There’s a day, fast approaching, when TV weathermen don’t look quite so happy to tell us it won’t be raining again today. The day will dawn when they’d much rather report a good old-fashioned downpour, than another glorious, record-breaking heat wave. On that day, a documentary will follow the News, explaining how, for years, Australians living in the outback have dealt with what they call crossfires. Gradually, the world will come to terms with what that means.

A crossfire is a fire that burns without fuel in the earth’s lower atmosphere. It generates heat like a dirty-great power station going into meltdown. It can’t be extinguished. Can’t be starved of Oxygen. And is fast expanding its territory.

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Only one boy, Cassian Prey, has ever survived more than a few minutes inside one. The full glare of the media spotlight turns on him. But he’s got no answers. In the end, his parents quit the UK to escape the attention of Fleet Street. They run to Normandy where they have friends.

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They anticipate a quiet break, away from the fear and anxiety that’s gripped London lately. But the French have just agreed to host a world summit on the subject of the crossfire. Due to be held in the Louvre, the gathering of ambassadors is hastily relocated when cracks appear in paving slabs beneath the Eiffel Tower. The city streets are literally buckling under the intense heat of a fire that’s been hovering over it for a week. The monastic island of Mont Saint Michel is chosen as the new venue.

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Cassian will be less than a mile away, over drained salt flats, staying in a whitewashed gite with a drafty door. The roads around him will choke up with black limousines and he’ll find it impossible to control his curiosity. What’s the word on the other side of the guarded causeway that serves the monastery? What’s the future of the crossfire? To his surprise, the answer he’s looking for is FreeSky. 

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Environmental scientists have long predicted rising sea levels and violent storms will result from increased volumes of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. But none have anticipated the emergence of the crossfire phenomenon. 

Crossfires are fires that burn holes in the sky. The early part of the twenty-first century will be defined by their presence over our major cities. And Cassian Prey will be defined by his ability to walk through them, unharmed. 

Not that he will understand or value this gift. Instead, he will quickly learn what a burden it is. Plagued by the media and placed under constant surveillance by a mysterious government ministry, his family will decide to spirit him out of London, taking him to Normandy on an extended holiday. But the bay of Mont Saint Michel will not prove to be the haven of peace and tranquillity they were hoping for. 

Paris is being raked by crossfires. Birds that would normally roost in the Jardin des Plantes or the Parc de la Villette, have taken refuge inside its beautiful buildings to escape the flames. And as a result, a conference of world leaders, due to be held in the Louvre, has been hastily relocated. The monastic island of Mont Saint Michel is chosen as its new venue. 

News teams and camera crews arrive first. Then support staff and secret service agents. Finally, ambassadors, politicians and heads of state descend on the countryside around Avranches to decide what to do about the crossfire plague. The whole world is suffering its effects. Reports of mass bird hibernations cannot be ignored. The threat to public health is unprecedented. 

Cassian’s curiosity gets the better of him. He visits the abbey during one of the summit’s lengthy sittings to find out more. Of course, he is refused permission to cross the heavily guarded causeway that leads to the island, but risks the patches of quicksand in the estuary and walks to the outer walls of the citadel. 

Caterers drafted in to feed the summit’s attendants are enjoying a well-deserved cigarette break outside. They have propped open a fire door to allow them back in when they’ve finished. Cassian sneaks through and climbs the steep stone steps on the other side. He overhears a private conversation in a tranquil rose garden. A representative from a company calling itself FreeSky is explaining how the incidence of crossfires could be controlled by a series of gigantic turbines, constructed to purify the atmosphere and reduce its CO2 content. Unfortunately, a passing security patrol spots Cassian and he is escorted off the island. He’ll have to wait for the conference’s official press release, to learn more.

He walks home, across the reclaimed pasturelands between the abbey and the tiny village of Ardevon. A television crew have discovered his whereabouts and are hassling his parents. So he doubles back, searching for a beach party he’s been invited to. Hidden in the low dunes behind Courtils, he comes across it, a campfire and a case of beer surrounded by half a dozen rolled towels. The partygoers are on the beach, night swimming. A small crossfire ignites over the bay as he joins them in the cool water. They ignore it, bodysurfing the small waves blown in from the English Channel. 

