Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

“That Epic,” Knighthawk said, and his mannequin pointed at Megan, “is Firefight, isn’t she? She was a dimensionalist all along?”


It wasn’t exactly true. When Megan spoke of Firefight, she spoke of him externally—a being from another dimension who she could bring into ours, fleetingly. She didn’t consider herself to be Firefight, though that was a small distinction.

“Yes,” Megan said, stepping up and—after considering for a moment—sitting down next to me. She rested her arm along the back of the couch, exposing her underarm holster and making it easily accessible. “There’s more to it, but basically…yes. I am what you say.”

I rested my hand on her shoulder. Megan could be cold—part was her native personality, part was wanting to keep her distance from people because…well, Epics tended to be dangerous to get to know. I could see past that, to the tension in the way she watched Knighthawk, the way she wiggled her thumb as if cocking an imaginary revolver. Her hand had a big red blister on it where she’d grabbed the flame.

We knew how to keep the darkness at bay, but this war wasn’t won yet. She was worried about what had happened to her earlier. Frankly, so was I.

Knighthawk’s mannequin leaned forward in a thoughtful posture and tipped its hat back to better expose its featureless face. “What you did in the lab, young woman,” Knighthawk said, “fooled all of my sensors, cameras, and programming. You aren’t just any dimensionalist, you’re a powerful one. My robots report scarring on the walls of the room, and some of my drones were destroyed. Permanently. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re not getting my DNA,” Megan said.

“Hmm?” Knighthawk said. “Oh, I already have that. I collected a dozen different samples before you two made it to the access corridor. You think you could come in here wearing anything other than a cleanroom suit and escape without me getting some of your skin cells? But you needn’t worry; I’m far from creating a motivator based on you. There is more to it than…is generally assumed.”

The mannequin continued to gesture while Knighthawk talked. But Knighthawk’s not moving at all, I noticed. And the overstuffed couches and pillows make it seem like he’s wedged into his seat. Dean Knighthawk was at least partially paralyzed. He could talk—every word he spoke came from his own mouth—but he didn’t move anything more than his head.

How could he be disabled? If he had technology to heal me, then why wouldn’t he have healed himself?

“No,” Knighthawk said, still addressing Megan, “I’m not interested in exploiting your powers right now, but I do want to understand them. What you did earlier was powerful. Incredible. The manipulation of reality is no small-scale stuff, young lady.”

“I hadn’t realized,” she said dryly. “What are you getting at?”

“You were going to sacrifice yourself,” Knighthawk said. “You stayed behind so the others could escape.”

“Yeah?” Megan said. “It’s not a big deal. I can survive a lot of things.”

“Ah…so a High Epic?” Knighthawk said, his mannequin sitting up straighter. “I might have guessed as much.”

Megan drew her lips to a line.

“Get to the point, Knighthawk,” I said.

“The point is this,” he replied, his mannequin waving to us. “This conversation. Such an explosive use of that woman’s powers should have driven her to isolation, rage, and a supreme annoyance at anyone near to her. Jonathan is one of the few Epics I know who could control the darkness—and following the use of his powers, he would often stay away from people for days before he was under control again. Yet this young lady used her powers but wasn’t consumed by darkness at all—as proven by the fact that she subsequently selflessly risked her life for her team.”

The mannequin leaned forward.

“So,” Knighthawk continued, “what’s the secret?”

I looked toward Abraham, who shrugged almost imperceptibly. He didn’t know if we should share the information or not. So far, we had been careful about when, and with whom, we talked about how to drive back the darkness in Epics. With this knowledge, we could accidentally tip the power structure in the Fractured States—as the secret of overcoming the darkness also gave away the secret to discovering Epic weaknesses.

I had half a mind to broadcast these things far and wide. If the Epics discovered one another’s weaknesses, maybe they’d kill each other off. Unfortunately, the truth would probably be more brutal. Power would shift, and some Epics would rise while others fell. We might end up with one group of Epics ruling the entire continent, and be forced to deal with an organized, powerful regime instead of a network of city-states fighting one another and remaining weak because of it.