“I didn’t get where I am without learning to read my men, Val,” Prof said. “Has Firefight replied?”
Val looked down at the screen of my mobile. I lay back, sick to my stomach. They’d been listening in. They knew. Sparks!
“She says, ‘Okay. You’re sure everything’s all right?’ ”
“Say yes,” Prof told Val. “And say, ‘You should stay away for now. Val called Prof over, and we’re going to head back to base. I think I can explain things away to them. I’ll let you know what we find out from this Epic.’ ”
As Val tapped on the phone, Prof walked over to me. He placed his hand on my leg and got out a little box, the thing he called the harmsway—his “technology” for healing others.
The pain in my leg went away. I looked at him and realized I was having difficulty holding back tears. I didn’t know if they were from shame, pain, or pure rage.
He’d been spying on me.
“Don’t feel so bad, David,” Prof said softly. “This is why you’re here.”
“What?”
“Firefight did exactly as we expected,” Prof said. “If she was so good she could infiltrate my own team, I knew she’d have little difficulty compromising you. You’re a good fighter, David. Passionate, determined. But you’re inexperienced, and you melt for a pretty face.”
“Megan’s not just a pretty face.”
“And yet you let her manipulate you,” Prof said. “You let her into our base, and you told her our secrets.”
“But I …” I hadn’t let her into the base. She’d done that on her own. Prof didn’t know everything, I realized. He’d bugged my mobile, but obviously that only gave him information when I had it on. He didn’t know things Megan and I had talked about in person, only what we’d said over the line.
“I know you don’t believe me, David,” Prof said. “But everything she told you, everything she has done, has been part of a game. She played you. Her mock vulnerability, her supposed affection … I’ve seen it all before, son. All lies. I’m sorry. I’d bet even this ‘weakness’ she told you about is a fabrication.”
Her weakness! Prof knew Megan’s weakness. She’d told it to me over the mobile. He didn’t believe, but he still knew. I felt a spike of alarm.
“You’re wrong about her, Prof,” I said, meeting his eyes. “I know she’s being sincere.”
“Oh?” Prof said. “And did she tell you about how she killed Sam?”
“She didn’t. I—”
“She did,” Prof said quietly, firmly. “David, we have it on film. Val showed it to me when I got to Babilar. Sam’s mobile was recording as he died. Firefight shot him.”
“You didn’t tell me that!”
“I have my reasons,” Prof said, standing up.
“You used me as bait,” I said. “You said … this is why I’m here! You were planning a trap for her from the start!”
Prof turned to walk back to Val, who nodded at him, showing him the screen of my mobile.
“Let’s move,” Prof said. “Where’s the sub?”
“Down below,” Val said. “I didn’t plant the supplies. I tracked David instead. You should have told me.”
“The plan required him to believe that we didn’t know what he was doing,” Prof said, taking my mobile and putting it into his pocket. “The fewer who knew, the better.” He looked back at me. “Come on, son. Let’s head back.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded, still sitting where I’d been shot, my blood a stain beneath me. “About Megan.”
Prof’s expression darkened, and he didn’t reply.
From that, I knew. The Reckoners had used ploys like this before, luring an Epic into a trap with a series of false texts they thought were from an ally.
I had to warn Megan.
I turned and threw myself off the rooftop, engaging the spyril. Which didn’t work. I had about enough time to let out a shout of surprise before I hit the water four stories down from the roof.
It did not feel pleasant.
Once I sputtered out of the water and grabbed the side of the building, I looked up. Prof stood on the edge of the roof, tossing something up and down in his hand. The spyril’s motivator. When had he lifted that? When he was healing me, probably.
“Fish him out,” he said to Val, loud enough that I could hear. “And let’s get back to the base.”
39
I spent the next day in my room.
I wasn’t confined there, not explicitly, but when I left, the looks I got from Val, Exel, and Mizzy drove me back into solitude.
Mizzy was the worst. At one point I stepped out to go to the bathroom and passed her working in the supply room. She looked at me and her smile faded. I could see anger and disgust in her eyes. She turned back to packing the supplies and didn’t say a word.
