Firefight (36 page)

I was completely incapable of thinking or swimming consciously. I’d have died there if Regalia hadn’t towed me upward. I had a sense of motion, and when I broke the surface—gasping and cold—my ears hurt for some reason.

The water beneath me grew
solid
somehow. A small pedestal of water raised me up, and Regalia appeared standing beside me. I lay there, shivering and wet, and eventually I realized we were moving. The water pedestal was zipping along the surface of the ocean, carrying me with it, approaching the glowing painted walls and bridges of Babilar.

Regalia could appear wherever she wanted—or, at least, she could appear anyplace that she could see. So this wasn’t about transporting her, but about moving me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, getting to my knees.

“Has Jonathan ever told you,” Regalia asked, “what we know about the nature of Calamity?”

I could see it up there, that omnipresent glowing dot. Brighter than a star, but far smaller than the moon.

“You can view Calamity through a telescope,” Regalia continued, speaking in a conversational way. “The four of us did it quite often, back in the day. Jonathan, myself, Lincoln. Even with a telescope, it’s hard to make out details. He glows very brightly, you see.”

“
He?
” I asked.

“But of course,” Regalia said. “Calamity is an Epic. What else did you expect?”

I …
 I couldn’t respond. I could barely even blink.

“I asked him about you,” she said. “Told him you’d make
a wonderful Epic. It would solve all kinds of problems, you see, and I think you’d take to it quite nicely. Ah, here we are.”

I struggled to my feet as our water platform stopped moving. We were in the lower section of Babilar, near where the operation to take out Newton would soon begin. It seemed Regalia knew about that too.

“You’re lying.”

“Do you know of the Rending?” Regalia asked. “That’s what we call the time just after an Epic first gains their powers. You’ll feel an overwhelming sensation driving you to destroy, to break. It utterly consumes us. Some learn to manage with the feelings, as I have. Others, like dear Obliteration, never quite get beyond them.”

“No,” I whispered, feeling a growing horror.

“If it’s any consolation, you’ll probably forget most of what you’re about to do. You’ll wake up in a day or so with only vague memories of the people you killed.” She leaned in, voice growing harsher. “I’m going to
enjoy
watching this, David Charleston. It is poetry for one who has killed so many of us to become the thing he hates. I believe, in the end, that is what convinced Calamity to agree to my request.”

She slapped me in the chest with a liquid hand, shoving me off her platform. I fell backward into the waters, and they churned about me, raising me in a pillar toward the night sky. I sputtered, righting myself, and discovered that I was hanging some hundred feet in the air, as if on an enormous jet made by the spyril. I looked upward.

And there was Calamity.

The star burned fiercely, and the land around me seemed to grow red, bathed in a deep light. Like on that first night, so long ago, when Calamity had come and the world had changed. Impossibilities, chaos, followed by Epics.

It dominated my view, that burning redness. I didn’t feel as if I—or it—had changed locations, and yet suddenly it was all that I could see. I felt, against reason, that I was so close I could reach out and touch the star. And within that blazing, violent redness, I
swore
I saw a pair of fiery wings.

My skin grew cold, then shocked alive with a tingling, electric sensation—as if recovering from numbness. I screamed, doubling upon myself. Sparks! I could
feel
it coursing through me. A foul energy, a transformation.

It was really happening.

No, no … Please …

The redness upon the land retreated, and my water pillar slowly lowered. I barely noticed, as the tingling feeling continued, more frantic, like thousands of worms squirming under my skin.

“It is unsettling at first,” Regalia said softly as I lowered down to sea level beside her. “I have been assured that you will be given powers that are ‘thematically appropriate.’ I suggested the same water-manipulation abilities that young Georgi possessed. That, if you have forgotten, is the Epic who was killed to make that abomination you call the spyril. I think you’ll find being an Epic to be
far
more liberating than using some device to ape us.”

I groaned, rolling over, face toward the sky. Calamity now seemed only a distant prick, but that red glow upon the land remained—faint, but noticeable. Everything around me was bathed in a shade of crimson.

