“At least the wire didn’t break on you halfway,” I noted.
“What?” Mizzy asked.
“Nothing.”
“David,” Abraham said, composed again. “There is a problem. Tia didn’t come with us.”
“She what?”
“Tia remained above,” Abraham said. “When we jumped into the elevator shaft, she ran the other way.”
Toward Prof’s room. Calamity’s shadow, that woman was stubborn. After all the work we’d done, she was going to get herself killed.
“Continue your extraction,” I said. “Tia is on her own now. Nothing we can do.”
“Roger.”
After all the work we’d gone through to get to her, she did this. Part of me couldn’t blame her; I was tempted by that information too. The rest of me was irate with her for forcing me into this position, where I had to make the call to leave a team member behind.
The lights suddenly came on again.
The ground lurched under the dining tables—Megan and I, near the hub, were on the nonrotating portion. To our left a short, balding Epic from Prof’s team approached around the hub, triumphantly raising the dampening device we’d attached to the generator.
Prof looked at it, then shouted, “They’re here! Secure both the elevators and the steps. Wiper, sweep the room!”
Wiper…That was a name I recognized.
“Oh!” Cody said. “Right, Wiper. I found that Epic for you, David. Sorry, lad. Had it in hand right as everything went to Wales in a handbasket. Wiper. Her powers—”
“—are to disrupt other Epics’ abilities,” I whispered. “Short them out for a second.”
A flash of light pulsed through the room. In that moment, I turned and found Megan looking at me. Not the false face she’d created, but Megan herself. Beautiful though that was, it wasn’t what I’d wanted to see at all.
Our disguises were gone.
FOR better or worse, my time with the Epics had seriously helped me deal with being surprised. I was almost as quick as Megan was in pulling out my handgun.
Pointedly, while we both moved by instinct, neither of us fired on Prof. Megan gunned down the three armed soldiers who had been firing out the window. Our little popguns acquitted themselves well, for compacts.
I shot Wiper.
She died a lot more easily than most Epics I’d killed—in fact, watching her drop in a spray of blood almost surprised me more than losing our disguises. I’d grown used to Epics being exceptionally tough; it was sometimes difficult to remember that the majority of them had only one or two powers, not a full suite.
Prof roared in outrage. I didn’t dare look at him; he’d been intimidating enough when he hadn’t been trying to kill me. Instead, I sprinted for the open stairwell door and gunned down the surprised Epic standing inside.
Megan followed me. “Duck!” she shouted at me as people in the room behind us pulled out guns. A few fired.
I dove through the doors. Nobody outside got off more than two or three shots before an explosion rocked the room, cracking saltstone walls and sending a shower of dust raining down.
I coughed, blinking salt from my eyes, and struggled to my feet. It had been one of Megan’s grenades. I managed to grab her outstretched hand and join her in running down the steps.
“Sparks,” she said, “I can’t believe we’re alive.”
“Wiper,” I said. “Her bursts negate Epic powers, specifically external usages, like Prof’s forcefields. Her burst left him momentarily unable to trap us.”
“Could we have…”
“Killed him?” I asked. “No. Wiper would have been executed by one High Epic or another long ago if her powers were that strong. She can’t…well, couldn’t…remove an Epic’s innate protections, just fiddle with manifestations for a second or two. Forcefields, illusions, that sort of thing.”
Megan nodded. The stairwell was dark—nobody had thought to hang lights in here—but we heard when people ventured in from above. Megan pulled back against the wall, looking up. I could make her out by the light trickling down from above.
I nodded to her unasked question when she glanced at me. We needed time to plan, and that meant keeping the pressure off us. She pulled her other mini-grenade from her thigh case, then activated it and tossed it upward.
The second explosion sent chunks of saltstone tumbling down on us, and seemed to have broken an entire section of steps above. I nodded to her, and we looked down the stairwell. There was no way we’d be able to take this stairway down seventy floors without finding ourselves trapped at the bottom. We needed another way out.
