She cursed and ducked beside the broken wall. “Didn’t realize you’d gotten so close,” she said through the line. “Wait. That girl looks familiar. Is that…”
Oh boy…
“Lad,” Cody said over the line, “I can’t make out what’s going on up there. Are y’all fighting him somehow?”
“Kind of,” I said, sliding my gun from its holster. Prof was consumed by his conflict with Tavi. A spike hit the girl, pinning her arm, spraying blood against the wall in a gruesome display. She fell to her knees, and moments later the wound started to heal. She deflected further spears of light with tensor power, clutching her arm. She then wobbled to her feet, flesh scabbed over, blood stanched.
Still hiding near the hole into the room, I gaped. She healed. And her powers had come back far quicker than Megan’s did after touching fire.
Like Edmund. Her weakness doesn’t affect her as much as it does Prof or the others. She’s faced her fears, overcome them long ago, perhaps?
Prof still bore the cuts where she’d hit him. Yet I couldn’t help feeling that I was missing something big about the nature of powers and weaknesses. Prof was fighting her. Wouldn’t that mean facing his fears himself? Why was he still so obviously consumed by the darkness?
Inside the room, and through the broken wall on the west, Tia had finally managed to get into Prof’s office. I could barely make her out in there, moving past a generator like the one we’d found above. She sat down at his desk and began furiously working at the computer there.
But Tavi…poor Tavi. I didn’t know her, but my heart wrenched to see her being driven back by Prof’s blasts of power. She still fought, but she was obviously less experienced with combat than he was.
I stood up, gripping my little pistol in two hands. Over my shoulder, I saw Megan approaching down the hallway, actively weeping, her face a mask of pain and concentration.
I had to stop this. It wasn’t working, and it was destroying Megan. I leveled my gun at Prof while he was focused on Tavi; I breathed out and fell still. I waited for a wave of Tavi’s tensor power to wash over him, destroying a forcefield.
Then I fired.
I can’t say if I pulled to the side on purpose, or if it was an effect of the floor shaking. The ceiling here was straining like the one in the other room; too many walls gone.
Either way, my shot clipped Prof on the side of the face instead of drilling him right in the back of the head. The bullet ripped off a chunk of his cheek, spraying blood. His innate forcefield protections were down. Maybe I could have killed him.
The moment passed. Prof tossed up a forcefield wall behind him to prevent other shots—an almost absent gesture, as if I were an afterthought. Calamity…what if he killed Tavi? We’d pulled her from her reality and thrust her into our war. I looked again at Megan.
Fire, I thought. That was another way to end this. I fished in my pocket, searching for my lighter. Where was it? I hadn’t even noticed how ragged my clothing had become, the nice coat covered in salt, the trousers ripped. I couldn’t find my lighter; I’d lost it somewhere.
I did find something else in my pocket though. A small cylinder. Knighthawk’s tissue sample incubator.
I looked up, toward where I’d shot Prof. Dared I? Could Megan hold out a little more?
I made my decision and dashed across the room, ducking around the forcefield and hopping over the remnants of a sofa that had been half melted by the tensor. This put me in the middle of the battle, Prof and Tavi fighting near the lush room’s wet bar. Waves of dust blew over me, getting into my eyes. Salt forced its way into my mouth, making me want to gag. The ground rocked, and I threw myself to the floor, rolling out of the way as an invisible tensor blast gouged a large hole nearby. Dust rained down from a hole in the ceiling.
I came up, skirting very close to Prof as I made for the bloodstain on the floor. He turned on me, eyes wide with fury. Sparks, sparks, sparks!
I skidded across the floor and—in the bloody patch—found a loose chunk of skin from his cheek. He’d already healed from the shot. Apparently the cuts remained unhealable only if he was hit by one of the spikes of light. An ordinary wound would start healing as soon as his powers reasserted themselves.
I scooped up the piece of flesh into Knighthawk’s device, too panicked to worry about the morbidity of it. Prof summoned spikes of light, a dozen or more. He roared, flinging them toward me.
