The Phoenix Project

By D. Ross Kellett

What would you do if you woke up 1,400 years in the future?
14-year-old Ellie Beckmann dies too soon. She awakens far in the future in a world beyond her wildest imagination. As the latest experiment of The Phoenix Project, she is brought back to life to fight for humanity in a brutal war that spans the galaxy.
Ellie is now a soldier, out of time and far from home. When she discovers her sister was also brought back from the past, she begins a journey across the stars to find the only family she has left.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Ross Kellett
• Release date: Oct 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301719662

D. Ross Kellett

Screenwriter and author D. Ross Kellett lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three cats.Check out his short film, Grief, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxL-OqvILkCheck out the trailer for his full-length psychological thriller, Serpent, at http://www.vimeo.com/16410439

Book preview

PREFACE

I STARED AT CARDINAL, MY MOUTH WIDE OPEN LIKE A VENTRILOQUIST’S DUMMY. What are you talking about? was all I could manage.

Come. It’s better if I show you. She stood and floated to the wall like an annoyed, British ghost. The images emanating from her wrist device disappeared as she waved the technology in front of her like a security badge. A huge section of the room melted away, turning wall into window like butter melting in a pan. The clear space was massive, stretching from the bed to the tank, and from floor to ceiling like a movie screen. Cardinal beckoned me to stand near her.

My legs feel like jelly.

Take your time, Cardinal scolded, Your legs will feel weak for another day or so. Was that a smile from Mary Poppins’ frowny younger sister? Maybe. I’d take what I could get.

The sight out the newborn window was beyond anything I’d ever seen. More alien, more beautiful than anything in my wildest imagination. I suddenly realized the question I should have been asking all along.

When… am I?

CHAPTER 1

I WAS BORN ON A DAY THAT WAS COLDER THAN NORMAL. Early winter that year. Mom remembered the Sun flickering behind a layer of autumn haze like a cigarette lighter running out of fuel.

Before I showed my red, wrinkled face, Mom and Dad had the name picked out: Eleanor Anne Beckmann. Old-fashioned. They said I had some distant aunts with the names Eleanor and Anne who died long before I made my debut. I would shrug at another boring ‘Mom & Dad Story’ and go back to texting. Everyone shortened my name, anyway.

Ellie.

Only Mom used my full name, hissing it through clenched teeth whenever I did something wrong. I failed to see how borrowing her lipstick without asking was a capital offense. Guess it was on the same level as bank robbery in our house.

Ellie fit me. My friends shouted it across the hallway at Benton Middle School. Miss Palmer barked it whenever my mind drifted away from Geometry, which happened a lot. Whether in a positive or negative light, Ellie just felt right. It belonged on the top right of my homework with a heart drawn over the ‘I’ for my daily bit of whimsy. If it made Miss Palmer smile, maybe she’d let me out of Summer School.

I was fourteen now. Used to look it. Not anymore. Today, I’d be lucky to pass for eleven. Nothing like a terminal disease to eat away fat and muscle and turn your skin a clammy shade of yuck.

A fainting spell in Biology was the first sign something was wrong. First day of pig dissection. Everyone just thought I had a weak stomach. Four days later, it was a nosebleed that wouldn’t quit. Then another fainting spell at dinner. Mom blamed her chicken alfredo which looked and tasted like glue. Mom and Dad dragged me off to Benton Memorial for a battery of tests. When those failed to find a solution, it was off to three different research centers. Two in Chicago, one in St. Louis. They drew so much blood from me I turned as pale as a vampire.

Congratulations! I had won a serious case of something called Lynchberg Syndrome. Incurable. Rare. The absolute least attractive way for a teenage girl to kick the bucket. Lucky me.

My private room in Franklin Hospital was a carnival. Adults I barely knew with somber frowns. The church crowd with their endless prayers. I begged them to stop with lungs that burned and all I could manage was an angry whisper. Ridiculous floral arrangements made me sneeze. Kids my age who had never seen death up close blubbered like pimply-faced babies. Giant balloons screamed, Get Well Soon! but I was just thankful they blocked out the buzzing fluorescents in the ceiling. I wondered if they made balloons that said, Sorry There’s No Hope For You! I’d laugh if I got one of those. Don’t think my parents would appreciate it.

