Michael Soll - Scorched

“Let me go!”

“I’m trying to help you!”

I hurried in and spotted James grabbing at Kaolin who had been backed into a corner.

“Let her go!”

James turned and held his sword firmly. I raised my hands, spikes protruding from my knuckles, but I did not know how to use them to defend or attack. I knew what they could do, I had seen them in action, but that did not mean I knew how to use them as such.

He swiped at me and I jumped back. He took a step forward and swiped again and all I could do was jump back. If he were chasing me, I could tunnel away, I could escape, but here, I was powerless. I could not defeat him with the weapon like Valasca could. He knew that. I knew that. Kaolin knew that. I could not defeat him with words like the Mayor could. He knew that. I knew that. Kaolin knew that.

I wanted so desperately to save her and vanish with her to the above. I wanted us to leave this place, this cruel and unforgiving city, but in order to do so, I had to become Valasca, I had to become the Mayor. I needed to defeat James.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said as calmly as possible.

“I want to hurt you,” he said defiantly.

“We just want to go. We just want to be happy.”

“Yeah? Well what about me? I want to be happy.”

“What can I do to help you?”

“Leave.”

“I can’t do that without her. Don’t you want her to be happy? She wants to leave with me.”

“She’ll be happy with me. She just can’t see that yet!”

He raised the sword and swiped. I put my hands in front of me. The sword connected with the spikes, pushing me back into the cabinet, causing several plates to fall and crash to the ground.

Despite my best efforts, I could not talk my way out of the situation. I would have to fight.

He raised the sword up high and I wondered, is this the same thing so many people felt long ago when the ball of fire flung its destructive energy toward the surface? Did they look up, knowing their imminent doom and wonder what would happen next? Where would I go? What would happen to me?

And as he brought the sword down, Kaolin jumped from behind and grabbed around his neck. His weapon fell to the ground as the two of them slammed against the sink.

He pried her off of him as I stood still, watching and immobile. He raised his hand and struck the side of her head, causing her to stumble back. He turned to face me and froze in place.

He looked down at his stomach and saw my fist pressed against his shirt, spikes sunken deep within. He grabbed at my hand, trying to pry me away, but I wouldn’t move back. I couldn’t move back.

I willed my hand forward. He stumbled backwards as I sunk the spikes deeper and deeper into his gut until he backed into the wall. He coughed and blood spurted from his mouth onto my face, but I was undeterred. I kept pushing forward as his power left his body and this world.

I could feel his energy subside. I could feel his everything vanish in a wisp of a memory. He whimpered as he pleaded for me to stop. But I couldn’t stop. Not anymore. He looked out the window and could see the city being extinguished.

“Everything is ending,” he said, spitting out his words. “The true apocalypse.”

And then, I felt nothing. No movement. No more whimpering. I pulled my hand back, spikes gleaming red and James fell to the ground where he may lay for all eternity. Where he may disintegrate into billions of specs of dirt.

Kaolin got up and threw her arms around me. “Are you okay?” she whispered in my ear.

“Yes,” I said, to soothe her nerves, to calm my fears. I looked out the window and saw the screams and heard the killing. My gaze turned from the outside to my own reflection, captured in the translucent glass, my own image disrupted and distorted. It didn’t feel like me, like my reflection in the water so long ago. Things were not all right. I was a new Spec, older and wiser and tainted.

It poisoned me, I thought. Newbury and Nanash. They infiltrated my mind and changed my very being. They transmuted me into something I did not want to be. They transformed me. They turned me into a beast.

They made me a savage.

The screams continued to echo throughout the city. They had a way of piercing your insides like the spikes had cut through James. Their fear was transferred from their cries into my being. I could feel the pain of the fallen, I could feel their dreams vanquished, and I could do nothing to stop their penetration. Their screams weren’t pleading for help. Nobody could help them. They were a way to be recognized one last time. To have their voice and thoughts heard. I felt what they felt. For a lingering moment, I absorbed their pain and fear, before both them and their essence dissipated into the darkness.

Kaolin and I sliced through the screams and to the North, toward the elevator that would save us from the inevitable doom below, bringing us to our potential doom above. We hurried up a hill through the dimming light and spotted the large mechanism with a pile of junk we could easily move.

I grabbed at rubble and flung it away like Gunnar did his victims. I looked over at Kaolin and saw her working just as hard, wanting the future just as badly as I wanted. I wondered if we survived the night, could we survive the surface, could we survive the future?

We broke through and stood before a metal gate with a small metal lock, blocking us from the elevator. I raised the spikes and hit down on the lock. Again and again, but it was no use. I found a large rock beside but couldn’t lift on my own. I glanced over at Kaolin and she knew what to do.

“Now—”

We hoisted the stone and heaved it at the lock. Again and again until the lock fell to the ground in a heap. We dropped the boulder and I walked inside of the contraption. There was a lever propped to one side. Is that all we needed? Is that all it took? One turn of a lever to fulfill our dream? Would it work? Did it need electricity? I took the flashlight and shined it upward, and for the first time in my life, I could not see a ceiling. I just watched as the light faded into the dark. How far down were we? I guess there was only one way to find out.

“Are you ready?”

I turned to Kaolin, but she was nowhere to be found. I took a step out of the elevator and spotted her pinned to the ground beneath Valasca’s knee.

“Hi, Spec. I’m afraid I’m going to have to break my promise.”

“Don’t…”

“My friends died because of you.”

Kaolin tried to speak, but her face was pinned to the ground and her breathing was labored.

“She didn’t do anything to you, Valasca.”

“Yes she did. She did everything!”

“Please don’t hurt her.”

“There’s nothing you can say, Spec. Because I don’t care the way you do. Your sadness means nothing to me. I have seen the world sulk. I have heard her moans, and I am left pristine. Your loyalty was all I asked. I gave you freedom and you gave me betrayal.”

“No, you didn’t. You gave me false hope. You gave me a substitute. Glowing mushrooms so that I would be content and Cotta would stay. I was never free. There was never freedom. You manipulated my mind to give me the illusion, to believe I had what I wanted. But you could never give me it. How did you earn your loyalty? I never betrayed you because you never had my allegiance.”

She moved the spikes against Kaolin’s neck, but then, shot her head up, as if something struck her in the side of the skull. She jumped off of Kaolin and stabbed in the dark and we heard metal clash and then a spark.

The Mayor appeared, yielding his sword, dripping red. He sliced downward toward Valasca. She connected her hands together, blocking the attack but pushing her back. I moved toward Valasca with my claw held high, ready to end the threat, but Kaolin held me back and shook her head.