FIRESTORM:

“Where’s Grace?” Jackie asked from the entrance of the stream. “She can’t leave him in there. Look at what they’re doing to him! She’s got to save him!”

By now, I’d hoped Jackie knew my non-response was a request to let the slipstream answer.

For the sake of time, I sped the stream up to the day Grace came back, five anguishing days for Zayne to worry about what she thought of him.

“How are you playing with time like that?” Jackie asked.

I stopped the stream to the day Grace finally walked back into the grungy warehouse wearing a designer t-shirt, jean shorts, white sneakers, and a backpack. She was a ray of sunshine in his dreary life.

“Grace!” Zayne exclaimed.

She didn’t look him in the eye. Instead, she moved straight to the lock and tested a set of keys one by one.

“Keys!” Zayne exclaimed.

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” Grace said sharply as she jiggled another key with frustration. Not a match. She fumbled and tried another one.

“Stupid lock!” Grace tried the last key with no luck. She stomped her feet and huffed out a mini-tantrum that surprised Zayne. He was the one enduring the cage, but he comforted her anyway by lightly stroking her arm.

“At least she tried,” I heard Jackie mumble from the slipstream. I was glad Jackie was seeing Grace’s true nature firsthand. I needed Jackie fully on board for my plan to work.

Grace relaxed a little and finally looked Zayne in the eyes.

He said, “Sorry.”

Tears came to Grace’s eyes. “Why are you sorry? I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back, and I don’t even have the right keys.” She wiped away snot from her perfect, petite nose.

Zayne repeated, “Sorry,” and made a monster face, recalling the way he yelled at her last time they were together.

Grace laughed through her tears. “It’s okay, I get it. This is not your fault.” She grabbed his hand in between the bars. They both felt a little safer.

“I’m freaking out, Zayne.”

“Grace?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen Father in days.” Her lip quivered and tears spilled as she spoke. “Mother is missing, too. They’ve been taken! I’m all alone in that massive complex.”

“Us. Together.”

Zayne put his arm around her from within the cage. She smiled slightly.

“What if the same person who put you in this cage has taken them, too?” Grace groaned at that dreaded thought.

“Who?” Zayne asked.

“There’s a kitchen worker named Tinga whose got a gnarly scar on his face. He creeps me out.”

“Tinga?” Zanye asked. “I know Tinga.”

“You do?”

“Tinga was father. Bennu bird attack Tinga’s son.”

Zayne made one of his hands eat the other to show his point in case his English failed.

“Or maybe Tinga killed his own kid and blamed it on a Bennu bird! I’m telling you, that guy is so weird. He seems like a madman. Without my parents around, I’m a sitting duck in that complex! What if I’m taken next?”

Grace’s breathing quickened into a mini panic attack. Zayne pulled her in close. She closed her eyes as they cuddled. For a moment, they both felt safe again.

“What… is… Father’s work?” asked Zayne. They both sat down on their side of the cell bars.

“You should see all the cool stuff he makes. Father made his fortune inventing the Universal DNA Identifier. You know, no more stupid usernames and passwords, no more physical money, keys… But he makes so much more. He used to let me watch him tinker with his cool robot project. I doubt I was very helpful, but it was awesome to see him invent. He always locks his workshop here on the island.”

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Grace pulled a little picnic from her backpack. Zayne’s eyes grew at the food; strawberries, mango, meat, and cheese. He stuffed his mouth in record speed. Grace giggled. He swallowed his lot and waited to take another piece until she delicately took her first bite. She popped open a can of seltzer water and offered it to him. The carbonated bubbles surprised him and some dribbled down his chin.

Grace giggled again. God, he adored her laugh. How could it be that both the absolutely worst and now the best times of his life happened in that cage?

“Grace?” Zayne asked.

“Yes, dear?” she replied. The term of endearment gave him the confidence to ask the toughest question.

“Father,” he said as he pointed to Grace.

“Yes, my father…” she helped fill the gaps in his speech.

“Father owns Bennu Island? Father… knows…” He pointed to himself and added, “me?”

“No way!” Grace said with conviction. “If Father made this cage, there’d be a DNA Identifier on it. Besides, whoever put you in this cage has also taken my parents. I have to figure out who’s behind all this.”

It was Grace’s turn to ask a tough question. “What are in those injections?”

Zayne shrugged his muscular shoulders, embarrassed.

Grace followed up with, “What do the injections do to you?”

The question felt like a whip on his well-trodden scars. He only wanted Grace to see the best of him, but it’d be easier to show than tell.

“Power.” Zayne took a deep breath, stood up, and flexed every muscle in his body. The blood in his veins glowed underneath his tight skin.

