Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(14)

And it was strong. It carried Knighthawk with ease, sliding its arms through straps in some kind of harness Knighthawk wore. The whole arrangement made the mannequin look like it was hugging him from behind, its arms across his stomach and chest, with Knighthawk remaining upright and strapped in place, his feet dangling a few inches off the ground.

It didn’t look comfortable or normal. Still, Knighthawk chatted conversationally while we walked, as if it were perfectly natural for a quadriplegic to be carted around by a tall wooden golem.

“So that’s basically it,” I said to him as we made our way down the nondescript corridor, heading toward Knighthawk’s armory. “The weaknesses are tied to fears. If an Epic confronts the fear, banishes it, then they can drive back the darkness.”

“Mostly,” Megan said from behind us. Abraham had gone up above to fetch Mizzy and Cody, as we’d decided that—one way or another—we were going to have to trust Knighthawk. We didn’t have any other option.

Knighthawk grunted. “Fear. Seems so simple.”

“Yes and no,” I said. “I don’t think a lot of Epics, consumed by their powers, like to think about being weak. They don’t confront these things; that’s basically the problem.”

“I still wonder why no one else has made the connection,” Knighthawk said, sounding skeptical.

“We’ve made it,” Megan said softly. “Every Epic thinks about this, I guarantee it. It’s just that we think about it all the wrong way—we connect fears and our weakness, but we connect them in reverse of the truth.

“It’s the nightmares. They’re maddening. They drive you from your bed, gasping, sweating, and smelling blood. The nightmares are about your weakness. The loss of power, the return to mortality, the return to being crassly common, so a simple accident could end you. It makes sense that we’d be afraid of the thing that could kill us, so the nightmares seem normal in a way. But we never realized that weaknesses grew out of our fears—the fears came first, and then the weaknesses. Not the other way around.”

Knighthawk and I both stopped in the hallway, looking back at her. Megan met our gaze, defiant as ever, but I could see the cracks. Sparks…the things this woman had been forced to live with. What we’d discovered was helping her, but in some ways it was also prying those cracks wider. Exposing things inside her that she’d worked hard to cover up.

She’d done terrible things in the past, serving Steelheart. We didn’t talk about it. She’d escaped that by being forced to not use her powers while infiltrating the Reckoners.

“We can do this, Knighthawk,” I said. “We can discover Prof’s weakness, then use it against him. Only instead of killing him, we’ll lay a trap that makes him confront his fears. We’ll bring him back and prove that there’s another solution to the Epic problem.”

“It won’t work,” Knighthawk said. “He knows you, and he knows Reckoner protocol. Calamity—he wrote Reckoner protocol. He’ll be ready for you.”

“See, that’s the thing,” I said. “He knows us, yes. But we also know him. We’ll be able to figure out his weakness far more easily than with other Epics. And beyond that, we know something important.”

“Which is?” he demanded.

“Deep down,” I said, “Prof wants us to win. He’ll be ready to die, so he’ll be surprised when what we actually do is save him.”

Knighthawk regarded me. “You have a strangely persuasive way about you, young man.”

“You have no idea,” Megan muttered.

“We’re going to need technology to beat him though,” I said. “So I’m eager to see what you have.”

“Well, I’ve got a few things I could lend you,” Knighthawk said, starting down the corridor again. “But contrary to what people assume, this place isn’t some kind of massive repository for hidden technology. Pretty much every time I get something working, I immediately sell it. All those drones aren’t cheap, you know. I have to order them out of Germany, and they’re a pain to unpack. Speaking of which, I’m going to bill you for the ones you destroyed.”

“We’re here begging, Knighthawk,” I said, catching up to him. “How do you expect us to pay you?”

“By all accounts you’re a resourceful kid. You’ll think of something. A frozen blood sample from Jonathan will do, assuming your crazy plan fails and you end up having to kill him.”

“It won’t fail.”

“Yeah? Taking a look at the history of the Reckoners, I’d never bet money on the plan that doesn’t intend to leave some bodies behind. But we’ll see.” His mannequin nodded toward Megan.

That mannequin…something about it struck me. I thought for a moment, and then it clicked in my mind like the mandibles of a giant poker-playing beetle.

“The Wooden Soul!” I said. “You got some of her DNA?”

Knighthawk twisted his head to look at me as we walked. “How in the world…”

“Pretty easy connection, once I thought about it. There aren’t many puppeteer Epics out there.”

“She lived in a remote Punjabi village!” Knighthawk said. “And has been dead for almost ten years.”

“David’s got a thing about Epics,” Megan said from behind. “I’d call him obsessed, but that doesn’t do it justice.”