Phoenix Hatching

By Marla Shin

Science fiction, set on earth 1000 years after humanity has become extinct. Rising to take its place are the descendants of genetically-engineered beings that were an experiment.

Hallia, a 16-year-old girl grown up in a repressive society, risks her life to leave. An exploration team from another society finds her, and gives her the chance to become whatever she wants to be. Her newfound friendships and love will be tested and tempered in a war fought to preserve the freedom she so recently gained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marla Shin
• Release date: May 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476493800

Marla Shin

I've been a librarian for over twenty years, and a bookworm from the age of 3. Wichita, Kansas is my hometown, but I've lived in the Southwest for about the same time I've been a librarian. I'm currently living in Albuquerque with my husband and five cats.Friend me on Facebook.

Book preview

PHOENIX HATCHING

by Marla Shin

(science fiction)

Copyright 2012 Marla Shin

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

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Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work

of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locales are real but fictionalized, others are completely fictional. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

*************

This work is dedicated to my Uncle Wilbur, the first person to take me seriously when I said I wanted to write novels.

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CHAPTER ONE

It had finally come. The year of the Ancestors 1145, and her last day of school! Ever! Hallia took a deep breath as she left the classroom, looking up at the high stone walls and ceiling of Cityhouse. The school rooms, on the bottom floor, had brick walls dating from the time the Ancestors walked the earth, faced and reinforced with stone where necessary. The stone floor had worn into ridges and ripples, but Hallia’s feet, clad in slippers of undyed cloth like the rest of her clothing, knew the feel of Cityhouse floors and didn’t falter.

Maybe the only kind of work they’ll let me do is drudge-work, she mused, but at least I’ll never have to go through all the humiliations of school again.

She looked down to find her classmates parting to make an aisle, murmuring to each other, excitement and a cruel satisfaction in their eyes. Hallia’s blood froze. Down the center of that aisle marched the Director of Purification and a full dozen of her security people. Big ones, nearly three feet tall. Coming right at her. Oh, Ancestors, she thought desperately, now?

The director, a thick-set woman with dark gray hair, planted herself in front of Hallia, hands on hips. You will come with me, Hallia 915-RT, to the hospital floor. You will be normalized this very day, you Flawed abomination! Those feathered deformities will be removed from your back. People do not have wings.

You think I’d live through that? Hallia argued. When you took off Nerfal’s extra set of arms, he died from blood loss. And when you tried to scrape Annia’s skin smooth of the scales, she died of the pain.

What’s another drudge, more or less? Deaths of Flawed don’t matter since you’re not allowed to breed. The Director sniffed, disgust warping her features. The worst law ever passed was the one allowing Flawed to live at all. You should have been killed at birth! You’re nothing but a drain on our resources.

But without us, what would you do for drudges? Hallia snapped. Her heart beat wildly. She had no more time to think or plan. It was now or never.

Her legs and wings tensed, and she leaped into the air, over the heads of her screaming classmates, over the heads of the Director of Purification and her security people, who howled with rage. Hallia felt hands brush her feet, but the ceilings of Cityhouse were a good fifteen feet high, and the tallest person two and three quarters feet tall. Hallia’s wings beat in time with the pumping of her heart, and a wild exhilaration filled her. They could never catch her in the air. They had never suspected that she could fly at all.

She turned a corner. The screams from everyone in the halls continued, and Hallia laughed out loud. They never look at us, at least not directly. They like to pretend we’re invisible. I guess they can see me now!

The north stairway loomed, with its dizzying heights and depths of open space. Hallia had longed to fly it as long as she could remember. School was on the ground floor. Her apartment was seven flights up. Below were the basements, four of them, the bottom one leading into the caves. Hallia soared under the arch into the enormous stairwell and paused just long enough for a look down. All that open space beneath her feet! Glorious!

Someone threw a turnip at her, but they missed. Hallia stared up at the fifteen above-ground stories of Cityhouse, the unused top five gloomy and dark like the maw of a vertical cave. Up she flew, her wings beating strong, and found herself flying in a loose spiral. Landing after floor after landing fell away, so swiftly. She calculated how long it would take the Director and her goons to climb all those stairs, and laughed again. Hallia flew clear to the door of her apartment before her feet again touched the worn stone of Cityhouse flooring. She flung open the door and ran in.

Hallia! Her mother stopped short in the middle of the room. How did you get here so quickly? She glanced at the stone bowl lamp, counting the notches cut inside down to the pool of oil. You didn’t walk out on the last day, did you?

