Calamity

by Brandon Sanderson

  Cody went running toward the door. I stopped him with a barked “Wait!”

  He froze and turned toward me, still in the tensor suit.

  “Megan,” I said, “you’re on scouting duty instead of Cody. Cody, you do her job and get the food rations ready. That suit is too valuable to risk out there, in case there’s some sort of trap waiting for a scout.”

  Megan obeyed immediately, and I tossed her Cody’s rifle as she passed. Cody hiked back, looking a little sullen, but started gathering our packs together—checking to make sure each one had food, water, and a bedroll.

  I hurried to text Knighthawk. Our location might be compromised, I sent him. We are pulling out. Would you mind lending me one or two of the drones you have patrolling the area?

  He didn’t reply immediately, so I hurried to help Mizzy with the ammo and explosives. She nodded in gratitude as I took the armful from her.

  “Goodbye gift?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “But only if you can do it quickly. I want out of here in five.”

  “Got it,” she said, scrambling up to the loft. She’d have an explosive charge set and ready to blast the entire warehouse to dust by the time we were done packing.

  “Make sure there’s a remote way to disarm it,” I called after her, remembering Cody’s story about the dead kids—which I was almost certain was made up.

  I placed the ammo in the backpacks—which Cody had set out in a row, bedrolls attached at the top—then zipped each one. There were packs for all of us but Abraham, who would be carrying a larger duffel with gravatonic lifts, filled with our guns and power cells.

  My mobile buzzed.

  How do you know I still have drones in the area? Knighthawk wrote.

  Because you’re paranoid, I wrote back, and you want to keep an eye on Prof?

  I slung one pack over my shoulder, then set a second one at my feet—I’d be carrying Megan’s until she could meet up with us.

  You really are smarter than you seem, he wrote me. Fine. I’ll do a sweep of your area and send you the video.

  I waited, anxious, as Abraham finished his packing. Mizzy hurried down to grab her bag, and nodded at me. Cody already had his on his shoulder. Under five minutes. Nearby, Larcener wandered out of the little room Cody had made for him.

  “Did I miss something?” he asked.

  “Crap,” Megan said over the line.

  I put my hand to my earpiece. “What?”

  “He’s got an entire army working its way through the streets toward us, Knees. Our primary exit points are both blocked. By the time we picked up on this from the sniper nest, we’d have been surrounded. We might be already.”

  “Pull back,” I said. “I’m going to get intel through Knighthawk.”

  “Roger.”

  I looked to the others.

  “False faces?” Mizzy asked.

  “Whatever our faces are, we’re going to look sparking suspicious with all this equipment,” I said.

  “Then we leave it,” Abraham said. “We’re not ready for a fight.”

  “And we’ll be more ready in twenty-four hours?” I asked. “When he destroys Newcago?”

  My phone buzzed; Knighthawk was actually calling me, which was rare. I picked up, dialing his feed into our communal line so everyone could hear him through their earpieces.

  “You guys are screwed,” he said. “I’m sending you footage in infrared.”

  Abraham stepped over, lowering his mobile, and we crowded around to look. A map of our area showed hundreds, maybe thousands of people descending on our position, each an infrared dot. They formed a complete circle.

  “East Lane,” Knighthawk said. “See those corpses? Bystanders who tried to run. They’re gunning down anyone who attempts to escape that circle. They’re sending a team into every building, holding the people there at gunpoint and—best I can tell from the shot I got through a window—feeling their faces.”

  “Feeling their faces?” Mizzy asked.

  “To see if any part is illusory,” I said. “Prof knows that Megan can fool a dowser, but the overlays she creates are still illusions. They feel a nose that doesn’t fit the image of its face, something like that, and they’ll know they’ve found us.”

  “Like I said,” Knighthawk added. “Screwed.”

  Megan rushed in through the door and closed it behind her, back up against the saltstone. “Surrounded?” she asked, reading our expressions.

  I nodded.

  “So what do we do?” she asked, joining our little huddle.

  I looked at the others. One at a time, they nodded.

  “We fight,” Abraham said softly.

