John Ridley: What Fire Cannot Burn

Eddi made the cross. Overpaid, again. This time for cover. Entered the club.

Mostly, Eddi wasn't a drinker. Her parents weren't drinkers. At least in the time she had parents, she never much saw her father taking a drink outside of special occasions. Eddi grew up thinking that was the only time you were supposed to have a drink: marking an event that was memorable. In the time she was fatherless Eddi's mother drank. A little. Also to mark an occasion. An anniversary, a birthday, Christmas. Maybe not mark it. Dull the pain of it. So for Eddi, here was a moment to combine both habits of her parents. She drained some, of her apple martini, which she knew wasn't strictly a martini but dug its candy goodness. She took in a little more, celebrated inside herself. Here's to eight months, six calls, two kills and no one to-

What was she gonna say? No one to share it with? She was in a club sick with people, the male percentage more than eager to share something with her. But she'd been sitting around, thinking about her past, her parents, what constitutes a proper martini. Eddi hadn't even been savvy to the three guys who were giving her the eye. One guy was clearly older than her but not old. Looked like he had means but didn't flaunt it. The other guy was gorgeous, and that was gorgeous measured against the average man in a city where the average man in a club at night made or hoped to make his living acting, modeling or otherwise engaged in a profession where a superior collection of features was an absolute requirement. The third guy didn't come off as being moneyed, was not nearly as gorgeous as the gorgeous guy, but was cute in the way he nervously, shyly stole glances at Eddi. He was a little country. In a good way.

In the way…

Yar was country.

Yar got killed courtesy of a piece of animated metal freak-jabbed through his chest. Eddie finished her drink. Marked the occasion. Dulled the pain.

Went home.

People think about it. Average people. Real people. Normal people. They think about, surely every now and again, what It'd be like to be super. Average, real, normal people-as much as they hate superpeople, hate them for what they did to San Francisco, hate them for all the average, real and normal people who were killed when a couple of warring superhumans turned half the city to slag-they still think: What would it be like to have abilities beyond imagination?

After San Francisco-as people refer to the history of man since the tragedy-the response to the thought, at least openly, was disgust and revulsion and strong statements of contempt. Why would I want to be like them? Who the hell would want to be like them?

But the false plating on the statements was fairly obvious. Like racists who spent their time at the beach working their tans. Normal people couldn't help but think what it'd be like to be a god.

The real, true answer to the thought depended on who was doing the pondering. The real, true answer was sometimes banal: If I could make myself invisible, I could hide out in the women's locker at 24 Hour Fitness and ogle all the naked chicks I wanted!

The real, true response was sometimes, probably, noble: If I had superpowers, I could've kept that little girl from being hit by the truck, saved the space shuttle crew, put an end to the war in…

But those are the thoughts of normal humans. People who have to shield their eyes from the sun as they look skyward from the bottom of an unclimbable mountain.

Truth is, reality is, looking down from the mountain, the view's not all that better.

Yeah, you can turn yourself into a human torch, but when you do, you ignite, incinerate, everything within a ten-foot radius.

Superstrength is real nice. Except you have to work, actually concentrate on opening a door without ripping it from its hinges. Picking up an egg is an Olympic event. Your fear, your sweaty nightmare: someone saying, "Here, you want to hold the baby?"

If you're invulnerable-bones like titanium, skin like steel-sure, you could walk from a plane crash scratchless.

Physically.

But an invulnerable's still got pain receptors. It could survive a plane crash, but it would feel the associated trauma. The impact, the metal of the fuselage slamming into, twisting against its body. The shock of the explosion, the burn of the resulting fireball.

What would it feel? A shitload of pain.

For an invulnerable, at some point, a sustained influx of pain could overwhelm it, fry its CNS. Do to it what the physical force of getting plowed by a bus or hit by lightning couldn't. Kill it.

Anson Hal! was feeling a lot of hurt.

Anson had jumped from an eight-story building, had been slammed against a brick wall, had a motorcycle thrown at him… And the running. All the running hurt like hell. His lungs burned from overuse, lactic acid nuked his legs. Brimstone in the body. Hurting like hell wasn't just an expression. Fact was. no matter he could take a hit from a semi truck, what Anson could not do was run any more.

Yet he kept on.

Adrenaline.

Adrenaline propelled Anson forward. Adrenaline brewed by panic. Anson could die.

That he could die: It was a concept that hadn't so much as entered Anson's mind in the twenty-seven years since, when he was thirteen, a couple of rottweilers mauled him. Tried to. Ended up shattering their canines without so much as breaking his flesh. The thought of dying had no traction with Anson since Anson realized he was… different.

Special, Ms parents told him. They told him he was special. Then they told him to never say anything to anyone about being special because even in the Age of Heroes regular people had fear of superpeople. Special people. People who were different.

Then San Francisco.

Then "after San Francisco."

Then everyone who was special… different…just kept their mouths shut. Heads down. Acted normal.

Anson knew the score, played the game. But Anson also knew what he was and death wasn't a consideration for him. Never before.

Now death was a demon on Anson's back, chasing him down. The demon drove him on.

Run.

Run to where? Didn't matter.

Just away. Run away from it. It.

Except It kept pursuing, and It could not be lost. It had followed Anson when Anson tried to lose It in that apartment complex, then jumped from the building to the street, crashed through the boarded window of an abandoned self-storage. It had been the one to hurl the motorcycle at Anson, pick Anson off the ground by his throat and slam him-repeatedly-into a brick wall.

Anson had broken away, run away, as he'd been running for the last eighteen minutes. Since It -middle of the night, at a lonely stoplight as Anson's car stalled- had run up on Anson, ripped the door from the frame and Anson from his seat. Introduced Anson to the asphalt of Chavez Avenue.

In Los Angeles, a city that traffics in random violence, this thing- It -had come specifically for Anson.

And It brought pain.

Fingers which crackled with electricity, electric fire which could not be deterred by indestructible skin and bones. Forget the drop from the building, the thrown motorcycle and wall. Brought pain? It was pain.

So keep running.

Keep running.

Keep…

To where?

Anson had run, had been chased into East LA. Was like getting chased into Beirut. Abandoned cars, houses shrouded behind metal bars and locked doors and chained gates. Citizens living as Inmates. Scared into submission, driven to seclusion by bangers and crackheads and LAPD Rampart cops who were most times little better than bangers and crackheads. Sometimes they were the same thing.

Farewell, age of heroes.

Who was going to help? Who among the timid, the thuggish, the strung out would help Anson?