Grace stood up, amazed at his magnificence. She put her hand to his bare chest and felt the strength of his heartbeat.

Zayne took a step back and said, “Heat.”

He flexed harder, and his veins lit on fire. He walked to the corner of the cell and put his flaming flesh to the bars where he’d been slowly melting away the steel. It would take forever to escape that way.

“Indestructible,” Zayne said like an impersonation, perhaps of the man in the hazmat suit. His eyes showed a glimpse of the suffering he’d endured to prove that to his captors.

He nodded toward the nearby shelves. “Cut me.”

Grace looked at the nearest shelf. He nodded. She grabbed a knife and cautiously handed it to him.

Zayne cut his own hand, drawing radiant blood that glowed as it dripped onto the floor. The cut healed instantly right before her eyes!

Grace gasped.

He showed her the knife and said, “I keep. Stab and escape.”

She nodded.

He tucked the knife into the waistline of his tattered pants. Zayne trusted Grace, but needed a plan of his own. With her parents now missing, he needed to protect her as well as himself. He vowed to kill the hazmat suit man, steal the key, and get the hell out of there. He refused to be tortured any longer.

Grace said, “You’re right. We need to be ready to fight. I need to be indestructible, too.”

She pulled out a small pelican case from her backpack, opened it, and took out a syringe of serum.

“This is what they give you, isn’t it?”

Zayne lowered his eyes to the ground. He couldn’t hide the truth from her much longer.

“I found a hidden room in the complex as I was searching for my parents. There are cases of this stuff. That’s where I found those keys, too.”

Grace put the serum to her veins, ready to inject.

“Stop!” Zayne protested. He tried to grab the syringe from her hand, but she stepped back. He couldn’t reach her from the confines of the cage.

“I’ve always felt powerless in my life, but not anymore. I can’t live in the shadow of my parents. What if they never come back? I’m on my own now. My way of doing things might not please them, but I can’t worry about what they, or anyone else, thinks anymore.”

“No, Grace. Stop…”

“She’s not going to inject herself, is she?” Jackie asked from the entrance of the stream.

Despite Zayne, and now Jackie’s objections, Grace injected the serum into her bloodstream.

“Oh wow, she’s doing it,” Jackie added as Zayne cried a thousand regrets. If only he wasn’t stuck in that cage, he could have stopped her. He knew the full effects of the serum and didn’t want Grace to suffer his same fate.

Grace recoiled as the serum lit up her veins like Christmas. She fell to her knees, holding her stomach. As the liquid moved quickly through her system, she screamed and dry heaved. She curled into a ball, moaning and crying.

“Grace?”

When she finally looked back up at Zayne, her bloodshot eyes held a newfound power.

“Grace?” Zayne asked again, concerned.

She took a few deep breaths. “I’m good, Zayne. Better than ever. If you can survive the injections, then I can, too. We’re in this together, and soon I’ll be powerful like you.”

Zayne was both amazed and baffled by her.

Grace charged the cage, grabbed Zayne by the waist, and pulled him close to her. They blended into the cell bars that separated them as their lips met. All their fears melted away as they embraced passion instead. They both dreamed of this moment, but the heat of their lips together was more delicious than they could have imagined. Neither of them felt alone anymore. Those kids had no clue what they were up against, but for the moment, that was okay.

“Sexy,” Jackie murmured from the slipstream.

The dinner bell rang, as it did every day at this time.

Grace said, “I don’t want to go back. Not by myself.”

“I stab and get key.” Zayne pulled the knife from the waistline of his pants and practiced his stab and grab. The way he moved the knife was convincing.

Grace nodded. “That’s a superb plan… But what if he doesn’t come back for a while? We need to move fast.”

They thought about it. She finally said, “I don’t want to go back to the complex, but there’s one more place where the keys might be.”

Grace pulled out a piece of gum from her backpack. She chewed it, then put it into the lock to study the teeth the key needed.

“There are no bad ideas, only bad execution,” she said. “That’s what Father always says.”

She pulled the gum out of the lock and studied it. Satisfied, she said, “One way or another, you’ll be free soon.”

Grace sealed her promise with a sweet kiss. Their eyes met to confirm their dedication.

I felt the slipstream pulling away from me, so I sped the stream up to the next crucial plot point.

“Hey! Why are you speeding things up? I enjoy watching them make out,” Jackie said sarcastically.

“We’re running out of time in the slipstream,” I explained.

“Is time even a thing in here, Firestorm?”

Her question was far too complicated to answer directly. I blinked and skipped to the pivotal moment that would change everything for my dear young lovebirds…