The Initiative (A Sleeping Beauty Remix)

Fifteen

Fifteen

"Fire abilities are the most unpredictable. Fire in itself is a weapon, an entity not meant to be contained. Pyrokinetic Aces are rare, but we take them very seriously, putting them under testing and observation before they can be released."

-Dr. Angela Henderson, in a lecture at Triad University, Ace Abilities 305

The heat rushed over me. Almost unbearable, I wanted nothing more than to turn my back. To get out of the warehouse and never turn back. Instead, I forced my feet to take another step forward.

The Ace in front of me threw off so much heat that I had no doubt he would burst into flames. Or worse. As it was, flames licked at his hands and up his arms. His color was orange and red—as if molten lava churned under his skin.

He stood in front of one of the large steel support beams in the furniture warehouse. This heat was more than a furnace. It was unnaturally hot and had the potential to melt that beam if we didn't get him calmed down.

Hands up, I approached the Ace with a delicate stance. A careful movement that implied he had nothing to worry from me.

"Aria..." From his tone, Wes did not like where I was headed. We were so in tuned to each other that I had no doubt he knew what my strategy was. It was the same one we'd followed so many other times in the field.

When it came to field work, you had to fight with the same strength as your opponent. If it were a knife fight, you better hope your knife skills or tactical skills were similar to your enemies. If it were hand-to-hand combat, you needed to be able to outfight the other. Otherwise, you were almost guaranteed to lose. In this case, our Ace had an affinity for fire. And since we had no water ability to combat it or another ability to help get close, we needed to fight fire with fire.

Only one person on this team could do that.

"He's going nuclear," I told Wes out of the side of my mouth. "See the way his skin looks? He's past the point of cool down. If we don't take him out now, he's going to do more damage."

"You don't know that you can control it," Wes said.

I took another slow step. "I don't." I exhaled slowly, "remember our promise, Wes."

"Fuck that—"

I whirled on him. "You promised."

Wes gripped my arm hard. "Don't do this. He can barely control it himself."

"If we don't do something soon he could take out the whole block. That's if we're lucky. There are apartments next door, Wes. Families are in those apartments. If we don't do something..."

"What if you can't control it either?"

I gave him a sad smile, "that's why I have you."

I would forever remember the look on Wes' face at that moment. As if he wanted to both hide me under a rock away from the world, but also understanding that that was an impossibility. He and I had never been the type to sit around and do nothing. Especially not when other lives hung in the balance.

"Let's hope I have more control with abilities," I said. Sweat dripped down my temple to my cheek. "Bullets would melt. We have no weapon to take him out. Except for more fire."