I hit the black waters with a splash.
I thrashed in that cool darkness, weak from near strangulation, not knowing which way was up. Fortunately, I managed to cling to consciousness and surface in a sputtering mess. I grabbed hold of the building’s brickwork, then—breath coming in desperate wheezes—I began to climb toward the roof, which was about half a story up.
Exhausted, water streaming from my clothing, I flung an arm over the edge of the rooftop. Blessedly, Obliteration had moved on. I lifted a leg over the side, hauling myself up. Why would he drop me, then—
A flash of light beside me. Obliteration. He knelt down, something metal in his hands. A manacle? With a chain attached to it?
A ball and chain, like from the old days—the type prisoners would wear. Sparks! What kind of person had one of those handy, ready to go grab? He clasped it onto my ankle.
“You have a shield to protect you from my heat,” Obliteration said. “So you are prepared for that. But not for this, I suspect.”
He kicked the iron ball over the side of the roof.
I grunted as the ball fell, the weight wrenching my leg in its socket, threatening to tow me off the rooftop. I clung to the stonework ledge. How to escape? No rifle, no bomb. I had Megan’s pistol in my thigh holster, but if I let go of the rooftop to grab it, that iron ball would pull me into the water. I panicked, grunting, fingers slipping on the stonework of the roof.
Obliteration bent down, close to my face. “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven,” he whispered, “having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain.…”
At that he brought his hands up and shoved my shoulders, prying me off the rooftop. My fingernails tore and my skin scraped on the bricks as I fell. I splashed down again, this time with a great weight towing on my leg—like the dark waters were actively seeking to engulf me.
I flailed as I sank, searching for anything to stop my descent, and caught hold of a submerged window ledge.
Darkness all around me.
I clung to it as a flash of light shone above. Obliteration leaving? The surface seemed so far away, though it couldn’t have been more than five feet.
Darkness. Darkness all around!
I hung on, but my arms were weak and my chest bursting for breath. My vision darkened. Terrified, I felt like the waters were crushing me.
That awful deep blackness.
I couldn’t breathe.… I was going to …
No!
I summoned a burst of strength and thrust my hand upward to grab a brick ledge higher on the side of the building. I heaved myself toward the surface, but in the darkness of night I didn’t even know how far away from the air I was. The weight beneath me was too strong. The blackness encircled me.
My fingers slipped.
Something splashed into the water beside me. I felt something brush me—fingers on my leg.
The weight vanished.
I didn’t spare time to think. I pulled myself upward along the submerged building with the last of my strength and burst into the open air, gasping. For a long moment I clung to the side of the building, breathing deeply, shaking, unable to think or really do anything but revel in oxygen.
Finally, I pulled myself up the five feet or so onto the rooftop. I got a leg over the side and rolled onto the stonework, lying on my back, utterly spent. I was too weak to so much as stand, let alone fetch my gun, so it was a good thing Obliteration didn’t return.
I lay there for some time. I’m not sure how long. Eventually something scraped on the rooftop nearby. Footsteps?
“David? Oh, sparks!”
I opened my eyes and found Tia kneeling over me. Exel stood back a few feet, looking about anxiously, assault rifle in his hands.
“What happened?” Tia asked.
“Obliteration,” I said, coughing. With her help, I sat up. “Dumped me in the water with a chain on my leg. I …” I trailed off, staring at my leg. “Who saved me?”
“Saved you?”
I looked at the still waters. Nobody had surfaced after me, had they? “Was it Mizzy?”
“Mizzy is with us,” Tia said, helping me to my feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You can brief us later.”
“What happened to Obliteration?” I asked.
“Gone, for now,” Tia said.
“How?”
“Jon …” She trailed off, meeting my gaze. She didn’t say it, but I read the meaning.
Prof had used his powers.
Tia nodded toward the boat, which rocked in the water nearby. Mizzy and Val sat in it, but there was no sign of Prof.