What would it matter? No one cares if Flawed learn or not. I wonder they even bother letting us sit in the back and listen. Mother, the Director of Purification came for me, so I flew...

Flew! her mother shrieked. By the Ancestors! How could you? Her face twisted in disgust. To flaunt your deformity before everyone! They’ll be talking about this for years. She sat down heavily, her work-worn hand against her face. There were a lot of lines in that face, Hallia noticed suddenly.

When the Director gets here you’ll go quietly, and no more of this flying nonsense. When I told you your wings were too weak to fly I hoped you’d believe me.

I might have, if you hadn’t kept them tied when I was little, Hallia replied. Why would you have to tie them if they didn’t work? Her quiet voice held no anger, only an icy calm. Today wasn’t the first time I’ve flown. As soon as I was old enough for free time, I went to the unused parts of Cityhouse and flew where no one could see me. The others are afraid of the dark. There are five whole floors up there, ankle deep in dust and not a track in it. Except mine. My wings were weak at first, but they got stronger.

The Director will catch you anyway, her mother said wearily. Why bring all this shame on your family?

You never cared whether I lived or died. Why should I care if you’re ashamed? Hallia looked at the aging woman before her with very little emotion left for her, not even bitterness. I was five when my Perfect sister was born, seven when my Perfect brother was. You only let me live because you’d lost four before me. After my brother, you asked the Director of Purification whether you could kill me and try for a third Perfect child.

Hallia. I had no idea you overheard that. Her mother seemed to crumple. She had always been thin, but it seemed suddenly to Hallia that she had shriveled. Her once-golden hair, tied in its usual complicated braids, had grayed and looked dim.

She said it was too late. I had used too many resources to be wasted. If I survived being Normalized, I’d spend the rest of my life drudging to pay back those resources. ‘Regretfully,’ she said, ‘we can’t have her killed.’

She’ll catch you, her mother said dully. There’s nowhere to hide for long before you starve.

Hallia smiled, gently. I’m going Outside.

Her mother leaped to her feet. You’ll die. Outside is poison.

Animals live out there, and I’m as much animal as person. She smiled. Maybe more. Hallia ran into the tiny bedroom and crammed her few belongings into her backpack. It just fit between her wings, the waist strap she had added making it more secure.

Don’t go, her mother pleaded.

I would rather die Outside than on the Director’s operating table, or wearing my life out on the treadmills that keep the electrics going. Goodbye, Mother. Tell my brother and sister goodbye for me. Not that they’ll care.

Her mother simply sat, pain in her eyes.

Hallia opened the door to find the Director standing there, arms crossed and a triumphant smile on her face. Wanted to visit your family, did you? Predictable. Begging for mercy that isn’t there. They all do it.

Hallia shrieked at the top of her lungs, pure rage filling her to the brim and firing her limbs with more strength than she’d ever imagined she had. The security guards reached for her, and she flapped her wings, pummeling them with the strongest muscles she had. Her wingspan was over six feet. With satisfying cries of fear and pain they fell away from her onslaught and she ran past, her flapping wings carrying her off the floor still running.

You’re trapped on this floor! shouted the Director. We’ve blocked the stairwells with nets!

Hallia flew down a side corridor, took one wild look at the blocked balcony to the Atrium, and flew back, dodging through the maze of corridors off the main hall. Collapsing into a heap at a dead end, she put her face into her hands to muffle her sobs.

Stop. This does no good. Hallia realized she’d spoken aloud and raised her face to see if anyone had heard. This dead-end corridor was dark, deserted, and silent except for the air whistling past her through the screen into the ventilation duct.

Her brain exploded with the light of an idea. The ducts had once been elevator shafts. They were huge. She pulled her stolen and hoarded chopping knife out of her pack and worked frantically at the two lower screws. When the second hit the floor she pulled the screen out and looked in, nearly laughing aloud at the vast space inside. She could fly in here!

Quickly she put the knife into her pack and slung it back into place. Slipping through the gap between the screen and the wall meant she had to allow herself to drop before she could unfurl her wings and fly. The drop didn’t frighten her. In fact, she had to fight down laughter at the thrilling sensation.

If they don’t find those screws and guess where I went, they’ll think I vanished into thin air. And they’re just about right.

Up she flew, until her wingtips brushed the ceiling. Then she groped down the wall in the darkness until she found a screen. She couldn’t get at the screws – or her knife, she realized, frowning. Oh, well. Hallia kicked in the screen and landed in the dark corridor on the very top floor of Cityhouse, sneezing at the dust that billowed up around her.

