Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  “Like in Quebec, remember? It’s a variation of electromagnetic armor,” Rhys explained. “The tracks send out a signal too. Their functioning’s dependent on each other, and they go for about thirty-mile sections each, so if one part of the section gets damaged, the whole APD system’s down for that stretch.” When I stared at him, he blushed. “I was into trains as a kid.”

  The train started moving. Though Rhys took the compartment on the right, Lake pulled me into the other one, sliding the door shut once I was inside. Chae Rin was already inside, fiddling with a touch screen screwed into the wall. I didn’t ask what it was for.

  “After what happened yesterday, we have to talk about Natalya.” Lake sat down on the bench. “I hereby declare this a totally full-on emergency meeting.”

  As Lake rummaged through her bag, Chae Rin leaned in to the corner next to the open window, her now-auburn hair tossed about by the wind. “Not sure what’s to discuss,” she said. “That guy from the Sect tried to kill Maia. Obviously something dirty’s going on in there.”

  “We need to plan our next move.” Lake pulled the cigarette box out of the plastic bag she’d stuffed into her travel bag.

  Chae Rin raised an eyebrow. “You put the box in a grocery bag?”

  “Of course I did! As if I’d let something that dirty touch my stuff.” Setting down her travel bag, she placed the box on the table and lifted the lid. “Chae Rin told me about the letter, Maia. You think it was written by one of Saul’s personalities?”

  The ravaged doll held my gaze, with its dirt-caked face and the twisted threads where its button eyes should have been. “Alice. I think Alice might have been the one attacking those cities. Nick, the other personality . . . when we interrogated him he seemed so . . .” I searched for the word. “Helpless. Scared. Desperate to talk to Marian. Well, they both want to talk to her.”

  “Really? But from the letter it seems like Alice wanted Marian’s ghost to bugger off or something.” Lake sighed. “This is really a lot to take in.”

  Chae Rin shut the lid. “So then what’s our next move?”

  “The museum.” Lake turned to me. “You said Natalya got inside a secret room in some museum, right? And hid that note for Belle in a book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, until you scry for more clues, we’re going to have to take that as our next lead, though I have no idea how to come up with an excuse to get there. Maia still has training.”

  Chae Rin shrugged as she fiddled with the monitor in the corner. Nothing but rolling hills and yet more rolling hills crossed the screen. “So we lie low until Maia’s done.”

  “Training typically takes two years.”

  “You ditched.”

  Lake glared at her. “Will you quit bringing that up? Anyway, I already played the photo shoot card, so we’ll just have to think of something else. But we should keep this to ourselves.”

  “Yeah.” Chae Rin turned the box around with a finger. “Because the Sect is evil.”

  “Not evil,” said Lake with an annoyed sigh. “There’s no way of telling who in the Sect is involved in this. Could just be that nutter Vasily. Without proper evidence, we can’t just go around accusing an entire international organization and its thousands of members.”

  I nodded, but in truth I was only half listening. My gaze slid to the door.

  “You know, this would be a lot easier if Slayer Barbie would deign to lend us a hand.” In all her blunt glory, Chae Rin had taken the words right out of my mouth. “Where is she, anyway?”

  “I don’t think she’ll be much interested anyway.”

  I finally told them what happened in the alleyway earlier that day. As Lake covered her mouth, Chae Rin folded her arms.

  “God, I am so tired of her constant emo ice-bitch act. Like, people die, get over it.” Chae Rin must have noticed the change in my expression, because she shrank into her corner. “I mean, obviously I didn’t mean it like that. You know what I mean, right?”

  She turned to Lake for help, who sighed and gripped my hand, a bit like my mother would have when she was alive.

  “We fight until we die,” Lake said, after letting go. “Maybe that’s true. I think that’s why the phantoms really scare me. To be honest, I . . .” She smiled sadly. “I don’t want to die.”

  I needed air.

  “Sorry,” I said, standing.

  “Where are you going?” Lake asked.

  “Just keep going without me.” I left.

