by C. S. Won
He exploded forward, back foot bolting off the floor and leaving a dusting of ash in his wake. The edge of the stairs came toward him in an open embrace, and beyond it, the inferno waited below. He planted his foot just at the edge of the abyss, leaving an imprint of his boot behind as he vaulted forward, legs kicking at the air.
It took his breath away, watching the world fall away from him. What had once been ashcovered floors transformed into a lake of fire, remnants of the fallen stairwell poking through the flames like black sticks. It seemed as though he was staring into the very landscape of hell itself, the devil giving him a glimpse of what awaited him if he dared to err in life. He forced his gaze from the pit, fearful that he would lose all momentum and suddenly drop into the fiery chasm if he continued to stare. He had to look ahead at the bottom of the stairs, as difficult as it was, and hope that his effort was enough to make the jump.
It appeared it was. The bottom of the stairs rushed up to meet him, looming faster than he thought, and he realized he had to prepare himself for landing. He tucked himself in and turned to his side, doing his best to shield the girl, and felt the ground punch him in the ribs, driving his breath away in a whooping cough. He rolled over, the world tumbling with him, until the wall halted his forward movement. Jae crashed into it so hard that he nearly broke through to the other side. He blurted out his pain, spitting it out in violent hacks, and rolled over onto his back, tasting the tinge of blood. Everything was distorted, the world nothing more than a smear of blotted colors, strange smells, and unfamiliar noises. His arm screamed out in pain, but he didn’t think it was broken, or maybe it was and the adrenaline masked it.
He flipped over onto his side and looked up at the spot where he had jumped from. He snorted out his surprise, unable to prevent the smile forming on his lips. He had made it. Somehow, someway, he had defied the odds and conquered the leap that seemed so daunting before. He opened up his coat and took a look at the girl. She was alive and well, and humming a song he didn’t recognize. She looked up at him.
“Did we make it?” She asked.
“Yes.”
She smiled. He nestled the coat back over her and stood back on his feet, pain rising with him. He made his way toward the emergency exit and shouldered it open, making his way down to ground level three steps at a time.
Chapter 8
Twenty-four floors above him, after a long and difficult battle, the fire was no more. Pressed into submission, all that remained of it was a thin, lazy trail of steam leaking out from the shattered windows. The haze drifted upward toward the grey sky and stained it a darker, meaner shade.
Smoldering ash danced around Jae like fireflies, swaying past on a cold winter breeze. They marked his coat in small, black splotches, and he’d brush them away when they clung to his face. Underneath his feet, several avenues of water streamed past him into a single winding path, which made its way toward a nearby sewer grate and emptied into the darkness below. Uniformed men and women moved past him, some stopping to shake his hands and offer congratulations, while others went about their business without so much a glance, busy with their tasks. The once bustling throng of onlookers had thinned out, the numbers dwindling once the excitement was over. Only a few lingered behind the police blockade, perhaps waiting to see if anything else would happen.
“You’re a lucky man.”
The EMT rolled the last of the bandages around Jae’s arm and clipped the end off with a quick snip of his scissors. He took a step back as he surveyed his work. To say Jae was hurt would be an understatement. It was a pain his body had almost forgotten. After having been out of commission for six months, his body had inevitably grown dull. Now sensations long forgotten were being reawakened, reintroducing themselves through the burn of sore muscles and aching bones. Every breath he took sent sharp sensations running up and down his body. No doubt about it—this was pain, reemerging like an old, forgotten friend. But all that agony, much to his surprise, made him feel more alive than he ever had. It made him alert. It made him aware. It made him remember what it was like to put his life on the line. It was exhilarating and frightening all at once, knowing that he crawled back from the abyss and lived to tell about it.
“Better lucky than dead,” Jae said. “Do you think I’ll need to go to the hospital?” He extended his arms out, working his fingers, moving his wrists, bending his elbows. Everything seemed to be in working order.
“It’s just a few bruises and minor burns. Nothing a little ointment and some rest can’t take care of. I have to say, though; I expected worse—a lot worse. Considering everything that happened, it’s amazing you were able to escape with only some vanity wounds.”
It amazed him too. It was funny, actually, thinking about it. How many times have I cheated death now, just in the past year alone?
His phone rang. Madeline.
“Hey, honey,” Jae answered.
Her voice came through panicked and high-pitched. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“Just a few minor bruises and burns. Nothing life-threatening. I can sleep it off.”
“Are you sure?”
“You can examine me later, if you’d like.”
She groaned into her phone, irritated. “What were you doing in that fire anyways? I thought you were at home, resting?”
“I went to the station and asked for my job back.”
“You did what? And McAdams agreed? Does he not know you were just released from the hospital? Why the hell didn’t he send you back home? Why did he even assign you such a dangerous task in the first place? I’m going to sue him for endangerment!”
“Honey . . .” He sighed. Her reaction was to be expected, he supposed. She’d made it clear since he arrived back home that she wouldn’t be able to handle another incident. Anything that could put him in any kind of danger was liable to put her on edge. “I went to work today because I wanted to work, and the chief gave me the okay.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to. I needed to.”
