Singed Wings

It is a frightening thing to watch an ocean burn.

The beach turns to pristine glass as the raging firestorm beats upon crashing waves. Salty mist evaporates as soon as it sprays. It barges up against the ocean’s front door demanding admittance.

Eventually, the ocean relents. Not even water can withhold this flame. The surface algae ignite, infecting the blue green with an orange flush.

The sight strikes a primal fear within me and, selfishly, all I can think is how happy I am that I did not join the naval armada. The monumental docks of Dalia char to a crisp in seconds. Hundreds of sea faring vessels incinerate in a godly firestorm, the likes of which has not been seen in a millennium. Smoke haunts the skies and envelopes my ship in its grasp.

Clocktower expects us to extinguish this?

As a second pilot in the Ember Guard program aboard the Black Stone, my crew and I have been deployed to smother this firestorm. It’s what we do. When Clocktower calls, the Ember Guard answers.

I’ve seen my fair share of death and flame but today is different. Last night, first pilot, Alex O’Connor, ate a bad clam and had to be designated to med bay for repairs.

Now, I sit in his seat.

Today is the day that I officially singe my wings. First female homidroid to singe her wings in the Ember Guard. Sure, there have been plenty of female pilots to do it before me, but never a homidroid.

I feel the full weight of Dalia’s world government, Clocktower, behind me, but riding in with their support? Their expectations?

I’ll make or break my career by sundown.

Dalia depends on my making of it.

The seventy-six souls aboard the Black Stone live by the grace of my wrist. I try to maintain my composure in front of Captain Alana and the rest of my crew. Relax my shoulders, steady my breath. The cockpit is no place for trepidation.

“Bring us around the beast, Owl. Let’s get out of this damned smoke. We need a clear view.” Captain Alana orders me.

“Aye, captain.” I press my clammy hands into the gearstick. “Hold fast.”

Seven screens split before me, each spouting off different information that my neural chip processes in lightning speed. Wind speed, direction, altitude, longitude.

No sight? No problem.

With the silent grace of my namesake, I swing our ship into a leaning dive. We escape the confines of black and reorient ourselves with a clear view of the firestorm. It rages. “We’re clean, captain.”

“Acknowledged.” Captain Alana stands front and center, jaw set in grim resolution. She takes a few moments to assess before taking a few soft steps toward my chair. Her hand finds my shoulder. “How are you feeling today?”

“Wings waxed, ma’am.”

“Glad to hear it.”

The slightest of whistles enters my ear, giving me pause. I turn back as she gives a wink and a nod. “Just remember to breathe. Alex nearly went red as the flame his first time.”

“Yes ma’am.” I said, expanding my chest for show.

“Good.” She places her hands behind her back and spins. “Let’s belly this beast then! Shall we?” Captain Alana roars to her crew.

We respond with a righteous. “We shall!”

“Who drowns the flame?”

“We do!”

“Who does Clocktower call when the sky’s ablaze?”

“Ember Guard!”

“You’re damn right they do! Now, a storm like this comes once in a millennium. It’s taken our docks and breached the sea. Are we going to let it touch down on the other side?”

“No ma’am!”

“Alright, let’s make a name for ourselves!” She roars, clapping her hands together.

“Yes ma’am!”

For a fleeting moment, I can imagine the firestorm roaring with us, an odd echo that tickles the back of my mind.

Captain Alana straps herself into her seat. “Owl, take us in.”

I crack my fingers and focus my mind. “Aye aye, captain.”

* * *

I stumble through the crash site, mumbling distress codes through a disconnected channel. Flames dance in my vision. I look down at my hands and see melted skin. Bone shows on one hand, glowing metal on the other. My emergency morphine releases tenfold.

Sections of destroyed plating, armor, and electronics are scattered in unrepairable disarray. The ship … my ship … has been crumpled by the firestorm like a writer crumpling a poor story and tossing it in the rubbish.

“M-mayday, mayday, B-black Stone…” What is the phrase for not flying anymore? It takes a few seconds for my circuits to compute, but I find it. “Black Stone down. I repeat, Black Stone down.”

No answer. Coms are blocked.

What happened?

How could this happen?

How could I let this happen?

Without warning, I’m wracked by seizure.

“Aghh!” I choke out as my spine locks.

Images burn into my brain followed by an electric static. A constant barrage of jagged shapes, flickering with energy. An energy I can only compare to the storm in the distance.

Flames. Raging Flames.