Cassian is caught by a current and dragged onto a nearby reef. He is cut off from the rest of the group. The crossfire sweeps towards them but stays hundreds of feet up in the air. Powerless to help, should it descend to earth, he watches the crossfire getting closer. Luckily, a local fisherman picks up the kids on the beach, and ferries them to safety. 

Dropped on a rocky quay on the East side of Mont Saint Michel, they wait, shivering, while the authorities sort out some transport for them. But, afraid of what their parents will do when they find out what they’ve been up to, some of them decide to make a run for it. They set off down the island causeway as the crossfire changes direction yet again. 

Cassian manages to reach the causeway and chases after them. Running through the crossfire bubble, which is now just a few feet above sea level, he reaches them in time to push them to safety. The crossfire dies and everyone goes home.

The next morning, Cassian helps with work to convert one of their gite’s outbuildings into a new holiday annex, completely unaware of the danger he’s in. But his abduction is being carefully planned by FreeSky. They don’t want Cassian’s gift, getting in the way of their plans to manipulate the weather with their turbines. 

Cassian is taken in his sleep. First, he’s interviewed in the sacristy behind the monastery’s high alter. Then, an ancient dungeon deep beneath its foundations is found for him. The summit ends and its attendants disperse, back to their home countries. Cassian is left guarded by a single mercenary whose instructions are to drown him as soon as the tide comes in. But before that happens, another, much larger crossfire lights up the Cotentin Peninsula. And a million seabirds flock into the buildings of Mont Saint Michel. Cassian’s guard is terrified. The birds crowd into the maze of narrow corridors and vaulted cellars all around them and cut off their exits. His guard pushes Cassian down a shaft leading to an old, World War Two ammunitions dump and leaves him for dead. But, despite everything, Cassian escapes. 

A coastguard vessel spots him swimming from the monastery and picks him up. Safe and sound, in a French police station, he dials a number given to him by a senior member of a mysterious agency monitoring his activities. Someone from the ministry is sent to collect him and drive him to Bayeux. In the bowels of a deserted museum, he is shown a tapestry as old as the famous one that carries the town’s name. On it are depicted detailed scenes of a medieval battle and a bustling pagan fair.

‘What do you notice about the image?’ asks the museum’s curator. 
Cassian shrugs. ‘Nothing,’ he admits. ‘Nothing unusual.’
‘You’re wrong,’ the man points at the sky. ‘Look more closely.’
Cassian shrugs again, then he sees it. ‘The Sky’s a funny colour,’ he says, ‘oh, and there aren’t any birds,’ he whispers.In fact, there are birds on the tapestry but only in the windows of the Town Hall.‘What does it mean? Do you think this has all happened before?’ Cassian asks. ‘The crossfires, the birds hiding in the buildings? Way back when this tapestry was woven...’

‘The Medieval warm period,’ the man from the Ministry admits. He points to a figure standing alone on top of a church steeple, ‘and I think that’s you. Or at least, your twelfth century ancestor...’

At dawn the next day, Cassian is back on the causeway linking the abbey of Mont Saint Michel to the mainland. The citadel is in the grip of a violent crossfire. He walks through it. The man from the Ministry has given him specific instructions. He is to climb into the monastery’s bell tower, unlock the service door to the roof space and step outside. Further instructions will be relayed to him via a headset he’s wearing.

Watching through high-powered binoculars, several miles away, ministry officials tell him to activate the piece of hardware they’ve given him. It looks like a lightsaber. Cassian switches it on and waves it above his head. Immediately his actions have an effect. The crossfire flames change colour. Cassian feels his lungs expand. Scientists are fed live data from sensitive equipment monitoring the site. The fire’s core temperature fluctuates, its walls begin to contract, and then, they begin to expand… 

A chain reaction has been set in motion. Violent blue flames burst from Cassian’s fingers, spreading across the sky, replacing the crossfire’s red spectrum of colour. He is held like a statue, perfectly still in the centre of the crossfire, while flares burst and tumble all around him. And then, the fire goes out. Everything is dark and silent. The wind forces him back inside.

Elsewhere, workmen toil to complete two immense nuclear turbines, to be installed on a greenfield site in Cadarache, southern France. The project is being managed by FreeSky. 

