Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(102)
Prof dropped a mere inch before landing on a disc of green light. He shook his head, then flung his hand toward me, sending a gout of tensor energy that dropped the ground out from beneath me, as I’d done to him.
I frantically tried to create a forcefield to land on, but only got another shimmer of light. Then an instant later the hole wasn’t as deep—and I hit bottom three feet down.
Megan stood beside the hole. “There are many worlds where he did not dig deep enough with that blast,” she said, her voice overlapped by a hundred whispers.
Prof growled, charging me and summoning spears of light, one after another. I hopped out of the hole, falling in beside Megan, destroying the spikes where I could.
Each time I did so, Prof winced.
“So, how do we fight him?” Megan asked in overlapping voices. “All I’ve been able to do is distract him. Is the plan still to make him confront his fears somehow?”
“Not sure, honestly,” I said, thrusting my hands in front of me and straining. Finally I produced a forcefield wall. It was kind of like using the tensors in reverse. Instead of releasing a hum, I let it build up inside me until it coalesced.
“How much can you alter?” I asked, looking at Megan.
“Little things,” she said. “Reasonable things. My powers haven’t changed, I just know them. David, I can see worlds…so many worlds.” She blinked, an action that seemed to trail infinite shadows of eyelids. “But they’re all ones that are nearby. It’s amazing, yet frustrating. It’s like I can count as many numbers as I want, but only if they happen to be between zero and one. Infinity, yet still bounded.”
Prof shattered our forcefield, then raised his hands, causing the ceiling to shake. I summoned the tensor powers as I anticipated his move—indeed, he tried to bring the ceiling down on us by vaporizing a ring of rock, dropping a large stone in the center.
I vaporized the chunk right above us. We were showered with dust, and the way it fell on Megan proved she was here and real, not a shadow as a piece of me had feared.
Prof winced again.
I’m using his power. And it hurts.
“All right, I have a plan,” I said to Megan.
“Which is?”
“To run,” I said, turning and dashing out of the main chamber into a side tunnel.
Megan cursed, following. We ran side by side and I engaged the tensors, vaporizing ribbons of stone along our path. I wasn’t sure what I could do to change him or make him return to us. All of my plans had failed so far; the best thing I could do at the moment was keep the suit working and keep him in pain.
Behind us, Prof roared. He teleported in front of us, but I simply grabbed Megan by the hand and turned the other direction while disintegrating the forcefield Prof tried to use to trip us up. We ran into a tunnel without any light, but glowsticks appeared a second later, summoned by Megan from a realm where Mizzy had lit this place.
When Prof teleported in front of us again, red-faced and snarling, I turned us back the other way, unrelentingly using the suit’s powers on random stones we passed. Each use of the tensors was driving him further into a fury.
I’ve been here before, I thought, feeling the echoes of another event. Another fight. Driving an Epic to anger…
Prof appeared again, and this time Megan reacted first, yanking me to the side as spears of light—faster than I could track—struck like blades around us. Sparks! I barely stopped them. Maybe this wasn’t such a good plan.
“This is always how you are!” Prof shouted. “No thought! No concern for consequences! Don’t you worry about what will happen? Don’t you ever think about failure?”
He teleported in front of us as we tried to flee, but a second later a rock wall created by Megan separated us.
“This isn’t working,” she said.
“Well, technically it is. I mean, my plan was just to run.”
“Okay, I revise: this isn’t going to work for very long. Sooner or later he’ll trap us. What’s your endgame?”
“Make him mad,” I said.
“And?”
“Hope…um…that makes him afraid? We were desperate, scared, frantic when we faced our weaknesses. Maybe he has to be in the same state.”
She gave me a skeptical look that—reflected through all of her shadows—was even more formidable than usual.
The wall near us melted away to powder. I gathered the energy of the tensors, preparing to be attacked by a series of forcefield spears, but Prof wasn’t behind the wall anymore.
Huh?
He crashed into existence behind us and seized me by the arm with one hand. With the other, he tried to vaporize the motivators on my vest. I yelped and let out a blast of tensor power—directly down, carving out the rock beneath me and dropping me lower a few feet. The sudden motion lurched me out of Prof’s grip and made his blast pass over my head.
I vaporized the ground below him, and by reflex he created a forcefield to stand on, so I wriggled through the dust underneath him. He had to twist to see me, but that left him open to Megan. Who, of course, shot him.
It didn’t have much effect; he was protected—as always—by thin, invisible forcefields around his whole person. Her shots did distract him long enough for me to crawl out from underneath the disc on the other side. There, I raised my handgun and started firing as well.