In time, the seizure ceases. I’m unsure how long I was shaking, but it was enough time for any survivor of the crash to find me.

In my periphery, I see brown hair splattered underneath a blinking control panel and steer my disordered body over. I trip, double over to my knees and cough up something resembling oil.

The images flash again. Orange death.

I push against them and crawl toward the control panel.

Begging every cell in my body to help, I grip the panel with bloody smears and heave. It nearly kills me, but the deed is done. It flips over with a thud, and I follow its lead. My eyes glaze over as smoke inhalation takes me and my knees buckle.

The unconsciousness is an odd relief from reality.

* * *

My mind swims through soup.

A relentless pounding stirs the pot as someone from the land of the living knocks on my metaphysical door.

“Come on, Owl. Don’t do this to me. Come on, pilot! Wake!”

Pounding and pounding. My eyelids open like someone trying to peel back a mousetrap already sprung. My vision comes into a faulty focus, seeing three Captain Alana’s performing CPR over three of my chests.

I find myself thinking this a dream.

Captain Alana would never be caught dead without her beret, but here she is, brown locks cascading over her shoulders without care for uniform. I let out a belated breath.

“Yes!” She elates.

I blink a couple times and the three of her collapse into themselves, forming the one and only. An injector appears in her hand. The cap is ripped off by the grip of her teeth. “Hold fast.” She says and plunges the needle into my chest.

My body erupts.

I gasp the deepest breath that anyone ever did gasp and sit up, back straight. Without full control over my neurotransmitters, my arm throws a haymaker towards the captain.

She ducks, “Shit’s sake, Owl!”

“Cap-Cap-Captain!” I say, eyes wide, riding stars. “What happened? The Black Stone – ”

“Gone.” She states plain as rice, eyeing me with the gaze of a psych warden. “Take it easy. Right, yourself, pilot.” She orders.

I blink each eye five times separately. “Adrenaline?”

“Aye.”

“I’ve never done drugs before.”

That gives her a wry smile, but it quickly turns into a staunch frown. “First time for everything.” She looks back toward our crash site where the Black Stone lies in ruin.

The ship, under my guidance, lays torn in two. Gutted. Gigantic webs in the cracked sand glass stretch out across the beach from impact. Sparse flames burn where the juices of quantum battery splashed down, but otherwise, the scene looks unnaturally still.

Grief claws into my heart.

I search around for anyone else. Anyone at all. But no one is there to meet my gaze. “Status of the crew?” I ask.

She shakes her head in solemn response.

“A-Alex?” My heart reaches out for someone familiar.

Alana’s face, a statuesque authority, does not move.

“Oh god…” My chest flutters. “What happened? I don’t understand.”

The captain stands, pushes her hair back into a tight knot, and stares down at me with water cool blue eyes. “Sabotage.”

* * *

“What do you remember?” Captain Alana asks, head lying back against the charred remnants of a redwood tree. The great beast is nothing but the shadow of a stump.

“Me?” I had been dreading this question.

“Of course, you, Owl. Who else?” She says, with a raspy voice. Ash falls upon the land like a blanket of cold wool. It infiltrates her human lungs without respite. “I – ” The cough that interrupts her sends shivers down my spine. “I need to hear your logs.”

I swallow dust. “That’s just it ma’am. I don’t have any logs to report. My memory of the crash is… altered. Fuzzy.”

“Figures.”

“Ma’am?”

“Makes sense. You were hacked.”

“Hacked? Like, like –”

“Like a computer, yes.”

“I’m not a computer,” I say, defiant.

She studies me. “Right.”

I’m adamant. “They said that couldn’t happen. Homidroid bioframe hacking is impossible. The quantum lockbox is impenetrable.”

“They –” Another coughing fit. “Obviously lied.”

The circuits interlaced with my neurons try to grasp this idea. “Am I still… infected?” My skin crawls with the idea that I have a bug inside my brain. A bug that crashed the Black Stone. A bug that killed my crew.

“Unconsciousness leads to full reset, so I doubt it, but who knows, I’m no engineer. Just a captain.” Her eyes wander. “The captain of a ghost crew.”

“Ma’am?”

Alana’s eyes lock back on to me. “Can you broadcast?”

I close my eyes and, mentally, reach out to clock tower. Static. “No. My connection to clock tower is broken. All signals blocked.” I bring my knees to my chest and my eyes fall to my ash covered feet. “Who did this? I don’t understand.”

