CHAPTER 2

Beacon

Alive!

Still alive.

Alive again.

I lay in a heap of rubbish in a jungle, and people were looking at me. What must they have seen? I did not move. It was night and the air was warm. I could feel it. The breeze blew and, despite my situation, I closed my eyes and let it wash over my face. It felt like silk. It smelled of sweet blooming flowers, stems and leaves, at first. Then there was an after-smell of dust and crushed rubble, disintegrated marble. Then it stank of raw gas, smoky rubbing alcohol, it smelled like suicide—this must have been the refuse of vehicles in the streets. This was the smell of car and truck exhaust.

I’d smelled this only once in my life. The smell had been mixed with the stench of dead bodies as I stared through a porthole in time. I pushed the memory of the Holocaust away and inhaled the air of the outside world. I was free of Tower 7. I was like the soft sweet flesh that falls out of the cracked hard shell of a walnut.

“We’ll be quick,” a young man in black pants and a black jacket told an anxious-looking group of about ten people. “They don’t like anyone lingering here. So for this leg of the tour, no digi-cams with flashes or cam-lights. Use night-vision or don’t take any photos at all.” His back was to me, and I could clearly see that on his jacket, it said, “Haunted City Tours.”

His audience members held all kinds of devices that could capture photos. The camera eyes on their devices reflected the dim streetlights and the lights of distant passing vehicles. Eyes, I thought. Big eyes. I wanted to get up, then. I had no idea how long I’d been there.

“Seven Days!” the young man said, with wide eyes and a big grin. “It’s only been seven days since LifeGen’s Tower 7 crumbled and this strange jungle sprung up in its place. And as you can see, not one dump truck, not one construction worker, not even a lawnmower is here to clear this mess. It’s incredible. Some people say that there is a dangerous alien ship buried in there that the government is terrified of disturbing. Others say that a live nuclear warhead is beneath the jungle and if it is moved, it will blow. Others say that those in the building were called The Big Eye, secret government workers owned and led by the Illuminati. All sorts of conspiracy theories are floating around.

“The neighboring buildings have been evacuated but the mayor has still not sent a soul to dig up survivors or bodies. Of all the haunted places in the city where I can take you, this one is the most haunted.” He chuckled knowingly. “Well, for now. Who knows what else the Rotten Apple has up its sleeve. Be proud to be only the third tourist group we’ve brought here. You’re likely the last. The city can’t possibly leave things this way much longer.” He looked around and then said, “And be glad to be the second group that has managed to sneak here without being quickly detected.”

All the people started whispering excitedly as they held their hand devices. I assumed the things stole light somehow to make photos or recordings. Again, I wondered what they were seeing. No one pointed at me and screamed that there was a woman lying in the rubble.

“People used to come from all around the world to see the building with the giant tree growing through its center called The Backbone.” He cocked his head and winked. “Now, you don’t have to go inside Tower 7 to see its magnificence. The Backbone is all that stands. Look up. You can’t see its top. Since the Tower fell, scientists say that the tree has grown another five hundred feet. Even before the tower fell, it was said that it grew at night and sometimes you could hear it groaning as it grew. Its noise would shake all of New York City like a minor earthquake. I have heard this noise a few times, myself. It is not a myth. It sounds like a giant monster.”

“What will they do with this place?!” an old man suddenly asked. He was the only one not holding out a device. He had an accent that was strange to me. It was not African, Arab or American. “They can’t just leave it like this! It’s a great big rubbish heap in the middle of the goddamn city! How is this even logical?”

The tour guide turned toward me and looked over the area. He was smirking mysteriously, as if the old man was adding to the guide’s obvious act. He turned back to his captivated audience and said, “That’s the mystery, sir.”

The tour guide stood back as the others took more photos and stared blankly at me and the heap that used to be Tower 7. Then the tour guide said, “Shall we move on?”

Looking relieved, everyone nodded or said “Yes,” or “Please.” The old man was all frowns. There were no children in the group. I’d have loved to see children. I’d never seen them in real life.

