Burn Read online

  “I have to try,” he said.

  “And when you do, you really think it will wipe out all the gods?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  Liam nodded. He looked away. Neither spoke for a long time. Noah wanted to reach out and pat Liam’s shoulder, pull him in for a hug, but he stood there awkwardly instead. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

  “It’s fine."

  “No, it’s not fine. We’ve been roommates for several years now and this was the first time I’ve ever been involved in one of your cases.” “This experience has confirmed a lot of things I’ve already known about you. You’re compassionate, relentless, and not afraid to stand up for the things you believe in. I don’t know how you do it. A lesser person would have abandoned everything by now, but somehow you keep pushing forward. Talisa has been lucky to have someone like you on her side, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this....it’s that I never want to do it again.”

  Liam held out his arm and pulled Noah into their first hug.

  “You act like you’re not about this hero life,” Liam joked, “but you’re right in the passenger seat alongside me, and there was a reason you stayed behind in the first place. You will restore the Grid. I know you will.”

  “I don’t know what will happen to Talisa if I do.”

  Liam’s smile faded and he swallowed hard. “But if it stops him, I suppose there’s no other choice.”

  * * *

  Ellie awoke to see that she had fallen asleep with her head pressed against the cold stainless steel tabletop, her hands wrapped tightly around Talisa’s. Her neck and back ached. She sat up slowly and stretched, carefully unhooking her hand so she could inspect the wound.

  Still clotted. No change.

  She worked through her routine vital checks- body temperature, pulse rate, respiration, and blood pressure. When she was done, she sat heavily back in her chair.

  Talisa wasn’t getting any better.

  She needed to take a walk.

  She looked around and was surprised to see Liam sleeping on a small couch along the edge of the room. She had no idea how long he had been there, or how long she had been asleep. She watched him for a moment, grateful that he had managed to fall asleep. She had been worried about him.

  She stood up and walked out into the hall.

  Ellie was amazed at how well the eyes adjusted when left in the dark long enough. She had been worried that she’d get lost in a maze of hallways, but there was just enough moonlight filtering through the windows that she was able to easily find her way back to the front lobby. She stood just inside the front doors and gazed outside.

  She was so tired. The fatigue sank into her body and rested in her bones, a deep weight that sleep could not shake. She was used to keeping her emotions blank when working with patients, working methodically through a problem until she was finished. Now, alone with her thoughts, she felt hopelessness pushing up like bile and she stifled a sob.

  She couldn’t cry yet.

  But she wanted to. For years she had relied on her father to get her through the hard times. After he died, she developed her own outer shell to continue surviving on her own. Now, with everything at stake, she didn’t know how much farther she could go.

  She longed for when life was easier, before the Fall and when she still had her father.

  “You’re awake.”

  She jumped in alarm and hands quickly reached out to calm her.

  “Noah, don’t sneak up on me like that!” she said, but then he wrapped his arms tightly around her. Before she speak again, his lips crushed urgently against hers and sent a thrill down her spine. His fingers wove through her hair, chest pressed against her own.

  When he pulled away, they were both breathless.

  “I need your help,” he said, his arms wrapped around her waist.

  Her mind was reeling. “With what?”

  “I need you to take Talisa and drive as far away from here as possible.”

  Ellie frowned and stepped back. “What?”

  “I’ve been sitting here and thinking about what I’m going to do, and if I get the Grid up and running then Talisa will die. I need you to save her.”

  “I’m doing the best I can-”

  “No, I need you get as far away from the Grid as possible. Outside of Phoenix, away from Tucson. Go to California. They’re on the coastal Field, if they’re still down then Talisa will be safe.”

  “What if the Grid is still on there?”

  “Then keep going.”

  Ellie blinked at him. “What would Liam think-”

  “Liam doesn’t know yet, but the sun will rise soon and without Talisa awake to bring the cloud cover, I can’t predict what will happen once it does. She needs to be away from here, and you’re the only one that has a chance of keeping her alive.”

  Ellie nodded. “Okay, what do we do?”

  * * *

  Together they hurried back to the surgical room. Ellie rummaged through the storage closets and found a gurney. Noah inspected Liam carefully, still stretched out on the couch.

  “He hasn’t had a good sleep for a long time,” he whispered

  Together they moved Talisa carefully onto the gurney. The goddess was still unresponsive. Ellie checked her vitals once more. Pulse faint, but still there.

  “Let’s go.”

  She pushed the gurney down the hospital wings and through the lobby. Noah opened the doors, brushing aside glass with his foot. As they approached the car, Ellie could see a light in the horizon. Sunrise was fast approaching.

  “Keep her as steady as possible,” she said. She pulled open the door, pushed the front seat forward, and stood aside as he carefully lifted Talisa and carried her to the car. Talisa let out a small groan.

  “She’s waking up,” Ellie said.

  “Don’t stop for any reason,” Noah said as she hurried to place clothes under Talisa’s head and shoulders to keep her steady on the seats. “Get out of here and head west.”

  “What about you and Liam? How will you get out?”

