I didn’t know what to think.
“If we’re seeking truth,” Phoenix went on, “perhaps we ought to look no further than the terminology itself. ‘Carcinogen’ is the absolute vaguest term the government could’ve provided. By definition, a carcinogen is any agent involved in causing cancer, which—when you think about it—is quite literally anything. Doesn’t living cause cancer? Each day you’re alive and healthy increases your risk of procuring cancer. But it’s not the cancer that kills children—it’s the Carcinogens. Are they viruses, bacteria—what are they, Kai Bradbury? Those are the sorts of questions the Feds don’t want you asking. Because then, you’d realize they don’t really exist… that there is no such thing as the Carcinogens.”
More bombs dropped, and the fort shook. Mila ran from the kitchen to get the others.
“It’s an illusion, Kai. Everything you know, everything you think you know, everything they’ve ever taught you, is an illusion. Because wouldn’t it be inconvenient if people lived past fifty? If they had time? Time to question things. Time to think about things. Time to think about the man behind the curtain.
“Because isn’t it convenient that every single person born with blue eyes had a genetic weakness to the Carcinogens? That the gene which made a person more resistant to the Carcinogens—allowed a person to survive instant death after exposure—happened to be on the same chromosome as the one for eye color? That, with Indigo, the government could pick out from a distance who had been vaccinated and who hadn’t? Doesn’t that seem convenient, Kai?”
More bombs. More explosions.
A bomb landed a little too close, and Phoenix pulled me into the other room as a kitchen wall was blown apart. “There was no natural selection—there was a deliberate genocide. And there’s another one happening today. Happening right at this very moment. Only this time, it’s different. It’s not a single group of people they’re after. No, that would be simple. They’ve already done that. They’ve already won that war. Every person who was ever born with blue eyes is dead. They killed them to make the ‘Carcinogens’ look convincing.
“No, now they’re after something bigger. They’re trying to eliminate something greater: the truth. They’re driving the truth to extinction.”
Mila appeared behind us and grabbed Phoenix’s hand. “We’ve gotta go, Phoenix. We’ve gotta get out of here—New Texas is toast.”
“Where are the others?”
“Bertha and Dove are getting ammunition. I can’t find Kindred and Sparky…” She was silent. “I—I think they’re gone.”
“Gone?” Phoenix choked.
Mila glanced at the ground. “We—we lost the left wing.”
“And you checked the control room?”
“Empty.”
Phoenix shook his head. “They’ve got be here somewhere. They have to be.”
Mila chewed her lip. “I don’t know how they found us. How the hell they found us in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
Phoenix stared at me: he knew. He always knew everything. I bet he wished he’d already killed me. I sort of wished he had, too.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, still staring at me. He turned to Mila. “Go help Bertha with the guns.”
“But—”
“We’ll find Sparky and Kindred, Meels. I promise you.”
It was all coming to me in flashes now. The pages of the Indigo Report, the books in Neevlor’s library, the Chairman’s comments about a perfect system and an ordered world. The confused look Kindred gave Phoenix that first day, when he asked her to get me Indigo pills. There was no such thing. They’d probably given me sugar pills. And there was a reason he’d never had Mila or Bertha vaccinated, even though they had the supplies. He wasn’t killing them—he was saving their lives.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
In the midst of dropping bombs and explosions, Phoenix laughed. “Would you have believed me? You hardly trusted me when it came to a paper clip.”
He had a point, but I still shrugged. “You could’ve tried.”
“We tried with Bugsy.”
“But it didn’t work.” I remembered his conversation with Vern. “So you killed him.”
“We didn’t kill him! I can’t believe you’d even suggest that. I don’t know who you think we are, but we’d never kill one of our own. We did things differently with Bugsy than with you. We told him the truth about our world—the truth about Indigo and the Carcinogens—too soon. He became unstable. Started screwing things up on missions. Forgetting where he was in the middle of raids… To be honest, I don’t think he died by accident during the Pacific Northwestern Tube’s accident. I think he… killed himself.”
“He wasn’t ready for the truth,” I said slowly.
“It devoured him whole.” Phoenix’s eyes got watery. “I don’t think he could admit Indigo’s reality to himself. He wasn’t ready to look away from the light and see the darkness that was around us all along. It was easier to keep pretending things were all right. The truth—it broke something inside him.”
The fort was burning. Chunks from the ceiling rained down around us. Phoenix knocked me to the ground to get me out of the way.
“Why did you tell Vern you’d kill me?”
Phoenix stared at where the ceiling patch had fallen. “You heard that? I thought someone was there… You were in the contact closet, weren’t you?”
“Contact closet?”
“Blue things, they look like eyes. Contact lenses. All along the shelves. The closet door was cracked open, but I thought I saw it shut quickly when Vern and I entered the hall.” I nodded, but still wondered what exactly a contact lens was.
“The Caravites wear contacts instead of getting vaccinated,” he explained. “It used to be that when the Feds caught an unvaccinated adult, they could see immediately that he was a Caravite, which assured they received a slow, tortured death. So the Caravites started wearing blue contact lenses to avoid that outcome. As long as a person has the blue eyes, the Feds don’t know the difference, and they receive a quick death. Bullet to the head, best-case scenario. The Federation doesn’t have room for ‘vaccinated’ criminals. But brown eyes in an adult—that’s a sure sign of terrorism. And terrorists are tortured for a long, long time when caught.”
Bertha barreled into the room, cuddling a shotgun in one arm and a rocket launcher in the other like babies. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Are you two just gonna sit here and braid each other’s hair over brunch? Or do you wanna—I don’t know—help us fight and LIVE?”
Phoenix smiled. “Brunch sounds lovely, thanks.” Bertha nudged him with the butt of the shotgun. He pointed to the door. “Go ahead, Bertha. A merry welcoming party awaits you.” He ran a finger over the shotgun’s barrel. “Sawed off the end, did you? A woman after my own heart.”
She grinned and ran out the door. I watched her fire into the sky. A helicopter plummeted into the ocean. She fired again at the burning rubble that floated on the water. Phoenix looked on like a proud parent. My heart still pounded in my chest.
A projectile struck Bertha from behind and she fell. I pulled Phoenix’s arm. “They shot her! We have to get out there before they kill her!”
He crossed his arms. “Doubtful. They’re almost certainly firing at us with Dummy Darts. We can’t stand on trial if we’re dead, and they’d like to make this whole affair look remotely democratic.” He paused. “How many of us does he think he’s getting?” he said quietly.
He knew I’d talked to the chancellor—that I was the one who’d given him the coordinates.
“Four,” I said, wiping the sweat from my forehead.