Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

Prof stepped into the light of the soldiers’ weapons. That haggard, broken face seemed to change, his jaw dropping. He seemed to see for the first time that night. So he got to watch as Tia breathed a last ragged breath and died.

I knelt, stunned, and barely heard Prof’s roar—his sudden, shocked cry of agony and regret. He tore across the hole in the floor on a field of light, charging past me and Megan, ignoring us as he grabbed Tia.

“Heal!” he commanded her. “Heal! I gift it to you!”

I held on to Megan, deadened, disbelieving. Tia’s figure remained limp in his hands.

The floor vaporized. The walls, the ceiling, the entire tower. It all shattered to dust in the face of Prof’s tormented scream. Soldiers dropped like stones, though a bubble sprang up around Prof and Tia.

My stomach lurched as Megan and I also began to plummet through salt dust seventy stories toward the ground. “Megan!” I shouted.

Her eyes had drooped closed. I held on to her, tumbling.

No. No. NO.

Bodies fell around us in the night, sprays of dust and furniture, scraps of cloth. They passed us.

“Megan!” I screamed again, over the sound of wind and terrified soldiers. “Wake up!”

Her eyes flared open and seemed to burn in the night. I jerked, barely keeping hold of her—as suddenly I was in a parachute’s harness.

We smacked the ground mere moments later, hitting with a distressing crunch. Then the pain arrived. I gasped at its intensity, like a wave of electricity running up my body from my legs. It was so overpowering, I couldn’t move. I suffered it, staring upward into the black sky.

And at Calamity, who stared back.

Time passed. Not much, but enough. I heard footsteps. “He’s here,” Abraham’s voice said, urgent. “You were right. Sparks! That was a parachute. One of ours, but I didn’t leave any behind….”

I turned my head, blinking away salt dust to find him, a hulking form in the night.

“I’ve got you, David,” Abraham said, taking me by the arm.

“Megan,” I whispered. “Under the chute.” It had drifted down over her after we hit.

Abraham moved over, picking at the parachute. “She’s here,” he said, sounding relieved. “And she’s breathing. Cody, Mizzy, I need your help. David, we’re going to have to move you. We can’t wait. Prof’s up there, glowing. He could come down at any moment.”

I braced myself as Abraham hefted me over his shoulder. The other two arrived, pulling Megan out of the rubble. There was no time to worry whether they were doing more damage than good.

They dragged us off into the night, leaving behind the wreckage of a mission we had failed, utterly and completely.





I didn’t sleep, though when Cody had us pause in an alley to see if we were being tailed, I let Abraham give me something for the pain. Mizzy worked on a litter to help carry Megan and me while Abraham inspected me. Turned out I’d snapped both legs when I hit the ground.

The sky had turned sour by the time we left that alley, and a misty rain started falling on us, making the roadway slick with salty water. The saltstone held up better than I’d have expected though. No mass melting of the city.

The rain felt good at first, washing some of the dust from my skin as I lay in the litter beside Megan. But by the time we approached the bridge in the park, I was soaked through. The lumpish sight of our base, growing under the bridge ahead like some strange fungus, was a beautiful thing.

Megan was still unconscious, but she seemed to have fared better than I had. No broken bones that Abraham could find, though she was going to have some serious bruises, and her arm was burned and blistered.

“Well, we’re alive,” Cody said as we stopped at the doorway to the hideout. “Unless of course we didn’t spot a tail and Prof is lurking out there, waiting for us to lead him to Larcener.”

“Your optimism is so encouraging, Cody,” Mizzy said.

It took a little work to navigate our litter through the entrance, which we’d made as a small tunnel covered in rubble on one end. I was able to help by pushing with my hands. My legs still hurt, but it was more a “Hey, don’t forget about us” kind of hurt than the “HOLY HECK, WE’RE BROKEN” it had been before.

The hideout smelled of the soup Larcener liked—a simple vegetable broth with almost no taste. Abraham lit the place with his mobile.

“Turn that off, idiot,” Larcener snapped from his room.

He must be meditating again. I sat up in my litter as Mizzy crawled in, then sighed and dropped her equipment into a pile. “I need a shower,” she called to Larcener. “What’s a girl got to do to get you to conjure one?”

“Die,” Larcener called back.