The Book of Phoenix (6 page)

I'd looked down on the false jungle and dreamed and hoped and never touched, smelled, stood within. I loved the sight of it from afar, but now I realized an unconscious part of me loathed its existence. It had been unattainable. It was not part of my world. Over eight days ago, this never would have been so clear to me, but now I was outside. Now it was. As the building collapsed, I felt joy. Most likely, there was not a soul inside it. The building would have been evacuated days ago. They had to have known it was unstable. But I loved the fact that it was I who gave it the push that finally brought it down.

Good.

The box, I held. There was no lock or latch. The wood was not heavy but it was solid. And a rich brown like the tree's trunk. Its edges were worn smooth.
Do I open it?
There was definitely something heavy inside. When I moved it this way and that, whatever was in it slid heavily this way and that. It was one thing.

I had been created in Tower 7 two years ago from the DNA of an African woman possibly born in Phoenix, Arizona. Or maybe what I was was the origin of my name. Standing out there watching the building fall, I took the idea further
. Maybe my DNA was brought directly from Africa and had nothing to do with Arizona.
I frowned as what I had been seeing all my life clicked into clearer focus. So many of those created, manipulated, enhanced, deformed, crippled people with me in Tower 7 were from parts of Africa. I'd known this by looking at people but now I wondered,
Why?

I sighed, looking at my feet. “Fully unraveling my origins is a lost cause,” I muttered.

But one thing I had learned was that, despite my origins and the sinister reasons for creating me, my light brought life. Though I burned, I was a positive force. It had been my light that had brought this jungle that grew in the debris. It was my light that had given The Backbone the strength to shake Tower 7 from its great body.

And now The Backbone was offering me a strange gift. I opened the box.

 • • • 

My hands went numb. My eyes watered. The scent of leaves packed my nose. The taste of mud flooded my mouth and my entire body began to glow. The grass pushed up beneath my feet, and tiny flowers blossomed from the blade tips. The Backbone softly twisted, shedding bits of bark as it stretched further toward the stars. I heard it snapping and creaking, but I was looking at the object in the box.

“It's a nut,” I whispered.

Round and about the shape and size of a garden egg, it looked made of a tougher heavier wood than that of the box and the tree. Etched deep into it were mazes of lines that made circles, squiggles and geometric shapes. The black lines ran and repeated close to each other but they never touched. The designs moved in a slow dance, undulated like bizarre insects.

Heat. It coursed through me like water, rushing up from my feet, up my entire body to my head. The heat again. Seven days ago, I had heated until I burned to ash. Now here I was again. However, my clothes still did not burn. I shined brighter through my brown skin and reached into the box and picked up the strange nut.

 • • • 

Blackness.

Pure. Quiet. Then pricks of tiny white, blue, and yellow lights. I was seeing stars for the first time. Billions and billions of stars. As I flew through space smooth and gentle. In a vastness that made me want to weep. But I had no eyes with which to shed tears. No body with which to shudder. No nose with which to leak.

I was traveling. I would know where to land when I saw it. My direction was clear. The pull was strong. The small blue planet. Earth. I was hope sent from afar. A beacon. Deep in the red soil. Until the right time.

 • • • 

“They dug you up?” I said aloud, as I stared down at the nut. “They dug you up with the red soil and brought you here.”
That is why The Backbone knows itself,
I thought.
Alien seed
.
Alien seed in the soil of Tower 7 where scientists, lab assistants, lab technicians, doctors, administrative workers, guards and police and the mutations, monsters and mistakes they made dwelled.
I laughed hard.

The world went white. I nearly dropped the box as I shielded my face. The light was harsh to my unaccustomed eyes. My heart sank as I understood I had been so focused on the nut that I hadn't noticed the chopping sound.

“Do not run,” a voice blared. “Stay where you are!”

