Set Ablaze

by Teyla Branton

  His eyes went to my gun. I wasn’t pointing it at him, but I would if I had to.

  “Come with me,” he said, his words garbled by either age or fear.

  I followed him from the park and down a side street until we came to a squat motorcycle with a ridiculously huge, tightly-woven wicker basket bolted to a homemade frame on the back. Similar setups had once been more familiar in Portugal, their owners often stacking an entire pickup load of wares into these homemade baskets. If the situation had been different, I would have been amused at the quaintness.

  Five large cardboard boxes half full of vegetables crammed into this particular basket. Interesting. Did the old man grow them himself or did he work for the Emporium?

  He took a key from a ring and handed it to me. “I would like it back,” he said, “when you are finished. Please.”

  I nodded. I was trying to protect humanity, but I was taking what was probably his entire livelihood. “I’ll leave it here with the key in the basket.”

  He reached in and heaved out one of the boxes. “Room for the body,” he muttered.

  I wanted to tell him to stop, that I wasn’t going back for the agent, but I had a few questions. Grabbing a box, I asked, “You’re a farmer? You grow these?”

  “All my life.” He set down another box. “Used to do good business before that man and the others came.” He jerked his head toward the park.

  “They sell vegetables in town?”

  A brisk nod. “If you can call it selling. They practically give food away. People won’t buy my veggies anymore. I mostly take ’em to friends.”

  “You eat your own?”

  He chuckled. “Of course. They taste better.”

  I doubted that—I’d eaten the grapes in the vineyard—but he was still alive. That was more than I could say for Dona Mafalda’s husband and the others her daughter had listed.

  “You never eat any of their food?”

  He spat out his disgust. “I make it a point not to.”

  Which was good for me, since he didn’t seem too concerned about reporting my assault.

  “What about bread?” Surely the old man bought bread here, and with all those wheat fields, the Emporium had to be selling flour locally as well.

  “One of my cousin’s sons owns a bakery, next town over. I go there twice a week.”

  We’d finished unloading the boxes, and I threw my leg over the motorcycle. “I would keep eating your vegetables,” I said. “And that guy in the park? I don’t have time to deal with him now, but if things work out, I’ll be back for him.”

  “I hope before he wakes up.”

  I stared, forgetting whatever I’d been going to say next. Apparently the old guy was sharper than I’d given him credit. Sometime during the past years, he’d witnessed something he shouldn’t have, and the Emporium’s carelessness about keeping our existence a secret said volumes about the fate they planned for the town. I was betting no one was meant to survive.

  Yes, they will.

  I dipped my head to the old man, and kicked the engine to life. I’m coming, Kenna, I thought. Finally.

  She’d better be okay, or I would be coming back for the Emporium agent, and he’d regret the day he’d Changed.

  I LEFT THE MOTORCYCLE A half mile from the villa and ran the rest of the way. When I reached it, the place was utterly dark. A sedan that didn’t belong sat outside the house next to our rented one with no sign of an occupant. Dread crawled across my shoulders.

  Drawing my gun, I headed around the back. Kenna’s bike was neatly stored on the cobbled deck where we’d found it—and in a lot better shape than mine. Everything looked peaceful, from the moon reflected in the rippling water of the swimming pool, to the whispers of the wind through the leaves of the trees lining the patio.

  I didn’t fool myself that Kenna was resting. If she’d finished here, she would have joined me in town. Besides, there was that little matter of the extra car sitting out front. I stepped to the back door. Sure enough, it was slightly ajar.

  Dropping my pack to the ground by the door, I eased into the house, pausing just inside the door to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark. Already I could see evidence of a struggle. Two figures sprawled on the floor, the sofa was overturned and a swath of ripped fabric hung from its side. Everything else was too dark to see. I inched forward.

