Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The world returned to being with a cacophony of stimuli, each equally insistent and overwhelming as the others, making it impossible to understand anything but noise.

The first unique tone Alex could discern was that of an alarm distantly screeching. Several alarms, actually, all at once, each tone a hammer into his skull.

Alex realized he was horizontal and sat up much too quickly, his vision swimming. While he clutched his head and waited for his sight to clear, he focused on what else he was hearing. The hiss of steam as loud as a waterfall. Irregular scraping and impacts that suggested a crumbling wall. The clang of hot metal.

It took Alex a few moments to recall what had happened.

First, as to where he was, in the factory where he was only supposed to be stealing a package, planting pyrotechnics, and exiting. Easy job. Only nothing was ever easy in this damn city.

Then there was the sound, something between a train ramming through a building and the memory of a thunderstorm. A heartbeat later, the ground shook so suddenly and violently that Alex was knocked over. The squealing of metal tearing. The grinding of blocks never built to move an inch flung full yards across space.

An explosion.

The explosion was supposed to be caused by him, and he wasn’t supposed to be here for it. It must have been what knocked him down.

He smelled the acridness of electrical smoke, the dust of toppled cinder block. There was something else in the air he couldn’t place yet, something almost like incense but far too bitter. The air in the back of Alex’s nose stung like gunpowder and burnt hair with a mask of lily. It made his throat close, his heart race, his lungs feel enormous whilst his ribs constricted—

Alex coughed a few times to clear himself of the heady perfume and focus on the moment. That explosion wasn’t supposed to happen, and that meant there was something to be angry at.

Alex rubbed his eyes to force his vision to clear. He was sitting in the supervisor’s office in the factory, where he was supposed to be making his escape through the ventilation shaft. Instead, the room had been crushed like a can. An entire wall had collapsed, and the remaining ceiling, which was several feet lower and sloped dangerously downward, was held up by a pile of rubble. Alex noted mangled pipes and clusters of debris which were most likely to give way first. It was dangerous to linger here for long.

When Alex turned his head towards where he remembered the door was, he was slapped in the face with a detail he had so pleasantly forgotten until now.

Mr Fires.

It wasn’t supposed to be here. Alex and his contacts had triple checked that it was meant to be elsewhere tonight. There had been some confusion in the planning process for that very reason—it was unusual for someone who wasn’t Mr Spices to have a chemical plant outside of Station VIII. But Alex knew Fires better than almost anyone; he knew what kinds of schemes it got up to. It seemed it hadn’t given up after its failure at the Orphanage.

Just when Alex was about to climb up onto the desk to get through the vent, Fires had shown up. The moment they each realized who was there, they had immediately begun arguing, and then there was the sound—

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing himself to focus. One sound was nearer than the rest and belonged to no material. An insistent screeching almost as high as the alarms and hot as steam.

Fires was screaming at the top of its voice in a pitch so high Alex wouldn’t have been able to decipher words even if his head was clear. The sound was not unlike one of the factory whistles, only Fires’ voice would be the last to halt an assembly line.

“Keep screaming at it,” Alex growled, his throat dry and gravely, though the raw hatred he felt for the master gave him strength. “That always fixes the problem, doesn’t it?”

Fires barely acknowledged him, claws swiping against the door and throwing sparks as they collided uselessly with the metal. Its cloak undulated with fury. “Stuck,” it growled. “Blocked by rubble on the other side.”

Fires was usually much more eloquent. It must have been very stressed. Alex didn’t care.

He could see over Fires’ bulk the way the metal bulged inwards. He didn’t need the strength of a master to know they were never leaving that way.

Fires flung its whole weight against the door with a sound like a tea kettle choking on coal. Predictably, nothing happened. It thrashed aimlessly at the unmovable opponent, spitting curses like sparks, limbs barely restrained under its cloak. At last, it whirled back on Alex, the twin cores of its eyes glowing red and mad as the walls in the Royal Beth. “I will not be entombed, not again, not here with you!”

Alex barely raised an eyebrow. “Shut. Up.” He reached for the overturned desk chair for leverage to pull himself to stand, never breaking eye contact with Fires, like one may handle a cornered animal that one happened to wish to hit with a train. “Calm. Down.”

“And who are you to speak to me in such a way?” Fires spat back, nostrils flaring under its hood and blowing steam into Alex’s face.

Alex blinked and waved a hand to clear the air in front of his face, muttering a curse of his own. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with Fires, insufferable as it ever was.

Leaving Fires to its task of abusing the door, Alex got to work casing the room they were stuck in. It was going to be up to him to get himself out of this. It wasn’t like he would have ever relied on any of the masters to do something right, but he had known Fires for long enough now that he had almost hoped it would master itself better in a crisis.

The dimensions of the office were smaller than he remembered, probably due to the fact the far wall had completely collapsed. He couldn’t see any of the windows, or the shaft he was supposed to escape through. Bother. Alex didn’t want to know what kind of chemical research happened here that the waste products were so heavy as to cause that. He was cautious as he moved closer to the rubble, wary of falling bricks, as he searched for any gap that they could squeeze through to reach the ventilation system and escape.

Alex felt a wave of heat behind him before he heard Fires’ voice or felt the folds of its robes brush against his ankles. He tensed long before it spoke. “Law,” it hissed, its voice higher and gravellier than it preferred to present in public. “One can read it if one knows where to look.” It reached an arm over Alex’s head and placed a single claw on one of the bricks. “I wonder—”

“Careful,” Alex warned. “If you handle this like you handled the door, we’re going to really be buried alive.”

Fires made a chittering sound under its robes. Alex felt more steam on his neck. “Let me speak.” It moved its hand, tracing a pattern in the rubble that Alex couldn’t see. “As I thought. Infernal influence in the bomb. Everything it touched, it magnified, in order to cause such a catastrophic collapse. Surely, young man, you did not think that a building of the former size of my factory would cause this magnitude of disaster?”

“I don’t know,” Alex spat back. He was always short with Fires, but part of the rise in anger he felt was at the thought he hadn’t been told exactly what he signed up for when he took the job. Someone had lied to him. He wouldn’t let Fires know that, though.

“And,” Fires continued as if Alex hadn’t spoken, “when a structure becomes as top-heavy as it was bound to do when you planted your bomb, things do not only explode, but they tilt over. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were underground at this very moment.”

“We’re all underground. You stuck the city in a cave.”

“You know what I meant!” Fires shrieked.

Alex dodged before it could catch him with a flailing claw, leaving it to investigate its science. There! That was what he’d been looking for, a passageway through the rubble. Alex squeezed through, squinting through the dark. The smoke was thicker, here. It was a risk with the fact he didn’t know what exactly was in the air, but he pulled a lighter from his pocket to be able to see. As luck would have it, nothing immediately exploded, which Alex took as at least one good thing for this terrible night.

He found, however, that he could only travel about ten meters before the passage stopped at a dead end. Alex swore under his breath again. He was about to turn around, feeling somehow as if the tight space was mocking his plight, when he realized he heard something. Alex lifted the lighter as far as he could reach to reveal a bent pipe overhead, bulging at the seam, pumping vapors through its rivets.

Before Alex could react, he sensed Fires behind him again. Its shape obscured every lumen of light that might have seeped through the cracks. Instead, it filled the space with its own light, a reddish glow cast over everything under its gaze. It was brighter than Alex’s lighter and revealed a valve.

Alex’s breath hitched as he was pinned in the small space. He was a thief. He always needed to have an escape route. He didn’t want to be trapped, trapped like before, in the coffin, in the workhouse, in his father’s bottle—

Alex nearly swayed into Fires. The sensation of its nearness allowed him to push aside his panic and focus on his anger. “Why are you following me?” Alex demanded, unable to turn to face it the tight space. “How did you even fit back here?”

Fires didn’t answer either question, though it struggled to lift a hand to the valve in such cramped quarters. The strength of a master made the turning of the wheel look very easy indeed—until Alex realized it was merely spinning loose on its hinge, broken.

“Hm.” Its hands fell. Alex felt its eyes on him as it contemplated. The jagged shadow of its claw moved again as it inexplicably reached and lay a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps we could—”

Alex shouted as he cursed this time. “Let go of me!” He twisted and crouched and turned so he faced Fires and the exit. Before Fires could react, he screeched, his own voice reaching as ignoble pitches as Fires, “Get out! You’re no help at all! Get out, get out!”

Fires retreated like a rat from a cat. Alex raced out and didn’t stop until he was against the wall furthest from the leaking pipe. There was still no visible escape, but at least he could move his arms out to his sides.

Fires stood aside like it was trying not to watch him, idly fiddling with its claws. Had he managed to hurt its nonexistent feelings? Good.

Alex waved a hand again through the air, where the steam was thicker since they’d tried to stop it. “What the hell do you even make here?”

“I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“If we’re breathing your drugs, it’s important!” Alex was advancing on Fires now. He had never been afraid of it, and now, all he saw was another obstacle standing between him and the open sky. “What do they do?”

“They serve... many purposes.” Fires prevaricated. “Have you been to Factory VIII? No, I would have known, because you would have stolen from Factory VIII—”

“Where does that pipe lead?”

“There are hundreds of pipes in this building.”

“Don’t give me that. I know you. I know how meticulous you are. You know exactly how much product is produced every day in this center, you know exactly where it’s shipped, and you know exactly who buys it. What does the pipe carry?”

Anyone who wasn’t Alex would have burned to a crisp by now under Fires’ hateful glare. Unfortunately for Fires Alex was far angrier with it than it was with him. Clipped and quiet and defeated, Fires answered, “It leads to Laboratory C.”

“And what do you make in Lab C?”

“It’s a refinery.” Unable to resist a demonstration, Fires grabbed a piece of wire out of the pile of rubble. “Contentment comes raw in slabs from Laboratory B. It’s always so difficult to attain its purest form, just as many die unhappy after unsatisfying lives.”

Alex couldn’t keep himself from lunging at it. How could it speak so calmly? “Maybe we’d be happier if we could afford to eat—”

Fires caught him easily with another hand on his shoulder. Despite all his most violent language and protests, it did not release him this time. Fires continued speaking as if Alex wasn’t there, twisting the piece of wire in its free hand, stripping the casing to reveal the shiny copper underneath. “It takes quite a lot of time and quite a lot of effort to isolate an adequate quantity of cheerfulness and placidity while removing any negative sentiment. Anger, nostalgia, fear—”

“Great. So we’re being poisoned with your waste products.”

“You have felt it, haven’t you?” Fires asked in a tone that suggested a condescending professor. “I’m well aware of our feelings of mutual distaste towards each other, but you can’t deny it, you’ve been feeling heightened anger since we’ve—”

Alex finally managed to struggle out of its grasp. “And what about you with the damn door earlier?”

But Alex wondered. He’d been feeling... something, tonight. Old memories he wished had stayed forgotten. Anger was easier to focus on. Fires was irate before. Now it was acting eerily calm. Despite its superior mass, it must have been affected by the drugs, too. Alex couldn’t help wondering, just for a second, what memories it might be trying to forget.

“We need to get out of here,” Alex muttered. This feeling stuff was too much to take in. He needed to focus on action. “Come on, you know every inch of this factory. The door can’t be the only way out of this room. Use your brain. Do something useful for once in your life.”

Alex saw the glint of teeth gnashing underneath its hood. “I’ll have you know, young man, I was shaping worlds before your species had evolved from cave dwelling.”

“Yeah, whatever. So get us out of here.”

Fires turned from Alex with much grumbling and walked in a slow circle around the room. It tested points of the wall and floor. It climbed on the desk to reach the ceiling. At last, it returned to the pile of rubble. Tsking to itself, it drummed its claws along the bricks closest to the floor. It stopped beneath a painted line that ran the length of the ceiling. With a horrible scraping sound, it scored in one of the bricks a sigil that glowed with red heat. Alex couldn’t read more than a few words of the Correspondence, and he wasn’t going to try now. He turned away before he could get a worse headache than he already had.

Without Fires to verbally spar with, Alex was left alone with his racing thoughts. What if they didn’t get out? What if Fires really was the last living thing he ever spoke to? The way death worked in the Neath, they might be stuck here for centuries, or at least until one of them killed the other—

“Aha!” Fires cried as bricks shifted with the sounds of tumblers shifting in a lock. The small sigil was nothing compared to whatever Law the explosion had written, but it was enough to clear a patch of rubble over a vent in the floor.

Fires tore off the grate as easily as if it were the lid of a hat box. Alex stood next to it, peering down into the darkness. “What’s down there?” He asked.

“Since your bomb went off, I can’t be certain. You’ve made quite a mess of my factory.”

“Screw your factory.”

“I will excuse your disrespect on the toxins in the air,” Fires dismissed, though its hand still twitched as if it wished to close around Alex’s neck. “I can say with reasonable confidence that this route is no more dangerous than the room we are leaving.”

“Guess we don’t have a choice,” Alex grumbled. “You go first.”

Fires titled its head. “I see how it is. If there were a bottomless chasm, or a lake of industrial waste, or any number of hazards waiting below in the wake of your bomb, you would rather have me confront it than you, the culprit, facing your mistakes—”

“You have wings,” Alex growled, pressing a hand to his forehead. “You can just come back up if it’s bad. God, you’re impossible.”

Fires’ jaw snapped shut. Without another word to Alex, but with much grumbling about the levels it had been reduced to, it crouched down and slid itself across the floor in a writhing mass of fabric, clawed feet kicking out from under its cloak as it positioned itself over the vent and wiggled its way down the shaft.

It took a long time for Alex to hear anything hit the bottom. The distance was too great for him to even see the light of Fires’ eyes.

Alex blamed the drugs as he felt himself worrying about Fires. Just when he was about to call out to it, he heard its voice, even more irritating than ever as it echoed through the long shaft. “Come down, now.”

“What’s down there?” Alex shouted back.

“You can come down,” the echo repeated.

Getting a straight answer from Mr Fires was harder than getting a jewel off of Mr Stones. Alex supposed he should just take what he could get. He knew what he needed to know to survive. That’s how he’d always done things.

Alex took a deep breath, crossed his arms over his chest, and inched his way over the edge of the shaft to slide down into whatever horrors awaited beneath.

He didn’t let the dark bother him. Instead, he imagined this is what carnival rides must feel like. He’d never admit he was jealous of the children who spent their summers at the fairs he saw advertised in the broadsheets while he spent all his days earning the right to survive.

Alex was at the bottom before he knew it. The ground vanished in an instant from under him, and he felt himself falling. Now, he finally screamed. Fires had to have tricked him. It was perched somewhere inaccessible to humans while Alex was going to land in an acrid pool or break his neck on the pavement—

He landed instead in something soft. “Got you,” Fires chirped as its claws wrapped around him and released him gently on the floor in an instant. Its eyes were the only source of light, but even their harsh glow was dimmed by whatever magic was leaking in this room.

Alex shook from adrenaline. He didn’t know if being touched by Fires was any better than death. “We’re not telling anyone about what just happened.”

“No. Never.”

“Good.” Alex thought that was the first time they’d agreed on anything. “Okay, what now? What’s down here?”

“I don’t know,” Fires admitted with much suffering. It was too pathetic to be a lie. “Your bomb—”

“Stop calling it mine. I didn’t build it.”

“—has completely restructured the order of my factory. For all we know, we may have fallen to the top floor.”

“I don’t care about your factory,” Alex growled for what had to have been the dozenth time. “We just have to find a door. Keep moving. Some place that at least we can see.”

“You do not have to ask me twice to get out of the dark.”

Chapter Text

The world was shrouded in impenetrable shadow.

Mr Fires and the boy spent what must have been an hour stumbling through the lightless corridors. This part of the factory was formerly a series of hallways connecting research rooms which were admittedly difficult to navigate, but it had never been this labyrinthine. That was the bomb’s workings.

The boy trailed along beside it, tripping a few times on loose stones where his feet did not have claws. Soon into their excursion into the dark, he had wordlessly began holding onto the edge of Fires’ cloak, with the agreement between them that it was only to improve the speed at which he could move alongside Fires who could see better in the dark than a human. It certainly was not for any other reason. Neither of them were afraid of the dark. Neither of them were feeling completely isolated from reality in this cage. Neither of them were succumbing to the negative sentiments in the drugs in the air.

At least Fires could say it wasn’t feeling that way. It couldn’t speak for the boy, couldn’t sense hidden desires like some of its colleagues might be able to. If Alexander was feeling bad, he deserved it for his role in this.

Fires didn’t know what was causing the unnatural darkness—some damnable liberationist element had gone rogue in the blast and latched itself here, most likely—but Fires was certain of one thing: the imminent demise of whoever had planned this. Its claws twitched methodically at its side as it walked, imagining in gruesome detail how it would make an example of the culprits once it got its hands on them.

The boy shouldered much blame for this, yes, but as much as Fires loathed the sight of him, it knew he wasn’t the mastermind behind the plot. This was not his usual style of crime. He was only here to carry out the final stage of the plan. To destroy a tree, one needed to do more than chop it down. One needed to tear up the roots and scorch the earth so nothing could grow there again. Fires could burn the trunk, but even it had its decorative uses, especially when he had spent so long engaging with Fires, more than most people ever dared, even if he was a thorn in its side...

Fires snorted under its hood in a futile effort to draw fresh air. Enough of this. Drugs fogging up its head, that’s what these thoughts were, nothing more. Fires had no fondness for any human, least of all the one who had thwarted it time and time again.

At last, Fires’ eyes honed in on a crack of light near the floor, leaking from beneath a door. With a squeak of delight, it hastened in that direction, forgetting to be cautious in its excitement, but as luck would have it, there were no hazards underfoot. Fires’ talons scraped along the door as they reached it, leaving deep gashes in the paint. It was unlocked. Factory doors were meant to be locked at all times with no exceptions, but Fires would forgive this mistake in this dismal situation.

