Firestorm Read online

  Last night I’d killed one with my tanto. That corpse in front of the door had served well as a warning, but they still smelled Darcy.

  She seemed to taunt them, sent them sniffing around the walls, testing with their claws all through the night. Sometimes they howled like wolves. Other times they growled, whined, scented the ground.

  It appeared these creatures had a special taste for humans.

  And now that I'd fought one, I realized how insufficient my training had been. I didn’t know what these were called, because they weren’t the creatures we’d been prepared for. Similar, yes, but bigger, fiercer, stronger. A mutation, or an evolution.

  It was possible the Ides facility had become so cut off from this world that they no longer had a pulse on what prowled up here.

  Either way, I needed to protect Darcy. This place had no supplies, no water or beds, and the only way out was through that door we'd come in.

  She needed treatment. Food. Safety. And she was relying on me now to get her to those things.

  She'd brought a few supplies in her backpack, most of them useless at the moment. There was a flashlight, which might come in handy for whatever lay beneath that panel. She couldn't see in the darkness like I could.

  I placed my shirt under her head, and she curled to it now, her body fetal. Calm, trusting.

  I sat on my heels in the corner, watching her. I had to admit I relished this chance. The past few hours had been my first opportunity to observe her at length, to be allowed to look. Even now—especially now—she looked beautiful. She had sacrificed everything to be here with me.

  My breathing quickened as she rolled toward me in her sleep, her hair falling over her cheek under the soft fluorescence. I would do everything in my power to ensure she always felt safe with me. Whatever this world entailed, my greatest purpose now was to keep her happy, healthy.

  A set of claws raked down the metal next to me. I didn’t move, refused to flinch. But now that I’d been exposed to the world aboveground, my internal clock had activated. Outside, I sensed sunrise occurring.

  It was time for us to get the hell out of here.

  Two

  Friday, May 9, 2053

  6:05 a.m.

  Darcy

  My eyes opened with a cinch of the heart. Above me, a rectangular light and squinting-bright fluorescence. To my right, the battery hummed.

  The memories of last night came back to me: running to the dock; Blaze collapsing. During the hours he'd been unconscious, I had injected myself with another shot of the painkiller. It had given me enough wherewithal to pull out the first aid kit and numbing agent.

  Those had been the easy parts. The hard part had been sanitizing the wound and applying the vitasalve. Even with the the painkiller and localized numbing agent, every movement felt like fire through my arm and chest.

  Now I sat up, fingers gripping the shirt beneath me. It was his black tee, and as my eyes focused, he smiled from where he crouched in the corner. “Morning."

  His eyes roamed my body, and I knew that if he was going to betray me—kill me—this would be the moment. He was an assassin, after all.

  I had placed my trust in him, gotten him out of the facility because I believed he was the best chance humanity had at survival, and now I would find out if everything he'd said and done had been genuine, or just an act.

  I held my breath as I sat on the floor, waiting.

  Blaze came over to me and knelt by my side. He raised his hand, and his fingers came to hover over my shoulder. Those green eyes flicked to meet mine, and I felt nearly leveled by the passion I saw there.

  He leaned forward, his hand coming to my cheek and threading into my hair with such gentleness that I gasped as his lips met mine.

  We kissed with a tenderness I hadn't experienced before, and even the pain seemed dulled as my body thrilled to his heat, his touch.

  It had been real. It had all been real.

  After thirty seconds or an hour—I couldn't tell which—he pulled a half-inch away. His forehead met mine, that hand still cupping my face and head. "Well, that was quite a night."

  I raised both eyebrows in acknowledgement. My hand went to my wounded shoulder, which ached powerfully. “What time is it?”

  He cast his eyes up to the ceiling light as though he might be able to spot the sun through there. “My internal clock says sunrise was half an hour ago.”

  “Shit,” I said, searching for my backpack. “We need to leave—now.”

  He watched me intently as I moved. It sent a thrill through me, even as I was processing the giant pile of shit that was our current situation.

