Exel rubbed his forehead with a set of meaty fingers. “Okay. David, water doesn’t compress. If you hit it at high speed, particularly with a lot of your body at once, it will feel like hitting something solid. Drop from a hundred feet or so, and you’ll break bones. Maybe die.”
That sounded bizarre, but it didn’t really matter so long as I had one of Prof’s forcefields protecting me, disguised as a little electronic box hooked to my wetsuit belt. Since he often split the power among several Reckoners at once, it would wear out over time, and focused points of pressure—such as a bullet strike—could penetrate it. But a fall into the water shouldn’t be a problem.
“A hundred feet, you say?” I asked. “This thing can get me that high?”
Exel nodded. “And higher. Sam couldn’t reach the tops of the tallest skyscrapers, but he could reach many of the medium-height ones.”
Mizzy stopped fiddling with my back. “I dialed down the flows,” she said. “So you can practice without quite as much force at first.”
“I don’t need to be coddled,” I said.
Exel looked at me seriously, then rested a hand on my shoulder. “I joke about death, David. It’s an occupational hazard—you learn to laugh at it when it’s all around you. But we already lost one point man from this team. Wouldn’t it be silly to lose another one while practicing? What happened just a few moments ago could easily have ended with you flipping into the air, then driving yourself face-first into the rooftop at high speed.”
I took a deep breath, feeling foolish. “Of course. You’re right.” Prof’s protections were good, but not infallible. “I’ll take it easy at first.”
“Then stand back up, Steelslayer, and let’s get to it.”
24
IT turned out that the difficulty in using the spyril didn’t have to do with its power. After a half hour of working, we had Mizzy up the strength of the water jets, as they provided a better footing that way.
The trouble was with balance. Trying to remain stable with two shifting jets of water coming out from your legs was like trying to balance a pot full of frogs on the tips of two half-cooked pieces of spaghetti. And I had to do it while keeping my left arm always pointed downward at the water, or I’d lose my power. I could use my right hand for stabilizing, fortunately. That one had what Mizzy called a handjet strapped to it. With it I could shoot out streams of water to adjust my balance, but usually I overcompensated.
It was all pretty complicated. Left hand with the streambeam had to stay pointed at water. Right hand opening and closing would adjust the strength of the water coming out my footjets, and the right thumb would control the strength of the handjet. But I couldn’t use that to stabilize unless I remembered to point it the direction I was falling, which—when you’re trying to juggle all of this in your mind—was easier said than done.
Eventually I managed to accomplish a stable hover about fifteen feet above the water. I wavered there, using the handjet to shoot a stream backward to keep from falling when I began to topple in that direction.
“Nice!” Exel called up from below. “Like walking on flexible stilts, eh? That’s how Sam put it.”
Well, if you wanted to be pedestrian with your metaphors.
I lost my balance and crashed back down into the water, relaxing my right hand and stopping the jets. I came up sputtering but let myself float there for a moment, Exel and Mizzy standing above me and looking down.
Falling again was annoying, but I wouldn’t let myself get discouraged. I’d had to practice for weeks with the tensors before getting the hang of those.
Something brushed my leg.
I knew it was probably just a piece of garbage moving in the lazy current, but I jerked my legs up and instinctively made a fist. So, when water jetted from my feet, I shot backward like a fleshy speedboat. I released my hand almost immediately, surprised by how easily I’d moved.
I turned around, face forward and legs back so I was on my stomach, and tried the jets again. I eased into the power until I was moving at a decent clip—about as fast as I’d seen Mizzy swimming the day before when she’d been giving me instructions. I checked my goggles and nose plugs to make sure they were secure.
Then I increased the speed.
For some reason, even though my feet were pointed straight back, this spat me out of the water so that I flew just above the surface. It was quick, lasting only a few seconds before I plunged into the water again face-first.
Wow, I thought, surfacing and then spurting from the water again in a splash.
