The Phoenix Variant: The Fifth Column 3 (4 page)

Nasira drew to a halt along the rocky path. Her lungs screamed to catch up and her legs burned. The path had led her higher into the mountains. High enough that clouds shimmered before her, tempting her to the unknown.

She’d reached the Forest of the Clouds.

After spending a few days in Cusco, a town below the mountains, to acclimatize herself to the altitude, she had started her trek through a less explored region of the Incan empire. And she had still a way to go.

The tops of the rocky mountains were swathed in haze. She’d clocked another thousand meters of elevation today, reaching an uncomfortable 5,000 meters above sea level. And it was starting to show. She had to stop every twenty paces to catch her breath.

She wielded two staffs fashioned from small tree branches along the way, using them to transfer some weight from her knees to her shoulders. Her arms could handle the fatigue but her lungs were really slowing her down. And it was starting to piss her off.

She took the moment to sip from her canteen and watch the clouds drift between the mountains and past a flock of grazing alpacas. They jerked their fluffy, unshorn heads in her direction and hummed. The cloud drifted over them, coating the yellowed grass and low bush.

She wanted to reach the summit before sundown and lay up overnight. She started moving again, able to breathe calmly in through her nose and out her mouth. She used her wooden staffs to help herself across some rocky steps and around a sharp bend. The side of the mountain dropped sharply below and she had to be mindful not to stray too close to the edge.

The last hours of the afternoon slipped behind her as she thought of Sophia. With each passing week Sophia had withdrawn. She still acted like everything was cool and nothing had changed. But everything had. She was struggling and Nasira could see it in her eyes.

With Sophia’s tagging mechanism removed, she could afford to slow down and move as she pleased. But she never did. Even her plans to fight back against the Fifth Column seemed to evaporate. Nasira knew they were still there, but she stopped talking about it. She hadn’t mentioned Denton in a while.

That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was Sophia didn’t speak of anyone. Not Freeman. Not Benito. Not even DC. If he had been in contact with Sophia she certainly hadn’t told anyone. It annoyed Nasira because Sophia had the support of her friends to help her do what had needed to be done. At Desecheo Island. In the Philippines. And in Denver. And then she had just shut down.

Sophia was supposed to be here with her. In the mountains. But she’d used some bullshit excuse of putting people at risk by being here. That she might lead the Fifth Column to a remote location in the mountains and put a village in danger. Even though the tracking mechanism was gone and that wasn’t possible anymore. They both knew it wasn’t the real reason. Sophia just wanted to be left alone.

So Nasira had left her alone.

Nasira reached the summit between the two mountains and fought the urge to collapse where she stood. She wiped sweat from her face. Her lungs struggled to pull enough oxygen and it took a few minutes before she felt normal again. As normal as you could feel up here.

The mountains in the distance were a faded blue. Between them and her, an ocean of cloud. They were beneath her now. Soon the sun would move under the clouds and darkness would coat the summit. Nasira set up camp in a clearing, erecting a hammock and tying her waterproof poncho overhead to keep the rain off. She sprayed the ends of the hammock and the two trees with bug spray before curling up inside and listening to the night.

At this altitude the sound of wildlife was sparse. Most of the nocturnal activity was far below now. She kept her Gerber Mark II fighting knife in the hammock with her. It dug into her side if she kept it in the scabbard so she held it, sheathed.

She wondered what Jay was up to and whether he was thinking of her much, if at all. Where Sophia had slipped, Jay had improved. A large part of his improved day to day function was because he worked with Damien now. The fools were almost brothers. Although Jay still called occasionally and asked about Sophia. But it wasn’t why he called.

Last week Jay had floated the idea of a reunion, just the four of them. Grab some food at the diner, nothing fancy. He was on for a job in New York next week, which was only one state north from where Nasira was supposed to go anyway. Talking Sophia into it would be another thing.

A light rain dusted the surface of her poncho. The sound reminded her of thunderstorms rattling her roof when she was young. She drifted to sleep.

*

The blizzard swept flakes of snow into Nasira’s eyes. She pulled the hood on her waterproof jacket to one side, compensating for the angle of the wind. The snow was hard underfoot, crunching and sliding with each step. At 6,000 meters above sea level, she walked among the mountaintops—peppered with snow like choc chip and vanilla ice cream—drawing closer to her final destination. The cold air made her cheeks sting and her head painfully numb. She checked the touchscreen on her GPS, grateful she could use it with gloves on.

