Phoenix Island (21 page)

“Two weeks? Really?” Fear goosed him—a lot could happen in two weeks. “Are my friends okay?”

“Friends?”

“Neil Ross and Octavia Gregoric,” Carl said. “Are they all right?”

Stark patted his back. “Don’t worry, Carl. After everything you’ve been through, it’s understandable that you might assume the worst, but trust me: everyone is fine.”

“You’re sure?”

Stark laughed. “Positive.”

Carl relaxed . . . a little. He was afraid to ask what he really wanted to ask.

Stark picked up on it. “You must have a million questions. Fire away. Anything you like.”

“Do you, um,” Carl said, deciding to go for it but feeling his face go hot. “Do kids . . . get executed here?”

Stark stared at him for a long second—then burst into laughter. This was no chuckle. It was an explosion of deep, rich laughter that stopped Stark in the middle of the road and bent him in half, the sound of it so full and cathartic that by the time Stark straightened again, wiping tears from his eyes, Carl realized he was sputtering laughter himself.

“Sorry to laugh like that,” Stark said, and put his hand once more on Carl’s shoulder. “Really, I shouldn’t. Boot camps breed the wildest rumors and speculation. If I’d gone through everything you’ve been through, I’d believe something like that, too. Here’s the simple truth: things got out of hand.
Drill Sergeant Parker
got out of hand. None of that was your fault. You’re safe now, and I’ve talked to Parker. I’ll check on your friends, too. What were their names, Ross and Pandora?”

“Ross and Octavia,” Carl said, feeling enormously relieved. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Stark said. “I’m sorry you went through all that, but now I’d like you to move past it and dwell on the positive. Your healing, for example. Amazing isn’t it?”

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Carl admitted and shook his head. “I feel better than ever. My cuts are almost healed. My bones feel good as new. The pain’s gone.”

“Welcome to the post-human age. Dr. Vispera used titanium oxide nanotubes, stem cells, and electrical stimulation to mend your bones. You’ve been receiving human growth hormone since your arrival on the island, along with daily doses of the best vitamins, herbs, protein, and creatine. It’s all coming together. But of course your new body will take some getting used to.”

New body?
Carl thought. He held out his hands and looked at them. They were fixed up—that seemed miraculous enough—but new? Looked like the same old hands, scarred knuckles and all. . . .

Stark chuckled. “And more: Dr. Vispera gave you certain enhancements during your coma. He implanted numerous small chips into your organs and glands and injected hundreds more into your ventricle, and
now they’ve spread throughout your body, attaching to smooth muscle along your circulatory system.”

Suddenly, Carl felt like he was crawling with ticks. “What for?”

“For now, they’re mapping you, electrically and chemically. Don’t look so startled, Carl, and don’t worry. Even now, chips at various points monitor your organs and record your movement, your muscle contractions, the transportation of oxygen, the firing of nerves. They’re learning your processes. Later, they’ll help to improve those processes.”

Imagining the things burrowing into him, Carl had the wild urge to start scratching.

Stark said, “They are like musical instruments. The master chip will be the conductor.”

Vispera had talked about music. The memory sent goose bumps over Carl’s flesh. “I don’t want another chip.”

Stark patted his shoulder. “Well, that will be entirely up to you when the time arrives. Presently, certain risks remain. We’re moving to an improved version, and Dr. Vispera still needs to fine-tune implantation. Soon enough, however, the procedure will be completely safe, and you’ll be allowed to choose. Personally, I can’t wait for the opportunity. The chip will change our lives forever.”

“You’re getting one?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I myself have also received the blood treatment he gave you while you were out.”

“Blood treatment?” This kept sounding worse and worse.

“You’d lost a lot of blood. Dr. Vispera replaced it with special blood, blood to which he’s added his blood virus.”

“Wait—he put a
virus
in my
blood
?”

Stark chuckled. “Relax, Carl. It’s not really a virus. It just acts like one. When a real virus invades our system, it hides for a while and then starts pumping out copies of itself. It reproduces inside us. Much like the Special Forces, it enters the back country of its host with a relatively small contingent, then raises an army behind enemy lines.”

