Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

THIS time I didn’t drop twenty feet after transitioning to the other world, which was a plus. I instead rolled onto the top of a roof in a quiet section of the city. This wasn’t a skyscraper, just some apartment building, though an admittedly tall one.

Nothing was dissolving, no gunfire sounded, and there was a complete absence of the disconcerting hum of Prof’s tensor power. Only the serene night sky. Beautiful…with no red spot to glare down upon me.

I clutched the tissue sample, lying there, and stared up at the sky, drawing in a few calming breaths. That might have been the craziest thing I’d ever done, and my life so far had set a pretty high bar.

“You,” a voice said from behind me.

I rolled over to a kneeling position, holding Prof’s cells closer with one fist while raising my handgun with the other. Firefight hovered beside the rooftop, alight and burning, skin and clothing consumed by his curling flames. Bullets wouldn’t hurt a fire Epic; they’d simply melt away. Had I traded one deadly situation for another?

I have to stall until I’m pulled back into my own world, I thought. Except…how long would I stay, if Megan wasn’t actively trying to pull me back? I couldn’t have slipped over permanently, right?

Firefight was inscrutable, his aura of heat and flame warping the air around him. Eventually he stepped up onto the rooftop and, surprisingly, his flames dampened. Clothing emerged, a jacket over a tight T-shirt, a pair of jeans. The fire continued to burn along his arms, but it was subdued, like the last flames of a campfire before they gave themselves up to the embers. His face was the same as the other times I’d seen him.

“What have you done with Tavi?” he demanded. “If you’ve hurt her…”

I licked my lips, which were extremely dry and salty. “I…” Again, the morality of what we’d done smacked me upside the head, like the fist of the Factory’s lunch lady after I’d tried to steal an extra muffin. “She’s been sucked into my world.”

“So Tia is right. You are actively looking to pull us into your dimension?” He strode forward, his fires flaring up again. “Why are you doing this? What is your plot?”

I scrambled backward on the rooftop. “It’s not that! Or, well, we didn’t know—Megan didn’t, at first, know what—I mean, we didn’t—”

I had no idea what I was trying to say.

Fortunately Firefight stopped, then dampened his flames once more. “Specks, you’re terrified.” He took a deep breath. “Look, can you bring Tavi back? We’re in the middle of something. We need her.”

“Tia…,” I said, lowering my gun as I put it together. “Wait. You’re one of the Reckoners?”

“Is that why you keep pulling me into your world?” he asked. “Is there no version of me there?”

“I…think you might be a girl,” I said. And dating me. I’d noticed the similarities before; Firefight was blond and had a face that, if you ignored its masculinity, was reminiscent of Megan’s.

“Yes…,” he said, nodding. “I’ve noticed her. She’s the one who pulls me through. Odd to think that I might have a sister, in another place, another world.”

A flash of light ignited a building nearby—a tall, round building. Sharp Tower? For the first time I realized that I was still in the same district of Ildithia. But outside the tower, on top of a building like the one where Cody had set up.

Firefight spun toward the explosion, then cursed. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll deal with you later.”

“Wait,” I said, scrambling to my feet. That flash…it felt familiar. “Obliteration. That light was caused by Obliteration, wasn’t it?”

“You know him?” Firefight said, spinning back to me.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. “You could say that. Why are—”

“Wait,” Firefight said, putting his hand to his ear. “Yes, I saw it. He’s come to Sharp Tower. You were right.” He squinted, looking up at the taller building. “I want to engage. I don’t care if he’s trying to lure me, Tia. We have to face him eventually.”

I hesitantly walked over beside Firefight, who stood at the edge of our building. There was so much that was different here, but so much was the same. Obliteration, Ildithia itself. Tia, apparently? And Tavi…her daughter?

The flash of heat from Obliteration returned, a deep pulsing heat. The salt couldn’t catch fire, but Obliteration continued radiating it. Shadows moved up there. I squinted, and then—silhouetted against the flames—I saw figures leap from the windows.

“Specks!” Firefight said. “Tia, there are people up there. Jumping out to avoid the heat he’s creating. I’m going.”