Firefight

  I bent down over my mobile and sent another message to Megan. Do you know why Regalia claimed she can make Epics?

  This time I got a response almost immediately. She said what?

  She told me she’d made someone into an Epic, I wrote back. She seemed to think it would scare me. I think she wanted me to decide that we can’t fight back because she can send an unending string of Epics at us.

  What did you tell her? Megan asked.

  Can’t remember exactly. I think I laughed at her.

  You never were very bright, Knees. That woman is dangerous.

  But she literally had us in her grasp at one point! I wrote back. She let us go. I don’t think she wants us dead. Anyway, why do you think she would claim something that ridiculous? Did she really think I’d believe she could make someone into an Epic?

  Megan didn’t respond for a time.

  We really need to meet, she finally wrote to me. Where are you?

  Heading into the city, I said.

  Perfect.

  Prof is with me, I added.

  Oh.

  You could meet with both of us, I wrote to her. Explain yourself. He’d listen.

  It’s more complicated than that, Megan wrote. I was a spy for Steelheart, and I infiltrated Prof’s own team. When it comes to his precious Reckoners, Phaedrus is like a mother bear with her cubs.

  Huh? I wrote back. No, that’s wrong.

  What?

  I don’t think that metaphor works, Megan. Prof is a dude, so he can’t be a mother bear.

  David, you are a complete and utter slontze.

  I could hear the smile in her tone. Sparks, I missed her.

  I’m an adorable one though, right? I wrote to her.

  A pause, during which I found myself sweating.

  I wish it was so easy, her message finally came. I really, really wish it.

  It can be, I wrote back. You still willing to meet?

  And Phaedrus?

  I’ll find a way to lose him, I wrote as Prof began to take the sub to the surface. Will message you later. I then tucked the mobile into my pocket.

  “We there?” I asked.

  “Almost,” Prof replied.

  “You’ve been pretty quiet this trip.”

  “I’ve been trying to decide if I should send you back to Newcago or not.”

  The words hit me like a slug from a .44 Special. I blinked, searching for a response. “But … you said when we came here, you said you were bringing me because you needed me.”

  “Son,” Prof said softly, “if you think I can’t kill Epics without you, then you must have a low opinion of my skills. If I decide you shouldn’t be part of this operation, then you’ll be out. Period.”

  “But why would you decide that?”

  Prof piloted in silence for a moment, steering the sub slowly around a large chunk of floating debris—it looked like a hot dog stand. “You’re a good point man, David,” Prof said. “You think quickly and you solve problems. You have excellent instincts under fire. You’re bold and aggressive.”

  “Thank you?”

  “And you’re exactly the sort of person I’ve avoided recruiting over the years.”

  I frowned.

  “You haven’t noticed?” Prof asked.

  Now that he mentioned it … I thought about Cody, and Exel, and Abraham, and Mizzy. Even Val, to an extent. They weren’t gun-toting, shoot-’em-up types. They were reserved, careful, slow to act.

  “I’ve noticed,” I said. “But I didn’t really put it together until now.”

  “The Reckoners are not an army,” Prof said. “We’re not even a special forces unit. We’re trap-layers. We’re patient and conservative. You’re none of those things. You’re a firecracker, always urging us to action, to change the plan. This is good, in a way. You think big, son. It takes people with big dreams to accomplish big goals.”

  He turned to me, the sub puttering along slowly, not needing his guidance. “But I can’t help thinking,” he said, “that you don’t intend to stick to the plan. You want to protect Regalia, and you harbor sympathies for a traitor. You have aspirations. So you’re going to tell me, right now, the things you’ve been hiding from me. And then we’re going to decide what to do with you.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Now.” Prof met my eyes. “Out with it.”

  28

  PROF held my gaze, making me sweat. Sparks, that man could be intense. He wanted to pretend that his was a quiet, careful group—and in truth, it mostly was. If you didn’t count him. He was like me. He always had been.

  And because of that, I knew how deadly serious he was.

  I licked my lips. “I’m planning to capture one of Regalia’s Epics,” I said. “When we hit Newton, I want to try to neutralize her instead of killing her—then I want to capture her. Like we did with Edmund back in Newcago.”

  Prof regarded me for a moment, then seemed to relax, as if that wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared. “What would be the point?”

  “Well, we know Regalia is devious. She’s planning something more than we’ve been able to figure out.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Probably. You’ve said she’s wily. You’ve implied she’s very careful, and very clever. Sparks, Prof, you have to be worried that she’s playing us all, even now.”

  He turned away from me. “I will admit that it has crossed my mind. Abigail has a habit of … positioning people, myself included, in places where she wants them.”

  “Well, she knows you. She knows what you’ll do.” I grew more excited—it seemed that I might have dug myself out of a bad situation. “She won’t expect you to try a kidnapping, then. It’s too bold, and not at all in line with the Reckoner methodology. But think what it could accomplish! Newton might know what Regalia is up to—at the very least, she’ll know how Regalia is recruiting these other Epics.”

  “I doubt we’d learn much,” Prof said. “Abigail wouldn’t share that kind of information.”

