The Fire Unseen

by Andrew C Jaxson

  “Try another one—catch him off guard,” Rachel said.

  I was tuning before she finished her sentence. The trainer was close now, so I picked a boulder just in front of him. The boulder shattered, again missing the trainer’s head, but a stray shard smacked him hard in the legs and he tumbled forward, face planting just a few meters away. He raised his hand.

  “That means he’s tapping out. You’ve defended yourself successfully, and he’s giving up.”

  He staggered to his feet, blood streaming down his face. He’d smacked his forehead on a sharp piece of rock when he fell.

  Rachel noticed the look on my face. “It’s okay. He’ll be fine.”

  I took a deep breath. This was not what I’d signed up for back at the Apex. Still, there were two more trainers out there, and if I could win this thing, I would have a shot at getting my family back. That was all that mattered. The siren blew a second time, signalling the end of the first two minutes.

  “That’s my cue to leave,” Rachel said. “You’ve made it almost halfway, but now they’re really going to put the pressure on. Those two techniques should be enough to last you until full time. Just keep focused, and you’ll be fine. And don’t leave this bus!”

  She ducked out a broken window, and I was alone.

  TWENTY

  I had to get an eye on the other trainers. They would be approaching from the other direction—there were no logs or tree stumps on that side, which left a big hole in my defences. I crept down to the other end of the bus, towards the driver’s seat. It was darker down this side, away from the flames. My heart slammed in my ears, drowning out the crackling logs. The world became still.

  There was a flicker of movement.

  I shifted my balance to the front of my feet, ready to run if need be, and peeped over the side of the driver’s window, squinting to make him out.

  A glow appeared ahead of me. No, it was in the rear-view mirror. The glow was behind me. I turned around as the flare formed at my side, too late to stop it with interference. It blistered my arm, and I yelled, falling backwards and cracking my head on the steering wheel.

  Rachel had lied. This was nothing like paintball.

  Adrenaline dulled the pain as my body went into survival mode. The other trainer had come up behind me while I was watching the first. They were now approaching from both sides, and there was no way I had time to take out both.

  Twin flares formed in front of me, through the hole where the windscreen once was. I untangled myself from the bus controls and leaped away as flames punched the air, chasing me back toward the other end. The bus was lost. I had to run and ignore Rachel’s instructions to stay in here. This was what good soldiers did. Improvise.

  The back of the bus was my only way out. Burning-hot seat springs and melted upholstery grabbed at my clothes as I clambered past them. I dove out the back window, thankful the glass had fallen out a long time ago. There was a sharp drop, and I smacked my shoulder on the ground. The mud broke my fall a little, but not enough to stop the pain.

  I scrambled to the nearest set of bushes and glanced over my shoulder. The trainers were heading my way. How long was left until the siren?

  Staying low, I edged towards a boulder. I had to lose them. That was the only way to pass their test. Run out the clock. My arm burned from the flare, and when it scraped against the edge of the rock, I had to bite down on my shirt to stop myself from screaming.

  From where I stood, there was a straight run to the edge of the arena. The rim of stones that formed the boundary would give me some protection.

  The air went eerily still, with no sound but the crackling of the fires I had set. A fly buzzed over a nearby garbage pile, landing on a mouldy piece of plastic so old it was melted into the food scraps underneath. My breathing was loud. Too loud. Surely they could hear me.

  Rachel had told me to use stealth and misdirection. If I could distract the trainers, make them think I was somewhere else, I would get a clean break to the safety of the rock line. They hopefully wouldn’t expect me to bend the rules, and they’d stay searching for me inside the arena.

  An old car sat rusting on the other side of the bus, barely visible over piles of debris. They wouldn’t expect a rookie to be able to tune over such a distance, so they would think I was on the opposite side of the arena. That is, if I managed to pull it off, at least.

