by Carrie Mac
“What a retarded thing to say,” Phee blurted. Oscar caught her with a warning look. “Well, it is! Gryph is just a cash cow to them. He’s not a part of their family—”
“Actually—”
“Don’t you dare say he’s part of the Chrysalis family.”
“I was going to say that.” The man straightened, indignant. “And I still will. He is a part of the Chrysalis family.”
Scoffing, Phee looked away, disgusted. This man clearly hadn’t talked to Lex lately. She bit her lower lip, willing herself to shut up before she could make things worse.
Eva caught Phee’s glance and gave her tiny, appreciative smile before turning her attention back to the man. “What measures are you taking to determine what exactly happened?” Eva sounded exhausted because she was. No one had slept well the night before— except perhaps Fawn—but no one had a worse night than Eva, who hadn’t slept at all. After Phee and Nadia couldn’t find the boys, they’d stayed up most of the night, poring over the news podcasts and online frenzy surrounding her brother’s death. Her mother had spent the night in the kitchen doing the same. Phee had finally fallen asleep sometime around three, but according to Oscar, Eva hadn’t been to bed at all. That morning her eyes were puffy, with shadows rubbed underneath, and there was a tired huskiness in her voice. She clutched a handkerchief in her fist and leaned forward. “How can there be any doubt? He was hungry for life.”
The rep straightened his papers, readying to leave. “I can’t say anything more on the matter at this point.”
“Where’s Lex?” Eva reached out for the man and caught his pants as he stood. She held a crease tight in her fist and implored with a catch in her throat. “Why can’t we see him? He’s been his agent for years. He can tell you about Gryph. He can tell you Gryph would never do such a thing. He’s a Chrysalis agent, and he knows Gryph the way we do. You would trust Lex, wouldn’t you?”
Phee raised an eyebrow at her mother. Had she forgotten Lex’s recent suspicions? The scene in the hospital? She shouldn’t include Lex in the picture at all.
“Mother …” Phee tried to infuse the one word with as much warning as she could.
“Dr. Nicholson-Lalonde, please.” The rep, clearly mortified by Eva’s desperate display, stood stock-still, unsure of what to do.
“Dear.” Oscar put his hand over his wife’s and gently loosened her grip.
“Lex will not be involved in this process.” The man backed away with a start. “Until further notice, any and all communications with Chrysalis go through me. Not Lex.” He smoothed his pant leg as he backed toward the door.
Phoenix’s eyes blurred across the pamphlet in her lap. He’d handed them out to her and her parents on his arrival. “When a loved one dies … what you should know about the recon process.” There was a picture of a woman on the front, smiling down at a framed photo of a man, handsome in a soap-opera-star way.
The rep was still droning on. “We’ll send updates to your lync, coded only for you and your wife to read.” This made Phee glance up. She wanted to read them too, of course. Oscar winked at her. He’d let her read them. “Our aim is to have a conclusion by the end of the week.”
Eva nodded. “In time for the DNA test.”
The man ignored her demonstration of inside knowledge. The DNA test needed to happen within ten days of the patient’s death. Within hours of the death, the stem-cell sample that had been taken from his umbilical cord blood at birth would’ve been retrieved from the cryopreservation tanks, kept two storeys underground in an earthquake-proof lab. The sample was allowed to thaw slowly so that the cryoprotectant fluid could gradually be replaced by the accelerator. After ten days, if the cells had multiplied accordingly, the recon could proceed. If not, the process was started with another stem-cell batch from the same cord blood. It had never occurred to Phee before just how many steps there were to the recon process. Just how many things could go wrong. She’d always had this rather magical idea of it. One day you’re dead. The next you’re walking out the front doors of Chrysalis into the arms of your loving family, returned to life like a fairy-tale princess who’s been kissed by the prince.
Or in Gryph’s case, the prince himself.
Phee’s phone vibrated in her pocket, breaking her macabre thoughts. She slipped it out and read the message from Nadia. “Neko’s home!”