Carl imagined little silver triangles tumbling along through his blood, breaking into smaller triangles, these swelling to full size, breaking apart, filling his veins. A shudder of revulsion went through him.

Stark laughed and patted his shoulder again. “This is great news, Carl. The virus is strengthening your white blood cells and making your red blood cells capable of carrying more oxygen. That will make you stronger, help you build muscle, and greatly improve your endurance.”

“Like blood doping?” He remembered a top amateur boxer in Philly getting stripped of his medal for that.

“No—this is much more effective . . . and permanent. For the rest of your life, you’ll heal more quickly, and you’ll be more resistant to everything from infection to malaria. Look—a pig.” Stark pointed into the forest, and Carl saw a dark shape disappear into heavy vegetation. “Vicious animals, these island pigs. See that peak?” He motioned toward the tallest of the stony ridges that ran across the center of the island. “The forest on the opposite slope is thick with pigs. Avoid it. End up among them, and you’ll be lucky to keep your fancy new blood.”

Carl nodded. Nothing seemed quite real.

“Dr. Vispera is no stranger to blood,” Stark said. “Before political unrest brought him to Phoenix Island, he was the ‘inquisitor’ for a particularly brutal South American dictator. Give him a sewing needle and thirty minutes, and he can reveal the deepest secrets of any prisoner.”

“He was a torturer?”

Stark nodded. “You’ve heard the saying ‘The eyes are the window to the soul’? Dr. Vispera has his own saying: ‘The nerves are the keys to the truth.’ Clever fellow, his ‘keys’ have a double meaning: they unlock truth, but he’s also referring to the keys of a piano.”

A chill went through Carl as he remembered the doctor saying he’d make him sing, that he missed the music.

“He considers himself a musician of pain. A maestro. Pain is his piano, and the victim’s nerves are his piano strings.”

Great,
Carl thought.
I threatened to break his nose
.

Stark said, “Despite his monstrousness, he is not so different from you.”

“Not so different from me? The guy’s a psycho.”

“You are both individuals of pronounced talent . . . but born in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I don’t get it.”

They passed under a thicker canopy, the roadside trees arching overhead, meeting imperfectly, dappling the road in sunlight and shadow. Stark said in an airy voice, “If Dr. Vispera had been born in London or Detroit, he would no doubt have risen through the ranks of respected physicians and scientists and established himself in more
conventional
ways. Unfortunately for him—and even less fortunately for his symphony of victims—he was born in place that valued power over science. Sometimes, the only difference between a Nobel Prize winner and a war criminal is geography. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Carl said.

“Consider your strengths: fighting ability, physical endurance, battle courage. You have a gift for remaining composed during moments of extreme emotional duress, moments that would tear most boys and men to shreds. Like Dr. Vispera, you suffer from the importability of assets. It’s a paradox. In today’s society, where the American child is rewarded for sitting still in a grid of chairs day after day, your natural strengths have become liabilities. Because you are a young man of action who believes in his view of the world, because you fight when you deem it necessary, you’ve ended up here.”

Carl nodded. “The stuff I’m good at gets me in trouble.”

“Yes—because of the time and place of your birth. When you stand up to bullies, American society deems you an animal. They keep putting you in cages and finally send you here. To me.”

“It’s so stupid,” Carl said. “At school they have these anti-bullying programs, but they never do anything. Nothing real. Then you do something, and they punish you for it.”

“Institutionalized hypocrisy works only in corrupt and convoluted systems. If you were born in a cave during prehistoric times, Carl, you would be a respected leader. Strong enough to protect your people, smart enough to make the right decisions, consistent enough to make them believe in you. You were simply born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even a slight adjustment—say one hundred years and one hundred miles—and you would’ve made a very successful farmer or stonemason.”

Carl thought for a few strides. “But if I’d been born someplace else
or at a different time or whatever, I wouldn’t be me, right? I mean, I’d be somebody else, with different strengths.”

“Perhaps. The good news is you’re here now.” Stark spread his arms. “This is a world outside of time, a world that recognizes your strengths. And here you will have guidance. I’ll give you skills that will empower you to make your own destiny.”

