Arise (Book Three in The Arson Saga) (25 page)

The human heart held little to no secrets, did it? He knew that a heart, much like a soul, was constructed with a thousand closets, trapdoors, and windows, but few permitted visitors. The secrets escaped in other ways—words or the lack of words, glances or the hushed accusations people only shared with the shadows. If he was lucky, Emery’s heart might unlock soon, letting the trapdoors swing open. But what if it didn’t? What if it couldn’t? Looking at her, painted with grief and wounds no amount of words or apologies could restore, he felt small, and his descent into the black matter of his own soul became an inescapable fate he knew he’d have to accept. How insignificant the accident from his memories seemed tonight. His powers didn’t even matter. The number imprinted on his wrist didn’t matter. None of it would ever matter.

Just stay with me. Just look at me, for real. Once and for all.

But she didn’t. He stormed out of the room, out of the apartment. He wanted to drown. He wanted to lie in the lake again. He longed for the safety of the cabin—the illusion of safety, if that was all it was. He knew it well. It didn’t confuse him. There’d been no question back then, only the reality which, in time, he had accepted.

Where was Grandma? Oh God, where was she?
Isaac, please help me. Please love me!

“Sick,” he could hear Grandma say. “You’re just sick, that’s all
.
” And for the shortest of seconds, he could smell her. That scent his nose picked up whenever she’d hug him. Maybe it wasn’t love; maybe it wasn’t at all. Maybe it never had been, but he understood it; in all its heinous confusion, somewhere within the fallacy of that love, there was understanding. This, what was
this
? He could not name it. He could not decipher it as anything other than torment. To be so close to Emery, the girl he loved more than anything, yet so far.

Did she even notice he was gone? Did she care? His feet beat against the floor as he trotted down apathetic steps that were far too quiet for their own good. He charged the door leading to the outside, hoping to derail it from its hinges. Then he’d have something in common with the weak steel. It didn’t break, not yet. It just whispered shut. But outside, the whispers and the tears and the frail hope of a teenager were swallowed by the undulation of silence. He turned his neck to the right, and there was the car, a car that hadn’t been there before. Adam and Emery must’ve used it to get here. At least, that was his theory. Next, his vision was caught in the wave of darkness, of night. Sure, spots littered the black, but that was all they were—spots. Like a cancer, trying to devour a body. Only this darkness, this body, would not let the light subdue it. A war. A forever kind of war. The casualties, too many to name. The players, fooled into thinking there was even a prayer of survival. What did it matter? The facilities, the evil men? What did it matter?

He wanted to scream, but nothing came out. Instead, a blade of ice emerged, creeping out of the flesh in his wrist. He wiped a tear away, wishing the hatred would go with it, the confusion, the blur of everything his heart feared. But that couldn’t be. Arson found the light and was now, more than ever, bothered by it. A bar about thirty yards away possessed a dim flicker that seemed skilled at seducing his temper. Taking aim, he launched the icy blade toward the tired, artificial lamp. In seconds, the glow was gone, and what should’ve come next was a wave of relief.

But it didn’t.

Chapter Thirty

By the time Arson
decided to venture back to the apartment, midnight was long behind him. Spending an hour outside hadn’t been the original plan, but embracing the new realities of what the future held—for him, for Emery—failed to grant any kind of sanctuary from his troubled thoughts. Having endured so many months without her, he knew that, logically, he should be able to cope with the idea that perhaps she had
matured
during their time apart. But was that it? Was that the dagger scratching at the corners of his consciousness, slicing him with a barrage of doubts about where they were and what would become of them?

Just ask her, you idiot. You won’t know until you ask her how she feels.

But how could he at a time as fragile as this? His going nuclear at Salvation had cemented her mother’s fate. He held the blame, no matter what Kyro said. Despite the differences every mother and daughter are forced to accept, nobody’s ever really ready to sacrifice a relationship like that, no matter what petty thoughts roamed the trenches of the mind. And this feeling, this dagger, was all the evidence anyone would need.

Suddenly, as his feet sketched a path up the stairwell, he found himself mourning the death of Isaac. Why? The man had abandoned him at birth because of something Arson could not even control. What kind of monster would do that? And to add to the black and white script, Isaac had lied to and manipulated him, killed Grandma, and then, at the moment of absolute vulnerability, tried like a coward to lure and trick him. So why did he feel
anything
for the heartless scoundrel? Wasn’t it better that Isaac was now a member of the deepest circle of hell? Definitely. But if that was what he believed, why was there this gnawing sense of sadness? Why, when he thought on Emery’s mother and the death of that relationship, did he also think about Isaac and Grandma, and even Grandpa Henry, who, in a sick way, was to blame for all of it?