“Just a sec.” I fetched my gun, still dizzy from my ordeal. Near it I found Mizzy’s discarded explosives, which were still attached to the front of the T-shirt that Obliteration had been wearing. It wouldn’t explode unless it got too far from the radio signal. I rolled the bomb in the remains of the shirt and made my way over to the small boat. Exel offered me a hand, helping me down into the craft.
I settled next to Mizzy, who glanced at me and then immediately looked down. It was hard to tell with her darker skin, but I thought she was blushing in embarrassment. Why hadn’t she watched my back like she’d said she would?
Val started the small motor. It seemed she didn’t care about drawing attention any longer. Regalia had located us, appeared to us. Hiding was pointless.
So much for keeping quiet, I thought.
As we motored away from the scene of the fight, I noticed people beginning to peek out of hiding places. Wide-eyed, they emerged to broken tents and smoldering rooftops. This was only one small section of the city, and the destruction wasn’t wholesale—but I still felt we’d failed. Yes, we’d driven off Obliteration, but only temporarily, and we’d managed it only by falling back on Prof’s abilities.
What I couldn’t figure out was, how had he done it? How could forcefields or disintegrating metal stave off Obliteration?
Judging by the slumped postures the others wore, they felt the same way I did—that we’d failed tonight. We motored past the broken rooftops in silence. I found myself watching the people who’d gathered. Most seemed to ignore us—in the chaos, they had probably taken cover and missed a lot of the details. You learned to keep your head down when Epics were near. To them, we’d hopefully appear to be just another group of refugees.
I did catch some of them watching us go, though. An older woman, who held a child to her chest, nodding with what seemed to be respect. A youth who peeked over the edge of a rooftop near a burned bridge, wary, as if he expected Obliteration to appear at any moment to destroy us for daring to stand up to him. A young woman wearing a red jacket with the hood up, watching from among a small crowd, her clothing wet …
Wet clothing. I focused immediately, and caught a glimpse of her face beneath the hood as she looked at me.
Megan.
She held my gaze for just a moment. It was Megan … Firefight. A second later, she turned and vanished into the group of townspeople, lost in the night.
So you are here, I thought, remembering the splash, the feel of someone’s hands on my leg in the moments before I was freed.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“What was that?” Tia asked.
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“Nothing,” I said, settling back in the boat and smiling, despite my exhaustion.
14
WE continued on through the darkness, moving into a section of the city that was obviously less inhabited. Buildings still sprouted from the waters like tiny islands, fruit glowing on their upper floors, but the spraypaint colors were faded or nonexistent and no bridges linked the structures. They were probably too far apart out here.
The area grew darker as we left the parts of the city with the bright spraypaint. Sailing across those waters in the blackness of night, only the moon to give us light, was thoroughly unsettling. Fortunately, Val and Exel turned on their mobiles, and together the glow created a bright enough light to give us some illumination.
“So, Missouri,” Val said from the back of the boat. “Would you mind explaining why you let David be attacked—and nearly killed—alone, without any backup?”
Mizzy stared at the boat’s floor. The motor puttered quietly behind us. “I …,” she finally said. “There was a fire inside the building I was on. I heard people screaming. I tried to help.…”
“You should know better than that,” Val said. “You keep telling me you want to learn to take point—then you do something like this.”
“Sorry,” the young woman said, sounding miserable.
“Did you save them?” I asked.
Mizzy looked up at me.
“The people in the building,” I added. Sparks, my neck was sore. I tried not to show the pain, or my exhaustion, as Mizzy regarded me.
“Yeah,” Mizzy said. “They didn’t need much saving, though. All I did was unlock a door. They’d gone inside to hide, and the fires had burned down to their floor.”
“Nice,” I said.
Tia glanced at me. “She shouldn’t have abandoned her post.”
“I’m not saying she should have, Tia,” I replied, meeting her gaze. “But let’s be honest. I’m not certain I could have let a bunch of people burn to death.” I glanced at Mizzy. “It was probably the wrong thing to do, but I’ll bet those people are glad you did it anyway. And I managed to squeak by, so it all turned out all right. Nice work.” I held out my fist for a bump.