Chapter 14: City On Fire

--- Harper Everette, City on Fire ---

While the people she’d pulled off the streets had all gone to hide in the back kitchen, neither she nor Frankie were willing to leave the monster unsupervised. Which unfortunately left them with little to do but watch as the monster paced back and forth on the other side of the glass, having eventually given up on the front doors.

An eventuality that gave her an unpleasantly clear view of the gray beast, the way its veiny muscles rippled as it moved, the fact that its gums and fangs were visible from a lipless maw, or the fact that it had no eyes despite there being two clear indents for them in the sides of its head.

“What do we do?” She whispered to Frankie, fully convinced that the monster knew they were still inside the building despite being blind. “We can’t just sit here.”

“Can we do much else?” The redhead asked her seriously.

She bit her lip. “What about the back? I know it’s locked but you think we can sneak through the alley out back?”

Frankie considered it for a moment before shaking her head. “No, that thing is blind but it can tell we’re here. If we go out back there’s no telling if it’ll be able to tell or not. As much as it sucks it might be best to wait until it wanders off, or someone comes to help.”

“Is anyone coming to help?” She wondered quietly, she’d heard of there being some group to prevent a second set of Riots but she also knew their predecessors hadn’t done much to help anyone either.

“Yeah…” Frankie pulled out her phone and frowned at it. “I… know someone but I need a cell signal to get a hold of them.”

“What about the landline? Isn’t there one in the manager’s office?” She suggested, figuring it didn’t matter who this ‘someone’ was just so long as they could help. “Do you think you could reach them through that?”

“Maybe…” Frankie sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Though that depends on if they’re at the Den or in the middle of all of this shit.”

“Can’t hurt to try.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s just a phone call. Not like we lose anything by trying.”

“True.” The other woman admitted before nodding. “Alright, I’ll try the land line. You just… keep an eye on things here.”

“Aye-aye, captain.” She saluted, earning a wry grin from her friend.

“Don’t change Harps.”

“Don’t plan to.” She nodded, as Frankie made her way into the back.

She glanced at the monster and grimaced as it continued to pace, waiting for she wasn’t sure what, before deciding it might be better to focus on the people she’d pulled in off of the streets rather than the monster on it.

Stepping back into the kitchen, her eyes drifted over the four people half huddled and half spread across the kitsch, before falling on the mother comforting her crying daughter. Something that had her remembering what little she could about her own mother. (A kind voice… Warm hugs… A feeling of safety… Blood on a wall and a corpse on the ground.)

She shook her head before looking at some of the treats that hadn’t been grabbed through the day.

“Here, I know it’s not much but…” She shrugged a little helplessly as she offered the people the cookies and snack cakes. Though she was more specifically offering it to the crying child.

“Th-thank you.” The mother told her, offering a weak smile as her daughter accepted the cookie. “For, for everything.”

“You mean for getting us trapped in here?” One of the others scoffed.

“Better than being dead on the streets like everyone else.” Another argued.

The child began to sniffle again, and she glared at both of the men. “Zip-”

A thudding sound made her freeze, the faint cracking afterwards made her heart stop.

Terrified but needing to know, she slowly opened the door separating the kitchen from the main area and peeked through the crack to watch as the eyeless mass of flesh and teeth bashed its head against the glass window, the impact causing a web of cracks to form. A web that grew even larger as the monster slammed its head against the glass again and again.

“Fuuuck…” She whimpered, before turning back to everyone else. “Okay, everyone I need you to stay quiet and stay down. I… I need to go get Frankie.” (Otherwise she might wander out of the office when that thing gets in here.)

“What’s wrong?” The mother asked, holding her child close.

She chuckled nervously. “N-nothing, just… just stay back here, and, uh, lock the door.”

“Not like there’s anywhere else to go.” One of the men told her.

(Right, don’t have the time for this…) She told herself before stepping into the main area and quickly moving for the manager’s office, her eyes never leaving the monster as it continued to slam its head against the deteriorating glass.

