Firefight

  “Thanks,” I said. “Val, just keep your eyes open, all right? I think Obliteration needs to charge himself that way; it’s how he acted in the other cities before he destroyed them. We’ll want to know if he starts doing that here.”

  “Right.” Val signed off.

  “We’re worrying about him too much,” Mizzy said. She sat by the edge of the rooftop, idly tossing broken chips of brick into the water.

  Exel chuckled softly, then spoke over the line. “Well, he is the one who is likely to try to melt the city, Missouri.”

  “I suppose. But what about Firefight?” Mizzy stared out over the waters, her brow furrowed in an uncharacteristic way. Angry. “She’s the one who killed Sam. She infiltrated the Reckoners, betrayed us. She’s a fire Epic too, like Obliteration. Why aren’t we talking about how to kill her?”

  Fire Epic. I was pretty sure that she wasn’t actually—she was some kind of illusion Epic—though honestly I didn’t know the extent of what she could do. There was something odd about the images she created, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “What did Prof tell you about Firefight?” I asked Mizzy and Exel, curious.

  Mizzy shrugged. “I have the Reckoners’ files on her, though they thought ‘she’ was a ‘he.’ Fire Epic; has an aura of flame about her that melts bullets. Can fly, shoot fire.”

  None of that was actually true, and Prof knew it. Why hadn’t he told the team Megan was really an illusionist, and had no fire manipulation powers? I certainly wasn’t going to explain—not when I didn’t know why Prof was keeping quiet. Besides, as long as Mizzy was still after Megan, it was safer if this team didn’t know Megan’s true nature.

  “The files don’t have anything about her weakness though,” Mizzy said, looking at me hopefully.

  “I have no idea what it is,” I said. “She didn’t seem too bad when she was with us.…”

  “Had you fooled right good,” Mizzy said, sounding sympathetic. “Yeaaah, I suppose we should be lucky she didn’t try that with us. It would be even harder if she’d made herself our friend first, then started killing us.” She still looked angry as she fetched herself a cup of tea.

  I stood up, setting aside the towel. I still had the spyril strapped on, jets on the backs of my calves, gloves on my hands. “I’m going to go practice that swimming thing some more.”

  “Just watch out for people,” Exel said. “Don’t let them see you—we wouldn’t want to ruin the reputation of the Reckoners by acting so silly.”

  “Eee, eee,” Mizzy squealed like a dolphin.

  “Great,” I said, fighting off a blush. “Thanks. That’s very encouraging.” I removed my earpiece and tucked it into the waterproof pocket on my wetsuit, then replaced my swimming goggles and nose plugs.

  I hopped back into the water and did a few more circuits of the rooftop. It was fun, even if it was in the water. Besides, I was moving too quickly for sharks to catch me, I figured.

  Eventually, when I felt like I had the hang of it, I turned away from the rooftop and ventured into the open water of what had once been Central Park. It was now a large expanse without anything breaking the surface—which was perfect for me, as it meant I didn’t risk shooting down into the water and smashing into a barely submerged roof or spire.

  I closed my right hand almost to a fist and picked up speed, then splashed through the water—popping out and then crashing back down, over and over. It was exciting at first, but eventually grew monotonous. I forced myself onward. I had to master this device—we were going to need the edge.

  Prof’s forcefield energy seemed to protect me; I suspected that without his help, my head and face would be taking more of a battering. As it was, I barely felt it. After crossing the entire park in a matter of minutes, I burst from the surface, shooting straight up, then managed to balance on the streams of water and stay in place some twenty feet above the ocean. As I started to tip, I raised my other hand and used the smaller jet on the back of the right-hand glove—controlled by my thumb—to knock me back into place.

  Excited that I’d managed to balance, I grinned—then accidentally overcorrected with the handjet. I crashed back down into the ocean, but I was getting used to this. I knew to ease off the power and angle myself upward in a gradual ascent. I emerged from the water and let myself float for a moment, satisfied at my progress.

