“It makes sense,” I said. “Listen. You’re strolling through a minefield, worried about getting blown up. And then you step on something, and you think, ‘I’m dead.’ But it’s just a potato. And you’re so relieved to find something so wonderful when you expected something so awful. That’s what you are. To me.”
“A potato.”
“Sure. French fries? Mashed potatoes? Who doesn’t like potatoes?”
“Plenty of people. Why can’t I be something sweet, like a cake?”
“Because cake wouldn’t grow in a minefield. Obviously.”
She stared down the hallway at me for a few moments, then sat on an overgrown set of roots.
Sparks. She seemed to be crying. Idiot! I thought at myself, scrambling through the foliage. Romantic. You were supposed to be romantic, you slontze! Potatoes weren’t romantic. I should have gone with a carrot.
I reached Megan in the dim hallway and hesitated, uncertain if I dared touch her. She looked up at me, and though there were tears in the corners of her eyes, she wasn’t weeping.
She was laughing.
“You,” she said, “are an utter fool, David Charleston. I wish you weren’t also so adorable.”
“Uh … thanks?” I said.
She sighed and repositioned herself on the large set of roots, pulling her feet up and sitting with her back in the crook of the tree trunk. That seemed an invitation, so I sat down in front of her, my knees before me and my back to the wall of the corridor. I could see well enough, though this entire place was creepy, with its shadowed vines and strange plants.
“You don’t know what this is like, David,” she whispered.
“So tell me.”
She focused on me. Then she turned her gaze upward. “It’s like being a child again. Can you remember how it felt, when you were really young, and everything was about you? Nothing else matters but your needs, your wants. Thinking about others is impossible—they just don’t enter into your mind. Other people are an annoyance, a frustration. They just get in your way.”
“You resisted it before.”
“No, I didn’t. In the Reckoners, I was forced to avoid using my powers. I didn’t resist the changes. I never felt them.”
“So do it that way again.”
She shook her head. “I barely managed it before. By the time I was killed, I was practically going crazy from the need to use my abilities. I’d started to find excuses, and that was changing me.”
“You seem okay now.”
She toyed with her gun, flicking the weapon’s safety on and off, her eyes still upward. “It’s easier around you. I don’t know why.”
Well, that was something. It made me think. “Maybe it has to do with your weakness.”
She looked at me sharply.
“Just consider it,” I said carefully, not wanting to ruin things at the moment. “It might be relevant.”
“You think it’s what’s making me act like myself,” she snapped. “You think that somehow being around you triggers my weakness, and that’s making me normal. Things don’t work like that, David. If being around you negated my powers, I wouldn’t have been able to save you—or hide among the Reckoners. Sparks! If that were the case, every time a weakness triggered, the Epic would be like, ‘What the hell? Why am I being evil? Let’s totally get along, guys, and go bowling together or something.’ ”
“Well, there’s no need to get snarky about it.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose with her off hand. “I shouldn’t even be here with you. What am I doing?”
“You’re talking to a friend,” I said. “That’s something you probably need these days.”
She looked at me, then glanced away.
“We don’t have to talk about this in particular,” I said. “Or about Newcago, or the Reckoners, or anything like that. Just talk to me, Megan. Is that a 24/7?”
She raised the handgun. “Yeah.”
“Generation three?”
“Generation two compact, nine-millimeter,” she grumbled. “I like the feel of the G2 better than the G3, but the sparking things are hard to find parts for. I have to use something small—can’t let the others know I need a gun. They see it as a weakness around here.”
“What, really?”
Megan nodded. “Real Epics kill with their powers in some kind of flashy way. We like to show off. I’ve had to get really good with the gun so I can fake my powers killing people, sometimes.”
“Wow,” I said. “So when we were fighting Fortuity, way back when, and you shot him out of the air …”
“Yeah. No cheating involved. I don’t have hyper-reflexes or anything like that. I’m kind of a pitiful excuse for an Epic.”
“Uh … you came back from the dead. That’s rather less than pitiful, if you weren’t aware.”
She smiled. “Do you have any idea how much it sucks to have your High Epic status granted by reincarnation? Dying hurts. And it wipes a lot of my memories from right before the event. All I remember is dying, and pain, and a black, icy nothingness. I wake up the next morning with the agony and terror dominating my thoughts.” She shivered. “I’d rather have forcefields or something to protect me.”
“Yeah, but if your forcefields go all Vincin on you, you’re dead for good. Reincarnating is more reliable.”
“Vincin?” she said. “Like the gun brand?”
“Yeah, they’re—”
“Always jamming,” Megan finished, nodding. “And about as accurate as a blind man pissing during an earthquake.”
“Wow …,” I bre
athed.
She frowned at me.
“That was a great metaphor,” I said.
“Oh please.”
“I need to write that down,” I said, ignoring her complaints, fishing for my new mobile to type it out. I looked up at her as I finished, and she was smiling.
“What?” I asked.
“We’re not doing a very good job of not talking about Epics,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“I guess it was a lot to expect. I mean, it’s kind of who you are. Besides awesome. As awesome as a—”
“Potato?”
“—a blind man pissing during an earthquake,” I said, reading from my mobile’s screen. “Hum. Doesn’t exactly work in this situation, does it?”
“No. Not quite.”
“I’ll have to find another place to use it then,” I said with a grin, tucking away the mobile. I stood up, holding my hand out to her.
Megan hesitated, then took something from her pocket and put it in my hand. A small black object, like a mobile battery.
I frowned. “The hand was to help you to your feet.”
“I know,” Megan said, standing up. “I don’t like being helped.”
“What’s this?” I asked, holding up the little flat square.
“Ask Phaedrus,” she said.
Standing had placed her right in front of me, very close. She was tall, almost exactly my height.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” I said softly, lowering my hand.
“Is that what you told that bouncing bundle of breasts and booty you were dancing with at the party?”
I winced. “You, uh, saw that?”
“Yeah.”
“Stalker.”
“The Reckoners came to my town,” Megan said. “It is in an Epic’s interests to keep tabs on them.”
“Then you know that I wasn’t exactly enjoying myself while at the party.”
“I’ll admit,” Megan said, stepping forward, “that I had trouble telling if you were trying to smash an angry swarm of bugs at your feet, or if you were just really bad at dancing.”
That step put her close to me. Really close. She met my eyes.
Now or never.