Firefight

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 hospital. 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.”

“I can help,” I said, taking another step forward.

“I know you can. I’ll keep you informed of what I discover.”

I stayed where I was, stubborn not to leave so easily.

“That was a dismissal, David.”

“I-”

“The people I work with are very secretive,” Tia interrupted. “I’ve been implying to them that you should be allowed to join our ranks, but if you do you’ll have to give up on fieldwork. Having access to our knowledge necessitates preventing you from taking risks, lest you get captured and interrogated.”

I grunted, annoyed. I’d been looking forward to the chance, someday, to meet with Tia’s lorists. But I wasn’t going to give up on running point, not when there were Epics to kill. Being a lorist sounded like a job for a nerd anyway.

I sighed and retreated from the library. This left me with the same problem as before, unfortunately. What to do with myself? Tia wouldn’t let me in on the research, and Val didn’t want me nearby.

Who would have thought that living in an awesome undersea base would be so boring?

I walked slowly back toward my room. The hallway was quiet except for some echoing sounds from farther down the dark stretch. Faint, with a rasping quality, they called to me like the ding on a microwave as it finished nuking a pizza pocket. I passed door after door until I eventually reached Exel’s room. He had the door wide open, and the inside was plastered wall to wall with posters of interesting buildings. An architecture buff? I wouldn’t have guessed-but then again, I was having trouble guessing anything about Exel.

The man himself sat filling up a large chair near a small table set with an antiquated piece of machinery. He nodded to me, then continued to fiddle with the machine in front of him. It made buzzing noises.

Feeling welcome for the first time all day, I walked in and settled into a seat beside him. “A radio?” I guessed as he turned a dial.

“Specifically, a scanner,” he said.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It just lets me look for signals, mostly local ones, and see if I can hear them.”

“How … old-fashioned,” I said.

“Well, maybe not as much as you think,” he answered. “This isn’t actually the radio, just a control mechanism. We’re buried far enough underwater that I wouldn’t get good signals here; the real radio is stashed above.”

“Still-radio?” I tapped my new mobile. “We have something better.”

“And most people above do not,” Exel said, sounding amused. “You think the people partying and lounging in this city have the resources to use mobiles? Knighthawk mobiles no less?”

I hesitated. Mobiles had been common in Newcago, where Steelheart had had a deal with the Knighthawk Foundry. While that sounded altruistic of him, there was a simpler truth to it. With everyone carrying mobiles, he could force upon them “obedience programs” and other warnings to keep them in line.

Apparently Regalia didn’t have something similar.

“Radios,” Exel said, tapping his receiver. “Some things just work. There is elegance in simplicity. If I were up there living a relatively normal life, I’d want a radio instead of a mobile. I can fix a radio; I know how it works. Calamity only knows what goes on inside one of those modern devices.”

“But how do the radios get power?” I asked.

Exel shook his head. “Radios just work here in Babilar.”

“You mean …”

“No explanation for it,” he said with a shrug of his ample shoulders. “Nothing else works without a power source-blenders, clocks, whatever you try. Won’t work. But radios turn on, even if you don’t have batteries in them.”

That gave me a shiver. Even more than the strange lights in the darkness, this creeped me out. Ghostly powered radios? What was happening in this city?

Exel didn’t seem bothered. He tuned to another frequency, then took out his pen, leaning in, writing. I scooted my chair closer. From what I could tell, he was just listening to random chatter of townspeople. He made a few notes, then moved on. He listened to this frequency for a while without making notes before going to the next one, where he scribbled things down furiously.

He really seemed to know what he was doing. His notes were neat and efficient, and he seemed to be searching to see if some of the people might be speaking in code. I took one of his sheets off the table; he glanced at me but didn’t stop me.

It looked like he was also scanning for mentions of Regalia and stories regarding her direct appearance. Most of what he had was hearsay, but I was impressed with the detail of the notes, and with the conclusions he was drawing. Some of the notes indicated the frequency had been muffled, or static-filled, but he’d managed to re-create entire conversations-the words he actually heard underlined, the rest filled in.

I looked up from the sheet. “You’re a mortician,” I said, skeptical.

“Third generation,” he said proudly. “Was there for my own grandfather’s embalming. Stuffed the eyes with cotton myself.”

“They teach this in mortician school?” I said, holding up the paper.

“Nope,” Exel said with a grin. “Learned that in the CIA.”

“You’re a spook?” I asked, shocked.

“Hey, even the CIA needed morticians.”

“Uh, no. I don’t think it did.”

“More than you think,” Exel said, tuning to another frequency. “Back in the old days there were hundreds like me. Not all morticians, of course-but similar. People living normal lives, doing regular jobs, placed in areas where we could do a little good here and there. I spent years teaching mortuary science in Seoul, listening to the radios at night with my team. Everyone imagines spies to be the ‘cocktails and bow tie’ sort, but there weren’t actually many of those. Most of us were regular folks.”

“You,” I said. “Regular?”

“Within plausible limits of believability,” Exel said.

I found myself smiling. “I don’t get you, Exel,” I said, picking up another sheet from his stack. “The other day you almost seemed to sympathize with the do-nothings who flock to this city.”

“I do sympathize with them,” Exel said. “I’d love to do nothing. Seems like a grand profession. It’s never because of the ‘do-nothings’ that people go to war.”