Initially, Carl had assumed Phoenix Island was just another teen boot camp, a bunch of gung ho ex-soldiers forcing kids to play army in an olive-drab hybrid of punishment and rehabilitation. Now, after everything he’d read in the journal and all the brutality he’d experienced, he wasn’t sure of anything. Still, after his stupid question about the executions, Carl wasn’t about to ask Stark about mercenaries and the mysterious Old Man.

Instead, he kept it simple. “Army stuff?”

“That’s part of it, but I’ll teach you to be far more than a grunt, and in the end, it will be your choice whether you want to become a soldier.”

A soldier? It was a job he’d considered while growing up, one that had always seemed real to him, and he knew a lot of cops—his own father included—had gone into the military before joining the police force. But now, after everything he’d experienced here? Not likely. . . .

Stark gestured toward a side road. “Turn here.”

They left the main road and walked uphill.

Stark said, “Many places in the world still value men like us. We can get rich in these places. I have. But what is money? In the United States, it’s everything. Money is status, power. In that world, the kings of the caves drive Jaguars with Harvard stickers in the back window. Nonsense.” He spat into the weeds alongside the road. “I wouldn’t last one week in American suburbia. The first person who tried to involve me in small talk about mulch would soon find my thumbs jammed into his eye sockets.”

Carl laughed. “People do talk about stupid stuff. I’ve seen kids sit around and talk about nothing. Somebody will bring up a TV show or a singer or something, and then they’ll just sit there and agree about how they all like the same thing and then talk about it for
hours
. It’s weird—it actually makes them happy.”

“Indeed. How could you ever succeed in a world like that? They’re asleep, and everyone—their teachers and parents and future bosses—wants them to stay asleep. A boy like you might wake them up.”

It made sense. School and pretty much everything else—except boxing and hanging out with friends—had often seemed entirely pointless to Carl. He’d always assumed it was a problem with him, not the other way around.

Stark said, “Here, your strengths will make you a great man. Just as Dr. Vispera’s strengths have made
him
a great man.”

That made Carl stop for a moment. “A great man? He’s a torturer.”

“The world outside America is full of people who would eat our livers raw for the simple pleasure of filling their bellies. If I capture one of these murderers and he has information that could mean life or death to my men, I will use any means necessary to extract that information. The comfort of one bad man is not worth the lives of ten good ones.”

“I guess it sort of makes sense when you put it that way.”

The continued walking, and, winding uphill out of the dark forest, the road opened onto a plateau, where at the center of a bright green clearing sat a massive camouflage hangar easily a football field in length and probably three or four stories high. It looked like the sort of thing the military would use for aircraft, but Carl saw no landing strip or planes. Behind it rose the tall mountain peak, its gray raw rock towering overhead like an enormous, unfinished statue, a half-sculpted bust, humanoid yet not necessarily human, God’s rendition of man or monster. . . .

Stark spread his arms, an epic gesture from a man of his great size, and said, “Welcome to my home.”

THE STEAKS WERE RARE,
served with crisp salad, wedges of bright red tomato on top, alongside mashed potatoes on heavy white plates beside tall glasses of ice water beaded with condensation. Carl sawed off another chunk of steak and forked it into his mouth.

Nothing had ever tasted so good.

Stark watched Carl like an amused parent. “Slow down, Carl. Chew your food. Taste it. This isn’t the mess hall.”

Carl smiled without showing his teeth, the piece of steak a lump in one cheek. With conscious effort, he slowed his chewing. It was all so good, and he was so hungry, he felt like tilting the plate and taking it all in a swallow.

Stark gestured with his steak knife. “Do you find it strange that I eat my meals here, in this . . . garage?”

Carl shook his head. They sat in folding metal chairs at a folding plastic table, at the center of the large, open space partitioned from the rest of the hangar by a long curtain. An old white refrigerator hummed against the wall between an oven and a sink. Two-by-fours and wallboard partitioned off a few small rooms on either side of the hangar. Everything was clean and simple.