 • • • 

I was alone now and I was glad. Every part of my body was shrieking. With life. Fresh fresh life. I was alive. I was awake. I was intact. I could move. My temples throbbed a different kind of pain. It felt like pieces of glass grinding in my head, and my vision went blurry for a moment.

I curled my body and some of the rubble that had buried me fell away. Chunks of white marble, chips of concrete, broken beams of steel, shattered glass. It was all heavy, but it did not crush me. I pushed it off. I tore off vines that had grown over me. There was no one around to hear the tinkle, crunch, and scrape of debris tumbling, sliding off my body. I got up. My vision blurred again and I stumbled. My balance felt off. Like the world around me was tilted to one side. I took a step and crushed more glass and some tiny white flowers with my tough feet. I took another and my heel ground into a piece of piping making me stumble again. Then it seemed everything settled—my vision, the way I related to the world around me. Ok, I thought.

I stood tall, stretching my arms, back, and legs. I felt a little odd. Like I was me, but who was me? I looked at myself. I was naked and covered in dust; I must have looked like a ghost. But I was alive. After I’d died. I vividly remembered dying. My name is Phoenix, I thought. I don’t know who named me, but I am named well. I stood up straighter.

I licked my wrist. Then I smiled. My skin was still brown as the ripe shell of coconut. I was me. Tall. Lean. Full breasts. Strong legs. Long feet. Did I still have the dark brown spot on my left eyeball? The birthmark on my thigh? Did I still have the scar on my belly from when they’d taken a hipbone sample? The burn mark under the nail of my left thumb?

I frantically started swiping the dust from my skin. I swiped and swiped. My arms. Legs. Belly. Backside. Chest. There was so much dust that a cloud rose up around me. Then I stood still. The warm breeze caressing my body and blowing away the dust.

The birthmark on my thigh was there. The burn mark under my thumb was gone. I laughed as I looked up. The night sky was indigo with a hint of red; the way the night sky had always looked to me. Except now I was seeing it with my naked eye, through no window. I had never been outdoors until now. I had never seen the stars, either. I would. I would get out of the city. Away from its light pollution.

“Ok,” I whispered. My voice was the same, too. I was working up to answering a most troubling question. If I was still me, was I still me? I stilled myself, shut my eyes and took a deep breath. Immediately, I could see it. Right through my eyelids. The soft yellow green glow that emanated from my skin. Beacon, I thought. I am a beacon.

When I attempted to escape from Tower 7, they had surrounded and riddled me with bullets as I burned to ash. My powerful light woke the plants, especially The Backbone. Then The Backbone had brought it all down, killing almost everyone and every freakish thing inside. Now I’d woken up in the ruins. I was reborn. I still glowed. I was still a phoenix. I let out a breath, a tear rolling down my cheek. It wasn’t over. Silly of me to think it was.

When I opened my eyes, they fell on something white and blowing in the strong breeze a few yards away. A dress hanging on a piece of piping sticking out of a jumble of thick green shoots. Only two people would have cared enough to leave it for me. Only two people really understood what I was. There was Saeed. How I loved Saeed. But Saeed was dead. And Mmuo, who’d also been a prisoner in Tower 7 and managed to escape when it all came down. Mmuo who could walk through walls. Mmuo who had opened the door for me. He’d most likely left the dress.

I walked over to it. With each step, I felt more like myself. It was cotton, stained a little from the dust, but long. It would fit perfectly. I liked long dresses, but I hoped the cotton wouldn’t burn. As I put the dress on, it felt odd on my back. I frowned. My back felt odd, now that I thought of it. Achy, as if I’d been injured there. But yet, when I touched my shoulder blade, I didn’t feel the touch as much as I should have. I smoothed out the dress on my body and then touched my back again. There was a swelling there or a sort of hump.

I bent forward without a problem. Only the aching. A flare of heat flew through my body. Then I was cool again. “Wish I had a mirror,” I whispered.

