Purple flames hailed towards them. The crowd of onlookers stood by oddly entranced by the colored fire as if they were watching fireworks, but once everyone shared the exact terrifying realization their bus would soon be consumed by flames, they ducked behind chairs and phones clattered to the floor. Their natural instincts told them to get out, flee, but waiting outside was over seventy feet of air and asphalt.
In midst of all the unintelligible cries inside, Lark found himself freezing in the face of death, again. He urged his body to move. Do something! Anything! Or you’re going to die here!
His blood ran cold as he saw the burst, burn so bright, the flicker of heat distorted the air.
Air left his lungs. It’s over.
The bus shook and more passengers screamed, but it was lost on his ears when he saw the same bubble that saved the Redlines airship emerge in front of them.
A bubble with the texture of bubble gum expanded from the top of the bus and met the flames head-on. If a sword were the equivalent of the flame, the sword would’ve pierced through the bubble. However, not only did the bubble block the attack as a shield… it ate the fire.
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Squeaky sneakers slid across the court and his entire hand twitched. He looked at the late pass in his hand. It felt sticky against his fingers. Before he entered through the double doors, he tilted his head up into the sky. Air traffic resumed about forty minutes after the attack and their bus dropped everyone off at its usual stops as if the incident was just a minor inconvenience. The channels streamed across the skies like layers of a braided rope. Wide, colorful, and knotted in his mind.
Lark sauntered into the school gymnasium when he was tackled by a majority of his classmates. His back landed onto the blue, rubber flooring, and he groaned from pain and laughter as he received several noogies.
“Ahaha, this bastard stealing all the glory!” one voice above him roared, while the others agreed.
“Gerroff me!” Lark struggled under the dogpile. “I don’t want all your sweaty balls on my face.”
A burly man with wavy gray hair strode over to their corner on the mat and blew the whistle around his neck, causing all the boys to scatter. Instructor Fuego ran a hand through his well-kept hair, showcasing a perfect right angle from his mid-line to his taut biceps in black spandex.
“Do you know what’s best about youth?” Fuego tapped his clipboard and twisted his back again before raising his arms in a herculean pose. “Your sweat sparkles!”
Some of the male students howled with laughter.
“Twenty more laps! Move your flabby butts!” Instructor Fuego blew his whistle again and they winced.
Lark shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t say Instructor Fuego had no sense of humor, but it was strange. As for why a world-renown athlete ended up teaching at their school, it must’ve it been due to his odd personality.
But even in retirement, Fuego trained daily. His resting heart rate was still in the 40’s last Lark remembered when they compared their activity trackers.
Lark checked the data from this morning; the spike in his heart rate reached over 120 - a new record. It was now at a steady 70 beats per minute average. As he stood up the instructor slapped his back. “You alright kiddo?”
He nodded.
“Good, then get out there too!” Fuego beamed. “We can’t let the hero skip training!”
What? He must’ve worn a shocked expression because Fuego kicked him into the running lane and his classmates roared with laughter again.
Lark tossed his jacket and backpack off to the side when Sky jogged up next to him.
“You bastard, everyone was so worried about you when you didn’t show up this morning. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Pumping his legs harder, he bumped shoulders with other students.
“You don’t have to.” Sky pushed the frame of his glasses up, even though they barely slid down his nose.
Lark turned on his heel. When could this skinny bean catch up with me—?
“It’s all over the web. But when we didn’t see you this morning and heard about the attack, Mishka constantly checked with her contacts to make sure you were alright, you ungrateful—ugh!”
Sky broke rhythm, and Lark shot back, “Don’t talk so much. You’re gonna bite your tongue.”
“C’mon, why are you so nonchalant—there’re leaked videos of a guy blasting fire from his hands! But you’re acting all hush-hush like the agency.” Sky panted as they made another turn. He lifted his glasses as sweat rolled off his nose. “Everyone’s cheering nobody got hurt, but what about that freakn’ fireball!”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, too.”
“Really, now?” Sky smirked. “Your quick reaction earned you some fame. And the granny was cute. It looked like she had a heart attack… from how cool you were.”
“Seriously, you talk too much.” Lark shouldered him.
Sky flexed his bicep and bragged, “You’re gonna have to push harder than that now. I may come from a long line of Professor Laytons, but look at these guns.”
“Ridiculous.” Lark snickered and sped up his pace a second time.
“Hey! I’m still working on my quads. D-don’t run so fast~”
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By the end of class, his entire body ached. Popping the joints in his shoulders relieved some of the tension, and he let a cool towel hang over his neck. He hadn’t run that hard since he quit soccer, but Sky looked ready to pass out on the floor.