He’d stayed out all night, much to his parents’ concern and anger. None of the boys had gone home after questioning at Crimcor headquarters. They hadn’t answered any calls or texts—except Saul did send one text to Nadia. All it said was “We’re okay.” What was that supposed to mean? And what had they been up to all night? Getting drunk? Sitting on the bluff and staring out at the ocean, not talking? Dodging further questioning from Crimcor? Phee had no idea what they’d been up to. Now was her chance to talk to one of them. Even if it was only Neko.
HE WASN’T OPENING his door. Nadia banged on it again.
“Open this door or we will break it down!”
No response.
“Come on, Neko.” Phee leaned her forehead against the death metal posters and KEEP OUT signs. At home, Neko seemed even younger than when he hung out with Gryph and the guys. Nadia said Phee used to change his diaper when he was little, but Phee didn’t remember. “Let us in.”
Still nothing. The two girls slid to the floor and sat cross-legged, blocking the way. “He can go out the window,” Nadia mentioned after they’d been sitting there for a while. “He always sneaks out that way.”
“I know. But do you think he would?”
“Maybe.” Nadia nodded. “He stayed out all night. His friend is dead. He’s upset. Just because he’s grounded doesn’t mean he’s going to stay put. Look who he hangs around with.”
“Neko!” Phee reached up behind her and pounded on the door. “If you don’t open this door I’ll get an axe and chop it into little bits.”
Another moment passed, and then they heard him. “We don’t own an axe.” His voice sounded so small and scared that Nadia immediately started crying.
“Oh, Neko, come on, honey,” she begged through the thin wood. “Open the door!”
They heard footsteps and then the lock releasing. The girls scrambled to their feet. Neko opened the door a crack. He was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He stared at the girls.
“Neko—”
“I’m not talking.” His head was bowed, his black hair falling across his face. “None of us are. So don’t even bother.”
Nadia was immediately indignant. “You owe Phee some answers.”
He kept silent, but Phee could see his reserve shaking. He’d been in with Gryph and his friends only since the New Year, after chasing Gryph’s shadow his whole life. “Sorry, Phee.” His voice was even smaller. “I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” she asked as gently as she could, setting aside her impatience and trying for kindness instead. “You can tell us. We won’t tell the guys that you said anything.”
“He tripped.”
Phee stared at him, her arms crossed. “He did not.”
Neko tried to shut the door. “Oh, no you don’t.” Nadia stuck her foot in. “Tell us what happened.”
“I can’t.”
“You can!” Nadia tried to shove her way into his room, but he resisted, barring the door with his shoulder. “You can tell us, Neko. We promise we won’t tell.”
“I just can’t.”
Phee reached for one of Neko’s hands, and he let her take it. She held it in both of hers and looked him straight in the eye. “My brother … my brother is dead, Neko. He’s dead, and I need to know what happened. I need to know.”
With a glance at each of the girls, Neko relaxed his grip on the door.
“Now, talk.” With a graceless heave, Nadia pushed the door open, overpowering her little brother. Phee followed her into the room. The shades were drawn, and it stank of dirty clothes. Empty plates scattered the floor, and the desk was heaped with junk. There was nowhere to sit bu
t the bed, but the sheets reeked of teenage boy, and she didn’t want to sit.
Phee glanced at her watch. “Neko, we don’t have much time.”
He plopped onto the bed. He was only wearing pyjama bottoms, and his skinny torso just added to how little he looked. He was hardly more than a kid, yet he thought he was as mature as his older friends. “I told you. He tripped.”
“Tariq told you to say that, didn’t he?”
He shrugged.
“You were going to tell us something and you changed your mind.” Phee glared at him. “Didn’t you?”
“No.” It was a tiny word, but he’d managed to pack it full of remorse.
