Chapter 8

Within the building, the fire encased Phantom and Valerie.

She shakily pressed her good hand against the glass, her fingers lining up with his. "I can try to get you out," she said, her voice torn from smoke. In her shock over his pain, she failed to even demand an exchange, or to remind him that he'd promised to get her to her father. She'd begun to cough, feeling woozy. Sweat beaded on her temples from the heat. "Just hold on. Okay?"

The wires in Phantom's arm were glowing nearly white, cracking burns into his skin. Now, he was no longer being drained by just the external pipes, but also by his own self-sustaining pod. He wheezed back up at her, squeezing his eyes shut as he managed a nod, steeling himself.

The alliance was on.

Valerie saw him suck in a shallow gasp, his green eyes wide and yet sightless. Uncontrollable tremors worked their way through his body as the cell walls began to brighten and flicker unsteadily.

Phantom's gasps began to gurgle, and ectoplasmic blood trickled from the sides of his mouth as he stared up in horror.

"Oh god," Valerie breathed at the sight. She stumbled over to the wires protruding from the cell. With shaking fingers, she wrapped her hand over the slick wires and pulled, attempting to disconnect them at a joint. "Hold on. Just hold on."

Phantom's gurgling disappeared under the fire's noise.

The wires didn't budge, and her hands slipped multiple times. She cried out from the pain tearing through her badly burned hand, pushing through it, but the sweat from her palms made her lose her grip, and even the strange pulse of the wires forced her to drop them.

They teemed with a life that wasn't their own, as if they did not want to be picked up.

She glanced at Phantom, who had found the strength within to stand up against the onslaught. He was holding onto the ring around his neck as he choked on his own blood, and the fatal wires that hung from his form appeared as savage wings. It hit her then that she had done this.

Her anger, and her need for revenge had brought them to this point. Her, to death, and him to mindless, brutal anguish.

She wheeled back around on her heels, rasping hard as she peered through the smoke. "The generator," she rasped. "Maybe there's a manual shutdown?"

Debris, thickening smoke, and slippery tiles coupled with her now-doubling vision made it hard to concentrate as she shakily began to cross the room to the other side. She inhaled a wave of smoke, and her nose and mouth burned with the smell. Her vision fizzled with the sensation. She shook her head, focusing her eyes forward as she fought off the feeling of suffocation. Just a little farther, she mentally prepped to herself. She stumbled over a cabinet door, and she grimaced when she felt a metal nail slice into the side of her boot.

She used the three glowing wires as her northern star, and she never let them out of her sight. Just a little farther…

A flame shot from the ceiling and barreled to the floor beside her.

Valerie didn't flinch.

Just a little farther.

The fire danced from the walls onto the floor. She lifted her hands out to grasp the hot metal of the generator, and its countless titanium plates and bolts dug into her palms.

Her fingernails tore at the encasings, feeling for the controls and the panels of the structure. But her hands glanced off the smooth metal. There were no buttons, no switches, no nothing to indicate a manual shut-off. The blinking lights now remained solid, as if to alert her that the power transfer between them and Phantom was constant and at the highest drain level possible.

"Come on," she whispered. "Come on, think." Air was growing precious. Her fingertips shook as it hit her that she was out of ideas. She was physically exhausted to the point of near unconsciousness. Her heart was pounding, and the sound flooded her ears, almost drowning out the fire's roar.

Was this going to be her end? Turning at the last second into a traitor to help Phantom escape?

But no matter what she did, the self-sustaining generator wouldn't budge. The metal plates held no give or secret springs. All she managed to do was leave smeared, bloody fingerprints.

She couldn't shut it down.