Firefight

  “Mmm …,” I said. “So you’re gorgeous and logical.”

  She gave me a flat stare. I just shrugged.

  “I’m still not sure this will work,” she said.

  “You’re the one who came to see me,” I said. “And if you hadn’t noticed, back in the base, that moment in my room … it seemed to be working pretty well then.”

  We stood, looking at one another, and I hated how awkward it suddenly felt. As if a fat man at the buffet had suddenly forced his way between us to get at the mac and cheese.

  “I should be going,” she said. “Thank you. For being willing to talk. For not turning me in. For … being you.”

  “I’m pretty good at being me,” I said. “I’ve had all these years to practice—I hardly ever get it wrong these days.”

  We stared at each other.

  “So, uh,” I said, shuffling from one foot to the other, “want to go with me to check up on Obliteration? If you’re not doing anything else important, I mean.”

  She cocked her head. “Did you just invite me on a date … to spy on a deadly Epic planning to destroy the city?”

  “Well, I don’t have a lot of experience with dating, but I’ve always heard you’re supposed to pick something you know the girl will enjoy.…”

  She smiled. “Well, let’s get to it then.”

  35

  I pulled out my mobile for a map of the area and Megan looked over my shoulder and pointed to the south. “That way,” she said. “We’ve got a walk ahead of us.”

  “You sure you don’t want to …” I gestured at the spyril on my legs.

  “What part of ‘spying’ involves flying through the city and drawing the attention of everyone nearby?”

  “The fun part,” I said, sullen. I’d practiced for a reason. I wanted to show off what I knew.

  “Well,” Megan said, “it might not matter, but I’d rather be quiet about this. Yes, Regalia wanted me to seduce you, but I don’t want to be blatant—”

  “Wait, what?” I stopped in place.

  “Oh, um, yeah.” Megan grimaced. “Sorry. I meant my explanation to be way better.” She ran her hand through her hair. “Regalia wanted me to seduce you. I’m not sure how much she knows of my background with the Reckoners, and I think she came up with the idea of me and you on her own. But don’t worry; I decided before even coming here that I wasn’t going to actively work against the Reckoners.”

  I stared at her. That was kind of a large bomb to drop on me, just like that. I knew it was stupid, but suddenly I found myself questioning the affection she’d shown me earlier.

  She wouldn’t have just told you if she were really planning on doing it, I told myself pointedly. I’d already decided to trust Megan. I’d just have to do it on this issue too.

  “Well,” I said, starting off and giving her a smile, “that’s good. Even if being seduced kind of sounds like it would be fun.”

  “Slontze,” Megan said, visibly relaxing. She took my arm and steered me across the rooftop. “At least if we’re spotted, I think Regalia will assume I’m just trying to do as she said.”

  “And if something goes wrong,” I noted, “we can use your illusions to distract her.”

  Megan shot me a glance as we reached a narrow rope bridge to the next roof. She started across in front of me, presenting a fine silhouette. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to use my powers,” she said softly.

  “You aren’t.”

  “I sense a very large but.”

  “Funny, because right in front of me, I see a—”

  “Watch it.”

  “—very attractive, um, set of calves. Look, Megan, I know I told you not to use your powers. But that was just a first step, a way to reset and gain control. It’s not going to work long-term.”

  “I know,” she said. “There’s no way I’ll be able to resist.”

  “I’m not just talking about that,” I said. “I’m talking about something bigger.”

  She stopped on the bridge and looked back at me. We swung gently above the waters below, some four stories down in this case. I wasn’t worried about the drop—I was still wearing the spyril.

  “Bigger?” she asked.

  “We can’t fight the Epics.”

  “But—”

  “Not alone,” I continued. “I’ve accepted it. The Reckoners only survive because of Prof and because of things like the spyril. I spent years convincing myself that regular people could fight, and I still think we can. But we need the same weapons our enemies have.”

  Megan inspected me in the darkness. The only light came from spraypaint on the ropes of the bridge. Finally, she stepped forward and picked at something around my neck. Abraham’s necklace, which I wore under the wetsuit. She pulled it out.

  “I thought you said these people were idiots.”

  “I said they were idealistic,” I clarified. “And they are. Heroes aren’t magically going to show up and save us. But maybe, with work, we can figure out how to … um … recruit a few of them.”

  “Did I tell you why I came to Babilar?” she asked, still holding the necklace by its small S pendant.

  I shook my head.

  “Word is,” Megan said, “that Regalia can enhance an Epic’s powers. Make them stronger, more versatile.”

  I nodded slowly. “So what she said to me the other day …”

  “She didn’t just make it up then. This is something she’s been claiming, in certain circles, for at least a year now.”

  “Which explains why so many High Epics have come to Babilar,” I said. “Mitosis, Sourcefield, Obliteration. She promised to increase their power in exchange for doing as she demanded.”

  “And if there’s one thing most Epics want,” Megan agreed, “it’s more power. No matter how strong they already are.”

  I shifted, feeling the bridge rock beneath us. “So you …”

  “I came,” Megan said softly, “because I figured if she really can increase an Epic’s powers, she might be able to take mine away. Make me normal again.”