“Your guess is as good as mine. One second, you’re singeing your wings on the storm, preparing the eighth breach and dump, then the next? We’re flipping into a tactical dive, spinning like a drill bit, heading straight into the beach.”

My shoulders dropped. “H-how fast were we going?”

“Doppler scope read over 180 knots.”

It’s a miracle we survived at all. I hesitate to ask my next question, but I know it needs to be asked, “And the firestorm?”

“Crippled but not killed. I don’t see it on our horizon anymore, but following the smoke, it looks like it spun off to the west.” Her tone takes a sharp bite at the end.

“The direction of Clocktower.” My voice cracks.

“Aye.”

I start to get up. To go where? I don’t know, but something needs to be done. People need to be warned.

“Hey, stop” Her arm grips my leg.

“I-I have to – I need to – ”

“Stop, Owl. It’s not our bag anymore. Sit down. That’s an order.”

Looking through the falling ash and burnt beach trees, I can’t see the blaze any longer, only its smoke. The storm is long gone, and her order brings me back down to Dalia. I fall back on my ass.

Captain Alana leans back against the stump. “Clocktower will have recorded our disappearance and sent out another of the Guard. Probably, Hanlon’s crew. A last chance at glory for the old goose before retirement.” She waves her hand. “He’ll be eating well tonight. You know he extended his active duty just to spite me?” She lets out a laugh that a humble waitress gives a rude customer. “Bastard couldn’t let a woman take over his post. Now, Fin is up for it, and I’ll have to fight my ass off just to be cc’d on emails after this.”

I blink, treading unfamiliar territory with a superior officer. “Hanlon’s a bastard, everyone knows.”

The corner of one lip turns up in a trying smile. Her eyes go kind. “You’re a good pilot, Owl. This wasn’t your fault. I can see it in your eyes that you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

I nod, unswayed by the niceties.

“I’ll emphasize that in the report. You have my word.”

My chin tilts down as I stare into the ash as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. I can hear it in her tone, and she can see it in my body. We both know that I’ll never sit in the pilot’s chair after this, whether it was my fault or not.

There are too many stellar records in Ember Guard. Too many aces sitting on the paddock with wings on their uniforms too white, unsinged. They’ll just fetch one from off planet to replace me, simple as that. Someone without the death of Dalia’s docks on their record.

This won’t be a ghost that haunts my career, it will be the shovel that digs its grave.

I used to be one of those new recruits and now here I am.

Wings black and burned.

I muster myself up, out of respect for the captain. “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate the senti –” My jaw locks mid word.

“Owl?” Captain Alana furrows her brows.

My body freezes, muscles tighten into knots, statue-esque besides the thumping of my human heart. I stare at her, unable to even move an eyelid.

“Hey! You still with me? Shit.” She gets to her knees, crawling over.

There’s a movement in the ash behind her, silent and fast. A shadow in the smoke.

I can’t warn her.

She snaps in my face and reaches behind my ear for my sensor. I prepare to go unconscious, but her fingertips don’t reach me in time.

The figure sprints and leaps over the redwood stump in one bound, landing in the ash with a winded splash. Captain Alana turns just in time to receive a blow to the head that will give her a concussion if she’s lucky. She’s flung to the ground, body limp, knocked out or worse.

My eyes refuse to accept the figure before me.

A melted slag of homidroid, half wearing a uniform, half wearing a suit of ash. His face has been tampered with. A mixture blood and quantum oil drips from a missing ear down the side of his soft cheeks marked with an unregulated five o’clock shadow.

Alex O’Connor.

My first pilot.

* * *

“Don’t flip out, Owl. Can you promise me that you won’t flip out?” Alex waits a moment for a response before remembering my state. “Oh. Hold on.” My friend’s finger slides to his temple, feeling for his processor to pair with mine. He closes his eyes performing mental gymnastics.

We connect and my breath becomes my own once more.

He opens his eyes to a fist in the jaw. “Aowh!”

I’m on my feet in a millisecond. My foot is raised ready to kick him in the chest when I give pause.

This is my first pilot, after all. The only other ace I’ve ever flown with. He taught me how to fly through water upside down and create a whirlpool in a spin. We’ve put out more fires than I can count. My teacher. My confidant. My friend.

“Whatever you did. Do not do that again.” I warn, stomping my boot in the ash, cracking glass beneath. I disconnect from his signal.

“Damn, Owl.” He spits to the side. “Shit.”

