It only takes a few days after Abin's demonstration for the excitement to wear off and tensions to rise. Like Abin said, Left Behind hasn't had a successful mission in months and the scattered support they've accrued across the country is starting to dwindle. Despite the voice in the back of Fiona's mind, she's been showing up to every logistics meeting to discuss the mission. Some part of her feels responsible for Abin, and she can't risk him dying for an organization that she'd brought him to.
"My team can do this sort of stuff with their eyes closed," says Samantha Tran, the lead on Left Behind's operations team. She runs her hand over her shaved part of the head. "His skills are impressive, to say the least, but we've never sent an agent in alone."
Right now, Fiona doesn't care for Samantha's bravado. Before she opens her mouth to retort, she realizes she would be defending Abin's prowess even though she doesn't want Abin to go on a mission. She purses her lips, and swallows unspoken words.
"With his powers, he won't need to carry heavy artillery or wear metal protection like the rest of your team does," Shailene says boredly, chipping away at some illegally-acquired paint on her nails. "He can wear the undercoat of Sheltersuit only, and move in undetected."
Samantha's second-in-command, Andre, sighs in frustration and pushes up his glasses. His response is much more measured than his superior. "Our team is well-trained. With all due respect, we have ways of getting around the detectors—"
Shailene giggles, a lilting sound. "With all due disrespect, you can't do this sort of stuff with your eyes closed because you haven't. I have. You haven't had a successful mission in months since I stopped running field ops."
Samantha's glower is palpable. "It's easy for you to say—"
"That's why I am saying it," Shailene says flatly. "Next."
The frustration in the room is almost a stink. This is how every meeting that Fiona's attended has gone, with people arguing back and forth and trying to poke holes in every step of the way. The truth is that missions like these used to be easy for Left Behind. Blowing up unmanned factories was done overnight with no real thought except for the goal of destroying the government's weaponry supply chains. But money and personnel have been dwindling, making it hard for them to find ways around the government's tightened security these days. Fiona can't help but wonder if this was what her mother had in mind when she first started the organization. She wants to think that a series of factory bombing wouldn't have been on her mother's agenda.
Fiona shifts in her chair, snapping the dozen eyes in the room towards her. Even Abin, who has been practicing character strokes on a tablet in the corner. Fiona avoids Abin's eyes. They haven't spoken since their non-fight. "We still haven't discussed the issue of our thermobaric bombs."
Sanjay, the head of the explosives unit, bristles at her comment. "What about them? They've never been the issue in our previous missions." Unlike the ops team is unspoken, but Samantha trains her glare on him regardless.
Fiona looks directly at Shailene for this, but she looks down at the maps in front of her. Ragnar does as well, knowing full well what she means. "This factory produces heavy artillery components for armored Sheltersuits, which means they're one of the few targets with a fleet of automated jets for mass exportation. We need to prepare for the possibility of a thermal shock."
Sanjay gapes at her, his brows furrowed in confusion. "We've never had a problem with thermal shock before–"
"We have."
Fiona's usually soft voice is filled with such finality that Sanjay drops the topic, the first in the room to do so. Shailene fidgets for a second, clearly hesitant to join the topic. "Jet fuel," Shailene says after an exasperated sigh.
Shailene looks around, as she continues explaining to no one in particular. "It's jet fuel. The initial explosion will set off the heated fuel on site to explode as well, which means something like 30 times the expected aerosols for the second explosion. If Abin is within 1,500 feet of the factory when the bomb goes off, he dies."
Fiona tries to gauge Abin's reaction from the corner of her eyes. Abin's complete lack of reaction to his potential death makes Fiona wonder if he has his translation device off. Ragnar finally looks up, although not at Fiona or Shailene. "Yes, we'll need to consider the possibility of shockwaves but it's impossible without accessing the site. We just don't know how much jet fuel is there."
"But we're only able to breach it once before McNamara and the rest of his WRAITH team figure out what we're up to," Fiona says. She can feel her brain powering down from all of the roundabout conversations. They've spent so much time discussing issues with no real solutions to keep Abin safe on the mission.
Ragnar opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He closes it. "Let's break for lunch, shall we?"
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The rest of the day continues with no real progress made. According to their informant, they have less than 24 hours before the mission until the factory's security code algorithm is updated. Their only solid information includes: One, Abin is the only person who can get through the government's updated detectors, two, their limited paper supply combined with the thermobaric bombs are just barely enough for a potential success, and three, they still have no solution for the same issue that killed Fiona's mother and Shailene's parents in a single mission.
