Firestorm Page 0,13

kiddo. Or the beginning. Tough to tell the difference. It's all one big turning circle, and where we are depends on who we are."

I clutched the blanket closer. "I--don't understand."

"Yeah, didn't figure you would. But I thought I'd give it a shot." He took another swig of beer, but those inhuman eyes never left me. "Take a look outside."

I rose, dragging the blanket with me wrapped around my shoulders like a bulky shawl. Not that I wanted to get up from that obscenely comfortable couch, but this was a dream, and I was going to do just what he wanted me to do. No real will of my own. My hand reached out for the drapery pull, and I yanked, and the heavy maroon curtains slid back, revealing...

A big field of nodding yellow flowers. Blue sky. A few clouds drifting lazily over the horizon.

I turned to look at him, a question on my face.

"Keep looking," he said. "Little more to the picture than meets the eye."

I narrowed my eyes, and it was like going up in to the aetheric, only I never left my body; the horizon zoomed toward me, clarifying itself as it came. What looked like a shadowy mountain range resolved into something else entirely.

Death.

I was looking at the skeletal remains of a city. Whatever skyline shape had once made it memorable was gone, so I didn't know if I was looking at Paris or New York or Dallas; it was a twisted bare mass of metal now, corroding and twisting together, being beaten down by the gentle, remorseless rain and wind. That was how the planet triumphed, in the end. With patience. With stillness. Without mercy.

"You're getting there," he said. "Closer."

And he was closer, too--across the room and standing right behind me. His hands closed on my upper arms, holding me in place against him. I didn't want to see, but it came to me anyway.

Bones. So many bones, sinking deeper into the hungry ground. Flesh liquefying and returning to the soil, bones taking longer to flake away into bleached splinters.

Bones were all that was left of humanity, I knew that. I could sense that. Nothing remained. Not a city untouched, not a family huddled in a cave, waiting out the disaster. We'd been completely, utterly removed from the Earth.

"You see?" Jonathan's voice rasped, soft as velvet against my ear. I could feel the warm whisper of his breath stirring my hair. "It's like bowling. When the match is over, you have to return the rented shoes. Sorry, kid. Game over."

Six billion lives, snuffed out. I wanted to fall to my knees, but Jonathan was holding me up. There was a certain lazy cruelty in the way his fingers dug into my skin.

"Don't go all weak on me now," he scolded me. "Bones and dust. That the way you want it?"

"No," I said, and firmed up my knees and spine. Weak? I wasn't weak, and I wouldn't let him see me that way. "So you tell me, how do I stop it?"

"What makes you think it's your job to stop anything?"

I shook free of his hands and whirled to face him. My fists clenched at my sides. "Because you brought me here!"

His face smoothed out, became as rigid and emotionless as a leather mask. Those eyes, God, those eyes. Fury and power and anguish, all together.

"I didn't bring you here," he said. "You think you're Miss Special Destiny of the year?"

"No," I shot back, furious. "And I don't damn well want to be, any more than you wanted to be--whatever the hell you are. But sometimes there isn't a choice. Right?"

"Careful. You might accidentally make some sense. Ruin your reputation."

"You are infuriating!"

"Yep," he agreed. "It's been said."

Arguing with him was getting me exactly nothing. I controlled my temper with a tremendous effort of will. "So how do we stop this?" Because I was not going to sit by and let a future roll toward us that contained six billion corpses turning to petroleum under the ground.

"That's the funny thing," Jonathan said, and stepped back. He tugged his cap more firmly in place, one hand at the back, one on the bill. "You want to survive, you need to convince Her that you're worth the favor."

"How?" I practically yelled it. "You'll know it when you see it. But first you have to get yourself to the right place."

"Which is?"

"Someplace you've already been," he said. "Once. Neat little place, kinda quaint. You'll think of it."

"Don't do that. Don't go