Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One) (28 page)

“Cross that bridge later. You have to find it first. Even more, you have to find her.”

“Who is she?”

He tilted the screen so that she could see. There was a blurry photograph of a dark-skinned girl flipping off the camera. The date stamp in the corner was a few days old.

“Her name’s Kitty, and she’s an odd sort of elemental. She was taken in by the Electric Mage over in Terremain, although she tends to just ‘wing it’ with her powers. With electricity, you can kind of get away with that.”

Her mouth stayed shut as she scanned the page of information. It had the basics—physical description, age, criminal record. Nothing really stood out, except for the note about a mental condition.

“She’s not psycho, is she?”

“Not until now.” At her look, he continued: “I’ve talked with the Electric Mage. He said the dead guy wasn’t her fault.”

“Dead guy?”

Aiden highlighted a section of the report that she hadn’t read yet. Great. He wanted her to go Underground—which was dangerous enough—to find someone with a mental condition that could shoot electricity.

“Why do you want me to do this?”

“To see if you still have potential or not.”

“Can’t you tell on your own?”

She became aware of just how loud the computer’s fan was when no one was speaking. Aiden stared at her. She must have missed something in conversation. She backtracked over it in her mind.

“I know you do. You do not.” he said.

That was a bit too sage-ish for her, but she got the impression that he was offering her a crossroads. Choose one way, and she could walk away from this and study for the exams she and everyone else had to write. Or she could pursue Kitty, who might provide a less cryptic answer to the question.

If Aiden was right, she still had that lottery ticket.

“Where is she?”

She hadn’t felt like studying, anyway.

Deep beneath the city streets, in a temple of pain and shadow and dark, crawling things, he was born. Or, shall we say, re-born, for he had existed for some twenty-three years that he remembered and, he suspected, quite a bit more that he didn’t. This birth was more of a free pass. A bail paid by a god he now owed, freed from the psychological prison of someone else’s mind.

When the capitol city of Lyarne had been built, its foundations were rooted on the bones of its predecessor. The recent war had forced most of the country to the capitol, but the city was only so big. Even if the city’s shielding system had been able to grow with the development, the steep mountains guarding Lyarne prevented any further expansion. The city was overcrowded. Those who had the money or the connections found places, but everyone else was out of luck.

Until some entrepreneurial individuals found that the old, buried city wasn’t quite as structurally incapable as was thought. If only it could be excavated.

There had been no shortage of refugees.

It wasn’t pretty. Practicality had shaped the underground city: it was much easier to build walkways than tunnels, so most of the pathways went through dead office-buildings and former houses in the buried city. A lot of buildings were still intact, and by the time the government took notice people had already started living in them. Focused on the war effort, the government decided to ignore them.

Before Mieshka had fallen in with the mage, she’d had no idea of what lay underneath her city. It was still shocking to walk through the makeshift tunnels.

The rain hadn’t quite dried on her jacket, and the chill pressed close to her like the tunnel’s walls. She preferred the closeness, though. Her phone chirped, and she wondered how far she was from the surface. There was a smell of stale air and mould down here. The only light came from a crude line of naked bulbs strung up on one side of the walkway—a new addition. Last time she’d been down here, she’d needed a flashlight. Looking at the bulbs, Mieshka tried not to think of just how precarious the electricity was down here.

She wasn’t sure how deep she was, but the last bar of service on her phone winked out when she started down a staircase. Not many people came this way. She could tell by the dust her hand gathered as it slid down the banister.

Still several blocks from the Core, she was already walking past the small mom and pop shops of the underworld. She knew they often paid tribute to the larger contenders to keep their windows intact and products unstolen, but there were exceptions—like the innocent-looking munitions shop she was headed for now. Maury, the owner, was too much of a badass. No one messed with him, not when he kept ‘demo’ rounds in a range of guns within easy reach behind his counter.

For some reason, he’d taken a liking to her. She hoped it was in a protective, uncle-ish sense. The bell rang as she walked in, and the burly man behind the counter straightened up.

“Meese! Long time! I been savin’ this one special for you!”

He leaned forward and she heard a drawer open. Then there was a tiny gun in his hand.

“I wanted to save its first shot for you, but you haven’t visited. And last month this jerk laughed at its size. Sorry, but I had to shut him up. Second shot is still good, eh?”

