The Nuclear Winter

by Brian Thompson

  “Why do you want to pass?”

  I stood and tossed my chair aside. Heat seeped along my neck and the front of my chest, and the bodysuit’s cooling system did little to fight it. Neither did I. The bracelet weighed on me. Digging my thumb beneath it, I yanked and pulled, but it had locked shut. “I quit,” I shouted. “I’m not playing anymore. Don’t try to make me.”

  Susan’s voice didn’t raise or waver. “Natalee Gupta.”

  I cursed her and flung my arms in the air to overcome the bracelet’s control and burn everything to cinders. “No!”

  She invited me to sit. I crossed my arms and tapped my foot instead. Whatever I had to do to escape this room I would do even if it meant hearing whatever nonsense she’d come to understand about me. The trash receptacle in my brain had been full of advice from teachers, counselors, therapists, police officers, and general adults about what I needed to do. What was one more person pointing out what was wrong with me and advising how to fix it?

  When Susan said Natalee’s name one more time, I broke down into tears. All I could think about was how Nat had gotten shot and how I hadn’t prevented it. I said the words out loud. “Guilty.” I sobbed. “Helpless. Dead. My fault. Responsible. Are you happy?”

  She handed me a box of facial tissues. I took one and dabbed at my eyes.

  “Why do you think it’s your fault, Lucy, when you were under duress and unable to control the fire?”

  “Because…what kind of good can I do out there if I can’t even save my best friend?”

  “There are eight billion people on the planet right now,” she told me. “A few million in this state. Somebody, somewhere, is going to need help, and you’re not going to be able to give it to them. That’s not your fault or theirs. People die, Lucy. You have to be able to cope with the inability to save everyone.”

  I continued sobbing. “I don’t know if Nat’s alive or dead. Do you?”

  Of course, Susan didn’t. She couldn’t tell me if she did. Therapists and doctors were sworn to confidentiality unless they felt you were a danger to yourself. And with this bracelet on, I wasn’t a threat to anyone. I’d gone through enough tissues for the time being. I offered her my wrist. “Are we done here, Susan?” I sniffed.

  She tapped her ear to complete recording and unlocked my bracelet. My energy level immediately spiked. “I have enough information to render a decision, yes.”

  “Which is?”

  Her shoulders sagged, and she exhaled. “Do you want to go into the field, Lucy?”

  I gave her my best response. “Yeah. My parents want me to, don’t they?”

  “All right. Say you’re in the field.”

  “Okay.”

  “One of your enemies is threatening to kill Natalee. Another enemy says he is going to kill me, a woman you barely know, and you can only save one of us. Who do you save?”

  My heart said Natalee, without a doubt, but my brain said Susan. Then, Susan added more qualifiers — only I could save either of them, and she had two young sons at home. That made Susan the right choice, didn’t it? But I loved Natalee. She was my best friend, my only friend. How could I let her die and have her family mourn both her and Mr. Gupta?

  Of course, under pressure, I’d go with my heart. Anyone would. And, I’d leave two boys without their mother. Either choice was impossible and cruel. She knew that when she posed the question. There was one truly fair but heartless answer. The words hurt to say, but I forced them out. “I do nothing. You both die. And I cut myself to deal with the pain. Is that what you wanted?”

  Susan’s blue eyes widened. I’d shocked and surprised her. Wasn’t what I was going for, but who cared? It was an answer, and my evaluation was over. She tenderly reached out to me. “Lucy…”

  The tears were already falling. “No. I’ve failed, and now, I can be normal, right?”

  I ran out of the corridor. Susan called after me, but by then, I was down the hallway. She followed me, but the click of her heels slowed when she couldn’t see me. I’d rounded a corner and ducked behind a wall. After a couple more steps, her shoes tapped against the floor in the opposite direction. I’d lost her. She’d finally given up on me.

  Evaluations like hers were why I never cared about tests.

