Firefight

  Heart thumping crazily, I closed my eyes and leaned in. I immediately felt something cold against my temple.

  I opened my eyes to find Megan had leaned in, her lips almost to mine, but then had raised her gun and pressed it against the side of my head. “You’re doing it again,” she said, almost a growl. “Distorting the truth, making people go along with your craziness. This thing between us isn’t going to work.”

  “We’ll make it work.”

  “Maybe I don’t want it to. Maybe I want to be hard. Maybe I don’t want to like people. Maybe I’ve never wanted to like people, even before Calamity.”

  I held her eyes, ignoring the gun to my head. I smiled.

  “Bah,” she said, pulling the gun away. She stalked off down the corridor, brushing the fronds of a fern. “Don’t follow. I need to think.”

  I stayed put, though I did watch her until she was gone. I fingered the batterylike item she’d given me, feeling a lingering pleasure—for as she’d left, I’d glanced at her gun.

  This time, when she’d pointed it at me, she’d flicked the safety on. If that wasn’t true love, I don’t know what was.

  23

  EXEL strapped the spyril onto me. It was sleeker than I’d expected it to be; the only bulky parts were two large, canisterlike tubes that attached to my calves. A nozzle extended from the back of my right hand, the opening as large as a common hose; it was secured into a black glove with an attached wrist brace. The setup inhibited my wrist motion a little.

  My left hand had a different kind of glove on it, with a few odd devices on the back about the shape of two rolls of coins. I prodded at these.

  “I’d avoid playing with those if I were you,” Exel said affably. “Unless you want to rush your funeral along. I happen to know of a wonderful place in Babilar that sells lilies year-round.”

  “You’re a strange man,” I said, though I lowered my hands to my sides per his warning.

  “Mizzy?” Exel asked.

  “Looks good,” she said, walking around and inspecting me. She knelt down and tugged on the line running from my foot to the back portion and nodded. She seemed to know a lot about things like this, particularly Epic-derived technology. When I’d come back with the motivator that Megan had given me—explaining that I’d followed Newton and that she’d dropped it—Mizzy had been the one to run it through tests and determine that everything was all right.

  The three of us were on a rooftop in northern Babilar, away from populated areas in a section where only the rare building peeked from the surface of the water. No bridges led between them. Aside from that it was daytime, when most people would be sleeping.

  I wore a wetsuit with the spyril, and I pointedly ignored how nervous that made me. Before agreeing to equip me with the device, Mizzy had insisted on teaching me some basic swimming strokes. Almost a week had passed since my meeting with Megan. I was getting pretty good at swimming—or, well, pretty good at not panicking when I got in the water. That was the majority of the battle, I supposed.

  I still hadn’t figured out a design for foot spikes to stop potential shark attacks. Hopefully I wouldn’t need them.

  Prof surveyed from the other side of the rooftop. He wore his black lab coat, goggles stuffed into the pocket. He didn’t believe my lie about having found the spyril’s motivator in the room after spying on Obliteration and Newton. I’d been tempted to tell him about Megan. I’d find a time soon enough. When Mizzy, Val, or Exel weren’t around. I didn’t think they’d react well to hearing that I’d had a pleasant conversation with the Epic who had supposedly killed their friend.

  She didn’t do it, I thought to myself for the thousandth time as Mizzy pulled my arm strap tight. Even if she did have the spyril’s motivator.

  “All right,” Mizzy said, finally. “Done!”

  “Congratulations,” Exel said. “You’re now wearing the most dangerous piece of equipment we own.”

  “Where are the rest of the tubes?” I asked, frowning. The canisters and gloves were each attached with some small wires—which were strapped securely to my arms and legs—to a circular device on my back, where Mizzy had installed the motivator.

  “No tubes needed,” Mizzy said.

