Phoenix Island (42 page)

Carl unloaded a blasting one-two-one-two flow of lefts and rights, turning his shoulder with every shot and cranking the combo with all the blinding speed available to him now. This was it, his only chance; he had to finish Stark here, or the man would grab him and crush him and finish him. His fists slammed into Stark’s head,
smash-smash-smash
, so fast that even in this slo-mo world, his hands were a blur,
smack-smack-smack
, the punches not just fast but
hard
, explosive with this new speed—and into his mind flashed one of boxing’s oldest maxims:
speed is
power
—and he was aware of his knuckles breaking, the flesh splitting,
bang-bang-bang
, his wrists fracturing,
smash-smash-smash
, but he didn’t hesitate, didn’t hold back, didn’t stop.

He watched Stark’s head jerk, watched the ear twist and tear, saw blood there and then the big head coming around, turning into the blows, toward Carl, the engine of an onrushing train that wanted to flatten him.

Carl had been waiting for this moment. His whole body—every nerve, bone, and muscle—moved in perfect harmony, and as he looped his right fist in a wide overhand arc, he bent his left leg and folded his body forward over it, throwing every ounce of weight and every iota of force into the looping overhand right that orbited Stark’s guard and smashed down like a sledgehammer into the opposite side of Stark’s head. Carl felt the jaw shatter, and he blew through the punch, clipping its arc slightly inward so that Stark’s head twisted with the force of it, then snapped back in the opposite direction.

Dazed, Stark stumbled away with his back turned.

This was it.

Carl surged forward, his whole body moving again in perfect precision. The ball of his foot twisted, his knee turned inward, his hip came around, his upper torso following after, and his right hand shot out, straight as a laser, bringing the shoulder with it, and he nailed Stark harder than he’d ever punched anyone or anything before, blasting him right where the thick muscle of his neck tapered to a thin veneer at the base of his skull. To Carl, it felt like his hand exploded. There was a sharp crack and a hollow
thock
sound, like a baseball bat smacking a watermelon, and the force of the impact jolted up his arm and into him like a jolt of electrical current, as if Stark’s strength and willpower and consciousness had raced out of him and into Carl, where, as Stark collapsed to the sand, it exploded, and Carl arched his back, raised his bloody fists, and roared in triumph.

C
ARL FREEMAN IS THE VICTOR!”
Cheng announced, standing over Stark’s motionless body.

The silence that had followed Carl’s knockout punch held a second longer—then broke all at once, the spectators clamoring in disjointed response to this thing they never could have imagined happening. Confused shouting, incredulous laughter, and then someone hooah-ed, and sporadic cheering sounded on all sides.

Something hard pressed into the back of his skull, and Agbeko’s voice said, “Do not move.”

The crowd fell silent. Some looked shocked, others sad, but most simply adjusted, their eyes as dark and hollow as the gun muzzles they now raised in his direction. A second later, more barrels rose, pointing at him from all sides. Of course, if they actually fired, they wouldn’t slaughter just Carl. A circle of machine guns firing simultaneously? They would all die. But what did that matter to them? When someone—Stark or Agbeko or whoever—told them to pull a trigger, they pulled it.

“We don’t have to do this,” Carl said. “He’s down. We can change everything now. Leave this place and head back to the world.”

“To us, brother,” Agbeko said, “this place
is
the world.”

And in that moment, feeling the gun barrel press into his skull, Carl knew Agbeko was right. For many, perhaps even most, of these orphans, the world was gone, burned to ash with their childhoods, leaving only this awful place. You couldn’t change that with a pep talk.

“Lower your weapons!” a broken but still-powerful voice said.

Stark staggered to his feet. Cheng tried to help, but he batted her away, reeling as his eyes locked onto Carl. His jaw was crooked, already ballooning, and he wore a beard of blood and sand. He plunged a hand into his pocket.

Carl tensed, watching in slow motion as Stark withdrew his hand, watched and waited and knew this wasn’t over, knew what Stark would pull out of his pocket. A knife, of course . . .

“To the victor go the spoils,” Stark said, his damaged jaw making his voice strange. His arm flashed out, throwing the knife at Carl—only in that dreamlike moment, Carl saw it wasn’t a knife, not a knife at all, but a shining gold disk wobbling through the air, trailing a bit of ribbon.

Carl snatched it from the air and opened his hand to see his only memento of success, the boxing medal Parker had stolen so, so long ago. Even now, battered and bleeding, he couldn’t help but smile.

“I am a man of my word,” Stark said. “Hempfield, Jackson . . . prepare a boat. Carl, you defeated me. You are free to leave.”

Free to leave.

Carl looked past him, past the shocked spectators, past the rigid figure staring blankly from the wheelchair, past the island to the ocean, which stretched away toward . . . what? So much, so much. Mexico first, then north to the States and further north, home to Philly, where he could go back to the gym. No calling ahead—no way—he would show up unannounced, see if he could surprise a smile out of old stone-faced Arthur James. Then they would train together, and with Carl’s new speed, power, and endurance, no one could stop him from fulfilling his lifelong dream: winning the professional championship of the world. . . .

“Tempting,” Carl said, “but I’m not going anywhere.”

L
ATER, THEY STOOD SIDE BY
side at the water’s edge, Stark’s arm draped like a heavy yoke across Carl’s shoulders, and watched the departing boat fade into the distance.

