CHAPTER 26

Yolanda stood in the open bay at Central Fire Station as we ran with Harribow hanging from our arms. Kenji, barking his head off, ran ahead and began circling the propellerhead’s legs.

“We need medical,” I yelled.

Several of the propellerheads had been waiting with a stretcher. We placed Harribow onto it and they wheeled him off, leaving the rest of us smoke eaters standing there with thumbs up our asses. A few of the firefighters came out from their hidey holes, looking around, wondering what all the fuss was about.

Brannigan handed Yolanda a metal container. “We were able to grab some phoenix ashes. Do whatever the fuck you have to so we can finally nab this bastard.”

“Naneun geudeul-eul butjab-eun salam-ida,” Kenji said. (“I’m the one who grabbed them.”)

“Okay,” Brannigan said, after hearing the translation. “Kenji scooped up the ashes. Anyway, while you’re working on this, I also want to know what’s going on with Harribow. Is it like Patrice Johnson?”

Naveena was exceptionally quiet, which told me she was fuming inside. If her silence hadn’t told me anything, it was definitely in her clenched fists, metal scraping under the pressure.

We all stared at Yolanda, like she would give us some huge revelation. We all knew it was the same thing that happened to Patrice. What we really wanted was a way to prevent the same fiery end from happening to another smoke eater.

Yolanda caught her breath, like our stares were squeezing the life out of her. She threw up her hands, almost losing hold of the box containing the ashes. “You guys, I’m going to work as fast as I can. I really don’t know anything yet. We still don’t know what was wrong with Patrice.”

She looked about to cry, so I stepped in to relieve some of her guilt. I was carrying enough, but I could heft a little more. “We all know you’re the best, Yolanda. What do you need from us?”

Before she could answer, two black-and-white cop cars pulled in behind us. When they stepped out of the cars, I saw one of them was a droid.

“What’s this shit?” I said.

“I called them,” said Brannigan. “We need to have Harribow guarded.”

“He’s not a goddamned cult member!” Naveena finally said.

“I’m not saying he is,” said Brannigan. “I’m not saying Patrice was. But this phoenix does shit to people and I’d rather have measures in place to protect him and everybody else.”

When a black hover-SUV pulled in beside the black-and-whites, Yolanda said, “I’m going to get started,” and ran inside.

Detective Rankin, who’d been working the cult case, got out of the SUV as it drifted to a rest on the ground.

“And this guy?” I thumbed toward the detective, giving Brannigan every ounce of pissed-off my eyes could shoot.

“He needs your help.”

“Chief,” the detective shook hands with Brannigan. “Sorry to hear about one of your people.”

“He’s not a goddamned cult member,” Naveena said through gritted teeth, as if it was the only sentence she knew.

“I’m Detective Rankin, by the way,” he said. “And I understand how you guys might be feeling, but we have to investigate this. We don’t know if these ‘Children of the Phoenix’ have infiltrated your department or…”

“I can assure you that’s not the case,” Brannigan said. “I’ve already told you what we believe is happening. If you don’t want to listen to reason, that’s your fault.”

“There’s no cult,” I said. “This bird is fucking with people’s heads.”

“And why are none of you affected the same way?” Rankin asked.

I looked to Afu, Renfro, the others. We didn’t have an answer to that. Patrice had caught some of the ashes in her mouth. I thought that might have been why. But Harribow hadn’t even had much action or contact with the phoenix or its ashes. Afu or Calvinson, if anybody, would have been the most likely to lose their minds from the phoenix fire.

Or me.

“Let me give you an opportunity to prove me wrong,” Rankin said. He turned to the human and droid cops, motioned for them to go inside with a toss of his head.

They both obeyed as robotically as the other. I wondered what the droid would do if Harribow tried to escape or hurt somebody. I still didn’t trust robots, not after what Rogola made them do to Chief Donahue.

“What do you need our help with?” Afu asked.

Rankin cleared his throat. “We need you to do some… surveillance.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“Look,” Rankin said, “we’ve found a connection with all of these arsonists and we’ve narrowed down some potential additional suspects. We figure you all have the ability to withstand any… heat that might occur. And you could save a lot of people if these suspects turn out to be a part of this cult and try to burn something else. You’d be right there to stop it.”

“So you want us to do your job for you,” Renfro said.

Rankin gave a small laugh and shook his head, as if he couldn’t understand why we would look down our noses at the opportunity to play Big Brother and violate a few citizens’ basic rights. “Like I said, you have the power not to get burned, and you can go where it’s smoky. It’d be handy. Plus, my people are doing their part of the heavy lifting, believe me.”

“We can still get burned.” Calvinson spoke up. “And the phoenix fire is hot. Hotter than our threshold.”

