Calamity (The Reckoners 3)

“I suggest,” Abraham said softly, “that you do not say such things where we might be overheard.”

Mizzy winced and checked over her shoulder. “All I’m saying is that there isn’t a reason for us to be here, now that we know what Prof’s up to.”

“And where do we go, Mizzy?” I asked.

“I don’t know. How about we start with a place other than the city inhabited by a guy determined to kill us?”

I could see that the other two agreed, at least in part.

“Guys, the reason we came here in the first place hasn’t changed,” I said. “Prof still needs us. The world still needs us. Have you forgotten the point of our mission? We need to find a way to convert Epics, not just kill them. Otherwise we might as well give up now.”

“But, lad,” Cody said, “Abraham is right. Your plan to turn Prof didn’t work.”

“That attempt didn’t work,” I said. “But there are logical reasons why it might be the case. Maybe he didn’t see Tavi as having his powers—he saw them as belonging to another Epic; similar, but different. So confronting her wasn’t confronting his abilities.”

“Or,” Abraham said, “Tia was wrong about his weakness.”

“No,” I said. “The fight with Tavi did negate his powers. She could destroy his forcefields, and he couldn’t heal from wounds her attacks caused. Like Steelheart could be hurt only by someone who didn’t fear him, Prof can be hurt only by someone wielding his own powers.”

“This is all irrelevant, regardless,” Abraham said. “You said that Megan summoned this woman because she could not find an actual version of Prof. Her powers are limited then, and this was our sole method of making him face himself.”

“Not necessarily,” I said, fishing in my pocket and taking out the cell incubator device. I rolled it across the ground to Mizzy, who picked it up.

“Is this…,” she said.

“Tissue sample from Prof,” I said.

Cody whistled softly.

“We can make him face himself, Abraham,” I said. “We can do it literally by creating motivators using his own cells. Knighthawk already has a prototype ready from years ago.”

The others fell silent.

“Look,” I said. “We need to give this another try.”

“He’s going to persuade us,” Mizzy said. “It’s kinda what he does.”

“Yes,” Abraham agreed, motioning for her to roll him the tissue sample. He picked it up. “I won’t argue with you further, David. If you believe it worth another attempt, we will support you.” He turned the tissue sample over in his fingers. “But I don’t like giving this to Knighthawk. It feels like…like a betrayal of Prof.”

“More of a betrayal than him killing members of his own team?”

The comment quieted the room, like a sudden shout of “Who wants extra bacon?” at a bar mitzvah.

Mizzy took the tissue sample back from Abraham, then placed it in the drone. “I’ll go release this while it’s still dark,” she said, standing. Cody joined her; he was next on watch. The two slipped out, while Abraham picked up the harmsway, then walked over to me.

“Megan first,” I said.

“Megan is unconscious, David,” he said. “A state that might not be caused merely by her wounds from the fire and the fall. I suggest that we first heal the person we know will return to fighting readiness.”

I sighed. “All right.”

“Very wise.”

“You should be leading this team, Abraham,” I said as he wrapped the diodes of the harmsway around the exposed skin of my feet and ankles. “We both know it. Why did you refuse?”

“You do not ask this question of Cody,” Abraham said.

“Because Cody is a loon. You have experience, you’re calm in a fight, you’re decisive….Why put me in charge?”

Abraham continued working, switching on the device, which caused a fuzzy feeling in my legs, like I’d slept on them wrong. If my wound back at the Foundry was any guide, this device—created from some unknown Epic—wouldn’t be as efficient as using Prof’s powers had been. It might take some time to heal me fully.

“I was JTF2,” Abraham said. “Cansofcom.”

“Which is…what exactly? Other than a strange jumble of letters.”

“Canadian special forces.”

“I knew it!”

“Yes, you are very smart.”

“Was that…sarcasm?”

“Smart again,” Abraham said.

I eyed him. “If you were military,” I said, “that makes it even stranger you haven’t taken command. Were you an officer?”

“Yes.”

“High rank?”

“High enough.”

“And…”

“You know Powder?”

“Epic,” I said. “Could cause gunpowder and unstable materials to explode just by looking at them. He…” I swallowed, remembering a point from my notes. “He tried to conquer Canada, second year A.C. Attacked their military bases.”

“Killed my whole team when he hit Trenton,” Abraham said, standing up. “Everyone but me.?

??

“Why not you?”

“I was in the stockade awaiting court-martial.” He eyed me. “I appreciate your enthusiasm and your grit, but you are young, yet, to understand the world as much as you think you do.” He raised his fingers to me in salute, then walked away.

I scraped the wall of our under-bridge hideout, easily breaking off salt and rubbing it between my fingers. Time to move again. Though we’d always considered this to be an interim hideout, it felt like we’d barely gotten here. It left me feeling transient. How could anyone get a sense of home in this city?

I crossed the room, stretching my now-healed legs. They still ached—though I hadn’t admitted that to the others—but I felt sturdy and strong. It had only taken a few hours in the night; I’d been ready by the time dawn arrived.

Megan’s arm and bruises had also been healed. The harmsway worked on her, blessedly. I’d been worried about that since in Newcago, she couldn’t be healed or use the tensors. Both of those abilities, however, had secretly come from Prof—and as Knighthawk had said, sometimes the abilities of specific Epics interfered with one another.

Well, this harmsway had worked, but she still hadn’t woken up. Abraham told me not to be concerned; he said it wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a day or two in bed following something so traumatic. He was trying to comfort me. How could anyone know what was or wasn’t normal when it came to an Epic overextending their powers?

Mizzy’s head popped out of the storage room. “Hey, slontze. Knighthawk is ticked at you. Check your phone.”

I dug out my mobile, which had been muffled from being in the bottom of my bag. Forty-seven messages. Calamity! What had gone wrong? I scrambled to open the messenger. Maybe the cells hadn’t taken. Or the drone had been shot down by a wandering Epic. Or Knighthawk had decided to switch sides on us.

Instead, I was treated to the sight of forty-seven messages of Knighthawk saying things like Hey or Yo or Hey, you. Idiot.

I quickly messaged him. Is something wrong?

Your didgeridooing face, the message came back.