I frowned.
“I don’t know if your theory is correct,” she said. “But…yes, he has nightmares about something. Think, David. In all our time together, what is the one thing you’ve truly seen him fear?”
I blinked, and realized she was right. I did know. It was obvious. “His powers,” I whispered.
She nodded, grim.
“But how does that work?” I demanded. “He can obviously use his own powers. They don’t…negate themselves.”
“Unless someone else is using them.”
Someone else…Prof was a gifter.
“When we were younger,” Tia whispered urgently, “we experimented with Jon’s powers. He can create lances of light, forcefield spears. He gifted the ability to me. And I—by accident—launched one of those lances at Jon. David, the wound he took that day didn’t regenerate. His powers couldn’t fix it; he took months to recover, healing like a normal person. We never told anyone, not even Dean.”
“So someone gifted with one of his powers…”
“Can negate the rest. Yes.” She glanced at Carla, who was waving urgently, then leaned in to me, continuing to speak very quietly. “He fears them, David. The powers granted him, the weight they bring. And so he lives his life with a great dichotomy—he takes every opportunity he can to gift his powers away, to let the team use them so he doesn’t have to. But each time he does, he gives them a weapon that could be used against him.”
She gripped my arm. “Get me out,” she said, then turned and rushed to Carla, who led her from the room.
—
They let us watch. From a distance, using scopes atop one of the apartment buildings, where they’d hollowed out a nice little hidden sniper nest. We were attended by a couple of guards who—we’d been promised—would let us go, assuming that Prof took Tia and left without demanding more.
Again I had to watch a man I loved and respected act like someone else. Someone proud and imperious, bathed in a faint green glow from the forcefield disc he stood upon.
I felt so powerless as the Ildithians led Tia up to him, then forced her down on her knees. They bowed and retreated from Prof. I waited, sweating.
Tia was right. He didn’t kill her immediately. He surrounded her in a forcefield, then turned and stalked away, her orb trailing behind him.
He never gifted us that power, I thought. He gifted us forcefield protection in the form of the “jackets,” but only in small amounts. The globes, those spears I saw him use the other day…He didn’t let us know about those abilities.
For fear that someday they might be used to kill him. Sparks, how were we going to get him to give away his abilities? I knew his weakness, but approaching it still seemed impossible.
As Tia and Prof left, I closed my eyes, feeling like a coward. Not because I’d failed to save Tia, but because of how badly I’d been wanting her to come with us.
She would have taken over, been in charge. She’d have known what to do. Unfortunately, that burden was now back on me.
I was somewhere dark and warm again.
I had memories…voices, like my own, that spoke in harmony. Together we were one. I’d lost those voices somehow, but I wanted them, needed them. I felt an ache, being separated from them.
At least I was warm, and safe, and comfortable.
I knew what to expect, though I could not brace myself in the dream. So the crashes of thunder still shocked me. The peals of terrible, blaring sound, like a hundred raging wolves. Garish, cold, harsh light. Snapping, attacking, assaulting, smothering. It came at me, and sought to destroy me.
I shot bolt upright, suddenly awake.
I was back on the floor of the upper room of our hideout. Megan, Cody, and Mizzy slept nearby. Abraham was on watch tonight. With an unknown Epic in the hideout, none of us were comfortable sleeping on our own or in pairs, and we were certain always to post a guard.
Sparks…that nightmare. That terrible nightmare. My pulse was still racing and my skin was clammy. My blanket was soaked in sweat; I could probably have wrung out an entire bucketful.
I’m going to have to tell the others, I thought as I sat there in the dark, trying to catch my breath. Nightmares were directly tied to Epics and their weaknesses. If I was having a persistent one…well, it might mean something.
I kicked off my blankets and realized that Megan wasn’t in her place. She got up in the night a lot.
I picked my way around the others toward the hall. I didn’t like this fear. I wasn’t the coward I’d been as a child. I could face anything. Anything.
I reached the hallway and checked the room across from ours. Empty. Where had Megan gotten to?
Abraham and I had returned from the Stingray Clan’s base late enough that we’d decided to call it a night and save digging into the new information Tia had given us for tomorrow. I’d told them Prof’s weakness, which had set them thinking. That was enough for the moment.