  For a moment, I stood in the hallway, wondering where I could go. I needed to clear my head, but Belle was already outside. I could see her through the back exit’s window. Venturing into the public seating area wasn’t a good idea either. It would just give people an excuse to write more blog posts about me.

  That only left . . .

  Nervously I spied the door to Rhys’s private compartment. I couldn’t. Could I? Would it be weird? I wrung my hands, endlessly debating with myself until the door opened.

  “Maia?” Rhys blinked. “You okay?”

  “Uh . . .” I stared at my toes. “Can I come in?”

  “’Course.”

  I appreciated the casual tone, though I wouldn’t have minded if he’d sounded a bit more eager, at least so I’d feel less like a little kid annoying her older brother. I gingerly sat on the bench opposite him, as if the slightest contact would break it in half. Hopefully, he didn’t notice how straight my back was, how stiff my limbs. Then again, it wasn’t exactly hard to miss.

  I opened and closed my fingers against my jeans as we sat in silence. Trying to avoid his eyes, I looked out the window. The train’s APD signal reached far enough to keep the phantoms at a comfortable distance, but I knew if I squinted I’d be able to see their silhouettes, trampling, flying, thrashing about behind the green hills as the train traveled the countryside.

  “See this monitor?” Rhys asked suddenly, pointing at the touch screen on the wall. “They have them in the public area too. You can pick any angle outside the train and zoom in. If you zoom enough, you’d probably be able to see a few phantoms out there.”

  Apparently, just like at Le Cirque de Minuit, seeing phantoms served as part of the entertainment.

  I would never understand people’s fascination with monsters.

  “Wanna try?”

  “No.”

  As he smiled, the tension in my body started slipping away.

  Rhys took a sip of his coffee. “Anyway, you wanted to talk?”

  Did I? I wasn’t even one hundred percent sure why I’d come inside in the first place.

  “You haven’t looked well since the shoot.” Rhys wasn’t wrong. “Something happen?”

  Something. Everything. With a heavy sigh, I told him the truth, but unlike Lake and Chae Rin, the news didn’t seem to surprise Rhys at all.

  “She’s angry,” he said, his expression solemn. “She’s always been a little angry, but ever since Natalya died . . . well, you remember how she was when you first met her.”

  Yep. Our totally un-awkward meeting at La Charte. That should have been the first hint that something was seriously wrong. Even for Belle, she was way colder than I’d expected. Cruel. I should have paid attention.

  “This job isn’t easy. Not for Effigies . . . and not for agents.” Rhys set his mug down on the table. Gripping it with both hands, he stared into its dark contents. “Sometimes the Sect can feel like a tide you can’t fight against. Especially when you’ve been raised with them, raised doing this. They ask so much of you, and you give so much until the sacrifice just feels natural. Like a foregone conclusion.”

  I laid my head against the seat.

  “Sometimes,” Rhys continued, “you feel like your life is just a chip in their pile and they can play it however they want. To Belle, I’m sure Natalya’s death is just another example of that.”

  He became silent.

  Belle was grieving. Like me. She’d lost something. “I wish things were different for all of us. I wish Natalya
hadn’t died. I wish I had my family back.” My voice cracked. “I wish . . .”

  I stopped when I noticed Rhys hunch over and bury his head in his hands.

  “Rhys?” After sitting up, I leaned in and touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

  Once he raised his head and gazed at me helplessly, I could see it: a flicker of something deep and painful in his dark eyes. Words yet unformed, desperate to be voiced.

  “Maia.”

  I drew back. “What’s wrong?”

  It was getting dark outside. Lights dotted the protective poles lining the railroad tracks. Light and shadow passed across Rhys’s face as the train’s steady rhythm murmured beneath us.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He’d said it so quietly, so weakly, that I couldn’t be sure what he was apologizing for. But soon his expression hardened. Straightening his back, he drew in a deep, shaky breath.

  “Maia. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  There was a light but unusual rumbling underneath us. We swayed on our bench as tremors surged throughout the compartment.

  “What was that?” I looked around. “Oh god, is it phantoms? It’s not phantoms, is it?”