There was a deep groaning, and I froze. Then it came again. From behind me. I turned around. The sight took my breath away. You could not see the end of it. Surrounded by smaller trees and bushes, its great trunk was the diameter of two cars. Its rough rich brown bark was now covered with large sharp thorns. No human in his or her right mind would attempt to climb it even if the tree were at rest. Which it was not. You could sense it even from yards away. If it wanted to, it could call its roots together, pull them out of the ground and walk away. Maybe it eventually would. Stranger things certainly had happened in the last seven days.

Its leaves were broad and oval shaped and you could see them happily waving with the wind, high high high into the sky. Until you could see no more. The leaves of The Backbone were slightly luminescent, just like me. And it had bloomed large fiery red flowers that grew high up. What happened at its very top? One would need a helicopter to find out.

The groaning came again and all the sounds of the city—vehicles driving on roads, the breeze moving around the skyscrapers, the creak of crickets, the sound of people talking—it all stopped. There was only dead silence. The building across the street was dark and deserted but on the second floor, if I squinted hard, I could see a pigeon was frozen in midflight.

“Wha- ?” I startled myself. My voice felt as if it were coming from within and outside of me at the same time. “What is this?”

The grassy ground beneath my feet vibrated and then domed the slightest bit. I stumbled forward and the ground here also domed, and I was forced forward again. The Backbone wanted me close. And it must have had a hell of a secret to tell me because it had stopped time so that it could do so. At least this was my theory. Amongst the thousands of books I had read in Tower 7, one included an African myth, or was it Arab, that spoke of a tree so old that it had learned to stop time. Hadn’t that tree been covered with spikes, too? My memory said it had. When I was mere feet from its lethal looking trunk, the bare ground before me began to churn.

If it weren’t for the forceful sagacious presence of the tree, I’d have run. I touched the hump on my back and rubbed at it. It felt so achy. The ground before the tree was rich red soil, different from the rest, which was brown. Had the Big Eye done exactly that? Brought in special soil for it from somewhere after they’d soaked it in the special growth formula? The history of its official planting in the base of Tower 7, the exact nature of the experimental solution poured over it and subsequent care were all kept top secret. It was even omitted from the classified books and files they let me read about the history of Tower 7.

“What is that?” I whispered as something began to push up beneath the churning soil. A tan powerful thin root whipped through. Then another, then another. Then a larger root must have pushed it from below, for the wooden box rose from the soil like a gift presented by a God, held up by a kneeling slave. It rose slowly, carefully, dare I say dramatically.

It was for me. I’ve never questioned that.

I picked it up and the tree groaned softly. Then I tensed, all my new flesh, muscles and sinews, tightening for the first time. My body flashed a brilliant green. I was blinded for a moment, though I kept my eyes open. It wasn’t hot, however, for my dress remained intact. I felt more gather in my chest. Then it burst from me, violently rustling The Backbone’s leaves and the twigs, leaf stems, vines, and flowers of all those plants that grew around the great tree. The Backbone shivered.

The flap of pigeon wings behind me. I turned around and watched the pigeon finish flying to the next building. The sound of vehicles moving, vomiting plumes of exhaust. The sound of far off voices. The movement of the breeze around the concrete jungle.

Then a different kind of rumbling began. There was enough light from the street and the buildings around the area to show me exactly what was happening. It was the building across the deserted street. Where the pigeon had landed. The building was called the Axis Building because according to satellite maps, it sat in the exact center of the city. The rumbling became a great roar and the concrete building started to collapse on itself. Crush, crash, beams buckled, buttresses splintered. The destruction plumed out dust, papers, and rubble. I stared in awe. I had been looking down at this building all my life. It stood right outside my window. It was one of the buildings the city designated to house a lush roof garden full of potted trees, bushes and flowers.

