Flash Fire

by TJ Klune

  Nick flinched when a car’s brakes squealed on the street, sure his powers were coming back. He balled his hands into fists. Nothing happened. Everything was normal. Everything was fine.

  Or, at least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

  Dad crossed the street with the light, and Nick began to jog to catch up so he wouldn’t have to wait until it was safe to cross again. He made it across just as the walk symbol changed back into a red hand. Where was Dad going? And why were his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears? He looked stressed, angry. Was it because of the meeting with his friends’ parents, or something else? What the hell was he hiding this time?

  A memory, then, unbidden but rising like a rocket in his head. Dad in the hospital, Nick next to his bed, both of them watching Pyro Storm and Shadow Star battle it out on the television that hung on the wall.

  If someone who loved you lied to you, kept things from you, hurt you, but they needed your help, would you do it?

  I would. Because I can never turn my back on someone who needs me. If I was lied to, if I was kept in the dark and my heart was breaking, I would still do everything I could. Sometimes, we lie to the ones we love most to keep them safe.

  Nick brushed his hand angrily against the burning in his eyes. He would get answers, one way or another.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Dad turned into a small park Nick wasn’t familiar with. Bare trees reached up toward a gunmetal sky and a pavilion with empty wooden tables sat on a cracked cement slab. The ground was covered in dirty snow. The only other people in the park were a kid on a swing, laughing as a woman pushed her, causing the chains to creak as the girl shouted Higher, higher!

  Nick hid behind a tree, watching his father go to the pavilion. Dad looked down at his phone, a furious expression on his face. He tapped the screen a couple of times before bringing it to his ear. Whoever answered, Dad didn’t greet. Instead, his mouth twisted into a snarl, teeth bared. Nick was too far away to hear what was being said. Dad began to pace, his back to Nick, his footsteps echoing dully in the pavilion.

  Nick took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the tree, moving closer. He froze when Dad turned toward him, but he was looking down at his feet, shoulders stiff. He paced the other direction, and Nick rushed forward, heart in his throat as he reached a thick pillar at the edge of the pavilion.

  He could hear his father now.

  He wished he couldn’t.

  * * *

  —and where do you get off?” Dad snarled. “Who the hell do you think you are? I told you I’d do what you wanted. I told you I’d handle it. You can’t—”

  Nick covered his mouth with his hand, his hot breath stinging his palm. The woman pushing the kid on the swing stared at him for a moment before pulling the girl off and walking away, glancing over her shoulder, eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t give two shits what you’re doing,” Dad said coldly. “He’s not your son. He’s mine, and I’ll be the one to decide what he does and doesn’t know. You’re in no position to give me parenting advice, Simon. Not after what you did to Owen.”

  Nick’s blood turned into icy sludge as he gasped against his hand.

  Dad laughed bitterly. “That’s not what we agreed to. I told you I’d keep you in the loop when it came to the Extraordinaries, and I’ve done that. You know everything I do about Pyro Storm’s movements. And there aren’t any other Extraordinaries. I would know if there—what? No. Of course I don’t know who he is. He wears a mask. How the hell am I—no. He doesn’t know either. I don’t care what you saw on the bridge, he doesn’t know who Pyro Storm is. Listen to me, Simon, because I won’t say this again. Leave my son out of this. All the Concentra in the world doesn’t matter if you’re screwing with my child, and I’m telling you right here and right now: if you try to speak to my son again, I’ll kill you myself. Just because you found a way to suppress what’s inside Nick doesn’t give you the right to involve yourself in his life.”

  Nick tried to move, but his feet were rooted in place. He couldn’t make his legs work, couldn’t do anything but struggle to breathe as his father broke his heart.

  He’d known. Dad had known about all of it. Mom. Nick. The pills. The Concentra made by Burke Pharmaceuticals.

  Have you taken your pill, Nick?

  Don’t forget your meds, kid.

  Did you take your pill, Nicky?

