Pacific Fire

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “You scare me sometimes,” Daniel said.

  “That’s just because you don’t know what hard work looks like.”

  “It looks awful.”

  “Don’t be an aristocrat, Daniel. It’s ugly.”

  They climbed through the chasm Moth had made with Daniel’s weak help and emerged inside a latrine. The tile walls echoed with the sharp ringing of alarm bells. Hiding behind a doorway, they watched a patrol of guards jog past.

  Some carried firearms, others cleaver-clubs or lances tipped with serrated teeth. All wore black shirts and trousers, tucked into boots. Otis’s guys usually wore suits, so Daniel assumed Sister Tooth was providing security.

  Daniel disliked the prospect of knocking out guards just to steal their uniforms. For one thing, it left you with the burden of finding an out-of-the-way place to stash their unconscious deadweight, and unconscious deadweight was heavy. Even more burdensome, you didn’t really want to permanently injure or kill anyone.

  Unless you did.

  In which case, everything became much simpler.

  A pair of guards met each other in the hallway. The smaller of the two was about Daniel’s size. The larger one was bigger than Daniel, but still four inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than Moth.

  “What’s going on. Break-in?” asked the bigger guy.

  “More like a break-out. The livestock we were holding upstairs got out of their cells.”

  “I didn’t even know we were holding livestock. For leeching, I guess?”

  The smaller guy shrugged. “Not my department. They had Beaumont watching them.”

  “Beau-moron? No wonder they got out. So what’s the big deal? There’s no way they’re getting off the island.”

  “Bells ring, we scramble; that’s all I know. Get your team and head upstairs.”

  “Aye aye,” the bigger guy said, long-suffering.

  Daniel exhaled with relief. They weren’t looking for him and Moth. And, better yet, they weren’t looking for Sam. The “livestock” were just a convenient distraction. Or, if Sam had actually paid attention when Daniel lectured him on heistcraft, maybe a deliberate distraction.

  Moth pinched the cloth of his shirt and gave Daniel a questioning look.

  Daniel nodded.

  They stepped out into the hallway. There was less than a second of surprised hesitation from the guards, which was enough for Moth to drop both of them in one-armed chokeholds.

  Minutes later, Daniel was comfortable in a slightly-too-roomy uniform, and Moth was grinding his teeth, trying to button his trousers.

  Several pairs of footsteps sounded down the corridor, coming closer.

  “Kill them?” Moth mouthed.

  “Hold off,” Daniel mouthed back.

  He knelt and covered the stripped and unconscious guards’ faces with his hands and thought back to the first time he’d tasted sint holo bone. It had been prepared by his father, scalding hot from the kettle, refined well enough to render Daniel invisible and enable him to walk right past the men who were busy cutting his father to pieces on the living room floor.

  He used remnants of his father’s gift that still remained in his cells, pushing it through the palms of his hands.

  “Hurry,” Moth whispered.

  Five guards arrived, halting before Daniel and Moth. A tall woman with gray hair stepped forward.

  “What’s this?” she said, looking from the guards sprawled on the floor to Daniel and Moth.

  “Two of the livestock,” reported Daniel crisply. “Looks like they were trying to exit through the cave.”

  She looked them over, her eyes slightly glazed. “Are they still alive?”

  “Yeah. We managed to take them down with nonlethal force. I don’t think they’re feeding them much upstairs. Should we take them back?”

  The woman sluggishly brought her attention back to Daniel and Moth. She peered into their faces, regaining her focus.

  “Good work,” the woman said. “Take them to Storage B, and then join up with your team. We’ve got to get the rest of these cows rounded up. Sister Tooth doesn’t want any delays.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She led her team off, but stopped and turned around several yards down the corridor.

  “You,” she said, aiming a sharp finger at Moth.

  Daniel tensed.

  “Your pants are undone.”

  “Sorry,” Moth said. But she was no longer listening. She turned and jogged away while Moth heroically tried to meet button to buttonhole.