I threw myself sideways.
Right into one of the shifting ripples in the air.
THIS time I didn’t drop twenty feet after transitioning to the other world, which was a plus. I instead rolled onto the top of a roof in a quiet section of the city. This wasn’t a skyscraper, just some apartment building, though an admittedly tall one.
Nothing was dissolving, no gunfire sounded, and there was a complete absence of the disconcerting hum of Prof’s tensor power. Only the serene night sky. Beautiful…with no red spot to glare down upon me.
I clutched the tissue sample, lying there, and stared up at the sky, drawing in a few calming breaths. That might have been the craziest thing I’d ever done, and my life so far had set a pretty high bar.
“You,” a voice said from behind me.
I rolled over to a kneeling position, holding Prof’s cells closer with one fist while raising my handgun with the other. Firefight hovered beside the rooftop, alight and burning, skin and clothing consumed by his curling flames. Bullets wouldn’t hurt a fire Epic; they’d simply melt away. Had I traded one deadly situation for another?
I have to stall until I’m pulled back into my own world, I thought. Except…how long would I stay, if Megan wasn’t actively trying to pull me back? I couldn’t have slipped over permanently, right?
Firefight was inscrutable, his aura of heat and flame warping the air around him. Eventually he stepped up onto the rooftop and, surprisingly, his flames dampened. Clothing emerged, a jacket over a tight T-shirt, a pair of jeans. The fire continued to burn along his arms, but it was subdued, like the last flames of a campfire before they gave themselves up to the embers. His face was the same as the other times I’d seen him.
“What have you done with Tavi?” he demanded. “If you’ve hurt her…”
I licked my lips, which were extremely dry and salty. “I…” Again, the morality of what we’d done smacked me upside the head, like the fist of the Factory’s lunch lady after I’d tried to steal an extra muffin. “She’s been sucked into my world.”
“So Tia is right. You are actively looking to pull us into your dimension?” He strode forward, his fires flaring up again. “Why are you doing this? What is your plot?”
I scrambled backward on the rooftop. “It’s not that! Or, well, we didn’t know—Megan didn’t, at first, know what—I mean, we didn’t—”
I had no idea what I was trying to say.
Fortunately Firefight stopped, then dampened his flames once more. “Specks, you’re terrified.” He took a deep breath. “Look, can you bring Tavi back? We’re in the middle of something. We need her.”
“Tia…,” I said, lowering my gun as I put it together. “Wait. You’re one of the Reckoners?”
“Is that why you keep pulling me into your world?” he asked. “Is there no version of me there?”
“I…think you might be a girl,” I said. And dating me. I’d noticed the similarities before; Firefight was blond and had a face that, if you ignored its masculinity, was reminiscent of Megan’s.
“Yes…,” he said, nodding. “I’ve noticed her. She’s the one who pulls me through. Odd to think that I might have a sister, in another place, another world.”
A flash of light ignited a building nearby—a tall, round building. Sharp Tower? For the first time I realized that I was still in the same district of Ildithia. But outside the tower, on top of a building like the one where Cody had set up.
Firefight spun toward the explosion, then cursed. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll deal with you later.”
“Wait,” I said, scra
mbling to my feet. That flash…it felt familiar. “Obliteration. That light was caused by Obliteration, wasn’t it?”
“You know him?” Firefight said, spinning back to me.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. “You could say that. Why are—”
“Wait,” Firefight said, putting his hand to his ear. “Yes, I saw it. He’s come to Sharp Tower. You were right.” He squinted, looking up at the taller building. “I want to engage. I don’t care if he’s trying to lure me, Tia. We have to face him eventually.”
I hesitantly walked over beside Firefight, who stood at the edge of our building. There was so much that was different here, but so much was the same. Obliteration, Ildithia itself. Tia, apparently? And Tavi…her daughter?
The flash of heat from Obliteration returned, a deep pulsing heat. The salt couldn’t catch fire, but Obliteration continued radiating it. Shadows moved up there. I squinted, and then—silhouetted against the flames—I saw figures leap from the windows.