They emerged into a dim space, but it was still so much brighter than the oppressive darkness of the previous corridors. Fires blinked a few times to overcome disorientation.

Fires’ ears twitched under its hood as it became aware of the boy panting for breath beside it. “Hey, some of us don’t have claws on our feet.”

“You didn’t fall, did you?” Fires smirked when he didn’t answer. “You’re fine.”

It took a dutiful step aside from him now that they could see each other again. No one had seen how close they had been standing before, and therefore it was of no consequence. Using each other to survive, nothing more. To master itself, Fires focused on figuring out where they were. The painted “B” on the wall provided a quick answer.

Laboratory B was not a large space, intended to receive shipments and prep them for transport to other rooms where the bulk of processing would take place. It was a clean space, where everything from the color of the ceiling to the arrangement of tables served a purpose in optimizing efficiency.

Now, it was in utter disarray. The force of the explosion had knocked all the furniture to one side. There were chunks of wall missing where pipes had bent and fallen, spewing pinkish steam from the adjoining Laboratory C.

The waste products had their uses. Not every love story could be a happy one. For Fires’ own purposes, it had found in its experiments that sometimes contentment wasn’t enough to subdue a group of people. Sometimes they needed to be reminded of how much worse it was to not have a job than to work for Mr Fires.

“What next?” the boy asked.

Always having its best thoughts interrupted! Fires whirled on him, having nearly forgotten again that he was here. “This is Laboratory B.” It gestured to the door beneath the hissing pipe. “That is Laboratory C—”

“We’re going closer to the poison. Isn’t that the opposite of what we want?”

Fires tapped a claw to the boy’s chest, making him stumble back but effectively silencing him. “Let me finish. We are not entering Laboratory C. I don’t believe either of us wishes to die here.” Fires turned to different door which was turned entirely sideways and half covered in rubble. “This leads to a small hallway, at the end of which should be a window that we can make our escape through.”

“If you made your factories remotely safe, we wouldn’t have this problem of having so few exits—”

Fires had the boy held up by his collar before it realized its hand had moved. It spoke in a hiss hotter than the leaking steam as it jerked the boy close to his face. “You are in no position to argue. It is your fault that we are here, and you are not the one who knows the way out. You should be nothing but grateful to me for helping you escape instead of dunking you into the nearest chemical vat until every last one of your bones has dissolved!”

Alexander kicked uselessly under its grip. Fires could just drop him against a sharp piece of rubble and be done with this quickly. It would have quiet for the rest of the journey.

But the boy was not done with this. He showed his teeth as he met its eyes. “Do it, then. What’s stopping you?”

What was stopping Fires? Some twisted sense of camaraderie, some loyalty to their reluctant alliance to survive this hell?

No. Nothing so kind, it told itself as it resisted the urge to sneeze as the split pipes spewed more dust. Nothing so kind were its feelings as fondness. Charity was a crime. It was keeping Alexander alive so that he would be indebted to it. A life saved was no small price to repay indeed.

But it would be far too quiet here without someone to argue with. Fires could only talk to itself for so long. Besides, if Alexander wasn’t here, who else could Fires blame for its plight? That would not do at all. The twisted innards of the factory were lonely enough without the soft footsteps that followed Fires. It was lonely enough in the sprawling spaces between stars, lonely enough in the Bazaar with colleagues far too unintelligent to be companions to Fires...

Damnable, damnable drugs. Fires snorted, and a stream of blue dust came out.

Fires was gentle as it dropped him. He still landed with a grunt, clutching his ribs. Fires’ shadow covered his face as he mumbled, “I knew you couldn’t.”

Fires pretended not to hear that. It would never let an enemy live if it had heard its character be demeaned in such a way. It watched as the boy gathered himself enough to stand, tugging his collar back into place with a reproachful glare.

“Enough playing around,” Fires said with forced levelness. “We need to get out of here.”

“I wasn’t the one playing—”

Fires tried the door to the hall. Unlocked! May this good luck follow them. May the window be unblocked and right on the other side of this door where it was supposed to be—

The world boiled with color.

A thick fog of pinkish smoke clung to the floor, where the more viscous of spilled compounds coalesced in opalescent pools. The pale greens and blues and oranges that stained every surface of the room faintly glowed, brightest in the spots where the colors overlapped in toxic shades of brown, casting eerie shadows.

A bright, red “C” was painted on the far wall.

Fires retreated under its cloak at the sight, trying to get its bearings. This wasn’t where this door was supposed to lead. Unless Fires had its directions wrong, which was impossible. It was too hard to think with the steam clogging its lungs.

“This isn’t the hall, is it?” Alexander asked just as Fires was forming the thought on its own. “This is the other lab. You lied, you have no idea what you’re doing!”

“The directions were corrupted by your bomb—”

“Oh yeah, be ‘grateful’ to you for your ‘help.’ You’ve done nothing but make things worse, that’s all you ever do—” 

Fires’ arm moved on instinct again as it grabbed him, a claw slipping over his mouth. There was no one else to hear how its voice cracked and squeaked, and therefore it had never made the ignominious sound it did as it cried, “BE QUIET and let me think!”  

The boy whined indignantly under its grasp. It pushed him aside, not looking back as it heard the shallow splash of a body landing in one of the puddles.

Fires’ body twitched under its robes as it struggled again to master itself. Think calming thoughts. Escaping. Eviscerating enemies. Wresting factories from its colleagues. Colleagues who would certainly be laughing at it if they could see it here. This more than anything inspired Fires to focus.

Dimly above, whitish lamps still clung to life, though they were drowned by the much nearer, much brighter glow of Fires’ discerning, red glare. It crossed Fires’ mind the hazard those lamps posed, if a spark were to ignite one of the more volatile clouds of dust that hung thick in the air. It had only agreed to add the damnable things to get the workers to quit their whining about the danger of working in the windowless factory, as if the chemicals being researched here didn’t glow enough on their own, as if oil lamps weren’t enough. In return for its generosity, Fires added an extra hour to everyone’s shifts, since if they couldn’t work well in the gloom like they claimed, they’d just have to work longer. Its monthly reports had revealed productivity had gone up by ten percent.

Fires took comfort at least in that fact, keeping the thought close to its heart to keep itself steady as they continued to wander deeper into the twisted intestines of the place. As soon as it got its hands on the revolutionary sect that had planned the bombing, it was going to compress their bones into coal. Idiots, playing with Laws far beyond their comprehension—

A door! Fires scrambled over the rainbow-colored floor towards the flashing light that signified an exit. Maybe the unionists had been—no. They had created this problem which required their solution. It gripped the handle with both hands and pulled, it would snap the thing off its hinges if it had to—

The door did not budge. Locked with the cutting edge of security, per protocol. No one got in, no one got out, not until it was quitting time. No exceptions.

Fires did not shout. It did not scratch. It did not set its cloak on fire. Fires pressed its forehead against the metal, resisting the urge to sniffle.

“I’m not even gonna say it again,” Alexander mumbled. Fires flinched; when did he get here? He stood under it where its eyes were bend downward, his clothes and skin glistening with a faint blue dust that lingered from the pool he’d fallen into. “What are you standing around for? Aren’t you the master that loathes idleness?” Alexander shook his head and forced Fires aside. “You’re so overdramatic. We just have to pick the lock.”

Fires pushed him back aside. “I know how to operate my own security system, thank you. Far too complicated for mere humans.”

Alexander disappeared from view. Fires heard the clank of metal as he leaned against the wall. “Fine. Knock yourself out.”

The world sang with scent.

Fires resisted the urge to scream again. How it yearned to spread its wings wide, knock down the walls that confined it, wrap all of London in its claws and carry it off to its own cavern where no one else would ever disturb it again. No Masters, no Bazaar, no unionists, no Sun. Fires would be London’s light, would be London’s law. She would accept it with time, once it showed her how it could transform her into much more than she is now. How efficient it could make her. How much value it could extract from every working pair of hands that dwelled within her bricks. It would shape her skin into the furnaces with which to power the law to state that she shall never die, that her heart will burn forever, that the reckoning at last will be subverted once and for all.

If Fires were to spread its wings now, as it was, all it would be able to reach would be the insufferable boy that trudged along beside it. It shuffled indignantly under its robes with a huff. Such a waste of time and talent this whole affair was. Master Fires, the one who learned the secrets of the stars, reduced to recording love stories.

All this time, and it had no story of its own. All it would be remembered for would be its failure, the denial of its rightful throne above the galaxies. It would fade into oblivion. London would fade into oblivion. The stars would watch cold and distant and uncaring—

Just as the lamp over the exit door blinked down at Fires, mocking it, watching it slowly suffocate.

No.

It was a waste of energy and Fires knew it, but it extended itself to be at—no, above—eye level with the lamp, glowering into the pulsating white light. Up this high, Fires could more acutely smell the chemical smog, the tones that lingered underneath the acrid fumes—the grease of machinery, the icy wind of the high wilderness, the cheap soap that the boy it’d been stuck with for the past ten hours used, the sourness of London streets near a manhole—

It forced itself to focus on the light bulb. White, the color of the king, the color of law and order and inexorable power. What Fires should be. Master Fires, whose wings once stretched across the horizons and illuminated the darkest edges of the skies, locked in the dark in a room in a factory in a cavern of Shame, with nothing left to its name brighter than the dying red of embers.

It drove its claws into the brick around the flickering light, that distant and uncaring star, baring its teeth, wishing from the core of the earth to the most distant galaxy that the thing under its talons it really was White.

“YOU WILL NOT. SNUFF ME. AGAIN.”

Glass shattered. Copper coils hissed and ceased to buzz. A new shadow was cast over the room. The light bulb was once again only a light bulb. Formerly a light bulb. Warped parts fell to the ground as Fires released its grip. The wretched thing would mock Fires no more.

Even the hissing of steam seemed to grow quieter for a moment, until the silence was interrupted by a muttered, “Great job. Dumbass.”

Fires shrank and twisted and turned to see the boy with his hand pressed over his face. Fires blinked, all at once feeling rather foolish.

“Why don’t you focus on unlocking the door instead of yelling at the damn light bulb?”

“Why don’t you have a try instead of standing there idle and useless?” Fires snapped. “I thought you were meant to be the greatest criminal in this city.”

“Oh, yeah, and you’re being so useful, I’m sure that light bulb really had it coming, you solved all our problems by adding broken glass to the chemical soup on the floor—”

“I said, quiet!”

Fires advanced close enough to the boy that he stumbled backwards from it. Alexander, whose feet did not have claws, slid on a puddle of glittering sludge and landed hard on his back. Fires’ talons scrabbled across the brick as the master itself lost its balance, overcome by the whirligig of colors and scents and steam. It caught itself just before entirely crushing Alexander beneath its much larger stature.

The world melted with noise.

“You!” Fires shrieked, no longer able to keep its wings concealed. They unfurled, barely a fraction of their once and stolen size, thumbs boring into the ground on either side of Alexander’s head to force him to look up at it. “You’re the one that ruins everything!”

“We’ve been over this a dozen times. Get away from me—” Alexander tried to growl, but Fires extended one long finger to cover his mouth.

The rest of its fingers closed around his neck, its other hand clamping over his waist. Fires raised its feet under it to encircle his ankles with its talons, joints contorting like springs, bones bending like tent poles as it lifted itself over Alexander, face bent down towards him, eyes pinning him like a star in a telescope. “Do you truly have no remorse for what you’ve done? Even when it’s going to bury you alongside me?”

“What I did?” Alexander choked through the hand around his throat. “Last time I checked, I didn’t build a torture factory.”

Fires growled deep in its chest. “Don’t think I don’t know you, young man. This was no coincidence. You could have bombed any factory and you chose mine!” Its nostrils flared, spraying purple over Alexander’s face. “I know how you operate. You didn’t care about the bomb, no. You simply would stoop to any level and make any sacrifice if it hurt me in the end!”

Alexander didn’t answer, but the gleam in his eyes said it all for him.

This outburst was caused by the drugs, Fires knew that, but its points still stood. Fires wanted him dead. Dead and turned to dust and scattered over the earth and forgotten. Every last one of its failures since this wretched boy had disgraced this cavern with his presence could be traced back to him. This insolence, this disrespect, this disorder would be tolerated no longer.

“If the unthinkable day ever comes to pass that London is lost from my grasp, it will be all because of you!” Fires tightened all six of its grips. “I will not allow anything else that is rightfully mine to be taken from me!”

Alexander’s skin sparkled under the rainbow of chemical dust that clung to it. Not only blue, now; he’d picked up a myriad of colors from the floor. There was that crease he always got between his brows when he was angry. His face was flushed red, made redder reflecting the light of Fires’ gaze. He looked so delicious in red. He belonged in red.

Alexander shifted under its grasp, squeezing his eyes shut with a whine under the weight of Fires’ claws. It had no intention of loosening its grip.

Rightfully mine—

Fires took a few ragged breaths, struggling to master itself. The din of the disaster seemed to fade once again. Maybe it was growing close to unconsciousness from the slow and ignoble poisoning of the air. Maybe it was growing close to the object of its focus.

Fires wanted the boy out of its way once and for all. It was convinced that even if it obliterated him from the face of the earth, his legacy would find a way to come back to bite it. What else was there to do? Remove him from the board. Imprison him in a way even such a revered criminal could never escape. Locked away forever and ever for only Fires’ eyes to see. Of course it didn’t want him dead. It wanted him somewhere that it could look at him every day, its greatest and most treasured trophy. He would never forget that he failed to stop it. He would never forget the sting of defeat. He would never forget his rightful place ever again.

“Do you know how often I've dreamed of trapping you?” Fires purred as it moved the claw from his neck to trace down his chest for emphasis, tearing open his shirt like tissue paper. “Not exactly like this, but here we are, my little one. One must not spend so much time questioning Fate.”

The sound Alexander made was strangled as Fires’ claw caught the scars across his chest. Fires practically trilled at the sound. It swayed, head tumbling with delight, the corners of its vision filled with sparkles. There was danger in being this close to the floor, lying amongst the hissing smog. They were most certainly being poisoned with the deadliest dose of joy. Fires should get that door unlocked.

But the moment it had minutely loosened its claws, Alexander was making a different sort of whine, a pleading one. He pressed himself in its embrace, eyes wide and shining as if begging, “Don’t leave me alone.”

Fires knew loneliness all too intimately. To think that maybe, just maybe, Lond—no, its greatest rival felt the same way, that they were kindred spirits of a sort—

Station VIII could extract a thousand vials with the feeling that welled up inside it.

“Well, little one—” Fires hiccupped— “if that’s what you want, far be it from me to keep us apart.” It slid its wings underneath him to pull him closer to it, holding him close with the most liberal, unrepentant greed. “Although you really don’t deserve to be so happy, you have earned my attention.” It nuzzled against him, chest vibrating with purring. “Isn’t that what you’ve been after all along, in one way or another, my attention?”

It released his wrists now that its wings enveloped him. Alexander used his newfound freedom to reach right into it, burying his hands into its fur. He seemed to relax the moment he was in its embrace.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

“You have my attention,” Fires purred into his ear, barely above a whisper. “And I have you, little one.” Fires drank in the pleased sound Alexander made, nuzzling against him once more. “We’ve both gotten finally what we want.”

The world spun in a kaleidoscope of sensation.

The greatest of summits began with a single pebble. Here was Fires’ greatest adversary, molten under its claws, begging for it to hold him. In his rightful place. Everything would come to follow now that this piece had slotted into place. Fires would have its city. It would have its throne. It would have the utmost power of Law. All that was owed to it, all that it had rightfully earned, it would have after millennia of patience and planning.

Alexander would be under it, just like he was now, where he had always belonged. The White would never see them. Breathing the thick perfume that smelled of a sweet bonfire, Fires realized it had had everything wrong up until now. Once it had ascended, it would not be like a star. The stars were cold and remote and unfeeling. Master Fires would be much more. Much, much more. It always knew it could do better. It would not only bring light, but it would bring heat. It would create, oh how it would create! The Judgements lacked any imagination. Why did they deserve to rule when Fires was the one who had sweat and bled and worked to build its own throne?

Most importantly, it would keep its favorite satellite as close to it as it possibly could.

Fires returned its attention to Alexander, who trembled under its touch, gasping for breath. It moved a claw up to push his hair back, forcing him to meet its eyes, his cast with a pinkish haze in the same hue as the chemical smoke that leaked from the valves around them.

It stated, barely above a reverent whisper, as if someone would snatch it all away if they heard, “You're finally mine.”

The words were spoken. The lamp was broken. A moment of stillness transpired in which there remained only the curator and man.

Pure giddiness overcame the master. Fires rolled over with Alexander clenched to its chest and its wings tucked tight around both of them, extending a long tongue to lick his hair back. With another cackle of laughter like the thunder that follows heat lightning, it screeched, “All mine!”

Chapter Text

Alex didn’t remember falling asleep until he drifted into waking.

The first thing he felt was the heat, cozier than a fireplace overflowing with coal. Alex had dreamed countless times of what this luxury might feel like. The sensation leeched into him and almost melted away frigid memories of nights on the streets.

The next thing was the unimaginable softness of the thing he rested on. Alex could sink for days into this cloud without finding the other side. His head ever so slightly bobbed as it rhythmically rose and fell, carrying him away on a lazy, warm summer wind.

Alex caught a thick handful of softness and rubbed his face into it with a blissful hum. As he stirred, its hold on him only grew tighter. Alex made another little noise, the pressure squeezing him full of a sense of calm and vitality he couldn’t describe as anything but “light.” He hadn’t realized he’d been living in a shroud. One never knew how long they spent in the dark until someone else lit a spark. 

Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hugged, let alone touched. He’d certainly never been held like this in his lifetime. It was like cuddling with a heated bed that wanted to snuggle Alex as much as he wanted to snuggle it.

