Infinity Son

by Adam Silvera

  Maribelle hovers to a balcony while the rest of us creep up these steel steps, and we all freeze when we hear voices in the room ahead. I make out Orton’s cruel laugh, and it sends shivers down my spine. I want to hit a one-eighty and hide in the car, but we’re in too deep already. It sounds like a group of people in there, and I wish I could see through these walls so I would know how outnumbered we’re about to be.

  We press ourselves against the wall outside the door, and Iris gestures to Brighton and Prudencia to get some distance. Brighton is hesitant, but Prudencia drags him back by his vest.

  “If she can’t help me, then I’m done helping her!” Orton shouts from inside the room.

  Iris counts down from three and punches the door off its hinges. I follow her and Maribelle in.

  The office is cramped enough without the six people in dirty gray jumpsuits and crimson belts staring us down—acolytes who have sworn their lives to the Blood Casters. Orton hobbles around the table, and when he grins, I zero in on his red-stained teeth. Dark veins pop against his sickly white skin, like shadows coursing through snow. His eyes glow like burning coal as he shoots bright, screeching fire at us. I freeze, and Maribelle is quick to yank me out of the way; Iris would’ve ripped my arm out if Maribelle hadn’t beat her to it. The fire explodes behind us, and I’m relieved that Brighton and Prudencia aren’t in here.

  “Get them!” Orton shouts.

  The acolytes charge. Three have switchblades, two have wands, and another has a battle-ax. One foolishly throws a punch at Iris, who catches his fist and swings him into another acolyte. Maribelle glides, careful not to bang into the low ceiling lights as she dodges spellwork. Two acolytes are closing in on me, and I back up, ready to run out that door, but I can’t do Maribelle and Iris dirty. There’s no shortage of fear to tap into as I hurl fire-darts into the acolytes. I hit shoulders and sides, doing my best not to kill anyone, even people who are trying to stab me. The woman with the battle-ax is screaming as she corners me, and as she raises it overhead, Maribelle pops up and snatches the weapon. Maribelle floats into a backflip kick, knocking the acolyte in her chin, and lands beside me.

  “Show no mercy,” Maribelle says as she hurls the battle-ax across the room, the blade digging into the leg of an acolyte who was sneaking up on Iris.

  An acolyte aims his wand at Iris, and I catch him with a fire-dart from across the room.

  “Nice, Emil!” Brighton shouts from the doorway with the biggest grin on his face.

  Maribelle and Iris are so in sync as they knock out the remaining acolytes left and right.

  The corner of the room glows with white fire as Orton casts an attack the size of a boulder. He hurls the blast and catches Iris by surprise. She’s thrown across the room and crashes through the desk.

  She doesn’t get up. I rush over to her as Maribelle pursues Orton. I’m relieved to feel Iris’s pulse, no matter how faint. I call her name over and over and beg her to stay with us. Suddenly Prudencia is by my side.

  “Help Maribelle,” Prudencia says. I nod, but I don’t get up. “Emil, go! I’ll watch Iris.”

  I’m shaking as I rise. I’m nervous about everything—the stirring acolytes, my brother and best friend’s safety, Iris’s condition, how Maribelle and I will hold up against Orton.

  We were idiots to come here without the full squad. Orton looks weak, but he’s stronger than when we battled on the train. Maribelle is swinging nonstop, but Orton is legit untouchable. He surprises her with punch-kick combos, phasing again whenever she counters. I study his pattern, like when Wesley was running circles around me during training, and the next time Orton lunges, I catch him with a fire-dart to the back and blast him straight into Maribelle. I would’ve been in shock and tensed up, but Maribelle is quick, and she chokes Orton from behind. I can’t tell by the look in her eyes if she’s trying to knock him out or take him down for good. Orton is struggling, but he’s not slipping away like air.

  “Don’t let go!” I shout. “I don’t think he can use his power when you’re holding him.”

  Orton’s face is turning blue the harder Maribelle squeezes, and then his eyes go dark. White fire ignites around his hands, and Maribelle screams as he burns her. Her grip is broken, and she’s shaking on the floor. Orton’s arms are glowing with flames, and he touches a desk, setting it ablaze. Black smoke begins to fill the room, and one acolyte picks himself up and runs away. The others probably won’t be so lucky if they don’t recover soon.

