A Brighter Flame

On Jack’s second day at the base, he turned the south intersection into a wall of fire.

I stood beneath the watchtower and watched him flick his arm. A crimson stream of flame whipped out and swallowed a dozen infected that were piling onto the fence.

Cheering erupted along the wall. Even a few guards who’d been complaining about fuel shortages were yelling his name.

Fire looks good at night. Like you’re forcing one more breath into a base that’s about to die.

But all I saw was the next problem.

“The heat signature’s too high.”

I lowered the binoculars and said to Alice, “Night runners will get drawn in from miles out. Starting tomorrow night, outer-ring patrols cut noise. The generators only get cold maintenance. And don’t let him—”

Jack was right there. He heard everything and laughed.

He lifted his hand. The last little flame danced in the wind in his palm. “So what’s your plan? Hide in the dark and wait for them to chew through the gate?”

“My plan is to stop turning the whole town into a lighthouse,” I said.

“Only cowards are afraid of light.” He turned to the people on the wall. “We need the streets cleared, not some warehouse spreadsheet.”

Someone laughed.

Not everyone. But enough.

The supply truck Jack brought had fuel, ammo—and the kind of thing that got people high faster than anything else: power they could see.

Compared to that, my way—minimize loss, keep noise down, patch one hole by stealing from another—was too quiet.

So quiet nobody wanted to hear it when their blood was up.

And Jack had another layer to him. Alice’s childhood friend. They’d even been in the same military academy. That made it easy: people who trusted Alice naturally trusted Jack more.

Worse, the storage yard had a “misunderstanding” that afternoon.

A crate of spare chips vanished from the check-in rack—then got “found” under my bed.

They were chips I’d kept safe the night before using my spatial pocket. I’d planned to pull them out only when the cold room actually collapsed.

Jack needed just one line—“the warehouse guy’s hoarding parts”—and suddenly I was the one who needed questioning.

I could explain why the chips hadn’t gone through normal registration. But the second I opened my mouth, my ability would be exposed with it.

So I said nothing.

Jack leaned on the warehouse doorway, spinning a lighter in his fingers, smiling like this was all easy. “See? Didn’t I tell you something was off. I don’t care if he stole or not. I care that when it matters, this base can’t put our lives in the hands of someone who hides things.”

Alice didn’t convict me on the spot. She just took the chips, her tone stiff. “Noah. Next time, report it to me first.”

She didn’t look at me.

That was her answer.

That night, Jack got field command.

He decided to take the convoy out the next day to “reclaim” the old power station. Simple logic: electricity meant life.

I told them the lines were rotten, the station’s backup fuel tank might have evaporated, and we had to send two people in light first to scout—then cut every high-heat source in the area.

Jack slapped the maintenance schematics down on the table.

“By the time you finish scouting, we’ll be out of power and out of drinking water.” He stared at me. “You’re great at fixing shelves. Leave the power station to people who actually move.”

Alice backed him.

I didn’t argue again. I took my loss chart and went back to the warehouse to inventory what we had left—batteries, purification chips, and the meds in the cold storage.

I knew they’d get people killed. The only question was how many.

The answer came faster than I expected.

At dusk, when the first vehicle got towed back in, the front end was already burned black.

Two men were missing from the truck bed. The fuel drums were down to half. The riders’ faces were gray with soot. One guy climbed out and immediately vomited.

“Line flashover,” a guard rasped. “Jack used fire to cut the door. Heat ignited fuel mist. And something else got drawn in… not normal infected. They run like dogs. Fast.”

The second vehicle was worse. The right-side tire had been chewed to pieces. To get free, they dumped four barrels of diesel. The generator’s main shaft they brought back was bent from the drop—couldn’t be mounted at all.

The deadliest part was the purification chip losing power. The main filtration system dropped to emergency mode. The clinic started rationing electricity immediately. Cold storage temperature spiked nonstop. Two critical patients deteriorated into high fever overnight.

The base finally went quiet.

For the first time, everyone understood: losing power wasn’t “inconvenient.” It cut people off piece by piece.

I didn’t waste time listening to Jack explain himself. I grabbed a whiteboard and wrote it all out—vehicle losses, fuel deficit, remaining watt-hours.

The few people in storage who actually worked stood nearby, faces paler than the dead.

“How long can water hold?” one of them—Evan—asked me.

“Twenty-six hours. That’s if the kitchen and the watchtower cut half their lights tonight,” I said.

“Cold room?”

“Eight hours.”

Evan went silent for a few seconds, then lowered his voice. “You need to come back and lock down main storage. You’re the only one who knows how to keep these broken pieces running.”

A woman from power distribution spoke up too. “Noah, don’t take it personal. Don’t fight them out of spite. People are going to die.”

I capped the marker. “I’m not fighting out of spite. I’m waiting for someone to admit the problem can’t be fixed with fire.”

After midnight, it finally got quiet outside the storage block.

I didn’t sleep. I was behind the wall, down in an old pipe shaft, checking the wiring.

That’s where I heard voices from Alice’s office.

First, Jack.

“…Blacklight Fortress is offering high-output batteries, purification chips, and quarantine-layer medical access.”

Then Alice, barely above a whisper. “Why do they want him?”

“Energy for a person. Don’t ask questions that don’t matter.” Jack paused, his tone half persuasion, half pressure. “A low-combat logistics guy, in exchange for a month of allocation for the whole base. You know if the deal’s worth it.”

Silence on the other side of the wall for a few seconds.

I held my breath, my nails digging into my palm.

When Alice finally spoke, her voice was raw. “…If we send him, Blacklight has to guarantee the batteries get released the moment the handover is done.”

Jack laughed.

“Of course. Quarantine will take him. One man, for a base to stay alive. A shelf-fixer doesn’t get priced that high every day.”

I slowly unclenched my hand. My palm was slick with blood.

They weren’t discussing a plan.

They’d already decided what I was worth.