Firefight

  “Or, you know, you could interview the perfectly willing Epic walking beside you.”

  I coughed into my hand. “Well, um, this scheme may have started because I was thinking about how to rescue you from your powers. I figured if I knew how long it took, and what was required to hold an Epic … You know. It might help you.”

  “Aw,” she said. “That has to be the sweetest way someone has ever told me they were planning to kidnap and imprison me.”

  “I just—”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said, actually taking my arm. “I understand the sentiment. Thank you.”

  I nodded, and we walked for a time. There was no urgency. Val would take hours on her mission, and Obliteration wasn’t going anywhere. So it was okay to enjoy the night—well, enjoy it as much as was possible, all things considered.

  Babilar was beautiful. I was growing to like the strange light of the spraypaint. After the dull, reflective grey of Newcago, so much color was mesmerizing. The Babilarans could paint whatever murals they wanted, from scrawled names along the side of one building we passed, to a beautiful and fanciful depiction of the universe on the top of another.

  While I still wasn’t comfortable with how relaxed people were here, I did have to admit that there was a certain appealing whimsy about them. Would it really be so bad if this were all there was to life? Tonight, as we passed them swimming or chatting or drumming and singing, I found the people annoyed me far less than they had before.

  Perhaps it was the company. I had Megan on my arm, walking close beside me. We didn’t say much, but didn’t need to. I had her back, for the moment. I didn’t know how long it would last, but in this place of vibrant colors I could be with Megan again. For that I was thankful.

  We passed up onto a tall building, approaching the eastern side of town, where Obliteration waited. I turned our path toward a bridge leading to an even higher building. That would be a good spot to either place Tia’s camera or scope out a better location.

  “I’m worried that when I reincarnate, it’s not really me that comes back,” Megan said softly. “It’s some other version of me. I worry when it happens that eventually, something will go wrong and that other person will mess things up. Things I don’t want messed up.” She looked at me.

  “It’s the real you,” I said.

  “But—”

  “No, Megan. You can’t spend your life worrying about that. You said that the powers grab a version of you that didn’t die—everything else is the same. Just alive.”

  “I don’t know that for certain.”

  “You remember everything that happened to you except the time right before the death, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It means you’re still you. It’s true—I can sense that it is. You’re my Megan, not some other person.”

  She grew silent, and I glanced at her, but she was grinning. “You know,” she said, “talking to you sometimes—it makes me wonder if you’re actually the one who can reshape reality.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Could you swap Obliteration?” I asked. “Pull out a version of him without powers, or with a really obvious weakness, then stuff this one into another dimension somewhere?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not powerful enough,” she said. “The only times I’ve done anything truly dramatic are right after I die, on the morning when I reincarnate. Those times … it’s like I can pull bits of that reality with me, since I just arrived from it. But I’m not myself enough then to really control it at those times either, so don’t get any ideas.”

  “It was worth asking,” I said, then scratched my head. “Though, I suppose even if you could do it, we probably shouldn’t. I mean, what good is it to protect this Babilar if we let tons of other people die in another Babilar.” If the things she could do were even from other worlds that did exist, rather than just possibilities of worlds that could have existed.

  Man. Thinking about this was giving me a headache.

  “The goal is still to get rid of my powers, remember,” Megan said. “Regalia claimed to be uncertain she could achieve it, but she told me that if I served her, she would see.” Megan walked for a time, thoughtful. “I don’t know if she was lying or not, but I think you’re right. I think there has to be something behind all this, a purpose.”

  I stopped on the lip of the rooftop, looking at her standing on the edge of the bridge just behind me. “Megan, do you know your weakness?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, turning to look out over the city.

  “Does it have some kind of connection to your past?”

  “Just random coincidences,” Megan said. She turned and met my eyes. “But maybe they aren’t as random as I thought.”

  I smiled. Then I turned and continued across the rooftop.

  “You’re not going to ask what the weakness is?” she said, hurrying up behind me.

  “No. It belongs to you, Megan. Asking you for that … it’d be like asking someone for the key to their soul. I don’t want to put you in that position. It’s enough to know that I’m on the right course.”

  I continued on, but she didn’t follow. I glanced back at her and found her staring at me. She hurried up in a sudden motion and placed her hand on my back as she passed, letting her fingers trail around my side. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Then she took the lead, hurrying across the top of the roof to where our vantage waited.

  36

  OBLITERATION was still perched in the same place, though he glowed more powerfully now; in the night, he was so bright that it was getting tough to pick out his features. This particular rooftop was high enough to get a vantage on him but was still quite distant—only the powerful zoom on my scope let me get a good look. I’d have to move closer to plant the camera.

  I zoomed out a step and found that one of the readouts on the side of my holosight was a light meter. “You getting this, Tia?” I asked over the mobile. Megan sat beside me silently, now that I had an open line to the Reckoners. The only video being recorded came from my scope, so I figured we should be safe.

  “I can see him,” Tia said. “That’s in line with what I expected—if he follows the pattern from before, we still have a few more days until detonation.”

  “All right then,” I said. “I’ll plant the camera and make my way back to the pickup.”

