Firedown Sun

The cold air made me shiver as I hurried up the sidewalk to the Cyrinthion, and I couldn't help but glance up at the old building with a slight wave of fear. It looked haunted and creepy now, like something disgusting and horrible, right out of my nightmares, would crawl out and eat me alive.

Ha. Like maybe the Spyders? I moved forward, pushing my way through the front door and inhaling sharply when it creaked. Whirling to look over my shoulder, I searched for any flashes of light indicating I was being followed by Ordermen.

No lights. Letting out the breath I'd been holding, I closed the door behind me and scampered up to the third floor.

I was exhausted by the jog up so many stairs, but I felt safer away from the ground level. Who knew how many people would consider this a bad idea and come after us?

"Hexa? Lune?"

At first, there wasn't an answer. But then I heard a light rapping on the wall behind me. Slowly, I turned around and saw a big, metal door. Breathing in deeply, I pushed it open and found myself face to face with a big, dark shape hanging by my nose. It had eight legs and beady eyes that shone in the light...

"Gah-" My voice was cut off by two hands slapped hard to my mouth.

"Quiet, Kitten! It's just a booby trap!"

Pulled roughly inside whatever room this was, the door was slammed shut and a flashlight glowed between someone's gloved fingers.

Free, I gasped for air. "Ow," I mumbled, running my thumb over my lips. They stung a little.

"Sorry," Lune murmured, and I could just make out his eyes. He really was apologizing, not just saying it to be polite.

"It's okay." I shivered away from the black Spyder hanging in front of the door. "Is it..."

"Yes, it's fake," Resh said. Of course it was Resh. She raised her dark eyes and gave me a slight smile. "Nice idea, huh?"

"Well, it worked." I glanced down at her hands and my eyes narrowed. "What's with the gloves?"

"Um, it's really cold where we're going. The walls aren't stable. Neither is the floor, so be VERY careful." She spun around to head toward what seemed to be a narrow hallway, the creaks of the floorboards with her every step bringing truth and echoing power her last words.

"I will be," I promised and felt Lune staring at me. I didn't look at him. I waited several moments until he turned away before I could take my turn in staring at him. He hurried after Resh, and the question, "why was he staring?" entered my mind. I followed him, biting my lip again and wondering if it was appropriate to ask or if I should just leave it be. I decided silence seemed the better option and began scouting the darkness for clues to where we were going.

"Ah, here's the door," Resh announced as she approached a part of the wall that was really falling apart. I was about to open my mouth and tell her it wasn't anything but slabs of wood crumbling to dust, but then she pushed on a section of it, and it slowly revealed a shiny, iron door.

"Brilliant, isn't it?" Lune whispered to me. Again, he was gazing at me with such intensity I couldn't bear to look at him. I felt my cheeks flush, and I groaned internally. Did I HAVE to feel like this every second of every day?

Ugh. Stupid crushes.

"By the way," he said, "the whole Spyder thing.... Um... you wanted to tell us something about that, didn't you? That's why you freaked out when you saw one hanging by your nose?"

I nodded. "Yes, it's... something that I couldn't say with Leon or Proxy around. Only... only the group." I remembered what my dad said about a name, but I was just so clueless as to what we could call ourselves.

Lune cleared his throat, facing Resh as she disappeared through the doorway, mumbling about a "ridiculous" something or other. I hoped it had nothing to do with me, because the look on her face wasn't so great.

"So, where are we headed?" I asked, coughing as dust filled my lungs.

"You'll see," Resh murmured mysteriously, and yes, I could tell. There was a tenseness to her voice, to her body language. What was going on?

"Who else is here? Hexa? Jaz?"

"Yes and yes. You might be surprised by who we've rounded up..." Lune didn't look at me, and I tried to think of any other rebels that hadn't changed. Had they thought of Poppi? Did she come on her own? She was so quiet, so distanced from the rest of us. She might not want to involve herself in this.

What about Xentri? I sighed as I thought of him. No, he wouldn't come. He was determined to make it seem like nothing had happened between him and I, that he hadn't been unreasonably nice to me, and that he hadn't shoved me against a wall to tell me how things were done. He didn't want to get caught up in all of this.

And as we moved onward in the darkness, approaching and advancing two sets of wooden, cobwebbed stairs- I kept an eye out for Spyders, naturally, and took each step slowly and with complete caution- I saw I was right. Xentri had not joined us.

But Margolo had.

We climbed up the last few steps and entered the sixth floor, which had a huge ceiling because, to my surprise, there was no seventh. The floorboards had long since rotted away and fallen to our feet here, in random piles and in corners, which left a huge open space above our heads. And within only a few seconds, I saw the flaming red hair and brilliant, unchanged, blue eyes of Margolo and gasped loudly.

