Page 11

LIV

T he last flicker of the shed’s lantern still warms my lips as I snap my helmet into place and sprint into the darkness of the retreating night.

Sirens split the camp like ruptured steel; engines groan awake; hot-shot rookies spill out of trailers half-dressed, dragging tools.

Whatever Ignis had scheduled has detonated early.

The canyon mouth seethes with wind and tension, the scent of scorched earth already rising in acrid waves as boots pound into gravel.

Darkness clings to the jagged ridgelines above, a predator waiting in silence, while fire crews begin to spill into the gorge—no longer a drill, but a battlefield.

Radios crackle, carabiners jangle, and the air vibrates with the urgency of a fight that shouldn’t have started yet.

“Anchor’s set—two-to-one mechanical advantage!

” My voice scrapes the cross-wind ripping through the gorge.

The canyon rim teems with rookies in school-bus-yellow Nomex, knots of nervous energy against a sky that hasn’t decided whether to give us dawn or more darkness.

Ten feet below the lip, Diaz hangs in a safety harness, playing conscious victim for the morning rope-rescue drill.

A deep concussion shudders through the canyon—not the raw snap of thunder but a hollow, deliberate boom that reverberates with violent intent.

The air goes tight in my lungs. Dust leaps off the ledge, my boots tremble on the stone, and deep in my gut, something ancient coils—a primal sense of wrongness just before the cliff seems to breathe and come alive.

“Rock!”

The cliff face fractures with a bone-deep groan.

Refrigerator-sized boulders tear loose, tumbling in a deadly cascade that rips through scrub, sending geysers of dust and pine needles spiraling into the air.

One jagged slab slams into Diaz’s main line.

The rope snaps with a sharp crack, the sound ricocheting through the canyon—sudden, violent.

He plummets, limbs flailing, until a narrow ledge catches him hard and fast, barely arresting the fall.

A second wave of scree hurtles down, engulfing the spot in a choking cloud of grit and shattered stone.

“Switch to real rescue!” My orders rip out raw. “Twin lines—now! Reed, Garcia, haul systems! Nelson—spotter!”

The team scrambles. Boots skid and slide across loose gravel, carabiners clatter like bones, and webbing screeches as it flies through gloved hands.

Reed lunges for the belay pack but catches a foot on a jerry can, half-hidden under a heat-warped tarp.

He crashes hard, shoulder-first, as the can tumbles, sloshing its contents in a wide, glistening arc.

A harsh, chemical sheen spreads across the sunbaked dirt, soaking into the dust—blood-dark and ominous. My nostrils flare. The smell hits—sickly-sweet, high-octane, wrong—hard as a slap. Accelerant. Too much. Too fresh. Too intentional.

A shard of falling shale shears off the ledge, striking flint against flint.

Sparks burst—fireflies gone rabid—then whoomph.

An audible gulp of air before the flame catches, blue-white and blinding, racing over the spill with terrifying speed.

Fire leaps from dust to brush, devouring brittle juniper with crackling hunger.

Heat punches outward. The rookies freeze, caught mid-motion, eyes stretched wide behind their smoke goggles, faces pale and stunned—deer in a backblast.

“No time for panic!” My lungs burn as I grab the nearest flapper. “Form a wedge, pull hose—cut that head fire before it crowns!”

Where the hell is Kade?

A silhouette rockets down the vertical cliff—single-line rappel, no backup prusik, boots slamming stone with bruising precision.

Kade. His black braid lashes, a battle pennant wind-torn and defiant.

Muscles bunch and release in fluid rhythm as he eats distance with impossible speed.

On the third rebound he drops beside Diaz, clips the injured rookie to his own harness with practiced snap-clicks, and launches upward again—legs pistoning, arms hauling with a strength that makes gravity blink and retreat.

He rises through grit and smoke, something forged in fire, something not quite human.

Radio static screams in my ear: “Possible backdraft on Bravo flank!” Backdraft—outdoors? Bull. Somebody’s already rewriting the story.

I drive the Pulaski into scorched soil with a grunt, the steel edge striking sparks that hiss and vanish in the dust. Each blow reverberates through my shoulders, jarring bone and muscle as sweat drips into my eyes.

Trainees scramble beside me, falling into rhythm, their faces smudged with soot and fear as we carve a trench, every hewn slice of earth a desperate promise carved into the ground: Not again… never again.

Kade crests the rim, Diaz slung limp over his shoulder, a broken marionette.

The kid groans, a gut-wrenching sound, blood seeping down the cracked shell of his helmet and trailing into his collar.

Kade’s boots hit the gravel; the impact vibrates up my spine.

His eyes—lined with that otherworldly gold only I ever seem to see—lock onto mine, burning with command and promise, fierce and unrelenting.

Hold the line , they seem to say without sound, and something primal in me answers, rising to meet the fire.

I dig in, shoulders screaming, lungs flaring with every breath of seared air.

The trench becomes a lifeline, my Pulaski biting deep with each brutal swing.

Twenty blistering minutes later, engine crews roar in, hurling foam across the fire’s teeth.

Flames lash once—twice—then collapse against the line with a final defiant snarl, coughing smoke, a dying beast. The air hangs heavy with ash and steam, every breath laced with soot and something more primal—victory wrestled from the jaws of chaos.

The sun claws its way over the horizon, bleeding copper and rust across a sky hazed with soot, casting an apocalyptic glow over the smoldering canyon as adrenaline drains from our limbs and the true toll of the scotched drill reveals itself.