Which is the only reason she wasn’t caught off guard when the glass finally gave in under the monster’s weight, leaving it free to climb inside the cafe in pursuit of its hiding prey. An event made all the worse by how it drew the attention of some of the other monsters that had come through the black tear in the sky.

Knowing that she didn’t have time to get to the kitchen or the office, she instead rushed for the nearest door and ducked inside of a supply closet before slamming it shut behind her.

Not even two seconds later a weight crashed into the door causing it to fracture and splinter, even if it didn’t quite give yet.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…” She steadily cursed as she quickly fumbled for her phone before using it as a light to look around the closet in the hopes of finding anything that could help her out of this.

--- Morris Brown ---

The moment he stepped into the Sanctuary control room he yelled, “Report now!”

“Sir, we don’t know what’s happening!” One of the senior technicians, a tired looking man with dark brown hair informed him.

“Well what do we know?!” They couldn’t be running into this completely blind.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“There’s activity across the entire Deviant spectrum, every energy we can detect on any level is going haywire.” The technician -an Agent Meyers if he wasn’t mistaken- continued with growing panic. “Any Divination spells our practitioner’s try to cast detonate, injuring them before we can get any information. All of our M.A.D.s and psychics -as well as anyone on the latter’s networks- are down bleeding from their eyes and ears. Our spectrometers are picking massive upticks in Ecto radiation across the city, but half our terminals are so fried we can’t actually see half the city. And then the massive crack in the sky is flooding the city in so much Deviant energy that even in the half we can see we can’t pick out any of the numerous Bleeds and Rifts until someone calls them in!”

“So, to summarize, everything that can go wrong is going wrong.” He grimaced, before looking over the digital map of the city, half the map a bright red and the other half completely blacked out. (This is as bad as the riots…)

His eyes shot to Meyers at a horrifying possibility crossed his mind. “Do we have any word from other cities? Is this a localized event or are we seeing the beginning of a second wave of Rift Riots?”

“It seems to be largely localized.” Another technician, a woman with short brown hair and a serious look assured him. “That said, the interference we’re getting is making all wireless service unstable. Only landline to landline data seems to be getting through it.”

Meyers flipped through something on his tablet. “She’s right, all of the data we’re getting is through hardwired terminals in our various stations. We aren’t getting anything from Sanctuary’s satellite network.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Meaning the only reason we aren’t completely down is due to redundancy.” (Fuck, and I honestly thought having a Sionis in my city would be the worst of it.)

With one last glance towards the map, he grimaced as he realized he lacked the resources to save everyone, before issuing orders. “Recall everyone from the dark zones, and then have them double down on the sectors we still have eyes on. I’ll request reinforcements from nearby branches, but we do not have the man power to contain every incident. Instead focus on civilian evacuation and defense of shelter positions. Do not engage any threat unless civilian casualty is imminent, and if we must engage, extract the civilians and retreat. This is what we’re here for, move people!”

Everyone near him saluted, “Sir!” before getting to work.

And as he looked down at the city map he couldn’t help but think that the flickering incident lights made the whole thing look like a city on fire.

--- Zoey Smith ---

All around her flames danced out of control and as much as she wanted to laugh she couldn’t, because all around her she could hear screams of terror and pain crying out over the cackling fires.

“Zoey!” A voice screamed, drawing her attention to Kelly as the older girl stumbled out of the black smoke, bringing white in behind her. “We need to go!”

“B-but…” She held her stuffed animal closer. (What about everyone else?)

“Zoey, I know you’re scared but we need to move.” Kelly told her as the older girl took her wrist and led her through the flames, her touch so much cooler than the flames that danced around them.

In front of them the ceiling began to creak and Kelly pulled her back just as the roof in front of them collapsed, leaving a burning wall in front of them.

“Shit!” Kelly cursed out the grown up word, before coughing. “How did this get so bad so fast?”

The stuffed animal in her arms felt hot to the touch, but she was too scared to let it go again.

Kelly looked around. “Do you-” The older girl coughed. “Do you hear that?”

She couldn’t hear anything over the flames, and the screams.

The older girl pulled her towards one of the bedrooms where she could hear a crying coming from under one of the beds.