  The sting from my arm made it harder to tune. I had to slow my breathing and forget about the pain. This had to work. I had to pass this test. I had to be out there, searching for my family. Fighting for them. I used that energy, the pure rage I felt for the Unseen, to focus. My tuning locked, and I channeled all the resonance I could muster straight into what sounded like the fuel tank.

  The ground jumped, and there was a colossal thump as the car blew apart. They would have heard it all the way inside the complex. My ears rang. The heat was intense, so hot the skin on my nose blistered. That was a bigger bang than I was expecting.

  I tore my eyes from the burning wreckage and ran blindly in the smoke, heading for the rock boundary. If the trainers found me, I wouldn’t even know—I couldn’t hear or see much of anything.

  The edge came faster than I thought, and I smacked head first into the rock. Brain spinning, I had to sit down before I passed out. It was technically cheating, but I edged around the rock, through the small gap between the stones, and out of the arena entirely.

  The air was clearer out here, and my breathing eased. I closed my eyes, rubbing them to ease the sting of the smoke. It had been at least four minutes by now, surely. Not long to go. My hearing still hadn’t returned. I likely wouldn’t even know when the siren sounded.

  Steadying myself with one hand against the cool rock, I took a deep breath, ready to go back inside. The sky was dark now, and the space beneath the trees was black as death. Their tops glowed red, lit by the light from my fire inside the arena as it burned high above the rock fence. Deep inside the bush, the ground glowed red too, like lava seeping through a fissure. It was the river, reflecting the firelight that flickered in the trees.

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and details emerged as if from fog. Smoke crept along the leaf-strewn dirt and crawled around trees, lifting its fingers to snake along bark and branches. The ringing in my head started to clear, and someone yelled over the crackle of fire.

  Beyond the river was a shed of some kind. It was hewn from stone, cold and uninviting. It wasn’t large, and I could barely make it out in the gloom. But looking at it gave me a weird feeling, like it didn’t belong. Not here, not now. It shouldn’t be here, in our time, in our world. It felt wrong. Evil. It glowed in the firelight, but it had its own light too, coming from a candle inside.

  It wasn’t a shed. It felt more like a shrine. A chapel.

  It had no door, just an opening where a door should be. The candle flickered out, and the door went black. Too black. It wasn’t just a hole in the wall, it was a threshold. A door to somewhere else entirely.

  I blinked, and a man stood in the threshold. No, not a man. His face was wrong, distorted and dripping, as if he was a wax statue burning down. Bone protruded from his cheeks and eyes and chin. He didn’t seem alive. It was not the thing I’d seen on my bedroom ceiling, but it was just as evil. And he was staring straight at me.

  I blinked again, and when I opened my eyes, the chapel was closer. It had moved toward me. It was now on my side of the river.

  The figure still stood in the doorway, and now that he was nearer, I could see him more clearly. He moved his mouth as if to speak, but it made no sound. His tongue lolled over his teeth like he was unsure how to use it. Had he ever been human?

  His mouth continued to move, as if incanting some terrible truths our world should never know. I was drawn, magnetized. I had to go closer. The spot on my stomach burned colder than it ever had before.

  The chapel moved again, and I was standing at the threshold, right in front of the awful man. His eyes had no irises, just black hol
es for pupils. I wanted to scream, but I was frozen.

  He grabbed my arm, and his fingers melted into my wrist. They burned as cold as my stomach. I jerked my arm away, but his grip remained firm. He moved his face closer, almost touching mine, his throat clicking as he tried to speak. Skin dripped down his cheeks, and I could feel his breath, see the veins in his eyes. There was something in them I recognised, something I knew.

  The siren blew, and he was gone, along with the chapel. I stared at the trees and river for a moment, to see if it had moved back to its original position. There was nothing there at all.

  Shaking, I snuck around the stone and back into the fire and smoke. Rachel was calling my name.

  “Over here!” I replied.

  She saw me and walked over, smiling. “Ari! You made it. You passed.”

  In the distance, the trainers were heading back into the complex. One of them gave me a thumbs up.

