Firestorm Read online

  “You’re an infiltrator," I explained. "In Beacon, you’ll be distrusted at best. If anyone down here spots you, they’ll kill you. This place is highly off limits, and precious to this outpost.”

  “They'll try,” he corrected.

  My gaze had already left him; I was surveying the cavern, my eyes flitting over everything. “What?”

  “They’ll try to kill me," he said. "And they’ll fail.”

  He didn’t know what he was up against, but I couldn’t help smiling. I turned his face toward mine, pulled him toward me. Our lips met, and I set my hands to either side of his face. “Wait here.”

  I felt him sigh against me, but this time he didn't protest. When we parted, his expression had shifted into concern.

  "I'll be careful," I said.

  "And if you aren't, I'll be here."

  I nodded, turned away. Behind me, Blaze stood in the shadows while I crossed into the light.

  “Hello?” I called, my voice pinging off the rock walls and disintegrating in the rush of water and electricity filling the center of the cavern. “Is anyone here?”

  Best to proactively make my presence known to anyone who might be down here. Better than surprising them.

  I strained my ears, but nothing human came back. I crossed to the underground river, which over the centuries had formed a massive rivulet through the rock, and knelt to its side.

  When I dipped my hand in, the water ran perfect and clear and cold over my fingers.

  Never in my life had I touched clear, fresh running water. It had always come through a filtration system, or, in the facility, been recycled thousands of times.

  This was straight from the earth, untouched by anyone before me. I cupped my good hand, brought the water up to my nose. The smell was fine.

  I stuck my tongue out for a brief taste. Even better than the refiltrated stuff in the facility. Way better than what we had in the jug.

  I proceeded to drink until my whole face was wet, water dripping off my chin. But I had to be quick: Blaze was still waiting, and I needed to suss out whether anyone was actually down here before I waved him out from our alcove.

  I stood to take a survey of the cavern. Thirty feet off, the central pylon rose toward the surface. Cords ran to the ceilings like the scaffolding of a tent, sloped away and into the other tunnels.

  I moved closer, what was behind now coming into view: a metal cart hooked to a chain that ran straight up into the light.

  That, I recognized immediately, was the mechanism for getting in and out of this place.

  This close to the pylon, the electricity sounded like many thousands of wasps, all of them piling into my ears.

  I pressed my hands to the sides of my head, circling to get to the pulley and basket. It had been fitted with a panel and two buttons: green and red. Easy enough.

  I pressed the green button. Nothing. I pressed it again, and the panel didn’t respond—not a beep, not even a sound to acknowledge I’d depressed the button. For good measure I pressed the red button. Again, nothing.

  That was when I spotted the keyhole in the panel. It was old, meant for a metal key. It had been years since I'd encountered anything but screens and fingerprint identification.

  My eyes wandered, searching the basket—maybe it would be as easy as this, that someone had just left it here. But the basket was empty.

  I gripped the edge of the panel, my eyes flicking to where Blaze stood, still in the tunnel, probably watching me with muscles so tense he’d be running in under a second.

  That was when I saw it in the cavern wall: an upright oval of a door with a green light above the frame. This door had been embossed with the old language, in the same way as the hatch. The number: 0. And it sat cracked open, ajar.

  I came to the door on cat’s feet. It didn’t open any farther as I approached, which probably meant it wasn't occupied. Probably.

  I set one eye to the crack, which was a mistake. White light seared my unattuned eyes, forced me to turn away and blink into the darkness while the long line of brightness faded from my vision.

  I stood there for ten seconds and heard nothing. So I pulled the handle and the door slid open to reveal a control room, a wide dashboard, and a computer.

  I’d just lifted a foot through the doorway when I heard the familiar click of a loaded crossbow, and cool metal touching the side of my face.

  “Stay right the fuck there.” A man’s voice, nervous and high. “Who are you?”