  Then I remembered where I was. Stupid water, ruining my enjoyment of swimming. I jetted sideways to where a short roof peeked out of the surface, then climbed up on it. There, I sat with my legs over the side—barely minding that they were in the water—to rest for a few minutes.

  Regalia appeared before me a moment later.

  25

  I leaped to my feet as her image coalesced from a rising figure of water. I immediately reached for my gun—which, of course, I didn’t have on me anywhere. Not that it would do any good.

  We’d known she might be watching—you always had to assume that, in Babilar. We could have gone outside her range to practice, but what would be the point? She knew about the spyril already, and we were confident she didn’t want us dead. At least not immediately.

  She stepped onto the rooftop, still connected to the sea by a tendril of liquid. She held a dainty cup of tea, and as she sat down a chair formed out of water behind her. Like before, she wore a professional suit and shirt, her white hair pinned up in a bun. Her dark African American skin was furrowed, creased with wrinkles.

  “Oh, be still,” Regalia said to me over her tea. “I’m not going to harm you. I just want to get a good look at you.”

  I hesitated. I could imagine this woman as a judge on television—distinguished, but harsh. Her voice had the air of a wise mother who was forced to intervene in the petty antics of immature children.

  She was a preacher too, I remembered from my notes. And didn’t Obliteration quote scripture at me? What was the connection there?

  The Reckoner in me wanted to leap into the water and get away as quickly as possible. This was a very dangerous Epic. I’d never interacted this way with Steelheart; we’d stayed far away from him until the moment we sprang our trap.

  But Regalia ruled the waters. If I leaped into them, I’d only be more in her power.

  She doesn’t want you dead, I told myself again. See what you can learn. It went against my instincts, but it seemed the best thing to do.

  “How did Jonathan kill the Epic who had those powers?” Regalia asked, nodding toward my legs. “Normally an Epic has to be murdered in order for such devices to be created, you know. I have always wondered how the Reckoners managed it in the case of those jets.”

  I remained silent.

  “You fight us,” Regalia continued. “You claim to hate us. And yet you wear our skins upon your backs. What you really hate is that you cannot tame us, as man tamed the beasts. And so you murder us.”

  “You dare talk to me about murder?” I demanded. “After what you did by inviting Obliteration into this city?”

  Regalia studied me with an expressionless face. She set her teacup aside and it melted, no longer part of her projection. Wherever she actually was, she was sitting in that chair, so I tried to remember how it looked. It was just a simple wooden seat, with no ornamentation on the sides or back, but maybe it could give us a clue as to where her base was.

  “Has Jonathan told you what he is?” Regalia asked.

  “A friend of yours,” I said vaguely. “From years ago.”

  She smiled. “Yes. We were both made Epics at around the same time.” She watched me. “No surprise at hearing he is an Epic? So you do know. I had assumed he was still maintaining the act.”

  “Do you know,” I shot back, “that if an Epic stops using their powers, they revert to their old selves? You don’t need us to kill you, Regalia. Just stop using your powers.”

  “Ah,” she said, “if only it were so simple …” She shook her head as if amused by my innocence, then nodded toward the waters out in Central Park Bay. They rippled an
d moved, small waves forming on the surface and changing as quickly as the expressions on the face of a child trapped in quicksand made of candy.

  “You took well to that device,” Regalia said. “I watched the other man practice, and he required far longer to accustom himself to its power. You are a natural with the abilities, it seems.”

  “Regalia,” I said, stepping forward. “Abigail. You don’t have to be like this. You—”

  “Do not act as if you know me, young man,” Regalia said. Her tone was quiet but firm.

  I stopped in place.

  “You have killed Steelheart,” Regalia continued. “For that alone I should destroy you. We have so few pockets of civilization remaining to us, and you bring down one that has not only power but advanced medical care? Hubris of the most high, child. If you were in my court, I’d see you locked away for life. If you were in my congregation, I’d do even worse.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed,” I replied, “Newcago is running just fine without Steelheart. Just like Babilar would run fine without you. Isn’t that why you’ve forced Prof to come here? Because you want him to kill you?”

