by Logan Jacobs
“And we’ll rescue the people inside?” I pressed. I always thought that was the most important part of being a hero, but the Shadow Knight rarely brought it up in his plans.
“Obviously,” the Shadow Knight barked and glared at me again. “You don’t need to state the obvious every time.”
“I just wanted to make sure that’s our priority,” I replied.
“We’ll contain the fire with specialized extinguishers,” he continued to explain the basics of whatever plan he’d cooked up on his own. “Coat the walls and floors with the substance as we go. The fire will burn itself out if it can’t spread.”
“Okay,” I said. “We can keep it from spreading, but we can’t save that building, can we?”
“It’s unlikely,” the Shadow Knight replied.
“I hope they have good arsonist insurance,” I joked.
The Shadow Knight ignored that, too. I guessed it wasn’t the right time and place for a joke, but he never replied to any of my quips, so I wasn’t sure why I even bothered. It would help me calm my nerves a lot if he wasn’t so tense all the time, and it would definitely make me feel better if I could hear the guy laugh, even if it was just one time.
That was kind of why I wanted to be part of Miles’ or Dynamo’s teams, or why I had wanted to at least shuffle around just for one mission. I wanted to see what it was like to fight crime with someone who wasn’t a huge stick in the mud. Even though I knew this was a serious job that I had to take seriously, I would explode if I was as tense as my mentor was all the time.
Okay, yeah, and I also wanted to be on Dynamo’s team because she was incredibly damn hot, and I really wanted to try to impress her.
The Shadow Knight skidded the car to a stop without even bothering to park, but I didn’t think anyone would care since the building in front of us was on fire. As I yanked open the door to rush out of the car, another floor exploded into bright, neon-accented flames. I felt the heat against my face even from the ground, and it felt like the asphalt trembled beneath my feet.
A few office workers had arrived and now stood around to uselessly gawk at the fire, but as soon as we stormed toward them, they parted for us.
“Stay back,” the Shadow Knight barked, and the people of Grayville obeyed enough to take a few more steps back. “Further! Evacuate the area and get as far away as you can!”
“We’ve got it handled!” I announced because I thought maybe the civilians could use some reassurance. “So please stay back and let us take care of it. You should all go home and get out of the danger zone.”
The office workers that had arrived all glanced between each other, but they didn’t seem to want to question either of us, so they quickly dispersed. I assumed at least one of them had probably sent out a notice to the rest of the company not to come in, but I also figured the police would arrive soon to set up a blockade so no one could get close.
“Should we call for a fire truck, too?” I asked the Shadow Knight. “I mean, I know it isn’t normal fire, but--”
“There’s no need,” he grunted. “Stop concerning yourself with that. We need to get inside and rescue the remaining workers, so turn on your heat-vision goggles and help me get a better look at where any survivors are.”
I nodded and pulled my goggles down over my eyes. They were equipped with a mild X-ray that showed heat signatures from inside buildings like this one, but it was definitely helpful that the walls of the building were basically floor-to-ceiling windows. Volcan’s mutated fire had a different heat level than a human body, so we could still get an idea of where people might be hidden.
“There!” I pointed up toward the fifth floor, just below the most recent explosion of fire.
“Good,” the Shadow Knight said in a rare show of approval. “We’ll climb the fire escape to get in. It looks like the people there are trapped on the other side of the building, so the floor must have given out.”
“How do we get them across?” I asked as we started off toward the fire escape around the back of the building.
“We’ll have to guide them across,” my mentor shouted above the roar of the flames.
Unlike the front of the building, the back was entirely concrete with only a few windows. As we approached the building, I had to turn my head away to avoid the worst of the heat, but Shadow Knight grabbed the ladder to the fire escape like the heat didn’t bother him at all. As soon as he pulled the ladder down, he started to climb.
“We’ll see how much of the floor has been destroyed,” he called over his shoulder. “We may have to use the grappling hook to help ferry civilians across, so you can help with that.”
“What about Volcan?” I yelled back as I started up the ladder after him.
“It looks like he’s burning the building from the top down,” the Shadow Knight said as he took multiple stairs at a time with a clang of metal. “We start as high as we can get, and then we work our way down.”
I peered upward through my goggles as I climbed, but the higher up the building went, the harder it was to see through all the smoke that clogged the air. With every step I took, the air grew thicker, and the heat from the building was almost enough to knock me off my feet.
“I can’t tell if anyone is trapped on the higher floors,” I shouted.
“We’ll worry about that when we get there,” my mentor growled.
I didn’t really like having to make a decision that might not save everyone, but I had to go along with it for now. Besides, I was too busy trying to put one foot in front of the other as I scaled the ladder, and every time I felt another wave of heat from the flames above us, my heart pounded a little harder inside my chest.
If this was what it felt like outside, how the hell hot was it inside?
“We really have to hurry!” I shouted.
“I know,” the Shadow Knight grunted. “What have I told you about stating the obvious?”
I didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t show him I was nervous anymore, but it felt like I was being thrown into this without a lot of direction. And the higher we climbed and the more suffocating the surrounding air grew, the less sympathy I felt for Volcan. It was hard for me to see him as human or anything but a monster who had destroyed hundreds of lives with his arsonist attacks. I wondered how the Shadow Knight’s code would apply to a villain that killed himself with his own superpowers.
Were we going to rescue him from this burning building, too?
“Pull down your mask,” the Shadow Knight barked.
I pulled down my mask as fast as he did, and the goggles plus the feathered mask with the filter over my mouth made me feel safer. I knew the technology we used was always top notch, but the mouth filter was a little difficult to breathe through, and I still couldn’t see really well, but at least my eyes weren’t watering anymore and I wasn’t breathing in all that smoke.
My crow-masked mentor slammed his shoulder into the door on the fifth floor, and an acrid smoke billowed out of it as it opened. Our masks would protect our eyes and lungs, so we charged into the building at full speed, but almost as soon as we were inside, we skidded to a stop so suddenly that I almost slammed into the Shadow Knight’s back.
The explosions had left a splintered hole through the floor right in front of the fire exit.
I knew there wasn’t any time to waste, so as soon as I recovered my balance, I began to spray the extinguisher strapped to my back around the walls and the floor to coat them with a neon green substance that would prevent the fire from spreading any further. Fire roared in my ears as I sprayed, and the smoke was impossible to see through, but I kept going.
I tried to keep my mind focused on the extinguishing spray, but it was hard not to look at all the destruction around me. The fifth floor was completely ruined, and burnt computers and technology filled the air with an acrid, toxic scent that managed to make it past my mouth filter. I even noticed a few charred bodies that had been melted into the plastic of their chairs from the initial blast.
I resisted the urge to gag and tore my eyes away from the sight so the smoke would hide it.
After I’d finished spraying the room so the fire couldn’t spread anymore, I started to listen for any signs of the trapped office workers. It was hard to hear much over the roar of the flames, but after a few seconds, I was able to hear their screams, so I hurried back toward Shadow Knight.
“I can hear them!” I told my mentor.
“So can I,” the Shadow Knight ground out, and then he unfastened the grappling hook from his belt and shot it so it looped around an exposed pipe on the ceiling.
I copied him without wasting any time, and we both swung across the hole in the floor. Flames licked at my feet as I made the jump, but I landed safely on the other side just after he did, and I tried to wipe the heavy sweat away from my mask so I could see a little better.
“We’ll have to carry anyone who survived on this floor across one by one,” my crow-masked teacher explained over the crushing roar of flames.
“Okay,” I said, even though that was what I had assumed based on what he told me earlier.
We both scanned the room with our heat-vision goggles to find the source of the screams, and after we panned across melted desks and computers, we located the survivors at the same time.
“In the closet,” the Shadow Knight announced. “You rescue them, and I’ll check the next floor for Volcan.”
“Wait!” I shouted. “It’s too dangerous to go through the stairwell! We’ve gotta help these people first!”
“It’s too dangerous for you,” my mentor snapped, “but that’s why you’re helping these people, and I’m going to face Volcan.”
“You can’t just--”
“There might be more trapped civilians higher up,” the Shadow Knight growled. “Just do as I say!”
The Shadow Knight whirled away with a flourish of his feathered cape, and he vanished up the smoky stairwell before I could protest anymore. I hoped he really meant that, and that the civilians were still his first priority. I knew they were, but sometimes part of me wondered if he put his supervillains’ lives over the people he was supposed to protect.
Since I couldn’t argue with him anymore, I just sprinted toward the closet and tore open the door to release the people trapped inside.
“We’re the only ones,” a woman coughed.
I tried to gently guide her out of the closet, but there were some nasty third-degree burns along her hand and up her arm, and I wasn’t sure where to hold her to help her since I didn’t want to make them worse. Once she was out of the closet, I helped the next civilian to his feet, a young man only a few years older than me.
“No, Charlotte and Randy are up on the sixth floor,” the young man said as he tried to shield the burns on his face from the heat all around us.
“O-okay,” I said, but I knew I had to take charge before they panicked. “Stay with me, I’ll get you to safety.”
“Thank you, Silver Squire,” an older man gasped and then coughed from the smoke.
There was another explosion from higher up in the building, and the floor beneath us shook. Burning plaster and debris from the walls and ceiling began to crumble around us, but I held out my arms like that would help prevent anything from landing on the civilians.
This was what it meant to be a hero.
“Okay, follow me,” I said as I led them back toward the hole in the floor.
Another explosion shuddered through the building as we slowly made our way across the floor. More smoke had filled the building, and I could barely see a few feet in front of me, but I still managed to lead the civilians back the way I’d come in.
When we passed the charred and melted bodies of their coworkers, one of the women collapsed into shrieked, wordless sobs on my shoulder. From her blubbered crying, I could make out that one of them had been her boyfriend, and that they’d come to work early together because they were supposed to go on vacation later that week. Since she wouldn’t let go of me, I carried her across the hole in the floor first and hurried her outside onto the fire escape.
