Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One)

by K. Gorman

  Jo folded her arms across her chest. The bandage on her hand was gone.

  “Aiden’s still fucking with the shield. It’s working, but the engine looks like shit.”

  “It’s always looked like shit.”

  “True. But now he can’t make all the parts fit.”

  Awesome. Mieshka leaned against the doorframe, eyeing Aiden’s empty chair.

  “He in the engine room?”

  He was.

  Mieshka stepped through the hole in the wall. Chunks of concrete lay scattered across the floor. Her shoes slipped on a layer of dust. Aiden still hadn’t replaced the light. Worklights glared around the machine’s black, boxy bulk. Data streamed on the orange screen. It was colder down here. With her body still recovering, she felt it more. Aiden sat under a worklight, tipping his chair as he read a paper. His hair stuck up, the soft orange glowing white in the light. His blue shirt had black, tar-like smudges. Curling her fists into her sleeves, she picked her way across the room.

  “Any luck?”

  He looked up at her voice. She edged into the light, feeling heat sink through her clothes. It reminded her of the Phoenix.

  “Not really,” he said. Slowly, he stood up. He swayed, steadying himself on parts of the machine. “The soldiers did a number on it. It works, but it’s not complete.”

  He seemed to be just as tired as her dad. There weren’t many that could do his job.

  “The shield’s stable, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “That’s good.”

  Another long silence. Aiden studied her.

  “But you’re wondering about something else,” he said, finally.

  She nodded. The work-light struck a sharp shadow over his face as he stepped away from the engine.

  “Dad told me what happened,” she said.

  He pulled a pen from his pocket.

  “I can’t scan you anymore—not without compromising the shield. But we can try the transfer again.”

  She held out her hand. The IV’s bruise ached as he drew the mark. Ink cooled on her skin.

  Nothing. No glow. No life. She felt only ash. Ash and cold smoke.

  She tried not to show her disappointment.

  Aiden slipped the cap back on the pen.

  “Don’t think too much about it. It can probably be fixed—”

  “It burned up, didn’t it?” She’d seen the news coverage. The Phoenix had lit the sky on fire. It had left her.

  She swallowed back a lump in her throat.

  “Yeah. And something’s blocking the transfer sign. I can’t scan—”

  “—without killing the shield.”

  Aiden gave her a grim look. He was quiet for a minute.

  “Jo’s been meaning to teach you how to shoot.”

  She didn’t want to learn to shoot. She wanted to hide.

  She knew just the spot.

  ***

  In the dark, the memorial was silent. Mieshka held her phone ahead of her, its light providing a thin solution for the dark. Without her backpack, she felt exposed. Her footsteps echoed. Except for her, nothing moved. Even the fountain was still.

  Bullets peppered the monsters. She examined them, swiping her thumb over her phone’s touchscreen as it dimmed. The air smelled of smoke.

  Memories flashed back. Jo said she hadn’t killed anyone, but Mieshka had caused a lot of pain. They would remember her. Her lip curled as she touched a carved phoenix. With what she’d done, the monsters were her peers.

  Briefly, anyway. There was no fire left in her. Nothing but ash.

  She pushed the memories away, shivering in her jacket. Lyarne’s winter pushed through the tunnels. There was no warmth left in this place.

  Her phone’s screen timed out. The hall went black.

  The stone dug into her side. There was no warmth in her, either. The ash in her soul was cold. She’d guttered out like a candle in its own wax.

  She slid down the wall and slumped at its base. In here, she hid. Her dad had taken to fretting whenever she came home. Sometimes, his hands shook when he hugged her. It was too much for him.

  She thought of her element. It had filled her. She hadn’t known she’d been so empty before. The Phoenix had promised an eternity of warmth.

  She was not warm. Hugging her knees, she put the phone back in her pocket. She couldn’t even transfer anymore. What did that mean? What the hell did that mean?

