HEARTHBOUND: THE LAST WARM MAN

Chapter 2: The First Spark

Rowan raised both hands and kept them where she could see them.

"I'm not armed," he said. "I'm just trying not to die."

"People who are trying not to die don't steam." The woman stepped out of the blowing snow, rifle tucked tight against her shoulder. She wore a sun-bleached army jacket two sizes too big and a knit cap pulled low over sharp, tired eyes. "Look at your feet. Look at the ground."

He looked. Behind him, a winding trail of bare, wet asphalt marked every step he'd taken from the hill. The snow around it was still hissing.

"I can explain that," Rowan said.

"Can you?"

"No. Not really."

The corner of her mouth moved, almost a smile, and then it was gone. "Honest, at least. Sergeant Tess Calder. You're going to walk in front of me, slowly, to that door. If you do anything strange, I'll shoot you in the leg first, then ask questions."

"That seems fair."

"It isn't. It's just what I've got."

The Eastline Bus Depot was a long concrete shed with half its windows boarded up and a dozen dead buses lined up like sleeping animals. Rowan stepped through a side door into a wall of stale air, wet wool, and smoke. Inside, someone had built a burn barrel from an oil drum, and around it huddled maybe fifteen people, wrapped in seat covers and moving blankets. Their faces turned toward him all at once. Nobody said hello.

An old man with a gray mustache and a mechanic's coveralls looked up from the barrel, then at the steam rising off Rowan's shoulders, then at the sergeant.

"Tess," he said slowly. "Did you bring us a ghost?"

"I brought us a problem, Gus."

"Well, he's a warm one, at least." Gus squinted. "Boy, are you on fire?"

"Sort of," Rowan said.

A cough cut through the room. It was a thin, wet, wrong sound, and it came from the far end of the depot.

The blue text flared to life in front of Rowan's eyes.

**[BOND CANDIDATE LOCATED.]**

**[REQUIREMENT: WILLING TRUST. CHILDREN CANNOT BIND.]**

**[CANDIDATE: OKAFOR, MARA. TRUST: 6%.]**

**[TIME REMAINING: 51 MINUTES.]**

The arrow slid across his vision and settled on a bench against the back wall. A woman in a stained parka was kneeling beside it, and on the bench, buried under a pile of coats, lay a small boy.

Rowan didn't wait for permission. He crossed the depot with the whole room watching, and Tess stayed one step behind him with the barrel of her rifle brushing his spine.

The woman looked up as he approached. She was about thirty, with dark skin, a tight braid, and eyes red-rimmed from too many nights without sleep. A stethoscope hung around her neck like a talisman. Her gloveless hands were rubbing the boy's thin arms, over and over, as though she could grind warmth into him by force.

"Don't touch him," she said.

"I'm not going to hurt him."

"I don't know who you are."

"I'm Rowan. And I think I can help."

"Everyone thinks they can help." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she steadied it. "His name is Pip. He's nine. He fell through the ice behind the depot four hours ago, chasing a stray dog. Core temperature twenty-eight, maybe less. I have no thermometer, no warm fluids, and no heat source that isn't a burning barrel I can't put him next to without getting him burned." She swallowed. "I'm Dr. Mara Okafor. I worked the ER at St. Aldric's until it closed. I've lost four people in this room since the freeze started. I won't lose him."

"Then let me try," Rowan said. "Please."

Mara stared at him. Behind him, Tess said quietly, "Doc, the snow melted when he walked. I watched it happen."

"That isn't medicine."

"No," Rowan agreed. "But it's heat. And I think it works better when someone I'm near wants it to."

It sounded insane. He knew exactly how insane it sounded. But Mara looked down at the boy's blue lips, and Rowan watched something in her face give way, the way a dam gives way when there's nothing left to hold.

"One minute," she whispered. "Not a second more."

Rowan knelt beside the bench and laid his bare hands on the boy's chest.

The warmth went out of him like water from a tap. It poured down his arms, through the coats, into the child's tiny frame. His own fingers, which had been numb a minute ago, now stung with pins and needles. The air around the bench shimmered, and a perfect circle of heat spread across the concrete, one meter wide.

**[HEARTH ZONE ACTIVE: 1 METER.]**

**[WARMTH TRANSFER: 12 EMBER PER MINUTE.]**

**[CURRENT EMBER: 100.]**

Tess swore under her breath. Across the depot, the survivors started whispering.

Mara had gone completely still. Her fingers found the boy's wrist and stayed there.

"His pulse," she said. "It's coming up. It's... forty. Forty-five. Oh my God."

"Keep your hand there," Rowan said. His voice came out strained. The heat was leaving him faster than he expected. "I need you to stay in the circle."

"I'm not going anywhere."

The pale text ticked in the corner of his vision.

**[TRUST: 21%.]**

**[TIME REMAINING: 44 MINUTES.]**

Twenty-one percent. Not enough. A bond needed willing trust, and Mara had just met him, and he was sitting inside a miracle she couldn't explain. He needed to earn the rest.

"Tell me about him," Rowan said, mostly to keep her talking. "Pip."

Mara let out a breath that was half a sob. "He's not mine. His mother died on the road three days ago. He latched on to me because I gave him half a granola bar." A wet laugh. "He sings when he's scared. Terrible songs. Something about a duck."

"Then he's going to sing the duck song again."

"You can't promise that."

"I know," Rowan said. "I'm promising anyway."

She looked at him then, really looked. The wariness in her eyes didn't vanish, but it softened a degree.

**[TRUST: 38%.]**

A ragged cheer broke out across the depot, and Gus shouted something about the Lord and lumbering miracles. Rowan almost smiled.

Then the boy's chest hitched. His eyes stayed shut, but his lips moved, and a thin, cracked whisper slid out of him.

"...Mama?"

Mara's hand flew to her mouth.

It would have been the best moment of Rowan's year. It lasted four seconds.

**[WARNING: EMBER RESERVES FALLING. CURRENT EMBER: 22.]**

He looked down at his hands. They had gone gray at the fingertips. The glow in his chest, which had felt endless, was sputtering like a candle in a draft. He had burned nearly everything he had to pull a boy back from the edge, and he had burned it with no bond to feed the fire.

**[TRUST: 51%.]**

**[BOND THRESHOLD: 60%.]**

**[EMBER: 9.]**

"Rowan?" Mara said sharply. "Your hands. What's happening?"

"I'm running out," he said, and for the first time he heard how thin his own voice had gotten.

"Then stop!"

"If I stop, he drops again."

"You'll die."

"Maybe." He tried to grin. It came out crooked. "But I think I'm eight percent from something good."

The ring of heat around the bench flickered. Shrank to half a meter. Then to a hand's width.

**[EMBER: 2.]**

The whole depot went quiet. Even the burn barrel seemed to hold its breath.

Mara pressed two fingers against Pip's throat. Her face changed.

"No," she said. "No, no. Pip.

Pip, stay with me."

The circle of warmth guttered out like a snuffed match. The cold rushed in to fill it.

And the little boy's chest stopped moving.