Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

“Megan!” I cried.

“On it,” she said, and the ceiling of the cavern rumbled and collapsed, making Prof jump back in alarm. Merely a shadow of another world, but hopefully it would buy Cody enough time to heal.

“Prof started speaking into a mobile,” Knighthawk said, surprised. “He must know we’re monitoring his line….Sparks. He’s talking to you, I think.”

“Patch it through to me,” I said, “but don’t let him hear what we’re saying.”

“…think to beat me with my own curse.” Prof’s familiar voice, gruff and deep, startled me even though I’d been expecting it. “I have borne this viper for years, felt it poisoning me day by day. I know it like a man knows his own heartbeat.”

“David, lad,” Cody said, coughing. “I’m…I’m not healing….”

I felt an icy chill. I focused on Cody, and it was true. He crawled through dust in the trench Prof had made, bleeding from both shoulders, where he’d been struck by light made solid. Why wasn’t the harmsway working?

“Got it,” Knighthawk said. “Kid, this is trouble.” He sent to my screen an image from the camera footage from moments earlier. It showed a blur moving away from Cody, small like a mouse. Or a tiny person.

“Loophole is here!” I said over the line. “He didn’t come alone! Warning, there’s another Epic in the cavern.” I hesitated. “Sparks, she unhooked one of the motivators from Cody’s vest and ran off with it.”

“Cameras have infrared,” Knighthawk said, taking control of several of them. He sounded excited. Engaged, even. “Overlaying now…There! I’ve got her. Ha. Think you can hide from my all-seeing eyes, little Epic? You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

Knighthawk zoomed one of our cameras toward a tiny figure hiding in the shadows near one of the cavern’s many broken chunks of rock. She wore jeans, goggles, and a tight shirt. I didn’t spot the motivator, but she’d likely shrunk it to a size small enough to carry.

“Megan!” I said as Prof rounded the false cave-in. “You and Abraham are going to have to handle him on your own for a time. Keep him distracted; he’s going to try to finish off Cody. Mizzy, go help get Cody bandaged. Don’t let him bleed out!”

A series of “rogers” sounded. I started wriggling out of my stone confines.

“Should have known,” Knighthawk said over the line. “Of course Jonathan came with a plan. He may not have realized I used multiple motivators on this version of the suit though, so his orders to Loophole weren’t complete enough.”

“I need you to run ops, Knighthawk.”

“Fine,” he said, reluctant. “You’re going to take on the mini-Epic by yourself?”

I squeezed out of my cubby and rolled to my feet, Gottschalk to my shoulder. “She’s not a High Epic. A single bullet will kill her.”

“Yeah. Hit her with a bullet the same size as she is—I’m sure that won’t harm the motivator she’s carrying.”

I grimaced as I crept down the hallway. It was a valid point. “Keep an eye on her for me.”

“Already done. One of the cameras is set to auto-track her. Jonathan’s talking again.”

“Patch him through to me, but not the others. I don’t want them distracted. And Knighthawk…keep them alive for me, please.”

“I’ll try. Get that motivator, kid. Fast.”





“I didn’t want to be here.”

I had to listen to Prof as I crept back up the tunnel, lit by the sickly green light of glowsticks.

“I wanted to remain quiet,” Prof continued, grunting as he fought. “I didn’t want to push myself, or my teams, too hard. This is your fault, David. Everything that happens here is because of you.”

I couldn’t see the battle. I still wore the domed headset, but my task was now Loophole and that motivator. I had one screen fixed on the map of the caverns with her location pinpointed; another showed the view from the camera watching her. They hovered at the edges of my vision; I needed the area right in front of my eyes clear.

I walked carefully, as if preparing to join the battle with Prof. I didn’t want to alert Loophole.

“Tia…,” Prof whispered. “You drove me to this, David. You and your idiot dreams. You upset the balance. You should have accepted that I was right.”

I gritted my teeth, face flushing. I couldn’t let him get to me. But his words were dangerous for reasons he likely didn’t know. Last time I’d been in a fight, back in Sharp Tower…things had happened.

Something lurked inside me. And so, while Prof’s belittling voice in my ears was abrasive, Larcener’s taunts from the rooftop earlier were what truly dug into me.

You see the truth of men manifest in those first moments, David…New Epics. They murder, they destroy, showing what every man would do if his inhibitions were relaxed. Men are a race of monsters, inefficiently chained….