The cells, I sent. They’re broken?
Exactly how does one BREAK cells, kid?
I don’t know, I sent back. You’re the one sending emergency texts to me!
Emergency? Knighthawk sent. I’m just bored.
I blinked, holding my phone and rereading that text.
Bored? I sent. You’re literally spying on the entire world, Knighthawk. You can read anyone’s mail, listen to anyone’s phone calls.
First, it’s not the whole world, he wrote. Only large chunks of North and Central America. Second, do you have any idea how mind-numbingly DULL most people are?
I started a reply, but a flurry of messages came at me, interrupting what I was going to say.
Oh! Knighthawk wrote. Look at this pretty flower!
Hey. I want to know if you like me, but I can’t say that, so here’s an awkward flirtation instead.
Where are you?
I’m here.
Where?
Here.
There?
No, here.
Oh.
Look at my kid.
Look at my dog.
Look at me.
Look at me holding my kid and dog.
Hey, everyone. I took a huge koala this morning.
Barf. The world is ruled by deific beings who can do stuff like melt buildings into puddles of acid, and all people can think of to do with their phones is take pictures of their pets and try to figure out how to get laid.
Well…I wrote to test if his diatribe was done yet. The people who can afford your mobiles are the privileged rich. You shouldn’t be surprised they’re shallow.
Nah, he wrote back. There are more than a few cities like Newcago, where the ruling Epics are clever enough to realize that a population with mobiles is a population they can propagandize and control. I can tell you, the poor are just as bad. Except their pets are mangier.
Is there a point to this? I asked.
Yeah. Entertaining me. Say something stupid. I’ve got popcorn and everything.
I sighed, tucking away the mobile and returning to my work—going over the list of Epics who, according to rumors in the city today, had died as a result of Prof’s tantrum at Sharp Tower. There had been dozens of them at the party, and very few of them had flight powers or prime invincibilities. He’d killed off half of Ildithia’s upper class.
My mobile buzzed again. I groaned, but glanced at it.
Hey, Knighthawk said. My drones did a flyby on your city. You want the pictures or what?
Pictures? I wrote back.
Yeah. For the imager. You’ve got one, right?
You know about the imager?
Kid, I MADE that thing.
It’s Epic technology?
Of course it is, he said. What, you think projectors that magically render near-three-dimensional images on irregular surfaces, without causing shadows from the people inside, are NATURAL?
I honestly had no idea. But if he was offering a scan of the city, I’d take it.
It’s one of the few I managed to mass-produce, like the technology for your mobiles, Knighthawk added. Most tech like this, it degrades significantly if you make more than one or two motivators from the cells. Not imagers though. Sparks—mobiles don’t even NEED motivators, except the ones I keep here in the hub. Anyway, you want this imager file or not?
I do, thanks, I wrote. What’s the progress on the motivators from Prof’s cells?
I’ve got to grow the culture a little first, he said. Will take at least a day before we know if it all worked, and if I’ve made Jonathan into my motivator dingo or not.
Great, I said. Keep me up to date.
Sure. So long as you promise to record yourself the next time you say something stupid. Damn, I miss the internet. You could always find people doing stupid stuff on the internet.
I sighed, pocketing the mobile. It, of course, beeped at me again a short time later. I grabbed it, annoyed and ready to tell off Knighthawk, but it was a notification saying my mobile had received a large data package. The scan of the city.
I didn’t know much about technology, but I was able to tether the phone to the imager in the storage room, then transfer the file. When I turned on the machine, I found myself hovering above Ildithia. The grandeur of this was spoiled by the piles of supplies in the room, which also hovered in the sky, like I was some kind of magical space hobo who flew about with my possessions in tow.
I did a quick sweep through the city, using my hands to adjust the perspective, reacquainting myself with the controls. The imager faithfully reproduced Ildithia, and for a moment I let the illusion of it run away with me. I swooped past a skyscraper, the windows a blur on my right, then pulled up to soar down a street, passing saltstone trees. I wove between them in rapid succession, then shot through a park past our hideout.
I felt alive, thrilled, awake and alert. My incapacitation with broken legs had been brief, but it had still left me confined, controlled, powerless. Sparks…it felt like it had been years since I’d been able to walk in the open without fear of exposing my team.
I delighted in the freedom of flying around the city. Then I hit a building. I continued through it, the scenery blurring to a black jumble of nothing until I emerged from the other side.
That reminded me that this was a fabrication, a lie. Objects warped when I drew too close to them, and I could see the corners of the room if I looked hard.
Worse, no wind greeted me upon my leaps. No lurch in my stomach marked gravity’s disapproval. I might as well have been watching a movie. There was no fun to this, no power. And it wasn’t nearly wet enough.
“That looked fun,” Cody said from the doorway, which opened like a portal in the middle of the air. I hadn’t seen him approach.
I flattened my hands, lowering the camera view so I settled in place atop the small apartment building. “I miss the spyril.”
In all the running around, fighting, and fleeing we’d done lately, I hadn’t thought much about the device that had let me fly through the watery streets of Babilar. Now I recognized a hole inside me. For a short time in that drowned city, I’d known true freedom, powered by twin jets of water.