And then he showed up.

Stupid Brian Hudson. Cute. Varsity sports. Dumb as a rock. The whole cliché. He cried more than anyone. When he thought my dad wasn’t looking, he took my hand. His hands were gross. Too hairy for a fourteen-year-old. Fingernails chewed down to nubs.

I didn’t care. I wished he’d never let me go.

Where was the love when you ignored me at Homecoming? Dork. I lay on my sterile hospital bed looking like warm crap. No one bothered to wipe the dried vomit from the corner of my mouth. Still, he held my hand. I appreciated the sentiment. Maybe in another life, buddy.

That morning, the nurses carried me to the scales. I hardly moved the needle, registering seventy-five pounds of dying teenager. I was the girl that wasn’t there. Bones poked against skin like tent poles under canvas. If Brian Hudson got all weepy over this skeleton of a former girl, maybe his feelings were real. Not like it mattered. All the flowers, prayers, tears and balloons couldn’t stop this arrow from reaching its target.

Fate brought me to the final, painful mile. Even in agony, I found a fragile peace.

You’re beautiful. My beautiful, beautiful girl, Mom reassured me. Stolen glances in the bathroom mirror -- when I didn’t have a weepy visitor in my face -- told another story. My eyes were no longer the color of grass in May. They were brown now, surrounded by gray zombie skin. My hair, once the most brilliant red anyone in southern Illinois had ever seen, lay lifeless on the vomit-stained pillow. Even the distinctive path of freckles that danced across my nose had disappeared.

I was Death’s daughter. He’d come to take me home.

Today was the day. No visitors allowed. I struggled for every breath like I was trudging up a mountain with Gracie Horowitz strapped to my back. Gracie was what an average person would describe as cow-shaped. And yes, I was the first to admit I was kind of nasty to her. She never visited even though my illness was the biggest local news story since the new Mexican restaurant was built. I wasn’t surprised. She was probably too busy sucking down nachos to care about the dead girl in room 12.

My room smelled funny. An odd combination of flowers and meatloaf. Mom’s friend from work, Judy, must have stopped by with another helping of meaty goodness. As Judy said, my mom, shouldn’t have to think about making dinner at a time like this. Too bad my appetite had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Judy’s meatloaf was hard as concrete but it smelled like Heaven.

I lost feeling in my hands and feet last night but I didn’t tell the doctors. Why bother? I could barely feel the gentle pressure of Mom and Dad holding my hands. Each in their uncomfortable chairs. Opposite sides of my bed. Dad, his hands strong like the foundations of the homes he builds. Mom, her fingers soft and musical. They looked at me with that ever-present it will all be OK look even though I knew they were screaming inside.

Dave and Amanda Beckmann didn’t look much older than their wedding photos. High school sweethearts. Followed each other to college. Pretty disgusting, if you ask me. I couldn’t imagine kissing any of the cavemen at my school, let alone making babies with any of them.

Maybe Brian Hudson once he stopped biting his fingernails.

Mom and Dad were approaching forty with just a few wrinkles here and there for character. Mom was blessed with strawberry blond hair streaked with the flames she passed down. Still gorgeous after all these years, she held the county record for getting out of speeding tickets with merely a smile. Dad was more serious. Dark brown hair. Always short. A hairline that stubbornly refused to recede despite the jealousy of his younger brothers. A quiet man, the only way to bring him out of his shell was to throw on his favorite Chris Farley movie. His laughter would make the walls shake.

They jogged every morning, always inviting me even though I’d just grumble and go back to texting my friends. Outwardly, they were the perfect couple. Inside, much the same. They rarely fought, and when they did it was always gentle teasing rather than yelling. My aunts and uncles remarked that they had never seen two people so in love. Since I was fourteen, and had no concept of love beyond I love my cellphone, I would just nod.

