Calamity (The Reckoners 3)

“Remember how you chased Prof and us into the understreets of Newcago, after expressly being told you’d be shot if you didn’t stay put?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Back then, I figured getting shot by the Reckoners would be so cool. Think about showing off a bullet scar to your friends, and saying that Jonathan Phaedrus himself shot you.”

“You’re such a nerd. My point is, are you going after Knighthawk?”

“Of course I’m going after him,” I said. “Make sure everyone gets out safely, then try to save me from my stupidity if this goes sour.” I gave her a swift kiss, caught my rifle as Abraham tossed it to me, then went to chase down Knighthawk.

I didn’t have to search far.

The hallway was empty, but I stepped up to the room we’d passed earlier—the one with the trophies on the back wall—and peeked in. I was unsurprised to find Knighthawk sitting in an easy chair on the far side of the room. A gas fireplace crackled beside him, and his mannequin lay, its invisible strings cut, on the ground beside it.

At first that worried me. Was Knighthawk all right?

Then I saw his eyes—reflecting the writhing flames—staring at the silvery box in the center of the room, the one that looked like a coffin. As a tear rolled down Knighthawk’s cheek, I realized the man had probably wanted to be alone, without even the mannequin’s silent gaze upon him.

“Prof killed her, didn’t he?” I whispered. “Your wife. She went evil, and Prof had to kill her.”

I finally remembered the details of a conversation I’d had with Prof weeks ago, right outside Babilar, in a little bunker where he’d been doing science experiments. He’d told me about his team of friends, Epics every one. Him, Regalia, Murkwood, and Amala. Over time, three of them had eventually gone evil.

Sparks. Four of them, when you included Prof.

It doesn’t work, David, he’d said. It’s destroying me….

“You don’t listen to instructions very well, do you, boy?” Knighthawk asked.

I slipped into the room and walked to the coffin. Part of the lid was translucent, and I could see a pretty face lying peacefully inside, golden hair fanned out behind.

“She tried so hard to resist it,” Knighthawk said. “Then one morning, I got up and…and she was gone. She’d been awake all night, judging by the six empty cups of coffee she’d left. She’d been afraid to sleep.”

“Nightmares,” I whispered, resting my fingers on the glass of the coffin.

“I think the stress of being up all night snapped her. My dear Amala. Jonathan did us both a favor in hunting her down. I must see it that way. Like you should discard this foolish notion you have of saving him. End him, kid. For his own good, and for all of us.”

I looked up from the coffin toward Knighthawk. He hadn’t wiped away that tear. He couldn’t.

“You have hope,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have invited us in. You saw the way Megan was acting, and your first thought was that we’d found some way to beat the darkness.”

“Maybe I invited you in out of pity,” Knighthawk said. “Pity for someone who obviously loves an Epic. Like I did. Like Tia did. Maybe I invited you in to give you a warning. Be ready for it, kid. One morning you’ll get up, and she’ll just be gone.”

I crossed the room, rifle over my shoulder, and reached for Knighthawk. I wasn’t prepared for how quickly his mannequin could move. It leaped to its feet, catching me by the arm before I rested my hand on Knighthawk’s shoulder.

His eyes flickered to my hand, apparently deciding I hadn’t intended to harm him, and the mannequin released me. Sparks, its grip was strong.

That let my hand fall on his shoulder, and I squatted down before his chair. “I’m going to beat this, Knighthawk, but I need answers only you can give me. About motivators, and how they work.”

“Foolishness,” he said.

“You kept Amala in stasis. Why?”

“Because I’m foolish too. She had a hole the size of Jonathan’s fist in her chest when I found her. Dead. Pretending otherwise is stupid.”

“Yet you healed her body,” I said. “And preserved her.”

“You see those?” he said, nodding to the far side of the room. To the remnants from fallen Epics. “Those powers didn’t bring her back. Each is from an Epic with healing powers that I made a motivator out of. None worked. There is no answer. There is no secret. We live with the world as it is.”

“Calamity is an Epic,” I whispered.

Knighthawk started, then tore his eyes away from the wall, focusing on me again. “What?”

“Calamity,” I repeated, “is an Epic. A…person. Regalia discovered the truth, even talked to him or her. This thing that destroyed our lives, it’s not a force of nature. Not a star, or a comet…it’s a person.” I took a deep breath. “And I’m going to kill Calamity.”

“Holy hell, kid,” Knighthawk said.

“Saving Prof is step one,” I said. “We’re going to need his abilities to pull this off. But after that, I’m going to get up there, and I’m going to destroy that thing. We’ll return the world to the way it was before Calamity rose.”

“You’re absolutely insane.”

“Well, I spent some time drifting after killing Steelheart,” I said. “I needed a new purpose in life. Figure I might as well aim high.”

Knighthawk stared at me, then kicked his head back and laughed loudly. “I never thought I’d meet someone with more ambition than Jonathan, kid. Kill Calamity! Why not? Sounds simple!”

I looked toward the mannequin; it had grabbed its belly and was rocking back and forth as if it were laughing.

“So,” I said. “You going to help me?”

“What do you know about Epics who were born as identical twins?” Knighthawk asked as the mannequin reached over and wiped the man’s cheeks. Tears of laughter had joined the one he’d shed for his wife.

“There’s only one set, as far as I know. The Creer boys, Hanjah and the Mad Pen, in the Coven. They’ve been active lately in…Charleston, isn’t it?”

“Good, good,” Knighthawk replied. “You do know your stuff. You want a seat? You look uncomfortable.”

The mannequin pulled over a stool for

me and I sat.

“Those two go all the way back,” Knighthawk explained, “to about a year after Calamity, around the time that Prof and the others got their powers. First wave, you lorists call it. And they’re what started some of us thinking about how the powers worked. They have—”

“—the exact same power set,” I said. “Air pressure control, pain manipulation, precognition.”

“Yup,” Knighthawk said. “And you know what, they aren’t the only pair of twin Epics. They’re merely the only pair where one didn’t kill the other.”

“That’s not possible,” I said. “I’d have known about them.”

“Yeah, well, my associates and I made sure nobody heard of the others. Because in them was a secret.”

“Each set of twins had the same abilities,” I guessed. “Twins share a power set.”

Knighthawk nodded.

“So it is genetic, somehow.”

“Yes and no,” Knighthawk said. “We can’t find anything genetic about Epics that gives clues to their powers. That mumbo-jumbo about mitochondria? We made it up; seemed plausible, since Epic DNA tends to degrade quickly. Everything else you’ve heard about motivators is technobabble we use to confuse those who might be trying to figure out how to compete with us.”

“Then how?”

“You realize that by telling you, I’d be breaking an agreement I have with the other companies.”

“Which I appreciate.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, and his mannequin folded its arms.

“If there’s even the slightest chance that I’m right,” I said, “and I can stop the Epics forever, isn’t it worth the risk?”

“Yes,” Knighthawk said. “But I still want a promise out of you, kid. You don’t share this secret.”

“It’s wrong of you to keep it,” I said. “Perhaps if the governments of the world had possessed this knowledge, they’d have been able to fight back against the Epics.”

“Too late,” he said. “Your word.”

I shook my head. “Fine. I’ll tell my team, but I’ll swear them to secrecy too. We won’t tell anyone else.”