  A dark figure hurtled at me from behind the couch. The next instant, a blow threw my gun across the room. My first punch was blocked, but I landed the second. So did my opponent. Breath rushed from me as pain spread across my chest. I kicked out, but nothing was there. A fist landed on my jaw from the other direction. I feigned right and punched left, but the blow only grazed my opponent, who’d dodged out of the way.

  Combat Unbounded, I thought. No way for me to beat him without using my own ability.

  Heat gathered in my hands. All I needed was to touch the Emporium agent for more than a few seconds and this would be over. Finding those few seconds, however, might be fatal.

  I took two pounding blows, trying to find an opening. A third blow met my ribs with an agonizing crack! But exposing myself afforded the opportunity to latch onto an arm. My opponent struggled to pull away, gasping with pain. I held on. My whole body burned with heat.

  “Blaze,” the figure screamed. “Stop!”

  Kenna.

  Damn.

  The next moment, we were falling, and I was sucking back the heat. It was easier to turn it off than to begin, but her grunts of pain as we fell told me I wasn’t fast enough.

  At last, she lay pinned under me, soft in all the right places.

  I’d hurt her. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Get off!”

  Right. I rolled off her, clenching my jaw against the pain in my ribs. “Is anyone else here?”

  “No. I took care of the last one right before you arrived. I thought you were their reinforcements.” Her voice was faint, and her rapid breathing told me she was hurt badly.

  “Do you think they called backup?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I left her side and crawled to the lamp that was on the floor next to the overturned sofa. Every movement sent needles of pain through my ribs and chest. As long as I took shallow breaths, the pain was bearable, but with my luck, I’d get to the stupid lamp and it would be broken.

  Too slowly, I passed the two sprawled figures, both men, dressed in black from head to toe. They were definitely dead, at least for now. I’d need to secure them before they awoke. I reached the lamp, flipping the switch, and to my surprise, light flared into the room. I crawled back to Kenna, trying not to breathe too deeply.

  Kenna still lay where I’d left her. Her wig was gone, revealing red hair pinned tightly to her head. A large section of her bare left arm was blackened, and I guessed the damage was deep enough to kill the nerves because she was moving the arm without sobbing. She’d need time to regenerate. The rest of her skin was only little reddened, so I hadn’t damaged her anywhere else, but sometime during the evening, she’d taken a bullet in her thigh. How she’d managed to fight me at all was a testament to her ability.

  Searching the room, I found a nine mil on the carpet—not mine or hers. I checked the magazine; six out of ten bullets left. “Here,” I said, giving it to her before climbing painfully to my feet. “I’ll get the kit.” I was back in a minute, locking the doors and closing the shutters and curtains on the way. I wanted a warning if we had any more visitors.

  From our medical kit, I took out several syringes of curequick mixed with pain killer. Deep wounds always benefitted from curequick injections, and she’d need them to get walking again. My hands shook as I fitted a needle.

  I glanced to see Kenna watching me. “You’d better take some first.”

  Grimacing, I looked away, unable to meet her gaze as I tried to remember where I’d left the pack with my curequick. An injection into my bloodstream would be better for the pain, but in a way, it was nice to feel something besides the buz
z from the curequick or the horrible aching need addiction left in my gut.

  Kenna fished something from a pocket near her waistband. “Here,” she said, tossing it.

  I barely caught the tiny pouch of curequick, flattened and still warm from her body. Nodding my thanks, I ripped the top open with my teeth and sucked it in.

  My shaking easing, I injected her leg first, checking to see how bad it was. The bullet had gone in, but there was no exit wound. “I’m going to have to remove the bullet.” Removing it would aid in healing, which we needed her to do fast.

  “Give me two minutes. I won’t feel anything by then.”

  She was right. Our pain killers had to be strong or they wouldn’t stick around in our bodies long enough for surgery.

  “I should have known it was you,” she said as I made tiny injections around and in the blackened skin on her arm. She didn’t flinch.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You make a lot of noise.”

  I glanced toward the fallen men. “They didn’t?” Why was she still alive then?