  Brighton is continuing to film while checking on Iris with Prudencia.

  “Get out of here!” I shout.

  I have to try and take down Orton alone. Brighton and Prudencia don’t have to die with me.

  Orton stares me down, and I feel like we’re about to have a shoot-out. We cast fire at the same time and our attacks explode against each other in dying screeches that chill my bones. I’m sweating as I unleash fire-dart after fire-dart, but the attacks phase through him. The sooner I handle him, the sooner we can focus on rescuing Iris and Maribelle. I’m catching my breath when Orton hits me with a fire-orb in the center of my chest. I’m thrown backward and slam face-first into the wall. The power-proof vest saved my life, no doubt, but my forehead is busted open and I can taste blood on my lips.

  “You’re okay,” Brighton says as he appears beside me and studies my wound.

  I cry out because the cut stings and stings, like whenever I would get sunburnt from the beach and Brighton would smack my back as a joke.

  “Whoa,” Brighton says. “It’s closing. You’re healing!”

  Another phoenix power.

  He reaches for his camera, and that’s when we see Orton glowing in white flames against the growing smoke. The fire has traveled from Orton’s arms to his back and is trailing down his legs. Someone might say he looks powerful, but there’s nothing but anguish on his face.

  “Move him!” Prudencia shouts at Brighton.

  Brighton tries helping me up, but Orton is closing in on us. He grabs his dagger. My brother won’t stab some dude—I know him. I’m about to raise my hand and try to blast Orton, but he stops. He continues taking slow steps, but he’s not progressing, like he’s stuck on some invisible treadmill. The white fire spreads throughout the rest of Orton’s body, consuming him from head to toe. Brighton is quick to aim his camera as the flames work against Orton. His howling dies before his body can slam across the floor.

  I don’t know if this is rebirth or death. But we need to save our own lives.

  I assist Maribelle as Brighton and Prudencia carry Iris. We step around the tomb of fire that’s continuing to eat at whatever remains of Orton’s corpse. Maribelle is in no condition to drive, and not having a license doesn’t stop Prudencia from putting her weekend driving lessons to use. Hopefully we didn’t survive this battle just so we can die in a car crash.

  We pull out of the factory’s alleyway as black smoke spills out of the shattered windows. I watch the glowing fire within until it’s out of sight, and even then, I can’t push the memory of the flames eating Orton out of my head.

  “Is that going to happen to me?” I ask.

  “What?” Brighton asks.

  “Burnout,” I say. “The powers turned on him. I’m not supposed to have mine either.”

  “Bro, you were reborn with these powers! It’s different. You owned everyone in there like a hero.”

  I can’t feel as hyped as Brighton. We didn’t get the information we needed. Maribelle is biting down on her shirt to fight past the pain of her burnt hands. Iris has been hurt so badly that she’s in need of healing—again. There were six acolytes, and I only saw one escape the factory. Orton is dead. I didn’t kill Orton or the acolytes directly, but six people are goners now because of me.

  I shouldn’t get to be crowned as the hero when everyone’s suffering is my fault. And maybe we’re not the saviors this city needs.

  Nineteen

  Spell Walkers of New York

  BRIGHTON

&nbs
p; Being Emil on social media is wild. He isn’t doing great in real life since last night’s fight, but he’s tracking really well online—really, really, really well. His Instagram profile is now sporting the blue verified badge, and he’s got over six hundred thousand followers showing him love and support. Some hate too, but he doesn’t need to know about that. His Twitter mentions are so out of control that I can’t keep up. Most notably, his Celestials of New York training montage has over three million views. BuzzFeed even cribbed my clips for their post! Between that and the twenty thousand new subscribers I’ve made overnight, I’m living the dream.