The Ministry are satisfied Cassian has done all he can to help them and allow his family to travel home to London. Thinking their troubles are all behind them, they relax but a substitute teacher has been placed in Cassian’s school. FreeSky are not at all convinced Cassian’s part in all this is over. He is kidnapped and given a truth serum to reveal everything he knows. Drugged and confused, he is dropped in Soho. From there, he manages to stagger to the Ministry’s headquarters. 

Now, he and his family are placed under proper police protection. They are housed in a Ministry research facility in Staffordshire. By studying Cassian, the Ministry hope to artificially manufacture responses from crossfires similar to those witnessed in Normandy. Soon, they’ll have a solution they can implement. Meanwhile, religious leaders, including representatives from the Vatican, have persuaded governments to set challenging CO2 emissions targets.

FreeSky finally gets the go-ahead to turn over their turbines in Cadarache, but are they too late? Have the Ministry already come up with a formula that will successfully control the crossfires? There’s no prize for second place. And FreeSky cannot afford to fail. They infiltrate the Staffordshire research facility and sabotage it. 

The facility burns to the ground. Cassian, his family and the site technicians escape, but lose the majority of their research material. Now there’s nothing to stop FreeSky expanding their turbine matrix across Europe. Except, that is, for the vial of blood Cassian has in his fist. 

The active cells in his body, the ones that help him interact with the crossfires, have been concentrated in this test tube. One of the ministry scientists believes if Cassian were injected with it, and climbed into the heart of a crossfire, he could snuff it out, forever. On top of the London Eye, Cassian waits for a nearby fire to envelope him. As it does, sapphire flames begin to extend from his fingers. This time they stream miles out, over the capital, taking on a life of their own. Weather stations in Greenland and the Faulkland Islands record incredible wind speeds and pressure variations. Satellites feed exciting thermal images to TVs everywhere. Until, at last, the crossfire is extinguished. 

Birds flock back to the royal parks of London. The story of Cassian’s imprisonment on Mont Saint Michel breaks and the guilty parties are arrested. The phenomenon that will forever define the second decade of the new millennium has passed. And with it, the gift that has defined Cassian Prey.

Cassian had a on his cheek from a cycling accident when he was younger but it wasn’t disfiguring. Actually, he liked it. It meant people gave him a wide birth sometimes, instead of spoiling for a fight. It had the effect of putting the words I’m tough in front of everything he said. No bad thing on the playground.

Cassian’s hair was ash-blond, spiked with gel so it stood up. His eyes were pale; a sort of ghostly green. But his skin was dark, as though there had been a drop or two of gypsy blood in his family at one time. His school didn’t insist on a uniform, so he dressed casually most of the time. Jeans. A T-shirt. A rugby-top in the winter if it got really cold.

He didn’t bother with labels. He wore whatever felt good against his skin. He didn’t make much of an effort at all really. Fitting in just didn’t matter to him. Except once, and that once changed everything…

He was in the middle of an old, overgrown tennis court, behind the tramlines near the back of the park. It was a Wednesday afternoon, after school and Cassian was tired. He’d had a rough day. He just needed to feel like one of the gang for a while. Today, that meant not asking questions. So here he was. Somewhere he’d never been before. The abandoned tennis courts.

Mitchell Turner had decided they should hang out there. The tarmac was riddled with potholes and weeds. The nets were long gone. There was no way you could play tennis here, even though here was in the heart of Wimbledon.

Cassian’s step-dad said it spoke volumes about the Government’s approach to sports. ‘That tennis courts in a part of London synonymous with the game could be aloud to get into this state was a national scandal.’ He commented on it every time he saw them from the main road.

Everyone seemed to be scuffing their feet in piles of dead leaves blown against the tattered green fencing. Or dropping pebbles down the holes where the net posts used to rest. What were they doing? The courts were a wash out.

Then, Mitchell produced something from his jacket pocket. A cigarette lighter. Someone else, someone Cassian didn’t know, revealed a can of deodorant from beneath the folds of his lumpy jumper. And Cassian’s mind began to fill in the blanks.

He could have viewed the two objects in isolation. A lighter. A spray can. Two random household items. But somehow, he knew they were connected. They’d been brought here for a specific purpose. Drawn together for one, clear goal.

