Calamity

  That was true, but only halfway. I glanced at Megan, unconscious and breathing softly. Doing what she’d done tonight had nearly destroyed her; I wouldn’t ask her to do something like that again. It wasn’t fair to her, and it certainly wasn’t fair to the person we brought through into our world.

  “So…,” Knighthawk said.

  I held up the sample container. “There’s another way to make him confront someone using his powers, Knighthawk.”

  The man laughed. “You’re serious.”

  “Serious as a dog about to be given treats,” I said. “How long would it take? To make devices for all three powers. Forcefields, regeneration, disintegration.”

  “Months,” Knighthawk said. “A year even, if any of the abilities are tough to crack.”

  I’d worried about that. “If that’s the only way, we’ll have to do it.” I did not relish being on the run for a year, keeping Larcener out of Prof’s hands.

  Knighthawk studied me. His mannequin set him into his jeep, then did up the seat belt. “You’ve got guts,” Knighthawk said. “You know how I said we did testing on early Epics and discovered that a living Epic was pained by a motivator created from them?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did I tell you who we tested on?”

  “You have them already,” I said. “That’s why you’re so eager for Prof’s cells. You’ve already built devices to replicate his powers.”

  “We built them together,” he said. “He and I.”

  “In your room,” I said. “The one with the mementos of fallen Epics. One didn’t have a plaque. A vest and gloves.”

  “Yeah. We destroyed all his tissue samples after we discovered how much it hurt him. I think that all along he’s been worried I would get another sample from him. He’s certainly kept his distance from me.” Knighthawk’s mannequin rubbed his chin, as if in thought. “Guess he was right to worry. You send me those cells, and I will be able to get you devices mimicking his powers almost instantly. But I’m going to try his healing powers on my wife first.”

  “You do that, and he’ll know immediately,” I said. “And he’ll come kill you.”

  Knighthawk gritted his teeth.

  “You’re going to have to gamble on us, Knighthawk,” I said. “Send us the devices. We’ll turn him, and then we can try to save your wife. It’s the only chance you have.”

  “Fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s self-preservation at this point, kid,” Knighthawk said. “The drone I send will reach you in six hours. The return trip with your tissue sample will take another six to reach me at my safehouse. Assuming the cells are good, I can get to work on a full set of motivators for you. Forcefield projection, healing powers, and tensor abilities.”

  “Will do.”

  “And David,” Knighthawk said as his mannequin started the jeep. “Don’t get cute. This time if he doesn’t turn, do what we both know you need to. After killing Tia…sparks, what kind of life is he going to live going forward? Put him out of his misery. He’d thank you for it.”

  The line went dead, Knighthawk’s face vanishing. I sat there, trying to process everything that had happened tonight. Tia, Firefight, Prof’s face in the shadows. A patch of dark grey metal on the floor.

  Eventually I put aside the mobile, then turned and—ignoring the protest of my splinted legs—pulled myself across the room until I was beside Megan. I rested my head on her chest and wrapped my arm around her, listening to her heartbeat until I finally, at long last, fell asleep.

  I woke up in a sweat. Again.

  Those same images haunted me. Sounds garish and terrible. Harsh lights. Fear, terror, abandonment. None of the normal relief that came with waking from a nightmare. No comfort from the realization that it was only a dream.

  These nightmares were different. They left me panicked. Raw, flayed, bruised, like a slab of meat in a boxing movie. After I awoke, I had to sit there on the floor—broken legs aching—for what seemed like an eternity before my pulse recovered.

  Sparks. Something was very wrong with me.

  At least I hadn’t woken any of the others. Abraham and Cody slept on their pallets, and during the night sometime I’d found my way from Megan’s pallet to my own, which the others had set out for me. Mizzy’s was empty; she’d be on watch. I reached beside my pillow, where I was pleased to find my mobile—repaired by Mizzy—waiting for me.