  Try or not, I always failed them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In case Susan doubled back, I smashed my body against the door. That way, I’d only be visible to a person immediately in front of me. My breathing slowed enough for me to hear faint tapping at the metal. Slowly, I turned. A pair of crazed brown eyes stared at me through the open window. The heavy locks grinded open, and I conjured fireballs, unsure of the horrors on the other side.

  Standing in the center of the room, Kendel greeted me. “Welcome to Training Room Four.”

  Incredible. I’d run away to the one place I didn’t want to be. After extinguishing my hands, I examined my surroundings. The area was much smaller than the other training room — narrower with a lower ceiling. The floor had a rugged, grooved texture I felt through my shoes. My body craved rest or an escape from expectations to produce results. I’d not get any of that here. The one exit I knew about had locked.

  Looked like the only way out was through.

  Kendel dropped a holographic display in front of me and manipulated its definition — the results of my body scan. “Before you get into the field, you need to know the fullness of your powers. Her armor crawled across her and formed a shiny second skin. The texture looked lighter and more flexible than mine. “Watch it, and then, try and hit me.”

  The presentation started with a diagnostic description of my powers using words, like: thermodynamic, nuclear, propulsion and antigravity, concussive fission and fusion, and access to the radioactive spectrum. The rest were terms I needed a college degree to pronounce[XW108].

  What I understood was that I was a walking, talking, thinking nuclear reactor with the untapped ability to fly. My flame blasts weren’t radioactive unless I wanted them to be. In that case, anything I touched would have an undetermined half-life. And my powers were inextricably linked to my cancer.

  Use my abilities and no bone cancer. Skip the powers and die.

  Got it.

  I squeezed my fists tight and felt power course through my veins. The next part was strategy. I’d be moving through a simulation cityscape with panicking civilians and powered aggressors. Protect the civilians. Eliminate the aggressors. Seemed easy enough.

  Kendel lifted the hologram, and I viewed the realistic downtown area. Transports had been overturned, civilians ran, screaming, and the aggressors weren’t obvious until they made threatening gestures. Before I processed everything that was going on, a teleporter slashed my neck with an intangible knife, ending the simulation. I’d forgotten to reactivate my suit.

  “Stop!” Kendel yelled. Her irritation put me on alert. “Are you ready now?”

  My suit slithered over my clothes. “Yes.”

  This time, I was prepared for the knife-slashing teleporter, but he did not appear. I stepped forward with fireballs at the ready. A trio of civilians at my right screamed for me to help. Chasing them was the teleporter, who noticed me and disappeared and then reappeared in my face. Bursts of flames erupted from my eyes and vaporized him. At my feet was a pile of blackened ash. I reminded myself this was just practice and moved on. Using my eyes worked better for crippling small targets with accuracy.

  I zapped everybody who I thought would cause a problem, until I came to a police officer who fired her Ordnance at my chest. The armor shielded me from the brunt of the blasts, but they hurt like a small bee swarm stinging my chest. I threw a shock of fire with enough force to send her through a storefront window but not kill her.

  Then, Natalee rushed to my side and grabbed my wrist. “Sandoval!”

  We embraced, and I didn’t want to let go. “What are you doing here?”

  Nat stabbed me in the shoulder with a knife — a real knife. I gasped as the blade exited th
e wound and blood soaked my clothes. Before she had a chance to strike again, I sent flames all over my body, and the knife clattered to the floor. Around me, the simulation faded, and Kendel shapeshifted from my best friend to her original form. Her mask melted away from her face, and I sensed real fear in her eyes over my reaction to being stabbed.

  I growled at her. Fire suppression steam hissed around me. I thought of it as a dare to outlast it, and my anger fueled my ability to do so. Though my fire had dampened a little, it was still an inferno. She’d used my guilt against me, and she’d pay for that.

  “Back it down, Lucy,” she begged me. “You’re compromising the integrity of the building. You’ll kill us.”

  “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before sticking a knife into me.”

  The air cooked with heat. Kendel sprinted toward the exit, and I sent a ceiling high wall of flame to block her. She started this, and she’d have to end it. “Enough, Lucy,” she told me, holding an object I couldn’t see in her left palm. “You were supposed to block my blow. Control it.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” I asked her.

