Season 2, Episode 14 — Firehouse of Lies
Timeline: Same night as Ep 13. Zack is Level 18. Rain still owns the sky.
⸻
Cold Open — Siren Hunger
The city burned in patches like a bad map. Zack jogged along the soaked avenue with Luna and Silas ghosting his flanks, the Hearthbreak Vow pulsing under his sternum like a second heart. Somewhere north, engines screamed—not police, not ambulances. Fire trucks. Too many. Wrong cadence.
The HUD cut a line across his vision:
LEVEL 18
EXP: 0 / 1000
OATH VECTOR: Active
ROUTE 2 TARGET: Firehouse Syndicate (Marrow subnetwork)
Civilians at risk: High
"Smell that?" Luna asked, wrinkling her nose. "Not normal smoke. This is… chemical."
Silas glanced up at the rolling bruise of cloud. "Bloodfire. He's corrupted hydrants and foam cannons."
Zack's jaw tightened until steel squealed. "We shut it off."
⸻
Act I — House 47
House 47 should have been a safe place in red brick and brass, the kind of civic shrine cities build to reassure themselves they deserve saving. Tonight, its bay doors were open like screams. The ladder truck glowed slick wet in the rain, engine idling. Three firefighters in turnouts moved with too-smooth motions, masks down, axes shouldered. Not human. Shades in turnout gear.
Behind them, real firefighters were zip-tied on the floor, helmets kicked aside, gags bit bloody.
One Shade turned at the trio's approach and clicked its radio. "Targets present. Begin cleansing."
The second Shade reached up and flipped a valve. The hose couplings breathed, scarlet foam bulging in the line like a vein.
Zack didn't wait. Hearthchain snapped—silver tether latching the zip-tied firefighters. With a jerk he dragged the line of groaning humans across the bay into Luna's arms. She dropped to her knees, knife flashing, slicing plastic fast enough to burn.
Silas stepped once and appeared in front of a Shade, plucking the radio from its hand like a disapproving teacher. "No calls after curfew." He crushed it to dust.
The first hose belched bloodfire—viscous red flame that stuck to the floor and climbed the wall like it had a to-do list. Heat hit like a slap. Sirens outside harmonized on the wrong note.
Zack angled his body between flame and the hostages, Surge building. The steel under his skin hummed and spread, shedding heat like a forge that knew its job.
The Shade trio advanced in step, axes slicing the air. Zack met the first with a cross that folded its mask inward; the crunch was ceramic over bone and not enough. He followed with an elbow that turned the head ninety degrees and the body to smoke.
+150 EXP
EXP: 150 / 1000 (Oath bonus +20%: rescue context)
The second Shade tried to cut him at the knee. He leapt, heel smashing down to shatter its shoulder. Luna slid beneath his landing, one palm to the slick floor, sweeping his legs and the Shade's in an elegant, filthy gymnast move that ended with her axe down through its helmet.
The third Shade spooled the hose like a python and lashed it at them; globes of bloodfire splattered and stuck. Zack planted, braced, bit the hose and tore—fangs through casing, sparks through liquid. The line screamed and went slack.
Silas stood in the bloodfire casually, cigarette ember stubborn in the wet, and reached into the flame with two fingers. The fire decided to be steam.
"Neat," Luna said, hauling the last firefighter to his feet. "Do that to the whole building?"
"Eventually," Silas said. "After physics gets bored with itself."
The rescued firefighters swayed, eyes blown wide. One gawped at Zack's shining eyes and bared fangs and decided to shelve the why for later. "They took… more stations," he rasped. "They're hitting apartment blocks, pushing people inward. Trapping them."
Zack looked at the map in his head. The vow sketched three hot points, pulsing in different quarters of the city like abscesses.
ROUTE SPURS:
• North: High-rise complex, sprinklers pumping bloodfire.
• West: Tenements, blocked stairwells, fake evacuations.
• South: School gym shelter, sealed and heating.
He tasted the choice. Oath Debt waited behind the wrong one like a hammer.
"Split," Luna said. "We can't be everywhere."
