The Fire Unseen

by Andrew C Jaxson

  I followed the group through the east wing. This was the first time I would enter the outside world in more than two weeks. The arena didn’t count. Not to me, anyway.

  We walked through eight or nine different corridors; they were so similar I lost count after a while. They were all hewn from rock like the corridor outside my room, bare stone left to weep water, unlike the clinical steel of the west wing. But the last corridor was different. The walls, ceiling, even the floor were dull metal. Six guards stood at the entrance, three on each side. They were heavily armed. This was the first time I’d seen actual weapons in here.

  “What’s with the guns?” I asked Hackman.

  “Look around you.”

  I did and counted eight different security cameras in this section of the corridor.

  “This is a different kind of war and requires a very different kind of security. The cameras stop the Unseen using their abilities to break in. Unfortunately, they also stop our people from tuning in defence. In this situation, for once, guns are the most elegant solution.”

  It made sense, but they still made me nervous.

  Hackman knocked on the large metal door, another airlock like the one that led to the arena. A masked face appeared at the small barred window and nodded. A clunk, and another, and the door swung open. Beyond was another corridor like this one, identical guards with identical guns, and another metal door at the end. This security was intense. There was no way the Unseen could get in here.

  The guards were motionless as we passed. They were so still it felt like a mark of respect, like they were saluting with their bodies. The whole thing felt like a funeral. The final door opened into a dark tunnel in the rock, similar to the secret one in the training ground, but not as claustrophobic.

  The light was dim, and we shuffled through the tunnel until it opened out into a mess of shrubs and lantana. Hackman ducked, and we followed, crawling through a low gap in the bushes. There was a steep path on the other side, and wooden sleepers in the dirt formed steps that led to a clearing. A few steps down, I looked back; the tunnel was impossible to see from here. No one would find the compound by accident.

  The clearing was basic, a small open area like a campground. A huge tree sat in the middle, a beautiful old oak that twisted and curled, covering most of the clearing with shade. There were three large patches of ground that looked as if they had been disturbed, dug up and backfilled somehow, but the only real indication this wasn’t a typical campsite was the ground covered with tire tracks. Although there was obviously a fair bit of traffic around here, I couldn’t see any cars.

  Three masked and hooded Kindred emerged from the trees behind us. Hackman nodded at them and instructed us to turn away. I faced the opposite direction along with the rest of my team, to avoid interfering with whatever they were about to do.

  The ground rumbled, and birds shrieked, disturbed by grinding that rang out across the clearing. A minute later, the noise stopped, and we turned around. A car sat atop one of the patches of disturbed soil.

  Rachel laughed at my surprise. “Cool, hey? Two guys make the dirt heavier; the other makes the car lighter. It’ll need a wash once we get it back, but it’s pretty hard to find sitting six feet under.”

  “World’s weirdest parking garage,” I said. But it made sense. They didn’t want a build-up of abandoned cars near a secret entrance. The dirt piles were reasonably inconspicuous, and as long as rangers didn’t come up here too often, nobody would think twice about them. It was pretty clever, although it seemed like a lot of work; the hooded Kindred were panting like they’d just run a marathon. Fortunately for them, the other teams had already deployed, so ours was the last car they had to lift. They headed back up the stairs, disappearing into the scrub.

  The big, black, dusty van was our transport. The sun was setting now, and the windows reflected the deep red framed by the trees above.

  Hackman opened the back door for us. There was a bench along either side of the van, no seatbelts, and no windows. Hackman drove, so Rachel, James, Vicki, and I sat in the back. The drive out of the clearing was seriously bumpy, and I started to feel sick.

  The drive would be about an hour, so I took the opportunity to get to know the team a bit better. Plus, talking gave me something to think about other than the nerves and nausea.