  “Then your parents will lose their only child.”

  Could she do that? She spoke as if it was a definite possibility, like the object in her hand was some sort of protection against what I could do. I flamed out. Then, the pain from the stab wound heightened. I’d probably need stitches to get the flesh to close.

  The damages I’d caused around me were considerable. For one, I straddled a gaping hole in the floor. I’d burned clean through, and I had been levitating above the piping and insulation beneath me. My armor was smoking everywhere, and I was afraid to retract it because I had probably torched my clothes. If that weren’t enough, much of the ceiling had caught fire and fallen to the ground in blackened, wet lumps, and the door to the room had melted shut.

  We were trapped.

  At my foot was the knife stained with my blood. Kendel and I breathed heavily and stared at one another. I wouldn’t be the first one to speak, but if I had any choice in the matter, the last word belonged to me. The throbbing in my back worsened. Stinging wetness oozed down my back. I dropped to the floor in pain and gritted my teeth.

  “Deactivate your armor[XW109] so I can examine your wound.”

  And give her an opportunity to finish the job? No way. I’d stall until we were found and rescued, and then I’d drop my guard. I told her what she could do to herself. The heads-up display under my mask analyzed the damage to my shoulder. The blade had come close to severing a nerve. That explained the burning numbness and why I didn’t want to move the fingers on my left hand. Kendel moved closer, and I kept her at bay with the threat of a fireball. “Come any closer” — I grunted — “I’ll turn you to ash.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  When she approached me, I tried manipulating the heat in my hand into a deadlier version. The agony in my shoulder blocked my concentration. Soon, the fireball flickered and extinguished. Nothing worked to reignite it. Kendel knew exactly how to incapacitate me — shapeshift into a person I loved to get close to me and wound me in a way to block my powers. I didn’t get it. Not only did she sound like Nat she smelled and moved like her, too. She’d shadowed me for God knows how long. There was no telling what she’d seen and heard and practiced how to do. Whoever they were fighting against out there could have similar strategies.

  Kendel manually deactivated my armor,[XW110] and, as I feared, my powers had incinerated my clothes to shreds. It didn’t take her long to examine my shoulder and arrive at the same conclusion I had. She clamped her right hand over the wound to staunch the bleeding. “We need help.”

  Obviously. I eyed the melted metal clump blocking our exit. “Push the door open.”

  “I can’t. The director will be here soon enough.”

  Fire extinguisher fluid dripped from the ceiling sprinklers onto the floor. The tapping drove me nuts, so I played along with small talk. “How do you think he’ll feel when he finds out you stabbed his only daughter and threatened to kill her?”

  Her hand squeezed a little harder, and I winced in pain. “It’s my responsibility to get you ready for the field. He doesn’t question Susan’s methods. He shouldn’t question mine.”

  “Then don’t stab people!” I shouted.

  Kendel switched hands. The fingers on her right hand dripped with blood — my blood. I started feeling woozy and nauseated[XW111]. The loss was getting to me. “Too bad Liam isn’t…” I slurred. “H-he could have…as much…as he wants.”

  With a hand wave, she summoned a portion of the wall the size of a suitcase that floated over to us. Many of her quick movements were hard to track, but the wall unit had compartments, and Kendel had no trouble accessing what she needed. She cooled and numbed the stab wound with a swab and injection and forced four staples into my flesh. I heard the metal click and snap into place and felt the separated parts of my skin knit back together.

  Following that, she swabbed the area clean and handed me a large vitamin. “Chew this,” she said. “It’ll increase your blood pressure and production. The shot will suture the muscle and nerve damage. You’ll be sore for a day or so.”

  I did as she told me to do and immediately noticed the difference in how I felt. Energized, I reactivated my suit and got to my feet. As I did, I noticed the simulation had restarted and the hole I’d burned into the floor had almost reconstructed itself.

  “Shapeshifters must be convincing imitations,” she said. “I watched the real Claire Elizabeth Allen, day in and day out, for two weeks before assuming her identity. I had to know every detail from her preferences in men and makeup down to her favorite chai tea blend. Our enemies study us, too. They may even know our armor’s weakness above the arm.”

