The phoenix subjugation, p.1
The Phoenix Subjugation, page 1
part #2 of The Phoenix Adventures Series
The Phoenix Subjugation
By
K. Barnett
Chapter 1
‘Clarendon! Take the pills!’
Alya flinched.
The officer wasn’t shouting, but her voice had a shard-like texture to it that travelled through you. It was clear from her tone that she was beginning to run out of patience.
Alya had listened to the previous six girls around the huge dining table protest, or query the two black pills they’d been told to take. In response, Officer Levy had simply tapped her baton menacingly on the table next to them.
Alya didn’t intend to argue back, but she’d been in a trance-like state when the pot of pills had been handed to her, and it must have looked like she was refusing.
She wasn’t. It’s just that her mind kept wandering involuntarily back to the events forty minutes ago when her hope was renewed and she’d seen Zeph again.
‘Clarendon!’
She looked up at the sombre-faced officer who tapped the tip of her baton against her forearm as if reminding her charge that punishment was due if she refused.
Alya took the pot of pills from the girl next to her and sighed. She’d taken pills so often, from the age of two to fifteen, and had never known what they contained then or now, so what harm could a couple more do?
She took two and knocked them back swiftly without water, much to the intrigue of her fellow companions at the table.
She handed the pot to Trin who decided not to complain or whine about the task, taking two and washing them down with a glass of water.
Trin then tried to hand the pot to a girl to her left who sat chatting to her friend. The pair were ignoring the proceeds around them. They chatted as if they were sitting in a café. They’d barely let up, talking quietly but at length, seeming not to notice that the others were extremely respectful of the two heavily-clad officers standing watch over them.
They’d already been told to hush by the smaller of the two officers and had complied for all of a minute before resuming their conversation.
Alya’s dark brown eyes flitted from the two officers to the two girls seated towards the end of the table, and she was sure trouble was brewing.
Alya had always been astute at reading people; she’d done it her whole life, and she could see that the taller of the two officers, Levy, was seething below the surface.
The girls had better quit their chatter or gods only knew what would happen. Alya felt she should warn them, but there was no way she could without drawing attention to herself and Trin.
Trin shifted uncomfortably next to her as if she too knew that something was about to happen. Alya placed her hand on the table casually and spread her fingers wide hoping that Trin would see and understand the need to stay calm.
She did. With a subtle tilt of her chin in Alya’s direction, she managed to convey that she’d understood.
‘You!’ snapped Officer Levy, prompting the first dissident girl to hurry up and take the pills.
‘My name is Dante,’ retorted the girl rudely, before whispering something indecipherable from the side of her mouth to the girl next to her.
Alya drew breath and her eyebrows rose towards the ceiling. Judging from the electricity around the table she knew that the other Recruits had felt it as much as she had.
They waited.
A moment later Levy had jumped onto the table, her impeccably clean military boots stealing the show before she jabbed her restless baton into Dante’s abdomen.
Dante was shoved back in her chair from the blow and for what felt like an age wasn’t breathing, before making a wheezing guttural sound as her body fought for the air it so desperately needed.
Trin pushed her chair back, and Alya too. Several of the girls leapt to their feet to help, concerned for their fellow Recruit despite never having met before.
The smaller officer, Officer Denver, began to hustle, demanding that the Recruits sit down. She shouted emotionally-detached instructions and the girls complied, all the while looking at Dante still coughing and trying to catch her breath.
Officer Levy was now on her haunches still on the tabletop her wings stretched wide as she watched Dante trying to breathe. She had a wry little smile at the side of her mouth which unnerved Alya, more than if she had remained unmoved by Dante’s struggle.
Dante began to regain her composure although her face had turned puce Alya presumed partly from rage as she watched the glint of anger in Dante’s green eyes looking up at Levy.
The other girls had begun to settle back down and Officer Denver pulled Dante’s chair upright and pointed for her to sit again.
Levy reluctantly disembarked the table and stood at the end of it, facing the girls.
Dante’s blonde friend had taken the pills without further ado and the pair suddenly seemed a lot more attentive towards the two officers.
‘I’m Officer Levy, and this is Officer Denver,’ said Levy.
She had already resumed her, default, plain expression. Her features were pinched and a pair of very dark eyes seemed to protrude from almost grey skin pulled tight across high cheekbones and an angular jaw. Her dark hair was scraped into a tight bun at the nape of her neck as per military rules for any female personnel with longer hair.
Officer Denver’s hair colour was similar and she too had it pulled back in a bun. The similarity ended there, for she was the complete opposite of Levy, at only five-foot-four and with blue eyes and a round face she seemed so much more pleasant and less vacant than Levy, although they both projected a similar invisible barrier when speaking to the girls.
Alya had decided immediately that Officer Levy was definitely the one in charge. The moment they had entered their accommodation Levy had cracked her baton against a door frame to get their attention, and that was enough for Alya.
After that the girls had done as they were told and followed Officer Denver in pairs when their names were called to go to their private rooms.
Alya’s heart had nearly stopped when Officer Denver had returned after only a few minutes and disengaged her and Trin’s door with a key code.