This pack bothers my wings, anyway, she thought. If I needed my knife in a hurry, I couldn’t get it. Maybe I should wear the pack in front.

She unbuckled the shoulder straps and left the waist strap fastened, turning the pack around. Buckling the shoulder straps, she slid them to the back of her arms, flapped her wings a couple times, sneezed more dust, and smiled. Much better. Pushing off with her legs, she flew through the dark, silent, empty corridors until she got to one of the outside apartments, the fancy ones with the windows. They didn’t open but it didn’t matter. The only other tool she possessed, also stolen, was a rock. Hallia got it out of her pack and threw it through the window.

Unfiltered air from outside rushed in. For a moment she held her breath, expecting for a terrified moment to die. Nothing happened. Hallia kicked shards of glass out of the window frame and climbed out onto the wide sill. Then she clutched the stone exterior of Cityhouse, dizzy.

The ground was fifteen stories away, and nothing but air was between her and it. She had to blink hard against the bright light after a lifetime of oil lamps and dim electrics. Below her was a richness of green that took her breath away. She had rarely been allowed near a window, and the colors of Cityhouse were the grays and dull ochres of stone and the cream of flowstone and undyed cloth.

Above her the sky had no boundaries. The clear fresh blue went on forever. Hallia leaned against the comforting solidity of Cityhouse and wondered if she might fall up into that amazing expanse of space. Fear washed through her until she could feel nothing else, until she couldn’t even feel the fear anymore. She took a deep breath of free air. It smelled of things she had never smelled, and they were sweet. She was alive, right at that moment, and she knew if she died the moment she flew out into that blueness, it would still be worth it.

Giddy, she laughed aloud, and launched herself into the wall-less space. Wild joy filled her. She felt like part of the air. She felt filled with light. She shouted a wordless trumpet of pure joy and laughed at it.

I have never been alive until this moment, she said aloud. I am sixteen years old and I am only just now born.

She flipped over in the air, then whirled and stared, hovering, back the way she had come, for her somersault had given her a glimpse of Cityhouse. Stunned, she almost forgot she was flying. It looked small, a blemish on the green around it. The first four floors were red-brown brick, the rest different colors of stone. It looked like a wart.

For a thousand years my people have lived in that, she said softly. Generations living and dying, never once taking a breath of air that smelled like this. For what? To stay safe from poison? I don’t feel poisoned. How much of the history I’ve learned is a lie, then? I’ll probably never even know. Hallia hung in the air a little longer, then wheeled and flew away.

She flew as long as she could before she landed, exhausted but happy. And hungry! Her ration of food never had quite filled her up and she had always been thin, but now she was ravenous as she had never been before. Hallia pulled her small hoard of food out of her pack and wolfed it.

The food barely dented her hunger. She landed near a stream, and could see fish swimming in the water as she drank. Cityhouse raised fish in the underground rivers, but she didn’t know how to catch or cook them. Food was prepared in the Kitchen for all citizens, and only Cooks prepared food.

Hallia looked around. So much was growing here, surely something was edible! Nothing looked like any of the vegetables from Hydroponics. It was spring, and flowers were everywhere, but as Hallia looked closer she couldn’t see anything that resembled the food she knew. Desperately she splashed into the water to try to catch a fish, but they vanished instantly with just flicks of their tails.

Soaked to the skin, Hallia shivered in the warm spring sunshine. Nets. They catch fish with nets. But I don’t know how to make one. No one got taught unless they were apprenticed to the fish farms. I only remember one school trip down there. I remember Hydroponics better. We had carrots, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, and squash. I know what they look like. They must not grow wild. Think! The Ancestors ate wild food. What was it?

She found berries on a bush and ate them, though they were so sour her eyes watered. She found a tree that had dropped nuts, and though animals had long since gotten most of them, there were a few that yielded meat when she smashed them with a rock. Her stomach really didn’t feel any more full. No matter how she searched, she couldn’t find any more that day.

By nightfall, Hallia felt as if she could sleep on a rock. A vague recollection of the wild animals who might eat her drove her to find a tree with a wide limb she could sleep on. Though the night air was cold and her empty stomach was beginning to ache, the flying she had done that day exhausted her enough to fall asleep at once.

The next morning, the muscles in her wings and chest ached so sharply that tears flowed out of her eyes. She couldn’t bear to try to fly, but a stream was easy to find, and she washed her face and cupped water to drink with hands that shook. If there were fish in this stream they’ve hidden already.

