“And Megan?” I asked.
He didn’t reply.
“Prof,” I said. “Before you kill her, at least try out what she said. Light a fire. See if it destroys the images she creates. You’ll have proof that she was telling me the truth.”
Prof reached up and touched the glass of the window. He’d left his lab coat on the back of the chair and was wearing only a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt, both the same oddly antiquated style that he favored. I could almost imagine him out in the jungle with a machete and a map, exploring ancient ruins.
“You can control the darkness inside,” I said to him. “And since you can do it, Megan can too. It—”
“Stop,” Prof whispered.
“But listen, it—”
“Stop!” Prof yelled, spinning on me. His hand moved so fast I barely saw it before he grabbed me by the throat and hauled me into the air, turning and slamming me back against the large window.
I let out a gurk. The only illumination in the room was that lamp on the desk, backlighting Prof, hiding his face in shadows. I scrambled, choking, trying to pry his fingers free from my throat. Prof took me under the arm with his other hand and lifted me up, relieving some pressure on my throat. I was able to wheeze in a short breath.
Prof leaned against me, forcing more air out of my lungs, and spoke slowly. “I’ve tried to be patient with you. I’ve tried to tell myself your betrayal isn’t personal, that you were seduced by an expert illusionist and con woman. But damn it, son, you’re making it very hard. Even though I knew what you’d do, I hoped for better. I thought you, of all people, understood. We can’t trust them!”
I struggled to wheeze something out, and he let me breathe a little more.
“Please … put me down …,” I said.
He studied me for a moment in the dim light, then stepped back, letting me drop to the floor. I gasped for air, pushing myself up beside the wall, tears rolling from the corners of my eyes.
“You should have come to me,” Prof said. “If you’d just come to me instead of hiding everything …”
I struggled to my feet. Sparks! Prof had a grip. Did his power portfolio include enhanced physical abilities? I might have to change the entire subset of Epic I’d categorized him under.
“Prof,” I said, rubbing my neck, “something is very, very wrong about this city. And we’re blind! Yes, your plan for Obliteration is a good one, but what is Regalia plotting? Who is Dawnslight? I didn’t get a chance to tell you. He contacted me again, yesterday. He seems to be on our side, but there’s something strange about him. He mentioned … surgery on Obliteration? What is Regalia planning? She has to know that we’re going to try to kill some of her pet Epics. She seems to be encouraging it. Why?”
“Because of what I’ve been saying all along!” Prof said, throwing his hands into the air. “She’s hoping we’ll be able to stop her. For all I know, she brought Obliteration here so we could kill him.”
“If that’s true, it would imply an element of resistance inside of her,” I said, stepping forward. “It means she’s fighting back. Prof, is it so far a stretch to believe that she might be hoping you’ll be able to help her? Not kill her, but restore her to what she once was?”
Prof stood in the darkness, a hulking silhouette. Sparks, he was so intimidating when he chose to be. Broad-chested, square-faced—almost inhuman in his proportions. It was easy to forget how big he was; you start thinking of him as the manager, the leader of the team. Not as this figure of lines and muscles, cut of blackness and shadow.
“Do you realize how dangerous this talk of yours is?” he asked softly. “For me?”
“What?”
“Your talk of good Epics. It gets inside my brain, like maggots eating at the flesh, worming their way toward my core. I decided long ago—for my sanity, for the world itself—that I could not use my powers.”
I felt cold.
“But now, here you come. Talking about Firefight, and how she lived among us for months, using her powers only when necessary. It starts me wondering. I could do it too, couldn’t I? Aren’t I strong? Don’t I have a handle on it? When you left me yesterday, in the room by myself, I started creating forcefields again. Little ones, to bottle up chemicals, to glow and give me light. I keep finding excuses to use them, and now I’m planning to use my powers to stop Obliteration—create a shield bigger than any I’ve created in years.”
He stepped forward and grabbed me by the front of my shirt again. He yanked me close.
