Chapter 6: Watching it Burn

I am a nervous wreck as I sit in my barracks room waiting for someone to come and get me for the meeting. If I thought I was scared before when I saw my name burning, I am terrified now. How did he know I was mindspying on him? How does he know about me? I didn’t recognize his face, I don’t think he’s anyone I’ve met or known before the two mindspying incidents.

I try to cycle through my music collection on the giant monitor but nothing seems to calm me. I force myself to listen to my favorite band when I hear a knock on my door. Before I can even get up to open it, Shadowmind has flung the door open and is standing next to my bed.

“We gotta go right now, Physion,” he says to me and seems a little out of breath.

“What’s going on?” I ask him. He motions toward my shoe rack and I pick up my sneakers and start putting them on.

“We’re going to get that punk,” he replies.

“Which punk?” I ask him. Shadowmind rolls his eyes.

“The one that’s been threatening you by burning your name into walls, clearly,” he says calmly. A wave a terror washes over me, but I finish tying my sneakers and stand up. Shadowmind motions for me to follow him and we leave my bedroom in a hurry.

We start heading toward the meeting room but we take a right where we would normally take a left. We take two more rights and then a left and at this point, I am thoroughly lost. I have explored the housing barracks a bit, but never this far. We step into an elevator and I see him press the button for the garage.

“I take it there’s no meeting?” I ask as he clears his throat.

“Not quite,” he responds. I think for a moment before I look up at him and ask where Tux and Darius are.

“Tux isn’t coming this time,” he answers without even looking at me. Before I can ask why, he turns his head and speaks again.

“Tux traveling along electrical lines into a flaming building would cause some kind of electrical fire, we’re sure. We don’t need an operative burning up in there.” I shake my head.

“And Darius?” I ask. The elevator stops and we step into a parking garage that must have at least forty cars parked in it.

“You’ll see about Darius,” he says. We walk to a black roadster and Shadowmind opens the passenger door for me. I thank him and he gets into the driver’s seat, turns this ignition, and peels out of the garage.

“Is that really necessary?” I ask him as I shake my head. Typical male.

“Not at all,” he responds with a smile as we travel much faster than we should be. I notice an in-car navigation system in the center console along with video monitors and various other devices that appear to be used for communication. Shadowmind reaches over to the center console and taps a button. I hear rock music start blaring throughout the vehicle.

“Can’t deliver an ass beating without the proper music to get you in the proper mood,” he says with a smile. I chuckle a bit and reply with “Ain’t that the truth.”

Shadowmind takes a lot of turns and we cross a bridge I recognize as the Seller Street Bridge, which will take us into Graymann Village. I feel my heart start to race and I get a little excited. I have no idea what to expect, but there is absolutely no turning back now.

My stomach is turning in knots when Shadowmind stops the car outside of a furniture warehouse.

“Is he in there?” I ask him. My voice cracks and I am about to either deliver a punishment or wet myself.

“Sure is,” Shadowmind replies as he gets out of the car and slams his door shut. I am about fifteen seconds away from needing to use a bathroom but I try to push it all aside and I follow Shadowmind to the main door. I expect him to use some kind of psionic abilities to break in, but he just turns the handle and walks in.

“This is how he got in. Not very concerned about intruders, what, with him leaving the door open like that,” Shadowmind remarks. As he is about to step in through the door, he stops and looks back at me. He reaches out to me and I take his hand. I am expecting a mindlock or some other psionic activity to occur, but he just smiles and me and walks in with my hand in his.

I look around and I feel my heart sink.

“Don’t be afraid, Physion. He already knows we’re here,” Shadowmind says to me and squeezes my hand a little. I find it a little difficult to believe that someone such as him is attempting to be comforting to me. I quickly forget about Shadowmind when I hear a voice out of nowhere.

“Welcome, friends,” it says. I recognize the voice immediately as the Pyromaniac’s. I look around in a panic trying to find him but I can’t tell where he is.

