Consuming Fire

Chapter 1

But this boy changed everything.

“Hey Barnes?” The scientist – Rodney, he was called – elbowed him in the side and sent shooting pains through his left hip. He was getting old. “What’s got into you?”

“N-nothing. What’s his power?”

“Uh.” Rodney flipped the first page back. “They’re unsure at the present stage. Somebody thought they saw him jump off a building and reported it, the Agents suspect it has something to do with intelligence. Doesn’t sound very intelligent if he leapt from a skyrise, eh?”

“Yeah,” Alistair mumbled. Beads of sweat began to drip from his forehead. He snapped awake when another young guard entered the room. He was an army buff, fresh out of inventory. He and Alistair moved into the small room where the consultations usually took place. The boy looked up into their faces, unsure but unafraid, a chunky bracelet clamped around his wrist.

Something flashed in his eyes when they met his. It was enough to bring Alistair to his knees. His eyes were exactly like his mother’s.

Chevie frowned, but said nothing.

“Let’s go kid,” said Alistair. “Time for breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry.” His voice was deep. Chevie guessed he was probably eighteen.

“We’re not asking,” said the other guard and he roughly hauled Chevie to his feet. The boy didn’t react with screams or tears or curses like most of the other kids. He still couldn’t take his eyes off Alistair.

“I know you,” he said to him. “Why do I know you? Where am I?”

Alistair caught the guard’s confused glance and then shook his head at the boy. “Sorry kid, you don’t know me. I think you’re just delirious. As for your other question… you’re in hell, and there aint no way out.”

The guard’s smile curved to the side. Alistair’s insides shivered at his cruelty. But the boy merely stared at his father with the same narrowed brow and a sparkle in his eye, as if he knew something Alistair did not.

“You’re lying,” he said. Then he let the guard lead him away.

2008

Alistair wasn’t lying. This was hell. A hell he could not escape from.

But he could help his son escape.

Since Alistair first arrived seventeen years ago, the inside of the Institution had changed. He no longer slept in the guard’s quarters – the rooms that felt like caves. They’d built new cells above, ones with murky white walls that made it feel more like a hospital than a cave. But the doctor’s methods had not changed. In fact, from what Alistair knew of Dr. Wolfe’s projects, he was diving deeper into torturous methods and unfathomable science than ever before.

Alistair knew he had to get his son out of the Institution. He didn’t want to see poor Chevie down in the morgue like all the other kids who reached their early twenties and withered into nothing. Chevie was twenty-one now.

It was time to take action.

Alistair knocked on his son’s door at exactly 2:58am one night. Since the Iceman and his baby daughter escaped a long time ago, security tightened and guards regularly patrolled the cell block corridors. But Alistair knew the schedule – they had time before the change of guard.

“Now?” Chevie whispered as the glass door slid open.

“Yes. You’re more valuable than ever, Son. Let’s go.”