  Last night, I handed over the full video of the battle against Orton to the Spell Walkers so they could figure out why Orton burned out. When people’s bodies react poorly to the amount of creature blood needed to turn someone into a specter, it usually happens at the beginning. Orton had his powers for at least two weeks. This was extreme. Lucky for them, I got most of it on camera. I stayed up editing the battle to fire it up on YouTube as soon as possible, but it sucks that I lost some moments, like when Orton’s blast was flying straight at me and Prudencia so we had to take cover away from the doorway, or when Orton was walking in place as if he were shackled like some rabid dog.

  The video is blowing up within the hour. I rush out of the library and back to our room to show Emil. I find him shaking, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, even though warm sunbeams are bathing him and Eva is sitting across from him with a mug of tea.

  “Hey,” Emil says weakly.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Your brother and I are having a long-overdue talk,” Eva says. “Would you mind giving us some more time?”

  “We tell each other everything,” I say.

  The way Eva stares at me makes me question what I’ve said. “I’m happy to set up a time for us to do some group counseling, maybe even involve your mother, but this is a private session.”

  Someone thinks she’s a real therapist.

  “It’s okay. He can stay,” Emil says.

  I’m tempted to throw an I-told-you-so smirk Eva’s way, but I keep it together and sit beside Emil. Emil gets me up to speed, though it’s nothing new—questioning his relationship with Ma, how he’s terrified all the time, how he couldn’t sleep last night because he feels so guilty over everything that happened with the factory. Talking it out with Eva is a solid idea because I refuse to grieve Orton and the acolytes, and Maribelle and Iris both received healing, so all’s well that ends well. Figuring out how he feels about the big family secret and feeling bolder in battles is going to take time, but Emil will get there. He has to.

  “What if using my powers overloads me too?” Emil asks.

  “Bro, you’re trying to talk yourself out of fighting. You see that, right?”

  “Emil’s fear is valid,” Eva cuts in. “There’s still so much we don’t know about Orton’s situation. Did he die because he was a celestial with phoenix essence? Maybe the creature’s blood took longer to corrode his celestial blood.”

  “I want to do the right thing,” Emil says. “But what if I screw up everything even worse than Keon did?”

  Eva is about to tug a strand of hair and resists. “Back before there was so much disharmony between celestials and humans, our ancestors had a saying: ‘The strongest power above all is a living heart.’ Emil, your heart is powerful—you care, you ache, you feel. I don’t know what Keon’s intentions were, but his execution was disastrous. Your humanity is what makes you heroic, not your powers.”

  As Eva tells Emil more about how she swears by this mantra as a pacifist, my mind keeps turning the words over and over: The strongest power above all is a living heart. Humanity is what makes heroes, not powers. The strongest power above all is a living heart. Humanity is what makes heroes, not powers.

  The strongest power is humanity.

  “I got it!”

  “Got what?” Emil asks.

  “The key to winning.”

  I tell them to get everyone in the boardroom, and I run back to the library to get ready. I collect all the links and data I need to make my case. This is going to be a level up for the movement. My heart is pounding when I enter the boardroom to find the Spell Walkers and Prudencia gathered around. I haven’t been this nervous about a presentation since my Advanced Placement Computer Science final—which I aced.

  I go to the front of the room and thank everyone for coming.

  “What’s the big plan?” Maribelle asks.

  “A six-part video series featuring all the Spell Walkers,” I say. Maribelle glares at me like Dad used to when I would urgently wake him up to tell him about some new fun fact I learned, a fun fact that always could’ve waited until he was out of bed. “Eva told us about that old celestial adage, the one about the strongest power being a living heart. Why don’t we post about why you all became heroes? Your origin stories. We can dispel all the rumors about how you’re building an army to take down the government or getting stronger to attack the city again.”

  Maribelle stands up. “Dude, no one cares about us.”

  “I disagree.” I share my report on the positive engagement I’ve seen across Emil’s accounts and my own. People are rooting for all of us. They didn’t know Emil two weeks ago, and now they’re starving for more details. I remember what it was like waiting for the next time any Spell Walker would pop up on my feed, whether it was a clip of the latest brawl or even a casual sighting of them out in the world.

  “We’ve tried the media route before and after the Blackout,” Atlas says. “My own account included.”

  “You built your following by shouting out how many lives you’ve saved or lost. They only see you as a warrior. Let’s take it to the next level and make it clear what you’re fighting for.”