Rankin raised his brow and looked to Brannigan. “Should I go with my Plan B, then, Chief?”

“No,” Brannigan said. He narrowed his eyes at Calvinson, too late to tell him to shut up. “We’ll do this. Won’t we?”

He was looking at me. I was in charge of the ash kickers. I was the one who had the whole fucking world on my shoulders.

“What’s the connection between the arsonists?” I asked.

Rankin looked over his shoulder. Firefighters had slowly begun to trickle into the bay like wraiths around an ash heap.

“Not here,” Rankin said. “I don’t want to start a panic. Let’s go inside.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I still have to give Yolanda something.”

The wraith inside my remote was weighing me down. The quicker I could give Wilkins to Yolanda, the sooner I didn’t have to worry so much about the ghost’s family taking him back and doing God-knewwhat with him.

The propellerheads had closed off part of the fire station and had placed one of the scientists outside a sliding glass door to prevent looky-loo firefighters from sneaking a peek. The guard was a nervous looking blonde woman with thick red glasses. She held a stun pistol and breathed a tsunami of relief when she saw us coming down the hall.

“Oh, thank God.” She opened the door for us. “I hate playing security guard. Please, please come in.”

The other side of the glass looked like a squished version of the propellerhead watch room at our old headquarters. Harribow was on the stretcher behind a curtain hung to provide only the tiniest amount of privacy. Both cops who’d entered earlier stood outside the curtain at parade rest. The human cop was dressed in the dark blue of a Parthenon City beat cop, while the droid had a police shield etched into its chest.

Yolanda was on the other side of the room, clenching her shoulders tight, clearly uncomfortable with the tight working conditions and having to squeeze by her coworkers.

“All right,” I said to Rankin. “What’s the connection between all these arsons.”

“Dragon blood,” Rankin said with a nod.

Yolanda looked up from her holoreader, face squished as if she’d bitten into a lemon.

Rankin continued. “Autopsies show that every person of interest, whether they’d moved from another city or not, all received dragon blood infusions within the last six months. That’s too big of a connection to ignore. That’s why we want you to be on their tail. They’ll have smoke eater abilities and who better than you guys to step in if something happens?”

“Right,” said Naveena. “Who better to stalk a five-year-old cancer patient? What is this Orwellian bullshit you’ve got us doing, Brannigan?”

Rankin shook his head. “We’ve vetted these suspects pretty thoroughly. They’re recent imports and–”

“So you’re aligning with those PC First scumbags,” I said. “They’re not from here so they’re obviously terrorists.”

“I don’t agree with those fascist bastards,” Rankin said. “Not one bit. But it’s hard to ignore the evidence. We’re thinking these cult members got DB infusions to be able to withstand hot and smoky conditions so they can do whatever morbid shit they’re into. No offense to you guys.”

Brannigan held up a hand, in an attempt to calm us all down before we had another fist fight with a different branch of public service. “I wanted us to assist in this because I know we’d do it the right way. Because we care about people.” He bobbed his head at Rankin. “No offense.”

Rankin shrugged.

“And if we don’t agree,” I said, “what’s Plan B?”

“The New US Army,” Rankin said, without any hesitation or regret.

Shitballs. This was going to happen one way or another. Brannigan was right. If we walked away and tried to hunt the bird without anything to go on, we’d risk losing not only time, but citizen lives because the army wouldn’t give two shits about saving any of our citizens. They’d be targets, and targets were to be eliminated.

“Perhaps,” Yolanda’s softened voice broke through the tension, “it’s the dragon blood itself that’s causing these individuals to lose their minds and… essentially burn the house down.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Rankin. “I thought dragon blood cured people. Made them better, stronger.”

“Well, it’s not just the blood, but the reaction the phoenix causes in those with dragon blood running through their veins.”

Holy shit. That was it. That was the key. Patrice and Harribow had both been given ieiunium curate to become smoke eaters. They hadn’t been born to eat smoke, and that made them susceptible to the phoenix’s influence.

“The way the dragons are acting at the enclosures,” I said, “I believe it. Think about it, Rankin. What if there is no cult? Just a bunch of sick people like Harribow in there. Like Patrice.”

“It’s too organized,” said Rankin. “We know what criminal group behavior looks like. That guy at the club the other night. He said he was one of the ‘Children of the Phoenix’.”

“He was out of his mind, sick, and probably saying all kinds of weird shit,” I said. “You’re only seeing what you want to see. It’s easier to create an enemy to go after. It’s a lot harder to realize these are victims. We wanted to cure shit so bad, we didn’t look at what could happen when we put monster DNA inside of us.”

Brannigan turned away from us suddenly. “I… I have to go. I have to get Kenji. I have to see Sherry.”

