Page 33 of Freedom’s Inferno

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Don’t die.” The distance was maybe four feet across, one story down. The kind of thing you could clear if you were desperate, and right now we were nothing but. I steadied her waist. “Go on three.”

She nodded, but her body shook. “One.”

“Two.”

“Three.” She leapt, her hands smacking the railing of the fire escape as she scrambled for footing. For a heartbeat, she dangled with her legs kicking, before hauling herself up and over. She turned, breathless. “Now you!”

I didn’t think, I jumped. The impact rattled my teeth, but I caught the railing, just as she had. I pulled myself onto the platform with relative ease, and my chest heaved. The building groaned behind us like a dying animal. Below, the fire trucks were pulling in, red lights bright in the night. The wail of sirens drowned everything else out, reflecting in Lana’s eyes, the flicker of emergency lights mingling with the orange glow of the fire.

She touched my arm, her voice shaky. “Your hand…”

I looked down. My left palm was raw, blistering. I must’ve burned it on the knob to the blocked stairwell without realizing it. The sight twisted my stomach—memory and pain colliding in the same nerve. I turned away, gripping the railing with my other hand.

The air was cleaner here, but the heat was rising fast. Smoke poured from the broken window behind us. We started down the fire escape, each step creaking beneath our weight. My heart hammered so hard it hurt. Every breath I took came sharp and shallow, and the back of my throat burned with soot.

By the time our feet hit the pavement, the fire department was flooding the lot, hoses unraveling, paramedics rushing from the ambulances. The roar of the flames swallowed every thought I tried to have.

One of the firefighters shouted at us. “You two! Get back! Over here!” He pointed toward the sidewalk.

Everything was muffled and distorted, like I was underwater. I sank to the curb, elbows on my knees. My hands trembled uncontrollably.

Lana crouched beside me, coughing hard, her face streaked with ash and sweat. “Hey,” she rasped, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

I nodded, though I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t okay. Not at all.

The smell of the smoke was too real, too raw. The flashing lights were too bright. The heat pressing against my chest was too familiar. My lungs collapsed in on themselves. Another time, another life bled through. My father’s fists pounding from the other side of a door, his voice drunk and furious.

Open the Goddamn door!

I closed my eyes, my chest tightening. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

“Charlie?”

That fucking name again. Why did she insist on using that fucking name? I clenched my teeth, and her hand moved to my neck, grounding and steady.

“Hey. Look at me.” Her voice cut through the noise, low and even.

I forced my eyes open.

Lana knelt in front of me. “Breathe. We’re alive.”

For now…

Dragging air into my lungs took effort, like I’d forgotten how. The panic eased, but it wasn’t gone. “Fuck,” I breathed. “I didn’t think we were gonna make it.” I looked up at the building and watched as the empire I’d helped build burned from the inside out.

Lana followed my gaze. “Costa?”

“Who else?”

“I thought you said they wouldn’t try to kill us?”

My mouth twisted into a grimace. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

She didn’t answer. We sat there, side by side, as the fire devoured what was left of Richard’s world.

The paramedics came to check us over, and I let them wrap gauze around my hand. My palm throbbed, but I was numb. The real pain was deeper.

Lana stood near the ambulance, arms wrapped around herself, watching the inferno. The flames painted her hair in gold; she looked like she belonged to them, born of something wild and unstoppable.