I was collapsed in a dirt hole, just below a circling storm of fire and molten metal, waiting to die. The little implant in my ear was letting loose with quite a bit of creative language, courtesy of the little mage behind it. Screams of the dead and dying thundered outside, but here I felt peace. I had done my job, and done it well. I wanted to die, right then and there, the pain of my burns was so fierce. ‘You can do this Willa Jean!’ I heard my grandmamma’s voice in my head, urging me to not give up, to not quit. I listened, I didn’t die, but I finally succumbed to the pain, and passed out cold.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I am Willa Jean, age seventeen and a half. This is the story of how the world went to pieces, how some of us got stronger, how we all had to pull together to keep the world from going to hell. I am one of the few granted special powers, Metahuman, they call us. I know that’s just politically correct. Even though Echo and all of them say that we are just like normal people, I know that I’m a freak. A necessary freak, but still...
I have the power to use fire. When I signed up for Echo, they said I was a Mach Two, just about in the middle, power-wise. I signed up for Echo a little over two years ago, when I was fifteen, about a year before the invasion. I wanted to figure out how to use my fires, instead of just randomly making candles go psycho, and starting house fires when I tried to light the fireplace, use the toaster, bake cookies, etc. I couldn’t just randomly produce fire, though. I have to already be near something almost flame-hot, or already flaming. Then, I can intensify the heat.
Oh, another thing. I’m mute. Been mute ever since I was little. There was an incident with a bit of a... long story. I have my own particular brand of sign language, using my lighter. The only people who really understand my language are my uncle, Benjamin, and my grandmamma. You’ve probably heard of them, who hasn’t? My grandmamma is Louisa May Davis, otherwise known as Dixie Belle. My uncle Benjamin Davis is Yankee Pride. No one has ever heard of my mama, though. Marina, the daughter of WWII heroes Dixie Belle and Yankee Doodle, the disappointment. She didn’t have powers, got pregnant at nineteen, and had me. My daddy ran off once he found out that mama was pregnant. My mama gave me to my grandparents to raise when I was born. She disappeared, and nobody ever heard from her again.
When I joined Echo, everything was business as usual. Nobody treated me special or anything just ‘cuz of my family, probably because none of them knew about my family. Nobody knew except Uncle Benjamin, and I was kind of glad. I didn’t want to be treated special. I had been my entire life, because I was mute, and ‘cuz of my family. I was assigned a trainer, some dude everyone called Corbi, a British expat with black wings. I thought of him as Trainer, just like the other two trainees on my team. There’s this skinny kid everyone calls Kid Zero, and this really pretty girl that’s named Kari. I chose the call sign Jamaican Blaze, because it sounds fierce. I wanted to be fierce.
Training was pretty standard, with a few concessions made for me being mute, like me not having to yell stuff like the other trainees. They trained us in Parkour, the art of free running. I was really good at it, and I practically flew over the course. The gun training was a little more... to the point. They taught us to aim, fire, and safely use a
weapon. They taught us care of firearms. They taught us the difference between the rounds, and when to use guns vs. powers.
Our team’s powers were pretty diverse. Kid Zero could split into two forms, Kid Plus and Kid Minus, who pissed me off equally as much. Each form could throw energy-augmented punches, and they could both run at the speed of sound. Kari was a telepath and telekinetic, which was really helpful, since she could speak for me.
I was really good in training, so good, in fact, that they sent me out with a team four weeks after my training started. I was the kid, the youngest one there. The team lead was a guy named Motu, who had the power to cover himself in a shell of whatever was nearby, like ‘HOLY CRAP, that car just MELTED onto that frikin GIANT over there!!!’ Matai, his brother, was his spotter, since he couldn’t see very well with the armor, and he was really strong with wicked aim. He wasn’t a Meta, though. Our DCO, Einhorn, had psychic healing and a psionic empathic gift, which was really annoying when she started projecting. Contreyerzone, or Leader of the Pack, had psychic links with six different dogs, and directed them to scout, fight, and generally be giant, over enhanced, really playful pets. I had my fire gift to fight with.