  He’d set an arrow's tip to my cheek. Between the angle and my pitching heart, I couldn’t tell if his finger was inside the trigger guard. By now, Blaze would be coming. I needed to warn this person. “My name’s Darcy West. Listen—”

  But he didn't hear me, or he didn't want to. “How did you even get down here? You're so far outside protocol I could unload this thing into your head and no one would question it. Now answer me: are you maintenance? Engineering?”

  “You need to lower the crossbow.” The best way through this was straight as an arrow. I would tell him the truth. "There's a man—"

  But his eyes had already swept past me to something—or someone—behind us. “Holy shit."

  I glanced left to the man with the crossbow, my eyes sliding past the arrow pointed at my face. I took him in at once: shaved head, jagged tattoo at his neck. The Electric Guild.

  He was one of the few who knew how to make this city run. Members of the Electric Guild were almost as precious to us as the lights themselves, every man of them.

  And I could see his pulse in his neck, like a bird trying to escape. I knew who he'd seen.

  I spun around, my hands going up. “Blaze, wait!”

  But the butt of the tanto had already found its mark at the engineer's temple, Blaze's hand wrapped around the hilt of it. The man crumpled wordlessly to the floor. A trickle of blood started down the side of his face.

  “No,” I breathed, dropping to my knees. "Blaze, you've killed him."

  "He's far from dead," he said from behind me. I felt his legs touching my back as he stood in the doorway. "But he might be a little forgetful for a while."

  I turned my face up toward Blaze, and in that moment, I was wracked with fury. "It's not funny. Also, I had it under control."

  He stood there with a soldier's impassiveness. "I'm not laughing. He had an arrow's head at your cheek, Darcy."

  I stood. "And I said I had it under control. You don't just go off like it's some goddamn training at the facility. This man is important—he's one of the Electric Guild. Everything he does is to keep the lights on, to protect us. You don’t understand that.”

  One brown eyebrow raised. "I understand that his blood pressure was 140/80, that adrenaline had entered his system three seconds before, and that he was approximately a half-second from firing that weapon. I couldn't risk him killing you—it would have killed me, too."

  I just stared at him, breathing hard. I understood why he'd done what he'd done, but I still felt anger flaring in me, ready to lash out.

  Blaze leaned down, touching his fingers to the engineer's neck. "He's got a strong pulse. He'll be okay."

  I pressed my eyes shut with my hand. Blaze had behaved exactly as he should have done, as he had been trained: if his highest priority was to protect me, then he needed to eliminate any imminent threats.

  And he had actually held back. He could easily have thrown the blade right at the center of the engineer's chest and killed him outright.

  But his first instinct had still been violence. Not diplomacy or humanity. Violence.

  This was my fault; I was angriest at myself, at what I had allowed to be. Because of our infiltrator program—because of my work—he'd been created to hurt people.

  I couldn’t even deny it.

  Beneath the beakers, the petri dishes, one chemical mixed with another, I wasn’t a doctor playing with genetics. I was designing destruction, packaging it into a visually perfect specimen.

  It had been my job to make a soldier,
but I understood my role now: to keep him a human being, as best as I could.

  “I understand why you did it. But you’re a man," I whispered, lowering my hand and opening my eyes. "Not a murderer. Just remember that, okay?”

  Blaze looked up at me, and my eyes flitted between his. Only the sounds of the water wheel and the river remained. He gave a single nod. "I haven't forgotten, Darcy. I won't forget."

  "Help me get him up," I said, and Blaze pulled the engineer onto the chair in the control room, where he slumped with his head on his shoulder. His blood trickled over his shirt's collar.

  "It'll be a few hours before he wakes," he said.

  "I'll explain it to Beacon," I said. I inspected the bruise forming at the engineer's temple. "When we get up there, I'll tell them it was me."

  Blaze's hand came to my shoulder. "No—you don't have to do that for me."

  I stood, turning to him. "We're in this together. You did what you thought was right to protect me, and I will, too."