He left without saying anything else. His wife had received dragon blood after she was attacked by a droid. Brannigan himself had been injected with it for two solid weeks. The good news was that Chief believed my side of things, but the bad news was that both he and his wife could turn into crazed human bombs at any moment.

Rankin decided Brannigan’s leave meant he could take on the role of leader. “Now, look, Captain. I’m not going to entertain this crazy theory. Thousands of people in this city have received dragon blood. Parthenon would be a goddamned inferno by now. Has your chief gotten close to the phoenix?”

“Close enough,” I said.

“And he’s fine. He’s not going to spontaneously combust.”

“Not necessarily,” said Yolanda.

“Y’all,” Renfro said. “Rankin is a good man. I’ve known him for years. He’s good at his job. I say we at least give him a shot.”

I looked at Yolanda who only shook her head slightly.

“It’s your call, T.” Naveena folded her arms and chewed on a nail. “I’ll support your decision one way or the other.”

I looked at Harribow lying on the stretcher, looking like a lobster with the flu. If I had known being a captain involved this many difficult choices, where you could only go left or right and not both…

…But that wasn’t true.

Nobody said I couldn’t follow Rankin’s suspects and work with Yolanda on reversing what the phoenix was doing to them. And, like Rankin said, who better than us to do it? Better us than some shithead mercs.

“We’ll do it,” I said.

Rankin nodded. “Good. Can you start tonight?”

I groaned and the other smokies looked back at me with tired eyes, slouching and ready to crash into a bed. “We just fought two monsters at once, Detective. We could use a break.”

“Tomorrow night, then,” Rankin said. “Meet me at police HQ, say, eight o’clock?”

“We’ll be there.” I crossed my arms. It was time for Dick Tracy to take a hike.

Rankin took a deep breath as if he’d just survived some harrowing battle, and nodded. “All right then. I’ll leave you to it.”

He walked away, taking a few seconds to look over Harribow lying on the stretcher before leaving the building. We all watched him through the window as he reversed his hovering SUV and sped off to fuck with someone else’s day.

“Are you sure about this, Tamerica?” Afu asked.

“What’s done is done,” I said. “You guys go on. I have to talk to Yolanda about something.”

Renfro and the rest walked out, but Naveena hung around in the doorway. “I told you I’d support you one way or the other. Just don’t make me regret it.”

She was gone before I could bolster any confidence in my decision, but that was just how it was going to have to be. I didn’t like it any more than them. But, like Brannigan always said, when have to eat a shit sandwich, best to do it as quickly as possible.

“I promise I won’t let the same thing happen again,” Yolanda told me. She wrung her hands and looked into my eyes like I was going to slap her.

“I know. That’s not what I want to talk to you about. I’ve got a wraith for you.”

Her face brightened. “Oh! That’s great. That’ll speed up the work.”

I took a breath through my nose, smelling the stale, dusty funk of the firehouse. “Yeah, thing is. There’s something about it you need to know. Something you have to keep to yourself.”

“You didn’t do anything untoward did you?”

I’d never heard anyone in person use that word outside of a spelling bee.

I shook my head and took out my wraith remote. “See, I trapped this sucker when those wannabe smoke eaters were getting in our way fighting the leviathans and the phoenix. The other wraith burned up, but I’m thinking this one is still good. But…”

“This is about your legal predicament.” She blinked and waited for me to respond. Casual as a cucumber.

“Right. Some people might come around and try to take it. That’s why you have to work faster than you ever have before. It’s only a matter of time before they find out it’s here. Do we understand each other?”

Yolanda took my wraith remote. “I’ve got the ashes and a wraith. Now all I have to do is figure out how to reverse the wraith’s frequency to get the bird to come to you. Check back with me in a day or two.”

I smiled, despite everything that had happened. “You’re the best, Yolanda.”

She walked over to cabinet and tossed me an empty wraith remote. “I know.”

When I walked outside, my fellow smokies were watching something going on down the street. I made my way around the cannon truck to see what had grabbed their interest.

A couple of military hover-vehicles that looked like metal tarantulas had veered onto the curb. Four soldiers surrounded a man in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, just an ordinary man, and they had him up against the wall. One soldier was patting him down, while the others aimed laser rifles at his back, save one soldier who held a young boy, no more than twelve, by the collar of his t-shirt.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked Naveena.

“This guy was walking with his son, or whoever that kid is. The army pulled over and began searching him for no reason.”

The boy wasn’t crying, but he was close enough to it. His dad was telling him everything was okay, but the soldiers told the man to shut up, pretty much killing the notion that everything was indeed ‘okay’.

I legged it down the street, toward this bullshit on full, public display.

