Children of Fire

The scent of frying onions and cheap synth-whiskey clung to Arwyn Maddox like a second skin. It was a Tuesday, which meant the dust from the eastern quarries was especially thick, settling over the Old Lattice district in a fine, grey film. From behind the polished bar of Celine’s Heaven, Arwyn moved with a silent, liquid grace, a tray of empty glasses balanced on his palm. His smile was a practiced, gentle curve, his blue eyes soft as a summer sky as he nodded at Old Man Herro’s rambling story.

“You’re a good boy, Arwyn,” Herro slurred, reaching out to pat his arm. “Not like these other street rats.”

The touch, calloused and paternal, landed on Arwyn’s wrist. A jolt, cold and electric, shot up his arm. The cheerful din of the bar—the clinking glass, the off-key singing from the corner booth, Celestine’s rich laughter—muffled, as if someone had stuffed wool in his ears. For a heartbeat, he wasn’t in the warm amber light of the bar; he was in a dark room, the smell of sour sweat and fear replacing the onions, a different, heavier hand pinning him down.

“Another round, Herro? On the house,” Arwyn said, his voice betraying nothing as he smoothly, gently, extricated his wrist from the man’s grip. The smile never left his face. It was his mask, his most vital piece of armor. Beautiful, blond, soft-spoken Arwyn. The darling of Celine’s Heaven. A boy who looked like he’d been carved from sunlight and melancholy.

No one saw the phantom that flickered at the edge of his vision then. A young man with kind eyes and auburn hair, leaning against the end of the bar, watching him with a sad smile. Brendus.

Arwyn blinked, and the apparition was gone. A hallucination. A memory his shattered mind refused to bury. Schizophrenia, the back-alley doc had muttered, but Arwyn knew it was just guilt wearing a familiar face.

He delivered the whiskey and slipped into the back room, the smile dissolving as he passed through the beaded curtain. Here, the air was cool, smelling of stored liquor and Celestine’s faint jasmine perfume. He leaned against the wall, closing his eyes, forcing his breathing back into the steady, controlled rhythm he’d learned in another life. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. A soldier’s trick.

“The dust gets to you today, sweetheart?” Celestine’s voice was a smooth contralto. She stood by the small desk, counting the day’s take. She was a vision of poised strength, her long black hair with its sharp fringe framing a face of elegant angles and warm amber eyes that missed nothing.

“A little,” Arwyn admitted, opening his eyes. With her, he could afford to let the mask slip, just a fraction. She was the only person in Marja who had ever looked at him and seen not a weapon, not a victim, but a child. She’d found him three years ago, a half-feral eighteen-year-old with hollow eyes, picking through a dumpster behind her bar. She hadn’t asked questions. She’d simply given him a room, a job, and a name to call his own.

“Go on up,” she said, not looking up from her counting. “I’ll close. You have that… delivery job early tomorrow.”

Their code. Delivery job. A flicker of cold purpose straightened his spine, chasing away the last ghosts. The waiter retreated; the mercenary awoke.

“Thanks, Celine.”

She finally glanced at him, her gaze softening. “Wear your warm coat. The nights are still bitter.”

---

Across the city, in a warren of repurposed maintenance tunnels deep beneath the industrial sector, Seth Leonhardt was sharpening his favorite knife. The rhythmic shink-shink of the whetstone was a comforting counterpoint to Ruby Bellino’s animated briefing.

“—so the data-chip is in a safe in the overseer’s office, third floor of the Silverhart logistics depot in the Lattice,” Ruby said, her violet ponytail bouncing as she paced. “Thermal scans show two guards on that floor, four on the ground, and automated sentry guns in the corridors. Easy in-and-out!”

“Nothing with Silverhart is ‘easy in-and-out,’ Ruby,” Melyssa Kaiser chided, not looking up from the pistol she was cleaning. Her long, wavy silver hair cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall of moonlight. “Remember what happened at the water plant.”

Ruby deflated slightly. “That was different.”

