Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

The other two members of my team followed him. Cody appeared first, a lanky man in his late thirties. He wore a camouflage hunting jacket and cap—though not specifically for this mission. He basically always wore camo. He hadn’t shaved in days, which he’d explained was a “true Highlander tradition used to prepare for battle.”


“Is that popcorn?” he asked in his strong Southern drawl. He walked over and snatched a handful from the bowl right out of the mannequin’s hand. “Brilliant! Boy, Abraham, you weren’t kidding ’bout the creepy wooden robot thing.”

Mizzy bounced in behind him. Dark-skinned and slight of build, she wore her wild curly hair pulled back so that it exploded in an enormous puff, kind of like an Afro mushroom cloud. She took a place at the table as far from Megan as possible, and shot me an encouraging smile.

I tried not to think of the missing team members. Val and Exel, dead at Prof’s hand. Tia, lost somewhere, probably dead as well. Though we were usually silent about such things, Abraham had confided in me that he’d known of two other Reckoner cells. He’d tried to contact them while fleeing Newcago, but he’d had no response. It seemed Prof had gotten to them first.

Cody crunched down his handful of popcorn. “How does a fellow score some more of this? Don’t know if y’all realize, but we’ve had an exhausting day.”

“Yes,” Knighthawk said, “an exhausting morning spent attacking my home and trying to rob me.”

“Now, now,” Cody said. “Don’t be sore. Why, in parts of the old country, it’s considered polite to introduce yourself with a fist to the face. Yes indeed, a man won’t think you’re serious unless you come in swinging.”

“Dare I ask…,” Knighthawk said. “Of what old country do you speak?”

“He thinks he’s Scottish,” Abraham said.

“I am Scottish, ya big slab of doubt and monotony,” Cody said, climbing from his chair—apparently determined to fix his own popcorn, since nobody had offered to do it for him.

“Name one city in Scotland,” Abraham said, “other than Edinburgh.”

“Ah yes, the Burgh of Edin,” Cody said. “Where they buried old Adam and Eve, who were—naturally—Scots.”

“Naturally,” Abraham said. “A city name, please?”

“That’s easy. I can name a ton. London. Paris. Dublin.”

“Those—”

“—are completely Scottish,” Cody said. “We founded them, you see, and then those other folks up and stole them from us. Y’all need to learn your history. Want some popcorn?”

“No. Thank you,” Abraham said, giving me a bemused smile.

I leaned toward Knighthawk. “You promised us technology.”

“Promised is a strong word, kid.”

“I want that healing device,” Abraham said.

“The harmsway? Not a chance. I don’t have a backup.”

“You call it that too?” Megan asked, frowning.

“One of Jonathan’s old jokes,” Knighthawk said, his mannequin shrugging. “It just stuck. Anyway, mine isn’t nearly as efficient as Jonathan’s own healing powers. It’s all I got though, and you aren’t taking it. But I have two other bits of fun I can lend you. One—”

“Wait,” Mizzy said. “You’ve got a healing machine, and you still walk around with Smiles McCreepy there? Why not, you know, fix your legs?”

Knighthawk gave her a flat stare, and his mannequin shook its head. As if asking about his disability broke some kind of taboo.

“How much do you know about Epic healing, young lady?” he asked.

“Weeellll,” Mizzy said, “the Epics we kill tend to stay pretty dead. So I don’t get to see healing often.”

“Epic healing,” Knighthawk said, “doesn’t change your DNA or your immune system. It merely fixes damage to cells. My current state is not the result of an accident; if it were no more than a severed spinal cord, I’d be fine. The problem runs far deeper, and while I’ve found that healing returns some sensation in my limbs, they soon degrade again. So I use Manny instead.”

“You…named it?” Abraham asked.

“Sure. Why not? Look, I’m starting to think you don’t want me to give you this tech after all.”

“We do,” I said. “Please, continue.”

He rolled his eyes, then accepted another piece of popcorn from his marionette’s hand. “So, a few months back, an Epic died in Siberia. A squabble between two despots, kind of dramatic. An enterprising merchant was in the area, and managed to harvest one of the—”

“Rtich?” I said, perking up. “You managed to emulate Rtich?”

“Kid, you know far too much about all this for your own good.”

I ignored the comment. Rtich—pronounced something like “r’teech”—had been a powerful Epic. I’d been looking for something that would let us go toe-to-toe with Prof. We needed an edge, something he wouldn’t expect—

Megan elbowed me in the stomach. “Well? Gonna share?”

“Oh!” I said, noticing that Knighthawk had stopped his explanation. “Well, Rtich was a Russian Epic with a very eclectic set of abilities. She wasn’t technically a High Epic, but she was very powerful. Are we talking about her entire portfolio, Knighthawk?”