Were he in the same spot, Adam would likely use this as a time to try to convince Arson how foolish any fashion of reminiscence was.

But Adam wasn’t here, trudging up these steps that felt like mud, constantly trying to drag him into some dark pit. Adam was inside, with a sister who loved him; with Emery. And Arson was the fool, stranded outside between a door and his hopelessness.

The faded, manmade thing might as well have been the portal to his dream world because the confusion that existed there, that was born within those wilting walls, was the very same confusion dwelling between the chipped wood and slipshod paint strokes. He thought about going in, confessing his love for Emery again, the way he’d done in that horrible hospital bed the day he’d been taken by Lamont, but the panic and fear grew talons. The chill of the night hadn’t been strong enough to choke such reckless memories out. He’d spent his time wandering in the cold, questioning everything, wondering if there still was a point to any of it. As a distraction, he even practiced forming shapes out of ice then melting them with his eyes. He liked how his vision could sometimes go so hot that beams of light radiated out. He may not have been sent to the earth from outer space in an alien ship, but never before had he felt such a connection to the Kryptonian hero from his comics.

Arson pressed his head on the door and exiled a deep breath. The rough surface was like sandpaper on his cheek. He invited his ears to trace the sounds coming from the other side. Whispers and a dim light slid into the hallway. He imagined the light originated not from the living room, where Kyro was already working up a good snore, but if he had to guess, a table lamp or hidden recess fixture was responsible and was likely located in a spot where the kitchen and living room merged. It too was divided.

“I managed to get one out,” Adam hissed. “But I swear it feels like there are more.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. You were his prized possession. Krane couldn’t take the risk of ever losing you,” a second voice imparted. It belonged to Lana. “The doctor was obsessed.”

“I’m glad he’s dead. Man, it hurts. A lot.” Was Adam sobbing? Not crying. Arson was almost positive he’d never get the satisfaction of witnessing Adam cry, but that was definite sobbing. Sobs, groans even, that desperately wanted to be tears but were too afraid to appear as such.

“On the other hand, maybe your mind just wants to believe there are more inside you.”

More inside?
What exactly was she talking about?

Adam answered sternly, “No, I’m not imagining this pain, Lana.”

“Well, I have no way of telling how many parasites he injected you with.”

Arson’s curiosity instantly morphed into worry. Why hadn’t Adam mentioned anything about this to him?

“I’ll cut them out. I’ll cut hers out too.”

“Does she even know?” Lana asked.

“Are you crazy? She was freaking out as it was. I blacked out several times. I should’ve seen God, sis.” The words limped out a trembling throat. Could Emery hear this, or was she asleep? She had to be, which meant Adam had been hiding this all along, even from her. “The last thing Emery needed to hear was that she could have a tracking device running around inside of her.”

The sound of a metal knife scraping against linoleum triggered a reaction behind Arson’s chest. He wanted to break off the door handle and storm into the room, but he didn’t.

“I won’t let you do it, Adam. Don’t think for a second that I’m letting you inflict more pain on yourself.”

“I’m the big brother, remember?”

She pressured about as much as someone whispering could. “I spent more than twenty years thinking about you. Days lost, wishing you’d come back, but you never did, until now. I am not gonna let you do something stupid.”

“I can heal. I’ll cut the parasites out and heal.”

“What if you don’t? Your abilities keep fluctuating. Last time you decided to get heroic, you nearly died, isn’t that what you said?”

“I didn’t die,” Adam returned. “I should’ve, but I didn’t. I astral-projected into Arson’s mind, and saved his life. I’ll be…fine.”

“Please, Adam. Please.” Arson couldn’t see her face, but what he pictured was a helpless little girl begging her big bro to put away his makeshift bravado and accept the reality that he mattered to someone other than himself.

“What do you expect I do, then? I have to act soon. What if Arson finds out?”

“Until we find a solution, he doesn’t need to know.”

“If I can feel them, it’s only a matter of time before he will. They’re tracking us now. I know they are.”

In this scene, Adam was the paranoid, borderline schizophrenic and Arson the covert spy.

“No, they’re not.”

“How could you possibly know?”

“Because I helped design the parasite.”

Arson’s stomach twisted into knots. Then, all of a sudden, nausea started working its way north, and he got a little dizzy. He felt like a kickboxer who’d just taken a right roundhouse to the side of the head and was experiencing extreme vertigo.

“Really?” Adam’s knees had to be getting weak. They had to be.

“I didn’t know you were alive,” she tried, but her defense carried little impact.