"Margolo?!" I practically shrieked. "You're here!"

"Yes, yes I'm here." She bent her head in embarrassment at my reaction, then shrugged. "Where else would I be?"

"Um, maybe at home, being a good puppet like everybody else?"

Laughing, Margolo shook her head. "No, that's not right. If you guys want to go ahead and kill yourselves like this, then sure, why can't I join in? If you screw something up, we'll all die anyways, right?"

We all flinched, and I was shocked to hear her speaking her mind. She'd said you had to control your tongue, not blurt out things so boldly, no matter how obviously true they were.

She noticed our surprise and explained in a rush, "I just meant that this place could come toppling down if we did something wrong! That's all, I didn't- Ugh! I'm sorry."

I didn't like hearing an apology coming from her. "No problem. We just... We should be saying sorry. We're the ones that could mess things up, knocking down buildings or otherwise." I turned to glance at the others that had gathered here, besides Lune and Resh, and blinked in surprise once again.

Tummel was here.

Tummel was here?!

"Oh my gosh!" I took a step toward him, then thought better of it. He looked so lost and confused, like he still hadn't gotten over Resh's punch. "What are you doing here?" I asked, shaking my head. This didn't make sense.

"I..." He looked over at Margolo, eyebrows bunching up and his mouth hanging open as he tried to find a reason. "I followed her...?"

Margolo moved over to him. "He's my recruit." She placed an arm gingerly, comfortably, around his shoulder. "He lives right across from me, so... Ha, I couldn't leave him alone with his brain like this."

"It's fine," I mumbled incoherently, still dazed by the thought of all this. Lune was right. I hadn't had a clue these two would show. I wouldn't have dared to dream they would.

"Don't worry, Tummel, you'll be better by morning. It would have worn off on its own about dinner time." Margolo got a strange look on her face, and she stared at the floor, her fiery hair shielding her expression from us. "They'll swallow the green ones tomorrow."

"What ones did they take today?" Lune asked suddenly, and I flinched as I realized he'd come up next to me. I could hear his breathing, his heartbeat. I felt warmth radiating off of his skin, and I began to realize how cold it was up here. I ground my teeth together, trying so very hard to keep them from chattering. I was shaking a bit, but so was Resh, and Hexa, too, sitting in the corner with her head resting on her knees, her arms wrapped around at her ankles. She seemed unaware of our presence so far.

"White. I don't know what the green ones do, but I remember the schedule. It's still imprinted in my head..." She turned to Tummel. "Do you recall at all?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "Something about waking up early... A bottle of medicine? I don't... I don't know why. Was it... was it the medicine that did this to me?"

"No," she said, brushing a lock of his hair back behind his ear. "No, it's going out of your system faster than it was meant to, so you're not used to being normal yet. Just wait until morning."

"It hurts..."

I swallowed hard. This was too much. I went over to sit by Hexa, and she raised her head ever so slightly.

"Oh, hi," she said, then collapsed again against her knees.

"What's up?" I asked, trying to distract myself from the conversation about Tummel's brain and the pills and what it was doing to our city. "You feeling alright?"

"I don't want to go to sleep. I'm afraid they'll come to me. But I'm SO tired......."

"Sh," I whispered, brushing her hair out of her face like Margolo had done for Tummel. It seemed to be the only thing I could do now. Just sit there and be a comfort to her. "They won't come near you. You've got your blades, remember? You can whip out-"

"No, that's not it." She sat up a little, staring at me intensely. "I know I can fight them. But you know how I am when I'm asleep. A foghorn could hardly wake me up. So if I'm sleeping..... They might do something... I might become......."

She didn't have to say the name. She was staring right at Tummel, her bottom lip quivering and her narrowed, green eyes twinkling in the moonlight streaming from the broken structure supposedly called a wall.

I breathed in deeply, then leaned an inch toward her, forcing her to hold my gaze. "Hexa," I said, "You. Will. Be. FINE. I promise. You can't just not sleep, Hex. We won't let them come after you. And even if they try-"

"We'll hurt them until they're begging to die," Resh cut in, standing in front of us, smirking evilly. "Don't you worry, they wouldn't survive if they lay a finger on you."

Hexa smiled. Good. I hated seeing her in this type of mood. It wasn't very Hexa-like to be worried about being attacked. She usually was the one to threaten to hurt people, not to fear being hurt themselves.

I patted her knee, then got to my feet. My friends had waited long enough. They needed to know about the Spyders.

"Alright, guys. Gather... um... in the middle of the room."