  “And you’re the one to do it?” Maribelle asks.

  “My platform has grown since Emil.” I can’t say it out loud, but it does sting that my personal fame isn’t because of my own spotlight. The tables have now turned, and I’ve become Emil’s cameraman. “I can get people to pay attention. We start with you all, and maybe we can expand to the innocents you’ve saved.”

  “Not every celestial wants to be exposed,” Prudencia says. “All the work they’ve done to blend into society gets thrown out the window.”

  “Everyone will have a choice to prove they’re not walking weapons simply because they have powers. They can tell their stories through my Human Power campaign.”

  I give them the rundown. We lead with a special feature—Spell Walkers of New York—on my channel and every video will be tagged with #HumanPower. When it trends—and it will—we’ll throw the question back at everyone: What’s your Human Power? Celestials can share their stories. Humans can prove they’re allies and energize others to step up their game.

  Prudencia takes a deep breath and looks me dead in the eye. “I want to believe your campaign will work, Brighton. It’s inspired. I’m not all that confident that someone who’s a bigot learning that Spell Walkers have dreams and feelings will finally view them as equals. Then there’s the fake activism, which is exhausting. People show up for a hashtag, spend an hour preparing a picture to post to prove they’re good, and then they return to their regular lives where people don’t swing at them.”

  It’s a conversation we’ve had before, but my cheeks flush having it in front of the Spell Walkers.

  “It’s worth trying,” I say.

  “I agree,” Iris says, and I hold back a smile. “Senator Iron is using the Blackout to silence Congresswoman Sunstar. It’s unrealistic to expect Brighton’s campaign to change everyone’s worldviews forever, but maybe now is the time to try. This could be a big push to get Sunstar in office, where she can continue her work on a greater scale.”

  Everyone is talking over each other. Atlas is on the fence because not everyone’s stories are going to be received well by the public. Eva is worried about what this could mean for Nova if enforcers and alchemists fin
d out there’s a healer on the team. Emil wants me to think about how this might backfire on me, but hateful comments are very different from what celestials face daily. Maribelle is resistant until she realizes the potential of this campaign catching fire—with a bigger platform, she can ask the world if they know the identity of the mystery girl who survived the Blackout. Wesley wants to talk it out with Ruth, but he’s open to it if she is.

  There are risks, of course, but the Spell Walkers decide to give me a chance.

  Maybe this war can be removed from the streets and won online.

  I set up my camera on the auditorium’s stage, facing two chairs against the black curtains.

  The Spell Walkers took the night to sleep on their involvement in my series, and now everyone is desperate enough for change that they’re honoring their yeses. I prep them on how this is going to go down: I’ll ask personal questions about their origin stories and lives, and the more honest they are, the better our chances will be at gaining sympathy for the campaign. We’ll each film for fifteen to twenty minutes, and I’ll stay up editing down to three to four minutes because of my viewers’ attention spans. Emil is my cameraman like the good ol’ days.

  “Who wants to go first?” I ask.

  Between his active Instagram and convention appearances, Wesley is the least camera-shy, but even he’s tense as I ask him about being kicked out by his parents at fourteen and forced to use his powers for survival on the streets. He admits to abusing his swift-speed for personal gain, but he turned it all around when he met Atlas, who gave him purpose, and later Ruth, who grounded him with love. He needs this war to be over so she doesn’t have to use her cloning power to raise their baby girl. Wesley will do whatever it takes to be the loving father he never had growing up.

  Atlas hugs Wesley before sitting with me and opening up about his parents being locked up in the San Diego Bounds after using their powers to rob a bank, since no one wanted to hire them. At ten years old, Atlas was acting out as he bounced between foster homes, but after the high of saving someone at seventeen, he ditched Los Angeles to make a positive difference with the powers he inherited from his mother. He changed his name, dyed his hair, and set out to New York with the air of someone enlisting in the military. He prayed he would attract the attention of the Spell Walkers with his heroic deeds, all tracked on his @AtlasCounts account, and he’s committed to creating a world where celestials won’t have to abuse their powers to make ends meet.