  Checking the mobile showed that it was six in the morning, and its light revealed a glass of water and several pills on a box set beside my pallet. I gulped them down, eager to get some painkillers into my system. After that, I pulled myself to a sitting position beside the wall, noticing for the first time that my side and arms ached as well. I’d done some real damage to my body during that mission.

  I felt at my back and found a set of strange bruises shaped—best I could tell—like quarters. The growing pain of my legs and accumulated wounds was bad enough that I had to sit there for I don’t know how long until the meds started to kick in. Once I could think clearly, I started searching through my mobile. Abraham had forwarded the entire team the data package Tia had recovered, so I dug into it, trying not to worry whether I’d eventually have to wake up Abraham or Cody to take me to the restroom.

  Regalia’s writing was clear, careful, straightforward. I felt like I could hear her voice as I read. So certain, so calm, so infuriating. She’d stolen Prof from us in a deliberate, destructive act—just to sate her own lust for an immortal legacy.

  Still, the reading was good. Regalia’s plan was incredible. Audacious even; I couldn’t help but feel a growing respect for her. As I’d guessed, Regalia had summoned Obliteration not because of his ability to destroy cities, but for his teleportation powers.

  Her plot reached back some five years, but she’d eventually run up against a final and unanticipated deadline: her own mortality. Epic powers could not cure natural diseases. She had found herself terminal, and so she’d looked for a successor in Prof. Someone who could travel to Ildithia, make a motivator from Larcener, then teleport to Calamity and do the unthinkable.

  Despite the plan’s insane brilliance, it was filled with holes. By our best assumptions, Calamity was the source of all Epic powers. But who was to say that you could even steal his abilities in the first place? And if you did, wouldn’t that simply replace Calamity with another host who acted exactly the same?

  Still, at least this plan had been something to try—something to do other than accepting the world as it was. For that I respected Regalia, though I had been the one to kill her in the end.

  Once done with Regalia’s notes, I opened a set of photos. Past the maps of Ildithia, I found several shots of Calamity. The first three were pictures through a telescope. These were indistinct; I’d seen shots like them before. They made Calamity look like some kind of star.

  The final image was different. I’d worried about what Knighthawk had said, that not all the images had made the transfer. I’d worried there wouldn’t be any real pictures of Calamity.

  But here one was, staring at me from the glowing screen in my hand. It wasn’t a terribly good shot—I got the distinct impression of a covert photo snapped with a mobile—but it was obviously the Epic. A figure made of red light, though I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It seemed to be standing in a room, and all around it light reflected off odd angles and surfaces.

  I searched through the files for anything similar, to no avail. Other shots of Calamity, if there had been any, were lost. Curiously, however, it appeared that Knighthawk had copied the entire memory of Tia’s mobile, not just the new files from Regalia. Indeed, a folder simply labeled Jonathan glowed on my screen. I knew that I should probably leave it alone, that it was private, but I couldn’t help myself. I thumbed into it and tapped on the first media file.

  It was a video of Prof in a classroom.

  I kept the sound low, but could still hear the enthusiasm in his voice as he took a lighter and moved dow
n a line of eggs with holes in the top, setting them on fire. Students laughed and jumped as each egg popped in turn, exploding from the hydrogen Prof explained he’d filled them with.

  Balloons went next, each flashing and popping in a different way as he went down the line. I didn’t care much about the science involved; I was too focused on Prof. A younger Prof, with jet-black hair, only a few strands of grey. An enthusiastic Prof, who seemed to be enjoying every moment of this demonstration, despite the fact that he’d likely done it a hundred times.

  He seemed like an entirely different person. I realized that in all our time together, I couldn’t remember seeing Prof happy. Satisfied, yes. Eager. But truly happy? Not before this moment, watching him interact with students.

  This was what we’d lost. I struggled to hold back my emotions as the video ended. The coming of Calamity had broken this world in more ways than one. Prof should have still been there, teaching those children.

  Footsteps outside caused me to quickly wipe my eyes. Mizzy peeked in a moment later, then held up something the size of a basketball, with rotor blades on top. One of Knighthawk’s drones.