Zeph had been hanging outside their window trying to mouth to Alya through the three-inch-thick glass some words of reassurance.
Alya had worked out that he’d said, ‘you’re going to be ok’ and then with his heavenly grin, ‘welcome to The Island.’ That was as much as she could decipher, but it was enough for her despair to turn to excitement and she’d temporarily forgotten her predicament.
She couldn’t help it, but she knew her eyes were shining with joy as she stood with her nose to the window following his lip movements. It was exactly what she needed to raise her spirits. Three days of sedation had left her feeling groggy and her stomach griped at the uncertainty caused by being forced into a life she knew nothing about. She and Trin had been separated from Hanuel, Red, Berlin, and Lancelot, and she worried about where the boys were? Would they get to see them? How were they going to get off The Island together?
Alya’s head had snapped around when the door to her and Trin’s room had rattled and it was obvious there was a technical issue as Officer Denver got to grips with the new system. By the time Alya had turned back to Zeph, her eyes wide with alarm, he had already launched off the window. She watched him fly back to where others, like him, wearing silvery coloured fishskin shorts and vests, were circling out to sea, as if parading in the air and welcoming the visitors from Continent One.
‘Take a shower, girls, and make it quick. We have to be in the Vestry very soon,’ said Officer Denver, when she finally made it through the door. She indicated the small bathroom off to the right of the compact room. She assessed her charges who looked bedraggled and dirty. The orange t-shirt and trousers that Trin wore had days old, dry blood splattered down the front, from where General Trop had split her lip during an unnecessary interrogation.
He was a bully, of that Alya was sure. Trin hadn’t been involved in the Patrol Ball takeover which was entirely down to her impulsivity, although the boys had helped gather the intel that led to her dramatic, storming of the stage. Why Trin had been dragged off to The Pen along with them was a mystery? Maybe the powers that be saw an opportunity to accuse yet another innocent teenager of something they didn’t do, as part of their corrupt recruitment tactics.
Officer Denver turned her attention to Alya. She appeared to be concerned by Alya’s clothing the most, or lack of it as she stood in her bare feet wearing a white bedraggled hospital gown which was open at the back only a light blue blanket draped around her shoulders protecting her modesty. Alya wasn’t concerned about her attire so much as she was about her raven curly hair which she could feel was greasy and sticking out at every possible angle. She loved her spiral curls but only when they behaved, and the thought of Zeph seeing her hair entirely misbehaving made her want to crawl into a dark hole and hide.
Officer Denver stood quietly contemplating the pair. She was dressed in the same black fatigues as the officers that had been on the boat that had brought them two thousand miles from Continent One, to The Island. She didn’t have an automatic rifle as they had had though. Instead, she had the all too familiar stun baton that Patrol officers on Continent One were issued with, as well as a pair of handcuffs that were attached to her belt. It was clear Officer Denver, and her colleagues, meant business if necessary.
‘Girls,’ said Denver more gently. ‘Please change into the clothes on your beds. We need to be back in the mess hall in twenty minutes. Er, the canteen,
Denver turned and let herself out, rattling the door as she went to ensure that the lock had engaged and the girls couldn’t escape.
Alya smiled to herself, partly because even if any of them could escape, she doubted any of the other Recruits would have a clue as to where they were to know which way to go. She also smiled because Denver had just revealed that she had a softer side and that could come to their advantage when Alya and her friends could plan their escape back to C1.
‘You first, Trin,’ said Alya, as she looked doubtfully at the grey leggings, vest, and underwear lying on her bed. She picked up the visor cap and examined the capital letters stitched in black thread: RECRUIT, then tossed it with contempt back on the bed.
‘I’ll take this one,’ said Trin, indicating the bed opposite from where Alya stood.
The two wooden cabin beds had been kitted out with a desk and drawers underneath, and Trin pulled them open to examine the contents. She found a wash bag that was surprisingly well-stocked with hair and skin care products and more fresh underwear and another two sets of grey uniforms. She and Alya were almost the exact same size, although there was nearly six inches height difference, with she being taller so she assumed it didn’t matter which bed they took.
Trin glanced around at Alya who had moved back to the enormous window the width of their room. She was scouting for a glimpse of Zeph, and although Trin was intrigued to know how the heck Alya knew someone from The Island, that no one on C1 knew existed, she was too tired and too yuck to ask her right now.
She made her way to the tiny bathroom taking a biohazard bag with her as instructed earlier to dump her orange Penitentiary outfit in before she showered.
Alya listened as the shower water ran, processing it on the periphery of her brain. She was mesmerized by the sight of blue waves outside as far as the eye could see. The sun sparkled across the horizon, not a cloud in the sky.
But what she was really entranced by was the crowd of hybrids, like herself, circling some five hundred metres out to sea.
They seemed to sparkle too, and it took her a few moments to realise they really were sparkling as every now and then the gemstones or glass sewn into their outfits caught the sun and blinded her.