“I can’t go on without him,” she sobbed as she sank down against the railing.
I wasn’t sure what to do or what to say to her, so I just turned back inside to help the others get across. One by one, I swung the rest of the office workers through the flames and across the giant hole in the floor to get them all safely to the fire escape. Each one of them clung to me like I was their only lifeline, and all I could think about was that if Volcan had died in one of his own fires instead of escaping from prison, then this never would have happened and all these people would still be safe. That woman could have gone on her vacation with her boyfriend who’d still be alive, and these people would have had a completely normal day.
Once we were all on the fire escape, I helped each civilian climb down the ladder until we reached the police officers who had surrounded the building by now. Then I passed them all off to the cops, even the woman who kept going back and forth between sobs and coughs. Once I’d made sure they were all safe, I turned back to the building and climbed up the fire escape again, this time to the sixth floor where the Shadow Knight was.
I found him as he was helping two more office workers down the fire escape, and I wondered why I felt so relieved to see that. I helped them down and then even though the sweat poured off of me from the heat and all the continuous climbing, I hurried right back up to where the Shadow Knight lingered on the platform to the sixth floor.
Flames burst free from one of the side windows with a searing heat that both me and the Shadow Knight had to duck and hide our faces from. As the flames fell back a little, I glanced up to scan the rest of the floors through the smoke. From what I could tell, there weren’t any human heat signatures left in the building other than Volcan’s on the very top floor.
“Is that all of them?” I asked. “Did we save everyone?”
“There’s one more,” the Shadow Knight replied as he stared upward. “Volcan.”
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
“We have to get Volcan out,” my mentor growled.
The building shook so violently that even the metal of the fire escape rattled under our feet, and I didn’t think it would last through many more eruptions.
“Why?” I demanded. “Why do we have to save him? This entire building is about to collapse, and he’s the one who did this! Besides, look at the building-- we’ll definitely die if we go back in!”
“We cannot stand here and let him die,” the Shadow Knight ground out with his teeth clenched.
“No way,” I said. “I’m not going back in there for him.”
“You know what’ll happen if we don’t follow the code,” the crow-masked hero replied in a dark tone. “If we can save someone, we need to save them. I will not leave him to die in there.”
“But that asshole started this!” I exclaimed as I held up my arm to block my face from the burning heat. “He did this! It’s his fault this entire building is burning to the ground, and it’s his fault that people died! He killed them!”
“That means nothing,” the Shadow Knight growled. “He can still be saved.”
“He’s a murderer!” I shouted. “I’m not risking my life for a murderer, and you shouldn’t either!”
“You’re a disgrace,” the crow-masked man snarled at me.
My mentor’s eyes suddenly lit up with a fury that I’d never seen before, and for a moment, I thought he might leap forward to attack me, but before he could move or say anything else, there was a sudden explosion directly above us as the concrete cracked and splintered.
A bald head poked free from the new hole in the wall. I raised my arms above my head and jumped to the side to avoid the falling concrete debris, but my forearms were pelted by bits of ash that scorched even through my supersuit.
“Oh, Shadow Knight!” the bald man called down at us in a completely deranged voice. “Come, come, join me in the beautiful, wondrous flames! We c
an drown in it together, just you and me!”
He disappeared back into the building with another vibrant burst of flames that burned hot against my skin. I ducked again to cover my face, and when I looked up, the Shadow Knight was no longer even looking at me. Instead, he frantically scanned the inside of the building like he was still trying to hunt down Volcan.
It felt like everything was playing out in slow motion around me. I knew the Shadow Knight was about to charge in after Volcan at the risk of his own life, and I knew he wanted me to do the same, but the idea was so absurd that it struck me as downright ridiculous.
I’d had a lot of time to think about the Shadow Knight and his methods compared to Miles’ during the past twenty-four hours. I didn’t know if Miles was totally right because I wasn’t sure if every single supervillain deserved to die or if the excessive violence he used was always necessary. I also didn’t know if every supervillain was beyond redemption because maybe there were a few that could be helped in the right circumstances. I wanted to give everyone a chance.
But at the same time, I wasn’t stupid, and I knew that the Shadow Knight’s code definitely wasn’t always right.
I had signed up to be a hero, not someone who saved a supervillain at the risk of my own life. If there were civilians still left inside that building, I would have considered it worth my time to go back in and help them. That was what we were trying to do, wasn’t it? Why didn’t it ever feel like the Shadow Knight put civilian lives above his obsession with not killing any of the villains?
Somewhere along the line, he must have gotten lost.
“Silver Squire!” Shadow Knight barked.
The world snapped back into focus around me, and I glanced from my mentor to the building and back. The crow-masked man held the steel fire escape door open with one hand, while black smoke billowed out all around him.
“We’re going in,” he growled.
“No,” I whispered.
“What did you say?” the Shadow Knight demanded.
“I said no!” I shouted. “No, I won’t do it!”
“Get it together, or I’ll find a new sidekick!” my mentor barked.
