The Extinction Trials(42)

“The day I got this pin, I went to school and then played in my backyard. I had dinner that night with my family, my whole family—mother, father, and older sister. For the last time. I went to bed in a home we’d never live in again. I woke up coughing. My eyes burned when I opened them. The smoke was so thick it was like a blanket of soot trying to smother me. I heard screams. I got up and called out. It was like the smoke swallowed my words up. I could barely stand still, the floor was so hot. I can still remember that panic, the warmth overtaking my feet and crawling up my legs. I opened my bedroom door and the wall of heat hit me and I screamed. Someone grabbed me and pulled me close. The suit pressed into my face. It was rough, the threads deep, rubbing into me like sandpaper as he carried me. I reached up and grabbed what I thought was a button on the fireman’s suit.”

Owen held out the pin. “It was actually this. It was hot as blazes when my little hand closed around it, but I held on because in my mind, I thought if I fell, I’d hit that hot floor and burn up instantly.”

Owen flipped the pin over in his fingers, as if touching every part of it would bring the rest of the story back. “When he reached the front yard, the firefighter set me down, gently but quickly. I held on to him and he pushed me away, and the pin came off in my hand. He never even noticed. Only turned and ran back inside. He was the only one there. I think he lived nearby. The house was collapsing. That’s what trapped my dad and sister inside. By the time he brought my mother out, the house was in shambles. The trucks arrived a few seconds later. There were people everywhere then. Medical technicians. More firefighters. It was madness.”

Owen took a deep breath, still staring at the pin. “The guy who carried me out came by to check on me. His face was covered in soot and grime. His suit was torn and singed. I was wrapped in a blanket. I could barely speak from the shock. I held out the pin to give it back to him. He looked at it a moment. I think he was surprised I had it. Keeping up with that lapel pin probably wasn’t high on his priority list that night. He slowly glanced back at the ruin of our little house and then turned and pushed the pin back toward me. ‘Keep it, kid,’ were the only words he ever said to me. And he was gone. I never even found out his name. I think he looked at me and saw someone who had lost everything, someone with no toys, one less parent, one less sister, and no place to live, and he couldn’t bring himself to take one more thing from me. At that moment, the pin was the only thing I had left. Besides my mother.”

Owen slipped the pin in his pocket. “That night, I decided that I didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore. I wanted to wear a different kind of suit. I wanted to be that guy—I wanted to be the guy who ran into a burning building when there was no one else. I wanted to be that person who arrived in the night when no one else was coming. I saw it clearly that night. That I could do that. Make a difference. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t read faces. I could recognize patterns and see logic in things others couldn’t. I could be a firefighter. And a good one, I thought. And that obsession gave me something to focus on. I needed it in the days and weeks after. They held us in the hospital for a few days. My mother was in worse shape than me. We lived with my aunt and uncle after. I wore the pin to school. Even when kids made fun of me. I wore it inside my shirt as I trained to be a firefighter. And I wore it on the inside every day I put on my suit. It was a reminder to me of what I wanted to be. Why I signed up. What it was about.”

Owen paced the deck, as if grasping for the words that would come next.

“The thing is, before I woke up here, I’d begun to question whether being a firefighter was what I still wanted to do.”

That surprised Maya. “Why?”

He focused on her. “The job had changed. When I first started, the fire bots didn’t even exist. We fought fires in about the same way that guy who saved me had fought fires. Evac drones became an increasing part of our work—especially for getting people out of tall buildings. Then the bots came along. Each year, there was less work for the humans.”

Owen held up his hands. “Granted, I think some of it was a good thing. Machines doing the dangerous parts of the job makes sense. But it wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned. It’s funny how our minds get locked into our own vision of how things are going to be. If it’s different from that, we resist, even if it’s better. That was the case for me. I felt my role shrinking every year. I was becoming a human babysitter for robots and AI. I felt almost like an actor in a costume, a throwback to some nostalgic era when humans did the hard work.”

He paused for a moment. “I was on the verge of reassessing everything when the Fall happened. I was at a crossroads.”

He put his hand in the envelope and took the paperback book out—The Birthright. “In fact, I was talking to my mother about that the morning The Change occurred. She gave me this book. It’s the last thing she gave me. Like the pin, it’s the last thing I have from someone who made such a huge impact on my life. I received both of these items at turning points in my life. One proved to be a beacon that showed me the way. I can’t help but see significance in that, though I don’t fully understand the book yet.”

“What’s it about?” Cara asked.

“Psychology, mostly. About understanding our own minds and living a life in harmony with our strengths and limitations.”

Maya saw Alister quickly roll his eyes, but he said nothing.