He could stay here forever...

Something touched the top of Alex’s head. He nuzzled against it with a sleepy purr. He was ready to drift back off into pleasant dreams of summertime, but the feeling of light on his face made his eyes blink open.

He found himself nose to nose with the Captain of London’s Industry.

Its hood sat low. Its arms held him snug. The exposed ruff of fur on its neck was his pillow. Its heartbeat was the gentle rocking that had accompanied his nap.

Alex’s heart leapt into his throat. He felt like he was going to be sick. There was a second in which Fires said nothing, and Alex said nothing, as they gaped at each other with their eyes growing wider in horror.

“What the f—”

Fires screeched.

Alex screamed.

He pushed himself away and was across the room before his brain realized what his legs had done. Fires turned from him as it rose to its feet, suddenly very interested in a smudge of paint on the wall, fidgeting with its claws.

Claws. Wings, hidden now, but Alex dimly remembered. That was what the Masters were under their cloaks. After all this time, he knew. That was... something to be processed later.

Alex struggled to remember what had happened to lead his life to this point. They were lost in the factory, Fires took the wrong turn, the drugs made it more agitated, it pushed Alex over, and... nothing until he woke up very close to it.

He blamed it on the drugs. It had to have been because of the drugs. Alex would never want to be near Fires. He wanted to be as far from it as possible. It was his greatest enemy. It was the evil industrialist of all evil industrialists. Alex didn’t want anything to do with Fires unless it was to hurt it. The feeling was mutual. He hoped.

He’d only felt good because of the drugs. They were messing with his head, putting thoughts there that weren’t his. That had to be it. Alex could never want to feel those things from Fires. He could never enjoy being held by it. It didn’t matter that it was so warm, and so soft, and had so willingly held him... that was all because of the drugs.

“You were more affected by the ingestion of substances because you are a human, ergo smaller,” Fires tried to explain. “You lost consciousness. I managed to drag the both of us out of Laboratory C and thought it best to wait for you to wake before traveling further.”

 “That doesn’t explain—no, I don’t want to know. Just shut up.”

Alex crossed his arms over himself. He hated how much more vulnerable he felt now that he was alone again. He hated the dampness that leeched into his skin where warmth once was. He hated the memory of touch that lingered in the center of his chest, which ached for the loss.

This discomfort had to have been from the drugs that still colored his skin. That had to be the cause, because if it wasn’t, if Alex did enjoy what just happened—he couldn’t even bring himself to think about it—he’d be a hypocrite to everything he stood for. A traitor to the cause. He wouldn’t be able to look any of his fellow unionists in the eyes again.

“This never happened,” he growled as much to himself as to Fires.

“No.”

“It was all the drugs.”

“Indeed.”

“And we’re never going to speak about it again.”

“Never.”

Alex grunted as he leaned against the wall and took deep breaths. He had to get back in control of himself. Away from Fires’ heat, Alex became aware of a draft on his chest. He looked down to see that much of his torso was uncovered. “Why the hell is my shirt torn?”

“There was an incident.”

Alex’s face scrunched up as he glared at Fires. “Hell did you do?” Before Fires could look up from its twiddling claws, Alex grunted again. “No, you know what, I don’t care, because it didn’t happen.”

A large tear remained, but Alex was able to salvage a few of the buttons. The two scars glistened with a pinkish substance that he must have picked up when he was on the floor. He rubbed at his skin a few times before realizing it was futile; he’d have to wait till he had access to clean water and soap. He wanted nothing more at this point than a nice bath. At the thought of forsaken and unreachable cleanliness, Alex became hyperaware of how itchy his hair was. He scratched his fingers through it to find a rainbow of chemical dust, in addition to a strange, sticky, wet feeling that twisted Alex’s insides and left a bitter frown on his lips.

“Hell is my hair is wet?”

“When I dragged you out of the laboratory,” was all Fires said.

“I know you’re not telling me everything.”

“I thought we agreed it didn’t happen.”  

“Piss off.”

Alex ran his hands down his face. They came back stained with purples and reds. Alex rubbed and rubbed at his face, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get the powdery feeling off his skin.

Somehow, this half of the factory was even louder than the previous. Alarms still distantly rang and flashed, sending daggers through Alex’s skull. Everything from the whistle of steam, to the moisture dripping from distant pipes overhead, to the slight congestion in the sound of Alex’s own breathing, echoed louder than a train engine behind his ears.

The tear in his shirt let in the damp air and made his chest itch. His hair was damp and tangled and it itched. His face itched. He couldn’t get clean. He couldn’t make anything shut up. No matter which direction he turned, he couldn’t get the safety lights out of his eyes.

Alex shouted as he grabbed a handful of rubble and flung it as far away as he could. And another, and another.

He became aware of a presence behind him and flung a fistful of pebbles straight into Fires. They bounced harmlessly off. A red glow fell across the floor as it watched them fall, before brushing off the ones that stuck in the folds of its cloak. Alex had never paid close enough attention before to notice how closely it resembled the protective gear that he’d seen workers wear at its furnaces. Alex forced himself to focus on this detail instead of his panic. A perfect row of buttons extended from the clasp of its hood to the bottom. The material was stiff and durable, its crimson hue blackened in places. Bright patches of chemical dust stood out like flowers in volcanic soil. Alex wondered why it would wear something like this when it was immune to heat. Wasn’t it? What could burn the master of flame?

The peace was ruined when Fires extended a hand with what looked like intent to pat his shoulder. Alex dodged. He didn’t need comfort. Besides, if one more thing touched him, he was going to claw his skin off.

“Why do you have to be so weird?”

“I was merely going to suggest we begin moving.”

“Fine.” Alex didn’t know why he was shouting. If he was loud, maybe it would make the rest of the world quieter. “Where are we going, then?”

“While you were unconscious, I was concocting a theory. The bomb has reversed the order of everything.” Fires snorted beneath its cloak at the slight. “What was small is twisted. What door should have led to the exit led instead to Laboratory C. I hypothesize that if we want to reach the surface, we need to move deeper into the factory.”

Alex didn’t know how to argue with that. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened today. “You lead the way. That way it’s your fault when we get in trouble again.”

“If.”

“When.”

Fires hissed. Alex hissed back. At an impasse, they fell into step beside each other, Fires leading a pace ahead.

“From here on is uncharted territory.” Fires did so love to fill every space with its own voice. At least it was nicer to listen to than the factory ambience. “The explosion has twisted the lower levels of my factory beyond recognition. However, as long as we keep moving...”

Alex focused more on its voice than its actual words. It seemed to have mastered itself enough to adopt its typical deep purr compared to the shrill shrieks of earlier. As much as he hated to admit it, listening to the familiar tones was soothing. Some described its voice as hypnotic. Alex didn’t think Fires deserved to be called anything so flattering, even if it might have been true—

Truer than Alex thought. His mind had wandered so far from his surroundings that Fires had to grab him by the collar to keep him from walking over the edge where the path had ended at what could only be described as a chasm.

When Alex looked down, he couldn’t hold back a gasp. A veritable sea of chemicals glittered beneath them, rising higher by the minute as it was fed by multicolor streams that poured from jagged pipes and dripped from the darkness above. Something below it illuminated the center with a reddish cast that turned blue at the edges, though the blending of chemical colors made the bulk of the pool an opalescent white. Chunks of plaster drifted like lily pads as sparkling bubbles rose and fell.

There was something fatally beautiful about the sight. It made Alex understand why the most vibrant animals were the most poisonous.

Alex staggered back from the ledge with only a minor amount of shivering before shaking Fires’ hand off and scowling again. “Told you. When.”

He should have noticed the cliff. He wasn’t called a master thief because he wasn’t observant. Even if he really wasn’t so keen, it wasn’t difficult to miss the fact the entire floor was gone. If it wasn’t for Fires, he’d be—no. It was the chemicals messing with him again, dulling his instincts. Alex didn’t even want to know how much he’d been breathing. If he’d passed out once already...

“...used to be the boiler room,” he tuned back in just in time to hear Fires say.

Alex should have been afraid, but he only felt tired. “I don’t care what purpose this room had in your torture factory. How are we going to get across?”

Fires peered over the edge. The pool simmered and squelched, sending up a cloud of vapors that obscured the far side of the chasm with a thick mist that Alex imagined would be a slow, painful death to inhale.

“I estimate five times larger than it was,” Fires muttered to itself, tapping its claws thoughtfully. “Yet all of the distortion is contained within the dimensions of factory’s original exterior shell. Fascinating. The red science...”

Even if Alex was in a good headspace, he wouldn’t understand or care what it was saying about law or architecture or treacheries or whatever. He only thought about how in this light, posed in this way, Fires’ cloak also resembled a lab coat. It was the most insufferable academic of all academics, and Alex was its captive and unwilling student.

He found another handful of rubble to toss at it and heard an audible snap of its jaw as it turned its gaze back on him. “Hey. Focus. Getting out.”

Fires huffed as it brushed off its cloak again. Both watched as one of the pebbles bounced over the edge of the cliff, and both leapt backwards as a plume shot up from the impact. Alex expected it to be hot, but instead, a cool mist hit him.

Once the steam had subsided, Fires crept back towards the ledge. “Why coalesce here? Were they drawn to the furnace? And yet the air is cool...”

“Did you not hear me?” Alex crossed his arms and turned his back on the pool. “That’s enough, we’re turning around. There’s no way forward, and I’m not standing here listening to you to talk to yourself about science till I die. We’ve wasted too much time already.”

If its feet weren’t clawed, Alex would worry it would lose its balance as it leaned forward, searching for something Alex didn’t have the anatomy to see or hear, not that he cared about it. The longer they stood still, the more he noticed himself shivering. All he could think about was a bath and a bed. Maybe if he just sat down and closed his eyes for a moment...

He'd never open them again.

Alex swore under his breath as took a few steps to regain his balance where he hadn’t realized he was leaning. He swatted uselessly at the air, wishing the steam had a body to hit. He should never have agreed to the bombing plan. He should have torched the factory when he had the chance. Then it wouldn’t be able to mess with his head.

At the sound of his shuffling, Fires turned back to him, its head tilted. Alex staggered backwards as it advanced forward, cloak undulating.

“Hey? If you tackle me again, I swear—”

In one swift motion, Fires swept Alex off his feet and held him against its chest, cradled in two vast claws. Alex yelled and kicked, but it was like fighting a brick wall. Just like every conversation with Fires, except the metaphor was a bit more physical this time. 

“Put me down!”

Alex’s hollering was lost to the sound of great wings unfurling. As Fires leaned over the edge, Alex’s vision was filled with the long fall down to the noxious pit, and his escape attempt turned to an instinctual clinging to its arms. There came a brief pause in which Alex heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears and hoped against hope that Fires had found an iota of sense and was going to turn back. Then his stomach dropped somewhere below his knees as it pushed off from the ledge and took flight.

Alex was certain of two things. First, Fires was undoubtedly and irreparably insane. But he knew that long before tonight.

Second, he wasn’t going to fall.

Fires held him securely, wings beating rhythmically overhead, the up-and-down motion combined with the closeness not unlike the sensation Alex remembered from waking up earlier. But this was still no summer breeze.

“You could have asked first!”

“Why?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Keep your mouth shut. We’re going to enter the cloud.”

Alex buried his nose in his shirt, closed his eyes, and braced himself. He only pressed his face against Fires’ cloak to protect himself. There was no other reason.

Steam washed over him, cool and heavy, not unlike the sensation of walking Wolfstack Docks after a fog rolled in. He caught a whiff of saltwater, mixed with—was that chocolate? Alex chanced another sniff, too curious. That was definitely chocolate. A chemical sting that was somehow different from everything else tonight, something more familiar. Cheap wine. Cheaper spirits. The warm odor of many bodies sharing a bedroom. Machine oil.

They said scent was the strongest memory, and this steam was all muddling in Alex’s head at once, just like the muddle of toxins below, each sensation competing for his attention. He wanted to smile and punch and cry and hold all at the same time. He saw faces he’d forgotten and faces he’d seen just yesterday, places he missed, and places he wished he missed. He’d blame the moisture he felt on his cheeks on condensation.

Fires’ own aroma pierced the fog, stronger with Alex’s proximity. Wet fur and ammonia, sulfurous factory soot, and sweet woodsmoke that somehow managed to perfume the rest.

Alex once again forced himself to focus on Fires. Smoke. Nothing else but the scent of smoke. The cacophony of sentiments bubbled at the edges of his mind, waiting till he’d let his guard down and be overwhelmed, but if he could just focus his mind for one second, he could focus for another.

They had to be halfway across by now, or at least, Alex hoped. He couldn’t see anything, and Fires said the space was extremely distorted. Alex vaguely recalled the missing block when he and the others began the Great Hellbound Railway, although he was never the one handling weird science stuff. All he was there for was securing materials through undisclosed means and working with the Union.

Fires’ grip tightened on him moments before Alex heard what it heard. A quaking above their heads. Fires dodged to the right seconds before a chunk of brick detached from the ceiling and plummeted through the space they’d been.

Alex felt the blast from the impact before he heard it. The moment the debris landed, a wall of bitterly cold wind erupted from the pool, knocking Fires off course and nearly tearing Alex from its grip. Thick clouds of steam billowed around them, obscuring even Fires from Alex’s vision. In the second it took him to breathe in the icy fog, the deafening shockwave caught up with them, and Alex shut off his senses.

The bomb has reversed the order of everything, Fires had said. The furnace was colder than the Northern Zee. Alex couldn’t keep from whimpering as the wind stung his skin and the sound rang in his ears; all he could do was press into Fires’ warmth. He wanted to go home.

But there was no home to return to. Even the false yet familiar scents he’d breathed in the steam had abandoned him. He’d never had a place to call home, a life as transient as fog. He never would. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t feel. There was nothing in the past, nothing in the future—

A shrill cry pierced the fog. The echo hit Alex a moment later, and the tiniest burst of light caught behind his eyelids as warmth slipped into his ears with the sound. He thought of the crackle of a hearth.

A spark of hope leapt in Alex’s chest. Fires was navigating the fog. It was still here. The world was still here. They were going to get out.

Fires did a maneuver that the flips in Alex’s stomach told him was a corkscrew before dodging to the left and to the right in rapid succession, avoiding stalactites of tangled pipes. The wind from its wings beat back the fog enough for Alex to see distant shapes. That line far away on the horizon, was that the shore? Were they really going to make it across this?

Just when Alex allowed himself to be optimistic, the ceiling groaned twice as loud as it did before. Alex’s choice language was lost to the wind as Fires’ wings curled in anticipation to block the mix of gravel and chemicals that rained down on them. Alex lifted his head just enough to watch sizzling rainbow drops roll off like an umbrella. Fires couldn’t be burned that easily. Alex, on the other hand, would have had his face melted if Fires wasn’t over him.

Fires was ready for the steam blast this time. It turned sideways, flying with its wings parallel to the wall like a sail in a storm. The wind buffeted them, but it did not push them off course.

It was good to see Fires using its brain for the first time since Alex had met it. Maybe, if they did reach the far side of the chasm, he’d have to give it a compliment in exchange for this insane plan actually saving them.

They had braved the worst of the wind, and Fires had resumed its previous course, when they heard another terrible creak. The force of the blasts was exponentially decreasing the stability of the cavern.

Fires was much stronger than Alex, but even it couldn’t resist succumbing to the confusion of the chemical smog forever. It reacted a moment too slow. Alex gasped as a concrete block broke over its back. Fires staggered midair. One of its wings bent at an awkward angle, and it turned dangerously to the side. Its claws spasmed.

Alex slipped.

Alex realized he was falling.

Alex didn’t scream. The breath was ripped from his lungs, but something in him didn’t want to scream.

There was something gravely peaceful about the feeling of fog embracing him.

Alex closed his eyes and waited.

Even if he could come back from such a high fall, he wouldn’t have a body to come back to, not with the chemical soup dissolving his flesh and bones.

It wasn’t the worst way to end. It would be fast.

Fires would be stuck here, too.

If Alex’s last action was to take Fires down with him, he was happy.

Alex had let the rest of the breath out of his lungs when a scream split his ears. He choked back to awareness in time to watch a shadow descend upon him and yank him upwards.

Alex’s head bounced back at the sudden motion, and his shoulders and thighs stung as claws bit into them.

Fires held him tighter than ever. Alex all at once remembered how to breathe as he was squeezed against its chest, his lungs heaving as the pressure of its arms forced his diaphragm to move and wrenched the scream of pure terror out of him.

He didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to fall.

He wasn’t going to die.

He wasn’t going to fall.

Alex could feel Fires’ heartbeat against his forehead, pounding with effort. No one was here to know if its heart was also pounding with fear.

For the first time this night, Alex didn’t care if anyone else could see. He clung to Fires with all his strength. His whole body shook as a ragged, damp sound streamed involuntarily from his throat. Alex buried his hands into its fur and smooshed his face into the feeling of its heartbeat. As long as he could feel that, he was safe. 

But the rapid diversion to Fires’ course in order to rescue him proved too much to recover from. Fires stopped just short of hitting a pipe that it couldn’t fly around, but the delay caused them to be caught up in the next steam discharge. The force this time pushed them like leaves in a gale. Fires’ attempted to regain altitude, but their trajectory came to a rapid halt at the sickening crunch of Fires’ head against an unseen protrusion of brick.

Alex cried out at the sound of the collision. The impact sent a jolt through his own body; he couldn’t imagine how much it hurt Fires. Its grip briefly loosened, long enough for Alex’s shouting to get louder, but its grip resumed twice as tight despite the spiraling sensation of unwanted descent.

Fires flapped in a few crooked patterns, losing altitude by the second, before extending its wings at an angle to glide along.

