As the flash of light faded from my eyes, I saw Prof on the other rooftop lowering his rifle. “Stay alert, son,” Prof said over the line, voice tense. “Mizzy, get some explosives ready. David, is there anything else—anything at all—you can remember about him or his powers?”
I shook myself. Prof’s energy shield had probably saved me from Obliteration’s heat. He’d just saved my life twice over, then. “No,” I said, feeling useless. “Sorry.”
We waited, but Obliteration didn’t reappear. Instead I heard screams in the distance. Prof cursed over the line and gestured for me to follow the sounds, and I did, heart thumping—yet it was accompanied by the strange calm that comes with being in the middle of an operation.
I passed abandoned tents on one side, people swimming in the waters nearby on the other side. Following the screams led me to a taller building. Thick with vegetation glowing inside the broken windows, the building rose some ten stories or more above the surface of the water. Light flashed inside one of those upper stories, and I saw Obliteration pass in front of an opening. I sighted on him with my rifle and saw that he was smiling, as if in challenge. I fired, but he’d already stepped out of sight deeper into the building.
People continued to scream from inside. Obliteration knew he didn’t have to come to us; we’d go to him.
“I’m going in,” I said, jogging toward a rope bridge that ran to the taller building.
“Be careful,” Prof said. I could see him moving onto his own bridge, heading the same way. “Mizzy, can you cook up a mother switch on something dangerous?”
“Uh … I think so.…”
Mother switch, short for “mother and child.” A bomb that would stay dormant as long as it was receiving a regular radio signal. When the signal stopped, the bomb went off. Kind of like an electronic dead-man’s switch.
“Clever,” I whispered, crossing the rickety bridge in the night, dark water beneath me. “Stick the bomb to him, make him port with it. Blow him up wherever he goes.”
“Yeah,” Prof said. “Assuming that works. He takes his clothing, so he can obviously teleport objects he’s carrying. But is it automatic, or can he consciously choose?”
“I’m not convinced we can even stick something to him,” Tia said. “His danger sense might trigger a teleportation if you even reach for him.”
It was a good point.
“You have a better plan?” Prof asked.
“No,” Tia said. “Mizzy, make it happen.”
“Got it.”
“Work on an extraction plan, Tia,” Prof said. “Just in case.”
I gritted my teeth, still on the bridge. Sparks. It was impossible to ignore that water down there. I moved more quickly, eager to reach the building, where at least the sea would be out of sight. The bridge didn’t lead to the rooftop, but to an old broken window on the story where I’d seen Obliteration.
I reached the window and crouched down before going in, careful of the profile I’d present. Just inside, glowing fruit bobbed from branches and flowers drooped, the petals colored like swirled paint. It was a full-on jungle in there; the gloom of shadowed branches and phantom fruit cast an eerie light. Discomforting, like finding a three-week-old sandwich behind your bed, when you swore you’d finished the darn thing.
I checked over my shoulder. Mizzy had moved into position at the other side of the bridge to give me fire support, but her head was down over her pack as she got the explosives ready.
I turned back and, rifle at my shoulder, stepped through the window and checked to each side with a quick motion, looking through my scope. Vines hung from the ceiling and ferns sprouted up from the floor, displacing the carpeting of what had once been a nice office building. Desks—barely visible through it all—had become flowerbeds. Computer monitors were overgrown with moss. The air was thick with humidity, like the understreets after rain. Those glowing fruits were barely enough to illuminate the place, so I moved through a world of rustling shadows as I poked forward, making my way toward where I’d last heard screams—though those had stopped now.
I soon emerged into a small clearing with burned tents and a few smoking corpses. Obliteration was nowhere in sight. He chose this place intentionally, I thought, scanning the room with my rifle against my cheek. We won’t be able to back each other up in here, and we’ll give our locations away by all the sound we’ll make.
Sparks. I hadn’t expected Obliteration to be this clever. I preferred the image of him that I had in my head, that of the raging, mindless monster.
“Prof?” I whispered.
“I’m in,” he said over the line. “Where are you?”
“Near where he attacked,” I said, steeling myself against the sight of the corpses. “He’s not here anymore.”
“Come my way,” Prof said. “We’ll move in together. It would be too easy to take us if we’re separated.”