“That’s nice of you to say. You hurt someone today. She’s in the hospital because of you. What’s stopping you—”
“I know that.” Jamie’s expression broke in a way that Zoe wasn’t expecting. “I know that. I don’t want to hurt people.”
A different kind of silence came between them. They remained still, but the fierce tension broke. Zoe watched as Jamie exhaled, his eyes falling, and though his hands were still up, his posture slumped. With that, her own muscles relaxed by a mere fraction. Something changed.
“You steal their money. That hurts people.”
“From big corporate banks. They’re covered by the FDIC. Come on,” he said, arms finally dropping the Mind Robber pose to wave in exaggeration, “it’s simple, like, law stuff. No one gets hurt from that.”
A scream came from the second floor. Zoe held her ground. Jamie didn’t react, either.
Maybe because he was the one who caused it.
Zoe inched forward, arms back in ready position.
“Whoa, whoa. Come on,” he said. “Don’t make me do something I don’t wanna do.” He took a step back, matching her pose.
“What’s going on upstairs?”
“What?” He looked up at the popcorn-textured ceiling. “I don’t know! Isn’t that the Y’s lounge area?”
Another scream. More yelling. And then the thump of footsteps. All from her enhanced hearing, something that others failed to detect.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Jamie bit down on his lip and glanced at the meeting room. Zoe’s eyes traced his, and though her angle was off, a few heat signatures in the other room had looked their way. Their standoff was drawing attention.
She better do this quick if she needed to keep her anonymity.
“Okay, seriously. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Let’s just calm down and talk this through, I’m honestly rethinking a lot of things right now and—”
A voice broke into their conflict, coming in from the other room and down the short hallway. “Fire!” he yelled. “Fire on the second floor!”
The burning smell. It hadn’t been her imagination.
The lights flickered again, this time a quick strobe that seemed to put things in slow motion. Bright flashes of blue burst in and out all through her peripheral vision. When things stabilized, the odor got stronger—but this time, it came with a trail of smoke from the kitchen’s electrical sockets.
Jamie dropped his arms.
If this was some sort of diabolical scheme, he wouldn’t be showing so much concern right now.
Smoke detectors rang through the space. From above, a small mist came down on them, little bursts of water that choked to come out. Nothing that could put out a match, let alone a fire. Voices formed into a huddle, and Zoe tried to force the overwhelming volume down to something reasonable. A look past the short hall connecting the break room with the main space showed Ian ushering people out. She tried to focus, isolating voices past the panic and coughing to hear what was happening all around.
“This shitty place. I knew it was a death trap.”
“That old couch, it’s on fire!”
“The front entrance is blocked!”
“Did anyone call 911?”
She dashed into the meeting space, where people clustered at the room’s entrance. “Let me through, let me through,” she said at full volume, instincts telling her to throw herself into the chaos. “What’s going on?”
Ian came back, arms waving above his head. “It’s no good. Six people got out before the entrance got blocked. A beam fell and caught fire. This place has to be decades behind code.”
Zoe whirled around, only to find Jamie right behind her, eyes closed but face turned upward. “Eight people down here,” he yelled over the commotion. “There’s no one left upstairs.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t sense anyone,” he said, opening his eyes. “Do you see any thermal...thingies?”
Ian looked at both of them and blinked.
Another look upstairs showed that Jamie was right, and she didn’t see heat signatures floating around up there, though a few barely visible ones stood on the other side of this hallway. So some people definitely made it out. Smoke began to plume in from the staircase off to the side, rolling in and spreading across the top of the room. One man sprinted to the break room before coming back. “Isn’t there a goddamn emergency exit here?” Behind him, another man yelled incoherently, and next to him, a woman started to scream back at him.
A tap came down on Zoe’s shoulder, and she turned. But once she realized it was Jamie, she pushed him away, restraining enough so he didn’t get sent flying across the room. “I’m trying to help,” he yelled over the alarms and voices. Above them, the sprinkler mist sputtered before slowing to a drip.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Everyone calm down. We can find a way out,” Ian said. “There’s a beam in the way. Maybe we can find a way to push it out.”
“Use your strength,” Jamie yelled. Zoe threw him a menacing glare, but she knew he was right.
The idea of getting burned didn’t seem appealing, but dying was certainly worse. “Let me through,” she said, pushing through people before getting to the cramped hallway.
In the way sat a fractured beam, the splinter in the middle of it forming a V. Smoke and heat funneled in from a hole in the ceiling where the beam had collapsed, and beyond it, the small entry of the YMCA had functioning sprinklers on only half the lobby.
But—the Mind Robber was here. What if this was all a trick to trap her, eliminate her? He could be making her use her strength to free them, then stun her until the fire burned her alive.
At this point, what choice did she have except to trust him?
* * *
Jamie knew how to brain-stun people. But could he just get them to shut up and calm down?
It sure would have helped. Half the remaining people seemed like they went into logic overdrive, searching every corner for a magical way out. The other half coped by yelling, though the alarm sirens drowned them out. The yelling could have been at each other, at the city departments who let this building get so dilapidated, the manager for putting in highly flammable old furniture.
Zoe dashed back in and motioned Jamie to come forward. “I’m going to move that beam. It’s on fire but I’ll heal. You try anything and I’ll throw it on you.”