“David?” Cody’s voice. “I spotted some explosions up there. Y’all all right?”
“No,” I said over the line, “we’ve been compromised.”
Abraham swore softly in French. “We left the backup equipment, David. Where are you?”
David and Mizzy had brought extra wire climbers, in case there were more prisoners than Tia—or in case Megan and I joined them. Mission parameters called for emergency equipment to be left behind, just in case.
“We’re right by the door to floor seventy,” I said. “Where’s the equipment?”
“Black backpack,” Abraham said, “hidden in the air vent near the service elevator. But David, that level was flooding with guards when we were leaving.”
It would also be the same floor where Tia had given them the slip to go after Prof’s data. I wasn’t sure I could save her though. Sparks. I wasn’t sure I could save myself at this point.
“Radio chatter went silent right after Abraham was spotted,” Cody said. “They must have some kind of secure signal to use in emergencies. And they won’t be using Knighthawk mobiles, you can bet your kilt on that.”
Great. Well, at least with that pack, Megan and I had a chance. My back to the wall beside the door onto the seventieth floor, I took out my mobile. Its light bathed us as we examined the map that Cody helpfully sent of this level. We were marked as a green dot; the elevator, red.
That red dot was halfway across the sparking building. Lovely. I memorized the route—noticing Prof’s chambers. We’d travel close to it, down a hallway right outside his suite.
I glanced at Megan, and she nodded. We slid the door open and Megan leaped out, gun ready, checking right and then left. I followed, keeping watch down the right hallway as she scouted ahead to the left. A string of lightbulbs hung along the ceiling, revealing absurdly beautiful waves of red salt shot through the otherwise black and grey walls. It looked like a pigeon on fire.
I exhaled. No guards yet. The two of us continued down the left hallway, passing closed doors that I knew led into luxurious apartments. By the time we’d reached the end of the hall, I was feeling pretty good about our chances. Maybe the guards had all been pulled out to search other floors or to protect Prof upstairs.
Then the wall about ten feet in front of us disintegrated.
We stumbled back as the night wind whipped in through a new gap in the outside wall of the building, blowing in more salt dust from seventy floors up in the air. I raised my hand against the salt, blinking.
Prof hovered outside on a glowing green disc. He stepped off it and into the building, feet crunching on salt dust. Megan cursed, backing away, gun out in front of her. I remained in position and searched Prof’s face, hoping for some sign of warmth; pity, even. I found only a sneer.
He raised his hands at his sides, summoning lances of green light—spears of forcefield to impale us. In that moment, I felt something unexpected.
Pure anger.
Anger at Prof for not being strong enough to resist the darkness. The emotion had been hidden within me, tucked away behind a series of rationalizations: He’d saved Babilar. Regalia had manipulated him into his fall. The things he did weren’t his fault.
None of that stopped me from being angry—furious—at him anyway. He was supposed to be better than this. He was supposed to have been invincible!
Something trembled in
side me, like an ancient leviathan stirring in its slumber within a den of water and stone. The hair on my arms stood up, and my muscles tensed, as if I were straining to lift something heavy.
I looked into Prof’s eyes and saw my death reflected back at me, and something within me said no.
That sense of confidence was gone in a moment, replaced with sheer terror. We were going to die.
I leaped to the side, dodging a spear of light. I rolled as Megan jumped back against the wall, managing to get out of the way of another razor-sharp lance of forcefield.
I tried to scramble down the hallway, but smashed right into a glowing green wall. I groaned, turning to see Prof studying me with a look of disdain. He raised a hand to destroy me.
Something tiny hit him in the side of the head. He started, then turned, and another one smacked him in the forehead. Bullets?
“Oh yeah,” Cody said over the line. “Did y’all see that? Who just sniped a guy at a thousand yards? I did.”
The bullets didn’t penetrate Prof’s defensive powers, though they did seem to annoy him. I scrambled over to Megan. “Can you do anything?” I asked.
