image [https://i.imgur.com/JgNs1pO.png]

MARCH

By now, we all welcomed Garrett’s presence at the station with open arms. He fell solidly into his place among the crew, though not in the way he’d likely hoped for: as a probie, he was the bottom rung of the ladder and thus was responsible for the most menial, and sometimes disgusting, tasks. If there was a job none of us wanted to do, he was first to be volunteered - whether he was willing or not.

“How’s the spelunking going over there?” I asked, as I leaned on the doorway to watch.

Garrett was elbow deep - thankfully, not literally - in the process of unclogging a toilet, surrounded by puddles on the floor. He turned to me, sweaty from exertion, and half-smiled. There wasn’t an ounce of amusement in it.

“Next time we do those presentations for kids, I think we outta mention fishing shit out of toilets.” As he turned back to continue, the smile fell off of his face. “Just to be more realistic about the job, you know? Don’t think it’s very nice to lie to children.”

“Won’t work, sadly. Kids aren’t thwarted by gross stuff,” I said. “My niece, when she was maybe… four or five? She was obsessed with the local garbage guy. Bought him a Christmas present and everything. It was cute.”

“Meanwhile—” With a final grunt, Garrett yanked the plunger out from the water and flushed the toilet again. The water slid easily down the drain, free of its clog at last. “My sister’s kids freak out and get asthma attacks just driving by certain neighborhoods.”

“What?” I raised an eyebrow. “Like they have allergies to certain zip codes?”

“Yeah, she gets them all bent out of shape about shit like hobos and feral dogs. As if they’ve even got time to be mauled or mugged!” He went over to the sink to wash up, soaping himself up to the elbow. “She’s always dragging them to bullshit ‘enrichment activities’… what are they, zoo animals? It’s not like learning to play the piano and tennis made me more interesting.”

“Damn, that all sounds like some rich kid shit.” I smiled playfully. “You sure were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, huh, chico?”

Garrett dried his hands off vigorously, his brow crinkling in confusion. “Huh? What do you mean by that?”

“I'm just saying that as a piece of advice, you should keep that kind of shit to yourself, or else the guys'll never let you live that down. Unless you wanna buy lunch for them every day with that big ol’ wallet of yours.” I gestured down to his pockets. “But don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

“Man, whatever. Screw those guys,” he grumbled. “I couldn't care less what they think of me.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Not so eager to please anymore?”

Garrett frowned flatly. “It's pretty hard to give a fuck about them when they Super Glue your boots to the floor— or give you a candy bar with crickets in it.”

“Jesus, you gotta learn to stop eating things they give you.” I couldn't stop the smile from forming on my face. “What about Heather? You still think she’s cool?”

“Screw her, too.” There no hesitation when he said it. “She called me Commander Flat-Ass yesterday in the gym ‘cause of how I squat. Sure, she can joke about my ass, but if I joked about her ass, I’d get reported for sexual harassment. That’s a fucking load.”

Now didn't seem an appropriate time to mention her history as a personal trainer, so I simply smirked in his direction, amused by the mental image of Heather’s running commentary on his form. As Garrett continued grumbling, I pushed off of the door frame and crossed my arms, standing in front of him in the doorway.

“What about me?” I tilted my head up toward him. “You still care what I think?”

Garrett paused, but there was no time for him to respond. Over the loudspeaker a call was announced, and from the sounds of it, it wasn’t going to be routine.

Within minutes, we were loaded up in the apparatus and on our way. By now, much of Garrett’s enthusiasm had been stamped out; when he sat beside me, rather than rambling a mile a minute about the upcoming call, he stayed quiet, unless one of the guys made a crack at him - which he then met with a forced smile or a clipped laugh. For the most part, I kept to myself, thinking passively instead of moving money around to pay for Cleo’s braces.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The impassioned debate around us about department budget cuts were interrupted as soon as we came up to the facility. We all fell into a sharpened silence when we recognized the building.

It was a storage warehouse connected to a research lab, the kind financed by bored venture capitalists wanting ways to sink their money beyond yachts and mistresses - but unlike yachts and mistresses, funding research is a lot better for PR. Progressing humanity’s knowledge was just an afterthought.

A dense column of smoke filled the sky above us right near the back of the lab. EMTs were already flooding in to support the injured staff members sitting around in varying levels of consciousness and pain.

We weren’t the first crew on the scene, but more crews from other stations were joining us quickly. Without wasting any time, we raced to the back of the building to locate the source of the fire. It wasn’t hard to find: when we got there, we were met with plumes of smoke pouring out from a large tank, fire bursting forth from a split in the side of it.

I’d never seen smoke quite like it in my entire career. It took a strange yellow hue as it came from the flames before turning black upon reaching the sky. As mysterious as it was, speculation about it was going to have to wait.

Around us, the fire advanced to the other tanks nearby, threatening to create more explosions. The whole place stank to high heaven, but it wasn’t a smell I could easily describe. It brought bile to the back of my throat the way the smell of burning bodies did, but as far as I could tell, everyone present at the lab had been evacuated.

The more we suppressed the fire’s spread, the more nauseated I got. I was in the lead and thus closest to the tanks, but even with my PPE, the smoke was hitting me in a way that didn’t seem to be happening to anyone else. What the hell were they doing at this lab? I held steady the best that I could, but as time went on, it became a struggle to walk in a straight line.

Even with backup crews supporting us, the flames were stubborn. I looked around to find Garrett beside me like my little shadow, but what scared me most was that upon looking at him, my vision changed. It was as if I were viewing the world through a kaleidoscope, fractured and multiplied, dizzying in its complexity.

Garrett’s face, though mostly obscured by his mask, was clear in its concern. As he called out to me, it was impossible to hear him over the sudden, violent buzzing in my ears. I froze in place, my head painfully swollen with the fluttering of thousands of wings, trying and failing to gain my composure.

Convulsing all over, my hands fell slack on the line and it dropped to the ground. There were no signs of the other firemen being affected, but for some reason I was falling apart. In my vertigo, my gaze traveled to my arms, which were overtaken by an agonizing itch. My gloves were too thick for my nails to reach my skin, so I tore them off, and I was close to ripping my jacket off before Garrett stopped me.

“Manny!” He shouted, this time loud enough for me to hear. There was such fear in his eyes - all fourteen of them. “Are you okay?”

When I opened my mouth to speak, instead of words, vomit gushed out. In spite of the fire still raging, I tore the mask off of my face to let the puke fall to the dirt below. First, everything that came out was brown; then, it ran clear, until it finally turned a sickly yellow-green.

Determined, Garrett reached for me, and I reached for him back. He stumbled when he bore the weight of me against him, so he wrapped his arm around me securely to keep me from falling to the ground. I didn’t even try to speak; I was too certain I’d never stop throwing up if I opened my mouth again. Though I tried my best to walk with him, my legs felt hollow all the way down to my bones, the throbbing in my head rendering me too weak to move.

He guided me to the ambulances, speaking so quickly to the paramedics that I couldn’t keep up. While he described what was happening, the world around me began to fade to black. All I could hear was the beating of my heart, beating in time with the wings in my head.

The last thing I remember before I blacked out was Garrett holding on to my hand, and the words that he said:

“Stay with me.”