Margolo and Tummel sauntered over, followed by Lune and Resh, who dragged Hexa to her feet and kept her hand clutched around her elbow, like she was worried she'd jump off the roof or something. I shuddered at the idea and glanced at the others who I hadn't really recognized yet.

There was Poppi, of course, and a depressed-looking Jaz. He still hadn't gotten over the loss of Havva. I wasn't really sure if any of us would be able to be of much comfort to him, and I knew none of us could understand his emotions right now, either. We hadn't been deserted by someone we loved. My eyes flickered to Lune, and I couldn't bear the thought of losing him. The hole it would leave inside me...... I flinched, immediately wishing I could be of more help to Jaz.

Pharis huddled closer to the others, keeping his distance from both me and Lune. Guilt washed over me as I considered that, but what should I feel guilty for? It wasn't my fault that his feelings weren't something I could return.

And that was all. We'd gained two more than earlier, which left us with a grand total of nine.

"Okay," I said, clearing my throat. "I, uh... figured something out today. About the pills." I waited for them to ponder that, and after it looked like all of them had their eyes on me, I inhaled....... and exhaled out, "They're filled with Spyder venom."

The gasps from around the circle weren't all that astonishing. Of course they'd be taken by surprise. Not to mention they weren't thrilled...

"No! What are they THINKING?!" Lune hissed. "That venom could kill them!"

"I'm alive, and so is Tummel," Margolo managed to say, her words slurred a bit by the mind-spinning I'd given her by my announcement.

"Barely!" he cried. "Look at him, he can barely walk on his own!"

"That's mostly my fault," Resh admitted. "I did a pretty good job knocking it out of his system."

"Which is WHY he's alive!" Lune was speaking through his teeth now, and he was glaring out into the open space, fuming. I was afraid he'd try and punch a wall and then he'd go toppling out of it.... But I blinked the images out of my head and tried to calm the group down.

"Hey, please don't fight. I know it's a stupid act on the leaders part-"

"Stupid," Lune muttered under his breath. "That's an understatement."

"Yes, I get that. But still. Think about how it'll change their way of thinking. Different Spyders do different things, and they can make you believe certain things and act a certain way. They could've been doing this our whole lives, you know," I told all of them. "Aren't you glad we aren't all addicted to these pills? Because then if we did get it knocked out of our systems......" I couldn't form the next few words, and I turned to Hexa for help, since she was the closest to me.

She nodded in understanding. "It would have destroyed us from the inside out. We'd go crazy without them, and we'd get too sick to be able to function."

"Great!" Resh said, the sarcasm thick in her voice. "So, basically, if this goes on, all of Monten will be dead if we don't do something."

"It won't take long," Tummel stammered, fighting to speak clearly and coherently. "Look at what's... happening t-to me. I can't... I can't even think. It hurts..."

"I'm going to pound some sense into those leaders heads!" shouted Lune. "I can't believe they would DO this! What are they, nuts?"

"Probably," I laughed. "I mean, they are, like, what? Eighty, ninty something? They'll call for replacements soon......"

We all made disgusted faces and turned to glare at the floor. Replacements. The only person in Monten I could think of that was counting the days for that to happen was Seem, and he wasn't himself lately, so he might not even be chosen. He might do something really stupid.

"You know," Lune said softly, and his tone made me look up. He was thoughtful, and he met my gaze easily. "I knew it was something about the Spyders. That's why we hung the fake one up by that door. Because, whatever it was about them, the adults would know not to go near them, because it was something... well, ugly." He sighed. "I just never imagined it would be something this crazy."

"None of us did," I mumbled. "When I found out-"

"Oh!"

I jumped at the sound of Pharis' voice, and quickly bent my head so I didn't have to look at him. He kept talking.

"It was when I told you, wasn't it? About what the venom does to your system? You figured it out then, didn't you?"

I nodded, boring holes in my sneakers with my eyes. My face was hot, and I couldn't bear to imagine what he thought about him being the one to help me discover all this. Was he proud? Guilty?

I finally had to see his expression, and when I raised my head, he was smiling at me. Not a weird, sad smile. A real one. There was no more pain or desire in his eyes. Of course, he could just be hiding it... But I was glad there wasn't anything on the surface. I returned the smile by instinct, then noticed Lune was staring. I sighed. Would that lead to a fight between Pharis and him? I sure hoped not...

And at that moment, speaking of fights, we heard footsteps, and everyone was tensed up, turning toward the sound of the intruder. Hexa had her hand on her belt, where her harmonica knife was, and Tummel still looked confused.

But it was a familiar face that appeared. And a laughing one at that.

