The Gemini Age: Book One

[9-3] What Lies Below - Part Three

    Over the pointed tips of the city's terraced buildings, the dawn sky blushed away the last threads of the night's cloudy veil. Light flowed over the slats of the roof tiles, yet only the thinnest dregs reached the muddy floor of the alleyways ribboned between the streets. The outer faces of the sprawling buildings had dried in the first cool breezes of the morning, leaving plenty of pale brickwork to receive another day's worth of airborne dust and liquid dirt from scurrying feet.

    A bolt of fire drenched the alley walls in rich waves of golden light. "See? Focus, breathe, then let them have it. Simple." Marcus relaxed his arms and shook the residual heat from his knuckles, folding his arms and stepping aside once he had caught his breath. "Give it a shot."

    Jade smiled and raised her fists, light on her feet with excitement. A solid thrust of her left fist released a charge of fire down the alley, and a quick follow-up jab from her right sliced the air with a slim burning blade. The row of covered skips stored by the wall popped into Jade's view as she cast, and with a fiendish grin she threw her arms down to spin up a breeze and leapt into the air. Before she landed on top of the dumpsters, she kicked out with her right leg and yelled with confidence, yet her cry deteriorated into a wail as a thundering flash suddenly blew her back along a trail of smoke onto the alley floor behind Marcus.

    Hand covering his feigned wincing, Marcus turned to Jade's reeling body. "Showboating already? Bold choice."

    "Hilarious." Jade rubbed the back of her head and sucked air through her teeth as she sat up. The waves of Marcus' combover blocked the sprinkles of light that spiralled from the dawn sky as she picked herself up, and she rubbed her ear to remove the shrieks ringing through her mind. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I was hardly showboating. I just tried to cast a larger flame. I didn't think it would explode on me!"

    Marcus' eyes shifted to look anywhere but Jade's irritated face. "Yeah, fire tends to do that when you don't focus its energy first. Especially that much energy." He fixed the crooked skip as they returned to their training position, and he scanned the four wheels for a brake to snap into operation before he returned to Jade's side. "In a real fight, you have to conserve your strength. Don't pour it all into one move, or you'll end up on the floor next to someone less nice than me."

    A raised eyebrow displaced Jade's knitted frustration, and she leaned into Marcus' chest with a suspicious look. "Did you just call yourself nice? I would've said...grumpy." Her cyan eyes shone with the wicked grin that sharpened her teeth, and the red of her cheeks wilted as quickly as it blossomed to leave behind a gentle warmth that beamed even brighter as she giggled at Marcus' rolling eyes. "Oh, sorry, do you prefer aloof?"

    "Nah, he's definitely grumpy. Look at his face now!" Lloyd leaned out from the overturned bucket he used as a seat and waved to the others, then fell back, nearly dropping the mobile phone he borrowed from Jade. "Sorry, Detective! No, nothing, I was just...Jade and Marcus are practicing right now. Yeah, it's going...great!"

    Fiona's sigh was audible through the speakerphone, and Lloyd shifted in his hoodie until her voice reappeared. "Brilliant, another potential arsonist to keep tabs on. If you lot set light to a block of flats, I'm denying I know any of you." Her chair squeaked as she sat up straight, and she took a long, quiet sip from a ceramic mug. "I have to go, kid. Try not to get in trouble today, alright? Or if you do, at least keep me out of it for once."

    The second the phone fell silent, Lloyd scrambled to his feet and pressed Jade's phone back into her hands, his breathing heavy. "Next time, one of you talk to her. I can't do it again. She terrifies me!" True to his words, a light film of sweat sheened off his brow, and red marks spread across the side of his neck that he raked his nails over to steady the flow of his rattled breaths. "She's so...intense!"