My Soul to Take

  “Phoenix?” Carlos answered, to be sure it was she.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gazed at the plastic mask and the gun still trained on her and her son. Phoenix made herself smile so she could borrow some cheer for her voice. Marcus’s father would not be gunned down within his earshot. That family tradition would end with her, even if it meant lying to her husband.

  “Yeah, baby, tranquilo!” she said. “Nobody’s hurting us! We’re gonna sue their asses! I already sent out the email!”

  She almost fooled herself. Marcus’s instincts told him not to call out for Carlos; instead, he locked his arms around Phoenix’s legs more tightly. She held on to the counter to keep from losing her balance. She wasn’t going to fall down and scare Marcus. And she wasn’t going to be shot in front of her son, even with a trank gun.

  “Come on, Marcus, let’s put our hands on the counter,” Phoenix said. “You heard what he said. Nobody’s gonna hurt us.”

  Marcus was crying, his grip iron. His tears seeped through the thin fabric of the flimsy track pants she slept in. Phoenix couldn’t move him without pulling him away hard.

  “He’s seven years old,” Phoenix said, as close as she could bring herself to pleading. How could anyone with the memory of childhood hurt a child?

  “Yes, ma’am, I have a daughter that exact age,” the man said. He tried on a more upbeat voice: “Buddy? Stand next to your mom by the counter. I know we look funny to you, but we’re just regular folks wearing big, hot raincoats. Do what your mom says, and you can have one of these nifty suits too. See? It’s got a light inside.”

  A dim yellow light went on beyond the plastic. Two eyes stared out at them. Kind eyes.

  Marcus straightened, suddenly more fascinated than frightened. The light made him forget the gun. Marcus loosened his grip around her legs and finally let her go.

  Phoenix was almost grateful to the man behind the mask, although she knew he was about to take her to a truck and force her away from her home, probably without Carlos. Someone—even this man who claimed to have a seven-year-old daughter—might try to take Marcus from her. That hadn’t happened yet, but it could. Knowing that made Phoenix want to break a wine bottle and wield it like a knife. Knowing that made her see blood on the walls.

  But that would lead to shooting, too. She would not make this worse than it had to be.

  Phoenix needed to believe the man’s lying eyes.

  Thirteen

  6:05 a.m.

  The truck smelled of oil and cleanser. The drive took two hours. Phoenix’s wristphone had been politely confiscated, but she had a good internal clock. The daylight when the truck’s rear door opened only confirmed what she knew: it was dawn, the sky dappled with unpromising gray light.

  Marcus had fallen asleep across her lap, and her arms were numb from holding him on the lightly padded bench where they had been strapped side by side. Her shoulder seat belt felt like chains. Marcus moved only when the truck jostled, but Phoenix had decided that she wasn’t going to let Marcus go. As long as she was holding on to Marcus, she could handle the rest. The world wasn’t ending yet. Her knees’ shaking had stopped somewhere north of Paso.

  If they were expecting her to cry or break down, they would be disappointed. And anyone who put a hand on Marcus would lose an eye. Her thumbnails were primed to strike.

  Making plans helped Phoenix keep her knees from shaking. Carlos had been stolen away before she and Marcus were allowed to leave the house, and she’d never heard a thing. They must have sedated him somehow, or he would have called for her again.

  But Carlos is all right, she told herself when her knees tried to shake.

  Phoenix couldn’t wait to call her cousin Gloria and crank up her machinery: press releases, internet blasts, TV. She would buy a home-page spread in The New York Times online. She would call the president and shame him into an apology. “This is gonna come down hard.”

  You’ve got to see about the revolution, Phee.

  Phoenix didn’t move after the truck came to a gentle stop and someone pulled open the rear doors. The doors hissed softly on their hinges. Judging by the protective suits, none of the half-dozen people congregated planned to get too close.

  They really think we have the killer flu, she thought. One day, it might be funny.

  The two men closest to the door held black semiautomatic rifles with both hands, waiting in disciplined silence. She was at a military facility. She might as well be in another country. A mechanical ramp whirred from the back of the truck with a clang onto the asphalt, and Marcus stirred. She wished she could put off his waking, or change what he was waking to.

