by Carrie Mac
“None of your business.” The look on Gryph’s face softened, but into what? Disappointment? Frustration? Phoenix couldn’t read it, but it unnerved her anyway. Not enough to stop her from pushing a little more, though.
“Drugs?” Phee asked. “Have you figured out a way to cheat the tests? Is that it? You’re doing drugs? Because if you are, let me be the first to tell you that you’ve lost more brain cells than you can spare.”
“Keep talking,” Gryph growled. “Maybe you’ll stop sounding like a clueless little twat eventually.” Okay, so maybe Phee had pushed it a little too far. Gryph gripped her arm hard. “There’s no way that I’m telling you anything. Why would I?”
“Because I’m your sister. And I worry about you.” That sounded good, when the reality was that she was concerned but was honestly more curious than anything.
“You don’t want to know.” Gryph gave her arm a final fierce squeeze and then let it go. “So stop trying to figure it out.”
“But if you’re in trouble—”
“I’m not.”
“Sounds like you are.”
“Listen to me, Phee.” Gryph brought his face right down to hers, his icy blue eyes locking on hers. “Put it out of your mind. Okay?”
Phee could think of a million responses to his request, but she knew full well the only one that he was willing to hear.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Then we have an understanding.”
Phee didn’t answer. It was hard enough to make the last response come out right, so she dared not try it again.
“Good. Because what I do is none of your business, Phee.” Gryph turned the cart, his words sharpening. “And what my friends do is none of your business either. As for you, your job is an easy one. Even a retard can do it. Just keep your fucking mouth shut.”
His words cut through her as if he’d stabbed her with the spade she held limply in her hand. She dropped it and gasped. “Gryph!” She ran after him. “Wait! I’m sorry!”
He disappeared around the side of the house with the cart, and when she caught up to him he was joking easily with the guards, handing the boxes into the cargo shuttle, as if nothing had happened. She stood off to one side, waiting for him to notice her, to say something, or to at least treat her as if nothing had happened. But he just ignored her, which hurt more than if he’d told her off again.
HOME FOR PHOENIX , Gryph, and Fawn was the gated community of the Shores. The luxurious houses were spread out along a pristine stretch of the Pacific Ocean, with reclaimed green space stretching on endlessly behind them. Security included an ironwork fence—custom-made by a renowned craftsman—that was electrified twenty-four hours a day. It hemmed them in on three sides and reached all the way down to the beach, where sensors anchored along the ocean floor took over. There was also a security guard at each of the two entrances, and remote-controlled closed-circuit cameras were everywhere.
The Shores was a three-per community, meaning that each individual was registered for up to three recons to be performed in the event of death between the ages of six months and sixty-five years. Oscar often muttered about the injustice of allotting the most recons to the highest-paid, most-educated, and heavily protected people, but he never muttered too loudly, because Eva had only to mention Phoenix’s name, and he’d shut up. His ethics were complex and philosophically vast, but they all went on hold when it came to his own family.
And while they had plenty, others didn’t have any food at all, which was why Oscar, ever the Good Samaritan, had the children work an enormous garden out at the back so that they could donate the food to one-pers and no-pers. The food was collected, along with other donations of food and clothing, at Oscar’s church. Once a month, a social worker came with a cargo shuttle and a security crew from Crimcor. Everyone helped load it up, and then it zoomed off for the sister church that Oscar’s congregation sponsored in a no-per zone.
OSCAR BROUGHT Gryph and Phoenix and Fawn on the ride to the church to have them help pack up the donations there. Once that was done, Oscar walked them to the train station.
“I’ll be home for supper.” He hugged each of them. “See you later.”
“Bye, Daddy!” Fawn stepped onto his shoes, and he walked her a few steps like that, the two of them laughing.
“Later, alligator,” he said. “In a while, crocodile.” He stopped suddenly, and gazed off, with one of his looks.
“Dad?” Phoenix pulled Fawn off him.
“You know,” Oscar said, as he fished in his pocket for his phone, “I’ve had an idea.”