  “Well, at the very least, Newton could tell us places that Regalia has appeared to her,” I said. “Which will help with our map. And there’s the chance she knows more. Right?”

  Prof tapped the submarine’s steering stick, the bubble-like window before him glowing with filtered light from above. “And how would you plan to make her talk? Torture?”

  “Well, actually, I was kind of hoping that by keeping her from using her powers … you know … we’d make her turn good or something.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “It happened with Edmund,” I said defensively.

  “Edmund wasn’t a murderer before his transformation.”

  Well, that was true.

  “Beyond that,” Prof said, “Edmund is good because he gifts his powers—like I do. He didn’t ‘turn good.’ He just never went evil in the first place. What you really meant, but didn’t want to say it for fear of angering me, is that Firefight seemed to be good when she was with us. You’re hoping that by preventing Newton from using her powers, you can get proof that doing the same for Firefight will return Megan to you.”

  “Maybe,” I said, shrinking down in my chair.

  “This is just the sort of thing I worried you were considering,” Prof said. “You could have endangered the entire team by pursuing your own goals, David. Can’t you see that?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Is that everything?” Prof asked me. “No other hidden plots?”

  I grew cold. Megan. “That’s everything,” I found myself saying.

  “Well, I suppose it isn’t too bad.” Prof let out a breath.

  “So I’m staying in Babilar?”

  “For now,” Prof said. “Calamity. You’re either exactly what the Reckoners need, and have needed for years … or you’re a representation of the reckless heroism we’ve been wise to avoid. I still can’t decide.”

  He steered the sub right toward a submerged building with a gaping hole in its side. It looked a lot l
ike the place where we docked, but it was a different building. We passed into the opening like a big piece of buttered popcorn passing into the mouth of some decomposing beast. Inside, Prof popped the lever that released a flood of dish soap into the water, to make the surface tension weaker and inhibit Regalia’s powers. He turned off the lights and let us surface.

  We felt our way out and found the ropes to lead us across treacherous, half-submerged flooring to a set of steps. I couldn’t see much of anything, though that was the point.

  “Head up those steps,” Prof whispered over the line. “We scouted this building to use as a potential base before we found the other one. This place is unused, far enough from the neighborhoods that no bridges lead to it. The upstairs is a private office suite, which should have a good view of the rooftop in question.”

  “Got it,” I said—holding my rifle in one hand, backpack over my other shoulder—as I felt at the door.

  “I’m going to get back in the sub to be ready to pull out in a hurry,” Prof said. “Something about all this feels off to me. Be ready to run; I’ll leave the top open for you.” He paused, and I felt his hand grip my shoulder. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered over the line, “I’m an expert on stupid.”

  “You’re …”

  “Like, I can spot stupidity, because I know it so well. The way an exterminator knows bugs really well, and can spot where they’ve been? I’m like that. A stupidinator.”

  “Never say that word again,” Prof said.

  Well, it made sense to me. He let go, and I pulled open the door and stepped inside. After pulling it closed, I strapped my mobile to my shoulder and turned on the light. The stairwell led upward in a dark incline, wet, partially rotting. Like the forgotten steps you might find in some old horror movie.

  Except people in those movies hadn’t been armed with a fully automatic Gottschalk assault rifle with electron-compressed magazines and a night-vision scope. I smiled, dimming my mobile and raising the rifle, engaging the night vision. Prof said this place was abandoned, but it was best to be certain.

  I climbed the steps carefully, rifle at my shoulder. I still wasn’t completely satisfied with the Gottschalk. My old rifle had been better. Sure, it had jammed now and then. And it hadn’t been automatic, and had needed the sights adjusted at least once a month. And … well, it had just been better anyway. So there.

  Megan would laugh at that, I thought. Getting sentimental about a clearly inferior gun? Only fools did that. The thing was, we talk that way—but we all seem to get sentimental about our guns anyway. I reached to my side, suddenly realizing that it felt wrong not to have Megan’s handgun on me any longer. I’d need to requisition a replacement.

  At the top of the long stairwell, I entered what had once been a well-furnished reception room. Now overgrown with the ubiquitous Babilar plant life, it was draped in gloom and vines. No windows gave light to this room, and though fruit drooped from the trees and covered the floor, none of it glowed. That only happened after nightfall.

  I inched forward, stepping over old expense reports and other paperwork. The room smelled terrible—of rot and fungus. I found myself oddly annoyed at Prof as I walked. What did he mean by “reckless heroism”? Weren’t we supposed to be heroes?

  My father had waited for the heroes. He’d believed in them. He’d died because he’d believed in Steelheart.

  He’d been a fool in that regard. But somehow, more and more, I found myself wishing I could be the same kind of fool. I wasn’t going to feel guilty for trying to help people. Prof could say what he wanted, but deep down he felt the same way. He’d agreed to bring down Steelheart because he’d sensed that the Reckoners weren’t making enough of a difference.

  He would make the right decisions. He’d save this city. Prof was a hero. The Epic who fought for mankind. He just needed to admit it. And—

  Something under my foot crunched.

  I froze and scanned the small room through my scope again. Nothing. I lowered the gun and turned on my light. What in Calamity’s shadow …?

