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.”