And so, I spent the time lying on my bed, alternatingly ashamed and furious. Was I going to get kicked out of the Reckoners? The possibility made me sick. And what of Megan? The things Prof said … well, I didn’t want to believe them. I couldn’t believe them. At the very least, I didn’t want to think about them.
Unfortunately, thinking about Prof made me furious. I had betrayed the team, but I couldn’t help feeling that I’d been betrayed even more by him. I’d been set up to fail.
When the next morning came, I woke up to noises. Preparations. The plan moving forward. I stewed in my room for a time, but eventually I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed answers. I pushed myself off the bed and went out to the hallway. I braced myself as I passed the storage room, but Mizzy wasn’t there. I heard noises from the far end of the hallway behind me, in the room with the sub. That would be Val and her team packing for the mission.
I didn’t go that way. I wanted Prof and Tia, and I found them in the meeting room with the glass wall. They looked up at me, then Tia glanced at Prof.
“I’ll talk to him,” Prof said to Tia. “Go join the others. We’ll be a man short on this mission, and I want you running operations from inside the sub. Our base is compromised. We won’t be returning here.”
Tia nodded, picking up her laptop, and walked out. She gave me a glance but nothing else as she shut the door. That left only me and Prof, lit by the lamp on Tia’s desk.
“You’re going on the mission,” I said. “The hit on Newton, to expose Regalia.”
“Yes.”
“A man short,” I said. “You’re not taking me?”
Prof didn’t say anything.
“You let me practice with the spyril,” I said. “You let me think I was part of the mission here. Was I really just bait the whole time?”
“Yes,” Prof said quietly.
“Is there more to the plan, then?” I demanded. “Things you haven’t told me? What’s really going on here, Prof?”
“We haven’t kept much from you,” he said with a quiet sigh. “Tia’s plan to find Regalia is legitimate, and it’s working. If we can get Regalia to appear in the region Tia wants, it will leave us with only a few buildings Regalia could be hiding in. I’m going to run point, execute the plan against Newton. Chase her through the city, tempt Abigail to appear. If she does, we’ll know her base location. Val, Exel, and Mizzy will move at Tia’s word and run an assault to kill her.”
“Sounds like you could use another point man,” I said.
“Too late for that,” Prof said. “I suspect it will take time for us to rebuild trust. On both sides.”
“And Obliteration?” I asked, stepping forward. “There’s been almost no talk about how to deal with him! He’s a bomb—he’s going to destroy the ent
ire city.”
“We don’t need to worry about that,” Prof said. “Because we already have a way to stop Obliteration.”
“We do?”
Prof nodded.
I flogged my brain like a dog who had made a mess on the carpet, but I came up with nothing. How would we stop Obliteration? Was there something they hadn’t told me? I looked at Prof.
And then I saw it in his grim expression, his tightly drawn lips.
“A forcefield,” I realized. “You enclose him in a bubble of it as he releases the destructive force.”
Prof nodded.
“All that heat has to go somewhere,” I said. “You’ll just be bottling it up.”
“I can expand the shield,” he said, “projecting the heat away from the city. I’ve practiced it.”
Wow. But, then, was this really anything more than he’d done in saving me from the blast that killed Steelheart? He was right. We’d had the answer to at least delaying Obliteration right here all along. The heat probably wouldn’t kill Obliteration himself—he seemed immune to his own powers—but it would slow him. And who knew, maybe a focused and concentrated blast reflected back upon him would actually be able to destroy him. It was at least worth trying.
I walked forward, approaching Prof, who still sat at Tia’s desk before the wall of dark water. Something brushed against it outside, something wet and slimy, but I lost sight of it in the blackness. I shivered, then looked back at Prof.
“You can do it, right?” I asked. “Hold it in? Not just the explosion, but … other things?”
“I’ll have to.” Prof stood up and walked to the glass wall, looking out at the dark waters. “Tia tells me that many Epics like Obliteration have a moment of weakness after they expend a large blast of energy. He might be vulnerable. If he survives the heat of his own blast, I might be able to bring him down right after while his powers are dampened. And if not, at least I can stop him long enough for it to matter—and for the other team members to deal with Regalia.”