“You didn’t need to do anything. You should be at home, swaddled up in bed. You should not even be working, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I should be working. I’m at my most useful when I’m out here doing my job. It’s who I am and what I do.”
A long silence lingered. Madeline’s indignation was palpable, even over such a long distance. He could imagine her fuming, eyebrows curled inward in an angry expression.
“It’s just . . .” She let it hang there, perhaps because she didn’t know what else to say, or she was expecting him to finish her thoughts for her.
“I know, honey,” he said, finishing for her. He paused, searching for the right words. “You have nothing to worry about. I have the best people watching my back. They’ll never let anything happen to me. I’m in good hands.”
“It’s just when I heard what happened, I was afraid that . . .” Another pause. “Just don’t scare me like that again, please. The next time you might not be so lucky.”
You don’t have to remind me. “I’m always careful, honey. I have to be, if I want to ever see you again.” In the distance, he saw Stephanie and Gabe making their approach, helmets tucked underneath their arms. “I have to go, honey. We’ll talk later.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” He hung up. When he looked up, smiling, ready to greet his friends, Stephanie had already closed the distance between for a hug.
“Whoa, something wrong, Steph?” Jae asked.
She pulled away. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Jae sighed. “I really shouldn’t have done the job. The chief should have picked you, Gabe—I should have made him pick you. You would have been better suited for it. The rope wouldn’t have snapped if you went.”
“That rope was a piece of shit. It would have snapped regardless of who went,” Gabe said. “You were the right man for the job. Your quick thinking salvaged the mission.”
“When i
t broke I thought that was it,” Stephanie said.
“I’m just glad there was some give before it broke. I’d be dead if it had just suddenly snapped,” Jae said.
“Lady Luck is smiling upon you.”
And how much longer will she smile?
“By the way, what the hell did you do up there? I went back up to assess the damage done and the whole place was totaled, and I’m not talking about the fire. It looks like someone went full Hulk in there,” Gabe said.
“What do you mean?” Jae asked.
“Like the doors, for example. I’ve never seen anyone break doors like that before. And that rubble . . .” Gabe whistled. “I have no idea how you were even able to chop through several feet of solid concrete and wood. I took several swings at it, just to test how strong it was, and I was only able to make a small scratch. How did you manage to break through that? You’ve been taking steroids in your spare time?”
Several feet of rubble? That surprised Jae. While the rubble did seem imposing at first glance, it lost much of its luster once he started swinging his axe, and the speed and ease in which he completed his task made him believe that he had overrated the strength and girth of his obstacle. Did his relentless pursuit to escape blind him to the reality of how strong the rubble actually was? But what about the door he had kicked away, shattered and broken with just one firm thump of his boot? There was no possible way that he alone could have done something like that. No amount of adrenaline or strength could cause that much damage, even if the door was weakened and softened by the fire. He’d seen battering rams made of hard black iron do far less damage, never mind send doors hurtling several yards away. Was it pure luck that he was able to accomplish such a feat, or was it something else?
He thought of the jump he had made, from the top of the stairs all the way down to the bottom, with only empty space in between to feather his fall. He didn’t need measurement to know how great the gap was. It was clear as day that the chasm stretched far—farther than any man would have been comfortable attempting to cross. Not even an Olympic athlete could have made that leap. By all accounts, he should have fallen into the gap, plummeting to his death in the fiery pit below, but he had crossed it. How?
He thought back to the shattered remote. He figured it was just a faulty device, cheaply made with low grade materials, with little to no regard for quality or craftsmanship, but the plastic shell felt hard in his hand when he picked it up. It had felt sturdy enough to at least take some abuse and definitely sturdy enough to not snap in half when a button was pressed. But he remembered how easily his thumb sank into the remote. He remembered how easily he’d accidentally split the remote in two, an act that took no effort whatsoever to accomplish. Was it truly the work of faulty engineering and design, or could it have been something else?
Ever since he had awoken from the coma, he had displayed examples of raw power that no average man could possess. He’d accomplished feats that, at least in his mind, should have been extremely difficult for anyone, if not impossible. He could no longer deny that something had changed about him. What that exact change was, or how it came about, was still unknown to him. The only variable he could think of that could have induced this change, something Gabe first alluded to in the beginning, was the global storm, as it seemed he gained this strength only after he was hit by lightning. But even that formative theory gave him pause. When striking soft, wet flesh, lightning was supposed to obliterate, not imbue with enhanced strength. It went against every natural rule and scientific law. Why would this particular storm do the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do? Was it some sort of one time phenomena, or was there something larger at play here, as people had increasingly posited?
Chapter 9
With the sun shining high on its perch and the sky painted a deep blue, Jae could have sworn he had fallen into another coma and woken up months later. How else could he account for the unusually warm day they were having? Even the wind—that once formidable wintry thing, with its snapping bite and blood-chilling cold—was nothing more than a cool, easy breeze, comfortable and soothing all at once. If he didn’t know better, he’d have guessed that the winter months had thawed away and brought about the early arrival of spring.
