Dell didn't really remember the trip back to his house, or how he got to his room. Vaguely, he could recall the rusty smell of blood on both his and the arsonist's clothes, and that she'd almost dropped him on the way over. That was it—she'd had to sling his arm over her shoulder to help him walk. She was taller than him, he'd realized.

He woke up something like five hours later, mad as hell. Still in his blood-covered clothes, he high-tailed it out to the garage, cussing out the spy and every feasible aspect of his lineage the whole way.

The arsonist was sitting outside, like she was waiting, cross-legged with her back to one of the garage's cement-block walls. She had the dog by her, its head resting in her lap. He couldn't tell if she was asleep or not until her head whipped around to look at him as he came near. Her hand shot to the flamethrower, laying beside her, but then she relaxed. "You're awake," she said, then stopped, like she thought there was something more to be said but didn't know what.

Dell let a sigh rattle out of him. "Sure am. No small thanks to you, either. Saved my bacon there."

She stared at him, then looked away, shrugging in a way that looked painfully awkward.

"He still in there?"

"I didn't touch him."

Ugh. There was a body in his garage. There was a body his secret room, and it was a Godforsaken spy. With a sigh, he unlocked the garage's door and stepped inside. A few minutes later, with the arsonist's help, he had wrapped up the blood-soaked body in a tarp and carried it upstairs. Hell if he knew what to do with it from there. He said as much.

"Burn it," the arsonist said.

"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, firebomb, we can't burn it."

"Why not?"

"Well …" He groped for an answer. Couldn't find one. "I mean, the smoke …"

"Conagher," she said, "do you think I don't know how to handle that kind of thing?"

He built a crematorium. Didn't take long, a day and a half, with the arsonist on hand to give him the numbers. It was like she had everything there was to know about fire and heat engraved on the inside of her skull. Flesh ignited at 1,400°F. The machine should be able to go up to at least 1,600°F. Propane would result in less smoke. When he asked her how she knew, where she'd learned these figures from, she just got this glazed look in her eye and wouldn't say anything.

"So," the arsonist said quietly, a little after they'd loaded the body into the crematorium and started it up. "Why'd you kill him?"

Dell hummed to himself. The flames roared. "Couldn't let him go. Minute he got down there, it was either me or him."

"How come?"

He sighed. "Dammit, Smoky, you and your questions."

"I had it under control. He could barely walk."

"Thing about spies is you can't ever really be sure about that. Specially not that one." Dell spat on the blazing machine. "Perfect God-damn actor an' too much tech for his own good. Hell, I wouldn't even count on that thing in there really bein' him."

That quieted her.

They watched the fire rage for a long time, bathed in heat. It was just beginning to die down again when the arsonist said, "I guess I didn't take you to be a killer."

"Heh. That bother you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I just burn things. I don't kill people."

Black Ice Stadium fire kills twenty-three.

"Well," he said.

Tobias.

When the fire had died down, they collected the bones and crushed them before burying them in one of the sweeping empty fields.

He spent the next two days cleaning up the mess, best he could. By then the arsonist had really finished her flamethrower, missing only a propane tank, and honestly he was pretty sure she'd just lightfinger one off one of his neighbors if she couldn't get one from him.

But that weighed less on his mind than the issue of his imminent return to work, and what would be done with the arsonist while he was away. She couldn't simply be left behind. Intentional or not, he suspected he would return to acres of ashes if he let her stay here on her own. Sending her on her way—especially with that weapon, dangerous once again—was terrible irresponsible, and it wouldn't sit with his conscience besides.

He could take her with, he considered once or twice. She seemed dangerous enough for his line of work. Crazy enough, too. But no way management'd go for it.

A week out from his departure date, though, the decision was removed from his hands entirely by a knock at the door. When he answered it, he found himself face to face with a very short, very prim-looking young lady in a violet dress and cateye glasses, holding a briefcase. "Miss Pauling," he said, taken by surprise.

"Good morning, Dell," she said, and offered him a smile. "May I come in?"

"'Course," he said, standing aside and holding the door for her. "Now just what's got you comin' down here? Somethin' wrong?"

"Oh no, don't worry. I'm actually here to speak with your friend. With the gas mask?"

Blindsided, Dell stared at her. "You know 'bout that?"

"We do, yes." Miss Pauling paused to set down her briefcase on the chair and smooth out her dress. "Is she in?"