“The only thing different is that you and Seth got lucky.” Dinah Rex’s voice cut through the room from the doorway. The leader of the Firebearers was a tall, imposing silhouette, her short, dark brown hair severe, her grey eyes like chips of flint. “This chip contains manifests proving they’re diverting famine-relief grains to their private military units. Getting it public could turn the city’s sympathy. Failure is not an option.”

Seth looked up, his green eyes bright in the gloom. “We’ll get it, Dinah.”

He meant it. His optimism was as much a part of him as his spiky black hair or the lean muscle earned from a lifetime of training. The Firebearers were his family. They had taken in a shell-shocked eight-year-old boy who’d lost everything to a Silverhart stray rocket and made him a warrior for a cause. He’d seen all the men of their group—fathers, brothers, uncles—die in the Battle of the Gallow’s Span five years ago. He was the last one left. The weight of that was a quiet, constant hum in his heart, but he refused to let it dim his light. The fight was for life, not just vengeance.

“You won’t be going alone,” Dinah said, stepping into the light. “This is too sensitive. We’ve contracted an independent asset to accompany you. He knows the depot’s layout and Silverhart’s security protocols. He meets you at the north-side access point at zero-two-hundred.”

Ruby frowned. “A merc? Can we trust him?”

“We trust his desire for payment,” Dinah said flatly. “His code name is Wraith. Follow his lead on infiltration.”

Seth exchanged a glance with Melyssa, who gave a slight, wary shrug. An outsider. It grated, but Dinah’s judgment was law.

---

The wind howling through the canyon of decaying buildings in the Old Lattice was indeed bitter. It cut through Arwyn’s dark, nondescript bodysuit as he stood in the shadow of a broken gargoyle. Below, the Silverhart depot was a block of dull grey permacrete, lit by harsh white floodlights. Wraith was here. Arwyn was back in his room above the bar, asleep.

He ran a gloved hand over the familiar weight of the pistol at his thigh and the short, mag-forged blade on his opposite hip. Tools of his other trade. The tools Silverhart had given him, and which he now used to bleed them, one paid job at a time.

A soft scrape of boot on gravel. He melted deeper into the shadow, his breath still.

Two figures approached from the opposite alley. He assessed them instantly through the tactical lens of his training. The girl: young, agile, trying to look professional but vibrating with nervous energy. Violet hair—a ridiculous choice for covert ops. The boy… young man. Taller, broader in the shoulder, moving with a controlled, athletic grace that spoke of good training. His posture was open, alert but not tense. Firebearers. Idealists playing at war.

“Wraith?” the young man called, his voice a low, pleasant baritone that carried easily on the wind.

Arwyn stepped from the shadows, making them both start. He said nothing, simply looking at them with the flat, dispassionate gaze he reserved for clients and targets.

“I’m Seth. This is Ruby. Dinah sent us.” Seth offered a small, friendly smile, his green eyes curious in the gloom. “She says you know the way in.”

Arwyn gave a single, curt nod. “Follow. Stay close. Do exactly as I say. Hesitate, and I leave you.” His voice was nothing like the soft tone he used at the bar. It was cold, stripped of all emotion, the voice of the soldier he’d been forced to become.

He didn’t wait for a response, turning and moving along a pre-mapped path of blind spots towards a rusted ventilation grate. He could feel Seth’s gaze on his back, a tangible, probing thing. It was unsettling. Most people looked at his pretty face and saw a harmless boy, or they looked at Wraith and saw a threat. This Seth seemed to be trying to look through both, searching for something else.

The grate came off silently. Arwyn slid into the darkness within, the familiar, sterile smell of Silverhart facilities—antiseptic and ozone—washing over him. It brought a wave of nausea. Concentrate. He heard the two Firebearers slip in behind him.

They moved through the maintenance crawlspace, Arwyn a silent ghost, Seth and Ruby competent but noticeably louder. He halted at an intersection, holding up a closed fist. Below, through a grille, they could see two guards in Silverhart’s silver-and-grey uniforms patrolling a corridor.

