The Book of Phoenix (20 page)

I flew high above.

Tower 4 was shaped like a rose. Layers and layers of rounded winding walls, a labyrinth. And the most experimental speciMen were at its center, in the bud. That's where we would start. Genetic manipulation was the specialty here. Saeed still wouldn't tell me what he'd seen in this place and the only way he'd managed to escape was because security was lax. “As long as I kept my head down, they didn't suspect a thing,” he'd said. However, that was back then. With all that was happening with the other towers around the country, we didn't think this was the case anymore.

The water grew choppier the closer we got to the coast of St. Croix's eastern point, though there was virtually no breeze. From above the sight was even stranger. The waves moved like nothing I'd ever seen. They were rhythmic but too organized. I'd flown across the ocean, the motion of waves was etched deeply into my memory. Normal waves did not move in mile long curved lines as these did. And these pulsed as they broke on the shores that flanked Tower 4. On the other side, a narrow road led to the building's entrance and there was a large parking lot.

The Tower sat on the eastern point of the island, Point Udall. This was the eastern-most part of the United States, the first part of the country to usher in the New Year. In 2000, a memorial had been built here with a giant sun dial. But then LifeGen had bought the land for the building of Tower 4 and all that was torn down. The land here was different from the rest of the island, the plants almost desert-like. And in certain parts of the year, all the greenery went brown as the plants regenerated. It was going through that phase now. From high above, it was a brown splotch on a green island. As I moved in, I wondered if the browned trees and plants were a result of something more sinister.

We were only three, but we were our own military unit. I came from the air. Mmuo came from the water. He would walk through the stone, then through the walls to get inside. Saeed came from the land, hiding in Dartise's Big Eye truck that he took to Tower 4 at 7 am. The best, most surprising and most insulting thing was that security was
still
practically non-existent. Even with the Ledussee speciMen revolution happening back in the States. They didn't expect us. They'd underestimated us. They thought so little of us.

I landed in the courtyard in the center of the four story narrow tower. The sun shone straight into it. There was a tree. It only reached past the first floor. I guess this one wasn't growing over an alien seed, nor had it been doused with a specially made fast growing formula. Not yet, at least. This was a normal tree, a palm tree. All around the courtyard, creating a large circular space were concrete walls.

There was a table and bookshelves against the wall, a hundred yards to the right. A narrow bed nearby and a wooden table heavy with leafy plants beside the bed. The plants grew healthily, many with vines that reached up the wall and hung down and crept along the floor. That was all. The rest was open space. What did they do when it rained in here? Did a window cover the opening? I was glad today was clear.

The smell hit me before anything else, and I froze, every part of my body suddenly on alert. I knew this smell well. From Ghana. When Kofi had stood for me. And been shot. It was a coppery scent, wet, alive, urgent. Fresh blood. I smelled it all around me. Thick. But the walls weren't bleeding. The floors shined from waxing, not gore. However, I still wanted to vomit. There were so many things being spawned, sliced open, bled, that the entire building was exuding the stench. Did the Big Eye who worked here even notice it? If you are part of the disease, do you notice the smell of it?

As I've said before, I don't believe in God. I've seen death many times. I've moved outside of time and space. I've travelled within it. I've seen life. If there is a God, he has not made himself known to me. There'd been no pale skinned Jesus to meet me in the darkness as my body became ashes and later returned from the ashes. Not that I remembered. But something, yes,
something
guided me into this room. I could feel it gently pushing me. “
That way
,” it said. And when I saw it, I was surer than ever that what I needed to find was right here. Such things were always near a tree.

Let Mmuo swim to the harbor side of Tower 4, move through the stone into the building to the main power source. Let him use that which guides him to manipulate the digital waves and open the rest of the doors before the Big Eye even knew we were inside.

