Firestarter

by Tara Sim

  But this time, there was no tower.

  The space was empty.

  Brandon paced near the crowd. When he saw Danny, he raced over and made to take his arm, but Danny yanked it away and dove into the throng.

  A few people turned and recognized him. They nudged their neighbors and the crowd parted before him. When Danny finally reached the front, his breath caught.

  The tower was in ruins. It lay in a mound of rubble, dust still floating in the air from broken mortar and plaster. The minute hand stuck out from the wreckage like a black arrow, pointing accusingly at the sky. Glass lay in millions of shards and fragments, glittering like discarded diamonds, crunching beneath Danny’s boots.

  The mayor stood off to one side, speaking to a boy. Or rather, the ghost of a boy. Colton was nearly see-through, flickering just as Big Ben had. Mayor Aldridge noticed Danny, and like the others, quietly stepped aside to let him by.

  Danny met Colton’s eyes. The spirit smiled, but it was one of his small, sad smiles, one that tried to preserve whatever strength he had left into the tender curve of his mouth.

  “You let go,” Colton said. Even his voice was faded. “You did as you were told. For once.”

  Danny couldn’t stop staring at the rubble that had been Colton’s tower. “We … We can rebuild it. We can start right now.” A new hope, bright and painful, burned in his chest. “We have to get a carpenter, and—and that bloody ironworker, what was his name?—but we have to start right now. We don’t have much time.”

  “No, Danny.” Those two words doused the hope that had flared so suddenly within him. “You have all the time in the world, now. But I have none left.”

  Danny shook his head. “No. No, there can still … I can’t …”

  Colton flickered. He lifted a hand and put it on Danny’s cheek, or tried to. His fingers passed through him, fog and dust and the memory of starlight. “The best decision I ever made was showing myself to you.”

  “Stop,” Danny pleaded.

  “When I think about what could have happened if I hadn’t, if I had just stayed lonely and forgotten in my tower …” Colton glanced down at the remains of that tower. “It was all worth it, Danny. Every minute. Because I had you.”

  “Don’t,” Danny whispered. “Don’t talk that way.”

  “You have to promise me, Danny. Promise you’ll live for me.”

  Danny shook his head, but it passed right through Colton’s hand.

  “You said you’d never leave me. You promised.”

  Colton closed his eyes. He flickered.

  “I wish I could have done the easy thing. I wish I could have thought only of myself. But I couldn’t. And you’ll get to live such a full life, Danny—”

  “Stop.”

  “—and meet someone special, and visit all those places you’ve dreamed of seeing. You won’t be tied to Enfield. You won’t be tied to me.”

  “I wanted to be,” Danny sobbed, reaching out for him, but his hand passed through Colton’s chest. “I wanted to be tied to you.”

  “You still haven’t promised me.”

  “Colton … God …”

  “Just say you will. Please.”

  Danny stared at Colton, fighting against the bitterness in his throat, the agony crushing his heart. “I will.”

  Colton looked relieved. He flickered again. “I’m sorry, Danny. I’m sorry.” Flicker. “I wish I could have stayed.”

  Another flicker as their eyes locked, as they tried to find themselves in the other.

  “Danny,” Colton whispered, “I would have chosen you.”

  In the next blink, he was gone.

  Danny drew in a broken breath. He lifted his hands, but there was nothing but air and dust and sunlight. Everything that was left at the ending of the world.

  “Colton,” he called, but his voice was feeble, barely audible. “Colton.”

  No one answered.

  He staggered into the rubble. Slowly, he fell to his knees, clutching the nearest piece of debris and pressing it to his chest.

  It was all he had left.

  There was once a golden boy who lived in a golden tower.

  And then the tower fell.

  Daphne made sure the address was correct before knocking. The door opened to reveal a middle-aged man, the current head of the Mechanics Union after the tragic shooting of the former Lead Mechanic. Now that clock mechanics were no longer a necessity, there had to be someone in charge of who was reassigned to what, and what trades they could transition into now they were all technically out of jobs.

  Christopher Hart gave her a weary smile before ushering her inside. “Daphne, hello. I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “I thought I would drop by before I leave. I’m going to be away from London for a while.”

  “Are you? Probably for the best.” It was a nightmare, cleaning up after the Builders had attacked. Only a week had passed, and so little had been accomplished. “May I ask where you’re off to?”

  “India.”

  “Ahh. It stole your heart, did it?”

  She smiled slightly. “In a way.”

  Christopher led her down the hall. “He’s in here. It’s probably better if you don’t stay long. He’s been feverish.”

  “I’ll try not to upset him.”

  Christopher placed a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you for coming. It’s …” He sighed. He’d aged in the time she and Danny had been gone, his dark hair now threaded with gray. “It’s been difficult.”

  “I understand.”

  She walked through the door, bracing herself for what she would find.

  What she actually found was relatively tame: Danny was sitting at the end of the couch, the sunlight from the open window slanting across his legs. There was a book propped open on his lap. His left arm was heavily bandaged and held in a sling.

  He didn’t look up at the sound of Daphne’s footsteps, or when she sat down beside him. He just kept staring at a spot beyond the book’s pages.