Cody chuckled, sauntering in. “I remember the first time you saw the imager work, lad. You looked like you were about to show us all what you’d eaten for lunch.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I took to it pretty quick though.”
“I suppose you did,” Cody said, joining me on the rooftop, then turning to look over the city. “You have a plan for us yet?”
“No,” I said. “Any thoughts?”
“Coming up with plans has never been my strong point.”
“Why not? Seems like you’re pretty good at making things up.”
He pointed at me. “I’ve punched men for wisecracks like that.” He paused. “Of course, most were Scots.”
“Your own kind?” I asked. “Why would you fight other Scots?”
“Lad, you don’t know much about us, do you?”
“Only what you’ve told me.”
“Well, I guess you know a heap of things then. Just none of them useful.” He smiled, looking out over the city, thoughtful. “Back when I was in the force, if we had to bring in someone dangerous, first thing we did was try to catch them alone.”
I nodded slowly. Cody had been a cop—that much about his stories I believed. “Alone,” I said. “So he wouldn’t be able to get help as easily?”
“More so we didn’t put people in danger,” Cody said. “Lots of people in this city. Good people. Survivors. What happened at Sharp Tower, that’s partly our fault. Sure, Prof melted the place, but we pushed him to do it. That’ll weigh on me the rest of my life—another brick in a pile that’s way too big.”
“So we try to fight him outside the city?”
Cody nodded. “If that idiot with the mannequin is right, then as soon as we use Prof’s powers, he’ll know where we are. We can pick the place to fight, draw him to us.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah…”
“Except?” Cody asked.
“That’s what we did with Steelheart,” I said softly. “Drew him to our trap, away from the populace.” I raised my hands to control the imager, moving us through the city toward the remnants of Sharp Tower. The drone flybys had happened right after dawn, and corpses still littered the site.
“Lifeline,” I said, counting off the fallen Epics I spotted. “Minor electricity powers and telepathy. Darkness Infinity—that was her fourth name, by the way. She kept coming up with ‘something better’ and it was always worse. She could jump between shadows. Inshallah and the Thaub, from Bahrain. Both had linguistic powers—”
“Linguistic powers?” Cody asked.
“Hmm? Oh. One could force you to speak in rhyme. The other could speak in any made-up language anyone anywhere had imagined.”
“That’s…very strange.”
“We don’t talk much about the odd powers,” I said absently. “But there are a lot of minor Epics whose abilities are very specific. It—” I froze. “Wait.”
I spun us in the air, fast enough that Cody stumbled and reached out to touch the wall. I zoomed us down toward the rubble, picking out a bloodied face, the body trapped beneath the remnants of the tower’s large generator. Prof’s blast had vaporized only the salt. It was the first confirmation I’d had that he, with exquisite control over his powers, could release a blast that vaporized some dense materials but not others.
That wasn’t important now. That face was.
“Oh, Calamity,” I whispered.
“What?” Cody demanded.
“That’s Stormwind.”
“The one who…”
“Makes this city grow food,” I finished. “Yeah. Ildithia’s food production supplied dozens of other cities, Cody. Prof’s little tirade might have some very lasting consequences.”
I dug out my mobile and typed a message to Knighthawk.
How soon after an Epic dies do you need to freeze their cells?
Soon, he wrote back. Most cells die quickly. CO2 poisoning, without the heart pumping blood. Epic DNA melts fast, in addition. We don’t know the reason yet. Why do you ask?
I think Prof just started a famine, I wrote to him. He killed an Epic last night who was vital to the economy.
You can try to harvest me a sample, Knighthawk replied. Some cells last longer than others. Skin cells…some stem cells…The DNA problem works on a kind of weird half-life, with most of it being gone in seconds, but some individual cells could linger. But kid, it’s REALLY hard to get a culture going from old Epic cells.
I showed the messages to Cody.
“It’ll be dangerous to go out,” he noted. “We don’t have Megan to give us new faces.”
“Yeah, but if we can prevent starvation, isn’t it worth the risk?”
“Sure, sure,” Cody said. “Unless we expose ourselves to Prof—who could very well have people watching those bodies—and then get ourselves killed. Which would leave only three Reckoners, instead of five, to confront him. Assuming he didn’t torture our secrets out of us and then go kill the rest of the team. Which he probably would. All for a very, very slight chance that we might be able to make a motivator that might feed people.”
I swallowed. “Right. Fine. You laid it on a bit thick.”
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Y’all’ve got a history of not listening to logic.”
“Like your logic of modern rock and roll being derived from bagpipes?”
“That one’s true, now,” Cody said. “Look it up. Elvis was a Scot.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, walking over to switch off the imager and the view of Stormwind’s face. It hurt, but today I would hold myself back.
A moment later, Mizzy poked her head into our room. “Hey,” she said. “Your girlfriend’s awake. Do you want to go smooch or—”
I was already on my way.
MEGAN was sitting up, holding a bottle of water in both hands, her back to the wall. I passed Abraham on my way in, and he nodded. According to his—admittedly limited—medical knowledge, she was fine. We’d unhooked the harmsway from her hours ago.
