Calamity

  “A…what?”

  “Something heavy,” I said. “It’s a trick we learned in the Factory.”

  She cocked her head at me, but then slouched. That was better, and I was able to enhance it by clinging to her in a frightened way, pushing the back of her head so that she bowed it farther while we walked arm in arm. My shuffling—while acting extra nervous and dodging out of the way of others when they got too close—got us about halfway across the street, but then the press of people grew too great.

  “Bow!” Prof bellowed at us. “Kneel before your new master.”

  The people went down in a wave, and I had to tow Megan with me to follow. Never before in our relationship had the disparity between us been so obvious. Yes, she had Epic powers and I didn’t—but at the moment, that distinction seemed slight compared to the fact that she obviously had no concept of how to properly cower.

  I was strong. I fought, and I didn’t accept Epic rule. But Calamity…I was still human. When an Epic spoke, I jumped. And though I seethed inside, when one told me to kneel, I did it.

  The crowd hushed as more people piled out of the garage, filling the street, kneeling. I couldn’t see much with my head down. “Mizzy?” I hissed. “You out yet?”

  “Near the back,” she whispered over the line. “By a light post with blue ribbons on it. Should I run?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s watching for that.”

  I glanced up at Prof, who stood imperiously before us, new Epic lackey at his side, Stormwind hovering in her prison beyond. Prof scanned the crowd, then turned sharply as someone exited a nearby building and sprinted away.

  Prof didn’t capture her in a globe of force; instead, he raised his hands to the sides and two long spears made of light, almost crystalline in shape, appeared and shot toward the fleeing woman. They speared her through, dropping her—crumpled—to the street.

  I swallowed, brow damp with sweat. Prof stepped forward, and something glowing shot out beneath his feet. A pale green forcefield that made a path for him. His own personal roadway, it elevated him three or four feet above us, so that when he walked he didn’t have to risk brushing against one of the huddled figures.

  We crouched lower, and I pulled the earpiece from my ear, worried it might remind him of the Reckoners, though we weren’t the only ones to use them. Megan did likewise.

  “The fight for Ildithia is over,” Prof said, his voice still amplified. “You can see that your most powerful Epic master, Stormwind, is mine. Your onetime leader hides as a coward from me. I am your god now, and with my arrival I create a new order. I do this for your own good; history has proven that men cannot care for themselves.”

  He stopped uncomfortably close to me on his radiant pathway. I kept my eyes down, sweating. Sparks, I could hear him breathe in before every proclamation. I could have reached out and touched his feet.

  A man I loved and admired, a man I’d spent half my life studying and hoping to emulate. A man who would kill me without a second thought if he knew I was there.

  “I will care for you,” Prof said, “so long as you do not cross me. You are my children, and I your father.”

  It’s still him, I thought. Isn’t it? Twisted though they were, those words reminded me of the Prof I knew.

  “I recognize you,” a voice whispered beside me.

  I started, turning, and found Firefight kneeling beside me. He wasn’t aflame like he had been at the Foundry; right now he looked like a normal man, wearing a business suit with a very narrow tie. He knelt but did not cower.

  “You’re David Charleston, aren’t you?” Firefight asked.

  “I…” I shivered. “Yes. How did you get here? Are we in your world or mine?”

  “I don’t know,” Firefight said. “Yours, it would seem. So in this world, you live still. Does he know?”

  “He?”

  Firefight faded before he could answer, and I found myself staring at a frightened young man with spiky hair. He seemed baffled that I’d been speaking to him.

  What had all that been? I glanced toward Megan, who knelt on my other side, then nudged her. She looked at me.

  What? she mouthed.

  What was that? I mouthed back.

  What do you mean?

  Prof continued to walk through the crowd, a glowing field forming before his feet as he stepped. His path rounded, and he came back along on my other side. “I have need of loyal soldiers,” he declared. “Who among you wish to serve me, and be lords over your inferiors?”