  Rhys smiled. “Exactly what you’d want to hear from an Effigy.”

  I grinned sheepishly. It wasn’t until a few seconds had passed that I realized the train was slowing down.

  “No, seriously, Rhys, what’s going on? Are we stopping?”

  Before he could say anything, a deep voice echoed through the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re experiencing some technical issues. We’ve started braking procedure. Please be patient while we work to fix the problem. Thank you.”

  Rhys stood. “I’m going to go find out what’s going on.”

  “Wait!” As he began sliding off the bench, I jumped to my feet too. “What were you going to tell—”

  The door shut.

  Rhys hadn’t been gone a few seconds when Chae Rin and Lake slipped inside the compartment.

  “Guys,” I said, “do you know what’s happening out there?”

  Chae Rin plunked down next to Lake, who had the plastic bag in her hands. “No idea,” she said, “but there’s something you should see.”

  Lake brought out the cigarette box. Flinging open the lid, she reached inside and drew out a tiny shard of some kind of jewel.

  Wait.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I leaned in for a better look. The shard was a white pearl-like stone, but it was the familiar swirl of black at the center that gave its identity away.

  “Yep.” Chae Rin shut the lid of the box. “It’s that stone. Same one from Saul’s ring. Same one from the ring I gave my boss. The one that can control phantoms.”

  “It’s much smaller, though.” Lake weighed it in her palm. “I almost didn’t see it. It’s like it broke off of a bigger piece.”

  I dragged the box closer and pulled out the letter, holding it delicately in my hands as I read. “I will reshape the world,” I whispered. Alice’s words.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “Guys,” I asked. “Where are the rings?”

  Chae Rin and Lake exchanged glances. “Aren’t they somewhere in London HQ?” Lake said, but from the look on her face she didn’t seem sure.

  Brooklyn. Moscow. Buenos Aires. They still didn’t know how Saul had managed to disable the central antiphantom devices of those cities.

  One time, Uncle Nathan took me on a tour of the Municipal Defense Control Center so I could see where he worked. Dragged me, actually. It was a huge building with plenty of complicated-looking computers with the sole function to keep New York’s Needle online.

  Saul was in the hotel room with us when the Needle shut off.

  He definitely had inside help. But how extensive? Natalya was murdered to keep Saul’s secret hidden. Hell, I was almost killed myself. As the train finally crawled to a jerky stop, I thought back to Saul’s calculating grin, unwavering even in the midst of an interrogation, while he spoke of his ring.

  Safe? Well, I suppose that depends on who has it now.

  “Um, guys?” Lake’s naturally sweet tone had risen by several pitches as she peered outside the window. “Is . . . the train’s APD off?”

  Everything faded to silence. One beat. Two. Nothing inside me wanted to peer out the window, and yet I did anyway, wordlessly as if in a trance.

  I couldn’t see it: the soft, faded blue current running down tracks and up the poles, a symbol of the armor protecting us from the terror outside. It was gone.

  No, no, no, no, no. I was on my feet, a tight pressure building in my chest. Chae Rin clicked the monitor in the corner of our compartment. It was dark outside now. We wouldn’t be able to see much no matter how furiously Chae Rin searched through the angles.

  I hoped, anyway.

  Pointlessly.

  “Oh my god.” Chae Rin’s hand fell from the monitor.

  The three of us stared at the screen, awestruck by the gaping hole in the tracks in front the train. It’d been blown apart, right down to the bolts.

  I couldn’t breathe. That was the rumble we’d felt earlier. An explosion? But—

  “Where the hell is Belle?” Rhys burst into our compartment, his knuckles drained of blood as he gripped his cell phone. “Where is she?”

  Static noise spat from his cell phone, but every once in a while a weak, wheezing voice broke through. It didn’t take long to figure out the words it moaned:

  “. . . gone . . . Saul’s gone. . . . Warn everyone. . . . He’s coming for you. . . .”

  Pushing past Rhys, I bolted out of the compartment and, after sliding open the door to the public area, I ran through the narrow hall. It didn’t matter that passengers were staring, pointing, mouthing my name. I needed to get to the conductor. They needed to know before it was too late.