The helicopter's searchlight nearly blinded me. I had seen them many times while I was growing up in Tower 7, where the windows were thick glass. Their chopping noise was always muted. I'd never imagined they were so loud, their blades chopping the air like a cleaver on a chopping block. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that on the side of the helicopter was the logo I'd been seeing in Tower 7 all my short life: A hand grasping spears of lightning. Those of us in Tower 7 had always called the organization represented by that logo the Big Eye (the lightning represented speciMen). We never used the Big Eye's official name.

They probably thought that I had purposely brought down the Axis building. In a way I had. But shouldn't they also have been expecting me? They made me. I was their weapon. To be used for nuclear warfare or biological warfare, I did not know. But I hadn't matured in the way they had wanted or expected. I was a failed project, a rogue prisoner. Still, they had to know that I would show up again. Maybe that is why they had not begun to clear the incredible amount of debris. Maybe. Maybe not.

I shut the box, tucked it under my arm and took off. If they knew nothing else, they'd know not to shoot.

 • • • 

My lean legs were strong. My back flexed. Every muscle in my body was working in perfect harmony. I was made to run. I was like the finest horse. First and foremost, they'd been trying to create a human weapon. A human bomb that self-regenerated to blow up another day. One who could run fast was a plus. I'd only gotten to run on a treadmill, during my time in Tower 7. Now I got to sprint out in the open. It was absolute joy, even with the Big Eye pursuing me.

One foot, then the next. Digging into the ground and launching me forth. I felt like I could fly. Like nothing could touch me. My healthy fresh lungs expanded and drew in hearty breaths. I ran faster. Faster. FASTER. There were cars on the street, and I kept up with them as I dodged the few pedestrians on the sidewalk.

It was night and I'd always thought people retreated indoors at this time. I'd read a lot about the crime rate here. The shootings, gang violence, muggings, car crashes. But people walked the streets, men and women. In groups and a few alone. They all carried thin glowing screens and coin-like portables. Some spoke to them; others watched probably the very same shows they could watch on the sides of buildings.

I passed a group of people standing outside a restaurant. They looked confused and bewildered and were pointing toward the ruins. They'd probably heard the building fall. Did these people even
see
me? They did, but not for long. Above, the Big Eye followed, shining their searchlight, confusing the people on the sidewalks and streets even more.

So this was New York. Palm trees grew beside roads. Mango trees. Iroko. Rosewood. Mahogany. The tall buildings were adorned with lights that showed large screens with dancing people, prime time TV shows, and flashy commercials. All the buildings were draped in those sweet smelling vines the mayor said would help keep the city's air clean. Those vines had been engineered in Tower 4, which was on the US Virgin Islands, but few people knew that. Even fewer cared.

Some of the roads were smooth, and I ran on them, keeping to the side. But I got to a few that were full of potholes. The news reports I had read all year were not exaggerating. The city had a water drainage problem, and the year's heavy rainy season had exacerbated it. The vehicles on the road were fast and dented. I'd never seen one up close and I'd always wanted to drive one. The acrid smell of their exhaust was greater here.

Suddenly, I saw huge versions of myself on the buildings. In some of them I was running. Others were old photos of me not smiling, peering into the camera. These photos were from before I had been what I was now. People looked up from their portable screens, to the big ones on the buildings and then back at their screens. Fantasy meeting fantasy. How confused some must have felt when they then saw me run by.

As I ran, the hump on my back ached worse than ever. I grunted from the pain, but I kept running. They would not get their hands on the box. It was
mine
. The Backbone gave it to
me.
And it had told me where to take it. And they certainly would not have me. Never again.

I ran beneath a railway and watched the searchlight pass overhead. Then I ran along the sidewalk beneath the railway. I could see the helicopter trying to change direction, but it was too late. How would they know which way I'd gone? Or if I ran anywhere at all? I could have just stopped right there and waited. They chose to go in the opposite direction. For the moment, I'd lost them. But my face was everywhere. Someone would recognize me any moment and report my whereabouts. I slowed to a walk as I tried to figure out my next move. I passed a jewelry shop and a currency exchange. Both were closed.

