Christchurch, Capital City
Zealand Prefecture
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 7. 29. 11:34
It’s a miracle that Archibald is not dead.
The fire starts easily, the way they always do, but he tries something different this time, decides to train fire. Like always, he starts it with a wooden match. Wood matches are the best. They don’t bend when you strike them, and the head ignites like a sparkler when you drag it over the strike line. Then when it drops into the lint kindling, it burns like mad.
Poof! A fire. It’s like magic.
Anything you control, you can train. Fire’s not different. Start a small fire on the floor of the Zealand Corp boardroom. As it grows, you wait. Wait for the fire to get large enough to lick the line of fuel, and then ignite a line of flames. The waiting is the best part.
You spray a stream of ethyl ether in a zigzag, making patterns on the portrait of the CEOs hanging on the wall—take that, Mother! You wait, and when the flames touch the fuel, it becomes an orange-red dancing asp, willing to strike when or what you tell it to. However, like Cleopatra, fire can be fickle and deadly. Sometimes, even when you’ve done everything right, it decides to punish you for not planning every detail. The ethyl ether can evaporate too quickly. The vapors can make your head spin, make you giddy and giggly and make you forget how to run. The fire can ignite before you have a chance to escape the room, and the extra bottle of accelerant you keep on your belt can explode, washing your pants and shirt with flames so quick and hot that even your cloak can’t stop them.
You plunge out of the room like a shooting star falling through the atmosphere. You hit the ground and run for the fire escape, blind to anything but the searing pain and the smell of your own flesh cooking.
The voices you hear shouting your name seem far away, and you think just for a fleeting second, right before consciousness slips away, that you hear Mother’s voice calling to you, saying as she always does, “Archibald. How many times must I tell you not to play with fire?”
Then the pain goes away. You know that the nerve endings are dead—you are hurt badly but just can’t feel it. You call Duke to pick you up in the Noriker. Somehow, you have to keep going, because you still have matches and there’s still a building to watch burn.
Archibald stops to catch his breath and compose himself. Wrapping himself in his cloak to protect the burns on his chest and belly, he stumbles down the spiraling fire escape of Parliament Tower, a toothpick that he’s chewed to bits in his mouth. He sucks on the wood, making a loud slurp his mother used to despise. What would she say about him blowing up the dam? Or burning down her corporate headquarters?
I can’t wait, he thinks, to see her face when Parliament Tower blooms with fire, surrounded by the river’s flood waters, a sign of the coming Armageddon, and living proof of a son’s promise kept.