“Sentries in sixty seconds,” Arwyn whispered, his lips barely moving. “We cross here.”

The guards passed. Arwyn lifted the grille, dropped soundlessly to the floor, and rolled into an alcove. Seth followed, almost as quiet. Ruby’s boot scuffed the floor.

A spotlight from a wall-mounted sentry gun whirred to life, painting her in stark white.

“Intruder!” a guard shouted.

Chaos erupted. Ruby dove for cover as laser fire scorched the wall where she’d been standing. Seth moved to draw fire, his own pistol barking a precise return shot that sparked against the sentry’s casing.

“The plan is blown!” Ruby yelled over the alarm now blaring through the corridor.

Arwyn cursed inwardly. Amateurs. He acted. While the guards were focused on Seth’s covering fire, he sprinted, not away, but towards them, using the chaos as his cloak. He dropped into a slide, coming up between the two startled men. His blade flashed twice—quick, efficient strikes to vulnerable points. They crumpled without a sound.

He yanked a keycard from one’s belt and tossed it to Seth. “The office is at the end. Get the chip. I’ll disable the alarm at the source.”

Seth stared at him for a split second, stunned by the brutal, effortless efficiency. “Right. Ruby, with me!”

As they ran, Arwyn turned towards the security hub. The cold focus was back, but it was fractured. The smell, the uniforms, the violence—it was pulling him under. A shape moved at the end of the hall. A young man with long auburn hair turned, his dark purple eyes full of love, then confusion, then blank, magical control…

Brendus.

Arwyn froze, his breath catching in his throat. The hallucination lifted a hand, not in greeting, but in accusation.

A searing pain exploded in his shoulder. A plasma bolt from a newly arrived guard. The impact spun him around, the real world crashing back. He gritted his teeth against the burn, returning fire and taking the guard down. He was wounded. The mission was compromised.

Seth and Ruby skidded back around the corner, a small silver chip in Seth’s hand. “We got it! Let’s go—shit, you’re hit!”

“Move!” Arwyn snarled, pushing past the pain and the lingering ghost in his vision.

They fled back the way they came, Arwyn leading them through a dizzying maze of shortcuts, his shoulder screaming with every movement. They burst out of a sewer outflow into the freezing waters of a canal, scrambling up the opposite bank into the welcome, rotten embrace of the slums.

In the shelter of a collapsed doorway, they finally stopped, gasping. The depot alarms were a distant wail.

“You’re bleeding badly,” Seth said, his cheerful facade gone, replaced by sharp concern. He stepped closer, reaching out. “Let me see.”

“Don’t touch me!” The words ripped from Arwyn’s throat, raw and sharp with a terror that had nothing to do with the wound. He flinched back, his cold exterior cracking to reveal a glimpse of pure, animal panic.

Seth’s hand stopped in mid-air. He didn’t look offended, only more concerned. His green eyes searched Arwyn’s face, seeing the pain, the fear, the sweat beading on a pale brow. “Okay,” he said softly, lowering his hand. “Okay. But you can’t walk back like that. Our safehouse is closer than wherever you’re going.”

Ruby nodded vigorously. “We have med-kits. Proper ones.”

Arwyn leaned his head back against the damp wall, waves of dizziness washing over him. The ghost of Brendus was gone, but the wound was real, and the mission was, technically, a success. He looked at Seth, at the open, earnest worry on the other young man’s face. It was an alien thing, that kindness, offered without demand.

He hated needing it. But the blood was soaking through his suit, and the cold was seeping into his bones. The waiter, the soldier, the Wraith—they had no answer for this.

“Lead the way,” he muttered, the words tasting like ash.

A small, genuine smile touched Seth’s lips. It was a different smile than the one he’d offered at the start. This one was quieter, determined. “Come on,” he said, turning and offering a path deeper into the night.

As Arwyn pushed himself off the wall to follow, the city around them seemed to hold its breath. Two paths, born of fire and steeped in blood, had finally, irrevocably, begun to weave together.