Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(91)

I yawned again and rubbed my fingernail on the rooftop’s saltstone rim in front of me. Curiously, our warehouse was still growing. The changes were minute, but looking closely I could see that vines as thin as pencil lines were growing along the saltstone, as if carved by an invisible hand.

The city’s major changes happened on the first and last days of a building’s life, but the times between weren’t static. Tiny ornamentations often popped up, ones that would be gone in another day or two, weathered away by the inevitable decay that was this city’s infinite cycle.

The alarm on my rifle buzzed again, and I looked through the scope at the map. The sound was coming from on top of our warehouse, and a moment later I heard footsteps grinding on the saltstone. They came from the direction of the staircase from the building below, the one that led from the loft to the roof. It was likely one of my team. Still, I carefully slipped my mobile out the side of the sniper hole, using its camera—which had a feed to the scope—to see who was up there.

It was Larcener.

I hadn’t been expecting that. I couldn’t recall him setting foot outside his room at any of the three bases, except during times when we’d needed to transition from one to the other. He stood with his hand shading his face, scowling at the distant sunrise.

“Larcener?” I asked, crawling back out of the sniper hole, rifle in tow. “Is everything all right?”

“People enjoy these,” he said.

“What?” I asked, following his gaze. “Sunrises?”

“They always talk about the sunrise,” he said, sounding annoyed. “How beautiful it is, blah blah. Like each one is some unique wonder. I don’t see it.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m increasingly certain,” he said dryly, “that I’m the only one on this planet who isn’t.”

“Then you must be blind,” I said, looking toward the sunrise. As sunrises went, it wasn’t much. It didn’t have clouds to reflect off, and today it was pretty much uniformly one color instead of spanning the spectrum.

“A ball of fire,” he said. “Garish orange. Harsh light.”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “Amazing.” I thought of the years in Newcago’s darkness, when we’d judged the time of day by the dimness of the lights. I thought of emerging to an open sky for the first time since my childhood, watching the sun come up and bathe everything in warmth.

The sunrise didn’t need to be beautiful to be beautiful.

“I come look at them sometimes,” Larcener said, “just to see if I can pick out what everyone else seems to see.”

“Hey,” I said. “How much do you know about the way this city grows?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it’s interesting,” I said, kneeling down. “Do you see this vinework? It’s still growing. Is that because the original warehouse had this pattern in its brick and wood? I mean, it wouldn’t make much sense if it did, but the other option would be that the powers are making art here. Isn’t that odd?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

I looked at him. “You don’t know, do you? You absorbed this power when you took over the city, but you don’t know how it works.”

“I know that it does what I want. What else matters?”

“Beauty,” I said, rubbing my finger along one of the vines. “My father always said that the Epics were wonderful. Amazing. A glimpse of something truly divine, you know? It’s easy to pay attention to the destruction, like what Obliteration did to Kansas City. But there’s beauty too. It almost makes me feel bad to kill Epics.”

He sniffed disdainfully. “I see through your act, David Charleston.”

“My…act?” I stood back up and turned toward him.

“The act of despising Epics,” he said. “You hate them, yes, but as the mouse hates the cat. The hate of envy. The hate of the small who wishes to be great.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Silly?” Larcener asked. “You think it isn’t obvious? A man does not study, learn, obsess as you have because of hatred. No, these are the signs of lust. You have sought a father among the Epics, a lover among them.” He stepped toward me. “Admit it. You want nothing more than to be one of us.”

“I loved Megan before I realized what she was,” I said, teeth clenched, shocked at the sudden anger I felt. “You don’t know anything.”

“Don’t I?” he said. “I’ve watched people like you so many times—you see the truth of men manifest in those first moments, David. New Epics. They murder, they destroy, they show what every man would do if his inhibitions were removed. Men are a race of monsters, inefficiently chained. That’s what’s inside you. Deny it, I dare you. Deny it, man who presumes to know Epics better than he knows himself!”

I didn’t dare. I spun from him and climbed back into the sniper nest to finish my shift. Eventually, he grumbled behind me and left.

Hours passed. I couldn’t shake the things Larcener had said, though I tried. As noon approached, and the time for my shift to end, I found myself fixating on something he’d said to me.

Man who presumes to know Epics better than he knows himself…