Prologue

The clicks of the lighter were like music. It's addicting to watch the flame jump from nothing but metal and a plastic handle and I clicked again. She told me I was wasting methane. I wondered how she could speak of waste when she had planned this.

If I clicked the flame to the sky too often, perhaps the air would alight, be blown out the chimneys. The houses breathe smoke like square dragons, with ragged scales and sliding tiles, and they coil into the horizon. The colours in windows have faded to grey on grey, waiting to be alighted. To roar.

Her skin shines with oil, and her face reflects the grey of the city back at me, and if I stare long enough, I can see a splodge of pale pink, my face in hers. Normally, her eyes are as black as her hair, but as she pulls the lighter from my hand, they seem to flash with savage passion.

"You're insane," I say.

"I am?"

"Definitely."

She smirks, and tries to flick her hair over her shoulder, but it's too heavy with oil, slicked back, clinging to her neck. I laugh quietly and the smirk is replaced by a wide-mouthed grin, and she kisses me.

Her mouth feels slimy, and my lips slide over hers. I can't taste strawberry chapstick anymore. The stench of oil infests my nostrils. But this is the last time I'll ever touch her and I pull her closer, crushing our bodies into one.

The lighter falls from her hand, and clatters against the stone. She wriggles out of my grasp to pick it up, pats her hair down again. I want to kiss her again but her eyes are flitting all over the place. Perhaps she's only just grasped that this is her last chance to stare at the mouldy sky, look over London's twisting dragon limbs we can see from this height.

"Wish me luck."

Our ideas of luck are radically different. I nod anyway.

"I still think you're insane."

"Insanity's my only option," she replies.

Without warning, the preamble is over. She gives me a last look, and grins, and in that moment, I know she's gone. There's a click and a flame bursts from the grey. She scrambles upwards, hitching her legs over the top of the wall, and there's another a rapid fire of clicks.

I know I shouldn't but I still run to the wall, and watch her descend. Click. Click. Click. She seems to fly, one hand clinging to a rope. The clicks are quiet but I can see their effect. She glows, flames devouring her skin. There's screams and the guards are momently silent, before their gun shots ring out, an echo of the lighter's clicks.

She somehow dodges them, and throws her arms outwards as she lands, the rope swinging away when she lets go. It's the perfect audience for her- shocked passers-by, clutching their crocodile skin bags, oblivious to who she is. Her eyes have been burned away already, leaving only charred circles and embers. Her voice is loud and unshaking.

"We won't surrender. You can't break us,"

I know there's a breathless smirk on her face, and she won't allow herself to wince. The flames will do their job though, on her oil smothered body, and her skin falls apart in clumps of coal, leaving her skin rugged with blackened mines. She dies sizzling.