Regalia’s voice whispered from my memory. I have been assured that you will be…thematically appropriate.
“Impressive,” Prof said from the shadows. “What did she do? Open a door to another world and send the bullets through?” He sounded tired. “I will have to do this myself. Don’t think it doesn’t pain me.”
“Jonathan…,” a voice whispered.
I frowned. It had come from nearby. Who—
I’d forgotten about Tia.
She slumped against the saltstone desk, lit by the fluttering firelight. She had been hiding there, but the bullets had gotten her. She bled from multiple hits, mobile clutched in her fingers. It had been shot straight through.
“Jon,” she said. “You bastard. You feared it would come to…this.” She coughed. “I was wrong, and you were right. As…always.”
Prof stepped into the light of the soldiers’ weapons. That haggard, broken face seemed to change, his jaw dropping. He seemed to see for the first time that night. So he got to watch as Tia breathed a last ragged breath and died.
I knelt, stunned, and barely heard Prof’s roar—his sudden, shocked cry of agony and regret. He tore across the hole in the floor on a field of light, charging past me and Megan, ignoring us as he grabbed Tia.
“Heal!” he commanded her. “Heal! I gift it to you!”
I held on to Megan, deadened, disbelieving. Tia’s figure remained limp in his hands.
The floor vaporized. The walls, the ceiling, the entire tower. It all shattered to dust in the face of Prof’s tormented scream. Soldiers dropped like stones, though a bubble sprang up around Prof and Tia.
My stomach lurched as Megan and I also began to plummet through salt dust seventy stories toward the ground. “Megan!” I shouted.
Her eyes had drooped closed. I held on to her, tumbling.
No. No. NO.
Bodies fell around us in the night, sprays of dust and furniture, scraps of cloth. They passed us.
“Megan!” I screamed again, over the sound of wind and terrified soldiers. “Wake up!”
Her eyes flared open and seemed to burn in the night. I jerked, barely keeping hold of her—as suddenly I was in a parachute’s harness.
We smacked the ground mere moments later, hitting with a distressing crunch. Then the pain arrived. I gasped at its intensity, like a wave of electricity running up my body from my legs. It was so overpowering, I couldn’t move. I suffered it, staring upward into the black sky.
And at Calamity, who stared back.
Time passed. Not much, but enough. I heard footsteps. “He’s here,” Abraham’s voice said, urgent. “You were right. Sparks! That was a parachute. One of ours, but I didn’t leave any behind….”
I turned my head, blinking away salt dust to find him, a hulking form in the night.
“I’ve got you, David,” Abraham said, taking me by the arm.
“Megan,” I whispered. “Under the chute.” It had drifted down over her after we hit.
Abraham moved over, picking at the parachute. “She’s here,” he said, sounding relieved. “And she’s breathing. Cody, Mizzy, I need your help. David, we’re going to have to move you. We can’t wait. Prof’s up there, glowing. He could come down at any moment.”
I braced myself as Abraham hefted me over his shoulder. The other two arrived, pulling Megan out of the rubble. There was no time to worry whether they were doing more damage than good.
They dragged us off into the night, leaving behind the wreckage of a mission we had failed, utterly and completely.
I didn’t sleep, though when Cody had us pause in an alley to see if we were being tailed, I let Abraham give me something for the pain. Mizzy worked on a litter to help carry Megan and me while Abraham inspected me. Turned out I’d snapped both legs when I hit the ground.
The sky had turned sour by the time we left that alley, and a misty rain started falling on us, making the roadway slick with salty water. The saltstone held up better than I’d have expected though. No mass melting of the city.
The rain felt good at first, washing some of the dust from my skin as I lay in the litter beside Megan. But by the time we approached the bridge in the park, I was soaked through. The lumpish sight of our base, growing under the bridge ahead like some strange fungus, was a beautiful thing.
Megan was still unconscious, but she seemed to have fared better than I had. No broken bones that Abraham could find, though she was going to have some serious bruises, and her arm was burned and blistered.
