Chapter 9

“I do NOT like where this is going.”

The three of us had made our way to the southern end of Mulberry, and Noire was currently trying to pry a manhole cover using a bent piece of rebar. Gene’s face was scrunched up in anticipation of our campsite tonight.

“Well, it’s pretty dry down there. Barely stinks too. HUUUPP.” Noire finally managed to remove the cover, throwing it aside and using his flashlight to check out the sewer.

“Hold on, got something better,” I said as I took one of Gene’s seedlings. It was still glowing, though not as bright as it was back at the apartment, and this one now had three tiny leaves growing on it.

“Oh, Christ, did you seriously keep those?” Gene moaned, one palm on his face.

“Yes. Now watch.” I dropped the flashlight seedling into the hole; its light was enough to illuminate the immediate area. Like Noire said, the walls and floor of the sewer seemed to be dry, and mostly clean if not for the layer of ash that covered everything.

“I think a Brand similar to mine did this,” I theorized. “Evaporated the water and turned everything else to ash.”

“So we’re STILL gonna be sleeping on trash, just slightly burnt. Got it.”

“Well, I dunno about you two, but I’m going down there.” Noire grabbed the access ladder without hesitation, its steel barely making any noise thanks to his Brand.

“Come on, Gene, you go second. I’ll be up here in case your uh, wooden greave causes an issue.” He approached slowly, peeked at Noire now at the bottom, and inhaled deeply.

“Fuck it.” The wood on his left leg clanged against the ladder, causing Noire to cover his ears to protect them. About two steps from the bottom, Gene let go, and our light vanished under this right foot. “Oops. Toss in another down here, man!”

“Nah, I’m good.” My Brand glowed like a half-burnt cinder as I got lower and lower. The sewer was probably colder than the streets. Every now and again a bone in my body would crack a little; evidently the nanos aren’t completely finished with my healing just yet.

Once I hit the floor, Noire whispered, “Dude, your bones sound like they’re rattling. The hell happened to you?”

“Got into an accident, still healing,” I summarized. “Where to now?”

“...few feet that way. I marked an access tunnel. It’s a little tight, but it should be safe.” He turned on his phone’s flashlight again and we followed close behind. Its light reflected on the grey of the ash that covered every inch of the sewer.

“Wait, so,” Gene began, his boot clacking against the cement, “if you’re safe down here, what were you doing in that basement?”

“I heard someone last night. ‘The next person that tries to exit the building will help you.’ Sat there for like 16 hours waiting until you and your friend arrived.”

“Hey, Blaze, you think that’s Ysandra again?”

“Uh, maybe? Noire, was the voice female?”

“Nah. He was using a voice changer of some sort, but definitely male. We’re here.” He got on his fours and started crawling through a small tunnel with a big red X painted on top of it, groaning a little as he went.

I took out another flashlight seedling and threw it at my feet. I checked my pistol to make sure it was ready - 10 bullets left - and told Gene to go after Noire.

“You sure, man? We’re gonna get deafened by that gun again. I still haven’t recovered properly.”

“Not much of a choice. Now go.” He shrugged and started crawling through the tunnel. I kept as alert as possible, but there was still some ringing in my left ear. My Brand continued to pulse its cinder-orange hue. Did this small thing really have the power to do what I did to that guy…?

More importantly, was that voice back there really Aria?

I fucked up; I had not stayed alert. I was snapped back to attention by the whistling of an arrow from my right, the opposite of where we came from. It hit the flashlight seedling, plunging the sewer into pitch blackness.

“Damnit!”

I quickly holstered the Tesla, got down to my elbows and knees, and crawled as fast as I could through the tunnel. I heard another whistle of an arrow as I finally got my entire body inside.

It was a tight fit, and the ash covering everything didn’t help either. The particles Gene and Noire had kicked up stung at my eyes, causing them to water. The small space also worsened the ringing in my left ear. After about fifteen seconds of crawling, I finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Jesus, man, I thought you died or something again,” Gene said as he helped pull me into another chamber of the sewer, this one about three feet lower than the main tunnels.

“Uh, excuse me, again?”

“No… time…” I said as I coughed out the ash I had swallowed. “Someone knows we’re here, and he has a bow and arrow.”

“Damnit, what is with people wanting to kill us today?”

“Uh, right,” Noire interrupted. “may suggest we move away from the tunnel exit then try to ambush whoever’s following us?”

I leaned against the wall to the right of the tunnel, Gene to the left, and Noire crouched below it, our muscles tensed and ready for anything. I half expected an arrow to come zooming out of the tunnel anytime, checking to see if someone was in front of it.

Nothing came.

Minutes passed. The silence of the chamber was starting to eat away at my nerves, and the ringing in my ear wasn't helping matters. My heart was hammering against my chest so loudly our pursuer could probably hear it.