  “You did well, too,” Rachel said.

  “Thanks.” I was still a bit shaky, and I felt cold.

  She saw my face. “Are you all right? The test can be pretty intense.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  I should have told her, but I didn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  The chapel was monstrous, and the man was a nightmare clothed in molten skin, but for some reason, I felt it should stay secret. The chapel had reached out to me, and no one else could know about the evil thing inside.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Begin!” Hackman’s voice cracked like a bullet.

  We started again. Focus, tune, wait, signal, shatter. Focus, tune, wait, signal, shatter. Six of us were gathered in the training ground, running drill after drill in our cubicles. This particular drill focused on timing and speed. We had to synchronise our tunings together and cause the small wooden stakes in the ground to shatter simultaneously. The better we could time our attacks, the more effective we would be out in the field. Hackman’s signal got faster and faster, so we had less time to tune between successive actions. You didn’t have time to think when the Unseen attacked.

  The last four days had been exhausting. Since passing the test, I’d been put straight into group drills. They started early and ran until none of us could stand anymore. I hadn’t got a chance to see Josh. I was so exhausted from training I could barely think straight, let alone make it to his room at the end of the day. It was getting harder and harder to get out of bed each morning. I thought after the test I would be sent straight out to find my family, but that wasn’t the plan. Of course, I had complained loudly to Hackman.

  “Based on our understanding of the Unseen modus operandi, they will not harm them without us giving good cause to do so. It would be unwise of them to damage their bargaining chips, so to speak. Your family will be safe for the time being,” he explained. “But if we are to have the highest chance of success, we must first be adequately prepared.”

  I complained a lot, but he wouldn’t give in. When I thought about it logically, he did make sense. After all, I would be no use to my family or Josh if I was lying dead on the ground. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Hackman. A failed rescue attempt could be even worse than waiting a bit longer, as it would likely cause the Unseen to keep my family locked up even more securely than before. Or hurt them in retaliation. Why they took them was still beyond me, and no one here had offered any convincing explanation. I had to assume they were leverage against me and the Kindred. If I really was some part of a grand plan, important in some way to either side, it made cold sense to hold me to ransom.

  “Cease!” Hackman called, sighing.

  Each of us had destroyed our ten stakes in less than thirty seconds. Not bad, but not good enough for Hackman, apparently, and he stormed off to find more bits and pieces for us to explode.

  I glanced at Rachel, who was tying her shoelace. She was assigned as my training partner. All of us newbies had been partnered with a more experienced Kindred member to speed up our training.

  There were three pairs, including Rachel and I, and we all took off our masks and sat down to catch our breath. There was James, a tall lanky guy with wispy blond hair and an awkward smile that looked vaguely familiar, and his training partner, Vicki, who was a short, sultry firecracker with a shot of blue running through her cropped black bob. James was the newbie, and Vicki was about five years his senior, but from the way they’d kept looking at each other, even from the first day, I’d gotten the feeling something was going on. This was confirmed when I walked past one of the empty dorms and caught them, well, making efficient use of bunk space. They’d been too engrossed in their attempts to rearrange the sleeping bag to notice me, and I didn’t mention it to them, but every time I looked at them, I went bright red, which must have been a dead giveaway.

  The other pair was Frank and Nareem. They were both older, in their mid-forties, and got along like a house on fire. I’d never seen Frank around Ettney, but I’d stopped dead in my tracks when I first saw Nareem in here. He was the town’s pharmacist and had apparently been Kindred for close to five years.

  Knowing the way Nareem was usually treated by most of the townspeople, I wondered why he hadn’t used his abilities on them. I sure would have. We didn’t have a lot of non-white people in Ettney, not like in the city, so when he first moved to town, some ratty kids had spray painted the front of his pharmacy with a whole stack of awful, racist messages, and then one day his house got done. Mitchell Markson at school told me his dad was mad at Nareem cause the “filthy migrants kept stealing our jobs.” I pointed out we’d been trying to get a pharmacist in the town for close to ten years but none of the white city folk wanted to move out here, and that also, Mitchell’s dad was unskilled and didn’t exactly want to work, so it wasn’t like Nareem was stealing a job his dad could have gotten anyway. Mitchell didn’t talk to me much after that.