  “None? No pumps, hoses …”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re wearing a freaky, Epic-derived weapon,” Mizzy said. “The tensors vaporize metal. This is a stroll in the park compared to that. Granted, our local park is completely submerged.…”

  I raised my right hand, making a fist. The wetsuit covering my arm scrunched as I moved. Her explanation bothered me. Shouldn’t we know how things like this actually worked? Of course, I didn’t understand how computers or mobiles worked either, and that didn’t bother me. Those didn’t have mysterious motivators, though, and weren’t built after studying the cells of dead Epics.

  And they also didn’t, so far as I knew, defy the laws of physics.

  Those were probably questions for another day. For now, I needed to focus on the task at hand: learning to use the spyril. “So how does it work?”

  “This,” Mizzy said, taking my left hand and flipping a switch, “is the streambeam. You point it at water and make a fist.”

  “Streambeam?” I asked dryly.

  “I named it,” Mizzy said happily.

  I inspected the glove. One of the coin-roll devices on the back kind of looked like a laser pointer. I stepped to the edge of the roof and pointed my left hand at the water just below, then made a fist.

  A bright red laser shot from my left hand. Even in full daylight, even with no smoke or anything dusting the air, I could see the beam easily. The device on my back started to hum.

  “The streambeam draws out water,” Exel said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Or … well, teleports the water to you, or something like that.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “Now, you have to be careful,” Mizzy said, “as your other hand will control the flow. You need to—”

  I made a fist with my right hand. Jets of water erupted from my feet, flipping me into the air end over end. I shouted, flailing my arms. The streambeam twisted toward the sky, then turned off as I was no longer making a fist. The jets immediately cut out.

  The world spun around me, drops of water spraying everywhere, then the force of the ocean hit me as I crashed into it. It was a huge shock, even with Prof’s forcefield to protect me. Brackish water sprayed into my mouth and up my nose. For a brief, terrified moment my mind was convinced I was drowning to death.

  I thrashed, remembering the time before when I’d been towed down by the weight on my ankle. My panic was accompanied by a deeper, more ancient terror—a primal fear of drowning mixed with a fear of what could be out there, in those depths, watching me.

  I struggled to the surface, sputtering, and swam awkwardly to the rooftop. I grabbed hold of a partially submerged windowsill and wiped my face, trying to catch my breath, stilling my nerves. Even with the wetsuit, I felt cold.

  A laugh bellowed out from up above. Exel. He reached down, and I took hold, letting him help me from the water. I sat on the side of the roof, pulling my legs up. No reason to give the sharks—which I was sure were down there—anything to chew on.

  “Well, it works!” Exel said.

  “Let me check the flow rates,” Mizzy said, kneeling beside me. Today with her jeans she wore a shirt that had frills cut along the hem. Behind the two of them Prof stood with crossed arms, his expression dark.

  “Sir?” I called to him.

  “Carry on with the practice,” he said, turning away. “I have things to take care of. Exel and Mizzy, you can handle this?”

  “Sure can,” Exel said. “I coached Sam his first few times. Never did try it myself though.”

  Made sense. I figured it would take some serious jets to lift Exel.

  Prof stepped onto our boat tied up alongsid
e the rooftop, then took out a paddle. “Contact Val via mobile when you want to be picked up,” he said. Then he rowed away toward where we’d hidden the submarine.

  “What’s up with him lately?” Exel asked.

  “Up?” Mizzy asked from behind me as she fiddled with the device on my back. “He’s always like that, so far as I can tell. Brooding. Dark. Mysterious.” I sensed a blush to her voice, and she ducked down a little farther.

  “True,” Exel said. “But lately the mystery comes with extra brood.” He shook his head and settled down beside me. “David, when manipulating the spyril you have to keep the streambeam pointed at water. The moment it isn’t, you’ll lose access to your propellant, and that will send you crashing down.”

  “Well,” I said, “at least the landing will be soft, right?” I nodded toward the water.

  “You’ve never belly flopped, have you?” Exel asked.

  “Belly what?”

  Exel rubbed his forehead with a set of meaty fingers. “Okay. David, water doesn’t compress. If you hit it at high speed, particularly with a lot of your body at once, it will feel like hitting something solid. Drop from a hundred feet or so, and you’ll break bones. Maybe die.”