Slowly she walked, looking carefully for anything to eat. She pulled up plants at random, looking for tubers, and found a few. Too desperate to save them until the next stream to wash, she brushed the dirt off and ate them where she found them. Several had nice tangy flavors, but one with a white bulb had such a strong taste that she choked and flew on her sore wings to the next stream, to drink deeply and wash the eye-stinging juice off her hands. All she could do was hope she hadn’t been poisoned.

That night Hallia felt as if something were gnawing on the inside of her stomach. The pain was beyond anything she had ever felt, and it would not let her sleep. As the night deepened, animal noises pressed on her from all sides. Growls, screeches, howls, shrieks. She couldn’t think of any animals that might make such sounds, so she cowered, shivering, in her tree, imagining all sorts of blood-thirsty horrors.

The next day she could see sharp bones in her wrists and hands. Her body had shrunk to flesh over bone. Everything hurt, but it hurt less to fly than to walk, and her Cityhouse cloth slippers didn’t cushion her feet from all the sharp things on the ground. Hallia barely skimmed the tree tops, not having enough energy to gain height. She was barely conscious of anything around her, but kept moving. Somehow she felt she had to keep moving.

The trees fell away into a clearing, startling her into stopping. Hovering for a moment, a dim sense of puzzlement in her hunger-fogged brain prompted her to land.

This place was so alien that she could barely understand what she saw. Under her feet was broken flooring of an odd rock that looked as though it was made of pebbles pressed into gray clay. The greenery growing up through the substance had shattered it, but plainly it had once been a floor. There was evidence of a step going to a raised part of floor that was narrower, running up to a wall with doors and windows. Fragments of glass remained like broken teeth around the edges. The sun lit a scattering of glittering debris inside.

The remains of another wall faced it, but a rock slide from the hill behind had tumbled that into rubble. A spring had forced its way through the cliff, tumbling down the broken rock to form a pool in the broken flooring.

Hallia went over to it, dipping up some water. She drank, ran her cooled hands over her face, then stayed crouched, her dimming mind entranced by the sparkle of the light in the water.

A sharp noise distracted her. When it was repeated in a different voice, she looked up. Voice? There shouldn’t be any voices here. She tracked where it had come from, and saw a Perfect man, a good three feet tall, standing at the edge of the clearing, staring at her, open-mouthed. Next to him was a creature with an impossibly long face topped with a lot of shaggy hair. It seemed to have an odd growth on its back. Blinking, she realized the growth had a face, a Perfect one. A two-headed Flawed? She staggered to her feet, shocked.

More of the long-faced shaggy things came out of the trees, one with another Perfect growing from its back. And then a four-armed Flawed walked out of the trees, dragging a large furry bundle. Hallia fainted.

CHAPTER TWO

Terral Beargreen, at the head of his four man exploration team, broke through the thick trees into a sunny clearing, pausing for a moment for a welcome glimpse of the sky. Ruined buildings lined the clearing, thick but cracking concrete holding back the growth here. It looked like the remains of an old human main street from a long-vanished small town. The Ozarks were rich in rain, and the plants had reclaimed their old territory.

A flash of gold caught his eye. He stared at immense golden-feathered wings, bigger than any bird he’d seen out here. It took a long minute before he realized they weren’t attached to a bird, but a muta girl. His jaw dropped.

Janeal, riding behind him leading half the pack ponies, took a deep breath. Sky again! We’ve been in dense forest so long I’d begun to believe the sky was green. He laughed, then cut off and exclaimed, What the? Who’s that!

Terral froze as he watched the winged Gifted girl fall headfirst into the water. The implications of finding her here raced through his head, momentarily stunning him.

She’ll drown! shouted Janeal from his pony, but Terral was already moving. He plucked her out of the water, limp, and stood holding her in his arms. Her wings trailed on the ground.

She breathes, Terral said, relieved. But look how thin she is. She’s nearly starved. He looked around and saw Erret, coming through the thick trees dragging an enormous fat rabbit with his two left arms. Good. All accounted for. Terral barked, Erret, get that dressed for cooking. Mykul, gather some vegetables. Janeal, gather firewood. I’ll handle the ponies.

Mykul, on pony-back behind Janeal and leading the other two riding animals and the rest of the pack ponies, stopped whistling and gaped open-mouthed as he dismounted and tied his pony. A muta! Clear out here in Arkansas! How’d she get here?

Terral didn’t bother to answer. Carefully he laid the girl on the ground away from the water as his team hurried to their assigned tasks. Then he gathered the reins of the six ponies, deciding on the right-hand storefront for a stable. The other would make a good camp, once it had been swept. Swiftly he stripped the ponies of their harness, saddles, and bundles.

