I had given up trying to make conversation with a very grim looking Jarod and my thoughts wandered back to when we’d first met.

I had been in some godforsaken little city that, apart from some ridiculous youth gangs, lacked any kind of organized criminal activity that I might have made a few bucks with, so I had decided to use my skills as a carpenter for a change.

It had actually been quite enjoyable despite the fact that the money wasn’t half as good as usual. One morning when I had closed my eyes to wipe the sweat away from my brow, a man had suddenly stood in front of me, smiling. He had extended his hand and introduced himself as Jarod Taylor, a name I had later learned he had chosen for its reference to the TV-show Home Improvement. He’d been working with me for a while before revealing to me just why we were paid so badly. Turned out that I was working for a criminal and simply oblivious to it. So although usually I didn’t mind in the slightest whether my employee abode to the law, since this time it was a disadvantage to me, I helped Jarod take the guy apart.

And that was that.

And even Jarod noticed that, apart from my obvious disinterest in being a model citizen getting a regular job which he didn’t know about, I was really a nice guy. No idea what got him to point one hell of a hot chick with raven hair and endless legs out to me, but before I could actually make a move, I was faced with three men, dressed in black and looking like a group of mafiosi from a B-movie. They’d brought me into a building and I had a chat with a guy named Mister Parker who’d explained a very nice kind of job to me.

Why would I have said no? It’s not a crime to knock a girl up, is it?

And indeed we did have a nice time together.

Why on earth did I begin to feel guilty right now? Maybe because the whole thing had spiralled out of control lately…

I leaned forward.

“Jarod…” I began, but he waved me aside angrily as he employed a quite ruthless way of driving to get to his girl as soon as possible.

“Jarod”, I said again, pointing towards the sky with my head. “Isn’t that where the Centre is located?”

He took his eyes from the road for a moment and paled as he saw the black smoke curling into the blue sky and turning it a sickly grey.

“Oh my god…” he whispered.

And that very moment I felt something that I hadn’t felt in a while. Regret. Poor Parker, I thought. Sure, I had betrayed her trust, caused her a lot of pain, but I had never wanted her to die in the flames of the prison of her youth burning to the ground.

The pain became almost bearable as soon as I couldn’t distinguish it from the heat of the flames anymore. I imagined it as it would happen.

The room would fill with smoke and so would the airvents.

Miss Parker, back when still chief of security, had always complained about the lack of precautions in case of a fire. Little had she known that it hadn’t been the mistake it had been labelled. Instead I had always knowingly kept it that way.

Prisoners and employees were too well watched to actually set anything on fire, but if a high powered executive like me would do it in the right place, there was no way any stone of this building would remain on top of the other.

I had been taking care of that.

Flames burst through the doors, made the metal glow a ghostly orange. I heard the old steel joints groan in agony and the building structure scream out in pain like a wounded beast coming down.

Around me the flames danced and lambently crawled towards the ceiling.

I was filled with a curious mixture of pain, regret and irrepresseable joy that seized me. Oh how glorious the fire bringing down this building from which all our lives had been ruined, souls –including mine- had been turned black and unspeakable deeds had been done inside these walls.

I thought about Nero who had set Rome on fire and sat above the city, admiring the heavenly fire consuming a city that had seemed invincible to those it had ruled over.

The same was happening here and like back then it was not just a building burning to the ground. It was so much more than that…

Finally the smoke filled my lungs and I inhaled it as eagerly as I had once inhaled the smoke of the cigarettes. And it killed me just as well. Only that I felt that I had been dead for years.

There was no way I would reach the Centre building by car since dozens of cars were pouring out of the lot, speeding away from the burning monster. Smoke and fire leaked from the windows, half the south wing had already collapsed. The air was filled with ashes, and black smoke that rose above the building like a tornado and blackened out the sun.

I pressed the sleeve of my shirt against my mouth and nose and ran towards the building, knowing that I didn’t stand much of a chance.

Still there was the image of Miss Parker in my mind as I had confronted her in one of the sunlit hallways up there that were now filled with smoke and fire. The sad look in her eyes as I had accused her of being a heartless person, addicted to power just like her father hurt me now.

“No wonder you’ve been trying to keep it from Broots and me. What did they offer you, Miss Parker? Freedom to walk away? Or was it what all Parker’s have ever fallen for: Power?”

I heard a security guard give another one the thumbs up as the evacuation plan had obviously worked well. On a Sunday, there was only the minimum staff operating anyway so whomever had set the building on fire’d had mercy on the employees.

“Sir, you can’t go in there!” A fireman caught my arm and held me back firmly.

“The basement is already burnt. It’s only a matter of time until the building will collapse.”

The horror sank in slowly as the hot air made my skin glow.

“I am looking for a young woman. She’s pregnant and I think she is still in there!”

“Don’t worry, Sir. We got everyone out in time,” he answered.

For a split second, I was almost relieved, but then a shocking bit of knowledge returned to my mind. Evil as all Centre operatives were, the evacuation plan did not include the prison.

And so I pushed the man aside and ran across the lot towards the building.

The smoke became almost impenetrable and the hot air started to burn inside my lungs. The main entrance was barely visible in front of me, the glass of the windows shattered by an explosion and crunching beneath my shoes.

There were yells behind me, but nobody dared to come any closer to the fire. I heard water splash into the other wing but knew instinctively that there was no chance to save the building.

Heck, I didn’t want the damn hellhole saved, but I needed to find Parker. I stopped in my tracks as one of the steel joints collapsed right in front of me and crashed to the floor, taking half the ceiling of the entrance hall with it.

I could hear the roar of an explosion somewhere underneath me and the floor rocked with its power.

More tears sprang to my eyes and this time they weren’t caused by the smoke.

Whereever Parker was, she was dead by now.