I relaxed my hand, slowing my momentum, then put myself upright. The small amount of force coming from the jets raised me up out of the water about to my waist, the water churning in a donutlike ring around me.
I’d gotten going pretty quickly back there. Could I go even faster? I let myself sink back into the water, then stuck my feet out behind me again and put the jets on full blast, shooting face-first like a torpedo. Water sprayed off me as I splashed up and down, thrilled by the speed. I got the hang of this power-swimming much more quickly than I had the hovering; I was having so much fun that I almost forgot I was in the water.
Eventually I swam up to the others and stopped the jets. Above, Mizzy was gasping. “That,” she said, tears in the corners of her eyes, “was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.”
“You said ‘awesome’ wrong,” I grumbled. “Did you see how fast I was going?”
“You looked like a porpoise,” Mizzy said.
“An awesome porpoise?”
“Sure.” She laughed.
Beside her, Exel was smiling. He knelt down and reached out to help me from the water, but I engaged the jets and shot up at an angle. I managed to land on the rooftop beside them without falling on my face, though much arm-waving was involved.
Mizzy laughed again and tossed me a towel. I settled down on one of the chairs, shivering. Spring might be upon us, but the air was still chilly. I accepted a cup of hot tea from Exel as he settled down beside me and put in his earpiece. I followed suit.
“That water,” I said, speaking in the soft way of the Babilaran Reckoners, “doesn’t seem as cold as it should be.” I realized, now that I was in the open air and shivering, that it was warmer in the water than out of it.
“It isn’t,” Exel said. “And it’s even warmer down in the southern parts of Babilar. There are currents that move through the streets bearing a tropical warmth all times of year, even midwinter.”
“That sounds …” I trailed off.
“Impossible?” Exel volunteered.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I realize how stupid that sounds, considering everything else happening in this city.”
Exel nodded, and we sat for a while, me chowing down on a sandwich I’d dug out of my pack.
“So,” Exel said, “are we done for the day?”
“Nah,” I said, munching the last bite of sandwich. “We’ve only been out here for an hour or two. I want to get this down. Just let me rest for a minute and I’ll get back to it.”
Mizzy
took a seat and checked her mobile. “Val reports that Newton is in Eastborough right now. No movement this direction. It doesn’t look like we’ve been spotted.”
I nodded and took a pull on the tea as I thought. It was sweeter than I was used to. “We’ll need to figure out her weakness, if we can.”
“I’d rather find out Obliteration’s,” Exel said. “He scares me.”
“He should.”
I’d spent the week thinking about Megan, but I probably should have let Obliteration dominate more of that time. Why had he suddenly decided to vaporize Houston? And then in rapid succession two other towns? What had changed, and why had I been wrong about the cooldown on his teleportation powers?
I pulled out my new mobile and searched through the digitized version of my notes. It wasn’t too different from my old one, though a few of Mizzy’s improvements—such as a slow-charging solar panel on the back—seemed like they’d be useful.
I stopped at a photo of Obliteration, taken in Houston only a few days before he’d destroyed the place. I’d traded half my rations for two weeks to another kid in the Factory for a copy of the photo, which he’d had forwarded on to him from a friend.
In the picture, Obliteration sat in the middle of a city square, cross-legged, basking in the sun with eyes closed and face turned toward the sky. A few days later, Houston was gone—which had shocked me, as I assumed he would remain emperor of the city for years, like Steelheart in Chicago. Nothing I’d read about him had prepared me for such an event.
My notes had been wrong about him. Consistently, not just regarding his powers, but also his motives and intentions. I thought a moment, then pulled up Val’s number and pressed the call button.
“Yo,” she said softly.
“Mizzy says you’re still on reconnaissance,” I said.
“Yeah. What do you need?”
“Has anyone spotted Obliteration sitting out in the sun?” I asked. “Here in the city, I mean?”
“Don’t know,” Val said. “There are lots of rumors about him, but not much concrete info.”
I looked up at Exel sitting in his chair beside me. He shrugged. “I can try to find out more if you’d like,” he offered.