“Ashe?”
“Something's coming.”
Vehicles, several of them, are speeding from the direction of the gate. I tear myself from Nick's side and hurtle up the closest building to get a look. Half a dozen heavily armoured vans are screaming along the tarmac. They'll be hitting the centre in minutes.
Chapter 56
The roads scream under the speed of the vehicles.
What can I do? At the very least, I need to delay them– but how to detain six vans at once? If I leap in front of them, one or two will brake... the rest will swerve straight round and continue their assault. Can I knock something across their path? The roads are wide here, no trees. Unless I can topple a building...
But all I have on me is my bow and arrows. Nothing explosive, but the car is speeding so quickly an arrow to the tyre could prove disastrous. Whether or not I can hit it, whether or not the arrow tip can penetrate rubber... that remains to be seen.
I ready my bow.
Before the vehicles have even entered my range, a dozen more come racing into view. Other cars, vans, trucks appear out of nowhere. A dozen snipers spring to life. A small army crawls out of the abandoned buildings on the outskirts.
Phoenix.
The firing starts immediately. One of the vans brakes, skids, and flips onto its side. Soldiers start crawling out, but bullets hail down on them. Another of the vehicles careens into its side, accidentally taking out one of its own. The remaining four split off, two in each direction, but another two are quickly halted and the third slides into my range. A few well-aimed arrows slow it right down, and Phoenix foot-soldiers descend on it. The last vehicle manages to avoid everything and is still tearing towards the centre of the slums.
I jump off the building and straight onto its roof, race towards the passenger window and smash into the seat. I jab the driver in the eyes and seize the steering wheel while he howls in pain, slamming on the handbrake as soon as we're clear and turning it on its side. Not even pausing to catch my breath, I scramble out the window as the soldiers climb out of the back. I reach for my arrows... only to find all of them gone. They must have slipped away from me as I was leaping.
I still have my bow. I smash it into the nearest one's face, then loop it over his head, pulling it against his throat, swinging round him like a pole and kicking the other three. He falls away, but I keep my grip tight on my bow. Two are already back on their feet, winded but wild. Luckily, they're unarmed, or have lost their weapons in the confusion. I stab at them with the end of my bow, then fling it up and deliver a flurry of punches to the gut.
Just as they drop to the floor, something comes flying out of nowhere and knocks me to the ground. A fist comes sailing towards my face. I roll clear of it just in time and twist to my feet.
A girl looks at me. She's my age, perhaps a little younger, almost impossibly fast and strangely familiar. She's dressed in the same combat gear as the rest, but she carries herself differently. A soldier, yes, but stronger than the others. Her movements are perfect.
Her leg swings into a kick. I meet it with the back of my arm, but the hit reverberates through me. I know this pain. I know this strength.
“You're from the Institute,” I say. “You don't have to fight me. You can run away. You can be free.”
She gives no notion of having heard me and lashes out again, her strikes even more precise and vicious than before. I don't want to fight her, because she knows how to resist my moves. I don't know how to stop her without killing her.
“Don't do this,” I ask. “It will not end well for either of us.”
She takes no heed.
I let her push me back a few times, getting a sense of her speed, her timings. Her moves are almost robotic. I can count them. I've seen them before. Letting her get a few punches in makes her overconfident. She's sure she's winning. I wait until she's surer, and then dart away from one of her swings at the last minute and somersault over her, twisting mid-air and delivering a punch to the back of her spine.
She topples over with a cry and a sharp crack. Her spine is broken. She lies on the ground like a dying fish, her arms flailing while the rest of her is horribly, horribly still.
We can probably recover from a broken back, but I am not certain.
Blue, and two other people I don't know, appear out of nowhere. They leap onto the semi-conscious soldiers and force them into handcuffs, while I deal with the remaining one. He does not put up much of a fight. Swarms of Phoenix members have flooded the roads. They drag people out of flaming vans, strip them of equipment, detain those still struggling. There are a few dead, many alive. The panic quickly quells.
I see Rudy standing over a row of captured guards, looking very smug.
“What... what's going on here?” I ask.
Rudy's grin widens. “A victory, that's what!” he says, practically cackling.
“But... how?”
“I knew they were bound to retaliate sooner or later. I did think it would be sooner. I've had these vans stationed here for days– there's no other way for them to get into the centre. We've been taking it in shifts.”
This explains, at least, why the base seemed so quiet the last few days.
“Sir!” A young scout appears at his side. “We've captured eighteen soldiers alive, sir. Four dead. Three are wounded.”
“Have Julia see to the wounded,” he instructs. “Do what you can for them in the meantime.”
“Very well, sir!” He scurries away.
My eyes turn back to the soldiers before us. “What will you do with these ones?” I ask.
“Take them prisoner, for now. Negotiate their return.”
“Useful bargaining chips,” I say. “Luca wouldn't do as much. They didn't do as much.”
“True. Which is why we must. Peace cannot be delivered through violence, after all. Only understanding.”
I know that from somewhere. “Emerson?” I hazard a guess.
Rudy looks surprised. “You know it?”