“Says the former spy.”

“Former?” Exel asked, waggling a pencil at me.

“Exel, if nobody changes the world, if nobody works to make it better, then we stagnate.”

“I could live with stagnation,” Exel said, “if it meant no war. No killing.”

I wasn’t certain I agreed. Maybe I was naive, as I’d never lived through any human-on-human wars-my life had been dominated by the conflict with the Epics. But I figured the world would be pretty boring if all you did was stay the same.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Exel continued. “That can’t be. My job now is about doing what I can to make sure people get to live their lives how they want to. If that means basking in the sun and not worrying, then good for them. At least someone in this sorry world is enjoying themselves.”

He continued writing. I could have argued further, but I found my heart wasn’t in it. If this was what motivated him to fight the Epics, then so be it. We each had our reasons.

Instead I let my attention be drawn by a page of notes relating to a specific topic: Dawnslight, the mythical Epic who supposedly made the plants grow and the spraypaint shine. Exel’s page was filled with references to people discussing him, praying to him, cursing by his name.

I could see why people were so interested in Dawnslight. Babilar could not exist without him, whoever he was. But reports placed him in the city long before Regalia had arrived. Dared I hope it was true, that an Epic existed who was this benevolent? An Epic who didn’t kill, or didn’t even dominate, but who instead made food grow and light appear? Who was this person who created paradise in the buildings of old Manhattan?

“Exel,” I said, looking up from the paper, “you’ve lived here for a while.”

“Ever since Prof ordered us to embed,” the large man replied.

“Do you think Dawnslight is a real person?”

He tapped his pencil on his pad for a moment, then set it down and reached beside his seat for a pouch of orange soda. You could get it shipped out of Charlotte, like the cola, if you had connections. There was an Epic there who really loved soda and paid to have the machinery maintained.

“You’ve seen my notes,” Exel said, nodding to the sheet I was looking at. “That page is one of many. I’ve been keeping an ear out for mentions of Dawnslight since I arrived. He’s real. Too many people talk about him for him to not be.”

“A lot of people talk about God,” I said. “Or they used to.”

“Because he’s real too. You don’t believe, I assume?”

I wasn’t certain. I fished under my shirt, bringing out Abraham’s gift. The stylized S shape that was the symbol of the Faithful. What did I believe? For years my “religion” had been Steelheart’s death. I’d worshipped that goal as fervently as any old-time monk in a monkplace.

“Well, I’ve never been the missionary type,” Exel said, “and I think that God might be a topic for another day. But as for Dawnslight, I’m reasonably certain he’s real.”

“The people here worship him as a god.”

“Well, they may be a screwy bunch,” Exel said, raising his pouch. “But they’re a peaceful lot, right? So good for them.”

“And their Epic? Is Dawnslight peaceful?”

“Seems so.”

I was dancing around it. I needed to just say what I meant. I leaned forward. “Exel, do you think it’s possible for Epics to be good?”

“Of course they can be. We all have free will. It’s a divine right.”

I sat back, thoughtful.

“You don’t agree, I see.”

“Actually I do,” I said. I had to believe Epics could be good-for Megan’s sake. “I want to find a way to bring some Epics to our side, but Prof thinks I’m a fool.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Half the time, I think he’s right.”

“Well, Jonathan Phaedrus is a great man. A wise man. But I once saw him lose to a bluff in poker, so we have empirical evidence that he doesn’t know everything.”

I smiled.

“I think your goal is a worthy one, Steelslayer.” Exel sat up straighter and looked me in the eye. “I don’t think we can ever beat the Epics on our own. We’d need a lot more firepower. Perhaps all the world needs is for a few Epics to step up and openly oppose the others. Nothing so dramatic as the Faithful believe, no mystical coming of blessed, angelic Epics. Just one or two who are willing to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t right.’ If everyone including the Epics knew that there was another option, perhaps it would change everything.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Thanks for what? For blabbing my random opinions at you?”

“Pretty much. I needed someone to talk to. Tia was too busy, and Val seems to hate me.”

“Nah, you just remind her of Sam. The spyril was his baby, you know.”

Well, I guess that made a kind of sense then. Unfair though it was.

“I-”

“Wait a sec,” Exel said, holding up a hand. “Listen.”

I turned my attention to the radio, focusing on making out the words. The static had been constant as we were talking, but I hadn’t realized there were faint voices in the background.

“… yeah, I see him,” a voice said. “He’s just sitting there, on the rooftop in Turtle Bay.”

“Is he doing anything?” another voice said, the frequency crackling with static.

“Nah.” First voice. “His eyes are closed. His face is turned toward the sky.”

“Get out of there, Miles.” Second voice. Frightened. “He’s dangerous. Murdered a lot of people a couple weeks back.”

“Yeah.” First voice. “Why’s he just sitting there, though?”

Exel looked up and met my eyes. “Obliteration?” he asked.

I nodded, feeling sick.

“You guessed he’d be doing this,” Exel said. “Nice call.”

“I wish I hadn’t been right,” I said, throwing back my chair and standing. “I need to go find Prof.”

Obliteration had started storing up sunlight, like he had in Houston, Albuquerque, and finally San Diego.

If I was right, the city wouldn’t survive his next step.