But how could I get information from her without saying anything? I made a snap decision and jumped off the rooftop, engaging the spyril and jetting through the water of Central Park Bay. I burst from the water a few minutes later, landing on another roof far north of the one I’d been on before.
“You do realize how ridiculous you look doing that,” Regalia said, stretching up from the water, speaking even before her new shape fully formed.
I yelped, pretending to be alarmed. I left this building and splashed farther northward until I was at the very northern edge of the bay. Here, exhausted, I broke from the water again and settled onto a rooftop, water streaming from my brow.
“Are you quite done?” Regalia asked as her chair formed from the water just before me again. She picked up her cup of tea. “I can appear anywhere I want, silly boy. I’m surprised Jonathan didn’t explain this to you.”
Not anywhere, I thought. You have a limited range.
And she’d just given me two more data points that would help Tia pinpoint her true location. I slipped off the roof into the water, intending to take another swim and see if I could get her to follow one more time.
“You are good with the device,” Regalia noted. “Did you ever know Waterlog, the Epic in whom those powers originated? I created him, you know.”
I stopped in the water beside the building, frozen like a beetle who’d just discovered that his mother had been eaten by a praying mantis.
Regalia sipped her tea.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Oh, so that interests you, does it? His original name was Georgi, a minor street thug down in Orlando. He showed promise. I made him into an Epic.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, laughing. Nobody could make Epics. Sure, once in a while new ones appeared. Though the vast majority had been here since about a year after Calamity’s rise, I knew of a few notable Epics who had only recently manifested powers. But no one knew why or how.
“So certain in your denial,” Regalia said, shaking her head. “Do you think you know so much about the world, David Charleston? You know how everything works?”
I stopped laughing, but I didn’t believe her for a moment. She was playing me somehow. What was her game?
“Ask Obliteration next time you see him,” Regalia said idly, “assuming you live long enough. Ask about what I’ve done to his powers, how much stronger they are, despite what I have taken from him.”
I looked up at her, frowning. “Taken from him?” What did she mean by that? What would she “take” from an Epic? And that aside, was she also implying she’d enhanced Obliteration’s powers? Was that the reason for the lack of cooldown on his teleporting?
“You can’t fight me,” she said. “If you do you’ll end up dead, alone. Gasping for breath in one of these jungle buildings, one step from freedom. Your last sight a blank wall that someone had spilled coffee on. A pitiful, pathetic end. Think on that.”
She vanished.
I climbed up onto the rooftop and wiped some water from my eyes, then sat down. That had been a decidedly surreal experience. As I rested I thought on what she’d told me. There was so much that it only grew more troubling the more I thought it through.
Eventually I jumped back into the water and swam to the others.
26
TWO days later I lingered in the library of our underwater base, alone, looking at Tia’s map. The points where I’d seen Regalia were marked with red pins and little exclamation points scribbled right on the paper. I smiled, remembering Tia’s excitement as she’d placed those pins. Though the math of what she was doing here wasn’t particularly interesting to me, the end result certainly was.
I moved to walk away, then stopped myself. I’d done well enough in my mathematics training at the Factory, even if I hadn’t enjoyed the subject. I couldn’t afford to be lazy just because someone else had things in hand. I wanted to know for myself. I forced myself to turn back and try to figure out Tia’s notations. From what I eventually worked out, my points had helped a lot, but we needed more data from the southeastern side of the city before we could really determine Regalia’s center base.
Feeling satisfied, I left the library. With nothing to do.
Which was odd. Back in Newcago, I’d always had something to occupy my time, mostly because of Abraham and Cody. Whenever they’d seen me looking idle, they’d handed me a project. Cleaning guns, carrying crates, practicing with the tensors—something.
Here, that didn’t happen. I couldn’t practice with the spyril down here—and I could only go up above to practice during certain preplanned excursions. Besides, my body ached from the hours I’d already spent power-swimming around the city. Prof’s forcefields kept me from getting battered, but they didn’t protect my muscles from strain.
I peeked in on Tia—her door was cracked—and I knew from her look of concentration and the six empty cola pouches by her seat that I shouldn’t disturb her. Mizzy was in the workroom with Val helping her, fixing one of our boat motors. When I stepped in to talk to them, I got an immediate cold scowl from Val. I stopped dead in the doorway, chilled by that stare. Val seemed to be in an even worse mood than normal in the last few days.
Mizzy gave me a little shrug, wiggling her hand and making Val pass her a wrench. Sparks. I turned around and left them. Now what? I should be doing something. I sighed and headed back toward my room, where I could dig into my notes on Epics yet again. I passed Tia’s room and was surprised when she called out.
“David?”
I hesitated by the door, then pushed it open farther. “Yeah?”
“How did you know?” Tia asked, head down over her datapad, typing something furiously. “About Sourcefield.”
Sourcefield. The Epic we’d killed just before leaving Newcago. I stepped forward, eager. “You found something more? About her background?”
“I’ve just recovered the truth about her grandparents,” Tia said with a nod. “They tried to kill her.”
“That’s sad, but …”
“They poisoned her drink.”
“Kool-Aid?”
“A generic,” Tia said, “but close enough. The grandparents were a strange pair, fascinated by cults and old stories. It was a copycat killing, or an attempted one, based on an older tragedy in South America. The important thing is that Sourcefield—rather, Emiline—was old enough at the time to realize that she’d been poisoned. She crawled out into the street when her throat and mouth started burning, and a passerby took her to the ho
spital. She became an Epic years later, and her weakness—”
“Was the very thing that had almost killed her,” I finished, excited. “It’s a connection, Tia.”
“Maybe a coincidental one.”
“You don’t believe that,” I said. How could she? This was another connection, a real one—like Mitosis, but even more promising. Was this where Epic weaknesses came from? Something that nearly killed them?
But how would bad rock music nearly kill a guy? I wondered. Touring, perhaps? An accident. We needed to know more.
“I think a coincidence is possible,” Tia said, then looked up and finally met my eyes. “But I also think it’s worth investigating. Nice work. How did you guess?”
“There’s got to be some logic to it, Tia,” I said. “The powers, the weaknesses, the Epics … who gets chosen.”
“I don’t know, David,” Tia said. “Does there really have to be a rationale behind it? In ancient days, when a disaster struck everyone would try to make sense of it—find a reason. Somebody’s sins. Angered gods. But nature doesn’t always have a reason for us, not the type we want.”
“You’re going to look into it, right?” I asked. “This is like Mitosis—similar at least. Maybe we can find a connection with Steelheart and his weakness. He could only be harmed by someone who didn’t fear him. Maybe in his past he was nearly killed by someone who—”
“I’ll look into it,” Tia said, stopping me. “I promise.”
“You seem reluctant,” I pressed. How could she be so skeptical? This was exciting! Revolutionary!
“I thought we were beyond this. The lorists spent the early years searching for a connection between Epic weaknesses. We decided there wasn’t one.” She hesitated. “Though I suppose that was a challenging time—when communication was difficult and the government was collapsing. We made other mistakes back then; I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised to discover we’d been too hasty in making some of our decisions.” She sighed. “I’ll look into this further, though Calamity knows I don’t have the time these days with the Regalia issue.”