Faded Flare

by L. B. Carter

  This was why he ignored the rest of the BTI community. You couldn’t rely on anyone but yourself.

  He flung an arm over the edge, hearing a much louder fissure splintering. Scrambling, he braced his forearms on the horizontal road and scuffled his feet up the wall, using what little friction he could to gain purchase rather than any chasm, worried his weight might widen it and it would break entirely off, sucking Sirena down with it.

  At last, he got one foot up and rolled the rest of the way onto the edge, immediately scooching his prone body to peer over the cliff.

  Sirena was a few feet down, searching for the next hold.

  “To your left,” he called, keeping the urgency from his tone so as not to startle or worry her. She needed to remain calm.

  “Where, left? There’s frickin’ five lanes spanning this road.”

  “Okay, put your hand out. Now shift it left about three inches. Good and up about two,” he directed. “No, too far, down again. Yep, there.”

  “You’re calling this a handhold?” she cried incredulously.

  “If you move your foot about a foot up, you’ll find another crevice you can use as leverage. That’ll be enough.”

  “So says you. I was made for water not… climbing.”

  “Are you afraid of heights?”

  She didn’t answer for a second, her foot shifting millimeter by millimeter up to the spot he’d told her about by feel. “When they leave me hovering above a water body. Never really tried scaling anything before though, so it’s hard to say if heights is another regular fear.”

  “You’re afraid of water?” That was contradictory. This was not the time for psychoanalysis. “You’re almost—”

  A cracking, deep grinding cut Ace off.

  “Shrimp! Help me!”

  Ace slid further off the edge, just enough to keep his center of mass stable, and reached an arm down.

  Sirena tried to lift her hand, but immediately dropped it back to the hold again, looking down her front to try to maneuver her foot into the right slot faster.

  “No, don’t look down!”

  “Too late.” Her voice was more faint, and she looked back up at him, her visage a slightly paler shade than her hair.

  “You can do it. Just do a little pull up, and your foot will follow, reaching its mark. You said you’ve got arm strength, right? Let’s see it,” he coaxed.

  She stretched her shoulders and tipped her head side to side, determination shuttering the terror in her eyes. She closed them as another groan escaped the bridge, a whimper slipping from faded lips. What would motivate her? She was tired.

  “The faster you get up here, the faster we can go find Nor and get you to safety. Jen wouldn’t want all her work wasted if you die here.”

  He had no idea if any of his tirade spurred her on, but her eyes snapped open again, boring into Ace’s. He wiggled his fingers enticingly, and she shifted her gaze to them, pursing her mouth. Then her biceps bulged as she strained to lift her weight with only her fingertips. Her back foot slid up, nearing the little opening.

  The crowd was chanting now, shouting encouragement, none of their suggestions or praise independently audible, but the vibe was hopeful, supportive.

  Almost as if feeding off it, Sirena’s elbows snapped into ninety-degree angles, and her toes made purchase. She slid a smile at Ace, who felt himself return it.

  C-c-crack.

  An entire section separated right where Sirena’s toes had just pushed in, and she screamed as she slid down the remaining limb of the bridge.

  Ace lurched, grabbing onto her wrist just as her fingers uncurled. But Ace had shifted too far, and their joined weight started to pull him over. The roadway hurtled into the water with a walloping sploosh, and the car adjacent to Ace in similarly treacherous balance finally careened over, causing screams among those nearby. Ace and Sirena were going to join it.

  Suddenly weight slammed on top of his legs, wrenching his knees backward painfully, but their tumbling movement ceased.

  Instead, they hung over the water, Sirena’s fingers now open, gripping nothing, her teeth bared, and his one hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling on his shoulder socket. He let out a half-cry.

  Then, whomever had his legs started to pull him back, bit by bit. Sirena slid up the last few feet, and Ace’s chest scraped onto the road-top. He heaved his exhausted biceps, yanking Sirena up beside him where they both lay, panting for a few minutes.

