Firefight

32

Burrowed into the rock beneath the shed was one of the secret Reckoner stopover bases, set up with a cot, some supplies, and a workbench. Prof stood by the bench, holding up a beaker and inspecting it by the light of a lantern. That was an improvement; when I’d come down here before, he’d been lying on the cot looking through some old photos-they lay scattered on the cot now.

Prof didn’t look up as I came down. “We’re grabbing the rest of the supplies,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder. “You need anything?”

Prof shook his head and stirred his beaker.

“You going to be all right?” I asked.

“I’m feeling fine,” Prof said. “I’m planning to head back into the city a little later in the evening. Might return to the base tomorrow; might stay away another day. We’ll need to give it enough time that Val’s team will believe I went to check in on another Reckoner cell.”

That had been Tia’s explanation for his absence. I watched curiously as he mixed another beaker with a liquid of a different color.

“We’re hitting Newton in two days,” I told him. “Tia made the call, since she said you weren’t being responsive.”

Two days was well before Obliteration’s expected deadline, which would give us some wiggle room in case things went poorly.

He grunted. “Two days? I’ll be back by then.” He mixed the two beakers into a jar and stepped back. A large jet of foam launched from the container, reaching almost to the ceiling, then fell back in a frothy splat. Prof watched, then smiled.

“Hydrogen peroxide mixed with potassium iodide,” he said. “The kids used to love that one.” He reached over and started mixing some other materials.

“Could you come back sooner?” I asked him. “We still don’t have a plan to deal with Obliteration, and he’s got a gun to the city’s head.”

“I’m working on how to deal with that,” Prof said. “I think if we bring down Regalia, it might scare him away. If it doesn’t, we might find intel on his weakness among her notes.”

“And if we don’t?”

“We evacuate the city,” Prof said.

Tia had theorized the same possibility, but it seemed like a bad option to me. We couldn’t start a theoretical evacuation until Regalia was dead-otherwise she’d surely move against the fleeing people. I doubted we’d have enough time to get everyone out before Obliteration wasted the place.

“Tell Tia to call me a little later tonight,” Prof said. “We’ll talk about it.”

“Sure thing,” I said, then paused as he worked on another mixture. “What are you doing?”

“Another experiment.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, turning away. His face fell into shadow. “Remembering the old days helps. Remembering the students, and their excitement, their joy. The memories seem to push it back.”

I nodded slowly, but he wasn’t looking at me. He’d returned to his science experiment. So instead I inched forward to see if I could catch a glimpse of the photos he’d been looking at.

I reached the cot and leaned down and picked one up. The photo showed a younger version of Prof, wearing casual clothing-jeans, a T-shirt-standing with some people in a room filled with monitors and computers. Other people were scattered throughout the room, wearing uniform blue shirts.

Prof glanced at me.

I held up the photo. “Some kind of lab?”

“NASA,” he said, sounding reluctant. “The old space program.”

“I thought you said you were a schoolteacher!”

“I’m not the one who worked there, genius,” Prof said. “Look more closely.”

I looked back down, and realized that in the photo Prof looked more like a tourist, grinning and getting his picture taken. It took me a second to spot that one of the many people in the photo wearing a blue NASA shirt had short red hair. Tia.

“Tia’s a rocket scientist?” I asked.

“Was,” Prof said. “That was a long time ago. She let me visit right after we first started dating. Highlight of my life-bragged about it to my students for months.”

I looked down at the picture. The man in this photo, though it was obviously Prof, looked like a different species entirely. Where were the lines of worry on the man’s face, the haunted eyes, the imposing stature?

Nearly thirteen years of Calamity had changed this man. And not just because of the powers he’d gained.

Another photo peeked out from underneath the sheet. I pulled it out. And Prof didn’t stop me, turning back to his experiment.

In this picture, four people stood in a line. One was Prof, wearing his now-trademark black lab coat, goggles in the pocket. Beside him Regalia stood with hand outstretched, a glob of water hovering above her fingers. She wore an elegant blue gown. Tia was there, and there was another man, one I didn’t know. Older, with white-grey hair sticking out from his head in an almost crown shape, he sat in a chair while the others stood.

“Who is this man?” I asked.

“Those are also memories from another time,” Prof said, not turning to me. “And ones I’d rather not revisit.”

