by L. B. Carter
His eyes connected with hers again. “I am sorry,” he repeated sincerely, “that you got hurt. I never wanted…” He paused, sorting through thoughts. Emotions were tricky for him to understand. Talking about them was probably near impossible. One thing the great Bus couldn’t do. “I never wanted to sit next to …someone in a burn unit again,” he admitted. She didn’t think that was what he was originally going to conclude his sentence with.
“Yeah well, I didn’t really want to be in a burn unit again.” Then she frowned, the little her cheeks allowed. “Who did you know in a burn unit?”
“I’m about the same age, remember. I was around for that huge fire.”
“That was south of here.” The nurse had told her their location. She was closer to home than she’d been at BSTU, but her current condition made it almost as difficult to get to her family. She needed to reach them.
Buster nodded again and swallowed. “My father was a fireman. He got called in. It was spreading so fast, threatening so many. He tried to do what he could.”
“’Was’? Did he… not make it?” Like her father? Anguish. Torment. Grief. Despair. Hopelessness…
“He’s still alive.”
“How long was he in the burn unit?” She could compare to her time spent there and get an idea of the extent of his injuries without being so rude as to ask. Ace was finally being open, and Henley soaked it all up.
“Long.” He gave a small smile at the throwback to his short response when they’d been wandering through the cornfields. It was just as irritating now as it was then. “But I visited longer—after he came home to finish recovery.”
She let him think for a second, his dark eyes fixed on the floor. She twisted her head a little further to more fully take him in.
“He asked me to check in on one of the people he saved for him. He said someone had to watch over her, protect her, because he hadn’t been able to save all her family. Guilt comes with the territory when you’re in that profession,” he explained unnecessarily to quickly bypass over what he was inferring.
“Who was it?” she whispered, wanting her hypothesis confirmed aloud, wanting the truth from him.
“A little girl. A little girl who lost a limb.” He was staring right at her. “And who then grew up to not only repair it but improve upon her hardship,” he said with respect, “and become one of the best minds BSTU had the misfortune of losing and I had the fortune of gaining to my… team.”
She smothered the elated new words zipping through her mind like exam flashcards. “They lost me because of a lie you told me.” She turned back to the fluorescents in the ceiling. “Why should I trust any story you tell me? You expect me to believe you brought me with you out of some honor-bound promise to your father to watch over me? One - I don’t need to be observed. I’m not an experiment like Sirena. And as you said, I have skills and have advantages over others. Other humans, at least.”
“Yeah, with the capability to punch and electrocute.”
She rolled right over that indictment. “And B - you said you needed me. Like a business asset. So which is it? You’re going to put me to work just like BSTU did, here, for the government?”
“Two.”
“Huh?” That threw her off her rant.
“You started your list with one and then switched to B. You should have said two.”
“Semantics,” she grumbled, and he chuckled. Henley tried not to clench her delicate fingers.
“Well, in this instance, it’s not a matter of determining one correct solution. Both are right. I did want to protect you, because though they don’t terminate their students in the literal sense—and honestly, I know you’re intelligent enough not to think a legitimate academic institution is going around killing each of their protégés like some barbaric—”
“Ah, but clearly I am dumb enough to listen to you, so my stupidity is far greater than you give me credit for.”
He gave her a look.
“Okay, I’m not stupid. I’m overly optimistic, laying my trust where it doesn’t belong. And if you spent as long as me in the robotics lab, you’d be amazed at the progress BSTU has made, how futuristic their products are getting. How was I to believe they weren’t dystopia-like eliminating the waste and weak parts like a failed prototype? Heck, they’re already infiltrating the airports and post offices… Right? You weren’t lying about those, too, were you?” She turned her head to level a suspicious look.
“No, that part is true. As is what I told you. I simply said they’d terminate you. You’re the one who made the extra step to literal life-ending.”
“As you intended.”
“That’s why the second part—B as you call it—is also an accurate motive.”
“Aha, you do want me to reveal all the designs BSTU has come up with that I saw during my five years there to the government.”
“Four years and eleven months,” he corrected. “And no. Well, my mom might want that, now that you’re here. She’s the one paying for your medical expenses after all—her department. She’s the Director of the Natural Disaster Department in the United States Geological and Climatic Survey,” he answered the question on her face. “And she’s not very happy with you right now, so in a way, you owe her. But—” He held up a hand to stave off her next question. “But, what I want is what you designed all on your own, not BSTU’s models.”
She was baffled. Her face would have been screwed up if it could.
He let out a long breath. “My father lost the use of an arm that day. And it crushed him. Unlike you, he couldn’t repair himself. He refused to accept assistance from Mom because it would have been a sort of acknowledgment to her I-told-you so; she hadn’t wanted him to go help. She’d said it was too dangerous.” His eyes met hers. “He believes his hand was worth the lives of those he saved—your life. But it also cut him off from his job. He loved what he did. Without it, he hasn’t known what to do with himself. He feels useless, no longer a hero.”
Henley couldn’t stifle the little bit of culpability that twirled around the empathy crumbling from inside the burned exterior of her heart. She knew just how that felt. It had taken her a while to get her model up to full capacity, and that intermediate period had been misery. Suffering. Distress.