Gryph and Phoenix glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. When Oscar had an “idea,” there was no telling what he was about to propose.
“Call your grandmother.” Oscar handed his phone to Fawn. “Tell her we’re dropping you off.”
As Fawn chatted cozily with their grandmother, Oscar put an arm around each of his older children. “I’m going to take you with me today. It’s time you see how the majority lives.”
The majority meaning no-pers? Phee’s stomach kicked up a flutter of nerves.
“We should check with Mom first.” Phoenix had no interest whatsoever in seeing the squalor and lawlessness she’d heard so much about. “I don’t think she’d let us go, Dad.”
“We should get going now is what we should do,” Oscar said. “Your mother is with a family who’s more than likely facing the death of their only child. We won’t disturb her. We’ll be there and back in a jiffy, and the two of you won’t even get out of the shuttle. This is a strong group of guards. It’s the perfect time to go. Your mother knows I’ve wanted to take you two for some time now.”
“But she doesn’t want us to go, does she? She says—”
“She can appreciate why I want you to go, Phoenix.”
“I’m in, Dad.” Gryph glared at Phee, but not so that their father could see him. “Just take me if she doesn’t want to go. If she’s too scared to.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to …” If Gryph was going, Phee would too. Her curiosity was stronger than her fear. “And I’m not scared.”
“Yes you are,” Gryph taunted.
“I’m not!” She was, of course she was. She’d have been stupid not to be scared. But she wasn’t about to let Gryph think that. “I just doubt that Mom would think it was safe.”
“We’ll be safe,” Oscar assured her.
“How do you know, Dad?”
“We’ll be in the shuttle. With security guards. And God.” Phee started to roll her eyes, so her father changed gears. “And, well, safe is just as much a state of mind as it is a reality.”
Phee eyed him again, arms crossed. She did want to go— especially to prove to Gryph that she wasn’t afraid—but the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that it was a mistake.
“Don’t worry.” Oscar took Fawn’s hand and they started back toward the shuttle.
“But how do you know if we’ll be safe?”
“Phoenix! Are you crazy?” Gryph gave her a not-so-playful shove. “You’d turn down the chance to see a no-per zone for real and not just on TV?”
“No, I—” Curiosity was a powerful incentive. “I do want to go. But I—” She pushed her fear aside and forced a grin. She wouldn’t be the fraidy cat. She’d let her curiosity and pride win this one. “I do want to go.”
Gryph grinned too. “There’s someone worthy of being my little sister. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Right?”
His shift in mood was like an elixir. She wanted more of it. Especially if he was going to act as if their fight in the garden had never happened. “Right. Only I’m not afraid.”
“Yes you are.” Gryph shoved her more playfully this time. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Yeah, okay. So Phee is the nervous nail biter and Gryph gets to be the big bold brother.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Okay, then.” The sinking feeling hadn’t vanished. She was still afraid. But Gryph was right.
Sometimes in order to live your full life, you just had to feel the fear and do it anyway. He was the champion when it came to that. “Let’s go.”
THEY DROPPED FAWN at Eva’s parents, and took off out of the Shores. Oscar and Gryph made easy conversation with the guards in their dark blue Crimcor jumpsuits and with the pilot and the social worker, but Phee was quiet. She sat on her hands so no one would notice the shaking. Her gut still twisted with anxiety, her ears buzzing with worry. What if, what if, what if …
The shuttle zoomed over other three-per communities, and then inland over a two-per town, where the houses were closer together and the landscaping lacked a certain finesse and the shops and schools looked just a little tired and smelly, as if they were in need of a nice hot shower and would be shipshape afterwards. Then came a one-per town, with dirt lots turned into makeshift dumps, boarded-up shops, and housing projects built up in chaotic heaps, as if a toddler armed with play bricks had built it.
