Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

Firefight burst alight and streaked into the air—though I could see that he wouldn’t reach the people in time. It was too far, and they were falling too quickly. My heart lurched. What a terrible decision: be burned by Obliteration, or fall to your death? I wanted to tear my eyes away, but couldn’t. Those poor souls.

Someone else leaped from the room atop the burning building. A figure with glowing hands—a magnificent form that shot downward, trailing a silvery cape. Like a meteor, he made a brilliant, powerful streak of light as he rocketed toward the falling people. My breath caught as he seized the first person, then the second.

I stumbled backward. No.

Firefight turned around and landed by me again. “Never mind,” he said to Tia, his flames partially dampening. “He got here in time. Should have known. When has he ever been late?”

I knew that figure. Dark clothing. Powerful build. Even at a distance, even in the gloom of night, I knew that man. I’d spent my life studying him, watching him, hunting him.

“Steelheart,” I whispered. I shook myself, then grabbed Firefight, completely forgetting he was on fire. The flames vanished on contact, fortunately, and I wasn’t burned. “Steelheart is helping you?”

“Of course he is,” Firefight said, frowning.

“Steelheart…,” I said. “Steelheart’s not evil?”

He raised an eyebrow at me as if I’d gone insane.

“And no Calamity,” I said, looking at the sky.

“Calamity?”

“The red star!” I said. “That brought the Epics.”

“Invocation?” he said. “It vanished a year after it arrived; it’s been gone a decade.”

“Do you feel the darkness?” I demanded. “The drive toward selfishness that strikes every Epic?”

“What are you talking about, Charleston?”

No Calamity, no darkness, a good Steelheart.

Sparks!

“This changes everything,” I whispered.

“Look, I’ve told you before that you must meet him,” Firefight said. “He refuses to believe what I’ve seen, but he needs to talk to you.”

“Why me? What does he care about me?”

“Well,” Firefight said, “he killed you.”

In my world, I killed him. Here, he killed me. “How did it happen? I have to…”

I felt a lurch. A shimmering. “I’m going,” I said, starting to disappear. “I can’t stop it. We’ll send Tavi back. Tell him…tell him I’ll return. I have to—

“—figure out what happened here,” I finished, but Firefight was gone. The rooftop was gone. In its place was a room of dust and glowing light. Two Epics at battle. They’d moved into the hallway again, skirting Prof’s chambers. That left them to my right—where most of the hallway’s walls were gone.

Guards had arrived during my absence, and they’d set up at the corner in the hallway, near where I’d been hiding. They’d begun ganging up on Tavi, firing barrages down the hallway in her direction.

No Calamity…

I had to tell someone! I spotted Tia easily, working furtively at a computer station inside the next apartment over—in front of me and a little to my left. A stream of salt trickled down onto my head, and the ceiling groaned.

I looked over my shoulder to see Megan striding through the suite toward me. Tall, deliberate, her head thrust back and hands at her sides, each finger trailing a ripple in reality. A High Epic in her glory.

She looked at me, and snarled.

Right. I had a bigger problem to deal with.





FIRE. I needed fire.

It seemed a cruel irony that mere moments ago I had been standing next to a man literally made of flame, yet now I couldn’t find even a spark.

I shoved Prof’s captured cells into my pocket, then scrambled to my feet and crossed the suite, doing my best to stay low. The guards were falling back. As I frantically searched for some way to create a flame, I spotted Tavi out in the hallway on her knees, surrounded by several layered bubbles of light. Presumably the innermost was her own. She huddled there with head bowed, skin plastered with salt dust streaked by sweat, trembling.

My heart lurched, but I ran for Tia, hoping she might have a lighter. Megan reached for me, but I dodged her. The air still rippled around me. I caught glimpses of other worlds, of alien landscapes, of places where this plain had become a jungle. Another where it was a barren wasteland of dust and stone. I saw armies of glowing Epics, and piles of the dead.

A large portion of the ceiling behind me caved in, crashing down with a cacophony of stone grinding against stone. It collapsed a section of the floor and knocked my feet from under me. I hit the ground shoulder first, skidding through salt.

When I finally came to a stop, I blinked away dust, coughing. Sparks. My leg hurt. I’d twisted my ankle in the fall.