Burn

by G E Hathaway

  “No, it’s stuck.”

  “Here.” Liam still held onto the metal pole from the hospital, and he used it to strike against the knob. He felt it give underneath his blows, and he stepped back. “Now try.”

  Noah twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

  Liam expected to see a room full of computers, blinking monitors, tablets, screens- things he had no idea how to use. He expected to see rows of cubicles and offices, of untouched desks and conference tables. He even expected to see a coven of unsuspecting Utopian Industry employees, hiding out for the past few years in this building, maybe even holding the secrets to the entire universe. Or a pile of bodies. He expected many things.

  He did not expect this.

  The room spanned the entire floor of the building, lined with large picture windows overlooking the city. Immaculately designed cubicles and office furniture sat around the room, slightly grey from a thin layer of dust. Filtered sunlight streamed in through the window, but the solar screens kept the heat safely outside.

  A figure stood in the middle of the room, its gender ambiguous with its tall, slender, curveless frame and cropped white hair. Despite its hair color, its pale face appeared ageless, skin spotless without any lines or freckles. It wore a crisp white suit, immaculately tailored to fit its body. Its face was perfectly symmetrical, with distinguished jawline and high cheekbones. Its eyes were black.

  Like Talisa’s eyes. Like the sun god’s eyes.

  Liam and Noah stood breathlessly in the doorway. Liam slid his backpack off his shoulders and it landed heavily on the floor.

  “Hello,” it spoke, and its voice was distinctly feminine. “I am Winter.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ellie slammed her hand hard against the steering wheel, tears stinging her eyes. Smoke rose from the closed car hood, dissipating into the hot air. She removed the key from the ignition, and the air conditioning shut off.

  She had almost made it out of town. She had driven as fast as she could through the littered, abandoned streets toward Interstate 10. She could smell burning rubber as her tires began to melt, feel the heat radiating from the shell of the car, and still she pressed forward. Only then, just a quarter mile from the interstate, did the sun overheat the car completely, and it died sixty feet above ground on the raised onramp.

  “Talisa, can you hear me?” Ellie twisted around in her seat. She was surprised to see that Talisa’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  “Talisa!”

  She blinked, and relief washed over Ellie. She reached and grabbed the goddess’ hand. It felt frail and thin.

  “Can you do something?” Ellie asked, desperately. “I can’t take us any further. Please help.” She wiped beads of sweat from her forehead.

  Talisa turned her head and looked through the front windshield. Ellie’s heart leapt for a brief second, but then the goddess closed her eyes.

  “No,” Ellie pleaded. She squeezed Talisa’s hand. “Don’t. Please, we’ll burn here!”

  “It is time,” Talisa whispered. Her chest rose and fell heavily. “The change begins.”

  “No it’s not,” Ellie shook her head. “There’s still time, please don’t-”

  “No.” Talisa opened her eyes again and raised her hand. Ellie followed her gaze back out the front windshield. Clouds were forming in the distance, rapidly moving over the city and casting deep shadows on the earth. Ellie watched in fear and amazement, the sky twisting and turning with alarming speed.

  “You’re doing it,” she breathed. “I knew you could!”

  But when she looked back, Talisa’s hand hung limply over the edge of the seat, unresponsive.

  Then the snow began to fall.

  * * *

  Noah and Liam stood at the large, southwest-facing picture window and watched as the snowflakes fluttered softly to the ground. The whole city was bathed in grey and white, the sun hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds. A wind sent flurries past the window, and Noah studied the intricate details of the snowflakes as they stuck to the glass in front of him. He suddenly felt very cold and tired.

  Winter hadn’t moved from her place in the middle of the room, instead choosing to observe them from a distance. She kept her hands folded neatly behind her back.

  Liam turned to look at her. “Talisa wanted us to find you, but she didn’t know how.”

  “Talisa?”

  “Talisa. You know- geezus, don’t you guys know of each other? The monsoon goddess. We brought her here.”

  Winter kept her expression neutral. “Giving herself the name of Talisa only proves how very human-like she’s become. She’s always been unusually sympathetic, but I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised. Monsoon does feed life here in the desert. How very maternal of her.”

  Liam could feel his anger begin to rise. “Then who is this sun god that’s been chasing after us this whole time? What’s his deal?”

  “You call him the sun god. Do not fear his real name. In your modern tongue, he is known as Summer. He is doing what he has always done. He is relentless and insatiable. Monsoon and I have worked together to keep his heat at bay in the desert, but neither of us is strong enough to fight him alone. So we take turns.”

  “What took you so long?” Noah demanded. “We’ve needed your help.”

  Winter’s eyes slid from Liam to Noah, and he shifted uncomfortably under the weight of her unblinking gaze. “I was not strong enough to come before,” she said unapologetically. “ Even now I am not at my full strength, but I could feel Monsoon slipping away and the pain of the earth, and so my time comes now.”

  “The pain of the earth,” Liam repeated in disbelief. “He is burning everything. He will kill everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that is his purpose. He purifies the ground and everything on it. If he had his way, there would be no life on earth. He sees you as a cancer on this planet. Until all life is gone, the planet won’t reach perfection like the others.”

