So beautiful.
They twist and curl, reaching up for the stars, hungry and alive. The heat of it burns my skin, even from here.
Doc gets here the same time I do, ditching his motorcycle so fast it crashes to the ground, his helmet quickly joining it. Our rabbit is running straight for the fire, screaming, determined to get inside. He catches her before she can reach the door, arms locking around her waist, lifting her clean off her feet.
But she doesn’t stop. She fights him, struggling in his hold, screaming her friend’s name. “JADE!”
Her Jade, I remember. The one she’d kill for. The one she’d die to protect.
It’s not fair, I think, watching the flames spread and grow, devouring the top floor of her building and moving down. Her screams belong to me.
My brothers are preoccupied. Doc holding her back, the others shouting, trying to calm her down, trying to keep her safe. That’s their job, not mine.
My job is different. Always has been.
I move past the chaos and toward the building, snatching a bottle of water from a waiting paramedic, and opening it with my teeth, spitting the cap onto the ground. The poor bastard does nothing to stop me, flinching away from me as I tear off my shirt and upend the bottle over it, soaking it. Not a perfect solution, but it’ll do.
Perfection is the enemy of progress, and all that.
A cop steps in front of the door as I approach, hand outstretched like he thinks that he can stop me.
“Sir, you can’t go in there, you need to go back behind the barrier and?—”
I look at him. Just look, until he steps aside, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
Rolling my shoulders back, I tie the wet shirt around my face, covering my nose and mouth, before I walk into hell.
The smoke hits me instantly, making my lungs seize, thick enough I can taste it through my makeshift mask. It tastes like gasoline, igniting a memory lodged deep in my consciousness, one I like to keep buried. Someone used an accelerant, wanted this building and everything in it to burn.
The smoke’s too thick to stay standing. I drop to my hands and knees, crawling low. You can’t see in a fire, can’t rely on your sight. You have to move by touch. I keep my eyes closed, moving quickly, feeling my way through the building, mapping it to my memory.
The floor is hot beneath my palms, the fire roaring around me. My skin sizzles and blisters when I brush a fallen beam. I push it aside, ignoring the pain.
She has to be in here. Somewhere. Her Jade.
I reach forward, feeling through the darkness. My fingers trace a shattered piece of a coffee mug, a fallen chair, and then…
Something slick. Viscous.
A pool of blood on the ground, the feel of it familiar under my hands.
Interesting. I rub it between my fingers.
Someonewashere. Someone got hurt.
Something cracks above me. A rush of searing heat follows as the ceiling splits apart and starts to give way. I roll, barely making it out of the way as a beam breaks off, falling to the café floor and exploding in a shower of debris and charcoal.
The air is changing. Thicker now, hotter. I keep moving, ricocheting off a wall, fumbling for a way out. I can’t breathe. Can’t see, can’t figure out which way is out, which way is back to safety.
This would be when most people panic, when their lungs start to blister, when the idea of their mortality goes from an eventuality to an actuality.
But death and I are close friends. Kindred souls. I don’t panic. I just keep going.
The world is a blur of heat and smoke, the wall unending under my palms. I feel around, making my way around the perimeter, searching, feeling, and?—
Glass. My fingers touch glass.
I throw myself against it, again and again, ramming my shoulder against the window.