  Much like his father, Danny looked tired. Distant. His green eyes were glassy. Feverish, Christopher had said, and it was true; there was an unhealthy tone to his skin and his body radiated too much heat.

  Daphne put a hand on his arm. “Danny, it’s me. It’s Daphne.” He didn’t respond. She was now glad she hadn’t brought Akash, though he’d wanted to see Danny before they left. “How are you feeling?” It was a silly question, but it was the only one she could summon.

  He didn’t answer. Trying not to sigh, Daphne looked at the book in his lap.

  “Greek myths? I think we’ve had enough of those for a lifetime.”

  Danny closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Danny. I’m so sorry.” They sat in silence. After a while, she said, “I’m going to India. With Akash.”

  He finally looked at her. There was nothing behind his eyes; they were flat. Empty.

  “My mother is being taken care of, and there’s nothing tying me here. He wants me to come with him to see his family,” she explained. “To tell them about Meena. It was difficult, telling Jo and Sally about Zavier. I’m not sure if I can handle going through that again.”

  She took a deep breath. “But I will. For him.”

  Danny slowly moved his good hand until it was grasping hers.

  “Be happy,” he whispered. “With him.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Leaning over, she kissed Danny on the cheek. “I will. And I’ll be back, you know. I’ll come and kick you into shape.”

  That managed the barest of smiles, but it was gone too quick for her to tell.

  Akash was waiting for her at the house. Daphne had become so used to bracing herself before opening the door, to be greeted by emptiness and silence, that the sight of him nearly knocked the air from her lungs.

  She supposed not all change was bad.

  He took one look at her face and came to hug her. She sank into his embrace, into the sheer relief of being able to do so.

  “How’s
Danny?”

  “He’s …” Daphne swallowed. “I wonder if maybe I should stay here a bit longer, just in case.”

  He ran his fingers through her hair and didn’t say anything. He was leaving it up to her, despite the fact that his family waited for him back home.

  You can have more than one home.

  London would still be here for her when she returned. Her mother would be cared for; Danny would be cared for. It was time for her to care of herself.

  She leaned back and caressed the side of Akash’s face, his dark eyes somber yet warm.

  “Let’s go home,” she said.

  Danny breathed in fire and exhaled knives. Every movement hurt. Everything turned dizzily around him. He was stranded, adrift.

  He found himself on the landing, calling for his father. But the word only came out as a thin wheeze. He fell, banging into the wall.

  A door whisked open. “Danny!”

  He welcomed the black when it came.

  He woke to heat and pain. Distantly, he thought he felt his heartbeat—a dull thing, inconsequential. Each pump fueled the ache in his head and stomach.

  Danny opened eyes that were dry and scratchy. He didn’t have the strength to rub them. He just lay there, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.

  His mouth was so dry. It was an effort to tilt his head, but he was rewarded with the sight of a cup beside him.

  A low groan escaped as he shifted. Everything hurt. Everything pounded. The ache exploded across the back of his skull and shot down his spine, making his toes curl. He sobbed in a breath and gritted his teeth as he turned onto his side, everything thump thump and red and black.

  Forcing himself to take deep breaths, he reached for the cup. Nothing happened. Danny lay with half his face buried in the pillow, staring blankly where his left hand should have been. But even as he felt he was moving it, he couldn’t see it. The cup remained untouched.

  Danny turned onto his back and looked down.

  Empty space where his left arm once was.

  He stared at the emptiness, the phantom limb, invisible flesh. The swath of bloody bandages over the stump of his arm, hot and sickly and pulsing with every beat of his heart. Red and black and thump thump.

  It still felt like a part of him. Until he tried moving again, and the cold air rushed in. His shoulder an empty socket, his side exposed to the world. Something ripped away, flesh torn from his body, removed like time—no longer there, no longer a sensation he recognized, no compass or guidance or fibers or ticks or tocks or mother or Colton and oh God Colton I can’t feel him I can’t—

  He didn’t know when he started screaming. People rushed into the room, crowded his bedside as he kicked at the covers and slammed his head back on the pillow.

  Broad hands held his head still. “Danny! Danny, calm down, please—”

  His father’s voice. He looked up, dazed, to seek out his father’s green eyes, wide and swimming with tears.

  “Thank God,” Christopher choked out. “Thank God you’re alive.”

  The doctors were poking and prodding, and there was pain. Danny whimpered and tried to turn away, tried to turn back to where the other sensations waited. Time and his mother and Colton and my mind is so empty.

  “He’s going into another fit.”

  “It must be the fever. He’s burning up.”

  They held his arm down and prepared a needle. Panic rose through him and he started screaming again. He was back on the Prometheus, looking into Zavier’s eyes. But those gray eyes belonged to a boy who was dead. Everything was dead and his arm was gone and Colton—

  The needle clattered to the floor. Someone swore. Before Danny could try to heave himself up, a wet cloth was slapped on his face and his eyes fluttered closed, throwing him back into the void.

  He woke to the sound of his father yelling. The door was closed, but Danny still heard Christopher’s raised voice and the shouting of others trying to defend themselves.

  The door opened. “—don’t care about your bloody regulations! This is my son!”

