22 Years Ago – Earth, Sablegate Underground Subway Station
Sablegate Station sat in the ground of a concrete plaza between a crumbling overpass and a row of corporate glass towers, and it looked the way most big-city transit hubs look after thirty years of use. The sign over the stairwell hung from rusted rails, its baby-blue neon spelling SABLEGATE SUBWAY beside a cartoon marten that some designer had thought was friendly. People poured down the wide steps in a steady, impatient stream, and nobody in it looked at anybody else.
Inside, the air smelled of instant coffee and floor cleaner. The ceramic tiles were cracked and gray, worn pale along the paths people walked, and the old advertisements on the walls promised synthetic health, digital love, and a ticket to a better city. An announcer's voice drifted from the speakers to call out arrivals in a tone that had stopped sounding urgent years ago. Trains ran on time. Vending machines clunked. Shoes clicked.
If you stood there long enough, though, small things stopped adding up. The bulbs overhead flickered out of rhythm with one another. The shadows cast by the escalator didn't quite match the people riding it. And the missing-person posters, which were supposed to be replaced as the weeks went by, always showed the same four faces, and no one ever tore them down.
Mary Vale stood at track 4 with her eyes on one of them. The flier hadn't peeled in three months. It had been printed from a photo taken before everything came apart, back when her husband still smiled like a man about to become a father, and her thumb moved over the edge of the paper without her telling it to. He wouldn't just leave. She kept repeating it in her head, quietly, as if saying it often enough would make it true.
Then footsteps stopped beside her, and the air near her shoulder went still.
"Still thinking about that guy?" Sienna asked.
Mary kept her eyes on the poster.
"I know it's hard to hear," Sienna said, in a voice that was warm and gentle and wrong in some way Mary couldn't name. "Some people just aren't meant to stay. He couldn't handle being a father, so he ran. Tail between his legs, like a dog."
Mary's jaw tightened.
"He ditched you to start another life."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?" Sienna stepped closer and took Mary's hand in both of hers, softly, the way you'd take a child's. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life waiting for someone who probably never loved you the way you loved him? Maybe you were just convenient." Her thumb found the ring on Mary's finger. "Take it off. It's a symbol of a lie. Let it go, and you'll be free."
The heat started in Mary's chest and rose fast. She barely touched the ring, and the fire came out of her hand all at once, pale white and roaring, with the sound of a flare lighting. It was a reflex of spiritual energy, old and raw, and it threw light across the tiles and made the posters curl at their corners.
Sienna screamed and stumbled backward as her sleeve caught. The flame climbed her arm.
"No," Mary said, her breath stopping in her throat. "I didn't—"
Sienna called her own spiritual energy to the arm and froze it. The ice held for a second and then shattered, and the flame underneath was as bright as before. She went down on one knee, staring at it. "Put it out," she said. "Put it out!" But Mary couldn't, and after a moment Sienna stopped asking. She blinked slowly at her ruined sleeve. A thread of blood ran from her nose, and she began to laugh, a dry, hollow sound with nothing behind it.
"This is what happens when you cling to your ghosts," she said. "Your soul is rejecting the one person who wants to help you." She reached up and scratched at the back of her neck, as if it itched.
A woman's voice cut across the platform. She had red hair and blue eyes, with freckles scattered across her face, and she had been standing perfectly still since the argument started. Beside her stood a very tall man with brown hair, golden-tan skin, and neon bronze eyes. He wore a Lustbrand shirt, and the word Bitchkilla! was tattooed down his forearm, which suggested he was a serious fan of the brand. Both of them were staring at the two women.
"That lady is on fire!" the redhead yelled.