  “The guy works fast,” she said, setting it down. Abraham and Cody stirred; they’d likely asked to be woken up when the thing arrived. Megan turned over, and for a moment I thought she was going to wake too. But she fell back asleep, snoring softly.

  As Mizzy set down the drone, Cody and Abraham turned on their mobiles, lighting the room further. I watched as Mizzy twisted the top half of the device off, revealing a compartment, and pulled out a box that looked a lot like the harmsway we’d used in Newcago. Prof had apparently developed his fake to look like the real thing.

  “Nice,” Abraham said, rubbing his eyes.

  “I’m surprised you convinced him to send it, David,” Mizzy said as she set it aside.

  Cody yawned. “Either way, let’s get that puppy hooked up and running. The sooner David’s legs are working, the sooner we can be out of this city.”

  “Out of this city?” I said.

  The other three looked at me.

  “You…intend to stay, then?” Abraham said, careful. “David, Tia is dead, and your theory—smart though it was—proved false. Confronting Prof with his weakness did not turn him away from his current course.”

  “Yeah, lad,” Cody said. “It was a good run, but we know what he’s trying to accomplish here, and we do have a way to stop it. We slip away with Larcener, and his plot can never work.”

  “That’s assuming we want it not to work,” Mizzy added.

  “Mizzy,” I said, surprised. “He’s trying to become the ultimate Epic!”

  “So?” she said. “I mean, how does our life change if he takes Calamity’s place? There’s no doomsday coming—no ‘Imma destroy the world, kids’ or anything like that. So far as I can see, all he wants to do is kill a couple of Epics. Sounds toasty to me.”

  “I suggest,” Abraham said softly, “that you do not say such things where we might be overheard.”

  Mizzy winced and checked over her shoulder. “All I’m saying is that there isn’t a reason for us to be here, now that we know what Prof’s up to.”

  “And where do we go, Mizzy?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. How about we start with a place other than the city inhabited by a guy determined to kill us?”

  I could see that the other two agreed, at least in part.

  “Guys, the reason we came here in the first place hasn’t changed,” I said. “Prof still needs us. The world still needs us. Have you forgotten the point of our mission? We need to find a way to convert Epics, not just kill them. Otherwise we might as well give up now.”

  “But, lad,” Cody said, “Abraham is right. Your plan to turn Prof didn’t work.”

  “That attempt didn’t work,” I said. “But there are logical reasons why it might be the case. Maybe he didn’t see Tavi as having his powers—he saw them as belonging to another Epic; similar, but different. So confronting her wasn’t confronting his abilities.”

  “Or,” Abraham said, “Tia was wrong about his weakness.”

  “No,” I said. “The fight with Tavi did negate his powers. She could destroy his forcefields, and he couldn’t heal from wounds her attacks caused. Like Steelheart could be hurt only by someone who didn’t fear him, Prof can be hurt only by someone wielding his own powers.”

  “This is all irrelevant, regardless,” Abraham said. “You said that Megan summoned this woman because she could not find an actual version of Prof. Her powers are limited then, and this was our sole method of making him face himself.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, fishing in my pocket and taking out the cell incubator device. I rolled it across the ground to Mizzy, who picked it up.

  “Is this…,” she said.

  “Tissue sample from Prof,” I said.

  Cody whistled softly.

  “We can make him face himself, Abraham,” I said. “We can do it literally by creating motivators using his own cells. Knighthawk already has a prototype ready from years ago.”

  The others fell silent.

  “Look,” I said. “We need to give this another try.”

  “He’s going to persuade us,” Mizzy said. “It’s kinda what he does.”

  “Yes,” Abraham agreed, motioning for her to roll him the tissue sample. He picked it up. “I won’t argue with you further, David. If you believe it worth another attempt, we will support you.” He turned the tissue sample over in his fingers. “But I don’t like giving this to Knighthawk. It feels like…like a betrayal of Prof.”