  “Mr. Hart, please—”

  The fingers of Danny’s right hand peeked out from underneath the covers. His mouth shaped a word.

  “If you don’t think I’m going to report this, think again. You could have made everything worse.”

  Danny tried shaping the word again. This time, the barest of sounds came out: “Dad.”

  Remarkably, Christopher heard. He rushed to his son’s side, grabbing his hand. His face was pale and gaunt.

  “How do you feel, Ticker?”

  Sick. Weak. In pain. Nothing.

  His eyes traveled down to the nothingness of his arm.

  Christopher brushed Danny’s hair back and sighed. “The blood infection was going to spread to your heart, and they had to take it at the shoulder. I’m so sorry, Danny. I asked if there was anything they could do to save it, but …”

  He wondered where his left arm was right now. Lying in a rubbish bin, incinerated in a burner, being fought over by dogs in an alley?

  “But don’t worry.” Christopher’s voice was fading, growing thinner and fainter as it stretched across the distance. “We have a solution. It’ll be all right, I promise. Danny?”

  But he was already sinking into the hollow place again.

  It took a while for the shoulder to heal sufficiently. Once it was decreed stable, and Danny’s fever had burnt away—or mostly away, he couldn’t tell when his body was constantly numb—he sat on the edge of the hospital bed with his father at his side.

  They showed him the arm. Long and chrome, with an elbow joint that allowed easy motion. The fingers were round, not skeletal as Zavier’s had been. A few days before, they had fixed a metallic holder to Danny’s shoulder socket, a process that had been so taxing he had passed out.

  “This will be painful,” the doctor warned, looking at Christopher instead of Danny. “Especially the first fusion.”

  Christopher nodded, securing an arm around Danny’s back.

  Danny was unmoved by the warning. He almost welcomed the thought of pain. The chance to feel something.

  He was unprepared. When the doctors suctioned the joint to the metal fuser in his shoulder, his nerves snapped and crackled and sent pure white agony across his synapses. His scream flooded the room. He grabbed his father’s shirt and pressed his head into his chest. Christopher clutched him tighter, murmuring that he wouldn’t let go, he would never let go of him again.

  When the pain finally subsided, Danny doubled over and vomited onto the floor.

  Someone laid him back down when he was done. The room spun. His body was so hot. He was going to burn here, turned to ash and the bitter reminder of pain.

  He faded in and out of consciousness. By the time he knew he was awake again, the doctors were long gone and his father sat sleeping in the chair beside his bed.

  He looked down at his new arm. It shone weakly in the lamplight, chrome and cold. He tried to move it and bit back a whimper; it was sore and stiff. Focusing on the fingers, he concentrated until one, then two, then all the metal appendages moved.

  Breathing out a sigh, Danny leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He felt no relief.

  Only disappointment that he’d survived.

  When Danny’s mother had died, part of him had died with her. The child he’d been was lost. He couldn’t find him. Probably never would.

  He still felt time, but it was more distant than it had ever been.

  He hadn’t been out of the house except for his stay at the hospital, so he knew nothing about Big Ben’s current state. His father told him the clock tower would stay, along with the name, but there were reports of towers around the world being demolished.

  The truth had spread. Christopher Hart had seen to that. When people learned about the sacrifices, the true history of the clock towers, they’d been appalled. Angry. Intrigued. No matter the reaction, the overwhelming consensus had been: thank goodness that’s all behind us now.


  Danny couldn’t share in the sentiment.

  Every night, he woke up screaming. He dreamed he was time, controlling people, controlling nations. Stopping bullets. Burrowing them into muscle and tissue and organs. Watching his mother die. Colton telling him to let go. When he woke, he huddled in the corner of his room and held his head, his metal fingers snagging in his hair, yelling at himself not to let go, don’t let go, you shouldn’t let go, why did you let go? His father came in and sat with him, whispering to him through the worst of it.

  Danny suffered the fevers and infections and dreams. He hallucinated seeing Leila in the kitchen, making eggs. She asked him how many he wanted. He stood in rooms for minutes at a time, silent, staring at nothing.

  An invisible hand covered his eyes, his mouth. It was like seeing out of a shadow. He didn’t know what to name this emptiness, this excess weight that shrank inward like a black hole.

  They gave him medicine for the pain that pulled him into thick, dreamless sleep. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the nightmares or this constant state of unbeing, his senses swallowed and smothered every night and leaking into the next day, so that it seemed as if he’d never feel anything again.

  Most of his days were spent lying on his bed. Not thinking, not remembering. Just staring at the same whorl in the ceiling above him.

  One day, he couldn’t concentrate on the whorl due to an incessant ticking in his room. He got up and searched, growing more and more frantic when he couldn’t find the source. He had to make it stop, he couldn’t stand it anymore, that God. Damn. TICKING.

  He found the culprit: his timepiece. He smashed it against the wall, against his dresser, pounded it with the thickest book he owned. His father found him ripping apart the gears and bloodying his fingers.

  His blood was useless.

  When he wasn’t staring at the whorl, he was sitting in the back room. People came to see him there. Cassie, Brandon. Friends of the family, friends of his mother. He could barely make himself speak to them.