  “The others,” Noah repeated. “You mean the other planets in the solar system? The ones without atmospheres or- or solid ground?”

  “Life persists, and it angers him.”

  “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Noah said.

  Winter simply looked at him.

  “What about Talisa?” Liam said. “What about you? Why do you care at all about us? Why not get rid of us, end your war once and for all. You must be tired of defending a bunch of people who don’t even know what you’re really doing.”

  “I don’t care about your existence at all,” Winter said coldly. “I don’t care at all about you or any life on this planet for that matter. Summer and I have fundamental differences. He purifies by scorching the earth, and I believe true purity comes from peace and stillness.”

  She saw the horror on their faces, and continued. “I don’t mind your existence, of course, but even you must admit that life is chaotic. Monsoon is the one who nurtures you. She feeds the earth and creates life in an otherwise barren desert. I suppose you have much to thank her for. But Monsoon also drowns life. Sweeps away civilizations.”

  She walked to the edge of the window and peered down from their staggering height.

  “Our curse is that we will never be as strong as Summer, we will never overpower him,” she said thoughtfully. “We are doomed to forever repeat the cycle until something finally changes. What will change? I do not know.”

  “And what does that mean for us?” Noah demanded. “We’re just a bunch of casualties that you use for leverage?

  Liam swallowed hard. His throat was tight. “Do you know if Talisa and Ellie made it out of the city?”

  Winter turned her head slowly to look at him, and felt a chill down his spine. He had thought she looked human before, but up close he never knew how he could have mistaken her for one. Her skin was white sheets of glittering frost and ice.

 
“Talisa cannot be here while I am here,” she said, “but I am here now because she no longer lives.”

  * * *

  Ellie unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed into the backseat. The cushion flexed under her weight, and Talisa slid against her knees.

  “Talisa,” Ellie said loudly, nudging her arm. “Talisa, wake up please. If you can hear me, say something.”

  She searched her throat for a pulse and found nothing. Her skin was cold to the touch.

  “Oh shit. Shitshitshit.”

  Ellie planted her knees firmly on the car floor and placed her palms together, left hand over the right. She took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and pushed down hard on Talisa’s chest. She felt the ribs give under her fingers, heard the snap of bone. Without hesitation she started pumping her hands, counting the seconds, trying to maintain a steady rhythm. After a minute she felt for a pulse again. Still nothing. She resumed compressions and realized her hands were wet. Expecting blood, she was surprised to see tears dripping freely from her own face. She gasped for breath, suddenly realizing how familiar all of this felt.

  Her father’s vacant stare flashed before her face.

  “It’s okay, Ellie, just breathe,” she told herself as she sucked in mouthfuls of air. She felt like she was drowning. Her fingers scrambled against the side of the driver’s seat until she found the recliner adjustment handle. She pulled, and the car seat folded forward. She pushed herself through the opening and rolled onto the deserted onramp.

  The temperature had dropped dramatically in the last few seconds, and her feet slipped on icy cement. Snowflakes landed softly in her hair. Crisp, cold air filled her lungs.

  Ellie sat there on the ground with her back against the car for several minutes, breathing slowly. The Phoenix skyline stretched across her line of sight, an eerie graveyard of empty towers . She had never seen snow before in the city. It looked strange against the desert backdrop.

  She counted to ten before pulling herself back to her feet. She kept her gaze away from Talisa as she pushed the driver’s seat back into position and sat down. She carefully avoided looking in the rearview mirror. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and breathed deeply. Goosebumps dotted her arms and legs and she realized she was shivering.

  Talisa was a god. Could she really die?

  “Okay Talisa,” she said, not even sure why she was talking outloud, but it strangely gave her comfort. “I don’t know if this is going to work, but I promised I’d get you out of the city and I’m going to try. Let’s give this car one last try.”

  She stuck the key in the ignition and twisted, praying for the best now that the vehicle was no longer overheating. The engine sputtered, then roared to life. She laughed loudly with relief. She turned around.

  “I’m getting you out of here-”

  She stopped short, her heart frozen in her chest.

  The backseat was empty.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “What did you say?” Noah said.

  “She’s gone of this world.”

  Liam advanced on her. “How do you know?”

  Winter looked unfazed. “Summer’s blade is fatal to all gods, she was doomed the moment she was pierced.”

  Liam bent over, his hands on his knees. The room spun and he had to fight the urge to throw up.

  “And Ellie?” Noah asked, “where is she?”

  “I do not care to meddle in the affairs of humans.”

  Noah’s eyes flashed angrily. “You better start caring! If Talisa’s gone, then you’re all that’s left! What are you going to do now without her? How will that affect your peace and stillness?”

  Winter’s eyes were cold and unfeeling.

  A great burst of wind blew against the building, sand particles clattering against the glass. They all looked up.

  A beam of golden sunlight had pierced the snowy sky, glowing brightly against the grey. The clouds swirled in protest as walls of sand grew menacingly on the city’s edge. Snow flurries fell with greater intensity, coating the ground in a white blanket.