  “Never again. God. I think,” Sirena gasped, “that anyone would be afraid of heights after that. Thank you,” she said sincerely.

  “I wouldn’t let you fall into the water,” he responded, breathing deeply.

  Her laugh huffed out on an exhale. “You know, I used to think you would. You didn’t seem like the hero type.”

  That pierced Ace and his brows lowered, a pang worming through his chest.

  A hand slapped on top of his where it rested on his stomach and patted once, floppily, before slipping off. “Now I know I’m wrong. You’re just like Nor. But—” She caught another breath. “—I’m the wrong damsel.”

  “Henley.” Ace bolted upright, sending the public who’d been bent over him scrambling. He shifted to his feet and stood, walking to the precipice, trying to see the shoreline.

  Behind him, Sirena mumbled a hurried thanks to their helpers. Henley would have done a much better job.

  He squinted as a black silhouette rose from the ground, seeming to elevate right into the air. A drone? He followed its trajectory up to a dark helicopter.

  “Salty barnacles!” Sirena exclaimed from beside him.

  The human-shaped object reached the metallic bird’s body, and it tilted, turning head on toward them.

  “Oh, shrimp,” she added breathlessly, “we have to run!” She clutched his sleeve, pulling him as she started between those in their audience.

  “No.” He held resolute, turning to face her.

  “What? They’re coming back.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t outrun them.”

  She looked around wildly, her hair and clothes dripping onto the road. “But we can hide among all the people, disappear into the crowd.” She messed with her beacon-like hair. “I can hide in someone’s car or—”

  “No. We can’t hide from them either.” Henley’s tech was too good to rely on visual aid. Ace had no qualms that the professor would be using the highest quality products from BTI. They were top of the line.

  An idea slid to the front of his mind. “How long can you hold your breath?” He asked. Sirena would stand out in a crowd here because she was designed for underwater camouflage.

  “What?” Her brows dropped. “Oh, no.” Her hands came up, and she stepped back from him. “No, I’m not going back in there. Nor promised—” Her sentence fell with a half-sob. She looked around her for help but, having rescued them, the bystanders on the bridge had returned to their passive natures, unwilling to take action.

  Ace advanced. “It’s the only option with a high chance of success. I’ll get Nor, and we’ll come back for you. I—”

  “No.” Her voice solidified, and her head half-turned, one hand shooting out straight, palm toward his chest. “Don’t you promise, too. This is what I get for letting people into my life. I put them all in danger.”

  Ace hated groups too, but that was not his reasoning. Maybe he was selfish. His mother would be proud. “You’re also in dan—”

  “Yeah, but if I go with them, they’ll leave you all alone. It’s me they want back. Nor will be safe.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Ace corrected softly.

  “Semantics,” Sirena gave a half-hearted smile, using Henley’s quip.

  “An important delineation, in this case. They want me and Henley, too. Nor will be safe. They’ll let him go. But you won’t see him again if they get you.”

  Her arms wrapped around her torso, one hand splayed across the base of her throat, opening and closing rapidly, a heart-valve, pumping furiou
sly to sustain life.

  “But—” she started, looking off the side of the bridge where Ace could hear the rotors coming closer.

  He grabbed her, stomped across the bridge, saying, “Go back and wait for us,” and tossed her over the far side, turning to confront the arrival before Sirena’s cry of surprise and panic had even cut off with her entry.

  He hadn’t broken his promise. He didn’t let her fall into the water; he’d tossed her in. She was right. She wasn’t his damsel, but he still had to try to save her.

  ∆∆∆

  “Tell me about Val.” Ace tried not to growl, but everyone was ignoring him.

  After landing on the helipad and descending several flights of stairs, they’d plopped him and Nor in some chairs in a hallway.

  “And where did you take Henley?” He snapped as another person walked past.