  She hesitated at that, and I realized I might have said too much. Did I just give away that Prof knew her plan? But if she really wanted him to stop her, she’d expect him to figure it out, right? I needed to be more careful. Regalia was not only an Epic; she was also an attorney. That was like putting curry powder in your hot sauce. She could talk rings around me.

  But how could I get information from her without saying anything? I made a snap decision and jumped off the rooftop, engaging the spyril and jetting through the water of Central Park Bay. I burst from the water a few minutes later, landing on another roof far north of the one I’d been on before.

  “You do realize how ridiculous you look doing that,” Regalia said, stretching up from the water, speaking even before her new shape fully formed.

  I yelped, pretending to be alarmed. I left this building and splashed farther northward until I was at the very northern edge of the bay. Here, exhausted, I broke from the water again and settled onto a rooftop, water streaming from my brow.

  “Are you quite done?” Regalia asked as her chair formed from the water just before me again. She picked up her cup of tea. “I can appear anywhere I want, silly boy. I’m surprised Jonathan didn’t explain this to you.”

  Not anywhere, I thought. You have a limited range.

  And she’d just given me two more data points that would help Tia pinpoint her true location. I slipped off the roof into the water, intending to take another swim and see if I could get her to follow one more time.

  “You are good with the device,” Regalia noted. “Did you ever know Waterlog, the Epic in whom those powers originated? I created him, you know.”

  I stopped in the water beside the building, frozen like a beetle who’d just discovered that his mother had been eaten by a praying mantis.

  Regalia sipped her tea.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Oh, so that interests you, does it? His original name was Georgi, a minor street thug down in Orlando. He showed promise. I made him into an Epic.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, laughing. Nobody could make Epics. Sure, once in a while new ones appeared. Though the vast majority had been here since about a year after Calamity’s rise, I knew of a few notable Epics who had only recently manifested powers. But no one knew why or how.

  “So certain in your denial,” Regalia said, shaking her head. “Do you think you know so much about the world, David Charleston? You know how everything works?”

  I stopped laughing, but I didn’t believe her for a moment. She was playing me somehow. What was her game?

  “Ask Obliteration next time you see him,” Regalia said idly, “assuming you live long enough. Ask about what I’ve done to his powers, how much stronger they are, despite what I have taken from him.”

  I looked up at her, frowning. “Taken from him?” What did she mean by that? What would she “take” from an Epic? And that aside, was she also implying she’d enhanced Obliteration’s powers? Was that the reason for the lack of cooldown on his teleporting?

  “You can’t fight me,” she said. “If you do you’ll end up dead, alone. Gasping for breath in one of these jungle buildings, one step from freedom. Your last sight a blank wall that someone had spilled coffee on. A pitiful, pathetic end. Think on that.”

  She vanished.

  I climbed up onto the rooftop and wiped some water from my eyes, then sat down. That had been a decidedly surreal experience. As I rested I thought on what she’d told me. There was so much that it only grew more troubling the more I thought it through.

  Eventually I jumped back into the water and swam to the others.

  26

  TWO days later I lingered in the library of our underwater base, alone, looking at Tia’s map. The points where I’d seen Regalia were marked with red pins and little exclamation points scribbled right on the paper. I smiled, remembering Tia’s excitement as she’d placed those pins. Though the math of what she was doing here wasn’t particularly interesting to me, the end result certainly was.

  I moved to walk away, then stopped myself. I’d done well enough in my mathematics training at the Factory, even if I hadn’t enjoyed the subject. I couldn’t afford to be lazy just because someone else had things in hand. I wanted to know for myself. I forced myself to turn back and try to figure out Tia’s notations. From what I eventually worked out, my points had helped a lot, but we needed more data from the southeastern side of the city before we could really determine Regalia’s center base.