  It turned out James did remember me from primary school; he recalled my two-toned eyes. Kids tend to remember stuff like that. He, like Rachel, had discovered tuning on his own, but he hadn’t used it to break into shops. He’d tried to be the town superhero over at Cawley but failed when he tried to stop a robbery. He mistuned and burned down the shop he was trying to save. The Kindred had heard about a strange fire and a caped crusader running around Cawley and connected the dots, approaching him soon after to give him the chance at a more structured use of his abilities.

  I couldn’t resist asking what his superhero name had been. He sighed, knowing how lame it was. He called himself J-Man. We all burst out laughing for a good minute, and Vicki teased him that using your real initials wasn’t the best way to keep your identity a secret.

  Vicki was quiet for most of the trip but opened up when I asked about the tattoo on her shoulder. I’d seen it a few times now, although I couldn’t right now because of the jumpsuit. It was a snake wrapped around a staff, a religious symbol, she explained. In the Bible, Moses made a staff with a brass snake on it, and if someone got bitten by a snake, they looked at the staff and were healed. Anyway, when she was sixteen, she was bitten by a snake on a bushwalk and almost died in hospital. Her family had taken her to this visiting minister to be prayed for, and overnight, she got better. She’d gotten the tattoo as a kind of faith symbol, and although she didn’t really follow it now, it still meant a lot to her. This seemed like news to James as well, which confirmed what I had suspected—they probably spent a lot less time talking than doing the other things new couples often did. I got embarrassed thinking about it, so I tried to talk to Hackman instead.

  He said he liked to keep his “real-world history” to himself. I thought the expression was strange, considering his so-called real life was a cover for this one. The world of the Kindred felt real enough to me. He did reveal that the Kindred would transfer him into hotspots to smooth things over. He was the fixer, the guy you sent in to repair what the last guy broke. He’d been all over the country and was transferred here because of the increased Unseen activity. The Mother had also tasked him to make sure I assimilated well. He changed the subject to the drought as we passed a dead wheat field.

  The conversation left me uneasy. A guy who ranked that highly looking after a rookie like me? Too much was connecting. I was marked by the Shadow and targeted by the Unseen before I even knew I had abilities. The thing in the chapel had reached out to me, and it seemed the whole Kindred were watching my every step. It was like everyone knew some big secret about me, but nobody had bothered to let me know what it was.

  We pulled up on the opposite side of the cornfield we would use as cover, having driven the last twenty minutes or so without lights on. It was safer to approach in the dark, and tonight, clouds muffled the moon, which helped make us harder to spot.

  Hackman led us into the cornfield, and we spread out from there. He, Rachel, and I would take a direct approach to the house. James and Vicki would flank on each side and hang back near the road to signal the support teams in case there was trouble. The support teams were already in place and had been for some time; they could be at the farmhouse in less than a minute, although I had no clue where they were actually positioned.

  Cornfields have always creeped me out, and this night was no exception. The constant rustling as we moved through the stalks made it impossible to be silent, and the corn grew above our heads so I couldn’t see very far. Someone could sneak up and take me down before I even knew they were there, and even though as a child I’d always imagined that happening to give myself a thrill, tonight it was a very real possibility. We moved throug
h the field quickly, and as a result, Rachel and I tripped on a few fallen stalks we didn’t see coming. Hackman didn’t break his pace once.

  We slowed as we neared the edge of the field, moving at a crawl through the last few rows, corn leaves lapping at our heads. We finally stopped one row from the road.

  The night was pitch-black and eerily quiet, like someone had sucked all the light and sound up with a vacuum cleaner. I’d seen some televangelist once on TV talking about his trip to hell. He said when he woke up in hell there was no sound and no sight and no feeling. I didn’t know if I believed him—I’d always thought hell was more like Mrs. Walkley’s math class last lesson on a Friday—but this was as close to his description as I’d ever seen. Even the moon was swallowed by a suffocating layer of clouds.