And Pauling knew the arsonist was a woman. Hell, Dell had only become really sure of that after watching her for a few days, talking with her. He scratched his temple. "Well, I think so. Spends most'a her time in the living room anymore, prob'ly in there. Won't do nothin' but read that science fiction stuff." He gestured for her to come with him, off to look for his guest. Pauling picked up the briefcase and followed.

Shortly after she'd finished the flamethrower, the arsonist had sort of… gone off a bit. A bit more. She'd gone right back to carting it around like a kid with a security blanket, for one, though Dell didn't mind so much. Meant she wasn't doing anything else with it.

But immediately after that, she'd taken the blanket he'd left out for her soon after her appearance and constructed a sort of fort behind the couch with it, held up with the kitchen chairs (he hadn't tried asking for them back yet) and a broken lamp (he didn't know where that had come from). It spread from the couch to the fireplace. Fair enough, he didn't have anything resembling a spare room to offer her; but a blanket fort? He'd stopped making blanket forts when he was ten.

That was where she was when he and Miss Pauling stepped into the living room, and anything else he'd thought to say trailed out of his mind, because the arsonist was speaking aloud. She faltered now and then, stumbling over the words and correcting herself, sometimes stopping entirely to make a sharp, frustrated sound.

"… a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his—his fists, with this great python spitting its venon—fuck—venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the … no, wait …"

There was a rustle of pages, and Dell eased over a few degrees to see into the fort.

Inside sat three things: the dog, half-napping; the flamethrower, safe and innocuous on the floor; and the arsonist, leaning against the edge of the fireplace, reading to both of them from an old and tattered book.

She didn't seem to notice him. " … Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by fl—flame …"

Without preamble, Miss Pauling pushed gently past him. She crouched down at the front of the tent, and it was her presence that pulled the arsonist from her story. The book fell into her lap as she startled, her head whipping around to face the stranger. On some instinct she reached for the flamethrower, useless as it was without its tank.

Before she could say anything, Pauling asked, "Fahrenheit 451, right? Ray Bradbury?"

Dell stared. The arsonist stared. "… Yeah," she said.

"I loved that one," Pauling said, leaning on her knees and smiling. "The beginning especially. Clarisse was my favorite."

When the arsonist said nothing else, her eye boring into this new stranger like a laser, Pauling extended her hand. "You can call me Miss Pauling," she said smoothly. "Pleased to meet you." Seconds passed. Dell counted a full ten of them before the arsonist took it. Pauling didn't miss a beat.

"I'm here representing the company our friend Mr. Conagher works for, the Builder's League United," she said. "We'd like to offer you a job."

The woman named Miss Pauling had said, "Essentially we'd like to pay you to set fires," and the arsonist had replied, instantly, "Oh, fuck, yes. Yes."

She didn't really remember anything else that happened between that and getting into Pauling's Cadillac. Conagher had looked stunned stupid the whole time, that had left an impression. Pauling had asked her if she needed to bring anything and she didn't, fuck, what did she have besides Shark and her lighter anyway? What else did she need?

Then they were on the road, Conagher standing on the porch watching them go. The first thing the woman named Miss Pauling said as they pulled away was, "I'm so glad you said yes. We found your work at the stadium very impressive, you know."

The arsonist looked up sharply. "What?"

"The hockey stadium a few miles away? Enormous structure. And you took it down all by yourself. The fire department couldn't even figure out where you started it, everything went up so completely."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

This made her new associate chuckle. "Oh, gosh. Don't worry. You're not in trouble. Even if you were—well, we can make all that go away." They turned off the old dirt road that lead to Conagher's house and onto the highway, and the arsonist found herself staring out the window at the tiny farmhouse. "You've made a very good choice for your future by joining us."

They knew. How did they know? She'd been so careful, she'd—there was no way they could have found that out, found out it was her. Even the article in the paper had chalked it up to a fault in the building, a blown gas main. "That wasn't me," she said, with more force. When she looked down, she found the lighter in her hands, but she didn't remember having taken it out.

Miss Pauling gave her a patient glance. "We also happen to know that you, among other things, caused an explosion at a bookstore in Wyoming, completely burned down a textile mill in Kansas, and destroyed most of a forest in Tennessee. And that flamethrower of yours on its own has left at least thirty-five people in six different states with severe burns. Sixteen fatalities, I think?"

