“I could use the cloak,” I said, pointing. “But I don’t have much to trade.”
“You’ve got nice shoes.”
I looked down. My sneakers. Good rubber on those, the type that was getting harder and harder to find. If I was going to be chasing the Reckoners, I suspected I’d need my footwear. I fished in my pockets and only came out with one thing. The chain that Abraham had given me, with the symbol of the Faithful dangling at the end.
The young girl’s eyes widened.
I stood for a long moment.
Then I traded my shoes instead. I wasn’t certain how much my shoes were worth, but I just kept haggling, adding things until I walked away with the cloak, a pair of worn-out sandals, and a pretty-good-looking knife.
I put on my new gear and found my way to a tavern on the side of the rooftop, a place Newton stopped for a drink most nights before continuing on to harass the various shopkeepers of the cathedral. It sold alcohol that glowed faintly in the night. If there was a universal law regarding mankind, it was that they’d find a way to ferment anything, given time.
I didn’t order a drink, but instead settled down outside on the ground next to the tavern’s wooden wall, hood drooping over my eyes. Just another idle Babilaran. Then I tried to decide what I’d do if Newton actually appeared.
I had about two minutes to think on it before she strolled right past me. She was dressed in the same retro-punk style from before, a leather jacket with pieces of metal jutting out of it, like it was wrapping paper that had been pulled tight around a death machine. Short hair, cut and dyed various colors.
She was tailed by two of her flunkies, dressed with similar flamboyance, and they didn’t stop to get a drink. Heart racing, I stood up and followed them as they prowled through the market. Where was Val? She’d be the one tailing Newton—Exel and Tia would be somewhere nearby in the submarine. Would Mizzy be on sniper duty, then? Bob’s Cathedral was a tall building, so there weren’t many places nearby to give a proper vantage, and sniping would be tough with all these people. Maybe Mizzy would be stationed somewhere farther south, close to where the trap was supposed to take place.
I was intent on finding Val or Exel, so I saw when a man emerged from the crowd and hurled a piece of fruit at Newton. It soared through the air and made contact in a way—Newton’s powers engaged immediately, reflecting the energy. The fruit bounced back and exploded when it hit the ground. The Epic spun around, searching for the source of the attack.
I froze in place, sweating. Did I look suspicious? Newton pointed, and one of her flunkies—a tall, muscular woman wearing a jacket missing the sleeves—took off after the man who’d thrown the fruit. He was doing his best to disappear into the crowd.
Sparks! This wasn’t part of the plan; it was just a bystander making a snap decision. Suddenly another piece of fruit flew at Newton, coming from another direction, along with a cry of “Building Seventeen!” This one was deflected too, of course, and the crowd immediately began to make itself scarce. I had no choice but to join them, lest I be left standing alone when the roof cleared.
This was exactly the sort of thing the Reckoners hated. I could imagine the chatter over the mobiles now, Val explaining that some locals had gotten it into their heads to get retribution for the building Newton had burned down. As much as I appreciated some people of Babilar finally showing a spine, I couldn’t help but be annoyed by their timing.
Tia would want to abort, of course, but I doubted that Prof would let it happen over something as simple as this. I joined a bunch of people crowding into a nearby shop tent, the owner yelling for them not to lay their hands on anything. I pocketed a pair of walkie-talkies, feeling only slightly guilty about it. As I was stuffing them into my cloak, I heard an odd noise. Whispering? Like someone talking under their breath.
Something about it seemed familiar. Cautious, I looked around. Standing not three people from me, pressed in by the hiding crowd, was a woman in a nondescript glowing green cloak. I could just make out her face peeking out underneath her hood.
It was Mizzy.
43
YES, it was Mizzy, a pack slung over her shoulder, muttering quietly to herself—no doubt speaking to the other Reckoners. She didn’t seem to have noticed me.
Sparks! I’d been so focused on finding Val that I hadn’t thought they might finally let Mizzy take point.
A scream came from outside. It seemed that Newton’s goons had found one of the malcontents.
