Source Fire: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 5) Page 5

  She stepped back to let Ryan pass. He disappeared into the hallway. She glanced at me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better, thanks. How’s the stuff with the physicists coming?”

  She dropped an excited wink. “We’re closing in.” Then she too, was gone.

  Tomio and I looked at one another, frowning.

  “Does something seem off about Ryan’s story, or is it just me?” I asked.

  He tucked a curl behind my ear, expression contemplative. “It’s not just you.”

  4

  Traveling

  The decision was made for Ryan to travel with the final orb in the fire-gym, rather than the CTH, so that Mehmet and Ms. Shepherd could safely observe from a pod. Tomio and I sat along the wall near to where Ryan would do the work. Our job was to position him in front of a mobile fireproof desk we’d pulled from storage, so that he had a solid surface to write on. Basil waited at a distance with pencil and paper tucked into a heat-safe neoprene envelope, ready to be whipped out the moment Ryan stopped producing heat.

  “He doesn’t look nervous.” Tomio threw an arm over the back of my chair as we watched Ryan pluck Basil’s orb from its velvet bed.

  “Why would he? He’s done this before.” Settling back against Tomio’s arm, I glanced at the camera we’d set up in one of the pods to film the event, making sure the recording light was on. Heat rose from Ryan’s body in visible waves already, drifting toward the ceiling and speeding up as the fans sucked them outside. His eyes became coals and his gaze turned flat and unfocused. Throughout it all, the orb did not change. The temperature in the gym climbed as Ryan’s internal furnace spewed out degrees. It baked off our faces and moved my hair with its currents. Tomio moved his arm away from me so our bodies didn’t gather further heat.

  Basil hovered nearby. The headmaster seemed barely able to breathe and his eyes were bright in anticipation of something one might only see once in a lifetime.

  When the change came, it was sudden and drastic. The heat baking from Ryan ceased abruptly, though his eyes continued to glow. He did not blink, but switched the orb from his right hand to his left in a sharp, artificial-looking motion. Like he was a robot operating by pistons beneath synthetic flesh and skin instead of organic muscle, blood and bone. His right hand began to move in a series of sharp gestures.

  The headmaster rushed forward as Tomio and I leapt from our seats.

  “I waited too long,” Basil cried with an unmistakable giddiness. “I expected there would be a window after the heat stopped.”

  Ryan’s hand jerked around wildly, beneath wide and sightless eyes. It was downright spooky.

  Tomio steadied Ryan’s body as I caught and stilled Ryan’s hand so that Basil could insert the pencil between his fingers. Ryan’s arm continued to jerk around, fighting for the freedom to move. When his fingers touched the pencil, they grasped it the way a hungry dog snaps at meat.

  Basil slid the paper beneath Ryan’s writing utensil and we stepped back and watched, a bit winded.

  Ryan took to the task with vigor. His illuminated eyes never once dropped to the page, never once blinked, yet the pencil scrawled without running off the edge or going over any of the white space twice.

  Tomio twined his fingers through mine as we watched the display, fascinated and a touch horrified. A peek at the words and shapes spewing from the end of Ryan’s pencil gave me no understanding or revelation at all; they were as foreign as cuneiform. The only observation I could make was that the shapes were tighter and more elegant than the ones I had produced.

  Tomio released my hand, and he and the headmaster closed in, preparing to catch Ryan when he collapsed. As the last of the white space was used up, Ryan’s eyes went dark. They rolled up in his head and his body went limp. Tomio caught him as he crumpled, sweeping him up the way men lift fainting women in old movies.

  We left the page of scribbles for Ms. Shepherd to collect.

  Basil and I held the fire-gym’s doors open as Tomio carried Ryan up the winding steps to the archway, then down the hall to the nearby bedroom we’d made up for the purpose. Ms. Shepherd and Mehmet followed at a distance. Lying on his back on the bed, his head cradled by a pillow, Ryan looked to be in a deep and dreamless sleep.

  We stood around looking at him for several moments, making sure his breathing was steady. My life was rife with weird supernatural elements now, but I still felt a bit winded by the whole experience. To give myself something to do, I grabbed the empty carafe from the bedside table and went into the bathroom to fill it.