‘Not a good idea,’ Cassian said, guessing what would happen if he let things play out. ‘I don’t need this.’
‘Don’t need what?’ Mitchell confronted him. He had one of those faces you knew wouldn’t stay in your mind, no matter how long you stared at it. He faned innocence, even as he took the lighter in his left hand and the aerosol can in his right and drew them up to each other.
There was no time to act. Cassian was a few feet away from Mitchell. Safe enough for now, he thought. He didn’t have to duck or run for cover just yet. Neither did anyone else. No one even bothered to shout ‘Stop!’ or ‘Don’t!’ Instead, they watched and waited to see what happened.

The flint at the head of the lighter sparked. Everyone stood perfectly still, their eyes fixed on it. The butane in the purple, plastic vial beneath the flint evaporated and flowed upwards. No one recoiled or raised their hands in front of their faces. The propellant in the aerosol can was activated and an invisible, flammable vapour poured out. And still, no one said anything.

Then, suddenly, fire shot forth from the hands of the boy in control, Mitchell Turner. His lips curled into a guilty smile. Blue flames tumbled over each other, arcing forwards, away from him in tight, hot rings. He dropped his left hand to his side. The lighter went out. But the deodorant burned on and on.

The smell of it reached Cassian. It was like boiling tar mixed with strong, cheap aftershave. LEON read the label on the side of the can. Cassian could just make it out through the heat haze around it. That is, until Mitchell changed his grip. He seemed almost to be juggling with it. What was he doing? Trying to show off? The can rotated through 180 degrees, completing one full rotation over his palm.

Flames continued to pour forth from its white plastic nozzle. Cassian didn’t understand. Mitchell should have burned himself horribly when the jet of fire had swung in front of his face. But he seemed completely unharmed. He realised at once what must have happened. He had taken his finger off the trigger for a second or so, while the can was in motion. He must have done. Then, he’d reapplied it, as it swung back up to meet his thumb. The air around had obviously been hot enough to ignite the gas again. It was a neat trick but stupidly dangerous.

Cassian scowled and turned away. He’d seen enough. He had better things to do. This was crazy and someone was going to get hurt. He nodded to a few of the silent faces dotted about the tennis court, the ones he knew best, and stepped carelessly onto the parched, yellow grass around the edge.

He hadn’t gone two yards when he felt a wave of intense heat push him to the ground.
‘What the heck was that?’ he choked. He rolled over, onto his back, expecting to see… what? He didn’t know. Not what he did see, that was for sure. The sun was in his eyes but he could still make out what was going on. The tennis courts were on fire! A terrifying inferno of orange, red and yellow flames had completely enveloped them. And his friends were caught right in the middle of it.

It was as if the aerosol can had exploded with the force of a small atomic bomb. Yet, he could still see it, clasped firmly in Mitchell’s hand. Mitchell himself just a cardboard cut-out now, engulfed in fire. What had happened? Cassian had no idea. Nor did he know what to do next, what to do for the best.

The fire didn’t seem to be making any noise. That struck him as odd. It should have been roaring and crackling like an out-of-control incinerator, but it was horribly silent. It didn’t seem to be tied to the ground either. He should have seen ivy leaves, vines, leaves and blossoms wither and blacken in the heat but they didn’t. The fire seemed to hover above them.

At last, Cassian woke up to himself. Without thinking, he rushed back onto the tennis court. Mitchell was stood like a statue in the middle of a sea of flames. He was obviously in pain but seemed too shocked to show it. Cassian pulled him away, prising the can out of his fist, hearing it clatter onto the tarmac at his feet. They staggered into the shade of a nearby willow. Mitchell was shivering, probably in shock. Cassian knew he would need an ambulance but he had to rescue the others first.

He immediately went back for them. They were all lying down, apparently knocked to the floor by the initial blast, as Cassian had been. He ferried them, one by one, to safety. Five minutes had passed by the time he sat the last of them in a bed of dandelions under the umbrella of the willow tree.

The fire raged on, silently. It reminded Cassian of a possessed man, writhing about inside an invisible straight jacket. It seemed to have arms and legs that were pushing and kicking at the clear blue sky above it. Plumes of flame bulged out on one side and then the other. It seemed to shrink and grow as the wind changed direction, then it would suddenly and unpredictably swell to twice its size.