  I’d stepped on a cluster of small objects that were growing from vines at the bottom of one of the trees. The bizarre plant tendrils grew out from under the bark like whiskers on a man wearing a mask. I had to take a closer look at what I was seeing because I could swear that at their tips were … cookies.

  Yes, cookies. I knelt down, fishing among them for a moment. I pulled out a piece of paper. Fortune cookies, I thought. Growing from the tree.

  I flipped the paper over, reading the words.

  Help me.

  Great. I was back in the horror movie.

  Unsettled, I stepped back and snapped my rifle up into position. I looked around the room again, shining my mobile into shadowed corners behind tree trunks. Nothing jumped out at me. When I was convinced I was alone, I bent down to the cookies again and searched among them, reading other slips of paper. They all said either Help me or She has me captive.

  “David?” Tia’s voice sounded in my earpiece. “You into position yet?”

  I jumped almost to the ceiling.

  “Uh, not yet,” I said, stuffing some of the pieces of paper and the bits of cookie into my pocket. “I just stumbled onto something. Um … has anyone ever reported finding cookies growing from the fruit trees?”

  Silence on the line.

  “Cookies?” Tia asked. “David, is something wrong with you?”

  “Well, I’ve kind of had some indigestion lately,” I noted, moving toward the room’s other door, behind a decomposing receptionist’s desk. “But I don’t think that’s causing me to hallucinate cookies. Usually indigestion strictly causes cheesecake delusions.”

  “Ha, ha,” Tia said dryly.

  “Take a sample,” Prof said. “Move on.”

  “Done and done,” I said, listening at the door, then shoving it open and checking each corner of the room on the other side. It was empty, though a pair of broad windows shone light in on me. It was an executive office strewn with fallen books and metallic doodads, like those little ball things where you raise one side, then it clicks annoyingly against the others. Only two trees were growing in here, one on either side of the room, sending vines creeping up the bookcases on each wall.

  I continued forward, stepping over the debris and doing my best to stay low, approaching the large windows. This building was secluded, off by itself in the middle of the ocean. Waves broke against the base, water churning below. Distantly across some kind of bay, other buildings broke the surface of the ocean. Babilar proper.

  I knelt down, set aside my backpack, and poked the front of my gun out a broken section of window. Eye to the scope, I dialed up to ten times magnification. It worked beautifully. I could see five hundred yards easily; in fact, dialing up the zoom, I bet I could get to two thousand yards with reasonable detail.

  Sparks. I’d never made shots like that before. I was good with a rifle, but I wasn’t a trained sniper. I doubted the Gottschalk had the range for that shot anyway, though the scope was excellent for peeking about.

  “I’m in position,” I said. “Which building is it?”

  “You see a peaked one?” Exel said over the line. “Next to the two flatter rooftops?”

  “Yup,” I said, zooming in. It was quite a distance, but no problem for the gun’s excellent magnification.

  And there he was.

  29

  OBLITERATION looked much as he had the other two times I’d seen him, except he’d removed his shirt, black trench coat, and glasses, which were now strewn on the rooftop beside his sword. His bandaged chest was exposed, and he sat cross-legged, goateed face stretched toward the sky, eyes closed. His posture was serene, like a man doing morning yoga.

  The major difference between now and when I’d seen him before, however, was that he glowed with a deep inner light, like something was burning just beneath his skin.

  I felt a surprising surge of anger. I remembered thrashin
g in the water, the shackle around my leg pulling me toward the depths. Never again.

  I focused on Obliteration, holosights putting a dot right on his head. Then I tapped the side of my gun, flipping a switch and sending a feed from the scope to my mobile. That sent the image to Tia.

  “Thanks,” Tia said, watching the feed. “Hmm … Doesn’t look good. You thinking what I am?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Can you dig out my photos of Houston?”

  “I’ve got better ones,” Tia said. “Asked around once I knew he was here. Sending.”

  I looked away from the scope and took the mobile off my arm. Tia’s message arrived soon after, including a set of photos taken in Houston. This was from the height of Obliteration’s reign in the city. It had been a terrible place to live, but—like Newcago—there’d been a certain level of stability. As I’d had proven to me in both Newcago and Babilar, people would rather live with the Epics—and their tyranny—than waste away in the chaos between cities.

  This meant there had been a lot of witnesses when Obliteration had settled down right before his palace, an old government building he’d repurposed, and started glowing. Most of those witnesses had died soon after. Some had gotten out, though, and more had sent photos from their mobiles to friends outside the city.

  Tia’s images—which were indeed better than the ones in my files—showed Obliteration sitting as he did now. Different pants, no bandage on his chest, and less scruff on his face, but same posture and glow.

  “Those look like the pictures from the first day of him storing power in the other cities, wouldn’t you say?” Tia said over the line.

  “Yeah,” I replied, moving through the images to look at another sequence of shots. Obliteration in San Diego. Same posture. I compared how much he glowed on the first day in both Houston and San Diego, then compared it to how he looked now. “I agree. He’s only just begun the process.”

  “Would one of you two mind explaining to the old man what we’re talking about?” Prof asked over the line.