My first week of being on a team was uneventful. We patrolled, up on Peach Tree Park, into some of the older, quieter neighborhoods, taking it easy for the new girl. We had one incident, a pretty small-time robbery in one of the smaller bodegas, but we dealt with it. One of Pack’s dogs got a few cuts and bruises, and Matai got a black eye, but that was all. Everything was good, for a while.
About a month into me working with my team, we were out on patrol, and we got a call. There was a dude that had just randomly gone Meta with psychokinetic powers, and had started taking out civvies. We loaded up, with Matai and Motu on their bikes, me with my BCP jetpack, and Pack, the mutts and Einhorn in one of the vans. We got to the scene, and everything was a wreck. Einhorn started flipping out, and she projects really badly when she freaks, so everything was kind of a mess. The target, a middle-aged dude, was standing in a circle of floating objects and...bodies, some still moving. He looked for all the world like something from a TV show, or a cheesy Sci-Fi book.
I was still hovering overhead, my jetpack making a low humming noise, and Pack was just standing there. We didn’t want to use our powers yet, in case we accidentally hurt one of his hostages. Matai walked up to just outside the halo of debris, and spoke, softly but with a commanding tone, letting his height and weight speak as loud as his words.
“We do not want to hurt you. Let your hostages go, put down the rubble and bodies, and surrender peacefully. Nobody wants any more bloodshed.”
The man held up his hands, the ring floating higher. “Why would I want to do that? I can get anything I want, here and now!”
My comm unit crackled to life. “This is Einhorn, broadcasting to open channel” I heard a sobbing voice say. “None of the hostages are alive. I repeat, powers are a go no hostages survived”. My comm went to static. Matai raised his arm, two fingers pointed upwards, the attack signal. Motu rolled into a fighting stance, the road slipping up to cover his form, making him taller and stronger. I got out my lighter and a slip of
paper. Flicking the lighter, I lit the paper and let it fall. As it fell, I reached with my mind, making it hotter, fanning the flames, until it hit the ground. I flipped the switch on my jetpack, landing. On the ground, I ran to the fire, and directed it into a nearby wooden sign. Curling the fire into a whip, I slashed it at the man, who was, by this point, dealing with Motu, who was by now completely covered in asphalt, as well as Matai, and Pack’s dogs. The flames struck him across the face, burning his skin. He screamed, but stayed upright long enough to direct a chunk of rock at me. I ducked and rolled, but the rock clipped me on the arm. My nano-weave armor stiffened, but I knew that I would have a helluva bruise there later. Motu swung an asphalt-and-concrete covered fist at the new Meta, hitting him in the stomach. He doubled over, falling to the ground. Pack descended on him, putting zip-ties and restraints on his arms and legs, then dragging him to the van.
The day Dominic Verdigris came to be Lord and Master of Echo started off pretty uneventful. I remember being really upset that the Parkour course on the grounds was closed, due to Bulwark and his trainees doing a ‘routine training maneuver’. What, I ask, is routine about tagging a bunch of construction robots with goop, programming them to moan like zombies, setting them loose on an obstacle course, and making trainees avoid them? Nothing. That just cemented my thoughts that Bulwark was weird, but Uncle Benjamin seemed to like him. I was practicing fire control in one of the trainee practice hangars, and I had asked my friend Kari to take over my turn at guard duty. I look back on that day, and I’m glad that Kari took my shift on guard outside Tesla’s suite, or else I would be dead right now, like all the rest of Tesla’s guards, and like Kari.
Anyway, I was in the trainee practice and staging area, in one of the fireproof rooms. I was trying to see how high I could get my flames, without burning any of the object that I had placed in a ten foot circle. I was up to four feet of flames without crisping anything, but I really wanted to get up to ten feet. I realized that it probably wasn’t going to happen that day, so I was packing up my stuff, and my comm unit buzzed.
I answered, and heard, of all people, Bulwark, saying “Attention, we have a visitor, a liaison from Blacksnake. We need a contingent of guards to escort him to Tesla’s office immediately, teams Delta, Sigma and Alpha, please report to Tesla’s office, full battle gear. The liaison is unarmed, but we have not had a chance yet to assess threat level. He appears to be acquainted with the Red Djinni, so we must take extra precautions.”
