Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(87)
“In what way?” Mizzy said, passing with a sack of supplies over her shoulder.
“It’s too big,” I said. “I can’t feel like I’m hiding if I have a whole warehouse to live in.”
“One would think,” Abraham said, setting down his supplies with a clink, “you would be happy to escape the tight confines of our previous dwellings.”
I turned around and felt distinctly creeped out that—by the frail light of my mobile—I couldn’t see the edges of the room. How could I explain that sensation without sounding silly? Every Reckoner hideout had been tucked away and secure. This empty warehouse was the opposite.
Cody claimed it would be secure anyway. Our time in Ildithia had let him and Abraham do some investigating, and they’d come up with this warehouse as a spot nobody used, and one that was convenient to a spot I wanted to use in our plan to attack Prof.
I shook my head, grabbing my pack and lugging it across the room to the far wall, where Abraham and Mizzy had set theirs. Nearby, Cody had already started growing a smaller room inside the warehouse. He worked carefully with a gloved hand, stroking the salt outward like he was sculpting clay, using the trowel to make smooth surfaces. His glove hummed softly, making the crystal structure of the salt extend behind his motions. He’d only been working for about an hour, but he already had a good start on the smaller chamber.
“Ain’t nobody gonna bother us here, lad,” Cody said in a reassuring voice as he worked.
“Why not?” I asked. “Seems like a perfect place to hole up a large group of people.” I could imagine the warehouse filled with families, each around their own trash can fire. That would transform it. Rather than being tomblike and empty, it would be full of sounds and life.
“This place is too far away from the city center—it’s from the northern edge of the section of old Atlanta that became Ildithia. Why pick the cold warehouse when you can have a group of townhomes for your family?”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I said.
“Plus, a whole bunch of people got murdered in here,” Cody added. “So nobody wants to be near the place.”
“Um…what?”
“Yeah,” he said, “tragic event. Bunch of kids started playing here, but it was too close to another family’s territory. The other family got spooked, thought rivals were moving in on them, so they tossed some dynamite through the door. They say you could hear the survivors crying under the rubble for days, but a full-on war had started by then, and nobody had time to come help the poor kids.”
I regarded him, stunned. Cody started whistling and continued to work. Sparks. He had to be making that story up, right? I turned and took in the vast, empty room, then shivered.
“I hate you,” I muttered.
“Ach, now, don’t be like that. Ghosts are drawn to negative emotions, you see.”
I should have known better; talking to Cody was generally among the least productive things you could do. I went looking for Megan instead, passing Larcener, who—of course—had refused to help carry anything to the new base. He swept into Cody’s unfinished chamber and flopped down, an overstuffed beanbag materializing beneath him.
“I’m tired of being interrupted,” he said, pointing at the wall. A door appeared, propped up against it. “Work that into your construction, and I’ll put a lock on the thing. Oh, and make the walls extra thick so I don’t have to listen to the lot of you squeaking and babbling all the time.”
Cody gave me a long-suffering look, and somehow I could tell that he was contemplating walling the Epic up.
I found Megan with Mizzy, near where Abraham was unpacking his guns. I held back, surprised. Megan and Mizzy sat on the floor surrounded by our notes—some in my careful hand, others in her…well, Megan’s handwriting could be mistaken for the aftermath of a tornado in a pencil store.
Mizzy nodded as Megan pointed at one page, then gestured wildly at the sky. Megan thought a moment, then huddled over the paper and started writing.
I sidled up to Abraham. “The two of them are talking,” I said.
“You expected maybe clucking?”
“Well, shouting. Or strangulation.”
Abraham turned back to unloading equipment from his bags.
I started toward the women, but Abraham took me by the arm without looking up. “Perhaps it would be best to simply let them be, David.”
“But—”
“They are adults,” Abraham said. “They do not need you to work out their problems.”
I folded my arms, huffing. What did their being adults have to do with it? Plenty of adults did need me to work out their problems—otherwise Steelheart would still be alive. Besides, Mizzy was seventeen. Did that even count as an adult?
Abraham removed something from one of the packs and set it down with a soft thump. “Instead of poking where you aren’t needed,” he said to me, “how about helping where you are? I could use your aid.”
“Doing what?”
Abraham lifted the top of the box, revealing a pair of gloves and a jug of sparkling mercury. “Your plan is daring, as I would expect. It is also simple. The best often are. But it does require me to do things I am not sure I can do.”
He was right; the plan was simple. It was also exceptionally dangerous.
Knighthawk had used drones to explore a few of the caverns underneath Ildithia, the ones Digzone had created long ago. There were many under the region, tunneled into the rock here. Ildithia was passing over a large set of them, and we’d chosen this warehouse in part because here we could dig down into one of the caverns and practice there.