She was never sure how to respond to him. Dutifully, she admired the gun, which was dwarfed by his hand.

“I’m sorry, Mo. He shouldn’t have laughed.”

She didn’t like guns. She was skittish around them. Some would argue that she was skittish around everything.

“Meese should have protection down here. Gotta back up your rep, little girl.”

“Rep?”

“Reputation. You’re the latest celebrity, don’tcha know?”

“What?”

“Well, except for Kitty, mind you. But she’s old news that came back.”

“Actually, I’d like to hear about Kitty.”

“Why Meese, didn’t you come down to visit me?”

Mieshka gave him her most guilt-free smile.

“Of course, Mo. She’s just business.”

“Business? You’re not after her, are you?”

“Maybe.”

“Meese.”

“Just kidding, Mo. I just gotta chat with her.”

“Chat, huh? I think you better take the Mieshka.”

He pushed the gun toward her.

She stared, aware her mouth had gone a little slack. “You… named it after me? That’s so… sweet.”

“Your name is just so perfect sounding for a gun.”

She picked up the gun carefully with both hands. Maury nodded with approval.

“Mo?” She stared at the gun in her hands. There was a tiny, stylized inscription on the side of the barrel.

“Yes?”

“Elementals—they’re people who mess around with elements, right? Control fire and water and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“So, technically all the Mages are elementals?”

He glanced up from the gun.

“Calling a Mage an elemental is like calling an Admiral a soldier.”

Of course Mo would use a military analogy.

“A bit of an understatement, then?”

“A bit.”

It was easy to connect Aiden with Mo’s analogy. She’d seen him do way more than shoot fire.

“On a scale of elemental to mage, what would you say Kitty was?”

Mo leaned his elbows on the counter and thought.

“A wildcard. If Mages were gods, she’d be the trickster figure.”

She checked the time on her phone. She didn’t have much of it to spend, if she wanted to find Kitty.

“Wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”

“Nope. But I’m sure you’ll find her. You have a knack for running into people.”

He hid a smile as he said the last bit, which made her think that he meant it literally. She fingered the gun.

“Mo…”

“Yes, Meese?”

“Thanks.”

Freedom, he learned, was comprised of promises. He’d known this all along, bitterly holed up in her mind, but to experience it was entirely something else. No longer did he view the world as on the screen of a television. Everything around him stirred with life, though perhaps not the life most of the world would associate with the term. His life was made of sticks and stones, and the shift at the edge of one’s perception. He was a whisper that turned a dream to nightmare, which was what he’d wanted his entire existence, except this dream was reality, and the claws in his paws were very, very real. He left one dead at her door, and another was coming up the stair.

She may not have liked guns, but the Mieshka was an exception. On the way, she tested the safety and loading mechanism, smiling at the feel of the well-built parts working smoothly. She’d followed the light trail through a shopping mall, and had now reached the entrance to the underground city’s Core. The windows of the department store had long ago been boarded up, but she could tell she was there by the light framing the plywood. Neon was very popular down here.

Before she went out, she stashed the gun in its holster at the back of her belt, went close to the boards, and listened. She would have heard a gunfight by now, but knives were popular down here and made a lot less noise. Then, satisfied she wouldn’t be inadvertently stabbed, she stepped out onto the sidewalk’s brickwork and squinted against the light.

It was easy to forget that she was still underground in this place. The ceiling was too high to see by the shop lights. In this part of town, the edifices marked a juxtaposition of different ages: brickwork sat next to plastic, and a cement structure crumbled next to a metropolitan pseudo-hotel that bore the distinct construction of the pre-Chromatix B era. Everything was well over 70 years old.

Mieshka hadn’t been down here enough to become a familiar face. Except for those involved with the Mages, all people saw was some young, orange-haired girl. Just another refugee from the war. Though, if what Mo said were true, everyone knew her name. She still wasn’t sure what she thought of that.

“Hey. Hey you girl. You lost?”

The man stood outside one of the storefronts that occupied the bottom level of the buildings. He was wearing an apron, and the shop display had a scattering of Chinese characters, which told Mieshka which group controlled this section of town.

“Nope.” She gave him her most winning smile. “But I’m looking for something. Someone.”

He wiped his hands on a rag while he gave her a long, considering look.

“Someone? Who?”