FIRESTORM:

Grace was full of energy and optimism, with the rebellious streak that comes from being a seventeen-year-old heir to a wealthy estate. She stood on the balcony overlooking the volcano and watched the Bennu Island villagers painstakingly build the new tower, brick by brick. She sighed and walked into the complex where her mother sat idle in a wheelchair.

“The new tower is coming along nicely.” Grace pushed her mother’s wheelchair around the massive complex her family owned and operated. This place housed one of her father’s many businesses. The living quarters completed the north wing, so the family could spend summers there comfortably.

“What’s up with all the birds calling?” Jackie asked.

Her questions would be answered sooner if Jackie sat back and let the slipstream and me tell it. I ignored her and kept my focus on the surrounding stream. I guess I couldn’t blame her. The rules of the slipstream Proba-verse take some getting used to. Even I don’t have all the answers. This was my first time allowing someone else to ride my stream, but after successfully riding Jackie’s, I knew we could do it as long as her inexperience didn’t get in the way.

“Relax and watch,” I told Jackie as I let the scene of Grace and her wheelchair-bound mother play out in real time.

In the afternoons, Grace parked her mother’s wheelchair by a fireplace in the sitting room so she could go explore Bennu Island. The mysterious call of the Bennu birds drew Grace into the forest, even though she had been told to stay close to the compound. Like Jackie, Grace had to know what was out there.

Grace kissed her mother’s cheek and said, “I’ll be home for dinner.”

Her mother didn’t respond, not with a word or a gesture. Not for lack of wanting to, but she had lost the physical capacity to do so. Muscular dystrophy turned her into a decaying shell of her former self, left to stare into that fireplace for hours on end while her vivacious young daughter explored Bennu Island.

Each afternoon, Grace gained more confidence to go farther and deeper into the woods. Even the dead carcasses littering the island didn’t deter her. In fact, the sight of the half dragon/half human-like skeletons of the local Bennu bird only fueled her curiosity. She was dying to see the creature alive, in the flesh, after hearing their relentless calls day and night since her arrival.

Today, Grace went farther than she’d ever gone before and found a warehouse set within dense trees.

“I wonder what's inside...” She approached the building cautiously, her hand brushing against the cold cement walls. The steel door had a keypad lock.

“Why not a DNA Identifier?” As she contemplated the code, the door unexpectedly opened from inside.

Grace ran and hid behind a nearby tree. She saw someone wearing a white hazmat suit leave the building.

As they walked away, Grace slid from the tree’s cover, hoping to catch the door before it locked shut. Not wanting to be seen, she was a beat too late, and the door closed before she reached it.

“Uh.” Grace sighed. She was used to getting what she wanted but did not get easily discouraged.

She entered a code into the keypad; her birthday. The device flashed red. That wasn’t the correct combination. She tried her home address and one-two-three-four, of course. No luck.

Grace thought… and then entered her parent’s anniversary. She knew that date well because every year before her mother got sick, her parents would throw a lavish party to celebrate their love with five hundred of their closest “friends.”

As her mother’s health got worse, the parties stopped. This year, her father took the bricks from the chapel where they got married, transported them to Bennu Island, and built that new tower on the complex so they could remember the strength of their undying love. Her father spared no expense in his grand gesture to show his devotion to Grace’s mother, despite her current paralyzed state.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Bingo. Their anniversary, May twentieth, was the correct code. The keypad flashed green, the door unlocked, and Grace slid into the secluded building. The heavy door slammed behind her. She paused at the entrance and tip-toed forward only when she heard no movement within.

The vaulted cement walls made the open space dark and dreary, but a few rays of sunshine peeked in from the glass roof. Rows of shelves filled the front half of the warehouse. Grace looked at the oddities on the racks; ropes, muzzles, whips, handcuffs, chains, and knives lying in a thick layer of dust and dirt. Grace walked through the rows of strange storage, as if browsing through a library.

She made her way to the back of the building and found a cage, and in it, a boy. Yes, there was a boy in a cage!