  About two dozen opportunists in the crowd stood up. Serving Epics so directly was dangerous—merely being in their presence could get you killed—but it was also the one way to get ahead in the world. I felt sick to see how eagerly some of the people stood, though the majority of the crowd remained kneeling, too scared—or too sensible—to throw their lot in with a new Epic when he hadn’t yet established total dominance.

  I’d have to ask Megan more about Firefight later. For now, I had a plan. Kind of.

  I took a deep breath, then stood up. Megan glanced at me, then stood as well. What are we doing? she mouthed.

  This will let us move through the crowd, I mouthed back. It’s the only way to get to Mizzy.

  Prof stood on his glowing walkway, hands behind his back. He studied the people in the crowd, surveying them. He turned about, looking directly at the two of us, and I swallowed nervously. This could be a way to weed out those whose loyalty was too fleeting. His next step could be to kill those of us who had stood.

  No. I knew Prof. He’d realize that in murdering those most eager to serve, he’d have trouble finding servants in the future. He was a leader, a builder. Even as an Epic, he wouldn’t discard useful resources unless he considered them a threat.

  Right?

  “Good,” Prof said. “Good. I have a task for you all.” He held his hands out, and I thought I felt something vibrate. A familiar sensation from the days, months ago, when I’d worn the gloves and used Prof’s power.

  I towed Megan to the side as Prof released a wave of power over the top of the crowd. The air warped, and the entire parking garage behind us exploded to salt dust. People screamed and dropped through the collapsing powder.

  “Go,” Prof said, waving toward the destruction of the parking garage. “Execute those still living who disobeyed my will and hid as cowards.”

  The twenty-something of us jumped into motion. Though the drop had already hurt, or killed, those on the upper two floors of the garage, there would be others who hadn’t fallen far—or who were hiding in the underground portion.

  Prof turned to resume his inspection of the crowd. That gave Megan and me our opening. We veered, using the pole Mizzy had indicated as a reference point. There she was, huddling down with a hoodie—I had no idea where she’d gotten it—covering her head. She glanced at us, and I gave her a thumbs-up.

  She didn’t hesitate. She sprang to her feet and joined us, and in an eyeblink Megan had changed Mizzy’s features to something similar but unrecognizable.

  “Megan?” I said.

  “See that wall over there?” she said. “The one by the ramp leading to where the garage used to be? I’ll create duplicates of us once we reach it. When they appear, drop down by the wall.”

  “Got it,” I said, and Mizzy nodded.

  We hit the location indicated, a salt ramp that now ended abruptly to our left. One version of the three of us split off and started up the ramp. The duplicates wore our clothing, and had the same fake faces we’d been wearing. Three people from another reality, living in Ildithia. It hurt my brain sometimes to wonder how all this worked. Those faces Megan had overlaid us with…did that mean these three were doing the same things we were? Were they versions of us, or were they completely different people who had somehow ended up living lives very like our own?

  The three of us—the real three—dropped and ducked behind the wall as our doppelgangers reached the edge of the ramp and hopped off. We were shielded from Prof and the c
rowd by this wall, but I still felt horribly conspicuous as we army-crawled across the ground toward an alleyway.

  A gust of wind carried dust across us, and it stuck to my face, tasting sharply of salt. I still wasn’t used to how dry it was in this city; my throat felt ragged from just breathing.

  We made it to the alley without incident, and our doppelgangers disappeared into the pits of the destroyed parking garage. I wiped the dust from my skin as Mizzy made a face, sticking out her tongue. “Yuck.”

  Megan settled on the ground beside the wall, looking exhausted. I knelt beside her, and she grabbed my arm and closed her eyes. “I’m fine,” she whispered.

  She’d still need time to rest, so I gave it to her. I didn’t miss that she started rubbing her temples to try to massage away a headache. I knelt by the edge of the alleyway so I could make sure we were safe. Prof continued to walk among the crowd, passing the place where Mizzy had been hiding. He occasionally made someone look up and meet his gaze.