  Hackman stopped one row from the road and held his hand up to signal we should freeze. He was in front, at the very edge of the field, and wanted us to be ready to cross the asphalt road ahead. James and Vicki took up positions on either side of us, ducking down behind fence posts and weedy shrubs to wait for our return. A three-wire fence strode the edge of the field, and Hackman stood on the bottom two wires so we could duck through quickly. The road was horribly exposed, with a direct line of sight to one side of the house, but the chicken-wire fence on the property was topped with barbed wire and only had one clear point of entry.

  I stepped onto the tarmac, and time slowed as I waited for retaliation, for a shout that meant they’d seen us, for a flare to explode in my lungs. It was four seconds of death waiting on a tarmac graveyard.

  Nothing happened.

  We reached the other side without incident. If they had seen us, they didn’t make it known. We would find out for sure as we approached the house.

  Once through the gap in the fence, we flattened ourselves completely. The ground was dry and cracked, and my face scraped it as I stayed low. Dusty red dirt kicked into my mouth from Hackman scrambling in front of me, but I didn’t complain. This was about staying alive, not being comfortable.

  We were headed for the tree line to secure our cover when something changed. Something that could get us all killed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  A line of light raced towards us—the moon was coming out from behind the clouds, its glow dazzling after the oppressive darkness. Anyone left in the moonlight would be seen for sure. Someone would spot us from inside the house, and before we could scream, our lungs would be fried inside our bodies.

  Hackman saw it the same time I did and began a frantic scramble along the grass to the first tree. I followed, but Rachel was taking a closer look at the silos and didn’t see the moonlight about to betray us. I hissed her name, and she looked, her face wide with fear. The light was halfway between the house and her position, and she had less than three seconds before it reached her. She was too far away, and she knew it.

  I reached the cover of the first tree with a moment to spare, but Rachel was caught completely in the light. It might as well have been daytime, and if anyone was inside the house watching, it was over.

  She cut her losses and jumped to her feet, half-rolling, half-diving into the cover of darkness. I was glad the owners had planted a big, dark pine here. We were safe in the shaded circle beneath it, dark in comparison to the moonlight around us.

  I readied myself for a firefight. We had made so much noise scrambling for cover, and Rachel had been exposed for so long they had to know we were here. We hid around the back of the tree, on edge, listening for the crumple of feet on the dry, crackling lawn, the creak of a floorboard, the click of a latch, anything that would give us warning of Unseen retaliation.

  My lungs burned. I was holding my breath. I slowly exhaled, trying to be as quiet as I could. It felt like we were frozen there for days, waiting for a sign, waiting for our deaths. In reality, it was probably ten minutes, but when you think you’re about to die, time slows. I’d learned that a few times over by now. It’s like your body tries to soak up every moment of living, and your mind puts your senses into overdrive so you can drain every last possible second out of existence, savouring every scrap of time you have left.

  Hackman moved first, confident we were still undetected. The tree line was thick at this end, a whole row of pines that created an unbroken line of cover. The bottom branches were so close to the ground we had to stay flat to change position. I moved along the back of the row, keeping the trunks between me and the house. Rachel kept far closer than before, not wanting to be left out in the open again.

  About halfway between the fence and the house, we were close enough to get a better look. The farmhouse had a corrugated tin roof, rusted in parts, and guttering that flaked blue paint onto the dead grass below. The broken window was obvious now; it led into what could’ve been a bedroom. Breaking a window at the front of the house to gain entry was sloppy. It would have made more sense to break one that faced away from the road. Maybe they were in a hurry, or maybe it wasn’t them at all, just some ratty local kids with too much time and not enough to do. Three sets of windows faced us, and a screen door hung slightly off its hinges into a veranda that leaned a fraction to one side. The whole place looked unstable. It hadn’t been maintained in a long time.

  A sad-looking garden ran along the front of the veranda on either side of the steps. It was filled with spindly, dead plants, the remains of whatever the owners had planted before the drought. The driveway was on my right and ran around to the back of the house from the road. There was a broken-down play set out front, one of those hollow plastic ones with a tiny slide, but the joints had split and, at some point, filled with murky mould and rainwater. That was all dried up now, but the watermarks remained.