I was freaked. No one from Blacksnake had EVER come by the Echo campus. Both organizations knew that the other would be about as welcome as an angry viper. You just didn’t waltz right into the Echo campus, yet someone from an enemy organization had managed to sneak in past our security! Well, I wasn’t on any of those teams, so I figured that I was okay for now, unless someone called Gamma team, I could just get back to my training. I walked out to the track, and started my run.
About forty minutes later, I heard a lot of screaming coming from the main campus building, and my comm was buzzing like crazy. I clicked onto the main channel, and heard a panicked voice that sounded like one of the Colt brothers saying “all teams, scramble! Tesla is dead, all protection teams are down, probably dead, and the Blacksnake liaison is gone. If anyone sees Echo Op 2 Emily Sciata, Call sign Harmony, shoot on sight. There was a click, and the message repeated, but I was already
sprinting, dead out, for the main campus. I didn’t know where the rest of my team was, but I figure that since I was closest to the main entrance, I would go there. Maybe Harmony would try to leave that way
Unfortunately, Harmony was not captured that day, and it would be months before anyone saw her again. Bulwark lived, but he was hooked up to so many machines that it was unreal. Tesla was dead, along with fifteen guards, including my friend and training partner, Kari. Dominic Verdigris took over Echo and... Wait a sec, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. If you want to know the rest, keep on reading.
Cutting back to about five months after the invasion, because I am sure you already know what that was like, all of the death and destruction. This is just after Dominic Verdigris came to be the reigning lord of Echo. That third, big push by the Thulians, right after Tesla’s murder. I was on a team with Contreyerzone and his dogs, Corbi, my old trainer, and Shakti, the four-armed woman. The other member of our team, Handsome Devil, was off that day. Shakti said he was a bit sick, but I didn’t believe her. She looked too frustrated for him to just be ‘sick’. Trouble in paradise. It was no secret, by this time, that they were a couple. Everyone was expecting a marriage proposal soon. I even had a bet on it.
We got a call from dispatch, saying that one of the detectives, the one that works with the blue healer chick and the Russians, was out on the freeway, by the Varsity,
facing a squad of two Kriegers and a death sphere. Shakti picked up the comm unit, and told dispatch to patch us through to the detective, Ramona Ferrari.
“Shakti en-route detective. Leader of the Pack is with me, along with Jamaican Blaze. Two minutes out.”
There was muttering from the other end of the unit. Shakti spoke again. “Negative. Call sign Handsome Devil is not on duty. ETA ninety seconds detective.” More muttering, and a few unpleasant words and screams over Ferrari’s channel, then Shakti switched frequencies on the comm. “Handsome Devil, your presence is DEMANDED on the field, Corbi, you’ll have to get him here.”
“Right you are luv.” Corbi grinned as he kicked open the back of the van, jumped out, and streaked into the sky, all back wings and feathers. We sped through traffic, hearing screams in the distance, coming from all over, a mini-flashback to the invasion. The comm unit buzzed. “Shakti, this is Leader of the Pack. I have Matai and the dogs with me. We were redirected to Five Points MARTA station, we have to clear it of civilians.” There was something unspoken in his tone, and we would later find out why. Even though this was a mini-invasion, most of the teams were handicapped by at least two members ‘redirected’ to clear civvies, on orders of Dominic Verdigris himself.
Shakti groaned. “Okay, so me, Blaze, Corbi and Devil will go to help Detective Ferrari. You, Motu and Matai will go to help clear out the civilians.” She gunned the engine, and within the minute, we could see the sphere hovering, and the two troopers on the freeway. I could see the detective, a shorter, middle-aged woman, ducking behind her car. I did a double take, seeing the rocket launcher half-assembled by her
feet, then remembered: she worked with those CCCP people. They had special rounds for rocket launchers that literally burned through their armor. That could come in handy with my fire powers, especially since it was super-hot to begin with. Amping the heat should be pretty easy.
Shakti and I jumped out of the van as soon as it stopped. We ran over to Ferrari, and Shakti pulled four pistols out of her holster belt. “Detective, I’ll buy some time. You load the launcher, we have to hold out until Klaus and Corbi get here. They should be here within two minutes.”
