Firefight

  “Why Calamity would choose a man in a coma to grant powers to, I have no idea,” Regalia said. “The Destroying Angel’s decisions often make so little sense to me.”

  “He’s been like that for a long time, then?”

  “Since his childhood,” Regalia said. “With his powers, he seems aware of the world around him at times. The rest of the time, he dreams. Trapped forever in his childhood some thirty years ago …”

  “And this city becomes his dream,” I realized. “A city of bright colors, fanciful paints, of perpetual warmth and gardens inside buildings. A child’s wonder.” I thought quickly, trying to put the pieces together. Why? What did it mean? And how could I stop Regalia?

  Did I need to? I looked at the aged figure, so frail. She barely seemed alive. “You’re dying,” I guessed.

  “Cancer,” Regalia’s projection said with a nod. “I’ve got a few weeks left. If I’m lucky.”

  “Why worry about Prof, then?” I asked, confused. “If you know you’re going to die, why go through so much effort to kill him?”

  Regalia didn’t reply. While her real body rasped in the background, the projection folded her hands in front of herself and regarded the center screen. Prof stepped forward in the blaze of light. He too carried a sword, one of the types he fashioned for himself by using his tensor power. And he’d dared make fun of Obliteration for carrying one.

  He strode through the light, holding a hand before himself like he was fighting against the flow of some powerful stream. What should I do? Regalia didn’t seem to care that I was here—Sparks, she probably didn’t care if I killed her or not. She was practically dead anyway.

  Could I threaten her? Somehow force her not to harm Prof? The thought not only nauseated me, but looking at her frail body, I doubted I could so much as touch her without provoking some kind of terminal reaction.

  The screen dimmed suddenly; the real Regalia was tapping something on her armrest, a control of some sort. It darkened the screen, adding some kind of filter to cut through the glare. It allowed me to see what Prof couldn’t, because the room he was in was so bright.

  The source of the glow wasn’t a person as I had suspected. It was a box with wires coming from it.

  What in the world? I was so confused I just stared at the screen.

  “Did you know,” Regalia’s projection said, “that Jonathan is not so unique as he assumes? Yes, he can give away his powers. But every Epic can do that, under the right circumstances. All it takes is a bit of their DNA and the right machinery.”

  They cut something outta him, Dawnslight had said. Obliteration, with bandages …

  A bit of DNA and the right machinery …

  A mounting horror grew within me. “You created a machine that replicates Obliteration’s powers. Like the spyril, only capable of blowing up cities! You used an Epic … to create a bomb.”

  “I’ve been experimenting with this,” Regalia’s projection said, arms crossed. “The Angel of the Apocalypse is … unreasonable to work with sometimes, and I have needed my own methods for transferring powers.”

  On the screen, Prof had reached the device. He touched it, then drew back, confused. I could barely make out Val and Exel behind him in the room, their hands thrown up against the light.

  “Please,” I said, looking to Regalia. I advanced on her with my sword. “Don’t hurt him. He was your friend, Abigail.”

  “You keep implying I want to kill Jonathan,” Regalia said. “Such a terrible assumption.” The real her pushed a button on her armrest.

  On the television screen, the bomb exploded. It erupted like an opening flower—a wave of destructive energy so powerful it would annihilate Babilar entirely. I watched it bloom, radiate outward.

  Then stop.

  Prof stood with hands upraised like a man gripping some enormous beast, a silhouette against the red light. A sun appeared right there in the center of the room, and he held it. He contained it with such tension to his body that I felt as if I could feel him straining, working to hold it all in, not let a single bit escape.

  Such power. This bomb had been charging for quite some time, it seemed. Regalia could have pulled the trigger and vaporized Babilar weeks ago.

  Prof roared, a primal and terrible shout, but he held on to that energy. And then he created something enormous, a shield of vibrant blue that ripped open the roof of the room they were in like two hands and created a column of fire into the sky. He let the energy out, siphoning it away harmlessly into the air.