Fiona and Shailene have taken to combat training together in the boxing ring every night, usually in silence. Shailene still kicks her butt every time, but it's been taking her progressively longer. Tonight, Fiona pulls no punches. Thwack. There's one for the government that separated her from her students. Thwack. Another for Left Behind and its infuriating meetings. Thwack. And one more for the state world that she lives in.
Fiona's hair whips around as she delivers a roundhouse kick, square on Shailene's chest. Almost lazily, Shailene swipes her feet across the ground and knocks Fiona off-balance. Fiona recovers quickly and ducks just in time to avoid Shailene's blow.
"What's gotten into you tonight?" Shailene asks, barely even winded.
"What makes you ask?" Fiona says, throwing one punch after another — all of which Shailene dodges deftly. She can feel the sweat trickling down her neck but she doesn't care.
Shailene twists and grabs Fiona's freckled arm, pinning her against the ropes. Game over. They huff into each other's faces and Fiona smells the familiar scent of candied strawberries, Shailene's secret guilty pleasure. "Don't play games with me."
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Shailene shoves her away and wraps a towel around her neck, gliding gracefully to the benches. Ragnar shakes his head as he approaches. "Watching the two of you is like watching... ice and fire. Too bad the two of you are always too busy squabbling to be working together."
Fiona collapses against the benches, taking long gulps of water. "We don't squabble."
"Am I the ice or fire?" Shailene lays against the bench, smiling at the ceiling. "Never mind, her hair's on fire."
Fiona rolls her eyes, and swipes the wet rose gold hair back. Shailene is probably one of the most lethal soldiers in the world but still so immature. "Weird analogy, Ragnar. Fire and ice should not be working together. Your engineering background is showing."
"She's right," Shailene says, sitting up. "They shouldn't."
Ragnar puts a heavy hand on each one of the girls. "You better get to bed. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."
Ever since witnessing their parents' deaths, Ragnar has acted as their pseudo-father. But Fiona stares past him at Shailene, who tucks a braid behind her ear and focuses somewhere in the distance. "What is it, Shailene?"
"Part of the failure on PALINURUS was because our par... they did not account for the jet fuel on site," Shailene says slowly.
Ragnar's voice is somewhat strangled, a rarity for him. He tenses. "And what about it?"
"Fiona, has Seraph ever said if he can project ice scrolls?" Shailene's smooth lips stretch into a dazzling smile as the plan formulates.
"I think so," Fiona says, starting to understand where she is going. "And fire scrolls, which we saw in the demonstration."
"What are you suggesting?" Ragnar asks, still confused by Shailene's behavior. Fiona and Shailene stare intensely at each other, their minds running rapidly.
"If Seraph could somehow bring the temperature of the jet fuel silo down to -50 degree celsius..."
"The jet fuel freezes, and will not react to the initial explosion, giving us a precise control for the blast radius," Fiona finishes grimly. If only someone had thought of this before twenty years ago.
Ragnar looks back and forth between the two of them. Fire and ice, ice and fire. He considers their plan for a moment. "We'll test it first thing in the morning," he finally says. "I told you you should work together more. Fire melts ice, and ice quells fire."
"Still a weird analogy."
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The group crowds over a grainy feed attached to Abin's specially-engineered Sheltersuit. Fiona has her own setup, with multiple monitors as she tracks the potential security breaches on the dark web. There are three encrypted gates that Abin has to get through, each of which regenerates a new passcode with every visitor. For a few brief minutes, Fiona can debug embedded code and find the six-digit string before access is locked.
Abin is fashioned in pitch-black robes to match the 4 AM sky, just in case any onlookers were to take the wrong glance. Fiona's already spent the past week rewiring the cameras to loop during the next thirty-minute period, bringing the feed to Left Behind quarters instead of the government's. Now, she switches between the empty hallways as Ragnar gives Abin instructions over a micro-earpiece.
He gets through the first three doors with no issues. Fiona types at breakneck speed, her computer automatically generating new IP addresses so as not to be tracked. On the grainy screen, Abin's view widens into a vast room, full of automated machinery. Steel towers surround him, pumping large puffs of steam through slats on the ceiling.
"What now?" Abin's voice is breathy through the mic, and Fiona tenses as though she is in the room with him.
"You have to find the control dash," Ragnar says carefully. The machinery is an organized maze ahead of him, with no control dash in sight. "It should be somewhere along the wall, on the right side of the room."
"And don't forget to plant as many explosives as you can along the way," Sanjay adds, running the calculations on his tablet. They have just enough for sufficient destruction, if Abin places them correctly.
