Calamity (The Reckoners 3)

Prof raised his hand toward her, a look of annoyance on his face. The sound had jarred him out of his contemplations, and he sneered toward the disturbance.

No…

You learned quickly: Don’t bother the Epics. Don’t draw attention. Don’t annoy them. They’d kill a man for the simplest of things.

Please…

I didn’t dare breathe. I was in another place for a moment. Another crying child. A hushed room.

I looked into Prof’s face, and despite the distance, I was certain I saw something there. A struggle.

He spun and stalked away, leaving the woman and her child alone, barking at his new Epic lackey. The forcefield sphere holding Stormwind trailed after him, and he left a bewildered crowd.

“We ready to go?” Megan asked, standing up.

I nodded, letting out a long, relieved breath.

There was still something human inside Jonathan Phaedrus.

“I did see him, Megan,” I said, unzipping my backpack. “I’m telling you, Firefight was there in the crowd.”

“I’m not doubting you,” she said, leaning against the pink saltstone wall of our new hideout.

“Point of fact,” I said, “I believe you were doing exactly that.”

“What I said is that I didn’t pull him through.”

“Then who did?”

She shrugged.

“Can you be absolutely sure he didn’t slip through?” I said, taking several changes of clothing out of my pack and kneeling by the trunk that was going to be my sole piece of furniture. I stuffed the clothing inside, then looked at her.

“On occasion, when I pull a shadow from another world, the fringes bleed,” Megan admitted. “It usually only happens when I’ve just reincarnated, when my powers are at their fullest.”

“What about when you’re stressed or tired?”

“Never before,” she said. “But…well, there are a lot of things I haven’t tried.”

I looked up at her. “Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why? You have amazing, reality-defying powers, Megan! Why not experiment?”

“You know, David,” she said, “you sure can be stupid sometimes. You have lists of powers, but you don’t have any idea what it’s like to be an Epic.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed, then settled down on the floor next to me. There were no beds or couches yet—our new hideout wouldn’t ever be as lush as the one in Babilar had been. But it was as secure as we could make it. We’d built it ourselves over the past few days, hiding it as one of the large “cancerous” lumps of salt that grew across Ildithia.

I’d given Megan some time at first, not wanting to push her about Firefight. She was often evasive for a few days after she used her powers strenuously, as if even thinking about the powers gave her a headache.

“Most Epics aren’t like Steelheart, or Regalia,” Megan explained. “Most Epics are small-time bullies—men and women with just enough power to be dangerous, and just enough taste of the darkness to not care who they hurt.

“They didn’t like me. Well, Epics don’t like most anybody, but me especially. My powers frightened them. Other realities? Other versions of them? They hated that they couldn’t define limits to what I could do, but at the same time my powers couldn’t protect me. Not actively. So…”

“So?” I asked, scooting closer, putting my arm around her.

“So they killed me,” she said, shrugging. “I dealt with it, learned to be more subtle with my powers. It wasn’t until Steelheart took me in that I had any kind of security. He always did see the promise of what I did, rather than the threat.

“Anyway, it’s like I’ve told you. I took what my dad had taught my sisters and me about guns, and I became an expert. I learned to use guns to mask the fact that my powers couldn’t hurt anyone. I hid what I could truly do, became Steelheart’s spy. But no, I didn’t experiment. I didn’t want people to know what I could do, didn’t even want him to know the extent of my powers. Life has taught me that if people learn too much about me, I end up dead.”

“And reincarnating,” I said, trying to be encouraging.

“Yeah. Unless it’s not me that comes back, but just a copy from another dimension—similar, but different. David…what if the person you fell in love with really did die in Newcago? What if I’m some kind of impostor?”

I pulled her close, uncertain what to say.

“I keep wondering,” she whispered. “Is next time going to be the time? The time I come back and am obviously different? Will I be reborn with a different hair color? Will I be reborn with a different accent, or with a sudden distaste for this food or that? Will you know then, once and for all, that the one you loved is dead?”

“You,” I said, tipping her chin up to look her in the eye, “are a sunrise.”

She cocked her head. “A…sunrise?”

“Yup.”

“Not a potato?”

“Not right now.”

“Not a hippo?”

“No, and…wait, when did I call you a hippo?”

“Last week. You were drowsy.”

Sparks. Didn’t remember that one. “No,” I said firmly, “you’re a sunrise. I spent ten years without sunrises, but I always remembered what they looked like. Back before we lost our home, and Dad still had a job, a friend would let us come up to the observation deck of a skyscraper in the morning. It had a dramatic view of the city and lake. We’d watch the sun come up.”

I smiled. It was a good memory, me and my father eating bagels and enjoying the morning cold. He’d always make the same joke. Yesterday, son, I wanted to watch the sunrise. But I just wasn’t up for it….

Some days, the only time he’d been able to make for me had been in the morning, but he’d always done it. He’d gotten up an hour earlier than he needed to get to work, and he’d done it after working well into the night. All for me.

“So, am I going to get to hear this glorious metaphor?” Megan said. “I’m twinkling with anticipation.”

“Well, see,” I said, “I would w

atch the sun rise, and wish I could capture the moment. I never could. Pictures didn’t work—the sunrises never looked as spectacular on film. And eventually I realized, a sunrise isn’t a moment. It’s an event. You can’t capture a sunrise because it changes constantly—between eyeblinks the sun moves, the clouds swirl. It’s continually something new.

“We’re not moments, Megan, you and me. We’re events. You say you might not be the same person you were a year ago? Well, who is? I’m sure not. We change, like swirling clouds and a rising sun. The cells in me have died, and new ones were born. My mind has changed, and I don’t feel the thrill of killing Epics I once did. I’m not the same David. Yet I am.”

I met her eyes and shrugged. “I’m glad you’re not the same Megan. I don’t want you to be the same. My Megan is a sunrise, always changing, but beautiful the entire time.”

She teared up. “That…” She breathed in. “Wow. Aren’t you supposed to be bad at this?”

“Well, you know what they say,” I told her, grinning. “Even a clock that runs fast is still right twice a day.”

“Actually…You know what, never mind. Thank you.”

She kissed me. Mmmmm.

Some time later, I stumbled from my quarters, ran a hand through my disheveled hair, and went to get something to drink. Cody was on the other side of the hallway, finishing the hideout’s roof there with the crystal-growing device that Knighthawk had given us. It looked kind of like a trowel, the kind you’d use to smooth concrete or plaster. When you pulled it along the salt, the crystal structure would extend and create a sheet of new salt. With the glove that came with the device, you could mold that new salt how you wanted for a short time, until it hardened and stayed strong.

We called it Herman. Well, I called it Herman, and nobody else had come up with something better. We’d used it to grow this entire building in an alleyway over the course of two nights, expanding upon a large lump of salt that had grown there already. This place was on the northern rim of the city, which was still growing, so that the half-finished structure wouldn’t look odd.