  Phoenix had become a warzone of battling storms.

  “He’s fighting back,” Noah realized. “You won’t last much longer.”

  For the first time, he noticed a glimmer of fear in Winter’s eyes. “You have a weapon,” she said suddenly.

  He studied her face, surprised that she knew. “But it will kill you too,” he said. “The only reason Talisa and the sun god came here in the first place was because the Grid fell-”

  “I will hold him back,” she said.

  Noah clasped Liam’s shoulder. “Stay here with her,” he said. “I’m going to find the power source.”

  “Do you know what you’re even doing?” Liam’s face was pale.

  “Sort of.”

  It wasn’t reassuring, but Noah didn’t like to lie to Liam.

  “Okay. Then you should take this.”

  Noah unzipped his bag carefully and pulled out a long and slender metal flashlight.

  Noah’s GridLight.

  “You brought it,” Noah said in amazement.

  “Of course I did,” Liam said. He held it out to him. “You worked so hard on it, I wasn’t going to leave it behind.”

  Noah took it from Liam’s hands, then pulled him into a big hug. They stood there for a long while against the cloudy backdrop, feeling the weight of the last few years culminating in the intensity of their grasps. Unspoken fears. Unending exhaustion.

  “You can do this,” Liam said, pulling away.

  “I don’t have any other choice.”

  * * *

  Despite the open office floor plan of the first level, Elysian Field 5 proved to be an endless maze of corridors and computer rooms throughout the rest of the top ten floors. Noah stuck to the stairwell, shakily ascending the steps and keeping his eyes averted from the edge of the banister to check each floor directory. The layouts were very similar to the Tucson office, and he followed the familiar logic until he got to the very top. He looked out the stairwell window, struck by the staggering height.

  There was no directory at this level, and the stairs ended at a single locked door. He tried the handle. It didn’t move.

  He cursed loudly. He couldn’t come this far to fail now. He pictured Ellie’s face, looking back at him before she climbed into the car, before he sent her to her likely death in the baking hot city. His stomach lurched at the thought and he closed his eyes.

  Ellie’s a fighter. She’s okay.

  But if Talisa was truly dead like Winter said, then Ellie would not be okay.

  He examined the door. It was a top level security entrance with a single identifier pad above the knob. He almost missed it, until he realized the tiny black screen was for fingerprinting. Only the top level executives would be able to get in.

  What is there to lose?

  He raised his Gridlight and pressed his thumb firmly against the pad and waited, expecting nothing to happen and that he’d have to come up with another creative way to get inside. He wondered if Liam had any guns left. Then he wondered if the bullet would ricochet off the door and hit him instead. Then he wondered what would happen if he bled out right here at the top of the stairwell-

  To his immense surprise, the keypad light turned green and something clicked from inside the door. He pushed down on the handle, and it turned easily. He pushed the door open, and his mouth dropped open in amazement.

  He could see the sky, wild and torrential against the domed glass ceiling. He stood there for a moment, watching the clouds twist and turn to block out the sunlight. It was terrifying. It was beautiful.

  The room was sparse of furniture, with only a circular desk sitting in the middle of the room, loaded heavily with darkened screens on its glossy surface. The rest of the room was empty. Noah walked forward, his footsteps loud against the white stone floor.

  He recognized the desk configuration. It was consistent with every desk he
’d worked on at Utopian Industries. All he had to do was power it on and hopefully access the power source, whatever it was that controlled the satellite up in the exosphere.

  He raised the GridLight again with bated breath, ready to see if the screens would respond the same way as the door.

  Something clicked loudly, but not from the desk.

  He looked up.

  A large figure stared down through the glass ceiling at him. He saw the gold armor, now dim against the darkened sky. He recognized the sword, the blade still red with blood.

  Talisa’s blood.

  With a deafening roar, the sun god plunged the knife into the ceiling. Glass rained down on Noah. He raised his arms over his head and threw himself aside. Razor-sharp shards of glass sliced his arms and legs, leaving behind streaks of red. When he turned around, the sun god was standing in the room.

  * * *

  Liam could sense Winter’s eyes on him, heavy with judgment. It made him angry.

  The storm continued to rage, and he wondered where Ellie was down there in the mess of sand and snow.

  His mess. He got Ellie in this mess when he dragged her from the front of his burning house. And for what purpose?

  He couldn’t even save Talisa.

  “You mourn for her,” Winter said.

  Liam had to close his eyes to keep from raging.

  “Mourning the gods is not an unusual human behavior,” Winter continued. “Society has often mourned the end of our cycles, longing for our return. But...you don’t mourn her for that reason.”

  “I can’t talk to you about this.”

  “She is not a human, you know. She does not follow the same natural laws you do.”

  Liam opened his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “When you die, your body dies. But Talisa is not defined by her body. She is the wind and rain and clouds. Her body was simply this life’s manifestation. You mourn the vessel.”

  Liam had an overwhelming urge to punch the glass and he carefully stepped away from the window. “I don’t think you should talk anymore.”