  That sounded bizarre, but it didn’t really matter so long as I had one of Prof’s forcefields protecting me, disguised as a little electronic box hooked to my wetsuit belt. Since he often split the power among several Reckoners at once, it would wear out over time, and focused points of pressure—such as a bullet strike—could penetrate it. But a fall into the water shouldn’t be a problem.

  “A hundred feet, you say?” I asked. “This thing can get me that high?”

  Exel nodded. “And higher. Sam couldn’t reach the tops of the tallest skyscrapers, but he could reach many of the medium-height ones.”

  Mizzy stopped fiddling with my back. “I dialed down the flows,” she said. “So you can practice without quite as much force at first.”

  “I don’t need to be coddled,” I said.

  Exel looked at me seriously, then rested a hand on my shoulder. “I joke about death, David. It’s an occupational hazard—you learn to laugh at it when it’s all around you. But we already lost one point man from this team. Wouldn’t it be silly to lose another one while practicing? What happened just a few moments ago could easily have ended with you flipping into the air, then driving yourself face-first into the rooftop at high speed.”

  I took a deep breath, feeling foolish. “Of course. You’re right.” Prof’s protections were good, but not infallible. “I’ll take it easy at first.”

  “Then stand back up, Steelslayer, and let’s get to it.”

  24

  IT turned out that the difficulty in using the spyril didn’t have to do with its power. After a half hour of working, we had Mizzy up the strength of the water jets, as they provided a better footing that way.

  The trouble was with balance. Trying to remain stable with two shifting jets of water coming out from your legs was like trying to balance a pot full of frogs on the tips of two half-cooked pieces of spaghetti. And I had to do it while keeping my left arm always pointed downward at the water, or I’d lose my power. I could use my right hand for stabilizing, fortunately. That one had what Mizzy called a handjet strapped to it. With it I could shoot out streams of water to adjust my balance, but usually I overcompensated.

  It was all pretty complicated. Left hand with the streambeam had to stay pointed at water. Right hand opening and closing would adjust the strength of the water coming out my footjets, and the right thumb would control the strength of the handjet. But I couldn’t use that to stabilize unless I remembered to point it the direction I was falling, which—when you’re trying to juggle all of this in your mind—was easier said than done.

  Eventually I managed to accomplish a stable hover about fifteen feet above the water. I wavered there, using the handjet to shoot a stream backward to keep from falling when I began to topple in that direction.

  “Nice!” Exel called up from below. “Like walking on flexible stilts, eh? That’s how Sam put it.”

  Well, if you wanted to be pedestrian with your metaphors.

  I lost my balance and crashed back down into the water, relaxing my right hand and stopping the jets. I came up sputtering but let myself float there for a moment, Exel and Mizzy standing above me and looking down.

  Falling again was annoying, but I wouldn’t let myself get discouraged. I’d had to practice for weeks with the tensors before getting the hang of those.

  Something brushed my leg.

  I knew it was probably just a piece of garbage moving in the lazy current, but I jerked my legs up and instinctively made a fist. So, when water jetted from my feet, I shot backward like a fleshy speedboat. I released my hand almost immediately, surprised by how easily I’d moved.

  I turned around, face forward and legs back so I was on my stomach, and tried the jets again. I eased into the power until I was moving at a decent clip—about as fast as I’d seen Mizzy swimming the day before when she’d been giving me instructions. I checked my goggles and nose plugs to make sure they were secure.

  Then I increased the speed.

  For some reason, even though my feet were pointed straight back, this spat me out of the water so that I flew just above the surface. It was quick, lasting only a few seconds before I plunged into the water again face-first.

  Wow, I thought, surfacing and then spurting from the water again in a splash.

  I relaxed my hand, slowing my momentum, then put myself upright. The small amount of force coming from the jets raised me up out of the water about to my waist, the water churning in a donutlike ring around me.

