by Drew Hayes
“Come on,” Galvanize urged, his voice coming through the communicator in Owen’s left ear. Right ear was always reserved for Dispatch, but he needed to be able to talk with his team as well. Their earbuds weren’t quite as good as the Hero-issued ones; however, they weren’t as far behind the curve as he might have guessed they’d be.
Owen followed his leader, taking careful steps. The floor appeared solid enough, but the stairs were a source of concern for him. They weren’t blazing in earnest yet, so thankfully their structural integrity was enough to hold his weight as he ascended to the second floor. Still, Owen continued being watchful of his movements. Him falling through a few burning floors wouldn’t injure him in the slightest, but it would definitely hasten this building’s destruction.
The first and second floors were clear of everyone save for emergency responders, and it was obvious they were going to have to pull out soon. The building was eight stories tall, so that meant they likely had at least two more levels to go before they met up with Zone and Impers, assuming neither team had to stop and facilitate any rescues. He hoped they would find the whole place properly evacuated. Getting someone out of the middle floors might be tricky.
“Does the heat bother you?” The question came so suddenly that Owen nearly twitched in surprise, a move that easily could have crushed the smoldering wood beneath his feet. Luckily, his entire career of experience hadn’t quite deserted him, so he managed to keep control.
“No, not really,” he replied. “I’m a little surprised at how well you’re taking it, though.”
“I did mention I was a bit hardier than normal,” Galvanize replied. “Besides, the costume does a lot of the work. It’s specially built for extreme temperatures in either direction, along with a fair bit of armoring in the more vulnerable spots, just in case I get hit by debris or something. Pair it with the breather mask, which keeps me from getting carbon monoxide poisoning, and it’s a handy ensemble.”
“Pretty snazzy,” Owen said, dating himself unapologetically with his word choice.
“One of the perks of working for the big guys. When I started out all I got was a t-shirt with a logo on it. This is much safer.”
Galvanize’s word choice struck Owen as intriguing. He’d have expected the glorified model to use words like “nicer,” “cleaner,” “more appealing,” or even “sexier.” “Safer” implied that his first concern was for the job the uniform denoted, not how it made him look. Owen had known Heroes who wouldn’t have said safer. Again he felt his respect for the wavy-haired young man raise a few degrees. Even if he was only playing a part, he played it exceptionally well.
It was on the third floor that their streak of finding everyone safely removed came to a halt. They’d just come off the stairs when Owen heard muffled screaming coming from a few apartments away. His hearing was good—above human grade but not so impressive that it would count as an ability on its own—so he could also make out sounds of someone scuffling about.
“We’ve got people,” he declared, alerting Galvanize while taking two careful, but sizable, steps toward the apartment that the noise was coming from. A single attempt on the doorknob told him it was locked, and he could see keyholes for three deadbolts. He reared back his hefty fist and prepared to turn the door into splinters.
“Titan, hold!” Galvanize’s order was curt and quick, spoken with the sort of veteran authority that reminded Owen of his intern days. “Time is short, but we don’t know where they are behind that door. You punching it could seriously injure someone.”
“Got a better idea?”
“Yes, actually. You’re incredibly strong, so just stick a finger through the door and run it down past where the knob and deadbolts are. That should let us in without sending chunks flying through the home.”
Owen bit back a terse remark and did as he was told. It was easy, like sticking a finger into pudding. The deadbolts put up a valiant effort to stop his index finger, but they may as well have tried to reason with a thunderstorm. In less than half a minute the locks were removed. Galvanize moved forward, pushing the door open and stepping into the apartment’s living room.
The two men had both been in rescue situations before, and this was not the first fire for either, so they’d had certain expectations of what to find behind the door. A huddled, scared group of people awaiting rescue, a panicked cluster that would race forward and possibly knock their rescuers down, or even the worst case scenario: one or more bodies that had already been claimed by smoke inhalation. This was none of those situations. Not even close.
A group of four adults were racing about, filling buckets from the sink and, judging by sound, the tub, emptying them on to a person in the center of the room, then repeating the process. This person in the center was young, roughly seven to nine if Owen had to guess, and sitting in a metal washtub that was glowing from the heat. This heat wasn’t from the fire that was engulfing the building; it came directly from the source.
This young person, a girl, Owen realized as he noticed her hair and facial features, was the one who had released the muffled screams. They didn’t seem to be ones of pain; that would have been impossible to bite back. No, these screams were likely of fear, or guilt, some mixture containing elements of the two. She was clearly terrified, and Owen didn’t blame her one bit.
Because, in addition to sitting, crying, and screaming softly, the young girl was also engulfed in fire. Her whole body rippled with flame, cascading off and flowing to the world around her.
“Shit,” Galvanize said, taking a step back. “We’ve got a Super.”
10.
Owen didn’t fault Galvanize for assuming they were dealing with a Super. He was in a dangerous situation, and a Super willfully causing fires would be his worst case scenario. It meant he had to run like hell and leave these people behind, because he wasn’t cleared to stop a fire-coated arsonist. It was a reasonable leap to make, but it was wrong.
