Calamity (The Reckoners 3)

“An underground room,” Abraham whispered. “That has to be the safehouse—an office linked to the parking garage, perhaps?”

“Can there be basements in this city?” I asked.

“Shallow ones,” Abraham said, tapping the ground with his foot. “Depending on the area, Ildithia can grow up on a mass of salt rock that’s several stories high in some places; it replicates the landscape of the original Atlanta, filling in holes and creating hills. It’s as shallow as a few feet elsewhere, but this is a thick portion. Did you notice the slope while we walked to the warehouse?”

I hadn’t. “Mizzy,” I said, “he might be coming in there. Status?”

“Trapped,” she whispered. “Stairwell is packed; everyone and their dog thought to hide in here. Like, seriously. There are four dogs. I can’t find a way out.”

Prof didn’t follow the young Epic toward the parking garage. He strode farther down the street and swept both hands before himself.

The street melted away. The salt became powder, and that blew off in a gust of air that Prof created by quickly pushing two concave forcefields. The rest drained away into a hollow space below, leaving behind a set of stairs that Prof walked down without breaking stride.

It was amazing. I’d studied Epics, come up with my own systems of categorization. I admit I was a little obsessed. In the same way that a million preschoolers asking questions over and over at the same time might be a little obnoxious.

Prof’s power was unique—he didn’t just destroy matter, he sculpted it. It was beautiful destruction, and I found that I envied him. Once, I’d held that power, gifted to me. After Steelheart’s death, Prof had stopped doing that so much. I’d had the spyril to keep me entertained, but I could see that even then he’d been withdrawing from us.

It was the time he saved me from Enforcement, I realized. That was the beginning of the problems.

I’d started him down this path. I knew I couldn’t take all the blame—Regalia’s plot to turn Prof would probably have happened whether or not I had joined the Reckoners—but neither could I deny responsibility.

“Mizzy,” I said over the line, “hold tight. You might be safest in there after all.”

Prof stepped down into the chamber he’d uncovered, but Cody’s vantage from above let us watch on our mobiles. Prof didn’t descend far before turning around and striding up again, dragging someone by the collar. Back on the street, he tossed the person aside. The figure fell limply to the ground, neck at an unnatural angle.

“A decoy,” Prof barked. His voice carried through the square. “Larcener is a coward, I see.”

“Decoy?” Megan said, taking my rifle from me and zooming in on the body.

“Ooooh,” I whispered, excited. “Larcener absorbed Dead Drop. I wondered if he was ever going to do that.”

“Talk normal-person, Knees,” Megan said. “Dead Drop?”

“An Epic who used to live in the city. He could make copies of himself—kind of like Mitosis, but Dead Drop could make only a few at a time. Three, I think? The copies each retained his other powers though. And, well, you know how Larcener is….”

The other two looked at me blankly.

“He’s an assumer….Don’t you know what one does?”

“Sure,” Cody said over the line. “Makes an ass out of you and Mer. Hate that guy.”

I sighed. “You people know very little, for being a specialized team trained to hunt Epics.”

“Maintaining lists of Epics and their powers was Tia’s job,” Abraham said. “Now yours. And we haven’t had our briefing.”

After a few days in the city, spent investigating who was here and who wasn’t, I had planned to sit them down and explain all the Epics they needed to watch for. I probably should have prepped them for Larcener early. We’d been too focused on Prof.

“An assumer,” I said, “is the opposite of a gifter. Larcener steals powers from other Epics—it’s his one natural ability, but he’s very powerful. Most assumers only ‘rent’ the powers, so to speak. Larcener can take another Epic’s abilities permanently, and he can keep as many as he wants. He’s got an entire collection of them. If Prof found a clone, it means Larcener grabbed Dead Drop’s powers—an Epic who could create a decoy of himself, imbue it with his consciousness and powers, then retreat to his real body if the decoy was threatened.”

I took my gun back from Megan and studied the decoy. It was decomposing quickly now that it had been killed, the skin melting off the bones like a marshmallow slipping off its roasting stick. Undoubtedly this was how Prof had recognized that he didn’t have the real Larcener.