She dashed off, trying to draw the attention of one of the troopers. I looked at the detective, who had almost finished the launcher. I looked in the car trunk, and saw one of those semiautomatic pistols. I grabbed it, loaded it with ammo from my belt clip, and followed Shakti. We all saw Corbi, carrying Devil, at about the same time as the Krieger troops. The big, literally flying target that was Corbi drew most of their fire, which was really good. Klaus had one of his pistols out, and was firing at the sphere, until he dropped it, almost kicking Shakti in the process.
We managed to take out one of the troopers, but the sphere was still active. Corbi dropped down, and Klaus rolled off of his back. Corbi landed and looked at me. “Alright, luv. We need to get you nearer to the sphere. The spotfires on the sphere from the Molotov formula are pretty hot. We need you to amp it, and if I remember right, you can’t work from a much of a distance. You up for it luv?” I nodded, and Corbi swung me up unto his back, taking off into the air.
I don’t like to admit it, but heights scare the *hit out of me. I hated being up here, but I knew that we were all gonna die unless that sphere came down. Corbi hovered just above the sphere. I reached out my hand, and concentrated, bending the flames to my will, making them brighter and hotter, spreading them. There was a loud pop, just beside my ear, and I heard Shakti scream. I cursed inside my head. The sphere was almost down. Just a little more...
The sphere came down, and we landed. I was happy, congratulating myself, and then I saw her. Shakti, standing before a small pile of white ash. Sobbing. Ramona was there, and Corbi and I were alive, which meant that the pile of ash was... her lover, the Handsome Devil. He was dead. Crap. Nobody thought he would die. He was supposed to be... luckier than that. I felt really bad for Shakti, especially since Devil was her boyfriend and all. No one deserves to have that happen to them. A lot of people died in the invasion, and it’s just like... I dunno, a slap in the face to have him die now, after they survived all of that.
Shakti didn’t ride back in the van with me, Ferrari and Corbi. She didn’t say anything to us, but I could see tears running down her face. She probably needed some time alone. God knows that losing someone so close to you would screw anyone up.
The day of the invasion, I wasn’t on the Echo campus. Good thing, too, since a crapload of people died there that day. I was with my grandmamma, at her nursing home, with all of the other retired vets. They were celebrating the All-Star game in one of the larger common rooms. My grandmamma was there, along with a couple of the
other old vets. Then there were some regular old folks, and me. I was sitting with my grandmamma, flicking my lighter to talk to her, and entertaining the others with shapes of flame in the air, when I heard the first explosions in the distance. I didn’t know what they were, but I could tell it was bad. The TV flickered, and went to static. I stood up, looked at grandmamma, and flicked my lighter, telling her that I was going to go look and see what was going on. She patted my hand, and whispered “Willa Jean, good luck. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I love you baby girl.”
As soon as I walked out of the building, I smelled smoke, and heard the clomping of large, metal feet. I looked to the right, at the entrance to the nursing home community, and my heart nearly stopped. There were three giants, armored in silver, with swastikas on the right side of their chests. They had what looked like giant guns mounted to their arms, and as I watched, they leveled them at one of the caretaker buildings. Without thinking, I struck, flipping my lighter open and throwing it to the ground so that flame engulfed the dry grass. I pulled the flame towards me, coalescing it into a ball at my feet and shooting it towards the... Nazis? Whatever they were, they were about to die. As soon as the ball of flame was shot away, I clicked my comm unit in Morse code, which the operator tuned to my channel was able to understand, that I needed help, but heard only static. Crap, my Echo comm was down. They never went down.
The fire didn’t kill them. It didn’t even hurt them. They just shrugged it off. I couldn’t stop them from taking out the caretaker building, but I figured out that a slice of fire across the visor kept them from seeing too much. I was only able to slow them down, though, and I was getting pretty winded. I couldn’t really concentrate on anything
but dodging the next bolt of energy, avoiding the next punch, keeping their attention. Then SWAT showed up, and they told me about the joint weakness, and I made pretty decent time clearing the squad up. They also told me that if they got heated red-hot, then they would be vulnerable, but I didn’t have enough power to heat them that high. I had used most of it trying to protect the habituated buildings. The SWAT commander, his nametag read Olhauzer, told me that I was needed elsewhere, that Echo was getting their *sses handed to them at the campus, and that the perimeter, I-285, was being torched. I didn’t want to leave the nursing facility unprotected, but I couldn’t tell them that. I was glad that I kept an extra BP jetpack on hand at Grandmamma’s place. I ran over to the apartment, opened the door, and grabbed it from the hall closet. As soon as I got outside, I took off, heading for the perimeter.
