“I…” What did I say to that? I could imagine how it would feel to have the one you loved begging for your help, all the while knowing it was a trap. I imagined struggling to not give in, to ignore their pleas.
I wouldn’t have been strong enough. Sparks, I’d chased Megan halfway across the country, despite her threatening to kill me.
“I’m sorry, Tia,” I whispered.
She shook her head. “I’m prepared for this. Jon and I talked about it, like I said. I can do him one last favor.” She opened her eyes. “I see you had the same instinct.”
“Not…exactly,” Abraham said, sharing a look with me.
“Tia,” I said. “We’ve cracked it.”
“It?”
“The secret,” I said, growing eager. “The weaknesses, the darkness—they’re tied together. Epics all have nightmares about their weaknesses.”
“Of course they do,” Tia said. “The weaknesses are the only thing that can make them feel powerless.”
“It’s more than that, Tia,” I said. “Way more! The weaknesses are often tied to something the person feared before getting their powers. A phobia, a terror. It seems…well, I haven’t talked to enough of them, but it seems like becoming an Epic makes the fear worse. Either way, stopping—or at least managing—the darkness is possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fears,” I said quietly, only to her. “If the Epic confronts their fear, it drives back the darkness.”
“Why?”
“Um…does it matter?”
“You’re the one who kept saying that this should all make sense. If there really is a logic behind the weaknesses, then shouldn’t there be a logical reason for the darkness?”
“Yeah…yeah, there should be.” I sat back. “Megan says—”
“Megan. You brought her? She’s one of them, David!”
“She’s why we know this works. Tia, we can save him.”
“Don’t give me that hope.”
“But—”
“Don’t give me that hope.” She glared at me. “Don’t you dare do that, David Charleston. You don’t think this is hard enough? Planning to kill him? Wondering if there isn’t something more I should do? He made me promise. I’m going to keep that promise, damn you.”
“Tia,” Abraham said softly.
She looked at him as I sat there, stunned by her tone.
“David is right, Tia,” Abraham said in his calm way. “We must try to bring him back. If we cannot save Jonathan Phaedrus, then we might as well give up this fight. We cannot kill them all.”
Tia shook her head. “You believe he’s found the secret, after all this time?”
“I believe he has a good theory,” Abraham said. “And Megan has learned to control the darkness. If we do not test David’s theories, we are fools. He is right. We cannot kill them all. We’ve been trying the same thing for too long; it is time to do something different.”
I suddenly felt very, very smart for having brought Abraham along. Tia listened to him. Heck, a rabid Chihuahua having a seizure would stop and listen when Abraham spoke.
The door burst open, and a frantic young woman scrambled into the room. “Sir!” she said to Carla. “Crooknecks. The whole family, three hundred strong, and then some. All armed, and coming this way. He’s with them.”
“He?” the woman, Carla, asked.
“The new Epic. Sir, we’re surrounded.”
The room fell silent. The ugly man who had disagreed with Carla earlier turned to her. He didn’t speak, but the implication was there in his dark expression. You’ve doomed us.
Abraham stood up, drawing all eyes. “I will need my gun.”
“Like hell,” Carla said. “You caused this.”
“No, I did,” Tia said, rising. “We’re just fortunate that David got here first.”
Carla growled, but then barked for her people to prepare for battle. For all the good it would do. Prof could destroy this neighborhood on his own.
Someone tossed Abraham’s pack to him as others rushed out the door. Carla moved to follow them, perhaps to get a look at the foe herself.
“Carla,” Tia said. “You can’t fight them.”
“I doubt they’ll give us a choice.”
“They might if you give them what they want.”
Carla looked at her companions, who nodded. They’d been thinking the same thing.
“No!” I said, standing up. “You can’t turn her over.”
“You have five minutes to prepare, Tia,” Carla said. “I’ll send runners to talk to the oncoming force, see if I can get them to demand you. We can act like we didn’t know who you were.”
She left us in that windowless box of a room, posting two conspicuous guards at the door.
“I can’t believe—” I began.
Tia cut me off. “Don’t be a child, David. The Stingray Clan was good enough to take me in, listen to my plans. We can’t ask them to die protecting me.”
“But…” I looked at her, pained. “Tia, he’ll kill you.”
“Eventually,” she said. “I might have some time.”
“He murdered Val and Exel immediately.”
“Yes, but me he’ll want to interrogate first.”
“You do know it, don’t you,” I said softly. “His weakness.”
She nodded. “He’d rip apart this entire city to get at me. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t murder everyone in this district, to be certain the secret hasn’t gotten out.”
It made me sick. Steelheart had done something similar on that day, so long ago, when my father and I had seen him bleed.
Tia pressed something into my hand. A data chip. “My plans,” she said. “For bringing Jon down. I’ve had variations on this in mind for years, just in case. But I’ve tailored it specifically to this city and what he’s doing here. David, there’s something bigger going on with him. I’ve been able to get people in to scout near him. I think Regalia must have given him something—some kind of intel on Calamity. I think she sent him here.”
“Tia,” I said, looking to Abraham for support. “I suspect some of the same things. But you can’t go with Prof. We need you.”
