Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

Perhaps it was the lack of the harmsway to prop me up. Perhaps it was the knowledge that at last we were done. But I didn’t have the energy to rise. I barely had the energy to speak.

“We’ve been beaten, yes,” Megan said. “But we haven’t failed, Jonathan. Failure is refusing to fight. Failure is remaining quiet and hoping someone else will fix the problem.”

I met his eyes. He stood about five feet before us in the cavern, which was now more of a crater. Ildithia’s creeping salt crystals had begun to crawl over the rim of the hole, crusting over the sides. If other soldiers were up there, they’d wisely taken cover.

Prof’s face was a network of cuts—injuries from debris blown by our violent explosion of tensor power, which had temporarily negated his forcefields. As if in defiance of my hopes, those wounds started to heal.

Megan…Megan was right. Something glimmered in my memories. “Refusing to act,” I said to Prof, “yes, that’s failure, Prof. Like…perhaps…refusing to enter a contest, even though you dearly wanted the prize?”

He stopped right in front of me. Tia had told me a story about him, when we were in Babilar. He’d wanted desperately to visit NASA, but wouldn’t enter the contest that might have won him the chance.

“Yes,” I said. “You never entered. Were you afraid to lose, Prof? Or were you afraid to win?”

“How do you know about that?” he demanded with a roar, summoning a hundred lines of light around him.

“Tia told me,” I said, climbing to my knees, placing my hand on Megan’s shoulder for support. It was starting to click. “You’ve always been like this, haven’t you? You founded the Reckoners, but refused to push them too far. Refused to face the most powerful Epics. You wanted to help, Prof, but you weren’t willing to take the last step.” I blinked. “You were afraid.”

The lines around him faded.

“The powers are part of it,” I said. “But not the whole story. Why do you fear them?”

He blinked. “Because…I…”

“Because if you are so powerful,” Megan whispered, “if you have all of these resources, then you don’t have any excuses left for failing.”

He started weeping, then gritted his teeth and reached for me.

“You’ve failed, Prof,” I said.

The forcefields faded and he stumbled.

“Tia’s dead,” Megan added. “You failed her.”

“Shut up!” The wounds on his face stopped healing. “Shut up, both of you!”

“You killed your team in Babilar,” I said. “You failed them.”

He lunged forward and seized me by the shoulders, knocking Megan aside. But he was trembling, tears streaming from his eyes.

“You were strong,” I told him. “You have powers no others can match. And still you’ve failed. You’ve failed so deeply, Prof.”

“I can’t have,” he whispered.

“You did. You know you did.” I braced myself in his grip, preparing for the lie I spoke next. “We killed Larcener, Prof. You can’t complete Regalia’s plan. It doesn’t matter if I die. You’ve failed.”

He dropped me. I stumbled up to my feet, but he sank to his knees. “Failed,” he whispered. Blood dripped from his chin. “I was supposed to be a hero….I’ve had so much power…and I still failed.”

Megan limped up beside me, ashen-faced, rubbing her cheek where Prof had hit her. “Hell,” she whispered. “It worked.”

I looked at Prof. He still wept, but when he turned his face toward me, I saw pure loathing in his eyes. Hatred for me, for this situation. For being made a weak, common mortal.

“No,” I said, my stomach sinking. “He didn’t face it.”

We’d found the true weakness. Tia had been wrong. His fear was something deeper than just the powers, though they—and his competence as a whole—were certainly part of that. He was afraid of stepping up, of becoming everything he could be—not because the powers themselves frightened him. But because if he tried, then the failure was far, far worse.

At least if he held something back and failed, he could tell himself it wasn’t completely his fault. Or that it was part of the plan, that he’d always intended for it to go this way. Only if he gave his all, only if he was using every resource he had, would the failure be complete.

What a terrible burden the powers were. I could see how they’d become a focus for him, how they represented the whole of his competence—and how they also represented his potential for true failure.

Megan pressed something into my hand. Her gun. I regarded it, then—my arm feeling like lead—I raised it to Prof’s head.

“Do it,” he growled. “Do it, you bastard!”

My hand was steady, my aim unwavering, as I rested my finger on the trigger—and remembered.

Another day, in a steel room, with a woman I’d driven to rage.

Me, kneeling on a gridiron battlefield.

My father, his back to the bank pillar, in the shadow of a deity.

“No,” I said, turning away.

Megan didn’t object. She joined me. Together, we walked away from Prof.