Ignite, p.9
Ignite, page 9
“I’ll head from the Station and distract them,” she said. “Call them over there with some gunshots, that should scare them. That should leave you with, oh, maybe two to deal with here. Surround and confuse—you know what I’m talking about, don’t you Corry?”
He nodded. Jeremy grinned.
“I love that one,” he whispered happily. He was still holding one of the knock-out devices. Zira took the other two out of his bag, slipped one into her own pocket, and handed the other to me. It was like she was trying to say something encouraging, but she didn’t have the words, so she just nodded at me and I nodded back, unsure of myself. This was mounting fast. First I interrupt an execution, then I steal an agent’s gun, now I was expected to actually attack one of them from behind. Could I actually do that? They had plenty of people. They didn’t really need me. My stomach felt sick.
“When you’ve taken the agents out,” she said, “get the people out of here. We don’t have enough blinders for all of them, so split them up. A few to the tunnel, the rest to other areas—got it?”
“And where will you be?” Corry asked. “You’ll run, after you distract them, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll meet you at base.”
“Don’t try to take them on yourself,” Corry warned, and I was shocked by the serious look on his face. Would she really do that? Making herself the target was dangerous enough, but Corry looked seriously worried that she’d sacrifice herself trying to fight them. I’d never heard of something so reckless…heroic…stupid.
“I won’t,” Zira promised. “Not unless I have to.” And before anyone could say anything else, she ducked out of the shack and disappeared. The others followed a few seconds later, fanning themselves out—surrounding the agents, I realized, in something like a circle.
“Come on,” Jeremy said, taking my hand suddenly and pulling me out of the shack. “We need to get behind those two. That’s our target.”
We positioned ourselves carefully, and as I crouched behind a cardboard wall, I could feel my heart beating in my throat. My muscles were tense and hot. The little black device in my hand kept slipping in my sweating palms. I was actually looking for places to hide. Clearly these people didn’t understand. They didn’t understand what it was like to watch those branded hands kill everyone you cared about, and how it’s impossible to be brave when you’re breathing in smoke and staring at corpses.
Gunshots broke the rhythm of my breathing and shocked me so much that I think my heart stopped beating. It’s been so long since I heard gunshots. The fact that I knew it was Zira’s hand pulling the trigger, it didn’t scare me any less. I just kept imagining my mother’s face with a bullet through her head, lying dead on our front lawn.
The sounds of confusion erupted from the agents and the crowd of captives. A few of them screamed. The agents were on their headsets, sending warnings to the others. I forced myself to turn, and watch, and just as Zira had said, two of them took off towards the sound, leaving just two agents behind to guard the frightened crowd.
A shriek came from off to my right, unmistakably Addy’s, though she was still hidden. Somewhere on the other side of the circle, Corry’s voice yelled something, and Finn was using some kind of technology to make a loud beeping sound somewhere nearby. Off to my left, Jeremy started laughing—just another noise to add to the confusion, I guess.
It worked well. The agents kept their ground, but glanced around wildly, pointing their guns at the phantom noises.
“Show yourselves!” one of them demanded. The other one, looking paranoid, reached up to tap his headset with his marked right hand. The sight of it stirred something. I wanted to run, and hide, but I also…I wanted them to pay. For having that mark, for showing their allegiance to everything I hated.
Suddenly out of his hiding spot, Jeremy appeared at my side.
“Now,” he whispered. “We have to go now!”
Instinctively, I pulled back, pressing myself further into the shadows.
“Jacks,” he said urgently. “Now.”
And at that second, someone else, someone I didn’t really know, took over me, and nodded to Jeremy, and jumped from the shadows to dodge behind that gun and press the object in my hand against the closest agent’s neck. As the man fell to the ground, I stepped back, staring at his limp body at my feet, my hands shaking.
The others emerged from their hiding places, quickly gathering up the captives to lead them to safety. They were incredibly organized, and I had this feeling like I should be helping, but I just stared down at the mark on the agent’s limp hand and thought, I just did this. I did this.
“Not bad,” Jeremy’s voice said, coming up behind me and gently prying the knock-out device out of my clenched fist. “Not bad, Jacks. Now let’s get out of here.”
***
We didn’t stop Charing Cross from burning. We barely got out in time as it was, and they were angry when they saw what we’d done. It was a controlled fire, carefully manipulated so it wouldn’t spread to the bridge or to other parts of the Strand. But it burned bright. When we got back to HQ, which was at a higher elevation, it was night, and the orange glow of Charing Cross burning was almost as bright as staring straight at the sun. The smoke rose up like a giant thundercloud, and I could smell it even from this far away.
The Flames weren’t too upset, though. Because even though the homes—if they could be called homes—had gone up in smoke, no one had died. Feather was re-united immediately with three grubby little boys who were clearly not related to him, but who he indiscriminately referred to as his brothers. And that was good to see—it made me think of my gang. They’d been family to me, too.
