“Should we be in the open like this?” I asked, uncomfortable.
“Babilar is a busy city,” Prof said, “particularly at night, when the lights come on. We’d be a lot more conspicuous if we tried to sneak in. Right now we’re just another ship.”
“Can’t use the motor, though,” Exel noted. “Not a lot of people have working motors in the city.”
I nodded, watching some youths paddle past in a glowing canoe. “They look so …”
“Destitute?” Mizzy asked.
“Normal,” I said. “Everyone’s just living their lives.”
In Newcago, you’d never been able to simply live. You worked long hours at factories producing weapons for Steelheart to sell. When you were off work you kept your head down, always watching for Enforcement. You jumped when you heard a loud noise, because it could be one of any number of Epics looking for entertainment.
These people laughed, they played in the water, they … lounged. In fact, very few people seemed to be doing anything productive. Perhaps it was the late hour. That was another oddity. It was the middle of the night, but even children were up and about.
We rowed past a larger building, which rose some three stories above the water. Through the broken glass windows I saw what appeared to be plants. Growing inside the building.
Fruit glowing a soft yellow-green studded the plants, and their leaves had the same painted look as the petals we’d found on Sourcefield. “What in Calamity is going on in this city?” I whispered.
“We have no idea,” Val said. “I’ve been embedded here for over two years—I arrived about six months after Regalia stopped her tyranny and decided to clean the place up.” As she’d indicated earlier, Val didn’t seem to mind saying Regalia’s name, so long as it was whispered to the rest of us via our earpieces.
“I feel like I know less than when I first came,” Val continued. “Yes, plants grow inside the buildings, and seem to need no cultivation, no sunlamps, no human attention at all. The trees produce flowers, fruits, and vegetables in plenty, enough that nobody here wants for food—so long as one of the gang cartels hasn’t monopolized everything.”
“Regalia stopped that,” Mizzy whispered over the line, dipping her oar into the water. “Things were pretty bad for us here before she came.”
“For ‘us’?” I asked.
“I’m from Manhattan,” Mizzy said, “born and raised. I don’t remember a whole lot of the early days, but I do remember Calamity. The glows came immediately afterward; anything spraypainted—old or new—started glowing. Only spraypaint works though. The plants started growing at the same time—they just grew in the streets back then—and nobody has a good explanation, except to credit Dawnslight.”
“An Epic?” I asked.
“Maybe?” Mizzy said, shrugging. “Some think so. Dawnslight is what they call the person, force, Epic, or whatever who causes all of this. Except the waters, of course. Those came after, when Regalia arrived. Sweeping into the streets, flooding buildings. We lost a lot of people back then.”
“She killed thousands,” Prof continued, voice low. “Then she let the gangs rule for years. It was only recently that she decided to rescue the city. Even now she controls the gangs, though they don’t terrorize. They watch.”
“Yeah,” Val said, looking at a group of people dancing atop a building. Drums banged to a pleasant rhythm. “It’s creepy.”
“Creepy?” Exel asked. “That an Epic wants to do something good for a change? I think what’s happening here is wonderful.” He waved affably to some of the people we passed.
They know him, I realized, studying the people who waved back at him. I assumed they didn’t know what he really was, that his being “embedded” here had led to creating some sort of false identity and mingling with the people.
“No, Exel,” Prof said over the line, his voice a harsh whisper. “Regalia is planning something. Her supposed benevolence worries me, particularly since she’s been sending Epics to try to eliminate my team in Newcago. Don’t forget that she also employs the … person who killed Sam.”
Val, Exel, and Mizzy looked to him.
“So is that why you’re here?” Val asked softly. “Are we finally going to bring Regalia down?”
I looked to Prof. He knew Regalia. Personally. I was increasingly certain of it. They’d been friends, perhaps, long ago. I wished I could get more out of him, but this was how Prof was. Years of secrecy, of running the Reckoners, had taught him to be circumspect.
“Yes,” he whispered. “We’re here to bring her down. And every Epic allied with her.” He looked straight at me, as if daring me to say something about Megan.