Chương 47: Chapter 46 - Escape

"We have to find Wes," I said. Dustin followed me to the door.

"Wes is here?"

"He's the only reason I got this far. You couldn't sense him?"

"I wasn't searching for him." I opened the door. The flames were everywhere, rolling up the walls, spreading across the ceiling. I shut the door.

"Can you sense him now?" I asked.

"How bad is it?" Dustin said.

"Pretty bad. But you're powerful, right? How good are you at controlling fire?"

"I'm not! I only ever tried to repress it, and it only worked on my fires." I pointed at him. My index finger was an inch away from his nose.

"From now on, you practice."

"I'll remember that if we make it out of here alive."

"Are you better at telepathy?" He looked uncomfortable, but he nodded.

"See if you can sense Wes. If he isn't here, we're leaving out the windows."

"And if he is here?"

"If he's still out in that, we probably need to go save him." Dustin closed his eyes. A perfect stillness fell over him. Three seconds later he opened them.

"He's that way." He pointed down the hall.

"I'll give you bonus points if you can tell me how he feels."

"Scared. And mad."

"Ding, ding, ding! You get the prize, Mr. Walman! Now, for the once in a lifetime chance to save your friend—can you try to repress this fire?" He swallowed.

"I can try."

"Thank you. Ready?" He looked as scared as a kid can look—almost as scared as I felt—but he nodded. I opened the door again. Circe was right: practice really does matter. Wes had made controlling the fire look like nothing. Dustin managed to keep a lot of the heat away, and he could push back some of the flames, but only if he was focusing, and only in a small area. But it was a whole lot better than the nothing I could do, so I was grateful.

"I don't think this is going to work," Dustin said.

"Do what you can. That's all anyone can ask from you." We moved down the hall, dodging out of the way of the worst flames and working toward where Wes was hopefully protecting an exit. Dustin suddenly wrapped his arm around me, pressing my hot hoodie and blazing zipper against me, and jerked me around. The wall I had been standing by erupted in fire. If it had been doused in gas and I had been a lit match, the effect couldn't have been more catastrophic.

"Was that you?" I shouted over the noise of the fire.

"I saw it," Dustin said. The way he said "saw it" made me think of how Circe "saw things." They both added the same odd undertone to the word.

"Does that mean you can see the safest route?"

"I…I guess—but I can't move while I'm trying to see. If I'm doing it on purpose, I can only see the future or the past." Seeing double must be another thing that comes with practice.

"I'll guide you," I said.

"You tell me where to go." With how thick the smoke was getting, it was a case of the nearly blind leading the blind. I put all my faith in Dustin, ducking and moving as he instructed down the burning hall, pausing in doorways, walking through connected rooms. When we emerged into the hall again, we were out of the hottest fires of hell and into the more modest flames of heck. The hall—or what was left of it—was running a different direction than it had before. We'd made it to the south wing.

"Wes!" I yelled. I thought I saw something move in the smoke and flames. I tried to walk forward, but Dustin grabbed me. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Don't move!"

"But—""Not a step!" I heard the crack. I grabbed Dustin and pulled him close. We ducked our heads over each other's shoulders as the ceiling beams crashed down. The fire had been working on all of the floors. The first floor was the slow burner. Now the incendiary debris from above was coming to help finish the job. When the noise stopped, I wiped at Dustin's hair, trying to remove anything that might have settled there.

"I'm fine," he said, "but we have to keep going."

"Which way?" He pointed to the gigantic blackened beams crisscrossing the hall like an ominous warning to "go no further!"

"Why couldn't I have had super strength? Huh? Tell me that!" I yelled to the uncaring universe—probably the same uncaring universe that thinks it's funny to give ominous warnings about things people have to do anyway. Dustin stepped forward.

"Let me try." He stared at the beams. They lifted away from the wall, shuddered, and broke apart. The mess crashed to the floor, tumbling into a flat heap.

"You have to walk over them," he said.

"Whatever you do, don't step on them."

"Anything else?"

"Move fast and be careful. I have to keep my eyes open to do this." I picked my way through the beams as fast as I could. Whenever I had to step over them, I could feel the heat scorching the leg of my jeans. When I was on the other side, I stopped and looked around. Fire in front of us. Fire behind. No doubt, fire above. Well. Crap. We both stood there, hands on our knees, trying to breathe whatever air was left.

"Dustin, can you deal with the flames?" He shook his head.

"Can you 'see' anything?" I asked.

"We're stuck." A white fear rolled through my stomach before my brain noticed that Dustin was smiling.

"But not for long," he said. Then I heard him. Wes Osborn. He was swearing worse than a pirate who'd stubbed his toe during a cussing competition and screaming about what he would do to Dustin the moment he got him out of there—and he would get Dustin out of there, because, dammit, the only thing going to kill the little Scottish bastard was him! The blaze parted and Wes stepped out of the smoke. He walked up to Dustin, and the two of them threw their arms over each other.

