Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(100)

He lay on the ground with eyes closed, his face pale. Mizzy had needed to pull off most of the tensor suit to get at his wounds; it was piled in a heap nearby, the harmsway portion detached, but with wires extended to his arm. Mizzy yelped when she saw me, then snatched the motivator from my limp fingers. She plugged it back into the vest.

“Knighthawk,” I said over the line, “you really need to secure those motivators better.”

“It’s a prototype,” he grumbled. “I built it to have quick access so I could tweak motivators as needed. How was I to know Jonathan would yank the things out?”

Mizzy glanced at me as the harmsway glowed softly. “Sparks, David! You look like you fell off a cliff or something.”

I wiped my nose, which was still bleeding. My face was starting to swell from the beating I’d taken. I slumped down next to Mizzy, exhausted. “How’s the fight going?”

“Your girlfriend is kinda amazing,” Mizzy said grudgingly. “Abraham keeps getting locked up in forcefields, but she gets him out. Together they’re keeping Prof busy.”

“Does she seem…”

“Crazy?” Mizzy said. “Can’t tell.” She looked to Cody, whose wounds were—blessedly—closing. “He’ll be out for a while yet. Hope the other two can last. I’m out of boom-packs too, I’m afraid. So maybe—”

Someone exploded into existence next to us. A sudden burst of light, silent, but stunning if you watched it. I shouted, falling backward, and reached for the handgun strapped to my leg. It wasn’t Prof. Unfortunately, that left only one other option.

Obliteration turned, his trench coat sweeping the side of the cavern. He looked from Mizzy to Cody to me, studying us with bespectacled eyes. “I’ve been summoned,” he said.

“Um, yeah,” I said, hands trembling as I held my gun on him. “Prof. He has a motivator built from your flesh.”

“To destroy the city?” Obliteration asked, head cocked. “She made a bomb beyond those she gave me?”

“Those she gave you?” I asked. “So…you do have more?”

“Of course,” Obliteration said calmly. “You are fallen, David Charleston.” He shook his head, then disappeared, leaving behind an image made of ceramic that broke apart and faded.

I relaxed. Then Obliteration appeared beside me, hand on my gun. It was suddenly hot, and I shouted, fingers singeing as I dropped the weapon. Obliteration kicked it aside, kneeling next to me.

“?‘And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come,’?” he whispered. He flinched as, distantly, Prof must have teleported. Then he grinned, closing his eyes. Sparks. He seemed to like the feeling. “The hour has come for you to die and for this city to be destroyed. I regret that I cannot give you more time.” He placed his hand against my forehead, and I felt warmth coming from his skin.

“I’m going to kill Calamity,” I blurted out.

Obliteration opened his eyes. The heat dampened. “What did you say?”

“Calamity,” I said. “He’s an Epic, and he’s behind all of this. I can kill him. If you want to bring about Armageddon, wouldn’t that be the perfect way? Destroy this terrible…um, angel? Creature? Spirit?”

That sounded religious, right?

“He is far away, little man,” Obliteration said, contemplative. “You will never reach him.”

“You can teleport there though, right?”

“Impossible. Calamity is too distant for me to form a proper picture of its location in my mind, and I cannot go to a place I haven’t seen or cannot visualize.”

How did you get in here, then? Sparks. Had he been watching us somehow? That didn’t matter. Hand still trembling, I reached into my pocket and unhooked my mobile. I brought it out and turned to him, displaying Regalia’s image of Calamity. “What if you have a picture?”

Obliteration whispered softly, eyes wide. “?‘And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition….’?” He blinked, looking at me. “Again you surprise me. If you defeat your former master, and impress me in so doing, I will grant your desires.”

He exploded into a flash again—and this time he didn’t immediately return. I groaned, leaning against the wall, shaking my burned hand.

“Calamity! What is up with that man?” Mizzy asked, sliding her sidearm into its holster. It took her three tries, her hand was trembling so much. “I thought we were dead.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I half expected him to murder me for the audacity of claiming I wanted to kill Calamity. I figured it was even odds that he worshipped the thing instead of hating it.” I peeked around the corner, looking down a tunnel that shone with rents and rips into other dimensions.

“Abraham just went down!” Knighthawk said in my ear. “Repeat, Abraham is down. Jonathan sheared his arm off—rtich attached—with a forcefield.”

“Sparks!” I said. “Megan?”

“Hard to see,” Knighthawk said. “I’ve only got two crab cameras left. I think you’re losing this fight, guys.”

“We were losing it before we started,” I said, turning and crawling to the tensor suit. “Mizzy, some help.”