“Because of Regalia?”

“Because I thought the world could be a different place back then,” Prof said, stirring a solution. “A place of heroes.”

“Maybe it still can be that place. Maybe we’re wrong about what is causing the darkness, or maybe there’s a way to resist it. Everyone’s been wrong about the Epic weaknesses, after all. Maybe we don’t understand all of this as well as we think.”

Instead of replying, Prof set down his beaker. He turned toward me. “And you’re not afraid of what would happen if we fail?”

“I’m willing to risk it, Prof.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Can I trust you, David Charleston?”

“Yes. Of course.” Where had that question come from? It didn’t seem to follow our conversation.

He studied me, then nodded. “Good. I’ve changed my mind. Tell Tia I’ll head into the city as soon as you leave; she can tell Val and Exel that the emergency with the other Reckoner team got solved quickly, and I came back early.”

“All right.” Prof had a motorboat from a hidden Reckoner dock. He could get back to the city on his own easily. “But what was that about trusting-”

“Go finish loading those boxes, son.” He turned around and began packing up his things.

I sighed, but put the picture down and climbed up, closing the trapdoor, leaving him in the hidden chamber. I grabbed a box of supplies, then almost ran headfirst into Val as I left.

“David?” she said. “What were you doing in there?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Had to catch a breather.”

“But-”

“You left the sub?” I asked.

“I-”

I hurried past her. Sparks! What if some scavenger found it and decided to take it on a joyride? Fortunately, it was still there, sitting in the calm black waters.

Val and I got the boxes loaded quickly, with minimal conversation. I tried to bring Val out again with some questions, but she didn’t say much. Even during our ride back in the sub she was mostly quiet. She knew I was hiding something. Well, I didn’t blame her for feeling annoyed at that-I felt the same way about the entire situation, honestly.

At the base, we docked and climbed out into the dark room. The docking mechanism was completely airtight, fitted exactly to the submarine. Quite ingenious. They still left the room dark though, in case of a leak. Even outside of Regalia’s range the Reckoners were careful. It was one of the things I liked about them.

I found the guide ropes in the darkness and grabbed two pairs of night-vision goggles off the rack on the wall. I handed one down to Val, then put on the other pair. Together we began unloading the boxes. Eventually I grabbed one and hefted it onto my shoulder, then left the darkened docking room and hauled the box toward the storage room down the hallway.

The bright Reckoner base-with its plush couches and dark woods-was an enormous contrast to the desolate landscapes I’d spent the day visiting. It was almost like being in a different world. I carried the box to the storage room and set it down. Behind me I could hear voices from the radio drifting out of Exel’s room. He was pulling extra hours on recon duty, listening to broadcasts, double-and triple-checking Newton’s routes.

There were more boxes to unload, but I figured I should pass on Prof’s message first. I walked down the hallway and rapped on Tia’s door.

“Come in,” she said.

On the walls she’d plastered maps of Babilar that showed Newton’s routes. In the center of the city, several pins noted where Tia thought Regalia might be hiding. There were still too many buildings to search effectively without giving away what we were doing, but we were close.

A dozen or so empty cola pouches lay in the corner of the room, and Tia looked bad. A few stray strands of hair had escaped her bun and stuck out, like frizzy ginger lightning bolts. She had bags under her eyes and her normally pristine business suit hadn’t been pressed in days.

“He was there,” I said.

She glanced up at me. “What did he say?”

“He says he’ll come back tonight. We’ll probably need to send the sub back to the city to pick him up. He seems like he’s mostly recovered.”

“Thank goodness,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

“Val’s suspicious,” I said. “You should tell her what’s really going on.”

“I wish I knew what was really going on,” Tia grumbled.

“What-”

“I don’t mean with Jon,” Tia said. “Ignore me. I was just venting. Here, I want to show you something.”

Tia stood up and walked to the wall, tapping on a section of it. We’d set up the imager in here to turn the wall into a smart screen, like Prof preferred to use as he worked. Tia’s tap brought up an image of Knoxx, the Epic in Newton’s crew I’d spotted the other day. The wall played the video of him transforming into a bird and flying away. My jerking of the scope followed, tracking the bird poorly until I found it on the other building. The transformation happened again. Tia stopped the screen on the figure and zoomed in on his face. The close-up was grainy, but he was still recognizable.