Arson made sure not to move, not even to breathe more than absolutely necessary.

“Are you in serious pain,” she went on, “or is it more of an uncomfortable sting?”

“The second, I guess,” he shot back immediately.

“That’s what I thought.”

Aggravation crept into his tone. “Well, can we make it stop?”

“We have to wait until they actually start moving again. They’re inactive at the moment. The reason you’re feeling pain is because Krane did trigger them when he was searching for you. Your parasites were linked to his receiver.”

“Meaning?” Adam was growing feverishly impatient.

“Only he can activate them…or deactivate them. If you’re not in pain—excruciating pain—then that means his body hasn’t been found. Try to get some sleep. That’s all we can do.”

“We can run, sis. We have to run.”

“We’ll leave at dawn, but for now, you need rest.”

“Look, I can’t—”

“We don’t need them to panic. Let them sleep.”

“And what if someone finds the trigger while we’re sleeping?”

“Adam, the only way for your powers to come back fully, if they’re
going
to come back fully, is…”

He scoffed at her lack of faith.

“You need rest. Dawn, that’s all I’m asking.”

And then what?
Arson wanted to yell as he touched his temple.
And then what?
He couldn’t sleep, especially not now, and the last thing he wanted was to be in the same room as them, even if Emery was in there.

Arson’s hand folded into a strong fist, and seconds later, a subtle flame rolled over his knuckles. But he didn’t have the guts to start a conflict, not in the middle of the night. He had to think, really think.

Kyro’s distrust echoed like a siren’s call inside him as he let slip a whisper of his own. “Whose side are you on, Adam?”

He waited out in the hall, and would until sleep stole away the idle tactics and idle worries of every victim in the godforsaken house.

Chapter Thirty-One

It seemed like his
thoughts raced at
autobahn
speed when he heard the creaking of the door handle. Arson turned his neck and saw the hem of Emery’s pants step out first. Her stare hooked him immediately.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked with a yawn, pushing the door closed. It made a gentle hissing sound he didn’t like. Although, to be fair, there wasn’t one square inch of this place that he did like.

He shrugged. “Around. I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh-oh,” she said, smirking out of the left side of her mouth.

The few short steps toward him were not steps at all but more like days. Weeks. Months. Years, even. When they’d met, it felt like he’d known her forever. But it had all slipped away so fast. A gaping hole existed at his center. He wanted, needed to be next to her. His muscles even confirmed it by almost getting up. Emery motioned to take a seat on the stairwell. What should’ve been a picturesque moment shared between two lovers, the way it was in the movies, instead caused intense heat to prick the back of his neck. But he quieted the sensation and faked a meager sense of calm.

Her eyes left his, again. Part of her flawlessly beautiful face remained hidden from him, and maybe a shred of guilt kept it that way.

“You were gone for a while. Everyone’s asleep. You can’t just take off like that.” With her forefinger, she poked at a tear in her jeans, right above the knee. Arson knew she was trying to sound like she cared, but all he heard was the familiar tone of someone reprimanding him.

“I’m not anyone’s problem.”

“I never said you were, but we should be sticking together, right?” He was a stone. Her eyes didn’t dare move closer. “I mean, if the crap is really gonna hit the fan, you shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’ve been alone for months. I survived.” She bit down hard when he gave her the blasé answer she clearly wasn’t expecting.

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s not just about you.” The stars finally aligned. Emery brushed those silky, caramel strands back behind her ear, and when the dim light graced her face, he swore heaven was real. “This is all bigger than us. We have to stick together. It’s dangerous out there.”

He scoffed, and again noticed the scar on her wrist. He couldn’t help but look at his own. Only his was a number and hers a result of running from the darkness. “They can’t hurt me.” Arson ignored the flakes of fear peeling off the edges of his mind, the thought that maybe those parasites would be activated and start chewing up his insides. Suppressing that reality was the only way to remain functional. “Their venom cocktail isn’t strong enough to take away my powers…not anymore.” The additional dose of arrogance made Emery cringe.

“We don’t know what’s coming, Arson. You’re not invincible.”

“But Adam is?”

She looked at him, but not the way he wanted her to. There was an ugly hue of contempt mixed in with something else. Perhaps pity. Did she pity him? Pity his jealousy? The fiery pricks sprang to life once more and fled down his spinal column.

“He healed you. He freed you from the asylum. He found a way to get
me
out of a coma. Maybe he is the savior you want him to be.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said he was our savior.”

Arson scratched his scalp. There was no itch. He just couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. “I’m not blind.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Did she really not get it? Did she really not freaking get it?

