Free FireDance by Viola Grace Page A

here.”
    Hahvi walked to her and held her fist. “Do you want to die?”
    Ankahra blinked. “What?”
    “If you continue to exhibit your strength, they will demand you be returned to them, and you will be destroyed. If you look through the dome, they are already coming for you.”
    It was true. Armed transports were driving across the salt flats and heading for the city.
    “They heard me?”
    Hahvi lifted her to her feet and walked away from the dome wall. Wahli followed closely. “They have monitors outside the dome for miles. If we so much as set a toe outside the dome without authorization, they will shoot to kill.”
    Ankahra sobbed. “I want to be home. I want my family back.”
    “I know what you are feeling.”
    The woman looked at her in disgust. “You can’t know.”
    “When I was twenty, I was driving to my family’s holiday cabin, and I went off the road. I had no food, no water and no extra clothing. The deep frost hit, and I had no choice. Knowing what it would lead to, I called fire from the mountain itself and waited for help. The search party found me sitting in the middle of a twenty-foot lava field, stark naked. It seems that while my skin can take the heat, my clothing can’t.
    “I was arrested as a physical talent and put in the restrictor suit. That was eight years ago, and I have been here ever since.”
    Hahvi sighed. “It was a survival reflex that landed me here, but I don’t regret it. I am alive and I could be dead. The living still have a chance.”
    Ankahra’s lips quirked, and she laughed. “My reflexes got the best of me, too. I was out with friends and a drunken jerk tried to push his attentions on my friend, so I flipped him with more energy than I anticipated, and he ended up in hospital with a fair description of Julini. They found her and through her, found me.”
    Hahvi nodded. “The men here have similar stories. Make the effort to get to know us. Make friends. We are all in this together.”
    The woman frowned, “I have heard that a few talents have been withdrawn from here in the past year.”
    “It is true.”
    “Where do they go?”
    “Based on what we have seen through the dome and what Kiiki has witnessed, they are being taken off world.”
    Ankahra walked in silence for a while. “Do you think they are all right?”
    Hahvi smiled. “I think they are fine and that they are being given an opportunity to actually use their powers.”
    “How do you know that?”
    Hahvi schooled her features. “I simply have a very good imagination.”
    Haloor was waiting for her in the anteroom of the gateway as he always was on this day. No less than nine cameras were watching them and two scanners were outside the room.
    It was her annual visitation, and she hugged her brother as soon as she made it through the frisking, not that there was anywhere for her to hide anything in the restrictor suit. The strange bands on her body were now part of her.
    “Haloor. How is the family? How is Amlie?”
    Haloor grinned and sat at the table. His position in the processing centre made his visits highly suspect, but as long as they didn’t speak of anything peculiar, he was merely monitored for any suspicious activity.
    “I knew that it would be the first thing that you asked. She is fine. Growing big and strong just like Hakena. I got her a new bracelet and some of those Darthimiac earrings you used to favour.”
    Hahvi took a seat across from him and touched the hand he held out. “Hakena still won’t come for a visit?”
    “You know how she feels about talents.” Haloor was a reader and Hakena was the only sibling in their trio that had not come out with a talent.
    Haloor had been pressed into government service when he was nineteen and Hahvi had already been in the dome at the time. Hakena was the eldest, and she was too busy being a wife and mother to visit her sister in prison.
    Brace yourself, Hahvi. There is a ship coming to get you.
    Really? When will it be here?
    In the