  He must have a list of descriptions of Epics, I thought, or other malcontents in the city.

  He was here for a purpose. I couldn’t believe that Prof had randomly picked Ildithia to rule. And I was increasingly suspicious that the secrets to why he did what he did came from the things he’d found when he’d taken power from Regalia.

  I didn’t lure Jonathan here to kill him, child, Regalia’s voice echoed in my head. I did it because I need a successor.

  What did Ildithia hide that had drawn Prof’s attention?

  Behind me, Mizzy gave Abraham and Cody an update. I kept my attention on Prof. He looked not unlike Steelheart, who—though taller and more muscular—had stood frequently in that same domineering pose.

  Out in the square, a baby started crying.

  My breath caught. I spotted the woman clutching her baby, not far from where Prof stood. She frantically tried to soothe the child.

  Prof raised his hand toward her, a look of annoyance on his face. The sound had jarred him out of his contemplations, and he sneered toward the disturbance.

  No…

  You learned quickly: Don’t bother the Epics. Don’t draw attention. Don’t annoy them. They’d kill a man for the simplest of things.

  Please…

  I didn’t dare breathe. I was in another place for a moment. Another crying child. A hushed room.

  I looked into Prof’s face, and despite the distance, I was certain I saw something there. A struggle.

  He spun and stalked away, leaving the woman and her child alone, barking at his new Epic lackey. The forcefield sphere holding Stormwind trailed after him, and he left a bewildered crowd.

  “We ready to go?” Megan asked, standing up.

  I nodded, letting out a long, relieved breath.

  There was still something human inside Jonathan Phaedrus.

  “I did see him, Megan,” I said, unzipping my backpack. “I’m telling you, Firefight was there in the crowd.”

  “I’m not doubting you,” she said, leaning against the pink saltstone wall of our new hideout.

  “Point of fact,” I said, “I believe you were doing exactly that.”

  “What I said is that I didn’t pull him through.”

  “Then who did?”

  She shrugged.

  “Can you be absolutely sure he didn’t slip through?” I said, taking several changes of clothing out of my pack and kneeling by the trunk that was going to be my sole piece of furniture. I stuffed the clothing inside, then looked at her.

  “On occasion, when I pull a shadow from another world, the fringes bleed,” Megan admitted. “It usually only happens when I’ve just reincarnated, when my powers are at their fullest.”

  “What about when you’re stressed or tired?”

  “Never before,” she said. “But…well, there are a lot of things I haven’t tried.”

  I looked up at her. “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why? You have amazing, reality-defying powers, Megan! Why not experiment?”

  “You know, David,” she said, “you sure can be stupid sometimes. You have lists of powers, but you don’t have any idea what it’s like to be an Epic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed, then settled down on the floor next to me. There were no beds or couches yet—our new hideout wouldn’t ever be as lush as the one in Babilar had been. But it was as secure as we could make it. We’d built it ourselves over the past few days, hiding it as one of the large “cancerous” lumps of salt that grew across Ildithia.

  I’d given Megan some time at first, not wanting to push her about Firefight. She was often evasive for a few days after she used her powers strenuously, as if even thinking about the powers gave her a headache.

  “Most Epics aren’t like Steelheart, or Regalia,” Megan explained. “Most Epics are small-time bullies—men and women with just enough power to be dangerous, and just enough taste of the darkness to not care who they hurt.

  “They didn’t like me. Well, Epics don’t like most anybody, but me especially. My powers frightened them. Other realities? Other versions of them? They hated that they couldn’t define limits to what I could do, but at the same time my powers couldn’t protect me. Not actively. So…”

  “So?” I asked, scooting closer, putting my arm around her.

  “So they killed me,” she said, shrugging. “I dealt with it, learned to be more subtle with my powers. It wasn’t until Steelheart took me in that I had any kind of security. He always did see the promise of what I did, rather than the threat.