"A fake Spyder? You guys are so crazy! Adults will see through THAT easily! Ha, they'll probably be up soon-"

"Get down!" Resh yelled from behind me, and I ducked immediately. I'd learned to take orders from her without question years ago. If you didn't listen right away, you'd most likely get kicked in the head. And I could see, when she leaped over me to tackled the figure in the doorway, that would have happened if I hadn't gotten down.

"What are you doing here, Summon?"

"Last names aren't supposed to be used," the figure chuckled, now laying on his back, Resh kneeling on his stomach with her hands pressed securely to his neck. Not tight enough to choke him, but definitely enough to keep him still.

"Answer the question, before I strangle you!"

"Resh, get off him," I said, hurrying to my feet. But someone grabbed my wrists and flung me behind them. I hollered, "Hey!" and wanted to kick them in the shins, but then I saw the hazel eyes. Of course Lune was trying to protect me. But from Zarther? He wouldn't hurt me.

"Keep him down," Lune growled, glaring over his shoulder at me. "Are you out of your mind? He's one of them!"

"Actually-" Zarther started to say, but Resh cut him off. Literally. She shoved her hands into his throat, and he sputtered into silence.

"Don't!" I cried, afraid he'd suffocate and die. "Zarther won't hurt any of us! Will you, Zarther?"

Lune held my hands even tighter, and it hurt just a little. Not much, but I had to bite my tongue to stop from crying out. "Don't ask him questions, Kitten, he'll just lie. He's one of them!"

"No he's not!" I screamed, pushing him away. Somehow, I succeeded, and Lune's grasp came loose long enough for me to move around him and sprint over to Zarther's side. "Let him go, Resh! Trust me, he's not one of them! He won't hurt us!"

Resh stepped aside reluctantly, and I pulled the poor guy to his feet. "Thanks," he said, laughing like he hadn't just barely escaped murder. "I owe you one, Kitten. At least you believe me."

And, for the first time, I gazed into his eyes. It had been a risk saving him from Resh, because I didn't actually know if he was normal or not, but I breathed a sigh of relief.

He hadn't been changed.

"Glad to have me here?" Zarther joked. "Because I'll show up more often if you-"

His voice faltered as I delivered a hard slap to his cheek. He fell backwards into the more stable wall, reaching up to where I'd hit him, his light green eyes widening.

"THAT'S for being an idiot!" I screamed. "What the HECK were you doing beating up that kid from homeroom? Do you know what the leaders could DO to you? You're such a stumbling, rotten GENIUS!!!"

He stared, and there would be no laughter this time. He just waited for me to apologize, or maybe one of the other people to kick him out. But nothing happened. Everyone was gaping at me, like I'd grown a second head or turned invisible or something.

"He was on the Telo," I said in my defense, aiming my gaze at Hexa. She was the least surprised of all of us. She almost seemed to be enjoying my final attribution to violence.

"Um... do you want an explanation?"

I turned to glare at Zarther, and he bit his lip, deciding whether he should shut up or continue.

He chose to continue. "When I saw what happened to Tummel- oh, look, there he is, hey what's up?- I figured it out. We hit people, and they're not like that anymore. So... um, I'm sorry Kitten. But he's ticked me off an occassion anyway, so he really deserved a good beating anyway."

I rolled my eyes. "You practically beat him to death, Zarther. That's not a good beating, that's torture. Abuse. You're such an idiot."

"I know I am. But now he's like us again."

"Great," I muttered. "Just what we need. A random guy we don't know, joining... the... um..." I sighed. I still hadn't thought of a name. What could we possibly be called? I was too confused and worried about being killed half the time to even have time to remember how to breathe properly, so how could I figure out what sort of name for our gang?

"No name?" Zarther scoffed. "You should figure that one out, Kitten. It's so unofficial, not having a name."

My eyes narrowed, and I snapped, "Well, why don't YOU come up with something, if you're going to be such a genius about it?"

He smiled at the invitation, then scratched his chin as he thought about it. After only thirteen seconds or so, he blurted out excitedly, "Oh, I've got the perfect one! How about The Blazes?"

"Blazes?" I repeated.

"Like a fire." Zarther shrugged. "You're addicted to flames, so... I thought it fit."

I frowned. "But we aren't ALL addicted to fire. So how does it make sense to-"

"I like it," Hexa interrupted. "The Blazes. It's perfect."

Margolo was grinning, and she giggled, "Ha, a red-headed Blaze! How appropriate!"

I couldn't help it. I smiled, too. Maybe it would work. It was definitely better than not having a name, and I hadn't been able to think of it.

"Well," I said. "Since you came up with it, Zarther, why don't you join us? We were just talking about our recent situation..."

"Ah, a meeting." He hurried to take his place in our circle, muttering, "What's the discussion so far? What did I miss?"