Blaize watches the last of her fireballs rain down on the flight case. It causes a flash and a bang, and serves to clear the last of the tourists from the square. The one thing it fails to do, however, is draw the cowering boy from his cover so she can alert him to the situation back at the alley mouth.
Breathless now, she rests her hands on her knees. Summoning any kind of psychic force could quickly become exhausting. Pyrokinesis was perhaps the most draining. Cooking up all that heat left you feeling weak and dizzy for quite some time. Even so, there’s no way now that she’s going to give up. Standing tall once more, Blaize calls out to the figure whose feet she can see peeping from behind the case.
“Get away from here! It isn’t safe!”
This time, a head pops up from behind this makeshift barricade. She sees the boy shield his gaze against the sun now, and then drop it when he recognises her.
“Too right it isn’t safe!” he cries. “First you try to barbecue me, and now this!”
“What?”
The boy gestures at something down there on her nearside, and then scrambles backwards. Billy is babbling in her ear from The Bridge, but this is more important. She peers over the lip of the building, sees nothing of note in the deserted square, and then a shiny bald pate floats into her field of vision. Aleister. Crossing the cobbles with a purpose.
“Help me!” cries the boy, as the brute advances towards him. “Do something!”
A static pop in her ear brings Billy to her attention.
“Bravo, I repeat. Evacuate now! Get out of there, Blaize.”
“OK,” she breathes into the boom mic. “This is the plan. I’m going to distract Aleister with one more fireball. The fact is that’s about all I can muster. It’ll give our M.I.A. a chance to get away. All I have to do is zip back over the rooftops and into the bunker like this never happened.”
Blaize holds out her palm, and moves her fingers around as if rotating a ball. She only pauses when Billy crackles through the airwaves.
“That is a very negative no, Bravo. There is a tango stationed in the alley.”
“What?”
“Your stepfather,” Billy reports after a pause. “He’s perched on a bin, waiting for Aleister to come back. It means that way is blocked. You’ll have to find another escape route.”
“But it’s the only way onto this roof,” she says, sensing herself to be trapped.
By now, Aleister is bearing down on the boy. He simply kicks the flight case from his path. The boy tries to run for it, only to stumble and fall to the ground.
What draws Blaize’s attention away from the scene unfurling in the square is a sudden rise in temperature and light just beside her. She glances at her hand, and is almost surprised to find a fireball burning brightly. Her first thought is to shake it off, but then the boy appeals for her help again. With no time to think ahead, she tosses it up and down in her hand, like a pitcher preparing for a strikeout, and hurls it at her target with all the strength she can muster.
The last thing Aleister expects, as he reaches down to grab the boy, is to find himself under ambush. The fireball catches him on the behind, causing him to jump with a grunt and twist around. As the smoke clears, he looks across the deserted square, and then up at the figure on the parapet.
“At last,” he smiles to himself, and smoothes his hands down the snake draped around his shoulders. “Now why don’t you come on down?” he calls out to the twin with the blue braids. “There’s somebody waiting just around the corner who’d be delighted to see you once again.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “Since when has Otto ever shown an interest in our lives?”
“He’s here for you, my dear.”
“I don’t think so,” Blaize replies. “He’s here to take in as much of this town as he can, and my guess is you’ll be picking up the tab. Our stepdaddy’s using you, Aleister, just as he hoped to profit from our pyrokinetic powers.”
The brute frowns sharply. “Your stepdaddy?”
“Aw, c’mon! Did you think we could be related to that buffoon by blood? Otto has more genetic links to pond life than he has to Scarlett and me.”
Aleister finds himself nodding sympathetically, but quickly gets a grip.
“We had high hopes for you at the Foundation,” he tells her. “You especially, Blaize. You have a hot temper, but I admire that. It shows a strength of spirit that could one day reap untold rewards.”
Blaize remains silent for a moment. She rests her hand on her hips, and lifts her gaze for a moment across the city skyline.
“Think about it, Blaize,” the brute continues, and steps towards the building. “Open your mind and consider the choices you face, for only one path can be true to you. Trust me, Blaize. Trust every word I say.”
Behind him, at a safe distance, the boy who had feared a sticky end hauls himself off the floor and frowns. If he didn’t know better, this brute was making an attempt to place the girl under some kind of hypnotic spell. Everything from the rhythm of his voice to the way he repeated her name with every breath sounded like an attempt to speak to her on a psychic level. Moving very quietly, so as not to draw attention to himself, the boy taps his radio pack gently on the cobblestones. “Billy, do you copy? We have a situation occurring here. Blaize is going to need some back-up. The entire crew would be good, I think. It’ll need an army to stop him now.”
This time, it seems, his appeal is picked up loud and clear.
“Request denied, Bravo Leader. There’s only two operatives here, and I’m not permitted to leave my post.”
“But we have to help her!”
“Easy, soldier. I’m going to patch into her earpiece now, and issue her the command to stand down.” The switch is marked by a crackle and popping noise in the boy’s ear, and then Billy’s voice returns, addressing the girl on the roof this time. “OK, Blaize, no sudden moves. Just get yourself out of that hot zone. Find a safe way to go to ground and we’ll bring you in when the coast is clear, do you copy . . . Blaize? I repeat, do you copy?”
The boy shakes his head, fearing the worst. By now Aleister is skirting the foot of the building, looking for a way to claim his quarry. He’s still talking to Blaize in a very strange tone, while the girl continues to look out blankly from the ledge three storeys above.
“It’s no good,” he reports to base, when the girl begins to sway. “I think we’ve lost her.”
In response, another voice kicks in through his earpiece. It sounds just like Blaize, but it’s broadcasting from the bunker. An appeal from one sister to another in a time of need.
“This is Scarlett. You mustn’t listen to that man. Blaize? Listen to me! There’s more to him than meets the eye in every way. I know that, and so do you. Be strong, sis. Resist his words and get away while there’s still time! Do it for me, Blaize. I’m begging you!”
The girl on the roof says nothing. When she blinks, as if stirring back to her senses, the first thing she does is to rip off the microphone mouthpiece and headset. Aleister watches the equipment smash on the cobbles at his feet, and beams broadly. “That’s my girl!”
Blaize looks down directly at him. “You can keep it as a memento,” she tells him, and grins as his own smile vanishes. “Because that’s the closest you’re gonna get to me!”
Before he can draw breath, she has turned away from the ledge and disappeared from his view. Only a traffic camera might record the moment that follows, one of the elevated eyes designed to take in the bigger picture. Through that feed, the girl can be seen kicking off her pumps, and sizing up the distance across the roof to the fire escape that switches down the building opposite. Without warning, she breaks into a sprint, headlong towards the abyss, and then leaps with all her might on reaching the point of no return.
For a beat, it might seem as if all London has frozen in time, but for the girl in the air. She swings her arms and legs forward, just as Yoshi had taught her, but from every view imaginable it’s increasingly clear that she’s not going to make it. Blaize herself can see her bid is doomed. In desperation, she reaches out for the fire escape, but it just seems to tip away as gravity drags her down. Her limbs begin to flail, grabbing at fresh air for every flight she passes, but there’s no time to scream or even see her life flash before her eyes. Indeed, the only thing she witnesses is a hulking figure rush below her and catch her in his arms. A bald-headed brute, it turns out, who collects his breath as she does, and rounds tight blue eyes on Blaize that share in her relief. “Now that,” he says, “was one hell of a fall.”