“You’re doing better than I thought you would,” he said, tossing a water bottle. “The reason why Instructor Fuego likes it when people call him Fuego is cuz it literally means fire in Spanish, and he likes to light people’s asses on fire.”
“Don’t make me laugh you jerk.” Sky struggled to open the cap and clutched his abdomen. “Did he tell you that? Or are you making shit up again with your one-year of Spanish?”
“You’ll never know,” he answered with a dry laugh. “Maybe if you get on Fuego’s good side, he’ll tell you.”
“I don’t know about that. Every time I catch him looking at me, it’s like he wants to snap me in half,” Sky said, faking a shiver while stretching his white lanky leg in front of a mirror.
The two walked through the back door of their next class: Intermediate Coding. The computer lab consisted of forty newly installed touch-screen panels, but their class had about half that many students enrolled.
Sky rolled out two chairs near the aisle and spun in one of them with his arms raised above his head like a little kid. “We’ve risen from hell to the heavens.”
Lark rolled his eyes and finger-swiped the glass monitor, revealing a digital landscape. An information box loaded on the screen and he logged in with his school ID and password. Spreading two fingers across the monitor, he widened the window browser. Blue hyperlinks about the Redlines incident reflected in his gaze.
Sky drummed his fingers and opened similar reports. “I wanted to ask you this morning, but are you going to Samuel’s funeral this weekend?”
“Wangshi can take us if you want to go,” Lark answered and his jaw locked when he accidentally pressed on an ad. He lifted his fingers off the glass, leaving a cloudy trail. Brushing his hot palms against his pants, he forced them to still.
“Up to me, huh?” Sky murmured as he clicked on a news link.
All the headlines applauded the Allied Agency for capturing the cultists. They all echoed the same sentiments: the anti-alien faction would be seeing the end of their so-called “tech raids.”
There were still ten minutes left of their break before the bell would ring and their teacher hadn’t walked in yet. Mishka was probably running late from her Physics class.
The two scrolled through the search engine when Sky cleared his throat. “Are you sure you want to go? It hasn’t been that long since your grandfather’s—”
“It’s been over a year already. I’m fine.”
First the cultists, now funerals he wanted no reminders of. Lark dug his fingernails into the crook of his neck, his mind flashing back to when he ripped apart the invitation from Sam’s parents.
Samuel was their senior by a year and the previous soccer captain before him. Last they saw Sam, he was this baby-faced college freshman who just moved into his dorm during the summer.
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No one knew where he was now.
“He’s only been missing since the start of the quarter. Only a few weeks later, and they’re already giving up? If it were me, I’d never…” Lark gritted his teeth.
Sky slumped in his chair and curled his fingers under his chin. “His parents are oddballs. People don’t normally send invitation cards to funerals. They actually wrote in there that God told them he’s no longer in this world.
“But you know, Lark, it’s not like your father’s case. The police suspected foul play in Samuel’s disappearance. I think this is more for them to have closure.”
“But there’s no proof. No body. Just rumors.”
Morosely scrolling through the twenty tabs he opened, his eyes dimmed. Sky was right; no one corroborated the release of purple flames from the cultist’s hands. All the videos captured a bright white flash and then the bubble enveloped the attackers. The only sources talking about the flames were those supposedly at the site. Like himself.
“Hey, you don’t look so good. You sure want to continue class today?” Sky leaned in and pressed a hand against Lark’s forehead.
“Who do you think is causing my bad mood?” Lark palmed Sky’s face away when another hand pinched his ear.
“Who gave you permission to touch my boyfriend?” Mishka wiggled the shell of Lark’s ear. She wore her usual white-striped cat hoodie and danced around his chair, whipping his infinity scarf around his head into a turban.
Sometimes, he wondered how a free-spirit like Mishka would be interested in a no-nonsense, study-type like Sky.
“I would rough you up, but by the cat gods, what would your fangirls do to me if I messed up your hair.”
As she did one look-over at Sky, she pinched her nose. “Are you wearing cologne? Like a lot of it?”
“That’s the smell of Fuego.” Sky beamed as their professor, Mrs. Zayne, walked into the room. Her long legs effectively shut down every conversation in the classroom. Unlike other electives, Professor Zayne only accepted students who mastered their prerequisites. As long as no one caused a ruckus, they had the freedom to talk while working. Plus, she was a little sweet on them after they won last year’s robotics competition.
Sitting down on Sky’s left side, closest to the wall, Mishka sprayed sanitizer over her hands, keyboard, and mouse. “Hey, panda eyes over here.”
Sky slid his chair next to her and pulled down her hood till it covered her nose.
Unable to look away, Lark caught a glimpse of her knees wobbling as his best friend pecked the top of her nose and whispered sweet words into her ear.
Stuck as a third wheel to the horrors, he kicked Sky’s chair.
