Project Frostbite

Chapter 12

We sat in silence for a while. Firestorm had wrenched her arm back and pulled the sleeve down to cover her brand. In bold elegant writing someone had tattooed Firestorm, but then they had put two black lines through it in the shape of an X. Below it, in the same font, the same person had elegantly tattooed Black Ice.

"You're the Balacqua Child, aren't you?" I accused. "You changed your name around to throw me off the scent. Quacabal is an anagram." Still Firestorm - Black Ice - said nothing. "That's how you know so much about Jekyll and Project Frostbite. How long were you in captivity? How did you even get caught? What-"

"I'd just had a fight with my parents." Firestorm startled me by saying. She ignored me, and continued looking out of the window as she talked. "I used to be a target for the bullies at school because of my weight, and I needed a release. My dad caught me with a disposable razor. As you can guess, they wanted to intervene and help. I told them not to get involved, that they'd only make it worse, but you know what parents are like. I stormed off, and was in my room, music up as loud as it could go because I knew they hated it. I never had any notion of what was going on downstairs, not that I would have. They used silencers when they came. I was dragged out of my room, out of my house, and drugged. But I saw them. My parents wouldn't have known what hit them." Firestorm paused, and for the first time since I met her, she looked truly vulnerable as she turned to face me. "You know the last thing I told my Dad was that I hated him?"

Firestorm was trying to hold it together. She hastily wiped a tear away before it could fall and heaved in a shaking breath, blinking to get rid of the tears. I refrained from trying to comfort her. She wouldn't want my pity.

"Four hundred, and sixty-three bullets." She said. My face said it all; I had no idea what she was talking about. "When I escaped, I killed seventy men, many of which I had become well-acquainted to over the years. Of those seventy men, fifty-six of them had partners. Of those fifty-six, fifty had children and four of them had a baby on the way. Another was engaged, getting ready to be married in a month. When I killed them, I was no better than those who killed my parents and took me from them. At the age of sixteen, I'd seen and done things no kid should ever have to witness." Firestorm absent-mindedly rubbed her wrist where the tattoo was hidden. "I hated that place. I wanted to die. I had nothing to live for. I tried so many things, setting myself on fire, hanging myself with the sheets off my bed, drinking all sorts of concoctions. But I always survived. Sometimes, if I press hard enough, I can feel the dents in the ice under my skin from the butcher's knife I stole. I was never strong enough to do anything more than make the skin bleed or bruise."

"Firestorm, I'm so sorry." It was all I could say, and yet, I knew it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough when I'd lost Kris and Jaymee. I knew the pain she felt. I'd felt it when I found out Ayla was dead, and I didn't even know her. Shifting seats, I sat beside Firestorm and slowly reached out, putting my arm around her. That sent her over the edge and she broke down, latching onto my jacket like it was her life support. For a while we just sat there. Eventually Firestorm ran out of tears, and pulled herself up and away from me. I shifted back to my seat on the other side of the cabin, and waited for her to compose herself. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and sniffed.

"I haven't cried like that in seven years." She said quietly. "Go on, I know you want answers. I'll do my best to answer your questions."

"Why isn't there any mark from the bullet?" Was my first question.

"My body used to be like yours, with flesh and blood, and a pumping heart." Firestorm explained. "When they reversed my powers, my whole body froze. Now, the only real part of me is my skin. I have layers of skin just like anyone else, but below that, there's nothing but ice. I still bleed, but only from superficial wounds, like a split lip. I bruise and graze just like any normal person, but I'm frozen in this body till the day I die."