Firefight

Then I watched the door to that restroom. The corridor fell silent. Lit only by burning scraps.

“Is anyone there?” a voice called into the hallway. “I … I’m hurt.”

I tensed. That was Megan.

It’s a trick. It has to be.

I scanned the dim room. There, on the other side of the hallway, I saw an arm wedged in a mountain of rubble from the blast. Chunks of steel, some fallen girders from above. The arm twitched, and blood ran down the wrist. As I looked closer, I could see her face and torso in the shadows. She looked like she was only now beginning to stir, as if she’d been briefly knocked unconscious by the blast.

She was pinned. She was hurt. I had to move, to go help her! I stirred but then forced myself down.

“Please,” she said. “Please, someone. Help me.”

I didn’t move.

“Oh Calamity. Is that my blood?” She struggled. “I can’t move my legs.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. How were they doing this? I didn’t know what to trust.

Firefight is doing it somehow, I told myself. She’s not real.

> > [...]

I heard a click and turned. Megan stood there, a gun in her hand. A handgun, a P226 just like she preferred to carry. The other version of her, the one trapped by rubble, vanished in a heartbeat. So did the girders.

“I never did like him,” Megan said indifferently, glancing toward Nightwielder’s corpse. “You just did me a favor. Plausible deniability and all of that.”

I looked into her eyes. I knew those eyes. I did. I didn’t understand how it was happening, but it was her.

Never did like him …

“Calamity,” I whispered. “You’re Firefight, aren’t you? You always were.”

> Chapter 38 page 359,361, Steelheart