  “That's true,” he said, his fingers touching the metal flooring. “We’re about ten miles away, and we need to get you to the city. But given what I've been hearing outside, that's a pretty fraught ten miles.”

  "If it's morning, the silvers won't be out," I said.

  One of his eyebrows raised. "They're called silvers—good to know."

  "Yes," I said. "They're the creatures we designed you to fight. I didn't get a chance to tell you that before."

  He shrugged. "It's possible I know more about them at this point than you do, anyway."

  "What do you mean?" I tried standing, found myself less dizzy than I'd expected. But my head pounded with the lack of painkillers in my system.

  Blaze rose, came to my side to help me up. "I mean the thing I fought last night isn't precisely the same creature you prepared me to fight. It had fur, ran on four legs. Howled like a wolf, except..."

  "Except?"

  "It was unbelievably vicious. Mindless. And I assume this is what caused me to pass out," he said, indicating his thigh wound.

  "Their claws create an infection in humans,” I explained. The wound had been deep—four inches, just missing the bone. “What you experienced was the initial anesthetic effect, but I designed your model to resist the worst of it."

  The worst of it being a fast-moving infection that either killed us or turned us into one of them at the rate of about 50/50.

  But he was supposed to be immune to it—he shouldn't have collapsed at all. Maybe there was truth to what he was saying about some sort of mutation among the silvers.

  He nodded. "It kept trying to get past me to you."

  As was to be expected; to them, Blaze was scentless, unappealing. I, on the other hand, smelled like a medium-rare steak. Keeping the silver off me must have taken everything he had. All his strength, all his willpower.

  "Thank you," I said, "for protecting me."

  His gaze softened on me, and he exhaled in amusement. "You're thanking me? I was designed to protect you. If I had failed in that, nothing else would have mattered. To me, you are humanity."

  Tears sprung to my eyes, and I lifted my good hand, set it to his face. "Come here."

  He did, leaning down toward me. His fingers slid to the point of my chin, held it between thumb and forefinger. “Darcy,” he said, and the velvet in his voice surrounded the syllables, wrapped them in delectable casing.

  Something moved deep inside me, and this time I wasn’t afraid.

  One of his hands traced my unhurt shoulder on down to my elbow, slid across the forearm. I shuddered with the electricity that ran through my body.

  When I turned, he was so close that we might as well have been touching. My breasts were less than an inch from his chest. When Blaze looked at me, his eyes glittered a deep green, and my breath caught in my throat.

  "This doesn't hurt?" he murmured.

  It did a little, but I didn't care. I felt like I was in a delirium, a daze. "It's fine," I breathed.

  "I can't tell you how much I want you right now," he said, his lips fluttering against my ear. I shivered with the vibrations. "But if I don't get you to safety, I wouldn't be doing my job."

  I nodded, exhaling. "It's safe outside—for now. We should leave."

  He shook his head. "There's another way. One that doesn't involve going out there."

  "Anothe
r way? There's only the door we came in by."

  His eyes flitted to mine, lit with excitement. “Actually, that’s not entirely true.” He directed my eyes to the spot in front of him.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Here, I'll show you." He helped me get down on the floor so that I lay on my good side, my ear pressed to the ground.

  I stared at him as he lay with me. “Now what?”

  “Listen."

  The metal ran warm with the current being siphoned through the battery, an electronic symphony. I pressed my ear hard to the floor, but I heard nothing else.

  “Close your eyes,” he said with pristine patience.

  I knew his hearing was at least three times mine. This all felt silly, futile—a waste, given the sun was already passing to its highest point. My face was on the metal floor of the dock, hands laid at either side of my head. I’d been listening for a full minute, and nothing.

  But I closed my eyes anyway. Blaze set one hand to my other ear, blocking external noise from his breathing and the battery. All went black and still, the current driving power to Beacon, and beyond—

  A thrumming. Machine revolutions, a gear slotting in and out of place beneath us. My eyes opened. “What is it?”