  “More of a betrayal than him killing members of his own team?”

  The comment quieted the room, like a sudden shout of “Who wants extra bacon?” at a bar mitzvah.

  Mizzy took the tissue sample back from Abraham, then placed it in the drone. “I’ll go release this while it’s still dark,” she said, standing. Cody joined her; he was next on watch. The two slipped out, while Abraham picked up the harmsway, then walked over to me.

  “Megan first,” I said.

  “Megan is unconscious, David,” he said. “A state that might not be caused merely by her wounds from the fire and the fall. I suggest that we first heal the person we know will return to fighting readiness.”

  I sighed. “All right.”

  “Very wise.”

  “You should be leading this team, Abraham,” I said as he wrapped the diodes of the harmsway around the exposed skin of my feet and ankles. “We both know it. Why did you refuse?”

  “You do not ask this question of Cody,” Abraham said.

  “Because Cody is a loon. You have experience, you’re calm in a fight, you’re decisive….Why put me in charge?”

  Abraham continued working, switching on the device, which caused a fuzzy feeling in my legs, like I’d slept on them wrong. If my wound back at the Foundry was any guide, this device—created from some unknown Epic—wouldn’t be as efficient as using Prof’s powers had been. It might take some time to heal me fully.

  “I was JTF2,” Abraham said. “Cansofcom.”

  “Which is…what exactly? Other than a strange jumble of letters.”

  “Canadian special forces.”

  “I knew it!”

  “Yes, you are very smart.”

  “Was that…sarcasm?”

  “Smart again,” Abraham said.

  I eyed him. “If you were military,” I said, “that makes it even stranger you haven’t taken command. Were you an officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “High rank?”

  “High enough.”

  “And…”

  “You know Powder?”

  “Epic,” I said. “Could cause gunpowder and unstable materials to explode just by looking at them. He…” I swallowed, remembering a point from my notes. “He tried to conquer Canada, second year A.C. Attacked their military bases.”

  “Killed my whole team when he hit Trenton,” Abraham said, standing up. “Everyone but me.?
??

  “Why not you?”

  “I was in the stockade awaiting court-martial.” He eyed me. “I appreciate your enthusiasm and your grit, but you are young, yet, to understand the world as much as you think you do.” He raised his fingers to me in salute, then walked away.

  I scraped the wall of our under-bridge hideout, easily breaking off salt and rubbing it between my fingers. Time to move again. Though we’d always considered this to be an interim hideout, it felt like we’d barely gotten here. It left me feeling transient. How could anyone get a sense of home in this city?

  I crossed the room, stretching my now-healed legs. They still ached—though I hadn’t admitted that to the others—but I felt sturdy and strong. It had only taken a few hours in the night; I’d been ready by the time dawn arrived.

  Megan’s arm and bruises had also been healed. The harmsway worked on her, blessedly. I’d been worried about that since in Newcago, she couldn’t be healed or use the tensors. Both of those abilities, however, had secretly come from Prof—and as Knighthawk had said, sometimes the abilities of specific Epics interfered with one another.

  Well, this harmsway had worked, but she still hadn’t woken up. Abraham told me not to be concerned; he said it wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a day or two in bed following something so traumatic. He was trying to comfort me. How could anyone know what was or wasn’t normal when it came to an Epic overextending their powers?

  Mizzy’s head popped out of the storage room. “Hey, slontze. Knighthawk is ticked at you. Check your phone.”

  I dug out my mobile, which had been muffled from being in the bottom of my bag. Forty-seven messages. Calamity! What had gone wrong? I scrambled to open the messenger. Maybe the cells hadn’t taken. Or the drone had been shot down by a wandering Epic. Or Knighthawk had decided to switch sides on us.

  Instead, I was treated to the sight of forty-seven messages of Knighthawk saying things like Hey or Yo or Hey, you. Idiot.

  I quickly messaged him. Is something wrong?

  Your didgeridooing face, the message came back.