Mizzy danced from one foot to the other, anxious; she wouldn’t want to let Newton get away from her. Conversely, I’d found my target, and was perfectly happy letting Newton go bother someone else.
I needed to get Mizzy alone, only for a few minutes, then explain myself. How to do that without her immediately calling to Prof and the others? I had little doubt that Val would shoot me, no questions asked—she already had—and Prof would probably be in line right after her, if his powers really were starting to get to him. Mizzy, though … I might be able to convince Mizzy.
First I had to get the earpiece out of her ear. I wiggled through the tent, riding the shifting press of people as some in front peeked out to see what was happening. I managed to place myself right behind Mizzy.
Then, heart pounding, I took out the knife—leaving it sheathed, since I didn’t actually want to hurt her—and pressed it against Mizzy’s back. At the same moment, I put my hand over her mouth.
“Don’t move,” I whispered.
She went stiff. I reached my hand into her hood and grabbed the earpiece, then fiddled with it, flipping the off switch. Perfect. Now I just—
Mizzy twisted, grabbed my arm, and I’m not sure what happened next. Suddenly I was bursting out the back flaps of the tent, the world spinning. I hit the rooftop on my shoulder, the knife skidding from my hand.
Mizzy was on top of me a second later, arm raised to punch, her face framed by glowing green cloth. She saw me and immediately gasped. “Oh!” She patted me on the shoulder. “David! Are you all right?”
“I—”
“Wait!” she exclaimed, clamping her hand over her mouth. “I hate you!”
She raised her fist again and punched me right in the gut. And Calamity, she could punch. I growled, twisting—mostly in pain—and threw her off me. I managed to stumble to my feet and went for the knife, but Mizzy grabbed me under the arm and …
Well, everything flipped around again, and suddenly I was on my back, completely out of breath. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I was way bigger than she was. Wasn’t I supposed to win in a fight? True, I didn’t have much hand-to-hand training, and she seemed to have … well, more than “not much.”
She had dropped her pack in the chaos and was reaching into her cloak for a gun. Not good. I managed to get to my feet again, wheezing, and jumped for her. She might get to pound on me some more, but so long as she was doing that, she wouldn’t be shooting me. Theoretically.
However, what she pulled out wasn’t a gun; it was a mobile. Almost as bad—she was going to call the team. I slammed into her as she was distracted. The mobile bounced away, and Mizzy struggled against my grip, getting her arm up and ramming her thumb right into my eye.
I yelped, throwing myself backward, blinking at the pain. Mizzy rolled for her mobile. So I kicked it.
Kind of too hard. It skidded right off the side of the roof. Mizzy threw herself that direction in a futile attempt to grab it. I took a moment to look around—one eye still squeezed shut. The tent we’d been in was shaking, one of the poles having collapsed as Mizzy threw me out the back. Off to our right, one of Newton’s gang members was prowling through the streets between tents, perhaps looking for the people who had attacked her, perhaps just watching the perimeter. I ducked to the side and pulled up my hood again, my back against the wall of a wooden shack.
Nearby, Mizzy looked up from the edge of the rooftop and glared at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she hissed.
“Someone poked me in the ey
e!” I snapped back. “That’s what’s wrong.”
“I—”
“Quiet!” I said. “One of Newton’s gang is coming this way.” I peeked around the side of the building and immediately cursed, ducking back around. Newton was there too now. Both were walking in our direction.
Sparks! I thought, searching for shelter. It was impossible to hide in the shadows of this stupid city because there weren’t any. The painted ground glowed under my feet with a sequence of vibrant, glassy colors.
One of the shacks ahead of me had a door that leaned open. I scrambled for it. Mizzy cursed and ran after me, pack over her shoulder. Inside I found a set of steps. What I’d mistaken for a shack was actually part of the larger skyscraper. A lot of these buildings had little structures on top, housing stairwells or storage. This one had steps that led down to the top floor.
I pulled off my cloak and wrapped it up as Mizzy crowded in behind me. She shut the door, then pressed a gun against my side.