I stand over him. “Are you a threat?”

His laugh reminds me of a mad drunk. “Am I a threat? Me?” He chuckles up a cough. “That’s rich.”

My boot finds his chest like a linebacker finds a receiver. He’s knocked onto his back, breath stolen. His sternum may be droid, but his lungs are still human. I capitalize on his position, driving my boot against his throat.

“You’ve attacked a superior officer.” I state while he gags. “I don’t know what else to do but arrest you, Alex.”

His hand rushes to his temple to freeze me again, but I drop a knee into his elbow. Flipping my body, I pull his head into a leglock while pinning his arm.

“Agggh!” He cries between aggravated gasps. “Owl!”

I reach my hand down to his ear, feeling for his sensor to put him in a quick sleep, but there’s nothing there. “Where’s your sensor, Alex?” I demand, pressing against his arm.

“Chunked it out.” He mutters through grit teeth.

“Why?”

“Cause of Clocktower.”

I press into his arm again and he cries out in pain. “What are you talking about?”

He slams his other arm down into the ground in frustration. “Clocktower’s been controlling us!”

“Bullsh- ” A handful of ash finds my eyes, followed by a risky backwards roll by Alex which could have snapped his neck if I didn’t let go. He wriggles free, creating space, while I do the same.

Through stinging vision, I see his hand go to his temple. “No!”

He pauses and we come to a standstill. “Okay. You said not to do that to you again and I won’t as long as you stop beating my ass!”

My eyes investigate the space between his forefinger and his forehead. A millimeter. Despite the panicked thumping of my heart, I drop my shoulders. “I’ve had a bad day, Alex.”

“So have I.”

“You knocked out the captain.”

“Had to. She could be one of them.”

“One of who?”

“One of Clocktower’s dials. I don’t know everything, but I know enough.” He takes a few steps backwards and bends down. Slowly, his fingers drop from his temple to Captain Alana’s neck. He looks at me and nods. Seeing my relaxation, he finds a few more words. “I didn’t eat a bad clam.”

“No shit.”

“The flight was sabotaged.”

“No shit.”

“Not by me.”

“Everyone is dead, Alex. Sixty-nine firefighters, soldiers, scientists. Dead.”

“I know and it’s not your fault either.”

Tears threaten to break free from my eyes, but I wipe them away. Aces don’t cry. “Explain, what the hell is going on.”

He stands back up and goes solemn for a moment. “It started two days ago. Images of flame. Always flame. Fire. Fire. Fire. When I slept, it was all I dreamed of and when I woke? Seizures. Have you experienced anything like that?” He asked, with a pointed tone.

My eyebrows furrow. “Did you tell anyone?”

“It was the first thing I did. I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe a bug in the homidroid circuits? Maybe a psych disorder? Maybe I needed to take a break from the guard? I wouldn’t have minded that. A little paid vacation? Sounds fucking nice.” His mouth soured. “So, I booked an appointment with Med.”

“And?”

“They ran a bio physical on me. Found nothing. Then, they plugged in and found…” He searched for the words. “It.”

“Fuckin’ spit it out, Alex.”

He rounds an incredulous look on me. “I’m still your first pilot, Owl.”

I wipe stinging eyes. “As I said, I’ve had a bad day.”

With a huff, he continues. “They found a virus. An infection. A static in my energies.”

“A computer virus? We’re not CPU’s, we can’t be infected like that.”

“It wasn’t something in my code. It was something deeper. Something quantum. Something targeted to the very atoms of my brain. I - I didn’t know what to make of what they were telling me and neither did the medics, but someone upstairs must have. They made a call, and, next thing I know, an alarm is sounded, the door is barred, and I freeze. For hours… Can’t move a single muscle until the Head Tech herself dictates it. They controlled me like a bot.” He spits through charred lips. “A fuckin’ bot.”

I recognize the irritation in his voice for what it really is. Fear.

“They hacked me, Owl. And you too!” His voice cracks. “Clocktower kept me on Black Stone for one reason. To die. The crash was planned. They never intended for you to put out the firestorm, they intended for me to die in it, and they were willing to kill seventy-two people to do it!”

I hold my hand up, trying to think. “That doesn’t make sense. Clocktower needs us to put out the firestorm. It destroyed the docks. It’s raging across Dalia’s Ocean right now, biggest storm I’ve ever seen, and it’s heading straight for them! You’re telling me they let that go so that whatever is in you never comes back?”