“Here I am, Physion,” the Pyromaniac says and I see a small flame rise about twenty yards to my left. A stockpile of covered furniture lights up shortly after he gives me the locator flame. I am absolutely terrified of him, especially since he is already toying with us. I know it won’t be long before the smoke starts to choke us.

Shadowmind looks at me and then to the far wall of the warehouse. I nearly wet myself again when I see the flaming letters spelling out “Physion” being written on the wall.

“I hope this is a fitting welcome gift,” the Pyromaniac says and I see a line of flames slowly snaking from his location to ours. He lets out a crazy laugh and I notice Shadowmind’s tattoos starting to manifest. The flame tentacle stops for a moment and then I hear the Pyromaniac laugh again. Shadowmind’s tattoos fade.

“Stupid fool,” the Pyromaniac says in a low voice. “I hear so many voices already, what makes you think I’m going to pay any attention to yours?” He laughs again and a giant wall of fire appears about ten feet from where we are standing. The flames engulfing the furniture have spread to other sections of the warehouse, the amount of furniture engulfed has nearly tripled. The smoke forces Shadowmind and myself to drop to the floor. I start coughing when I notice the smoke parting and a tall figure moving toward us. It stops and I see black combat boots right in front of my face. He is standing just far enough so that his hedge of protection from the smoke and flame is not encompassing me. The Pyromaniac reaches his hand out to me.

“Stand up, Physion,” he orders. I am on my hands and knees choking. I am too terrified to stand up and too terrified not to. I remain on the floor. Shadowmind is hacking.

“I told you to stand up,” the Pyromaniac orders again, this time his voice is more stern. He moves closer. His sphere of protection is about four inches from me. He clears the smoke a little from in front of my face. I look up at him and I notice the eyes, the ones that are completely black with red irises. I am overcome by a sense of responsibility and I immediately dismiss my fear and know what I have to do. I raise myself to my knees.

“Get. Up,” he says again. Shadowmind is coughing so much that I fear he won’t last much longer. I see his tattoos appear again and when they do, the Pyromaniac throws his head back and lets out s small whimper. As quickly as it started, his head snaps back and he stares directly at Shadowmind.

“Keep trying, fool. You’re only buying yourselves time. Now, who shall I kill first?” he says in a snarky voice. He keeps looking back and forth between Shadowmind and myself before he rests his gaze on me.

“It will be far more gratifying for me to make him watch someone he cares about suffer,” he says with a grin on his face. “Now, I thought I told you to stand up.”

I slowly raise my head to look him in his black eyes. I stare at him for a moment and his grin grows larger. He moves his right hand and clears the smoke from around Shadowmind and myself.

“All the better to see you with, my dear,” he says. Shadowmind goes to stand up but I rise to my feet before he can. He stops midway and rests on his knees.

“Now, come here,” he orders me and I stand still. He shakes his head at me.

“Tisk, tisk, young lady. When you will you learn to follow orders?” the Pyromaniac says. His words send a chill down my spine and he reaches out his hand. A swirl of smoke leaves his fingers and snakes its way toward me. He laughs a little as the line of smoke makes it way up my nose and I start choking again.

“Having some trouble breathing, Physion?” he asks. “Or is it just that I take your breath away?”

I give him a dirty look and I refuse to let him beat me. I close my eyes and I can feel the warmth start in my chest and spread throughout my body. By the time it reaches my fingertips, it feels electric and full of energy and I open my eyes as a flash overtakes the room. With my hands out to my side, I turn around and look at Shadowmind, who is still coughing but stands up. He looks at me.

“What the hell?” he says as he coughs a little bit more.

“Flames cannot survive in a vacuum,” I say to him with a smile. My sphere of protection isn’t very large and we can both see out, though looking out into the warehouse is a bit blurry.