“What really happened?” Phee knelt amid the mess beside the bed, all the better to plead with him. “You have to tell us so that we can help, Neko. If we don’t convince Chrysalis that it was an accident, he won’t be reconned. He’ll be dead forever. No more Gryph. You’d do that to my family?”
With an anguished groan, Neko turned to the wall. But he talked. “We were just standing around, goofing off, and then the train was coming, and he just tripped. Is that so hard to believe? That he tripped? That the perfect Gryphon Nicholson-Lalonde actually tripped?”
“The cameras were broken. Who did that, I wonder?”
His answer took a beat too long. “There was a drug deal. Okay?”
Nadia grabbed for her brother’s bony shoulder. “Drugs?”
“Yeah.” He looked up at her and then at the wall again. “That’s why we busted the cameras.”
“So”—Phee looked at the ceiling, tired of Neko’s lies—“that’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”
Neko shrugged. “Yeah.”
“A drug deal. What kind of drugs?”
“Some performance-enhancing shit … you know. Roids or whatever.”
“Gryph gets tested all the time, Neko.” Phee glared at him. “All the time. He doesn’t do steroids, or anything else, for that matter. You have to come up with something better than that.”
“Look, I don’t know what it was about, okay?”
“You’re full of shit, Neko.”
“So what if I am?” Neko sat up and glared at them. “Apparently you’re not going to believe me no matter what I say!”
“Neko …” Nadia grabbed her brother’s earlobe and twisted it hard. “If I find out you’re messing around with that crap I will kill you three times in quick succession so that you will really and truly be dead, once and for all.”
“Like Gryph will be.” Phee heard herself say the words, but still they shocked her. “Like your friend and my brother and my parents’ son will be if you guys don’t start telling the truth.”
BUT WHAT IF the truth did them no good? Phee wandered home alone; Nadia’s parents had asked her to stay home with her brother. Phee waited for the train on the platform, but when she heard it coming in the distance, she was gripped by a sudden, horrible panic that sent her running down the stairs and into the courtyard under the station. There was no other way home, but she didn’t want to get on that train. If she had any money she could hire a private shuttle, but she hadn’t even thought to bring her wallet with her.
It had been easier on the way here, when she was distracted by the thought of interrogating Neko. But now, after a fruitless visit with him—he was clearly in shock from the events of the day before—Phee could only obsess about the train. She spun around slowly, glancing at each safety feature. The cameras, the yellow painted line at the edge of the platform that set off an alarm when you stepped over it, the sensors on the track that shut off the current when there was an impact.
Impact.
He would’ve been in so much pain. Her stomach knotted sympathetically, and she had to double over to keep from passing out. He would’ve been afraid. Even Gryph. He hadn’t meant to die. She knew this to be true. Now she only had to convince Chrysalis.
WHAT WILLIS KNOWS
Phee got off at the last stop before the Shores and walked the rest of the way. She wanted to collect her thoughts, and she knew home wouldn’t let her do that. Not with her parents dripping with sadness, and confused little Fawn with all her questions and all the friends and neighbours with their casseroles and plates of cookies and good intentions.
The sky was clear and blue, and the air off the ocean smelled salty and clean. Phee wanted nothing more than to run into the waves and float on her back with the pelicans bobbing alongside her, none of them with a care in the world. She walked on an old road that had been made into a pedestrian boulevard that linked Pacific Heights with the Shores. It wasn’t used much, so she had the wide stretch of concrete to herself. Until she cleared the last turn and caught sight of the gated entrance to the Shores. A knot of private shuttles and people blocked her view of the little hut that housed the security guard and their bank of closed-circuit televisions. More media. She could see the station logos and the robot-like antennas that reached up from the shuttle roofs, twisting in constant search of a better satellite connection. Phee had two choices. Walk all the way back to Pacific Heights and get the train, or carry on. The sun was high, and she was hot, and she had no water and she was tired. So really, she had only one wise choice. She kept walking, all the while trying to see who was on shift in the little hut. And then someone in the throng spotted her.