“What would you say about what you just saw?”

“At least class C self-transmutation abilities,” I said. “He was able to change his mass as well as retain his original thought process after transforming; either alone would elevate the transmutation from class D. I’d have to know if he can take other shapes, and whether there are limits like how often he can change, before I can say more.”

“This man,” Tia said, “has been part of Newton’s gang for years. Exel confirmed it with several points of evidence. There is no evidence before this moment that Knoxx had any powers. This means that somehow, Newton or Regalia convinced him to hide his abilities for years. I’m worried, David. If she can hide Epics in plain sight, and can prevent them from displaying their powers, our intel in this city-despite our long investment of time-might be worthless.”

I frowned, stepping up to the image and taking a closer look. “What if he wasn’t hiding his powers?” I asked. “What if he only gained them recently.”

Tia looked at me. “You seriously think Regalia can make people into Epics?”

“I’m not convinced, but she obviously wants us to believe she can create Epics, or at least enhance their abilities. Perhaps she has access to a gifter, or some kind of Epic we’ve never seen before, and fakes granting powers. Or … maybe she simply can create new Epics. Seems to me that as much as we’d like to, we can’t judge what is unreasonable when applied to Epics.”

“Perhaps,” Tia admitted. She sat down in her chair beside the desk and fished out another pouch of cola.

“You don’t like being forced to take charge,” I realized. “To run the operation, without Prof.”

“I’m fully capable of being in command,” she said.

“That’s an answer in the same way that ketchup can be hair gel.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You see, it’s technically true, but-”

“I understood,” Tia said.

“You … did?”

“Yes. And you’re right. Jon is the leader, David. I manage things; I make the pieces fit together. But he has the vision; he sees things others don’t. Not because of his … abilities. Just because of who he is. Without him to look over this plan, I worry I’m going to miss something important.”

“He says he’ll be back in time to help.”

“I hope so,” Tia said. “Because honestly, that man sure can mope with the best of them when he wants to.”

“Was he like that before?”

She eyed me.

“He told me about NASA,” I noted. “I saw a picture of you two there, together. I’m impressed.”

She sniffed. “Did he tell you why I had to invite him to visit?”

“I assumed it was because you two were together.”

“We’d only just started dating,” Tia said. “Another teacher in his school won a contest we were holding-come pretend to be an astronaut for a few weeks. Train, go through the tests, that sort of thing. We did it occasionally for PR reasons.”

“And Prof didn’t win?” I asked.

“He didn’t enter,” Tia said. “He hated contests. Wouldn’t even put a quarter into a slot machine. But that didn’t stop him from feeling torn apart when he didn’t get to go.” She stared at her pouch of cola without opening it. “We sometimes forget how human he is, David. He’s just a man, despite it all. A man full of feelings that, at times, don’t make sense. We’re all like that. We want what we can’t have, even when we have no right to demand it.”

“It will be all right, Tia.”

She seemed surprised by the tone of my voice, and looked up at me.

“You see, he’s not just a man, Tia,” I said. “He’s a hero.”

“You sound like one of them.”

Them?

And then it hit me-she meant the Faithful. Sparks, it was true. Where there are villains, there will be heroes. Just wait. They will come.… My father’s words, on the day he died.

As recently as a few months ago, I’d regarded the optimism of people like Abraham and Mizzy as foolishness. What had changed?

It was Prof. I couldn’t believe in some mythical Epics who may or may not someday arrive to save the world. But him … him I could believe in.

I met Tia’s gaze.

“Well,” she said, “finish unloading supplies, then get your gear together. I want you to go install a camera to watch Obliteration and give us a constant visual. We don’t know for certain if his energy storage will progress at the same rate as it did previously. I’d rather not be surprised.”

I nodded and left the room, closing the door behind me. I walked down the hallway and passed the storage chamber, where I found that Mizzy had been recruited to start carrying the boxes in. She set one down and gave me a perky smile before heading off for another.

I couldn’t help grinning after her. She was the definition of what it meant to have an infectious personality. The world was a better place because Missouri Williams was in it.

“Why is it,” a voice said softly from beside me, “that every time I find you these days, you’re ogling some girl?”

I turned to look and there, standing just inside the storage room, was Megan.