Great.
“I don’t think it was related,” a woman’s voice said from outside. “This was just a coincidence.”
“They’re getting restless.” That was Newton’s voice. “A populace needs to be properly cowed to serve. Regalia shouldn’t hold me back.”
“Bah,” the first voice said. “You think you could do a better job, Newton? You’d lose control of this place in two weeks flat.”
I frowned at that comment, but only then did I realize the conversation was growing louder. With a start at my own stupidity, I twitched toward the stairs leading down.
Mizzy grabbed my shoulder and pressed the handgun into me more firmly. By the light of her hood, I could see her lips as she mouthed, “Don’t move.”
I pointed outside. “They’re coming in here!” I hissed.
Mizzy hesitated and I risked pulling out of her grip, then scrambled down the steps as quietly as I could. She followed reluctantly. It wasn’t happenstance that Newton had been coming this direction; she’d been looking for this very building.
Indeed, I heard the door open above us. I tried to move as quietly as possible down the stairwell, but soon found myself face to face with a wall of plants. Sparks! No way through. The stairwell was completely overgrown.
I spun around and put my back to the plants, heart pounding. Mizzy, still wearing a glowing cloak, joined me.
“I’m out of sight,” Newton’s voice echoed softly in the stairwell from above. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re following. You want to keep on with this?”
Silence.
“Yeah, fine,” Newton said. “Then what am I to do?”
More silence. She was talking to Regalia and had wanted to duck out of sight while she did it, so her tail wouldn’t overhear her or record her lip movements. Ordinarily that would be smart—except for the fact that she’d chosen a location populated by two Reckoners.
Well, one and a half Reckoners.
“Yeah, I suppose,” Newton said.
More silence.
“Fine. But I don’t like being bait. Remember that.” The broken door above opened, then swung closed. Newton was gone.
“What did you tell her?” Mizzy demanded, stepping away from me and leveling the gun in my direction, pack still over her shoulder. “She knows we’re following her? How much have you betrayed?”
“Nothing and everything,” I said with a sigh, letting myself slide down into a seated position, my back to the vine-covered wall. Now that the tense moment had passed, I realized just how much I hurt from being thrown around by Mizzy. I’d started to take for granted that such things wouldn’t hurt as much as they should, because they hadn’t in a long time. Prof’s forcefields had done their job well.
“What do you mean?” Mizzy demanded.
“Regalia knew about all our plans already. She appeared to me in the base.”
“What?” Mizzy looked appalled. “You let water into the base?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the important part. She appeared there. Mizzy, that’s supposedly outside of her range. Regalia has been playing us all along, and the plan is in serious danger.”
Mizzy’s face, shadowed and lit only by the glow of her cloak, was creased in worry. She bit her lip, but when I shifted, she straightened the arm holding the gun—and her grip didn’t waver. She was young and inexperienced, but she wasn’t incompetent. My aching shoulder and eye were proof of that.
“I need to contact the others,” she said.
“Which is why I came to you.”
“You put a knife to my back!”
“I wanted to explain myself,” I said, “before you brought the Reckoners down on me. Look, I think Regalia is planning to kill Prof. She’s been leading us along, setting up a trap for him. She knows he’s the only one who can stop her from dominating, so she wants to bring him down.”
Mizzy wavered. “You’re working with her.”
“Regalia?”
“No. Firefight.”
Oh. “Yes,” I said softly. “I am.”
“You admit it?”
I nodded.
“She killed Sam!”
“I’ve seen the video. Sam pulled a gun on her, Mizzy, and she’s a trained marksman. He tried to shoot her, so she shot back first.”
“But she’s evil, David,” Mizzy pleaded, stepping forward.
“Megan saved my life,” I said. “When Obliteration tried to kill me. That’s how I got away from him, when you were otherwise occupied.”
“Prof said she was toying with you,” Mizzy said. “He said you’d been compromised by your … affection for her.” Mizzy looked at me as if begging for it to not be true. “Even if he’s wrong, David, she’s an Epic. It’s our job to kill them.”