“It’s his sister!” A man with a spray-on tan jogged up to her, his whitened teeth gleaming in the sunlight. Out of breath, he shoved a tiny microphone at her. “Tom Archer, KLTV News. What do you have to say about yesterday’s tragic events?” His cameraman caught up to them, one eye squeezed shut as he zoomed in on her startled expression. And then, within moments and before she could think of anything to say, she was swarmed on all sides.
“What’s the word from Chrysalis?”
“Recon, or no recon?”
Phee felt the chill of panic race up her spine. “I don’t—”
“We understand there were several witnesses, and that they’ve all been questioned by Crimcor … is this correct?”
Where was the security guard? Phee strained to get a look beyond the designer-clad shoulders and carefully coiffed, TV-ready hairdos. The door to the hut was open.
“Did your brother express any hints that he might’ve been suicidal? Was the pressure getting to him?”
“No comment,” Phee whispered, with a catch in her throat. These people were the same media hounds who had nothing but praise and smiles and congratulations for her brother before yesterday. The very same people had been invited into his dressing room and to countless podium presentations, and now they were no better than vultures. Phee felt the panic melt into rage.
“Get out of my way,” she growled.
She could see the security guard Willis running toward her now, his utility belt bouncing against his bulk. At last! But still the reporters pushed in on her, tightening their scrum.
“Will your parents appeal Chrysalis’s decision if they rule Gryph’s death a suicide?”
Phee sensed something inside her snap, as if she’d cracked a bone. “Get out of my way!”
“Just a couple of questions—”
“How is your family coping amid—”
Phee elbowed the woman who blocked her way. She recognized her shimmering copper hair and plump lips from her prime-time podcast. “Leave us alone! All of you!” The woman stumbled back, but was kept from falling by the horde pressing up behind her. “He’ll be reconned—”
The woman had hardly missed a beat. She shoved her microphone in Phee’s face. “But reports leaked by Chrysalis state that—”
“Everyone back away!” Willis’s bellow cut the flurry of questions. He pushed into the crowd and grabbed Phee with his enormous hands and dragged her out of the chaos. Phee let herself be led away by him, his beefy arm shielding her the way she sometimes did for Fawn. How she wished she were Fawn right now … too little to understand. Too little to be compelled to make it right.
“Where were you?” Phee cried, as
Willis hustled her into his air-conditioned hut.
“Helping Rawlins at the other gate.” Willis steered her to a chair before taking his own seat, panting, a sheen of sweat on his brow. “We thought all the jerkoffs were at his gate, and then I get the call that they’re over here too.” He swivelled to pour Phee and himself each a glass of water. “Now, you tell me. Why didn’t you take the train all the way home? What were you doing walking on your own?”
“There’s no law against it.”
“No,” Willis replied, “but plenty would say it’s not the brightest idea, especially now. All things considered. What your family’s going through.”
“What my family’s going through?” Phee almost laughed. “What is my family going through?”
Willis wisely let the question float between them, unanswered.
“I just wanted some fresh air,” Phee said. “Okay, I admit it. It was stupid. I should’ve taken the train.”
“That’s good to hear.” He reached over and rapped gently on her skull. “Nice to know that you still have your brains in there.”
“My brother doesn’t.” Phee heard herself say the words and couldn’t stop the rest. They were as unstoppable as the train would’ve been. “His brains are all over the tracks at the Steveston Pier station.”
Willis sucked in a breath as he wiped his face with a handkerchief. “And once this is all worked out and he’s reconned, his brains will be exactly where they’re supposed to be. New and improved.” He heaved himself onto his feet with a groan and offered her a kind smile. “Now, come on. Let’s get you home.”
“You’re not worried, are you?” Phee didn’t budge. “Why aren’t you worried?”
“I know your brother well enough to know that he didn’t jump. So once the controversy is sorted out, all will be well.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“What do you mean?” Willis asked brightly, his expression betraying his attempts at appearing carefree.