Firebreak, p.1
Firebreak, page 1
Firebreak
Craig Schaefer
Demimonde Books
Copyright © 2025 by Craig Schaefer
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
No part of this book was created using generative AI. Craig Schaefer and Demimonde Books are actively opposed to the use of generative AI in the arts, and have pledged to never use it.
Contents
The Story So Far
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
39. Chapter 39
40. Chapter 40
41. Chapter 41
42. Chapter 42
43. Chapter 43
Afterword
The Story So Far
“Every one of you has been singled out for a very special purpose. And a special education. I am your headmistress, Chen Lan, and it is my great honor to welcome you to the Saunders Academy .”
Amy Nettle was a high school student living in a dead-end town, dreaming of college and escape from her abusive, drunken father. One night, desperate and pushed to the breaking point, she tried to rob her lecherous boss and nearly got caught — only to be whisked away to a remote, Gothic fortress upon an island in an eternally swirling, storm-tossed, hungry ocean.
She was one of dozens, all teenagers plucked from a myriad of parallel worlds to learn the arts of magic at the mysterious Saunders Academy.
The regimen was relentless…and strictly pass-or-fail. Failure meant a trip through the Arch of Resignation, a one-way trip back home, deprived of magic, deprived of memories of the Academy, as if nothing had ever happened. For Amy, going home was a death sentence. Success was the only option.
She wasn’t alone. Amy quickly fell in with a tight circle of friends, all trapped, all determined to run the gauntlet and survive. Colin was fleeing a broken home; Dalton, a techno-dystopian dictatorship where he was wanted “for thought-crimes and also regular crimes.” Bahati, a mega-successful pop star on her homeworld, narrowly escaped the rise of a fascist dictatorship. And Olivia was…well, she was Olivia, but she meant well.
Then there was Vail, a freckled, flame-haired jock dragging the chains of addiction behind her, along with memories of being exploited by a brutal pimp. When Amy nursed Vail back to health, easing her through the pangs of withdrawal, they became inseparable friends.
They’re all castaways, abandoned and discarded by the people who should have protected them. But united, helping each other to heal, they’re stronger than they’ve ever been on their own.
When a string of accidents culminated in a student’s death, it was clear a saboteur was at work. The Network, an interdimensional crime syndicate, has been scouring the multiverse for the Academy’s location, intent on razing it to the ground. Their agents, a sorcerer known as Elmer the Jangly-Man and his henchman Mr. Shaddock, a hulking rat-creature, nearly escaped with the island’s coordinates before the Castaways destroyed their escape vehicle and sent them fleeing into the wilds.
While Amy and her friends broke practically every school rule in the process, the faculty agreed on one thing: it had been as grueling as any final exam they could think up. The Castaways had completed their first year of studies, with distinction.
But it only gets harder from here. And Elmer and Shaddock are still in the wind, marooned on this hostile world with a single intention: to get word to their masters, and summon an invasion fleet.
Chapter one
Professor Abraham Chalk spoke like a Shakespearean actor, one who only performed in tragedies. His stentorian voice rang out in the depths of Amy Nettle’s mind as she scrambled up a wet, grassy embankment on all fours, grabbing gnarled roots for purchase, her school uniform slacks streaked with glistening mud.
“This mission is over,” Chalk intoned telepathically, “Abandon your objective and return to the Academy gates at once. Let me be perfectly clear: if you are intercepted, you will be killed.”
“Who’s got the Candle?” Dalton hissed. The lanky teenager was ahead of Amy at the crest of the rise, flat on his belly and peering over the tall, wild grass that stretched in all directions.
Amy held the Candle, a stout brass baton capped in scalloped tips. Runes ran its length in a descending spiral, lost words and forgotten signs etched into the metal with laser precision. It was warm in her hand. Her palm tingled.
“Here,” she said. “Stay on me.”
Amy risked a look back over her shoulder. Vail was right behind her. The muscular redhead peered around in frustration. “Where the hell are Olivia and Bahati? Did they—”
Suppressed shots rang out from the trees, cutting into the grass a few inches shy of Amy’s head. Vail grabbed her hand in a steel grip and yanked her forward. They ran crouched, heads down, feet pounding, Dalton at their side as they hunted for cover.
***
In a dark room that resembled a sound producer’s mixing booth, Colin sat at a console. He felt his blood turning to ice. The wall clock that hung over the machine didn’t seem to be moving at a consistent speed — the second hand echoed like slow, booming thunder, then sped up to match his jackhammering heart. The polished console, a steampunk nightmare festooned with buttons and levers and rivets, lay half-covered by field maps and tattered pages torn from his notebook.
On a small black screen, occult radiation tracked the Candle’s glow. An orange blob filled the screen, with six small bright dots in the cloud. Three were together, one was straying east, and the fifth was falling far back to the west.
“What should we, uh—”
Professor Chalk loomed behind him, an icy shadow.
