The Amplified : Fire Blight (Book 1)

Chapter Twenty Three - His Fire Burned...

The clatter of the gravel and dirt underneath the wheel hummed through the truck as Elaine sped through traffic lights, Adam held onto the grab handle for dear life as Juan and I clawed into the seat in the back. The view from the window was a blur of dark colours merging together with the odd bright light of a car's headlight. Within the truck, time felt like it was moving through jelly. Each moment felt like forever. I looked to Juan beside me, he would throw his moppy hair out of his face every few seconds as they fell in front of his black glasses, yet in his eyes a look of determination that I had never noticed carried weight in the amber. The curves in his muscles were showing through his shirt like he wasn't wearing anything. He caught me examining him, but I didn't stop on his account, I was trying to piece together what I had missed, how I couldn't have known.

"Are you going to ask or are you just going to stare me down like Sauron?" He asked.

"How long have you been in The Foxhole?"

"I was born into it." He said tentatively.

"Why were you in Cross County then?"

"I was there to watch over you and Stephy."

"No, don't give me vague answers. Be specific." I said with grit in my words.

He looked towards the carriage floor, lights from outside caught in the reflection of his glasses. "After your father died, your mother went silent. We, The Foxhole, had kept in communications with her until that day. Maybe it was because she wanted to distance herself and you guys from this other life, try to give you both something normal or maybe it was too hard for her to know that it was this that got him killed. Regardless, you were still Francis' children which meant that you could be Amps. For a while, they had other people watching you from a distance but when I was old enough, it became my job and that was when we first met."

"Old enough?" I basically laughed. "We were ten."

"Yeah, and at ten I could put a bullet through a target two football fields away with a 10 mm."

"So, what? Is that your power, Deadshot like accuracy or is it Loki like deception?"

He paused for a second, briefly glanced up at me only to look down again. "I don't have any." He whispered almost ashamed of the words that he said. "I guess bisabuelo  didn't feel like sharing before he died."

"What does your great-grandpa have to do with it? I mean I remember you saying you looked up to him a lot."

"I mean how could I not. He left such a legacy to fill, being one of the founding members who started The Foxhole."

A part of it began to click in my head. "Wait, your great-grandpa was-"

"Carlos Manuel Leonard Estaban. The Fox." He said his name with pride but at the same time with distance. The words echoed an emptiness he felt he needed to fill.

"That doesn't change the fact that for the last six years you've been lying to me," I said with less anger, but with more pain.

"I choose this mission. I choose to watch over you, I don't even know why." He said trailing off, staring out into the night as lights whizzed past. "Maybe it was because I thought it was my trip to finally getting noticed. I mean I would be protecting Francis Stark's kids. Maybe I was tired of being cramped up in The Foxhole with Mother trying to make me into my bisabuelo and yayo. All I know is that my life wasn't half as amazing as I thought it would be until I got to Cross County and met you and Pep."

"Really, spy stuff and superpowers weren't amazing." I scoffed.

"You mean constant training and envy of the people around me to try to match up to someone with those powers. To even be half as useful as they were. Yeah, of course, I think discovering the Star Wars movies and riding to a coffee shop with people who I really thought of as my friends was infinitesimally better than all that." He sighed the words out with frustration.