Consuming Fire

Chapter 42

The lake was still, silent. Smoke and ash hung in the air. Bodies were scattered across the shore, some charred beyond repair, some simply bleeding out with their eyes wide and empty. A chilly fog crawled over the glassy surface of the lake, creeping toward the cabin and the fire that was dying out.

Jet watched it, half awake, half unconscious. He wanted to get up, but he was afraid of the pain. He knew the ice stake was still buried inside him, but it had missed everything important. It was simply the blood loss that was going to kill him.

Get up, a voice whispered. You have to live.

He wasn't sure why. No one cared that he was dead, no one except Mikayla, and more often than not she was just an accessory.

See, Jet didn't feel love like most people. He didn't feel guilt or remorse or kindness either. All he cared about was living, so that he could kill that son of bitch who staked him.

As the fog neared the shore, Jet shakily looked down at the stake jutting out of his stomach. Some of it had melted. It was a cold feeling, a burning cold. He concentrated, gritting his teeth, taking three sharp breaths before holding out his hand and ripping the stake from his stomach where it soared away. He screamed in pain and saw spots in his vision. But the burn was enough to keep him awake.

He felt paralyzed, wondering how he was going to make it to the house, much less back to the new ICE.

There was a scuffling behind him. Someone was talking from a distance. Then there came the unmistakable, high-pitched chuckle of Madam, one of the mutants he'd befriended.

Jet grit his teeth and forced himself to roll over.

"Help ..." he croaked.

Through blurry vision, he saw a shape start to gallop toward him. There were more of them coming out of the trees. It had to be the Agents.

"Ah haaa!" Madam giggled and she fell beside Jet. He made friends with all the mutants – and by friends, he meant that he'd acquired a sort of fan club after bragging to them all that he killed Dr. Rosenthal and he would be leading them to freedom. The mutants were too brain damaged to focus on anything except their anger and didn't think twice about following him. Madam was one of his favorites – if she wasn't completely crazy, he would have looked to her as a mother. "Wakey wakey!" she said and tapped him on the head. Her dark hair fell like a curtain around his face and her breath nearly made him choke.

"Get – off –"

"Is he alive?" asked another voice from beside Madam. Jet looked up and saw Dice's knife fingers glittering in the moonlight. As well as having blades for fingers, Dice was subjected to a brutal experiment in which Dr. Wolfe tried to re-create Zac's ability to change form and instead infected Dice's pigmentation – his entire body was so pale, any exposure to sun would burn him in seconds. He hid in shrouds of black clothing so the only thing Jet ever saw of him were his red eyes and silver knives. He also knew that Dice had experienced brain damage after a fight with Will the night the others escaped.

Madam clicked her long-nailed fingers together. "Staying alive," she said.

Jet felt someone stand over him and he looked up into the face of Agent Bravo – Alpha's second in command.

"Bravo ..." said Jet, "what happened?"

"They escaped in a modernized aircraft. Took Mikayla with them. We're all that's left."

"What?"

Madam began to groan and twitch. She didn't care for Mikayla at all.

"They'll come back," said Bravo. "We saw the fire girl teleport into a room upstairs, so it must have been for something important."

Jet nodded, trying hard to keep his eyes open. "Let's go."

Bravo clicked his finger. He was suddenly being lifted into someone's arms, the pain ripping through his body. It had to be Mouse. He was the largest person Jet had ever seen, so the name seemed to fit. He never spoke a word, and his muscle capacity was unbeatable.

Jet didn't know how in hell he was still living. They hiked through the trees to the door of the cabin, Madam running ahead and singing lyrics that weren't even in English.

The cabin was old and smelled oddly like his last foster home in Kentucky. He could also smell a salty metal and saw a body leaning against the wall beside the staircase. Alpha. Someone had killed him. Beside his body were two more with stab wounds in their chests.

When Bravo saw the bodies of his colleagues, his friends, he swore and lost his cool, swiping his arms over the kitchen bench and sending dishes crashing to the floor.

"Feel the fire, burning bright!" yelled Madam. "Burning, burning, through the night!"

"What are you on about?" asked Bravo.

"She sees something," said Jet. None of the mutants had powers – their abilities were failed experiments. Madam came from a gypsy camp in Georgia where she used to be a fortune teller. She had a natural ability to sense things, and sometimes her ramblings came true.

"If it's fire, I'm getting out of here." A girl in a white dress walked up to Madam and put a hand on her shoulder. The girl was badly burnt on one side of her body – an effect of Hunter's formula failing. She went by her real name – Caitlin. Like Mouse, she rarely said or felt anything.

"Up, up and away ..." Madam whispered and pointed at the roof.

Jet understood. She could sense something upstairs. Perhaps it was something to do with their powers, a mutual energy that only those with abilities – failed or not – could sense.

"They were up there earlier looking for something," said Bravo.

"Go with her," he said.

Madam and Bravo disappeared. Caitlin and the girl with two heads they called Twins were whispering to each other and snooping through the lounge room. Jet swore he fell out of consciousness, for they were back within seconds with a briefcase. It was black, leather and modern – not Dr. Rosenthal's. There was an inscription in the gold plate under the handle.

J.H.

"What is it?" he asked.

Bravo lifted the latch on the metal encasing. There was nothing in it. Jet rolled his eyes. "You idiot, that's not-"

"We found this."

The mutants crowded around him. Jet winced, his eyes stinging, until a glowing orange light lit up around them and he gazed in wonder at the stone Madam held in her dirty hand. Jet lifted it with his mind, hovering it before his eyes. The stone turned eerily in the air. He looked for an opening, but saw nothing. Gently and carefully, he raised a finger. And as his finger just barely touched the stone, a shock went through him.

Then a voice came out of the darkness and sent chills through his already cold heart.

Jet ... it said. You've come home ...