  I knew, with rising horror, it wouldn’t be enough. Oh, he might save the city, but it still wouldn’t be enough. The corruption grew hand in hand with the amount of power expended. Even if I was right, and he’d be able to control it in small amounts, he’d never be able to handle so much at once.

  Prof used his powers as I’d never seen him use them, on a level like Steelheart had used when transforming Newcago to metal. This was an act of inhuman preservation, proof that a hero had come. It was also a condemnation. He’d been on the edge before. Now this …

  “Too much,” I whispered. “Far too much. Prof …”

  “I didn’t lure Jonathan here to kill him, child,” Regalia whispered from behind me. “I did it because I need a successor.”

  50

  “WHAT have you done?” I screamed at Regalia. I spun and rushed to the bedside, ignoring the projection. I seized the aged woman by the front of her gown with one hand, pulling her up toward me. “What have you done?”

  She breathed in, then spoke with her own voice for the first time, rasping, feeble. “I have made him strong.”

  I looked back at the screen. Prof dispersed the last of the energy and fell to his knees. The room grew dark, and I realized the filter was still on. I dropped the sword and fiddled with the buttons on the side of Regalia’s bed, trying to bring the light back up on the monitor so I could see what was happening.

  The screen returned to normal. Prof was kneeling in the room, his back to us. Before him, the floor ended in a perfect circle, vaporized in the release of power. A trembling figure walked up to him from behind. Val. She reached him and hesitantly put a hand on his shoulder.

  He raised an open palm to the side, not looking. A forcefield surrounded Val. Prof squeezed his palm shut into a fist. The forcefield collapsed to the size of a basketball, Val still inside. In a heartbeat, she was snuffed out, ended.

  “No!” I screamed, scrambling back in horror at the awful sight. “No, Prof …”

  “He’ll kill the Reckoners quickly,” Regalia’s projection said softly, almost in regret. “A High Epic’s first move is usually to remove those who knew him best. They are the ones most likely to be able to find his weakness.”

  I shook my head, appalled. It couldn’t … I mean …

  Prof swung his hand out. I heard Exel shout. His voice cut off mid-phrase.

  No …

  Prof stood up and turned, and finally I could see his face, twisted, shadowed, marred by hatred and anger, teeth pulled together, jaw clenched.

  I didn’t know this man any longer.

  Mizzy. Tia. I had to do something! I—

  Regalia was coughing. She managed to do it triumphantly. Growling, I seized the sword and raised it over her. “You monster!”

  “It was … coming …,” she said between coughs. “He … would have let it … out … eventually.”

  “No!” My arms trembled. I shouted, then brought the blade down.

  And killed my second High Epic for the day.

  I stumbled back from the bed, blood spreading onto the white sheets, some of it staining my arms. On the screen, Prof walked lethargically past Val’s remains. Then he stopped. A piece of the wall in his room had opened up, showing a series of monitors like the ones in this room.

  One showed a map of Babilar with a circle on it. A place out in New Jersey—this house? It seemed likely, as the other screen in front of him flickered, then showed a shot of the room I was in. Regalia dead in her bed. Me,
standing with bloody arms, wrapped in a cloth at my waist.

  I looked up at the corner of my room and saw for the first time a video camera there. Regalia had set all of this up so she would be able to confront him after what he’d done. It seemed … it seemed she’d wanted him to come to her.

  Prof looked me over in the screen.

  “Prof …,” I said, and my voice sounded in his room, across the city. “Please …”

  Prof turned from the monitor and strode from the room. In that moment I knew. It wasn’t Tia or Mizzy I needed to worry about protecting. Neither of them had ever killed a High Epic.

  I had.

  And so he was coming for me.

  51

  “DAWNSLIGHT?” I said, shaking the slumbering figure in the other bed.

  He didn’t move. Coma. Right.

  “I could use some help again,” I said to him, but of course I got no response.