The Flames, too, I realized, were like a family of their own. And now that I’d done those things, it was like I was suddenly a part of it. I liked it, but it also frightened me.
“You were brilliant, Jackie,” Addy said proudly, glancing up from her treatment of a cut on Zira’s knee. Zira had made it back fine, which relieved the rest of us, and we were all sitting around in the kitchen now, discussing what to do next.
“Thanks…” I replied awkwardly. I didn’t feel brilliant. More than anything, my own actions just confused me.
Zira looked up at me too, with an unreadable expression on her face. The gun I’d stolen was sitting on the table next to her. She hadn’t trusted me at first, I knew, and perhaps she still didn’t. In return, I hadn’t liked her much either. But the way she’d risked everything today, without any thought of herself…it was stupid, yes, but it was brave. And for some reason I respected that.
“It’s true,” she said, looking a little like she’d just lost a bet. “We definitely needed you.”
“Does that mean we can keep her?” Jeremy asked, turning happily from his perusal of the stock of food in the fridge.
“She is not a pet, Jeremy,” Addy reprimanded.
“She’s kind of like a pet,” he reasoned, grabbing an apple out of the fridge and taking a giant bite. “She’s small and cute, you know?” He patted my hair teasingly.
“I’m not small,” I retorted in mock anger, pushing his hand away. “You’re a giant.”
“Oh, did you hear that?” Corry asked, laughing. “She bites.”
The banter continued, but I was only half-listening. After everything that had happened today, there were so many thoughts bouncing through my head, but foremost in my mind was the simplest thought of them all—that after a year of living on my own, I was finally back in a place where people treated me like I belonged.
I could leave. I could go back to living by myself and I’d be alright and I’d probably be safer, honestly, a hundred times safer. But then, I’d already gotten involved, hadn’t I? Some of the agents might have seen me. The people we saved, they’d seen me, and Feather and his boys. They would know. It was too late not to be associated with the Flames.
If I was going to take that kind of chance, I should probably take it while surrounded by people who knew what they were doing.
Yes, that. Protection. These guys did dangerous things, but they knew what they were doing. They got out of it.
I was staying for that.
Chapter 13: Jeremy
“A computer thermometer?” I asked, trying not to look bored as Finn nodded encouragingly in my direction. He was trying to explain this new gadget that he was setting up in the computer room to help us figure out who our stalker was, the one who kept using fire-related things to warn us about things. I don’t know what the actual name of the thing was, I just know that he explained it to me by telling me it was a computer thermometer.
“Think about it. What do thermometers do?” he prompted.
“Tell you when you have a fever,” I replied. I was sort of unimpressed.
“Right! So what this does is go through all the live feeds of messages we’re streaming from hacked files, and tell us which ones are hot.”
“It tracks the messages with the most outside responses?” Corry asked, getting all excited about it. As usual, the technical explanation was becoming a conversation between the two nerds. I still didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.
“Yes. It tracks the messages outside to their destinations, so a message that’s hot is one that lots of people are looking at right now. And that means…”
“That it’s probably coded and important,” Corry finished. “Finn, that’s genius!”
“Save us a ton of time,” Finn agreed. “So we won’t waste time on de-coding what’s not important, and we’ll catch the important stuff quicker, even if we don’t realize at first what it means.”
“Sounds good,” I muttered, yawning. Corry was already leaning in over the thing to learn how it worked. Addy had already left—she got a call from her mother and rushed off. I was useless to the whole conversation, so I headed out of the room and settled myself on the couch in the den.
“I don’t know what they’re talking about, either,” a voice said, and I jumped a little when I realized Jacks had followed me like a silent little ghost and was standing in the doorway. She walked in like she didn’t notice and sat down on the other side of the couch.
“You know,” I said, “the way you creep around like that is kind of…uh, creepy. Impressive, but creepy.” I sure wouldn’t leave anything unattended around her anymore.
“I don’t creep around. I’m just invisible.”
I shrugged. “Well, I guess it makes a good quality in a thief. How do you do that, anyway?”
“What, pick pockets? I don’t know. I just do.” She was blushing a little, and I thought it was cute.
“Where’d you learn it?” I asked. “Someone from Wolfe’s gang teach you?”
She turned to me, shocked.
“I, uh…” I bit my lip awkwardly. “I just, I recognized your mark,” I said quickly, gesturing at her neck. “Wolfe’s.”
“Yeah…” She looked down at her hands. “Yeah, Tommy taught me. He was the best.”
“How old were you?” I asked. “When you joined up with Wolfe’s gang.”
“Oh, must’ve been…eight, I think.”
So I was right. Or, I thought I was right—about her being a shiner before, that is. Because you don’t really join a gang at that age unless you don’t know how to survive the streets by yourself. That was probably why I’d never joined one, because I didn’t need anyone to tell me how to deal with shit.
“The way Zira was today,” Jacks asked suddenly, changing the subject. “Is she always like that?”
