John Ridley - What Fire Cannot Burn

Tangled together, Eddi and Carlin did a little tango to the ground.

Eddi lay among the junk, the oxidizing metal. She lay with a dead dog. The dying Carlin. Blood still geysering.

Less, less. The spray subsided.

Was gone.

The end of fear.

No sirens.

All the ruckus done and no one in LA, at least in this part of LA, cared enough to call a first responder.

Eddi wouldn't be making the call.

She was broken up and she was bleeding out, and her abilities were at the moment limited to lying right where she was.

She could hear a child just pulled from its mother's womb take its first breath.

Eddi could hear the lips of two lovers meeting.

Eddi could feel the air generated by the flap of a butterfly's wing in China. Guiyang, to be precise.

Eddi had a sense of the world.

Loss of blood made her very relaxed. But she was also very sad. She did not wish to die. Obvious. Does anybody really want to die? Like cloudy skies on the day of a parade, it's just one of those things that happen. One of those things you can do nothing about.

One thing she could do.

She put on that grin of hers.

So how did you know?

What's that?

How did you know, Eddi?

I just… in the moment, I knew.

In the moment, while a guy Is trying to snap your head clean from your body, you just-

When Raddatz took the cadre after Carlin their radios just happened to go down? Anytime Carlin was anywhere near a surveillance camera they just happened not to work? Cars just stalled? Technology vs. technology. Carlin… I figured he must have had a low-level electromagnetic pulse coming off Ms suit. Just enough to mess with electronics, digital cameras… Enough to mess with Soledad's gun. That's why it misfired. Even if I'd found, it, if I'd tried to use it, it would have done the same. I quit trying. I went for my knife.

Ah, bullshit.

Look, I'm not a techie. I don't know how all that electronic stuff works. Bet I took a chance, and it-

That's not what I'm talking about. You figured all that out in one split second while somebody was working on separating your head from your body? Nah. What I think: When it came down to it, you wanted out of you know who's shadow. Wasn't going to happen dropping Carlin with that gun.

Wait…

So you went for your knife. Carlin could've killed you, but you went for it.

Wait, am I… I'm not having this conversation. I'm not… I'm talking, but I'm not… I'm dead. In Carlin's yard with the junk and the dog. I'm-

You had a better place of dying. Although, guess there's no perfect place.

I don't want to-

Glad you could make it, Eddi…

I don't want to die.

Even for just a minute. I'm proud of you.

The average human can survive about eight minutes without heartbeat before the brain, starved of oxygen-rich blood, begins to suffer permanent damage.

Eddi's heart stopped beating for nine and three-quarters minutes on the operating table of Valley Presbyterian Hospital. It would have remained still eternally except she'd lucked out, gotten an ER doc who was only in his second year. Jaded by the sight of people dropping off the face of the earth, he worked that extra minute and three-quarters to bring her back to this side.

No brain damage.

None that the docs could find with their MRIs and CAT scans. None that the psychologists could find testing her mind. Except…

There was a conversation had that was absolutely indisputable in Eddi's mind. The words and tenor were vivid to her. The only thing she wasn't sure of: who she'd spoken with.

She told this to no one. Told no one about her conversation. She didn't need anyone thinking her head was messed up, her gray matter was fractured. Despite her snapped wrist, her snapped ankle, a left eye that's usability would be diminished by at least thirty-five percent, a face that would forever carry a lightning scar from left brow to right jaw… and possible but clandestine brain damage, Eddi still had designs on being a cop. Back in MTac if doable. DMI if she had to. She wasn't ready to quit the fight. The fight was just starting. And it was nothing like what Eddi thought it would be when she'd first suited up.

The question, the questions now as she rested, re-habbed, got ready to get back into things:

What is she going to do?

Who's she really fighting?

Who does she trust?

Who could Eddi even talk to about the new knowledge of the struggle? Not to Vin. Not that she couldn't trust his council, not that she couldn't trust him with the truth. Or the version of it she was carrying this week. Vin was beyond caring about anything that didn't pour from a bottle. Much like the city of Las Vegas, what happened with Vin would stay with Vin. But Eddi had no idea how to begin a deep meaningful politically dicey conversation with him. In her heart she didn't want one. Her feelings about him, for him were confused. Confusion was a thread not to be trifled with for fear of unraveling. So all the days Vin sat with Eddi, endured her recuperation with her, she said nothing to Vin of the incident.

That's the way it was talked about within the department. What other euphemism is there for cops going after an ex-cop who'd souped himself up so he could kill freaks? Wasn't one. Wasn't a good one. So it got called "the incident," and a lot of brass spent sweaty nights hoping no one at the LA Times got wind of the truth.

They didn't. It was Oscar season in Hollywood and the Times flooded the zone on that.

There were conversations to be had.

With Raddatz. That conversation was difficult. Carlin had done a job on him, had come up shy of killing him. Busted Raddatz's back, his spine at T9. His body was dead from the abdomen down. He was bed-bound. For a while. He had to wear diapers because he had absolutely no control over Ms bladder and bowels.

Other than all that…

Actually, other than that, Raddatz was still a prideful fighter. In private moments he would tell Eddi that what they had done together was perhaps the single most significant act in the real struggle between normals and metanormals since San Francisco.

Eddi worked really hard at cheering him up, cheering him on. The world at large didn't know the truth. The world at large still hated freaks as much as they did the day before Raddatz's body got busted.

There was a conversation to be had with Helena, Raddatz's wife. It wasn't quite the "he was a good man" chat Eddi was afraid she was going to have to have. It was an ugly cousin to it. He is a good man. You should be proud of him for what he did, even though we can't tell you what it was.

And Helena was all right with that. Not with… there was no part of her that wanted her husband to be a paraplegic. No part of her. But what she had wanted for so long, two things: That her husband should live to see their boys grow. That he would no longer be a cop.

Not like she'd hoped, but finally, she'd have both.

There was the talk Eddi had to have with Bo, the one where she came around and told him that all was good with Soledad's weapon. Bo, being MTac and not DMI, didn't know all the specifics of "the incident" beyond the rumors that bounced around inside the blue wall. Eddi gave no clarifications other than to say that with modifications Soledad's piece should be able to eliminate its only fault. Excel was a weapon. As dismissive as she'd previously been, Eddi was now effusive in praise for the gun. For Soledad.

For all that Bo didn't know of the reality of things, Eddi's contriteness was not lost on him.

As she began her hobble from his office. Bo said to her: "Why don't you do it?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Work on Soledad's piece. Modify it."