“It’s okay…” Kelly gasped, reaching under the bed to help another kid Billy out from under it. “We’re getting out of here.”

“B-but the monster!” Billy cried, causing her to hold her stuffed animal as tightly as she could.

“Monster?” Kelly repeated before shaking her head as she started coughing again. “We… we need to… get out of… here… Smoke is… smoke is getting worse…”

Kelly looked at the window and licked her lips as her eyes darted to the flames eating away at the walls, “This is a bad idea… You two, stay low and by the bed!”

Too scared to argue she grabbed Billy’s hand and pulled him to the ground as Kelly picked up a lamp before slamming the lamp against the window and causing it to crack.

As she pulled the lamp back to hit the window again the older girl seemed to hesitate as she once more looked back at the flames on the wall. Somehow in spite of the smoke Kelly took a deep breath before nodding to herself.

“Whatever happens… you two need to… get out this window… okay? Don’t… don’t worry about me.” Kelly told them.

She nodded, even if Billy didn’t quite understand what was happening she’d get them both out. (I have to…)

“Alright, then stay back.” Kelly nodded once more, before turning back to the window and slamming the lamp into it until the window shattered.

Something in the air changed and all the fire in the room seemed to leap for the window, completely uncaring of the fact that Kelly stood in the way.

As the flames reached the older girl she was pushed backwards as the fire licked at her skin, only to pull back as more white smoke began to surround her.

“W-what the hell?” Kelly blinked, her brown eyes turning an icy white.

“K-Kelly?” She called, scared another monster had gotten into her foster sister.

The older girl blinked again as her eyes returned to their normal color, before she rushed towards Zoey and Billy. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

Taking Kelly’s hand the three of them made their way to the window where the older girl looked down at the street that had a handful of people stopping to watch the fire. “Hey, someone help!”

A couple of people noticed them but no one dared move closer to the burning building.

“Fucking cowards!” Kelly growled the air around her growing cold in a way that Zoey couldn’t help but flinch away from.

The older girl looked at her with those icy white eyes before shaking her head as they turned back to brown. “L-look, I’m going to go down there, but I’m going to need you two to climb out and follow me alright.”

“But it’s so high!” Billy cried.

“Yeah, but I’ll catch you. I promise.” Kelly told them, as she broke out the last of the glass in the window. “I just… I need you two to be brave… please?”

She forced herself to nod. “We’ll follow you.”

“Alright.” Kelly nodded, before climbing out of the window.

She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to hear the quiet, “This is gonna hurt.” just before the older girl jumped down to the sidewalk two floors below.

As Kelly hit the ground another burst of white smoke surrounded her for a few seconds, and the older girl seemed to look down at herself in shock, before once more shaking her head and turning back to them. “Come on! Jump and I’ll catch you!”

Next to her Billy seemed to back away from the window.

(He’s too weak. Leave him.) A dark voice whispered in her head.

She shook her own head before grabbing Billy’s shoulder. “You have to jump down. Kelly will catch you.”

“I-it’s too high, I’m scared!” The boy cried.

She growled as the heat around them began to get to her. “You need to jump!” She told him as she actually grabbed him and forced him out of the window.

“I-I’ve got you!” Kelly yelled, and when she glanced out the window she saw the older girl setting the boy on the ground before looking up at her. “Alright Zoey, you next.”

She nodded, before climbing out of the window. Something she knew would scare her normally but for some reason couldn’t as she felt a sort of numbness throughout her.

Once sitting on the windowsill she closed her eyes before pushing off and feeling herself go into free fall.

Not even two seconds later she felt an almost comforting sort of coolness wrap around her. “It’s okay, you’re safe now.”

She opened her eyes as she felt the ground beneath her feet before looking around and seeing that things were so much worse than she’d thought.

In front of her the entire building was on fire, the flames dancing almost like demons as they devoured everything they could get their hands on. But worst of all…

Her house wasn’t the only one on fire.

She held her stuffed animal so tightly that it could never escape again as she realized, (This is all my fault…)