  Of course, doing what was right for the people we cared about and serving the greater good were sometimes different things. It was a morally sticky ground.

  His eyes softened, and he placed a soft kiss on my forehead before he stepped around me, pulled the key from a hook on the wall. “I believe this is what you were looking for.”

  We stepped out from the tiny control room, Blaze a few steps ahead of me. We walked in silence to the basket that would take us up into Beacon.

  When I inserted the metal key, the panel illuminated, and the red button lit at once. Blaze opened the small door for me, gestured for me to step in.

  “Wait,” I said, setting my hand to his arm. “When we go up there, things are going to happen quickly. There’s a lot I still need to tell you.”

  But we were butting up against our eternal problem: time. Within the next few hours, Luther Ides would almost certainly activate the chip in Blaze's neck. I needed to get him into Beacon's hospital and separate him from that damned piece of metal.

  Blaze seemed to sense my conflict. He slipped one hand around my waist, urging me into the basket. “You have until we arrive,” he said, stepping in after me, swinging the door shut with a clang.

  He pressed the green button, and the chain above us jerked, tightened. Somewhere a gear shifted into clanking motion, and we were airborne, our only flooring a slatted metal grate.

  My hands shook, and I set them on the rail. Blaze held me to him. “After everything, the doctor fears heights.”

  “You’re just lucky I programmed you to ignore that very rational survival instinct,” I whispered, my cheek pressing into his chest.

  He chuckled, the richness of it easing my nerves just a little. “We have approximately thirty seconds, Darcy. Tell me what you want to say.”

  This was the time to tell him straight. I lifted my eyes to his. “When we hit the surface, we’ll be in Beacon. You and I—we have no identity. I gave mine up when I went to work for Luther Ides.”

  He nodded. “What else?"

  I inhaled deeply. “If they don’t try to kill us, they’ll detain us. And if we survive that, Ides will activate the chip in your neck, either to kill you or make you kill me. It’s impossible to remove except by a dangerous surgical procedure.”

  Pressed to his chest, I could feel his heartbeat, as strong and even as ever. “That’s all?” he said. Beyond his face, I could see the cavern’s ceiling drawing closer. We were about there. “Well, Dr. West, I have a few tricks of my own.”

  And then he winked at me, and despite everything we'd gone through, my stomach soared. A smile cracked his lips, and then he brought his face down to mine.

  Our lips met, and if this was going to be our last kiss, somehow the infinity of this moment made death feel small, unimportant, a tiny shadow shrunk by the light.

  Five

  Friday, May 9, 2053

  10:38 a.m.

  Blaze

  I could have kissed her then and forever. But instead, I had to make myself scarce; two humans waited above. I could hear their soft chatter, their breathing. One young, one older, neither a threat.

  But I trusted Darcy’s words—“if they don’t try to kill us, they’ll detain us”—and planned to slip myself apart from her before the basket reached its destination.

  As we rose, I scanned the rock for holds. The cavern's walls swept in toward us to form a natural ceiling with a small space where the basket would pass through into the room above.

  There, just a few feet off, I spotted a couple divots in the ceiling, close enough that I wouldn’t even have to jump for them.

  Here, it was dark enough that Darcy couldn’t really see me. "See you there," I whispered into her ear.

  I stepped back, pressed my fingers to my lips and out toward her, and turned my face up. I would have to time it perfectly, just before the basket crossed the threshold of the ceiling.

  As we came to it, I angled my body so that my back bent over the railing, and my hands reached out, searched out the holds. The sticky pads in my fingertips activated on instinct, and I didn’t have to rely so much on my muscle strength.

  In fact, defying gravity had come easier than I’d expected.

  Thanks for that, Doctor.

  The basket kept rising, and I had to be quick; I grabbed the next hold farther out, leveraging myself flush to the ceiling and finding half-holds that would allow me to move my legs out of the basket’s way.

  I listened as the gear wound the cart fully up and into the room, and then it clanged to a stop.

