18.
I caught up with Captain Frost about two blocks away. I could have done it sooner, but I didn’t want to go supersonic in Manhattan for various reasons—busting windows is bad, I’d overshoot my target, I wasn’t sure where I was going, overtaking him would really just be me showing off for shits and giggles, I’m cool enough without having to prove it, etc.
“Dude,” I said, wind whipping my hair as I came alongside him. He had his hands out like Superman, creating an ice bridge that he rode through the streets like Frozone as he dodged between two buildings, “are you seriously wearing yoga pants?”
Frost looked back at me, his brow a visible line beneath his cowl. Flecks of ice were shooting up at me like I was caught in conversation with a spitter. “Absolutely. They’re designed for comfort and freedom of movement—and Spandex? Not the thing anymore. And armor is way too bulky.”
Maybe for the first time in my life, I was at a loss for words. Frost took this as a cue to babble on, ignoring my scornful remarks about his attire. “It’s such an honor to meet you. You’re like … the inspiration to us all, you know.”
That broke me out of my silence. “Well, at least you’re not killing people all willy-nilly like I … uh … have in the past. So that’s good. That you … weren’t inspired by that part.”
“You’re a hard-hitting hero for modern times,” Frost said over a sudden gust of wind that ripped down the channel of Broadway. “You do what it takes to save the day. If it came down to me needing to put an end to one of my villains like you have, I like to think I could do it, too, but so far I’ve mostly been taking down lame humans who can’t really do much.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “A human with a gun can kill you, you know.”
“Yeah, but I can make an ice shield fast enough to stop bullets,” he said, blowing off my warning. “I don’t worry about it, much.”
“Might want to give it some thought,” I said, casting a few pearls out to see if he was a swine. “You know, before a bullet plasters your brains on a wall and takes that possibility off the table.”
Frost stared at me like he was deciphering my mixed metaphor like a code. “Wait, what table?”
I ignored him and looked at the buildings around us. “Is this really Hell’s Kitchen?” I asked. “Because it doesn’t look anything like it does on Daredevil.”
Frost’s face evidenced his confusion at my sudden jump in topics. I had that effect on people. “It’s called gentrification,” he said, catching up.
“There’s the fire,” I said, pointing toward the billowing clouds of smoke a street ahead. I put on my game face and got ready to descend.
“You can just put it out, right?” he asked, grinning broadly and vibrating slightly from excitement as we started to descend for our landing. “With your powers?”
“Uhmm … not really.” I looked at the building, which seemed to be an old brownstone, fire coming out of its window in great, leaping flames.
“What?” His mouth was ajar, and I wanted to shut it for him. “I’ve seen you use your powers on YouTube, and you can control fire—”
“Yes, I can control it—sort of,” I said, feeling sheepish. “I could draw it toward me to snuff it out, for example. But if I do that, I’m basically going to pull the fire through, uhm … anyone who might be between me and it. So, if there’s anyone trapped in the building …” I waited for him to get it.
We were almost on the ground before he did. “Oh, they’ll get burned!” His face fell. “To death. Oh. That would be bad.”
“Yup,” I said, striding up to the front entrance to the building. There were no flames here, but it did not lack for smoke. “I can pull off some of the fire up at the front of the building, though, maybe reduce the size of the blaze. Gavrikov?”
I am with you, but be careful, Gavrikov said in my head. This is a dangerous situation, even for you. The building could collapse, and if you are not ready and it explodes—
“Trust me, I know my weaknesses,” I said as I slipped back into the air and held myself between the third and fourth stories, drawing the fire out of the front windows and into my hands. It was blazing hot and pretty soon I was sweating even as I drew the flames to me and snuffed them in my palms. I considered myself fortunate I was wearing short sleeves, because otherwise I would have singed them for sure.
I tried to look into the building where I’d just pulled out the fire, but now there was just smoke replacing it. “I’ll go in this way, you go in the ground floor, see if there’s anyone down there you can get out, okay?” I shouted to Captain Frost and heard an “Okay!” in his mellow voice before I squinted my eyes against the billowing smoke and flew slowly in through the window.