I’d looked down on the false jungle and dreamed and hoped and never touched, smelled, stood within. I loved the sight of it from afar, but now I realized an unconscious part of me loathed its existence. It had been unattainable. It was not part of my world. Over eight days ago, this never would have been so clear to me, but now I was outside. Now it was. As the building collapsed, I felt joy. Most likely, there was not a soul inside it. The building would have been evacuated days ago. They had to have known it was unstable. But I loved the fact that it was I who gave it the push that finally brought it down.

Good.

The box, I held. There was no lock or latch. The wood was not heavy but it was solid. And a rich brown like the tree’s trunk. Its edges were worn smooth. Do I open it? There was definitely something heavy inside. When I moved it this way and that, whatever was in it slid heavily this way and that. It was one thing.

I had been created in Tower 7 two years ago from the DNA of an African woman possibly born in Phoenix, Arizona. Or maybe what I was was the origin of my name. Standing out there watching the building fall, I took the idea further. Maybe my DNA was brought directly from Africa and had nothing to do with Arizona. I frowned as what I had been seeing all my life clicked into clearer focus. So many of those created, manipulated, enhanced, deformed, crippled people with me in Tower 7 were from parts of Africa. I’d known this by looking at people but now I wondered, Why?

I sighed, looking at my feet. “Fully unraveling my origins is a lost cause,” I muttered.

But one thing I had learned was that, despite my origins and the sinister reasons for creating me, my light brought life. Though I burned, I was a positive force. It had been my light that had brought this jungle that grew in the debris. It was my light that had given The Backbone the strength to shake Tower 7 from its great body.

And now The Backbone was offering me a strange gift. I opened the box.

 • • • 

My hands went numb. My eyes watered. The scent of leaves packed my nose. The taste of mud flooded my mouth and my entire body began to glow. The grass pushed up beneath my feet, and tiny flowers blossomed from the blade tips. The Backbone softly twisted, shedding bits of bark as it stretched further toward the stars. I heard it snapping and creaking, but I was looking at the object in the box.

“It’s a nut,” I whispered.

Round and about the shape and size of a garden egg, it looked made of a tougher heavier wood than that of the box and the tree. Etched deep into it were mazes of lines that made circles, squiggles and geometric shapes. The black lines ran and repeated close to each other but they never touched. The designs moved in a slow dance, undulated like bizarre insects.

Heat. It coursed through me like water, rushing up from my feet, up my entire body to my head. The heat again. Seven days ago, I had heated until I burned to ash. Now here I was again. However, my clothes still did not burn. I shined brighter through my brown skin and reached into the box and picked up the strange nut.

 • • • 

Blackness.

Pure. Quiet. Then pricks of tiny white, blue, and yellow lights. I was seeing stars for the first time. Billions and billions of stars. As I flew through space smooth and gentle. In a vastness that made me want to weep. But I had no eyes with which to shed tears. No body with which to shudder. No nose with which to leak.

I was traveling. I would know where to land when I saw it. My direction was clear. The pull was strong. The small blue planet. Earth. I was hope sent from afar. A beacon. Deep in the red soil. Until the right time.

 • • • 

“They dug you up?” I said aloud, as I stared down at the nut. “They dug you up with the red soil and brought you here.” That is why The Backbone knows itself, I thought. Alien seed. Alien seed in the soil of Tower 7 where scientists, lab assistants, lab technicians, doctors, administrative workers, guards and police and the mutations, monsters and mistakes they made dwelled. I laughed hard.

The world went white. I nearly dropped the box as I shielded my face. The light was harsh to my unaccustomed eyes. My heart sank as I understood I had been so focused on the nut that I hadn’t noticed the chopping sound.

“Do not run,” a voice blared. “Stay where you are!”

The helicopter’s searchlight nearly blinded me. I had seen them many times while I was growing up in Tower 7, where the windows were thick glass. Their chopping noise was always muted. I’d never imagined they were so loud, their blades chopping the air like a cleaver on a chopping block. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that on the side of the helicopter was the logo I’d been seeing in Tower 7 all my short life: A hand grasping spears of lightning. Those of us in Tower 7 had always called the organization represented by that logo the Big Eye (the lightning represented speciMen). We never used the Big Eye’s official name.