Megan gave me a wan smile and took a pull on her water bottle. The others left us alone, Abraham steering Cody away by the shoulder. I let out a long sigh of relief as I reached Megan. Despite Abraham’s assurances, a piece of me had been terrified she wouldn’t wake up. Yes, she could reincarnate if killed, but what if she didn’t die, just slipped into a coma?
She cocked an eyebrow at my obvious relief. “I feel,” she said, “like a barrel of green ducks at a Fourth of July parade.”
I cocked my head, then nodded. “Oh, yeah. Good metaphor.”
“David. That was supposed to be nonsense…a joke.”
“Really? Because it makes perfect sense.” I gave her a kiss. “See, you feel healed, and that’s not right—like the ducks, thinking they’re out of place. But nobody’s truly out of place at a parade, so they simply fit in. Like you fit in here.”
“You’re absolutely mental,” she said as I settled down beside her, my arm around her shoulders.
“How do you feel?”
“Awful.”
“So the healing didn’t take?”
“It did,” she said, staring at the water bottle.
“Megan, it’s all right. Yes, the mission went awry. We lost Tia. We’re recovering from that. Moving forward.”
“I went dark, David,” she said softly. “Darker than I’ve been in a long time. Darker than when I killed Sam…darker than I’ve been since before meeting you.”
“You pulled out of it.”
“Barely,” she said, then glanced at her arm. “I was supposed to be past this. We were supposed to have figured it all out.”
I pulled her close, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I wished I knew what to say, but everything I thought of was stupid. She didn’t want false reassurances. She wanted answers.
So did I.
“Prof killed Tia,” Megan whispered. “I could end up doing the same to you. Did you hear her? At the end?”
“I’d hoped you were unconscious for that part,” I admitted.
“She said he’d warned her and she hadn’t listened. David…I’m warning you. I can’t control this, even with the secret of the weaknesses.”
“Well,” I said, “we’ll merely have to do the best we can.”
“But—”
“Megan,” I said, lifting her head to look her in the eyes. “I’d rather die than be without you.”
“You mean that?”
I nodded.
“Selfish,” she said. “Do you know what it would do to me to know that I’d killed you?”
“Then let’s see that it doesn’t happen, all right?” I said. “I don’t think it will—but I’ll risk it, to stay near you.”
She breathed out, then rested her head on my shoulder again. “Slontze.”
“Yeah. Thanks for trying my idea with Prof.”
“Sorry I wasn’t able to make it work.”
“Not your fault. I don’t think we want to try another dimensional version of him.”
“What then?” she asked. “We can’t just give up.”
I smiled. “I’ve got an idea.”
“How crazy is it?”
“Pretty darn crazy.”
“Good,” she said. “The world’s gone mad; joining it is the only solution.” She was quiet a moment. “Do…I have a part in it?”
“Yes, but we shouldn’t need you to overextend your powers.”
She relaxed, snuggling against my side, and we sat there together for a time. “You know,” I finally said, “I really wish my father could have met you.”
“Because he’d be curious to meet a good Epic?”
“Well, that too,” I said. “But I think he’d like you.”
“David, I’m abrasive, cocky, and loud.”
“And brilliant,” I said, “and an awesome shot. Commanding. Decisive. My dad, he liked peop
le who were straightforward. Said he’d rather get cussed out by someone who meant it than be smiled at by someone who didn’t.”
“Sounds like a great man.”
“He was.” The kind of man others ignored or talked over because he was too quiet, and not quick with something clever—but also the kind of man who would run to help others when everyone else fled for safety.
Calamity, I missed that man.
“I’ve been having nightmares,” I whispered.
Megan sat up, looking at me with a sharp motion. “What kind?”
“Persistent,” I said. “Terrible. Something about loud noises, jarring sensations. I don’t get it—I don’t think it’s something I’m afraid of.”
“Any…other oddities?” she asked.
I met her gaze. “How much do you remember from Sharp Tower?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Tia’s words. And before that…gunfire. Lots of it. How did we survive that?”
I drew my lips to a line.
“Sparks!” she said. “How likely do you think…I mean…”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Could be nothing. There were a lot of powers being flung around that room—maybe there was a leftover forcefield, or…or maybe some pocket of another reality…”
She rested her hand on my shoulder.
“Sure you want to stay around me?” I asked.
“I’d rather die than do otherwise.” She squeezed my shoulder. “But I don’t like this at all, David. It feels like we’re holding our breath, waiting to see who explodes first. Do you think Prof and Tia had conversations like this, where they decided it was worth the risk of remaining together?”
“Maybe. But I don’t see that we have any option but to proceed. I’m not going to leave you, and you’re not going to leave me. It’s like I said. We have to accept the danger.”
“Unless there’s another way,” Megan said. “A way to make sure I’m not a danger to you, or to anyone else, ever again.”
I frowned, uncertain what she meant. But she seemed to decide something, looking at me, and she lifted her hand to caress my face. “You can’t say you haven’t considered it,” she said softly.
“ ‘It’?”
“The entire time he’s been here,” Megan said, “I’ve wondered. Is this my way out?”
Calamity Page 25