  “Could it be part of the facility?”

  “No,” I said. Ides ran perpendicular to the city, and over the years I’d explored much of what lay down there. The emergency shaft was its farthest reach. And I’d never, never heard such a noise at Ides. “It’s something else.”

  Blaze’s knuckles rapped at the flooring. They produced a hollow echo. “Want to find out?”

  The release sat beneath the generator, a red pinhead. When I touched it, a square of the floor separated, the lines obvious now as it lifted. Beneath lay a hatch lettered with the old language; I recognized the number: 12.

  Dock 12. There were twenty-four docks in total—were all of them equipped with these nearly invisible panels?

  There was a handle atop the hatch that could be spun to unscrew the tight hold. Blaze was already kneeling, his muscles in a hard flex. He couldn’t budge the thing, and his lips parted as he strained.

  He leaned into it, and in painful, nearly invisible increments, the handle began to move. Faster, faster, until he was able to use his momentum to spin the handle and with a hiss it depressurized, a circle of white steam rising.

  I stood back as he opened the hatch, and a blast of cool air hit us. My hair flew around my face as we stared into a pure and untainted darkness.

  Blaze leaned in, surveying. "There's a ladder down. Do you think you could do it with one arm?"

  He got to his feet, and we both stood at the edge. “I can try, but I've only got a little flashlight."

  “You have me.” His night vision was as good as any predator’s, so fine-tuned to light he only needed the tiniest illumination to navigate by.

  “And if we’re separated?” The thought of losing him in that dark hole raised goosebumps up my arms.

  His hand reached out, enfolded my fingers in his grip. He squeezed, his face serious. “You won’t.”

  I knew I was in trouble. Not with the silvers, with Ides, with the world at large—yes, all those things were trouble—but with him. There was a space inside me I didn’t know existed until, drop by drop, he had begun to fill it.

  If he ever betrayed me, that was the terrain of real suffering.

  So I watched him grab the backpack and descend the ladder, his fingers holding the metal grips with such ease I knew he had activated the sticky pads on his fingers.

  A prickle of jealousy entered my chest—everything was so much simpler for him—along with a surge of pride. This man had been engineered to survive. I had done that.

  His baritone sailed up to me, echoing up into the dock. "No time like the present, Dr. West."

  "Says the man with sticky pads on his hands," I murmured. But I followed him, setting one foot at a time on the metal rungs.

  I gripped the first one with my good hand, and froze in a moment of nervousness. I didn't know how far down this went, and I didn't know if I would be able to make it before I fatigued.

  As if he sensed my worry, Blaze called up: "I'm right below you. You can do this. Follow my voice."

  So I did. I breathed, stepped down. One-two, my feet went. One-two, and above me, the light from the hatch moved farther and farther away.

  Down, down we went, the fluorescent light shrinking to a tunnel, a moon, a pinhole. And then nothing. Just the cold ladder and the thrumming from below.

  In the darkness, I remembered: my sister's hair was the color of honey. Honey had been rationed, and then it became a memory.

  Beacon's beehives had gone barren, their holes and combs flaking—and then, when I was six, I tasted honey for the last time. A single dollop of it on my mush, liquid gold, so sweet I’d pressed my lips together and my eyes shut, overwhelmed.

  Zara’s hair put me in memory of it. On my last night in Beacon I’d combed her hair from the braid, the ripples of it hanging low along her back. Her face in the mirror, large eyes closed, was not one of illness.

  But illness didn’t always use a club; sometimes it used a needle.

  “Honey,” I said, tracing a finger across the butterfly rash that had appeared on her cheeks. “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday.” Delivered simply, without inflection. Zara was twelve and thirty years old at once, a girl with a woman’s understanding of chronic pain.

  Two years before, she had come down with a perfectly human, perfectly incurable illness: lupus. Her immune system regularly attacked her own body, and she often struggled to get out of bed.