They locked eyes. Seeing each other jolted them both into a panic. Grace stumbled back and knocked over a bucket full of rancid liquid. She recoiled when it splashed onto her expensive dress, but never mind that. She did a double take to see that boy in the cage once more. He froze stiff at the sight of her, both of them completely shocked.

“Oh goodness, are you locked in there?” Grace asked.

The boy nodded with his eyes lowered to the filthy floor.

Grace felt bold enough to step closer to examine the boy because she knew the cage was locked. He looked like a teenager around her age, seventeen. He wore tattered stained pants. His lack of a shirt showed off his thin but muscular frame. He had a tanned complexion with shaggy black hair. The young man felt the power of her gaze on his sculpted body and lifted his dark eyes to meet hers.

“Are you alright?” Grace asked. “What’s going on here?”

The sheepish boy in the cage didn’t answer. His cell was about five square feet, with a bucket and a food plate in the corner.

“How long have you been in here?” Grace asked next.

The boy responded with a shrug.

“Why are you locked up like an animal? You must have done something awful. You reap what you sow.”

That triggered the boy. With furrowed brow, he paced the cage like a lion, now sizing Grace up. Her shiny blonde hair, her bright clean sundress, her fair skin; not something he saw every day. As he paced, Grace saw deep scars from a whip across his back.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Who are you?” the boy barked back with an Indigenous accent.

Grace flinched at the intensity of his voice, but the excitement of the experience intrigued her. She moved in closer, putting her hands on the cell bars.

“Maybe I’m someone who can help if you answer my questions. So please, tell me… how long have you been in here?”

“Many moons,” he responded vaguely, with a far-away look in his eyes.

“What did you do to deserve this?” Grace asked.

The boy mumbled something in another language. His shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. Despite the language barrier, Grace understood exactly what he meant.

“No one deserves this,” she whispered.

She examined the dark circles under his eyes, the bruises on his wrists and ankles, the filthy condition of the cage. The boy didn’t seem dangerous. He seemed beaten down.

Grace moved to examine the cage’s door. There wasn’t a DNA Identifier mechanism. Instead, a simple lock was the only thing standing in the way of this young man’s freedom.

“Keys?” The boy pointed at Grace and added, “You… have?”

“No, but maybe I can find them.”

Her statement sounded uncertain, more like a question. Still, the boy teared up at the vaguest hint of release.

“What will you do if I let you go?”

The boy hugged himself and said, “Family.”

Grace nodded. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. Even if you did something wrong, no one should live like this. Justice can still be served.”

The boy looked at Grace with confusion.

“Jus…dis?” he asked.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell Father. He’ll fix this. We own this island, and if he knew what was going on here, he would surely stop it. Trust me…”

The confusion on the boy’s face grew, stuck on the fact that Grace thought she owned the island his people inhabited for centuries.

A bell rang in the distance outside. Grace looked toward the sound and said, “Already? Wow, it’s getting late. That’s the dinner bell. I have to go.”

Realizing his only shot at getting out was leaving without him, he reached his hand out between the steel bars and grabbed Grace’s arm to stop her.

“Please…” he begged.

She looked at his grip, then back at his face. He let go and put his hands up in surrender, an action he knew well.

“Don’t worry,” Grace said with a smile. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

“She’s going to leave him in there?” I heard Jackie ask from her comfortable vantage point in the slipstream. “Who is this over-privileged chick?”

“Keep watching before you judge,” I responded.

Jackie wasn’t strong enough to enter the scene fully yet. I didn’t need her meddling, trying to change things. For now, watching was enough. If she proved worthy, I’d teach her how to affect the streams to try out new probabilities. To start, she was on a need to know basis, and there was a lot Jackie needed to know before I truly let her in. She was lucky that she couldn’t smell the filth or taste the suffering in that tiny cage.

I sped up the stream so the events could unfold quicker for my impatient audience.

“Whoa, how are you doing that?” Jackie asked. “How does time work in the slipstream?”

Another answer that was too complex to give yet, so I focused on stopping the stream at the next pivotal moment to give Jackie the best understanding possible of what was at stake. My plan was to show Jackie enough to convince her to work with me to take down Life Rite. Would she agree to go against her employer and bite the hand that feeds her?