One person was missing from the family tableau. My mini-me. Little Maddy. Madison Beckmann. Red hair as scorching as mine, but cut into a bob to better fit her chubby three-year-old face. Maddy was staying with Mrs. Vickers, the neighbor lady who couldn’t stop baking peanut butter cookies if she tried. Better to leave Maddy out of the death march, Dad had suggested. I said goodbye the day before. I cried whatever liquid was still left in my body as Maddy just glanced from Mom to Dad with confusion.

I gave her my favorite keepsake and told her to hang on to it until the day she died. My necklace. Thin leather string. Half-dollar sized yellow smiley face. It was a relic from the 1960’s but I had made it my trademark, like my hair. I could think of no one better in this cruel world to have it than little Maddy. She took it even though I could tell she was disappointed it wasn’t a doll.

There’s no way she would understand how unfair the world could be. Her world was toys and kitty cats. Leave fatal illness to the big people.

I loved the little stinker. Maybe I’d haunt her after I died.

Death in a hospital, when you know it’s coming, is always quiet. Hospital clowns will break their necks to keep a cancer kid laughing. Doctors will bark orders as they race against the clock to pull a bullet from an inner city kid two weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday. But a girl with a terminal illness in a room filled with flowers? Deathly quiet. I guess that’s how it should be.

The heart monitor and breathing machine beeped in parallel rhythm like soldiers doing their duty in a war already lost. Outside the door, someone mumbled something about a blood transfusion. The intercom summoned Dr. Woods to the ER. Someone wheeled a bed past. Hopefully it was someone getting better.

Death sucked.

I took another breath and pain ripped through my chest like an amateur sword swallower.

Ellie? Baby? Mom tried to remain strong but the wavering voice gave her away. She glanced at Dad. Should we increase the dosage?

Dad eyed the morphine bag. It’s on full.

What do we do?

Mom? Dad? a whisper was all I could manage. Dad answered with a hand on my cheek. My skin was dry. Cold. Felt like it would fall off at any moment. But he kept his hand there. Pure warmth. Like he just removed lasagna from the oven.

Time to sleep, Ellie, he stuttered. Close your eyes.

I did. Mom sniffed away a tear. Colors flashed under my eyelids as the balloons eclipsed the ceiling lights. Yellow the color of sweet corn. Purple like amethyst, my favorite gem. The sound of the machines keeping me alive began to fade.

My heartbeat and breathing slowed like a car running out of gas. The machines, with their emotionless beeps, broadcasted the last moments of my life.

The notion that we relive every day of our lives in the moment before death was only partially true. I didn’t recall all fourteen years in their entirety. Thank goodness. My first training bra had a rather festive floral design. Rather, I saw a series of still images projected on a giant movie screen and I was the only one with a ticket.

Lucky me, I’ve got my favorite seat right in the middle.

Light flashed like paparazzi. I was a baby again, holding Mom’s hand as I took my first steps. Suddenly, my stomach turned as I remembered eating way too much cake at my third birthday party. My tiny hands grabbed with excitement at the heavy blue doors on the first day of school. Josh Pender got paste in my hair and then giggled with a voice much higher than my own. Angry music teacher Mr. Mathews yelled at me with vicious breath that could peel paint. I stood on my father’s feet and he taught me how to waltz.

And Maddy. Sweet Maddy. Holding her for the first time.

Air leaked from my lungs. I tried to take another breath and found that my body was ignoring me.

As if sensing death upon me, Mom and Dad squeezed my hands in unison. Relaxing warmth covered me like a quilt. I waited for another heartbeat. But it never came.

Weird. I thought death would hurt worse than this.

I saw light. Unbelievable blinding light that scorched the very back of my brain. I wanted to look away but I knew my eyes were already closed so this light must be a part of me. I wanted to cry out and tell my parents that Heaven was real and I would see them again soon.

But I couldn’t. I was dead.

