Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(69)

Prof roared in outrage. I didn’t dare look at him; he’d been intimidating enough when he hadn’t been trying to kill me. Instead, I sprinted for the open stairwell door and gunned down the surprised Epic standing inside.

Megan followed me. “Duck!” she shouted at me as people in the room behind us pulled out guns. A few fired.

I dove through the doors. Nobody outside got off more than two or three shots before an explosion rocked the room, cracking saltstone walls and sending a shower of dust raining down.

I coughed, blinking salt from my eyes, and struggled to my feet. It had been one of Megan’s grenades. I managed to grab her outstretched hand and join her in running down the steps.

“Sparks,” she said, “I can’t believe we’re alive.”

“Wiper,” I said. “Her bursts negate Epic powers, specifically external usages, like Prof’s forcefields. Her burst left him momentarily unable to trap us.”

“Could we have…”

“Killed him?” I asked. “No. Wiper would have been executed by one High Epic or another long ago if her powers were that strong. She can’t…well, couldn’t…remove an Epic’s innate protections, just fiddle with manifestations for a second or two. Forcefields, illusions, that sort of thing.”

Megan nodded. The stairwell was dark—nobody had thought to hang lights in here—but we heard when people ventured in from above. Megan pulled back against the wall, looking up. I could make her out by the light trickling down from above.

I nodded to her unasked question when she glanced at me. We needed time to plan, and that meant keeping the pressure off us. She pulled her other mini-grenade from her thigh case, then activated it and tossed it upward.

The second explosion sent chunks of saltstone tumbling down on us, and seemed to have broken an entire section of steps above. I nodded to her, and we looked down the stairwell. There was no way we’d be able to take this stairway down seventy floors without finding ourselves trapped at the bottom. We needed another way out.

“David?” Cody’s voice. “I spotted some explosions up there. Y’all all right?”

“No,” I said over the line, “we’ve been compromised.”

Abraham swore softly in French. “We left the backup equipment, David. Where are you?”

David and Mizzy had brought extra wire climbers, in case there were more prisoners than Tia—or in case Megan and I joined them. Mission parameters called for emergency equipment to be left behind, just in case.

“We’re right by the door to floor seventy,” I said. “Where’s the equipment?”

“Black backpack,” Abraham said, “hidden in the air vent near the service elevator. But David, that level was flooding with guards when we were leaving.”

It would also be the same floor where Tia had given them the slip to go after Prof’s data. I wasn’t sure I could save her though. Sparks. I wasn’t sure I could save myself at this point.

“Radio chatter went silent right after Abraham was spotted,” Cody said. “They must have some kind of secure signal to use in emergencies. And they won’t be using Knighthawk mobiles, you can bet your kilt on that.”

Great. Well, at least with that pack, Megan and I had a chance. My back to the wall beside the door onto the seventieth floor, I took out my mobile. Its light bathed us as we examined the map that Cody helpfully sent of this level. We were marked as a green dot; the elevator, red.

That red dot was halfway across the sparking building. Lovely. I memorized the route—noticing Prof’s chambers. We’d travel close to it, down a hallway right outside his suite.

I glanced at Megan, and she nodded. We slid the door open and Megan leaped out, gun ready, checking right and then left. I followed, keeping watch down the right hallway as she scouted ahead to the left. A string of lightbulbs hung along the ceiling, revealing absurdly beautiful waves of red salt shot through the otherwise black and grey walls. It looked like a pigeon on fire.

I exhaled. No guards yet. The two of us continued down the left hallway, passing closed doors that I knew led into luxurious apartments. By the time we’d reached the end of the hall, I was feeling pretty good about our chances. Maybe the guards had all been pulled out to search other floors or to protect Prof upstairs.

Then the wall about ten feet in front of us disintegrated.

We stumbled back as the night wind whipped in through a new gap in the outside wall of the building, blowing in more salt dust from seventy floors up in the air. I raised my hand against the salt, blinking.

Prof hovered outside on a glowing green disc. He stepped off it and into the building, feet crunching on salt dust. Megan cursed, backing away, gun out in front of her. I remained in position and searched Prof’s face, hoping for some sign of warmth; pity, even. I found only a sneer.

He raised his hands at his sides, summoning lances of green light—spears of forcefield to impale us. In that moment, I felt something unexpected.

Pure anger.

Anger at Prof for not being strong enough to resist the darkness. The emotion had been hidden within me, tucked away behind a series of rationalizations: He’d saved Babilar. Regalia had manipulated him into his fall. The things he did weren’t his fault.

None of that stopped me from being angry—furious—at him anyway. He was supposed to be better than this. He was supposed to have been invincible!