Let Saeed, twitchy and nervous, enter the building he swore he'd never return to. Let him wear the uniform Dartise gave him. Let him use the ID Dartise paid his bearded best friend Abdul Mohammed to borrow. Let Saeed enter through the front, following Dartise. Let them both rely on the stereotype that all Arabs and blacks look the same. Let Saeed wait for Mmuo in one of the kitchens. Let Saeed use his light skin, though with Arab features, to walk the halls of Tower 4 as if he belonged there, while Mmuo moved through wall after wall, a naked man who didn't follow the rules of physics. Let them eventually locate that room full of normal looking yet utterly mute children. And after wrestling back their initial shock, let Saeed focus on guiding them out—for it was these children that Saeed remembered and felt guilty about leaving when he was last here.

But me. I was in a room that didn't seem to have an exit. The walls were smooth. The only way out was up. She must not have had wings. I felt my body growing warmer the longer I stood in there. Not far from me, but deeper inside the building, several rooms to my right, Saeed was telling the children to get into a line. Mmuo was relaying everything to me in my mind through his nanomites. But how would he get the children outside? Why were the children unable to speak?

I walked to the table with the plants. The word “HeLa” was etched into a large metal square on the wall. The wall was not concrete, as I thought. It was made of some type of heavy grey stone. Like marble, but something else. There was a large green leafy plant that crept up five wooden planks leaning against the wall. Against the farthest wall of the small room were stacks and stacks of books.

“Phoenix Okore.”

Every part of my body tightened. The whisper came from behind me. Far across the room. Slowly, so so slowly, I turned around. When I lay my eyes on her, I knew I would save her. If it was the last thing I ever did, I'd save her.

She walked toward me. She stepped up to me. She was the same height as me. She wore a white dress like the ones I liked to wear. Much darker than I, she was the rich hue of crude oil. An African woman, but there was something about her that I could not put my finger on. She had large dark brown eyes. She looked about twenty years old.

“It has happened before and it will happen again,” she said. Even her voice was like mine.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I felt ill. Looking into her eyes. Looking at her face. “Are you HeLa?”

She nodded. “They named me after Henrietta Lacks' immortal cells.”

“I assumed that,” I said, smiling. “It suits you, I guess.” I knew of Henrietta Lacks, a black American woman who died during Jim Crow, in 1951. Her cancer cells were harvested and used to advance science beyond the imaginable after scientists learned that those cells were immortal. For years, her family had no idea that this happened; they had no idea that though Henrietta had died, her cells lived on and on and on and on, multiplying and multiplying. Though it wasn't stated in my records, I had always been sure Henrietta's cells had been used in the research that led to my creation.

“You, too, I suspect. How old are you?”

“Three.”

“I am six,” she said.

“You're like me. Accelerated?”

“I am,” she said.

“Oh my God.”

“They always said you'd come,” she said “They said our blood draws itself.”

“Blood?”

“But you bring death,” she said. “And I don't have wings or burn up.”

“I think the wings were an accident,” I said. “Look, HeLa, we have to go. I can—”

“Or maybe it was exposure to the alien thing in the ground,” she said.

“How do you know about that?” I asked, frowning. If she knew, the Big Eye might have known.

“News travels,” she said. “Especially amongst speciMen. Phoenix, they didn't make me. I was born in India. I am Jarawa, the last of my kind. My home is gone. All my people are gone. I was the one who survived the water that swallowed my island. I was just two years old then. The Big Eye came and got me because I bring the water, water is life. I have
life
in my blood. It is a river of time.” She began to shake as tears fell from her eyes. “And the Big Eye are like vampires.”

“Phoenix!”
I heard Mmuo said in my head.
“Come! Hurry! We're getting out! Now!”

“HeLa, come on!” I said. “We can—”

“Let them leave,” she said. “Then burn! Please. Kill me!”

“But why?” I asked, taken aback.

“The time runs in my veins,” she said, wiping her tears. “You have to understand what this means. They come in here. They take my blood, and they sell it. So far, seven men have bought a vial of it. They pay billions! Do you know what my blood has created? Do you know what it does?”