As I walked, I sniffed. There was a spicy smell in the air. Tomato, onion, garlic, lemon. A perfumy aroma. A familiar one. When I came to the open door, I looked up. Ethiopian Sunrise. I walked into the restaurant.

“We're closed!” a slim brown-skinned man with granite black curly hair said. His accent reminded me a bit of my lost love Saeed.
Saeed
, I thought. Saeed was dead. They made him want to die and that was what made me want to live.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'll leave.”

“You!” he said, pointing at and striding up to me. “You're the terrorist who they are saying just brought down the Axis Building!” His eyes got wider. “Are . . .” He brought his hands up and then let them fall. “Are you . . . y-y-you're
glowing!
Why in Allah's name are you glowing?! I thought the photo they were showing of you was just bad.”

I backed toward the door.

“No, wait!” he said, holding up his hands. “See?! See my hands! No portable, no nothing.”

I looked past him. Certainly there were others in the kitchen. I wanted to kick myself for coming in here. It hadn't been a rational thing. It was the smell. The smell was so familiar.

“I just need a moment,” I said. “To rest. Then I'll leave.”

The houseplants near the restaurant's window began to stretch and thrust out fresh leaves. He looked at this and then slowly back at me.

“Where would you go?”

“Why would I tell
you
?
Who are you?”

He laughed. “I am sorry. I am rude.”

I only frowned.

“My name is Berihun. I am an immigrant from Ethiopia and the owner of this restaurant. My wife Makeda is in the back. Only her.”

Then I understood what had attracted me to this place. The smell. The food. In Tower 7, the majority of the cuisine we ate was African, whether you were African or non-African. I remember the lion lady was fond of couscous and boiled yams with peppered palm oil. Nobody ever complained about the food in Tower 7. My favorite was the Ethiopian dish of chicken in red pepper paste. How I loved doro wat. Just the thought of it made my empty stomach growl. I had not eaten a thing since my rebirth. I decided to leave it all up to what Saeed called The Author of All Things, for Saeed had stopped believing in Allah long ago, and I had never believed in any gods of religions.

“Please, Berihun, I would like some doro wat,” I said. “It is my favorite dish and I have not eaten in, well, a long time.”

Berihun blinked and then he grinned wide. “You know our food!”

I smiled back and nodded.

“Sit,” he said, motioning to the table beside the counter. “I will be right back! Makeda will be so excited. What is your name?”

I paused. Names are powerful. They have a way of becoming destiny. They should not be shared with just anyone. But this man had given me his name without hesitation. “My name is Phoenix,” I said, sitting at the table for six.

He grinned and turned to go to the kitchen. He turned back. “They say that Tower 7 was the research facility where Leroy Jackson and his group of scientists discovered the cure for AIDS, but no one ever saw him or any of his famous research team ever go in that place. My wife is sure that what they really did in there was evil and cruel. She is smart and observant. I usually believe every word she says on subjects like this. She is correct?”

I nodded. “Leroy and his team worked out of New Orleans, Louisiana, in Tower 3.”

“You are not a terrorist.”

“No, I am not.”

He nodded and started walking away when he stopped again and came back.

“Do you have scoliosis?”

I knew what this was. The woman with the head of an owl in Tower 7 had it. Curious about her condition, I'd read about it in one of the medical books they gave me. The curvature of the spine. It was a genetic deformity that sometimes resulted from growing too quickly. “No,” I said.

“My wife has scoliosis and your back kind of looks like you may have it, too.”

He came closer.

“Well, really I-I don't know,” I said. “Does hers hurt?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“Can you look at my back?” I said. “I can't really see it.”

He hesitated and then stepped around me. “Well,” he said, gently pulling the collar of my dress back a bit. “Oh my!” he said. “Your skin is very warm. Are you running a fever?”

“No, not in the usual way. I glow and I heat up.”

That was when I noticed the counter behind him. There were several items for sale there. My eye fell on the large tub full of a yellow thick substance. Shea butter.

“Can use some of that? I'm sorry I don't have any money but . . .”