  Sparks! Prof was coming. I left the room in a mad scramble, passing the doctor who, without comment, rose from her chair by the door and hurried back in, perhaps to gather her things and make a hasty exit.

  Smart.

  Prof had … killed Val and Exel without a second thought. He’d do the same to me. I hurried through the building, looking for the way out onto the street. What was that low, rumbling sound I heard in the distance?

  I’d leave the building and find a place to hide. But … could I really hide from Jonathan Phaedrus? I had no resources, no contacts. If I hid, he’d find me. If I fled, I’d spend the rest of my life—probably a short life—running.

  When he got here, he might very well kill Dawnslight, and in so doing, destroy Babilar. No more food. No more light.

  I stopped in the living room, panting. Running did no good. I would need to face Prof eventually.

  I’d do it now.

  So, despite every instinct screaming at me to hide, I turned and looked for a way up onto the roof. The place was a suburban home that was surprisingly well maintained. What had happened to Dawnslight’s family? Were they out there somewhere, worried over their dreaming son?

  I finally found the stairs and climbed up to the third floor. From there I climbed out of a window onto the roof. Unlike most of the buildings in Babilar, this one was peaked, and I carefully walked up to the tip. The sun, not yet risen, had brought a glow to the horizon. By that light I saw the source of the roar I’d heard earlier: the water was retreating from Babilar.

  It washed outward like a sudden tide, exposing skyscrapers covered in barnacles. Sparks. The foundations had to be incredibly weakened from being submerged for so long. The tide might very well destroy the city, killing everyone Prof had given himself to save. One careless swing of my sword might have cost thousands of lives.

  Well, no buildings were collapsing at the moment, and there was nothing I could do about them if they did.

  So I sat down.

  Sitting up there in the night’s last darkness gave me some perspective. I thought about my part in all of this, and whether I’d pushed Prof too hard to become a hero. How much of this was my fault? Did it matter?

  Regalia probably would have managed all of this if I hadn’t been hounding Prof. The most disturbing part was that she had accomplished it by preying upon Prof’s own innate honor.

  I was certain of one thing. Whatever had happened to Prof, it wasn’t his fault. Any more than it would be a man’s fault if, drugged to oblivion by a cruel prank, he thought the people around him were devils and started shooting them. Regalia had killed Exel and Val, not Prof. Of course, maybe she couldn’t be blamed either. She was in the power’s grip too.

  If not her, then who? I looked away from the horizon and toward that glowing red spot. It hung on the opposite side of the sky from the sun.

  “You’re behind this,” I whispered to Calamity. “Who are you, really?”

  Calamity gave no answer as it—he?—sank below the horizon. I turned back toward Babilar. I might not be to blame for what had happened to Prof, ultimately, but that didn’t mean I was innocent. Ever since coming to Babilar, I’d stumbled from one crisis to another, rarely following the plan.

  Reckless heroism. Prof was right.

  So what do I do now? I thought. Prof, the real Prof, would want me to have a plan.

  Nothing came to me. Of course, this wasn’t the time to plan. The time to plan was before everything went wrong, before your mentor was betrayed and corrupted, before the girl you loved was shot. Before your friends died.

  Something appeared in the distance, moving over the waters, and I sat up straighter to get a better look. A small disc—a forcefield, I realized—with a figure in black standing atop it. It grew larger and larger as it sped through the air.

  So Prof could use his fields to fly. His power portfolio was amazing. I stood up, balancing on the rooftop, gripping the necklace that Abraham had given me, which dangled from its chain in my fist.

  It flashed bright as the sun finally broke over the horizon, bathing me in light. Was it my mind, or was the light stronger than it should have been?

  Prof approached on his flying disc, his lab coat fluttering behind him. He landed on the other side of the small peaked roof from me, and regarded me with a strange interest. Again I was struck by how different he seemed. This man was cold. It was him, but a him with all of the wrong emotions.

  “You don’t have to do this, Prof,” I told him.

  He smiled and raised a hand. Sunlight bathed our rooftop.

