Firestorm:

  How much damage can five anguished days do to a person?

  That’s how long it took for Grace to return, leaving Zayne stewing in the wreckage of his exposed secret, tormenting himself with the relentless thought: What does she think of me?

  I fast-forwarded the stream to bypass his distress.

  “How are you playing with time like that?” Jackie asked.

  I stopped the stream when Grace waltzed back into the grungy warehouse wearing a designer t-shirt, jean shorts, white sneakers, and a leather backpack. She was a ray of sunshine in Zayne’s dreary life.

  “Grace!”

  She didn’t look him in the eye. Instead, she moved straight to the lock and tested a set of keys one by one.

  “Keys,” Zayne exclaimed.

  “Don’t celebrate too soon.” Grace jiggled another key with frustration.

  Not a match. She fumbled and tried another one.

  “Stupid lock.” Grace tried key after key with no luck.

  She stomped her foot and huffed out a mini-tantrum that surprised Zayne. He was the one enduring the cage, but he lightly stroked her arm.

  “At least she tried,” Jackie mumbled from the Slipstream.

  I was glad she was seeing Grace’s true nature firsthand. I needed Jackie on board with my plan.

  Grace finally looked at Zayne.

  He said, “Sorry.”

  Tears came to Grace’s eyes. “Why are you sorry? I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back, and I don’t even have the right keys.”

  She wiped snot from her perfect, petite nose.

  Zayne repeated, “Sorry,” and made a monster face, recalling the way he yelled at her last time.

  Grace laughed through her tears. “It’s okay, I get it. This is not your fault.”

  She grabbed his hand through the bars. “I’m scared, Zayne.”

  “Grace?”

  “I haven’t seen Father in days.” Her lip quivered, and tears spilled as she spoke. “Mother is missing, too. They’ve been taken. I’m alone in that massive complex.”

  “Us. Together.” Zayne put his arm around her from within the cage.

  “What if the same person who locked you up has taken them, too?” Grace groaned.

  “Who?” Zayne asked.

  She rubbed her temples, fighting back another round of tears. “There’s a kitchen worker named Tinga who's got a gnarly scar on his face. He creeps me out.”

  “Tinga?” Zanye asked. “I know Tinga.”

  “You do?”

  “Tinga was a father. Bennu bird attacked Tinga’s son.” Zayne made one of his hands eat the other to show his point in case his English failed.

  “Or maybe Tinga killed him and blamed it on a Bennu bird. I’m telling you, that guy is so weird. He looks like a madman.”

  “No, not Tinga.”

  Grace’s breathing quickened into a mini panic attack. “Without my parents around, I’m a sitting duck in that complex. What if I’m taken next?”

  Zayne pulled her close.

  She closed her eyes as they cuddled through the bars. For one breathless instant, they felt untouchable, if only for a heartbeat.

  “What… is… Father’s work?” Zayne offered Grace a seat on the grungy floor.

  They sat on their side of the cell bars.

  “You should see all the cool stuff he makes. Father made his fortune inventing the Universal DNA Identifier.” Grace showed her pointer finger.

  Zayne shrugged.

  “You know, no more stupid usernames and passwords, no more physical money, keys… But he’s done so much more since. I like to watch him tinker with his new robot project. He hasn’t let me since coming here though.”

  Zayne nodded, trying to understand.

  “His island workshop is locked, and now he’s gone missing.” Grace bit her lip to hold back fresh tears.

  Zayne caressed her rosy cheek.

  “Thank goodness we have each other. I have something for you.” Grace pulled a picnic from her backpack. She used the bag as a table over the disgusting floor.

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  Zayne’s eyes grew at the sight of the feast; strawberries, mango, meat, and cheese. He stuffed his mouth in record speed.

  Her scowl softened.

  He swallowed his lot and waited to take another piece until she delicately took her first bite.

  She opened a can of seltzer water and offered it to him.

  He guzzled it. The carbonated bubbles dribbled down his chin.

  Grace giggled.

  God, he adored her laugh. The absolute worst and now the best time of his life happened in that cage.

  “Grace?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  The term of endearment gave him the confidence to ask the toughest question.

  “Father,” he said as he pointed to Grace.

  “Yes, my father…” She helped fill the gaps in his speech.

  “Father owns Bennu Island? Father… knows…” He pointed to himself and added, “me?”

  “No way,” Grace said with conviction. “If Father made this cage, there’d be a DNA Identifier on it. Besides, whoever put you in here has also taken my parents.”

  Her chin trembled, and her nose flushed red. “We have to find my father. I’m nothing without him.”

  Zayne grabbed her hand.

  It was Grace’s turn to ask a tough question. “What’s in those injections?”

  Zayne shrugged his muscular shoulders, flushing brighter than her tear-soaked cheeks.

  “What do the injections do?”

  The question was like a whip on his well-trodden scars. He wanted Grace to see the best in him.