  There was a creak from inside the house. Then a second one. A third. Footsteps.

  The front screen door wailed, opening slowly out into the veranda. A figure stepped out onto the grey, weathered boards. He let the door close behind him and walked to the top of the steps. He looked in my direction. I tensed, ready to run. A glow lit up his face. A phone. He was on a call. I exhaled and tried to listen in.

  “Have you heard anything else?” A pause. “No. It’s strange for an operative to go dark this long ... Yes, I know it’s deep cover. But everything’s quiet, right across the board. The Kindred are never this silent. If we haven’t heard from our eyes inside ... I’m just saying, what’s the use of having an agent in the Kindred if they don’t tell us anything?”

  I almost gasped but managed to swallow it. Hackman’s eyes went wide, and Rachel’s face dropped. The Unseen had someone inside the Kindred. We had a traitor.

  The phone call ended, and the figure stepped off the porch into the grass. We were almost level with the house, and he was far too close for comfort. Stepping slowly across the lawn, he walked our way. I wanted to run, but the others stayed still, so I did my best to follow their lead.

  He was close now, breathing only a few steps away, thick deodorant wafting through the air. He stopped at the tree next to ours. We were made for sure.

  There was a zip and then the sound of dirt splattering, like someone emptying a bucket of water a few drops at a time.

  “Got to get the plumbing going in this God-forsaken house,” he muttered as he relieved himself on the tree trunk. I almost laughed. Thankfully, he hadn’t chosen the tree we were hiding under. Either he would have seen us, or we would have stayed hidden and had a pretty disturbing new experience. He zipped his pants up and wandered back into the house. Rachel stifled a laugh, and I joined her, snorting quietly. Hackman glared at us. We settled, with some effort, and waited for a long half hour, until we were certain the house was still again.

  Then, on Hackman’s order, we crept forward. Every time a twig cracked, I panicked, sure it would give us away. I tripped on an exposed tree root and made way too much noise as I regained my balance. But the house remained silent.

  Finally, we were level with the house, and one by one, we scurried across the moonlit gap to press ourselves square up against
the wall. The whole house was raised to avoid flooding, the same as many farmhouses around the area. The floor was even with my waist, and the windowsill sat way above my head. We would be safely out of view as long as we stayed close to the wall. We were on the opposite side to the driveway and flanked by trees, so even though this was the closest we were to danger, I felt the safest since we’d left the cornfield.

  Hackman had brought a periscope, a tiny mirror on a stick like the ones spies in movies use to see around corners. We were to go from window to window to get an idea of numbers, learn the layout of the house, and confirm my family’s presence. That would give the following night’s assault a far better chance of success.

  We wouldn’t be able to check the front, as the veranda was far too creaky for us to stay hidden, but the front rooms hopefully shared windows with the side of the house so we could check them from there.

  There were three windows on this side of the house. One was small and made of the speckled glass used for bathroom windows, so we couldn’t check it, but the rooms on either side were bedrooms. We couldn’t see into the first due to thick blinds, but the second had a hole in the curtain, and Hackman signalled that there were two Unseen inside.

  We slid around the corner to the back of the house, which was level with the ground on this side. The land sloped up slightly so we had to crouch as we stepped onto the paved back entrance. We were in a small yard with a few dead flowers and a shed, and beyond that were fields as far as I could see. The windows back here were big, covering nearly the entire back wall of the house. Most likely the living room and kitchen were here, but they looked empty. As Hackman looked inside with his mirror, I edged forward and ducked from one side of the screen door to the other.

  A light went on like a gunshot, and I dove to the ground. The whole yard lit up, and a shadow covered the shed. It was someone inside the house, standing in front of the light. The shadow began to shrink. Whoever it was, they were coming to the door.