  “Moth, quit futzing with your pants and help me figure out how to get to the power plant from here.”

  “Did you see the look on her face? Like I was the worst, slobbiest guard she’d ever seen. Like I’m not super-overqualified to work here.”

  The power plant was the first target. Cutting the facility’s power would mean no alarms, no surveillance cameras, and no lights—an even better distraction than escaped prisoners. Since the power was still on, that meant Sam and Em hadn’t gotten here yet. Or else they had but something prevented them from getting the job done. Which suggested any number of bad possibilities.

  “Moth…”

  “I tell you one thing, there wouldn’t be any escaped prisoners running around if I was in charge of this place.”

  “Moth!”

  “Find where the power cables come out and follow them back to their source.”

  The alarm bells finally stopped clanging. Either all the prisoners had been accounted for, or else everyone who needed to know they’d escaped knew. Some of the guards and sentries would be returning to their normal stations.

  “Grab ’em and let’s go,” Daniel told Moth.

  Moth hoisted an incapacitated guard on each of his shoulders and followed Daniel down corridors carved from the rock. They came to a door, behind which hummed air handlers or some other equipment. A young man came out with a tool belt and gray overalls. He looked surprised to see Daniel, and when his eyes fell on Moth and his now-moaning cargo, he made a startled hiccup.

  “Can we stash these guys in here?” Daniel asked quickly. “Or are you still working?

  “No, no, I’m done. Uh … you want to leave them in here?”

  “Just temporary until the holding pens are secure. But if you need to be going in and out, we can find somewhere else.”

  “No, it’s fine. I gotta go reset some alarm boxes. Man, the infrastructure here … I’m telling you, if I was in charge—”

  “That’s exactly what I was just saying,” Moth said. “Hey, you got a safety pin, by any chance? I got a problem with my pants.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No sweat,” Moth said, despondent.

  The technician left them alone, and Moth dumped the guards on the ground and proceeded to duct tape their wrists, ankles, and lips.

  Daniel found a fuse box, with conduit branching to the bare stone ceiling. There was no open vent, but the blade of his shinjin-mushi knife would dissolve the rock like a seltzer tablet.

  “Hey,” Moth said as Daniel climbed up on a junction box to reach the ceiling.

  “Yeah?”

  “I know this is serious shit, but I’m having fun. You know?”

  Daniel wasn’t having fun. He was too worried about Sam to have fun. But having Moth with him helped make the worry something he could push back so he could keep moving forward. He grinned at his friend.

  “I know.”

  * * *

  It was slow going in the shaft. Like the rest of the complex, it was carved from the bare stone, most likely by the Hierarch himself, and it gave Moth only enough room to pass without scraping his head too often.

  They followed the thickest of the power cables, and though they took some false turns, Daniel got the sense they were moving deeper into the complex. After a while, he stopped following cables and instead followed scents. His nose detected odd things—the aromas of magma, of pressures ascending from tremendous, subterranean depths. He smelled kraken storm, muc
h brighter than any he’d ever smelled before. And also, dim traces of osteomancy that smelled like Sam. Most strangely, he caught a whiff of something that reminded him of himself. It was like looking at a mirror in a darkened room.

  They turned a corner, and Daniel found himself facing a woman with a bayonet.

  In the dark, Daniel had a difficult time focusing on her. Her aroma was confusing. Some kind of sint holo essence in her clothes, he suspected. But he recognized her face—the thin blade of a nose, the gray eyes, the cheeks, narrowing down to a mouth that seemed set in a mocking half smile.

  “You’re an Emma,” he said. “You’re Em.”

  Her eyes widened a little. “And you’re Daniel Blackland.” She didn’t lower her weapon.

  From behind her in the shaft, like a light emerging from a cave, came Sam.

  Over the past few days, Daniel had thought about what he’d do when he found him. In some scenarios, he was too late, and he was mourning over Sam’s body. He was building a fire with the hottest flame he could summon to make sure nobody would ever consume his boy’s magic. In others he was screaming himself red in the face over Sam’s reckless disregard for self-preservation. Daniel had given up ten years of his life trying to keep him safe, only to have Sam traipse into his enemies’ stronghold.

