“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.
33
MEGAN.
Megan was inside the Reckoner base.
I let out a sound that was definitely not a whimper. It was something far more manly, no matter what it sounded like.
I glanced after Mizzy in a moment of panic, then stepped into the storage room, taking Megan by the arm. “What are you doing!”
“We need to talk,” she said. “And you were ignoring me.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you. Things have just been very busy.”
“Busy looking at women’s backsides.”
“I wasn’t … Wait.” It hit me and I smiled. “You sound jealous!”
“Don’t be a buffoon.”
“No,” I said. “You were jealous.” I found I couldn’t stop grinning.
Megan seemed confused. “Normally, that’s not something people smile about.”
“It means you care,” I said.
“Oh please.”
Time to say something suave. Something romantic. My brain, which had been working a few steps behind all day, finally came to my rescue. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’d rather ogle you any day.”
Wait.
Megan sighed, peeking out into the hallway past me. “You are a buffoon,” she said under her breath. “Is she likely to come back here?”
Right. Enemy High Epic. Reckoner base. “I’m assuming you’re not here to turn yourself in?” I said softly.
“Turn myself in? Sparks, no. I just needed to talk to someone. You were the most convenient.”
“This is convenient?” I asked.
Megan looked at me and blushed. A blush looked really good on her. Of course, so would soup, mud, or elephant earwax. Megan on a bad day outshined anyone else I’d ever known.
“Come on,” I said, taking her by the arm. I didn’t want to encourage her to use her powers to hide, not when she was so obviously acting like the Megan I’d known before. Which meant moving quickly. I towed her after me in a heart-pounding rush down the hallway toward my room.
We got there without being spotted. I pulled her in, then shut the door, pressing my back to it and exhaling like an epileptic pilot who’d just landed a cargo plane full of dynamite.
Megan inspected the room. “You didn’t get one with a porthole, I see. Still the new kid on the team, eh?”
“Something like that.”
“Nice, anyway,” she said, strolling forward. “Better than a metal hole in the ground.”
“Megan,” I said. “How … I mean, does anyone else out there know where our base is?”
She met my gaze, then shook her head. “Not so far as I know. I don’t meet with Regalia often—I don’t think she trusts me—but from what I’ve heard of the others, they’re searching for you. Regalia thinks your base is somewhere on the northern coast, and seems thoroughly annoyed that she hasn’t been able to find it.”
“How did you find us, then?” I asked.
“Steelheart had me bug everyone in the team,” she said.