From that chaos, Jack emerges, kicking Richard’s pistol away and drawing his own as he stands. He turns towards me.
“Celes, get back inside. This is no place for a civilian now. And take Grayson. I’ll deal with things here.”
I don’t want to leave Jack like that. He might not be the boyfriend I left behind, but he has grown to be just as close to me, starting off as merely the boyfriend of my cover identity, Celeste Channing, but quickly becoming far more, until the real me loved him as much as the fake one.
Grayson seems just as reluctant, but for very different reasons. He looks down at his father. “Call your men off,” he demands. “Call them off, or Jack here will shoot you where you are.”
Richard looks at his son with contempt then. “No.”
Jack seems to be expecting that, moving closer, the gun pointed straight at the Others’ lead scientist. He’s going to do it. He’s actually going to murder someone in cold blood. And right then, with so many of Richard’s friends trying to kill me, I can’t bring myself to say anything to stop him.
Then Jack brings the pistol up and down sharply, knocking Grayson’s father sprawling into unconsciousness. He turns and fires a couple of shots at the remaining others, helping his fellow Faders to pin them down, before looking over at Grayson.
“You shouldn’t try to negotiate. Kill them or don’t kill them, but don’t talk to them.”
“He’s my Dad,” Grayson says, and again, he sounds more like just the boy from my home town than whatever he has become thanks to the Faders’ memory device.
“You thought he’d pull out his men?” Jack ducks below the level of the car as a burst of automatic fire comes our way, and I do the same. He stands to deliver another couple of pistol shots by way of retaliation. “He’d die before doing that. You’re lucky I just knocked him unconscious. At least this way he isn’t in the firing line. Now, I’m sure I told you two to get going. Get back to Sebastian.”
I notice that Sebastian isn’t ‘Dad’ to Jack out here. This is business, not family, and Jack is his ever calm, ever dangerous self through it. Grayson doesn’t look anywhere near as comfortable, and for a moment I think that it is just the violence going on around him, but that isn’t it. It’s only as he opens his mouth to thank Jack that I get it. He doesn’t like owing Jack like that.
“Tha-”
One of the Others bursts around the car, grabbing Jack in a rear choke, while ripping the gun from Jack’s hands. The arm that isn’t around Jack’s neck comes up around the back of his neck, putting extra pressure into the choke. Not that the black clad attacker needs it. He’s huge, muscles showing in bunches under the unrelieved darkness of his sweater.
Jack drives an elbow back. It does nothing, while the other man is stuck to him too closely for Jack to get most other forms of strike in. Even when Jack throws himself forward, obviously hoping to drop to his knees and throw the bigger man over the top, nothing happens. The man strangling him is so large, so strong, that he can just hold Jack up while he chokes him.
Grayson starts to grab for the gun, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t know if he’ll be able to pull the trigger, and even if he does, how do I know he won’t miss accidentally and shoot Jack?
How do I know he won’t miss deliberately?
There’s no time to think about it. Jack is already starting to lose consciousness, and I know what I need to do. I step forward, take the big man’s arms in mine, and tear them away from Jack. I hear bone break as I do it, but I don’t care. Right then, it simply doesn’t matter to me. Even when the big man cries out in pain, it doesn’t make any difference.
The big man tries to kick me, even injured as he is, and I toss him to the ground. That’s when I feel it inside me. The same furious force that let me kill two men out on the road back near my old home. The same power that let me burn them up completely when they chased me and Grayson after I had broken the rules by going home to see him once more.
The big man seems to sense it, because he tries to crawl away. I don’t let him. It’s far too late for that. He tried to hurt Jack. Tried to hurt one of the people I love. I reach out for him, snatching him up like he doesn’t weigh twice what I do. He hangs for a moment in front of me, out at arm’s length.
Then the power rushes into him.
I’m not aware of sending it into him, but I don’t try to stop it either as it pours out of me like raw sunlight, burning its way into the man and then burning back out of him white hot as it shines from his eyes, his mouth. It glows like a furnace, and it burns as hot as one. So hot that the man who tried to hurt Jack can’t scream. So hot that I shouldn’t be able to touch him. I stand there, and I burn him, until I’m holding nothing but a human cinder, then I drop him to the ground, looking around with my eyes glowing brightly.
It’s then that I managed to regain some control. I push down the part of me that’s looking around with that feral, energy filled gaze, trying to find the next person who represents a threat. I push it down even though it seems to burn through my blood as I do so, squashing it, compressing it, locking it away. I push it down until I can look out again and know that I am in complete control. Though what scares me is the thought that really, I always was.
I look down at the remains of the man I have just killed, feeling the horror of it start to seep into me, the way it did with the two men I burned before. I want to throw up, or run away, but I do neither. I force myself to stand there and get a grip instead. It’s only then that I realize how quiet it is.
There should be shots. There should be the sounds of people fighting, shouting orders to one another or crying out for help. There should be the crash of people falling against cars and the dull pings of bullets ricocheting off them. Instead, there’s nothing. It’s only when I steel myself to look around that I see why.
They’re staring at me. All of the Others. All of the Faders. They’re staring at me like they don’t know what to think. Like they’ve just seen what I really am for the first time. Even Jack and Grayson are staring, though for them, it’s with worry, not horror. Not much horror, anyway. They have seen what I am before. I look around at the rest of them, and they flinch back, like they’re all asking the same question. The same one I’m asking quietly, in the privacy of my head.
