“That’s a new one,” Cody said.
“It’s different for everyone,” Tia said from her table, head still down. She opened a can of cola as she scribbled notes. Tia was useless without her cola. “Using the tensors isn’t natural to your mind, David. You’ve already built neural pathways, and so you have to kind of hotwire your brain to figure out what mental muscles to flex. I’ve always wondered if we gave a tensor to a child, if they’d be able to incorporate using it better, more naturally, as just another kind of ‘limb’ to practice with.”
Cody looked at me. Then he whispered, “Wee daemons. Don’t let her fool you, lad. I think she works for them. I saw her leaving out pie for them the other night.”
Trouble was, he was just serious enough to make me question whether he really believed that. The twinkle to his eye indicated he was being silly, but he had such a perfectly straight face.…
I took off the tensor and handed it over. Cody slipped it on, then absently raised a hand—palm first—to the side and thrust it outward. The tensor began vibrating as his hand moved, and when it stopped a faint, smoky green wave continued on, hitting the fallen chair and the pipe. Both vaporized to dust, falling to the ground in a puff.
Each time I saw the tensors work, I was amazed. The range was very limited, only a few feet at most, and they couldn’t affect flesh. They weren’t much good in a fight—sure, you could vaporize someone’s gun, but only if they were very close to you. In which case taking the time to concentrate and fight with the tensors would probably be less effective than just punching the guy.
Still, the opportunities they afforded were incredible. Moving through the bowels of Newcago’s steel catacombs, getting in and out of rooms. If you managed to keep the tensor hidden, you could escape from any bond, any cell.
“You keep training,” Cody said. “You show talent, so Prof will want you to get good with these. We need another member of the team who can use them.”
“Not all of you can?” I asked, surprised.
Cody shook his head. “Megan can’t make them work, and Tia’s rarely in a position to use them—we need her back giving support while on missions. So it usually comes down to Abraham and me using them.”
“What about Prof?” I asked. “He invented them. He’s got to be pretty good with them, right?”
Cody shook his head. “Don’t know. He refuses to use them. Something about a bad experience in the past. He won’t talk about it. Probably shouldn’t. We don’t need to know. Either way, you should practice.” Cody shook his head and took off the tensor, tucking it into his pocket. “What I’d have given for one of these before.…”
The other pieces of Reckoner technology were awesome too. The jackets, which supposedly worked a little like armor, were one. Cody, Megan, and Abraham each wore a jacket—different on the outside, but with a complicated network of diodes inside that somehow protected them. The dowser, which told if someone was Epic, was another piece of such technology. The only other piece I’d seen was something they called the harmsway, a device that accelerated a body’s healing abilities.
It’s so sad, I thought, as Cody fetched a broom to clean up the dust. All of this technology … it could have changed the world. If the Epics hadn’t done that first. A ruined world couldn’t enjoy the benefits.
“What was your life like back then?” I asked, holding the dustpan for Cody. “Before all of this happened? What did you do?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Cody said, smiling.
“Let me guess,” I said, anticipating one of Cody’s stories. “Professional footballer? High-paid assassin and spy?”
“A cop,” Cody said, subdued, looking down at the pile of dust. “In Nashville.”
“What? Really?” I was surprised.
Cody nodded, then waved for me to dump the first pile of dust into the trash bin while he swept up the rest of it. “My father was a cop too in his early years, over in the homeland. Small city. You wouldn’t know it. He moved here when he married my mother. I grew up over here; ain’t never actually been to the homeland. But I wanted to be just like my pa, so when he died, I went to school and joined the force.”
“Huh,” I said, stooping down again to collect the rest of the dust. “That’s a lot less glamorous than I’d been imagining.”
“Well, I did take down an entire drug cartel by myself, you understand.”
“Of course.”
“And there was the time the president’s Secret Service were shuttling him through the city, and they all ate a bad mess of scones and got sick, and we in the department had to protect him from an assassination plot.” He called over to Abraham, who was tinkering with one of the team’s shotguns. “It was them Frenchies who were behind it, you know.”