“Slontze,” Megan said.
“Guilty as charged. Can you get into position to cover me through some of the windows?”
Megan sighed. “Let me see.”
37
THIS, I thought as I crossed back through the swanky overgrown office, is crazy.
Moving against an Epic I barely knew? One about which I had no research, no notes, no intel at all? It was like jumping into a swimming pool without first looking to see if your friends had filled it with snakes.
I had to do it anyway.
We were blind; Regalia had us all running. Prof had been unresponsive for a day, during our most difficult stages of planning—but worse, even if he helped, Regalia was probably manipulating us based on her knowledge of him and Tia.
I needed to do something unexpected, and the secrets Knoxx knew could make a huge difference. I consoled myself with the idea that at least I wasn’t trying to take on Obliteration or Newton on my own. This was just a minor Epic, after all.
I wasn’t certain what Prof’s reaction would be. I’d told him my plan about kidnapping an Epic—and he’d said that either I was just what the Reckoners needed, or I was dangerously reckless. Maybe I was both.
But he hadn’t specifically forbidden me to try it. He just hadn’t wanted me endangering the team. This wouldn’t do that.
I peeked back into the stairwell. What I needed to do was make more noise so that Knoxx would figure out he’d gotten the wrong location. When he came up to check on me, I could clock him. Easy as pie.
Not that I actually knew how to make pie.
I stamped on the floor and knocked an old desk lamp off a side table, then I cursed as if I’d bumped into it. After that I moved back to the stairwell and held Megan’s gun up, two-handed and at high ready, mobile darkened so that the only light was the moonlike glow of the plump fruit drooping from branches.
I waited, tense, and just listened. Indeed, I heard something in the stairwell. It echoed, a scraping that sounded far distant down below. Or was it coming from the floor right below me? With the strange echoing, it was difficult to tell.
“He’s moving in.” I jumped at Megan’s voice. Though I’d turned the receiver way down, it seemed like thunder in my ear. “He entered the window and is on the floor just beneath you.”
“Good,” I said softly.
“There’s movement on the first floor too,” she said. “Well, the first floor above the water level, anyway. David, I think someone else is in that building.”
“Scavengers?”
“I can’t get a visual. Sparks. I’m having trouble getting any sort of clear look into your location too. It’s too overgrown. I’ve lost Knoxx. Maybe you should flush him out.”
“I’d like to avoid gunfire if possible,” I said. “Who knows what kind of attention that will bring?”
“Does this rifle have a built-in suppressor?” Megan asked.
“Uh …” Did it?
“Yup, here it is,” Megan said. “Electron-compressed muzzle suppressor. Sparks, this gun is nice.”
I felt a stab of jealousy, which was utterly stupid. It was just a gun. And it wasn’t even as good a gun as my last one. I immediately felt ashamed for thinking ill of the gun—which was even more stupid.
I listened at the stairwell, trying to pick out sounds of someone sneaking up. I heard something, but it came from behind me, inside the room where I’d planted the camera.
I stifled a curse. Knoxx had somehow circled around and come in the window of the executive office. My first instinct was to run toward him, but I pressed that down and instead eased open the door to the stairwell and slipped through.
Not a moment too soon. As I watched through the cracked stairwell door, the door into the executive office inched open and a figure emerged into the light of the hanging fruit in the receptionist’s entryway. Knoxx. Slender, with buzzed hair and about forty earrings. He wore a mobile on his shoulder and carried a sleek-looking Beretta compact in two hands. He checked his corners, then inched into the room.
“Whoever it was,” he whispered, “they were in here.”
I couldn’t hear the reply; he had in an earpiece.
“You’re such an idiot, Newton,” he said, kneeling to inspect the lamp I’d knocked over. “It’s probably just some kids looking for food that nobody else has touched.”
I frowned, surprised that a High Epic let a man like this talk to her that way. He must be more powerful than I’d assumed.
Knoxx stood and moved toward the stairwell. Again a noise echoed up from down below, and the man hesitated. “I heard something,” he said, moving forward less carefully. “From the stairwell, far below. They’re running, it seems.… Yes …” He reached the door to the stairwell. “Okay, I’ll check it out. We—”