As soon as I came into sight of the Interstate, I was being shot at. I saw that red dude, Handsome Devil, I think, down below with my team. I saw Warzone die. I couldn’t have stopped it, but I still see him in my nightmares, even now, almost a year later. Immediately after the thermite bombs dropped, I dropped to a lower altitude. This was something I could use, something already white-hot. I pulled the molten metal, coalescing it, and moved it with my mind, out over the ranks of power armor. I don’t think anyone noticed. It looked like that Devil guy had gotten ahold of one of the spheres, and he was bombing the hell out of the Nazis too. I was almost out of energy, but I had to keep going. I pulled one of the stimulant packs out of my bag, popped the top, and drank it down. Instantly, I felt more alert. What did they put into those things, straight caffeine and sugar? Well, whatever it was, it worked. I had the energy I needed to kill these murdering ***holes. The team had this stretch of I-285 covered, so I buzzed
the power in my jetpack to get to the next area. Then, I was falling. They must have hit the broadcast power-receiver tower that powered the jetpack. Luckily the half-battery it carried had enough power to get me to the ground, or I would have been a Jamaican Blaze pancake!
I knew that my pack wouldn’t be any use now, so I unstrapped it, and let it fall to the ground. I looked around, and saw a team of Op-Twos, Carnivora, the wolf-man, my old training partner, Kari, and The Eye, a girl who could see through almost anything.
I ran over to join them, already coalescing the fires burning around this section of asphalt, pulling them to me. Kari’s voice was in my head. “Blaze, glad you’re here. We really need your help. I’ve been getting in their minds and short-circuiting their Nazi brains, but I’m running out of steam. Eye can’t do anything offensively, and Carnivora has a broken arm. Light ‘em up, girl.”
She didn’t need to tell me twice. The fires that I had been unconsciously gathering since I arrived flared in front of me, and something snapped. I had never felt this strong, this... in control. Energy surged through me, and I spread the fires, wider hotter, brighter, deadly burningflameheatburnfiremeltburndestroy. It all ran together in my head as I destroyed those sonofa***** Nazi bastards that had killed Warzone, injured Carnivora and nearly cost my team their lives. I was sure then that I was going to die. Then, I ran out of steam. My fires shut off, and I collapsed to the ground. I felt Kari catch me before I hit the ground. The last thing I heard was “you did a *amn good job. God, that was amazing.”
I spent four weeks in the Echo campus medic trailer after that. I had two broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, two black eyes and a broken arm. Luckily I had fast healing as a part of my gifts set, or I might have been permanently crippled, or even died, because they couldn’t operate on my spleen right away. I pulled through, but they said that it was really close.
Nobody knows where the Thule come from. They came, they wreaked havoc, and they left. I was there the day of the second invasion, though. They came back because we are becoming a threat. That day started off as normally as the day Tesla died. I was at the Parkour course, about a quarter of a mile behind Vicky Victrix, the mage that gave all of the Medic Corps and some of the field teams, including me, implanted microphones, earpieces, and camera/HUD sets, all connected to a new version of the old Overwatch rigs. She was with the Red Djinni and one of the newer recruits, Melanie Gochea. They were moving at a pretty fast clip, and I was taking my time, perfecting my jumps and landings. Suddenly, they stopped, and about two seconds later, my Overwatch earpiece started blaring a red alert. That meant exactly one thing: Thulians. A map popped up on my HUD, showing two black dots in the sky closing fast, and a field of black on the grounds, which I guessed were trooper suits. This was my first time battle testing my new rig, since I had the old setup when we made that big push in New Mexico.
As soon as the red alert went off, I was running. I think that is the fastest that I have ever gotten off of the Parkour course, ever. I ran for the main grounds, and I was fairly sure that I was going to be needed. After all, Echo only had a few fire talents, and I was one of the strongest.