“Well, on with it,” Regalia said. “Let’s see what you can do. I am
distinctly
interested to see how your former teammates react when you bumble into the middle of their careful planning, manifesting Epic powers, murdering everyone you see. It should be … amusing.”

A distant part of my brain realized that this was why she’d
been so fast to help me escape the base. She hadn’t believed I was defecting; she intended to use me, and my new powers, as a way to disrupt the Reckoners’ plans.

I rolled back over, finding my way to my knees, still positioned on a section of water that Regalia had made solid. My face reflected in the waters, lit by spraypaint on a nearby building.

Was I now an Epic?

Yes
. I felt it was true. What had just happened between me and Calamity was no trick. But still, I had to test it. I had to know for absolute certain.

And then I would kill myself, quickly, before the desires consumed me.

I reached out to touch the water.

42

I
felt something.

Well, I felt the water, of course. I mean something else. Something inside of me. A stirring.

Hand on the surface of the water, I peered into those depths. Just beneath me was an ancient steel bridge cluttered with a line of rusted cars. A window into another world, an old world, a time before.

I imagined what it would have been like to live in this city when the waters swept in. My fears returned, the images of being crushed, drowned, trapped.

Only … I found that they didn’t control me as they once had. I was able to shove them aside. Nothing would ever again be as bad as standing before the glass wall beneath the ocean
and firing a pistol toward it, inviting the sea to come and crush me.

Take it
, a voice said in my head. A quiet, distant voice, but a real one.
Take this power. It is yours
.

I …

Take it!

“No.”

The tingling vanished.

I blinked at the waters. Calamity’s light had retreated, and everything looked normal again.

I stumbled to my feet and turned to face Regalia.

She smiled. “Ah, it takes hold!”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m a washing machine at a gun show.”

She blinked, looking totally befuddled. “… What did you just say?”

“Washing machine?” I said. “Gun show? You know. Washing machines don’t use guns, right? No fingers. So if they’re at a gun show, there’s nothing they’d want to buy. Anyway, I’m good here. Not interested.”

“Not … interested. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested or not! You don’t get a
choice
.”

“Made one anyway,” I said. “Thanks, though. Nice of you to think of me.”

Regalia worked her mouth as if trying to speak, but no sound came out. Her eyes bulged as she regarded me. Gone was her posture of dominance and control.

I smiled and shrugged. Inside, I was working frantically on some way to escape. Would she destroy me, now that I’d failed to become part of her plans? The only place for me to go was into the water—which, considering her abilities, didn’t seem wise.

But I wasn’t an Epic. I had no doubt that she’d just
tried
to
give me powers, as she said she could do. I had no doubt that I’d heard Calamity’s voice in my mind.

It just hadn’t worked on me.

“Epic powers,” I said to Regalia, meeting her gaze, “are tied to your fears, aren’t they?”

Regalia’s eyes widened even further. A piece of me found it supremely satisfying to see Regalia so flummoxed, and it seemed further proof to me that everything else she’d done had been calculated. Even when she’d seemed out of control, she’d known what she was doing.

All except for this moment.

She glanced away and cursed. Then she vanished. I, of course, immediately dropped into the ocean.

I sputtered a bit but managed to paddle myself to the nearest Babilar building. Mizzy would have laughed to see my silly version of a swimming stroke, but it worked well enough. I hauled myself up out of the water and into the building through a window. It took about five minutes to find the stairwell—there were paths worn through this building, probably made by people gathering fruit—and climb to the roof two stories above.

It was a typical Babilar night, with people sitting out, legs hanging off the edges of their rooftops. Some fished, others lazily gathered fruit. One group sang softly as someone played an old guitar. I shivered, soaked through, and tried to sort out what had just happened to me.

Calamity was an Epic. Some kind of … super-powerful gifter, perhaps? Could it be that there had really only been one single Epic all along, and everyone else held an offshoot of his powers?