They probably thought that I had purposely brought down the Axis building. In a way I had. But shouldn’t they also have been expecting me? They made me. I was their weapon. To be used for nuclear warfare or biological warfare, I did not know. But I hadn’t matured in the way they had wanted or expected. I was a failed project, a rogue prisoner. Still, they had to know that I would show up again. Maybe that is why they had not begun to clear the incredible amount of debris. Maybe. Maybe not.

I shut the box, tucked it under my arm and took off. If they knew nothing else, they’d know not to shoot.

 • • • 

My lean legs were strong. My back flexed. Every muscle in my body was working in perfect harmony. I was made to run. I was like the finest horse. First and foremost, they’d been trying to create a human weapon. A human bomb that self-regenerated to blow up another day. One who could run fast was a plus. I’d only gotten to run on a treadmill, during my time in Tower 7. Now I got to sprint out in the open. It was absolute joy, even with the Big Eye pursuing me.

One foot, then the next. Digging into the ground and launching me forth. I felt like I could fly. Like nothing could touch me. My healthy fresh lungs expanded and drew in hearty breaths. I ran faster. Faster. FASTER. There were cars on the street, and I kept up with them as I dodged the few pedestrians on the sidewalk.

It was night and I’d always thought people retreated indoors at this time. I’d read a lot about the crime rate here. The shootings, gang violence, muggings, car crashes. But people walked the streets, men and women. In groups and a few alone. They all carried thin glowing screens and coin-like portables. Some spoke to them; others watched probably the very same shows they could watch on the sides of buildings.

I passed a group of people standing outside a restaurant. They looked confused and bewildered and were pointing toward the ruins. They’d probably heard the building fall. Did these people even see me? They did, but not for long. Above, the Big Eye followed, shining their searchlight, confusing the people on the sidewalks and streets even more.

So this was New York. Palm trees grew beside roads. Mango trees. Iroko. Rosewood. Mahogany. The tall buildings were adorned with lights that showed large screens with dancing people, prime time TV shows, and flashy commercials. All the buildings were draped in those sweet smelling vines the mayor said would help keep the city’s air clean. Those vines had been engineered in Tower 4, which was on the US Virgin Islands, but few people knew that. Even fewer cared.

Some of the roads were smooth, and I ran on them, keeping to the side. But I got to a few that were full of potholes. The news reports I had read all year were not exaggerating. The city had a water drainage problem, and the year’s heavy rainy season had exacerbated it. The vehicles on the road were fast and dented. I’d never seen one up close and I’d always wanted to drive one. The acrid smell of their exhaust was greater here.

Suddenly, I saw huge versions of myself on the buildings. In some of them I was running. Others were old photos of me not smiling, peering into the camera. These photos were from before I had been what I was now. People looked up from their portable screens, to the big ones on the buildings and then back at their screens. Fantasy meeting fantasy. How confused some must have felt when they then saw me run by.

As I ran, the hump on my back ached worse than ever. I grunted from the pain, but I kept running. They would not get their hands on the box. It was mine. The Backbone gave it to me. And it had told me where to take it. And they certainly would not have me. Never again.

I ran beneath a railway and watched the searchlight pass overhead. Then I ran along the sidewalk beneath the railway. I could see the helicopter trying to change direction, but it was too late. How would they know which way I’d gone? Or if I ran anywhere at all? I could have just stopped right there and waited. They chose to go in the opposite direction. For the moment, I’d lost them. But my face was everywhere. Someone would recognize me any moment and report my whereabouts. I slowed to a walk as I tried to figure out my next move. I passed a jewelry shop and a currency exchange. Both were closed.

