Phoenix Island (34 page)

It was time to start keeping his promise to his father.

Even if it cost him his life.

At 0800, he was supposed to go at it cowboy style on the beach. His chance to gun down a bad man . . .

But that was the wrong fight. Killing Parker wouldn’t destroy Carl’s weakness; it would surrender his life to it. Instead of casting his fatal flaw away, it would allow that flaw to define him. It would burn the Carl he’d wanted to become, and out of those ashes would rise not a phoenix but a monster.

Parker’s death would avenge all that had happened to Medicaid, Campbell, and Ross but would save neither them nor Octavia.

If Carl fought the duel, she would die. It didn’t matter whether he won or lost. The hunt would go on.

So the only way to save her was by
not
fighting. But that wasn’t possible. Duelists couldn’t change their minds, couldn’t back out. Once the duel was set, it was set.

He pictured everyone gathered on the beach: Parker, Stark, the orphans,
the cadre, the Phoenix Forcers chanting, “Killer Carl! Killer Carl!”

He pictured the abandoned hangar, the abandoned roads, the abandoned camps . . .

Everyone out on the beach, ready for the Phoenix Island Super Bowl.

Almost everyone. There would still be an abandoned girl locked in a cage on the other side of the island. . . .

Carl sat up in bed.

What if . . . ?

And he held two images side by side in his mind: Octavia in the cage, Camp Phoenix Force abandoned . . .

The boats bobbing in the water, unguarded . . .

He stood and paced in the darkness. Just before lights-out, Stark had discussed the morning by way of helping Carl visualize the coming duel. Stark would escort Phoenix Force to the beach, leaving Carl alone for an hour to meditate and focus his mind. . . .

What if, instead of meditating, Carl waited for Stark to leave, then left himself? What if he ran not to the beach but straight to Training Base One. To Octavia . . .

How long would it take everyone to realize he wasn’t coming to the duel?

He pictured the crowd shouting, pictured Stark going through a range of emotions: realization, shock, disappointment, rage. . . .

They would all think Carl was afraid. Afraid of Parker and afraid to die.

Parker would get away with everything he’d done, with killing Ross . . . and he’d howl with laughter.

Carl’s pride screamed. Could he walk away from the biggest fight of his life?

It has always been that he would rather die than back down to a bully. It didn’t matter who, how big, or how many. He’d fought again and again, as if doing so could bring his father back to him. It never had. Just as fighting Parker now would do nothing to bring back Ross and nothing to save Octavia.

Ross was gone. Carl’s father was gone.

Nothing would bring them back.

Parker and Octavia remained. The choice was simple: risk everything to kill Parker or risk everything to save Octavia.

He knew what he had to do.

He had to break his pattern of weakness.

He had to start keeping his promise to his father.

He had to stop fighting the bullies and start helping the victims.

He had to defend, not destroy.

Love, not hate.

He had to save Octavia.

T
HE MEMBERS OF PHOENIX FORCE
mobbed him, shaking his hand and slapping his back, all smiles and bright eyes and encouragement. Then one of them shouted, “Killer Carl!” and they hoisted him off his feet and onto their shoulders, chanting, “Killer Carl! Killer Carl! Killer Carl!”

Stark smiled like a proud parent as they paraded Carl around the hangar. Then he raised one fist in the air.

Both parade and chanting stopped, and hands lowered Carl to the ground. Boudazin gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “For luck,” she said, and smiled—a pretty girl who shot bull’s-eyes at three hundred meters.

“Let’s save some of that celebration for after the duel,” Stark said. “Carl needs time to prepare himself. Agbeko, form everybody up outside. I’ll join you momentarily.”

“Yes, Commander,” Agbeko said. “Phoenix Force, you heard the Old Man. Outside, form it up.”

The troopers hooah-ed and started out the door, many turning for one last wave.

Carl waved back, filled with a sudden and unexpected sense of loss. The Phoenix Forcers really liked him, and no matter how crazy it was, no matter how misguided they were, he liked them, too, all these high-speed orphans from around the world. They, too, had been born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their strengths had likely doomed them to this fate and madman’s vision. It wasn’t their fault Stark had cultivated them like a deadly virus. Yes, he liked them. Pitied them, even.

But this was the end of all that. If he ever saw them again—and oh, how he hoped he never did—the Phoenix Forcers would try to kill him.

Agbeko gave him a bone-crushing embrace. “You will win your fight, Carl. I know you will. And then you and I, we will be brothers, yes?”

“Yes,” Carl said, and his throat closed with a lump of sorrow, gratitude, and warmth for this hulking killer whom he hardly knew. It was completely insane, made absolutely no sense, but then, when did emotions ever give a flying
crap
about logic?

“To glory,” Agbeko said, and then he was gone, too.

“Do you see it, son?” Stark said, coming to him. “Do you the effect you have on them? And in such a short time. You’re not just a born leader, you’re
their
born leader. It’s not just charisma. It’s destiny.”

“Thank you,” Carl said, and then added the words he’d practiced in the night. “It’s been an honor to learn from you.”

“The honor has been mine,” Stark said—just as Carl had expected, word for word—and gave a slow bow.

Carl returned the bow, remembering to dip lower than the Old Man, like a samurai before his lord.

When he straightened, Stark was smiling down at him admiringly, as if Carl were graduating high school rather than fighting a duel to the death.

Outside, Phoenix Force took up the chant again. “Killer Carl! Killer Carl! Killer Carl!”

Stark took him by the shoulders. “You know what you have to do, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re prepared to do it?”

“I am,” Carl said, thinking,
And if you had any idea what I’m really prepared to do, you’d snap my neck right now
.

“Hooah,” Stark said.

“Hooah,” Carl echoed.