"Fatalities?"

"Well, yes. I imagine taking well over a thousand degrees fahrenheit to the face is traumatic enough to cause death. Are you surprised?"

"I…"

Was she?

"I was particularly a fan of the textile mill," Miss Pauling went on as the arsonist fiddled with the lighter. "That was artful. They had to get the fire department from the next county over to come help, didn't they?"

Textile mill. A wall of memory came crashing down over the arsonist, a gush of color and sound and panic, all blurring and bleeding into the distant howls of sirens and the very near screams of people. It all faded and smeared together, obscuring the details but: yes, she had done that. She'd forgotten.

"… I only meant to get the Greyhound terminal next to it."

"Happy accident, then?"

She wasn't sure. "How the fuck do you know that was me?"

"BLU has a great deal of resources," Pauling said. "We deal largely in information, and we've been interested in you for a while."

"How long is 'a while'?"

"Just a while."

This was bullshit. This was psychotic. Abrupt second thoughts that hadn't bothered occurring to her when Pauling had said the words job, fire, no catch began to swarm her thoughts. Her grip around the lighter tightened, and she found herself wishing to God that her flamethrower, lying inert in the back seat, had its propane tank. "If you know all that then you know I'm out of my Goddamn head," she snapped. "Why the hell do you want me? No one needs a, a, an insane pyromaniac around."

"That's why the job title is 'Incendiary Pyrotechnician,' not 'Insane Pyromaniac,'" Miss Pauling said smoothly, still smiling. "You're the best person we've seen for the job. Believe me, we've looked. But if you'd like, I can turn around. You can go right back to what you were doing, though I don't know where you'll go when he ships out next week."

The arsonist thought about it. She said nothing else.

It was dark by the time they arrived, pulling to a stop in front of a sprawling building complex done up all in blues and grays. There was someone waiting for them, and once she stepped out of the car, numb-legged and tired, he scuttled toward them, began speaking in hushed tones with Pauling. The arsonist pulled Shark out of the back of the Cadillac and checked it over for damage.

A few minutes later she was being ushered through hallways and up stairs by the man, a stooped-over middle-aged creature who didn't look twice at her or her gutted flamethrower. In an eerie turn of events, none of the people they passed even spared her a glance.

Somewhere along the way she came into possession of a tray of some kind of mass-produced meat-and-potatoes thing, and then she was being shown her temporary dorm, with the man's promise that there would be a proper introduction to everything in the morning, and by the way, welcome to Builder's League United. Then he went away, and she shut the door.

The room seemed fine, if sparse. A shaded bulb on the ceiling kept it well-lit, and there was a bed and a dresser with a mirror and a lock on the door. The windowblinds lay half-shut, letting the last dregs of light in. She locked herself in immediately, and next she clapped the blinds closed. Isolated, she sat down on the bed and put the tray aside.

She unbuckled the straps on her mask, and the black plastic dropped down to her lap. She took a deep breath and started coughing hideously. At some point breathing had gotten more difficult than she thought it was probably supposed to be. The fit passed after a minute or so, and she set the mask aside, where it stared blindly up at her with its one lens.

Her face hurt, like it always did when the mask came off.

She glanced up at the mirror—couldn't see herself from the angle she was at on the bed. A dull curiosity for what she would find if she looked into it hung at the back of her mind, like a sticky, clammy fog, but she ignored it. Instead she took another survey of the room. Dingy carpet, bare walls, dim light. A little too warm. It was a vast improvement on most of the places she had stayed in her driftings.

Better than Conagher's couch, she thought, and better than the blanket-fort that had appeared as if by magic a few days ago, too. (At least, she didn't remember building it.) Privacy was the thing. The mask couldn't come off around someone else. Even loosening it to take those pills with Conagher around had made her gut clench and her head fill up with panic, and it made eating a constant exercise in hiding. She had become very good at timing her meals with Conagher's absences.

But she didn't have to worry about that, now. Instead she ate, and flicked her lighter on and off, and ignored the way the mirror pulled at her. She had looked maskless into the mirror in Conagher's bathroom the night she was shot, and she was still recovering from that.

The next thing she knew, someone was banging on the door. She jumped, and stopped in confusion when she found herself covered in a blanket, curled up with her back to the wall on the bed. Her flamethrower was at hand, like it should be. Her mask had returned to her face, and the plastic was warm from the beams of sunlight filtering down onto it through the drawn blinds.

