Ablaze (Indestructible Trilogy Book 2) (8 page)

And I’ve no idea how I did that. But maybe Jared knows. He survived the first war, too, though everyone thought he was dead. Perhaps I can get information from him. Seeing as he’s apparently in a generous mood.

Don’t be stupid. He’s tricking you.

But it’s not like I can go back. And I already told him the others were dead.

He’s still waiting for an answer.

“I’ve been near death ever since I found out I was one of the Pyros,” I say, determined not to give anything away.

“That is true.” He regards me, thoughtfully. “You’re unusual, Leah.”

I give a forced laugh. “Yeah, maybe because I’m the freaking Transcendent? In case you’ve forgotten that?”

“I don’t think any of us have forgotten, Leah,” he says softly. “Would you like to come with me? I have a much more comfortable room reserved for you.”

“So you expect me to stay?”

“You’re a fighter, Leah. You do what’s necessary for your own survival. And wouldn’t you like to see Cas again?”

He gives me an expectant look.
Like I’m going to fall on my knees and beg you.

“Where are we?” I ask, instead.

“At my new base.” He taps the stone wall. “Underground. You almost made it, you know, but it’s well-hidden, and close to the divide. No one would dare come near here.”

I blink. “You mean we’re right next to… them?”

“In a manner of speaking. The divide is closed, as I’m sure you’re already aware.”

“And you’re planning to open it.” The words spill out before I can stop them. “You’re planning to pit Cas and me against them, aren’t you?”

He frowns. “I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, Leah. But the fact remains that the Fiordans are relentless. They
will
find a way to break through again, and this time, we have to be ready to face them. If not, I don’t need to tell you what the consequences will be. You’ve seen it already.”

The world burning. Death. Hideous monsters. Like my last dream.

I grit my teeth and glare at him. “Yeah. I seem to remember
you
were the one who caused some of it yourself.”

“You weren’t there, Leah,” Jared says. “Why don’t you let me show you my side of the story?”

I want to shake my head, want to run, but the two guards holding me make that impossible. “
Show
me?”

“You’ll see, Leah, if you let me. Guards, bring her to my quarters.”

“Are you sure?”

It’s the first time one of the guards has spoken, and something about his voice doesn’t sound right. It’s too low-pitched and growl-like to be a regular person’s, and images of the experiments from Cas’s visions come flashing back.

“Leah, give me the chance to show you what we fight for.”

In spite of everything, I can’t help feeling a twinge of curiosity about what
he
thinks happened. He might be a crazy psychopath, but he and Murray were on the same side, once. Maybe I can get clues about what happened two years ago that Murray didn’t tell me. There was an awful lot he didn’t want me to know, that much is obvious.

The guards frog-march me through the corridor. Definitely like a cave, even with the tiled floors and painted stone walls. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling illuminate every corner. I try to get a good look at the guards. They’re dressed in black, and their hoods are pulled up so it’s hard to make out their faces, at least without not looking where I’m walking. Soon enough, we come to another corridor lined with doors, and I’m strongly reminded of the old Pyro headquarters, except underground.

Several more corridors later, we enter an area where the walls are painted white and the floor’s roughly tiled in an approximation of the Pyro HQ. Jared leads the way through a metal door and into a dimly lit room with actual furniture—a plush black sofa, several chairs, a bookshelf in the corner—and a television on a wooden table. An old, blocky TV with a VCR.

I don’t know what I expected the quarters of a madman to look like—severed heads mounted on the walls, maybe?—but it’s so plain and ordinary. I stare, especially at the television set and the low table in front of the sofa, littered with car magazines, and even a remote control. I don’t realise my mouth’s slightly open until Jared turns and gives me a smile.

“Not what you expected, hmm?”

“You—you live
here?”

“Where did you expect me to live? Inside a volcano?” He laughs, a touch too loud to be entirely comfortable. I want to back away, but my arms are pinned to my sides.

Apparently realising this, he says, “Guards, you can go.”

And they let go. My upper arms are slightly numb, and I turn quickly to get a proper look at them. One’s hood’s fallen back slightly and what I see underneath makes my stomach turn. His skin’s been sewn together, but there are different patches of slightly different colours, some pale, some dark, others red.

They’re experiments. That explains their unnatural strength.

“Leah?” Jared beckons to me. I tense up, less-than-eager to follow him into his supervillain lair.

“I promised not to hurt you,” he says. “See? You’re not restrained. You’re free to walk around as you like.”

Not if you’re planning to cut me up.
But he needs the Transcendent in one piece, right? I can’t trust him for a heartbeat, but I need to be here. Cas needs me to be here.

“You said
show
me,” I say, gesturing at the room. “Show me what?”

“This.” He walks over to the television, leaving me hovering in the doorway, and holds up an old video tape. “I think this is the one.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“This is an instructive video we used to show to recruits.”

“And it still works?”

“My colleagues and I appropriated fiend technology,” he says. “Believe it or not, they were as advanced a race as we once were, the Fiordans. Too bad it turned out like this for both of us, but we’ve adapted with the times.” He inserts the tape into the VCR.

Despite the warning nagging at the back of my mind, I walk over to the TV as the screen lights up. Holy crap. It’s working. Then again, I suppose Murray did have a working PC in his office.

“Come and sit down, Leah. I promise you it’s comfortable.”

I walk forward a few more steps, but don’t sit. Jared hits a button and fast-forwards the video. The screen shows an all-too familiar sight.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A burning red sky. Ground, cracked open by a rift wider than a house. And monsters crawling out of the gap. My nails bite into my palms.