“I…”
A forcefield sprang up, surrounding both me and Megan, gouging out a large chunk of the saltstone floor as well. Sparks. This was it. We were going to be crushed like Val and Exel.
I reached for Megan, wanting to be holding her as it happened. She had adopted a look of concentration, teeth clenched, eyes staring sightlessly.
The air shimmered. Then someone else appeared inside the globe with us.
I blinked in surprise. The newcomer was a teenage girl with red hair worn short in a pixie cut. She had on a plain pair of jeans and an old denim jacket. She gasped and looked up at the forcefield globe surrounding us.
Prof closed his hand into a fist to make the globe shrink, but the young woman thrust her hands to the sides. I felt a thrumming vibration, like a voice with no sound. I knew that sound. The tensors?
Prof’s forcefield disintegrated, dropping us to the ground. I lost my balance, though the young woman landed easily on two feet. I was utterly baffled, but I was alive. I’d take that exchange. I grabbed Megan, pulling her away from the girl. “Megan?” I hissed. “What did you do?”
Megan continued to stare sightlessly.
“Megan?”
“Shhh,” she snapped. “This is hard.”
“But…”
Prof cocked his head.
The girl stepped forward. “…Father?” she asked.
“Father?” I repeated.
“I couldn’t find an uncorrupted version of him in a close enough reality,” Megan muttered. “So I brought what I could find. Let’s see if your plan works.”
Prof regarded his “daughter” contemplatively, then waved his hand, summoning another forcefield around Megan. The girl destroyed it in a flash, hands forward, releasing a burst of tensor power.
“Father,” the girl said. “How are you here? What’s happening?”
“I have no daughter,” Prof said.
“What? Father, it’s me. Tavi. Please, why—”
“I have no daughter!” Prof roared. “Your lies will not fool me, Megan! Traitor!”
He thrust his hands to the sides and spears of green light appeared there, shaped like glass shards. He flung them down the hallway toward us, but Tavi waved her hand, releasing a burst of power. That was the tensor power—as Tavi destroyed the spears of light, she vaporized the wall nearby as well. It fell to dust.
A set of blue-green spears appeared around Tavi, just like Prof’s. Sparks! She had his same power portfolio.
Prof’s eyes widened. Was that fear in his expression? Worry? Megan hadn’t brought a version of him into this world, but this was apparently close enough. Yes, he was afraid of her powers. His powers.
Face your fears, Prof, I thought, desperate. Don’t flee. Fight!
He bellowed in frustration, sweeping his hands before him, destroying the hallway in a long swath and sending a wave of salt dust over us. Forcefields flashed into existence—shards of light that struck at Tavi, walls that swept in to crush, a cacophony of destruction.
“Yes!” I shouted. He wasn’t running.
Then, unfortunately, the floor disappeared beneath me.
PROF’S wave of destructive power had ended right about as it hit me, and though I fell into the hole in the floor, I was able to reach out and grab the edge to stop myself. Megan knelt by the ledge, oblivious to the hole that had opened beside her.
The drop was about ten feet, but that was a little far for me to want to risk. I started to pull myself up.
“David,” Tia’s voice suddenly said in my ear, “what are you doing?”
“Trying not to die,” I said with a grunt, still dangling. “You still here on the seventieth floor somewhere?”
“In Jon’s chambers, trying to get into his office. Can you cut the power for me, maybe? There’s an electronic lock on the security door here.”
A tensor wave hummed above, and I heard an ominous groan from the ceiling.
“Dampener is gone, Tia,” I said, getting to my feet—and finding myself in a war zone. “And we have bigger troubles than getting into Prof’s rooms. He’s here.”
“Sparks!” Tia said. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“Yes and no.”
In the moments I’d been down, Prof and Tavi had leveled walls separating rooms, creating a much larger field of battle. They exchanged bursts of light and tensor powers, leaving rips and craters in the floor.