Well, Regalia was in communication with him, whoever he was. She’d left me alone. Was it because her failure to make me an Epic had spooked her? She’d looked to the side at the
end; it was hard to remember sometimes that she was actually in her hidden base, with other things happening around her there. Perhaps something had distracted her.

Well, I was free, for the moment. And I still had work to do. I took a deep breath and tried to orient myself, but I had only a vague idea of where I was. I jogged up to a group of people cooking soup beside some tents; they were listening to the music of a quiet radio—probably a live broadcast by someone else in the city. They looked up at me, and one offered me a water bottle.

“Thanks, uh, but I can’t stay,” I said. “Um …” How could I say this without sounding suspicious? “I’m totally normal and not weird at all. But I need to get to Finkle Crossway. Which direction is that again?”

An aging woman wearing a glowing blue knit shawl pointed with a lazy gesture. “Ten or so bridges that way. Turn left at the really tall building, keep going. That’ll take you past Turtle Bay, though.…”

“Um. Yeah?”

“Big Epic there,” a man filled in. “Glowing.”

Oh, right. Obliteration. Well, surprisingly, he was the least of my problems. I took off, running the direction indicated, trying to keep my attention on the task at hand, not on Calamity. I needed to save Megan, get some answers, warn Prof that Regalia’s range was wider than he and Tia thought.

What would Prof do when he saw me free from the base? It probably wouldn’t be good, but I had to believe that he’d listen to me when I explained that Regalia had appeared at the base.

Ten bridges? That was a long run, and time was short. The Reckoners had likely already started putting their plan into motion. I needed my mobile. Sparks, I needed more than that! I needed a weapon, information, and—preferably—an army
or two. Instead I ran, alone and unarmed, across a wooden bridge where each board had been painted a different color.

Think, think!
I couldn’t reach them in time, even running all the way. So what could I do?

Well, I knew the plan. The Reckoners would follow Newton doing her nightly rounds. That would start midtown, then sweep through the city down toward old Chinatown, where the hit would happen. So, if I could position myself in the middle of that path, they’d theoretically come to
me
instead of me needing to find them.

By asking a few more people for directions, I was able to make my way to Bob’s Cathedral, a place I knew would be along Newton’s route. The grandly named locale was just a rooftop spraypainted on the top and sides like a series of stained glass windows. The place had a dense population, and Tia suspected that it was on Newton’s rounds because it let her show off and remind everyone who ruled the city.

I slowed my pace as I neared, joining a line of people moving up a bridge toward the colorfully painted building. Sparks, the place was busy. As I reached the top, I found that it was a market, full of tents and shacks. The tents displayed wares ranging from things as simple as hats made from Babilar tree fronds to products as exotic as salvage from the old days. I passed one man who had bins of windup toys. He sat behind them with a small screwdriver, fixing a broken one. Another woman sold empty milk jugs, which she claimed were perfect for storing fruit juice. A few full ones sat out glowing brightly to prove her point.

The press of bodies and the chatter was—for once—something I found relieving. It would be easier to hide here, though I had to make certain I was in position to spot Newton when she came. I lingered by one stall that was selling clothing. Simple stuff, really just sheets of cloth cut with armholes.
One was a cloak, though, that glowed bright blue. Perfectly unobtrusive here in Babilar.

“Like what you see?” asked a young girl seated on a stool beneath the awning.

“I could use the cloak,” I said, pointing. “But I don’t have much to trade.”

“You’ve got nice shoes.”

I looked down. My sneakers. Good rubber on those, the type that was getting harder and harder to find. If I was going to be chasing the Reckoners, I suspected I’d need my footwear. I fished in my pockets and only came out with one thing. The chain that Abraham had given me, with the symbol of the Faithful dangling at the end.

The young girl’s eyes widened.

I stood for a long moment.

Then I traded my shoes instead. I wasn’t certain how much my shoes were worth, but I just kept haggling, adding things until I walked away with the cloak, a pair of worn-out sandals, and a pretty-good-looking knife.