  When I returned, Basil was mopping his brow with his handkerchief. “That was remarkable.”

  “Should we stay with him?” I set the glass where Ryan would see it when he woke.

  “If he’s anything like you, he’ll be out for hours,” Tomio said, studying Ryan’s sleeping face.

  “If he’s anything like me, he’ll wake with one hell of a hangover,” I murmured, grateful that Ryan had agreed to spare me the experience a second time.

  The traveling part hadn’t been too bad, mostly just disorienting, but the aftermath had been brutal. I wondered if Ryan saw a face at the end of his travels, or maybe even the same face. I made a mental note to ask him as we left him to his rest.

  As the clock journeyed toward the end of another day, Tomio and I sat curled up on the couch in the first-years’ lounge, tummies full of takeout. Empty sushi trays and crumpled napkins lay across the coffee table. The lounge had the faint aroma of soy sauce and vinegared rice.

  Technically, we were second-years now, but the first-years’ lounge was where we felt most at home, even if it made me a little sad. The vast majority of our friends would not be returning to Arcturus. The unanswered question hung in the air of every room: would Arcturus Academy even have a school year in September?

  Basil had said nothing about the impact the snuffings would have on how he would proceed as headmaster, and I didn’t have the courage to bring it up. If I were him, I wouldn’t know what to do either, and if we weren’t able to prevent Nero from snuffing the remaining fires… well, the thought was too horrible to contemplate. Life would look different for all of us come fall.

  Tomio lay against the opposite armrest with my foot in his lap, giving me a half-hearted rub. His eyelids looked about to close up shop for the night. The pad of his thumb pressed into a sore spot in the arch of my foot. Somehow, he was able to find all the achy bits. He’d missed a calling as a therapist.

  “Shall we check on Ryan before we go to bed?” he asked.

  We’d looked in on Ryan once every hour since he’d gone limp this morning but there’d been no change. His breathing was deep and even, his slumber appeared peaceful. It struck me that both the Wendig twins could be considered comatose at the moment. Thoughts of Gage made me even more morose than wondering about the future of Arcturus.

  My phone buzzed from the coffee table and I peered at the screen. “Speak of the devil.” Angelica Wendig’s name flashed on the screen.

  Tomio’s jaw cracked with a yawn. “Who is it?”

  “Gage’s mom.” Reluctantly, I pulled my foot from Tomio’s lap and straightened.

  Normally she texted, but this time she was requesting a video call. Heart jumping with hope, I hit the answer button. Angelica’s face appeared against a backdrop of pastel green paint. Something had changed. Her expression was bright and excited. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head in wild curls and tied with a red kerchief. Fat gold hoops swayed at her jawline and she wore bright red lipstick. She looked like a movie star from the forties.

  “Saxony. Hi!”

  “Hey. You look great. What’s happened?”

  Tomio scrambled to my end of the couch and put his forehead to mine to peer at the phone. “Hi, Angelica. Wow, you do look good.”

  Angelica smiled, tears shining in the corner of her eyes. “Tomio, hey. I’m glad you guys are together. There’s someone who wants to say hi to you.”

  Tomio and I mashed our che
eks together further, as Angelica turned the phone toward Gage’s hospital bed. My heart began to sprint and my breathing felt shallow.

  The head of his bed was lifted at an angle, and he lay propped against a couple of pillows. His eyes were half-open as he watched his mom. His gaze shifted to the screen as she turned it toward him. Emotion clutched at my throat. Gage looked tired, thin and pale, but he was awake. Though he wasn’t smiling, his gaze was clear. He was all there behind those blue eyes.

  “Hi, Gage.” My voice came out wispy. “How are you? How do you feel?”

  Tomio lifted a hand in greeting. “Hi, Gage. Amazing to see you awake. You gave us a real scare.”

  “He sure did.” Angelica’s hand appeared, brushing the hair at Gage’s forehead back. “But he’s going to be okay. Doc says he’s out of the woods. If his vitals continue to improve at this rate, I’ll be able to take him home in a couple of weeks. Maybe even less.”

