“With a forcefield bubble extending in front of me?” Prof said. “Yeah. Haven’t practiced it in ages.” He grunted. “I came into the building from below, by vaporizing a section of ground and crossing over into the basement. I’m going to make a forcefield tunnel through the water for these people and hike back to the building we left. Can you meet me there?”
The thought of going back into the bay nauseated me, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “Sure.”
“Good.”
“Prof …,” I said, trying to look morose, though I felt distinctly the opposite. “You’re a hero. You really are.”
“Stop.”
“But, you saved—”
“Stop.”
I fell silent.
“Get back to the building,” he said. “I’ll need you to pilot the sub and take the people to a place well outside Regalia’s range, then let them go. Do you understand?”
“Sure. But why can’t you pilot it?”
“Because,” Prof said, voice growing soft. “It’s going to take every bit of my willpower over the next few minutes not to murder these people for inconveniencing me.”
I swallowed. “Got it,” I said, then fixed the wires on my boot. I pocketed the phone and pointed the streambeam at the water, testing to make certain everything was operating—then I double-checked the wires just to be certain.
Finally I started out, more carefully this time. It took a long while, but I eventually arrived. Then I had to wait in a room near where we’d docked the submarine for the better part of an hour before I heard sounds.
I stood up as a door opened, and an ashen group of people began to pile out of a hallway. Prof had led them up into another part of the building. I rushed to help, calmed them, then explained how we’d have to enter the submarine in the darkness with everyone being as quiet as possible. We couldn’t risk Regalia discovering what Prof had done.
With some effort, I got the coughing, wet, and exhausted group of people into the submarine. There were about forty of them, but we could all fit. Barely.
I helped the last one down, a mother with a baby, then climbed out and crossed through the building to the room where I’d met the people, shining my mobile to make certain I hadn’t left anyone.
Prof stood in the opposite doorway, mostly in shadow. His goggles reflected the light so I couldn’t see his eyes. He nodded to me once, then turned around and vanished into the gloom.
I sighed and clicked my mobile off, then walked back to the submarine room and used the ropes to guide me. I climbed in and pulled down the hatch, sealing it, then descended into the crowded sub full of wet people who smelled of smoke. Prof’s attitude disturbed me, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the warmth I felt inside. He’d done it. Despite his complaints about my recklessness, he’d gone and saved the people himself.
He and I were the same. He was just a hell of a lot more competent than I was. I took the sub’s front seat and called Val to ask for instructions on how to pilot the thing.
31
I set the box of rations down with a thump, then stood and wiped my brow. Several of the Babilaran refugees Prof had saved picked up the boxes and hurried off with them, making quickly for the nearby wreckage of a warehouse. They’d cleaned off some of the soot in the day since I’d dropped them off here in the rotting remains of a small island off the coast of New York, but they seemed to have gained a healthy sense of self-preservation during that time. It must not have been buried very deep.
“Thank you,” a woman named Soomi said, bowing. Though it was evening, their spraypainted clothing didn’t glow here, so it just looked dirty. Old.
“Just remember our deal,” I said.
“We didn’t see anything,” she promised. “And we won’t return to the city for at least a month.”
I nodded. Soomi and her people believed that the Reckoners had saved them using secret forcefield technology. They weren’t to tell anyone what they’d seen, but even if it got out, hopefully the stories wouldn’t implicate Prof as an Epic.
Soomi picked up one of the last boxes and joined the others, hurrying back toward a group of ramshackle buildings with overgrown grounds. It was best not to be seen with food, in case scavengers saw you. Fortunately, the only way off this island was a bridge just to the north, so hopefully they would be safe here.
My heart wrenched to see them without homes or possessions, cast adrift, but this was all we could do. And it was maybe more than we should have done—we’d needed to have Cody airlift us supplies out of Newcago to provide rations for these people.
I turned and made my way down an empty, broken street, rifle over my shoulder. It was a short walk to the old dock where we’d parked the submarine. Val lounged, seated on top of it. She’d stacked the boxes of food on the dock, while the refugees and I had carried them inside.