Ugly and desperate, but still so full of life. Mothers pushing babies on a swing set built from what looked like old machine parts and dangerous rope, hopeful flags of laundry hanging along wires strung between buildings, old people sitting in rickety chairs, smoking cigarettes, playing cards, boys tussling over a basketball. And the garden—Phoenix was surprised to see such an enormous and lush green square of abundance amid the concrete and garbage. A high fence framed it, and two burly men stood on either side of the only entrance, shotguns cradled in their arms.
“They’ve got guns!” Fear gripped Phoenix’s guts. “Are they allowed?”
Her father shook his head.
“Aren’t you going to report it?”
He shook his head again.
“But why not?”
“Think about it, Phee,” Gryph broke in. “They’re protecting the garden. They’re just making sure they can feed their kids. Is that so wrong?”
“It’s not wrong at all,” Oscar said with a nod. “I would never stop someone from feeding their children, no matter what it takes.”
“What if they shot at us for the food we’ve got?” Phee asked, keeping her eye on the men below, whose narrowed glares were locked on the shuttle as it passed overhead. “Even then?”
Gryph shrugged. “I wouldn’t blame them.”
“You wouldn’t have a choice! You’d be dead.”
“Okay, then, when I came back from being reconned, I wouldn’t blame them.”
“You wouldn’t?” Phee’s disbelief was obvious in her tone. “Come on, Gryph. Really?”
“I’ve got a life to spare,” Gryph said with a smile. “Several, in fact.”
“Speak for yourself,” Phee grumbled. Since when did Gryph give a shit about one-pers? Since when had he become Mr. High-and-Mighty-Help-the-Less-Fortunate? She felt her father’s arm on hers.
“Let me put it this way,” he was saying. “If someone killed me for the loaf of bread I had in my hand in order to feed it to his starving child, I’d make sure that if it was my time to reach heaven, I’d tell God how I understood and forgave his desperate soul. And when that same man reached heaven—”
“It’d be hell, though, and not long after killing you,” Phee said with a snort, “if Chrysalis found out.” She could handle one person in her family lecturing her on ethics, but two was too many. “Murderers don’t get reconned, in case you’d forgotten.”
Oscar ignored her and continued. “When my murderer reached heaven, I’d sit him down and have him tell me about his children, and I’d tell him about mine. In heaven, the two of us could be friends in a way impossible here on earth.”
“So?” Phoenix laughed. “Who’d want to be friends with anyone other than a three-per anyway?” She shot a glance at her brother.
Gryph had a disappointed frown on his face. “Take a look around you, genius.”
“And then consider apologizing,” her father added.
Aside from them, everyone on the shuttle—pilot, crew, social worker, and security guards—were two-pers. And they were staring at her. And not in a kindly way either. They’d heard her. Every single one of them had heard her.
Phoenix turned to the window again, embarrassed and confused. It used to be that she and her brother both thought their parents were weird for being so sympathetic with people who were less than three-pers. Eva with her “do no harm” mantra and Oscar with his “we’re all God’s children.” Gryph and Phee used to joke about it even, how they wouldn’t be surprised to come home for Thanksgiving dinner one day to find their house invaded by slovenly one-pers waiting for a free home-cooked meal, and filthy no-pers sleeping in their beds and wearing their clothes.
They were approaching the no-per zone now, and beneath them the chaos lurched out in all directions, distracting Phee from her thoughts. Directly below, little shacks and cramped shanties and hawker stalls lined the old freeway, which was now left to rare automobile traffic (Crimcor still patrolled in armoured trucks, for example), but mostly bicycles and pedestrians made use of it. Many no-pers made their homes under the protection of the overpasses, so children clambered over medians and played on the paved shoulders of the roadway outside their sad little huts. And then the eight-lane snake abruptly stopped in a heap of jagged rubble, grown over with brambles.
“Earthquake,” Oscar explained. “Back when I was about your age. The freeway was never rebuilt.”