  “No noise, but I stopped to look at the watering system on one of the other fields and caught a glimpse of them. No mistaking an Emporium hit team. So I came in the front and snuck around the back and waited for the one who tried to enter there. I would have had them both but . . . but . . .” Sudden moisture filled her eyes. She closed them, her expression becoming rigid, impassive.

  “Did I hurt you?” I pulled out the empty needle.

  She shook her head. “It’s not that. The courier service sent a woman, but the other Emporium agent picked the front lock, and he was inside when she arrived. He answered the door, let her in, probably thinking it was me. I didn’t get to her in time.” Her gaze strayed to her leg, and I guessed she had taken the bullet trying to save the woman.

  “Where is she? Maybe . . .” Standing, I saw the very young woman dressed in khaki pants and a blue shirt. She was curled up on the other side of the sofa, one of the cushions obscuring half her body. A black bag lay open near her, papers spilled over the floor.

  “She’s gone,” Kenna said before I could move toward the girl. “I was checking when you came.” Her voice was devoid of emotion but somehow told me more than if she’d let the tears fall. “We’re supposed to help mortals, not send them to their deaths.”

  I thought of the old man and knew exactly how she felt. I hadn’t hurt him, but I would have if it had meant saving all the others in the town.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She nodded. “Me too.”

  A single silent tear strayed down her face. Swallowing hard, I turned and retrieved the sofa cushion that wasn’t covering the courier and worked it under Kenna’s head.

  “You can only do what you can,” I said.

  When she didn’t respond, I pushed on the edges of her gun wound with my finger. She didn’t stiffen but looked away as I took a scalpel from the medical kit and cut into her leg deep enough to remove the bullet. I followed the extraction with a few stitches and a bandage.

  She studied me as I scooted next to her on the floor. “It’s not your fault, you know,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The addiction.”

  “Of course it’s my fault.”

  “You forget I’ve been a part of the ops. I’ve seen what Greggor and the others did to you, sending you in again and again. And you coming back dead or so damaged they had to submerge your entire body in curequick to get you to regenerate in time for the next op.”

  I couldn’t look away from her mesmerizing eyes and those pale cheeks. “It was my choice. I knew the risk.”

  “You were in mourning.”

  I didn’t need to tell her what it had done to me to watch my wife age and die. In her lifetime, Kenna had already experienced that same loss. Older Unbounded said it got easier.

  “They should have given you more time between ops.”

  “Maybe.”

  Grimacing with pain, she moved toward me until our bodies touched along the length of our sides. “Not maybe. Definitely. The fact that they keep sending you proves you’re capable, but I think they’ve pushed you too far. After this, you have to tell them no. You have to take care of yourself first. You need to get free.”

  She was so beautiful. I wanted to kiss each of those freckles, taste her lips, explore her body. I wanted to eat grapes off the vine and take her to the second house I owned on the Portuguese coast. It would never happen unless I was free.

  “Okay,” I said.

  She rested her head on my shoulder, and I slipped an arm around her, gently pulling her closer. My chest felt tight. How long had I wanted to hold her this way? Even this afternoon the idea was out of reach, but now staying this way forever seemed like a possibility.

  Except it wasn’t. Kenna needed a few more minutes to heal and for a little of the numbness to recede before we could move, but in the meantime, we had to come up with a plan.

  I dragged my attention back to our situation. “I was followed too.” I told her about Dona Mafalda’s daughter, the man on the moped, and the old guy in the park. “I think they’ve genetically modified the food. To kill. I don’t know if it’s a poison or a virus or something else altogether, and I have no idea why it’s killing older people, or if there are other casualties we aren’t aware of.”

  “But the Emporium is going to need mortals in the new world they want to create. A virus might kill too many workers the Emporium would need to provide special services.”

