Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

He was moving down a dark hallway. Diaphanous light seeped through the wall to his right, like a flashlight shining inside someone’s mouth. He reached a room that still had a salt door—I was surprised when he shoved it that it moved. He slipped inside and crept up to a window. He broke the salt there—which proved more difficult than I’d have guessed—with the butt of his rifle, then poked the gun out. When he patched through the feed from his scope instead of his earpiece, it gave us a vantage from several stories up.

The market was easy to spot—it was an old parking garage, the sides draped with colorful cloths and awnings that spread out onto the streets around it.

“Yeah,” Mizzy said as Cody focused on it, “I’m in there. Got pushed down onto one of the lower levels by the crowd. I’m trying a stairwell now. Still a lot of people hiding in here.”

Prof was heading right for the market, the green glow of his forcefields lighting up the street. I followed a parallel path down a smaller side street, eventually taking cover beside some bushes made of pink salt.

In fact, this bush was still growing. I stared, momentarily transfixed by the little salt leaves sprouting out of tiny branches like crystals. I’d assumed that things grew up on the leading edge of the city, stopping once they matched the way Atlanta had once been, then remained static. It seemed that parts of the inner city were still developing.

“David?” a voice whispered. I turned to see Megan and Abraham scrambling up to me.

Right, right. Friend and mentor on a murderous rampage. I should probably remain focused.

“Megan,” I said, “a little more cover might be nice.”

She nodded, and concentrated for a moment. In an eyeblink, the bushes in front of us became far more dense. It was an illusion, a shadow pulled from another world where those shrubs were more dense, but it was perfect.

“Thanks,” I said, taking off my pack and quickly assembling my rifle.

Prof strode out onto the street a short distance from us. The teenage Epic I’d seen earlier led him, gesturing as they walked. Stormwind’s bubble had been parked at the mouth of an alleyway and left there, hovering.

The younger Epic with Prof…Dynamo? I wasn’t sure what his powers were. In a city like this there would be dozens of lesser Epics, and I didn’t have them all memorized.

Dynamo pointed toward the ground, then toward the market. Prof nodded, but I was too far away to hear what they said.

“An underground room,” Abraham whispered. “That has to be the safehouse—an office linked to the parking garage, perhaps?”

“Can there be basements in this city?” I asked.

“Shallow ones,” Abraham said, tapping the ground with his foot. “Depending on the area, Ildithia can grow up on a mass of salt rock that’s several stories high in some places; it replicates the landscape of the original Atlanta, filling in holes and creating hills. It’s as shallow as a few feet elsewhere, but this is a thick portion. Did you notice the slope while we walked to the warehouse?”

I hadn’t. “Mizzy,” I said, “he might be coming in there. Status?”

“Trapped,” she whispered. “Stairwell is packed; everyone and their dog thought to hide in here. Like, seriously. There are four dogs. I can’t find a way out.”

Prof didn’t follow the young Epic toward the parking garage. He strode farther down the street and swept both hands before himself.

The street melted away. The salt became powder, and that blew off in a gust of air that Prof created by quickly pushing two concave forcefields. The rest drained away into a hollow space below, leaving behind a set of stairs that Prof walked down without breaking stride.

It was amazing. I’d studied Epics, come up with my own systems of categorization. I admit I was a little obsessed. In the same way that a million preschoolers asking questions over and over at the same time might be a little obnoxious.

Prof’s power was unique—he didn’t just destroy matter, he sculpted it. It was beautiful destruction, and I found that I envied him. Once, I’d held that power, gifted to me. After Steelheart’s death, Prof had stopped doing that so much. I’d had the spyril to keep me entertained, but I could see that even then he’d been withdrawing from us.

It was the time he saved me from Enforcement, I realized. That was the beginning of the problems.

I’d started him down this path. I knew I couldn’t take all the blame—Regalia’s plot to turn Prof would probably have happened whether or not I had joined the Reckoners—but neither could I deny responsibility.

“Mizzy,” I said over the line, “hold tight. You might be safest in there after all.”

Prof stepped down into the chamber he’d uncovered, but Cody’s vantage from above let us watch on our mobiles. Prof didn’t descend far before turning around and striding up again, dragging someone by the collar. Back on the street, he tossed the person aside. The figure fell limply to the ground, neck at an unnatural angle.

“A decoy,” Prof barked. His voice carried through the square. “Larcener is a coward, I see.”

“Decoy?” Megan said, taking my rifle from me and zooming in on the body.

“Ooooh,” I whispered, excited. “Larcener absorbed Dead Drop. I wondered if he was ever going to do that.”