From some angles, it was hard to see. It was as though parts of it were transparent while other parts were constantly changing colour. And it burned on and on and on, as though it had a life of its own. Cassian called an ambulance on his mobile and it arrived in no time. Everyone was ferried to the burns unit of the local Accident and Emergency ward. Eventually, their parents came to take them home.

The boy who’d brandished the aerosol can so confidently an hour ago was hurt the worst. Mitchell Turner had suffered some first and second degree burns on his face and neck. Cassian knew that face, the one that simply refused to register in his mind before, would always be remembered now. Mitchell’s hair was a mess too. It had to be shaved. He would be scarred for life but even so, the damage should have been much more severe. No one at the hospital could explain it.

Cassian bought a can of Coke from a vending machine in the hospital foyer. He looked at his watch. He’d better get home too, before his step-dad missed him. He set off at once. But as he passed the Park, he couldn’t resist returning to the thicket, which concealed the tennis courts, the crushed patch of dandelions and the sheltered willow tree.

The fire was still burning. It had grown to encompass most of the embankments below the tramlines and the overflow carpark for the station now. ‘What was burning?’ Cassian thought. ‘Was there a gas leak in the area? An underground pipe expressing something volatile into the atmosphere?’ He had no idea. ‘Whatever. It was a matter for the authorities. Where were they?’ He was surprised to see the site remained unguarded.

He shrugged and drifted home. It never occurred to him that he should have been the most badly burned person of all. He had stood upright in the very centre of the fire. He should have been scarred but he wasn’t. He was fine. He’d felt almost nothing inside the flames. No. That wasn’t true. Actually, he had felt something, he’d felt in control…  

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‘Hi!’ he shouted as he pushed through his own front door. ‘Anyone about?’

‘Upstairs!’ shouted his step-dad in reply. ‘In the Study. Where’ve you been?’

‘Nowhere,’ Cassian helped himself to a snack from the fridge. He walked through to the Living Room and flicked on the TV. His step-dad stayed silent. He didn’t come downstairs to check on him. He’d probably hide up in his study until Cassian’s mum came home. Cassian would be more than happy if he did. They didn’t get on.

A camera crew had obviously been sent to Merton Park in the last few minutes, to film the unearthly fire burning there. Live pictures flashed across Cassian’s TV screen. Unfortunately, the flames didn’t show up very well. It looked more like a mass of bubbling clouds than a fierce firestorm. It was slowly drifting over the evacuated playground now, heading for the cricket pavilion and beyond that, the motorway. Cassian wondered where it would all end.

‘From here of course, it’s only a hop, a skip and a jump to Heathrow Airport,’ the reporter was saying. ‘If this phenomenon continues to grow, and if the wind fails to change direction, we could have a disaster on our hands.’

Cassian cringed. He could see the reporter’s point. If the body of flames drifted into an airplane hanger or enveloped the airport’s main control tower, who knew what might happen? Presumably, Heathrow Airport was home to several million gallons of highly explosive Kerosene. The majority of it would be buried deep underground but there must be enough on the surface to cause untold damage if it were ignited.

Cassian didn’t want to guess at the cost of such an explosion. What if the airport had not been closed and evacuated first? The consequences could be appalling…

‘No one understands the cause of this floating island of fire,’ the reporter was in shot now, pointing over his head at the ripples of colour in the atmosphere behind him. ‘London has never seen anything like it. As we speak, scientists are trying to position weather balloons in its path, to study it. It is also being tracked by a recently launched satellite. Hopefully, we will know more soon. For now, this is Tim Montgomery in Merton Park, South Wimbledon, handing you back to the studio.’

Cassian switched off. What on earth did LEON put in their spray cans? Cemtex?

‘I know it says on the side Do not use near a naked flame,’ Cassian muttered as he sipped his coke. ‘But it doesn’t make it clear you’ll spark a national disaster if you do…’ Cassian considered phoning the police, telling them what he knew. But he eventually decided against it. There had to be more to this than a bunch of kids mucking about on an abandoned tennis court. He would sleep on it.

If the situation hadn’t improved by the time he got up for school the next morning, he’d tell. Until then, it was up to the scientists and their weather balloons to figure out what was going on and put a stop to it. Cassian always imagined scientists were a lot cleverer then they let on. They’d soon have all this straightened out. He was sure there was nothing to worry about.