Fate of Flames THE WAR SIREN WAILED. I gaped at the windows, my eyes locked on the sky-grazing tower that stood out against the Manhattan skyline. The Needle. Like all the others in the country, it was a tall, sleek eyesore glimmering day and night with bright streaks of the most obnoxious metallic blue running up and down its length like little live wires. It was supposed to be some kind of high frequency . something-something particular disrupter. Okay, I''m not great with technical terms. The important thing was that it was more than just a tourist attraction.
Eyesore or not, it was the only thing keeping everyone in the city from being slaughtered very messily. Blinking lights meant we were safe. And its lights had just blinked off. No one in my algebra class said anything. No one could. We were screwed. "Okay, ch-children, just remain calm," Mr. Whomsley shouted, though he tripped over his own feet trying to get around his desk.
His sunken eyes darted around the classroom as if looking for one of us to tell him what to do next. Except we were all looking at him now, at his gaping mouth and his greasy forehead beading with sweat. I could tell he was nervous, no, terrified--terrified because the War Siren that hadn''t blown in some fifty years had just broken into short, quick pulses. The signal for a Category Three attack. It was all from the Hirsch-Johnson Phantom Disaster Scale. Four categories. Categories One and Two were already bad, with damage to infrastructure and physical injury expected to varying, awful degrees. But Category Three .
large-scale destruction . city-wide terror . And that was just the third level. Wait. Category Three? Oh god. My nails grazed my desk. This isn''t happening. "Don''t panic!" Mr.
Whomsley shuffled the papers on his desk. "Mr. Whomsley?" Janice Gellar sounded near tears. A lot of oh my gods harmonized with her whimpers in the background. My own included. "I said don''t panic. Don''t panic!" He started grasping his tie, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "What the hell are we supposed to do?" Rick Fielding roared from the back of the classroom.
Then Whomsley finally got his beady eyes to focus, probably because he knew as well as I did that another two seconds of waffling and there''d be a bloody stampede for the door. I could already hear the doors of other classrooms opening, students filing out, teachers crying out over the terrified din: "Okay, everyone, now just proceed in a calm and orderly fashion." Calm and orderly. Like we weren''t all going to die soon. "O-okay, students, remain calm." Mr. Whomsley readjusted his toupee and sucked in a breath. "Proceed to the shelter in a .
a calm and orderly fashion." Right. The shelter. Just like the handbook said, going to the school''s underground shelter was the first thing we were supposed to do "in the event of an emergency." ''Course, nobody really read the handbook anymore because we hadn''t had to in years. So after that . what were we supposed to do? As I stood from my chair, I tried to remember what those two military guys had said at that special preparedness seminar back in September--the same one they gave every year. Bits and pieces came back to me: In the rare case of a hostile attack, take only the essentials.
Get to the shelter beneath the school within ten minutes of the first few warning pulses. Ten minutes. Or was it five minutes? Damn it, what had I been thinking, blogging instead of paying attention? I slung my tote bag over my shoulder and pushed my chair in. The feet groaned against the tiles, but I could barely hear it beneath the siren''s steady rhythm and my own pulse beating in my ears. "Orderly fashion!" Mr. Whomsley cried when people started shoving. "Orderly!" In front of me, Missy Stevenson was muttering deliriously under her breath, and I couldn''t blame her. New York had one of the most efficient APDs in the world.
This wasn''t supposed to happen to us. "The National Guard should be here in ten to fifteen minutes," Mr. Whomsley assured us. True. And if there was a base nearby, the Sect could get here a bit faster. That meant there was actually a chance we could make it down to the shelter alive before the big fight scene started. I inhaled an unsteady breath and nodded. Everything was good.
Everything was going to be fine. Except . Ten to fifteen minutes would be quite enough time for a Category Three phantom to raze Manhattan to the ground. As we flooded out of the classroom and joined the long, silent death march making its way through the labyrinthine halls, I noted the terror hollowing out the faces of students and teachers alike, even those with the good sense to at least pretend to be calm and collected. Deep down, we were all hoping for the best, praying to be saved. But what if the cavalry came too late? What if nobody came to save us? Then I would end up being the city''s only hope. Oh god. I let the thought sink in as I gazed down at my clammy hands.
If people knew what I could do . if they knew who I was, what I was, especially now, then they''d ask me to save them. Beg me. And I knew I couldn''t. But if I didn''t do something . I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart rattling. What the hell was I supposed to do? "Oh god, there it is!" Missy Stevenson shrieked, and it was like all of Ashford High erupted into chaos. She was pointing out the windows, up at the sky, its bright blue darkening by the second.
Dead, gray clouds crackled with frantic energy, but nobody was expecting lightning. We knew better. We saw it instead. It was as if the clouds themselves were distended. A dark, twisting funnel slowly drooped out of the gray masses, but the farther it descended, the clearer its shape became. I ran to the windows with everyone else, clutching the metal bars separating us from the glass. I''d never seen one before, not up close. It looked like a coiled snake detangling itself from a net, its long, thick body trying to shake itself out of the clouds.
And as it slowly dipped into the stratosphere, I could see its body of gray mist hardening, an armor of black bones sprouting down its length, gripping its skin. A phantom. A big one. The metal bars bit into my palms, pinching the blood flow. "Keep moving, students!" A teacher began shoving kids forward. "Get to the shelter. Now!" I wasn''t gaping at the sky anymore. My eyes were fixed on the chaos down below.
The NYPD was doing a pretty crappy job of getting citizens off the street in a calm and orderly fashion, though a giant freaking monster appearing from nowhere probably made the task all the more difficult. Traffic had come to a full stop with too many cars going in too many directions. People were abandoning their vehicles altogether and fleeing on foot, though some multitasked and captured the chaos on their phones as they ran. It was bedlam down there. Nobody seemed to notice the tiny girl who''d hidden underneath a parked Jeep. "Keep moving, students!" Just go to the shelter, Maia, I told myself. It was okay; the police would take care of it. I managed to tear my eyes away from the girl, but they slid back again, helplessly.
Nobody had noticed her. Where were her parents? Why wasn''t anyone helping her? "Maia," a teacher called me. Mrs. Samuelson. "Get moving!" I clenched and unclenched my hands. No doubt they could all see me shaking. "Get moving, Maia!" I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
But people''s lives were in danger. Neither the National Guard nor the Sect were anywhere to be found. And a horrifying monster was about to kill us all. A deep, low cry, as haunting and pure as a whale''s song, vibrated through the streets, shuddering up my bones. The tail had broken free from the clouds, sharpening to a point, coiling its way down to Earth, dangerously close to us. When this thing landed, it''d take out a good chunk of Prospect Avenue for sure. A few streets later and Ashford High would be next. June .
if you were me, you''d do something, wouldn''t you? A stupid question. I already knew the answer. I gritted my teeth. Meanwhile, Missy Stevenson finally just flipped out. Clutching chunks of her hair, she tried to run in the other direction, howling like a banshee, pushing her way through students, and swinging wildly at whoever was dumb enough not to get out of her way. It was the distraction I needed. In that one hectic moment, I stupidly took off toward the fire exit. "Maia!" I couldn''t tell who was calling me, and it didn''t matter.
I was too fast. "Maia, get back here!" Tears stung my eyes as I sped down the steps. I wasn''t ready for stuff like this: saving people, fighting things. It had only been two days, two days since fate crossed my name off the list of people''s lives to manhandle. I needed more time. Then again . technically, this was what I''d always wanted, in a way. This was what I''d always dreamed of, ever since I was a kid playing in the backyard with June, the two of us acting out our dumb hero fantasies with bathroom towels for capes and stuffed animals to valiantly p.