  All of them paid him no heed as they traversed in a quick power-walk to wherever they were desperately needed. The flight-crew in the helicopter hadn’t let him even see around their bodies, blocking Henley’s prone form, and she’d been whisked off the chopper first, taken in an elevator on a gurney that had appeared next to the open door as soon as they touched down.

  “If you yell at them, they’re unlikely to respond,” Nor commented. He was sitting next to Ace, continuously running his fingers through his hair.

  Ace had informed him of Sirena’s whereabouts over the cover of the loud helicopter, but since then, they hadn’t spoken of it. Ace was waiting until he damn-well saw someone he knew and trusted before sending a rescue after the girl, now that he knew this one wasn’t Professor Tate’s ‘copter, and she was still likely on the prowl nearby.

  Ace’s premonition about having no one to greet him when he arrived home had been realized. He couldn’t entirely blame the other USGCS employees for avoiding him and Nor. Both of them were still damp to varying degrees, and there was undoubted chaos regarding the newly collapsed bridge, forcing a schism in the country, almost as if it were a cell dividing into two. The helicopter had lifted off the moment they’d disembarked to rescue others stranded. Ace comforted himself with the fact that they had still been priority.

  Had they gotten his note, or was it just right place, right time? Was what Reed had said about Valerie true?

  “Ace Acton?”

  He jumped to his feet. A lackey stood a few feet away, eyeing the puddle forming on the floor under Ace’s feet as if it were blood and he hemophobic. Ace could tell it was a lackey, because the guy was coming to fetch him instead of doing something more useful during a national crisis.

  “Ace?” Nor echoed from behind in the chair, eyebrows raised so high they were hidden under his drying hair. He pushed smoothly to his feet to get eye to eye. “I thought you were Buster. The Bus.”

  Ace just raised one eyebrow. “And you are Norton Stanley.”

  Nor squinted but let it drop.

  “Mr. Acton?” The lackey looked at his watch. “We must hurry. She’s waiting.”

  “She? Valerie?” Ace’s hope launched like the firework he’d set off. He tried to tamp down the sparks igniting.

  The lackey didn’t confirm, merely shuffled ahead like the White Rabbit.

  “Where are we, anyway?” Nor asked, keeping pace beside Ace, supremely suspicious now as he scrutinized the hallway. It was basic; he would find no information there.

  “United States Geological and Climatic Society headquarters,” the lackey replied courteously in a clipped tone. “USGCS for short; governments love their acronyms.”

  So, he’d respond to Nor but not Ace? Was Ace in trouble? He hadn’t had much choice in his method of getting home. And he hadn’t come empty-handed. He had what he’d intended to bring back. And what was asked of him. And more.

  “Geology?” Nor glanced sideways at Ace. “You’re an undercover geologist?”

  Ace scowled. “No. I’m—” He waved a hand, affronted. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  “He’s one of our associate atmospheric dynamicists in the Natural Disaster Department,” the lackey offered.

  Ace did actually growl.

  “Oh, my apologies,” Nor said sarcastically, a hand going to his heart. “An undercover weatherman.”

  Ace bit his tongue. “And you’re a what? An undercover lawn protector? What was your family’s company called again, Green Solutions?”

  Nor’s eyes flashed, and he shut up.

  “Green Solutions is a small, family-run firm that helps protect and preserve academic property, usually of the environmentally-friendly categories, and it also performs a small amount of its own research in biology and earth sciences.” The lackey sounded robotic as if he’d memorized a script.

  “What are you, a walking encyclopedia?” Ace muttered at their guide. He was starting to worry that the guy was another design of Henley’s from BTI and had wandered incredibly far from Faneuil. They wouldn’t infiltrate a government facility. The BTI administrators were strict but not the rule-breakers he’d led Henley to believe.

  “I am the Natural Disaster Management Director’s aid.”

  Ace walked faster, catching up. “Director? What’s the director’s name?”

  “Here we are.” The aid stood to the side of a door and gestured into an office.