  “Be careful,” Tia said. “The camera will need to be pretty close to be effective. You want support?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’ll call in if I need anything.”

  “Okay then,” Tia said, though she sounded hesitant. I hung up, deactivated the wireless link to my scope, and pocketed the mobile. I raised an eyebrow at Megan.

  “They have this place under guard,” she said softly. “The bridges have all been cut, and Newton frequently runs patrols. Regalia doesn’t want anyone wandering close.”

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” I said.

  “I didn’t say we couldn’t,” Megan said. “I’m just worried about you improvising.”

  “I’d assumed all your complaints about my improvisation back in Newcago were because you didn’t want us to actually kill Steelheart.”

  “In part,” she said. “But I still don’t like the way you run crazy all the time.”

  I grunted.

  “We need to talk about Steelheart, by the way,” Megan said. “You shouldn’t have done what you did.”

  “He was a tyrant,” I said, using the scope to check out buildings near Obliteration, scouting out a good place for the camera. I lingered on the gaping block of water where the building had been burned down. Charred beams and bits of other rubble jutted from the ocean like the broken teeth of a giant submerged boxer with his mouth open and head tipped back.

  Megan didn’t reply, so I glanced at her.

  “I feel sorry for them, David,” she said softly. “I know what it feels like; that could have been me the Reckoners executed. Steelheart was a tyrant, but at least he ran a good city. All th
ings considered, he wasn’t so bad, you know?”

  “He killed my father,” I said. “You don’t get a pass on murder because you’re not as bad as you could be.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you have this hang-up regarding Regalia?”

  Megan shook her head. “I feel bad for her, but she’s planning to let Obliteration vaporize the city. She has to be stopped.”

  I grunted in agreement. I just wished I could shake the feeling that despite our precautions, Regalia was a step ahead of us. I handed the rifle to Megan. “Spot for me?” I asked.

  She nodded, taking it.

  “I’m going to go for that building just beyond the one they burned down. It’s high enough that if I put the camera on the lip just below the roof, it should have a clear line of sight.” I fished out the box Tia had given me, a waterproof housing with the small camera inside. I put in my earpiece, then attuned my mobile to a private frequency matching Megan’s so we could talk without using the Reckoners’ common frequency.

  “David,” Megan said. She pulled her P226 out of the holster on her leg and offered it to me. “For luck. Just don’t drop the thing in the ocean.”

  I smiled and took the gun, then jumped off the building.

  There was certainly something liberating about the spyril. Jets of water slowed me until I touched down, softly, into the water. From there, not wanting to draw attention, I used the jets under the water to zip me through the streets.

  About two streets away I noticed that my dimensional clothing—man, that sounded cool—vanished. I was left in just the wetsuit again. It looked like Megan’s powers only worked at very close range. That fit with what I’d discovered years ago, when I’d figured out that a shadowy figure was always nearby when “Firefight” was seen in Newcago. Megan had needed to stay near to maintain the crossover.

  When I reached the building I looked upward. I’d need to go up some ten stories to get into a position where the camera could see Obliteration. The spyril might be able to get me there, but I was close enough to Obliteration now that if I hovered up that high, someone was sure to spot me.

  I took a breath and let the spyril lift me up one story, then I pulled my way into the building through a broken window. “I’m going to climb up through the building,” I said softly to Megan. “Have you spotted any of Regalia’s watchers?”

  “No,” Megan said. “They’re probably in the buildings too. I’m searching windows.”

  I took off the spyril gloves and clipped them to my belt, then stepped into the humid, overgrown innards of the building. Most of the fruit had been harvested but there was still enough of it to see by. I managed to climb out of the orchard over the root systems and find a hallway, then I prowled down it.

  I passed an old elevator shaft where the doors had been broken open by tree branches, and I kept going until I located the stairwell. I forced the door open to find a twisting stairwell overgrown with roots and vines. It looked like the plants all sent runners into shafts like this one, seeking the water below.

  I turned on my mobile’s light, careful to keep it dim. I didn’t want anyone spotting a moving light through one of the windows, but with all this foliage blocking the view, I figured I should be okay inside the stairwell. I started to climb the steps, making it up the first flight without difficulty.

  “This is a nice gun,” Megan said in my ear as I started up the second flight. “Light readings, wind projections … Both active infrared and thermal? A control for remote firing? Ooh, recoil reduction gravatonics! Can I keep this?”

  “I thought you liked handguns,” I said, reaching a section of broken steps. I looked up, then jumped and grabbed a root, which I scaled with some difficulty.

  “A girl has to be flexible,” Megan said. “Up close and personal is my style, but sometimes, somebody needs to be shot from a distance.” She paused. “I think I just spotted a lookout in the building next to yours. I can’t get a straight sight. I’m going to reposition.”

  “Any birds?” I asked, grunting as I climbed.

  “Birds?”

  “It’s a hunch. Before you move, see if there are any pigeons on rooftops nearby.”

  “Okay …”

  I managed to climb the system of roots up to the next landing, then I swung off and landed on the steps. The next flight was easy.

  “Huh,” Megan said. “Look at that. There is a pigeon on that rooftop there, all by itself, in the middle of the night.”