“They had us read it at the Institute. Part of our varied curriculum on the culture of violence.”
Rudy scoffs. “Are you sure they were raising you to be a soldier?”
“Believe me,” I say, remembering the feeling of Beta's neck snapping underneath my hands, “I'm sure.”
Nick arrives at my side, breathless. “We all OK?”
I nod, and he turns to Rudy. “Sorry I missed out on the action, Captain. What can I do now?”
Rudy barks a series of instructions, and we all begin to follow them. The uninjured guards are taken away in trucks. Not, I note, to the base, but some other location that's less important if it becomes compromised. Mi arrives to help the wounded, having heard the chaos from the loft. He is tending to the girl from the Institute. She does not seem to be in any pain, but she's staring at her shoulder with frightening intensity. I wonder if she can move at all.
I crouch down by Mi's side. “Will she live?”
He nods. “She might not walk again.”
“She's a chimera.”
There is a slight pause. “Then she probably will.”
The girl is on her side. At the base of her spine is a horrible, black burn. Where did that come from? Either way, it doesn't seem to be bothering her. Her eyes are glazed and empty.
“Why are you fighting for them?” I ask her. “Why not use this opportunity to escape?”
Her blank eyes briefly circle to me. “Escape from what, to where?”
“Anywhere! Anywhere you could be free.”
“Freedom is a lie,” she tells me. “Long live the Director, long live the dream!”
Her mouth opens in a wide, almost snake-like fashion, and reaches for her shoulder as if she intends to bite it off. I realise what is happening seconds before it does.
My hand reaches out to stop her, closing around the fabric of her shoulder. I feel the cyanide capsule underneath my palm as her teeth dig into my flesh. I hiss, and a second later she is howling. At first, I thin
k, because I've foiled her plans. Then I see the smoke rising against her skin. The smell of sizzling flesh pervades the air.
“What... what just happened?” Mi blinks, his nostrils flaring. “What's on fire?”
There are plenty of small fires around to blame it on. Maybe a stray spark...
But then why is her mouth and shoulder burned, and my hand fine? And the mark on her back, and the fire in that block...
“I... I think I just burned her...”
“You what?”
I stumble upwards, clutching my hand to my chest. It's burning hot.
“I... I need to get out of here.”
“Wait, Ashe–”
But I don’t wait. I run away from the others, away from everyone, and try to ignore the fact my fingers are shooting sparks.
Chapter 57
I find an abandoned building, far away from people, to shelter in while I calm down. My hand has stopped smoking, stopped sparking. It's still very warm, but that could just be because I'm nervous.
So... I can create fire. With my hands. This is quite possibly the worst ability for me to suddenly develop. Am I to go up in flames every time I lose my temper? What if it's just completely random, and I set fire to my sheets while I sleep?
Inhale, exhale.
I have learnt to control my strength. I have learnt to rein in my senses. I have learnt not to kill people even when they are really, really pissing me off. I can do this. I can do it.
Preferably before I actually hurt someone.
I can't hide for too long. People will be worried. I crawl back out of my hiding place and head back. Clean-up is still in effect, even though night has fallen. The prisoners have been shipped off, the vans stripped. Only a few people still remain, clearing the debris off the road.
One of them is Nick.
“Hey,” I say, hovering beside him.
He turns to face me, half-relief and half-fear. “Hey... where did you go? Mi said you just ran off–”
“I can set fire to things with my hands.”
Nick blinks. “I'm sorry, what?”
“I accidentally burned one of my opponents and... and I think I set fire to that building in Luca. Accidentally.”
“You set a building on fire?”
“Accidentally.”
“Right.” He nods his head, as if this is a perfectly normal piece of information. “Have you ever... heard of this sort of thing before?”
“Back at the Institute, there were a few with... extra abilities. I don't mean like Abi's. I mean genuine, inexplicable... gifts. They usually present themselves a lot earlier than this, though.”
They were also often out of control and rarely survived into adulthood. I don't tell him this. Partly because I don't want to worry him, but also partly because I know I am stronger than that.
“What's the trigger?” Nick asks.
“What?”
“What made you set it off? Fear, anger–”
“I wasn't angry,” I snap, “and I don't think I was particularly afraid, either. It just... happened.”
“And... you're scared it could happen again. And you could hurt people.”
I pause. “Yes,” I say. “Wouldn't you be?”
“Yes. I would.” He thinks for a moment. “What... what do you need me to do?”
“I’m... I’m not sure. Maybe... not be afraid of me?”
Nick takes a step closer. “I think I can say with some certainty, that I will never be afraid of you.” He reaches out and touches my arm, only briefly. “What else do you need?”
I need answers, a solution, a safe space, a way of magically gathering up all of my fears and squeezing them into a box, at least for a moment. But most of all, I just need sleep.
“I... I'm tired,” I say eventually. “I just want rest.”
Nick puts his arm around me, and I have to force myself not to shirk away.
“That I can help with.”
We climb into one of the cars and drive to the other side of the slums. Nick radios the base or wherever Mi is, and lets him know I’m safe. He’s looking after the injured hostages, including my own victim. I’m too scared to ask about her, and he says nothing about the burns.