There were things he recognized, as a former Hero, and as a father, that told him something was off. The blackened spots on the metal tub showed it had been used for similar purposes before. The people, probably her family, were scared and frantic but not lost in terror, and that meant this was something they’d come to terms with. The way the girl was sobbing and trying to bite back her fear spoke volumes of how much she hated what was happening to her. Above all was the efficiency of the system they were using to douse her. This had been planned, worked on, and drilled. They knew she might start burning, and they had a method in place to deal with it.
“She’s not a Super,” Owen said, correcting his team leader. “She’s a Powered. She can’t control it.”
“You can’t. . .” Galvanize’s words trailed off as his brain finally snapped to the context clues Owen had already seen. Fear had made him momentarily slow, not stupid. “Crud, I think you might be right.”
“I am right,” Owen stepped forward, his large body’s movement finally seeming to snap the people in the apartment to awareness of the costumed men’s presence. One of the older men lowered his bucket and raced over to Owen.
“No. . . go. . . Go away!” His voice was heavy with a Hispanic accent, and his stilted way of speaking made it clear he was still learning English. Once upon a time Owen could have faked his way through some basic phrases, but Spanish was a skill he’d long ago let rust to oblivion on his mental shelf.
Galvanize, thankfully, had not been so lax in his language exercises. He hurried over immediately, snapping into a quick, fluent conversation with the older man. Owen was impressed; the kid even rolled his r’s, a trick Owen had never managed to get down.
“I’m hitting a wall,” Galvanize told him after a few moments of conversation. “They understand that the building is on fire, but they’re refusing to leave. They seem to think we’re here to take the girl away.” He shot Owen a confused expression, visible even through the mask and breather apparatus on his face. “Any insight you want to offer?”
“Mirr
or Fog really did keep you kids away from other Supers, didn’t he?” Titan gave a small shake of his head. “Powereds with abilities that are a severe danger to others, ones like hers, are often put in ‘protective custody’ until they find a way to let them safely interact with society. Usually some tech-genius can slap a suit or something on them, but there’s always rumors of people never being heard from again.” Owen pointedly refrained from commenting on his own suspicions of the validity regarding those rumors. There were more important things at the moment.
“I can see how he’d be worried about that,” Galvanize said, sparing a moment to glance at the growing amount of fire filling the building. “But we need to get them out. I’m going to have to ask you to pick them up and remove them forcefully.”
“You open to a suggestion?”
“I’ll hear it out,” Galvanize assured him.
“They’re here to protect the girl. If I take her out, they’ll follow on their own. Faster and safer,” Owen pointed out.
“True but. . . well, I guess you’re allowed to deal with her. But be gentle: Powered or not, she’s still a person.”
In that moment, Owen’s grudging respect for the young man leading this team of corporate shills metamorphosed into genuine affection. Job be damned, he liked this kid.
“Don’t worry,” Owen assured him, stepping past the older man still jabbering in a language he couldn’t understand. Dimly, he felt a pair of hands grip his bicep, some poorly thought out attempt at stopping him. His assailant, like countless others who’d tried such things before, was in for disappointment.
Owen continued forward, kneeling down next the metal tub and staring at the girl in the face. He smiled at her, his big, wide, corny grin that had endeared him to the hearts of the public so many years ago. It seemed he still had a bit of his old charming magic left, because the girl stopped crying long enough to turn and look at him.
“Are you okay?” His voice was calm and gentle, ignoring the urgency of the situation around him.
“No,” she said, her words high-pitched, hoarse, and heartbreaking. “I can’t stop this time. I keep trying and it won’t stop.”
“Don’t worry,” Owen assured her. “I’ll get you out of here. We’ll go out to your apartment’s pool and help you cool down. Does that sound okay?”
She shook her head fiercely. “I can’t leave. I can’t get up. I’ll burn people. I’ve burned Papa and Mama and my sister and our house. . . I burn everything.”
With great care, Owen reached out his hand and brought it down on top of her head, momentarily smothering out the flames before they regrouped and dashed across his skin. The girl tried to pull away, but he held fast, holding his hand there long enough to send the message. Then, he pulled it away and held his fingers in front of her face.
“You can’t burn me. I’m special, like you. No matter how scared you get, no matter how hot you get, you can’t hurt me. I promise.”
Her eyes grew wide (an unsettling sight since they were still coated in flames) as she stared at his unmarred skin. Not even the hair from the back of his knuckles had been singed. She reached out and grasped his fingers with hers, ever so carefully, and watched in amazement as the fire coating her failed to scorch him in the slightest.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Titan. What’s yours?”
“Alexandria.”
“Well, Alexandria, how about that swim?”
She nodded, and he reached over, delicately scooping her out of her metal washtub and pulling her against his chest. His uniform crackled and wrinkled as she came into the contact with it, but his words held true as the fire proved unable to burn him.
“Ready when you are,” Titan told Galvanize, who gave a quick nod and hurriedly escorted the rest of the apartment’s occupants to the stairs. Titan followed, even more careful with his steps than before.