“Specks!” Firefight said. “Tia, there are people up there. Jumping out to avoid the heat he’s creating. I’m going.”
Firefight burst alight and streaked into the air—though I could see that he wouldn’t reach the people in time. It was too far, and they were falling too quickly. My heart lurched. What a terrible decision: be burned by Obliteration, or fall to your death? I wanted to tear my eyes away, but couldn’t. Those poor souls.
Someone else leaped from the room atop the burning building. A figure with glowing hands—a magnificent form that shot downward, trailing a silvery cape. Like a meteor, he made a brilliant, powerful streak of light as he rocketed toward the falling people. My breath caught as he seized the first person, then the second.
I stumbled backward. No.
Firefight turned around and landed by me again. “Never mind,” he said to Tia, his flames partially dampening. “He got here in time. Should have known. When has he ever been late?”
I knew that figure. Dark clothing. Powerful build. Even at a distance, even in the gloom of night, I knew that man. I’d spent my life studying him, watching him, hunting him.
“Steelheart,” I whispered. I shook myself, then grabbed Firefight, completely forgetting he was on fire. The flames vanished on contact, fortunately, and I wasn’t burned. “Steelheart is helping you?”
“Of course he is,” Firefight said, frowning.
“Steelheart…,” I said. “Steelheart’s not evil?”
He raised an eyebrow at me as if I’d gone insane.
“And no Calamity,” I said, looking at the sky.
“Calamity?”
“The red star!” I said. “That brought the Epics.”
“Invocation?” he said. “It vanished a year after it arrived; it’s been gone a decade.”
“Do you feel the darkness?” I demanded. “The drive toward selfishness that strikes every Epic?”
“What are you talking about, Charleston?”
No Calamity, no darkness, a good Steelheart.
Sparks!
“This changes everything,” I whispered.
“Look, I’ve told you before that you must meet him,” Firefight said. “He refuses to believe what I’ve seen, but he needs to talk to you.”
“Why me? What does he care about me?”
“Well,” Firefight said, “he killed you.”
In my world, I killed him. Here, he killed me. “How did it happen? I have to…”
I felt a lurch. A shimmering. “I’m going,” I said, starting to disappear. “I can’t stop it. We’ll send Tavi back. Tell him…tell him I’ll return. I have to—
“—figure out what happened here,” I finished, but Firefight was gone. The rooftop was gone. In its place was a room of dust and glowing light. Two Epics at battle. They’d moved into the hallway again, skirting Prof’s chambers. That left them to my right—where most of the hallway’s walls were gone.
Guards had arrived during my absence, and they’d set up at the corner in the hallway, near where I’d been hiding. They’d begun ganging up on Tavi, firing barrages down the hallway in her direction.
No Calamity…
I had to tell someone! I spotted Tia easily, working furtively at a computer station inside the next apartment over—in front of me and a little to my left. A stream of salt trickled down onto my head, and the ceiling groaned.
I looked over my shoulder to see Megan striding through the suite toward me. Tall, deliberate, her head thrust back and hands at her sides, each finger trailing a ripple in reality. A High Epic in her glory.
She looked at me, and snarled.
Right. I had a bigger problem to deal with.
FIRE. I needed fire.
It seemed a cruel irony that mere moments ago I had been standing next to a man literally made of flame, yet now I couldn’t find even a spark.
I shoved Prof’s captured cells into my pocket, then scrambled to my feet and crossed the suite, doing my best to stay low. The guards were falling back. As I frantically searched for some way to create a flame, I spotted Tavi out in the hallway on her knees, surrounded by several layered bubbles of light. Presumably the innermost was her own. She huddled there with head bowed, skin plastered with salt dust streaked by sweat, trembling.
My heart lurched, but I ran for Tia, hoping she might have a lighter. Megan reached for me, but I dodged her. The air still rippled around me. I caught glimpses of other worlds, of alien landscapes, of places where this plain had become a jungle. Another where it was a barren wasteland of dust and stone. I saw armies of glowing Epics, and piles of the dead.