Alex dared to turn his head, and his eyes popped at what he saw. He couldn’t hear his own voice over the sound of his blood rushing, but Fires had the most acute hearing indeed. “I see the ground! We’re almost there! You can make it!”

Fires lifted its head as he spoke. Its neck tensed as it honed in on the target. With a wild shriek, it mustered one final burst of speed to aim their descent towards the rocky outcropping that burst like salvation from the fog.

Moments before Fires could touch down, the ceiling groaned a final and loudest time. The feedback loop between falling debris and blasts of steam had reached a critical point, and whole sheets of brick were crumbling down. Alex covered his ears and buried his face against Fires as it tried for one more sprint, but it had pushed itself to the limit. The only thing it could do was turn sideways to try to dodge the oncoming avalanche.

Alex blocked most of the cacophony from his memory. He yearned for the past when he thought a mere safety alarm was loud.

Fires stumbled, and stumbled, and stumbled again until the debris became too much to recover from. It came to a crash landing, one of its hands closing over Alex’s head to protect him from the worst of it as they came to a rolling stop. The second time they bounced off the ground, Alex’s left foot caught on a piece of rubble and was yanked back at an angle that sent a hot, tearing sensation through his ankle. Before he could think about that, they bounced again. This time, Alex kept rolling, but Fires didn’t. It released him from its grasp before its falling body could crush him, and Alex tumbled to a stop on a cold stone floor.

At least there was a floor this time.

Alex lay staring at the ceiling for an indefinite time, waiting until his pulse and breathing had slowed enough for him to see straight. Distant lights flickered far overhead. Maybe, just maybe, could one of those have been the light of an exit?

It would be quite the trial to find out. The ceiling was several stories high. At least they no longer had to worry about being crushed.

His legs numb and spasming from adrenaline, Alex propped himself up on his elbows and looked back the way they’d come. A thick wall of rubble blocked off the chemical lake. It was a good thing it would seal them off from breathing the fumes, but the sight made Alex’s insides quiver. A moment too slow, and they would have been under it. They were lucky to have escaped.

Well, mostly escaped.

Alex’s eyes flickered down to where Mr Fires lay, its left wing pinned under a pile of debris.

He sat up to move towards Fires, but the moment he put weight on his leg, his ankle buckled and screamed, and he slid back to the ground with a stifled cry.

Alex knew not to take his shoe off. Sitting up against the whirling in his head caused by pain, he eased his pantleg up and his sock down to see the joint swelling and turning a strange color. Alex swallowed hard at the sight and looked away before it could make him too queasy.

Goddammit, can this night get any worse?

Alex clenched his fists and jaw. He’d had much worse in his life. He could walk on this. He would. He just needed a moment to adjust to the pain. They had to keep moving, no matter what. He’d cut off his foot if it was what it took to get him out of this place.

Fires similarly was discovering its own plight. It tugged and writhed to no avail, its cries becoming increasingly frantic. Its gaze landed on Alex, but its eyes were unfocused and lacked their piercing light. Alex grimaced at the thought of how badly it hit its head. It was lucky to survive with just a concussion from blow that would have instantly killed lesser beings.

Well, Alex always knew it had a thick skull.

He sat at a wary distance from Fires, staying out of the way of the wickedly sharp talon on the tip of its flapping free wing. The master looked bigger than usual, like it always did when it was upset. Bigger still without its cloak concealing it. Was Fires using magic to show off in anger, or was its smaller stature the true disguise? Those wings could never fit under its cloak without some sort of glamour.

Even where it was stuck low to the ground, Fires’ head looked bigger than Alex could reach around with both arms, with flared nostrils and sharp teeth bared in distress. If he could stand, he might barely be able to reach its neck. How tall would it be if it could stand?

Oversized ears each the size of his face swiveled at every little sound: drips of water, shifts in the rubble, Alex’s ragged breathing. The fur on its face was dark as soot with warm red undertones, and a brighter red ruff peeked out from the edge of its cloak, encircling its neck and plunging down its chest. Under its chest, its arms were occupied keeping it in a crouching position, but the tips of its claws could be seen. Just one of those fingers could reach out and wrap entirely around Alex’s body and tear through his ribcage in an instant. 

The Master’s sheer size combined with the steam coming from its nostrils reminded Alex of a storybook dragon, but Alex was no knight. He had never felt so small.

He tried not to think too hard about what he was seeing. This wasn’t the time for that. He could wrap his head around “Giant evil bats with arms?” later, when he had a thought to spare that wasn’t dedicated entirely to pain and escaping.

Both of them were in bad shape, but Fires had taken the brunt of it, Alex safely sheltered under its body. Why didn’t it drop him? If it had just let Alex fall, it would never have collided with the debris. It could have flown right out and forgotten about Alex forever. Now, because it hadn’t, Alex was the one holding the cards. Fires was trapped, and it wasn’t getting out on its own, not for a long time at least. Alex could walk away. He’d find some way to limp his way out.

Something stuck in Alex’s throat, keeping him from following his instinct to run. His honor. Fires had saved him. Didn’t he owe it in return? That was the right thing to do.

But this situation was different. Alex was one man; Fires was an ancient evil. It embodied everything he stood against. If Alex freed it, he might as well be signing off on the construction of a new Orphanage, stealing bread from the houses of Spite, pushing Furnace off a ledge with his own hands. What would happen if Fires escaped? It would go right back to oppressing the masses. More people would die. More factories would churn. And what of the sixth and seventh cities, if they ever came? An unfathomable number of lives would be ruined. It was far too dangerous to be allowed free.

Alex doubted Fires wouldn’t find some way out on its own. He doubted the other Masters wouldn’t find a way to extract Fires, even if it took a few days or years. But what if it didn’t? What if Alex had the power in this moment, in this choice, to keep Mr Fires from hurting anyone ever again? Didn’t he owe it to the workers? Didn’t he owe it to Clara?

Alex looked back to where it lay. Fires’ body rapidly rose and fell; Alex heard a distressed clicking sound in each breath it took. It tried again to push itself up, its other wing flapping uselessly, claws scrabbling along the brick—only to be pulled back down, where it stayed down this time. Instead of having a hissing fit like it did with the blocked doors, it was eerily quiet.

Alex scooted closer to it, sitting up as tall as he could. Fires turned its head to face him, nose twitching as he approached. From this vantage point, Alex had the rare moment of needing to look down to meet Fires’ eyes. Its gaze hit him like the last meager coals of a stove dying much too early on a bitter winter night. A Master of the Bazaar, pleading.

It didn’t speak, but it didn’t have to. It knew what Alex was thinking. Why would you help me? Go on, leave while you have a chance. No one would spare mercy for Mr Fires.

Fires wheezed as it sighed. It twisted its neck, smelling the rubble before wrapping its teeth around what seemed to be the loosest brick and trying to pull.

“Hey!” Alex held up a hand, crawling closer as fast as he could. “Stop that. You’ll only hurt yourself more.”

Fires snapped at his approach, showing all its teeth as it hissed in Alex’s face.

“Relax! It’s only me.” Alex held up his other hand. “Why do you have to be so dramatic all the time, huh?”

I’m only going to help it because I need its help to get out, Alex told himself. No other reason. And it wasn’t a lie. Alex didn’t know what further trials lay ahead, and Fires was the one who knew the science going on. Maybe it was injured, but it was still much stronger than Alex was, with faster instincts. Alex wasn’t that prideful, and besides, there was no one else here to see him admit he was feeling weak from the drugs. It would be... unwise to try to venture alone in his condition. Unwise, nothing else. That was the word he was choosing.

And Fires saved my life.

He shook his head to himself and tapped its forehead in what was meant to be a chastising way, but he hesitated when he felt its fur. His hand sunk into the thick fur, soft and warm, leaching the damp and cold right out of his skin.

Well, Alex knew one way to calm an injured animal. Alex reached higher, running his fingers along Fires’ head and down its snout. Fires’ jaw snapped shut, though it still writhed, its eyes wide and dim, its nostrils flaring. Alex dodged as it sneezed out white fumes, but no sooner than he had raised his hand was it pressing its snout against him for more.

“You must really be hurt, huh.” Alex scratched between its eyes, brushing away bits of rubble. Fires blinked one eye at a time, its ears flicking as Alex spoke. He was sure it could hear him, but he doubted it understood. He wondered just how badly it had to have hit its head, combined with the drugs, to be acting so animalistic. “Don’t make me regret this.”

This was all he was doing, Alex told himself, placating it so he could work on freeing it. He had no other reason to want to touch it. Why would he? It was a ruthless industrialist murderer. Capitalists did not deserve head pats.

After a few minutes of stroking, both of them had significantly calmed. Alex hadn’t realized how badly he was shivering until he stopped, muscles relaxing in the heat that radiated off of Fires. Under Alex’s hand, the Master had shrunk as it relaxed, until its head was closer to the size of a horse’s rather than entirely dwarfing Alex. At last, it eased its chin to the ground, tilting its neck so Alex could get closer access to its injury.

“Good job, just stay there.” Alex gave it a final pat before dragging himself cattycorner. “Let me take a look at your wing.”

Much of the vast limb was concealed in shadow. Alex concentrated on the stack of rubble that pinned the wing between two fingers. He cringed as he noticed the holes where the membrane had already torn in Fires’ struggling. His ankle ached in sympathy. How it ached. Pain, drugs, the coziness of proximity to Fires all made Alex want to curl up and take a yearslong nap.

He squeezed his hands into fists, forcing himself to focus. Alex looked around the rubble pile for any angle he could use for leverage. There were three distinct chunks of debris, if he could only get a grip. He tried to balance on his knees, but the movement caused his ankle to bend, which sent fresh stars into his vision. Alex fell with a hiss, only barely catching his balance by grabbing onto Fires.

Warmth erupted across his whole body. Alex couldn’t contain a sigh of relief. He hated sounding so vulnerable, but he doubted Fires was in any state to pay attention. It tensed when his weight hit it, wary of more debris, but it relaxed again feeling his hand. “It’s just me,” Alex muttered, patting its side. “Need a minute.”

Alex had been in much worse situations before, he reminded himself, and he’d gotten through all of them. He couldn’t give up now. He could barely sit up, but he needed to be closer to work. That left him one option: crawling.

“I need to get on your wing if I’m gonna free you. I’m not going to break it. Try not to move, okay?”

Fires snorted in what Alex took to be approval.

Using mostly his arms, Alex got himself turned around. With great reluctance, he pushed away from Fires’ warmth and laid on his stomach across its wing. The second he spent in the cold was well rewarded with the sense of laying across a heated blanket.

Alex yawned before shaking his head, fighting off sleep. At this angle, he could see smaller pieces of rubble under the big ones. If he could move those, the bigger stones would be off balance enough to push away.

He slid his fingers under the closest pile and flinched when he felt how cold and wet the stones were. Careful not to cut himself, Alex brought back two handfuls of muck and tossed them aside. He was about to wipe water off his hands on his trousers when he had a better idea. He pressed his hands into Fires’ wing to dry them and keep himself from losing feeling.

Alex didn’t know how much time he spent chipping away at the pile. At least it gave him something to do with his hands to distract himself. Another moment he was shoveling debris was another he wasn’t fixating on the pain in his ankle, or the cold, or how utterly trapped he was, or the fact he was helping Fires.

Helping himself by helping Fires, he reminded himself.

Only the heavier pieces remained. Alex paused to catch his breath. The exertion had him covered in a cold sweat despite the chill in the air, and even his proximity to Fires wasn’t helping much anymore. Alex stretched his arms, wincing as his muscles creaked. Just a little longer, and they could move again, and they’d be free, and Alex would have all the time in the world to collapse into bed.

Alex’s temples began to pulse as he started the slow process of rolling the large bricks off Fires’ wings. They left streaks of wet dirt, but they didn’t tear the membrane any more than it had already been damaged. The wing twitched under him, Fires making a hissing sound, and Alex shouted right back. “Hey, this isn’t comfortable for me, either!”

Only one brick to go. Alex paused, panting. When had he last had a drink? He could get one once he finished. No twisted ankle, no muscle strain, no thirst, no shivering, no headache. Only the brick he pushed inch by inch.

Alex all but collapsed when the brick finally clattered to the floor. “It’s done,” he wheezed between heavy breaths, patting Fires’ wing. “Let me get down, then you can move.”

Fires, unable to be patient any longer, arched its wing, causing Alex to slide off. He made a less than dignified noise at the sudden motion, though his descent was gentle, and he came to a safe landing on the floor. The cold, hard floor. Alex hugged himself as he forced himself to sit up. Laying down would only make him colder, would only make him sleepy.

The moment it was free, Fires tried to shoot off, but injuries made it clumsy. It staggered a few steps sideways before balancing on all fours again, crawling away from the rubble with its wings dragging behind it. Once it was far enough away from the pile to avoid the risk of getting pinned again by shifting debris, it all but collapsed, its head landing chin up in Alex’s conveniently placed lap.

Oof. A little too heavy for comfort, but Alex was only grateful it didn’t touch his ankle. Alex tried to push, but he may as well have been trying to move an elephant. “Hey, get off! I’m not your bed.”

Fires’ ears twitched, but it didn’t respond. Its eyes were closed, the slits as long as Alex’s fingers, and upturned in a squinty way Alex recognized as content from the many cats he’d played with in his life. Its good wing was tucked snug around its body, whilst the injured one lay bent to the side.

Alex cringed looking at the tears in its wing membrane. He figured it would heal fast—the Masters were annoyingly difficult to harm—but in the meantime, it couldn’t have been comfortable. Fires certainly wouldn’t be flying again before they got out of here.

If they did.

They would. They had to. Alex was too stubborn, and Fires was too selfish to die.

“You’d better not fall asleep there,” Alex yawned, speaking as much to Fires as himself. “We hate each other, remember? Tomorrow, I’m gonna burn another of your factories, and you’re gonna steal my mail again, and we won’t remember any of this.” 

Alex had never expected his worst enemy to look like this, and he certainly never expected it to act like this, or feel like this. Its fur was so soft, and it was the only thing keeping Alex from freezing down here.

Alex extended a hand before he realized what he was doing, but he stopped himself and made a resolute fist. He would not give the master of work and order scritches under its chin, even if it was a bat. It was bad enough already he’d stroked it between its ears.

How could this be Mr Fires? The Master that Alex knew was sharp and distant and ruthless as a machine. The thing in front of him now was... fluffy, and warm, and nothing more than a wounded animal. The way its ears moved was almost endearing.

Alex didn’t know how he felt about this. More thoughts to file away for later. Much later. In the meantime, Fires was sniffing his hand where it hovered midair. The tiniest tip of a pink tongue flicked over its lips.

Some chemical reaction occurred in the space between Alex’s eyes, warming his chest to the deepest recess that mere temperature couldn’t reach. “Oh, alright. Come here, you giant idiot, before I change my mind.”

Fires butted its head into Alex’s hand. One of its feet kicked up from under its cloak, scratching at the dirt caught under its chin as Alex scratched between its ears. Alex was careful to avoid those claws. He didn’t want to even think about how much blood there would be if Fires caught his skin.

Its eyes gradually opened to two thin, red crescents. Alex wasn’t sure it could see him, although its nostrils flared every time he moved, drinking in his scent. Its tongue slid out, cleaning the dust and debris off the fur that showed where its hood had slipped down. Alex again was careful to avoid that. He started to wonder if this was the reason he was wet when he woke up earlier... best not think about that either.

Alex must have dozed off where he’d curled against it, because he jolted awake when Fires pulled itself out of his lap. Consciousness brought a fresh awareness of throbbing into his ankle, and Alex grimaced.

Fires was slow to gather itself where it crouched on the floor, first pulling its cloak over its body, then folding its wings back. Watching its shape twist in real time made Alex dizzy, and he closed his eyes, only looking up again when he felt its shadow over him.

Fires tapped its claws together, gaze aimed to its feet. It looked even more hunched than usual. “It seems I hit my head, and in the brief time it took to recover, I forgot myself. I trust what you saw will not be shared.” Fires tried to sound commanding, but its voice was raspier than ever. “There will be consequences for slander of my character. Unlike some of my colleagues, I am no base animal.”

Alex would take what happened to his grave, but he couldn’t resist teasing it. “Sure you aren’t.”

The sarcasm was lost on Fires. “Good. I’m glad you’re willing to reason for once.”

Alex rolled his eyes, though motion made his head spin. He gripped the floor to steady himself, but his foot shifted just enough to send a lightning bolt up his leg that knocked him flat on his back and really sent his head through the gyre.

The swirling spots in Alex’s vision gradually faded until only two red ones were left. Fires leaned over him where he’d fallen flat on his back, its hood still down. Its good wing was stretched over them, sheltering Alex from what dripped from the ceiling, as its hand hovered over his ankle.

Fires purred more softly than he’d ever heard it. “You’re hurt.”  

“Why do you care?”

“It will slow us down,” Fires answered too quickly. “We need to evacuate before the rubble shifts a second time. I can’t fly again.”

“I can still walk on it. It isn’t even broken.” The hitch in his voice didn’t make him sound convincing. “I’ve had much worse—”

Fires put its other hand on his chest to keep him down. “There are more efficient means, if you wouldn’t make everything so difficult for once.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Stay there.” Fires took a few steps back with a commanding hand raised, and when Alex didn’t move, it purred in approval. “Good boy.”

Of all the remarks Fires had made tonight, this made Alex’s ears ring with rage. His pulse pounded in his leg, but he gritted his teeth against the darkness that threatened to take him. “I should have left you buried.”

Fires clicked its tongue as it searched the rubble. “Hm, that would have been productive. You can’t walk. Both of us stuck here, until you froze to death.”

“It’s not that cold.”  

“Hush.” Fires returned with a rod. As if it were a toothpick, Fires bent it into two pieces in front of Alex’s face. Alex raised an eyebrow. After all this time, did it think he was affected by threats? “You will understand that I am only helping you to hasten our exit. Now, I’m going to set your ankle, but I will need something to tie it with.”