  “Power.” Zayne took a deep breath, stood, and flexed every muscle in his body. Veins bulged in his arms, his blood glowing under his tight skin.

  Grace stood as her jaw dropped. She put her hand on his bare chest and felt the strength of his heartbeat.

  Zayne took a step back and said, “Heat.” He flexed harder, and his veins lit on fire.

  Grace flinched.

  He touched his flaming flesh to the cell bars where he’d been slowly melting away the steel. It would take forever to escape that way.

  “Indestructible,” Zayne said, like an impersonation, perhaps of the man in the hazmat suit. His eyes showed a glimpse of the suffering he’d endured to prove that to his captors.

  He pointed at the shelves behind her. “Cut me.”

  Grace went to the nearest shelf, grabbed a knife, and cautiously handed it to him.

  Zayne cut his palm, drawing radiant blood that dripped onto the mucky floor.

  His skin healed instantly, the gash knitting itself shut.

  Grace gasped.

  He showed her the knife. “I keep. Stab and escape.”

  She nodded, and he tucked the knife into the waistband of his tattered pants.

  Zayne trusted Grace, but needed a plan of his own. With her parents now missing, he needed to protect her as well as himself.

  “I kill the man, steal the key, and we find your parents. No more torture.”

  Grace paced. “You’re right. We need to be ready to fight. I need to be indestructible, too.”

  She removed a small Pelican case from her backpack, opened it, and revealed a syringe of serum. “This is what they give you, isn’t it?”

  Zayne lowered his gaze. He couldn’t hide the truth much longer.

  “Searching for my parents, I found a room in the complex with cases of this stuff. That’s where I found the keys, too.”

  Grace put the syringe to her veins, ready to inject.

  “Stop.” Zayne tried to snatch it from her, but she stepped back. He couldn’t reach from within the confines of the cage.

  “My parents always know what to do, how to fix things. But they’re gone, probably dead.” She cried. “I have to do something, become something on my own.”

  “No, Grace. Stop…” He pressed his body against the bars, reaching for her.

  “She’s not going to inject herself, is she?” Jackie asked from the entrance of the stream.

  Grace wiped her tears. “I need control, some kind of power, even if I have to steal it. Even if it tears me apart.”

  Despite Zayne and now Jackie’s objections, Grace injected the serum into her bloodstream.

  “Oh wow, she’s doing it,” Jackie said.

  Zayne cried a thousand regrets. If only he weren’t stuck in that cage. Knowing the effects of the serum, he didn’t want Grace to suffer the same fate.

  Grace recoiled as the injected concoction lit up her veins. She fell to her knees, holding her stomach.

  As the liquid moved quickly through her system, she screamed and dry-heaved. She curled into a ball, moaning and crying.

  “Grace?”

  She suffered in silence for many minutes.

  Every second tore him apart inside.

  When she finally looked at Zayne, her bloodshot eyes held a newfound power.

  “Grace?” Zayne asked again, concerned.

  She panted. “I’m okay, Zayne. If you can survive the injections, then I can, too. We’re in this together, and soon I’ll be indestructible, like you.”

  Zayne was both amazed and baffled by her.

  Grace charged the cage, grabbed Zayne by the waist, and pulled him close.

  They melted into the cell bars that separated them as their lips met and tongues collided. In each other’s arms, terror vanished, replaced by the burning need for closeness.

  Dream fulfilled, the heat from their forbidden kiss was more delicious than they imagined. They were no longer two lost souls, but something whole.

  Those kids had no clue what they were up against, but for the moment, that was okay.

  “Sexy,” Jackie murmured from the Slipstream.

  The dinner bell rang, as it did at the same time every day.

  Grace’s glow faded. “I don’t want to go back to the complex. Not by myself.”

  “I stab and get the key.” Zayne pulled the knife from his waistline and practiced his stab and grab. The way he moved the knife was convincing.

  “That’s a superb plan… But what if he doesn’t come back for a while? What if I get snatched next? We need to move fast.”

  They considered their mounting problems.

  She finally said, “I don’t want to go back to the complex, but there’s one more place where the keys might be.”

  Grace pulled a piece of gum from her backpack. She chewed it, then put it into the lock to study the teeth the key needed.

  “There are no bad ideas, only bad execution,” she said. “That’s what Father always says.”

  She peeled the gum out of the lock and bit her lip, squinting at the smeared impression. The print was useless. Still, she wrapped it carefully, placing it in a small pocket of her backpack.

  “One way or another, you’ll be free soon.” Grace sealed her promise with another kiss.

  Their eyes met to confirm their dedication to one another.

  The Slipstream pulled at me, so I moved the stream to the next crucial plot point.

  “Hey. Why are you speeding through the timeline? I enjoy watching them make out,” Jackie joked.

  “You’re running out of time in the Slipstream,” I explained.

  “Is time even a thing in here, Firestorm?”

  Her question was far too complicated to answer directly.

  I blinked and skipped to the pivotal moment that would change everything for my dear young lovebirds…