Hellfire

Wherever he was, there was a real lack of architectural creativity.

Every corner he turned, there was just another hallway stretching concrete grey and infinite. He was beginning to doubt he would ever escape this damned place. He still didn’t even know where this damned place was, much less why he was there. He’d used the guard’s body only briefly and at the time, he’d been running on pure adrenaline and hadn’t thought to take a look through his mind for a map.

He passed by plenty of unconscious guards, but they were useless to him. If he decided to shadow them, the only thing he would accomplish would be trapping himself inside them until they woke up. He planned on being far from here when that happened.

Maybe that red girl knows the way out.

Except, she didn’t exactly seem like the friendly type, if her flaming red hair and feral eyes were any indication. Not to mention the fact that she managed to take down four armed guards in the time it took for him to run the length of a hallway.

No, I should definitely wander a few more minutes.

He took a wild guess at an intersection…and found himself at what was left of the laboratory doorway.

“Son of a—!”

A warm breeze touched the back of his neck and he turned just in time to spot the flame girl rush by in a crimson blur. A moment later, she backpedaled to face him. Her hair seemed to be a shade darker, more brown now than red, and wasn’t dancing around her head like a flame. He decided to take that as a good sign.

“Hey, could I get some directions?”

She snarled something in a foreign language and before he could decipher whether or not she was conveying hostility, she grabbed his arm and hauled him down a different hallway.

This place was a damned maze but she seemed to know where she was going. She released his arm so that he could follow of his own accord and his arm tingled with numbness where her fingers had gripped. He still wasn’t sure what she was but whatever it was, she was strong.

A small metal canister suddenly clanged down the hall, spinning towards them. She shrieked again in her odd language and skidded to a stop, crouched nearly parallel to the ground. She shoved him hard back down where they’d come from and just as he turned his head away, gas and thick white smoke exploded from the canister.

Shit.

He hit the wall at the end of the hall, escaping the worst of the smoke. He looked back and there was a fire in the middle of the hallway.

Wait, when did they set a fire…?

The outer edges of the cloud of smoke finally reached him. His throat burned and his vision blurred momentarily. There was a funny fizzing sound in his head, just like when he had first been taken to the lab what seemed like a lifetime ago. Then his ears popped and there was nothing at all. Though worried about the possible effects the gas may have on him, he pushed it aside to puzzle over at a more convenient time.

The flames in the hall grew and burned through the smoke like thin mist in the sun’s morning rays. He saw the curve of shoulders and a waist and realized that the girl was the fire. She was on her knees, her hair flared out above her in vibrant crackling flames and her white-hot aura was nearly blinding. Again, she screamed her guttural sounds and the flames grew brighter, an inferno that rushed down the hall and scorched the paint on the floor.

He couldn’t see the troop of guards that had thrown the canister through the thick wall of flames but he heard the screams as the fire barreled through their thin line of defense.

Yeah, she’s definitely hostile.