“Or spreads.” He mutters out of the side of his mouth. “They don’t even understand the fires.”

“And you do?” My voice sharpens.

His eyes meet mine in a locked stare. “Yes, and deep down so do you. It’s the only reason that you survived the crash.”

“I can assure you I’ve not the slightest clue of what’s going on here, ace.”

“You will.” He says. “If you remove the sensor.”

Instinctively, my hand flies to my ear. “Why did you do that to yourself?”

“To hear it better. The storm couldn’t commune with me while I had earmuffs on.” Alex licks his lips. “It’s truly incredible, Owl. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I don’t think anyone has. The synchronicity. It goes beyond anything biological or robotic. It’s metaphysical. This storm is no different from the others. It’s alive. They’re all alive and we’ve been extinguishing them. How is that right?”

“You’re not thinking right, pilot.”

He shakes his head. “I’m thinking clearer than I ever have without Clocktower in my noggin. I know how it sounds, believe me, but it’s not crazy. The fire is talking, and we, you and me and the other homidroids, are the only ones who can hear it. More than that, Owl.” The words spill out of his mouth, emphatic. “We can pilot it!”

Captain Alana groans, stirring faintly, but Alex doesn’t pay her mind.

“Watch the ash fall, Owl.” Alex says. “Feel the wind. Which direction is it going?”

My eyes narrow at him. There isn’t much wind to feel, but my enhancements pick up on the subtlest of changes. “Two six zero at one two. Southeast.”

“And yet, what degree does the storm venture?”

My brain runs a million clicks a minute. It doesn’t make sense, nothing makes sense. It’s all impossible, but… it’s all too real. “D-did you?”

“Yes.” Alex says, standing up straight, eyes full of fiery pride. “I shepherd the flame.”

“Well, shepherd it away!”

“Can’t.” He shrugs. “It’s on the correct course. Should feast at the top of the hour.”

“It’s heading straight for Clocktower!”

He stares into me.

“They’ll extinguish it. They’ll throw everything they have at it.” I blather.

“What, Hanlon?” He blows air out of his nose. “I’ll retire him by the end of this conversation. I know – we, know their tactics and now so does the storm. It will not bow. It will not disperse. This storm is the father of all storms. Clocktower will never control us. They don’t understand what they’ve made.”

“That’s home!” I struggle to find words that can make sense of the insanity. “It’s fucking Clocktower! Our friends live there. Our family lives there. We live there! Why am I even explaining this shit? You’re a first pilot!” I bark at him, balling my fists. “If Clocktower falls…” I don’t even want to think about the flame storms that will overtake the rest of the planet. “If the Ember Guard dies and everyone dies with it...”

“The flame will thrive.” He says. “Simple as that.”

The despondence that I see on his face reiterates my humanity. It’s the best confirmation that I could ever hope for. The way that my heart contorts in my chest in comparison to his lack of one tells me everything I need to know.

“Aren’t you upset?” He stalks back and forth, stepping over the captain’s folded legs. “They were using us against our will. Nefarious shit. How many times do you think they hacked into our minds?” He taps his head. “I guarantee this wasn’t the first! What do you think we’ve done without our knowledge? Kill? Steal?”

The thought infuriates me too, someone tooling around in my head and controlling me, but there are more pressing matters. My voice drops an octave. “Steer the storm away, Alex.”

I make my eyes as kind as I can in spite of the pyre blazing within me. “Please. Come back to base with me. We can fix this. It’ll all be like a bad dream. You’re not right.”

Upset, he rubs at red eyes and releases a long exhale. “I don’t want to force it on you. It’s a much better experience if you let it in yourself.”

“You’re not piloting your own ship anymore, ace.” I say. “Something else holds sway over your mind. If what you say is true, you’ve traded in Clocktower for another beast entirely. Well, not me. I’ll be damned if I hand my controls over to anyone or anything willingly.”

“Fine. It’s okay, truly. It’s okay. I didn’t want to commune with it at first either. I don’t blame you.” He spreads his arms. “This is a high stress situation. It’d be a tough sell if I were in your shoes.”

“Don’t, Alex.” I tell him, unable to really stop him.

Alex holds his hand up to his temple. “Just hold fast, pilot. We’ll singe your wings, short –”

His face freezes mid-sentence, mouth ajar, eyes twitching ever so slightly. His chest still moves, breathing, but his voice has left him. His pupil’s contract until they disappear. Hand still at his temple, his skeleton is frozen in a sort of rigor mortis. In a way that sends chills up my spine, he tips over like a suit that had never housed anything at all. An empty vessel.

