Fire and Smoke

by Mark Ayre

  “Neither,” she said. “Your sister is walking into a trap.”

  “She already knows,” Adam said.

  “Yes,” Caldwell agreed. “She does.”

  Again, she leaned forward, putting herself just out of reach. Adam’s arms and legs tensed. It took everything not to lash out, even knowing he couldn’t get her.

  “She believes I’ll have the place surrounded. That my people will flood in at the moment she attempts her rescue. She’s right, but that’s not how I’ll capture her.”

  She patted Adam’s knee. He lashed out, but she was too quick. Pain shot up his back as the chains restrained him.

  “Your sister knows I plan to use a trap to capture her,” Caldwell said. “She’ll avoid it, thus falling straight into my real trap.”

  Donnelly parked in a convenient location, then left his car.

  Caldwell’s rats were scurrying. If they saw him, they might wave. They would not perceive him as a threat, so they would not try to shoot him. That was a comfort. Even so, he kept out of sight, not wanting his presence reported to the woman in charge.

  On the edge of the construction site, he took in everything. Eve was smart—he didn’t doubt that. She wouldn’t know what Caldwell planned. Emotion would steal her ability to act rationally, to escape.

  If everything went well for Caldwell, her plan would succeed. She would take the twins and the associated glory.

  Unfortunately for her, everything would not go well.

  Smiling, Donnelly approached the building shell, drawing his gun and forming his plan.

  The construction yard was silent. There should have been men at work. Another sign of the financial might of her enemy was its apparent emptiness.

  It wasn’t empty. As soon as Eve walked through the mesh gate, agents would surround her. She could neither see nor hear them. She knew they were there—armed, waiting to fire.

  Whoever spoke through Bethany planned to draw Eve in before closing the net. If she knew the drawbacks of Eve’s power, she would have people take random shots at Eve on her journey. It would put the twin in an awkward position. Two choices. Try to hold a constant forcefield and risk passing out, going to hell, or trust she could hear any approaching shots and block them.

  After using his power, it could take Adam days to recover. Eve might spend minutes or hours in hell. But never days, at least not yet. She returned refreshed, if afraid. No fatigue prevented her from using her power to the extent of her ability.

  Trusting herself, she stepped through the mesh gate and toward the building.

  Construction equipment and machinery lay abandoned. A tin office, low and narrow, had been thrown together in the shadow of the building shell. A temporary internal stairway led up, stopping at each floor, traveling to the top.

  Halfway between the mesh gate and building husk, movement way above drew her attention.

  The agents were many things. Careless was not one. High up, concealed shooters were not growing restless and stretching their legs. They had not accidentally given themselves away.

  She was supposed to see.

  Three figures appeared, toes over the edge at the peak of the construction. So far away, with the sun at their backs, they were hard to make out. It was not difficult to tell who they were.

  The frightened, slim girl was Bethany. Fumbling fingers went to a pocket. Eve knew she was drawing a phone.

  Next to her, the man in the dark clothes with a sack over his head was Adam. Beside him was the man with the gun.

  A click of her fingers would kill the gunman. If she could guarantee he would not shoot her brother in his dying second, she would have ended him.

  Bethany had the phone to her ear. Eve’s burner rang.

  Answering, she said, “I’m guessing you’ve not double-crossed us? They’ve threatened you, yeah? You realize they’re going to kill you no matter what.”

  “Yes,” Bethany said.

  That stumped Eve. To her left lay an empty cement mixer. Beyond it, she thought she saw movement. Were the troops mobilizing?

  She unraveled the Bethany situation.

  “They’ve confessed they’re going to kill you no matter what, but said they’d spare your loved ones if you do as they say?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must be very frightened,” Eve said. She could hear it in the girl’s voice. All her anger for the receptionist fluttered away on the breeze.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, to stand up there, doing everything they ask, knowing you’re going to die, to save the people you love…” Eve stopped. Being complementary did not come easy. “You’re incredibly brave.”