I laughed.
“Which way?” I asked. “The bossy way, or the know-it-all way, or the comic book hero way?”
“I mean how she…um, yeah, how she knew everything. Like she knew what the burners were going to do.”
“Like I said before, she reads the DRT’s collective minds. I dunno how she knows, she just always knows. So yeah, she’s always like that. A little bit brilliant, a little bit scary.”
“Is it because she grew up in the Palace?” Jacks asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. That’s what they tell us. Her and Corry, I mean, they’re both from there.”
“What did they do there? I mean, do they talk about it?”
It was weird that she was asking me all these questions. Not weird that she was asking, but weird that she asked me. And Zira—how she’d been asking me all about Jacks earlier, as if I knew anything. Jacks and Zira, actually, were more alike than they thought they were.
“Sometimes,” I said nonchalantly, leaning back and putting my feet up on the coffee table. “They just worked there, I guess. Like servants or something. They don’t like to bring it up. I mean, it probably sucked, right?”
“Everyone’s life sucked at some point,” Jacks pointed out. “But not everyone’s secretive about it. What happened to their parents?”
“Zira said she never had any. Said Corry’s parents raised her. So I guess his whole family lived there. I don’t know if they’re really keeping secrets, they’re more just… moving on. It might not matter much to them anymore. You can say what you want about the boss, she’s a freaky kid, but even as dumb as she is sometimes, she saves our asses. A lot.”
That much was true. I said it mostly because I knew the two of them didn’t really like each other. It was mostly Zira’s fault, since she’s not exactly the friendliest person, but Jacks was also the type of kid who questions everything. I’d grown up around that, and that way okay, but maybe she’d trust me if I said there was nothing to worry about.
Mostly I just didn’t want them to fight. I don’t like fighting. Especially girls fighting. It confuses me.
“Anyway,” I said. “We don’t know how she learned all that stuff, but it helps us out. Just like you picking pockets, right? You learned that ‘cause you had to. Maybe this is just stuff she had to learn. It helps us out, just like you do.”
“I’m not all that helpful,” Jacks muttered.
“Sure you are,” I said, grinning at her. “You can steal things, and you come with the bonus feature of being small enough to investigate tiny spaces if we ever need you to. Like ventilation shafts, or…mouse holes…”
“I am not that small!” she cried indignantly, smacking me on the arm.
“You’re a midget,” I replied. “A stealth-midget.”
“If you keep it up, I’m going to rob you blind.”
I laughed and held out my hand in truce, but she hesitated a minute before she took it. For a second I thought of the way she’d hesitated today at Charing Cross, like she was about to run, like she wasn’t going to help me. Maybe that was in her nature, what she’d learned to do, and I didn’t blame her. But even so, I hoped she’d get over it soon. Because from what I could tell, we really did need her around. By now even Zira knew that.
Chapter 14: Zira
I let myself into Corry’s room a few minutes past midnight. As I expected, he was not asleep. He was hunched over his desk with a frustrated expression, four different coded messages spread out in front of him.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “I was just…practicing.” He sighed and pushed back from the desk. “Some of them I’m just never going to get.”
I glanced around at his messy room, shook my head regretfully, and started picking things up off the floor.
“Honestly,” I said, throwing a handful of dirty clothes across the room into his hamper. “I don’t understand why this room is such a mess. It’s a miracle you actually survived cleaning my room for so many years.”
“I’ve regressed,” he replied. “Stop that, sit down. I’ll deal with it later.”
I threw a few more things around before sitting heavily on his unmade bed and sighing.
“We’re in trouble,” I confessed.
“Yes, that’s generally true of organized rebellions,” he pointed out.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But what we did today, and the thing with the tunnel last week, which they still haven’t been able to find—both of those were close. Really close. It’s a lot more high-profile than normal, what we’ve been doing. More noticeable than just tipping off suspects before the DRT shows up.”
“That’s not all we did before this.”
“No, but people didn’t know who we were. And they hardly ever saw us. The agents today, at least one or two of them, they did see us. And we’ve hardly ever had to actually take them out, before.”
“It was all over pretty quickly,” Corry said reassuringly. “And we had blinders. There’s no way they’ll find us from that.”
“But someone has found us,” I objected. “The computers, the candles, the fire alarms. Just because they’re on our side doesn’t mean they don’t put us in danger. Who knows who they are, or how they found out, or who else knows…?”
“It has to be someone we know,” said Corry. “How could they know so much about us, otherwise?”
I bit my lip. There was a very dangerous look on Corry’s face—a hopeful one. He kept me balanced, with all his optimism, but sometimes there were things that shouldn’t be hoped for. I knew who Corry wanted it to be.
“It’s…” I had a hard time with emotions, to be honest. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I couldn’t let him get hurt by convincing himself of things that weren’t true.
“It’s not her,” I said. “It’s not Hannah. You know it’s not.”
His face fell a little bit, but he caught it back.