She stopped.

It should be right here, she thought.

But there was nothing. Just snow, mountaintops and more snow. And the blizzard.

She ran her gaze in full circle, returning to find thin gray shapes ahead of her. The blizzard rippled through the air and the gray shapes took sharper form. At first she thought they were pillars, the remains of the Incan fortress rumored to exist in these mountains. But they were irregularly shaped and their tops were bumpy. She realized she was looking at the heads and shoulders of people. Three of them standing before her, hooded and cloaked in dark gray to protect them from the blizzard. They didn’t say a word. They didn’t move.

Nasira reached for her knife. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find her breath. She didn’t know her legs had given way until her face hit the snow. She couldn’t feel the cold anymore.

Darkness.

Then snow again. She was being rolled over. The blizzard was a soft pattern of white and gray. She breathed. Something plastic fogged in front of her. She noticed a small oxygen tank next to her.

White became gray, black.

*

Light danced across the wooden beams in the ceiling. Nasira sat upright and noticed a fireplace burning before her. She felt strange. It took a moment for the details of her surroundings to soak in. She tried to gather the threads of what had happened up to this point but her head ached and the threads fell loose.

‘How are you feeling?’

Nasira looked over at a woman standing in the doorway. She was twice Nasira’s age, with dark chocolate hair and concerned lines drawn around glacial blue eyes.

‘Been better,’ Nasira said.

Nasira’s voice warmed in her chest as she checked her clothes. She had everything on her except her knife and ruck. The woman noticed her concern and pointed to a corner of the room. Her things were there, almost hidden behind other satchels and rucks.

‘Your knife and other belongings are here,’ she said. ‘You are very lucky.’

‘What the hell happened?’ Nasira said.

‘Hypoxia,’ the woman said. ‘Oxygen deprivation.’

She stepped into the room and nudged another ruck with her mountain boots. ‘You’re lucky because I always carry an oxygen tank.’ Her blue eyes focused on Nasira. ‘You wouldn’t have lasted for long.’

Nasira rubbed her eyes. ‘I was feeling fine.’

‘It comes on quick; there’s no warning.’

‘Thanks,’ Nasira said. ‘I owe you one. Uh, you have a name?’

‘Lucia.’

Nasira blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You asked for my name,’ she said. ‘It’s Lucia.’

Nasira nodded slowly. ‘Gotcha.’

Lucia approached Nasira and the bed she had been lying on. Nasira realized she was waiting for her name.

‘I’m Nasira,’ she said.

‘Now tell me, Nasira, why have you come here?’

Nasira stood slowly and found her balance. ‘Where is
here
?’

‘Our village.’

Nasira moved for her ruck, her socks almost slipping on the polished concrete floor. She found her GPS and checked the coordinates. The woman who called herself Lucia watched with growing curiosity.

Nasira confirmed the coordinates of her location. She lowered the GPS and met Lucia’s gaze.

‘I’m here,’ Nasira said.

‘We’ve established that,’ Lucia said. ‘But what do you seek?’

Nasira felt overwhelmed. Just the thought of why she had come, weighed on her.

‘I came … I came to speak with the relatives of a young woman,’ Nasira said. ‘Another Lucia. Lucia Carpio.’

Something twitched behind the woman’s eyes. ‘This Lucia, what are you to tell her relatives?’

Nasira swallowed. ‘Lucia passed away. Last year. She was a friend of mine.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘How did it happen?’

‘She was killed in Belize,’ Nasira said. ‘It was a quick death, painless.’

‘And who was responsible?’

‘The Fifth Column,’ Nasira said. She was about to continue with the story but had to remind herself this woman had no clue who the Fifth Column were. ‘They’re an intelligence agency, sort of. And a shadow government, sort of.’

‘Are they American, like you?’

‘No, and no,’ Nasira said. ‘I’m not American, it’s just my accent. I was born in the UK. I’m African-Caribbean.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I used to work with Lucia. Do you know her relatives? I’ve been trying to find them.’

The fire warmed Lucia’s dusty skin, flickered in her eyes.