  Bethany didn’t know what to say.

  “They only letting you say yes or something?”

  “No,” Bethany said. “They want me to tell you that if you stand still and allow yourself to get sedated, they’ll spare your brother.”

  “They know I’m not going to do that here,” Eve said. “If anyone tries to shoot me, I’ll stop them. Once I’m up there, once I’ve confirmed my brother is safe, they can take me out, no complaints. What do they say about that?”

  “They say okay.”

  The man with the gun hadn’t spoken. Bethany had not hesitated long enough for Eve to believe anyone was speaking into her ear, responding to Eve’s demands. They knew what the twin would want. Everything had been pre-arranged.

  On the building’s roof, they believed they could take her.

  They were wrong.

  “I’m coming up,” Eve said.

  “Okay.”

  “Bethany?”

  “Yes?”

  “I meant what I said about your bravery. You’ve been incredible.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They can’t hear what I’m saying, can they?” Eve said. “It’s just you and me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good, because I don’t want you to die today. Do you want to die?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you want to survive, I need you to be even braver than you’ve already been. Are you with me?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Good. Listen closely. We get this right, then me, you, and my brother can all get away. Preferably alive.”

  Donnelly preferred guns to knives.

  It was not that he was not proficient at hand-to-hand combat. He excelled at it. Never lost a fight.

  He was fashion conscious. He wore tailored clothes. Expensive. The problem with close combat, especially when blades were involved, was that shirts and trousers got ripped and bloodstained. More than once, he’d had to chuck out outfits that had cost thousands.

  Wherever possible, he killed from a distance, outside the splash zone. Sometimes, this wasn’t possible. He was a professional. Needs must.

  Ninja silent, Donnelly approached a tall man with close-cropped, greying hair. His shirt was untucked, which was reason enough for execution in Donnelly’s book. His gun pointed at dead space.

  When Donnelly was a meter away, the untucked agent heard him. Before he could spin, Donnelly had pounced. Grabbing the man’s head, he slashed his throat and shoved the body away. He checked his clothes for damage, then the body for signs of life.

  Not a tear, nor a drop of blood from head to toe. Fabulous. The man had no pulse. Wonderful.

  Wiping his knife on the dead man’s jacket, he concealed it and proceeded.

  One down, five to go.

  Under Eve’s feet, the metal steps clanged. Unnervingly, the whole structure seemed to sway in the breeze. She was sure it was her imagination, but not quite sure enough.

  Up she went. Neither she nor Adam was afraid of heights. Given everything they had been through, the constant fear of capture or murder, they had no room for the trivial, common phobias—spiders, heights, commitment.

  Each floor was littered with tools and safety signs. Block letters warned her not to proceed alone, nor without a hardhat. In a clear breach of both warnings, she climbed.

 
; The rising sun had brought little wind. At ground level, the world felt still. The higher she rose, the more the wind rattled the scaffolding, ruffled her clothes.

  One floor from the top, she paused. No one had yet fired. She could neither see nor hear any agents. The wind might muffle any sounds. There were few hiding places amongst the tools, scaffolding, and girders.

  The final few steps opened onto the sky. Unsecure-looking boarding sealed off the roof, preventing her from spying her brother, Bethany, or any bad guys. Encasing herself in an invisible field, she took the steps with caution, circling the moment her eyes were above the boards, taking in the scene.

  Other than the three she had seen from the ground, there was one further agent. A woman. Her gun pointed at Eve. The man still had his trained on Adam.

  She took the remaining steps, turning to the three at the edge. Saw the trick in an instant. Chastised herself for not realizing earlier.

  From behind, the woman said, “I’m going to shoot you. Don’t try to stop me, or your brother gets a bullet, then goes over the edge.”

  Silence. Eve met Bethany’s eye. On the planks, strong winds whipped Eve’s hair, pushed at her. She was surprised Bethany had held her nerve.