  Ace darted around him, but it was empty. He started inspecting all the surfaces for personal items, photos, a name placard.

  “The director will be right with you.” The aid shut the door behind Nor, leaving the two of them in the office.

  “Well, they’re incredibly hospitable here. I see why they wanted you to bring Sirena.”

  “They didn’t,” Ace said, rifling through a sheaf of folders and pages from the other side of the desk.

  “What?”

  Ace glanced past the monitor, which glowed to show a login screen as he tapped the keys.

  Nor’s gaze was sharp, penetrating.

  Ace sighed. “They will keep her safe.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to bring her.” It wasn’t a question. “Ace.” With Nor’s lids narrowed, the stare was paradoxically less intense, their blue color almost as disarming as the irises belonging to the subject of their discussion, which Ace had last seen plummeting off a bridge.

  In retrospect, that hadn’t been the safest option for her, but he hadn’t known who operated the helicopter.

  “No.”

  With furrowed brows, Nor crossed his arms, flexing muscles that Ace didn’t have. Ace was bulkier though, bigger boned. It was not clear who would win in a fight. However, the director would be displeased if they ruffled all the neatly stacked reports more than he was already doing… particularly if the director was his sister.

  “So why did you?”

  Ace abandoned the computer, having failed enough logins that it locked him out. He was going to be in trouble for that one regardless of who walked through the door. He was likely already in enough trouble as it was that it bothered him not at all.

  He straightened up to face his… well, his current opponent. Before, he wasn’t sure if they could be considered friends. He had little expertise in discerning human relationship statuses. Now, Ace wondered if he had destroyed that possibility. “It was a package deal.”

  “What?” Nor was becoming visibly agitated the longer Ace took to explain, so he laid it all out.

  “When I reported that I’d retrieved what I was sent there to procure, I received communication to coordinate my departure with a Miss Jennifer Tate and ensure she returned with me. Jennifer, once I contacted her to coordinate, insisted on bringing her experiment—”

  “Rena,” Nor growled dangerously, taking a step forward in a threatening move Ace wasn’t sure Nor even knew he’d made.

  “Rena,” Ace amended feeling out of sorts using such an intimate nickname. “—with her,” he concluded his interrupted sentence.

  Nor’s chin tilted up, marginally satisfied. “And Henley? Jen tacked her on, too? Or did she bring herself? I wouldn�
��t put it past that spit-fire.”

  Ace swallowed. “No. She was my addition.”

  Nor was curious rather than attacking, head tilting to the side, nearly dry hair adjusting to the new position, when he asked, “Why?”

  Ace looked off to the side at an oversized satellite map of the country. Someone had slathered on the new coastlines, burying green land in blue marker scribbles. The intercontinental seaway consumed most of the middle of the continent, widening to the base so that North America looked more like a pair of legs connected at the top than its old rectangular shape.

  “Because I need her,” he told Nor as he’d told Henley.

  Nor waved one hand, indicating the building. “If this place—your work—didn’t request her, what are your intentions?” Then he snorted. “I sound like my Father talking to Reed when he started dating Valerie.”

  “Yes, tell me, when was that? I need to better understand the timings of her—”

  The door opened, and they could see the back of a head with layered, shoulder-length, dark hair. “—and then report back to me once you’ve heard from them. Don’t do anything else yet until they give us a status update, got it? I don’t want anything leaking before we can process and get PR to provide an approved brief.”

  Whomever she was talking to, presumably the lackey, agreed hurriedly, and their feet clipped away.

  The woman swung around, starting at her guests, a hand going to her chest. “Oh! Forgive me, we’re so busy I had forgotten you were—” Her words trailed off as dark brown eyes met genetically similar dark brown eyes. “Ace,” she breathed, one hand still on the doorknob, the other pressing over her heart as though to contain it, as her eyes shone.

  “Mom. What are you doing here?” Ace was just as shocked, and the realization of what Reed had promised sank in.