The air shimmered. Then someone else appeared inside the globe with us.
I blinked in surprise. The newcomer was a teenage girl with red hair worn short in a pixie cut. She had on a plain pair of jeans and an old denim jacket. She gasped and looked up at the forcefield globe surrounding us.
Prof closed his hand into a fist to make the globe shrink, but the young woman thrust her hands to the sides. I felt a thrumming vibration, like a voice with no sound. I knew that sound. The tensors?
Prof’s forcefield disintegrated, dropping us to the ground. I lost my balance, though the young woman landed easily on two feet. I was utterly baffled, but I was alive. I’d take that exchange. I grabbed Megan, pulling her away from the girl. “Megan?” I hissed. “What did you do?”
Megan continued to stare sightlessly.
“Megan?”
“Shhh,” she snapped. “This is hard.”
“But…”
Prof cocked his head.
The girl stepped forward. “…Father?” she asked.
“Father?” I repeated.
“I couldn’t find an uncorrupted version of him in a close enough reality,” Megan muttered. “So I brought what I could find. Let’s see if your plan works.”
Prof regarded his “daughter” contemplatively, then waved his hand, summoning another forcefield around Megan. The girl destroyed it in a flash, hands forward, releasing a burst of tensor power.
“Father,” the girl said. “How are you here? What’s happening?”
“I have no daughter,” Prof said.
“What? Father, it’s me. Tavi. Please, why—”
“I have no daughter!” Prof roared. “Your lies will not fool me, Megan! Traitor!”
He thrust his hands to the sides and spears of green light appeared there, shaped like glass shards. He flung them down the hallway toward us, but Tavi waved her hand, releasing a burst of power. That was the tensor power—as Tavi destroyed the spears of light, she vaporized the wall nearby as well. It fell to dust.
A set of blue-green spears appeared around Tavi, just like Prof’s. Sparks! She had his same power portfolio.
Prof’s eyes widened. Was that fear in his expression? Worry? Megan hadn’t brought a version of him into this world, but this was apparently close enough. Yes, he was afraid of her powers. His powers.
Face your fears, Prof, I thought, desperate. Don’t flee. Fight!
He bellowed in frustration, sweeping his hands before him, destroying the hallway in a long swath and sending a wave of salt dust over us. Forcefields flashed into existence—shards of light that struck at Tavi, walls that swept in to crush, a cacophony of destruction.
“Yes!” I shouted. He wasn’t running.
Then, unfortunately, the floor disappeared beneath me.
PROF’S wave of destructive power had ended right about as it hit me, and though I fell into the hole in the floor, I was able to reach out and grab the edge to stop myself. Megan knelt by the ledge, oblivious to the hole that had opened beside her.
The drop was about ten feet, but that was a little far for me to want to risk. I started to pull myself up.
“David,” Tia’s voice suddenly said in my ear, “what are you doing?”
“Trying not to die,” I said with a grunt, still dangling. “You still here on the seventieth floor somewhere?”
“In Jon’s chambers, trying to get into his office. Can you cut the power for me, maybe? There’s an electronic lock on the security door here.”
A tensor wave hummed above, and I heard an ominous groan from the ceiling.
“Dampener is gone, Tia,” I said, getting to my feet—and finding myself in a war zone. “And we have bigger troubles than getting into Prof’s rooms. He’s here.”
“Sparks!” Tia said. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“Yes and no.”
In the moments I’d been down, Prof and Tavi had leveled walls separating rooms, creating a much larger field of battle. They exchanged bursts of light and tensor powers, leaving rips and craters in the floor.
That ceiling wasn’t going to last much longer. I sought out Megan, who knelt beside the remnants of a wall. She hissed between clenched teeth, watching the contest with unblinking eyes. I stepped toward her, but when she looked at me, her lips curled, teeth clenched. A sneer.
Uh-oh.
This was dangerous. She’d pulled too many things through to our world too quickly.
But sparks, it was working. Prof was backing down the hallway before an assault by Tavi—flying spears of blue light, which he was able to vaporize with his tensor power. The outer wall to his left was in shambles, wind howling through. To his right, rooms were pocked with holes, the floor and walls almost completely destroyed.
I threw myself toward Megan as the ceiling to Prof’s right fell in. Blinking—sparks, that salt made a scrape I’d gotten on my arm sting—I saw spears of glowing green launch toward Tavi, their light illuminating the dust around them. She deflected those, barely.
Prof had lost his air of uncompromising confidence; he was sweating and cursing as he fought, and—to my surprise—I saw a few scratches on his arm.
They weren’t healing.
Her powers were indeed negating his. But why hadn’t he turned good? Hadn’t he confronted his fears?
“David,” Tia said, anxious. “It sounds like the entire building is coming down. Are you all right?”
“For now. Tia…Megan summoned a version of him from another world. Someone with his powers. They’re fighting.”
“Sparks!” Tia cursed over the line. “You’re insane.” She grew silent for a moment as I stared at Prof, mouth agape, awed by the use of power. “All right,” Tia said, sounding reluctant. “I’m coming to you.”
“No,” I said. “Stay hidden. I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Anything any of us can do.”
I looked at Megan, her teeth clenched, and started toward her.
She looked at me, angry. “Stay back, David,” she growled. “Just…stay back.”
I stopped, then sighed and scuttled farther down the corridor—toward Prof and Tavi. Stupid, perhaps, but I needed to watch this. I passed the room where the ceiling had collapsed on my right, then came up toward the two combatants. The corridor turned here, but they’d continued on, vaporizing the wall and stepping into a lavish suite.
Prof unleashed a wave of tensor power toward Tavi, melting tables and chairs and hitting her full force. Buttons on her shirt disintegrated to d
ust, though the shirt didn’t. Only dense nonliving materials were affected.
Her forcefields vanished. She jumped for cover, narrowly dodging lances of light. It took a count of three before she was able to summon a forcefield to block oncoming blasts. It was working. She seemed to have the same weakness as Prof: the powers themselves, wielded by someone else. Getting hit by the tensors negated her abilities for a time, like fire did to Megan.
Could I do something? Explain this to her? I stepped forward, then hesitated as the air warped near me.
I was drawn into a momentary vision of another world: Firefight standing on a rooftop, hands clenched at his sides, fire rising from his fists. A night sky. Cold air punctuated by bursts of heat from the Epic.
The vision passed, and I was on the skyscraper battlefield again. I stepped away from the warping air, then took cover behind a broken saltstone wall, outside the room where Prof and Tavi were fighting. A few spears of light shot overhead, slamming into the wall above me like forks into a cake.
Now that I knew to look, I spotted other places where the air twisted and warped. They dotted the corridors and rooms; Megan’s powers were tearing our reality apart, interweaving it with Firefight’s.
That seemed to me like a very, very bad thing.
The lights suddenly dimmed, went out—then almost immediately came back on. Prof and Tavi didn’t even pause in their contest, but I did notice that the young woman looked far more haggard than he did. She was sweating, her teeth clenched, and tears streaked her face, washing through the prevalent salt dust there.
“Sparks,” Tia cursed over the line. “Still can’t get through this door. Jon has a backup generator in his rooms somewhere. It turned on when I cut the wires; I can hear it chugging inside.”
“You’re still going on about that?” I demanded.
“I’m not just going to sit here,” she said. “If he’s distracted, then—”
She cut off as Prof released a wave of tensor power—intended to stop a sweeping forcefield—and it blasted the wall of the suite he was fighting in. The wall fell in, revealing another suite of rooms beside it—where Tia was kneeling on the floor.