Both of them looked to where Alex’s shirt was already torn. Alex looked to Fires with a quirked eyebrow. Fires refused to look up, though its claw inched ever closer to his sleeve.

Well. He didn’t have any dignity left to lose.

After a long groan and a muttered curse, Alex let his head down and glared at the ceiling with as much purpose as he could muster. “Get on with it.”

Check out this art that my dear friend Prophet, the person this fic is written for, made of Mr Fires!

Chapter Text

Fires did not enjoy the company of its enemy. It did not enjoy the events immediately following their crash landing which would never be spoken of again. It certainly wasn’t helping Alexander for any selfless reason, and it certainly hadn’t risked itself to keep him from dying. There was nothing going on so ignoble as feelings. Only transactions. Quid pro quo. Chips changing hands, beads sliding on an abacus, pieces moving in a game. The way this board was laid out, if Fires wanted to keep its king, it couldn’t sacrifice a crucial knight.

Alexander insisted upon staggering beside Fires despite Fires’ offers to help him more. It could carry him with one arm. He weighed nothing at all to it, even with an injured wing dragging behind it. But he always had to be so stubborn and self-righteous, clinging to Fires’ arm and limping alongside it with his jaw set in determination. Did he think he was being brave? Fires only thought he was being stupid.

Fires would never feel anything so close to fondness for something as low as a human, nor would it ever stoop to such a level as to worry. It wasn’t Mr Wines. But it was the master of efficiency, and it knew when a part in a system was failing.

Alexander did not look good. His face had lost color. Dark curls clung damp and flat to his forehead, soaked with a cold sweat despite the chill. Certain footfalls caused him to make a pained sound and start to shiver again. Fires tightened its grip whenever that happened, not only to keep him upright and moving, but to keep him warm. Even Fires felt a chill on the tip of its nose, and Alexander was small and lacked fur. Still, he pushed himself onward, never asking for more help than the bare minimum he needed, a minimum that Fires had to force him to accept. So dramatic.

Mr Fires didn’t understand Alexander one bit. He was alive. With the skills he had, he could steal anything he wanted. Riches, palaces, even immortality. He didn’t have to stoop to such levels as petty crime or planting bombs. All he was doing was harming himself. Why did he insist on making life so difficult for himself?

Humans. So silly. Once they calmed down and accepted their role in Mr Fires’ order, their discontent would melt away. Nothing like this would certainly ever happen again.

Its poor, disordered factory. These corridors that surrounded the main boiler room were once the warmest parts of it, but the blast made everything topsy-turvy. Fires had long given up trying to fully understand the mechanism at work. It would be impossible to fathom without seeing the design of the weapon itself, and the red science gave one a headache even when they hadn’t just been in a crash landing.

“Stop here!” Alexander cried out so suddenly that Fires nearly tripped over its feet as it brought them to a halt.

Fires hadn’t sensed any hazards. There was nothing on this path but slowly freezing pipes and a downward slope that would, if the scientific method was smiling upon them, lead them up and out. “What’s the matter? What is it? You’d better not be hallucinating from one of the drugs!”

Alexander tugged against its grip, leading them sideways. Mr Fires, being ordered around by a human. Ridiculous. Had this reversal of order corrupted even the two of them?

“Here.” Alexander wriggled the rest of the way out of Fires’ hold, sliding to the floor beside a pool that hadn’t frozen. Instead, the water faintly steamed. This must be spillage from the furnace’s cooling mechanism. Fires was surprised that any water had survived the blast without becoming contaminated.

Alexander dragged himself to the edge of the pool, dunking his hands into the water and splashing his face, arms, and chest, being careful to keep the splint on his leg dry. He still looked abysmal, but it brought a spark of life back to his eyes. He almost smiled. Fires had never seen him smile before. Alexander always looked so angry every time he was around it, and in the photos in his police records.

Fires inched its way closer. On one hand, it knew Alexander would quickly become cold if he was too far from it. On the other... the pool was wet. Fire and water did not mix. While some of its colleagues most disgracefully emulated the humans in taking baths, the curators’ natural grooming skills were perfectly sufficient for Mr Fires.

Watching Alexander trail his hands through the water... being clean did seem nice right now. If they were stopping for a rest, maybe Fires could find some place to climb up to, stretch its wings, and give them a good licking. The events which would never be spoken of had admittedly scratched an itch, physically and metaphorically, degrading as that fact was.

No. Fires could not let Alexander see it acting any more primal than he already had. He already refused to respect it. Fires would not dig the hole any deeper before they got out of here.

Fires grew restless the longer they stood still. How it loathed closed-in spaces. Standing still only made it hyperaware of how trapped they were. Moving meant they were working towards escape, meant there was something actionable that could be done, meant that Fires wasn’t utterly powerless with its fate. It refused to be, ever again.

Alexander seemed to be clean by now and was just playing in the water. Wasting valuable time. “Are you quite finished yet?”

With a huff, Alexander reached for Fires cloak to dry his hands. Mr Fires, letting a human use its clothes as a towel! The next thing you knew, Mr Stones would be giving charity, and Mr Wines would be sober!

Alexander’s hold tightened on its cloak as he used it as leverage to pull himself up.

Fires took a step closer to Alexander so both of them could keep their balance, and it was about to reach a hand to him to facilitate the process when its feet landed in a puddle of water he’d splashed up. Its claws scrabbled, and its good wing flapped, but the tugging on its cloak was just enough for it to cross over the threshold of the inexorability of gravity. Fires’ feet slipped out from under it, and it plunged face first into the pool.

Fires sunk beneath the waves, only having a moment to hold in a breath before the cold and lightless depths reached up to envelop it. Its good wing flapped and breached the surface with a glorious splashing as it managed to roll over to face upwards, taking another spluttering breath before it was pulled back under.

Fires bobbed in the pool, thrashing and kicking but unable to find purchase on the bottom. It spat out water as it surfaced again, making wide and useless gestures with its arms. Every time it tried to swim upwards, some force held it back. Every time it thought it had found an edge to hold onto, its claws slipped, and it was submerged again. Had the order of appearances even been reversed? Was this pool as deep and inescapable as the Unterzee? 

And where was Alexander? Safe and dry on the shore, watching Fires fight to survive? Fires, who had rescued him in his most desperate hour!

Dishonor! Treachery! Regicide—

“Hey, Dumbass! Stand up.”

Fires’ flailing and spitting ceased at once. Its claws met brick as it bent its legs under its body and forced itself against the weight of its cloak to stand.

The water barely came up to Fires’ ankles. It couldn’t have been more than two feet deep.

Fires sniffled.

Water dripped down the groove between its nostrils, dripped off its whiskers, dripped from the tips of its downturned ears. Water ran in rivulets down the thick fur of its chest and legs, its feet quickly becoming sodden. Its cloak had protected most of its body, the material waterproof by Fires’ own design, but Fires had not merely been splashed. It had been betrayed.

Mr Fires, who commanded London’s industries, who ignited the secrets of the Law, standing in the bottom of a lightless pit, sopping wet, humiliated, miserable.

What had it ever done to deserve this?

Alexander stared up at Fires, trying and failing not to smile, his chest shaking with the effort of remaining composed before he gave up and burst into laughter. He doubled over where he was sitting and laughed until he couldn’t breathe. Fires gave him a sharp tap between his shoulders, fearing he was choking, and after coughing, Alexander lifted his head with a fresh round of delighted noises, a toothy grin still splitting his face.

“What, pray tell, is so amusing?”

“You look like a wet rat!” Alexander wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes. “A pathetic wet rat.” Alexander’s face was straight for one second before he burst into giggles again, a hand on the floor to brace himself. “Like someone dunked a cat in the bathtub.”

Fires had never heard Alexander laugh before. It had never so much as seen him smile. Its ears swiveled at each lovely sound, drinking them in. It was almost musical, though Fires didn’t feel intoxicated. It felt only the warmth and sweetness of a fine spiced drink by a fireside, with none of the headiness or hangover.

An emotion to be postponed indefinitely.

Fires remembered to be indignant. Hissing, it shook itself out, water flying off its fur in all directions. Alexander abruptly stopped laughing as he was sprayed with water, but once he’d wiped his face off with an ew sound, his smile returned, fainter this time, but just as endearing.

Fires climbed out of the pool and shook again, a tickling feeling spreading through its skin as its fur began to stand up from the moisture. It looked in its reflection in the water to see its fur an absolute wreck, puffed up in all directions.

Alexander started laughing again. “You look like you grabbed a live wire.” He mimed an enlarging gesture with his hands in regards to the sorry state of its fur. “Poof!”

Fires frantically combed its claws through the fur on its head, though in its frustration, it was only generating more static and making the problem worse. Steam curled from its lips as it gnashed its teeth. And it still wasn’t dry! Patches of fur still stuck in odd angles, soaked and spiky with water.

It felt another tugging on its leg and looked down to see Alexander holding onto its cloak again. It had half a mind to shake him off into the pool, but when he looked up at it, he was still smiling. Fires glowered down.

“Well? Are you happy, now? Delighting in my suffering, as you always do?”

Alexander pressed his face against it. “You’re steaming. Feels nice.”

Fires supposed he was right. It would be dry soon with its own heat burning off the moisture. Still, its fur would be in ruins for weeks.

“Come along, then. We’ve wasted too much time with your trickery. We need to keep moving.” It raised its head and sniffed at the air. Was that a hint of sourness? “I think we may be close.”

Fires wrapped an arm around Alexander to help him get to his feet. The moment he was upright, he swayed dangerously, and it wasn’t only from his ankle. Fires nearly lifted him off his feet in its haste to keep him standing, claws leaving new holes in his long-suffering shirt. “Are you alright?”

Alexander screwed his eyes shut, taking deep breaths to regain constitution as he slowly raised his head to a level position. “Fine.”

Let it never be said that Fires cared about its enemy. He wanted to struggle with walking, refuse to ask for help? Far be it from Fires to interfere. 

They moved in slow silence. Fires’ gaze slid across the icy walls, casting a red hue onto the whorled patterns that were forming in the frost that had turned the cinder block a ghostly white. If Fires had the time to study them and had access to its library, it may be able to interpret the fractals to determine exactly how the bomb had worked. But the cold was loathsome and dangerous even when one didn’t have a headache; attempting to study it now may serve only to incapacitate Fires further. Being unable to understand exactly how a machine worked would keep it awake at night for weeks, but at least it would be awake in its bed and not underneath frozen ruins.

Fires’ ears caught on a slight change in the boy’s gait. His feet were dragging more on the loose gravel. It nudged him with a finger. “Alexander?”

Alexander snapped out of a daze hearing his name, only to curl into himself in a fit of shivering. Fires refused to put up with this stubbornness any longer. It stopped walking and jerked Alexander in front of it to examine him, holding him tight with one hand and passing its other over him. It was careful as it pressed its thumb to the center of his chest, feeling for his pulse. Fires realized it had no reference for the standard biometrics of a human, but things seemed slow. Fires also realized how easy it would be now to apply a bit more pressure, extend a talon straight through his sternum, put a swift end to this weed that had strangled its garden for far too long without pruning.

But if it wanted to do that, it would have let him fall.

Such generosity as Mr Fires had displayed tonight was appalling, an opprobrium upon its entire culture. But so long as they were in the factory, where order had been scrambled beyond recognition... perhaps this and only this instance of charity was not a crime.

Alexander was still smiling, blissfully unaware of how fragile he was as a human. He pressed his face into Fires’ hand where it hovered, his two small hands wrapping around its wrist to hold it close as he nuzzled against its gloved palm. A sound like purring rumbled deep in his throat.

Fires sighed, twitching a claw to rouse him, though it didn’t try very hard. “Oh. Who allowed you to behave in such a manner?” It moved its claw again, this time to brush through his tangled hair. “It’s criminal.” 

If Fires was less restrained, like Mr Apples, it would have almost called this behavior cute. Who indeed had allowed its nemesis to be so... so small?

Who indeed?

Fires’ warm feelings were replaced by a chill that almost made even it shiver. “Alexander, what have we been breathing in?”

He didn’t answer, but Fires’ ears still twitched. It reacted on instinct, reaching to scoop up Alexander the moment before his knees buckled.

Alexander didn’t fight against it. He turned liquid in its grasp, curling into its chest and making that same purring sound.

It was imperative that they escape.

“Keep your eyes open,” Fires commanded as it began moving again, at three times its former pace without Alexander dragging alongside it and with the desire for self-preservation to motivate it.

What compound was plaguing them now? Something odorless, something stealthy, something dangerous. Could they not have a break for one moment? Fires was much bigger and much less human than Alexander, so it should feel any effects at a much slower and less incapacitating rate, but it wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks dawdling.

Alexander blinked up at it with a disgruntled, sleepy sound. “’S cold here.”

“Well it wouldn’t be if you hadn’t schemed—” but Fires couldn’t find it in itself to continue to argue. “I know. But we will be someplace warm soon, as long as you remain conscious.”

Alexander grasped a handful of its sleeve and pulled it closer like a blanket. “You’re all nice and warm. If you weren’t such an asshole, I might like to take a nap right here.”

“No, you might not!” Fires glowered at the precious bundle in its arms, hoping Alexander would feel the burn of its gaze and respect its orders for once. “You cannot fall asleep here.”

Fires’ wings unfurled in its impatience. It was not able to fly without crash landing, but it was able to glide for a short time. It leapt over uneven patches of ground, gravel and ice and pitfalls be damned, along with this injury! If it could fly, it could find an exit in minutes. At least there were no prying eyes around to notice a Master moving without its feet always touching the ground. Infuriating, humans and their small minds!

It realized it hadn’t felt its human move in some time. “Alexander?” Fires glanced between its perilous path and the boy in its arms. Against Fires’ wishes, he’d closed his eyes, and would have looked perfectly peaceful with his cheek pressed into Fires’ chest if it wasn’t for his pallor. “Alexander!”

Fires skidded to a stop around a corner, tongue slipping out as it panted for breath. It lifted Alexander closer to examine him, but he didn’t even react to a sharp prod to his thigh. “Alexander, you need to wake up for me.” It sniffed his face. Fires’ distressed chittering was interrupted by a brief chirp of relief: he was still breathing, faint clouds of mist coming from his lips. “Come, now, this is getting ridiculous!” Even a lick to his cheek didn’t make him jolt awake with an ew and a familiar scowl. “Are you truly so dedicated to defying me that you would succumb to poison because I asked you not to?”

Alexander’s head lolled as Fires let him rest against its chest again. Its wings arched around him, an instinct from as long as curators had been hoarding. “Alex!”

Nothing.

Fires threw back its head and screeched. How it hated this place! How it hated revolutionaries! How it hated Alexander for getting himself hurt! How it hated the Bazaar!

Its cries of frustration echoed back to it, garbled by the twisted acoustics of the bowels of the factory. Fires staggered onwards as the floor sloped down, down, down into oblivion. The walls changed from white to black, and even the safety lights were beginning to fade. Fires lost the energy to even glide, instead wrapping its wings around Alexander in a last effort to shelter him from the elements. It could always keep him warm, but it could not keep him from inhaling a fatal dose indefinitely, only postpone the inevitable.

At the bottom of the slope, Fires stopped, leaning against a wall that dripped with greenish slime. And what toxin was this that now stained its cloak? It didn’t care anymore. Its own head pounded and swirled as all it had ingested tonight reached a critical point even for its strength, and it wanted nothing more than to sleep with Alexander. What was the point of still trying? They were never getting out of here.

Fires may survive, as it had before in long captivity, but what was the point? Alexander was fading fast. Its colleagues already saw it as a liability in their blind devotion to Bazaar; they would not be looking for it. There would be a Sixth City, and there would be a Seventh, and Fires and London would be buried here for eternity.

Which was exactly why Fires had to escape. If it didn’t, London would die. Alexander would die. Fires’ work wasn’t finished yet. Alexander needed it. London needed it.

Fires shrieked again with determination as it started to move again, step by unsteady step. The echo was staticky, distorted, but what was that faint sound in the background? Fires cried and listened with the keenest focus to the echo. Yes, that was it! The low moan of a foghorn! They were near the surface! Wolfstack Docks!

Fires scrambled along as fast as it could move, claws scrabbling to keep it upright as it swayed, sounding off at regular intervals to ensure it was heading the right direction. It had long since run out of energy, but this hopeful twist gave it a final burst of power.

It really had saved London. It had always known it was capable of such. Why had it ever entertained doubt? Doubt was more dangerous than any bomb or poison. No matter. Against all opposition, Fires held London in its arms, and no one was going to take her away from it.

The walls turned greener. Was this a sewage pipe they’d wandered into? Distantly, below, the groan of machinery. More distantly still, the drone of the Zee.

Fires came to the edge of a cliff. There was no way of telling how deep it went, but at the bottom were pricks of light. The false-stars! Never mind Fires’ failed experiments; for this moment, it rejoiced. The sight of the wretched beasts meant they were almost free.

Fires peeked under its wings to check on Alexander before making the descent. Sound asleep, a tiny fist curled around a handful of its cloak. Adorable. With a squeak, Fires pushed his hair back from his eyes with its nose and gave him a lick on the forehead for good measure. Neither of them looked their best, but Fires could at least be sure that Alexander was presentable for their triumphant ascension.

Mr Fires’ throne was waiting for them. A sleek, obsidian seat at the height of the tallest building in London, its palace built overtop the central power plant of the city, with walls of glass so Fires never had to take its eyes off its hoard. Factories stretching into the horizon as far as the eyes could see. The thrum and heat of machinery pulsing through every street, the streets themselves laid out in the shape of a sigil with furnaces at key vertices which would power the Law to keep London’s assembly lines turning without end, with Mr Fires as their lord, forever and ever.