“Well, we’re alive,” Cody said as we stopped at the doorway to the hideout. “Unless of course we didn’t spot a tail and Prof is lurking out there, waiting for us to lead him to Larcener.”
“Your optimism is so encouraging, Cody,” Mizzy said.
It took a little work to navigate our litter through the entrance, which we’d made as a small tunnel covered in rubble on one end. I was able to help by pushing with my hands. My legs still hurt, but it was more a “Hey, don’t forget about us” kind of hurt than the “HOLY HECK, WE’RE BROKEN” it had been before.
The hideout smelled of the soup Larcener liked—a simple vegetable broth with almost no taste. Abraham lit the place with his mobile.
“Turn that off, idiot,” Larcener snapped from his room.
He must be meditating again. I sat up in my litter as Mizzy crawled in, then sighed and dropped her equipment into a pile. “I need a shower,” she called to Larcener. “What’s a girl got to do to get you to conjure one?”
“Die,” Larcener called back.
“Mizzy,” Abraham said softly, “check over the equipment, and return to Larcener the things he created for us, with our thanks. It probably does not matter, as they will just fade away, but perhaps the gesture will mean something to him. Cody, watch outside for any signs of pursuit. Now that we have more time, I want to check these two over more thoroughly.”
I nodded dully. Yeah. Orders. Orders needed to be given. But…the trip here was something of a blur to me. “We need a debriefing,” I said. “I’ve discovered things.”
“Later, David,” Abraham said gently.
“But—”
“You’re in shock, David,” he said. “Let us rest first.”
I sighed and lay back. I didn’t feel like I was in shock. Sure, I was clammy and cold—but I’d been rained on. Yes, I was trembling, and hadn’t been able to think of much during the trip here. But that was because of how thoroughly draining it had all been.
I doubted he’d listen to my arguments. Despite the fact that he agreed I was in charge, Abraham could be downright motherly. I did convince him to see to Megan first, and with Mizzy’s help he carried her away to change her out of the wet, ripped evening gown and make sure she hadn’t suffered any unnoticed wounds. Then Abraham returned to splint my legs.
About an hour later Abraham, Mizzy, and I huddled together in the smallest of the rooms in our new base—far enough from Larcener to speak privately, we hoped. Megan lay bundled up in the corner, asleep.
Abraham kept eyeing me, expecting me to doze off. I remained stubbornly awake, seated against the wall with my splinted legs stretched before me. They’d given me some industrial-strength painkillers, so I was able to confidently stare back at him.
Abraham sighed. “Let me check on Cody,” he said. “Then we will talk.”
That left me and Mizzy. She sipped some hot cocoa she’d bought at the market a few days ago. I couldn’t stand the stuff. Way too sweet.
“So,” she said, “that…wasn’t a complete disaster, right?”
“Tia’s dead,” I said, my voice hoarse. “We failed.”
Mizzy winced, looking down into her cup. “Yeah. But…I mean…you got to test one of your theories. We know more than we did yesterday.”
I shook my head, sick with worry over Megan, frustrated that we’d gone through so much to save Tia only to lose her for good. I felt adrift, and defeated, and pained. I’d looked up to Tia; she’d been one of the first of the team t
o treat me like someone useful. Now I’d failed her.
Could I have done more? I hadn’t said anything about how I’d survived the gunfire. Truth was, I didn’t know the answer myself. I mean…I suspected. But I didn’t know, so what use was there in talking about it?
Lying to ourselves, are we? a piece of me asked.
“That parachute,” Mizzy said, glancing at Megan. “She made it, didn’t she?”
I nodded.
“She put it on you, instead of on herself,” Mizzy said. “She’s always like that. I suppose if you’re reborn when you die, it makes sense….” She trailed off.
Abraham stepped back in. “He’s as happy as a jackrabbit in its den,” he said. “Hunkered up on the bridge in his raincoat, chewing on beef jerky and looking for something to shoot. Nothing so far. We may actually have escaped.”
He settled down, sitting cross-legged. Then he carefully removed the pendant he wore, the symbol of the Faithful, and held it before himself. It sparkled, silvery, in the light of the mobiles we’d set out.