  “We fight,” Mizzy agreed. “He’ll be expecting us to try to punch out; it’s Reckoner protocol when surprised or outmatched.”

  I smiled, feeling a sudden swell of pride. “If this were one of Prof’s teams,” I said, “we’d run.”

  “We’re not his team,” Cody said. “Not anymore. We’re here to change the world; we ain’t going to do that without a fight.”

  “It’s stupid,” I noted.

  “Sometimes stupid is right,” Megan said, then paused. “Hell. I hope nobody ever quotes me on that one. So where’s our battlefield?”

  “Same place it was always going to be,” I said.

  Then I pointed down. That tunnel and cave complex was beneath us. “Cody, cut us a path. We go in full gear, exactly as we planned. We won’t have as much of an edge as we hoped, but we’ve still got those caverns mapped, and they’ll allow us to fight him with the least chance of causing harm to people nearby.”

  “Wait,” Megan said. “If Cody uses the tensors, that will call Prof right to us—he’ll know that we have the device.”

  “Yeah,” Knighthawk said over the line. “He’s hovering at the rear of his little army right now, but that won’t last long. Years ago, when we tested it, using a motivator drove him into a rage. He’ll come for you immediately.”

  Cody looked at his hands. “I…Lad, I just started practicing with these tensors. They’re stronger than the ones we had before, but it could take hours for me to cut an escape hole.”

  “It shouldn’t,” I said. “You’ve seen what Prof can do—level buildings, vaporize huge swaths of ground. You hold that power, Cody.”

  Cody set his jaw. The tensors started glowing green.

  None of us asked how Prof had located us. It could have happened in one of any number of ways—our bases here in Ildithia weren’t terribly secure. Maybe we’d been spotted by an informant, or perhaps Prof did have an Epic who could dowse for us, or maybe he’d noticed the drone deliveries.

  “All right,” Cody said. “Everyone get ready, and then I’ll do the deed. Time to fight.”

  THE team loaded up. Weapons in hand, mobiles strapped to arms, earpieces in. Mizzy tossed a small box to each of us: a compressed rappelling cord. I affixed mine to my belt.

  We left our packs, only grabbing some ammo. The packs were for long-term survival. After this, one way or another, we wouldn’t need them.

  Tension laced the air, like the distant scent of smoke that signaled a fire. We weren’t ready, but the battle had arrived anyway. Right now it was all up to Cody. He stood in the center of our warehouse base, eyeing the dusty saltstone floor. He’d always seemed lanky in an almost comical way to me, but now—wearing the tensor suit, with its glowing greens and dramatic, futuristic vest, he cut an imposing profile.

  I stepped up to him. “It’s down there, Cody,” I said. “An entire cave complex. The battlefield we have chosen. All we need is a pathway.”

  He took in a deep breath.

  “Remember what you said when you were first training me in the tensors?” I asked.

  “Yeah…you’ve gotta use them like you’re caressing a beautiful woman.”

  “I was thinking more the other thing you said. You’ve got to have the soul of a warrior, like William Wallace.”

  “William Wallace got murdered, lad.”


  “Oh.”

  “But he didn’t go down without a fight,” Cody said, steeling himself. “All right. Hold on to yer haggis, everyone.” He raised his hands before himself, and a green glow ran down the wires strapped to his arms and into his hands. He thrust his hands forward, and I felt a distinct hum that seemed to vibrate all the way down to my soul without actually making a sound.

  A three-foot-by-three-foot section of ground vaporized, maybe ten feet deep. That was very impressive on the old scale of the tensors, but nowhere near what we needed to reach those caverns.

  “Jonathan’s moving!” Knighthawk said over the lines. “Sparks. You people are in trouble. He does not look happy!”

  Cody swore under his breath, regarding the patch of floor that had been reduced to fine grains of sand. Wind from the open door of the loft curled some of the powder up in the draft.

  I grabbed Cody’s arm. “Try again.”

  “David, that’s as big as I can make it!” he said.

  “Cody,” I said. “Concentrate. Soul of a warrior!”

  “If I keep screwing this up, lad, we’re dead. Trapped in here. Gunned down. Hell of a lot of pressure to work under.”

