I nodded, then felt foolish because she couldn’t see that. I forced myself to start climbing again. “Thank you, Megan,” I whispered over the line. What she’d given me just then had taken a lot of guts to say.
She let out a breath. “Yeah, well, you’re never willing to just let things alone. You’ve got to find answers. So … well, maybe you’ll find this one.”
I reached the next flight of stairs, then twisted around the stairwell to keep going up. As I did, my foot trod on something that crunched.
I shivered and looked down. Another fortune cookie. I was tempted to just leave it there—the last ones had been seriously weird. Nobody in the base had been able to make sense of them. But I knew I couldn’t just leave it. I knelt down, anxious about making too much noise, and held up the slip of paper to the light of a glowing fruit.
Is this a dream? the paper asked.
I took a deep breath. Yeah. Still creepy. What did I do? Respond?
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“What?” Megan asked in my ear.
“Nothing.” I waited, uncertain what kind of response I expected. None came. I started up the stairwell again, watching my feet. Sure enough, I found another set of cookies growing from a vine on the next flight.
I popped one open.
Gnarly, it read. I get confused sometimes.
Was that a reply? “Who are you?”
“David?” Megan asked.
“I’m talking to fortune cookies.”
“You’re … Huh?”
“I’ll explain in a minute.”
I made my way upward slowly. This time I was able to catch a vine curling down, cookies sprouting from it like seeds. I waited for one to grow to full size in front of me, then pulled out the slip.
They call me Dawnslight. You’re trying to stop her, right?
“Yes,” I whispered. “Assuming you mean Regalia, I am. Do you know where she is?”
I broke open a few more cookies, but this pod all read the same thing, so I climbed up a little bit until I found another cluster.
Don’t know, dude, it read. I can’t see her. I watched that other one, though. On the operating table.
“Obliteration?” I asked. “On an operating table?”
Sure. Yeah. They cut something outta him. You’re sure this isn’t a dream?
“It’s not.”
I like dreams, the next cookie read.
I shivered. So Dawnslight was an Epic for certain. And this city was his.
“Where are you?” I asked.
Listen to that music.…
That’s the only response I got, no matter what questions I asked.
“David,” Megan said on the line, worry bleeding into her voice, “you are seriously freaking me out right now.”
“What do you know about Dawnslight?” I asked her, continuing upward at a slow pace in case any other cookies appeared.
“Not much,” Megan said. “When I asked Regalia, she claimed that he was ‘an ally’ and implied that was all I needed to know. Is that who you were talking to?”
I looked at the slips of paper in my hand. “Yeah. Using a kind of bizarre Epic texting plan. I’ll show you later.” I needed to get this camera placed and move on. Fortunately, floor twenty was the final flight. I pushed on the door out of the stairwell, but it didn’t budge. I grunted and shoved a little harder.
I winced as it opened with a loud creak. Beyond was an entryway accented by dark wood trim, with a very nice rug covering a marble floor, though that had been broken up by the plants.
“David, what did you just do?” Megan asked.
“Might have opened a door a little too loudly.”
“Well, the bird just looked your direction. Sparks! He’s flying toward the building. Hurry.”
I cursed softly, making my way through the room as quickly as possible. I passed an overgrown reception desk and pushed into the office beyond. The window here looked out right at Obliteration.
I climbed up on the windowsill.
“The bird just landed on a window on your building, one story down from you, but on the south side,” Megan said. “He must have heard you, but he wasn’t certain of the location.”
“Good,” I whispered, reaching out and affixing the camera on the outside of the building. This was the east side, so the bird shouldn’t see me. The camera stuck in place easily. “Obliteration?”
“Not looking your way,” Megan said. “He hasn’t noticed. But if that bird really is one of Newton’s Epics …”
If he is …
An idea started to form in my head. “Mmm …,” I said, tapping the camera to activate it.
“David?” Megan said. “What does that tone mean?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re improvising, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.” I ducked quietly back into the room. “Tell me, Megan. What is one surefire way to know if this Knoxx guy has been hiding his powers all along, or if Regalia—either through trickery or some other means—gave him his abilities?”
She was silent for a moment. “Sparks. You want to kidnap him, don’t you?”
“Well, Val isn’t going to be back for another hour at least. Might as well do something useful with my time.” I paused. “I’m really itching to see if that guy has had any nightmares lately.”
“And if Prof or Obliteration notices what you’re doing?”
“It won’t come to that,” I said.
“Slontze,” Megan said.
“Guilty as charged. Can you get into position to cover me through some of the windows?”
Megan sighed. “Let me see.”
37
THIS, I thought as I crossed back through the swanky overgrown office, is crazy.
Moving against an Epic I barely knew? One about which I had no research, no notes, no intel at all? It was like jumping into a swimming pool without first looking to see if your friends had filled it with snakes.
I had to do it anyway.
We were blind; Regalia had us all running. Prof had been unresponsive for a day, during our most difficult stages of planning—but worse, even if he helped, Regalia was probably manipulating us based on her knowledge of him and Tia.
I needed to do something unexpected, and the secrets Knoxx knew could make a huge difference. I consoled myself with the idea that at least I wasn’t trying to take on Obliteration or Newton on my own. This was just a minor Epic, after all.
I wasn’t certain what Prof’s reaction would be. I’d told him my plan about kidnapping an Epic—and he’d said that either I was just what the Reckoners needed, or I was dangerously reckless. Maybe I was both.
But he hadn’t specifically forbidden me to try it. He just hadn’t wanted me endangering the team. This wouldn’t do that.
I peeked back into the stairwell. What I needed to do was make more noise so that Knoxx would figure out he’d gotten the wrong location. When he came up to check on me, I could clock him. Easy as pie.
Not that I actually knew how to make pie.
I stamped on the floor and knocked an old desk lamp off a side table, then I cursed as if I’d bumped into it. After that I moved back to the stairwell and held Megan’s gun up, two-handed and at high ready, mobile darkened so that the only light was the moonlike glow of the plump fruit drooping from branches.
I waited, tense, and just listened. Indeed, I heard something in the stairwell. It echoed, a scraping that sounded far distant down below. Or was it coming from the floor right below me? With the strange echoing, it was difficult to tell.
“He’s moving in.” I jumped at Megan’s voice. Though I’d turned the receiver way down, it seemed like thunder in my ear. “He entered the window and is on the floor just beneath you.”
“Good,” I said softly.