The Gryphon Project by Carrie Mac Read Free Book Online Page A

as if the building were a mangy dollhouse. People were living in it anyway, squatting in the squalor. A woman pulled aside a yellowed plastic sheet and stood at the edge, a baby on her hip. She yelled something at the shuttle, and then thrust her baby skyward at them. All the woman was wearing was a big T-shirt, and her baby wasn’t wearing anything except a sagging rag for a diaper. The baby looked up with a blank, crusty stare. The woman was still screaming at them, but Phoenix couldn’t hear what she was saying.
    Phee turned to her father. “She wants food?”
    “Maybe,” Oscar said. “But more likely she wants us to take the baby. She probably can’t care for him.”
    “Oh.”
    “Not so full of opinions now, are you?” Gryph said to Phee as they all watched the woman dangle the baby over the edge.
    “No electricity. No running water.” Oscar touched the window with his hand as the shuttle took the corner. “Those poor people. Imagine.” He closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer. The guards accompanying them snickered.
    “Not here, Dad,” Gryph said. “Come on.”
    Oscar finished and opened his eyes. “Prayer is for everywhere.”
    “You should get that on a shirt,” one of the guards said, and all of them laughed. Phoenix saw Gryph bristle, ready to defend their father.
    “There’s the church,” Oscar said.
    As the pilot flipped on the landing lights and siren and lowered the shuttle onto an old parking lot, the back door to the churchburst open and a jumble of people poured out, running for the shuttle, pushing each other, screaming, arms reaching up.
    “Something’s wrong,” Oscar said. “There shouldn’t be this many.”
    Below, a fist fight erupted between two men. A third picked up a plank of wood and swung it into the crowd, knocking over a mother with a toddler trying to hold on to her skirt and sending an old man face-first to the pavement.
    “Go up!” The guard by the shuttle door pulled it open and trained his weapon on the crowd below, an angry belt of bullets spooling at his feet. “Take us up! Up!”
    There was a sharp jolt as the pilot, startled, yanked the shuttle back into the air.
    “What’s happening?” Phoenix gripped her father’s hand.
    “These people shouldn’t be here,” Oscar said. “Something’s gone wrong.”
    Phoenix gawked at the sight below. Pandemonium . It was a spelling-test word that she’d aced only last week, and exactly what this was. Pandemonium. The crowd churned and roiled as if it were a pot of boiling muck. The looks on their faces made Phoenix wince.
    “Gross,” she whispered, as a woman ripped her shirt off and shook her breasts at the shuttle, as if that would bring it down, as if that would get her fed. And then a man pulled himself out of the jumble and reached into his pocket, his eyes fixed on the shuttle. He lifted a handgun and pointed it skyward, his hands steady, his gaze a watery fury. Phoenix’s breath caught in her throat. She coughed, suddenly breathless.
    “Faster! Up! Up! Let’s go!” The guard shoved Phoenix away from the window. “They’re armed!”
    “Do you blame them?” Gryph yelled at the same guard as he tried to pull Gryph away too. “Let me go!” Gryph wrenched free and kept watch over the chaos below.
    “Gryph!” Oscar reached for his son, his eyes pleading.
    Gryph reluctantly slid to the floor of the shuttle beside Phee as the guard at the door fired on the crowd.
    Gunfire was returned from below as the shuttle banked sharply to the left, tipping Oscar to the floor too.
    “Don’t shoot!” Oscar pleaded. “Just take us out of here, please.”
    The gunman tossed Oscar a frown but lowered his gun.
    Phoenix gasped, her asthma like a fist clutching her throat. She clung to her seat, her knuckles white, her lungs hot with the effort to breathe. She dug in her pocket for her inhaler and sucked the medicinal mist down her throat.
    Within seconds, they were at a safe height.
    “Wow.” Gryph