A large portion of the ceiling behind me caved in, crashing down with a cacophony of stone grinding against stone. It collapsed a section of the floor and knocked my feet from under me. I hit the ground shoulder first, skidding through salt.
When I finally came to a stop, I blinked away dust, coughing. Sparks. My leg hurt. I’d twisted my ankle in the fall.
The debris settled to reveal that most of the floor of the suite was gone. I had ended up inside Prof’s chambers, near Tia, who had taken cover beside the desk, her mobile gripped tightly in her fist. It was connected by wires to the data drive of a computer powered—along with the swinging lightbulbs—by the small generator that puttered in the corner.
Megan hadn’t so much as flinched. She turned toward me. Behind her, on the other side of the hole in the floor, Prof’s guards called to one another and pulled themselves out of the rubble. To her right, Prof loomed over Tavi, who was crumpled on the floor. Her forcefield was gone. She stirred, but didn’t rise.
Megan met my eyes, hands raised before her. Her lips curled in a sneer, but she held my gaze, then gritted her teeth. I sensed a plea in her expression. Still lying on the broken floor, I yanked my gun from its holster, then leveled it and fired.
At the generator.
Like the one above, it had a gas tank. It didn’t explode as I’d expected, but the shots punctured it and sparked a fire, sending up jets of flame.
The lights immediately went out.
“No!” Tia cried.
Megan stared into the fire, and it danced in her eyes.
“Face it, Megan,” I whispered. “Please.”
She stepped toward it, as if drawn by its heat. Then she screamed and ran forward, passing me and thrusting her arm into the flames.
Megan collapsed. Tavi vanished. The rents in the air shrank away. I let out a relieved breath and managed to crawl over to Megan, dragging my pained foot behind me.
She trembled, clutching her arm, which she’d burned severely. I pulled her farther from the generator, in case it flared up, and folded her into my arms.
In the pitch-black room, there were only two lights: the dwindling fire…
And Prof.
Megan squeezed her eyes shut, shaking from her ordeal. She’d saved our lives, had put my plan into motion, and it hadn’t been enough. I could see that easily as Prof strode toward us. He stepped up to the lip
of the broken hole in the floor, then across it, a forcefield forming under his feet. Lit from beneath, he looked like a specter, his face mostly in shadow.
Prof had always possessed a kind of…unfinished look. Features like a stack of broken bricks, his face usually accented by stubble. Today though, I could spot signs of exhaustion as well. The slowness of his step, the streaks of sweat on his face, the slump to his shoulders. His fight with Tavi had been difficult. He was practically indestructible, but he did get tired.
He studied me and Megan. “Kill them,” he said, then turned his back on us and walked off into the shadows.
Two dozen guards lowered their weapons to fire. I pulled Megan close, close enough to hear her whisper.
“I die as me,” she said. “At least I die as me.”
Fire. Her powers were negated. She was always without them for a minute or two after deliberately burning herself.
If she died now, would it be permanent?
No.
No…What have I done?
I twisted, sheltering her as the guards opened fire in a terrible barrage. The walls exploded in sprays of salt chips. The computer monitor shattered. Bullets pelted the area, accompanied by the earsplitting sound of weapons fire.
I clutched Megan close, my back to the assault.
Something stirred again within me. Those depths lurking in my soul, the blackness below. Shadows moving around me, screams, emotions like spikes piercing me, the sudden and overpowering sensation from my dreams. I threw back my head and screamed.
The gunfire stilled, a few last pops sounding as the magazines fell empty. With an enemy Epic in their sights, these people had not hesitated or held back. Several flipped on lights attached to their guns, to inspect their handiwork.
I awaited the pain, or at least the numbness, that came from having been shot. I felt neither. Hesitant, I turned to look behind me. Destruction surrounded us—floor, walls, furniture splintered, pocked, broken…all except in my immediate area. The ground here wasn’t broken at all. In fact, it was glassy and reflective. A deep, burnished silver-black. Metallic.
I was alive.