I got to the main gates, where we would make our stand, about the same time as the rest of the people from the training fields. The newly installed blast shield were already up and out of the ground, and there were Jeeps handing out RPG launchers and specialized Molotov rounds, something that Echo had gotten from the CCCP in downtown Atlanta. They literally burned through the Thule armor. I took my place in the firing line, about halfway down the shield from the main gate, and prepped the launcher that I snagged from a truck. I wasn’t sure if I would be using it, depending on the numbers I would mostly be using my powers.
The troopers came marching out from behind the trees lining the main concourse. According to my HUD, there were about three hundred of them, and the spheres were right behind them. I was ready to start firing, but the signals in my HUD were telling me to wait.
The Thule opened fire on the blast shield, and for about ten minutes, all I could hear was the blasting of energy cannons. I guess that the troopers were confused by the fact that we weren’t firing back, and so they slowly stopped firing, the blasts getting more spaced out. As soon as they had stopped firing, one word played over my HUD implant: NOW!
I fired until my RPG ran out of ammo, and switched to sidearm. I hadn’t gotten the signal for powers yet, so I held back. Then the spheres showed up. I looked to the field commander, Bella ‘Blues’ Parker, for any signal as to what to do, since my HUD was dark. She slowly raised one fist, two fingers up, thumb pointing to the spheres. The ground shook, and a ten-foot tower slowly rose out of a cleverly concealed plate in the ground. Attached was a supersize version of the RPG launcher, with an equally
supersized rocket attached. It launched, and hit the first sphere, bursting like an egg and dripping a gooey fluid. It was expected, still only about sixty percent of the Molotov formula RPG’s combined completely to produce the super-sticky, super-hot flame. The second, launched at the other sphere, worked more like it was supposed to. There was a loud SPLAT, and the sphere was engulfed in fire, and I got my signal from the field commander.
Using my powers has never really come easily for me. It takes a lot of concentration to bend the primal forces of heat and light, shaping them to your will. I was pretty good at it, but it took a lot of time, a lot of psychotic birthday candles, a few burned eyebrows, and an exploding toaster before I was able to gain a modicum of control. I knew, though, that this was the biggest ever test of my control. I had to do this right, there was no other option. All I had to do was focus. Not so hard, right?
Starting off was easy. There was a patch of flame on the shoulder of one of the troopers, as good a spot as any to start a massively destructive reaction. I made it hotter, brighter, more intense. I pulled it over the troopers’ entire arm, and made the flames jump to the next trooper. As the assault continued, I slagged more and more troopers, pulling them into a tornado of molten metal and screams, willing the flames higher, snaking them out to pull more in. I had never tried to control this much before, and I had no clue how long I would be able to keep it up... My comm opened up with the voice of one of the Colt brothers, Sam. “Jamaican Blaze, your readings are starting to redline. I suggest you pull back.” I ignored him.
I will the flames hotter, brighter, even more deadly than before. I hear a voice in my head... not my implanted rig, but... my grandmamma. It felt like she was holding me
up, giving me strength, her loving voice telling me that I could do this. I could do this, I would do this, I would finish what I started, and if it killed me, then so be it. I would go out saving the people I cared about.
I used the last bit of my strength to pull the flames into a column, and brought them as low as I could, and collapsed. The ground opened up under me, and there was a lull in the noise, and I heard a voice in my ear, Victrix, saying “I’ve got you. Remember, as long as I’m here, I will never let you fall.” I just laid there for a second, and realized just how much I hurt. I realized that the flames that I had started were spreading again. I couldn’t stop them.
I was collapsed in the dirt, just below a circling storm of fire and molten metal, waiting to die. The little implant in my ear was letting loose with quite a bit of creative language, courtesy of the little mage behind it. Screams of the dead and dying troopers thundered outside, but here I felt peace. I had done my job, and done it well. I wanted to die, right then and there, the pain of my burns was so fierce. ‘You can do this Willa Jean!’ I heard my grandmamma’s voice in my head, urging me to not give up, to not quit. I listened, I didn’t die, but I finally succumbed to the pain, and passed out