"No," Zack said, eyes narrowing as the vow sharpened priorities. "We'll be in the right place first."
He pointed. "South. Kids."
Silas nodded, approval hidden and audible anyway. "Correct."
⸻
Act II — South Gym
The school sat in a block of wet brick and chain-link, its gym a glowing red lung. A "SHELTER" banner drooped from the doors. The parking lot was full of cars and fear. Through the glass, Zack saw silhouettes pressed against locked exits, faces lit hell-red from within.
A pumper truck idled at the curb, hoses fed through a basement window. Two Shades in turnout gear guarded the doors with halogens. When they saw the trio coming, they didn't warn. They leveled pike poles like spears.
Zack broke the first one's pole with his forearm and used the broken shaft to wedge the door handles apart. A wave of heat hit him. People screamed new and wet. Bloodfire pooled on the gym floor like a red ocean, climbing the bleachers toward a cluster of children on the top row.
Hearthchain snapped—tether biting the railing, dragging the whole cluster down the aisle like a conveyor-belt miracle. Parents sobbed, hands out. Luna blasted through the gap, swinging, scooping, swearing. Silas… wasn't there, then was, placing a grandparent gently into a father's arms with the efficiency of a magician filing paperwork.
The hose pumping bloodfire into the building bulged and pulsed like a feeding snake. Zack followed it to the basement stairs and took them three at a time. Heat clawed his throat. Steel fattened under his skin, wicking it into purpose.
The pump unit in the boiler room wasn't a machine. It had veins. Shades had bolted it to the mains and set glyphs around it like a hedge of cursing. A bone-masked Surgeon watched it run, tapping a gauge that was a human jaw.
"Inventory improving," the Surgeon murmured to itself. "Combustion yield trending—"
Zack took its head off with a backfist hard enough to staple it to the cinderblock wall. The body stayed standing a second, offended, then fell.
He grabbed the pump with both hands. It pulsed under his palms, arteries whining. He ripped it out of the mains. Bloodfire screamed and guttered. The room exhaled; the gym above groaned.
+250 EXP (Critical route disruption)
EXP: 400 / 1000
OATH BONUS STACK: +0.2 (multi-rescue continuous)
A Shade swung an axe at his spine. He hunched; sparks flurried. He caught the axe haft, twisted, broke the Shade's arms with satisfying math, and used it as a mule to smash the remaining glyph pylons. The hum cut. The pump went inert like a heart that finally got bored.
He sprinted back up and waded through the gym. Fire licked his boots and learned about humility. Hearthchain fished drowning kids from the bleachers in pairs; he passed them to Luna's swearing arms, to Silas's clean hands. He threw a halogen light through a window and air crawled in grateful and dirty.
+300 EXP (Mass rescue)
EXP: 700 / 1000
The remaining Shades pivoted to a fallback plan: stampede. They cut through the crowd, shoving toward a side exit they'd jammed to crush people. Zack saw the geometry—panic turned into a blade.
He planted. He set Hearthchain to shield yank, the new trick he'd learned in Mercy—projecting a snapping curtain of tether that dragged incoming bodies away from a lethal funnel. The crowd shuddered—then flowed around the jam instead of into it. People tumbled out into the rain alive.
Silas looked at him over a grandma's shoulder and nodded once like yes and finally.
The last Shade raised a child as a human shield. Zack's vow screamed. He threw himself, Surge humming, and bit the Shade's wrist—hard—tearing tendon and oath-marking its blood. The child fell free. Zack shoulder-threw the Shade into a trophy case; glass cheered and died. Luna put an axe through its chest because sometimes old solutions are perfect.
+150 EXP
EXP: 850 / 1000
They emptied the gym. Steam kissed everything. Faces streaked with soot became human again. A firefighter—real—who'd been zip-tied downstairs staggered up and stared at Zack with disbelief and a gratitude too big to carry. "You… how…?"
"Doesn't matter," Zack said, voice iron-soft. "Get them to House 47. The real crews are there." He looked at Luna and Silas. "West."