“It’s not working,” Prof hissed at me. “It’s destroying me, step by step. You are destroying me, David.”
“I …” I licked my lips.
“Yes,” Prof whispered, dropping me. “We tried this once. Me. Abigail. Lincoln. Amala. A team, just like in the movies, you know?”
“… And?”
He met my gaze in the gloom. “Lincoln went bad—you call him Murkwood these days. He always did love those sparking books. I had to kill Amala.”
I swallowed.
“It doesn’t work, David,” Prof said. “It can’t work. It’s destroying me. And …” He took a deep breath. “It has already destroyed Megan. She texted this morning. She wants to meet with you again. So at least something good will come out of this.”
“No!” I said. “You’re not—”
“We’ll do what we do, David,” Prof said quietly. “There will be a reckoning.”
I felt a mounting horror. I had an image of Sourcefield powerless in the deluge of Kool-Aid, struggling with the bathroom door, looking back at me with pleading in her eyes. Only in my mind, she had Megan’s face.
A pulled trigger.
Red mixing with red.
“Please,” I said, frantic, scrambling for Prof. “Don’t. We can think of something else. You heard about the nightmares. Is that what happens to you? Tell me, Prof. Was Megan right? Do they have something to do with weaknesses?”
He took me by the arm and shoved me backward. “I forgive you,” he said. Then he walked toward the doorway.
“Prof?” I demanded, following him toward the door. “No! It—”
Prof raised a hand absently and a forcefield sprang into place in the doorway, separating us.
I pressed my palms on it, watching Prof walk down the hallway. “Prof! Jon Phaedrus!” I pounded on the forcefield, for all the good that did.
He stopped, then looked back at me. In that moment, his face in shadows, I didn’t see Prof the leader—or even Prof the man.
I saw a High Epic who had been defied.
He turned and continued down the hallway, vanishing from my sight. The forcefield remained. If the jackets were any guide, it could stay in place as long as it was needed, and Prof could travel quite a distance without it vanishing.
A short time later I spotted the sub in the enormous window, passing in the dark water. They left me without my mobile, the spyril, or any way to escape.
I was alone.
Just me and the water.
PART FOUR
40
I spent the next hour or so slumped at Tia’s desk in the meeting room, the huge window looming over me like a roommate who just heard you unwrap a bag of toffee-pulls. I stood up and began pacing, but moving only reminded me of what the team would be doing out there. Running, fighting for their lives. Trying to save the city.
And here I was. Benched.
I looked up at Prof’s forcefield. I couldn’t help feeling that Prof specifically wanted me out of the way for this operation—that catching me with Megan was an excuse, not a reason.
Megan. Sparks! Megan. He wouldn’t really kill her, would he? My thoughts kept turning back to her over and over, like a penguin who couldn’t be convinced that these plastic fish weren’t real. She’d trusted me. She’d told me her weakness. Now Prof might kill her because of it.
I hadn’t completely sorted out my emotions regarding her. But I was sure I didn’t want her to get hurt.
I stalked back to the desk
and sat, trying to keep my eyes off that dominating view of the dark waters. I started digging through the desk drawers, looking for something to distract myself. I found an emergency sidearm—just a little nine-millimeter, but at least I would be armed if I could ever get out of this stupid room—and ammunition. In another drawer I found a datapad. It had no connectivity to the Knighthawk networks, but it did contain a folder with a copy of Tia’s notes about Regalia’s location.
The map showed the path that the Reckoners would use for today’s trap. They’d follow Newton on her rounds, then hit her in a specific spot in an attempt to make Regalia appear. I found a little X on the datapad’s battle map with an oblique reference to Prof in position for an emergency—and I now recognized that as an indication of where Prof would be waiting to stop Obliteration if necessary. But what were they planning to do about Megan?