Gene was the first to speak up again. “I think we're sa-”

An arrow flew past the tunnel, embedding itself with a thud against the opposite wall, so low against the tunnel floor that the arrowhead shaved off a bit from Noire's brown hair. Gene put two hands over his mouth in a panicked scream. Our assailant shot two more arrows, both also driving themselves deep into the wall. There was enough light to even see the ash scatter.

Wait a second…

“Noire,” I whispered, “is there another way out of here?”

He pointed upwards, and I scanned the dark ceiling. Wait, it wasn't dark - there was a weak orange light filtering in from a hole above us.

“How do we get up there?!” This time Noire pointed to the wall opposite him. The arrows had kicked up enough ash to reveal an access ladder.

“There's nothing good up there, though!” he explained hurriedly. “It's way too dangerous!”

“Buddy, half the world is gone, and everyone else now has powers. Everywhere is dangerous. But I am NOT dying in a goddamn sewer if I can fucking help it.”

I waited for their response, but instead they were looking at my right hand. “What are yo- WHOA!” My Brand wasn't just glowing like a cinder now - it was a brilliant, fiery hue of blue, and small tongues of flame escaped from my fingers every few seconds. I winced a little when I saw it, expecting my hands to burn themselves off. Instead, Gene's and Noire's Brands also began glowing, bathing the chamber in a sea of blue, green, and silver.

“Fucking Branded!” screamed a voice in the tunnel. We had completely forgotten about our attacker, and three pairs of eyes darted back towards a tunnel. Instead of a hole, though, it was now completely blocked by a thick layer of green vines. Somehow, the other three seeds in my bag had broken through the fabric and were now several times bigger than what should be possible, covering the opening almost completely. Weirdest of all, they grew without making a single decibel of sound in this empty sewer.

“GO. NOW!”

One by one we grabbed the ladder, the light of our Brands guiding us. About halfway to the opening in the ceiling, my Brand flared even stronger, strong enough that it actually hurt a little, and I could hear the crackle of fire from down below. I didn't dare look down even as the bandages on my left hand burned off.

Gene was the first to scramble up the hole, grunting in effort audibly. He helped Noire up, then both of them reached back down to me. I managed to clamber up to safety just as smoke began billowing out of the hole.

“Oh, thank God. We're safe.” Gene said, relieved. But even as we were recovering, black smoke was beginning to fill the room we were in.

“We need to find a way to seal that opening!” The room was filled with a few pallets and broken containers, so we began to hurriedly pile it over the hole. But the fire was too strong, the heat too much, and soon they were also smoking and catching on fire.

In desperation I instead began searching for a door with the help of my still-glowing Brand. The room was smooth, bare metal, though I could feel one of the walls vibrating a little. I tried to knock on it, but it was way too dense, and I ended up bruising my hands instead.

The black smoke was starting to fill the room, clouding my vision and causing my eyes to water. Gene and Noire were on their knees, facing away from the source of the smoke, trying to preserve their air as much as possible while coughing uncontrollably.

It can't end like this.

I punched the wall one last time; I felt my knuckles crack in several places, but the blue flames had burned right through the steel of the wall. I pulled back my fist, slag building up around it, and punched again. Another hole.

Please!

I was preparing for a third when the smoke was finally too much. There was no burning - I think my body was used to far higher temperatures now - but I could still feel my lungs struggling to breath. My third punch barely scratched the surface.

I fell, my lungs tightening. The smoke covered most of the room now, and pure white ash was beginning to fall on our bodies. As I closed my eyes, a speck got inside my mouth, and I expected it to taste bitter - but instead it tasted like… water?

My eyes flew open. Slowly but surely, the black smoke was turning a stark white, the air freezing into fresh winter snow. A thick layer of frozen smoke now plugged the opening, completely sealing it off.

“Ack! Snow?! What is this?!” Gene screamed from somewhere behind me.

Noire was still hacking his lungs out, but it sounded a lot better every time he did until he said, “I… I think we're safe. For real, this time.”

I got back on my knees. My Brand was back to its regular orange glow, pulsing as the temperature of the room lowered. I looked at my friends, and Gene's Brand was inactive and Noire's was now its old, softer silver. I then peeked through the holes I made on the wall, and saw a person on the other side.

She was standing perfectly still, almost like a statue. Most of her body was covered in body-conforming armor that left her shoulders and arms completely bare. Instead a snowstorm raged around them, pelting her featureless white helmet with icy sleet. Her head tilted a little to the side as I observed her, and when I met her eyes - or at least, the spot on her helmet where her eyes should be - her left hand exploded with bright white light. Her personal snowstorm grew stronger, the snow clumping up into larger pieces that thunked all over her armor; soon the snowstorm became a blizzard, the ice cracking and bouncing off of her.