  “Sure,” I said, frantic. “But…um…no more pressure than when you stopped those terrorists from launching the nukes at Scotland that one time, right?”

  He glanced at me, brow beading with sweat. Then he grinned. “How’d y’all know about that?”

  “Lucky guess. Cody, you can do this.”

  He focused again on the floor in front of him. His suit started glowing once more, ribbons of emerald coursing along his arms, pulsing like a heartbeat. Being so near made me feel something familiar, like hearing the voice of an old friend. It reminded me of days in the caverns of Newcago, of innocence and conviction.

  Cody raised his hands over his head, and the thrumming grew louder. “Like caressing a woman,” he whispered. “A very, very large woman.” He released the power with a defiant shout, and it blasted into the floor with such force that it sent me to my knees.

  Inches before me, the ground disintegrated into a large hole filled with grains of salt. I watched as the grains siphoned away to reveal a hole a good five feet across. It curved downward, with smooth, glassy sides, traveling through saltstone and then actual rock. The vanishing salt indicated that it opened into something much larger below.

  “Remind me,” I said to Cody, “never to let you caress me.”

  He grinned, holding up hands that glowed bright green.

  “He’ll be there any second, you slontzes,” Knighthawk said over the line. “He’s taking it more slowly than I’d have expected; he’s a careful one, to be sure, but he’s still almost upon you. I’d vacate if I were you.”

  “Down,” I said, catching my Gottschalk as Abraham tossed it to me. “Remember starting positions!”

  Mizzy skidded to the side of the hole and, using a large, tubelike gun, planted a series of spikes into the floor there. She hooked her rappelling cord to one, then jumped in. Megan hooked on to another spike, then followed, sliding down the hole like it was a ride in an old amusement park.

  I glanced at Larcener, gesturing for him to go.

  “I’ll remain,” he said.

  “He wants to kill you!” I said.

  “And he’ll be drawn to you people,” Larcener said, folding his arms. “I’ll be safer hiding in my room up here.”

  “Not with the explosives Mizzy left behind. Look, we could use your help. Join us. Change the world.”

  He sniffed and turned away.

  I felt it like a punch to the gut.

  “David,” Cody said, watching the ceiling. “Let’s move, lad!”

  Teeth clenched, I pulled the end of the rappelling cord from the box at my belt and hooked it on to an empty spike, then threw myself into the hole. I slid down smooth stone in the darkness, trying to contain my frustration. My expectations were foolish, but part of me had still assumed that Larcener would join us for this battle.

  I’d always intended to speak with him further, but we’d constantly been frantic with some other preparation. Should I have done anything else? Could I have done anything else? If I’d been cleverer, or more persuasive, could I have found a way to bring him to our side?

  My mobile automatically engaged the box at the correct depth, putting resistance on my cord until I slowed, then popped out into a larger chamber, lurching to a stop a mere two or three feet above the ground. I cut and dropped into an enormous pile of salt and rock dust. I pushed through, getting out of the way of the opening.

  Mizzy and Megan shined their mobiles about, lighting a series of natural caverns covered with an impressive amount of graffiti. The caverns tended to be low-ceilinged—about ten feet high, though this wasn’t uniform—and connected by tunnels with lots of nooks. It didn’t look quite natural, but it was far more organic than the tunnels beneath Newcago. Had Digzone been as mad as the Diggers he gifted his powers to? Judging by the crazy number of caverns down here, that seemed likely.

  Abraham came down into the pile of salt next, the rtich coating one arm. Finally Cody entered, and he hadn’t bothered with a cord—he dropped out of the hole onto a forcefield that sprang into existence under his feet.

  “Cody, disengage the powers,” I said, and pointed down a turn in the cavern. “Find a spot in that direction and be ready. We won’t be able to surprise him with your abilities, but I still want you to be hidden at first. Mizzy, be ready to blow your present up above on my mark.”

  “Larcener?” she asked.

  “He knows about the blast,” I said. “He’ll get out of the way.” And if he didn’t, well, that was purely on his head.