“Lead your team, Mister Woodrue,” he replied. “I suggest you do it quickly.”
Colin snatched up an antique microphone, like something a radio announcer from the Forties might have used, and smoothed a map of the forest out on his lap.
“Okay, reading me? Listen. Olivia, you are way too close to the picket line and you’re losing the others. Change direction and regroup.”
Her answer, transmitted directly into Colin’s mind through the Candle’s power, was breathy and desperate. “I’m totally lost. Are those shots?”
“Yes,” Amy’s thought cut in. “And we need cover, Colin, now.”
“Okay, okay—” His finger slid along the map, trying to line up the scalloped topographic lines with the vague blobs on the screen in front of him. “Olivia. Can you see the pickets from where you are?”
“Yeah, there’s one right here.”
“Turn forty-five degrees to your right and run. Don’t stop until you meet up with the others.”
“How much is forty-five degrees?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Estimate. Okay. Amy, Vail, Dalton, there’s a sharp drop due north of your position. Hit that ditch and you can use it for cover. Can you see the sun from where you’re at? Use it to get your bearings.”
“Yeah, I see it.” Vail’s psychic voice suddenly rose an octave. “Dalton is down!”
“Injury?”
“He’s gone,” Vail said.
Colin’s stomach clenched in a sickly fist. Professor Chalk leaned in, his voice soft in Colin’s ear.
“Focus, Mister Woodrue, or you’ll be attending five funerals instead of one.”
Colin had to multitask, to keep track of the scattered team, to keep them moving and alive just a little longer. “Amy, Vail, keep going until you find that ditch and report back once you do. Bahati, report! I see you on the Candle, but you’re not moving.”
Her mental voice came back as a tense whisper. “I’m crawling. Slow. One of them is about ten feet ahead of me. I’m waiting for him to turn around so I can take him out.”
“Negative, Bahati. Remember the briefing? They’re patrolling in pairs. If you don’t see one of them—”
A pained grunt, and then her blip on the screen faded.
***
Amy slid down into the muddy ditch her heels, nearly twisting her ankle in a mess of tangled vines. Vail landed in a crouch at her side. They couldn’t finish the mission, Dalton was down, they had no idea where Olivia and Bahati were, but at least they could save each other. The ditch was tall, practically a trench wall on one side and a gentler rise on the other. They could follow it almost to the Academy walls, and—
A shot rang out. Scarlet exploded across her chest, along with a breath-stealing eruption of pain . Vail started to turn, and two more rounds hit her square in the back.
Jellica Barnes, her steel-checkerboard scarf fluttering at her throat, the tips of her snow-white hair seeming dipped in midnight-black ink, lifted the muzzle of her paintball gun. She pursed her dark-painted lips and blew, theatrically, across the muzzle.
“Pathetic,” she said, fixing Amy with a cruel smile. “You did even worse than we expected. That’s kind of a feat. Kudos on being a top-tier loser! S-rank, but the S stands for suck.”
***
Colin watched as the final circles of light on the monitor winked out. The Candle’s transmission ended, the orange cloud folding in upon itself and imploding in a whirlwind of probabilities as the enchantment fueling the conductor’s booth, held together by five-dimensional mathematics and duct tape, powered itself down.
The booth fell silent. He felt Professor Chalk still standing behind him. He didn’t dare turn around.
“Congratulations,” Chalk said. “If this had been a real mission, your entire team would be dead. A complete and abject disaster.”
The professor’s cane clicked on the tile floor as he turned to leave. At the threshold, he looked back, grave.
“I am beyond disappointed. Do better.”
He left Colin there alone to stew in the dark.
***
Jellica’s partner Gecka was a feral thing with a shock of pumpkin-orange hair. She wore a safety pin as an earring and makeup like war paint. There was a swagger in her step as she sauntered up to Vail.
“You, we kinda expected better from. You’re the only second-year student who can actually put up a fight.” Her gaze flicked from Vail to Amy and back again. “Guess you couldn’t do much with this anchor dragging you down though. Too bad, so sad.”
“You’re not the only one,” Jellica said, savoring the moment. “Dalton’s pretty good. Remind me, how’d he go down?”
“Shielding Amy. Gave his life for her. A true gentleman.”
“Right.” She snapped her fingers as she pretended to realize something. “Gosh, I see a common thread here. You should really think about that when you get back to the dorms.”
Dalton, Bahati, and Olivia glumly trudged through the underbrush, their uniforms spattered with paint. Dalton glared at Jellica.
“Protecting your friends isn’t something you know anything about, huh?”
She twirled the gun in her hand, pulled the trigger, and shot him in the crotch. He glanced down at the eruption painting his trousers red and raised a thin eyebrow.
“I made sure to wear a cup,” he said. “Figured you’d do that at some point and I wanted to be prepared.”
She raised her aim by two inches. The next paintball hit him square in the abdomen. One of his knees buckled as he clasped his thin hands against his belly.