The cargo shuttle started its descent, banking wide around a half-built housing project riddled with bullet holes and covered in graffiti. One entire wall had been blown out, revealing the tiny apartments, as if the building were a mangy dollhouse. People were living in it anyway, squatting in the squalor. A woman pulled aside a yellowed plastic sheet and stood at the edge, a baby on her hip. She yelled something at the shuttle, and then thrust her baby skyward at them. All the woman was wearing was a big T-shirt, and her baby wasn’t wearing anything except a sagging rag for a diaper. The baby looked up with a blank, crusty stare. The woman was still screaming at them, but Phoenix couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Phee turned to her father. “She wants food?”
“Maybe,” Oscar said. “But more likely she wants us to take the baby. She probably can’t care for him.”
“Oh.”
“Not so full of opinions now, are you?” Gryph said to Phee as they all watched the woman dangle the baby over the edge.
“No electricity. No running water.” Oscar touched the window with his hand as the shuttle took the corner. “Those poor people. Imagine.” He closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer. The guards accompanying them snickered.
“Not here, Dad,” Gryph said. “Come on.”
Oscar finished and opened his eyes. “Prayer is for everywhere.”
“You should get that on a shirt,” one of the guards said, and all of them laughed. Phoenix saw Gryph bristle, ready to defend their father.
“There’s the church,” Oscar said.
As the pilot flipped on the landing lights and siren and lowered the shuttle onto an old parking lot, the back door to the church burst open and a jumble of people poured out, running for the shuttle, pushing each other, screaming, arms reaching up.
“Something’s wrong,” Oscar said. “There shouldn’t be this many.”
Below, a fist fight erupted between two men. A third picked up a plank of wood and swung it into the crowd, knocking over a mother with a toddler trying to hold on to her skirt and sending an old man face-first to the pavement.
“Go up!” The guard by the shuttle door pulled it open and trained his weapon on the crowd below, an angry belt of bullets spooling at his feet. “Take us up! Up!”
There was a sharp jolt as the pilot, startled, yanked the shuttle back into the air.
“What’s happening?” Phoenix gripped her father’s hand.
“These people shouldn’t be here,” Oscar said. “Something’s gone wrong.”
Phoenix gawked at the sight below. Pandemonium. It was a spelling-test word that she’d aced only la
st week, and exactly what this was. Pandemonium. The crowd churned and roiled as if it were a pot of boiling muck. The looks on their faces made Phoenix wince.
“Gross,” she whispered, as a woman ripped her shirt off and shook her breasts at the shuttle, as if that would bring it down, as if that would get her fed. And then a man pulled himself out of the jumble and reached into his pocket, his eyes fixed on the shuttle. He lifted a handgun and pointed it skyward, his hands steady, his gaze a watery fury. Phoenix’s breath caught in her throat. She coughed, suddenly breathless.
“Faster! Up! Up! Let’s go!” The guard shoved Phoenix away from the window. “They’re armed!”
“Do you blame them?” Gryph yelled at the same guard as he tried to pull Gryph away too. “Let me go!” Gryph wrenched free and kept watch over the chaos below.
“Gryph!” Oscar reached for his son, his eyes pleading.
Gryph reluctantly slid to the floor of the shuttle beside Phee as the guard at the door fired on the crowd.
Gunfire was returned from below as the shuttle banked sharply to the left, tipping Oscar to the floor too.
“Don’t shoot!” Oscar pleaded. “Just take us out of here, please.”
The gunman tossed Oscar a frown but lowered his gun.
Phoenix gasped, her asthma like a fist clutching her throat. She clung to her seat, her knuckles white, her lungs hot with the effort to breathe. She dug in her pocket for her inhaler and sucked the medicinal mist down her throat.
Within seconds, they were at a safe height.
“Wow.” Gryph grinned as he lifted himself off the floor. “As messed up as that was, that was very, very cool.”
The guards just stared at him. One of them shook his head, dumbfounded at Gryph’s delight.
At last the fist at her throat relaxed, and Phee took a long, unsteady breath before speaking.
“Cool?” She kicked Gryph hard in the shin. “How can you say any of that was cool?”
“Maybe ‘exciting’ is a better word,” Gryph allowed when he saw her expression. “The rush, I mean. The adrenalin, you know?”