Cody went running toward the door. I stopped him with a barked “Wait!”
He froze and turned toward me, still in the tensor suit.
“Megan,” I said, “you’re on scouting duty instead of Cody. Cody, you do her job and get the food rations ready. That suit is too valuable to risk out there, in case there’s some sort of trap waiting for a scout.”
Megan obeyed immediately, and I tossed her Cody’s rifle as she passed. Cody hiked back, looking a little sullen, but started gathering our packs together—checking to make sure each one had food, water, and a bedroll.
I hurried to text Knighthawk. Our location might be compromised, I sent him. We are pulling out. Would you mind lending me one or two of the drones you have patrolling the area?
He didn’t reply immediately, so I hurried to help Mizzy with the ammo and explosives. She nodded in gratitude as I took the armful from her.
“Goodbye gift?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But only if you can do it quickly. I want out of here in five.”
“Got it,” she said, scrambling up to the loft. She’d have an explosive charge set and ready to blast the entire warehouse to dust by the time we were done packing.
“Make sure there’s a remote way to disarm it,” I called after her, remembering Cody’s story about the dead kids—which I was almost certain was made up.
I placed the ammo in the backpacks—which Cody had set out in a row, bedrolls attached at the top—then zipped each one. There were packs for all of us but Abraham, who would be carrying a larger duffel with gravatonic lifts, filled with our guns and power cells.
My mobile buzzed.
How do you know I still have drones in the area? Knighthawk wrote.
Because you’re paranoid, I wrote back, and you want to keep an eye on Prof?
I slung one pack over my shoulder, then set a second one at my feet—I’d be carrying Megan’s until she could meet up with us.
You really are smarter than you seem, he wrote me. Fine. I’ll do a sweep of your area and send you the video.
I waited, anxious, as Abraham finished his packing. Mizzy hurried down to grab her bag, and nodded at me. Cody already had his on his shoulder. Under five minutes. Nearby, Larcener wandered out of the little room Cody had made for him.
“Did I miss something?” he asked.
“Crap,” Megan said over the line.
I put my hand to my earpiece. “What?”
“He’s got an entire army working its way through the streets toward us, Knees. Our primary exit points are both blocked. By the time we picked up on this from the sniper nest, we’d have been surrounded. We might be already.”
“Pull back,” I said. “I’m going to get intel through Knighthawk.”
“Roger.”
I looked to the others.
“False faces?” Mizzy asked.
“Whatever our faces are, we’re going to look sparking suspicious with all this equipment,” I said.
“Then we leave it,” Abraham said. “We’re not ready for a fight.”
“And we’ll be more ready in twenty-four hours?” I asked. “When he destroys Newcago?”
My phone buzzed; Knighthawk was actually calling me, which was rare. I picked up, dialing his feed into our communal line so everyone could hear him through their earpieces.
“You guys are screwed,” he said. “I’m sending you footage in infrared.”
Abraham stepped over, lowering his mobile, and we crowded around to look. A map of our area showed hundreds, maybe thousands of people descending on our position, each an infrared dot. They formed a complete circle.
“East Lane,” Knighthawk said. “See those corpses? Bystanders who tried to run. They’re gunning down anyone who attempts to escape that circle. They’re sending a team into every building, holding the people there at gunpoint and—best I can tell from the shot I got through a window—feeling their faces.”
“Feeling their faces?” Mizzy asked.
“To see if any part is illusory,” I said. “Prof knows that Megan can fool a dowser, but the overlays she creates are still illusions. They feel a nose that doesn’t fit the image of its face, something like that, and they’ll know they’ve found us.”
“Like I said,” Knighthawk added. “Screwed.”
Megan rushed in through the door and closed it behind her, back up against the saltstone. “Surrounded?” she asked, reading our expressions.
I nodded.
“So what do we do?” she asked, joining our little huddle.
I looked at the others. One at a time, they nodded.
“We fight,” Abraham said softly.
“We fight,” Mizzy agreed. “He’ll be expecting us to try to punch out; it’s Reckoner protocol when surprised or outmatched.”
I smiled, feeling a sudden swell of pride. “If this were one of Prof’s teams,” I said, “we’d run.”
“We’re not his team,” Cody said. “Not anymore. We’re here to change the world; we ain’t going to do that without a fight.”
“It’s stupid,” I noted.
“Sometimes stupid is right,” Megan said, then paused. “Hell. I hope nobody ever quotes me on that one. So where’s our battlefield?”
“Same place it was always going to be,” I said.
Then I pointed down. That tunnel and cave complex was beneath us. “Cody, cut us a path. We go in full gear, exactly as we planned. We won’t have as much of an edge as we hoped, but we’ve still got those caverns mapped, and they’ll allow us to fight him with the least chance of causing harm to people nearby.”
“Wait,” Megan said. “If Cody uses the tensors, that will call Prof right to us—he’ll know that we have the device.”
“Yeah,” Knighthawk said over the line. “He’s hovering at the rear of his little army right now, but that won’t last long. Years ago, when we tested it, using a motivator drove him into a rage. He’ll come for you immediately.”
Cody looked at his hands. “I…Lad, I just started practicing with these tensors. They’re stronger than the ones we had before, but it could take hours for me to cut an escape hole.”
“It shouldn’t,” I said. “You’ve seen what Prof can do—level buildings, vaporize huge swaths of ground. You hold that power, Cody.”
Cody set his jaw. The tensors started glowing green.
None of us asked how Prof had located us. It could have happened in one of any number of ways—our bases here in Ildithia weren’t terribly secure. Maybe we’d been spotted by an informant, or perhaps Prof did have an Epic who could dowse for us, or maybe he’d noticed the drone deliveries.
“All right,” Cody said. “Everyone get ready, and then I’ll do the deed. Time to fight.”
THE team loaded up. Weapons in hand, mobiles strapped to arms, earpieces in. Mizzy tossed a small box to each of us: a compressed rappelling cord. I affixed mine to my belt.
We left our packs, only grabbing some ammo. The packs were for long-term survival. After this, one way or another, we wouldn’t need them.
Tension laced the air, like the distant scent of smoke that signaled a fire. We weren’t ready, but the battle had arrived anyway. Right now it was all up to Cody. He stood in the center of our warehouse base, eyeing the dusty saltstone floor. He’d always seemed lanky in an almost comical way to me, but now—wearing the tensor suit, with its glowing greens and dramatic, futuristic vest, he cut an imposing profile.
I stepped up to him. “It’s down there, Cody,” I said. “An entire cave complex. The battlefield we have chosen. All we need is a pathway.”
He took in a deep breath.
“Remember what you said when you were first training me in the tensors?” I asked.
“Yeah…you’ve gotta use them like you’re caressing a beautiful woman.”
“I was thinking more the other thing you said. You’ve got to have the soul of a warrior, like William Wallace.”
“William Wallace got murdered, lad.”
“Oh.”
“But he didn’t go down without a fight,” Cody said, steeling himself. “All right. Hold on to yer haggis, everyone.” He raised his hands before himself, and a green glow ran down the wires strapped to his arms and into his hands. He thrust his hands forward, and I felt a distinct hum that seemed to vibrate all the way down to my soul without actually making a sound.
A three-foot-by-three-foot section of ground vaporized, maybe ten feet deep. That was very impressive on the old scale of the tensors, but nowhere near what we needed to reach those caverns.
“Jonathan’s moving!” Knighthawk said over the lines. “Sparks. You people are in trouble. He does not look happy!”