  “Hi, guys.” Gage’s voice was a croak.

  “I’m so sorry we aren’t there,” I told him, the guilt now slipping between my ribs in repeated thrusts, like someone was stabbing me with wire.

  “Mom explained everything.” Gage spoke slowly, and couldn’t seem to enunciate the way he usually did. “I owe you both a debt I can never repay. She told me what happened inside the volcano.” He gave a long slow blink and took a breath. “So, thank you.”

  “I’m only sorry we didn’t make it sooner,” I said, my words heavy with implication. I didn’t have to point out to anyone present what it might have meant for Gage if we had found him before he’d lost his fire. This led to another thought that briefly took my breath away. He would have woken to the rude realization that he no longer had fire. How was he handling it? It was impossible to tell from his sleepy face and slow drone of words. This Gage seemed a little drugged.

  His eyelids lifted a fraction further. “I’m just happy to be alive, Saxony.”

  My sinuses stung with unshed tears. There was a lot of the old Gage in that answer. He was always so positive, so upbeat in the face of difficulty. It was one of the reasons I loved him.

  “I’ll figure out the rest later,” he continued. “I want to get strong enough to go home and see my dad.”

  We nodded.

  “How is Mr. Wendig?” I asked.

  Angelica chimed in from the side, keeping the camera on Gage. “No news there, I’m afraid. His mom is still looking after him. He’s… not fantastic.”

  Chad was worse than not fantastic, he was in pieces. If nothing had changed, it meant that he still wasn’t speaking. Grandma Wendig was probably struggling to get him to eat. But I guessed that Angelica didn’t want to hit Gage with the full and harsh reality of the state of his dad until he was stronger, so she downplayed it.

  “Is Ryan there?” Gage asked.

  Tomio and I exchanged a look. Tomio’s raised brows meant he’d leave the answering of this question up to me.

  “Ryan is asleep right now. We’ll be heading to bed ourselves, shortly.” The words had only just left my lips and I wanted to smack myself in the forehead. Tomio and me heading to bed wasn’t a visual I wanted to leave Gage with, but now if I added that we were going to our own rooms to sleep, it would only be more awkward. I battled through the embarrassment. “There’s other developments to catch you up on, but we don’t want to overwhelm you.”

  “Thanks, Saxony,” Angelica replied. “Gage does need a lot of rest. I only meant to let you see each other for a moment. I don’t want to tire him out.”

  “Of course.”

  “Why don’t you catch me up, and when Gage is stronger, I’ll pass along the details?” Angelica turned the phone toward Gage again without waiting for an answer. “Say goodbye, honey.”

  Gage’s lids were drooping again. “Bye, Saxony. Bye, Tomio. Take care of…”

  My heart twisted as he paused. For a horrible moment, I felt sure he was going to say, my girl.

  But he finished with, “…each other.”

  Tomio let out a sigh and relaxed, and I wondered if he’d thought the same thing.

  We waited while Angelica kissed Gage and closed the door to the hospital room. She sat on the same couch I’d been near when I’d first seen her come strolling into the wing.

  We relayed as much as we could, which wasn’t much because we’d been forbidden to discuss certain details over a cellular line by Ms. Shepherd. But Angelica was more interested in Ryan’s state anyway, and asked us to alert her when he awoke. The twins would benefit from seeing one another as soon as possible.

  We agreed and said good night.

  Tomio leaned back against the couch and threw both arms across its back. I felt his gaze on me and turned to look at him.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I blew a stray curl away from my cheek. “Well, my ex-boyfriend has lost his fire because he came to Naples to help me when he didn’t need to. I can’t help but feel… Oh, I don’t know, crippling guilt? On top of that I’ve fallen for his best friend.”

  “Ex best friend.”

  I put my face in my hands and let out a long sigh. “It’s awful, but I also feel like I’m not entitled to feel any selfish emotions until after we stop Nero.”

  He lay a warm hand on my lower back. “You’re entitled to feel everything you’re feeling, Saxony. The situation is complicated and confusing. Whatever your fears are, Gage will be okay. Body and heart. Can you believe that?”

