Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(97)

“David, lad,” Cody said, coughing. “I’m…I’m not healing….”

I felt an icy chill. I focused on Cody, and it was true. He crawled through dust in the trench Prof had made, bleeding from both shoulders, where he’d been struck by light made solid. Why wasn’t the harmsway working?

“Got it,” Knighthawk said. “Kid, this is trouble.” He sent to my screen an image from the camera footage from moments earlier. It showed a blur moving away from Cody, small like a mouse. Or a tiny person.

“Loophole is here!” I said over the line. “He didn’t come alone! Warning, there’s another Epic in the cavern.” I hesitated. “Sparks, she unhooked one of the motivators from Cody’s vest and ran off with it.”

“Cameras have infrared,” Knighthawk said, taking control of several of them. He sounded excited. Engaged, even. “Overlaying now…There! I’ve got her. Ha. Think you can hide from my all-seeing eyes, little Epic? You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

Knighthawk zoomed one of our cameras toward a tiny figure hiding in the shadows near one of the cavern’s many broken chunks of rock. She wore jeans, goggles, and a tight shirt. I didn’t spot the motivator, but she’d likely shrunk it to a size small enough to carry.

“Megan!” I said as Prof rounded the false cave-in. “You and Abraham are going to have to handle him on your own for a time. Keep him distracted; he’s going to try to finish off Cody. Mizzy, go help get Cody bandaged. Don’t let him bleed out!”

A series of “rogers” sounded. I started wriggling out of my stone confines.

“Should have known,” Knighthawk said over the line. “Of course Jonathan came with a plan. He may not have realized I used multiple motivators on this version of the suit though, so his orders to Loophole weren’t complete enough.”

“I need you to run ops, Knighthawk.”

“Fine,” he said, reluctant. “You’re going to take on the mini-Epic by yourself?”

I squeezed out of my cubby and rolled to my feet, Gottschalk to my shoulder. “She’s not a High Epic. A single bullet will kill her.”

“Yeah. Hit her with a bullet the same size as she is—I’m sure that won’t harm the motivator she’s carrying.”

I grimaced as I crept down the hallway. It was a valid point. “Keep an eye on her for me.”

“Already done. One of the cameras is set to auto-track her. Jonathan’s talking again.”

“Patch him through to me, but not the others. I don’t want them distracted. And Knighthawk…keep them alive for me, please.”

“I’ll try. Get that motivator, kid. Fast.”





“I didn’t want to be here.”

I had to listen to Prof as I crept back up the tunnel, lit by the sickly green light of glowsticks.

“I wanted to remain quiet,” Prof continued, grunting as he fought. “I didn’t want to push myself, or my teams, too hard. This is your fault, David. Everything that happens here is because of you.”

I couldn’t see the battle. I still wore the domed headset, but my task was now Loophole and that motivator. I had one screen fixed on the map of the caverns with her location pinpointed; another showed the view from the camera watching her. They hovered at the edges of my vision; I needed the area right in front of my eyes clear.

I walked carefully, as if preparing to join the battle with Prof. I didn’t want to alert Loophole.

“Tia…,” Prof whispered. “You drove me to this, David. You and your idiot dreams. You upset the balance. You should have accepted that I was right.”

I gritted my teeth, face flushing. I couldn’t let him get to me. But his words were dangerous for reasons he likely didn’t know. Last time I’d been in a fight, back in Sharp Tower…things had happened.

Something lurked inside me. And so, while Prof’s belittling voice in my ears was abrasive, Larcener’s taunts from the rooftop earlier were what truly dug into me.

You see the truth of men manifest in those first moments, David…New Epics. They murder, they destroy, showing what every man would do if his inhibitions were relaxed. Men are a race of monsters, inefficiently chained….

Loophole. I had to focus on Loophole. She was the problem right now! What could she do?

She…she had slightly augmented speed and could alter the size of things, herself included. She had to touch them first though. Her size manipulation lasted a few minutes if left unchecked—she couldn’t do it permanently, but she could shrink something and leave it. It would return to normal on its own later, or if she touched it and changed its size again.

Fortunately, unlike other similar Epics, when she shrank she didn’t retain her strength or mass. She was fast, clever, and dangerous—but not a High Epic. And her weakness…I strained trying to remember…her weakness was sneezing. Her powers disappeared if she sneezed. I had explicit records of that.

Well, just because she wasn’t a High Epic didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. I reached the part of the corridor where she was hiding, then continued down it toward the others, pretending I didn’t know she was there. Light shone down from the hole Prof had made in the ceiling. I grabbed a handful of rock dust off the ground, shoving it into my pocket. Distant crashes and shouts echoed from ahead. I resisted the urge to switch camera views and check in.