  Her phone chirped in her pocket. Its echo jumped out of the dark. She pulled it back out and slid a thumb over its screen.

  Chris.

  Want to meet?

  The text glowed in the dark, bright against the black backdrop of her phone. She hadn’t seen him since the fire. Both he and Robin had left a card in the hospital. Robin had stormed Cyprios, too. Mieshka had trouble picturing it.

  She thought of the Underground. It frightened her a little, but its people had taken up arms to defend the shield.

  She texted back.

  Yes.

  And remembered all those stairs. It would take her forever to get back up.

  The End

  Keep reading for a short-story adventure with Mieshka and another Elemental!

  Cat and Meese

  He took her while she slept, and with her lips he spoke a promise to her shadow. Her eyes moved under their lids, deep in the REM of slumber. With a smile, he listened through her ears to the shadow’s answer. He knew the shadow. They were kin. And this deal between devils would benefit them both.

  ***

  “Got something for you.”

  Mieshka was dripping. The rain hadn’t quite made it through her jacket, but her pants were soaked. At Aiden’s voice, she paused in the doorway. Behind the desk that dominated the far corner of the room, he looked up from his computer screen.

  “There’s someone you should find. Underground. She can give you some answers.”

  Underground. Definitely not where she liked to go.

  “She got the answers to my finals?” To accentuate the point, she slid off her backpack and dropped it to the floor. The textbooks inside made a satisfying thunk.

  The mage ignored her. “She’s an elemental.”

  Mieshka paused. As the mage’s ex-apprentice, she knew an ‘elemental’ was, and it had little to do with chemistry. The Fire Mage’s magic was called elemental because he could manipulate fire. Of course, he could do much more than that. From what she gathered, there was a distinct level difference between an elemental and a mage.

  “Answers to what?”

  “To whether or not the potential in you is really gone or not.”

  Potential for magic, he meant. She took a moment to digest that, meeting his gaze across the room. She’d had a ‘potential’ before she’d used it up two weeks ago. Having it was like winning the lottery. Or, in her special case, being given the chance to win. The logistics of it were a bit beyond her, but she had the capability to become a Mage. Somehow.

  “You said it was gone.” Her voice didn’t sound as confident as before.

  “No, I said it had burned up.”

  The computer whirred quietly in the pause between them.

  “And the difference is?”

  “You’re familiar with the legend of the Phoenix?”

  ‘Rise from the ashes’ was a very appropriate analogy for a fire mage to use.

  “And if I still have it?” Her shoes squelched as she crossed the floor. Since she’d ‘burned up’, the mage had been too busy dealing with other things to address what her status was now. He still kept her around, but she wasn’t sure why—she was fairly useless when it came to the business he did, and otherwise tied up with finishing eleventh grade.

  “Cross that bridge later. You have to find it first. Even more, you have to find her.”

  “Who is she?”

  He tilted the screen so that she could see. There was a blurry photograph of a dark-skinned girl flipping off the camera. The date stamp in the corner was a few days old.

 
“Her name’s Kitty, and she’s an odd sort of elemental. She was taken in by the Electric Mage over in Terremain, although she tends to just ‘wing it’ with her powers. With electricity, you can kind of get away with that.”

  Her mouth stayed shut as she scanned the page of information. It had the basics—physical description, age, criminal record. Nothing really stood out, except for the note about a mental condition.

  “She’s not psycho, is she?”

  “Not until now.” At her look, he continued: “I’ve talked with the Electric Mage. He said the dead guy wasn’t her fault.”

  “Dead guy?”

  Aiden highlighted a section of the report that she hadn’t read yet. Great. He wanted her to go Underground—which was dangerous enough—to find someone with a mental condition that could shoot electricity.

  “Why do you want me to do this?”

  “To see if you still have potential or not.”

  “Can’t you tell on your own?”

  She became aware of just how loud the computer’s fan was when no one was speaking. Aiden stared at her. She must have missed something in conversation. She backtracked over it in her mind.

