Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(21)

“It happens more often to Epics. Jonathan proved that Epics could use motivators, but occasionally we’d run into one that he couldn’t operate. Same goes for two different motivators being used by the same person. Sometimes they interfere and one craps out.”

I sat back on the stool, thoughtful. “Cell cultures. Huh. Makes sense, I suppose, but it seems…so simple.”

“The best secrets usually are,” he said. “But it’s simple only in retrospect. Do you know how long it took scientists in pre-Calamity days to figure out how to make cultures of normal human cells? It was a strikingly difficult process. Well, same with motivators. We slaved to create the first ones. What you call a motivator is really a little incubator. The motivator feeds the cells, regulates temperature, expels waste. A good motivator will last decades, if built right.”

“Regalia knew your secret,” I said. “She took Obliteration and used his cells to create a bomb.”

Knighthawk was silent. When I looked at him, his mannequin had settled against the wall, hands behind its back, head down as if uncertain.

“What?” I asked.

“Making motivators from Epics who are still alive is dangerous.”

“For the Epic?”

“Sparks, no, for you. They can feel it when their powers are used by someone else. It’s terribly painful, and they get a sense for where it’s happening. Naturally, they seek out the source of the pain and destroy it.”

“That’s where the twins come in,” I said. “You said…”

“One almost always kills the other,” he said. “One would be in pain whenever the other used their powers. It’s why I don’t make motivators out of living Epics. It’s a bad, bad idea.”

“Yeah, well, from what I know of Obliteration, he probably enjoyed the pain. He’s like a cat.”

“A…cat?”

“Yeah. A freaky, messed-up, scripture-quoting cat who loves to be hurt.” I cocked my head. “What? You think he’s more like a ferret? I could see that. But Regalia. She performed surgery on Obliteration. Wouldn’t she just need a blood sample?”

Knighthawk’s mannequin waved dismissively. “Old trick. Used it myself before I decided to stop making motivators from living Epics; helps keep them from realizing how simple it all is. Either way, you have the secret. Maybe it will help; I don’t know. But can you leave me to my grief now?”

I climbed to my feet, suddenly very tired. Lingering effects of my healing earlier, perhaps. “Do you know Prof’s weakness?”

Knighthawk shook his head. “No idea.”

“Are you lying?”

Knighthawk snorted. “No, I’m not. He never let me know what it was, and every guess I had turned out to be wrong. Ask Tia. He might have told her.”

“I think Tia’s dead.”

“Damn.” Knighthawk grew quiet, and his gaze seemed distant. I’d hoped that the secret of the motivators would shed light on Prof and what he did by gifting his powers to others. I still didn’t have an answer to why some Epics could avoid the darkness that way.

Unless they actually can’t, I thought. I needed to talk to Edmund, the one called Conflux.

I walked toward the door, passing the dead Epic in the coffin. I quietly hoped Knighthawk never found a way to bring this woman back; I doubted he’d get what he wanted from the reunion.

“Steelslayer,” he called after me.

I turned, and the mannequin approached, carrying a small device on one palm. It looked like a cylindrical battery, of the old bulky style I’d seen in toy commercials during recordings shown after dinner in the Factory. We kids had loved the commercials. They’d somehow seemed more real—more a picture of life in the world before Epics—than the action shows they’d interrupted.

Oh, to live in a world where children ate colorful breakfast cereals and begged their parents for toys.

“What is it?” I asked, taking the device from the mannequin.

“Tissue sample incubator,” he said. “It will keep cells fresh long enough for you to send them to me. When you fail, and have to kill Jonathan, get me a sample of his DNA.”

“So you can make some kind of device, enslaving his cells to enrich you?”

“Jonathan Phaedrus has the most powerful healing abilities of any Epic I’ve ever known,” Knighthawk said as the mannequin made a rude gesture at me. “He’ll create a harmsway far more capable than any I’ve ever tested. It might…it might work on Amala. I haven’t tried anything on her for well over a year. But maybe…I don’t know. Either way, you should let Jonathan keep healing people after he dies. You know it’s what he’d want.”

I made no promises, but I did take the incubator.

You never knew what might come in handy.





I was somewhere cold and dark.

My world was only sounds. Each one horrible, an assault, a scream. I curled up before the barrage, but then the lights attacked. Garish, terrible. Violent. I hated them, though that did nothing. I wept, but this too terrified me; my own body betraying me with an assault from within, to pair with all of those from without.

It built to a climax of booms, and flashes, and burning, and crashes, and screeches, and terrible explosions until—