Prof has my mobile, I thought. He wouldn’t even have to work to set a trap for Megan. All he’d have to do is send her a text asking to meet, then attack her. And if she died by fire, she wouldn’t reincarnate.
Feeling even more anxious, I started looking through the datapad, though for what I didn’t know. Maybe Tia had recorded something about a plan to hurt Megan.
There. A file named “Firefight.” I tapped it.
It turned out to be a video file.
Within seconds I knew what it was. A man, puffing with exertion, moved through one of the jungle-esque rooms of a Babilar high-rise. The recording was from his viewpoint, likely captured by one of the earpieces that the team often wore.
The man pushed through vines, passing fruit with a deep inner glow. He looked over his shoulder, then scrambled over a fallen tree trunk and peeked into another room.
“Sam.” It was Val’s voice. “You weren’t supposed to engage.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “But I did. So now what?”
“Get out.”
“Working on it.”
Sam crossed through this second room in a rush, moving along the wall. He stepped over a coffeemaker that had sprouts growing out of the top, hurried through a small break-room kitchen, and finally found a wall with windows. He glanced out at a drop of four stories, then looked back into the jungle.
“Go,” Val said.
“I heard something.”
“Go faster, then!”
Sam remained with a hand on the window frame. In the light of a glowing fruit I could make out his gloves. He was wearing the spyril.
“All we’re doing is watching, Val,” he whispered. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”
“Sam …”
“All right,” he grumbled, then used his elbow to knock some of the glass out of the frame so he could climb through. He pointed the streambeam down into the water below, but hesitated.
Something rustled in the room. Sam spun, a jarring motion of the camera accompanied by a muffled crunch as a vine brushed his earpiece.
Megan stood behind him, shadowed by draping foliage, wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt. She seemed surprised to see him, and didn’t have her weapon out.
All grew still.
I found myself rising from my seat, words formed in my mouth. I wanted to scream at the screen, even though it was just a recording. “Just go,” I said. I pleaded.
“Sam, no,” Val said.
Sam reached for the gun at his side.
Megan drew faster.
It was over in under a second. I heard the shot, and then the camera lurched again. When it settled, Sam’s camera faced a nearby wall. I heard Sam’s breathing, labored, but he didn’t move. A shadow settled over him, and I could hear shuffling and figured that Megan—ever conscious of firearms—was disarming Sam and checking to see if he was feigning injury.
Val started whispering something over and over. Sam’s name.
I realized I was sweating.
Megan’s shadow retreated and Sam’s breathing grew worse and worse. Val tried to talk to him, told him that Exel was on his way, but Sam gave no response.
I didn’t see his life end. But I heard it. One breath at a time until … nothing.
I sank down into the seat as the video stopped, Val’s voice cutting out halfway through a yell for Exel to hurry. I felt like I’d watched something intimate, something I shouldn’t have.
She really did kill him, I thought. It had kind of been self-defense, hadn’t it? She’d checked on the noise he was making. He’d drawn a gun.…
Of course, Megan reincarnated if killed. Sam didn’t.
I lowered the datapad, numb. I couldn’t blame Megan for defending herself, but at the same time, it tore at me to think of what had happened. This could have been avoided so easily.
How much of what Megan had told me could I trust? After all, Prof had been spying on me. And now it turned out Megan really had killed Sam. Unfortunately, I realized that deep down, I wasn’t surprised. Megan had seemed uncomfortable when I’d mentioned Sam to her, and she hadn’t explained herself or what had happened. I hadn’t given her the chance.
I hadn’t wanted to know.
Who could I trust? My emotions were a messed-up jumble, a churning stew of confusion, frustration, and nausea. Nothing made sense anymore. Not like it should have.
Gasping for breath …, Regalia had said to me.
I latched on to a thought, something different, something to pull me away from the muddle of how I felt about Megan, Prof, and the Reckoners. That day back when I’d first been practicing with the spyril, Regalia had appeared. She’d talked about how I’d die alone someday. Gasping for breath in one of these jungle buildings, one step from freedom, she’d said. Your last sight a blank wall that someone had spilled coffee on. A pitiful, pathetic end.