I flew into the darkened world of the burning building, the smell of smoke overwhelming me. I could hear screams somewhere in the distance, and I hoped like hell they weren’t Captain Frost already getting himself in trouble. They probably weren’t. I figured them for the screams of a full-grown man in absolute panic, and Frost was probably half-grown at best.
I kept my hands in front of me as I walked slowly through the smoke. The heat was intense, way worse than Minnesota summer, a dry sort of burning feeling rolling across me. I felt a flare-up of fire to my right and raised my hand, drawing it to me, squelching it before it could consume the wall where it was smoldering. I ripped all the nearby heat out of that potential fire zone and drew it to me, then waited, feeling for another.
I could see another hot zone burning a little farther ahead. I wanted to be sure no one was fallen in front of me, because as I'd just explained to the hero who should have been known as Sleazy Snowman, drawing the flames to me with someone in between was pretty much a death sentence for them. I could see the fire crackling, and I bent low, sweeping out with my feet with every step to make sure there wasn’t someone prone on the ground, overwhelmed by the smoke.
I could hear the creak of the floors protesting at my weight. “Oh, shut up,” I told them, “it was one burger and one shake. I didn’t even have the cheese fries.” They’d looked good, though.
The screaming started again, followed by a pounding. I cringed; there was definitely more fire in that direction, and doing this slowly was not helping my rescue effort. I sped up, hurrying to the nearby wall that was on fire and quickly drawing out the heat and snuffing it, leaving the wall smoking behind me as I slid forward into the black smoke, feeling for bodies with my feet as I shuffled, bent low to try and avoid asphyxiation.
The smoke was so thick it was like swimming in a pond at night. My eyes burned from the touch of the thick fumes, tears streaming down my cheeks. Wolfe, I said, can you just … like … heal my eyes as I go?
I could hear Wolfe grunt in my head. It’s not damage, Sienna. It’s just irritation.
“Heal my lungs, then,” I said, and I coughed hard, expelling all the toxic air. I suddenly felt a little better, a little less light-headed, and I knew he’d done as I asked. I avoided saying, “Good dog,” out loud, but unfortunately, I thought it, and he growled in reply. But he didn’t stop healing me, thankfully.
The thumping was growing fainter, less persistent as I made my way down the hallway. I could see more flames ahead, wrapping a staircase, and I was already tired of being in a burning building. This was why I didn’t become a fireman. Woman. Person. Whatever. That, and yellow isn’t in my color wheel.
I came up to the open stairway and looked down; the wood was burning madly. “Shit,” I whispered, and hurriedly drew the fire to me.
It got very dark after I extinguished the fire around me, no windows to shed light through the smoke, and I cursed softly under my breath before coughing heartily again. I heard a knock again, to my right, and I plunged into the darkness in that direction.
I found a door between me and the noise, and thumped it a few times with my palm. “Anyone in there?” I asked. I tried the handle and found it locked, like anyone sensible would keep their doors in New York City. I broke the lock with a hard twist and pushed against it. It resisted me, like there was something blocking the door.
“Ah, hell,” I muttered, shoving gently into the apartment. I got the door open wide enough to figure out there was definitely something trapped behind it. I slid down, my body stuck partway in (I didn’t want to shove it with all my strength, cuz that would kill whoever was lying there), and felt down to the floor to see what was blocking me from opening it.
There was definitely a body there, but it wasn’t human. I felt short fur, like someone had gotten a buzz cut, and when my fingers found a soft belly, I heard the unmistakable whimper of a dog. “You poor thing,” I said, and hurriedly slid the pup around so I could open the door all the way.
I put the dog on my shoulder and felt steady breathing. I crouched low; I might be able to constantly heal my lungs against the assault of chemicals and smoke from a building burning up around me but that was what made me a special snowflake. I needed to find an exit and get the dog out, or at least search the apartment quickly so that I could be sure that only the dog needed to be evacuated from this floor.
This was hard. Maybe this was the reason I wasn’t a fireperson.
“Hello?” I called into the smoke-filled apartment. Smoke-filled, but not fire-filled. Did that mean the person I’d heard knocking was the dog? No, there’d been screams, manly-ish screams. Maybe the person I’d heard screaming was in here, maybe they weren’t. I lit my free hand as a torch and stumbled through the apartment, which was roughly the same dimensions as a refrigerator box, looking for anyone else to save.