Firefight

41

The bullet barely harmed the window.

Oh, it made a tiny hole, which sent out a little spiderweb of cracks-like you see in bulletproof glass that takes a slug. Only this was just a nine-millimeter, and the window in front of me had been built to withstand a bombing. Feeling stupid, I shot again. And again. I unloaded the entire magazine into the glass wall, making my ears ring.

The window didn’t break. It barely sprung a small leak. Great. Now I was going to drown in this room. Judging by the size of that leak, I only had … oh, somewhere around six months before it filled the entire place.

I sighed, slumping down in the chair. Idiot. And here I’d faced the depths, challenged my fears, and prepared myself for a dramatic swim to freedom. Instead I now had to listen to tinkling water dripping onto the wood floor-the ocean making fun of me.

I stared at it pooling on the ground and had another really bad idea.

Well, I’ve already sold the family name for three oranges, I thought. I dragged one of the room’s bookshelves over and obscured the doorway and the forcefield. Then I took out one of the desk drawers and put it under the leak to contain some of the water. A few minutes later, I had a respectable pool in there.

“Hello, Regalia,” I said. “This is David Charleston, the one called Steelslayer. I’m inside the Reckoners’ secret base.”

I repeated this several times, but nothing happened of course. We were all the way out on Long Island, well outside Regalia’s range. I’d just hoped that maybe, if she really was playing us all, Prof and Tia’s information about her range might be-

The water in my drawer started to move and shift.

I yelped, stumbling back as the little hole I’d made in the window expanded, water forcing its way through in a larger stream. It rose up, growing into a shape, then stopped flowing as color flooded the figure.

“You mean to tell me,” Regalia said, “that all this time I had my agents searching along the northern coast, when he had a sparking underwater base?”

I backed away, heart thumping. She was so calm, so certain, wearing her business suit, a string of pearls around her neck. Regalia was not out of control. She knew exactly what she was doing in this city.

She looked me up and down, as if evaluating me. Tia’s information about Regalia’s range was wrong. Maybe her powers, like Obliteration’s, had been enhanced somehow.

Everything that was happening in this city was wrong.

“So, he locked you away, did he?” Regalia asked.

“Uh …” I tried to decide how to game Regalia. If that was even possible. My vague plan of acting like I wanted to defect to her side seemed pitifully obvious now.

“Yes, you are an articulate one,” Regalia said. “Well, brains don’t necessarily accompany passion. In fact, they might often have an inverse relationship. What will Jonathan do to you, I wonder, when he finds out you’ve revealed his base to me?”

“Megan already found it,” I answered. “So far as Prof thinks, this place has been exposed and is no longer a valid base.”

“Pity,” Regalia said, looking around. “This is a fine location. Jonathan always did have a keen sense of style. He might fight against his nature, but aspects of him so blatantly show his heritage. His extravagant bases, the nicknames, the costume he wears.”

Costume? Black lab coat. Goggles in the pocket. It was a little eccentric, actually.

“Well, be quick with your request, boy,” Regalia said. “It is a busy day.”

“I want to protect Megan,” I said. “He’s going to kill her.”

“And if I help you with this, will you serve me?”

“Yes.”

This is one of the most cunning Epics in the world, I thought to myself. You really think she’ll believe you’d swap sides, just like that?

I was banking on the fact that she’d shown an interest in me earlier. Of course, she had also said that she was mad at me for killing Steelheart. Perhaps, now that her plan to bring down Prof was in full swing, she’d just crush me.

Regalia waved a hand.

Water shattered the wall, ripping apart the hole I’d made and destroying the glass. I didn’t even have time to grab the gun off the desk as the water filled the room, plunging me into darkness. I sputtered and thrashed. I may have faced my fear of these depths, but that didn’t mean I was comfortable in them.

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.