“Abraham,” I said. “I know that…I mean, Tia was a friend….”
“More than a friend,” he said softly. “My superior officer, and one I disobeyed. I believe we made the right call, and she the wrong one, but I cannot take her loss lightly. Please. A moment.”
We waited, and he closed his eyes and said a quiet prayer in French. Was it to God, or to those mythical Epics he believed would save us someday? He wrapped the chain of his pendant into his hand and held it close, but as usual I couldn’t get a good feel for his emotional state. Reverence? Pain? Worry?
Finally, he took a deep breath and put the necklace back on. “You have information, David. You feel it important to share. We will mourn Tia properly when the war is through. Speak. What happened in there?”
He and Mizzy looked at me expectantly, so I swallowed, then started talking. I’d already told them about Tavi, but now I explained what had happened when I’d been sucked into Firefight’s world. The things I’d seen. Steelheart.
I rambled a lot. In truth, I was tired. They probably were as well, but I couldn’t go to sleep. Not before unloading the burden of what I’d seen, what I’d discovered. I told them everything I could before eventually trailing off. Any more, and I’d have to talk about what I suspected regarding my own…development.
“He killed you?” Abraham said. “In their world, Steelheart killed you? Is that what they said?”
I nodded.
“Curious. That world is similar to our own, yet different in such important ways.”
“You didn’t ask him about me, did you?” Mizzy asked.
“No. Why? Should I have?”
She yawned. “I dunno. Maybe I’m, like, some kinda super-awesome ninja thing over there.”
“I’d say you were a super-awesome ninja thing today,” Abraham said. “You performed that mission well.”
She blushed, taking a drink of her cocoa.
“A world with no Calamity,” Abraham said. “But what does that—” His mobile started buzzing. He frowned, looking at it. “I do not know this number.” He turned it around toward me.
“Knighthawk,” I said. “Answer it.”
He did so, lifting it to his ear, then moved it away as Knighthawk started talking loudly. Abraham lowered the phone. “He is excited about something,” he said.
“Obviously,” Mizzy said. “Speaker that sucker.”
Abraham pressed the requisite buttons. Knighthawk’s face appeared on the mobile and his voice projected into the room.
“—can’t believe the balls on that woman. What happened to David’s mobile? Did he get it vaporized? I haven’t been able to track the thing for hours.”
I pulled mine out. It had survived the fight, barely—with a cracked screen and a ripped-off back, battery gone.
“It…has seen better days,” Abraham said.
“He really needs to be more careful,” Knighthawk said. “Those things aren’t free.”
“I know,” I said. “You made us pay for them.”
“Heh,” Knighthawk said. He was shockingly, even annoyingly, chipper. “I’ll send you a replacement on the house after this, kid.”
“This?” I asked.
“Regalia’s data,” he said. “It’s incredible. Haven’t you been reading it?”
“The data?” I said. “Knighthawk, that was on Tia’s…mobile. You copied it?”
“Of course I copied it,” he said. “You think I built a nationwide network of data links for fun? Well, it is fun. But that’s because I get to read people’s mail.”
“Send us a complete dump,” Abraham said.
Knighthawk fell silent.
“Knighthawk?” I said. “You’re not—”
“Hush,” he said. “I’m not ditching you. I just got another call.” He swore sharply. “One second.”
Silence. The three of us regarded one another, uncertain. If Knighthawk had grabbed that data, then perhaps the mission wasn’t a complete write-off.
He came back a few minutes later. “Well, hell,” he said. “That was Jonathan.”
“Prof?” I said.
“Yeah. Demanded that I track you. I don’t know how he figured out I can do that. I’ve always told him I can’t.”
“And?” Mizzy asked.
“I sent him to the other side of the city,” Knighthawk replied. “Nowhere near you guys. Which means that once he’s done with you, he’s basically guaranteed to come murder me. I should have turned you idiots away at my door.”
“Um…thank you?” Mizzy said.