I hesitated on the dock, looking out toward Babilar to the southwest. It glowed with surreal colors, like a portal to some other dimension. Though the water extending out before me looked flat, I knew that it sloped upward slightly. Regalia had sculpted this city’s look intentionally; she even maintained different water levels in different parts of Babilar, creating handcrafted neighborhoods of rooftops and sunken streets.
She does care, I thought. She built this city like she intended to stay here, to rule. She made it inviting.
So why destroy it now?
“Coming?” Val called to me.
I nodded and crossed the dock and scrambled aboard the sub—this area was outside of Regalia’s range of sight, theoretically, so we could let it surface in the open.
“Hey,” Val said as I passed, “when are you going to tell me how you saved them? For real, I mean.”
I hesitated at the hatch, light from down inside rising to bathe me. “I used the spyril,” I said.
“Yeah, but how?”
“I put out the fire in a room,” I said, using the lie Tia and I had prepared. We’d been expecting Val or Exel to prod eventually. “I was able to crowd everyone into the same room, then keep them safe and quiet until Regalia thought everyone was dead. Then I snuck them out.”
It was a good enough lie. Val didn’t know that the building had basically collapsed once the water came rushing back in. It was plausible that I’d have been able to get the people out.
Good lie or not, I hated telling it. Couldn’t Prof be straight with the members of his own team?
Val regarded me carefully, and though her face was too much in shadows to read, I felt like the only rotten strawberry in a line of strawberries. Finally, she shrugged. “Well, nice work.”
I hurriedly slipped down into the submarine. Val followed, then locked the hatch and moved to the front seat. She didn’t believe what I’d told her, not completely. I could read it in the stiff way she sat down, the too-controlled sound of her voice as she called Tia and said we were on our way back to the supply dump to get the next set of boxes, which would restock our base.
I fidgeted, and we moved under the waves and traveled for a while in silence. Finally, I forced myself to get into the copilot’s seat next to Val at the front. I still knew next to nothing about Val. Maybe some disarming conversation would ease her suspicion about what had happened the day before.
“So,” I said, “I notice you prefer a Colt 1911. A good, time-tested gun. Is that a Springfield frame and slide set?”
“Don’t know, honestly,” she said, glancing at the gun she wore on her hip. “Sam gave it to me.”
“But, I mean, surely you need to know. For replacement parts.”
Val shrugged. “It’s just a gun. If it breaks, I’ll get another.”
Just a …
Just a gun? Had she really said that?
I found my mouth working, but no sound coming out, as we puttered beneath the waves. The gun you carried was literally your life—if it malfunctioned, you could be dead. How could she say something like that?
Be disarming, I told myself forcefully. Chastising her won’t m
ake her more comfortable around you.
“So, uh,” I said, coughing into my hand, “you must have enjoyed it here, on this assignment. Sweet undersea base, no Epics to fight, a city full of good-natured people. Must be the best job a Reckoner team could get assigned.”
“Sure,” Val said. “Until one of my friends got murdered.”
And now I was “replacing” that friend in the team. Great. Another reminder why she shouldn’t like me.
“You’ve known Mizzy for a while,” I said, trying another tactic. “You didn’t grow up in the city, did you?”
“No.”
“Where were you stationed before this?”
“Mexico. But you shouldn’t ask about our pasts. It’s against protocol.”
“Just trying to—”
“I know what you’re trying to do. It’s not necessary. I’ll do my job; you do yours.”
“Sure,” I said. “All right.” I settled back in my seat.
Wait. Mexico? I perked up. “You … weren’t in on the Hermosillo job, were you?”
Val eyed me, but said nothing.
“The hit on Puños de Fuego!” I exclaimed.
“How do you know about that?” Val asked.
“Oh man. Was it true, did he really throw a tank at you?”
Val kept her eyes forward, tapping a button on the sub’s control panel. “Yeah,” she finally said. “An entire flippin’ tank. Broke open the wall of our base of operations.”
“Wow.”