  Feeling satisfied, I left the library. With nothing to do.

  Which was odd. Back in Newcago, I’d always had something to occupy my time, mostly because of Abraham and Cody. Whenever they’d seen me looking idle, they’d handed me a project. Cleaning guns, carrying crates, practicing with the tensors—something.

  Here, that didn’t happen. I couldn’t practice with the spyril down here—and I could only go up above to practice during certain preplanned excursions. Besides, my body ached from the hours I’d already spent power-swimming around the city. Prof’s forcefields kept me from getting battered, but they didn’t protect my muscles from strain.

  I peeked in on Tia—her door was cracked—and I knew from her look of concentration and the six empty cola pouches by her seat that I shouldn’t disturb her. Mizzy was in the workroom with Val helping her, fixing one of our boat motors. When I stepped in to talk to them, I got an immediate cold scowl from Val. I stopped dead in the doorway, chilled by that stare. Val seemed to be in an even worse mood than normal in the last few days.

  Mizzy gave me a little shrug, wiggling her hand and making Val pass her a wrench. Sparks. I turned around and left them. Now what? I should be doing something. I sighed and headed back toward my room, where I could dig into my notes on Epics yet again. I passed Tia’s room and was surprised when she called out.

  “David?”

  I hesitated by the door, then pushed it open farther. “Yeah?”

  “How did you know?” Tia asked, head down over her datapad, typing something furiously. “About Sourcefield.”

  Sourcefield. The Epic we’d killed just before leaving Newcago. I stepped forward, eager. “You found something more? About her background?”

  “I’ve just recovered the truth about her grandparents,” Tia said with a nod. “They tried to kill her.”

  “That’s sad, but …”

  “They poisoned her drink.”

  “Kool-Aid?”

  “A generic,” Tia said, “but close enough. The grandparents were a strange pair, fascinated by cults and old stories. It was a copycat killing, or an attempted one, based on an older tragedy in South America. The important thing is that Sourcefield—rather, Emiline—was old enough at the time to realize that she’d been poisoned. She crawled out into the street when her throat and mouth started burning, and a passerby took her to the ho
spital. She became an Epic years later, and her weakness—”

  “Was the very thing that had almost killed her,” I finished, excited. “It’s a connection, Tia.”

  “Maybe a coincidental one.”

  “You don’t believe that,” I said. How could she? This was another connection, a real one—like Mitosis, but even more promising. Was this where Epic weaknesses came from? Something that nearly killed them?

  But how would bad rock music nearly kill a guy? I wondered. Touring, perhaps? An accident. We needed to know more.

  “I think a coincidence is possible,” Tia said, then looked up and finally met my eyes. “But I also think it’s worth investigating. Nice work. How did you guess?”

  “There’s got to be some logic to it, Tia,” I said. “The powers, the weaknesses, the Epics … who gets chosen.”

  “I don’t know, David,” Tia said. “Does there really have to be a rationale behind it? In ancient days, when a disaster struck everyone would try to make sense of it—find a reason. Somebody’s sins. Angered gods. But nature doesn’t always have a reason for us, not the type we want.”

  “You’re going to look into it, right?” I asked. “This is like Mitosis—similar at least. Maybe we can find a connection with Steelheart and his weakness. He could only be harmed by someone who didn’t fear him. Maybe in his past he was nearly killed by someone who—”

  “I’ll look into it,” Tia said, stopping me. “I promise.”

  “You seem reluctant,” I pressed. How could she be so skeptical? This was exciting! Revolutionary!

  “I thought we were beyond this. The lorists spent the early years searching for a connection between Epic weaknesses. We decided there wasn’t one.” She hesitated. “Though I suppose that was a challenging time—when communication was difficult and the government was collapsing. We made other mistakes back then; I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised to discover we’d been too hasty in making some of our decisions.” She sighed. “I’ll look into this further, though Calamity knows I don’t have the time these days with the Regalia issue.”