  “We won’t have to.”

  His answer could go either of two ways, but Ellie didn’t want to think about it. She stood up and hugged him tightly. In such a short amount of time, she realized she didn’t want to lose him from her life.

  “Promise me,” she said. “I’m doing this because you’re promising me that we’ll find each other.”

  “I promise.”

  She kissed him, and this time she felt the stinging of tears on her cheeks and she couldn’t tell whose they were. She pulled away quickly and ran around to the driver’s seat, too afraid to look back. She started the car easily and pulled away from the curb, and for a split second she let herself look in the rearview mirror, to watch him as he faded away behind her.

  * * *

  Noah watched Ellie go with grim resignation, the memory of her kiss still fresh in his mind, her tears wet on his skin.

  The sun would crest the horizon anytime. Ellie barely would have a head start, but it was better than nothing. He would need to wake Liam up and explain everything.

  He waited, feeling the warmth as the light filled the sky. It was dazzlingly clear blue, with not a cloud in sight. He admired it, for a moment forgetting himself as he briefly imagined it was a regular normal day in the desert. Somewhere in an alternative universe he could be waking up about now, preparing a cup of coffee, ready to inspect the neighborhood power sources. Or if it were pre-Fall, he’d be getting ready for work, preparing for another riveting day inventing new solutions for the biggest tech giant in the world.

  The first rays of sunlight peeked over the mountains, and he realized something was wrong.

  Noah’s skin prickled painfully. Heat radiated off the ground. He stumbled backwards, falling through the broken hospital doors and onto the ground. Glass shards cut into him, peppering his back and arms with red specks.

 
He looked down at his arms. His skin was smoking.

  “Oh no,” he said with dawning realization.

  The sun was scorching the earth, and he had just sent Ellie and Talisa out there, defenseless against it.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was a gloriously beautiful morning.

  The man in the golden armor stood atop the tallest tower in the city and admired the sunrise, his unshielded eyes glowing as bright as the sun. He breathed in deeply, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath his breastplate. He dangled his sword from one hand, the tip dragging on the glass rooftop, the blade still red with Talisa’s blood.

  She was fading away. He could tell. A never-ending cycle of torment and violence finally coming to an end.

  The heat pressed on his skin, and he smiled.

  “You are given freedom, and the first thing you do is destroy everything?”

  He was not alone on the roof. He turned to see a strange apparition before him, the faint outline of a young woman dressed in black. He had never seen her before. Blonde hair lay in attractive waves around her shoulders. She was there on the rooftop with him, yet he could see right through her.

  He approached, growing larger until he towered over her. “What did you say?”

  She seemed unaffected by his size, and instead looked out over the city. “The heat is rising, reading at one-hundred and fifty degrees. You’ll kill every living thing. Who will worship you then?”

  He didn’t know how to answer. He felt strange standing close to her, a wave of nausea in the pit of his stomach, and he stepped back. Her blue eyes looked straight through him.

  “It matters not,” she said, her voice cold. “That wasn’t why we woke you in the first place.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You woke me?”

  “We knew you couldn’t resist having your fun, but it was all so that avatar four-eight-zero would respond. It’s taking a bit longer than we expected.”

  “Who?”

  She smiled at him, and he could feel his blood boil in anger. “Thank you for your service.”

  Then she winked from existence.

  The man in the golden armor waved his arms where she had been, but touched nothing. He raised his sword in the air, the sunlight glinting off the blade. Anger and fear burned in the pit of his stomach.

  “Come back!” he shouted.

  He was alone.

  * * *

  Liam hit Noah in the face and watched him fall back against the hospital linoleum floor.

  “What the fuck? Why would you do that without talking to me?”

  “We were running out of time!” Noah rolled onto his side, clutching his nose. “I thought if they could get out of the city, they’d be safe when the Grid came back on! They still have a head start, if they keep driving they might be able to escape the heat-”

  Liam grabbed his bag from beside the couch and jumped to his feet. “How do we stop it?”

  He walked out of the room and down the hall, leaving Noah to pick himself off the floor.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Noah said breathlessly, scrambling to catch up, “but if we run we can reach Field 5-”

  “We had a deal,” Liam interrupted hotly.

  “Yes, to turn on the Grid. You were worried about Talisa, I thought this would help!”

  “How do you know he won’t just follow them?”

  “I...suppose that’s a good point.”

  “Of course it is, but you didn’t think to include me.”

  They stopped at the front doors and Liam peered out. He could already see the air rippling with heat over the pavement, feel it press suffocatingly against his skin. Elysian Field 5 loomed in the distance. He studied their route. Tall buildings covered most of the sidewalks in shade, but there were bright spots of sunlight in the intersections and roadways. Bricked GridCars littered the streets, creating obstacles along the path.

  “Half a mile,” Liam said. “Half a mile between here and Elysian Field 5. Have you even run that far before?”

  “Not since high school.”

  Liam looked at his friend closely. His face was slightly puffy where he had hit him, but his nose wasn’t bleeding and he looked alert. “Are you sure about this? Once we leave this building, there’s no going back.”