Alex clunks to the ground.

Captain Alana stands over him, looking down in a curious disgust. “Bad clam, my ass.”

* * *

“Owl. Give me a hand.” The captain’s eyelids flutter as she wobbles back and forth, reaching out for the redwood stump only to come up empty handed. I rush to her aid, gripping her by the shoulders before she joins Alex in the ash.

“Captain, are you alright?” I go to push back her hair, looking for a head wound, but she holds up a hand.

“I’m alright.” A few deep breaths later and Captain Alana is able to stand on her own again. “Just a blinding headache. Concussion, no doubt.” She reaches a weak arm out in the direction of the med kit, pointing. “Flashlight and O2.”

I retrieve the items and run a quick field test, shining the flashlight in her eyes. “Pupils a bit oval, ma’am. Response to light… Slow, but active. Sclera white, no bleeding.”

“That’s good.” She says. “Probably no internal bleeding. Probably.” Her fingers go to the bridge of her nose for massage. “He got the jump on me.”

“But you returned the favor.” I assure her.

We both look at Alex, settling in for a deep sleep amongst a fresh blanket of ash. Swallowing, I bend down to inspect. “What did you do to him?” I’m not ready for the answer, but the question needs to be asked.

Holding her head, the captain frowns. “OOC protocol. Trip switch just above C1 lumbar vertebrae.” Her speech slurs. “Puts homidroids out of commission: OOC.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. I’m not an engineer.”

I flip Alex, brushing the dirt and ash from his face. He doesn’t look back at me, he looks through me. “So, it’s true then?”

“What’s true?” She says in between inhaling pure oxygen. Still trying to get her bearings, she looks almost as out of commission as Alex.

“Captain?”

“Yes, Owl?”

I close Alex’s eyes before standing up. “Don’t bullshit me, ma’am.”

That gets her attention. She takes a big hit of oxygen and exhales. “Rumors is all I know. I’m not an engineer. I’m a captain, but still just a little cog in the big clock. Ticking away, like you. What did he tell you?”

“Enough.”

“And what do you make of it?”

The simplicity of the question nearly elicits a mad chuckle from me. Someone crawling around under my skin, controlling my actions, piloting… me. What do I make of it? What do I fuckin’ make of it? I let the question marinate, trying to parse my thoughts in the chaos of the last hour. Has it only been an hour? I look at my busted watch, still ticking along, though the glass is as cracked as the beach.

Fifty-six minutes.

Oh, how a life can change in fifty-six minutes.

Oh, how many lives will change in four.

My eyes go wide.

“What?” Captain Alana asks.

“The storm. A-Alex was piloting the storm. He said, he was talking to it. Uh, uh. I don’t know anything else, but I know that he said that it would hit Clocktower at the top of the hour. Shit! We’ve got four minutes until –”

“Until Hanlon –” She starts.

I put my hands on my head in exasperation. “No! Listen, Alex could pilot the damned storm! Hanlon’s dead by now.”

“You don’t actually think – ”

“There’s no time to be think, Alana! I can only feel, and I feel like he was telling the truth. A crazy, incoherent truth.”

Still a bit slow, Alana raises an eyebrow. “Well, what the hell are we supposed to do about it from here?”

My legs itch to run off and do something impossible. Leap the ocean, drown the storm, I dunno. Something. Anything. I - I can’t just let this happen. What kind of human would I be if…

My gaze rests on Alex’s missing ear.

My breath stills.

Time to truly singe my wings.

* * *

The term “Singeing Wings” originates with the Leading Legion. The mark of a first pilot’s first successful flight to cease a storm. Buzzing around the storm like a mosquito risking everything just to taste a little drop of blood. How close can you fly without burning? How much do you dare to tempt fate? How long can you maintain control? Until this morning, it had been all I’d looked forward to in my career.

* * *

The ear comes off with seven deep cuts from the captain’s serrated boot knife. Jagged metal teeth rips into my flesh, squirting brown liquid, red blood mixed with quantum oil. With each tear, flames flash into my mind’s eye, surging like a growing leak from the base of my skull.

It roars at me.

It roars against me.

And then, it roars… with me.

“Owl?” Captain Alana stares at my actions in horrified approval. The dark glare of a war captain who understands sacrifice in the name of duty. “Owl?”