“Larcener makes other Epics very uncomfortable,” I explained. “They don’t like the idea that someone might be able to take their abilities. Fortunately for them, he’s not very ambitious, and has always been content to stay in Ildithia. The Coven relied on him—or the idea of him—to keep other Epics from moving in on their territory….”

Megan and Abraham were rolling their eyes at me now.

“What?” I demanded.

“You look like you just found an old hard drive,” Megan said, “full of lost songs by your favorite pre-Calamity band.”

“This stuff is cool,” I grumbled, inspecting Prof. He seemed thoroughly displeased by what he’d discovered in that hole. Now he was contemplating the market, which I could see from out here was packed like Mizzy had said.

“I don’t like that look on his face,” Abraham said.

“Guys,” Mizzy said, “I think I’m by a wall to the outside. I can see sunlight through it if I squint. Maybe we can get me out that way.”

Abraham looked at Megan. “Can you make a portal into another dimension, where the wall isn’t there?”

Megan looked skeptical. “I don’t know. Most of what I can do is ephemeral, unless I’ve recently reincarnated. I can trap someone in another world for a time, so long as it’s very similar to our own—or pull that world into ours. But they’re only shadows, and sometimes things seem to reset after the shadow fades.”

Prof was on the move, striding toward the marketplace. He snapped his fingers, and Dynamo hurried over to him. A moment later when Prof spoke, his voice boomed through the area, as loud as if enhanced by a speaker.

“I am going to destroy this building,” Prof said, pointing at the market. “And all of those nearby.”

Ah, right, a part of me thought. Dynamo. He has sound manipulation.

The rest of me was horrified.

“Everyone who wishes to live,” Prof continued, “must come out here to the square. Those who run will die. Those who remain will die. You have five minutes.”

“Oh, hell,” Cody said over the line. “You want me to pop him? Make a distraction?”

“No,” I said. “He’d come for you, and we’d trade one problem for another.” I looked at Megan.

She nodded. If she created a distraction and Prof came for her, she’d reincarnate. Sparks. I hated thinking of her ability to die as some kind of disposable resource.

&nbs

p; Hopefully we wouldn’t need that.

“Abraham, fall back and support Cody,” I said. “If something goes wrong, you two continue with the plan to make a safehouse in the city. Be sure he doesn’t spot you.”

“Roger,” Abraham said. “And you two?”

“We’re going to get to Mizzy,” I said. “Megan, can you conjure up some temporary faces for us?”

“Not a problem.” She concentrated and changed in a split second—eyes the wrong color, a face that was too round, and hair that was black instead of golden. I assumed I’d undergone a similar transformation. I took a deep breath, then handed my rifle to Abraham. Though I’d seen people in Ildithia carrying guns, mine was far too advanced. It would draw attention.

“Let’s go,” I said, slipping out from behind the cover and joining the groups of people who were—timidly—leaving buildings and the market to stand before Prof.

MIZZY was in the parking garage on the other side of the street from us, which presented a problem. “How close do you need to be to give her an illusory face?” I whispered to Megan.

“The closer the better,” she whispered back as we moved into the crowd. “Otherwise, I risk catching more people in the ripple between worlds.”

So we had to cross the street in front of Prof without drawing attention. He was fully in the grip of his powers, so he’d be selfish to the extreme, completely lacking the ability to empathize. It wouldn’t matter who we were or what we looked like; if someone inconvenienced him, he’d kill them as easily as another man swatted a mosquito.

I slumped my shoulders and pinned my eyes to the ground. The act was still second nature to me; they’d drilled it into us at the Factory. I used it now to become inconspicuous as I stepped away from the mass of other people and headed eastward across the street, moving purposefully, yet careful to keep my posture hunched and subservient.

I shot a furtive glance over my shoulder to see if Megan was following, and she was—but she stood out like a hammer in a birthday cake. She was obviously trying to look innocuous, hands shoved in her pockets, but she walked too tall, too unafraid. Sparks. Prof would spot her for certain. I reached out and took her hand, then whispered to her, “You need to be more beaten down, Megan. Pretend you’re carrying a lead statue of Buddha on your back.”