The Incandescent Escape

Concrete splinters rain down under the gunfire. I cross the breach first. The steam swallows me. It carries a century-old dust, a taste of cellar and crushed revolt that reeks of the sweat congealed in the stone. Under my boots, dry cracks. Skulls. Femurs. The mass grave of the walled-in strikers, left there to rot by leaders who preferred silence to dialogue. Jolanda pushes Lio ahead of her. The kid stumbles over the bones, clutching his iron bar to his chest with the energy of a cornered beast while Nita trots at my side, her small fingers gripping my pants. Behind us, the white beams of the Stabilité tear through the darkness. Pulse discharges rip entire blocks from the walls. The tunnel plunges into the shadows, but we must pierce the surface. I scan the vault. Three meters of reinforced concrete separate us from the open air. A dead end. Boum-tak. Marisol's rhythm beats in my marrow. I raise my obsidian arm. I unleash the furnace. The magma floods beneath my mineral skin, radiating a heat that calcines my own clothes even before touching the rock. A thousand degrees. I strike the ceiling. The material collapses. The concrete liquefies into a glowing paste, the steel twists, recoiling before my assault while I dig a vertical fault with my bare hands, ignoring the drops of molten rock beading on the back of my neck. I forge handholds, smoking notches directly into the foundations of Salvador-Solnitza. "Haul yourselves up!" Lio clings to the warm stone. Jolanda pushes him, lifts Nita. The gray sky finally pierces the breach. A shot rings out. It tears a patch of flesh from my left flank. The pain explodes. The Mutation extricates itself from the earth through violence. I propel my body into the incandescent chimney to burst into broad daylight, exhausted, finally offering these Oubliés the light that was stolen from them. Below, the militia gathers at the foot of the melted shaft. I close my black fist.