Her voice is far away from me, now.

I wrench the knife through my ear lobe, severing billions of tiny circuit modules, each of which cost more than the moon. Looking down at my removed ear, I hear a warm buzzing and see an odd blinking in the meat of it. The sensor.

Crunch. My fist closes around it.

In its destruction, comes silence.

My connection to anything Clocktower no longer exists. My connection to my ship, to my friends, to my knowledge. Gone. I reach out for wind measurements, but nothing returns. No word on the storm. There’s no telling how far it’s gone or if it’s already devoured home.

“Owl? Hey, hello? Status?” Captain Alana requests, snapping her fingers. “Can you connect?”

“I - I dunno. I don’t know.” Something spurs my legs. Frantic, driven by feeling, and I’m gone, heading to the crash site of the Black Stone in a sprint. I need to see the fire. It’s not a want, it’s a need.

An order.

“Owl!” My old captain cries, but I don’t hear.

Stumbling through piles of ash, scraping myself on cut glass and coarse sand, I arrive on the shore. The Black Stone sinks into the sand after breaking its jaw on the thick layer of glass. Waves wash over its debris, eager to clean up the mess, and put this whole business behind it. Dead green litters the beach, scorched. An algae graveyard.

I fall to my knees in the low waves. Warm to the touch, nearly hot, but nothing compared to the horizon. The storm seems to reach for the very heavens. It’s grown exponentially after feeding on the ocean’s algae. A titan that the horizon cannot jail.

For a precious thirty seconds, I do nothing but watch the heavens burn. Dalia’s sky bleeds before my eyes.

It is horrible and majestic and devastating and… bewitching.

Without any other plan of action, I close my eyes, place my finger to my temple as I would any normal telecommunication with Clocktower, and reach out to the storm.

It’s as easy as that.

My mind fills with a burning potential unrealized in the modern day. The noise is incredible, infiltrating every single thought, neuron, and circuit in my brain. It’s not a voice, but an understanding. It slithers inside my blood vessels, along nerve pathways, and drowns my sense of self.

Never have I felt anything remotely close to this.

Not that I would have noticed, but my body is wracked with seizures. On my back, salt water threatens to enter my open mouth, but too much of my own foam is coming out for it to go in. My physical body twists in a knot, while my mental is trying its best to untie one.

Flame. Flame. Flame.

It is alive.

It is true and real and a living being.

It breathes.

It devours.

It… understands… Sort of… Like an animal that understands that it must feast, or a fish that understands it must swim. It is a naturality. This understanding invades me, and I relish in it. Alex did not lie, nor did he did exaggerate. I feel for the flame as if it were my own kin.

As I slide into the skin of the storm, the seizure subsides, and connection is established. My body goes limp on the beach, but my mind flies.

It rides for Clocktower upon a wind that it has generated on its own accord. It is a beast of ungodly proportions. My mind floats with the storm and I see Clocktower nearing.

A swarm of Ember Guard ships try to dump toxins into my skin, but it is folly.

Ants run along their ant hill, squirming in their holes, but it is folly.

Owl screams for me to halt, but it is folly.

Owl?

Something pulls on me from beneath the subconscious. A familiar voice.

My own.

My true voice, unaltered by flame’s intentions. “Pull up!” She screams. “Pull up!” Inches before my vortex can reach the anthill that is Clocktower, I pause and look back at myself screaming. Curious, I focus on that voice.

“Maneuver!” I cry.

Realization becomes me. My mind remerges with itself, and my eyes open wide. Choking and sputtering, I rise from the water breathing as if I’d never had the luxury of tasting oxygen prior.

I scramble backwards, watching the horizon. The storm stands still. I place a hand upon my temple and think of a straight-level-turn, no, I feel a straight-level-turn. The storm obeys my gentle commands retreating off on an angle away from Clocktower.

Our connection is one of trust and balance. She is as happy to graze on ocean and algae as she is my home, I think. I release an exhale as I let go of the reins and send her spinning off into the long stretch of Dalia’s ocean to which no land resides.

Exhausted beyond comprehension, my body crumples.

I weep.

Not for the storm, not for Clocktower, not even for the people saved. Not for myself, not for Dalia, not even for singeing my wings.

I weep because I am human. Though my body and mind may not be, my soul is.

Nothing can question that now.

“Nothing.” Whispers the fire.

Article © Austin Arnold. All rights reserved.
Published on 2025-12-01