Though I hated to see any of this again, I rewound the video to Sam’s last sight, his camera pointed at the wall. That wall was stained as if something had spilled on it.
Regalia had seen this video.
Oh, sparks. How much did she know? My discomfort with this entire mission flooded back. We didn’t know half of what we thought we did. Of that I was certain.
I hesitated for a moment, then swiped everything off Tia’s desk but the datapad.
I needed to think. About Epics, about Regalia, and about what I actually knew. I bottled up my emotions for the moment, and I set aside everything we assumed we knew. I even set aside my own notes, which I’d gathered before joining the Reckoners. Obliteration’s powers proved that my own knowledge could be distinctly faulty.
So what did I actually know about Regalia?
One fact stood out to me. She’d had the Reckoners in hand, and had decided not to kill us. Why? Prof was certain she wanted him to kill her. I wasn’t willing to make that leap. What other reasons could there be?
She confronted us that first night expecting to find Prof there, I thought. Sure, she could have finished off most of us without a thought. But not Jonathan Phaedrus.
She knew him as an Epic. She was familiar with his powers. She had let us live, ostensibly to deliver the message that Prof was to kill her. Well, I didn’t accept that she wanted to die. But why else would she goad Prof into coming to Babilar?
Regalia knew how Sam died, I thought. In great detail. Detail that Megan was unlikely to have explained. So either she’d watched that video, or she’d been there on that night.
Could she have pulled the strings from behind the scenes, engineering Sam’s death? Or was I simply searching for ways to exonerate Megan?
I focused back on our first night in Babilar, when we had faced Obliteration. That fight had worn us out, and after we’d run, Regalia had appeared in her glory—but had been shocked that Prof wasn’t there. What if Regalia had done this all to find a way to kill Prof? Prof knew a lot about Regalia’s powers. He knew her limits, her range, the holes in her abilities. Could she have the same intelligence on him?
I suddenly imagined it all as an intricate Reckoner-style trap, one laid by Regalia to bring Prof here and eliminate him. A plot to remove one
of the most powerful potential rivals to her dominance. It seemed like a tenuous connection, a stretch. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Prof was in serious danger.
Could it really be that we had not been the hunters here at all? Were we, instead, the ones being trapped?
I stood. I had to get out. Prof was probably in danger. And even if he wasn’t, I couldn’t risk him attacking Megan. I needed answers from her. I needed to talk to her about Sam, about what she’d done. I needed to know how much of what she’d told me was a lie.
And … the truth was I loved her.
Despite it all—despite the questioning, despite feeling betrayed—I loved her. And I’d be damned before I let Prof kill her.
I strode to the door and tried to pry the forcefield out of the way. I tried pushing, thumping—I even grabbed the chair from the desk and beat it against the forcefield. All, of course, had no effect.
Breathing hard from the exertion, next I tried to break the wood of the frame around the forcefield. That didn’t work either. I had no leverage and the building was too sturdy. Maybe with tools and a day or so, I could break through one of the walls into another room, but that would take way too long. There were no other exits.
Except …
I turned and eyed the large window, taller than a man and several times as wide, looking out at the ocean. It was midnight, and therefore dark, but I could see shapes shifting out there in that awful blackness.
Each time I went into the water, I felt that void trying to suck me down. Consume me.
Slowly, I walked to Tia’s desk and fished in the bottom drawer, picking up the nine-millimeter. A Walther. Good gun, one that even I’d admit was accurate. I loaded the ammo, then looked up at the window.
I immediately felt an oppressive dread. I’d come to an uneasy truce with the waters, yet I still felt like I could sense them eager to break through and crush me.
I was there again, in the blackness, with a weight on my leg towing me down into oblivion. How deep were we? I couldn’t swim up from down here, could I?