“You look at him like he’s a god.”

“No, I don’t. He’s flesh and blood. Just like me. Just like you.”

A sluggish sigh dripped out. “No, he’s not. We’re more different than you think.”

She swallowed hard and kept sticking her finger through that ugly denim hole, rubbing the bandage. “I never felt beautiful before now. Is that wrong? I don’t get you, Arson. Am I supposed to feel guilty that he healed me?”

“I can’t tell you how to feel.”

“But you want to, right? Go ahead, tell me what I’m supposed to feel.”

The hole was getting bigger. The fabric ripped even more than she probably intended.

“Emery, I—” He froze. Blank stare. Stiff, sweaty hands. He couldn’t believe it. The end of the world was around the corner, and all he could think about was Emery and what she might think if he told her the truth, if he told her how much torment he had endured in hopes that someday he’d see her again.

“What?” Her eyes found his, this time on purpose.

“I missed you.”

“Then why did you bail the second I got here?”

“Because…” He shut his eyes and remembered destroying the asylum. Remembered Isaac’s words of deception, and worst of all, how he didn’t look for her a second time before destroying the place for good. He just trusted in Isaac’s manipulated version of truth, never fully knowing if Emery had found escape or death. He was back there now in his mind, setting it ablaze, a mountain of fire ripping through everything, destroying everything. His lack of concern for anyone in that moment filled him with relentless shame. He even remembered the way the snow felt on his feet, hot somehow, like he was walking out of hell itself. “It was my fault.”

She was quiet for a while, and he knew her analytical brain was working. But then she spoke, and her words crashed into his thoughts. “I don’t blame you for my mother’s death. You didn’t know.”

That’s not enough.
“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Patronize me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Arson, it wasn’t your fault. I’m not gonna lie, it hurts, a lot, more than I ever thought it would. And I don’t think that will ever go away, but you can’t carry that burden. It’s mine.”

“It doesn’t fix anything, Emery.”

“Stop. Just talk to me, like we used to.”

A tidal wave crashed against his chest.

“If what you need is forgiveness…you have it.”

Forgiveness?
He wanted her love. He wanted the stolen months back. He wanted his old life back, screwed up as it had been. The relief washing over him concerning Aimee’s death just wasn’t enough.

“You don’t have to be Superman around me.”

Emery reached for his hand, but Arson couldn’t take the tension inside anymore. Abandoning all fear, for the first time in a long time, he chose action over
re
action. Arson cupped the small of Emery’s back, drew her close, and kissed her. That very instant, more memories collided, and countless endorphins took charge over every teenage hormone in his body. He inserted his tongue as past images splattered across the walls of his subconscious, magically painting a collage of their brief time together. The long walks home, the hospital, the night he saved her from Mandy’s sick party, and last, the time he stupidly thought Emery was trying to save him and kept referring to him as
the alien
. He treasured that memory.

He waited and waited for her to respond. She tasted sweet, smelled even better.
Any second now.
They weren’t in some grungy apartment, some so-called safe house with a group of misfit strangers. It wasn’t winter at the end of the world. For a split second, he wasn’t thinking about corpses or dead relatives or supernatural abilities. For a blink, he was home.

But the waiting didn’t pay off. Emery wasn’t kissing him back. Her lips, like misers, received but offered nothing in return. The fear crept in, and Arson leaned away, the ridges of each wooden spindle rubbing against his spine a little. Emery’s sweet breath hypnotically confused his heart and his brain.

“Sorry,” she said, eyes narrow. Her forehead wrinkled, and in a different world it would’ve been cute. “I meant to kiss you back.”

“But you didn’t.”

Her mouth was open, but no words spilled out. Only the thought of words. The thought of stillborn words. Empty words he didn’t want to hear. Why hadn’t he been the one to heal her? Why hadn’t he been strong enough to break her out, to escape his coma alone, to fix it all? Fury and brokenness welled up inside him, like two brothers once on opposing sides of the same war, now both enlisted as allies.

He looked at her as she glanced at her feet. The hole in her jeans was large enough to fit his hot fist through. She brushed her hair back, the signature move of anyone pretty enough to lure a boy’s eye. He liked it too. He hated that he liked it. Arson wished Emery still had the mask, because it seemed like the girl looking down at her shoes could use it some. He didn’t know her. He swore he didn’t know her at all.

Without warning, the apartment door swung wide, and Adam leapt into the hallway.
How long has he been standing there?
Arson wondered. And had Emery ever actually shut the door, or was that just a cursory detail his mind had penciled in because it logically came next?

“Em,” Adam started, examining her the way a cornered lover might.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, jumping to attention.