CHAPTER 2

I WAS DEAD. The blinding light disappeared as quickly as it started. Everything went black, and I entered the void. Weightless, floating in pure warmth like the deep end of the pool in Dylan McDermott’s backyard in the middle of August. The water was thick, like jelly. I could barely move my arms.

Move my arms?

I shouldn’t be able to move at all. I was dead, wasn’t I? This must be Heaven. Fun. Heaven was a dark, warm void. Who would have known? Where were the Pearly Gates and singing angels? Saint Peter’s got some ‘splaining to do.

Are those voices? Is someone there? I couldn’t make out the words, but those were definitely voices droning on with no excitement like someone taking a drive-thru order.

Heaven has a drive-thru?

I wanted to scream, Where am I? but if I opened my mouth I’d probably get a lungful of fluid and I’d die… again. This was ridiculous. I clenched my fists in anger before a cold surface pressed against my back.

What was it? A bed? Table? I wasn’t even sure which way was up.

Whatever it was, it lifted me. The jelly liquid began to thin. A gray light filled the blackness. The surface tension of the goop broke over me like cocoa powder bursting from a glass of milk. Liquid poured from my ears. I could hear again. I still couldn’t see much beyond blurry grayness, but the mysterious light had definitely brightened.

This must be what being born felt like.

Is she breathing? someone asked. The voice was deep. A man?

She can’t breathe with her lungs full of fluid. Help me turn her over. The second voice was female… maybe. Neither voice sounded familiar. I thought I’d met all the doctors and nurses at Franklin in my final months. These two were new. And now they were touching me! Four hands grabbed my right side. One on my shoulder, one on my arm. Another on my thigh while the final hand pressed dangerously close to my butt.

Ew… she’s all sticky, the male whined.

Protocol Seven: always wear gloves, the second voice barked. Angry. Short. Definitely female.

With shock, I realized I was naked and wondered what happened to my unflattering hospital gown made of blue paper. I opened my mouth to protest. Too late. The strangers lifted up my right side. I curled into the fetal position as if I subconsciously wished to return to that cold day when I was warm and safe inside my mom.

Mom? Dad? Where are you? What kind of parents allowed their dying, naked daughter to be touched by strangers? I forced myself to protest -- no use laying here a useless lump any longer than I have to -- as my lungs pushed air through my voice box. Instead of speaking, though, I promptly threw-up a gallon of liquid. Coughing came violent and fast. I was sure I would pass out. Again.

Dead people can’t pass out. Right?

That’s it… let it all out. Keep coughing. The hand at my shoulder patted me in an awkward, fatherly way. The male. I gave him points for trying to make me feel better.

Don’t bond. Protocol Thirteen. Let her find her way back on her own, the female said. She had a British accent. Scolding. Harsh. Like a nanny for people with too much money.

Mom... Mom… was all I could manage. I sounded like I was speaking underwater. More liquid filled my left cheek. I spat again.

What’s she saying?

I think she’s asking for her mother. The second voice, the male, had an accent I couldn’t place. Thundering. Powerful. I couldn’t see him, but I imagined him to be very tall.

Another fit of coughing and I cleared the last of the liquid from my mouth. I took my first full breath. My lungs ached like I’d just finished a marathon. The air tasted metallic. What happened to the flowers and meatloaf?

You’re OK. Relax. Breathe normally. Gentle, even breaths, the female said with zero bedside manner. I couldn’t see her, but I bet she was rolling her eyes.

My arms seemed to work. I reached up and cleared the gunk from my eyes. I rolled onto my back as the man and woman pulled their hands away. Two unfamiliar faces peered down like scientists watching a rat after feeding it some dangerous pills. Their faces were haloed in soft gray that beamed from a ceiling of pure white. What happened to the fluorescents? I assumed they were doctors but, after a closer look, they weren’t dressed like any doctors I’d ever seen. They wore dark blue uniforms that reminded me of formal wear worn by Naval officers.

Was I on a military base?

On both jackets, a bright