But he knew this was only a tease, a mere illusion of spring. Come nightfall, winter would make its roaring return, complete with stabbing winds and icy temperatures. They were still months away from consistently warmer temperatures broaching the cold. Until then, days like these would only be the exception, not the rule. A shame, but that didn’t mean Jae couldn’t enjoy it while it lasted. Any reprieve from the frost of winter was a welcome one considering he was still trying to get used to the fact that it was January and not July.
He clasped his hands together and stretched them out over his head, groaning through gritted teeth. Gabe’s backyard was an impressive crop of land, a meadow of grass stretching as far as his eyes could discern, resembling more of a field than a simple yard. Small fruit trees, branches stripped clean of their greenery by the cold winds, lined the outer perimeter like rigid, unmoving sentinels. It was as if they were watching over the domain of their master, forming a natural fence right along the border. Near the middle of the yard, an oak tree—bark lined with the ridges of time and battered by the passing of countless storms—stood tall and stoic, its naked, pointed branches swaying gently with the breeze, scratching the skies above like they were trying to peel away at the blue.
“Whatcha’ doin’?” Madeline asked, approaching with a cup of hot coffee, Gabe following close behind. Jae smiled and took the coffee in hand, thanking her with a peck on the cheek. She smelled nice and looked nice, outfitted in form-fitting jeans, boots, and a slender turtleneck. Her hair was roped behind her in a long, thick braid. She pointed to the ground around his feet. “Yard work?”
Jae took a sip of his coffee, black and bitter, and looked at the ground. A tangle of tree branches, ripped and torn, was strewn about in haphazard fashion. The branches were piled on top of one another in uneven stacks. Jae set the coffee on the grass behind him and picked up a branch with an impressive girth, about as wide as a basketball hoop he reckoned. He considered it in the nook of his palm, feeling the weight of it. “I was just testing something out. Watch carefully.” He gripped the branch with his other hand, fingers applying the tightest of holds, and applied a small degree of pressure. The branch snapped in two, a clean break right down the middle.
Gabe whistled. “Impressive.”
Madeline eyes widened. “Whoa.”
Jae handed one half of the branch to her. She took it with both hands and examined it, raising it over her head, turning it this way and that way, running a finger over the exposed, circular-ringed innards of the branch. “This is pretty heavy. How did you . . . ?” She placed it over her knee, making an attempt to break it. A groan squeezed through her lips, face glowing red with effort, but her attempt yielded nothing. Jae chuckled at her.
“Here, let me try,” Gabe said, rolling up his sleeves and taking the branch from her. He gave it his all, putting his entire weight into the task, knuckles going white with tension and his body shaking, but the branch refused to even bend. He went down to a knee, a cry of exertion singing from his lips, but his struggles continued to produce no results. He let the branch fall to the ground, hand on his knee as he fought to catch his breath.
“How were you able to break it so easily?” Madeline asked.
“Steroids, right? Who’s your supplier? I need whatever you’re having,” Gabe said.
“Let me show you something else. Hand me that crowbar behind you.” Jae pointed over Madeline’s shoulder. She turned and picked up the crowbar lying on the back porch, steel scraping against wood. She handed it to Jae. The crowbar’s black metal felt cold and hard in his hands, its strong and sturdy frame belying its thin and lightweight nature. He gripped both ends and pushed his hands together, bending the crowbar into an arch of sorts, iron screeching.
“No wa
y,” Gabe said.
“Honey—”
“I’m not done yet.” Jae bent the crowbar even farther, winding it until its two ends touched each other, forming a circle. He paused for dramatic effect, letting the moment linger, and then mangled the crowbar further. He bent and twisted it until it resembled more ball than crowbar.
For a while, nobody said anything. Then Jae broke the quiet. “What do you think?”
“This has to be some kind of trick, right?” Madeline asked.
“No trick. See for yourself.” Jae extended the crumpled crowbar, waiting for her to take it. She approached it with some trepidation, and when she took it, her eyes became two wide circles, disbelief etched on her face.
“It’s real,” she said. “It’s heavy and it’s real. This isn’t a trick.”
Gabe took the crowbar from her, holding it with both hands. From the strain on his face Jae could tell he was trying to bend the crowbar back, but that notion was quickly given up.
“How did you do this? What the hell is going on?” Gabe asked.
Jae took the crowbar from him and began to straighten it back out to its original form, or something close to it. With the crowbar so distorted, it was difficult to get it back to its initial state, having to contend with all the new crooks and grooves he created when he manipulated it. “Ever since I woke up in the hospital, something has seemed . . . different, and I’m not talking about the circumstances I was in or the abrupt change in weather. Something seemed different about me.”
“What do you mean?” Madeline asked.
He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. He still couldn’t, in a way. “It wasn’t noticeable right away, but over time, I began to do things that I’ve never been able to do—that no normal man should be able to do, for that matter.”