Checking the girl, he found her breathing shallowly, but still breathing. A wild excitement raced through him, though he didn’t let any of it show. She wasn’t from Mutatis United, for he had never heard of anyone with wings, and such a Gift would have been recruited for the explorer’s guild immediately. She couldn’t be from Mutatec because they didn’t send out explorers. There had to be another colony of mutas out here! Triumph flooded him like a golden light. This was the most momentous discovery ever. It would eclipse everything his father, or any other explorer, had ever discovered on a mission. At last, he said aloud.

What? said Mykul, choosing a spot and flinging down firewood.

Nothing, said Terral, flashing a smile at his younger brother. Go ahead and make the fire. I’ll make a broom and sweep out our campsite.

We get to sleep indoors? Mykul exclaimed, his wide smile, so like their mother’s, lighting his face.

Thought you’d like that, Terral replied, pulling tall coarse grasses to make his broom. I know this trip’s been hard for you.

I wanted to come along, remember? Mykul replied with a shrug as he stacked the wood. I wanted new material for songs. And I needed to know what life on an exploration team was like, firsthand, after a lifetime of Dad’s stories, and then yours. He studied the pile, smiled at his handiwork, then pulled his flint and steel out of the divided leather belt pouch. Striking them together until a spark caught the dry grass he’d piled next to the kindling, he carefully blew until it turned into a flame. The kindling caught, and he turned away from the fire to the saddlebags, pulling out the big pot and the iron rod to hang it over the fire. As soon as the fire catches, I’m going to boil a little jerky and make a broth.

Good idea, said Terral. Her stomach may not be able to take solid food if she’s been without for so long. He put the last knot into his broom, regarded it with satisfaction, and began to sweep out the ruin. Hey, all of this isn’t glass. Reaching down, he plucked a faceted gem out of the debris, and squinted into the dimly lit building, studying what was left of the furniture. I think this was a jewelry store. He tossed the blue stone back into the pile of sweeping. We should go through the debris if there’s time. The harder stones are useful and the colored ones good for trade. They’re decorative.

Any metal? asked Mykul, dipping up water from the pool where the girl had fallen. He plunged the rod into the ground next to the fire and hung up the half-full pot with a heave and a grunt. He grabbed a handful of jerky out of the pack and threw it in.

Don’t see any so far. The stones all seem to be loose. Too bad, he thought. Gold was useful. So was platinum, but it was harder for the metal smiths to work. They couldn’t scavenge much since they had to pack it so far. The Ozarks were a long way from their home on the west coast.

As he finished sweeping, Mykul began bringing in the bedding, limping a little on the ankle he had twisted two days earlier. Terral nodded approval at him and went back out to look at the young Gifted. She was still unconscious, still breathing, but her skin had taken on a waxy pallor. Her wings were a pile of golden feathers, her short hair matched the color and also looked rather feathery.

Frowning at her unhealthy skin color, Terral looked at the pot Mykul had put over the fire. The water was beginning to take on the faint color of broth. It’d be weak, but it might help. He dipped up a cupful and knelt by the girl, carefully lifting her head and pouring a little between her lips.

She choked, swallowed, and without opening her eyes clutched the cup in bony fingers and gulped the rest. The thin hands fell back.

We’re losing her, Terral thought desperately. We can’t lose her! She’s the find of a lifetime!

Janeal strolled into the clearing with a bulging gather sack. I’ve got a bag full of vegetables, and even found some herbs for flavoring. This forest is rich in foodstuffs.

Get those vegetables into the pot, fast, Terral barked. He cut a piece of jerky off the softening mass in the pot and chewed it softer. No time now to be dainty. I think she’s dying.

Janeal gave him a horrified look, sprinted for the pool and dumped the vegetables into it, scrubbing them with his hands. Gathering them up, he sliced them into the pot with his knife.

Terral transferred the softened meat to the girl’s mouth. Her breath caught and she chewed it and swallowed it, as he began pre-chewing another chunk. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

Mykul came outside and grabbed the cup. I’ll get some more broth.

The pot was beginning to smell like food. The quicker the better, Terral muttered, but there was no way to hurry food cooking.

Erret came back with a bagful of meat wrapped in rabbit skin, and threw chunks into the pot. Using all four arms at once, he skewered the rest of the meat on sticks, positioning the improvised spits in the ground near the fire so the meat would roast. Then he looked at the