Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

IVAN is full of surprises. Like Mother Russia, the more you pound on him, the more you have to deal with. He’s

MEGAN was dirt-poor growing up, but now she’s learned to shine. A regular diamond in the rough is our

JOE be nimble, Joe be quick, Joe can snatch your candlestick. You better bring your best game if you want to go one-on-one with

EMILY is the fastest grrl on wheels. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss her whizzing by. There, that’s her, that

Don’t you dare call RAJ handicapped. His servants wouldn’t take kindly to it. Step aside and clear a path for

The three-story Brownstone burned. Tongues of fire crawled out of every window, waves of heat and clouds of smoke billowed up, choking the nighttime air. Shouts of residents trapped inside sounded over the roar of flames. People leaning out of windows, begging for help, were shadows against a backdrop of red fire. A nearby fire truck sat abandoned. Hoses hadn’t even been hooked to the fire hydrant.

Ana stood on the curb and watched the inferno. Even a dozen yards away, the fire pressed scorching fingers against her face. She drew a breath and coughed at the dry, soot-filled stench. Horror at the sight froze her into inaction. This was too much. This was impossible. They didn’t expect her to actually do anything, did they?

“We don’t have any powers that can handle this,” said Drummer Boy, squinting at the glare of the flames. “Unless somebody here is invincible and forgot to tell anyone.”

The joker Drummer Boy was over seven feet tall and had six arms. All of them were lean, powerful, and covered with tattoos, along with much of his torso—which contained a set of tympanic membranes. He really was his own drum set, and he usually went shirtless to show it off. He managed to stand with all six arms akimbo, hands lined up on his hips. With his shaved head, scowling expression, and firelight glinting off his skin, he seemed like a monster from legend.

Curveball, the pretty nineteen-year-old with a perfect figure and blond ponytail, brimmed with energy. “Let’s stop bitching and do this thing.” She dashed forward, toward the blaze.

She’s crazy , Ana thought, hanging back by the curb.

The others—Hardhat, Gardener, Hive, Wild Fox, and Drummer Boy—followed Curveball. No one got close before the heat drove them back. It came off the building in shimmering walls. The air itself seemed to burn.

Hardhat reached out, seeming for a moment to paint his hand across the air. Along the wall in front of him, a structure appeared: one by one, glowing yellow I beams morphed into existence. They stacked into a scaffold that climbed to a second-story window, where one of the victims leaned out. But he couldn’t convince the guy that the phantom I beams were real and would hold his weight if he climbed onto them.

“Come on, you fucking cock head! Get your sorry fucking ass down here! Jesus Christ!” he hollered. The victim kept shaking his head.

“I’ll get him.” Drummer Boy ran for the scaffold. Using all six arms, he made short work of climbing the beams, and once at the top, braced himself while reaching for the victim. He winced away from a blast of sparks that poured from the window. The sparks, if anything, encouraged the man to take Drummer Boy’s hand and allow himself to be coaxed from the window.

One down, at least. The flames seemed to be climbing higher, and the shouts from within continued. Drummer Boy helped a second victim climb from the window. Two rescued. Maybe this would turn out all right after all.

Ana’s heart was racing, and she was just standing there. She clenched her fists, watching, praying. It was all she could do.

From inside, sounding over the crackle and roar of flames, a baby started crying. The sound was piercing, and jacked the tension to a new level.

Gardener pulled a handful of something from the leather pouch at her belt and flung it toward the building. Seeds. They instantly took root in the concrete and grew at a terrific rate. In minutes, vines sprouted and climbed, sending out leaves and tendrils, anchoring on the brick wall. Following Hardhat’s lead, she used living vines instead of conjured steel.

Before the vines reached the first window, however, they blackened and caught fire. The plants collapsed into ashes.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“You got anything in there that can shoot water?” Wild Fox asked.

“There aren’t any plants that shoot water,” she said, scowling at him.

Meanwhile, Hive rubbed his hands together in preparation of—something. His expression was uncertain, however. “Maybe I can do some scouting. Find out where the people are so we don’t waste any time searching.”

His outline fuzzed. Then, his shirt and pants collapsed, and in his place a swarm of tiny green wasplike insects hovered. The swarm maintained the outline of the man—a disturbing, wavering form, rather than anything with human features—and raised a nebulous, buzzing arm in salute. Then, he scattered. The swarm broke apart, zoomed to the building, and entered through three different windows.

“Is that bastard going to be okay?” Hardhat asked, staring. He’d built a second scaffold by another window and rescued a third victim.

In only a second, almost as quickly as they’d entered the building, the swarm returned, tendrils of insects shooting out of the windows and dropping to the ground. There, they coalesced, crawling together to form the shape of a man, kneeling and naked. “Bugs and smoke… don’t mix,” he managed, coughing.

Wild Fox pointed. “Dude, you know you’re naked?”

Regaining his feet, Hive glared. “Thanks very much. I might have missed that little fact.” With a bout of angry buzzing, his hip region snapped out of existence, to be replaced by a Speedo band of writhing insects. He went to retrieve his clothing.

“I bet the girls love that,” Curveball said, smirking.

He leered. “You could find out.”

“We don’t have time for this.” She drew a pair of marbles out of the pocket of her shorts. Then she wound up for the pitch. She threw with that odd softballer’s pitch, the underhanded swing and snap. The marble flew, faster than a softball, faster than any thrown object had any right to fly. It burned through the air, glowing yellow, before impacting on the front door. The wood shattered with the force of an explosion. She threw the second one at a ground-floor window. The impact left a jagged hole in the side of the house.

“Great,” Hive said, deadpan. “Now we can see the fire even better.” She glared at him.

Exposure to more air only made the flames larger and more ferocious. The baby was still crying.