Firestarter

It’s just a business center; full of files and flammable paper cups, to which the fire starts without much struggle. In minutes, it licks up the walls, crawling across the carpet and baking everything in heat. Normally, the sweat coating my back and forming beneath my helmet would be uncomfortable, itchy in the way that digs beneath my skin, but now, it’s almost comforting.

But, as the flames bathe everything in an orange glow, I hear a guttural scream. Beyond the cubicles, someone chokes on their terror, and it breaks me from the calm bubble of crackling smoke.

With a flurry of instincts fueling me forward, I stride past every identical box until the begging gets louder.

“Hello?!” I shout, gaze sweeping the smoldering office. There’s a response back, but the words are muffled by my mask. “Paula, the building isn’t empty!” I say, racing towards the hallway of conference rooms. When I open the door, a blast of hot air nearly knocks me off my feet. The fire had spread further than I’d expected if it was already back here. “Paula!”

“I’m aware of the occupancy,” she says, voice cold in my ear. “Continue destroying all property.”

I grit my teeth, squinting through the thickening layers of smoke. “If I keep going, whoever’s here is gonna die!”

“That’s the point.”

The dampness on my skin somehow turns icy cold, chilling me in places even a raging inferno can’t reach. There’s another scream and I feel my brain fighting with itself. “Paula, I can’t kill someone.”

I’m almost surprised she can hear my growl. “The target wasn’t files or hard drives, Malakai. I’m ordering you to ensure that woman doesn’t leave the building.”

It was a straightforward demand, but thousands of threats lay just beneath the surface of her thickly manicured voice. Her words from the other night are clear in my head; a solemn understanding settling like an itchy sweater over my shoulders. She doesn’t need to say anything else.

“Or we can visit your house.”

Except she does, and she knows it’s exactly the right thing to send me reeling. My nightmares flash desperately just behind my eyelids, my sisters, Julian, drowning in their pleas, begging I save them—

My jaw sets and the flames caressing my elbows flare brightly. I don’t have a choice.

“Order received,” I say smoothly, distantly concerned at my sudden lack of remorse, but there’s still screaming and it grates on my ears too much for me to feel anything even resembling empathy. I convince myself far too easily that I need to put out the noise. That’s all it is; an annoying wail. A sound.

I continue down the hall of conference rooms, hands clenched firmly as fire climbs up my arms. The cries get louder, and then I can see her— it. A shadowy figure trapped by the blaze.

Deliberately, I cross to it, pushing away the remains of rolling chairs as I stalk my prey. For a brief second, I can see the tear-stains tracing the creases of her soot covered face, but then she’s nothing but a blurry image that I can extinguish without guilt.

I raise my hand, somewhat aware of the way it tries to scramble away from me, but then I get a hold on its throat, hooking my fingers beneath its jaw and watching as the already injured animal chokes on smoke and the acrid smell of its own blistering skin.

It doesn’t take long for the screaming to stop. The figure collapses like a puppet cut from its strings. “Paula, it’s—”

I blink. The fogginess disappears suddenly. My empathy returns in full force and my words stop in my throat as I stare. Stare at the woman; she’s light-skinned, with thick curls that were surely a gorgeous brown before the ash had destroyed the sheen. Her eyes look through me, glossed over, lashes clumped together with tears that have lost all momentum. Her lips, chapped with gray edges, are open in a frozen scream, spit sliding down her chin.

And her throat. Her throat is blistering, shiny and red, slowly oozing blood as her heart stops pumping, angry and peeling and distinctly hand shaped.

I throw up. Bile splashes across flames just as I tug my helmet off, and I almost find it ironic that my vomit puts out a fire I started.

“Malakai?” Paula calls.

My lungs desperately protest the smoke—especially as it mixes with the acid still coating my throat—but I can’t work up the courage to put my mask back on. Stuffing my face back into the cramped space, breathing fake air, listening to the fake sincerity of a woman who does nothing but use me— I can’t do it.

The helmet drops from my hands and rolls to the side of the woman. The beautiful woman who likely had someone waiting for her to come home. A mother that would kiss her cheeks or a brother she lived with to save on rent, definitely not because they’re best friends. A partner, someone to gather her in their arms and lull her to sleep. A child maybe. A kid who’s watching the door, waiting for their mom. A kid who will have to pull their siblings into a hug when they get home to a house that still smells like her, but that will never see her again.

An insecure daughter who wanted to tell her mom about the college classes she was taking. A lonely kid who looked up to her mother as she transitioned.

Or a son. A son who needed his mom.

The flames plume around me.

I run. Through the crumbling drywall, barreling toward the staircase I came through, I run. I run before they can stop me, before everything catches up. I ram my shoulder into a stud, feeling the rest of the wall fall upon my shoulders, but I keep running.

Her face is still burned into the back of my eyelids.

God, what would my mother think? Just as her life had been stolen, I'd snuffed out an unnamed face with no hesitation. Like my father and his violence, I just let the anger, the obedience take over. He'd call me a pansy for crying; for running.

My footsteps echo in the smokey staircase, screams joining the chorus behind me, and all I can do is run.