Diaz winces while medics cinch a chest wrap around bruised ribs. “Rockslide wasn’t in the syllabus, was it, boss?”

“Not unless the Forest Service added ‘death by landslide’ to required reading.” I try for humor; it breaks on my tongue.

Kade stands fifteen feet away, back straight, voice low and clipped as he gives his statement.

The medic at his elbow keeps glancing at the pulse-ox clamped to his finger, brow furrowing at readings that show no exhaustion, no crash.

Not even a flicker. His eyes lift to mine for a single beat—intense, unwavering, a silent promise forged in fire and grit—then return to the clipboard, steel once more.

Chief Ruiz stomps in with the Feds. Clipboard #1 doesn’t bother with hello. “Pre-incident brief warned of potential backdraft physics. Why wasn’t your crew accounting for rapid flame spread?”

“Because backdraft only happens in closed structures,” I snap. “What we had was accelerant and sabotage.” I jab a gloved finger at the blackened jerry, now taped off in an evidence triangle. “Add a timed rockslide—this was an execution attempt.”

Clipboard #2 taps a tablet. “Ms. Monroe, the medics have the power to insist on a psychological evaluation.”

Translation: Crazy woman sees conspiracies. Heat throbs behind my eyes—rage, humiliation, grief. A broad palm settles on my spine—Kade, weight, a steel plate steadying my quake.

“If that’s what’s ordered, we’ll comply,” he says, voice glacial. “After she clears decontamination.”

I should shove him away, refuse the comfort that has no place in a moment this raw—but I can’t.

His hand rests between my shoulder blades, solid and steady, heat cutting through the cold sterility of the clipboard brigade.

It anchors me in the storm, a visceral reminder that someone believes me even when the system pretends I’m unhinged.

That night the air bristles with cricket song, the canyon walls still pulse with the distant thump of retreating rotors.

My legs throb with fatigue, aching and unsteady, each step a whisper of pain as I limp toward the equipment shed in search of replacement gear.

Behind its warped plexiglass window, a lantern sputters and flares—not just casting light, but pulsing with movement, golden and alive, painting the dirt path in shadows that sway and stretch, restless ghosts on parade.

Kade stands shirtless beneath the flickering lantern, sweat-slick muscles etched in molten amber.

Each movement ripples with strength honed by fire and battle, ancient and unyielding.

He drags a long-handled axe across a whetstone, the rasping scrape singing with quiet menace.

The blade’s edge glows ember-red—unnaturally so—but no heat touches the air.

It pulses with something I can’t explain, like pressure or promise, as if it is alive and lingers with the presence of every enemy it has consumed.

I swallow. “Tell me that’s a prop.”

He lifts his gaze. “Nope It’s a prototype.” Four words, heavy as gospel.

The word vibrates through my bones, tuning fork against steel—deep, unsettling, elemental. The air around him thickens, charged with something primal and potent, atmosphere recognizing the truth behind the blade.

“Why test it here?”

“Because the thing that lit our canyon wants bodies, not smoke. This ends it quicker.” His stroke along the edge sings, a metallic hymn.

My attention flicks to Kade—he has the baggie with the accelerant rag and photos, evidence that will vanish if I file it. “Run your Blackstrike magic on the contents of that baggie. It needs to be off site today.”

He leans in, voice a gravel whisper. “Give me the baggie. You’ll be breaking chain of custody.”

I snort. “I crossed that bridge a while ago.”

It’s a gamble. But my options are evaporating faster than a backburn in canyon wind. I slide him the baggie. Our fingers brush—static arcs up my arm. He tucks the contraband inside his field notebook.

Kade nods. “You sure you trust me?”

“I trust a firebreak when the front’s bearing down. Right now, you’re the only break I’ve got.”

Fingers brush—electricity arcs. “I’ll get answers.”

A charged silence swells—thick with heat, tension, and the ache of what neither of us will voice. The axe’s edge throws flickering ember-light over my neck and shoulder, tracing fire across bare skin. My breath catches, sharp and shallow, a spark waiting to ignite.

He leans in and I slide my palms along his chest as his mouth claims mine—fierce, devouring, and the shock of it ignites every nerve, a flashfire racing through me with no warning and no escape.

I taste smoke and steel and something far more elemental—inevitability laced with wildfire.

One hand tangles in my hair, tugging just enough to drag a gasp from my throat; the other sears against my hip, anchoring me to the furnace of his body.

He yanks me flush to him, hardness that isn’t just desire—dominance unleashed and unrepentant.

The lantern flares in protest, then dies with a clatter, shadows swallowing us whole.

We break apart when a distant siren whoops—Engine Two rolling. Our foreheads meet, breaths ragged.

“We just went live,” he rasps. “Stay on radio three.”

“No dying today.”

His smile glints—ancient, dangerous—feral amusement laced with promise, like the flicker of firelight just before it roars to life. Unshakable.

He snatches a shirt and shoulders past the darkness with the coiled tension of someone stepping into war.

I seize my helmet, fingers brushing worn plastic still warm from earlier heat.

The air outside greets us, a looming threat—thick with pre-storm ozone, smoke, and the acrid tang of disturbed ash.

It scrapes my throat raw as we each stride away into the dark.

Across the ridge, another orange pillar mushrooms skyward—Ignis just lit the canyon fuel cache. The only evacuation route? Straight through the fire line Kade told me to avoid. I thumb my radio—channel three. “Your move, dragon man.”