  “I know,” Dad said. “But I’ll keep it going for as long as I can. I know what happens to people like them. I’ve seen it. And you did too; you saw how much it weighed on Jenny. I won’t let the same thing happened to Nick.” A beat of silence. Then, furiously, “She was targeted. They knew who she was the day they followed her into that bank, even though it’d been years. They killed her because of what she meant to the people of this city. If I’d known where that would lead, I would have begged her to never put on that suit. The city didn’t need her to be Guardian, we needed her to be alive and—”

  Guardian.

  Guardian.

  The Extraordinary who’d watched over Nova City.

  The hero who’d disappeared before Nick was born.

  Nick’s phone rang in his pocket, startlingly loud in the quiet of the park.

  Nick panicked, muttering, “Oh my god, no, no, no,” as he stepped away from the pillar, trying to pull his phone out, trying to make it stop. He didn’t even see who was calling as he jerked it from his pocket, hissing as his knuckles popped. He swiped his thumb across the screen, sending the call to voicemail.

  “Nicky?”

  Nick whirled around. Dad stood there, all the blood having drained from his face. His mouth hung open, the phone falling from his hand and bouncing on the floor of the pavilion.

  Dad recovered first. “Nick? Hey, hey. What are you doing here?” He tried to smile, but it crumbled as he took a step toward his son. “Kid, what’s—what’s going on?”

  Nick picked up his phone and took an answering step back, his mind viciously blank. He couldn’t form a single coherent thought, and the sound that fell from his open mouth was a high-pitched whine, broken and weak.

  “No,” Dad said, hands shaking as he reached for his son. “Oh, Nicky. I didn’t—” His chest heaved, his breath pouring from his mouth in a thick cloud. “Please. Listen to me, okay? I need you to listen. We’re okay. We’re all right, I swear it. Let me explain. Oh my god, please don’t—Nick, no!”

  Nick, yes.

  He didn’t look back as he ran out of the park, his heart thundering in his chest, head spinning. He slid on a slick patch of ice hidden under the snow but managed to keep his footing with a few hard steps that jolted his knees. A thin tree limb slapped against his cheek, causing it to go numb as he picked up speed. He heard his father shouting his name, begging for him to stop, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.

  Nearly blind with panic, he ran.

  9

  The sky had darkened considerably. Flurries fell, catching the light from the streetlamps. It was freezing, but Nick barely felt it as his feet pounded pavement, pushing through the people on the sidewalk.

  He didn’t know how long he ran for, only that by the time he stopped, he had a painful stitch in his side. He was hot. He was cold. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t latch onto a single clear thought that would help pull him through the storm in his head. He couldn’t pull enough air into his lungs.

  He lifted his head, his neck stiff and sore. In an alley. He was in an alley a few feet off the sidewalk, hidden in the encroaching dark. Nick pressed his forehead against the side of a building, the brick cold against his skin. Before he could stop himself, he punched the brick. The pain was fierce and immediate, the knuckles of his skin splitting, blood welling. It was enough to clear his head a little, and he sucked in a breath that burned his throat.

  “Think,” he muttered, shaking his hand, blood falling to the ground. “Think. You can do this. Focus. Next step.”

  He couldn’t call Dad. He didn’t know where Jazz had gone. Las
t he heard, Gibby was still at the Grays’ house, working on—

  Seth.

  Seth, Seth, Seth.

  He would know what to do.

  Nick pulled his phone from his pocket, wincing when his injured hand rubbed against rough denim. He ignored it, grunting as his fingers flew over the screen.

  The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.

  “You’ve reached Seth’s voicemail. I’m probably busy. And nobody calls anyone anymore unless it’s an emergency. Send a text. Unless it’s an emergency.”

  “It is an emergency,” Nick hissed into the phone after it beeped. “Pick up your damn phone! I can move things with my mind.”

  He tried again.

  Voicemail.

  Like last year, when he thought Seth had been ignoring his calls, because if his phone was off, it would have rung once before going to voicemail. If he hadn’t heard, it’d ring at least six times.

  Three times meant Seth silenced the call.