  “I believe in the heroes!” I shouted, holding up the pendant. “I believe they will come, as my father believed. This is not how it will end! Prof, I have faith. In you.”

  A forcefield globe appeared around me, breaking the roof tiles under my feet, enclosing me perfectly. It was exactly like the one that had killed Val.

  “I believe,” I whispered.

  Prof squeezed his hand closed.

  The sphere compressed … but suddenly, though I’d been inside it a moment ago, I wasn’t in it now. I could see it right in front of me, shrunken to the size of a basketball.

  What?

  Prof frowned. That sunlight, it was getting brighter, and brighter, and …

  And a figure of pure white light exploded into existence between me and Prof. It blazed like the sun itself, a feminine figure, radiant, powerful, golden hair blown back and shining like a corona.

  Megan had arrived.

  Prof summoned another forcefield globe around me. The figure of light thrust a hand toward him, and suddenly that globe was around Prof himself instead. Megan was changing reality, making possibilities into fact.

  Prof looked even more surprised this time. He dismissed the globe and summoned another around the figure of light, but when it started to shrink it was around him again in an eyeblink, closing him in, threatening to crush him.

  He dismissed it, and I saw something else in his eyes I’d never seen before. Fear.

  They’re all afraid, I thought. Deep down. Newton fled from me. Steelheart killed anyone who might know anything about him. They’re driven by fear.

  That wasn’t the Prof I knew, but it was the High Epic Phaedrus. Confronted by someone who manipulated his powers in ways he didn’t understand, he became terrified. He stumbled away, eyes wide.

  In the space of a heartbeat, we were somewhere else.

  Me and the glowing figure. One building over, inside a room with a window through which I could see Prof standing on the rooftop. Alone.

  The glowing figure beside me sighed, then her glow vanished and resolved into Megan, completely naked. She fell, and I managed to catch her. Outside the window, on the next building over Prof cursed, then hopped on his disc. He sped away.

  Sparks. How was I going to deal with him?

  The answer was in my arms. I looked down at Megan, that perfect face, those beautiful lips. I’d been right to have faith in the Epics. I’d just chosen the wrong one.

  Her eyes opened, and she saw me. “I don’t feel like killing you,” sh
e whispered.

  “More wonderful words have never been spoken,” I said back.

  She stared at me, then groaned, closing her eyes again. “Oh hell. The secret is the power of love. I’m going to be sick.”

  “Actually, I think it’s something else,” I said.

  She looked at me. I was suddenly made conscious that she was very, very naked, and I was nearly naked as well. She followed my eyes, then shrugged. I blushed and put her down, then moved to find something for her to wear. As I stood, however, clothing appeared on her—the standard jeans and shirt, shadows of clothing from another dimension. Good enough for now, I supposed.

  “What is the secret, then?” she asked, sitting up and running her hand through her hair. “Every other time I’ve reincarnated, I’ve been bad when I first came back. Unable to remember myself, violent, destructive. This time … I feel nothing. What changed?”

  I looked her in the eyes. “Was that building already on fire when you ran into it?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yeah,” she admitted. “It was stupid. You don’t need to tell me it was. I knew you probably weren’t in there, not for real. But I thought—maybe you were, and I couldn’t risk that you might be.…” She shivered visibly.

  “How afraid of the fire were you?”

  “More than you can possibly know,” she whispered.

  I smiled. “And that,” I said, gathering her into my arms again, “is the secret.”

  Epilogue

  ABOUT five hours later I sat on top of what had once been a low building in Babilar, warming my hands at a cookfire. The building now rose some twenty stories over the once-submerged street below.

  Not a single building had collapsed as the waters left. “It’s the roots,” Megan said, settling down next to me and handing me a bowl of soup. She wore real clothing now, which was kind of unfortunate, but likely more practical, as it had gotten really cold in the city all of a sudden. “Those roots are tough stuff, tougher than any plant has a right to be. They’re literally holding the buildings up.” She shook her head as if amazed.