⸻
Act III — Tenement Teeth
Three buildings, shoulder-to-shoulder, damp brick and old lives. Arson in the alleys, doors chained, "FIRE ESCAPE OUT OF ORDER" signs wired to lies. At the front, "evacuation wardens" in reflective vests waved people toward a stairwell full of smoke. Shades in good costumes.
The vow showed him the breathing rooms: fourth floor rear, sixth floor front, fifth floor center. He broke left while Luna sprinted up the exterior ironwork and Silas vanished into a wall that knew his name.
Fourth floor rear: a mother with two kids coughed in a kitchen orange with hungry light. Zack kicked the door into splinters, steel soaking flame, hearthchain snap on girl-child, snap on boy-child, yank across linoleum toward the hall. The mother grabbed their wrists; he shepherded them with his shoulders, a bulldozer for love, and shoved them into a stairwell Silas had convinced to stop being on fire.
+200 EXP (Rescue)
EXP: 1050 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 19
Gain: VIT + | Hearthchain Cooldown −1 s
Fifth floor center: elderly man with an oxygen tank rolling circles near his window, eyes huge, decision paralysis a monster with smaller teeth. Zack climbed into the window, hoisted him up with a grunt, tethered the tank to himself, and jumped the gap to the fire escape Luna had stabilized with a cuss and a prayer.
"Thanks, saint of poor choices," she panted, helping lower the man. "You keep this up, the city's gonna canonize you in beer."
"Can't drink," he rasped. "Mouth's full of knives."
Sixth floor front: locked door, crying behind it. He drove his fist through the panel, reached in, twisted, and dragged it open. A woman shielded a terrarium with a snake in it. She looked at him with I know you're a monster please be my monster eyes.
"We're not leaving her," she said, chin iron.
"We're not," he agreed, and hearthchain clicked onto the terrarium handle because vows understand weird love, too. He pulled the whole thing into his arms and muscled them onto the fire escape.
A Shade in a vest tried to push people back into the stairwell. Luna threw her axe from across the alley—thunk—and the Shade remembered a different career path: floor ornament.
Silas reappeared on the landing above like a semicolon. "West stairwell will hold two more minutes. He's closing the grid; we have one site left."
"North high-rise," Zack said, feeling the word vibrate through the vow.
⸻
Act IV — North Tower
The tower was new glass and old debt, thirty floors of future promised and past unpaid. Sprinklers had painted the lobby pink. People pressed against turnstiles that had never liked them. Shades in FD jackets pretended to usher and actually penned.
"Get them out," Zack said, and the three of them were doors.
Luna's axe made music with glass. Silas palmed the turnstiles and probability apologized. Zack threw his body at the flow until it was a river.
Over the lobby, a mezzanine bristled with Shades on hoses, bloodfire hissing. Zack vaulted the escalator rail, sprinted up the steps in three blinks, and met the first hose with a fist that taught it humility. He tore a valve out by its spine.
Two Shades charged with halligan bars. He parried one, disarmed with a twist that would make YouTube proud if YouTube filmed real nightmares, and jammed the steel wedge through the second's mask like a love letter sent by mistake.
+150 EXP
EXP: 200 / 1000 (L19)
The building groaned. Above, on the 20th floor, heat blossomed into violence. The vow screamed—children and older folks, trapped by jammed fire doors. A Shade Captain in a turnout coat stitched with bones stood in the hall, radio to ear, giving orders with a calm that made murder a hobby.
Zack hit the elevator button. The car would take forever. He ran for the stairwell.
He climbed like climbing was a sin he needed to commit fast. Floors blurred. On 18, two Shades tried to trip him with a length of hose; he hurdled it, came down with enough weight to crack a skull through a helmet, didn't slow.
On 20, the door was welded—glyph heat along the edges. He smashed his shoulder into it anyway. Bang. Bang. The steel didn't want to move. He bit the seam—fangs into hot metal—and dragged. Alloy sang and split. He tore the door open and staggered into a corridor alive with red.
Children and elders were huddled at the far end, pressed into a corner where heat tried to write them into the wall. Three Shades fanned bloodfire across the ceiling to herd them. The Captain turned as Zack entered, eyes bright with somebody else's plan.
Zack didn't speak. He flew.
