Cassius regained consciousness just as the flame retardant foam began to blanket the inside of the cabin. It wasn’t going to help anyone around him. They’d been burned to a crisp long before the system switched on. The car itself was reduced to a metal shell, heated up until it stung to touch it.
Unlike everything around him, Cassius wasn’t burned. He lay in the middle of a bed of flames, but they passed through him, ignoring his tender skin. His senses were alert, his mind sharp and refreshed. If his insides weren’t all raw and bruised, he’d think he had suddenly become invincible. It was the most painful form of invincibility he could imagine.
He pulled himself from the bathroom floor, searching for clothing to cover his naked body before heading out into the night. Most everything had already been mutilated by fire. Retardant foam buried what managed to survive.
He paused a moment to stare at the bodies-the blue-haired girl lying still in the corner, the businessman crumpled in a heap below his chair. The force of the explosion had killed most of them before the flames could do anything.
He had done this. Whether he had meant to or not didn’t make any difference. This wasn’t a killing in the name of the Unified Party. This wasn’t part of a mission. This was a massacre.
Glancing around the cabin, he found a body lying in the corner of the room least ravaged by the fire. Like all the others, the man was dead, but the foam had reached him before the fire had a chance to completely destroy his body. Most of his clothing remained intact, despite many scuffs and burn marks.
Cassius began the unpleasant job of stripping off the man’s jeans and pulling them over his own legs. They were much too loose, but he was able to tighten the belt to an acceptable length. With great difficulty, he yanked off the man’s shirt, tearing it at the shoulder as he tried to work it around the guy’s limp arms. It was horrifying work, pulling the clothes off a dead body, but he didn’t have any other choice. The guy was already gone. Cassius needed it more than he did.
Stumbling into the night air, he turned to survey the wreckage he had caused. The train cars curved into the darkness beyond him. As he stared at the fallen Chute, his frustration with Madame began to turn to doubt. Twice now this had happened, and she knew why. Yet she wouldn’t tell him. Not without a price. Not without Fisher.
It was a game. They were pinballs, him and Fisher. Pinballs filled with gun powder. The more they ran into each other, the worse things got. And she didn’t seem to care.
He wiped tears from his eyes and allowed himself to break down for a moment. He wasn’t a killer, not like this. Not when it was a Chute full of innocent people just trying to get from one city to another.
After giving in to his emotions, he regained control of his breathing and realized that he had to go on, not only to prove that he could do it, but also because he had to know.
He had to know what was happening to him, who his parents were, and what Jesse Fisher had to do with it.
But he didn’t need Madame’s help anymore. Now he was going to do it his way. His com-pad was lost in the fire, his link with Madame gone. He was going to find Fisher, and he was going to find answers. With or without her.
And if he had to set the whole world on fire to find out what was wrong with him, then so be it.