As I walked, I sniffed. There was a spicy smell in the air. Tomato, onion, garlic, lemon. A perfumy aroma. A familiar one. When I came to the open door, I looked up. Ethiopian Sunrise. I walked into the restaurant.

“We’re closed!” a slim brown-skinned man with granite black curly hair said. His accent reminded me a bit of my lost love Saeed. Saeed, I thought. Saeed was dead. They made him want to die and that was what made me want to live.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll leave.”

“You!” he said, pointing at and striding up to me. “You’re the terrorist who they are saying just brought down the Axis Building!” His eyes got wider. “Are . . .” He brought his hands up and then let them fall. “Are you . . . y-y-you’re glowing! Why in Allah’s name are you glowing?! I thought the photo they were showing of you was just bad.”

I backed toward the door.

“No, wait!” he said, holding up his hands. “See?! See my hands! No portable, no nothing.”

I looked past him. Certainly there were others in the kitchen. I wanted to kick myself for coming in here. It hadn’t been a rational thing. It was the smell. The smell was so familiar.

“I just need a moment,” I said. “To rest. Then I’ll leave.”

The houseplants near the restaurant’s window began to stretch and thrust out fresh leaves. He looked at this and then slowly back at me.

“Where would you go?”

“Why would I tell you? Who are you?”

He laughed. “I am sorry. I am rude.”

I only frowned.

“My name is Berihun. I am an immigrant from Ethiopia and the owner of this restaurant. My wife Makeda is in the back. Only her.”

Then I understood what had attracted me to this place. The smell. The food. In Tower 7, the majority of the cuisine we ate was African, whether you were African or non-African. I remember the lion lady was fond of couscous and boiled yams with peppered palm oil. Nobody ever complained about the food in Tower 7. My favorite was the Ethiopian dish of chicken in red pepper paste. How I loved doro wat. Just the thought of it made my empty stomach growl. I had not eaten a thing since my rebirth. I decided to leave it all up to what Saeed called The Author of All Things, for Saeed had stopped believing in Allah long ago, and I had never believed in any gods of religions.

“Please, Berihun, I would like some doro wat,” I said. “It is my favorite dish and I have not eaten in, well, a long time.”

Berihun blinked and then he grinned wide. “You know our food!”

I smiled back and nodded.

“Sit,” he said, motioning to the table beside the counter. “I will be right back! Makeda will be so excited. What is your name?”

I paused. Names are powerful. They have a way of becoming destiny. They should not be shared with just anyone. But this man had given me his name without hesitation. “My name is Phoenix,” I said, sitting at the table for six.

He grinned and turned to go to the kitchen. He turned back. “They say that Tower 7 was the research facility where Leroy Jackson and his group of scientists discovered the cure for AIDS, but no one ever saw him or any of his famous research team ever go in that place. My wife is sure that what they really did in there was evil and cruel. She is smart and observant. I usually believe every word she says on subjects like this. She is correct?”

I nodded. “Leroy and his team worked out of New Orleans, Louisiana, in Tower 3.”

“You are not a terrorist.”

“No, I am not.”

He nodded and started walking away when he stopped again and came back.

“Do you have scoliosis?”

I knew what this was. The woman with the head of an owl in Tower 7 had it. Curious about her condition, I’d read about it in one of the medical books they gave me. The curvature of the spine. It was a genetic deformity that sometimes resulted from growing too quickly. “No,” I said.

“My wife has scoliosis and your back kind of looks like you may have it, too.”

He came closer.

“Well, really I-I don’t know,” I said. “Does hers hurt?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“Can you look at my back?” I said. “I can’t really see it.”

He hesitated and then stepped around me. “Well,” he said, gently pulling the collar of my dress back a bit. “Oh my!” he said. “Your skin is very warm. Are you running a fever?”

“No, not in the usual way. I glow and I heat up.”

That was when I noticed the counter behind him. There were several items for sale there. My eye fell on the large tub full of a yellow thick substance. Shea butter.

“Can use some of that? I’m sorry I don’t have any money but . . .”