“Ouch, hey!”
Mishka reached for her boyfriend’s cheeks and pulled them in different directions.
“W-wait! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…”
“Lark’s finesse with words is rubbing off you. This makes me worried.”
Sky released her from his embrace to tend to his loved cheeks, while she folded her hood back. Loose, golden hair curled down the sides of her flushed face.
Lark hugged his shoulders. “This is too much PDA in the morning.”
Mishka fixed her hair and asked, “Should I introduce you to someone?”
“No. Please, no.”
“In that case, let’s talk about that new piece from Soko’s.” Her familiar catty smile appeared.
It’s been over a year since the half-a-million purchase and Mishka still looked at him sometimes as if he were one of the jarred lab specimens in Mr. Zayne’s Biology classroom. A goose-flesh impression erupted along his arms, which he often experienced when hearing Mishka’s love for the unexplained phenomena in their world. One of which was alien technology.
Lark pretended to not hear her as he shot a glare at Sky, who double-teamed in silliness with his girlfriend. They both tried their best to cutely pout.
“Mishka is our leading expert on alien-technology, you know that. And you wouldn’t hide something from me if it was something you could easily search online for,” Sky said stiffly, facing forward.
“To call her an expert is overkill, but you just had to ruin the surprise,” Lark snorted, and refreshed the news cycle. His eyes widened at the latest headline: Loose Cultist from the Attack on Redlines Airship?
Mishka’s fingers flew across the keyboard. Seeing as no students were notified of the possible danger, Lark guessed she was making several inquiries to her contacts.
“The bomb went off at 7:45 and there were zero reported injuries from the blast. All passengers on the Redlines’ airship were safely encapsulated from the debris as the vehicle went down. It looks like there’s only minimal infrastructure damage,” Sky read off the link. “Three cultists were immediately apprehended within five minutes of the attack, but some are speculating there’s an insider. Whoa, there’s a lot of comments about you again. Some of the comments are asking who is the handsome guy in the second row.”
“Seriously? What trashy news cycle are you reading this from? I’ll have to unsubscribe.”
Mishka hadn’t stopped typing when the teacher came by their row to hand them their new assignments.
“Hey, Professor Zayne. Did Mister Zayne get those beautiful trilliant cut earrings for your anniversary?” Lark’s voice oozed with charisma.
One of her hands brushed against the sapphire studs as if she almost forgot they were still there. Her lips pushed to one corner as if to say, “What do you want from me?”
“Professor,” Lark began seriously, “Did you hear anything about the AA attack this morning?”
“Yes.” Her response wasn’t fast, nor slow. She raised an immaculate eyebrow that reached the height of her brown curled bangs. “Didn’t you receive a notification from the school administration when they were caught?”
“No, we didn’t get a notification that it even happened on our phones. We just heard about it from our teacher during first period.” Sky piped in. “And the news is saying that there’s a possible fourth cultist on the loose.”
Professor Zayne nodded, but her smile pressed into a thin line— Is she worried?
“I’ll let the staff know during lunch that there’s probably an issue with our servers. Here, pass these down.”
It was only after the professor went back up to her desk that Mishka shared any tidbits of reliable information.
“My contact at the Northshore Express confirmed there’s a loose cultist but no other leads...”
Following the warning, the bell rang and Professor Zayne booted up the screen in front of the classroom. It displayed all their hard work from last night. Diagrams and formulated scripts filled the wall.
Thumbing the edges of his wristband, Lark didn’t even notice the professor handing him another assignment until Sky elbowed him. For the rest of the class period, they didn’t talk about the AA topic, but the image of the purple flame remained stuck inside his head.
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Thinking too much made him stressed and hungry; lunch became an escape from his turmoil. The three met up again for lunch in the school library. Not many libraries allowed food near literature, but since people were sneaking in snacks the Dubois High librarian sectioned off a small area for eating.
Lining his back against the pillar, Lark emptied the lunch bag Wangshi packed for him.
Mishka, sitting next to him, dove into a burrito and crossed her ankles.
“Aren’t you cold? I feel cold lookin' at you,” he said, staring at her lightly exposed skin. Her skin tone wasn’t as pale as Sky’s, but they were on the peachy side compared to the tan that he got from running outside so often.
“Hey, stop staring at my girlfriend’s legs.” Sky eyed the two from the trash can, stopping midway from peeling his banana.
Smirking, she trailed her fingers up to the curb of her black shorts. Lark shifted his gaze back to Sky, who nearly popped his banana into the trash.
“I have smart threads running through them. You should know better than anyone how they work.” She giggled.
“Since I’ve answered your question, you have to answer one of mine.”
“Shoot.” Lark washed down the last bite of his sandwich with some OJ. He reached towards his sling backpack to prepare himself for the barrage of questions related to the piece of alien tech.