That ceiling wasn’t going to last much longer. I sought out Megan, who knelt beside the remnants of a wall. She hissed between clenched teeth, watching the contest with unblinking eyes. I stepped toward her, but when she looked at me, her lips curled, teeth clenched. A sneer.
Uh-oh.
This was dangerous. She’d pulled too many things through to our world too quickly.
But sparks, it was working. Prof was backing down the hallway before an assault by Tavi—flying spears of blue light, which he was able to vaporize with his tensor power. The outer wall to his left was in shambles, wind howling through. To his right, rooms were pocked with holes, the floor and walls almost completely destroyed.
I threw myself toward Megan as the ceiling to Prof’s right fell in. Blinking—sparks, that salt made a scrape I’d gotten on my arm sting—I saw spears of glowing green launch toward Tavi, their light illuminating the dust around them. She deflected those, barely.
Prof had lost his air of uncompromising confidence; he was sweating and cursing as he fought, and—to my surprise—I saw a few scratches on his arm.
They weren’t healing.
Her powers were indeed negating his. But why hadn’t he turned good? Hadn’t he confronted his fears?
“David,” Tia said, anxious. “It sounds like the entire building is coming down. Are you all right?”
“For now. Tia…Megan summoned a version of him from another world. Someone with his powers. They’re fighting.”
“Sparks!” Tia cursed over the line. “You’re insane.” She grew silent for a moment as I stared at Prof, mouth agape, awed by the use of power. “All right,” Tia said, sounding reluctant. “I’m coming to you.”
“No,” I said. “Stay hidden. I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Anything any of us can do.”
I looked at Megan, her teeth clenched, and started toward her.
She looked at me, angry. “Stay back, David,” she growled. “Just…stay back.”
I stopped, then sighed and scuttled farther down the corridor—toward Prof and Tavi. Stupid, perhaps, but I needed to watch this. I passed the room where the ceiling had collapsed on my right, then came up toward the two combatants. The corridor turned here, but they’d continued on, vaporizing the wall and stepping into a lavish suite.
Prof unleashed a wave of tensor power toward Tavi, melting tables and chairs and hitting her full force. Buttons on her shirt disintegrated to d
ust, though the shirt didn’t. Only dense nonliving materials were affected.
Her forcefields vanished. She jumped for cover, narrowly dodging lances of light. It took a count of three before she was able to summon a forcefield to block oncoming blasts. It was working. She seemed to have the same weakness as Prof: the powers themselves, wielded by someone else. Getting hit by the tensors negated her abilities for a time, like fire did to Megan.
Could I do something? Explain this to her? I stepped forward, then hesitated as the air warped near me.
I was drawn into a momentary vision of another world: Firefight standing on a rooftop, hands clenched at his sides, fire rising from his fists. A night sky. Cold air punctuated by bursts of heat from the Epic.
The vision passed, and I was on the skyscraper battlefield again. I stepped away from the warping air, then took cover behind a broken saltstone wall, outside the room where Prof and Tavi were fighting. A few spears of light shot overhead, slamming into the wall above me like forks into a cake.
Now that I knew to look, I spotted other places where the air twisted and warped. They dotted the corridors and rooms; Megan’s powers were tearing our reality apart, interweaving it with Firefight’s.
That seemed to me like a very, very bad thing.
The lights suddenly dimmed, went out—then almost immediately came back on. Prof and Tavi didn’t even pause in their contest, but I did notice that the young woman looked far more haggard than he did. She was sweating, her teeth clenched, and tears streaked her face, washing through the prevalent salt dust there.
“Sparks,” Tia cursed over the line. “Still can’t get through this door. Jon has a backup generator in his rooms somewhere. It turned on when I cut the wires; I can hear it chugging inside.”
“You’re still going on about that?” I demanded.
“I’m not just going to sit here,” she said. “If he’s distracted, then—”
She cut off as Prof released a wave of tensor power—intended to stop a sweeping forcefield—and it blasted the wall of the suite he was fighting in. The wall fell in, revealing another suite of rooms beside it—where Tia was kneeling on the floor.