“Use what?” He looked toward the counter. “Oh. Which one?”

“The shea butter.”

“Sure,” he said, picking it up.

“Thank you,” I said. “So aside from the heat, did you notice anything else about my back? I don’t normally have any sort of hump or swelling there.”

He pressed his lips together as he handed me the shea butter. I pulled the lid off and the nutty smell assured me this was the pure unrefined kind. Perfect.

“What have they done to you?” he suddenly asked.

I paused, touching the smooth hard surface of the shea butter. It softened at my warm touch. I sighed, looked him in the eye and said, “I think it is more that it is what I am, Berihun.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“So what did you see?” I asked, rubbing the shea butter on my arms. It felt like cool water. It felt so so good, though not as divine as the shea butter they gave me in Tower 7.

“The skin,” he said. “It’s . . . it’s kind of puckered and swollen. Is that muscle?”

I frowned but said nothing, rubbing shea butter on my legs.

He shrugged, trying not to look worried, and quickly went to the back.

Two minutes later, a plump tall woman with many long black braids came out of the kitchen. Why didn’t they do my hair like that? I touched my head. “Oh,” I said. I had a healthy two inch afro. I pressed at it as the woman stared at me. Then I rubbed it. Pebbles and dust flew out.

“So it is true?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Africans? Like me? Like my husband?”

“Yes, most of us were Africans.”

“Ethiopians?”

“Not that I knew.”

“But they served our food?”

“Yes.”

She came over to me and touched my cheek. Only Saeed had ever touched me with tenderness. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I wasn’t quite sure why. “So warm,” she said. “My sister, you’re safe here.”

As she went back into the kitchen, I noticed what her husband spoke of. Her back was slightly crooked and she had a bit of a hump, like mine. But I didn’t think her back was hot to the touch.

 • • • 

His wife brought the food out minutes later. By then my entire back was aching so badly that I began to wonder if my light was burning me from within. But if that were the case, then my whole body should have been in pain, not just the area around my shoulder blades. Every move I made brought a deep itchy pain that made me want to tear at my skin.

“My husband and I were about to eat dinner. This is my special recipe,” Makeda said, ceremoniously placing the large round metal platter on the table. “I only make this for family.”

The platter was covered with injera, a spongy delicious flat bread. At Tower 7, only once in a while did they serve my doro wat with the traditional injera. On the layer of the bread in the center of the platter, were the drumsticks and boiled eggs stewed in the spicy red sauce. On the injera layer closer to me, to my left was a small mound of boiled cabbage and carrots and on the right was a mound of yellow curried lentils. The same was on the other side of the platter.

Berihun sat across from me. “You should have the pleasure of company with your meal,” he said. I felt my chest swell with emotion. Good company, a small but wonderful thing. That was exactly what I craved, next to a good meal. It seemed so long ago that I’d had good company. Makeda also set a plate with four rolled up sections of injera on the table and then sat down in the chair beside me.

“I’m not hungry for food, but I am for your story,” she said, looking at me with eyes of wonder. “Will you tell us?”

“Let her eat some first, my wife,” Berihun said, chuckling.

Makeda nodded, but glanced toward the door. I understood her unspoken words perfectly. I didn’t have much time. The Big Eye were out there. They were looking for me. How long would it be before they came running down this street, checking every building?

I picked up one of the soft rolls of flat bread, unrolled it a bit and tore off a piece. I grasped some chicken and stew with it and popped the combination in my mouth. This is the most wonderful thing about injera flat bread; it is simultaneously food, eating utensil, and plate. My eyes grew wide as my brand new taste buds sang.

“Oh! Delicious!”

Makeda beamed. Berihun was busy shoveling food into his mouth, too.

I tore off more injera. The balance of meat, egg, pepper, tomato was harmony. Tower 7 doro wat had never tasted like this! The injera was delicately sour and light as a cloud. The sauce was colorful tantalizing heat. The chicken, savory. I ate and I ate. She brought out more of everything, and I ate that, too. Neither of them commented about the fact that I was eating like two large men, and I was glad.