“Where are you going?” Afu asked.

I turned back to the ash kickers while staying in motion, back-pedaling. “Are you just going to stand there and watch this mess?”

Calvinson, whose teeth were still stained with jabberwock ink, said, “But they have guns.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” I turned round again and ran.

Feet hitting pavement behind me helped my courage a little, but my stomach was already in a knot and I began thinking of who would take care of Mama and Daddy if these assholes shot me in the street.

“Whoa!” The first soldier who noticed me moved his rifle toward my chest. “Stay back.”

The other soldier turned her weapon on me, while the man who’d been patting the civilian down looked over his shoulder as casually as if I was a plastic bag flying by in the wind.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, taking out my holoreader and quickly hitting record on the video app. The soldiers looked at my upheld holoreader and, in unison, looked to the soldier who’d been doing the frisking.

So, he must be the one in charge.

“This is army business,” the frisker said. “Move along.”

“Like hell,” I said. “I’m Captain Williams with Smoke Eater Division. And what you’re doing is illegal. You’re not the police and I doubt this man has done anything to warrant your harassment. So maybe you should move along.”

“I’m Colonel Calhoun,” the man who’d been frisking said. He gave me a smug smile, showing a silver-capped front tooth. “And by order of Mayor Ghafoor, we have every right to search any person we deem to be a potential threat to this city.”

The civilian pressed his back against the building. His lip bled.

“My dad and I were on the way to the ice cream shop,” the boy said.

Calhoun tucked his lips and glared at the kid, almost as if he was jealous of the prospect of Dippin’ Dots. Then he smiled and straightened his uniform. “We’re all trying to do the right thing, Captain.”

“Then start right now,” I said. “Let ’em go, and maybe I don’t report this little incident to Mayor Ghafoor.”

“None of you are going to have jobs for long,” said one of the other soldiers.

Calhoun laughed as if the soldier had been telling a tall tale, but the one who’d said it looked as serious as could be.

“Look, just let us do our duty and we’ll let you do yours. That’s fair isn’t it?” Calhoun said.

“Fair?” I raised my voice. “I can show you fair.”

One of the other smoke eaters grabbed my arm. It was Naveena, who whispered, “Let’s go, Captain.”

Her eyes held restrained anger. She hadn’t been trying to betray me, but that’s exactly how I felt.

Calhoun brushed off the shoulders of the man he’d just been forcibly groping and, very roughly, ruffled his hand through the boy’s hair.

“You look a little young for a captain,” he said to me. “What did you do to get promoted so fast?”

“Me?” I said, with a smile full of venom. “I’ve got a great ass and know how to kick ass, too.” I bent to the side, overdoing a look at Calhoun’s rear end. “You don’t seem to have much of one, so you must be great at sucking dick.”

“Cap,” Afu said, clearing his throat. “We got to head out, yeah?”

“That sounds like a great plan,” Calhoun said. “Go protect us all from the scary monsters rising from beneath. Meanwhile, we’ll be doing the grunt work, making sure every citizen here supports the greater good.”

With a grand draw of his arm, Calhoun let the man and his son go as his soldiers cursed under their breath and hiked it back to their tarantula-looking shitmobiles.

I turned the other way, broke through the line of smoke eaters. They’d been behind me, but they sure as hell didn’t have my back. “Thanks for the support, guys.”

“That’s not our jurisdiction, T,” said Renfro. “I can handle flames and dragons, but I can’t live through a laser to the head.”

They all followed me to Cannon 15, where I opened the captain’s door, but didn’t get inside.

I huffed and turned back to the others with hands on my hips. It was something Sergeant Puck would have done right before giving us all an important speech.

“The scalies didn’t burn away our decency, right? I mean, they can take our houses and ash, the dirt we stand on, but I thought we were at least upholding some basic principles in this dump of a country. The shit that just happened was wrong. And you all know it. This notion that it’s good to sacrifice freedom for security, it’s been kicked around since before Brannigan’s old ass was born, and I’m tired of seeing it thrown at us again and again every time something bad happens. That’s not us. And now we’ve got the cops having us follow people around like some fucking Gestapo agents. What’s happened?”

I didn’t expect an answer. I was just regurgitating my mind, no, my heart onto the pavement between me and the other smoke eaters. And I was too tired to cry.

“Better us than those assholes back there,” said Afu. “Ay, Tamerica?”

“Yeah,” I said, beginning to nod. “Let’s wrap this phoenix shit up so we can run these army bastards out of town.”

Afu pulled me to the side as the others went their separate ways. “This might not be the right time, but…”

“But what?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well… we don’t really have anything to do tonight. Kind of in limbo, you know? So, I was thinking, how about that date?”