  Silence hung between us like a dead wombat on a string.

  “Megan …”

  “A foolish dream,” she said, dropping the necklace and turning from me. “As foolish as yours. You’re as idealistic as Abraham, David.” She continued across the bridge, leaving me.

  I hurried to catch up. “Maybe,” I said, taking her by the arm as we reached the other side. “But maybe not. Let’s work together, Megan. You and me. Maybe what you need is a pressure valve of some sort. You use your powers a little here and there, in a controlled situation, to scratch the itch. That lets you practice restraining the emotions. Or maybe there’s another trick, one we can discover together.”

  She moved to pull away, but I held on tight.

  “Megan,” I said, stepping around her and meeting her eyes. “Let’s at least try.”

  “I …” She took a deep breath. “Sparks, you’re hard to ignore.”

  I smiled.

  Finally, she turned and pulled me toward an abandoned tent, really just a cloth propped up on one side by a pole mounted in the rooftop. “If we’re going to do this, you have to understand,” Megan said softly, “that my powers are not what they seem.”

  “The illusions?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She squatted down in the shadows of the abandoned tent, and I joined her, uncertain what we were hiding from. Likely she just wanted to be sheltered as she talked, not so out in the open. But there was something very hesitant about her.

  “I …” She bit her lip. “I’m not an illusion Epic.”

  I frowned but didn’t object.

  “You haven’t figured it out?” Megan asked. “That time back in Newcago in the elevator shaft, when you and I were close to being spotted by guards. They shined a flashlight right on us.”

  “Yeah. You made an illusion of darkness to hide us.”

  “And did you see any darkness?”

  “Well, no.” I frowned. “Does
this have to do with the dowser?” It was the device—a real piece of technology, so far as I knew—that scanned a person and determined if they were an Epic or not. The Reckoners tested everyone in their team with some regularity. “I never did figure out how you fooled it. You could have created an illusion on the screen to cover the real result, but …”

  “The dowser records its results,” Megan finished for me.

  “Yeah. If Tia or Prof ever looked back at its logs, they’d have noticed a positive identification of an Epic. I can’t believe they never did that.” I focused on Megan, her face lit softly by some glowing spraypaint beneath us. “What are you?”

  Megan hesitated, then spread her hands to her sides, and suddenly her wet clothing was dry. It changed, in an eyeblink, from a jacket and fitted tee to a jacket and green blouse, then a dress, then rugged camouflage military gear. The changes came faster and faster, different outfits flickering over her figure, and then her hair started changing. Different styles, different colors. Skin tones soon joined the mix. She was Asian, she was pale with freckles, she had skin darker than Mizzy’s.

  She was using her powers. That put my hair on end, even though I had been the one to encourage her.

  “With my powers,” she said, a hundred different versions of her face passing in a few moments, “I can reach into, and touch, other realities.”

  “Other realities?”

  “I once read a book,” Megan continued, her flickering features and clothing finally returning to her normal self, wet jacket and all, “that claimed there were infinite worlds, infinite possibilities. That every decision made by any person in this world created a new reality.”

  “That sounds bizarre.”

  “Says the man who just flew through a city using a device powered by the corpse of a dead Epic.”

  “Well, research derived from a dead Epic,” I corrected.

  “No,” Megan said. “An actual corpse. The ‘research’ involves using bits of dead Epic and drawing their abilities forth. What did you think the motivator on that machine was?”

  “Huh.” Mizzy had said the motivators were each individual to the device. So … like, individual because they had a piece of a dead Epic in them? Probably just the mitochondrial DNA, I thought. The Reckoners harvested it from dead Epics, and used it as currency.… That was what made the motivator work. It made some sense. Creepy sense, at least.

  “Anyway,” Megan said, “we’re not talking about motivators right now. We’re talking about me.”

  “That happens to be one of my favorite topics,” I said, though I felt jarred. If Megan’s powers were what she said, it meant I’d been wrong. All those years, I’d been certain I knew what Firefight was, that I’d figured out a secret nobody else knew. So much for that.

  “Best I can tell,” Megan said, “I pull one of those other realms—those not-places of possibility never attained—into our own, and for a time skew this reality toward that one.

  That night, in the elevator shaft, we weren’t there.”

  “But—”

  “And we were,” Megan continued. “To those men looking for us, the shaft was empty. In the reality they inspected, you and I had never climbed up there. I presented for them another world.”

  “And the dowser?”

  “I presented to it a world where there was no Epic for it to find.” She took a deep breath. “Somewhere, there’s a world—or maybe just a possibility of one—where I don’t carry this burden. Where I’m just me again.”

  “And what about Firefight?” I asked. “The image you showed the world, the fire Epic?”

  Megan hesitated, then raised her hand.

  An Epic appeared in front of us. A tall, handsome man with clothing aflame and a face that seemed molten. Eyes that glowed, a fist that dripped trails of fire, like burning oil. I could actually feel the heat, just faintly.

  I glanced at Megan. She didn’t seem to be losing control despite using her powers. When she spoke, it was her voice—the her I knew.