  Lifting her arms, she said, “Fire then.”

  A soft puff signaled the dart leaving the chamber.

  Inches from Eve, it swerved, defying the laws of physics, disappearing into the second agent’s throat.

  “You’re a rubbish shot,” Eve said.

  The woman gasped. Her colleague disappeared over the building’s edge, plummeting toward the gravel twenty stories below.

  With him, he dragged his hooded prisoner.

  On the screen in the back of the van, Eve appeared, walking up the stairs onto the building shell’s planked roof.

  “How long before she realizes, do you reckon?” Caldwell said.

  “She already has.”

  Seconds later, two men plummeted over the building’s edge. Adam chuckled.

  “We’re twins. We’ve spent almost every day together since we were born. You were lucky it took as long as that.”

  “It took long enough,” Caldwell said. From her pocket, she pulled a radio. “Time to move.”

  “You can send a million agents up there,” Adam said. “They’ll never stop her.”

  Grabbing the radio again, she shouted, “Start the van.”

  Looking to Adam, she continued, “Don’t you get it? They’re not supposed to.”

  After watching her colleagues plummet over the edge, the female agent began firing.

  Her aim was good. Each bullet came within an inch of Eve’s chest before veering off, disappearing.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” Eve asked. She clicked her fingers, and the dart gun sprung from the agent’s hand and disappeared over the building’s edge. “He’s my brother.”

  Without moving a muscle, she could utilize her power. Finger clicking made for a cool effect.

  At a second click, the agent’s holster unclasped, and the gun flew into Eve’s hand. The agent dived to grab it, but she was too slow. She fell to her knees. By the time she rose, the gun was pointing at her chest.

  “If you’d succeeded in sedating me, do you know what they would have done to my brother and me?”

  The agent seemed to have lost her voice. Maybe the wind had dried her throat.

  “Endless experiments,” Eve said. “Torture and torment. Never again would we have seen the light of day. They’d use us, kill us, then dispose of the bodies.” Temper flaring, she fired over the agent’s shoulders. “Did you know?”

  “I’m sorry,” the agent whispered. “I was following orders.”

  “You love orders so much, here’s one. Die.”

  She fired three bullets, hitting her target three times. Powerless, the agent could only watch, stumble, then collapse. Still.

  Bethany stared at the dead woman. Eve patted her on the shoulder, gazing over the building’s edge. Agents were rushing under the rafters, toward the stairs. Soon, she would hear their pounding feet.

  “That’s a lot of people. Come on.”

  She pulled Bethany from the edge to the center of the boards and gripped her shoulders, forcing the frightened receptionist to meet her eye.

  “Where’s my brother?”

  On the ground, opposite where Eve had entered the building shell, a van kicked into life. At the end of a path, before more open mesh gates, it prepared to depart.

  “He’s in the van,” Bethany said. “It was a trick.”

  “Well, yeah,” Eve said. “We have to get down there.”

  Pounding feet were audible on the metal steps. Bethany squeaked.

  “We can’t get past them.”

  “You definitely couldn’t,” Eve said. “Me, maybe. They’re expecting me to try. How many more tricks they got up their sleeves, you reckon?”

  Bethany didn’t answer. She was on the verge of collapse.

  “I already told you how we’re escaping,” Eve said. She retook Bethany’s shoulders, this time from behind. Shoved her toward the roof’s edge, high above the van. “I suggest you close your eyes.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Close your eyes?”

  “Do it.”

  Eve put her arms around Bethany’s stomach, as though to perform the Heimlich maneuver. “We’ll see.”

  The receptionist attempted to escape.

  “Stop it,” Eve snapped. “You wriggle while we’re out there, I will drop you, and you’ll die. I’m taking a big risk trying to do this with two anyway.”

  “I’m staying here,” Bethany said.

  “They’ll shoot you.”

  “I can’t. I can’t.”

