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.