  I grabbed my mobile and scrambled across the cavern’s uneven floor to a side passage. The complex was intricate, but my mobile’s map noted a few relatively safe nooks from which I could run ops. This wasn’t the exact side of the cavern complex where we’d originally planned to pull our trap, but it had to work.

  Megan joined me. “Nice job with the Scotsman up there.”

  “He just needed a little nudge,” I said, “to become what he always pretends to be.”

  “He’s not the only one,” she said. We stopped at an intersection of tunnels, and she pulled me close for a quick kiss. “You always thought you wanted to be in charge, David. You had good reason.”

  She turned to go the other direction. I held her arm, then hand, as she slipped away from me. “Don’t push yourself too hard, Megan.”

  She smiled—sparks, what a smile—and held on to my fingers with hers. “I own it, David. It’s mine. I don’t fear it anymore. If it takes me, I’ll find a way back.”

  She let go, crossing the cavern as I ducked into my chosen nook. It was a tight squeeze, requiring me to wriggle through some rock, but would shelter the light of my mobile from Prof’s eyes, and shelter me from explosions. Inside, I was in a small bubble of a room with no other exits.

  I reached to my belt and detached a headset with a dome of glass attached to its front. A grudging gift from Knighthawk in the same shipment as the tensor suit, multiple screens could be projected onto it.

  “Mizzy,” I said, “cameras in place?”

  “Sticking the last one,” she said. “Knighthawk, these things are waaay creepy.”

  “She says to the man who built them using a mannequin he controls with his mind,” Abraham added under his breath.

  “Shut it,” Knighthawk said, though his voice was somewhat difficult to make out over noise on his end.

  “Knighthawk,” I said, “your line has some kind of static or interference on it.”

  “Hmm? Oh, don’t worry. The popcorn is almost done.”

  “You’re making popcorn?” Abraham demanded.

  “Sure, why not? Should be quite the show….”

  One by one, four screens blinked on on my headset’s display, giving me a sequence of views of the main cavern and its nearby tunnels. Mizzy had set out glowsticks, though the cameras h
ad thermal and night vision. These things had come from Knighthawk, little crablike drones with cameras in their bodies. I used my mobile to turn the camera of one drone, and it worked perfectly.

  “Nice,” Knighthawk said. He and Mizzy would be watching the screens also, though Mizzy would be busy with her explosives. Megan and I had been desperate when we’d faced our weaknesses; I hoped that if we could drive Prof to exhaustion, if we presented a real danger, we’d make it easier for him to do the same.

  “Knighthawk,” I said, cycling through the cameras to get a view from Cody’s eyes, then Megan’s, “Prof’s ETA?”

  “Just landed on your building,” he said.

  “Any other Epics with him?”

  “Negative,” Knighthawk said. “All right, he’s vaporized the roof and he’s dropping through.”

  “Mizzy,” I said, “blow the present.”

  We felt the shock of it, and some debris rolled down the hole we’d made. I waited, tense, trying to watch all of the different screens at once. Which direction would he come from?

  The roof of the cave trembled, then fell in, dumping practically a ton of salt dust into the main chamber. Light shone down in streaks. Prof wasn’t content with a little hole like we’d made. He’d ripped the top off an entire cavern.

  He floated down on a glowing disc of light, dust swirling around him, goggles on his face and his dark lab coat fluttering. My breath caught.

  I didn’t see a monster. In my mind’s eye, I remembered a man who had come down through another roof amid falling dust. A man who had run for all he had—breaking through to face an Enforcement team, risking his life and his own sanity—to save me.

  It was time to return the favor.

  “Go,” I whispered over the line.

  ABRAHAM engaged him first, bringing out the big gun—his gravatonic minigun. I always got a little thrill when I watched it fire, because man—it could unload bullets faster than a pair of drunk hicks visiting a varmint factory.

  “Everyone stay under cover,” I warned as Abraham’s gun flashed from the darkness, spraying Prof with a couple hundred rounds.

  Prof’s forcefields were up, and the bullets deflected—but those forcefields weren’t invincible. Using them took effort. We could wear him down.