“The price of progress,” Stark said.

Carl nodded. About that, Stark had been right all along.

The price of progress did run high at times, so high, in fact, that sometimes you had to burn the whole world . . . not to conquer its kingdoms but to keep a promise, not to rise from the ashes but to lift someone else from the flames.

The conditions of the duel had been clear. One-on-one combat with, as Stark had stressed, the freedom of one person up for grabs. One person’s freedom, not necessarily Carl’s.

It hurt, watching the boat disappear, and he knew that this wound, like the loss of his parents and the death of Ross and the unspeakable thing that had happened to Campbell, would never heal and never stop hurting.

Yet he’d made the right choice.

Octavia would be safe. Stark had guaranteed it—and despite the casual apathy with which he destroyed lives, Stark was a man of his word. Phoenix Forcers would escort her to the mainland and check her into a hospital, where she would receive, no matter the price tag, whatever treatment she required. Nobody would believe her if she tried to speak of Phoenix Island; Stark likely knew this and therefore didn’t fear her release.
Once she healed, she would start a new life, free and safe . . . so long as Carl lived up to his end of the bargain.

Carl would stay on Phoenix Island, his own freedom exacted as the price of her salvation.

“I hope you can forgive me,” Carl said as convincingly as possible. “I was only fighting for her.”

“That’s behind us now,” Stark said, “and you are forgiven. Time, at last, to embrace your destiny.”

“True,” Carl said, and he was going to fulfill his destiny. For now, that meant this place and training with Stark so he could unlock the chip’s powers. But after that . . .

He remembered sitting in the courtroom, what seemed a thousand centuries ago, staring at his scarred knuckles and thinking how they read like a twisted road map of the great lengths he had traveled to arrive there. Now the map had changed again, new lacerations splitting old scars, new fault lines obscuring old roads. With time, these wounds, too, would heal, forming scars upon scars, roads upon roads, delivering Carl . . . where?

There will come a day, son
, the judge had told him,
when you will need to determine exactly who it is you intend to be
.

Carl knew now. He was a fighter. Simple as that. Not a throwaway kid, not a cop-in-the-making . . . a fighter.

For the world made its demands of you, whether you set forth to destroy that which you hated or to preserve that which you loved. Life was a constant struggle, an endless fight, and anything else was merely a breather between rounds. Any day now, a great bell would toll, and he’d be drawn once more into combat.

Until then, he would play the part of the willing apprentice, but as soon as he discovered a way . . .

He was going to destroy Stark and his entire organization.

That
was his destiny.

Yes,
he thought, and the old ache returned to his knuckles. As an experiment, he called out to the chip with his mind and tried to dim away the throbbing. The pain of his new injuries faded at once, but the old
ache remained, pulsing away in his fists like a heartbeat . . . the heartbeat of his rage, his purpose, his destiny.
Good,
he thought.
Good
 . . .

On the horizon, the boat grew indistinct, faded, vanished.

“Shall we begin?” Stark said.

“Yeah,” Carl said, but he lingered for one last look at the empty space where the boat had passed out of sight and out of his life.

Good-bye, Octavia
.

Along that far horizon, black spots appeared in the sky, like so many crows flying this way. But no—not crows, he realized, hearing a faint
whup-whup-whup
reverberating across the water like distant gunfire. Helicopters, likely loaded with returning Phoenix Forcers, led perhaps by Baca, the high-speed psychopath from the Zurkistan video. Whoever they were, let them come. He would greet them with simmering contempt befitting the heir to the throne.

A glance at Stark told him the big man hadn’t yet noticed the approaching aircrafts.

Interesting.

Had the chip improved Carl’s vision and hearing, too? He hoped so, for any advantage the chip gave him, no matter how small or seemingly innocuous, he would carry off into the darkness of his private world, where, with the deadly patience of a prisoner honing a blade in the night, he would sharpen this gift to a killing edge.

“Lead the way,” Carl said, turning his back to the vanished boat, the approaching helicopters, and the world. “I’m ready.”

L
OOKING BACK ON THE UNLIKELY
chain of events that led to the writing and publication of this book, I am both humbled and awed by the amazing people who made it all possible. I owe thanks to many people—so many, in fact, that I am doomed to acknowledge only a portion of them here. . . .

First of all, thanks to my family and friends, living and deceased, for your love and support. Mom and Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t write this book in time for you to have read it.

Thanks to editor extraordinaire Adam Wilson for taking a chance on
Phoenix Island
and for making it a much stronger book, and to everyone at Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books for your hard work. Thanks to Stephanie DeLuca in PR, Liz Psaltis in marketing, John Vairo for creating
Phoenix Island
’s knockout cover, and eagle-eyed copy editor Erica Ferguson, who saved me dozens of times from looking like a complete fool.

Thanks to my excellent agent, Christina Hogrebe; the indefatigable Christina Prestia; and all of the fantastic people at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. You adopted an unknown author and made his dreams come true.

Thanks to my incredible film agent, Joe Veltre, who read this book in a night and then changed everything by shopping it on the West Coast.

Thanks to the coolest guy in the world, Tripp Vinson, whose enthusiasm, vision, and advocacy changed my life and the life of this book, and thanks to everyone who has helped in the insanely complex and collaborative
book-to-series creation of
Intelligence
, including the formidable Christine Cuddy, who stepped in when I needed a hand.