Nick takes me to the most fireproof place he can think of at short notice; a deserted swimming pool. It's lain dormant for so long that a tree has started crawling into the building. It has been decades since the pool was used.
I climb down into the empty crater while Nick fetches something from the car. There’s not much in the way of combustibles; some leaves, a broken bench, a couple of boxes. There’s no way for a fire to spread if I should accidentally set off a spark.
I try to push that thought aside and pull off my jacket. My flesh trembles, and I wait for it to betray me.
Nick returns from the car with an emergency pack of rations and a couple of sleeping bags. I'm still paranoid I'm going to burst into flames at any moment, so he runs around the building, filling every receptacle he can find with water. He places them in a circle around my makeshift bed.
“I'll sleep on the bench up there,” he suggests.
“Thank you.”
I want him down here with me, and my skin now burns for a very different reason, but I also don't want to set him alight.
What if I never get to touch him again? What if I never stop worrying that I’ll lose control and hurt him?
Nick unrolls his own sleeping bag and shuffles into it.
“It'll be OK, Ashe.”
Sometimes, when he says it, I believe him.
Chapter 58
The next morning, I feel better. Not quite ready to take on the world, but ready at least to tackle this problem. We formulate a plan of action. It would be sensible, of course, to go to Julia. She could run some tests. I reason, however, that she's already performed dozens of them and nothing has suggested I've ever had powers before. Plus, although she could explain them, could she help me control them? No, I want to have a go at figuring this out for myself. I need to go somewhere far away from people, somewhere near water.
“We could try to refill the pool?” Nick suggests.
I shake my head. I'm no Abi, but I theorise a pool this size would probably take days to fill. It would need to be deep enough for me plunge into if I couldn't control the fire. Plus, although this building is deserted, ones nearby aren't. I don't want another incident like at the apartment block. It may have been exacerbated by the gas, but I don't want to risk any lives on the assumption that I can't summon more than a few sparks.
“There's a river, out in the wilderness,” I tell him. “It's far out though. We'd be gone all day.”
“We've got supplies. We'll take the car as far as we can.”
I like that there's no debate as to whether or not he's coming with me, and mere moments later we load ourselves into the vehicle and head towards the old wire gate. We don't get very far on the road before it forks off in the wrong direction, and we abandon it and continue on foot.
It's a good trek towards the stream. The lake might be better, but that's even further in and Nick doesn't move as quickly as I do through rough terrain. Once more, I am conscious of time, how easily the daylight could slip away through our fingers.
We break for lunch after a few hours, but don't rest long. It's a cold day and even I can feel a slight sting in the air. Nick rubs his hands to keep them warm.
“Want to borrow my scarf?”
Nick shakes his head. “Why do you even wear a scarf, if you don't feel the cold?”
I shrug. “Mi made it. He said I should keep warm even if I couldn't feel it. He made them for all of us.”
“He's quite the caretaker.”
“Hey, what can I say? I'm high maintenance.”
Nick smiles at this, and jogs up to my side. He slips his hand into mine. I freeze, but he squeezes my fingers reassuringly.
“I promise to pull away if you start to spark up, but at the moment, I quite fancy a bit of heat...”
&n
bsp; “I wouldn't have to set you on fire for that.”
“No,” he whispers, “you wouldn't.”
He stops in his tracks and pulls me into his arms. His mouth surrounds mine. Warmth spreads through me, a warmth that quickly climbs, dives, soars. His lips explore every inch of mine, and I feel I will explode with sensation. My knees turn to putty. My back crushes against a tree, and I arch against it, feeling like I could fall away to nothingness without it.
Our kisses permeate the air. When we finally part, I can barely breathe.
“Warmer?” I ask him, trying not to look too smug.
“Yes,” he grins back. “Happier you're not about to burst into flames if we touch?”
“I could use a little more reassurance...”
Nick is only too happy to oblige, but eventually it's time to move on. We reach the spot not long afterwards.
It's a wide stream, waist-height at the deepest point, next to a small waterfall. It might be beautiful on another day, but there's a bitter sting in the air that even I register as I take off my boots and extra layers.
Nick tries not to look, but does not do a very good job.
“You really don't feel the cold, huh?”
“Not like regular people.”
I wade in half-way, and flex my fingers. Right now, I couldn't feel any less like summoning fire. I may not feel the full effects of the cold, but my body reacts nonetheless. My skin shudders and my breath ekes out in icy spurts.
“Is there anything you want me to do?” Nick calls from the bank. “Apart from stand a safe distance away?”
“I don't know,” I say, “you could try getting me angry? See if that triggers anything?”
“How would I do that, exactly? Pull your pig tails?”
“You could try being mean to me.”
“I'm not that good a liar.”
“Really? You can't think of one single thing to rile me up?”
“Your scarf doesn't go with your outfit.”
“Outstanding insulting there, Lilywhite.”
“Your left buttock is less exquisite than your right.”
“Oh, how ever will I contain my anger?”
The Phoenix Project: Book I: Flight Page 25