  “You’re alive,” whispered Sam, and he rushed at Daniel and wrapped his arms around him, and Daniel returned his embrace, and his tears of relief fell into Sam’s hair.

  And he could already feel his cells awakening, nourishing themselves on Sam’s magic.

  Sam pushed him away.

  He felt it, too.

  * * *

  The reunion was brief and consisted mostly of exchanging pertinent information. Like Daniel and Moth, Sam and Em were trying to make their way to the power plant. From there, they would get to the firedrake hangar and poison the dragon in utero.

  “Looks like you’re just in time to join us,” Sam said.

  “I didn’t come here to destroy the dragon, Sam. I came here to get you.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Moth said.

  Everyone turned toward him.

  “Moth—”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel, but that’s not true. Each one of us is here by our own choice. If Sam and Em want to get off the island, that’s fine, I’m all for it, I will lead the way home. But none of us gets to withhold from the others. Team, right?”

  Sam fixed Daniel with an unyielding stare. Maybe it was the light, or the tension between them, or the ordeals he’d suffered coming here, but his face looked older, leaner, harsher. He looked more like what he actually was: a younger version of the Hierarch.

  “What are you not telling me, Daniel?”

  There was a lot he wasn’t telling him. But now wasn’t the time for confessions. Focus on the job, Daniel told himself.

  He reached into his bag for the small jar of bone.

  “It’s a coagulant,” he said. “I stole it from Mother Cauldron. It’ll kill anything. Or almost anything. Maybe a firedrake.”

  Sam held his hand out. “If you’re not willing to use it, then let me have it.”

  Daniel slipped it back into his bag. “What if we make a deal?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of deal?”

  “I don’t want Otis or Sister Tooth to have a Pacific firedrake any more than you do. But the only thing I want even less is for them to have you.”

  “Okay? So?”

  “You get off the island, and I’ll slay the dragon.”

  Sam’s expression softened, just a little. “No,” he said gently.

  “Just think for a minute, Sam. This way, we both get what we want. No more weapon of mass destruction, and I don’t have to lose sleep wondering what else I could have done to keep you alive.”

  “No.”

  “Sam—”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel. Please listen to me. Ten years ago, you charged into the Hierarch’s castle and found me. One minute you had no idea I existed. And the next minute you devoted yourself to protecting me. You didn’t raise me on stupid notions of heroism. You just showed me that when people do stupid things for the right reasons, sometimes they can live with themselves. Well, millions of people need me to do a stupid thing, and I need to do it, too.”

  All it would take was one strong kraken jolt to the center of Sam’s chest. Enough to stop his heart. And then hydra regenerative and eocorn to keep him alive. Moth could haul him out, the Emma could go with them, and Daniel could finish the dragon business alone.

  “There’s something else you’re not telling me,” Sam said.

  And here it was. Daniel forced himself to look at the boy.

  “Did you know?” Sam asked him.

  “No,” Daniel said, his whisper in the stone tunnel like a weak exhalation. “Not until you were already gone. I really didn’t. I would never knowingly consume your magic, Sam. Please believe me.”

  Sam nodded sadly.

  Daniel reached to ruffle his hair, just like he did when Sam was small. And just like Daniel’s father did when Daniel was small.

  Sam stepped away. “Don’t,” he said.

  Em and Moth watched all this. Discomfort and love was evident on both their faces.

  “The power plant’s this way,” Em said. “And we’re all going together.”

  Moth offered her his hand.

  “I’m Moth, by the way.”

  “Em.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a safety pin?”

  She rummaged in her bag and found one.

  “Em,” Moth said, fixing his pants, “I’m fed up with everyone on this team but you.”