  “Ma’am …?” a gravelly voice began from the open truck door.

  “Step back,” Phoenix cut him off. “No one touches me. No one touches Marcus.”

  After glancing at one another, a few of the waiting men took token steps backward. But the men with the guns held their ground. “Ma’am …” the lead man went on. “Come forward. Slowly. Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  Marcus sat up, his body stiffening as he suddenly remembered where he was. His forehead was warm. In the rush to leave the house, she had grabbed him a lined denim jacket that had been far too warm for the truck. All they had were their bedclothes and jackets. Phoenix wasn’t wearing underwear under her paper-thin track pants. Or a bra under her T-shirt.

  Phoenix pressed her palms to his hot cheeks, which had stopped his crying before he fell asleep. “I’m here, baby …” she said, as if they were alone.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Marcus whimpered.

  “That’s what we’re about to find out.” Phoenix stared past the gun’s arresting black nozzle to the nearest soldier’s eyes.

  Phoenix’s legs had jellied, so she had to accept a steady, efficient gloved hand to help her walk down the metal ramp from the truck. She held Marcus with her other hand, and he moved like her shadow, so close that she nearly tripped.

  As they walked down the ramp, Phoenix was relieved when the men kept their distance, forming a loose ring. They were funneling her toward an open set of double doors at a bland, piss-colored two-story facility with no markings she could see. Mostly concrete, fewer windows downstairs. Around her stretched an empty parking lot, with faded paint lines. She looked for mountains, but no landmarks were in sight. A ring of dogwood trees hid everything else from view. She had no idea where she was.

  “Am I under arrest?” Phoenix said. She’d been asking for two hours.

  “No, ma’am,” the soldier said, the stock answer. A buried southern twang jostled memories of Sarge’s stories. “Please walk to the doors ahead.”

  Her legs wouldn’t move. She wanted to stay outside, where she was almost free.

  “Ma’am, please walk to the doors ahead.”

  Phoenix remembered watching the miniseries Holocaust with Mom when she was in middle school, the first time she’d cried real tears over anything on TV. The story of the Holocaust in Germany had taught her that sometimes routine was a lie. It was hard for Phoenix to catch her breath, much less walk. Marcus was hugging her too tightly, but she couldn’t bring herself to pry him free.

  “Ma’am?” the voice said, patient. “Please walk to the doors ahead and we will escort you to the first door on the right. That’s our intake office. More personnel will meet you there.”

  It was the first time she’d been given information in advance, and she was grateful. Maybe it really is an intake office, she told herself, and her legs moved again.

  But intake to where?

  After the dim light in both the truck and the sky outside, the brightness inside the antiseptic facility reawakened Phoenix’s headache. The white walls and floors hurt her eyes. She squinted, walking close to the wall.

  The space suits ringed her while they walked, some in front, some behind her. Even if running had been an option, she wouldn’t have gotten far.

  “Here,” the same voice said. “The first door on the right. Please go inside.” br />
  Phoenix wondered if the same paralysis would meet her in the doorway, but it didn’t. The space suits didn’t follow her and Marcus into the intake room. The heavy door closed behind them, and a powerful lock whispered to rest.

  The room was the size of a large classroom, mostly empty except for shiny metal carts lining the rear wall. It looked like a storeroom with a wall of glass on the other end.

  Phoenix was cold, suddenly. The AC was on too high. She felt the thinness of her clothing beneath her light jacket, and her missing socks and loafers. Something whirred loudly above them in the maze of shiny aluminum pipes.

  Someone was watching her.

  On the other side of the glass, a sole black woman sat waiting at a microphone, beneath a crown of light. The glass was semireflective, so Phoenix hadn’t seen her at first. When she walked to the glass, her own anxious, wide-eyed face floated above the stranger’s.

  The woman was wearing a lab coat instead of a plastic suit. No badge identified her. She was a dark-skinned woman, fit and stern.

