I shoved down my envy. I doubted I’d ever stop wishing I had been able to make this device work, but I could avoid acting childish about it. Cody and I clapped Abraham on the shoulder, giving him a thumbs-up. The Canadian man bore an uncharacteristic smile of pleasure, which was good to see. It wasn’t that he never smiled, it was just that his smiles always seemed so controlled. He rarely seemed to enjoy life. It was more that he let it pass around him, regarding it curiously, like a rock watching a river.
“Maybe this will actually work,” he said to me. “Maybe we won’t all end up dead.” He held up his hand and the mercury ran up his arm, pooling in a sphere above his gloved palm. It rippled and shook like a miniature ocean with waves and a tide.
“Do a puppy next!” Mizzy called from below. “Oh! Then a hat. Make me a silver hat. A tiara.”
“Shut it, you,” Abraham called.
My pocket buzzed. I pulled out my mobile, finding yet another text from Knighthawk. The guy considered me his personal entertainment factory. I flipped the message open.
Jonathan contacted me again today.
He’s discovered you sent him on a wild rat chase?
Rat?
I’ve never seen a goose, I wrote back to him. Don’t know why you’d chase one. But Newcago has lots of rats.
And you’d chase those instead?…Never mind. Kid, Jonathan sent a message to me. For you.
I felt cold, then waved for Abraham and Cody to step over and read along with me.
He said, Knighthawk continued, that you have two days to turn over Larcener to him, or he’ll destroy Newcago. Every single person in it. Then Babilar the next day.
Abraham and I shared a look.
Do you think he could actually do that? Knighthawk wrote.Destroy a whole city?
“Yes,” Abraham said softly. “If he killed Tia, he’s capable of anything.”
“I think he’s asking if Prof has the power to do it,” I said.
“Didn’t you say you talked to Obliteration at the party?” Abraham asked.
“Yeah. And he implied that Prof had summoned him by using a device linked to Obliteration’s powers. Even though Regalia made the bombs to hide her true goal—the teleportation device—I think it’s safe to assume Prof has access to at least one bomb.”
“He has the capability,” Abraham said. “And we have to assume he’ll do it. Which means…”
“…we have a new deadline,” I said, tucking away the mobile.
So much for our month of preparation.
THE drone landed on our warehouse roof that night. Four of us waited in a silent huddle, cloaked in darkness, while Cody scanned the city from inside a sniper nest he’d made on the rooftop nearby.
I reached into my pocket and clicked a button on my mobile; its screen went dark. The click sent a message I’d prepared earlier: Drone has landed the prize. We’re inspecting it now.
We knelt over the drone, night-vision goggles in place, looking at a world painted green. Mizzy pulled the drone open.
Inside, packed in straw mixed with old newspapers, was a glorious sight: a vest, a small metal box, and a pair of gloves. I breathed out. Those gloves looked exactly like the tensors—black, with lines of metal running like tiny rivers up the fingers and pooling at each tip. Those would glow green when engaged.
“Niiiice,” Mizzy whispered, poking at the vest. “Three different motivator casings. The first one offers healing, judging by the sensors you attach to the skin; it probably activates automatically upon injury. This one is connected to the tensors. Last one for forcefields.”
She turned over one of the gloves. I couldn’t help feeling that this suit represented something new, a different step in the creation of Epic-derived technology. Instead of one lone power, this replicated everything Prof could do. A complex network of wires and multiple motivators, combined in an imitation of an enhanced human. Should I be disturbed or impressed?
Heroes will come, son. My father’s words. I thought of that as I ran my fingers along the sleek metal of the suit’s motivators. But sometimes, you have to help them along….
“There is a problem with this,” Abraham said. “Cody cannot practice with this device without alerting Prof that he’s using it, and therefore revealing ourselves to him.”
“I’ve got an idea for that,” I said. “Though it will require Megan to use her powers.”
She looked up at me, curious.
“I doubt Prof can sense Cody practicing,” I said, “if he’s in another dimension.”
“Clever,” she said. “He’ll only be able to stay a short time though. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes, if I push it.”
“Don’t push it,” I said. “It might not give us much time, but at least we’ll be able to make sure the motivators are working.”
Everyone seemed to like this plan, and together we dug out the tensor suit. Beneath were some other supplies that we’d managed to beg off Knighthawk: some explosives, some tiny drones that were little more than cameras with feet, and some technological gizmos Mizzy had suggested as additions to Megan’s and my plan.
The others carted all this away, Mizzy placing the old harmsway in the drone—the one that had healed Megan and me—and sending it off to return to Knighthawk. We had something better now, though we’d have to be careful about using it lest we alert Prof.
I caught Megan by the arm as the team passed, carrying the goodies. She nodded to me. She felt all right about using her powers. I didn’t follow her into the warehouse below, but instead walked over to Cody’s sniper nest. It was my turn to be on watch.
The nest was shaped like a wide, shallow box near the center of the roof. Cody had devised a ceiling for it with the crystal grower that merged right into the roof and made the structure look like another normal building feature. It had slits on all sides, however, and a large enough hole at the rear for you to crawl in and lie down.
I peeked in; the lanky Southerner was cuddled into the hole like a joey in its mother’s pouch—though people really shouldn’t let baby kangaroos play with a Barrett .50 cal with armor-piercing rounds.
“Has my new toy arrived?” Cody asked, setting aside the gun and wriggling backward out of the nest.
“Yeah,” I said, stepping out of his way as he stood up. “It looks great.”
“You sure you don’t want to pilot it, lad?”
I shook my head. “You have more experience with the tensors, Cody.”
“Yeah, but you were way more talented with them.”
“I…” I swallowed. “No, I need to be running the mission from behind.”
“Right, then,” he said, turning toward the steps down to the building.
“Cody?” I said, and he stopped, turned back. “The other day I was talking to Abraham and…well, he kind of bit my head off.”
“Ah. You were poking around, were you?”
“Poking around?”
“In his past.”
“No, of course not. I just asked why he didn’t want to be in charge.”
“Close enough,” Cody said, patting me on the arm. “Abraham’s a strange one, lad. The rest of us, we make sense. You fight for revenge. I fight because I was a cop, and I took an oath. Mizzy, she fights because of her heroes, people like Val and Sam. She wants to be like them.
“Abraham though…why does he fight? I couldn’t tell you. Because of his fallen brothers and sisters in the special forces? Maybe, but he doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge. Maybe to protect the country? But if that’s the case, why’s he down here in the Fractured States? All I’ve been able to figure is that he doesn’t want to talk about it—and you shouldn’t assume he’s gentle because he’s in control, lad.” Cody rubbed his jaw. “Learned that the hard way once.”
“He punched you?”
“Broke my jaw,” Cody said with a laugh. “Don’t poke, kid. That’s what I learned!” He seemed not to care much, though a broken jaw sounded like a pretty big offense to me.
But then, who hadn’t wa
nted to punch Cody on occasion?
“Thanks,” I said, sitting down to begin wiggling into the sniper nest. “But you’re wrong about me, Cody. I don’t fight for revenge, not anymore. I fight for my father.”
“Isn’t that the same as revenge?”
I reached into my shirt and took out the small S-shaped symbol of the Faithful that I wore around my neck. The mark of one who awaited a day when the heroes would come. “No. I don’t fight because of his death, Cody. I fight for his dreams.”