“Then stop him,” she said, “before he kills me.”
“But—”
She crossed the room quickly and grabbed the broken mobile from a table. “You can track this if I stick the battery back in?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good. Use it to see where he takes me. I didn’t tell any of the Ildithians his weakness, and I can hide behind that truth for a time. They might be safe, and if he asks about you all, I can say I got separated from you in Babilar. He’d spot a lie from me, but I won’t be lying.”
“He will break you eventually, Tia,” Abraham said. “He is nothing if not persistent.”
She nodded. “Yes, but he’ll act kindly at first. I’m certain of it; he’ll try and bring me to his side. Only after I refuse will he get brutal.” She grimaced. “Trust me, I have no intention of being some kind of noble martyr. I’m counting on you. Stop him, and get me out.”
Abraham saluted again, more solemn this time. Sparks. He was going to let it happen.
People were calling outside the room. Carla ducked back in. “They’ve said we have five minutes to turn over the outsider. I think they believe that we didn’t know who you were. They also don’t seem to know about the other two.”
“Jon’s paranoia works for us,” Tia said. “If he’d been hiding here, he’d never have told you who he really was. He’ll believe that I was trying to blend in.” She looked toward me. “Are you going to make this difficult?”
“No,” I said, resigned. “But we will get you out.”
“Good.” She hesitated. “I’ll see if I can dig up what he’s working on here, what his plot is for this city.”
“Tia,” Carla said from the doorway. “I’m sorry.”
Tia nodded, turning to leave.
“Wait,” I said, then continued in a w
hisper. “The weakness, Tia. What is it?”
“You know it.”
I frowned.
“I don’t know if your theory is correct,” she said. “But…yes, he has nightmares about something. Think, David. In all our time together, what is the one thing you’ve truly seen him fear?”
I blinked, and realized she was right. I did know. It was obvious. “His powers,” I whispered.
She nodded, grim.
“But how does that work?” I demanded. “He can obviously use his own powers. They don’t…negate themselves.”
“Unless someone else is using them.”
Someone else…Prof was a gifter.
“When we were younger,” Tia whispered urgently, “we experimented with Jon’s powers. He can create lances of light, forcefield spears. He gifted the ability to me. And I—by accident—launched one of those lances at Jon. David, the wound he took that day didn’t regenerate. His powers couldn’t fix it; he took months to recover, healing like a normal person. We never told anyone, not even Dean.”
“So someone gifted with one of his powers…”
“Can negate the rest. Yes.” She glanced at Carla, who was waving urgently, then leaned in to me, continuing to speak very quietly. “He fears them, David. The powers granted him, the weight they bring. And so he lives his life with a great dichotomy—he takes every opportunity he can to gift his powers away, to let the team use them so he doesn’t have to. But each time he does, he gives them a weapon that could be used against him.”
She gripped my arm. “Get me out,” she said, then turned and rushed to Carla, who led her from the room.
—
They let us watch. From a distance, using scopes atop one of the apartment buildings, where they’d hollowed out a nice little hidden sniper nest. We were attended by a couple of guards who—we’d been promised—would let us go, assuming that Prof took Tia and left without demanding more.
Again I had to watch a man I loved and respected act like someone else. Someone proud and imperious, bathed in a faint green glow from the forcefield disc he stood upon.
I felt so powerless as the Ildithians led Tia up to him, then forced her down on her knees. They bowed and retreated from Prof. I waited, sweating.
Tia was right. He didn’t kill her immediately. He surrounded her in a forcefield, then turned and stalked away, her orb trailing behind him.
He never gifted us that power, I thought. He gifted us forcefield protection in the form of the “jackets,” but only in small amounts. The globes, those spears I saw him use the other day…He didn’t let us know about those abilities.
For fear that someday they might be used to kill him. Sparks, how were we going to get him to give away his abilities? I knew his weakness, but approaching it still seemed impossible.
As Tia and Prof left, I closed my eyes, feeling like a coward. Not because I’d failed to save Tia, but because of how badly I’d been wanting her to come with us.
She would have taken over, been in charge. She’d have known what to do. Unfortunately, that burden was now back on me.
I was somewhere dark and warm again.
I had memories…voices, like my own, that spoke in harmony. Together we were one. I’d lost those voices somehow, but I wanted them, needed them. I felt an ache, being separated from them.
At least I was warm, and safe, and comfortable.
I knew what to expect, though I could not brace myself in the dream. So the crashes of thunder still shocked me. The peals of terrible, blaring sound, like a hundred raging wolves. Garish, cold, harsh light. Snapping, attacking, assaulting, smothering. It came at me, and sought to destroy me.
I shot bolt upright, suddenly awake.
I was back on the floor of the upper room of our hideout. Megan, Cody, and Mizzy slept nearby. Abraham was on watch tonight. With an unknown Epic in the hideout, none of us were comfortable sleeping on our own or in pairs, and we were certain always to post a guard.
Sparks…that nightmare. That terrible nightmare. My pulse was still racing and my skin was clammy. My blanket was soaked in sweat; I could probably have wrung out an entire bucketful.