The fiends are crawling out, knocking people aside—yes, there are people everywhere.

But something about them doesn’t look right. The way they move—fiends don’t move like that. And, now I see close up, the people don’t look right either.

“That’s CGI,” I say. An idea long-forgotten, in this world. “You made that using a computer, right?”

“My brother did. It was exceedingly difficult to capture live footage, before… recent events.” He skips the video forward, then hits the play button. Now, the screen shows an above-shot of the Earth. Our planet.

An overhead voice comes on. “This is our world, as it is now. The only world most people know about.” The camera zooms in, the scene changing to the image of a field. Grass, blowing in the wind under an honest-to-God
blue
sky.

“But there are others who wish to take it from us. Others who cloak themselves in our skin, but are no more human than an alien life form.”

I stifle the urge to laugh. This is bizarrely like a movie voice-over.

“Aliens,” the voice repeats. “Walking amongst us, seemingly harmless. You might have known one once. Talked to one. Made friends with one.”

Now, the video is showing a busy shopping centre, packed out with people. All kinds of people, carrying shopping, small children. Images as alien as the fiends.

“But they are not like us. And they are dangerous.”

Despite the eye-rolling dramatics, a shiver runs down my spine as the scene darkens, and a figure dressed in a red coat passes in front of the camera.

“Our job is to find them, hunt them down, before they can cause harm. You may wonder what aliens want with humans, why they would hide themselves rather than revealing themselves outright. Some might say they want to escape persecution. Humans, as a whole, are not accepting of those they deem to be outsiders. But these particular outsiders are waging a war against us even as we speak.”

Now, the camera’s showing what looks like actual video footage, the poor-quality black-and-white images of a CCTV camera. It shows a road between fields and a ramshackle hut sitting at the roadside. A car drives past, and comes to a stop. Someone gets out. The camera’s too distant to see anything distinct about them. But even I can’t miss the moment when they vanish into thin air.

“They have unnatural powers,” says the voice. “For a hundred years, our organisation has struggled to pull together information on our uninvited guests. But through rumours and eyewitnesses, we learned that they are, indeed, not from here.”

On cue, three figures appear where the first one vanished. Again, I can’t make out anything about them, but they leave an odd ripple effect behind them, barely visible on the poor-quality video. The three of them get into the car, and drive away.

The air shimmers, the ground shifting, grass blowing in an invisible breeze. Without warning, all the grass in the field vanishes as though sucked into a void. The small hut moves, walls falling apart either side, quivering, coming apart molecule by molecule. The sound’s gone, but I’ve seen enough buildings collapse to be able to fill in the gaps. Within a few seconds, nothing remains.

“They leave a trail of destruction wherever they walk, and it’s getting harder to hide their traces.” The voice drops dramatically. “This must end. They have waged a secret war against us for more than a century. Our realities are close to colliding.”

The planet Earth fills the screen again.

“Every day we hear more rumours. People with unnatural powers. Strange sightings. It’s our job to follow these rumours, and eliminate them. We can’t allow them to expose us. Because if you’re watching this video, you have some power of your own. Maybe you’ve always been aware of it. Maybe you’re confused, or frightened. There is no reason to be afraid, because we are here to help you.”

An image of a red coat, with a familiar symbol embossed over the heart.

A flame. Jared’s tattoo symbol.

“We are the Pyros. You have been invited to join us. We will train you in the arts of combat, teach you to unlock your powers.” A video image of a hall, like a school gym, full of teenagers engaged in the same training exercises we did back at the base. A sudden, unexpected jolt of homesickness goes through me.

“You will learn to fight them. Because we may have only seen a glimpse of the horrors on the other side, our ancestors have seen it first-hand.”

The scene changes to an old piece of parchment, faded and yellowing. A drawing of a twisted monster is scrawled in black ink. Even though it’s rough and faded, it can only be one of the fiends.

“Most of the evidence is with us. Why? We don’t want regular people to know about us. Our powers are not so different from our enemies’. We would be shunned, forced into hiding. Already, we live in secret communities. There is no place for us in regular life. If you are here to join, you will have experienced some of this already. You will be unnaturally strong and fast, and be able to endure more damage than any regular human. This is not anything to be ashamed of. Now you know our place in the scheme of things. Our organisation was formed to learn more about them, but when they turned hostile, we had no choice but to intervene. Through this, we have learned much about them.”

Now, the scene shows a laboratory, through a grainy camera lens. I recognise it from my visions of Cas’s past—and from when we actually went there. The old lab.

“Thousands of years ago, a rift was opened between our worlds. The Fiordans decimated their own world, and ever since, these smaller rifts have been enabling them to get through into our world, to invade us. We are gifted with fire for a reason. We are humanity’s avenging angels. Time and again, we have protected humans from the Fiordans, and so it continues, and will always continue, until our enemies are vanquished.”

The video cuts out. Jared looks at me expectantly.

“Well?”

“Well what?” I say, folding my arms. “That was a propaganda video for your group, right? Not like it told me anything. Avenging angels?”

I admit, it’s odd that Jared’s symbol once belonged to the group as a whole. But he could have told me that already.

“We were once united,” says Jared. “All of us. Pyros against the Fiordans. Why can it not be the same again?”

“Because of what you did.” The experiments. The tattoos. Cas. Does he really think a stupid propaganda video will change my mind?

“I see you’re going to take some convincing.” Jared sighs and pauses the video. “I will take you to him.”