  But it was getting worse. And if the silvers didn't get her, the illness likely would.

  I set my face by hers, cupped my hand over her cheek so ours pressed together. She met my eyes in the mirror. “I’ll be back,” I said. I wasn’t sure of when, but the promise rang through me like a struck bell. “I will.”

  This was a necessary separation—not one I looked forward to. My initial plan: produce the clone within a year, get back to Beacon. In a year she would be fourteen, still in that liminal space between child and woman, and I wouldn’t have missed too much.

  And maybe, maybe, I could produce a cure.

  The facility had better equipment, better scientists, better resources—none of those things were available in Beacon.

  “I know,” she said, her eyes opening. They were blue, deep sea dark. She'd always been the beautiful sister: wide forehead, full lips, and a pointed chin. People were enlivened by her presence, put in mind of a better, ethereal place.

  If I could, I would give my life that she could live long enough to make her own way—whatever that way would be. “We do what we need to, right?"

  I hung a long, silent moment before the mirror, our eyes meeting. She was the wise one, the brave one. Finally I dropped my forehead to her shoulder, smelling the sweet scent of her hair one more time. “Right,” I said. “We do.”

  "We do what we need to do."

  In the tunnel's darkness, I heard a thud and a grunt. I clung to the rung I was on, my body tensed. "Blaze?"

  “One’s missing,” Blaze called. Beneath me, his face was upturned, framed by the small circle of light. “Eight rungs down from where you are.”

  “Got it,” I said back, turning my face back to the ladder and the dark. I breathed out, began to descend again.

  Zara would be eighteen now. Maybe they had found a way to cure lupus without my help. Maybe she was healthy, flourishing.

  But if I was being honest with myself, I'd be happy if she was alive. Just alive.

  Below, the thrumming sound was finding distinct form, edges. The sound carried up through the shaft, every note of it pressed tight in the small space. It sounded like, like—

  My foot reached out, found only open air. The missing rung. I had already lowered myself with the expectation of finding that metal, and I yelped, my good hand straining to hold my wh
ole body’s weight. After a moment my feet swung to, and they found the next rung.

  “I’m okay,” I said before Blaze could ask. I held tight to the ladder, my arm wrapped around it, breathing hard. “How much farther?”

  I heard the sound of his feet hitting ground. “We’re here."

  But where was here? I followed, descending two rungs, three, four.

  "Drop down," he called. "I'll catch you."

  I hesitated a moment, and then I let myself go. As soon as I did, I felt his hands grasp my waist to ease me to the hard ground. We stood on rock. And aside from the tiny circle of light from the dock, the space around us was dark as pitch.

  The underground machine—I knew it was a machine now—sounded clear now, echoing down the tunnel ahead of us.

  “I knew you could do it,” Blaze said, his hand coming to my arm. “Are you okay to walk?”

  "Let's go." My hand went around his forearm, and I followed him into the darkness. “What do you think the noise is?”

  “It’s a machine I don’t recognize. It has a spinning gear. But beneath it, there’s the same noise from the dock—the generator—except many times more powerful.”

  And we were headed toward it. I couldn't see anything, and my vision swam with colors as my eyes became desperate for stimulation. I flicked on the small flashlight, creating a cone of whiteness in the dark.

  Around us, rock and more rock. But it had been hewn so deftly that the walls and ceiling looked perfectly smooth, as though evened out by running water over many centuries.

  On and on we walked, silent as we passed through this tunnel, my feet testing the rock with every step, always finding even purchase.

  This, I thought to myself, this is why we were no match for them. This is why we created the infiltrators. The silvers thrived in the darkness—and not just because they possessed night vision. They became empowered by it: stealthier, stronger, more vicious.

  Even with a weapon, the spot on their bodies particularly vulnerable to attack was the eyes. Like us, their eyes were gentle orbs, susceptible to just about anything. But they were small targets in the darkness, and even with a scope, you’d have to be a good marksman to hit a moving silver in the eye.