  Eve sighed. Would have put her head in her hands if she weren’t holding Bethany. The rising feet were a couple of floors away. The van could leave any second. There was no time to mess around.

  “Fine,” she said.

  Bethany’s lips started to form the words, thank you. Eve jumped, dragging them over the edge.

  Donnelly killed five of his six targets without a hitch. On the last, it all went wrong.

  He grabbed the man, bringing the knife across his throat with one fast, powerful swipe.

  In desperation, his victim spun.

  Sensing danger, Donnelly shoved and dived, tumbling onto the ground and rolling.

  Too late.

  Blood sprayed from the man’s neck. Though Donnelly moved fast, he saw a few droplets hit his jacket; one landed on his collar.

  Worse, in dropping and rolling, he had caked dirt on his clothes and ripped his trousers.

  “No.”

  The agent was still. Donnelly fumed, wishing he had screwed up the attack. If the agent hadn’t died, Donnelly could torture the bastard before finishing him off.

  On the ground, groaning, miserable, he closed his eyes.

  When he reopened them, he saw Eve and another girl plummet from the top girders.

  Forgetting his clothes, he jumped to his feet, started running.

  He had to reach his car in time.

  Only twice before had Eve jumped off a building. Both times, she had been without a conventional parachute. Yet, she had survived.

  She had also been alone.

  Twenty stories looked like a mammoth drop when standing at its peak. When falling, fast picking up speed, the distance didn’t seem so great. As fun as free falling was, Eve had to slow her descent almost immediately.

  “Hold on,” she said to a screaming, panicking, not-listening Bethany.

  Eve tightened her grip, imagining a parachute billowing from her back as wings sprang from an angel’s. She felt her power solidify into an invisible canvas a second before it caught the wind.

  Yanked skyward, Eve held Bethany’s blouse. The distraction stole her focus, put holes in the parachute. Holding tight to her passenger, she patched it as they began to speed up, steadying the descent.

  On the horizon, flames entwined with ice da
nced in the wind. A spinning vortex ripped a hole in the sky, offering a window into hell.

  Instead of that demonic world, she focused on a controlled landing. Mess that up, she’d break her legs and possibly Bethany.

  They were sitting ducks. Luckily, the soldiers had risen too far. Though they had turned, begun their descent, they would be too late.

  “Coming in hot,” Eve said. “Try to relax.”

  Bethany had squeezed her eyes shut a second after Eve’s jump. At Eve’s words, she opened them, saw the ground. Screaming, wriggling, she slipped free of Eve’s grasp.

  “Hey,” Eve shouted.

  Focus abandoned her.

  The parachute vanished.

  She plummeted.

  There was not far to go. Well practiced, she landed in a roll. The stone-laden ground tore at her clothing and skin. Suffering a knock to her skull, she was temporarily lost to dizziness.

  By the time she’d got to her feet, the world had stopped spinning. In plenty of pain, Bethany groaned. The oncoming agents would probably kill her. Eve could spare her no more time.

  The van idled.

  Desperate to reach her brother, able to think of nothing else, Eve sprinted as though it were already moving.

  They watched Eve run.

  “Oh, dear,” Caldwell said. “In comes emotion, and out goes any chance of escape.”

  “We’ll see,” Adam said.

  Caldwell brought the radio to her lips. “Fire.”

  Eve was halfway there. In her seat, Caldwell vibrated with excitement. Thirty years of failed attempts, and she was going to succeed. Here came glory. Promotion. Hopefully, a pay rise and a bonus. A big bonus. A massive bonus. A—

  Adam said, “I don’t think they heard you.”

  “Fire,” Caldwell repeated. “Fire now.”

  “Maybe they’ve all taken their ciggie breaks at the same time. Pretty irresponsible. I blame the boss.”

  “Fire, fire, fire.”

  Eve reached the van.

  “I guess you’re out of plans,” Adam said.

  “Guess again.”

  Caldwell grabbed something from beneath her seat. On the front, there was an innocuous black button.