  The way the town treated Nareem made me mad. He was such a nice guy and always went out of his way to make sure Skye and I were all right. Once, when we were younger, Mum had gotten caught up at work and I walked Skye home from preschool. She tripped right outside his shop, and he came out and bandaged up her knee with a bright pink Band-Aid, which she was so pleased with that she immediately forgot all about the pain. He even offered to close up his shop and give us a lift home, but Mum didn’t let us get lifts with anyone so I said no as gratefully as I could. Nareem seemed a bit confused by that. I think in his culture everyone helps each other out a lot more.

  Then I’d walked in to the training ground for our first session and found out he was part of the Kindred. He was there for my induction in the Apex too, but with all the masks, I hadn’t seen him. In fact, I had never seen the faces of any of the live-ins from the west wing, aside from Rachel of course, but she was staying in the east wing to keep an eye on me. They always wore masks when they were outside their rooms, and we weren’t allowed to wander through there unaccompanied. It was a security measure; keeping real identities as compartmentalised as possible would protect everyone.

  Hackman stayed with us in the east wing as well, although he disappeared frequently to maintain his cover as the chief of police. I wasn’t sure why so many of them needed covers and outside lives, except maybe to keep them from getting cabin fever. Also, Hackman had hinted there was a much larger plan at work, one that needed Kindred in positions of influence in society. You couldn’t get those hiding in a cave underground.

  “You need to get your tuning faster,” Frank told James, who nodded and shifted uncomfortably. Frank was a newbie like us but had that annoying habit adults have of thinking they know everything. Sometimes he acted like he knew more than Hackman.

  Frank moved on to Vicki, who glared at him as he tried to tell her where she was going wrong. She had years of experience over him, and I quietly willed her to crack and teach him a lesson.

  I leaned over to Rachel. “If he comes over here,” I whispered, “you have my permission to set him on fire.”


  “Face or butt?” she grinned.

  “Butt first, then face.”

  “That’s a problem,” she said. “I might have trouble telling which is which.”

  I snorted, and when he looked over, we had to pretend we were laughing at some inside joke that had nothing to do with him. Fortunately, Hackman returned before Frank started on us, although he had time to roll his eyes in our direction and sigh, “Kids,” which made me want to punch his bulbous nose right back into his squashed little head.

  We ran the exercise twice more, each time getting better and faster. Frank struggled a bit, which was deeply satisfying for the rest of us, even Nareem, judging by the look on his face. When Frank got wrung out by Hackman for missing two targets, I could barely hide my grin, at least until I saw the look on Frank’s face. He was so deeply embarrassed, it was like someone had pantsed him in front of the Dalai Lama. Maybe for Frank, knowing what to do and being the best at it—even if he wasn’t—was something he really needed. Struggling to master something was not just humiliating for him, it was crushing.

  It finally hit me how I knew James. He’d gone to the same primary school as me, a few years ahead, but had transferred to Cawley when his parents moved for work. I never knew him well—in primary school, a four-year age gap is an eternity. Still, I remembered he had spent most of his time at school playing one of those fantasy card games with the strange-looking characters on them. Everyone thought he was the biggest nerd around. Back in primary school, I would never have pegged him for getting with a girl like Vicki. I don’t think he would have, either. As I watched him, he smiled. He was clearly loving his new identity as a secret superhero, like one of the characters in his card game.

  We trained for days, and to say I was getting impatient would be an understatement the size of Frank’s ego. It felt like ants were crawling up and down my legs. I could barely sit still and was on edge constantly. It was exhausting being so tense, like a guitar string wound too tight for too long.