He raised an eyebrow at me as if I’d gone insane.
“And no Calamity,” I said, looking at the sky.
“Calamity?”
“The red star!” I said. “That brought the Epics.”
“Invocation?” he said. “It vanished a year after it arrived; it’s been gone a decade.”
“Do you feel the darkness?” I demanded. “The drive toward selfishness that strikes every Epic?”
“What are you talking about, Charleston?”
No Calamity, no darkness, a good Steelheart.
Sparks!
“This changes everything,” I whispered.
“Look, I’ve told you before that you must meet him,” Firefight said. “He refuses to believe what I’ve seen, but he needs to talk to you.”
“Why me? What does he care about me?”
“Well,” Firefight said, “he killed you.”
In my world, I killed him. Here, he killed me. “How did it happen? I have to…”
I felt a lurch. A shimmering. “I’m going,” I said, starting to disappear. “I can’t stop it. We’ll send Tavi back. Tell him…tell him I’ll return. I have to—
“—figure out what happened here,” I finished, but Firefight was gone. The rooftop was gone. In its place was a room of dust and glowing light. Two Epics at battle. They’d moved into the hallway again, skirting Prof’s chambers. That left them to my right—where most of the hallway’s walls were gone.
Guards had arrived during my absence, and they’d set up at the corner in the hallway, near where I’d been hiding. They’d begun ganging up on Tavi, firing barrages down the hallway in her direction.
No Calamity…
I had to tell someone! I spotted Tia easily, working furtively at a computer station inside the next apartment over—in front of me and a little to my left. A stream of salt trickled down onto my head, and the ceiling groaned.
I looked over my shoulder to see Megan striding through the suite toward me. Tall, deliberate, her head thrust back and hands at her sides, each finger trailing a ripple in reality. A High Epic in her glory.
She looked at me, and snarled.
Right. I had a bigger problem to deal with.
FIRE. I needed fire.
It seemed a cruel irony that mere moments ago I had been standing next to a man literally made of flame, yet now I couldn’t find even a spark.
I shoved Prof’s captured cells into my pocket, then scrambled to my feet and crossed the suite, doing my best to stay low. The guards were falling back. As I frantically searched for some way to create a flame, I spotted Tavi out in the hallway on her knees, surrounded by several layered bubbles of light. Presumably the innermost was her own. She huddled there with head bowed, skin plastered with salt dust streaked by sweat, trembling.
My heart lurched, but I ran for Tia, hoping she might have a lighter. Megan reached for me, but I dodged her. The air still rippled around me. I caught glimpses of other worlds, of alien landscapes, of places where this plain had become a jungle. Another where it was a barren wasteland of dust and stone. I saw armies of glowing Epics, and piles of the dead.
A large portion of the ceiling behind me caved in, crashing down with a cacophony of stone grinding against stone. It collapsed a section of the floor and knocked my feet from under me. I hit the ground shoulder first, skidding through salt.
When I finally came to a stop, I blinked away dust, coughing. Sparks. My leg hurt. I’d twisted my ankle in the fall.
The debris settled to reveal that most of the floor of the suite was gone. I had ended up inside Prof’s chambers, near Tia, who had taken cover beside the desk, her mobile gripped tightly in her fist. It was connected by wires to the data drive of a computer powered—along with the swinging lightbulbs—by the small generator that puttered in the corner.
Megan hadn’t so much as flinched. She turned toward me. Behind her, on the other side of the hole in the floor, Prof’s guards called to one another and pulled themselves out of the rubble. To her right, Prof loomed over Tavi, who was crumpled on the floor. Her forcefield was gone. She stirred, but didn’t rise.
Megan met my eyes, hands raised before her. Her lips curled in a sneer, but she held my gaze, then gritted her teeth. I sensed a plea in her expression. Still lying on the broken floor, I yanked my gun from its holster, then leveled it and fired.
At the generator.
Like the one above, it had a gas tank. It didn’t explode as I’d expected, but the shots punctured it and sparked a fire, sending up jets of flame.
The lights immediately went out.
“No!” Tia cried.
Megan stared into the fire, and it danced in her eyes.
“Face it, Megan,” I whispered. “Please.”
She stepped toward it, as if drawn by its heat. Then she screamed and ran forward, passing me and thrusting her arm into the flames.
Megan collapsed. Tavi vanished. The rents in the air shrank away. I let out a relieved breath and managed to crawl over to Megan, dragging my pained foot behind me.
She trembled, clutching her arm, which she’d burned severely. I pulled her farther from the generator, in case it flared up, and folded her into my arms.
In the pitch-black room, there were only two lights: the dwindling fire…
And Prof.
Megan squeezed her eyes shut, shaking from her ordeal. She’d saved our lives, had put my plan into motion, and it hadn’t been enough. I could see that easily as Prof strode toward us. He stepped up to the lip
of the broken hole in the floor, then across it, a forcefield forming under his feet. Lit from beneath, he looked like a specter, his face mostly in shadow.
Prof had always possessed a kind of…unfinished look. Features like a stack of broken bricks, his face usually accented by stubble. Today though, I could spot signs of exhaustion as well. The slowness of his step, the streaks of sweat on his face, the slump to his shoulders. His fight with Tavi had been difficult. He was practically indestructible, but he did get tired.
He studied me and Megan. “Kill them,” he said, then turned his back on us and walked off into the shadows.
Two dozen guards lowered their weapons to fire. I pulled Megan close, close enough to hear her whisper.
“I die as me,” she said. “At least I die as me.”
Fire. Her powers were negated. She was always without them for a minute or two after deliberately burning herself.
If she died now, would it be permanent?
No.
No…What have I done?
I twisted, sheltering her as the guards opened fire in a terrible barrage. The walls exploded in sprays of salt chips. The computer monitor shattered. Bullets pelted the area, accompanied by the earsplitting sound of weapons fire.
I clutched Megan close, my back to the assault.
Something stirred again within me. Those depths lurking in my soul, the blackness below. Shadows moving around me, screams, emotions like spikes piercing me, the sudden and overpowering sensation from my dreams. I threw back my head and screamed.
The gunfire stilled, a few last pops sounding as the magazines fell empty. With an enemy Epic in their sights, these people had not hesitated or held back. Several flipped on lights attached to their guns, to inspect their handiwork.
I awaited the pain, or at least the numbness, that came from having been shot. I felt neither. Hesitant, I turned to look behind me. Destruction surrounded us—floor, walls, furniture splintered, pocked, broken…all except in my immediate area. The ground here wasn’t broken at all. In fact, it was glassy and reflective. A deep, burnished silver-black. Metallic.
I was alive.