All that I had been through in the last hour was smoothed away by this perfect sustenance. My entire being relaxed. My mind was calm and alive as the flavors in my mouth touched my other senses.

“My name is Phoenix,” I said. We’d been eating in silence for ten minutes. Berihun and Makeda both looked at me with anticipation. “My DNA was probably brought straight from Africa. That makes the most sense to me now. I was mixed and grown in Tower 7, two years ago, though I look and feel about 40 and have the knowledge of a centenarian. I am what they call an ABO, an ‘accelerated biological organism’.” I sighed. “Amongst other things. I think I was supposed to be one of this country’s greatest weapons.”

I told them everything.

 • • • 

“Now I am free of it,” I said, after a few minutes. I sat back. My meal was done. The three of us kept stealing looks at the front window and door. The streets seemed too quiet. But what did I know about what streets normally looked like?

“No, you’re not,” Makeda said. She and her husband were grasping hands. As if the tale of my life and my journey would fling them into space if they did not hang on tightly. “This is who you are.”

And who AM I? I thought.

Berihun was nodding vigorously. “I didn’t want to tell you this while you were enjoying your meal but your face is on every network, every newsfeed, even embedded in the advertisements. This is happening now, Phoenix. Everyone who looks at a television, computer, e-reader, portable, everyone who walks past a building and looks up at its screens will know your face by morning. Whatever that is you have, seed, nut, whatever, take it where it demands to go.”

Makeda took my hand and for a moment, I forgot all things. Her grasp was warm, strong, as was her gaze. As the food had calmed me, she and Berihun gave me strength. My eyes stung, and I felt the tears coming again. Unlike before, when I was trying to escape Tower 7, they did not sizzle to vapor. They ran down my face, and dropped from my chin to my lap.

“You can’t stop now, girlie,” Makeda whispered. “You have to keep running.”

She pulled me close and said into my ear, “There is an exit in the back. Leave now!”

The bell on the front door jingled as a young man in a black uniform walked in.

“Assaalmu Alaykum,” Berihun said, jumping up and quickly walking to the front of the restaurant. He laughed loudly, thickening his accent and breaking his English, “We are close. Open tomorrow.”

 • • • 

I was running again. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was running. Something had happened to the streets. There were no cars. There were no people. They’d been cleared. The sky sounded like it was swarming with helicopters. I could see the flash of searchlights in front of me and to my right side. I needed to get out of the city but how would I do that on foot?

I felt something give in my back, and I stumbled but didn’t stop. I felt it painfully rupture and then ooze down. Blood? This was something new. I felt the upper part of my dress pull tight, and then I heard the back rip. What was happening to me? I ran into an alley and reached behind my now exposed back. I felt . . . I had no idea what I felt. Something was protruding. Wet but hard bone? I knocked on the part I could reach. Not heavy. Hollow. I ran my hand over it. Soft things, too. I flexed my shoulder blades as the itchiness grew intense again. What felt like the skin of my middle and lower back tore some more. This time I could even hear it. But the pain wasn’t pain. It was relief. Itchy relief. I looked at my hand and saw that it was red and wet with blood.

“Oh God,” I wept, disgusted. “What is happening?” I shuddered as I fought not to scratch.

I leaned my face against the wall. The concrete was cool against my cheek. A door opened feet away from me, spilling out warm yellow light. Perhaps the backdoor of a shop or a restaurant. A man walked out laughing. He took one look at me and gasped, stumbling over his feet.

I tried to press my back to the wall. I froze. I couldn’t; whatever was sticking out of me was too big. Then whatever it was knocked over a garbage can two yards to my right. I could feel it hit the can.

The man only stared at me, slack jawed. Another man came out, carrying a pack of cigarettes. “Holy shit,” he said, staring at me, dropping the cigarettes. He made the sign of the cross and fell to his knees.