  “One of Newton’s cronies,” I said. “Knoxx, an Epic with shapeshifting powers.”

  “Knoxx? I’ve met that guy. He’s not an Epic.”

  “We didn’t think he was either,” I said. “He revealed the abilities for the first time a few days back.”

  “Sparks! You think …?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “My notes listed Obliteration’s teleportation power needing a cooldown time, but he doesn’t seem to have that limitation anymore. Now this Knoxx guy. Something’s going on, even if it’s just some strange plot where Regalia is pretending to have abilities she doesn’t.”

  “Yeah,” Megan said. “You there yet?”

  “Working on it,” I said, rounding another flight of steps. “This is kind of a lot of work.”

  “Whine whine,” Megan said.

  “Says the woman watching comfortably from—”

  “Wait! David, Prof is here.”

  I froze in the stairwell beside a faded number fifteen painted on the concrete wall. “What?”

  “I’ve been scanning windows,” Megan said. “David, Prof is sitting in one. I’m zoomed in on him now.”

  “Sparks.” Well, he had said he’d come back to the city tonight. “What’s he doing?”

  “Watching Obliteration,” Megan said softly, the tension bleeding from her voice. “He’s not here for us. He doesn’t seem to have spotted me.”

  “He’s checking in on Obliteration,” I said. “You know that building that collapsed out here?”

  “Yeah.” Megan sounded sick. “I couldn’t stop it, David. I—”

  “You didn’t need to. Prof saved the people.”

  “With his powers?”

  “Yeah.”

  Megan was silent on the line for a while. “He’s powerful, isn’t he?”

  “Very,” I said, excited. “Two defensive abilities, either of which would categorize him as a High Epic. Do you know how unusual that is? Even Steelheart only had the one defensive power, his impenetrable skin. You should have seen Prof when he saved us back in Newcago.”

  “In the tunnels?” Megan asked. “When I …?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My fail-safe transmission didn’t capture that,” she said. “Only you talking.”

  “It was incredible, believe me,” I said, still excited. “I’ve never read about an Epic like Prof and his ability to vaporize solids. Plus, his forcefields—they’re class A for sure. He made an enormous tunnel under the water and—”

  “David,” Megan said, “the more powerful an Epic, the harder it is for them to resist the … changes.”

  “Which is exactly why this is so exciting,” I said. “Don’t you see, Megan? If someone like Prof can remain good, it means so much. It’s a symbol, maybe even a bigger one than killing Steelheart! It proves that Regalia and the others could fight it off too.”

  “I suppose,” Megan said hesitantly. “I just don’t like him being here. If he sees me …”

  “You didn’t betray us,” I said as I climbed over a large section of roots. “Not really.”

  “I … kinda did,” Megan said. “And even if I didn’t, there are other issues.”

  “You mean Sam?” I said. “I’ve explained that you didn’t kill him. I think I nearly have them convinced. Anyway, I’m almost to the top. Where is that pigeon?”

  “Building directly south of you. So long as you’re quiet, you should be safe.”

  “Good,” I said, catching my breath as I reached floor number eighteen. I’d started
on floor ten, and there were twenty in this building. Two more and I could place the camera and be gone.

  “David,” Megan said, “you really believe this, don’t you? That we can fight it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Fire,” Megan said softly.

  I stopped on the stairwell. “On what?” I asked.

  “It’s my weakness.”

  I grew cold.

  “Firefight,” she explained, “is my opposite. Male where I am female. In that universe, everything is reversed. Here, fire affects my powers. There, fire is my power. Using him as my cover was perfect; nobody would use fire to try to kill me if they thought my own powers were fire-based, right? But by the light of natural fire, the shadows I summon break apart and vanish. I know, somehow, that if I die in a fire I won’t reincarnate.”

  “We burned your body,” I whispered. “Back in Newcago.”

  “Oh sparks, don’t tell me things like that.” I felt as if I could hear a shiver in her voice. “I was already dead. The body was just a husk. I always had Steelheart’s people bury my bodies after I died, but I could never watch it. Seeing your own corpse is kind of a trip, you know?”

  I waited on the steps. A few pieces of fruit dangled here, lighting the stairwell in a gentle glow.

  “So why doesn’t Firefight vanish?” I asked. “He’s made of fire, which should negate your powers, and then he would go away.”

  “He’s just a shadow,” Megan said. “No real fire. That’s what I’ve been able to figure. Either that or …”

  “Or?”

  “Or when I pull his shadow through, he brings with him some of the rules of his universe. I’ve had … experiences that make me question. I don’t know how this works, David. Any of it. It frightens me sometimes. But fire is my weakness.” She hesitated. “I wanted you to know what it was. In case … you know. Something needs to be done about me.”

  “Don’t say things like that.”

  “I have to,” Megan whispered. “David, you need to know this. Our house burned down when I was just a kid. I was almost killed. I crawled through the smoke, holding on to my stuffed kitty, everything burning around me. They found me on the lawn, covered in soot. I have nightmares about that day. Repeatedly. All the time. If you do manage to interrogate other Epics, David … ask them what their nightmares are about.”