Might as well show it to her now…
“I want to know what happened to you, can you tell me?” Mishka’s tone was light and borderline nice, but he knew it was calculated.
“You’ve had this self-destructive look on your face since third, but it seems more than just nerves from this morning,” she added as if to explain her sudden questioning.
His head ached. Really, she was becoming more and more like Sky, he thought. When did they start watching him so closely?
Sky sat beside her and chided, “Mishka, we’re making him uncomfortable. Can’t you see? He’ll tell us when he’s ready, you can’t push him like this—”
It’s fine. Deciding to open the lid a bit more, he thought, maybe, all the emotions he contained would be easier to process.
“Sky must’ve told you some of it. My grandfather on my dad’s side passed away during the spring of our Junior year, which made my exit as captain of the soccer team very dramatic.” The library was brightly lit from the open bay window, and cracks weaved through the floor like a river. He casted his story from the least unpleasant part. “The suddenness— he was just so healthy before it happened. But Runetech needed to live on even without the brains behind the whole thing. Everyone knew that—”
A chuckle almost escaped him. He shouldn’t be laughing; death wasn’t funny. Mishka’s expression was exactly like his old teammates when he quit soccer. She’s probably thinking, like what the hell is wrong with this guy?
He covered his mouth and fixed his expression before continuing.
“I’m not sure if it was a joke on his part or the company’s, but in his will, he wrote out specific measurements to cremate the lower half of his body, while his top-half was to undergo cryogenics.”
Why would he want that?” Mishka asked.
Lark just shrugged. “It was a ridiculous request. But I loved him. He was all I had after my father went missing. Now all I have is Wangshi and the company.”
His gaze darkened.
“You know money makes people do crazy things. So, while I was dealing with the inheritance, people targeted me…” and tried to assassinate me, he wanted to add.
A sixteen-year-old controlling the company’s assets angered a lot of people. Splurging on the Trinity Watch didn’t do him any favors and he unknowingly entered a dangerous situation. He couldn’t trust anyone.
“I’ve known Sky since we were five. It’s hard to keep secrets between friends who’ve been together that long… But how long have we’ve known you? Four years? Since freshman year?”
He knew he sounded cold, but the paranoia wouldn’t stop. It seemed to build inside him, like an angry spirit fanning the flames.
“I know you’re not an ordinary person. You’re someone with connections, so you should already know important people are questioning Runetech’s value. And as the heir apparent, I stand to gain or lose more than the average person. So, what is it exactly that you want from me?”
Ignoring Sky’s hostile stare, Lark observed Mishka’s reaction. He needed honesty, not fake pleasantries. If she was anything like Daisy, he could never show her the inheritance.
“You are not wrong,” she spoke slowly as if walking around eggshells.
“Since Runetech’s CEO passed away, everyone’s more cautious. That’s a no-brainer whenever big waves happen in the biz. But, you’re smart. Maybe, not smart in the way Sky is, but you’re capable in other ways.
“I’m not dating Sky to get to you. I just want to help. You don’t trust me right now, but have I given you a reason not to?” She bit her lip. She wasn’t teary-eyed—but her voice quivered and guilt gnawed at his stomach. Everything up till this moment was draining; life-sucking. His friends deserved better from him.
“You haven’t.”
He rubbed the back of his shoulder. “Whatever, you know about the company’s instability. I did my best to please everyone. But after my grandfather’s funeral, a cultist tried to kill me.”
“What?” The two jolted up from their seats.
“If it weren’t for Wangshi, I’d be dead,” Lark continued. “But he got away and we couldn’t figure out the reason behind the attack. Runetech doesn’t sell alien technology and my grandfather never produced anything on the same level…but then I found this in his possessions.” He reached inside his backpack and Mishka squeaked, instantly recognizing the alien-tech.
In his hand sat a mysterious pyramid. The artifact was small, only half the size of a gambling die. He didn’t tell them yet, but occasionally, gray lines would appear on the sides and glow.
The truth was mostly out in the open. He scooped it back inside his backpack after the warning bell rang much to Mishka’s chagrin.
“I’m not even sure if the cultist was after this, but it didn’t feel like a coincidence that they chose somewhere so close to attack.”
“No-no. I get it. We’ll figure something out,” Mishka said, eyes gleaming. Her hands pawed at his backpack.
Lark ruefully grinned. Alien tech was like catnip to her.
Suddenly, Sky sandwiched everyone into a big hug.
“Why is everyone so touchy today?” Lark protested as he wiggled out of the hold. For the first time in weeks though, his chest felt lighter. Then he sneezed when Sky’s arm hooked around his face. “Oh god—what is this smell!”
“Shh...shh... it's Fuego.”