  Seth—for whatever reason—couldn’t talk right then. Before he could get pissed off, he remembered vaguely that earlier, Gibby had said that Seth suited up, meaning something had happened.

  Just busy. That’s all it was. Seth was saving the day.

  Again.

  But then, why hadn’t Dad known? Unless he’d been distracted by his call with Simon Burke, Dad should’ve been where Seth was, or at least monitoring the situation remotely.

  Nick swallowed thickly, unable to comprehend that level of betrayal. Simon Burke was the enemy. And Dad was helping him.

  Nick was alone. No one to call. No one to help him. No one he could trust.

  “Oh, come on,” he mumbled to himself. “You’re not that much of a drama queen. Call Gibby. Call Jazz. Call Martha or Bob. Be smart about this. Figure it out. My superpower is my brain, so think, goddammit!”

  Before he could get anywhere, his phone beeped.

  A text from Seth, as if he knew Nick needed him. Saw u called. Long day, heading home. Talk tomorrow? xx

  Kiss kiss. It should have made Nick flush to the roots of his hair.

  Except his phone beeped again, this time from the Team Pyro Storm app, the alert with an 8-bit cartoon of Pyro Storm’s face with a word bubble proclaiming PYRO STORM IS NEARBY! He clicked on Pyro Storm’s face, which opened a map of Nova City on his screen. Gibby had integrated Google Maps to show every street, complete with the names of buildings, parks, and neighborhoods. A green dot blinked on the screen as it moved. The dot showed Seth about twenty minutes away from where he now stood. The green blip moved toward what Nick thought was an alley behind a row of restaurants and a bodega with a particularly mean cat the size of a small horse.

  The opposite way of his house.

  Nick frowned as he went back to the text thread. Hesitating a moment, he tapped a reply.

  Going to bed?

  Yep! Exhausted. Easy stuff, no worries. Even sent a new tweet on the account!

  Playful. Fun. Their usual banter.

  And a lie, because he switched back to the app and saw that Seth still wasn’t going home. The dot was stopped in the alley.

  He was about to text back that he could see that Seth wasn’t going home. His thumb hovered over the screen. But that wasn’t cool, right? The app wasn’t made for Nick to track his boyfriend. It’d be an invasion of privacy if Nick called him out for it. He trusted Seth as much as he did his … well, as much as he had trusted his father. So what if Seth was lying about where he was? He didn’t need Nick’s permission to do anything.

  He switched back to the app, planning on shutting it down, when the green blip disappeared.

  It only did that when Seth turned off the tracker himself.

  Like he realized he wasn’t where he said he was.

  But …

  Nick’s gorge rose, his mouth flooding with saliva. What if Seth had been captured by a new villain? What if this new villain had taken Seth’s phone from him to respond to Nick’s messages while ordering his lackeys to torture Pyro Storm? What if Seth was screaming for help and no one was there to save him? That was more likely than Seth Gray lying about where he was. Seth never lied. Sure, he’d kept his alter-ego from Nick for years, but there’d been a good reason for that.

  Doubt crept in. Seth would be the type to keep things from Nick if he thought it’d put him in danger. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek as he stared down at his phone.

  He typed back a response. Glad ur using the Twitter. Remember that candy I gave u last year? What was it called again?

  No one outside of their friend group would know the answer. If this wasn’t Seth on the other end, then they wouldn’t be able to tell him.

  Skwinkles Salsagheti. Good night <3

  “Oh no,” Nick breathed. “You’re lying.”

  He left the alley behind.

  * * *

  Nick tried to run the entire way but he’d already run more today than he’d probably done in his entire life, and the stitch in his side grew teeth.

  He made it to the cross streets he’d seen on the map. The snow flurries had lessened, the sky now spitting a few flakes that swirled around him. People laughed and smiled as they hurried by him. Though the streetlamps lit the sidewalks, the shadows of night seemed to reach toward him, and he felt colder than he had in his life.

  The alley was as he thought: in between a bodega and an apartment building at the forefront of gentrification, sleek and made of steel and glass.

