Instead, her text was brief, yet chilling.
Hurry up. We decided to scout close to the city, to get a glimpse. Something’s happened.
What? I messaged back, urgent.
Kansas City. It’s gone.
I tried to think of a proper metaphor for the way the slag crunched under my feet. Like…like ice on…No.
I stepped across the wide-open landscape of melted rock that had been Kansas City. For once, words failed me. The only proper descriptor I could think of was…sorrowful.
The day before, this had been one of the points of civilization on an otherwise dark map. Yes, it had been a place dominated by Epics, but it had also been a place of life, culture, society. People. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of them.
All gone.
I crouched down, rubbing my fingers on the smooth ground. It was still warm, and probably would be for days. The blast had warped stone and, in an instant, turned buildings into molten mountains of steel. The ground was covered in little ridges of glass, like frozen waves, none taller than an inch. Somehow they conveyed the feeling of an incredible wind blowing from the center point of the destruction.
All those people. Gone. I sent a prayer to God, or whoever might be listening, that some of them had gotten out before the blast. Footsteps announced Megan. She was lit by the morning sun.
“We’re dying out, Megan,” I said, voice ragged. “We capitulated to the Epics, and we’re still getting exterminated. Their wars will end all life on this planet.”
She rested a hand on my shoulder as I crouched there, feeling the glass that had once been people.
“This was Obliteration?” she asked.
“This matches what he did in other cities,” I said. “And I know of no other with the powers to do this.”
“That maniac…”
“There’s something seriously wrong with that man, Megan. When he destroys a city, he considers it a mercy. He seems to think…seems to think that the way to truly rid the world of Epics is to destroy every single person who could ever become one.”
The darkness had given Obliteration a special kind of madness, a twisted version of the Reckoners’ own goal. Rid the world of Epics.
No matter what the cost.
My mobile blinked, and I ripped it off the place where it usually rested, strapped to my jacket’s shoulder.
You see this? It was Knighthawk, and he’d included an attachment. I opened it up. It was a shot of a large explosion blasting out from what I presumed to be Kansas City. The photo had been taken from far away.
People are sharing this right and left, Knighthawk sent. Aren’t you guys heading that direction?
You know exactly where we are, I texted back. You’re tracking my mobile.
I was just being polite, he sent. Get me some photos of the center of the city. Obliteration is going to be a problem.
Going to be? I sent.
Yeah, well, look at this.
The next shot was an image of a lanky man with a goatee walking through a crowded street, long trench coat fluttering behind him, sword strapped to his side. I recognized Obliteration immediately.
Kansas City? I asked. Before the blast.
Yeah, Knighthawk wrote back.
The ramifications of that sank in. I scrambled to dial Knighthawk’s number, then lifted the phone to my ear. He picked up a second later.
“He isn’t glowing,” I said, eager. “That means—”
“What are you doing?” Knighthawk demanded. “Idiot!”
He hung up.
I stared at the phone, confused, until another message came. Did I say you could call me, boy?
But…, I wrote back. You’ve been texting me all day.
Totally different, he wrote. Didgeridooing invasion of privacy, calling a person without their permission.
“Didgeridooing?” Megan asked from over my shoulder.
“Profanity filter on my mobile,” I said.
“You use a profanity filter? What is this, kindergarten?”
“Nah,” I said. “It’s hilarious. Makes people sound really stupid.”
Another text came from Knighthawk. You said that Regalia created a motivator from Obliteration. What do you want to bet she made more than one? Look at these images.
He sent another sequence that showed Obliteration in Kansas City, working on some kind of glowing object. It was bright, but you could still tell it was doing the glowing, not Obliteration himself.
Timestamp on that last one is right before the place got vaporized, Knighthawk sent. He destroyed Kansas City with a device. But why use one of those instead of doing it himself?
Stealthier, I wrote back. Him sitting in the center of town like he did in Texas, glowing until he blows the place up, is going to give a big warning that people should run.
That’s downright disgusting, Knighthawk wrote.
Can you watch for him on other mobiles?
That’s a lot of data to sift, kid, Knighthawk sent.
You have something better to do?
Yeah, maybe. I’m not one of your Reckoners.
Yes, but you *are* a human being. Please. Do what you can. If you spot him in another city, glowing or not, send me word. We can maybe warn the people.
We’ll see, he sent.
Megan regarded my phone. “I should be creeped out by how much control he has over the mobiles, shouldn’t I?”
She and I took some more pictures of the downtown. After we sent them to Knighthawk, my entire conversation with him faded from my mobile. I showed Megan, though she was distracted, looking across the seemingly endless field of glassy rock-and-steel mounds that had once been a city.
“It would have killed me,” she said softly. “Fire. A permanent end.”
“It would have killed most Epics,” I said. “Even some other High Epics.” It was one way to get past their invulnerabilities—nuke them to oblivion. A terrible solution, as some countries had discovered. You could nuke only so many of your own cities before you didn’t have anything left to protect.
Megan leaned on me as I put my hand on her shoulder. She’d climbed into a burning building to save my life, confronting what could have killed her, but that didn’t mean her fear was gone. It was merely controlled. Managed.
Together, the two of us joined the other Reckoners, who had settled near the center of the blast—which Abraham had tested for radiation, to be sure it was safe.
“We’re going to have to do something about this one, David,” Abraham said as I walked up.
“Agreed,” I said. “Saving Prof comes first though. Are we agreed on that?”
Around the group, they nodded. Abraham and Cody had been with Megan and me from the start, willing to try bringing back Prof instead of killing him. It seemed I’d persuaded Mizzy with our conversation in the car, as she nodded vigorously.
“Is anyone else here worried about why Prof went to Atlanta?” Cody asked. “I mean, he could’ve stayed in Babilar and had all sorts of Epics obeying him. Instead, he’s moved all the way out here.”
“He must have a plan,” I said.
“He has all of Regalia’s information,” Abraham said. “She knew things about Epics, their powers, and Calamity—more, I suspect, than anyone else knows. Makes me wonder what he discovered in her data.”
I nodded, thoughtful. “Regalia said that she wanted a successor. We know she was involved in things much larger than that one city. She’d been in communication with Calamity, had been trying to figure out how his powers worked. Maybe Prof’s continuing her work, whatever she was plotting before the cancer grew too bad.”
“Possible,” Mizzy said. “But what? What was she planning—or alternately, what is Prof planning?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m worried. Prof is one of the most effective, intelligent people I’ve ever met. He’s obviously not going to sit around as an Epic and merely rule a city. He’ll have grander plans; whatever he’s up to, it will be big.”
; We left Kansas City a far more solemn group than had entered. We traveled closer together this time, two jeeps driving single file. It took a sickeningly long time to reach a point where we weren’t surrounded by melted buildings and scarred ground. We kept going, though the sun had risen. Abraham figured we were close to our target, within a few hours at most.