  I hadn’t been keeping time, but [XW112]a considerable amount of time had passed, and there had been no rescue efforts. “Do you know how many of us got injured our first time in the field? Ninety-seven percent.”

  No way. “Even — ”

  “The director is near invulnerable, so we don’t count him.”

  This — me losing control, the stabbing, the patching up — it was all part of her plan? Betrayed and infuriated at the same time, I cursed at her and asked why she hadn’t healed me sooner.

  Kendel did not seem bothered in the least. She sent the wall piece back into place and masked up. “When supplies are available, they take an average of four minutes and thirty-six seconds to arrive without a teleporter for extraction. I gave you treatment thirty seconds early. You were bleeding too much.”

  Things started to come together. She’d told the truth about leaving the training room. I was stuck here no matter what I did. “Nobody’s coming to free us, are they?” I asked her.

  “Not when they see my name on the simulation room log. Not even if I call for them.”

  How were we supposed to get out? My face must have conveyed my confusion.

  Kendel pointed to the imaginary cityscape’s end. The only way out was through.

  “Now, concentrate. Make it hot,” she said to me, gasping. “Level down the kRads[XW113].”

  Focusing on the melted wad of metal blocking the exit, I shot a tunnel of flame from my hands. I bored through quickly to minimize the smoke curling from the hole. By the end of the fifth time, we’d been through the full simulation, I’d become adept at adjusting the radioactivity levels of the flames, their dimensions, colors, and intensity. I couldn’t fly, though. A moment, thirty seconds of subconscious levitation, was the best I could do.

  Kendel’s double-barreled-Ordnance-under-the-chin-style training got me this far. I wouldn’t call us friends though. Less than enemies and unlike strangers worked for me. Once the liquefied [XW114]metal stopped dripping onto itself, we stepped through the opening and into the hall. The passageway reeked of burnt metal and sweat. Okay, the sweat was probably ours. We’d exercised for hours, and I was so hungry I swore I could’ve eaten for a day straight.

 
; She cracked a dirty joke about how our suits must smell, and I smiled. She’d been a jerk to me for most of the time I’d known her, and I hated that I didn’t hate her anymore. My father had been the one to push Kendel onto me, and perhaps, he knew more about me than I thought he did. With Zhang, I might’ve “girled” my way out of being useful to anyone. With her training me, the possibility of getting to Nat myself? Not an impossibility.

  Kendel’s wrist beeped with an urgent-sounding alarm. She tapped it with her finger twice. A white beam streamed from her arm into her right eye.

  “What is it?”

  She waved me off with her hand until she had a chance to process the information. Then, without a word, she broke into a full run ahead of me. Whatever was going on, it had to be serious. I struggled to keep her sprinter’s pace, but I followed her into the armory. There, she pointed me to the center aisle, third row, first locker, and told me to wait. A panel verified my identity and popped open. The inside had fresh sets of clothes, a new bodysuit disk, and a couple things I didn’t recognize.

  “Your suit is damaged,” she said from a distance. “Change.”

  She unlocked her own bodysuit disk and shed the clothes I’d singed. I’d never seen a naked woman besides my mother, and she was far leaner and muscular than her. I redirected my attention to my own situation. My body had a terrible smell — like body odor and ashes — but there was no time to remedy it. I changed, closed my locker, and met up with Kendel. She kept a pace closer to jogging this time. After not moving for a few minutes, my legs were liquid.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked her, nearly out of breath. “Silence on my comms.”

  After fanning her hand at me and waiting a beat, she said, “It’s on another, secure channel — Liam survived, and he located the cave.”

  Okay, that wasn’t much to go on. “What cave?”

  She didn’t answer me until we were in the staging area — a large, round room where my parents, Zhang, and every other person in this place had gathered. There weren’t many people — twenty or so — I kept losing count trying to catch my wind. All were masked and of similar height, which made it harder to tell who I had already counted.