Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(47)

“David,” she said calmly, “in Babilar, you and I met together in our hideout, after you’d gone out to deliver supplies. Tell me what we discussed.”

“What does that matter? Tia! We need to talk about—”

“Answer the question, David,” Abraham said. “She is testing to see if we are ourselves.”

I swallowed. Of course. Any number of Epics could have created doppelgangers of the Reckoners at Prof’s command. I tried to recall the event she was talking about. Why hadn’t she picked something more memorable, like when I’d first joined the Reckoners?

She needs something Prof wouldn’t know about, I realized.

I started to sweat. I’d been out on the submarine, and…Sparks, it was hard to think with those armed men and women staring at me, each as angry as a cabdriver who’d discovered I’d ralphed all over his back seat.

“I met with Prof that day,” I said. “I came to the base to report, and we talked about some of the other Epics in Babilar.”

“And what…interesting metaphor did you make?”

“Sparks, you expect me to remember those?”

“I’ve heard a few that were rather hard to forget,” Abraham noted. “Despite a great deal of time trying.”

“Not helping,” I muttered. “Uh…mmm…Oh! I talked about using toothpaste for hair gel. No, wait. Ketchup. Ketchup for hair gel, but as I think about it, toothpaste would have been a way better metaphor. It hardens stronger, I think, and—”

“It’s him,” Tia said. “Put your guns down.”

“How did you know she was with us, kid?” said one of the Ildithians, a stocky older woman with thinning hair.

“Your shipments,” I said.

“We get shipments twice a week,” the woman said. “As do most of the sizable families in the city. How would that have led you here?”

“Well…,” I said.

Tia groaned, putting her hand to her face. “My cola?”

I nodded. I’d spotted it in the crate that day when I’d first seen Prof. Not just any cola; the brand she loved. It was expensive, unique, and worth playing a hunch on.

“I told you,” said another Ildithian, a bulky man with a face like a barbecue grill. In that it was ugly. “I told you that accepting this woman among us would be trouble. You said we wouldn’t be in danger!”

“I never said that,” replied the woman with thinning hair. “I said that helping her was something we needed to do.”

“This is worse than you think, Carla,” Tia said. “David is smarter than he might first seem, but it’s hardly outside of reason that something he discovered might be discovered by someone else.”

“Uh…,” I said.

They all looked at me.

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “Prof might know about the cola. At least, he spotted some of it in the boxes the other day.”

The people in the room froze, then started shouting to one another, sending messengers, warning their lookouts. Tia pulled off her hood, exposing her short red hair, and rubbed her forehead. “I’m a fool,” she said, barely audible over the shouted orders from Carla. “They put in their supply order and asked if I needed anything. I barely gave it any thought. A few cans of cola would be nice….”

Nearby, the ugly Ildithian man entered with the crate that had held the cola and dug through it, discovering the broken mobile. “A Knighthawk mobile?” he said. “I thought these were untraceable.”

“It’s only a shell,” I said quickly. “Convenient to put the bug in, since it had a power supply and antenna.” I wasn’t giving everything up.

The man accepted that and tossed the mobile to Carla. She removed the battery, then moved to the side of the room with several other people, where they held a quiet conference. When I stood up, ugly-face glared at me, hand on his pistol, so I sat back down.

“Tia?” I asked. It was odd to see her like this, with a rifle slung over her shoulder. She had always run operations for us from positions of relative safety; I didn’t think I’d ever seen her fire a weapon. “Why didn’t you contact us?”

“Contact you how, David?” she asked, sounding tired. She stepped closer to me and Abraham. “Jonathan had access to our mobile network and knew every one of our hideouts. I didn’t even know if you’d survived.”

“We tried contacting you in Babilar,” I said.

“I was in hiding. He…” She sighed, sitting down on the table next to us. “He was hunting me, David. He came directly to where I’d been set up during the Regalia hit, pulled the sub out of the water, and crushed it. I was out by then, thankfully. But I heard him calling for me. Pleading, begging me to help him with the darkness.” She closed her eyes. “We both knew that if this day came, I’d be in more danger than anyone else in the Reckoners.”

“I…” What did I say to that? I could imagine how it would feel to have the one you loved begging for your help, all the while knowing it was a trap. I imagined struggling to not give in, to ignore their pleas.

I wouldn’t have been strong enough. Sparks, I’d chased Megan halfway across the country, despite her threatening to kill me.