“It’s begun.”

Aggravated by the interruption but knowing the hour was delicate, Arson followed them both inside, where Joel, Kyro, and Lana sat glued to the television.

“What’s…?” Arson’s question didn’t fully get out before he saw it.

A shaky iPhone cam was documenting the fall of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The footage, generated by an American college student who was part of some semester abroad program, had been turned in just one hour earlier by an anonymous sender and was apparently on every major news channel in the country. Several moments of the destruction came to violent life. Every frame jittery and tormented, the way the user’s pulse must have been at the time of recording. Ancient structures collapsed in mere seconds. Statues, which seemed unbreakable, cracked and sank to the earth. The zoom feature was activated and a young girl carried the next segment of the clip. Standing in the center of St. Peter’s Square, the girl seemed to marvel as the ruin unfolded. No obvious horror. Seemingly no emotion at all, other than wonder. Some distance away, a man frantically sprinted toward her. He was attempting to warn the girl of massive stone fragments soaring in her direction and that she should flee the scene of destruction, but instead, he was swallowed up by the grounds. The quake, like an efficient, demonic mole, had hollowed out the dirt beneath their feet, and caused the square to cave in on itself, consuming scores of people. Still, the girl did not move.

“Fearless in the face of disaster,” the awed MSNBC anchor commented, as his face appeared on the television, the news clip slightly cropped and offset to his right. “I can only imagine what was going through that child’s head.”

The obelisk at the center of the square dissolved next, and the cross at its apex descended with intense force, spearing a priest who had been taken over by fear at the terrible might of the earthquake. High-pitched screams engulfed the speakers of the cell phone and the sound turned to a blaring static. The anchor sat hushed and in reverence as devastation roamed deeper. Every pillar in its path gave way, crushing entire families in less than a blink. Children wept in one breath; in the next, mothers reached with futile hands for their sons and daughters, now separated by a wave of concrete, brick, and stone. The wave hurled bodies wherever it saw fit, creating a chaotic, hovering stream of dirt and corpses.

Arson couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. The endless bodies. The lives stolen. The sacred lost. Rage flooded every facet of his being.

“My God,” Joel gasped, fixed on the television. “How is this happening?”

By some miracle, the college student was still alive. A dark red horizon bloomed into the camera’s vantage point. Unholy smoke spiraled skyward, along with shouts of pain and dread. But the calamity was not yet complete. The quake snaked rapidly through narrow streets, wiping out businesses, gypsies, museums, churches. Sculptures of the Madonna and of the Blessed Savior, shattered. The Vatican Gardens were then devoured by the treacherous grounds that birthed them. Uprooted and torn apart. Centuries of labor and cultivation reduced to compost and dust. It was the renaissance of chaos, the bastard of a war no spiritual soul could ever fathom. And the restless cam recorded all. Its user lowered to the likeness of a poor man with hungry eyes.

Tears rushed down Emery’s cheeks. Kyro sat mesmerized in a horrible way. Lana observed the screen much like a widow observing the public hanging of her lover’s murderer. Adam turned to Arson, but neither spoke. Neither shed a tear. A chill hovered above the room like a malevolent ghost as the jittery camera concluded its tragic report, which Lana claimed she’d stumbled on as a result of insomnia. The MSNBC anchor was minimized so the footage could play on repeat for the next several minutes, with his comments whispering over the loop.

“Citizens of Italy are no strangers to the humbling effects of earthquakes,” he stated. “Around the fifth or sixth century, the Coliseum was in desperate need of repair because of just such cruel acts of nature. But Vatican City, up until now, has always been spared, and some believed, protected. But today, it seems, the deity—if such a judge exists—has lifted that protection. Today, the Eternal City is forced to feel the bitter sting of mortality.”

In awe, Emery lowered her head and whispered a prayer.

A curse tore out of Kyro’s throat. “Dude, I think I’m gonna be sick.” His face flushed as he stormed toward the bathroom.

“The beginning of the end.” When Lana spoke, not a single stir of surprise could be detected. Arson only recognized the aggressive nature attached to each of her words, the haunted inevitability of a future she had believed in for so long.

“Project Sunrise,” Arson said, almost numbly.

Joel’s neck turned toward Lana so fast it looked as though it could snap. “This was what you were working on?”

“This is Phase 1.”

“The earthquake was planned?” Emery asked, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

Lana answered with a heavy sigh.

A wave of dread stretched across Emery’s eyes. She was paralyzed, like the priest trapped inside the fate of the found footage. Like the reality of it all was finally collapsing on her. Her skin turned pale.