I sat in that darkened stairwell, eye smarting—I could still see with it, fortunately, but it hurt. Mizzy had gotten me pretty good. I sat there wondering, remembering. Thinking about the kid I’d been, studying every Epic. Hating them all. Making my plans to kill Steelheart.
I knew what Mizzy felt like. I’d been her. It was crazy, but I guess I wasn’t that person anymore. The shift had started back on that day I’d defeated Steelheart. I’d flown away in the copter, carrying his skull in my hands, overwhelmed. My father’s murderer dead, but only because of the help of another Epic.
What did I really believe? I fished in my pocket and pulled out the pendant Abraham had given me. It caught light from somewhere, a glow reflecting off a metal banister above, and sparkled. The symbol of the Faithful. “No,” I said, finally understanding. “We don’t kill Epics.”
“But—”
“We kill criminals, Mizzy.” I reached up and put on the necklace, then I stood. “We bring justice to those who have murdered. We don’t kill them because of what they are. We kill them because of the lives they threaten.” I’d been thinking about this the wrong way all my life.
Mizzy looked at that small pendant, with its stylized symbol at the end, hanging outside my shirt. “She’s still a criminal. Sam—”
“Will you execute her, Mizzy?” I asked. “Will you pull the trigger, knowing you’ve negated her powers and there’s nothing she can do? Will you watch that moment of realization in her eyes? Because I’ve done it, and I’ll tell you: it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.”
I met her eyes in the dim light. Then I started walking up the steps.
Mizzy held her gun on me for a moment, hand quivering. Then she looked away and lowered the weapon.
“We need to warn the others,” I said. “And, since I was stupid enough to ruin your mobile, I need to reach the submarine instead. Do you know where it is?”
“No,” Mizzy said. “Nearby, I think.”
I continued up the steps.
“He’s planning to kill her,” Mizzy said. “While we’re here, tailing Newton, Prof is going to trap and kill Firefight.”
I continued up the steps, a cold sweat chilling my brow. “I have to get to him. Somehow, I need to stop him from—”
“You
won’t get there in time,” Mizzy said. “Not without this, at least.”
I froze in place. Below, Mizzy unslung the pack from her shoulder and unzipped it.
She had the spyril inside.
44
I rushed back down the stairs and helped Mizzy get out the spyril. I started strapping it on.
“I’m helping you,” Mizzy said, kneeling beside me and working on my leg straps. “Why am I helping you?”
“Because I’m right,” I said. “Because Regalia is smarter than we are—and because everything about this mission feels off, and you know something awful is going to happen if we go through with it.”
She sat up. “Huh. Yeaaah, you should have said that stuff earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t have punched you so much.”
“I tried,” I said. “The punching kind of got in the way.”
“Really, somebody needs to teach you some hand-to-hand. Your showing was pathetic.”
“I don’t need hand-to-hand,” I said. “I’m a gunman.”
“And where’s your gun?”
“Ah … right.”
I shrugged the spyril’s main mechanism onto my back and pulled the straps tight while Mizzy handed up the gloves. “You know,” she said, “I was really looking forward to using this thing to prove how awesome I was, so Prof would agree I’d make a great point woman.”
“And do you have any idea how to use the spyril?”
“I put the thing together and I maintain it. I’ve got heaps of theoretical knowledge.”
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“How hard can it be?” She shrugged. “You figured it out, after all.…”
I grinned, but there wasn’t much emotion behind it. “Do you know where Prof was going to trap Megan?”
“Down by where we’re planning to hit Newton. He set up a meeting between you and her, using your phone.”
“Down where … But that’s a long ways from where Obliteration is set up.”
Mizzy shrugged. “Prof wanted to do the Firefight hit in the same region as the Newton hit. The point is to get Regalia to manifest there, right? Giving Tia the last data point she needs to pinpoint where Regalia’s hiding. Of course, if her range is greater than we think, that’s all pointless.…”