And where was Alexander, Fires once and greatest opponent? Curled up in its lap, making that delightful purring sound, cheeks red and warm and full of life. Fires would secure some means of immortality for him, nothing so expensive and temporary as cider, but some permanent alteration of the red science. Just as London would be illuminated eternally, so too would Alexander never die. Alexander could never forget how ubiquitously Fires had defeated him. He would never be in danger from anyone but Mr Fires ever again; eternal, living proof that absolutely no one could resist submitting to Mr Fires’ control.

All of Fires’ scheming had culminated to this moment. It was time for the phoenix to rise.

Fires angled itself over the drop, feet crushing the brick below as it leaned over the edge to scout. Echolocation revealed no hazards below, only the wide-open path to victory.

It hadn’t anticipated to have a broken wing on its day of triumph, but if this was the only minor complication to happen during the Scheme of the Phoenix, Fires had no complaints. Rather than flying up to its castle and letting its workers behold it’s majestic and terrible true form, it would have to settle for a controlled fall. It would get over its disappointment the moment it could curl up around the fireplace with its prize in its lap.

Fires took off, wings angled as aerodynamically as possible to glide down, down, down the tunnel. At some point in the middle of the fall, reality seemed to hiccup, like the missing block on Ladybones Road. Fires’ stomach flopped in its torso as it felt itself jerked into moving up rather than down.

Even the laws of physics were obeying Fires’ command!

Fires tumbled to a landing on the ceiling, or the floor, whichever it was deciding to be. It rolled over to keep the brunt of impact off Alexander. A brief check revealed he was still safe; he’d barely been jostled at all with how tightly Fires held him. Fires was quick to wrap its wings back around him, keeping its hoard snug and secure. No one, no one would take London from it.

And there! There, rising before Fires’ very eyes. Its throne, at last, just as it had envisioned it! Fires’ claws and wing thumbs scrabbled on the floor as it dragged itself forward. It hadn’t expected to be so dizzy, but they did say emotion could be overwhelming. Besides, Fires had transported a city through the earth! It was allowed to be exhausted!

Fires’ throne, at long last. No one else at the top but Fires. No Bazaar. No Masters. With the last of its strength, Fires heaved itself up to its rightful place.

London tucked right where she belonged under its firm and guiding hand. Fires would protect her. It would treat her better than anyone else ever had or ever could. Fires was the only one who saw her true potential. Together, they would rule forevermore over the most perfect, efficient, productive factories the world had ever seen.

Fires trilled with utter, giddy delight. Now that it was in its sanctum and away from the eyes of the public, it could revel in its success. It dipped its head under its wings where Alexander was still sleeping (Fires had had to subdue him for his own safety during the transportation of the city, yes, that was why he was unconscious) and nuzzled against him. Safe and sound and obedient. Fires’ feet tightened on the base of its throne; it rocked and purred as it cradled him, occasionally pausing to lick a glistening patch of dust from his hair.

They had been through an unspeakable ordeal, but they had made it. The view of London from Fires’ throne was worth any sacrifice. Look at how she blossomed with its leadership.

Distantly, Fires heard the crowds cheering. Something shook the earth. Were those fireworks? Fires purred louder. The people loved their leader, the one who gave them work, the one who brought the light.

Fires’ ears twitched. No. No, those weren’t fireworks at all! There was an assault on the palace! Fires only had the time to blink as the wall in front of it crumbled, and bright, white light flooded in. Who were these? Agents of the White? Fires hissed as it was blinded, but it was not defenseless. It would take far more than a petty Judgement to defeat Fires now that it was King!

Fires spat a slew of burning sigils and wrapped its body tighter than ever around London. They thought they could remove it from its throne? How wrong they were! Mr Fires would show them. Its fur puffed up as it made itself bigger until its head brushed against the ceiling. Its good wing extended to full length, the other keeping Alexander hidden away, as it bared all its teeth and screamed a barrage of light.

The enemy light subsided in seconds, replaced by familiar, soothing shadow peppered with the glow of gas lamps. Fires victorious laughter danced and sparkled through space. Such a pathetic excuse for an attack. Watch them try to oppose the Law! Fires was the Law!

Wait a moment, what was that, now? Were the shadows moving too? Oh for the love of—how had the Liberationists followed London? Fires thought every last one of those villains had been burned at the stake! No matter. No matter at all. It would conquer them just as it had conquered and would conquer everyone who dared oppose its regime.

One of the approaching figures dared reach out to touch it, and Fires moved quick as a flash of lightning to bite their sword in half and throw them off its tower. Thunder rumbled in its wake. Pathetic fools!

Let them come. Let them all come. Mr Fires held immensurable dominion. They could never steal its city away. They could never remove it from its throne! They could never, ever again deny Mr Fires' true mastery of the Light.

Find the illustration here.

Chapter Text

“Mr Spices, you stop that this instant! You’re doing nothing but agitating things! We have enough of a mess to clean up without a correspondence related Tragedy!”

Mr Spices snapped its jaw shut at the interjection from Mr Hearts. “What was Mr Fires doing with a chemical factory anyway? The trade belongs to me! I’m only taking back what is rightfully mine.”

“You can have this debatement later, when there is not a public relations crisis!” Mr Pages hollered from outside, where it stood blocking the entrance with its bulk, commanding a small army of neddy men who had formed a barricade around the ruins of the factory. It snapped its head back to snarl at a reporter who’d come too close. “No entrying allowed by unauthorizated personnel!”

Never far away when matters of the Bazaar were afoot, the clay men Jasper and Frank lumbered around, aiding in crowd control after they’d used their hammers to knock down the sewer wall where Mr Fires’ cries had been heard.

Mr Fires hung by its ankles from a low utility pipe, the rest of its body slouched on the ground and wrapped in its wings. It lifted its head to hiss in reply to Mr Spices, though it could only produce a few wisps of steam. Mr Spices, stooping to lows even for a Curator, continued to argue the trade dispute despite Mr Fires’ lack of mental presence. Orange sigils bounced in the air, and Mr Fires swiped at them with its wing thumb.

“Really, you’re going to argue over ownership of a pile of rubble?” Mr Hearts shook its head. “Give it a rest. There are more important immediate concerns.”

“It’s the principle!” Mr Spices hissed. “Who knows how many other secret encroachments upon my domain Mr Fires has!”

Mr Iron, meanwhile, had found a loose lead pipe and was prodding Mr Fires, attempting to nudge it off its perch. Mr Fires shrieked at the provocation and grabbed the pipe with its teeth; a tug of war ensued in which Mr Iron managed to jerk the pipe away, and Mr Fires laughed as if it had won. Mr Iron jabbed it harder.

“Be careful with that,” Mr Wines ordered, though it showed no intention of moving from where it leaned comfortably against the wall with a chalice clutched in its hand. “As much We’d love to see it, it would be counterproductive for Mr Fires to be compromised more than it already is.”

“Are you going to do anything to help—” Mr Hearts glared— “or are you just going to stand there?”

“We are doing something.” Mr Wines cheerfully inclined its glass. “We are supervising.”

“If I had an echo every time I heard that,” Mr Spices muttered, its tongue metaphorically and physically dripping venom. “It’s alright, Your Majesty. Just stand there while us peons do the real work.”

“All those fragrances and flavors,” Mr Wines stated witheringly between long sips of wine, “and yet you’ve never been anything but bitter.”

Mr Spices dropped its jaw with smoldering affront. Mr Iron shook with silent laughter. Mr Fires growled at the splatter of sizzling saliva that hit the floor and retreated further under its wings, muttering something about a throne.

Mr Pages’ violant-tipped quill snapped in its hand. It had had quite enough of its colleagues’ nonsense. “Can you silencify yourselves in there for one minute? Some of us are trying to think!” In the moment of distraction, the same reporter attempted to move forward again. Long out of patience, Mr Pages motioned for two neddy men to take the reporter away.

When the clamor arose two nights ago in Wolfstack Docks, the first assumption was that a ship had crashed. Accidents happened sometimes, but it wasn’t of concern to any Master who didn’t have stakes in the industry. Therefore, Mr Iron was the first to investigate and report back that the true situation was much more dire. Anarchists had destroyed a factory, which was infuriating, though not unusual, and again would have only concerned the business of whichever Master owned the factory if circumstances were ordinary.

The fact that Mr Fires had not immediately reacted to a personal attack could only mean one thing: Mr Fires was trapped inside during the explosion. Even a situation like this wouldn’t have warranted such an immediate response from the Masters; their kind were notoriously difficult to kill, and there was an acceptable time to wait before assuming someone was in dire need of rescue.

The situation required the special attention of the Tragedy Commission.

The bomb had utilized the red science, but whoever had rigged it either was a criminally incompetent novice, an intentional saboteur, or had taken too much inspiration from the inventions of Hell. Although the blast was contained, it was too dangerous to explore what the insides of the factory looked like. Even without knowing how much reality had melted, it was clear the ruins could be classified as nothing short of a Tragedy. Mr Pages arrived posthaste on the scene to supervise the execution of the Tragedy Procedures, decide if new Procedures needed to be drawn up, and mobilize the Ministry of Public Decency to condemn the site and keep the press out. And investigation of the red science was of utmost interest to Mr Hearts.

To make the situation even more complex, none of the other Masters even knew this factory existed. Officially, this was a warehouse for electrical wire parts. Officially, Mr Fires did not own any chemical plants. It did have interests in Station VIII, as many of them did, but to have a hidden industry in London was blatantly insulting to Mr Spices.

It was a surprise to everyone that Mr Wines was on the scene while Mr Spices was also attending. Mr Wines claimed it was obligated to attend when the Tragedy Commission convened, but no one could prove if it was really only here to laugh at Mr Fires after Mr Fires burned its archives. Having both Wines and Spices here was bound to cause an inevitable fight, but in event of a Tragedy, it was essential to have all hands on deck, especially with how their ranks had recently been weakened. Though no one would ever admit it, the truth was, the Bazaar couldn’t afford to lose another Master.

Mr Stones was told who was stuck, laughed for a long time, and refused to attend. And the Efficient Commissioner was still abroad on business, which left Mr Pages all the more irritable.

Which brought them to this morning.

“As much as We hate to agree with Our colleague—” Mr Wines spat the word like it was a stinging insect— “we do need a plan.” It took a long sip before approaching Mr Iron and pointedly ignoring Mr Spices. “You always were more sensible than certain others present, Mr Iron. What do you motion?”

Mr Iron drew a sword to scratch letters into the stone floor. “MR FIRES’ INJURIES HAVE MADE IT COMBATIVE. REASONING HAS FAILED. WE MUST SEDATE IT IN ORDER TO TRANSPORT IT TO THE BAZAAR AND ASSESS THE EXTENT OF SAID INJURIES.”

“Pity we can’t leave it here,” Mr Spices whined, spitting another petty insulting sigil at Mr Fires, who had almost closed its eyes but was now riled up and hissing again.

Mr Wines could not restrain itself any longer. Its wings unfurled to their full length as it whirled on Mr Spices and spat in purple sigils. “Must you constantly antagonize?”

Mr Spices doubled back for space to extend its own wings and fire back. The two began circling each other, each attempting to appear bigger than the other, though it was obvious when Mr Spices was at least a foot shorter than Mr Wines. Sigils clashed between them, filling the room with lightning and smoke, until Wines had Spices pinned up against the opposite wall. Mr Spices squealed and kicked much like an irate laundry pile. Mr Wines showed no intent of loosening its grip, rather, intent upon strangling its washing.

Mr Iron leapt forward with its sword, forcing the blade between the two and wiggling it until they were forced to separate or bleed.

Mr Spices landed on the ground with a squeak, chittering to itself about how uncalled for this was as it collected its bundle of robes and gathered itself. Mr Wines retreated to sulk in the corner, dodging a swipe from Mr Fires as it bent to retrieve its dropped chalice. It procured a bottle from its robes, refilled its cup, and drained it in one go before refilling it again.

“You knew Mr Spices would be here,” Mr Hearts accused. “Why did you come if it was going to cause a problem?”

“We couldn’t trust the lot of you to properly oversee things. For the greater good, We set aside Our ego—”

“Your ego,” Mr Spices wheezed as it dragged itself to its feet, “is bigger than the galaxies you claim to have ruled!”

Before Mr Wines could retort, Mr Fires took advantage of Mr Wines’ distraction to bite its ankle. Mr Wines whirled around with a shriek to shake off its teeth. Mr Fires shrieked back before burying its face back under its wings.

“What on earth was it manufacturing here?” Mr Hearts mused, poking at Mr Fires’ shoulder with its foot and pulling back before it too could be bitten. “I’m surprised this mix of compounds didn’t kill it, or worse.”

“Playing with things far outside its field of expertise,” Mr Spices spat. “It deserves what it got.”

“Just figure out how to remove the package!” Mr Pages snarled before putting on the most pleasant face it could manage to give a few words to a Ministry-appointed newsman.

“Simple.” Mr Spices removed vials of powder from concealed pockets. “I happen to be carrying a somnolent—”

“Mr Fires is acting this way because of drugs,” Mr Hearts retorted. “We don’t need to add more.”

“IT IS TIME TO RESORT TO FORCEFUL METHODS,” Mr Iron scrawled, twirling the sword in its hand to aim the pommel at Mr Fires’ head.

“No!” the three other Masters cried at once.

“YOU ARE ALL NO FUN.”

The discussion dissolved into a great deal of chittering, with Mr Iron tamping the ground with its sword to emphasize its own points. Even Mr Fires, disoriented as it was, added its voice, hissing at random moments and trying to swipe at the bottoms of others’ robes. Nothing in the world was able to bring the Masters of the Bazaar together like an argument.

Mr Pages’ increasingly high-pitched voice pierced the cacophony as it gestured violently at the growing crowd. “Just do something, posthastifically!”

Mr Wines stepped forward, looking very smug indeed. “While you all were wasting time arguing—”

“Were you not also arguing?” Mr Hearts cried.

“Here we go again,” Mr Spices moaned. “You act like you’re so much better than everyone else—”

Mr Iron stepped between the two again, glaring daggers.

Mr Wines paused, and when it wasn’t interrupted again, it spoke. “—We were formulating a plan. We don’t know how We didn’t think of it immediately.” Mr Wines leaned closer to Mr Fires, a hand raised over its forehead with purpose. “We will use Our power over dreams to put Mr Fires to sleep for the journey.”

Before anyone else could argue, purple sparks flew as Mr Wines snapped its claw in front of Mr Fires’ face. Normally, it wouldn’t have been so easy to use its magic against another curator—if that were the case, Mr Wines would have silenced its colleagues millennia ago—but Mr Fires was already so out of it that it fell quiet in seconds. Its eyes blinked shut, and the tiniest tip of its tongue flicked over its lips as it dreamed the most pleasant dreams that an industrialist bat could dream.

“Well, would you look at that. Mr Fires is sedated.” Mr Wines turned to its colleagues, gesturing grandiosely. “No need to thank Us for Our solution. We will forgive your insinuations that We didn’t belong here.” 

“I could have done that!” Mr Spices howled. “You have no reason at all to be here!”

Mr Wines busied itself pouring a celebratory glass. “Oh, yes. We would have loved to have seen what you tried with your little toys—”

Before tensions could reach nuclear levels, Mr Pages poked its entire head inside the room and spoke in the Correspondence to prevent even the neddy men from understanding it. “I will silence both of you myself if you get into one more argument! It’s already going to be hard enough to censor this without the humans asking questions about your shenaniganry!”

So exhausted was Mr Fires that even its ankles slipped from its perch. It crashed to the ground in a heap of leathery wings.

“Quickly, someone cover it. We cannot let the humans see its wings.” Mr Hearts rushed forward, gesturing to Mr Spices, who removed a few of its larger shawls.

Before they were able to secure Mr Fires, its head lolled to the side. Ignoring its drooling tongue and peering under its chin, there was a clump of dark hair that didn’t match the rest of its coloring.

Mr Hearts looked to Mr Wines, who looked to Mr Iron, who looked to Mr Spices, who looked to Mr Pages, who had poked its head inside again to investigate the cause of the silence.

Gingerly, Mr Wines stepped forward to peel back Mr Fires’ outer wing. All five of them hissed when they saw the injuries that marred its inner wing. Even more gingerly, Mr Hearts pulled the other wing aside, already muttering plans to itself of the science that could mend it faster.

All five of their jaws dropped when they saw what Mr Fires had wrapped in its arms.

It couldn’t be. Mr Fires? With a human? Mr Fires, of all the Masters?

In shocked silence, Mr Hearts and Mr Wines carefully let Fires’ wings back into place. Mr Spices hastily wrapped it in the coverings.

The silence was broken when Mr Hearts began to laugh. “After what it said to me. I always knew it was a hypocrite.”

“The situation just became much more urgent,” Mr Wines announced. “Humans are far more fragile than us. This one needs immediate care.”

“As ill as Mr Fires is,” Mr Spices mused, “it’s a marvel the human is still alive. It is alive, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Mr Hearts. “I can smell when meat is dead.”

“WE CAN DETERMINE WHY MR FIRES HAD A HUMAN LATER.” In smaller font, Mr Iron added with a silent laugh of its own, “AND IT WILL NEVER HEAR THE END OF THIS.”

“To the Bazaar, as quickly as we can,” Mr Wines ordered, hoisting the bundle which contained Mr Fires up by its feet. “We cannot let the human die here. Surely, this is a piece of the situation we can salvage. Most of all, we cannot let another Tragedy occur! Do you know how much more paperwork that would be?”

All five of them shuddered at the thought.

Mr Hearts lifted the end of the bundle which contained Mr Fires’ head. Mr Spices started to make an excuse that it couldn’t do heavy lifting with its delicate condition, but when three voices snapped that they never expected help from Spices’ idle personality, it shuffled in sulking silence beside Mr Hearts. Mr Iron stoically brought up the rear.