  “Anyway, it’s like I’ve told you. I took what my dad had taught my sisters and me about guns, and I became an expert. I learned to use guns to mask the fact that my powers couldn’t hurt anyone. I hid what I could truly do, became Steelheart’s spy. But no, I didn’t experiment. I didn’t want people to know what I could do, didn’t even want him to know the extent of my powers. Life has taught me that if people learn too much about me, I end up dead.”

  “And reincarnating,” I said, trying to be encouraging.

  “Yeah. Unless it’s not me that comes back, but just a copy from another dimension—similar, but different. David…what if the person you fell in love with really did die in Newcago? What if I’m some kind of impostor?”

  I pulled her close, uncertain what to say.

  “I keep wondering,” she whispered. “Is next time going to be the time? The time I come back and am obviously different? Will I be reborn with a different hair color? Will I be reborn with a different accent, or with a sudden distaste for this food or that? Will you know then, once and for all, that the one you loved is dead?”

  “You,” I said, tipping her chin up to look her in the eye, “are a sunrise.”

  She cocked her head. “A…sunrise?”

  “Yup.”

  “Not a potato?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Not a hippo?”

  “No, and…wait, when did I call you a hippo?”

  “Last week. You were drowsy.”

  Sparks. Didn’t remember that one. “No,” I said firmly, “you’re a sunrise. I spent ten years without sunrises, but I always remembered what they looked like. Back before we lost our home, and Dad still had a job, a friend would let us come up to the observation deck of a skyscraper in the morning. It had a dramatic view of the city and lake. We’d watch the sun come up.”

  I smiled. It was a good memory, me and my father eating bagels and enjoying the morning cold. He’d always make the same joke. Yesterday, son, I wanted to watch the sunrise. But I just wasn’t up for it….

  Some days, the only time he’d been able to make for me had been in the morning, but he’d always done it. He’d gotten up an hour earlier than he needed to get to work, and he’d done it after working well into the night. All for me.

  “So, am I going to get to hear this glorious metaphor?” Megan said. “I’m twinkling with anticipation.”

  “Well, see,” I said, “I would w
atch the sun rise, and wish I could capture the moment. I never could. Pictures didn’t work—the sunrises never looked as spectacular on film. And eventually I realized, a sunrise isn’t a moment. It’s an event. You can’t capture a sunrise because it changes constantly—between eyeblinks the sun moves, the clouds swirl. It’s continually something new.

  “We’re not moments, Megan, you and me. We’re events. You say you might not be the same person you were a year ago? Well, who is? I’m sure not. We change, like swirling clouds and a rising sun. The cells in me have died, and new ones were born. My mind has changed, and I don’t feel the thrill of killing Epics I once did. I’m not the same David. Yet I am.”

  I met her eyes and shrugged. “I’m glad you’re not the same Megan. I don’t want you to be the same. My Megan is a sunrise, always changing, but beautiful the entire time.”

  She teared up. “That…” She breathed in. “Wow. Aren’t you supposed to be bad at this?”

  “Well, you know what they say,” I told her, grinning. “Even a clock that runs fast is still right twice a day.”

  “Actually…You know what, never mind. Thank you.”

  She kissed me. Mmmmm.

  Some time later, I stumbled from my quarters, ran a hand through my disheveled hair, and went to get something to drink. Cody was on the other side of the hallway, finishing the hideout’s roof there with the crystal-growing device that Knighthawk had given us. It looked kind of like a trowel, the kind you’d use to smooth concrete or plaster. When you pulled it along the salt, the crystal structure would extend and create a sheet of new salt. With the glove that came with the device, you could mold that new salt how you wanted for a short time, until it hardened and stayed strong.

  We called it Herman. Well, I called it Herman, and nobody else had come up with something better. We’d used it to grow this entire building in an alleyway over the course of two nights, expanding upon a large lump of salt that had grown there already. This place was on the northern rim of the city, which was still growing, so that the half-finished structure wouldn’t look odd.