Hearthchain split—one tether to a kid on the outside edge, one to a man with a walker, one to a teacher with a broken shoe. He yanked them past a lick of fire that tried to be important. He took a halligan bar to the ribs from a Shade, bent double, ate the pain, pulsed Surge.
The Captain threw a hooked tool—a grappling line tipped in bone—aiming for Zack's throat. He saw the trajectory six frames ahead—micropacing—pivoted, and let it whistle past his ear. He grabbed the line, hauled, and yanked the Captain off his feet into a drywall baptism.
"Badge means something," Zack snarled, and put the Captain through the window. It hit a balcony outside and learned starlight.
+200 EXP (Command neutralization)
EXP: 400 / 1000
Fire crept down, hungry and methodical. Zack kicked through a utility closet door and found the valve stack. Glyphs crawled along the pipes, making mechanical systems mean. He ripped charms free until they squealed. Water remembered itself. Bloodfire tried to argue and lost.
Luna crashed through the half-open stairwell, hair smoking, eyes bright. "Got your memo," she coughed. "Need a hand with the child army?"
He nodded. Hearthchain sang. Together they swept the hall: she grabbed, he dragged; he punched, she carved. Silas appeared at the far end, opened the fire door with two fingers like he'd negotiated a truce with the hinges, and ushered souls into the stairwell as if folding them into safer grammar.
When the last pair stumbled past, Zack turned back to the Captain on the balcony. It crawled, collarbone glowing where Zack's earlier bite should have left a thread.
"You're marked," Zack said, stepping out into the rain.
The Captain grinned through a broken jaw. "I cut out your leash."
He had. The oath-thread frayed at the bite, snipped by a scalpel of ritual. The mark was gone.
Zack smiled with too many teeth. "So I make a collar."
He grabbed the Captain's turnout coat, hauled him upright, and bit the steel hook at the shoulder—fangs into metal—bending it into a loop that welded itself shut with a hiss. He shoved a length of hose through it and yanked, snapping the Captain back into the hall like a dog that had just learned history. The suddenness knocked the ritual neat out of his blood. Zack bit his other shoulder for old time's sake. The new mark held. The collar hummed.
OATH MARK: Reinforced (Hardware) — cannot be self-removed
Duration: 72h
Trace Level: Strong
"You're coming back to me later," Zack said, and slammed the Captain into a wall hard enough to ensure later wasn't now.
+200 EXP (Capture)
EXP: 600 / 1000
He turned as the floor shook—a deeper, slower tremor. The building's PA crackled and Marrow's voice rolled down the stairwell like a warm doctor's lie.
"Zack. You're excellent at triage. Have you noticed the new fire I started while you played lifeguard? The one with fewer children and more electorate? Choices, choices."
The HUD spat three pings. East. South. Downtown. All live. All bloody.
Zack wanted to sprint until gravity begged. The oath pulled—within reach had rules. You don't abandon the hallway with three stragglers left to bully a blaze across town. He finished the floor. He finished it fast.
+200 EXP (Remaining rescues)
EXP: 800 / 1000
He dropped into the stairwell with Luna and Silas, moving with a pack's unity. They emptied the tower down twelve flights, out into rain that had the nerve to be cold.
Real firefighters—freed by House 47—took over with faces that had re-learned relief. One grabbed Zack's arm, eyes shining. "Whatever you are—thank you."
"I'm the guy who leaves," Zack said, already pivoting toward the next siren.
⸻
Act V — The Square
Marrow didn't lie. The square downtown boiled—an art fair turned into a bonfire. Firetrucks blocked exits, their lights strobing hypnosis. "Wardens" waved people into cordoned zones while hidden hoses painted them with thin coats of sticky red. It would flash, it would climb, it would cook.
The vow howled. So did Zack.
He didn't arrive. He happened.
Hearthchain Rank 3 sang off his chest—three tethers firing at once, dragging three different clusters out of kill zones in a choreographed violence of no. Luna crashed a truck's pump panel with her axe and found the glyph rack; she tore charms loose, cursing them by their Latin names and their shoe sizes. Silas walked through red that chose not to burn him and turned off valves with two fingers and a tone that brooked litigation.
