Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

I grabbed my mobile and scrambled across the cavern’s uneven floor to a side passage. The complex was intricate, but my mobile’s map noted a few relatively safe nooks from which I could run ops. This wasn’t the exact side of the cavern complex where we’d originally planned to pull our trap, but it had to work.

Megan joined me. “Nice job with the Scotsman up there.”

“He just needed a little nudge,” I said, “to become what he always pretends to be.”

“He’s not the only one,” she said. We stopped at an intersection of tunnels, and she pulled me close for a quick kiss. “You always thought you wanted to be in charge, David. You had good reason.”

She turned to go the other direction. I held her arm, then hand, as she slipped away from me. “Don’t push yourself too hard, Megan.”

She smiled—sparks, what a smile—and held on to my fingers with hers. “I own it, David. It’s mine. I don’t fear it anymore. If it takes me, I’ll find a way back.”

She let go, crossing the cavern as I ducked into my chosen nook. It was a tight squeeze, requiring me to wriggle through some rock, but would shelter the light of my mobile from Prof’s eyes, and shelter me from explosions. Inside, I was in a small bubble of a room with no other exits.

I reached to my belt and detached a headset with a dome of glass attached to its front. A grudging gift from Knighthawk in the same shipment as the tensor suit, multiple screens could be projected onto it.

“Mizzy,” I said, “cameras in place?”

“Sticking the last one,” she said. “Knighthawk, these things are waaay creepy.”

“She says to the man who built them using a mannequin he controls with his mind,” Abraham added under his breath.

“Shut it,” Knighthawk said, though his voice was somewhat difficult to make out over noise on his end.

“Knighthawk,” I said, “your line has some kind of static or interference on it.”

“Hmm? Oh, don’t worry. The popcorn is almost done.”

“You’re making popcorn?” Abraham demanded.

“Sure, why not? Should be quite the show….”

One by one, four screens blinked on on my headset’s display, giving me a sequence of views of the main cavern and its nearby tunnels. Mizzy had set out glowsticks, though the cameras had thermal and night vision. These things had come from Knighthawk, little crablike drones with cameras in their bodies. I used my mobile to turn the camera of one drone, and it worked perfectly.

“Nice,” Knighthawk said. He and Mizzy would be watching the screens also, though Mizzy would be busy with her explosives. Megan and I had been desperate when we’d faced our weaknesses; I hoped that if we could drive Prof to exhaustion, if we presented a real danger, we’d make it easier for him to do the same.

“Knighthawk,” I said, cycling through the cameras to get a view from Cody’s eyes, then Megan’s, “Prof’s ETA?”

“Just landed on your building,” he said.

“Any other Epics with him?”

“Negative,” Knighthawk said. “All right, he’s vaporized the roof and he’s dropping through.”

“Mizzy,” I said, “blow the present.”

We felt the shock of it, and some debris rolled down the hole we’d made. I waited, tense, trying to watch all of the different screens at once. Which direction would he come from?

The roof of the cave trembled, then fell in, dumping practically a ton of salt dust into the main chamber. Light shone down in streaks. Prof wasn’t content with a little hole like we’d made. He’d ripped the top off an entire cavern.

He floated down on a glowing disc of light, dust swirling around him, goggles on his face and his dark lab coat fluttering. My breath caught.

I didn’t see a monster. In my mind’s eye, I remembered a man who had come down through another roof amid falling dust. A man who had run for all he had—breaking through to face an Enforcement team, risking his life and his own sanity—to save me.

It was time to return the favor.

“Go,” I whispered over the line.





ABRAHAM engaged him first, bringing out the big gun—his gravatonic minigun. I always got a little thrill when I watched it fire, because man—it could unload bullets faster than a pair of drunk hicks visiting a varmint factory.

“Everyone stay under cover,” I warned as Abraham’s gun flashed from the darkness, spraying Prof with a couple hundred rounds.

Prof’s forcefields were up, and the bullets deflected—but those forcefields weren’t invincible. Using them took effort. We could wear him down.

He sneered at Abraham, then flung his hand to the side, forming his trademark forcefield globe around the Canadian man. Prof clenched his fist to shrink it, but the forcefield caught as Abraham used the rtich to brace it on either side.

I had a good view of Prof’s startled face through one camera.

“Cody, go,” I said.