“Okay, okay, stop,” he wheezed.
Two more of Jellica’s Blades strode up, Tullo and Prentise. Prentise was thin, willowy, and she wore a lace choker around her neck. She parted her lips and her tongue played over her teeth. As always, she held her silence. Tullo, on the other hand, carried himself like a low-rent thug.
“Dunno,” he said, “seems a shame not to use all this ammo we brought.”
He shot Olivia in the shoulder. She yelped. Vail’s hands instantly curled into fists and she stomped toward him.
“I’m going to take that toy away from you,” she said, “and then I’m going to shove it straight up your—”
“Ladies,” Chen Lan said. The headmistress of the Saunders Academy, draped in a dark gown knotted at one hip like a sarong, descended from the tangled canopy of leaves. She hovered before them for a moment before touching down on feather-light feet. “And gentlemen. The exercise, and the hostilities, are over for the day. Return to the dorms. Second-years, I suggest you change into your spare uniforms before lunch. These, you’ll be scrubbing clean. By hand. Considering the consequences had today’s outing been the real thing, I think you’ll agree that it’s a very light punishment by comparison.”
Behind her back, Tullo raised his gun again, pointing it at Vail.
“Pull that trigger,” the headmistress said without turning around, “and you’ll be doing the laundry for them. Do I need to repeat myself?”
She did not.
Chapter two
Long carpets in shades of zig-zag ivory and black, flanked by gas lamps that burned with purple fire, welcomed the students back into the Victorian confines of the Saunders Academy. The cavernous dining hall awaited. It had been built to hold far more students than the school had ever hosted — and there were even fewer now, with no new first-year students recruited to replace the recent graduates. Admissions were on hold until the current crisis, the pair of Network agents running loose in the wilds of Firebreak Island, had been dealt with.
Amy found a seat at the end of one long, knife-scarred wooden dining table with the rest of the Castaways. She listened to the clank of plates, the hiss of flame from the open kitchen window, and the growing din of conversation all around them. Tales of woe, mostly.
After last year’s brutal cuts, so many students sent through the Arch of Resignation for one failure after another, all that remained of the second-year class was twenty-four teenagers. They’d been divided into teams of six — one conductor, five “field agents” — and sent outside the walls on their first simulated mission.
“Everyone failed,” Dalton confided, glancing at the other cliques who sat in their own huddled groups. At this point Amy knew everyone, at least well enough to say hello in the halls. There was Bobbi and her posse, mini-tycoons of the Night Market, who hoarded snacks in their dorm room and sold them to the other students at an obscene markup. Wasif and his buddies lived in the school gym, obsessed with a version of basketball in which magical interference was not only allowed but encouraged. The more feral students gravitated to Eyodora and spent every free hour roaming the trails and wilds of Firebreak Island.
The third- and fourth-years, meanwhile, were spread across the great hall, mostly clustered by the softly glowing mouth of the wide stone hearth. While everyone was uniformed in the school colors, crisp chocolate brown tweed over ivory button-down shirts and purple neckties, most of the older students wore added decoration in the form of the scarves and pins of their Septs. There were four — Cups, Coins, Staves, and Blades — each a “special interest group” tacitly sanctioned by the school faculty. You couldn’t join a Sept merely by asking. You could only wait to be invited, and hope the one you wanted was the one that wanted you.
“That’s what Anahera told me,” Bahati agreed. “We were just the last to go through the meat grinder. We actually didn’t do all that bad. You know Corey, the tall kid with the scraggly mustache stubble? His team didn’t even make it a quarter mile past the school gates.”
Olivia squirmed in her seat, head on a swivel, looking like she expected someone to throw a bag over her head and toss her through the Arch.
“But we’re not in…trouble trouble?” she asked, her voice low. “I mean, last year, if we made a mistake like that…”
“They can’t throw us all out,” Vail said. “I mean, yeah, I guess they could, it’s their school, but even Chalk said this wasn’t part of the usual pass-fail business.”
Amy’s eyes landed on Colin, who sat at Dalton’s side as usual. The slight young man had been dead silent since their return, lost somewhere inside of himself.
“Hey,” Amy said.
He glanced up at her.
“Not your fault.”
Colin gave a tiny shake of his head. “I was your conductor. Getting you out was my responsibility.”
“Dude,” Dalton said, “you’ve never done it before. You should have seen me the first time I tried riding a motorcycle. Ate asphalt in front of my entire crew. I wasn’t sure what was worse, my busted arm or the sheer embarrassment. Soon as I healed up, know what I did? I got back on that hog and learned to do it right.”
“They had to know none of us could stand up to Jellica and her jerk club,” Vail groused. “They’ve been running these training exercises for years, and we practically just got here. What was the point besides making us feel like crap?”
Amy tilted her head, an insight sparked. “It’s the Kobayashi Maru.”
