Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(39)

I didn’t see anyone alone—the kids playing ball in an empty lot were watched by no fewer than four elderly men and women. Those heading to market went in pairs or groups. People congregated on steps up to houses, and quite a few had rifles nearby, though they laughed and smiled.

It was a strange kind of peace. The atmosphere implied that so long as everyone stuck to their own business, everyone would get along. I was disturbed to see how many of the groups seemed segregated along racial lines though. Our group with mixed ethnicities was irregular.

“So, lad,” Cody said, walking beside me with hands shoved into the pockets of his camo pants. “Why are we out on the street again? I was planning on a wee nap this afternoon.”

“I didn’t like the idea of being cooped up,” I said. “We’re here to save this city. I don’t want to sit and plan in a sterile little room, away from the people.”

“Sterile little rooms are secure,” Megan said from behind, where she walked with Abraham. Mizzy was to my right, humming to herself.

I shrugged. We could still talk and not be overheard. People on the street kept to themselves, and gave way when others approached them. The smaller groups actually demanded more respect—when one person did pass walking alone, everyone moved to the other side of the street in a subtle motion. A solo man or woman might be an Epic.

“This,” I said as we walked, “is what passes for a functional society these days. Each group with their territory, each with an implicit threat of violence. This isn’t a city, it’s a thousand communities one step from war with one another. It’s the best the world has to offer. We’re going to change that, once and for all. And it starts with Prof. How do we save him?”

“Make him confront his weakness,” Mizzy said. “Somehow.”

“We have to find it first,” Megan noted.

“I have a plan for that,” I said.

“What, really?” Megan asked, moving up so she was walking beside Cody. “How?”

I held out the broken phone and wiggled it.

“Folks,” Cody said, “looks like the lad’s finally snapped and gone completely mental. I take full credit.”

I got out my working mobile and wrote a text to Knighthawk. Hey. I’ve got a mobile with a broken screen here. Battery is in though. Can you still track it?

He didn’t respond immediately.

“Let’s assume that I can discover Prof’s weakness,” I said. “Where do we go from there?”

“Hard to say,” Abraham answered. He was carefully watching everyone else on the street as we made our way down it. “The nature of the weakness often defines the plan’s shape. It could take months to perfect the right approach.”

“I strongly doubt that we have months,” I said.

“I agree,” Abraham said. “Prof has plots of his own, and he’s been here for weeks already. We don’t know why he is here, but we certainly don’t want to wait around and see. We need to stop him quickly.”

“Besides,” I added, “the longer we wait, the greater the chance Prof will notice us.”

“I think you’re trying to do things backward, lad,” Cody said, shaking his head. “We can’t plot anything without the weakness.”

“Though perhaps—” Abraham started.

I looked at him.

“We do have something of a trump card,” he said, nodding toward Megan. “We have a team member who can make anything real. Perhaps we can begin planning a trap, with the assumption that whatever he fears, Megan can create it.”

“That’s a leap,” Mizzy said. “What if he fears…I don’t know, a sentient taco.”

“I could probably make that,” Megan said.

“Okay, fine. What if he fears being afraid? Or being proven wrong? Or something else abstract? Don’t a lot of weaknesses come from things like that?”

Mizzy was right. The rest of us fell silent. We passed an old fast-food place on the left, crafted from a beautiful shade of blue salt. More of this region slowly bled to that color as we walked. I didn’t lead us anywhere in particular yet; we’d want to do some intel gathering later today, which was standard Reckoner protocol after securing a base. For now, I wanted to be out, to be moving. Walking, talking, thinking.

My mobile buzzed.

Sorry, Knighthawk said. Was taking a koala. What’s this about another mobile?

You said you could track mobiles, I wrote to him. Well, I’ve got a broken one here. Can you pinpoint it?

Leave it somewhere, he wrote, then move on. Your signals are all too close together.

I did what he said, setting the mobile on an old trash can and leading the others off a ways.

Yeah, that one is working enough to send a signal, he wrote. Why?

I’ll tell you in a bit, I sent, jogging back to get the broken phone. From there I turned the team left, heading down a larger street. Some of the salt signs hanging above us had already been knocked down and broken, even though we were in the part of the city that was freshly grown.

“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We can’t talk specifics about fighting Prof until we get the weakness, but there are still things to plan. For example, we need to figure out how to get him to face his fear, not run from it.”