Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

“To run,” I said, turning and dashing out of the main chamber into a side tunnel.

Megan cursed, following. We ran side by side and I engaged the tensors, vaporizing ribbons of stone along our path. I wasn’t sure what I could do to change him or make him return to us. All of my plans had failed so far; the best thing I could do at the moment was keep the suit working and keep him in pain.

Behind us, Prof roared. He teleported in front of us, but I simply grabbed Megan by the hand and turned the other direction while disintegrating the forcefield Prof tried to use to trip us up. We ran into a tunnel without any light, but glowsticks appeared a second later, summoned by Megan from a realm where Mizzy had lit this place.

When Prof teleported in front of us again, red-faced and snarling, I turned us back the other way, unrelentingly using the suit’s powers on random stones we passed. Each use of the tensors was driving him further into a fury.

I’ve been here before, I thought, feeling the echoes of another event. Another fight. Driving an Epic to anger…

Prof appeared again, and this time Megan reacted first, yanking me to the side as spears of light—faster than I could track—struck like blades around us. Sparks! I barely stopped them. Maybe this wasn’t such a good plan.

“This is always how you are!” Prof shouted. “No thought! No concern for consequences! Don’t you worry about what will happen? Don’t you ever think about failure?”

He teleported in front of us as we tried to flee, but a second later a rock wall created by Megan separated us.

“This isn’t working,” she said.

“Well, technically it is. I mean, my plan was just to run.”

“Okay, I revise: this isn’t going to work for very long. Sooner or later he’ll trap us. What’s your endgame?”

“Make him mad,” I said.

“And?”

“Hope…um…that makes him afraid? We were desperate, scared, frantic when we faced our weaknesses. Maybe he has to be in the same state.”

She gave me a skeptical look that—reflected through all of her shadows—was even more formidable than usual.

The wall near us melted away to powder. I gathered the energy of the tensors, preparing to be attacked by a series of forcefield spears, but Prof wasn’t behind the wall anymore.

Huh?

He crashed into existence behind us and seized me by the arm with one hand. With the other, he tried to vaporize the motivators on my vest. I yelped and let out a blast of tensor power—directly down, carving out the rock beneath me and dropping me lower a few feet. The sudden motion lurched me out of Prof’s grip and made his blast pass over my head.

I vaporized the ground below him, and by reflex he created a forcefield to stand on, so I wriggled through the dust underneath him. He had to twist to see me, but that left him open to Megan. Who, of course, shot him.

It didn’t have much effect; he was protected—as always—by thin, invisible forcefields around his whole person. Her shots did distract him long enough for me to crawl out from underneath the disc on the other side. There, I raised my handgun and started firing as well.

He turned on me, annoyed, and I hit him with a blast of tensor power, dissolving his forcefields. Megan’s gunshots began to chew chunks out of him, and he cursed, flashing away.

Megan stepped up to me, her face blurred by a hundred different identities. “We don’t have the weakness right, David.”

“His own powers could hurt him,” I said. “And the tensor leaves him able to be shot.”

“He heals from those shots immediately,” she said, “and getting hit with tensor power doesn’t disrupt his abilities as much as it should. It’s like…we have part of the weakness right, but don’t grasp the entire thing. And that’s why he’s not turning—confronting the powers must not be enough.”

I couldn’t argue. She was right. I sensed it inside, with a sinking feeling.

“So what now?” I asked. “Any ideas?”

“We have to kill him.”

I drew my lips to a line. I wasn’t sure we could do that. And even if we could kill him, it felt like in so doing, we might win the battle but lose the war.

Megan glanced at my gun. “You’re reloaded, by the way.”

My gun suddenly felt a bit heavier. “That’s convenient.”

“Can’t help thinking there should be more I can do than reload guns and replace walls. I can see so much….It’s overwhelming.”

“We need to pick one thing for you to change,” I said, holding my gun and watching for Prof to reappear. “Something very useful.”

“A weapon,” she said, nodding.

“Abraham’s minigun?”

She smiled, then that smile became an almost girlish grin. “No. That’s thinking too small.”

“That gun is too small? Woman, I love you.”

“Actually,” she said, turning her head to look at something I couldn’t see, “there is a very close world where Abraham ran ops for our team….”