  I’d gotten going pretty quickly back there. Could I go even faster? I let myself sink back into the water, then stuck my feet out behind me again and put the jets on full blast, shooting face-first like a torpedo. Water sprayed off me as I splashed up and down, thrilled by the speed. I got the hang of this power-swimming much more quickly than I had the hovering; I was having so much fun that I almost forgot I was in the water.

  Eventually I swam up to the others and stopped the jets. Above, Mizzy was gasping. “That,” she said, tears in the corners of her eyes, “was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.”

  “You said ‘awesome’ wrong,” I grumbled. “Did you see how fast I was going?”

  “You looked like a porpoise,” Mizzy said.

  “An awesome porpoise?”

  “Sure.” She laughed.

  Beside her, Exel was smiling. He knelt down and reached out to help me from the water, but I engaged the jets and shot up at an angle. I managed to land on the rooftop beside them without falling on my face, though much arm-waving was involved.

  Mizzy laughed again and tossed me a towel. I settled down on one of the chairs, shivering. Spring might be upon us, but the air was still chilly. I accepted a cup of hot tea from Exel as he settled down beside me and put in his earpiece. I followed suit.

  “That water,” I said, speaking in the soft way of the Babilaran Reckoners, “doesn’t seem as cold as it should be.” I realized, now that I was in the open air and shivering, that it was warmer in the water than out of it.

  “It isn’t,” Exel said. “And it’s even warmer down in the southern parts of Babilar. There are currents that move through the streets bearing a tropical warmth all times of year, even midwinter.”

  “That sounds …” I trailed off.

  “Impossible?” Exel volunteered.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I realize how stupid that sounds, considering everything else happening in this city.”

  Exel nodded, and we sat for a while, me chowing down on a sandwich I’d dug out of my pack.

  “So,” Exel said, “are we done for the day?”

  “Nah,” I said, munching the last bite of sandwich. “We’ve only been out here for an hour or two. I want to get this down. Just let me rest for a minute and I’ll get back to it.”

  Mizzy
took a seat and checked her mobile. “Val reports that Newton is in Eastborough right now. No movement this direction. It doesn’t look like we’ve been spotted.”

  I nodded and took a pull on the tea as I thought. It was sweeter than I was used to. “We’ll need to figure out her weakness, if we can.”

  “I’d rather find out Obliteration’s,” Exel said. “He scares me.”

  “He should.”

  I’d spent the week thinking about Megan, but I probably should have let Obliteration dominate more of that time. Why had he suddenly decided to vaporize Houston? And then in rapid succession two other towns? What had changed, and why had I been wrong about the cooldown on his teleportation powers?

  I pulled out my new mobile and searched through the digitized version of my notes. It wasn’t too different from my old one, though a few of Mizzy’s improvements—such as a slow-charging solar panel on the back—seemed like they’d be useful.

  I stopped at a photo of Obliteration, taken in Houston only a few days before he’d destroyed the place. I’d traded half my rations for two weeks to another kid in the Factory for a copy of the photo, which he’d had forwarded on to him from a friend.

  In the picture, Obliteration sat in the middle of a city square, cross-legged, basking in the sun with eyes closed and face turned toward the sky. A few days later, Houston was gone—which had shocked me, as I assumed he would remain emperor of the city for years, like Steelheart in Chicago. Nothing I’d read about him had prepared me for such an event.

  My notes had been wrong about him. Consistently, not just regarding his powers, but also his motives and intentions. I thought a moment, then pulled up Val’s number and pressed the call button.

  “Yo,” she said softly.

  “Mizzy says you’re still on reconnaissance,” I said.

  “Yeah. What do you need?”

  “Has anyone spotted Obliteration sitting out in the sun?” I asked. “Here in the city, I mean?”

  “Don’t know,” Val said. “There are lots of rumors about him, but not much concrete info.”

  I looked up at Exel sitting in his chair beside me. He shrugged. “I can try to find out more if you’d like,” he offered.