The flames around us shrank and rolled away so fast it looked like they were fleeing for their lives. I watched, awed, as the clear area spread down the hall. Maybe it would be enough… It wasn't. Whatever power Wes was using, it waned at nine feet. Beyond that, I could see the fire, still growing and eagerly assessing the territory it had controlled a moment before.

"This way," Wes said. He took a step, then stopped.

"Um," he said. He turned around. Flames had claimed the pile of ceiling beams. He turned around again.

"Yup," I said, "that's where you came from."

"But—"" You were keeping the fire down, Wes. Then you came to get us. Now you're keeping the fire down here."

"Can you control it?" Dustin asked.

"Of course I can!" Wes insisted. I glanced at Dustin. If his expression was anything to go by, the empath didn't put much stock in Wes's bravado, but he didn't contradict him either. We started toward the end of the south wing with Wes leading, but we only made it twelve feet—if that. The flames rolling off the walls on either side of us were so big, they met in the middle of the hall. Dustin stopped.

"We can't go any further."

"Why?" Wes asked.

"We die." I looked around. It was no good. Everywhere I turned was the same fiery wall. The ceiling was creaking. Standing next to Osborn was super dangerous. Being anywhere else was lethal.

"Dustin?" I said.

"I need a second." He closed his eyes, grit his teeth, and held still. A second. Okay. We probably had that. Dustin opened his eyes.

"Wes, I'm going to put up a shield—""You can do that?"

"Shut up for once and listen! I want you to pull the fire to us—"" What?" Dustin glared.

"Right!" Wes cried.

"You're the smart one! I pull the fire to us."

"Focus it on the floor. Try to make it burn as hot and fast as possible!"

"Yes, sir!" They both acted at once. I stood between them, the silent spectator. Wes held his arms out wide. The flames on the floor leapt up, taller than us. Dustin turned in a circle, his eyes moving everywhere. Every speck of dust, every bit of ash and smoke, every spark—it all flew away to hang in the air, three feet out. I could see it gathering against the edge of Dustin's power, like rain dashing against a clear umbrella. It wasn't a shield. It was telekinesis.

He was pushing away everything except us and the air. The fire around us made a perfect circle. It tore through the floor, burning a deep ring into the boards. There was a crack. Another.

"Dustin!" Wes yelled.

"Keep going!" Wes raised his arms higher. Tiny blue flames rolled down his forearms and danced off his fingertips. At the last second, Dustin threw his arms around us both. The descending roller-coaster lightness filled my body as the floor gave way. We fell in slow motion. I saw the beige-white walls of the hydrotherapy room soar upward. The floor we'd brought with us and the false floor below us were blasted out of the way. Fragments of teal and yellow tiles flew like shrapnel.

We landed, hard, in a perfectly round crater. Rubble from the floor above rained down and scattered to the edges of the hole. I could see the flames, a million miles above us, looking down, wondering if we were okay. Then everything went black. The sound came back first. It was slow and muddled. Like I was hearing through water. Dustin? Were we back in the tower, somehow lost in the edge of reality he'd created? But we were in the basement. I remembered the fall. As my thoughts grew clearer, so did the noise.

It was Eric. He sounded so far away, but he was screaming at the top of his lungs. His friends were down there. He knew it. And on and on. That kid would fight the gods if all the stupid adults would stop holding him back. I winced when the breath of my laugh made my ribs rock. Everything hurt. But it wasn't a billion degrees. And the air moving in and out of my lungs was warm, but not hot. My eyes fluttered open. I could see the hole in the ceiling, the charred remains of the ceiling above that one, and daylight.

Too much daylight. The diffused light poured in from the left, across the first floor. Eric was still screaming. I tried to lift my head. I could barely move it. I tried to speak, but it hurt too much and in too many ways. Pain was a creative tyrant, and, apparently, she had missed me. Someone moved beside me. It wasn't more than a twitch, but someone else down here was alive. A new beam of light appeared. It was smaller, warmer. It moved around above us. No. There were two of them.

At first I couldn't understand what it meant. There were more voices. They're flashlights, my brain supplied. There are people up there with flashlights. The flashlights started blinking on and off. Slowly at first, then faster. They started flashing in unison. From the floor above, I heard a stranger's voice: "What the hell?" Three short blinks. Three long blinks. Three short blinks. Dustin was alive. Smiling hurt, but I did it anyway.

"Get over here!" I knew that voice. Darius Vasil. Always giving orders.

"We found them," he said. I shut my eyes again. We were safe. I didn't need to have them open anymore. I heard the crack when Darius's dress shoes landed on what was left of the floor.