Fiona checks the time. "Fifteen minutes before the cameras stop looping."
Abin takes off running, tossing explosives along the way. They're set to activate at a certain temperature, which depends on Abin initiating the thermal shock at the right time — but only if he can find the control dash. Fiona has to continue typing, working to prep for the codes on his way out, but she knows everyone behind her is on the edge of their seats.
"There!" Shailene shouts, scaring the life out of everyone in the darkened room. "On your right. Now you need to do what we talked about."
Abin unfurls the scrolls from his pocket, with special symbols for ice on the last of their reserve papers. They'd only had enough paper to test it out in one of the spare rooms, not on a large scale like they need right now. It works in theory but in reality, no one really knows.
Everyone holds their breath as Abin stands in front of the control dash. He grips the ice scrolls between his palms, as though praying. In a flash of white, the scrolls shoot out across the room and bathe the factory in ice. The display of the control dash prints the jet fuel temperature to be -50 degree Celsius on screen. The steam which previously filled the factory disappears altogether and they see puffs of Abin's breath in front of him.
Ragnar watches the scene closely as though he can't believe his eyes. "Now, Seraph, you have three minutes to get out of the building," Shailene says. "Before everything implodes, that is."
Fiona almost falls out of her seat. "What?"
Shailene barely turns to look at her. "The temperature change on site will alarm the nearest base, and it's two minutes away. If the bomb does not go off in 3 minutes, they will either be disabled or will kill people. We didn't want to worry you."
Fiona spins back to her computer, typing furiously. "I can't open the gates that quickly! You should have told me!"
"I thought you told—" Ragnar cuts himself off. "Are there any other routes he can take? We need to get him out now."
She toggles through the various cameras, forcing her fingers to move despite the ice running through her veins. "There might be, but it doesn't take him as far from the blast as I'd initially hoped—"
"Two minutes," Shailene says. "There are no other options."
"Take the extended hallway on your left," Fiona says, trying to steady her voice. Abin follows her instructions, sprinting as quickly as he can. The camera on his chest jostles uncomfortably but the images seem to match the map that she has. "You should be passing by some rooms. The gate is at the end of the hall."
She switches back to the code on her computer, which is running multiple scripts to find the last 6-digit passcode that she needs. It loads, but not fast enough. Fiona can't help but remember the disaster of OP-PALINURUS, the way her heart raced as she listened to the carnage. Powerless.
She can't do that again.
"What are these rooms?" Abin asks, stumbling over a stuffed bear as he approaches the gate. Fifteen feet away. Ten feet. She still only has four of the digits.
"Not important right now, Seraph," Shailene says, her voice trilling slightly high at the end of the sentence. "One minute left."
The fifth is still loading when Abin reaches the keypad. "We have 4-9-3-0," Samantha says into the microphone, tapping Fiona urgently with her fingers which does not help at all.
"Five," Fiona says, feeling the whisper of tears as the screen loads, trying over and over to produce the last digit.
"Less than thirty seconds left," Shailene announces, face pale.
"Five!" Ragnar repeats into the microphone, as Samantha's fingers start to dig into Fiona's arm. Fiona shakes her off aggressively, tapping the keys to try to run other scripts and get a quicker answer.
"Ten seconds," Shailene says, her voice a whisper.
It loads. And loads, and loads.
The number 2 appears on the screen.
"Two!" Fiona screams. "Two, two, two—"
She's cut off as a huge blast rocks their camera feed. The sound creates a screeching noise that fills the entire room, forcing everyone to plug their ears. Fiona watches in horror as the camera feeds return to normal and capture the domino of exploding towers, one bursting into roaring flames after another. Rubble starts to crash against the concrete ground, and Abin's camera feed turns to black.
Suddenly, Fiona's eighteen-years-old again and sitting in some faraway room while her mother and every adult she's ever known dies at the mercy of their own explosion. She's watching a bloodstained Ragnar running out of the destruction with an unconscious Shailene, shaking his head and sobbing — the only time she's seen him cry.
There is dead silence.
No one dares to say it out loud – that their best hope, their only hope, failed. Failed again. And now they have a casualty on their hands.
Ragnar doesn't take his eyes off the screen.
Shailene slaps a water bottle off her desk.
Fiona shuts off her computer and grips her head.
And then–
After what feels like an eternity, the grainy darkness lifts and they get a close-up shot up Abin's nostrils. "Where am I supposed to meet you again?" he asks, pointing the camera at the night sky.