The Gryphon Project by Carrie Mac

with her—“you have to promise not to tell Nadia.”
    “I can’t promise that. She’s my best friend. I’d be lying to your face if I told you I wouldn’t tell her. You know all about best friends. You pick yours over your girlfriend all the time.”
    “Maybe I shouldn’t.”
    “Exactly.”
    “And maybe, just this once, you can promise to keep something from her.”
    “No can do,” said Phee.
    “Even if her knowing what I tell you would destroy her? Hurt her?”
    Phee felt a shiver creep up her spine. What did he want to tell her that was such a big deal?
    Saul read her silence as a refusal to keep a promise. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and ran them over his face. He looked tired. Drained. What was his secret? Cancer or something? In love with someone else? What? Her curiosity could not let it go.
    “What if I do promise?” She heard herself say this and immediately wanted to take it back. Her curiosity had gotten her in trouble before. She wished she could just leave well enough alone, but she couldn’t. She wanted to know what he was holding on to. What was pulling him down, weighing on him so heavily?
    “For real?”
    Phoenix nodded.
    “You wouldn’t tell?”
    “Promise, Saul.”
    “I’m going to tell you”—Saul leaned forward—“but keeping it secret is a matter of life and death. I know that you get what that means, Phee. That’s why I think I can tell you. That’s why I think I can trust you.”
    His seriousness unnerved her, so she went for a joke. “Well, we all know you’re not gay.” She laughed. Saul didn’t. “Okay, that fell flat. So what is it?” Phoenix glanced over her shoulder again. Nadia was starting toward them, walking slowly, ever the injured princess.
    “I’m a one-per.”
    “She’s coming this way, Saul. Get on with it.”
    “I just told you.”
    “Told me what?” She’d heard him, but her brain had refused to process his words.
    “I’m a one-per.” He leaned closer still, his voice barely a whisper. “No one knows. Except you now.”
    “You … you can’t be.” He’d been Gryph’s best friend since kindergarten. He lived in a three-per community, went to a three-per high school. It made no sense. He might as well have been talking gibberish.
    Nadia was getting closer. Panicking, Phoenix gripped Saul’s arm and marched him in the opposite direction.
    “Where are you going?” Nadia flung her arms down at her sides and stamped a foot as a train pulled up and a swarm of commuters flooded the platform.
    “Just a sec, Nadia!” Phoenix lifted a hand. “Hang on.”
    As suited and briefcased men and women bustled past them to the escalators, Phoenix stood on tiptoe to be eye to eye with Saul. She jabbed him on the chest with each word she said.
    “Tell me that you’re lying.”
    “I’m not lying. God’s honest truth.” Saul raised one hand and placed the other over his heart. “I solemnly swear.”
    Phoenix jabbed him once more, this time hard. “If you think this is funny, you’re wrong, Saul.”
    “I’m dead serious, Phoenix. I swear.”
    “Then how do you live in this sector? How can you go to our school? Your family is registered as a three-per, right?”
    “Officially, yes. We have an assumed identity. It’s a long, long story, and I wouldn’t get into it here, even if it was safe to. But I can assure you I won’t get caught unless I land at Chrysalis for a recon. They’d find out when they checked my DNA. So this morning, when it was such a close call, I kind of freaked out. That’s why I was shaking so bad.”
    “But Saul—” Phoenix’s stomach flung itself against her rib cage. He had to be making it up. There was no way he could be telling the truth. But … but if he was? If he really was only a one-per, she did not want this knowledge. And how could she not tell Nadia? He’d been lying to them all along. He wasn’t who he said he was! All these years, thinking he was one of them, only to find out he’d