Stark checked his watch. “You have just over an hour. Meditate. Prepare your mind. Self-efficacy, yes? The past is a ghost, the future a mirage. Place yourself firmly in this moment, your moment to ascend.”

“I will,” Carl said.

Stark gave him a light shake. “I won’t wish you luck, my son. This has nothing to do with luck—only fate.”

Carl nodded.

Stark released him, stepped back, straightened crisply, and snapped one hand to his brow, paying Carl the ultimate compliment, saluting
him
.

Carl returned the salute, held it—listening to the troopers outside filling the reverent moment with “Killer Carl! Killer Carl!”—and then let it drop.

Stark finished his own salute, executed a smooth about-face, and marched out of the hangar, where the chanting stopped in an eruption of hooahs.

Carl let his breath shudder free and stood for a moment, shaking and staring at the door. Then, as Stark and Phoenix Force jogged away, singing cadence, he started gathering everything he needed.

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER,
hearing an engine’s rumble, Carl dove into the roadside weeds. Approaching lights cut the predawn gloom, and a pair of cattle trucks filled with kids passed. He flattened himself to the ground and listened to their loud voices, their excitement. They sounded like kids on a field trip to an amusement park.

How many of them were hoping to see him die?

He was glad he didn’t know the answer.

Then they were gone, and he was running again. He’d left shortly after Stark, taking time only to dress in black fatigues and slick nighttime camo grease over his hands, face, and neck.

He glanced at his watch and pressed the backlight. Twenty after. In forty minutes, they would wonder where he was. How long after would they begin to hunt him?

Well before reaching the entrance to Training Base One, he angled off through the woods toward the side of the compound nearest the sweatbox.

He low-crawled out of the trees into dawn’s dim half-light. Reaching the fence, he lifted his head and scanned the compound.

A low growl escaped him.

Downhill, a guard stood watch at the gate, a machine gun slung over one shoulder. Another stood in the little room atop the gate tower. Not good. He’d hoped the guards would attend the duel. After all, what was left to guard?

Seconds later, he heard a drill sergeant yelling orders. Over by the barracks, several kids raked gravel and swept the sidewalks. He recognized Sanchez, Octavia’s friend Tamika, and Lindstrom, the nice kid from Post Falls, Idaho.

He figured he knew why they were cleaning rather than watching the big fight. Sanchez, Tamika, Lindstrom . . . they were all decent. Ross’s murder must have been the turning point. Parker weeded out anybody who refused to hunt. Now they were good for only three things: slave labor, getting hunted, and feeding the sharks. Twisted.

Then he saw someone else down there: Davis. Like the others, he was being forced to work. Carl remembered the barracks, the fight with Parker, Davis standing up for him. Something had changed in him . . . for the better.

Carl wished he could take them all with him, but there wasn’t time. The faster he got off this island, the better chance he’d have at alerting people to the presence of this place and thus helping all of them. Only one couldn’t wait: Octavia. If he left without her, she’d be as dead as Ross.

His eyes found the dark little sweatbox. Even in the relative cool of the morning, the box would be heating up, its metal roof clicking like a radiator. In its shadows, he made out a darker shadow, a lump. No motion.

It made him sick, her suffering like this.

He scaled the fence easily, thanks to his new muscles. Clearing the top, he dropped down the other side and low-crawled to the torturous device.

Octavia lay inside the box, asleep or unconscious, turned away from him. A surge of pity and concern rushed through Carl. He knew what she was feeling in there, knew not only the pain but also the hollowing hopelessness.

He whispered her name.

She stirred and turned, eyes blinking—eyes that he was outraged to note were badly bruised—and spoke with a voice that sounded like an old woman’s. “Carl?”

“Yes. I’m getting you out of here.”

She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Are you . . . real?”

Carl went to the latch. “I’m real, all right. We’re leaving, Octavia. We’re getting off this island.”

She mumbled something.

He slid the bolts free, and the door swung open.

“Feel like I’m dying,” she said.

“I know you do. But you’re going to be okay.” He reached in, took her by the hand, and helped her from the sweatbox. She was hot to the touch, and Carl remembered the fever he’d suffered during his time in the box. She trembled as he pulled her into a quick hug. She felt very small in his arms. He glanced downhill. No one had spotted them yet. “We have to hurry.”

He led her behind the box, safely out of sight, and handed her his canteen. They had little time, but she needed water.

She drank. Paused. Let her eyes close. Drank some more. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “It’s no use, Carl.” Her voice was a raspy whisper.

“Come on, Octavia. I know how you feel. I was in there, too. But I also know you’re strong. When they see you’re gone, they’ll hunt us. We have to leave now.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I can walk.”

“I’ll carry you.”

She shook her head again. “I’ll try.”

“We have to get to the other side of the island. There are boats there.”

“Carl, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said, then trailed off. She took another sip of water and leaned against him. “It’s about Ross—”

“I know. I know what Parker did, but he can’t hurt us anymore.”

Octavia’s muscles relaxed a bit, as if no longer having to carry the news of Ross had lifted a physical weight off her body. She managed a weak smile. “All right. I’m with you. And, Carl—thanks.”

If this were a movie, Carl thought, he would give her a kiss and some snappy line, but he just smiled and helped her along. Then he realized his mistake.

The fence.

She couldn’t climb it in her condition, and even with his new muscles, he couldn’t get her safely across. Why hadn’t he thought to bring rope?

“All right,” he said. “We have to go through the gate.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was.

“They’ll never let us through,” she said.

He tried to look confident. “We’ll make it. Come on.” He draped her arm over his shoulders and wrapped his arm around her waist. As they started downhill toward the gate, tension built in his body. “I’m going to try to talk my way through. If we have to run, break left and get into the trees as quickly as possible.”