thread.”

  “Everyone will have to deal with it,” I said. “Charlie is a living being. Not someone who you guys can just plant a flag on and claim, like you just landed on the moon.”

  “Is that why you two did this? Because you think we were trying to claim him?”

  “Well, aren’t you? You all want Charlie for your own scientific experiments,” I said. Even Dad wanted to study and publish papers about Charlie—to put his name on the map.

  “We didn’t want Katsu or Ivan or Randal to hurt him.” Kyle sat on the edge of the bed. “Charlie’s not a lab rat.”

  “I know. But until now he wasn’t a living breathing person, either. We thought he was dead. We all thought that he was ancient, from another time.” She shook her head. “It’s just unbelievable.”

  “Please, Karen.” I jumped up. “They’ll take him away. Katsu will clone him.”

  “No, d
ear. Katsu only wanted to clone mammoths.” Karen reached over and tucked a loose hair behind my ear. “I can’t believe I just said that. Anyway, no one is going to clone a boy.”

  Randal stood in the doorway. His green eyes sparkled. He didn’t seem surprised to see Charlie.

  “We don’t know that he is a boy, Karen. We don’t know what he is, and now I must take him back to the lab with me,” Randal said.

  “No!” I jumped to my feet and charged toward Randal, blocking him from the room. “You can’t have him.”

  Dad rushed into the room and held me back. “Maya, I can’t believe you were a part of this. How could you have done this to Charlie—to all of us? You put a major scientific expedition at risk.” The look on Dad’s face was utter disappointment. “I’m sorry, Randal. I take full responsibility for my daughter’s lack of judgment.” And when he said judgment, it really sounded like he meant crime.

  “What do you mean?” I was utterly shocked. I knew that Dad was not going to be happy that we thawed out Charlie, but he was really angry.

  “You could have hurt Charlie. He’s not a toy or a new dog for you to play with,” Dad said.

  “We weren’t playing with him.” My face was hot with shame. Dad didn’t get it.

  “Yeah, we were teaching him stuff.” Kyle came to my defense.

  “Teaching me to be alive,” Charlie said. He smiled a big goofy grin. “Like a polar bear. A superhero.”

  Dad helped Charlie off the bed. Disappointment filled his face.

  “But, Dad,” I pleaded. “It’s not fair.”

  “No buts. This is serious, Maya.” Dad turned his back on me. “We are going to take Charlie back to the lab, where he will be safe.”

  Safe? Hardly. The lab was the least safe place in the whole station. My stomach rolled over. How had my plan turned into such a mess? In trying to save Charlie, I had made the situation worse for him. Now he was going to be more trapped, more studied than ever. A wave of fear shuddered through me. I thought I was helping. I thought I was doing the right thing.