‘I am her aunt,’ Lucia said. ‘She was named after me.’

Nasira swallowed. She wasn’t good at this kind of thing. ‘I’m sorry.’

Lucia sat on the end of the bed. ‘What sort of work?’

Nasira walked to the fire. Embers crackled over chopped logs. ‘This man called Denton,’ she said. ‘He enlisted hundreds of kids into this project. Their parents thought they were enrolled in some cool scholarship.’

Lucia’s mouth parted. ‘You were one of them.’

Nasira let the question sink in. She finally nodded.

‘My niece—’

‘All of us,’ Nasira said. ‘Brainwashed.’

‘That is quite a story.’

‘It’s not an easy one to tell,’ Nasira said.

‘It’s not an easy one to hear,’ Lucia said.

There was silence for a moment. Then Lucia went on: ‘And you came all this way to tell us what we, in all honesty, already suspected. That she was dead.’

‘I wanted to tell you how,’ Nasira said. ‘Sophia warned me off, said you shouldn’t know all this—’

‘Sophia is your friend?’

‘Yes,’ Nasira said. ‘We had an argument before I left. I wanted her to come but she didn’t—she thought this would make it worse.’

‘Do you think it made it worse?’

Nasira shook her head. ‘Hell no. That’s why I’m here, ain’t I?’ She paused. ‘Has it … made it worse?’

Lucia seemed to stare through her. She took a long time to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She used to roll through the snow, laughing.’

Nasira watched tears wet Lucia’s face. She was smiling.

‘It was only yesterday. But it was so long ago. Sometimes I have to remind myself that she was a real little girl and that she lived here. I miss her. Was she happy?’

The question caught Nasira off guard.

‘When … when we were deprogrammed, we were free,’ Nasira said. ‘We were happy then.’

‘This must be hard for you,’ Lucia said.

‘Hard for Sophia,’ Nasira said. ‘We all looked up to her.’ She looked
 down at the GPS unit in her hand. ‘I should probably be going.’

That seemed to surprise Lucia. ‘Where?’

‘Back to my friends, to Sophia,’ Nasira said. She started for her ruck and paused. ‘Thank you for saving me.’

She shoved her shoes on, tied the laces and plucked the jacket from her ruck.

‘There is a snowstorm outside and it’s past sundown,’ Lucia said. ‘Very bad time to leave.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Nasira said, tightening the ruck over her shoulders.

She zipped her jacket and found her own way to the front door of the cabin. She took a deep breath and opened the door, stepped through into a blast of snow and wind. She knew it would be harsh, but she braved it and punched through, pulling the hood over her head.

Something burned through the sky. For a moment the entire village was illuminated. At first she thought it was a flare, but then she realized it was something much larger.

The ball of fire plunged through the sky. It seemed to shimmer through the blizzard, passing right over her head. A fiery meteor. She watched it burn silently through the storm and disappear from view. The night was dark again.

Something crackled Nasira’s ears. She thought it might’ve been the meteor’s impact, but it seemed to come from around her, not a great distance. It overwhelmed her. Her balance was gone. She couldn’t stay upright. She dropped to her knees, hands over her ears. Everything was spinning. Ringing. Buzzing. She screamed into the night. It was soundless in the blizzard.

*

Nasira sat on one side of the bed. She held her hands in front of her, watching them shake. She tried to steady them but it was no use. How could her body go crazy like this? She had things to do. She didn’t have time for this.

Lucia entered the room from wherever in the cabin she had been.

‘You should rest,’ Lucia said.

Nasira let her hands drop to her knees.

Lucia handed her a mug of tea. Steam wafted from it so Nasira didn’t try to sip just yet. The smell of mint filled her nostrils.

‘Coca tea?’ Nasira said.

‘Muña tea,’ Lucia said. ‘My ancestors have used it for thousands of years. For stomach trouble, digestion, energy, circulation. It helps with the altitude.’

Nasira nodded. ‘I could’ve used that before I passed out.’

The only sounds now were the fire crackling and the blizzard whistling outside.

‘The fire should last the night,’ Lucia said. ‘If you need anything I’ll be just down the hall.’

Nasira flexed her hand. It was still shaking a little. ‘Thanks.’

Lucia nodded and left.