“Um … it’s good to see you too?” I said, pulling my arm—with Megan’s gun in it—carefully out of the window, then dropped the gun to the floor in a nonthreatening way and kicked it gently in her direction. “I’m unarmed. You can lower the gun, Megan. I just want to talk.”
“I should shoot you,” Megan said. Keeping her gun trained on me, she stooped to retrieve the other one from the floor with her left hand, then slipped it into a pocket.
“What sense would that make?” I asked. “After you saved me from drowning the other day, and then saved me again tonight when Newton was tailing me? Thanks for both, by the way.”
“Newton and Obliteration think you’re dangerous,” Megan said.
“And … you disagree?”
“Oh, you’re dangerous. Just not in the way that they—or you—think. You’re dangerous because you make people believe you, David. You make them listen to your crazy ideas. Unfortunately, the world can’t be what you want it to be. You’re not going to overthrow the Epics.”
“We overthrew Steelheart.”
“With the help of two Epics,” Megan snapped. “How long would you and the team have survived in Newcago without Prof’s shields and healing abilities? Sparks! You’ve only been here in Babilar a couple of days and you’d be dead already without my help. You can’t fight them, David.”
“Well,” I said, stepping forward despite that gun—which was still pointed right at me. “I should think that your examples only prove that we can fight the Epics. So long as we have the help of other Epics.”
Her expression shifted, lips tightening, eyes hardening. “You realize Phaedrus will turn on you. You’ve hired the lion to protect you from the wolves, but either will be happy to eat you once the food runs out.”
“I—”
“You don’t know what it’s like, inside! You shouldn’t trust us. Any of us. Even the little bit I did just now, protecting you from those two, threatens to destroy me.” She hesitated. “You’ll receive no further help from me.” She turned to walk back into the corridor.
“Megan!” I said, feeling a sudden panic. I’d come all this way to find her. I couldn’t let her go now! I scrambled out into the hallway after her.
She strode away from me, a dark silhouette barely visible by the light of a few dangling pieces of fruit.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
She didn’t stop.
This wasn’t how I’d imagined our meeting. It wasn’t supposed to have been about Prof, or the Epics; it was supposed to have been about her. And about me.
I needed to say something. Something romantic! Something to sweep her off her feet.
“You’re like a potato!” I shouted after her. “In a minefield.”
She froze in place. Then she spun on me, her face lit by a half-grown fruit. “A potato,” she said flatly. “That’s the best you can do? Seriously?”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Listen. You’re strolling through a minefield, worried about getting blown up. And then you step on something, and you think, ‘I’m dead.’ But it’s just a potato. And you’re so relieved to find something so wonderful when you expected something so awful. That’s what you are. To me.”
“A potato.”
“Sure. French fries? Mashed potatoes? Who doesn’t like potatoes?”
“Plenty of people. Why can’t I be something sweet, like a cake?”
“Because cake wouldn’t grow in a minefield. Obviously.”
She stared down the hallway at me for a few moments, then sat on an overgrown set of roots.
Sparks. She seemed to be crying. Idiot! I thought at myself, scrambling through the foliage. Romantic. You were supposed to be romantic, you slontze! Potatoes weren’t romantic. I should have gone with a carrot.
I reached Megan in the dim hallway and hesitated, uncertain if I dared touch her. She looked up at me, and though there were tears in the corners of her eyes, she wasn’t weeping.
She was laughing.
“You,” she said, “are an utter fool, David Charleston. I wish you weren’t also so adorable.”
“Uh … thanks?” I said.
She sighed and repositioned herself on the large set of roots, pulling her feet up and sitting with her back in the crook of the tree trunk. That seemed an invitation, so I sat down in front of her, my knees before me and my back to the wall of the corridor. I could see well enough, though this entire place was creepy, with its shadowed vines and strange plants.
“You don’t know what this is like, David,” she whispered.
“So tell me.”
She focused on me. Then she turned her gaze upward. “It’s like being a child again. Can you remember how it felt, when you were really young, and everything was about you? Nothing else matters but your needs, your wants. Thinking about others is impossible—they just don’t enter into your mind. Other people are an annoyance, a frustration. They just get in your way.”
“You resisted it before.”
“No, I didn’t. In the Reckoners, I was forced to avoid using my powers. I didn’t resist the changes. I never felt them.”
“So do it that way again.”