A Shade with a bullhorn screamed, "Remain calm!" Zack took the bullhorn and fed it to the Shade the wrong way around.
+150 EXP
EXP: 950 / 1000
The last hose—hidden behind a vendor tent—sprayed a ribbon that caught air and ignited. A tongue of red flame licked toward a group of teenagers with phones up, eyes huge. Zack saw it, felt the math, and threw Hearthchain sideways—the R3 shield trick—dragging a rolling metal trash bin across its path. The flame hit steel and sulked.
Silas flicked his coin and the flame decided it was tired.
Luna climbed onto a truck roof, drenched and grinning like war. She held up a stolen helmet and yelled into the rain: "Anyone wearing this and not bleeding is fake! Anyone tries to herd you? Bite them!"
A few desperate people actually did and yelped when the Shades tasted like old pennies and lies. The crowd turned. Panic became movement with intent—out, away, alive.
Zack slammed a Shade through a windshield and looked up just as a new sound arrived: a cascade of sirens that weren't corrupt. The vow brushed their faces and let him know: real crews. House 47. Two more houses freed. Help.
The last remaining Shade in command stepped up on the truck bumper, shrugged off its coat, and revealed a chest tattoo of crawling glyphs. "I'll burn the loyalty out of you," it crooned, and drew a bone flare.
Zack jumped the distance and bit the flare in half.
"Bad trick," he said, and broke the Shade's neck.
+250 EXP (Command removal)
EXP: 1200 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 20
Gain: Surge Control ↑↑ | Hearthchain Range +5 m
OATH BONUS: City Acknowledgement (Minor) — easier crowd flow near you
The square exhaled. The rain moved in. Sirens parked with intention not malice. Real firefighters grabbed real hoses and put wet on wrong until wrong chose elsewhere.
Zack breathed once, hard and human, and let Surge dim to a hum.
Luna slid down the truck, hair plastered, mascara a war memorial. "We do good chaos."
Silas tucked his coin away, silver eyes considering the smoke. "He tested you across three fronts, and you didn't trip the debt."
Zack stared into rain that tasted like an old oath and a new problem. "He's telling me he can multiply faster than I can run."
"Then we don't run," Luna said. "We break the engine."
Silas inclined his head. "The engine is Station 9. Central dispatch for the syndicate. Hard site. Old church with radios. And a… bell."
"A bell?" Zack asked.
"A calling instrument," Silas said, mouth tight. "Once rung, everything comes. We don't let them ring it."
Zack looked at the city and the way it looked back, curious and newly greedy. The HUD delivered receipts:
ROUTE 2 PROGRESS:
House 47: Cleared
South Gym: Cleared
Tenements: Cleared
North Tower: Cleared
Downtown Square: Stabilized
Syndicate Hub: Station 9 (Pending)
He rolled his shoulders. The steel in him sang at a pitch that didn't hurt anymore—yet.
"Station 9," he said. "Now."
⸻
Act VI — Station 9 (Stinger)
They approached the old church that dispatch had colonized. Once, bells called the faithful. Tonight, radio masts stabbed the sky, and a new bell hung where the old had been—bone cast into bronze, veined with runes. It pulsed like an organ waiting to play a heartbeat too big for bodies.
Shades patrolled in turnout gear with radios that prayed instead of transmitted. Surgeons moved in the nave, wiring the altar to a console. High above, a single figure in a captain's coat stood by the bell rope, hand resting lightly, smile small.
Luna exhaled. "Hate this."
Silas's coin clicked against his knuckle, once. "We go quiet until loud is non-optional."
Zack nodded, and the vow sharpened to a point he could hold.
The HUD drew the map for him: exits, alive rooms, kill zones, the instant the bell rope would twitch if they made the wrong noise.
OBJECTIVE: Seize Station 9 without bell ring
OATH BONUS: +Rescue Multiplier if zero civilian casualties
Penalty: If bell rings → citywide swarm
He smiled without humor. "Make it neat."
They stepped into the church and the season leaned forward in its chair.