“I think he’d accept a hand from you though, literal and figurative this time—no lie. From the last girl on his list of those he saved.”
She looked away, the salty tears stinging her skin as they slid down her temples onto the pillow. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll go. But first,” she bartered, “you take me to my family like you promised. I’m not letting that one be a lie.”
His fingers were gentle but still sent a stab that caused her jaw to tighten as he wiped the wet trail from the corner of her eye. “Deal. In that order?” He smiled.
“Those are the terms.”
He laughed, a deep sound that didn’t really pass through his vocal chords so much as built and expanded in his chest until it leached as if through wire tendrils, reverberating out through his feet into the floor and extending in a rootlike system to everything else in the room. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to cause you more pain—again, literal and figurative. But I need to tell you…”
“Two,” Henley said.
“What?” Now he was confused.
“You said sorry twice now. I need to keep a tally. It’s an improvement.”
His lips quirked on one side. “I can be modified, too, with the right engineer working on me.”
“And to speak longer sentences, divulging something without me even asking.” She feigned utter shock. “What is this tidbit you’d like to offer me?”
“I’d rather not tell you. But I know your curiosity will probably burn you from the inside if you don’t get answers…” He winced. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”
“Three.”
His lips gave the ghost of a smile then flattened. “It’s not your fault—well, we can’t prove that without a con
trol; there were two variables. Sirena’s stalker blew up the bridge.”
Henley was quiet, worry starting to chill her chest. She looked back at the ceiling tiles. “I’m not a civie, I’m EE; I can’t help you fix that monstrosity. Unless you want your bridge coated in a waterproof flexible nanomaterial.” Her heart sank with her tone. “Then again, that also needs to be modified, since I… overlooked making it fireproof. Sorry for the electrocution.”
“Apology accepted. It was a shock,” he joked. “Well, honestly, if you’re focusing on fireproofing…”
Henley still felt terrible but his lightheartedness helped repair it; it was a new side to him. “If you don’t spit it out, my next project is going to be teaching you to answer questions. And I’ll use electrocution to train you.”
“It’s happening again,” he said with regret. She took in his somber expression, hers fading to match. “Another fire. And it’s spreading fast. Which is partly why I’m here. We need to get to your family soon …if you’re up for it.” He scanned her mummified body skeptically.
“I can do it.” She swallowed. She needed to. “You’re coming with me right?” He nodded. She wouldn’t have to use a memory to focus on happy emotions. She could have the real thing. Then what he’d prefaced with hit her like a spark to the system. “It was me.” Her voice was a whisper but it seemed to ooze heavily into every crevice of the room, coating everything. She’d known but hadn’t accepted it. “I started this fire.”
Ace looked away.
“That’s why your mom’s mad.” The overhead lights began to blur as Henley’s face crumpled. “Me. I’m the reason more firemen will get hurt, more little girls will lose their hands… more kids will lose their parents,” she wailed, her body jerking. It pained her immensely, but it was just another layer on the heartbreak sawing through her.
“What is going on in here? Young man, did you upset my patient?” The nurse bustled in.
Henley paid her no mind either. She’d have a burn unit full of patients soon.
Buster rose and made to leave.
Henley’s hand snapped out and snagged his, her padded fingertips catching his palm.
He turned to look back, pain marking his features, too.
She blinked a few times, sniffing. “Oh no, this is your fault, too. Don’t think you can plow through the hallways away from me again, Buster. I need you, too.”
His nose scrunched. “Okay, there’s one more thing I lied about and then only honesty from here on out.”
Her hand dropped back to the bed, another shooting ache flaring up into her shoulder. She held her breath until it passed, embracing it. She needed to get accustomed; she had a sister to warn and a fireman to assist before an inferno engulfed their lives and destroyed everything again.
“My name is Ace Acton. Not Buster.”
Epilogue
“So you work for the government? On top of BSTU?” Henley asked aloud while Ace drove the government-issued truck through the mountains. It was a lot quieter and newer than Lindy’s, with technology more similar to BSTU’s. Though Henley had been assured it was made in-house to avoid any potential for compromise or bugging. It didn’t comfort her.
It reminded her too harshly of why they were driving into the mountains, raising her impulse to get there in direct correlation with their elevation. She also missed the peaceful feeling of calm-between-storms from the rumbling back of Lindy’s pick-up with new but trustworthy friends at her back and strong, caring arms around her waist. The stomach drops from the bumps of that old suspension had been a lot more fleeting than her current tense nausea.
“Yes.”
Those strong arms turned the steering wheel to avoid a fallen tree, now rotting and sprouting new biota. Life always found a way. There he was again, barreling along, fully focused on his goal, but he wasn’t the Bus anymore. Henley was having a hard time adjusting her mindset to Ace, the USGCS staff scientist, too.
Henley gave Buster an eyebrow raise, which he saw on a quick glance over, resulting in a twitch of his lips. It was rewarding getting him to almost-smile. She felt she’d helped him grow, become a person, instead of being as robotic as the androids she’d aided in creating, during what she was rapidly considering her past life.