She realised that the parade was indeed a show, probably put on for the arrival of the newcomers from C1. A welcome party as such, as the antics of the hybrids in flight, were playful and light. The clothing they wore was much like the shorts she’d seen Zeph wearing that day when he’d help pluck Hanuel from the sea during a storm; saving both hers and Hanuel’s lives. The skins were white or silvery hides of big fish, maybe sharks with shiny strips from tuna sewn in. The women wore matching tank tops but the men were bare-chested, covered only by leather straps that held knives and small spears for fishing, and water bottles tucked neatly behind them on their backs or hip.
Alya also realised that she’d never seen quite so many blonde, honey-skinned people, like Zeph, all in one go before. There were others of course, like herself, like Red, and Berlin, but the majority were like Zeph. It was hard to tell exactly, from where she stood but she thought she saw in all of them the tall athleticism in which she’d seen in Zeph too. Unlike the residents of Continent One, all of whom came in different shapes and sizes, some too heavy to fly and as equally uninterested, as unbelievable as that seemed to Alya, who couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else.
Trin had finished in the shower and she came out looking more like herself. She shook her dark brown wings violently, like a large dog, then stretched them back and at an angle towards the ceiling forcing her shoulder blades towards each other in a luxurious stretch. Droplets flew everywhere and the remaining shower water ran through her wavy black tresses onto the towel she’d placed around her neck. She was wearing the grey, issued uniform, and Alya caught sight of how thin her arms looked and was concerned. She tried not to let it show on her face and tapped the windowsill as if disengaging from the hybrids outside before grabbing her new clothes and towels from her bed.
When in the shower, having discarded her gods’ awful hospital gown on the floor, she looked down at her own slim frame. She could see her hip bones protruding and realised she might not have had a proper meal in as many as four days. The last thing she could remember eating was a dry bread roll at the Patrol Ball. That was before she’d turned her own world and many of Continent One’s residents’ upside down.
She was deeply regretful at how she’d handled the whole incident. She hadn’t meant to divulge her knowledge of the Mobi Project quite so brutally in front of a live television audience with thousands upon thousands tuning in. In hindsight, she should have sought her father’s advice or someone who could have handled the situation better. As it happened, she could well have been the reason that she and a hundred teenagers were now being quickly advanced into forced conscription, although it would certainly have happened anyway. However, the timing might have been solely down to Alya’s actions.
The shower was divine and Alya stood for what seemed like an age, with her face tilted towards the stream of warm water running over her feathers, seeping through the overlapping raven and amber sheaths. She was daydreaming about being out there with The Island hybrids, in the sun, circling together in each other’s slipstreams, feeling and sensing every wave of air current—a feast for the senses.
Trin knocked politely.
‘You ok in there?’
‘Er, yeah,’ laughed Alya, realising Trin was probably wondering if she’d drowned. ‘I’ll be out in a second.’
Alya turned her attention to her hair and quickly shampooed and rinsed, then stepped out of the shower cubicle into the compact bathroom.
It had a corner toilet and a micro sink with a cabinet above it. The floor was made of tiles that glittered and her keen vision picked out tiny bits of crushed shells, the type of décor that poorer housing on Continent One would have. Prompted by memories of home, her thoughts turned to Red and she wondered how Austin, his poor father, was coping with having lost both his sons to the Mobi Project. Trin and Hanuel’s parents too; their twins taken from them.
It didn’t occur to Alya to feel sympathy for her own parents, however. They still had Tal so they’d be fine she surmised. She’d caused them a lot of bother lately so they’d probably be pleased for the rest from her.
‘You look much better, Trin,’ said Alya, as she placed her damp towel over a rail by the window next to Trin’s.
‘So do you, Aly. I’m starving.’
‘Me too. We’ve lost a lot of weight, Trin,’ said Alya, directing her gaze out of the window instead of at Hanuel’s sister.
‘I know we have,’ she said softly. ‘Yours because you were out for three days and mine because my stomach is in knots wondering about what is going to happen to us. Do you think we might die out here, Aly?’ said Trin as she climbed onto the deep window ledge.
Alya looked in horror at Trin, then back outside at the beautiful view. She climbed up onto the window ledge too so that the girls sat facing each other, their knees gathered up and held by their interlocked fingers.
‘Trin, I don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re using us as free labour, I know that much, but how dangerous it might be, well only time can tell. I think we should learn quickly how to get out of here before they start to move Mobi.’
‘How will we do that, Aly? We must be at least a thousand miles from C1.’
‘Two thousand.’
‘Seriously? How do you know that?’
‘The guy. Zeph. The one clinging to our window before? Well, he’s done it. He’s flown from The Island, which is what we are on now. He made it almost all the way to C1. If he could help me, then I know I can fly that. I could go and get help, be back within a couple of days maybe.’
Trin shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to dash Alya’s hopes but she couldn’t see how anyone other than an Olympic champion could fly that distance without a team of professionals.
‘Do you think you could? It’s an awfully long way, Alya?’
Alya could see the doubt in Trin’s light brown eyes, and she knew, that logically speaking, she too should feel a nagging doubt like a normal person would, but she didn’t. She just knew she could do it.