What happens now?
THREE
T
he silence seems to go on forever, with the Others and the Underground’s Faders just staring at me. Everyone is quiet. Everyone is still. It feels a little like the moment before the gun sounds in a track meet, and I can’t help remembering all the ones I’ve been to with Grayson. That feels like a lifetime ago now though.
Two
lifetimes ago, in fact, because there’s my life as Celeste Channing in the way.
There’s one point of movement now, and I look around to see Sebastian Cook walking towards me from the Underground’s base. He doesn’t look frightened, the way so many of the others do. Instead, he looks rapt, as though what I have just done is something he has been waiting his whole life for. Then again, he probably has. After all, I know from Jack’s memories as they played on the walls of the Underground’s viewing room that Sebastian wasn’t there when Jack’s mother used the same kind of energy on an attacker. He has spent his whole life trying to understand those like me, and now he has finally seen one of us in action.
I hope it was worth it.
The Others and the Underground seem to shake themselves then, and shots start to ring out once more. I dive for cover behind the car again. Grayson is already waiting for me, while Jack is a couple of cars away, crouched behind one of the Others’ Jeeps. They keep their heads down as bullets fly, and Jack returns fire blindly now. Grayson seems to have concerns beyond the fight though as he looks from me to Jack.
“What happened?”
“You know what happened, Grayson,” I say. I don’t want to think about what I’ve just done. Sadly though, it seems that Grayson does.
“Why is it that every time Jack is in trouble, your powers come out?”
“I don’t know.” Actually, I think I might, but I don’t want to hurt Grayson’s feelings like that. There are some things he won’t want to hear.
Unfortunately, he’s a good guesser. “Maybe it’s because you care a lot for him, Celes.”
“I don’t know,” I say again. I don’t know what else
to
say. Grayson doesn’t want to hear how much I care about Jack. He doesn’t want to hear every detail of the weeks we spent together when I was pretending to be the tycoon’s daughter, Celeste Channing. He certainly doesn’t want to hear how the kisses and close moments designed to convince the world that Jack and I were a couple in love gradually became real, until neither one of us knew how to untangle ourselves from the closeness we’d created.
“It’s because you love him,” Grayson insists, and he doesn’t sound angry. Just sad. So very, very sad.
The truth is that’s probably only part of it. A big part of it, admittedly, but not the whole truth. Jack is at least partly what I am. His mother was the same as me, and I’m sure that connection is part of what makes the fire I can use burn. Through love… yes, it probably is down to that too. After all, the two times I’ve used my powers have been moments of incredibly strong emotions, and what emotion is stronger than love?
Jack stands, looking like he’s going to make his way over to me. He doesn’t get a chance though, because in that moment, the large hangar that serves as a front for the Underground’s base blossoms into fire, an explosion ripping through it. The blast is not just deafening, it’s palpable. The shock wave of it knocks everyone who was standing from their feet. Jack, the Others, everyone. In the silence that follows, part of the Underground’s building collapses inwards, flames licking at its framework.
People start to struggle to their feet, but I see that Sebastian Cook isn’t one of them. He was closer to the explosion than almost anyone, and he’s down on the ground, unmoving. Jack races over to him, heedless of the potential for getting shot, and I find myself doing the same. We need to get him clear of the base, because there’s no way of knowing if there will be more explosions or not.
Sebastian rolls onto his back as we approach. “It’s a good distraction, don’t you think?”
That’s one way of putting it.
“Plus it stops what we have to leave behind from falling into the wrong hands. Oh, don’t worry. We moved your family’s memories out before we blew it up.”
I hadn’t even thought of that, but I sigh in relief to hear it as Sebastian struggles to his feet. He doesn’t seem to be moving very well. And there are bigger problems. Over by the cars, I see Grayson’s father start to stir. He looks at me standing next to Sebastian, and he points.
“What are you waiting for? Get her!”
Most of them seem a little reluctant, but one of the black clad mob of Others is quicker than the rest, and he grabs for me. I half expect to feel the same power as before rising up to incinerate him as his hands close on me, but nothing happens. I’m left trying to fight him off with nothing more than my ordinary strength, and I simply don’t know enough about protecting myself for it to work. I try to hit him, and he blocks the blow. I try to wrestle free of his grip and it’s solid.
At least it is until Jack gets there. Jack hits the man once, twice, and he falls back, then Jack raises his pistol and shoots him without so much as a warning. Jack tosses me his gun, and then takes one from the belt of the man he has just killed, firing with that uncanny calmness and accuracy he seems to have. I try to join in too, but this isn’t the same as facing down an irate trucker, the way I had to when Jack was first taking me to the Underground. This isn’t a test designed to see how willing I would be to pull the trigger. This is real.
Real, and chaotic. There are bullets flying everywhere now. Grayson has recovered the pistol he threatened his father with, and is shooting blind. Jack is firing back at the Others precisely, neatly. I… I try to help. I try to stand and shoot back, but it seems like every time I poke my head around the car I’m taking cover behind, I have to jerk it back as a dozen of the Others target me. This is the kind of full blown battle that needs special training, and I simply don’t have it.