I’m going to have to tell the others, I thought as I sat there in the dark, trying to catch my breath. Nightmares were directly tied to Epics and their weaknesses. If I was having a persistent one…well, it might mean something.
I kicked off my blankets and realized that Megan wasn’t in her place. She got up in the night a lot.
I picked my way around the others toward the hall. I didn’t like this fear. I wasn’t the coward I’d been as a child. I could face anything. Anything.
I reached the hallway and checked the room across from ours. Empty. Where had Megan gotten to?
Abraham and I had returned from the Stingray Clan’s base late enough that we’d decided to call it a night and save digging into the new information Tia had given us for tomorrow. I’d told them Prof’s weakness, which had set them thinking. That was enough for the moment.
I continued to the steps, my feet bare on the saltstone floor. We had to be very careful with water; spill it, and the ground started to rub off on your feet. Even as it was, I woke up in the mornings with salt crust on my legs. Building a city out of something that could dissolve was decidedly worse than building one out of steel. Fortunately I didn’t much notice the smell any longer, and even the dryness was starting to feel normal.
I found Abraham on the middle floor, in the kitchen. He was bathed in the light of his mobile, the rtich on his hands and a large globe of mercury hovering in front of him. The mercury certainly had an otherworldly cast: perfectly reflective, it undulated as Abraham moved his hands around it. He drew his palms apart, which caused the large globe of mercury to elongate like a loaf of French bread. The way reflections distorted and shifted on its mirrored surface made me imagine it was showing us a different, distorted world.
“We must be careful,” Abraham said softly. “I think I’ve learned to contain the fumes this metal releases, but perhaps it would be wise for me to find another place to practice.”
“I don’t like splitting us up,” I said, getting myself a cup of water from the large plastic cooler we kept on the counter.
Abraham spread his palm out, and the mercury made a disc in front of him, like a wide plate—or a shield. “It is marvelous,” he said. “It conforms perfectly to my commands. And look at this.”
He brought the disc down, flat portion facing the ground, then hesitantly stepped onto it. It held him.
“Sparks,” I said. “You can fly.”
“Not exactly,” Abraham said. “I cannot move it far while I’m standing on it, and it needs to be nearby for me to manipulate it. But watch this.”
The disc of mercury rippled, and a piece of it siphoned off, forming steps in front of Abraham. Very thin, very narrow, reflective metal steps. He was able to walk up them, stooping down as he got closer and closer to the ceiling.
“This will be of great use against Prof,” Abraham said. “It is very strong. Perhaps I could use it to counteract his forcefields.”
“Yeah.”
Abraham glanced at me. “Not enthusiastic?”
“Just distracted. Is Larcener still awake down there?”
“Last I checked,” Abraham said. “He does not seem to sleep.”
We’d discussed what to do with him, but had come to no conclusions. So far though, he hadn’t posed much of a threat.
“Where’s Megan?” I asked.
“Haven’t seen her.”
That was odd. If she’d left, she would have had to pass this way—and I hadn’t seen her on the top floor, which was pretty small. Maybe Abraham hadn’t noticed her slipping by.
He continued to work with the rtich, climbing down his steps and creating other shapes. Watching him was hard, but mainly for juvenile reasons. We’d all agreed that Abraham should practice with the device, with Cody or Mizzy as backup. Abraham was our primary point man now.
But spar
ks, that device looked cool. Hopefully it would survive our activities here. Once we had Prof and Tia back, I could return to running point, where I belonged.
I left Abraham and walked down to the bottom floor to check on Larcener. I stopped in the doorway to his room.
Wow.
The once-bare walls were now draped with soft red velvet. A set of lanterns glowed on mahogany tables. Larcener lay on a couch as elegant as any we’d had in the Babilar hideout, wearing a pair of large headphones, with his eyes closed. I couldn’t hear what, if anything, he was listening to—the headphones were likely connected wirelessly to a mobile.
I stepped into the room. Sparks, it seemed way larger than it had before. I paced it off, and found that it was bigger.
Spatial distortion, I thought, adding that to his list of powers. Calamity, that was an incredible power. I’d only heard rumors about Epics having it. And his ability to materialize objects from thin air…
“You could beat him,” I said.
Larcener said nothing, remaining on his couch, not opening his eyes.
“Larcener,” I said, more loudly.
He started, then ripped off his headphones and shot me a glare. “What?”
“You could beat him,” I repeated. “Prof…if you were to face him, you might be able to win. I know you have multiple prime invincibilities. Add on top of those the ability to create anything, to distort space…you could beat him.”
“Of course I couldn’t. Why do you think I’m here with you useless idiots?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“I don’t fight,” Larcener said, moving to put his headphones back on. “I’m not allowed.”
“By who?”
“By myself. Let others do the fighting. My place is to observe. Even ruling this city is probably inappropriate for me.”
People, including me, tended to work under the assumption that all Epics were essentially the same: selfish, destructive, narcissistic. But while they did share these traits, they also had their own individual levels of strangeness. Obliteration quoted scripture and sought—it seemed—to destroy all life on the planet. Regalia channeled her darkness toward greater and greater schemes. Nightwielder, in Newcago, insisted on working through lesser intermediaries.
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