I stopped, unable to move with the guilt that weighed down upon me, sending me crashing to my knees. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of the fire on my face, the dust tickling down on me. I longed for the crisp cold winter air, but knew that I wouldn’t breathe it again.

At least I had done all I could….

“Sydney!”

I blinked my eyes, looked up at the person standing next to me with worried blue eyes. There she was. The angel she had always been to me.

“Catherine….” I whispered, knowing that this was the hour of my death and grateful for the fact that there was a higher entity that had sent me this woman to guide me although I did not deserve it.

“I’m so sorry…. I couldn’t save Mischa…” I whispered, feeling the softness of her hot skin on mine as she took my hand.

Catherine walked slightly doubled over, her beautiful face streaked with black dust, her hair a tangled mass around it.

“Come with me, Sydney!” she yelled over the tumbling down of another wall. And suddenly there was another arm grabbing mine and they pulled me to my feet together. I turned left and saw the worried face of Angelo.

“Catherine…” I murmured again, disorientated and short of breath.

“Damnit, Sydney,” she answered curtly. “It’s me. Parker!”

Relief flooded me when I regarded her quickly as we set in motion towards the door. I wasn’t faced with the ghost of Catherine as my clouded mind had assumed but with her daughter in the flesh. She’d stripped down to her tank top and trousers, walking gingerly with an arm around her stomach, her face exhausted, but her eyes shining with determination.

She had made it… thank god, she had made it!

I felt my body weaken with every step that Angelo and I dragged Sydney towards the exit. I had woken from unconsciousness to the worried face of Angelo, his large childlike eyes peering down upon me.

“Come… danger!” he had whispered in the whining tones that usually annoyed me, but made me cry out in relief today. I had thrown my arms around his neck, abandoning my give-a-damn attitude towards him for a few seconds.

Before I’d known it, he had scooped me up in his arms and carried me along the corridor he must have dragged me into from the air-vent.

I had already been able to hear the flames from the fire that was raging underneath, but I had felt oddly safe with my arms around Angelos’s neck, admiring his surprising strength as he turned corners, absolutely confident as to where he was headed.

Finally we had made it to the main hall where the fire was consuming everything that the Centre had represented and found Sydney kneeling on the floor, obviously crying.

The smoke had weakened the three of us and I still wasn’t sure whether we would make it out of here alive as hot ashes and burning pieces of wood were raining down upon us. I launched into a coughing fit and had to stop for a moment.

Sydneys red-rimmed eyes looked at me with anguish and he soothed me by stroking my back in a tired motion.

“Don’t give up, Mischa,” he said and I couldn’t prevent myself from wincing once again with the usage of my first name.

Angelo dragged us forward, his empathic instinct helping us along as he assessed the situation very quickly. My empathic abilities, however, were weakend to zero by the pain in my stomach that raged like the fire around me.

I doubled over slightly as it got worse once again and clung to Sydney whose arm around my shoulder seemed no longer serve to support him but me.

“I am so sorry…” he rasped into my ear. “I am so sorry… I should have known about this… I am so sorry I assumed the worst…”

“You knew about the plan?” I coughed, afraid that I would never find out and suddenly desperate to learn the truth.

“Your mother told me about what they had planned… and she tried to save you along with the other children. It’s just… I thought they’d given up on it… but of course they hadn’t… You know… they have tried to train your sense before… do you remember?”

“What do you see?”

I tried hard to concentrate on the image that had plagued me earlier in the cell and unsettled me so badly but still I couldn’t come up with it. A memory… another lost memory… buried beneath years of denial…

The mind exercise was too much and suddenly my physical strength left me altogether. I touched my hand to my forehead and withdrew it, staring in horror at the blood it was newly covered in.

The world around me began to spin uncontrollably, the flames hissing by, ever threatening to turn me into their collateral damage in its wake.

I heard someone yell my name, then Angelo’s arms closed around me and pulled me down as my legs had begun to give way beneath me.

I knew I was about to die but still everything I could still think about was my little girl.

I didn’t know why I had allowed Thomas Gates to accompany me in the first place but now I was glad to have someone who helped break through the line of firemen who tried to restrain us from running towards the building.

He shoved the guy and followed me through the haze of smoke and ashes towards the dying giant in front of us. Although I still hated what he had done to Parker, I felt somehow connected to him as we ran next to each other, pumping all our energy into our legs to get to her faster.

We broke through the entrance, the once imposing entrance hall a battlefield of shattered columns and pieces of marble that lay scattered across the ashen covered floor.

And there they were. Only metres away from the entrance that would have saved them, Angelo crouched next to Parker, Sydney behind them, half kneeling on the floor.

My relief was only temporary as the groaning of a huge column next to them snapped me out of it. Thomas’ reaction was quicker than mine, however.

The world seemed to sink into slow motion when he lurched forward and threw himself towards Parker, shoved her towards me and hit the floor where she had been.

The deafening sound of the collapsing stone tuned out his scream when it buried him underneath. For a moment I simply stared at this man sacrifizing himself for the woman who had loved him, then automatically kneeled down, gently picked Parker’s limp body up and turned around, Sydney and Angelo following slowly.

Fueled by a sudden strength I didn’t know I still possessed, I dodged parts of debris that came raining down on us and narrowly avoided the flames that were reaching for us, Sydney supported by Angelo right next to me.

Still, the only thing I could think of was Parker, ghastly pale, the left half of her face almost entirely covered in blood whose source I could not yet make out. I cradled her head to my chest to protect it from the raging fire around us.

“You’re strong, Miss Parker…” I whispered. “You can do this.”

But I wasn’t sure whether she was still alive. I pressed her body against mine but still couldn’t make out a heartbeat.

A moment later we stepped out into the cold winter air, to safety.