  “I know you do. You do not.” he said.

  That was a bit too sage-ish for her, but she got the impression that he was offering her a crossroads. Choose one way, and she could walk away from this and study for the exams she and everyone else had to write. Or she could pursue Kitty, who might provide a less cryptic answer to the question.

  If Aiden was right, she still had that lottery ticket.

  “Where is she?”

  She hadn’t felt like studying, anyway.

  ***

  Deep beneath the city streets, in a temple of pain and shadow and dark, crawling things, he was born. Or, shall we say, re-born, for he had existed for some twenty-three years that he remembered and, he suspected, quite a bit more that he didn’t. This birth was more of a free pass. A bail paid by a god he now owed, freed from the psychological prison of someone else’s mind.

  ***

  When the capitol city of Lyarne had been built, its foundations were rooted on the bones of its predecessor. The recent war had forced most of the country to the capitol, but the city was only so big. Even if the city’s shielding system had been able to grow with the development, the steep mountains guarding Lyarne prevented any further expansion. The city was overcrowded. Those who had the money or the connections found places, but everyone else was out of luck.

  Until some entrepreneurial individuals found that the old, buried city wasn’t quite as structurally incapable as was thought. If only it could be excavated.

  There had been no shortage of refugees.

  It wasn’t pretty. Practicality had shaped the underground city: it was much easier to build walkways than tunnels, so most of the pathways went through dead office-buildings and former houses in the buried city. A lot of buildings were still intact, and by the time the government took notice people had already started living in them. Focused on the war effort, the government decided to ignore them.

  Before Mieshka had fallen in with the mage, she’d had no idea of what lay underneath her city. It was still shocking to walk through the makeshift tunnels.

  The rain hadn’t quite dried on her jacket, and the chill pressed close to her like the tunnel’s walls. She preferred the closeness, though. Her phone chirped, and she wondered how far she was from the surface. There was a smell of stale air and mould down here. The only light came from a crude line of naked bulbs strung up on one side of the walkway—a new addition. Last time she’d been down here, she’d needed a flashlight. Looking at the bulbs, Mieshka tried not to think of just how precarious the electricity was down here.

  She wasn’t sure how deep she was, but the last bar of service on her phone winked out when she started down a staircase. Not many people came this way. She could tell by the dust her hand gathered as it slid down the banister.

  Still several blocks from the Core, she was already walking past the small mom and pop shops of the underworld. She knew they often paid tribute to the larger contenders to keep their windows intact and products unstolen, but there were exceptions—like the innocent-looking munitions shop she was headed for now. Maury, the owner, was too much of a badass. No one messed with him, not when he kept ‘demo’ rounds in a range of guns within easy reach behind his counter.

  For some reason, he’d taken a liking to her. She hoped it was in a protective, uncle-ish sense. The bell rang as she walked in, and the burly man behind the counter straightened up.

  “Meese! Long time! I been savin’ this one special for you!”

  He leaned forward and she heard a drawer open. Then there was a tiny gun in his hand.

  “I wanted to save its first shot for you, but you haven’t visited. And last month this jerk laughed at its size. Sorry, but I had to shut him up. Second shot is still good, eh?”

  She was never sure how to respond to him. Dutifully, she admired the gun, which was dwarfed by his hand.

  “I’m sorry, Mo. He shouldn’t have laughed.”

  She didn’t like guns. She was skittish around them. Some would argue that she was skittish around everything.

  “Meese should have protection down here. Gotta back up your rep, little girl.”

  “Rep?”

  “Reputation. You’re the latest celebrity, don’tcha know?”

  “What?”

  “Well, except for Kitty, mind you. But she’s old news that came back.”

  “Actually, I’d like to hear about Kitty.”

  “Why Meese, didn’t you come down to visit me?”

  Mieshka gave him her most guilt-free smile.

  “Of course, Mo. She’s just business.”

  “Business? You’re not after her, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Meese.”