“I’m sending you a copy of Regalia’s plans,” Knighthawk said. “Keep in mind that it references a few photos that aren’t in the folder. That’s not because I’m holding out on you; it’s because the mobile died before finishing the full download of the files. Tell Tia she did great though.”
“Tia got shot,” I said, subdued. “He killed her.”
The line fell silent again, though I heard Knighthawk breathe out after a short time. “Calamity,” he whispered. “I never thought he’d go that far. I mean, I knew he would…but Tia?”
“I don’t think he meant to,” I said. “He turned his goons loose on us, and she ended up dead.”
“Your transfer is working,” Abraham said, holding up his mobile. “Does this data explain what Prof is doing here?”
“Sure does,” Knighthawk said, growing excited again. “He—”
“He’s here for Larcener,” I broke in. “He’s here to make a motivator from Larcener’s assumer abilities, then use that to absorb Calamity’s powers—all of them—thereby becoming the ultimate Epic.”
Mizzy blinked in shock, and Abraham looked up at me.
“Oh,” Knighthawk said. “So you did read the data?”
“No,” I said. “It just makes sense.” The pieces were falling into place. “That’s why Regalia brought Obliteration to Babilar, isn’t it? She could have come up with a hundred different ways to threaten the city and force Prof to use his powers. But she invited him because she wanted to make a motivator out of his destruction powers to hide what she was really doing.”
“Making a teleporter,” Knighthawk said. “So she could get to Calamity, once she had Larcener’s abilities. But she died before putting her plan into motion, so Prof is doing it instead. Sharp guess, kid. You’ve been holding out on me; you’re nowhere near as stupid as you act. As a side note, I’m abandoning my base here. Manny is already carting me to the jeep. I’m not going to hang around here when the most dangerous Epic in the world can likely teleport anywhere he wants in an eyeblink.”
“He’d alert Obliteration if he did that,” I said. “Part of the reason for the bomb in Babilar was to keep Obliteration from knowing that his powers were being stolen.”
“Still leaving, at least until Jonathan cools off from my little goose chase.”
“Knighthawk,” Abraham said. “We need your harmsway. We have wounded.”
“Tough,” he said
. “It’s the only one I’ve got right now. I love you guys—well, I don’t actively dislike you guys—but my skin is more important than yours.”
“And if I could give you something to make another one?” I asked, digging in my pocket. I pulled out the tissue sample container and held it up. Abraham obligingly turned his mobile around to give Knighthawk a view.
“Is that…,” Knighthawk’s voice said.
“Yes. From Prof.”
“Everyone else get out of the room. I want to talk to the kid alone.”
Abraham raised an eyebrow at me, and I nodded. Reluctantly, Abraham handed me his mobile, and he and Mizzy left. I slumped back against the wall, looking at Knighthawk’s face on the screen of the mobile. His own mobile seemed to be secured before him with some kind of device he wore around his neck, as Manny carried him through one of his tunnels.
“You did it,” Knighthawk said softly. “How? His forcefields should have protected him from harm.”
“Megan reached into an alternate dimension,” I said, “and pulled out a version of Prof. Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“His daughter,” I said. “His and Tia’s, I think. She had his same powers, Knighthawk. And…” I took a deep breath. “And that’s his weakness. His powers. At least, so Tia claimed.”
“Hmm…,” he said. “Makes sense, knowing Jonathan. Odd that his daughter has his powers. Children of Epics here have been born without powers. Anyway, she got past his abilities?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I managed to blow a chunk of skin off him and bag it for you.”
“Man,” Knighthawk said, “we are really asking for it here, you realize. If he knows you have that…”
“He does.”
Knighthawk shook his head, rueful. “Well, if I’m going to get murdered, might as well let an old friend do it. I’ll send you that harmsway via drone, but you send me back that sample. Deal?”
“Deal, with one condition.”
“Which is?”
“We need a way to fight Prof,” I said. “And make him face his powers.”
“Have your pet Epic summon another version of him.”
“No. It didn’t work; we were able to bypass his powers, but he didn’t turn. I need to try something else.”