  “Yes, but they don’t need old people—and they won’t need mortals forever. Without the war between Renegades and Emporium, we’ll multiply, and sooner or later our longer lives mean we’ll far outnumber mortals. Then the Emporium won’t need any of them.”

  “But even with genetic manipulation, only half our offspring Change.”

  “Exactly. More than enough to fill any grunt position. The Emporium has never been above using their own children.”

  Kenna looked thoughtful. “If you’re right, the Emporium plans to have mortals work until whatever is in that food does its job and kills them. The money saved on health care alone would be astronomical.”

  “And you’ve seen how weird everyone is here. Docile, absently friendly, smiling at everything.”

  “No rebelling. No protest.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We have to stop it.”

  “They’ll be coming for us,” I countered.

  “I know. Let’s call Greggor for a quick update; he’s waiting for our report. I only need a minute or two more. I should be able to move then.”

  “Even if he can send backup, they won’t get here in time.”

  “I know.”

  I put in my password and dialed the number. Nothing. “There’s no cell service.”

  “Try the laptop. Maybe you damaged your phone when you melted the bicycle.”

  I had a feeling it couldn’t be that easy. It never was when we went head-to-head with the Emporium. Leaving Kenna, I went to retrieve my laptop. Already I was breathing a little easier, and by tomorrow, my ribs wouldn’t even twinge.

  My laptop appeared miraculously undamaged on the floor by the coffee table, and as I reached for it, I couldn’t help seeing the face of the courier. She looked so young, so peaceful, despite her violent death. We’d have to make sure her family was taken care of, if she had any.

  Seated again next to Kenna, I attempted to link to the Internet over my laptop’s internal data connection, while she patted herself down, looking for her phone.

  “Nope,” I said. “Not working either.”

  “Then I guess it won’t help to find my phone. I was trying to text you when I got busy with those agents. I’ve no idea where it ended up. We’ll try the satellite connection when we get outside, if they haven’t blocked that too.” She rotated up onto the knee of her good leg. “Let’s go.”

  I wanted to protest that she wasn’t ready, but I knew it didn’t matter. We’d already stayed
too long. When these Emporium agents didn’t report in, someone would come looking for them. Besides, combat Unbounded were better than the rest of us at pushing through the pain.

  At that moment we heard the chopper.

  We were too late.

  KENNA WAS UP BEFORE I was, reaching for the gun I’d given her earlier and dragging her wounded leg behind her. I hit the destruct button on my laptop, snatched up another gun, and barely beat her to the back door. “We have to get into the trees,” she said. “Before they trap us.”

  I yanked open the sliding glass door and put one arm around her waist, the other arm scooping her legs out from under her before she could protest. Without checking the sky, I ran from the house, carrying her. Bullets sprayed us from the approaching chopper, but they were still too far away to be accurate. My ribs screamed, and every bruise Kenna had given me in our fight burned with renewed pain. I pushed myself harder.

  With relief, I watched the trees rise up before me. Kenna struggled in my arms, and I let her down before she broke any more of my bones, keeping my arm around her waist for support. The trees were planted too far apart to be decent cover, but at least they gave us something to dart in and out of as we headed for the denser patch of wild olive trees farther in.

  I glanced back once and saw men perched on the edge of the chopper, rifles in hand.

  Something sliced into the fleshy part of my upper right arm, and agony rippled through my body. From long habit, I bit down hard on a scream.

  We made it to the thicker grove, where the heavy brush between the trees afforded better cover but made our flight more difficult. I half carried Kenna as we fought our way through, and it became clear that I wasn’t the only one hit. Kenna’s arm was also bleeding where she’d been grazed. No time to take care of either of us.

  “Wait,” she said after a moment. “They’ll be dropping men to come after us. We need transportation they won’t expect. Otherwise, we won’t be fast enough to escape.”

  The old man’s motorbike came to mind. It wouldn’t go fast, and with the basket it was an awkward ride—not to mention a substantial target, but it would be better using it on the open road than traversing the countryside on foot.