“Blaze, the wall,” Noire warned me. I stepped back and realized my Brand was working overtime, as the steel wall was now completely frozen over. "Gene, kick the wall please." He did as instructed, his wooden greave holding strong despite the shuddering impacts. After four or five kicks, a single crack formed on the frozen steel. More cracks soon appeared, the brittle metal grating against our ears as it shattered in a cacophonic crash.

“Hey, thank you,” I said, expecting the white-armored woman to still be there.

“Uh, you're welcome, my guy,” Gene replied.

“Not you, he-”

But there was no one on the other side of the wall.

Well, shit.

“Nevermind,” I said. “This place seems… large. What is it, Noire?”

“Branded quarantine facility,” he replied in a shaky voice. “I was here for all of ten minutes, and it's already given me nightmares.”

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The facility was empty, and most of it was wrecked. The wood and crates from the room we were originally trapped in got way too wet for use when all the snow and ice melted. My best guess was that the White Lady’s Brand was able to lower the temperature of her surroundings.

A small part of me couldn’t help but be reminded of the icy landscape of Laura’s apartment a few days back. Could she or someone with her Brand have been responsible for it?

“Man, you can’t make any more fire?” Gene asked desperately as I tried my best to light some wooden planks on fire. My Brand stayed stubbornly cinder-orange no matter what I did - I vented my frustration, thought happy thoughts, even tried punching it in case my Brand lit up to help. I ended up with sore fingers and a bloody knuckle instead.

Noire came back from the other room, something heavy causing his footsteps to actually make some noise - an electric lamp, probably the source of the light we saw from the sewer chamber. He knelt down next to me, cracked open the lens, ripped out the wires halfway and fiddled around with them until he found a pair that sparked when he brought them together. He put them near some wood chips, finally igniting a small fire. Gene immediately huddled in front of it, shivering.

We sat around our makeshift camp, our shadows dancing in the dark. The facility felt pretty spacious and windy, but it was too dark to see just how large it was. Every now and again something would spark in the darkness, and the three of us would jump a little every time.

“So,” Noire began as he stoke the fire, “what’s your story?”

Gene and I filled him in on everything so far - Ysandra and the Valkyries, our Brands, our previous attackers who were also Branded, and the Disappearance. He stayed silent all throughout, until we explained what we knew about that last part.

“Sorry, ‘gone’? What are you saying? That my...family is dead?”

I exchanged looks with Gene. “Until we find a way to communicate at long range, we can’t really say. You probably noticed already, but our phones aren’t getting any signal.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. They’re probably alright.” Noire sounded more like he was reassuring himself than he was talking to us. He blinked away his tears, then asked us about our own families.

Gene slowly caressed his camera, which had somehow survived the events of the sewers. “Turned 18, then my family kicked me out of the house.” His bitter laugh echoed throughout the empty warehouse. “I crashed with a friend for a while. Then one day he took me hiking - actual hiking, not one of those virtual ones.” The fire was reflected in his wistful, brown eyes. “Worked my ass off starting that day, hoping to capture nature. Or whatever’s left of it, anyway.”

“That explains your reaction back at the greenhouse,” I guessed.

He nodded solemnly. “I’ve seen better, but that place was definitely greener than literally everywhere else in New Pines. Which is why I was so surprised it even existed.” He sighed heavily, then turned to me. “So what about you, Blaze?”

“I, uh…” I rubbed my hands, trying to decide how much I could share with them. “I ran away from home with a friend when I was a little. We were basically starving to death when we were saved by someone named Harrison Grant.”

“Ah,” Noire nodded, “they must be the one who gave you that penthouse of yours?”

“Yep. And these.” I dug out the three tubes of unprogrammed nanobots from my bag, but my heart caught in my throat when I saw that two of them were empty. “Wait, what the fuck? Neither of you touched my bag, did you?”

“Dude, we’ve been running around all this time. Why are you blaming us?”

“Shit. Damnit. I was planning to breed those nanobots once we were in a safer spot.”

“Excuse me?”

I opened up the last remaining tube and poured some of it into the other ones until they were all about one-thirds full. “Yeah, I wrote up a program to allow nanobots to duplicate, but with how much has happened in the past few days, I haven’t had time to test it.” I put the tubes back inside and inspected the small hole the seedlings made earlier. It didn’t seem too bad, thankfully. “If I mess up the program, the nanos will stop working. I needed those samples…”

I turned back to my companions. “Either of you have severe enough injuries to need healer nanobots for?” They both shook their heads. “Good. I’ll take the first watch,” I said as I prepared my gun. I crawled away from the fire - I didn’t really need it anymore.

Gene leaned against a wall and Noire laid down on his side, and just like that I was alone with my thoughts once again, like so many times before.