  But it was already too late.

  I stopped. My hands gripped the seat of the old man beside me. I could see him on the monitor standing in front of the train. In front of the explosion he’d made.

  Saul.

  Whatever terrible glee I was used to seeing in his eyes had vanished. This was a somber Saul, his familiar malice replaced by a quiet determination that was just as frightening.

  And even from where I stood in the train, even with the sound turned off, I could still understand the word that passed his lips. The name he uttered.

  “Marian.”

  I BUMPED INTO RHYS AS I whipped around.

  “Rhys,” I cried. “It’s Saul! We have to get people out!”

  “What’s going on?” Lake’s eyes glazed as she wandered down the hall, lost as a child. “Why . . . why is he here?” She had to grab on to a seat to stay on her feet.

  “What the hell is going on?” A young man stood, his tablet flopping out of his lap, taking his earphones with it. “What’s wrong with the tracks?”

  “Just sit down,” Rhys ordered.

  “Why aren’t we moving?” A young woman pressed her child to her chest, her arm shaking. “What happened to the lights?”

  I just kept tugging Rhys’s sleeve. “We have to get them out!”

  “We can’t.” Rhys slid past a pair of empty seats to peer out the window through the blinds. “We’re on a tall, very steep hill in the middle of nowhere. We’re not anywhere near an antiphantom signal. This train’s APD was our only protection.” He turned to me, making very sure to keep his voice low. “Going out there would be suicide.”

  “Is it any worse than staying in here?”

  “Neither is a particularly good option.”

  “Regarde!” A teenage boy stood on his seat cushion, pointing to the back of the train. “Belle! Belle est ici! Incroyable. Dieu merci!”

  Belle had just reentered the cabin, pushed along by Chae Rin. She took one grim look at the monitor and curled her hands into fists. “Saul.”

  I looked at the monitor and saw that the conductor and two members of the crew had stepped outside to talk to Saul. “No,” I h
issed under my breath. “Get away from him!”

  It was too late. At first the passengers fell silent, confused, perhaps, as they watched the conductor and his men crumple to the ground. It wasn’t until a man started screaming that the rest of them followed, climbing out of their seats, pouring into the hall, clambering over one another to escape.

  “Calm down!” I could barely hear Rhys’s voice over the pandemonium. “Hey! Don’t go out there!”

  A few passengers had already fled through the back of the train car, chancing the dangerous night.

  “No! There are phantoms out there!”

  Lake’s words paralyzed the crowd, and for a moment we all stared at each other, the realization stunning us into terrified silence. It was a short young woman who spoke first, reaching for Belle.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She had to crane her neck to look at up at Belle, her trembling fingers clasped around the fabric of the Effigy’s blouse. “Belle’s here. The Effigies are here. We’ll be okay! Right?”

  “That’s right!” cried a passenger.

  “Belle’s here!”

  “Belle’s a hero. Everything’s okay!” A few more babbled their relief in French.

  But something must have snapped in Belle when she looked into the young woman’s eyes. “No.” She shook her head, backing away. “I’m not . . . don’t . . . Please don’t count on me.”

  Pushing through the crowd, Belle fled outside.

  It hit me all in one instant: anger. No, rage. Rage so hot it left no room for anything else. I barreled after her, squeezing through the crowd to get to her.

  I found Belle outside the train car bent over the metal railings she clutched for dear life.

  “I’m not.” Belle’s chest heaved as she rasped the words. “I’m not that. I can’t.”

  Seeing her like that, so desperate, so small . . . Suddenly, whatever rage had been building in me gave way to a vast cavern of despair. My limbs felt cold and heavy, my knees weak. Everything was coming apart, but I couldn’t approach Belle, couldn’t take a single step toward the idol crumbling in front of me.

  Shoving me aside, Chae Rin pulled Belle around and punched her, hard, in the face. Belle crashed against the railing, slumping to the ground. But she was lucky. She was still conscious. Chae Rin must have held herself back, though I could already see the swelling around Belle’s eyes.