I continued to the steps, my feet bare on the saltstone floor. We had to be very careful with water; spill it, and the ground started to rub off on your feet. Even as it was, I woke up in the mornings with salt crust on my legs. Building a city out of something that could dissolve was decidedly worse than building one out of steel. Fortunately I didn’t much notice the smell any longer, and even the dryness was starting to feel normal.
I found Abraham on the middle floor, in the kitchen. He was bathed in the light of his mobile, the rtich on his hands and a large globe of mercury hovering in front of him. The mercury certainly had an otherworldly cast: perfectly reflective, it undulated as Abraham moved his hands around it. He drew his palms apart, which caused the large globe of mercury to elongate like a loaf of French bread. The way reflections distorted and shifted on its mirrored surface made me imagine it was showing us a different, distorted world.
“We must be careful,” Abraham said softly. “I think I’ve learned to contain the fumes this metal releases, but perhaps it would be wise for me to find another place to practice.”
“I don’t like splitting us up,” I said, getting myself a cup of water from the large plastic cooler we kept on the counter.
Abraham spread his palm out, and the mercury made a disc in front of him, like a wide plate—or a shield. “It is marvelous,” he said. “It conforms perfectly to my commands. And look at this.”
He brought the disc down, flat portion facing the ground, then hesitantly stepped onto it. It held him.
“Sparks,” I said. “You can fly.”
“Not exactly,” Abraham said. “I cannot move it far while I’m standing on it, and it needs to be nearby for me to manipulate it. But watch this.”
The disc of mercury rippled, and a piece of it siphoned off, forming steps in front of Abraham. Very thin, very narrow, reflective metal steps. He was able to walk up them, stooping down as he got closer and closer to the ceiling.
“This will be of great use against Prof,” Abraham said. “It is very strong. Perhaps I could use it to counteract his forcefields.”
“Yeah.”
Abraham glanced at me. “Not enthusiastic?”
“Just distracted. Is Larcener still awake down there?”
“Last I checked,” Abraham said. “He does not seem to sleep.”
We’d discussed what to do with him, but had come to no conclusions. So far though, he hadn’t posed much of a threat.
“Where’s Megan?” I asked.
“Haven’t seen her.”
That was odd. If she’d left, she would have had to pass this way—and I hadn’t seen her on the top floor, which was pretty small. Maybe Abraham hadn’t noticed her slipping by.
He continued to work with the rtich, climbing down his steps and creating other shapes. Watching him was hard, but mainly for juvenile reasons. We’d all agreed that Abraham should practice with the device, with Cody or Mizzy as backup. Abraham was our primary point man now.
But spar
ks, that device looked cool. Hopefully it would survive our activities here. Once we had Prof and Tia back, I could return to running point, where I belonged.
I left Abraham and walked down to the bottom floor to check on Larcener. I stopped in the doorway to his room.
Wow.
The once-bare walls were now draped with soft red velvet. A set of lanterns glowed on mahogany tables. Larcener lay on a couch as elegant as any we’d had in the Babilar hideout, wearing a pair of large headphones, with his eyes closed. I couldn’t hear what, if anything, he was listening to—the headphones were likely connected wirelessly to a mobile.
I stepped into the room. Sparks, it seemed way larger than it had before. I paced it off, and found that it was bigger.
Spatial distortion, I thought, adding that to his list of powers. Calamity, that was an incredible power. I’d only heard rumors about Epics having it. And his ability to materialize objects from thin air…
“You could beat him,” I said.
Larcener said nothing, remaining on his couch, not opening his eyes.
“Larcener,” I said, more loudly.
He started, then ripped off his headphones and shot me a glare. “What?”
“You could beat him,” I repeated. “Prof…if you were to face him, you might be able to win. I know you have multiple prime invincibilities. Add on top of those the ability to create anything, to distort space…you could beat him.”
“Of course I couldn’t. Why do you think I’m here with you useless idiots?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“I don’t fight,” Larcener said, moving to put his headphones back on. “I’m not allowed.”
“By who?”
“By myself. Let others do the fighting. My place is to observe. Even ruling this city is probably inappropriate for me.”
People, including me, tended to work under the assumption that all Epics were essentially the same: selfish, destructive, narcissistic. But while they did share these traits, they also had their own individual levels of strangeness. Obliteration quoted scripture and sought—it seemed—to destroy all life on the planet. Regalia channeled her darkness toward greater and greater schemes. Nightwielder, in Newcago, insisted on working through lesser intermediaries.