  Don't freak out, I thought to the two men. I didn't want to have to do to them what I'd done to the engineer who had put a crossbow to her temple. Just the memory of it set my hairs on edge.

  Above me, the two humans became suddenly aware of Darcy's presence. The young one, a male, sounded skeptical, uncertain. The older one, who’d been addressed as Wilt, sounded smart and patient enough not to panic at the sight of a woman.

  They wouldn’t kill her, at least, and even if she was detained, I’d been trained to handle such situations.

  Good. Darcy was safe for the moment, and I could focus on getting off the ceiling.

  I angled my eyes across the sweep of rock before me and, tilting my head, observed the wall sloping down to the floor some 100 feet below. The descent would take me approximately five minutes.

  Climbing through that obstacle course in the facility every day had proven to be applicable to the real world after all.

  As I began the work of moving two-hundred and fifty pounds across the ceiling, one hand-hold at a time, something unspooled in my mind—what my colloquialism training had called “deja vu.” Like this had happened before.

  I stopped as the image percolated, and my eyes closed to see it better. This massive room—I had been here. I had moved across this ceiling.

  Below me, the pylon had buzzed, the water wheel had churned just like it did now. And I could see a single, brilliant cone shining from the hole in the ceiling where the basket now sat.

  It illuminated the river pressing its way through the cavern. Soft, natural in the darkness. I've seen this, I thought. That was how I knew where the holds in the ceiling would be.

  The feeling that came over me was the same as from my dream of the snow, the cabin. Both felt as real as anything, as distinct as memories could be.

  But I was only a week old. Neither of those memories could be mine.

  All at once, a jarring spike of fear ran through my body. The image deviated from what was happening in real life: in it, a sharp pain bloomed at the back of my neck.

  I grabbed for a divot and misjudged the distance, and I lost my grip and fell to the cavern floor below. The pain had been sudden, awful. I heard the sounds of my bones cracking, and then blackness.

  My eyes flew open, and I breathed hard. I still had my grip on the ceiling. No pain, no bones breaking. I hadn't fallen.

  And with that lucid thought, the deja vu lifted as quickly as it had settled. The
intense humming of the central generator returned to the fore. I was Blaze, and around me, the cavern was as it had been five minutes before.

  Voices filtered down from the room above, and I caught snippets. They had decided to bring Darcy into Beacon.

  I needed to follow. I started my way across the ceiling again, and the memory—whatever it was—didn't disappear completely. It hung vague and familiar in my memory, as though it had happened to me. As though I had somehow fallen.

  But such a thing had never happened to me. I had never been in this room. I was sure of my own memories—I’d only accumulated a week of them, after all. Which made this something else.

  But still, as I reached toward the next hold in the rock and managed to get a firm grip, I resolved to pay close attention to the act of climbing down to the floor of this cavern.

  10:42 a.m.

  Darcy

  We came into the light. The basket clanged to a stop, and I could see nothing. “Well, I’ll be,” came a man’s voice.

  “Who the hell is that?” came another. Younger, uncertain. “Did you see something moving?”

  My eyes adjusted with painful slowness, and I could make out the edges of things. We stood in a room with dials and knobs and computers. A pair of men in uniform had risen from their seats: Electric Guild engineers.

  “Certainly isn’t Ehren,” said the older one. I could make out a tuft of hair on his balding head. And the other had a full head of brown hair, stood tall and lanky with an awkward hold on his wrench.

  Beside me, the cart sat empty where Blaze should have been. I gasped, spun. “Hey, don’t move,” the younger one said, angling his wrench closer. The room around me was small, octagonal, the cart and chain at the center.

  Blaze wasn’t here.

  “It’s just a little woman, Wilt,” the man said. “Though I’m pretty concerned myself about how you got up here, girl. And what the hell happened to your arm? Silver got you?"

  At the mention of silvers, all three of us tensed up. I would have to work my way out from under the death sentence that a silver attack would mean.