  Nick crossed the street as soon as the light gave him the go-ahead, hurrying as he pulled his hood up and over his head. It wasn’t a costume, but it’d have to do until he could change that. He reached the alley, hoping Seth hadn’t left. No lights, only darkness. He couldn’t even see how far back the alley went. “Okay. You can do this. Furious Lightning Punch. Make sure they know you mean business. Move silently. Don’t let them hear you.”

  With that, he stepped into the alley.

  And immediately tripped over a bag of trash lying on the ground. The bag was apparently filled with at least five hundred pounds of glass; it shattered so loudly, Nick was sure the sound registered as a seismic event on the Richter scale. He managed to stay upright, but only because he stepped down hard onto the bag, breaking even more glass.

  He froze, waiting to see if anyone called out to him.

  No one did.

  He took another step forward. More glass broke. And then more. “Are you kidding me?” he whispered angrily. “Come on.”

  He took an exaggerated step forward, clearing the glass. Relieved, he hurried further into the alley, keeping close to the building on his left.

  He was halfway down the alley when he heard Seth’s voice.

  Scratch that.

  Pyro Storm’s voice, modulated and deep.

  He didn’t sound hurt.

  He sounded fine.

  Nick pressed himself flat against the building as he inched closer.

  “—and we’ll have to be careful,” Pyro Storm was saying. “They’ll figure out something is up before too long. I don’t like keeping things from them, my boyfriend especially. People don’t give him the credit he deserves. He’s smart. He’ll figure it out eventually. We need to get ahead of that.”

  Before Nick could puff out his chest (because compliments he wasn’t supposed to hear were his favorite kind of compliments), another voice spoke, breathy and deep. “I get that, honeybunch, but I’d remind you this isn’t about him. It’s about you and me.”

  Pyro Storm sighed. “I know. And I’m not going to force you to do something you’re not ready for, but I don’t like lying to people I care about. I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime.”

  “Don’t I know it,” the voice replied. “There may come a time when I’ll change my mind, but it’s not today. I gotta watch out for me, because I’m the only one who will.”

  “We’re in this together,” Pyro Storm said. “I promise.”

  Nick stopped moving, his back against a wall that ended a couple
of feet away, turning inward at a ninety-degree angle. An alcove. Pyro Storm and whoever he was talking to were in an alcove.

  “I wish I could believe you,” the voice said. “But I’ve seen what happens to people like us. We’re different. It’s like coming out. I went through that once already. I don’t know if I’m capable of doing it again. I don’t even know who you are behind the mask.”

  “Just like I don’t know who you are outside of your costume,” Pyro Storm said. “It’s safer this way, at least for now. We’re Extraordinaries. You need to get used to keeping your identity a secret.”

  Nick’s heart thudded painfully in his chest. Extraordinaries? As in plural? There was no way there were others he didn’t know about, right? Seth wouldn’t … he would never keep something like that secret.

  “You’re breaking my heart,” the voice said. “Look at you. You can mope with the best of them. Come here. Let me make it better.”

  Nick heard movement, and then the voice said, “There. That’s it. Tighter, fire boy. I’m not gonna break. Put your back into it.”

  Nick trusted Seth with his life. He trusted Seth with his heart. Seth would never do anything to hurt him, at least not intentionally. But today hadn’t been a normal day, even in the life of one Nicholas Bell, which was filled with many abnormal days. Nick was tired, hurt, and more than a little angry.

  So Nick didn’t think he could be blamed for jumping out of the shadows into the alcove, a thunderous expression on his face. He blinked against the bare bulb hanging over a rusty door at the back of the alcove.

  And there, standing in a pool of light, was Pyro Storm, hugging a spectacularly tall woman with brown skin who had to hunch over to wrap her arms around Nick’s boyfriend. Her hair, which hung in shockingly blue curls, bounced as she swayed Pyro Storm back and forth. She wore a leotard of sorts, covered in black sparkly sequins, and killer white boots that rose up to her knees. Her arms were covered in thin metal bangles, and if Nick wasn’t extremely confused, he’d think this stranger had the best costume he’d ever seen.