Ace was silent for a long time, so Henley assumed she hadn’t helped him grow enough just yet to use real sentences. She turned back to the trees. They felt so familiar and yet so menacing.
It had never really felt the same living in the woods after her dad passed, almost like they’d taken him with greedy, grabbing limbs. She knew that wasn’t true—it had been the flames like those that had almost conquered her if not for Ace’s reluctance to let her go.
She stared down at the raw skin of her hand, coated in a shiny layer of ointment. Surprisingly, this time, her hands had experienced the least damage, her middle, where her gasoline-infused shirt had rested, receiving the highest degree of burn. Her present shirt—another borrowed one, from the kind elderly nurse’s long-since-grown-up daughter, was bulky over the bandage wrappings.
“I was told to.”
Henley turned back.
Ace’s face was dark, clouded like the sky overhead. If only it were clouds—impending rain would be welcome to fight the raging fire that she had instigated.
Instead it was haze, building in the atmosphere from the smoke, traveling far on the mountainous winds. Henley pushed aside the guilt that crackled and flared just like the reaches of the wildfire that wasn’t so wild. She had repeated what was naturally instigated years ago, analogous to Jen and Reed’s discussion of the climate and dinosaurs.
“Told to?”
Ace nodded. “Yes.”
Henley huffed. “Longer, please.”
“I wanted to be a fireman like my dad. I wasn’t allowed. My mother has always instilled me with the idea to put myself first and foremost.”
Henley blinked at the guy, an enigma she strove to delve into, to figure out. “But you saved me.”
“Fake-saved. BSTU wouldn’t have killed you,” Ace reminded. “And I brought you for my father. At the beginning anyway,” he appended softly. “Family is an obligation, not a choice. Putting family first is equally selfish.”
Henley turned back to the gravel road, which this truck hid well, the ride as smooth as if they coasted over cement. “So you think I’m selfish. For coming all this way and forcing you to come with me to protect my sister.”
She swallowed, her good hand—now doubly so—coming up to play with her hair then dropping to her lap again. She purposely ignored the sight of the purple glove covering it. Another gift from the nurse, it was nowhere near as effective waterproofing for the extremity as the material she had designed and subsequently destroyed by not completing her degree and, thus, missing one important final test on its readiness. Without the computerized nerve-endings of her old one, using this outer layer was much more complicated and less satisfactory with no feeling to help guide her dexterity. It felt more like a rudimentary and clumsy tool than an improved, sleek replacement of her hand.
“No. You never limit yourself to just family. You helped all of us along the journey, and you’ve agreed to renovate my father’s arm. And as to the second part, I’m …pleased to be here… with you.”
She blew out a heavy breath, gravity pulling her head back against the headrest at their ascending angle, her eyes shutting to block out his latter statement. “You make no sense. That is a blatant juxtaposition. It’s the most selfish, because I dragged you into trouble. I’ve ignited, literally, a natural disaster and national emergency.”
He shook his head again, his heavy brows lowering. “That is the fault of Professor Tate and BSTU. Not you. There was no way around that.”
“There was,” she interrupted. “I could’ve gone with Jen’s mom back to BSTU as I was contractually obligated to do. I signed the document; it was I who broke the agreement by leaving.”
“Leaving at my suggestion,” Ace said, turning to look at her
, bemused.
“Semantics,” she scowled back, not entertained. “I chose to believe you. I chose to break the rules.”
He shrugged. “Nature would have started a fire at some point in this drought. If you had never left BSTU, Katheryn Tate still would have gone after the rest of us for leaving and perhaps succeeded in imprisoning Sirena longer. You saved her. And again, without a control recreation, it’s unknown which caused the fire, the drones—the safety of which are the responsibility of BSTU—or that BSTU prospective kid, Stew, and his stupid attempt to launch a firework from a crowded bridge.”
“Trust the computer geek to blame the engineer. I made those drones.”
Ace didn’t reply, revving the engine to get over a boulder jutting out of the road, the road’s grade steepening as they neared the crest of their current incline.
Henley lurched forward as they crested the slope, and Ace slammed on the breaks, leaving them tilted slightly forward. “What? What?” she demanded, righting herself.
The view spread before them was answer to her question. Ace didn’t answer anyway, as horrified as she.
The entire trail in front of them was aglow. Bright sparks of burning embers dotted along the road edge and the ground to one side. Columns of flames engulfed trees on their right while their left sat in a cloud of smoke, waiting, like a nervous child before that gruesome grandfather as he wafts an exhalation of cigar smoke in their face before swooping in for a wet kiss. The road was a natural fire break, but whether it could continue to resist the hungry force, Henley didn’t know. She wasn’t a fire expert.
“Will it cross over?” she asked Ace. “Should we chance it?”
He shook his head, still eyeing the destruction. The sound of the crackle and pop barely pierced the truck’s expertly-made exterior, making the vision surreal, the windshield a tragic movie screen. “I don’t know.” Frustration flared in his tone. He didn’t like not having answers as much as Henley.
“But don’t you study fire?”