  Two plain wooden chairs waited on their side of the glass. Only two. Carlos wouldn’t be coming here, Phoenix realized, and sadness sealed her throat. He shouldn’t have blogged about his mother. Carlos had deleted the page right away, but not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough.

  The woman beyond the glass sighed. “It probably won’t help … but I’m a big fan of your music.” She said it as if they could share amusement over the irony.

  “It doesn’t help.” Phoenix barely choked out the words. She wanted to break the glass. She was shaking again, not just her knees. The room seemed colder than when she’d walked in.

  “I was afraid it wouldn’t. I almost didn’t say it. Have a seat, Mrs. Harris.”

  Phoenix didn’t sit. “Where’s my husband?”

  The woman blinked, and her eyes seemed to dim. Maybe she really was a Phoenix fan. “Do you know that your husband broke into a contaminated federal facility in Puerto Rico?”

  Marcus was whimpering, still clinging to her legs. Phoenix decided not to lie to someone who already knew the truth. “He wanted to find out what happened to his mother.”

  “Your husband exposed himself to a very dangerous virus.”

  “He isn’t sick.”

  “There may be an incubation period of up to twenty-one days for some carriers,” she said. “Were you aware of that?”

  It sounded like a lie. Her online research of the killer stomach flu had never mentioned an incubation period longer than a week. A week was bad enough.

  “As I said,” the woman said slowly, with more authority, “would you please take a seat?”

  Phoenix sat, and pulled Marcus onto her lap. His limbs were too large to share the chair with her, but she contorted to make room for him. Marcus would climb back into the womb if he could. For Marcus’s sake, Phoenix fought away tears.

  “I won’t take too long, I hope,” the woman said. “I only need to know what your husband told you, and I have a few other questions.”

  “Why am I really here?”

  A hidden emotion tugged at the woman’s lower lip. “For the sake of safety—yours, and the public at large. I personally apologize for the inconvenience to you and your son.”

  Phoenix leaned closer to the glass and her thin microphone. She hoped her voice was loud on the other side. “You’re sorry you woke me up in the middle of the night and took me, my husband, and child from our home. You’re sorry you won’t tell me where my husband is or let me see him. You’re sorry I was brought here, with my child, against my will.”

  The woman’s face seemed to shimmer in the glass. “Yes. I’m personally sorry.”

  “You don’t sound a damn bit sorry,” Phoenix said. “And no one is going to take my son away from me. Not for a minute.”

  Marcus tightened his arms around her waist, where his head nestled against her stomach.

  “No, ma’am,” the woman behind the glass said. “But we’ll need to draw blood.”

  “Fine, as long as the syringes are empty. Nobody’s pumping anything in my body,” Phoenix said. “The faster the better. My blood is perfect. So is Marcus’s. And so is Carlos’s. This has all been for nothing.”

  “You sound very sure about that,” the woman said.

  “I am.”

  The woman typed rapid strokes on a keyboard that was just out of Phoenix’s sight. “With such a new disease we’re still learning about? How can you be so sure?”

  “Have you heard about my last concert?” Phoenix said.

  The woman blinked. “I’ve heard reports.”

  “We were all there. That’s why I know our blood is fine.”

  The woman lowered her voice, as if to caution her. “Are you telling me that you and your husband injected a banned drug, and also injected your son? And that you believe this drug cleaned out the virus?” She was baiting Phoenix with Glow terminology. Glow users called themselves cleaned out. Phoenix had learned that only since the concert, from her research.

  “You didn’t hear me say that. I never said I had a virus or dropped any Glow.”

  “Then I don’t understand your meaning, Mrs. Harris,” the woman said.

  There were no words to explain the concert, even when words might set her free. Phoenix might talk about Fana and John Jamal Wright one day, but it wouldn’t be here and now.

  “Anyone who was sick before the concert wasn’t sick when it was over. Me included. My son and husband too. And we were never infected with anything, so test us and let us go.”

  The woman looked sad. “I wish the world were that simple.”