More lost time. But on the plus side, she realized as she pulled herself out of bed—no nightmares. If she had drowned or sunk or been swallowed by the ocean, she couldn't remember it. Come to think of it, she hadn't had one since she was shot by Conagher's gun.

The door was still locked when she reached it. Behind it was Miss Pauling. "Good morning," she said brightly, adjusting something on the clipboard in her arm. "Ready to get started?"

The next few days were a blur. Pauling, and others who left much less of an impression, trotted her back and forth across the premises. The arsonist was pretty sure she had signed at least a tree's worth of releases or contracts or NDAs after the first day, one after another, all so dense with type that even considering reading them gave her a headache. She just scrawled a big black 'X' on each one.

Things got more interesting after that. For one, Pauling personally showed her how to handle a shotgun, and as it turned out there was a shooting range directly on site. The arsonist was less surprised than she thought she should have been.

"Who are we fighting?" she had asked, watching Pauling as she loaded the shells with easy efficiency.

"The Reliable Excavation/Demolition group," she said. "RED, for short."

"RED versus BLU."

"Right. Funny coincidence, isn't it?" Pauling smiled. "I think that's the first question I've heard you ask the whole time you've been here. Most people ask why we're fighting."

The arsonist just shrugged. Why wasn't important.

After that, later in the evening after she had shut herself up in her dorm with her dinner, she found her new uniform on the bed. It consisted in part of a thick, blue rubber chemsuit that covered the whole body. A stylized flame emblazoned either shoulder, and the included gloves went up to her elbows. The attached tag proclaimed proudly NEW! IMPROVED! LINED WITH ASBESTOS FOR YOUR PROTECTION! A surprisingly light tank of what was apparently oxygen lay on the bed beside it.

The other piece of the pyrotechnician uniform was, sensibly, a gas mask. It was shiny black, brand new with functioning filters, and as she looked at it it occurred to her that no one—not Miss Pauling, not a single one of any of the BLU employees that had lead her to and fro the whole time—had said a thing about her own mask. None of them even seemed to have noticed it. It was a nice change.

She took hers off, just to compare the two. The difference was dramatic, between the missing lens and uncountable scuffs on her old friend and protector. God, she hated that missing lens. She'd thought about patching it over with duct tape a few times, but her shoes always needed it more. The new one even covered all of her head instead of just her face, and something about that appealed to her.

But when she tried the suit on, the new mask stayed on the bed.

She wore the uniform the next day, the whole thing, except the new mask. Pauling said it looked good on her as she led her to an empty, cavernous conference room, and handed her a stack of folders before leaving again.

The folders contained brief—very brief—summaries of what were to be her new teammates. Included in each was a bad black-and-white photograph and a short description (and thank God it was short), but it took her a while to realize what was out of place.

None of them had names. Not even Conagher's was officially listed. Instead everyone seemed to exist only under their job title—Sniper. Medic. Demoman. Scout and Soldier and Heavy. She just barely recognized the man who had given her the cigarettes in the photo of the Spy, and Conagher, in a hardhat and goggles, grinned out at her from the Engineer's folder.

Well, that was just fine. She wasn't sure she could remember her name anymore, anyway. It seemed to be just out of reach every time she tried to think of it. Sometimes she wished she had told it to Conagher when he had asked, because she sort of thought she could still remember it back then. He could have reminded her.

That left her as the Pyrotechnician, Miss Pauling had said as she showed her the company-issue flaregun the next day. "But I'm sure you know how it goes, with nicknames and all. Dell gets called Engie, the Demoman's just Demo, that sort of thing. I imagine they'll call you Pyro—some of the boys around here already are."

The time passed quickly, and by the time it ended the arsonist wasn't really sure what all had been done, really. On her last night, sitting in her room, she took inventory. She had a rubber suit and a piece of paper listing her new paycheck, something with a lot more zeroes on it than she had ever anticipated. (What the hell was she going to do with all that money? …Stop being one of the homeless insane, she guessed.) She had a brand new propane tank for the flamethrower. And she had a sort of idea she was supposed to shoot it at people wearing red, somewhere far away.

That, and she had the new mask. She had avoided it, though she wasn't sure why. Well—because it would be replacing her entire face, probably.

The thought startled her, a little, and she wondered when she had started thinking of the mask as her face. She pulled it off and looked at it again, traced the sharp leftover fragments where the lens had shattered months ago.