  * * *

  Daniel peered through the vent, thirty feet down to the power-plant floor. There were two entrances, one at either end of the room, each manned by a pair of guards. Curiously, he spotted none of the surveillance cameras he expected. He supposed since this wasn’t a shop or casino there was no reason to keep cameras hidden. Or maybe something about the environment made cameras inoperable.

  Next, he took in the cables and steel latticework and apparatus, like the guts of a giant radio. He located the transformers, the circuit breakers, and control equipment. There was a ring of six glass tubes the size of phone booths set on a raised concrete platform. Cables snaked from the bottoms of the tubes through a gap in the floor, presumably a cable tunnel. The glass was darkened, and Daniel didn’t know what the tubes’ function was, but he wasn’t sure he needed to. The equipment was pretty densely packed, and it wouldn’t take much finesse to bring the whole place down. A few clusters of salamander-resin charges ought to do the trick.

  So, drop a few rukh eggs to stun the guards, rope-ladder down to the floor, place the charges, grab the ladder, and have Moth pull him up before things went boom. Simple, violent, and nice.

  A sharp scream cut through the noise. The tubes flared, illuminating human forms inside: six people, naked, suspended in standing positions by brackets under their arms. Their flesh was punctured by wires that fed into coiled devices at their feet. Arcs of lightning played over their skin, and they jittered and screamed. Daniel’s cells responded, sending spikes of pain from the depths of his bones to the surface. His head flooded with scents of brine, with the delicious rot of the ocean floor and the fearful moans of fleeing sperm whales. The facility was being powered by kraken storms induced from the osteomancers inside the tubes.

  Whenever Daniel thought he’d encountered all the ways in which Otis used people, Otis never failed to come up with a new twist. This had his fingerprints all over it, using osteomancers as human resources.

  Should have killed him, Daniel thought. Should have killed him before he teamed up with Sister Tooth and his other collaborators, before he got his hands on a Pacific firedrake skull. Should have killed Otis a long time ago. Because Otis might be wrapped up in the back of Cassandra’s van where he couldn’t pull strings, but there wasn’t much comfort in that. Otis had already pulled all the strings he needed.
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br />   Daniel turned to his companions. “We have a problem. They’re powering this place with human kraken batteries. We blow the plant up, we kill six people.”

  Sam nudged Daniel aside to get a better look. “I thought Argent was supplying electricity. Why’s he using an osteomantic power source?”

  “This isn’t Argent. This is Otis.”

  “Of course it is,” Moth said. “What’s the procedure, then?”

  “No salamander charges,” Sam said. “Not until we disconnect the batteries.”

  Daniel found himself feeling proud of him. “Agreed.”

  They quickly sketched out a revised plan. Regrettably, it would entail more risk than simply blowing the shit out of the place.

  Daniel cut through the vent grate with his shinjin knife.

  “Shut your eyes and hide your faces.”

  In rapid succession, he lit and dropped three rukh eggs to the floor. Searing-hot daggers of light struck his eyes through closed eyelids. Cracks of close-distance thunder punished his ears.

  “Everyone still alive?” he said, blinking away spots.

  They all were, though Moth professed to not be sure.

  Below, the guards were rolling around on the floor and looking generally miserable and nonlethal. That wouldn’t last, and the commotion of rukh thunder would probably bring more reenforcements. So things from here would have to move quickly.

  The team descended the rope ladder, except for Moth, who remained in the shaft, ready to haul them back up. Spreading out, Em and Sam went to disarm the stunned guards and bind them up with duct tape. Daniel made for the glass tubes.

  His skin prickled as he approached, even though the tubes had gone dark and quiet. He spent a few seconds examining the various connections and mechanisms and decided he didn’t have time to understand them. He chose a tube at random and drew monocerus essence from his cells. The skin of his right hand burned and cracked and turned gray, and he hissed in pain as armored plating formed over his knuckles. He pulled back his fist and drove it through the glass. Shards fell with a musical scream.

  Daniel at first mistook the man inside for a child. He barely reached five feet, and his eyes looked too big for his head.