  Noah was determined. “If it keeps getting hotter, we’ll bake here. We have to go now.”

  “Once we reach the building,” Liam said, “we break the first window we see. We get in as quick as possible.”

  Noah looked at him with disbelief. “You’re referring to one of the most important and highly secured buildings in the world. The entire structure will be reinforced. You can’t just break a window, it’s not a hospital!”

  Liam lowered the pipe. “Then what’s your idea, Einstein?”

  “Employees had to have been inside the building when the Grid fell, right?”

  Liam pictured a dozen rotting corpses littered throughout the building.

  “No.” Noah shook his head. “No, I was able to leave the Tucson headquarters, they will have gotten out too.”

  “So we go through the front doors then. Makes things easier.”

  “Not exactly. The Fields are more secure. Employees enter through a completely different entrance. We have to search the whole perimeter.”

  Sweat dripped down Liam’s face. The pipe had become slippery in his hands. “What?”

  “Trust me,” Noah’s skin was flush from the heat. “Please. We reach the building, we immediately turn left, round to the back. There will be a parking garage, it should buy us some shade.”

  “I thought you said you’d never been here before.”

  Noah stammered. “You’ve been to one Field, you’ve been to them all.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Liam turned to face the street, slinging his bag over his shoulder. It weighed heavily on his back. He swallowed hard, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth had become. “Let’s go.”

  They both sprinted down the sidewalk, sticking close to the buildings where the shade was the deepest. The once pristine sidewalks were fractured with deep cracks. Nature had slowly reclaimed the roads, weeds poking through breaks in the pavement to someday grow into bushes and trees.

  Liam felt his first hit of direct sunlight when he crossed the street between the hospital and a high rise hotel. The heat sizzled against his skin like a frying pan, burning the top of his head, ears, neck, and shoulders. He reached the shade on the other side and immediately stopped to check his skin.

  “No!” Noah ran past him, and Liam could see the air rippling off him. “Keep going!”

  Liam followed, eyes locked on the back of Noah’s head, determined to run through the pain. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the shadows became shorter. The next hit of sunlight almost made him black out. He realized how light-headed he had become, and he stumbled over a raised piece of sidewalk. He steadied himself and didn’t fall.

  The half mile felt like twenty miles, but somehow they had reached Elysian Field 5. The tower was the largest in the city at one-hundred and twenty floors. Its silver glass and filigrees of white lacquered metal once housed a mixed use of office space, hotels and restaurants, with a popular shopping mall at its base. Utopian Industries dominated the top half of the building, and dedicated the top ten floors alone to Elysian Field 5, the computer that communicated with the southwest-serving satellite.

  “Around!” Noah shouted, and Liam followed him away from the main entrance and to the side of the building. There were no shadows on this side.

  Liam’s skin felt like it was on fire, and an acrid smell hit his nose. His hair was crisping. His vision went bright red, then-

  He turned the corner and was safe in the shade of the parking garage located on the back end of the building.

  Noah was waiting for him. He clasped him tightly, and Liam realized that he could barely hold himself up.

  “We’re here,” he heard Noah say.


  Liam dropped to the ground and looked at his arms. They were bright red, as if he had fallen asleep while sunbathing and woken up five hours later. The shade was a welcome relief, but not by much. The air was still rising in temperature. He looked at Noah. His skin was the same angry shade of red.

  “Come on,” Noah said, “the back entrance is this way.”

  He helped Liam up, and together they walked under the pedestrian bridge from the overhead parking garage level and approached a small alcove in the base of the building. There stood a single unmarked door.

  “Moment of truth,” Liam said. He reached out and twisted the handle. The door swung open.

  “Top security building and they leave the door unlocked.”

  The room was large and surprisingly cool, with a bank of white elevator doors to the left and an open stairwell to the right. Liam craned his neck to look up. The stairwell arched in a perfect circle, creating a spiral of white steps. It went up seemingly forever. His legs ached.

  Noah leaned heavily against the wall. His face had gone white.

  “What’s the matter?” Liam said.

  Noah shook his head and looked back up. “Fucking heights.”

  “We’ll find a different way.”

  “The elevators won’t work. This stairwell is the only way to Field 5,” Noah said.

  “Of course it is.”

  They began their steady ascension, gripping the banister. Liam counted the floors in his head, keeping a careful eye on Noah the higher they climbed. At first he was able to make twenty floors before resting. They stood leaning against the rail, willing their heart rates to slow down before starting again. By the time they reached the fortieth floor, they had to rest every three floors. The air was hot and stuffy, the heat floating heavily toward the top of the stairwell.

  Liam’s body hurt. His legs shook. He wanted to throw up.

  Noah didn’t speak the entire time, keeping to the center of staircase and fixing his eyes on the steps directly in front of him.

  It took forty-five minutes to reach the top, where they were greeted by another single door. Noah gripped the handle and pulled. It didn’t move.

  “Is it locked?” Liam asked incredulously. “Well I guess now I know why they left the back doors open-”