Phoenix

Prologue

A gas wave, thick as fog after a snow storm floated above homes and apartments of New York City as it traveled to downtown Manhattan.

"Run!" people on the streets yelled out as my father and I ran quickly down a crowded street.

"Stay with me ok," he said.

"OK," I responded with fear controlling most of my voice.

No stores were opening their doors to let people in. Apartment complexes had locked their doors shut and only few places had opened doors. But even then, there was no room for stranglers. The gas was over us now, looming there waiting for us to stop running, to quit and just let it take us. We weren't going to stop that easily.

We quickly turned the corner and headed for my father's construction building. The door's weren't locked as he quickly shoved me inside and closed the doors behind him. There were abandoned desks, papers scattered around the dark and empty building. My father pushed me forward into the empty building as my eyes darted in every direction. He found an abandoned air mask and handed it to me.

"Wear this," he ordered.

"What about you?" I asked putting on the mask.

"I'll find another one," he breathed more focused on something else.

I gasped as I followed his gaze and locked onto the open windows at the top of the building.

"It's going to be okay," he said, trying to reassure me.

It wasn't working though. My breath felt taken from me, fear took over my thoughts, and everything turned into blood red death. My father kneeled down in front of my shaking body and wrapped his arms around me. I shobbed on his shoulder, letting out all my fears.

"It's alright," he whispered softly as gas started to leak in from the windows. "It's alright, I'm here." I couldn't stop crying, tears poured out of me like a fountain.

"Shh," he soothed softly as he placed a hand on the back of my head. "Breathe, match my breathing."

I horribly held back my tears and tried to match his breathing.

'In and out, in and out' I continually told myself.

The gas consumed us. I still focused on my father's breathing and nothing more. The subtle rising and falling of his chest against mine was strangely calming. I refused to open my eyes, to see the strange mix of blue and green gas swarming around us. Slowly my eyes started to get droopy, muscles were weak, and my mind went numb.

We didn't communicate for a long time, but I felt his chest rising and falling. Despite all my efforts to stay awake I couldn't fight against the weight that kept piling on top of my eyelids. I passed out in his arms.

When I came to, my father was being pulled off of me by paramedics. It took my brain a moment to catch up with what my eyes were seeing, as a firefighter helped me to my feet but I pulled away from him.

"Dad!" I screamed for him but still they held me back as two men stood over my father giving him CPR.

"It's going to be ok, he's going to be alright," the firefighter holding me back said, trying to calm me down.

I was only 10 at the time but I was old enough to know that he was lying to me. My father was dead, like my mother, who died when I was only 3. Fear overtook me. My mind raced and my body went numb with pain and fear. I fell to my knees and when I hit the floor, fire exploded throughout the building.

I learned later on that The Gas took several lives, it also didn't harm many, but for others it mutated their DNA. The government named these people inhumans, in other words people with abilities. Mine is fire.

I can control and set off fires with the snaps of my fingers, while also creating weapons and other objects out of flames. Along with turning myself and others into ashes before rising from the ashes in another location.

The day my father died was the day I found out what that gas did to me. It had spared my life but it also gave me something that people would hunt me down for. That was the day I was put in an orphanage attached to a church and also the day I killed someone.

After the fire had spread to the wall and everyone had evacuated, one of the firefighters breathed in too much smoke and passed out. Later that day they pronounced him dead from smoke poisoning.

People at the orphanage kept my secret as I moved in and out of temperamary homes for seven years. Each time returning back to the same orphanage, in the same room they had brought me to, after I was released from the hospital. The room where I had first told someone what I was, the place that strangely felt like home.

I still went to school, still had to catch the bus in the morning. I was required to pass all my classes or Ms. Heather (I called her Heth) would personally go down to the school and ask teachers why I wasn't passing a certain class. Heth was one of the few people who knows what I have, yet she still treats me like a regular teenager which makes life just a bit easier.

-

After the Gas, the government tried to fix those that were infected but it only hurt the people they were trying to help. After finding out how powerful some inhumans were, the government issued a mass extermination of inhumans.

The Army and National Guard walked up and down the streets for weeks looking for inhumans that had escaped their grasp. Heth stayed glued to my side making sure nothing happened to me. I was glad she did, even though I continually told her that I didn't need her hovering over my shoulder.

Many inhumans are still on the run and during the night I decided to put my powers to good use. I started helping those that truly needed help, whether it was a human or inhuman I didn't care. I just wanted to help people.

I was able to hack into the NYPD's radio, with the help of my best friend Luke, I listen to dispatchers and wait for a domestic violence call or an inhuman on the run call to kick out.

It doesn't take long for a call to kick out over the radio and there are easily five or six calls a week. I try to go to more than one call each night, but when the police see you as a threat, it takes the whole night to get them off your back.

The gas had changed my life. In ways I still cry about at night, in other ways that make me smile and fill me with pride every time I help someone. Even though that's not how the NYPD sees it. Seven years to the day of my father's death the gas decided to throw another curve ball at me.