  “Just kidding, Mo. I just gotta chat with her.”

  “Chat, huh? I think you better take the Mieshka.”

  He pushed the gun toward her.

  She stared, aware her mouth had gone a little slack. “You… named it after me? That’s so… sweet.”

  “Your name is just so perfect sounding for a gun.”

  She picked up the gun carefully with both hands. Maury nodded with approval.

  “Mo?” She stared at the gun in her hands. There was a tiny, stylized inscription on the side of the barrel.

  “Yes?”

  “Elementals—they’re people who mess around with elements, right? Control fire and water and stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, technically all the Mages are elementals?”

  He glanced up from the gun.

  “Calling a Mage an elemental is like calling an Admiral a soldier.”

  Of course Mo would use a military analogy.

  “A bit of an understatement, then?”

  “A bit.”

  It was easy to connect Aiden with Mo’s analogy. She’d seen him do way more than shoot fire.

  “On a scale of elemental to mage, what would you say Kitty was?”

  Mo leaned his elbows on the counter and thought.

  “A wildcard. If Mages were gods, she’d be the trickster figure.”

  She checked the time on her phone. She didn’t have much of it to spend, if she wanted to find Kitty.

  “Wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”

  “Nope. But I’m sure you’ll find her. You have a knack for running into people.”

  He hid a smile as he said the last bit, which made her think that he meant it literally. She fingered the gun.

  “Mo…”

  “Yes, Meese?”

  “Thanks.”

  ***

  Freedom, he learned, was comprised of promises. He’d known this all along, bitterly holed up in her mind, but to experience it was entirely something else. No longer did he view the world as on the screen of a television. Everything around him stirred with life, though perhaps not the life most
of the world would associate with the term. His life was made of sticks and stones, and the shift at the edge of one’s perception. He was a whisper that turned a dream to nightmare, which was what he’d wanted his entire existence, except this dream was reality, and the claws in his paws were very, very real. He left one dead at her door, and another was coming up the stair.

  ***

  She may not have liked guns, but the Mieshka was an exception. On the way, she tested the safety and loading mechanism, smiling at the feel of the well-built parts working smoothly. She’d followed the light trail through a shopping mall, and had now reached the entrance to the underground city’s Core. The windows of the department store had long ago been boarded up, but she could tell she was there by the light framing the plywood. Neon was very popular down here.

  Before she went out, she stashed the gun in its holster at the back of her belt, went close to the boards, and listened. She would have heard a gunfight by now, but knives were popular down here and made a lot less noise. Then, satisfied she wouldn’t be inadvertently stabbed, she stepped out onto the sidewalk’s brickwork and squinted against the light.

  It was easy to forget that she was still underground in this place. The ceiling was too high to see by the shop lights. In this part of town, the edifices marked a juxtaposition of different ages: brickwork sat next to plastic, and a cement structure crumbled next to a metropolitan pseudo-hotel that bore the distinct construction of the pre-Chromatix B era. Everything was well over 70 years old.

  Mieshka hadn’t been down here enough to become a familiar face. Except for those involved with the Mages, all people saw was some young, orange-haired girl. Just another refugee from the war. Though, if what Mo said were true, everyone knew her name. She still wasn’t sure what she thought of that.

  “Hey. Hey you girl. You lost?”

  The man stood outside one of the storefronts that occupied the bottom level of the buildings. He was wearing an apron, and the shop display had a scattering of Chinese characters, which told Mieshka which group controlled this section of town.

  “Nope.” She gave him her most winning smile. “But I’m looking for something. Someone.”

  He wiped his hands on a rag while he gave her a long, considering look.

  “Someone? Who?”

  Her turn to mirror his look.

  “Kitty.”

  His hands stopped wiping.

  “No one find her. Why you look?”

  “My boss wants me to.”

  “Boss?”

  Time to go, she thought. She had no idea what terms Aiden was on with this guy’s boss. Instead of answering, she gave him another winning smile.