Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(42)

A shadow fell on the steps and Megan appeared, lit from the kitchen above. “Hey,” she said. “David? Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Just thinking,” I said.

She continued down, eventually taking a seat on the ground beside me, lighting her mobile and setting it in front of us for illumination. “We’ve packed about forty different guns into the city,” she muttered, “but not a one of us thought to bring a sparking cushion.”

“You surprised?” I asked.

“Not in the least. Good job today.”

“Good job?” I said. “We didn’t come up with anything.”

“Nothing is ever decided at the early meetings, David. You got everyone pointed in the right direction, got them thinking. That’s important.”

I shrugged.

“Nice work with the hidden mobile too,” she noted.

“You saw that?”

“Had me confused until I checked in the box. You think it will work?”

“Worth a try,” I said. “I mean, if…” I trailed off as an indicator light hanging on the wall blinked softly.

That meant someone had walked into the entryway of the apartment building beside us. Our fake door led into that entrance, and was one of our security threats. Cody had hidden it by covering some old boards—taken from cargo crates he’d scrounged up—with a thin layer of salt on one side and a black cloth backing. From the outside it looked like any other section of the wall, but you could push it in and slide it open to make a doorway. He warned that if someone was in the entryway, they might be able to hear something coming from the false section. Hence the light, and the instructions for everyone on the ground floor to be quiet if someone was outside the door.

Megan draped her arm around me, yawning, as we waited for the people to move on. We needed a pressure plate out there to let us know when they were gone, or maybe a camera or something.

Our phones flashed, and the hidden door rattled.

I blinked, then scrambled to my feet, following Megan, who had moved a hair faster than me. Both of us had handguns out a second later, leveled at the door, while Abraham cursed in the room nearby. He charged out a moment later, with his minigun at the ready.

The door wobbled, scraped, then slipped to the side. “Hum,” a voice said outside. I imagined Prof bursting through, having traced us. Suddenly all of our preparations seemed simplistic and meaningless.

I had led the team to its destruction.

The door opened all the way, revealing a backlit figure. It wasn’t Prof, but a younger man, tall and lanky, with pale skin and short black hair. He looked us over, not a glimmer of concern in his eyes, despite facing three armed people.

“That door isn’t going to do at all,” the man said. “Far too easy to get through. I thought you people would be capable!”

“Who are you?” Abraham demanded, eyeing me, waiting to see if I gave the order to fire.

I didn’t, though I knew this man. I had several pictures of him in my files.

Larcener, emperor of Atlanta, had come to pay us a visit.





“OH, put those things down,” Larcener said, stepping into the hideout and pushing the door closed. “Bullets can’t hurt me. You’ll only draw attention.”

Unfortunately, he was right. This man was invulnerable in multiple ways. Our guns might as well have been wet noodles.

None of us lowered our weapons.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. “Why are you here?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Larcener had an unexpectedly nasal voice. “Your friend wants to kill me. He’s been tearing the whole city apart looking for me! My servants are useless, my Epics too cowardly. They’ll switch sides on me in an eyeblink.”

He walked forward—making all three of us jump—and kept right on talking. “I figured you’d know how to hide from him, if anyone does. This place looks horridly uncomfortable. Not a cushion in sight, and it smells like wet socks.” He shivered visibly, then poked into Abraham’s workroom.

We crowded around the doorway as, inside, he spun and flopped backward. A large stuffed chair materialized out of nowhere, catching him. He lounged there. “Someone get me something to drink. And try not to make too much noise. I’m tired. You have no idea how nerve-racking it is to be hunted like a common rat.”

The three of us lowered our weapons, baffled by the slender Epic, who had started muttering under his breath as he lay, eyes closed, on his new easy chair.

“Um…,” I finally ventured. “And if we don’t obey you?”

Abraham and Megan looked at me as if I were crazy, but it seemed a valid question to me.

Larcener cracked open an eye. “Huh?”

“What are you going to do,” I said, “if we don’t obey you?”

“You have to obey me. I’m an Epic.”

“You do realize,” I said slowly, “that we’re the Reckoners.”

“Yes.”

“So…we kinda disobey Epics all the time. I mean, if we listened to what Epics said, we’d be pretty bad at our job.”

“Oh?” Larcener said. “And didn’t you spend your entire career doing exactly what an Epic told you?”

Sparks. Did everyone know about that? I supposed it wasn’t too tough to guess, now that he’d moved into town. Still. I opened my mouth to object further, but Megan pulled me from the room by my arm, Abraham retreating with us, awkwardly hefting his gun. Cody and Mizzy were on the steps leading down, looking concerned.