“What’s more, I was running ops.”
“So you—”
“Yeah. I was inside when this tank comes crashing right through the wall. He’d dodged around Sam and managed to double back, so he could hit our operations station. Still not sure how he even knew where we were.”
I grinned, imagining it. Puños had been a beastly strength Epic, capable of lifting practically anything—even things that should have broken apart as he did it. Not a High Epic, but hard to kill, with enhanced endurance and skin like an elephant’s.
“I never did figure out how you beat him,” I said. “Only that the team eventually took him out, despite the job going wrong.”
Val kept her gaze trained straight ahead, but I caught a hint of a smile on her lips.
“What?” I asked.
“Well … I was there,” she said, growing slightly more animated, “in the rubble of our operations station—a little brick building in the center of the city. And he was coming for me. I was alone, no support.”
“And?”
“And … well, there was a tank in the room.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yeah,” Val said. “At first I climbed into the thing just to hide. But then, it was armed, and he walked right in front of the barrel. The tank was on its side, but it had crashed in through the wall rear-end-first. So I figured, what the hell?”
“You shot him.”
“Yeah.”
“With a tank.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s awesome.”
“It was stupid,” Val said, though she was still smiling. “If that barrel had been bent, I’d probably have blown myself up instead. But … well, it worked. Sam said he found Puños’s arm seven streets over.” She looked at me, then seemed to realize who she was talking to. Her expression dimmed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For not being Sam.”
“That’s stupid,” Val said, turning away from me. She hesitated. “You’re kind of infectious, Steelslayer. You know that?”
“It’s my gritty, determined manliness.”
“Um. No. It’s not. But it might be your enthusiasm.” She shook her head and pulled back on the steering column, raising the sub up toward the surface. “Either way, you can go be manly hauling boxes. We’ve arrived.”
I smiled, glad to have finally had a conversation with Val that didn’t involve a lot of scowling. I got up and made my way over to the ladder. The door to the bathroom was rattling again. We really needed to get Mizzy to fix the blasted thing. I nudged it closed with my toe, then I climbed up and opened the hatch.
The land up above was pitch-black, darkness fully upon us. This supply dump wasn’t as far up the coast as City Island, but we should be well outside Regalia’s range. Still, it seemed a good idea to never leave the sub without someone in it, so I’d fetch the boxes and carry them the short distance to the coast, then set them down for Val. She’d get them from shore to the sub, then carry them down the ladder and stack them.
I shouldered my rifle and climbed out onto a quiet dock, water lapping against the wood, as if to pointedly remind me that it was still there. I hurried across the dock and approached a dark building ahead, an old shed where Cody had unloaded our supplies.
I slipped inside. At least there wouldn’t be as many boxes this time around. We probably should have carried them all down before, but our arms had been aching, and a short break had sounded really nice.
I turned on the light on my mobile and checked the room.
Then I pulled open the hidden trapdoor in the floor, and climbed down to check on Prof.
32
BURROWED into the rock beneath the shed was one of the secret Reckoner stopover bases, set up with a cot, some supplies, and a workbench. Prof stood by the bench, holding up a beaker and inspecting it by the light of a lantern. That was an improvement; when I’d come down here before, he’d been lying on the cot looking through some old photos—they lay scattered on the cot now.
Prof didn’t look up as I came down. “We’re grabbing the rest of the supplies,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder. “You need anything?”
Prof shook his head and stirred his beaker.
“You going to be all right?” I asked.
“I’m feeling fine,” Prof said. “I’m planning to head back into the city a little later in the evening. Might return to the base tomorrow; might stay away another day. We’ll need to give it enough time that Val’s team will believe I went to check in on another Reckoner cell.”
That had been Tia’s explanation for his absence. I watched curiously as he mixed another beaker with a liquid of a different color.
“We’re hitting Newton in two days,” I told him. “Tia made the call, since she said you weren’t being responsive.”
Two days was well before Obliteration’s expected deadline, which would give us some wiggle room in case things went poorly.
He grunted. “Two days? I’ll be back by then.” He mixed the two beakers into a jar and stepped back. A large jet of foam launched from the container, reaching almost to the ceiling, then fell back in a frothy splat. Prof watched, then smiled.
“Hydrogen peroxide mixed with potassium iodide,” he said. “The kids used to love that one.” He reached over and started mixing some other materials.
“Could you come back sooner?” I asked him. “We still don’t have a plan to deal with Obliteration, and he’s got a gun to the city’s head.”
“I’m working on how to deal with that,” Prof said. “I think if we bring down Regalia, it might scare him away. If it doesn’t, we might find intel on his weakness among her notes.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We evacuate the city,” Prof said.
Tia had theorized the same possibility, but it seemed like a bad option to me. We couldn’t start a theoretical evacuation until Regalia was dead—otherwise she’d surely move against the fleeing people. I doubted we’d have enough time to get everyone out before Obliteration wasted the place.
“Tell Tia to call me a little later tonight,” Prof said. “We’ll talk about it.”
“Sure thing,” I said, then paused as he worked on another mixture. “What are you doing?”
“Another experiment.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, turning away. His face fell into shadow. “Remembering the old days helps. Remembering the students, and their excitement, their joy. The memories see
m to push it back.”
I nodded slowly, but he wasn’t looking at me. He’d returned to his science experiment. So instead I inched forward to see if I could catch a glimpse of the photos he’d been looking at.
I reached the cot and leaned down and picked one up. The photo showed a younger version of Prof, wearing casual clothing—jeans, a T-shirt—standing with some people in a room filled with monitors and computers. Other people were scattered throughout the room, wearing uniform blue shirts.
Prof glanced at me.
I held up the photo. “Some kind of lab?”
“NASA,” he said, sounding reluctant. “The old space program.”
“I thought you said you were a schoolteacher!”
“I’m not the one who worked there, genius,” Prof said. “Look more closely.”
I looked back down, and realized that in the photo Prof looked more like a tourist, grinning and getting his picture taken. It took me a second to spot that one of the many people in the photo wearing a blue NASA shirt had short red hair. Tia.
“Tia’s a rocket scientist?” I asked.
“Was,” Prof said. “That was a long time ago. She let me visit right after we first started dating. Highlight of my life—bragged about it to my students for months.”
I looked down at the picture. The man in this photo, though it was obviously Prof, looked like a different species entirely. Where were the lines of worry on the man’s face, the haunted eyes, the imposing stature?
Nearly thirteen years of Calamity had changed this man. And not just because of the powers he’d gained.
Another photo peeked out from underneath the sheet. I pulled it out. And Prof didn’t stop me, turning back to his experiment.
In this picture, four people stood in a line. One was Prof, wearing his now-trademark black lab coat, goggles in the pocket. Beside him Regalia stood with hand outstretched, a glob of water hovering above her fingers. She wore an elegant blue gown. Tia was there, and there was another man, one I didn’t know. Older, with white-grey hair sticking out from his head in an almost crown shape, he sat in a chair while the others stood.
“Who is this man?” I asked.