Fragments Against the Fire

My mind was still reeling from the sight of the blast, my body shaking in shock, when the Answers appeared. Silhouettes flickered into existence against the blaze that had been the city, blurred outlines sharpening in seconds. The Answer in the centre snapped out a command. Some of them swarmed into the heat, gathering casualties as they staggered out, charred and screaming. Others hurried toward the survivors huddled amid fallen shacks, our mouths hanging open, faces streaked with tears.

Something of my old discipline under fire must have showed, because an Answer honed straight in on me, wielding questions along with her medical kit. A warm wind ruffled her radiation suit and rolled across my face, carrying white dots softer than snow.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “Which district is this? Are there doctors around, police maybe?”

I stared at the muscles bulging beneath her sleeve. Small objects hung in the hem of her suit: a broken knife blade; a rounded sliver of a plate; a torn strip of paper bearing a page number and the last letters from a dozen printed lines.

“Listen to me,” she said. “We’re here to help, but we need your help too. So, any doctors?”

“No doctors.”

Doctors had money. They had fine homes. They lived in the heart of the city. Only the likes of me were swept out to the city’s limits: those with jobs beneath despising; with minds too broken to work; without money to start over or families to help them. Skinny, wheezing men and women in unwashed clothes. Foreign faces. People who couldn’t meet your eye, or who met it far too hard.

“I was a soldier, once,” I said, gesturing at the puckered scar on her cheek. It seemed important, despite the destruction, a known quantity I could hang my thoughts on. “I wanted to be an Answer when I got out.”

She flickered, parts of her blurring for a moment, but those fragments sewn into her robes stayed solid, anchoring her in the world. The magic that carried the Answers between realities could tear them apart, without those totems. Hard to believe that I’d wanted that. Hard to believe I’d wanted anything, these days.

“Hold out your arms,” she snapped, and started scanning me with a radiation counter. Some of the Answers were assembling a transport vehicle, while others dressed people’s wounds. Half a mile closer into the city, we would have been vaporised; another hour standing here and the flames would consume us. The Answers needed to act fast.

“I used to be like you,” I said, shock robbing my mind of anything but cliches. “Thought I’d miss the action, the sense of purpose.”

I’d found something else to fill that gap in my life, as testified by the pinprick scars up my arms. Her way was better, but mine found me when I was weak.

“I know what you mean,” she said, switching to another scanner. “This job’s the only thing that makes me feel real. It’s crazy, but some days I miss the sound of shelling.”

Our eyes met and her body flickered, blurrier this time. The broken knife blade fell to the ground, but the other charms held her in place. She cursed, looked away.

“Careful, Sharl,” the leader called. “No connections.”

“Sorry, shit, sorry,” I muttered. “I know you mustn’t, I just…” I wave my hands. “I lost the life, then I lost my family, now my home’s been blown over and even my dealer’s probably dead, and…”

My breaths were rasping, frantic, as broken as those pieces in the hem of her suit.

She snapped open her medical kit, took something out, turned back to me. She was trying to be all business, but she couldn’t help herself. She met my terrified gaze and flickered one more time. The piece of plate shattered on the ground. The scrap of paper blew away. All her charms were gone, and the suit that protected her in this world couldn’t stop her being dragged out of it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out a hand, and then she crumbled into dust.

I looked around in panic. The other Answers were all around me. They’d be wild with grief and righteous anger. With the city blazing and the outlands swamped with radiation, no one else was coming for me.

But instead of fury, there was eagerness in their eyes. One of them picked up the fallen medical kit and took out a syringe. There was a curl of wood in his sleeve, the corner of a map, a frayed piece of sail cloth.

“Don’t worry.” His voice was as hungry as my soul on a cold morning, when my fingers shook and my skin felt like fire. He reached for me. “We’re here to help.”