I could hear Saeed shouting my name. Just beyond the walls. And I heard the voices of others, too. I heard gun shots. “
Phoenix, I am opening the doors
,” Mmuo said in my head. He sounded crazed. “
I am opening them all! I don't know what these people have made. Be careful!”

Then I heard the clang of gates and glass doors opening. I only focused on HeLa. She was about to tell me something awful. I could feel it in my blood. What had we been used to do? What were we all being used to do? I whimpered.

“Men, only men are wealthy enough to buy my blood,” HeLa said. “They spent half of all they have, billions. What kind of man has billions? You know what kind? There are the seven men who have injected my blood into their veins. These are the seven men whose bodies will never go through senescence. They will never die. These men who are still billionaires and garner great influence. In a matter of years, the world will be theirs. Because of me. BECAUSE OF ME!”

There was a great explosion from nearby and the whole building rocked. A door slid open on the other side of the room. So there were exits here. I was glad. We'd have been immediately shot down if I flew her out.

“Don't save me,” she said. “You have to
kill
me before they get more of my blood.”

For a second I couldn't move. Even while surrounded and distracted by chaos, her words were clear to me. I'd read the nuances, I saw beneath her words what she was saying. This was the end of the world, and she was the cause.

I'd read about this woman's people—the Jarawa. They'd lived on the Andaman Islands in India; there were less than a hundred of them. They'd lived there for thousands and thousands of years. But they did not look Indian, they were African. They had the African hair, dark dark skin, thick lips, wide noses. They were a mystery, and the people of India treated them like pariahs. And these people had produced a woman with time in her blood. And now there were seven filthy rich, corrupt LifeGen investors who'd made themselves immortal by blending HeLa's blood with theirs.

I grabbed her arm. I was strong. Stronger than her. She could resist all she wanted to, but I would pull her along. I would carry her if I had to. We ran out of the room, hand in hand. Her feet were bare, mine were sandaled. The floor was shiny. The smell of the hallway was of smoke because something somewhere was burning. All the doors, all the cages, all the prisons were open.

Freedom. The freakish. The beautiful. The maimed. Tower 4 was a concrete flower that housed suicidal birds called phoenixes, shape-shifting monkeys, glowing spiders, lightning birds, cheetahs with deformed tails who drooled and ran fast as airplanes. And it housed one woman who was a child and twelve children who were really adults.

The Big Eye's greatest downfall was their sense of entitled superiority. There was no heightened security in Tower 4. They'd assumed that its isolated location on the secret island in the Caribbean kept it safe from the speciMen rebellion happening in the States. And if we came, they assumed they would see us coming. And now the Big Eye didn't know what to fight. Some were stung, bitten, shot with their own guns, struck by lightning.

HeLa and I made it past several squabbles without being stopped. With so many now free and ready to fight, we were nobody's number one concern. This was not part of the plan. Thankfully, I knew where the exit was, generally.

Unlike at Tower 7, when I stepped into the tower lobby, there was no one there waiting for me or HeLa. The seats were plastic. The floor was green and worn. There were plants but they were potted and small. The real plants were outside but they, too, were brown at the moment. The glass windows and door looked old and in need of a wash. We walked right out the front door. Right into a standoff. Mmuo, Saeed, and the group of mute children were cornered right at the end of a cliff by several armed Big Eye. At the bottom of the cliff was water. According to the map, these waters were deep, having once been beaches the sea level had swallowed over the last 40 years. This was where Mmuo had come through. Mmuo could escape right into the ground. But he wasn't moving.

“Phoenix, fly up!”
Mmuo said in my head.

“Hold on,” I said, putting my arms around HeLa's waist and flapping my wings. At the sound, several of them turned around. They opened fire. Even with HeLa, possibly the most prized possession in the entire world, in my arms. They were stupid, scared, and shocked. Saeed shoved three of the children over the cliff. Some of the others also used the moment to jump.