11.
It took a good ten minutes of submersion in the apartment complex’s pool, now partially filled with ash, before Alexandria’s cloak of flames started to dissipate. Titan spent that time talking with her, asking her about life and school, pretending he wasn’t gently holding her face above water while the rest of her body sent steam billowing into the late-morning air. Before taking her out of the building, he’d wrapped her in his fire-resistant over-shirt, illustrating one of the many reasons that Heroes always dressed in layers. It had held up well, which was a stroke of good fortune because he was relatively certain she’d have torched through anything else he could have used.
Having fathered Powereds, Titan was more familiar with their condition than most. Their abilities were triggered involuntarily. Sometimes this response was purely physical, like a nervous tic. Sometimes it happened from other stimuli, like sneezing. And for many, their ability was tied to their emotions. So while the water was keeping Alexandria from burning anything else, Titan had a firm suspicion that it was the act of calming her down that finally banished the flames.
The rest of the team had finished checking the building and reported there were no more people left inside. Only Alexandria’s family had stayed behind, too scared to move her and perhaps set something else aflame. With the coast clear, the firefighters had pulled out and focused on getting the blaze under control. Galvanize, Hexcellent, Bubble Bubble, and Zone had all gathered out in front of the smoking building to catch the eye of various reporters and news crews that were gathering on the scene. Technically, Titan should be with them, but he felt he was doing better work standing waist deep in dirty water, getting a little girl down from her emotional rollercoaster.
“Titan, the Powered girl’s transport is en route. Estimate arrival in five point two minutes.” Dispatch’s voice hummed in his ear, nearly startling him. He’d forgotten about the earpiece already. It would take some time for the Hero habits to kick back in. At least he’d remembered to call the incident in. A person with her ability and no control needed some serious help.
“Understood.” Titan tapped the side of his mask covering his ear as Alexandria looked on curiously. He stuck out his thumb and pinky, making an “I’m on the phone” gesture to explain his apparent discussion with no one. “The secondary transport as well?”
“Yes, another car for the girl’s family is paired with the one for her. They will not be able to ride in the same vehicle.”
Titan smiled down at the girl, but inwardly winced. If he threw her into a mysterious van without so much as a friendly face, it was highly likely she would flare up again. The team getting her would have things to control her fire, but it wouldn’t be a great first impression.
“I can accompany. There shouldn’t be any danger for me.”
“It was never an issue of danger. We have equipment to completely neutralize a fire-conjurer of the level you described; however, that equipment occupies a large amount of space. We cannot fit anyone in the van aside from the driver and the Powered.”
Damn, there went that idea. If a normal person couldn’t fit, then Titan had no chance of squeezing in. He was still trying to think of another way to help when Dispatch's voice grabbed his attention again.
“Titan, another Hero has flagged your location as a destination. Gale is currently en route.”
“Make that ‘arrived.’”
The new voice came from a source high above the pool: a woman floating forty feet in the air. She wore a green and black outfit: standard pants and top paired with a matching ankle-length coat. It fluttered out behind her, billowing in the breeze as she began to descend.
She was halfway down when Titan realized there was no breeze. That probably meant air-elementalist, and if she had enough oomph to fly herself without riding on something as ostentatious as a hurricane, then she must be a pretty good one. Her brunette hair flitted about as she descended, coming to rest a few inches below her shoulders when she finally landed.
“Gale, I presume?”
The woman, Gale, nodded, and then flashed a warm smile at Alexandria. She turned
her attention back to the man in the soot-covered outfit a moment later. “And you’re Titan, or so I’m told.”
“That I am.”
“From what I heard, Titan left the business years ago. So that leaves me with a question: original or legacy?” Her tone was cheerful, and the smile she’d shown Alexandria had only faded a bit, yet Titan could still sense the tension in her body as she quizzed him. He didn’t blame her; the return of someone as legendarily infamous as himself was bound to stir up a lot of something. Maybe it would be bad, maybe it would be good, but it would be something.
“Original,” Titan replied. “Just reinstated, actually. You caught me on my first job.”
“A burning building? Interesting choice for a strongman.”
“Long story,” Titan said with a sigh.
“Are you really Gale?” This question came from neither of the registered Heroes, but rather from the small girl who had finally stopped burning a few minutes prior. Both adults looked at her, realizing they had something more important on their hands than a pissing contest.
“I really am,” Gale told her. She took a step off the edge of the concrete and began to hover over the water, making small ripples below her feet as she glided across the water’s surface. “See? I can fly and everything.”
Seeing her interact kindly with Alexandria, it struck Titan that Gale was quite pretty, a fact that was evident even through the mask that concealed all save for her eyes, a bit of nose, and from the mouth downward. Dark skin, full lips, and likely a fit body beneath all the armored clothing she wore. If his inclinations had lain in that direction, he’d have been a bit tempted to ask for her number.
“You came to speak at our school last year,” Alexandria said. “You talked about how being a Hero meant making good choices, even for young people like us.”
“And I meant every word,” Gale assured her.