“Creating a vacuum. You would, Physion,” Shadowmind says to me and walks over to me and pats me on the back. “Good job, kid.”

I look out to see if I can find the Pyromaniac. He is standing in the spot he was before I created the vacuum. He looks startled and I see the red in his eyes become even more intense and the blue flickers start appearing again. A wall of fire appears all around my sphere but does not touch us. They disappear for a moment before he creates flames completely surrounding our protective bubble. I hear him growl in frustration.

“You little bitch!” he yells to me. I see the flames and smoke part as he approaches the edge of my bubble. With his face right at the edge of my vacuum, he gives me a disgusted look. He turns to walk away but spins back around quickly and throws a punch at my sphere. It ripples a little on impact and he pulls his hand back in pain.

“You like what I did there?” I ask him. He growls again and plants his feet slightly apart directly in front of my sphere. His irises are blue now. I notice the flames engulfing the building are also burning blue.
“Where is Darius?” I ask Shadowmind. Almost immediately after I ask, I see a small black cloud appear in my sphere and grow larger until Darius steps out of it.

“You rang?” he asks me. I smile and he walks over to me.

“I might have,” I say back. He notices me standing with my arms spread and I’ve planted my feet slightly apart as the Pyromaniac has done. Darius taps on the vacuum shell.

“Nice,” he says and yawns a bit.

“I take it you’re a teleporter?” I say to him. He grins widely and nods.

“Just your local teleporter and ass beater. The usual,” he says back. I look at him and he nods his head slowly.

“It’s okay, Physion. You need to take down this vacuum shell before I can get to him,” he says and paces around the shell.

“You’ll choke to death,” I tell him. “Or he’ll fry you.” I notice that the Pyromaniac is pacing back and forth in front of our shell. He has pulled out a cigarette and is puffing away as he paces.

“You know what to do, Physion,” Darius tells me. I look to Shadowmind and he nods.

“What? What do I do?” I ask in a shaky voice.

“Just relax. You already know,” Shadowmind tells me. I look back and forth between the two again and I make my shell smaller so that I can concentrate some of my energy on my next task. I will have to drop my shell in order to complete my plan. I want to be sure I’m ready before I drop the vacuum out. I throw my head back again and the warm feeling starts in the center of my chest. It takes longer to become strong and travel to my fingertips because I am using some of my resources to maintain the shell. When I feel like I will burst with energy, I snap my head back up and nod to Shadowmind and Darius, hope they can see it, and immediately drop the vacuum shell. Within seconds, I am pushing on the smoky air in front of me and when I feel as though I have enough force on it, I open my eyes and the room is overtaken by a flash again. The smoke immediately clears and the entire building smells of burnt wood. I don’t see any flames.

We hear a crash about fifty yards from us. I have managed to successfully apply enough force to the air to propel the Pyromaniac back a good distance. We all look slightly to the left simultaneously and see a figure stirring in a pile of burnt tables. Darius smiles and within seconds, his black cloud has appeared again and he steps into it. A second later, we hear a small struggle and a lot of noise being made. A few second later, Darius steps through his teleportation cloud again dragging the Pyromaniac behind him. The Pyromaniac seems to be knocked out.

“What happened?” I ask Darius. “Did you use some other power on him?” Darius gets a wide grin on his face again and shakes his head.

“Only the power my fists of fury,” he says. I shake my head back at him and notice Shadowmind rolling his eyes. Shadowmind steps closer to me.

“Well, let’s go, kids,” he says as he starts toward the door we used earlier. Darius points at us and says “I’ll race you,” and within seconds, he is dragging the Pyromaniac into his teleportation cloud and they’re both gone. I follow Shadowmind back out to the roadster.

“Where are we going now? Where is he taking the Pyromaniac?” I ask. Shadowmind flips the music back on as he shifts into gear and we peel out.

“To the interrogation barracks,” he responds. He looks at me and grins a little bit as he changes the music track to “Great Balls of Fire.”