Mr Pages stormed outside ahead of the group. “Out, away, all of you! This entire block is nowmediately and indefinitely closed to the public, by direct orders of the Masters of the Bazaar! Anyone caught trespassing will wish they were only sentencificated to New Newgate Prison!”

#

“Don’t think we’ve seen something like this before, have we, Jasper?”

“Don’t think we have, Frank.”

“Boss all cuddled up with a human like he were the deed to London.”

“Not just any human, were it, Frank?”

“Not just any human at all, Jasper. Our old friend.”

“After all what happened between him and the Boss. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Interesting, indeed.”

“Well, Frank, suppose it would only be friendly for us to stick around and make sure our old friend was alright.”

“He was kind enough to invite us to his wedding, wasn’t he, Jasper? We’d only be repaying that kindness.”

“Lovely ceremony it was, Frank. Still get choked up sometimes thinking back.”

“We didn’t have any plans this week anyway, did we Jasper?”

“We do not, Frank.”

“And it would only be right to check in on the Boss while we was there.”

“Always wondered when old Fires would go mad.”

“Reckon we find out if it’s alright. Sure would complicate our jobs if it wasn’t.”

“Sure would please old Stones, though.”

“Curious, indeed, isn’t it, Jasper?”

“Curious, indeed, Frank. Curious, indeed.”

Chapter Text

Alex struggled to surface to awareness beneath a crushing weight of pain.

His skin stung and itched with chemical burns, like ants were crawling underneath. His body felt so heavy against him that his blood must been replaced with liquid lead. Against the insurmountable weight of his own skull, he tried to move, but at the slightest effort, his muscles screamed like they’d been torn into ribbons, and a cleaver split his broken ankle like a nutshell. His heart pounded with such vigor he feared his ribs would split, and his head whirled out of control through the rough eddies of half-consciousness.

It took him very long to realize he wasn’t moving at all.

Why wasn’t he moving? Where was the soft thing that rocked him to sleep, kept him warm and snug, and held him high up and away from the agony that weighed him down?

Alex gasped and forced his eyes open, like he’d woken from a nightmare. His vision was nearly black with fatigue, but with heavy blinking, he found himself laying in a bed big enough to fit four people, the blankets and drapes a rich red hue. Lamps glittered in odd corners of the room. He wasn’t sure if his vision was still spiraling, or if the walls really were rippling with a faint pulse. It was so quiet that his ears rung. Or was that sound too coming from the walls?

Not the factory. This was not the factory.

Then where was he?

Why was he alone? This wasn’t right. He was going to die if he was alone. He needed it. They needed each other. Fires would never let him fall. It never let him fall. It wouldn’t drop him to suffer like this; it wouldn’t have abandoned him unless it was in trouble. Where was it? He had to find it.

Alex channeled all of his energy to his voice. Just one little noise, one tiny cry for help, and Fires would hear with those big ears and swoop in to pick him up and rescue him. But his throat was raw and dry and useless, like he’d gargled sand. No sound passed through his lips. Desperate, waterless tears pricked his equally parched eyes.

He glanced down his chin where his limbs were sprawled. He tried to wiggle a finger or a foot, but beyond how wholly he ached, he couldn’t feel his body at all. This should have been troubling, but his mind was as numb as his legs.

Below, the red duvet was covered by sterile white towels. His left leg was held still by belts and prongs and propped up on something flat. Wicked looking instruments glistened on a tray in the corner of his eye. He blinked a few times, unsure if the shadow that loomed over him was real or a specter of his fading vision.

No, it couldn’t have been real. If it was real, that meant the other thing Alex saw was real, too. Where his left leg was strapped down, it was also stretched unnaturally long. His foot dangled limp at a dreadful angle that could only be achieved if he didn’t have an ankle. Where the joint should be was a bulging, stringy mass that stained the towels red. The morbid picture of spaghetti crossed his mind at the sight.

He closed his eyes to forget the image. None of this was really happening. This was a waking dream, nothing more. He couldn’t move, speak, or see clearly because he was dreaming, and if Alex knew one thing, it was how to deal with bad dreams. It would go away if he just calmed down and focused, and then he’d wake up for real, in someplace safe. He just had to breathe slowly and wait...

Alex felt a presence behind him. He nearly whined with relief before realizing he didn’t smell smoke. This wasn’t Fires. He smelled something sweet, fresh, earthy—soil? No, he couldn’t be back here—

An unseen hand gripped his chin. Whiskers brushed against his ear as a high voice hissed, “You aren’t supposed to be awake yet.”

Before Alex could bite or even scream, the hand squeezed to force his jaw open, and a spoon of a somewhat lemony tasting substance was pushed into his mouth. Alex had no choice but to swallow. He snarled the moment he was free, trying again to sit up, but whatever he’d been dosed with was already taking effect. A smooth, cool sensation spread from the center of his chest, stealing him away from his pain and making him feel very light indeed, lighter than the blankets, lighter than a cloud.

He floated up with the clouds back into a gauzy, deep sleep. 

Alex woke slowly, bobbing in and out of sleep. His limbs were heavy, and his head was light. He had the sense he had woken from a nightmare, but he couldn’t remember it, and the drifting, pleasant half-dream that tugged him on its slow, lazy currents was irresistibly enticing.

His brain, as always, had other ideas. The moment Alex became aware he was awake, he was wide awake. He grumbled and rubbed his eyes. Couldn’t he sleep in just once? Of all days, he needed it today. A dull, warm ache lingered under his skin, and his mouth was painfully dry. Was he sick or something?

His hand moved across soft sheets. Strange, he never remembered buying fabric quite so expensive-feeling—

Memories came flooding back.

He was not where he was.

And where was he now?

How did he get here? Why was he alone?

Alex became distressingly aware of something wrapped around his left leg. A snake? His own rogue sock? No, it wasn’t a sock, because Alex became aware that he wasn’t wearing clothes except for his undershorts. How did that happen? One question at a time.

Whatever was on his leg, he tried to kick it off, but it held tight as a manacle. Oh for the love of—he’d survived hell and back, only to be arrested when he got out? That was just his luck.

But no, he wasn’t in New Newgate. They would never have bought such nice sheets for prisoners. The thing around his leg wasn’t metal, either. It felt like... a hand.

Alex took a deep breath to pay attention to his surroundings. The all-encompassing thrum of magnetic anticipation. The faint scent of ammonia. The pervasive sense of nostalgia for golden memories which were not one’s own. There was only one place he could be.

His throat heavy with dread, Alex opened his eyes to see the Master leaning over him, its claws clamped over his ankle.

Despite his blurry vision, he immediately knew this wasn’t Fires. Its silhouette was bulkier, and its presence didn’t heat his face, nor did its eyes smolder as they bore into Alex. This Master’s eyes were red, but the color was more like jeweled fruits than embers. Its gaze gave Alex the sense that he was a specimen about to be dissected, or a particularly appetizing dish under an avid fork. He didn’t know which metaphor was worse.

Alex tried to jerk his leg away, but the Master held tight. “You’re finally awake. Good. Please, relax.”

Nothing it could say would stop Alex from trying to wriggle free. Still only semi-aware, Alex could only think to ask one thing. “Where’s Fires?” His voice burned with disuse. He turned his head as far as he could to try to see behind him. “It—I—”

“Relax,” the Master repeated, leaning very close indeed as its other hand came down behind his head to hold it still. “Your body has been through quite the shock.”

“Get the hell away from me!” Alex cried, amongst other, more colorful things. His heart raced. He was warm, but not safe. He wasn’t alone, but he didn’t want whoever this was. Some deep instinct inside him only wanted one thing in his panic. “Where’s Fires?”

A glass of water was pressed to his lips before he could react. More of it spilled down his bare chest than made it into his mouth as he choked against it. It did feel nice to drink—water tasted sweet on his cracked throat and took the edge off his headache—but Alex’s face burned with indignity. Couldn’t it have just handed him a cup? Couldn’t it have at least asked? Somehow, the Masters still managed to surprise Alex with how useless they were.

The Master set aside the empty cup without turning from him. “Better, now?”

Alex grunted and wiped his face. “Where. Is. Fires.”

The Master sighed, like it was dealing with an inquisitive toddler. “Mr Fires is resting in its own quarters. We rescued both of you.”

“How—”

“You were in a sewer pipe that ran parallel to the factory’s lower levels. Neither of you were conscious. We extracted you and brought you here to assess the situation, per protocol.” The Master tilted its head. “Do you not remember?”

Alex shook his head. What was the last thing he remembered? Pushing Fires into the water. Despite the situation, he couldn’t keep from snorting at the memory.

Hearts mistook the sound for distress. “No need to work yourself up.” It tapped his leg, claws long enough to stretch from his ankle almost to his knee. “Stress isn’t good for the organs. Makes them gristly.”

Let go of me, you creep. Let me see Fires this instant, Alex wanted to demand, but he bit his tongue. By now, he’d recovered enough from the shock of waking up to control his reactions.

He closed his eyes to think. He could feel the Master breathing on him, but at least he didn’t have to look at it.

Suppose if Fires is, then all the Masters are giant bats. This was all very new to him, but it didn’t change much. He still wasn’t afraid of them.

No, Alex decided, he didn’t want to see Fires. He didn’t. Why would he? They had both survived, so now they had no reason to be friendly with each other anymore. They didn’t owe each other anything else. The moment Fires was awake, it would be hunting down the revolutionaries who planted the bomb, or taking out its anger by ordering stricter enforcement at its sweatshops, or signing off on a new factory to replace what it lost. Alex hated Fires for all it did and represented. He shouldn’t—didn’t want to visit it now, and he was sure Fires felt the same. It hated him just as much. The factory was a whole separate world. Now that they were free, now that they were in the open where they could be seen, there was no relationship between them.

Because Alex was still for a few minutes while he was thinking, the Master over him relented and stood straight again, though it still hadn’t let go of his leg. “Feeling calmer, now? I told you, you’re safe.”

They had very different definitions of safe. Injured, in an indeterminate chamber of the Bazaar, with a hungry-looking Master refusing to let go of him? Right, safe, just like the police told him he was safe when they picked him up off the streets and took him to the industrial school. Alex didn’t know which Master this was, but the way it looked at him, he wanted nothing more than to run.

When he continued to say nothing, the Master filled the silence, as if reading his mind. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced before. You may know me as Mr Hearts. I’ve been tasked with supervising your recovery.”

Alex tensed. The Butcher. That explained everything. He really wanted to run now.

Just when he was about to jerk his legs again, Hearts lifted his covers from below to show him his foot. Alex gasped. In the confusion of the moment, he’d forgotten his injury at all because it didn’t hurt. It looked like it had never been broken. No swelling, no bruising. Alex wiggled it in consideration.

“No need to thank me for repairing your ankle. It was aggravated like you’d tried walking on it for a long time—” Hearts’ tongue flicked, and Alex imagined it raising an eyebrow— “though the solution was unchallenging. An apprentice could have fixed it in their sleep.” Why did it sound disappointed? Wasn’t an easy repair a good thing? It went on to mutter, “We pluck you fresh from a meltdown of the red science and you come to my lab with nothing more interesting than a common break.”

Alex didn’t know what it was talking about. All he knew was that he was angry. Sorry, next time I’ll be sure to fling myself into more danger to sate your sadistic curiosity! Would you like to see a second set of arms? Perhaps a melted ribcage? Bloody hell. He would have rather been scooped up by the special constables. Is Hearts the reason I’m not even wearing pants? Alex didn’t even want to think about that. All he could wonder about were the choices in his life that led to him repeatedly getting himself in such outlandish situations. 

“You may have some lingering stiffness, but it should fade in due time.” Hearts’ hand crept up his leg finger by finger like a heavy, bony spider until it closed again around his thigh. Alex squirmed as it squeezed. “Tender,” it muttered before looking back to Alex. “Yes, you’ll make a full recovery.”

He sat up as far as he was able to with it pinning him down. “You’re right, I feel better already. I’m fine. So let me leave. You must be busy.”

“Ah.” It wagged a claw. “Not yet. You went through quite the ordeal, and I’d be very curious to hear all about it.”

It spoke like it wasn’t giving Alex a choice. Luckily, he had a lifetime of experience of not talking to cops.

“But we have plenty of time to talk. Before we get into details, your health must be attended to.” It retrieved from the depths of its robes an oversized pen and an amusingly small notepad. “You may reply with a simple yes or no to each inquiry. Are you experiencing aches? Dizziness? Excessive melancholy? Confounding of the senses? Burning beneath your skin?”

Hearts prattled on. Alex didn’t know what half the things it listed meant, but he nodded no to each symptom, even if he did have a headache, and even if his heart was tight with... some feeling or other.

“Just one more question. You came to me absolutely covered in chemical residue. While I’ve cleaned you thoroughly—” ew— “you absorbed a nontrivial amount. Do you remember any effects the substances had on you?”

This question was safe enough. “Messed with feelings, made me dizzy.”

Hearts made a note. “Consistent with our predictions. I’ve consulted with Mr Spices, who estimates you may feel adverse effects for a few days.” It set aside its notes and twiddled with its claws, eyes bright and ambitious. “I’d be more than happy to keep you under observation in that time period—”

“No. I told you, I’m fine.”

“Are you? I don’t think so. I think you aren’t thinking clearly from the drugs you inhaled.” Hearts idly traced a wrinkle in the sheets over his hip. “Your kind is so fragile, after all.” Alex’s vision was stable enough by now that he was certain he saw its shoulders getting bigger as it got excited. “Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, your place on the chain makes you all the more fascinating to study—” Hearts deflated again, mastering itself— “but I have said too much already. I digress.” Its claws tightened, and he bit back a yelp. “You have barely slept, and haven’t eaten, in almost two days. This is dangerous for a creature like you.”

“Then let me go home so I can rest,” Alex growled, shaking his leg beneath the sheets despite futility. He wasn’t an exhibit to play with.

Unsurprisingly, Alex was ignored. Hearts turned without releasing its grasp to grab something off a shelf behind his head. A tray with a bowl of syrupy fruit and a plate of indistinct meat in gravy was pushed into his lap. Alex raised a dubious eyebrow. Did the Masters really expect him to trust them?

“Not hungry.”

But he knew as he said it that it was a lie. His body ached with the familiar hollowness that had followed him through most of his life. He hadn’t been this hungry since he’d left the Surface, but he was no stranger to food shortages. He could wait a few more hours to eat on his own terms.

Hearts inclined its head, unimpressed, as it slithered a claw along his waistband. Alex stifled his discomfort. He wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of seeing him react.

“You were stuck for almost two days without sustenance. If I let you leave before I was sure you’d had something to eat, I would be failing not only in my task of ensuring your health, but in my Masterly duties of ensuring London’s people are fed.”

You’re already failing at that, Alex wanted to say, but even he knew better than to argue in a vulnerable position. He didn’t think Hearts would hurt him, but he didn’t like the implication of what it may do instead. He was still wet from the spilled water.

Alex picked up his spoon and had a small bite of fruit, glaring all the while. Apple, or perhaps pear? It didn’t matter. It was sweet, and Alex was hungry.

He wasn’t in a position to fight, he reminded himself as he ate. He did need strength, and the sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could leave. And it wasn’t hard to hurry. He ate as fast as, well, as if he hadn’t had food in days.

Hearts never took its eyes off him as he ate. He was distracted enough with hunger to mostly ignore it, but he was keenly aware of its hand sliding up to rest over his abdomen. Why.

The moment he’d finished eating, Hearts clicked its tongue and reached for his tray. “Would you like more? There is plenty.”

“No.” He’d cook when he got home.

Hearts set aside the tray and let its other hand come to rest on his shoulder. It leaned in close, inches from Alex’s face, so close that he could see its nostrils flaring as it smelled him. This close, Alex could smell it in turn: damp, earthy, and slightly pungent—the scent of a ripe, overflowing orchard. An undercurrent of something left a metallic taste in the back of Alex’s throat.

Its tongue flickered for an unsettlingly long time, revealing rows of fangs. “Hm. Well, if you don’t want more to eat, then I suppose it’s time for us to talk.”

What did it expect him to do, spill all his secrets? Neither he nor Hearts were that stupid. But he knew one thing: he wouldn’t be here if the situation wasn’t sensitive, which gave him certain advantages. If the Masters wanted to hurt him rather than cover this entire thing up, they would have never fixed his ankle.

“What reason did you have for being in that factory?”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes, I go places.”  

Hearts growled. “Did you know Mr Fires would be there?”

“No.”

“That must have been a pleasant surprise for you.” He could have almost sworn Hearts winked. “How exactly do you feel about it?”

Alex chose a few favorite words that would never pass the censors of the Ministry of Public Decency.

He was confused when Hearts laughed in response. “Really? Do you not recall how you woke up shouting for Mr Fires?”

Alex’s face grew very warm indeed. His scowl deepened. “Hey, I thought we already discussed the lingering effects of the chemicals!” 

Hearts snorted again. “Don’t you know that they only exacerbate what is al—” Hearts stopped and shook with silent laughter, apparently deciding it was funnier not to tell him. Alex hated when people were intentionally vague. Every second this went on, he wanted even more to harm it. “And you don’t remember how you and Mr Fires escaped?”

“I already told you I don’t!”

The friendly lilt faded from Hearts’ voice the longer Alex continued to be combative. It seemed to be saying, What aren’t you telling me? “Don’t think we don’t know about you. Mr Pages pulled your criminal record. Although, curiously enough, it wasn’t stored in Concord Square where it was supposed to be. I wonder why Mr Fires checked out your file—not a thin file, may I say—and was keeping it in its office.” Claws moved past the edge of the blanket in his lap and tickled up his ribs, each warm finger wider than a bone. “Just who are you to be so delectable to my colleague?”