  I looked over my shoulder. “I want to. He says he’s just happy to be alive, but he only just woke up. He probably doesn’t know how he feels yet.”

  “No, you’re right. He needs time.” Tomio leaned forward, his face coming close, his gaze penetrating.

  He brushed a long curl back over my shoulder. His fingertips grazed my neck, lifting the little hairs along my arms in a pleasant way. He leaned forward, his lips hovering mere inches from mine, but he went no further. An invitation, but not for anything more than a kiss. I understood that. I pressed my lips to his, softly and slowly. My eyes drifted closed, every sense homing in on the sensations of kissing him. It had thus far never failed to surprise me—how it felt to kiss without any fiery reaction leaping up between us. A warmth and longing expanded within my belly. My arousal was strong and pleasant, but came with a heavy-handed serving of chilly guilt.

  I hesitated and Tomio felt it, pulling back.

  “He isn’t the only one who needs more time,” he said.

  “My body doesn’t want more time,” I whispered, “but I think my mind needs it.”

  We drew apart at the sound of someone approaching. Mehmet appeared in the doorway, his expression lifting when he saw us.

  “I thought you’d gone to bed but nobody answered when I knocked on your doors. Ms. Shepherd and Basil need to see you in Basil’s office, right away.”

  Without waiting, Mehmet vanished from the door. We scrambled from the couch to follow.

  We found Basil seated behind his desk and Ms. Shepherd pacing behind the largest sofa. Mehmet’s computer sat open on the coffee table. Voices could be heard buzzing through his headset. He sat in front of the laptop and jammed the headset over his ears, pulling the computer onto his lap as he sat back in the sofa.

  Tomio and I took the two chairs in front of Basil’s desk.

  “Thank you, Mehmet,” Basil said, though Mehmet clearly couldn’t hear him.

  “With the information Ryan gave us about background radiation, and the results of the scribbles you produced”—Ms. Shepherd eyed me—“we’ve narrowed one of Nero’s two possible next locations to a remote region of the Arctic.”

  That it was an Arctic region did not surprise me, given that I’d been the one to travel with the orb, but Tomio visibly reacted.

  “The Arctic? Really?”

  Ms. Shepherd nodded. “The language Saxony produced is, of course, unknown and uncategorized, but our language expert was able to loosely connect it to a Northern Athabaskan Indigenous group in the Arctic who speak a dialect o
f Dené-Diné.”

  “If it’s a loose connection then how do you know it’s the best one to pursue?” Basil asked, leaning his elbows on his desk in an uncharacteristic slouch.

  “We don’t. Not for sure. But our physicists have at the same time found an area of high background radiation in a region where this language is still spoken today, by a very small group of people. That makes it a target.”

  My heart had begun to trot. We were closing in on Nero, but making a mistake here would be devastating. “How do we know Nero will head to this location instead of to the other one?”

  “We know because a contact in Bolzano has linked Nero—by an alias he used to use years ago but hasn’t used in recent years—to a private flight booked with an airline we know he has a contact at. The airline flies privately to Yellowknife from Verona every Sunday. We believe Nero is presently in Verona and will be on that flight.”

  “And Janet? Any news of her?” I asked.

  Ms. Shepherd frowned. “She is still MIA, I’m afraid. We don’t know if he has her with him, or if he’s keeping her somewhere, or if he’s… done away with her for her betrayal.”

  I swallowed hard. “I refuse to believe she’s dead.”

  “Either way, our best chance to recover her is to find Nero.” Basil tented his fingers and stood. “We have three days to get to that site before Nero does. I’ll speak to our London Airport contact and arrange a flight as soon as possible. We’ll have to strategize on the way.”

  “What about Ryan? We can’t leave without him and he’s not yet woken up.”

  “He will. And if he’s still woozy by the time we leave, well…” Ms. Shepherd paused, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. “We’ll make sure the seats recline. Mehmet?”

  He cocked one side of his headset off his ear. “I’m on it. There’s a landing strip on Mahoney Lake. It’s probably not in prime shape, since its only used by bush-planes, but it’s thirty-seven kilometers from the epicenter of the radiation, which, given the pure vastness of the tundra, is pretty damn fortuitous.”