Then she put it down, and looked at the mirror.

Her face began to hurt again. Most days the pain faded, for whatever reason, she couldn't understand why. It certainly seemed, to her, like it should hurt all the time.

She stepped in front of the glass.

There. Like always. Fresh agony washed over her as she studied herself, trying not to wince. It was funny; where the lens had broken, where people like Conagher and Miss Pauling could see beneath the mask, her skin was smooth and good. Convincingly human. She could even fool herself, if she looked into a mirror with the mask on. The pain wouldn't come, at least.

The arsonist stared into the mirror for what seemed like a long time before lifting a hand and touching her cheek, right on the edge of where the raw, unhealing wounds sat, festering.

What skin she had left was charred to black and red, and what wasn't exposed skin was exposed muscle. Blood, wet and warm, dribbled from her nose and the corner of her usually-masked eye, drooled between her teeth. Her eyelashes and eyebrows had been seared away, her tear ducts melted shut, her nose was a misshapen lump of angry red wax. One side of her mouth was pulled up in a permanent sneer, scar contracture from wounds that had never even been within shouting distance of a doctor twisting up into a permanent grimace.

The dispenser hummed.

"…It heals anything?" she asked.

"Just about," Engineer said.

Bullshit.

Bleary-eyed, dizzy with pain, she blinked at herself, as if that would make the thing in the mirror go away. But it just stared back.

On the last day at 7 AM sharp, she was ushered outside, suited up and with flamethrower and the company-issue suitcase filled with what she guessed were necessities to normal people in hand. Conagher's truck was idling before her. He startled badly when she came around the passenger side and opened the door. "Whoa now," he said, and then relaxed a bit as he studied her. "… Heck, campfire, that you under there?"

"Duh," she said, slinging her suitcase into the bed of the pickup. "What are you doing here?"

Conagher squinted at her, head tilting by degrees. He was wearing a hardhat and goggles, the same ones from his folder. "Sorry?"

"I said what are you doing here?"

"…What am I doin' here?" Aggravated, she nodded. "Got here last night, myself, got to get briefed on the mission. Looked for you a bit, no luck there. They brief you?"

She had no idea. "Yes."

"Good, good." Oh, he understood that. "Anyway. BLU ain't got a car for you or nothin', thought I'd give you a ride."

"Oh," she said, and got inside.

"How'd it go?" he asked. At first she opened her mouth to answer, and then opted for an exaggerated shrug instead. Fine, I guess. It hadn't occurred to her that the new mask would muffle her so badly, that much of her voice had escaped the old mask due only to its missing eyepiece. "Good t'hear. So you're our Pyro. Funny world … say, they tell you much 'bout the team?"

"A little," she said, holding up a finger and thumb with about an inch between them to indicate. Conagher—Engineer? The Engineer shook his head, grinning.

"Heh, well, they're—ah, you'll meet 'em soon enough. I'll warn ya now, they're a bunch of … characters." He paused to fiddle with his seatbelt. "They tell you 'bout respawn?"

"About what?"

She saw his brow raise. "They didn't, huh. Mm. … Don't you worry 'bout that. I'll show you when we get there."

And that was it, mostly. They drove off. The miles were filled with Engineer chattering easily away. He seemed excited, she thought. He told her stories about the team—how the Demoman lost his eye, or how he said he did; the Soldier's war stories ("Tall tales, every last one, but damned if he don't believe 'em through and through."); that the Heavy had entire operas memorized, in both English and his native Russian; how the Scout would swear up and down that once he had absolutely-for-real fought four guys with nothing but his bat and a wrapped fish, and won…

His steady stream of words seemed endless, and it was calming. It had nearly lulled her to sleep, some hours later, when it came to a sudden halt. Jarred by the lack of sound, she blinked awake, and glanced over at him. He was frowning, sort of.

"Hey, uh," he began, and then stopped again. "Heck. Forgive my askin', but who's …"

He trailed off. Silence swallowed up the air.

Engineer drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. "It's just you, uh. Said a few things the night you got messed up by the sentry. Got me mighty curious, been on my mind. Don't know if you remember that." But when she did not answer—how could she, anyway?—he shook his head. "Ah. You know what, never mind. Ain't my business. Sorry."

The Pyro gazed at him a while longer before looking back out the window.