Alex paused, and it wasn’t from the thing grabbing him. Why would Fires want that? He supposed he was of special interest to it after the whole affair of the hybrid, but things had been quiet; Fires didn’t know the truth that the child had lived. Alex hadn’t been cooperative with it, but with its personality, it must have had dozens of other people like Alex antagonizing it through the fallen cities. He couldn’t have been that special to it. Although snippets of things it had said in their shared drugged haze hovered concerningly on the edge of Alex’s consciousness...

Mr Hearts’ shrill voice brought him back to himself. “You are a difficult one, aren’t you, Alexander? Alright. We do not need to talk about your history with Mr Fires, or with the law.” It was now preoccupied with the scars across his chest. It scowled, tongue dripping with disdain. “Nor do we need to discuss your medical history. But if I may say, if I were the one to perform this operation, you would not have such scars—”

This was the boiling point. Alex had had enough. He snarled, smacked at Hearts’ roaming hand, and twisted to try to free himself from the grip on his arm. “Mind your own damn business!”

He might as well have been wrestling with a leathery ton of bricks, but Hearts, genuinely surprised by his outburst, recoiled. If it was Fires, its glare would have melted Alex by now. Like a curtain falling, all of the Master’s pleasantries faded away. “We only need to discuss the last forty-eight hours.” It touched a single finger to the soft spot in his neck, like a locomotive coming to a stop an inch from his face. “Tell me what happened inside that factory.”

Despite everything he’d suffered, he refused to divulge any secrets of the revs. He understood too little of the science to explain in any case. But he knew he had to say something if he wanted to leave as soon as possible. Words were terribly difficult. They jumbled the page when you tried to read, and they scrambled your mind when you tried to speak. But Alex didn’t have to say much. He didn’t even have to tell a lie.

“Don’t remember most of it because of the drugs. Dark and cold inside. Blast made it hard to find an exit. Whatever weird science Fires was doing there made it worse more than anything. It had some theory about how the bomb worked, but I didn’t understand it. You should ask Fires instead of me.”

The finger pressed into his neck ever so slightly. Hearts shook with restraint; it could crush him if he so much as swallowed incorrectly. “I will talk to Mr Fires later. Right now, I wish to hear what you experienced. If you truly have so little to say, I certainly have means with which to jog memory—”

“There were lots of chemicals in the boiler room,” Alex stuttered on. “Mixed up. Explosive. That’s where we both got hurt. Lots of rubble.” Alex internally smirked thinking again of the pool. “Don’t remember anything else before waking up here.”

Hearts dragged a knuckle up his neck and slowly, silently uncurled its finger to tilt his chin up. When it spoke, it’s voice was deadly quiet. “You aren’t telling me what I want to know. Your kind is small. Overwhelmed by toxins with the fabric of reality unweaving around you, how did you survive so unscathed? You should not have.”

A cold feeling caught in Alex’s throat. It was right, and he didn’t know the answer to its question. Fundamentally, he was only alive now because of Mr Fires. But how could he possibly comprehend why it had protected him?

“You’ll have to ask Fires,” Alex repeated, swallowing hard to cover how his voice wavered. No need to say anything about what had transpired between them or alert the other Masters to a potential debt. But he told the truth. “I told you, I didn’t know anything. It was the one to figure out how to escape.”

Hearts regarded him for a long, tense moment. “You truly have no memory of how Mr Fires got you to that sewer pipe?”

Alex had an increasing, dreadful suspicion, but he’d take it to his grave. “If you don’t like my answers, you can shut up and shove your questions.”

Hearts seemed to smirk before leaning back, shoulders shrinking as it shook with a sticky laugh. “Then I suppose I will have to ask Mr Fires.” Its eyes glittered like ripe berries. “Yes, there is much I must discuss with Mr Fires.”

Pitting the Masters against each other was usually a good strategy for these sorts of situations. Alex didn’t know what Hearts found so funny—he had the strong sense he was being left out of crucial information—but whatever he’d said, its temper had abated, and he didn’t want to ask any questions and prolong this affair any longer.

Hearts let go of him all at once, retreating in a writhing mass of vermillion and claws. Alex fell back onto the pillow with relief. The Master stalked away to retrieve something from a closet, tutting all the while about humans and their weak memories, which turned to chittering about some “preservation” experiment Alex didn’t even want to understand.

A bundle of clothing was dropped onto the bed. “You are free to go. I will be waiting on the other side of the door. Once you are dressed, I will escort you out.” With a final, lingering squeeze to his shoulder which may have been good-natured if it came from literally anyone else, Hearts left him alone, or as alone as one could be in the Bazaar.

Alex sat up and shivered a bit as the sheets slid off him, and the awareness of how far he was from a certain warmth. No. Not that. He didn’t care. He was only chilled because he wasn’t wearing clothes, and he scowled at the pile of what Hearts gave him. Everything was a gaudy red that one only saw in music hall curtains. Alex wore plain clothes, not whatever this was, though out of everything the Masters did, this was the one thing Alex doubted was intentionally malicious. A petticoat with a pair of trousers? Six pairs of socks? Hearts had no clue what it was doing. 

He took the trousers and one pair of socks, found a shirt, and left the rest in a heap. Fortunately, his shoes were tucked beside his bed. He wished he had a cloak, but he wasn’t going to wear any more of these layers than he had to.

Alex stood slowly. He was a bit lightheaded, but his legs held his weight. His muscles were stiff from spending a while in bed, and he felt far from well, but his ankle held up, and he needed to get out of here as soon as possible.

Hearts waited for him as promised. The moment he began walking towards the door, it opened. Alex remembered how Fires’ ears had moved, and supposed Hearts had been listening for him.

It allowed him to go ahead of it, before clamping a claw around his shoulder to guide him along. With how heavy the limb was across his back, Alex didn’t think this was its arm, but he had no interest in turning around to find out.

Hearts squalled on, apparently in a much cheerier mood than before. “To reiterate, you may feel some lingering effects of the substances you absorbed for a few days, or perhaps weeks. It’s hard to know without knowing exactly what compounds you came into contact with. If you have any trouble, you can come calling any time, and I’d be more than happy to examine you.”

“No.”

“Would you like me to pass a message on to Mr Fires? I’m sure it would be positively delighted to hear from you.”

“No.”

Hearts stopped outside a heavy door. Alex raised an eyebrow. “This doesn’t look like an exit.”

It was Hearts’ turn to say, “No.”

Alex’s instincts flared. His eyes darted around, searching for the signs of a trap. “Then what the hell is this?”

Hearts’ grip tightened. “Do not think I was lying when I said you could go. There is merely someone else who wished to see you for a brief moment.”

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“You didn’t ask.”

Alex bit his tongue. This wasn’t Fires he was talking to. He couldn’t insult it till he knew how it would react. Though at this point with Hearts, he could guess, and he didn’t want to be touched any more.

Without releasing him from its hold, Hearts slid its claw up to hook on the doorknob. Its chest rumbled, and heat rippled over Alex’s head as a symbol in the alphabet Alex recognized to be the Correspondence flared to life over the lock. He couldn’t read a word of the language—one was hard enough—but Alex averted his eyes before the blazing letter made his headache worse.

As the door swung inward, Hearts turned to face him. It didn’t have to say what Alex knew they were both thinking: “No you don’t, ‘master thief.’ You won’t be watching my hands and learning how to pick this lock.” What it did say was, “I’m afraid this is where we must part ways. You were a most delicious patient.”

Alex said nothing in ways of goodbyes. He didn’t even look back as he walked inside, though he felt its hungry eyes follow him all the way.

If the books piled from floor to ceiling in this room weren’t a dead giveaway, the ink stains on the robes of its occupying Master made it clear that this was Mr Pages. It stood with its back to him, preoccupied with ordering scrolls on a shelf.

It took all of Alex’s willpower not to rush forward in the moment. As a silverer, he frequently provided services to artistic types, and when they disappeared after publishing something bold, it was no mystery who was responsible. And here Pages was, cozy in its lair, idly arranging its collection as if the whole thing wasn’t violently stolen.

He knew how quick Pages’ temper was. Was it risky to interrupt its work? Alex didn’t care. It was the one that asked to meet him. “Hey!”

Pages barely looked his way as it shuffled along, paused at another shelf, and scanned for something over its head. “Mr Fires’ little thief. You’re earlier than I anticipated.” Pages stretched to retrieve a thick, leather-bound volume. “This won’t take extramuch of your time at all. I need to be sure we are clarific on a few facts before you leave.”

It stepped away from the shelf and turned to face Alex, the book clutched to its chest at his eye level. He resisted the urge to take a step back. He resisted even stronger the urge to think about what it had called him.

“Two nights ago, workers at the factory attempted a revolt, malhandling the volatile substances stored on site, which blastificated. Anyone who did not perish in the ensuing chaos was promptly arrested for endangering the public welfare. The site has been sealed until further notice under direct orders from the Masters of the Bazaar. I’m sure you know primehand how unpleasant a fate a trespassenger would suffer.” Pages brushed a mote of dust off the bookshelf nearest Alex without taking its eyes off him. “But of course, you were never there that night, and neither was Mr Fires.”

Alex said nothing. He only tilted his head to meet Mr Pages’ eyes as he poured every ounce of vitriol he could muster into his gaze.

“This is the story the press is reporting. It would be nonfortunate if word were to get out that contradictized this story.” Pages’ grip tightened on its book as it leaned in close to Alex, ink-stained claws denting the cover. “It would be even more nonfortunate if correctments to the truth had to be made to remain consistible with this story.”

Alex never took kindly to being threatened, but he would achieve nothing by fighting here. There was a lot he wanted to say, but he continued to say nothing.

“Are we understood?” When Alex still refused to speak, Pages lifted a single claw from its book to touch his chest, revealing the hole that pierced clean through the heavy volume. “I said, are we understood?”

Alex gritted his teeth. He wasn’t one for lying, but the Masters didn’t count, especially when Pages had lied first. “Fine.”

“Beneficient.”

Alex blinked. Why couldn’t Pages talk in a way he could understand?

Pages pushed him along out of the library and continued to follow him through the Bazaar’s twisted passages, a hand ghosting over his back should he get any ideas about slipping off to where he wasn’t supposed to.

It said nothing more to him as they traveled. There were many terrible things Alex wanted to shout, but he knew this wasn’t the time for it, not when he held none of the cards.

They turned a corner, and Alex’s heart leapt into his throat at who stood waiting for him.

No. Not them. I don’t care what the Masters think about this whole situation, but I know them, dammit.

One of the clay men waved in greeting. “Say, there he is! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Frank?”

“It has, Jasper.”

Pages came to a stop, its arms crossed. It lifted a claw, and at its gesture, the clay men rumbled forward.

“We’ll escort him the rest of the way from here, won’t we, Frank?”

“We will, Jasper. Wouldn’t want our old friend to get lost.”

Pages nodded. With a swish of robes like the sound of newspapers flapping in the wind, it was gone, leaving Alex alone with Jasper and Frank.

How could stone faces look so smug?

Alex swallowed his shock, adopted his usual scowl, and fell into step between them, head held high as if he wasn’t in a compromising situation at all.

“Glad to see you’re alright.”

“Quite the sticky wicket you was in with Mr Fires.”

“How did you get yourself into trouble this time?”

Alex grumbled as they bantered over his head. If he had his cloak, he’d be hiding his face under his hood.

“But you and trouble go hand in hand. Don’t they, Frank?”

“They do indeed, Jasper. Can’t say we was surprised.”

I don’t try to get into these situations.

“Though I don’t think we seen anything quite like this before.”

“That is, if we seen anything at all. I don’t think we did, did we, Jasper?”

“No, we did not, Frank. We didn’t see a thing, not this time, for our old friend.” 

“You don’t have to worry about us talking.”

“Our little secret.”

Alex didn’t even know what the secret was! Here they were, being just as misleading as Hearts was. At this point, did Alex even want to know what happened? If he did, he’d have to talk to Mr Fires again. No, he did not want to. If his inklings were correct, and he had very little uncertainty they weren’t, he wanted that secret to stay buried forever, even from himself.

They came to a stop in front of the Steel Door. Now that he thought about it, Alex had never entered or exited the Bazaar through a door. It was always a hidden passage for burglary.

Frank, or maybe it was Jasper, opened the door. It looked heavy, even for the clay man’s strength.

“Well, this was a lovely trip down memory lane, wasn’t it, Jasper?”

“Lovely it was, Frank.”

“Afraid this is where we must part ways.”

“Be seeing you.”

Jasper, or maybe it was Frank, clapped Alex on the back so hard he nearly fell over the threshold. He staggered the rest of the way down from the Steel Door and braced himself on a railing. When he turned around, the door was closed, and the clay men were gone from sight, though Alex knew they’d never be far behind from the trouble that was never far behind from him.

Before him, the Bazaar Side-Streets bustled with morning trade. People haggled over the price of grain, a woman banged on the door of a solicitor’s office, a child chased a terrier. No one had noticed Alex leave the Bazaar through such a door. Good. Alex slipped into the shadows behind a row of shops and made haste to get through Veilgarden and into Spite where he had a safehouse waiting, where he wanted to do nothing more than hide for months.

He couldn’t move as fast as usual with the lingering weakness from his ordeal, but his ankle was surprisingly sturdy. A little stiff, but fully functional, like he’d never broken it at all. How could such a bad injury heal overnight? Alex didn’t want to think too much about the “science” that Hearts was talking about.

There was a lot he didn’t want to think about, he thought as he jogged the last few steps to the safehouse and slammed the door shut behind him with a sigh of relief. No noise, no lights, no people, no chemicals.

Once Alex had changed his clothes into something that did not come from the Masters, he fell into the soothing routine of setting up the stove (which burned Hearts’ outfit alongside coal). Soon enough, he had pots boiling for tea and to make soup. While he waited, he grabbed a blanket, wrapped himself up, and settled into a chair by the fire, relaxing almost into dozing as he watched the flames. He supposed he should be tired from what had happened. He still hadn’t quite processed that it did happen.

A lot he didn’t want to think about, indeed. He didn’t want to remember how terrified he’d been, or how sick he’d felt from the drugs, or the awful moments when he lost hope he’d ever survive this. He always tried to tell himself he’d had worse in his life, but this event was among the worst.

The fire crackled to distract him, homely and inviting and mocking. Alex couldn’t look at it without thinking of a certain someone. He scowled at it and turned his attention to picking at the frayed edge of the blanket.

Now that Alex was home, he could think. Even if he couldn’t remember and no one would tell him exactly what happened, he knew enough to guess what sort of position he and Fires had been found in. It probably involved a lot of hugging, and his hair getting sticky, and both of them making complete fools of themselves. Though no one else was here, he covered his face with the blanket and groaned at how badly his cheeks burned.

There were—other—feelings that Alex would never think about if he could help it. He didn’t want to think about the fleeting memories, mostly just sensations, he had of being held so caringly by the strong, attentive force that wanted him. A force that was unfairly soft and fluffy, that kept him snug and warm against the fear and pain. Someone that, defying all he knew about it and its kind, had protected him at its own expense.

But wouldn’t the Masters do anything to protect their collections?

Alex swallowed dryly. He wiped his face with the blanket and bit down on the frayed edge to get the bitter taste out of his mouth. Enough of that particular train of thought.

The flickering light of the stove continued to mock him, casting its shadows over the small, dark room. Had this house always been so cold and lonely? 

No. Absolutely not. He refused to entertain such thoughts. Didn’t Hearts say he’d still be woozy from all he’d breathed in? That was it.

He just had to distract himself. First, a good meal and, well, he’d at least try to get some sleep. He had his work on both sides of the mirror, but he should probably take at least a few days to rest. Shake off the last of the odd, lonely feelings that plagued him from the drugs. He could relax a little and spend time with plenty of better company than Mr Fires.

Can I look my friends in the eye after what happened?

It was survival instincts, nothing more, he told himself. Nothing more. He wasn’t even in his right mind with the drugs. He wouldn’t have done what he did for any other reason. Why did he keep reflecting on it, anyway? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t have done anything differently. Fires would have escaped with or without his help, the difference being that this way, Alex was able to live, too.

The Masters knew what happened, but they would never try to blackmail him with it and admit one of their own had shown weakness. Jasper and Frank were a complication that would leave Alex blushing whenever he saw them again, but they were trustworthy in their own way, and if they said they wouldn’t talk, they wouldn’t.

This still wasn’t enough to put Alex’s mind at ease. Some of his enemies had seen, but no one, not even Fires, knew how Alex felt. What would everyone think if they did?

Stop thinking about it. It doesn’t matter. Nobody needs to know.

He was under no obligation to tell his friends what he did or didn’t do. They didn’t need to know he’d been involved in the affair of the factory at all. It wasn’t like Alex was known for being talkative. Besides, if he told anyone, he might be putting them in danger. He didn’t care what the Masters thought about him, but he knew how ruthless Mr Pages was. He wouldn’t risk any of his friends “disappearing” for what they knew.

But maybe one day, when everything had blown over, if it was still bothering him by then, he might like to talk to Furnace. He valued her reasoning; she was always straightforward. But for now, Alex just wanted to put the whole affair out of his mind. Officially, it didn’t even happen.

There were plenty of things to preoccupy himself with. There was always a new heist to plan, another hungry family to deliver food to, another picket line to hold. There was always someone in need of his assistance in dreams, and the cats appreciated his counsel, or his help with the cubs. He could meet with the rabbi he was becoming acquainted with, or he could catch up with Clara, or Doctor Vaughan. More urgently on his schedule, supplies for the tracklayers had to be “obtained.” The Great Hellbound Railway Board was scheduled to meet in a few days to discuss plans for the station at the Magistracy of Evenlode.

After all Alex had been through, he doubted anything the Upper River could throw at him could be worse.