  “If there’s a world where I don’t have powers,” Megan said, looking at the imposing figure, “there is one where I have different powers. It’s easier to summon forth some possibilities than it is to summon others. I don’t know why. It isn’t like this one is similar to our world. In it, I have a completely different power set, and beyond that …”

  “You’re a dude,” I said, noticing the similarity of features.

  “Yeah. Kind of disconcerting, you know?”

  I shivered, looking over this burning Epic that could have been Megan’s twin. I’d been way off about her abilities.

  I stood up, meeting Firefight’s gaze. “So you don’t have to … like, swap places with him or anything? To bring him here, I mean?”

  “No,” she said. “I pull shadows from another world into this one. That warps reality around the shadow in strange ways, but it’s all still just a shadow. I can bring him here, but I’ve never seen his world.”

  “Does he … know I’m here?” I asked, glancing at Megan.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I can get him to do what I want, mostly, but I think that’s because my powers seek out a reality where he was already going to do what it is I want him to do.…”

  I met those burning eyes, and they seemed to be able to see me. They seemed to know me. Firefight nodded his head to me, then vanished.

  “I felt heat,” I said, looking at Megan.

  “That varies,” she said. “Sometimes, when I swap in the other reality—splicing it into our own—it’s shadowy and indistinct. Other times, it’s almost real.” She grimaced. “We’re supposed to be hiding, aren’t we? I shouldn’t be going around summoning High Epics that glow in the night.”

  “I think that was awesome,” I said softly.

  I immediately regretted my words. These were powers Megan had just said she didn’t want to have. They corrupted her, sought to destroy her. Complimenting her powers was sort of like complimenting someone with a broken leg on how white their bone was as it stuck from their skin.

  But she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I could swear she blushed a little. “It’s not much,” she said. “Really, it’s a lot of work for a simple effect. Surely you’ve read of Epics who could make illusions of whatever they want without having to pull some alternate reality out of their pocket.”

  “I suppose.”

  She crossed her arms, looking me over. “All right. We should do something about that outfit.”

  “What? You think a guy wandering around in a wetsuit with strange Epic-derived devices strapped to his limbs is suspicious?”

  She didn’t answer me, instead placing her hand on my shoulder. Jeans and a jacket—both almost exactly like ones I actually owned—faded into existence around me, covering up the wetsuit. The bottoms of the legs flared, wide enough to go around the spyril. I was pretty sure that wasn’t fashionable, but what did I know about fashion? In Newcago, the rage was outfits based on old 1920s Chicago.

  I poked at the clothes. They weren’t real, though I thought I could feel them just faintly. Or, like, I felt a memory of them. Does that make any sense? Probably not.

  She inspected me, raising a critical eyebrow.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Trying to decide if I should change your face to make it less likely you’ll be spotted sneaking up on Obliteration.”

  “Uh … okay.”

  “There are side effects, though,” she said. “When swapping someone’s body, I’m always worried I’ll end up swapping them out completely with the version from another reality.”

  “Have you done that before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, arms crossed. “I’m mostly convinced that every time I die, my ‘reincarnation’ is really just my powers summoning out of another dimension a version of myself that didn’t die.” She shivered visibly. “Anyway, let’s leave you like you are. I wouldn’t want to swap your face and get it stuck that way. I’ve gotten used to the one you have. Shall we m
ove on?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We left the abandoned half tent and continued walking toward where Obliteration had set up. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Little hungry,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant.” I glanced over at her.

  She sighed as we walked. “I’m irritable. Like I haven’t gotten enough sleep. I want to snap at anyone close by, but it should fade soon.” She shrugged. “It’s better this time than it has been in the past. I don’t know why—though, despite what it might seem, I’m not really that powerful.”

  “You said something like that before.”

  “Because it’s true. But … well, that might be an advantage. It’s why I can do these things and not turn immediately. It’s harder for the really powerful Epics. For me, the only time it gets really bad is when I reincarnate.”

  We started across a bridge. “It feels odd,” I noted, “having an Epic to talk to about all this so frankly.”

  “It feels odd,” she said, “having your stupid voice say so much about my secrets.” Then she grimaced. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. A pleasant stroll with Megan wouldn’t feel right if a few wry comments didn’t accompany us.”

  “No, it’s not all right. That isn’t me, Knees. I’m not acerbic like that.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Okay,” she snapped, “maybe I am. But I’m not downright insulting. Or, at least, I don’t want to be. I hate this. It’s like I can feel myself slipping away.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Talking is good,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Tell me about your research.”

  “It’s kind of nerdy.”

  “I can handle nerdy.”

  “Well … I found those connections between some Epics and their weaknesses, right? Turns out, there’s a step beyond that. But to investigate it I’ll need to kidnap some Epics.”

  “You never think small, do you, Knees?”

  “No, listen.” I stopped her. “This is a great idea. If I can capture some Epics, then use their weaknesses to prevent them from using their powers, I can find out how long it takes them to turn normal. I can interview them, tease out connections from their past that might indicate what creates weaknesses in the first place.”