  “The world is exactly that simple,” Phoenix said. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  For a few seconds, the woman didn’t speak, her eyes gazing at Phoenix with the same question in most of her fans’ eyes: What did you really see? What happens after we die? One touch from Phoenix could send some fans fainting to the floor. Her stories from Beyond had inspired those kids in Chicago to race ahead, unafraid.

  “Let us go,” Phoenix said, woman to woman. Idol to fan.

  The woman looked away from Phoenix’s eyes with a flash of pain before composing her face. “I’ll need the names of anyone you had contact with at that concert. Anyone who might have been exposed. Or anyone who might be distributing Glow. Any names you remember would be very helpful.”

  Phoenix decided that the woman behind the glass was dressed like a doctor or researcher, but wasn’t. Her job was to get Phoenix to talk. She had been assigned this job because she was efficient, fan or not. Under a flimsy pretense, the government had locked her up to question Phoenix about Glow. Others would be locked up, too. Sarge and Carlos had known all along. This is what this looks like, Phoenix thought.

  “They were just fans,” Phoenix said, trying to sound impatient instead of cornered. “No offense, but I have a lot of fans. I don’t socialize on a gig.”

  “Can I make a suggestion to you?” the woman said, like a friend.

  The room went silent except for the low hum of the air system and Marcus’s whimper.

  The woman went on. “Try to start with some of the easy names, like the people we’ve seen on the internet and TV. The Glow Messengers? Your office contacted them.”

  “They tried to contact me.”

  “I’m sure you can jog your memory with their names. Easy, right? Let’s start there.”

  It was going to be a long day, Phoenix realized. A hard day for her and Marcus. He would be hungry soon, if he wasn’t already. She pressed her hands to Marcus’s cheeks and squeezed softly, smiling at him. His cheeks were still hot, although Phoenix’s molars trembled in the cold room. Marcus didn’t smile back, but he stopped whimpering.

  “What are you afraid of?” Phoenix said, meeting the woman’s eyes.

  The woman blinked, startled.

  It was the last time Phoenix would be sure she had heard her.

  Phoenix refused to eat or drink all day and all night, although she relented t
o let Marcus have a McDonald’s Happy Meal and a bottle of water for a late dinner. How could she refuse food to Marcus? She tried to have faith that they wouldn’t drug a child.

  The smell of the fries in the bag a soldier slipped through a tube in the door assaulted Phoenix when the food arrived. For a moment, she was sorry she hadn’t put in her own order.

  “This is good,” Marcus said, confirming her mistake. “You should eat too, Mom.”

  Phoenix only shook her head and lied about not being hungry. Her stomach growled to contradict her, but Marcus pretended not to notice.

  Had she been foolish not to get food? Fasting seemed silly, in retrospect. She was on United States soil, a United States citizen … and a celebrity! People would notice she was missing, if they hadn’t already. Her cousin Gloria was probably having a fit, since they spoke every other day without fail. Nobody was going to drug her food, she told herself. She would have to eat and drink something the next day. Her first chance.

  Their room was about twice the size of a standard jail cell, although it wasn’t furnished any better. All they had was a bunk bed, a toilet, and a single chair for sitting. Instead of bars, their locked door was made of impossibly thick Plexiglas fitted with a tube and a tray for passing items back and forth. Anyone could peek in at them at any time, and she could see the muddy images of the faceless soldiers ignoring her pounding on the door as they passed. Phoenix wasn’t sure they could hear her through the thick glass.

  Someone had brought Marcus a SpongeBob coloring book and a box of a dozen crayons soon after they’d been locked in the room, and he’d already worn some of the crayons to the nub coloring furiously on the bottom bunk. He was coloring to forget, Phoenix assumed. She wished someone had brought her a keyboard.

  “Dad’s gonna be okay,” Marcus said, staring at his book. “Right?”

  “Yes,” Phoenix said. “Of course he will. This is just a mistake. Sometimes when there are new diseases, the government gets scared. But they’ll let us go soon.”

  They’d had this conversation a dozen times, and Phoenix wasn’t sure either of them believed her anymore. Why hadn’t they been released? Where was Carlos?