It was firing into the room where Megan had been.
“You sly woman,” I said, snatching the gun. I raised myself on a jet of water and ran back to her body and rolled it over. The heat had dried the blood, darkened the skin, but I could make out the bullet holes.
Never had I been so happy to see that someone had been shot. “You set it up so you could shoot yourself,” I whispered, “in case things went bad. So you’d reincarnate, rather than risking death by fire. Sparks, you’re brilliant!”
Emotion flooded me. Relief, exultation, amazement. Megan was the most awesome, most clever, most incredible person ever. If she’d died by bullets, she was coming back! In the morning, if what she said about her reincarnation timing was true.
I touched her face, but this … this was just a husk now. Megan, my Megan, would return. Grinning, I grabbed the Gottschalk and stood up. It felt good to have a solid rifle in my hands once again.
“You,” I said to the gun, “are officially off probation.”
Megan had survived. In the face of that, anything else seemed possible.
I could still save this city.
48
“MIZZY,” I said, holding the walkie-talkie to my ear as I ran in the direction Prof had gone. “Does this stupid thing still work?”
“Yup,” came the reply.
“Clever move, using the camera to get a message to Tia.”
“She saw?” Mizzy said with an exuberant perkiness that seemed a distinct contrast to the agony I’d been through a few moments ago.
“Yeah,” I said, charging across a bridge. “I overheard a message from Tia to Prof. That might get him to scrap the mission.”
Unlikely. But it was possible.
“You found Prof?” Mizzy asked. “What happened?”
“Too much to explain,” I told her. “They say they stormed Regalia’s supposed base—Building C, on Tia’s map—and found Obliteration glowing inside. I’m sure it’s some kind of trap.”
“That’s not Obliteration they found.”
“What? Val said she’d found him.”
“He appeared back here just after I knocked out the lights,” Mizzy said. “Nearly gave me a heart attack. Didn’t seem to notice me hiding, though. Anyway, he wasn’t glowing at all, but I got a goooood look at him. Whatever Val found, it isn’t Obliteration.”
“Sparks,” I said, trying to push myself faster. “Then what is Prof walking into?”
“You’re asking me?” Mizzy said.
“Just thinking out loud. I’m heading uptown. Can you get here? I might need fire support.”
“Already on my way,” Mizzy said, “but I’m pretty far. Any sign of Newton your direction?”
“Newton’s dead,” I said. “I managed to guess her weakness.”
“Wow,” Mizzy said. “Another one? You’re really making the rest of us look bad. I mean, dude, I couldn’t even shoot an unarmed, powerless enemy who fell in my lap.”
“Call me if you spot Obliteration,” I said, then stuffed the radio back in its bag and into my jeans pocket. My jacket was basically ruined—I’d ripped it off and left it behind—and even my jeans were ragged, burned up one side. Worse, the spyril was in shambles. I’d lost the cords on one half entirely. The other half sputtered when I used it, and I didn’t know how long I’d trust it to hold me.
I passed a rooftop, noting the number of people crowded into the jungle of a building nearby, who peered out through the windows and hid beneath fronds. My confrontation with Regalia had been pretty blatant. Even the relaxed Babilarans knew to take cover after something like that.
Trusting my memory of Tia’s maps, I continued right across a particularly ratty bridge. I had a ways to go before getting to the base, unfortunately. I ran for a short time until my path took me across a strange rooftop that consisted of a large square balcony running around the outside, with a big structure in the middle. Here I had to slow, as people had built awnings above the balcony, and the space underneath the awnings was crowded with junk. The people here hadn’t been near enough to my fighting to be afraid, so they just lounged there enjoying the night, reluctantly making room for me.
As I drew near to the other side, one particularly oblivious Babilaran stood right in the pathway. “Excuse me,” I said, leaping over a lawn chair. “Coming through.”
He didn’t move, though he did turn to me. Only then did I see that he was wearing a long trench coat, face bearing a goatee and spectacles.
Uh …
“And I looked,” Obliteration said, “and beheld a pale horse. On him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Power was given unto them to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death.”
I stumbled to a halt, unslinging my rifle.
“Do you deny,” Obliteration whispered, “that this is the end of the world, slayer of angels?”
“I don’t know what it is,” I said, “but I figure that if God really wanted to end the world, he’d be a little more efficient about it than all of this.”
Obliteration actually smiled, as if he appreciated the humor. Frost began to crust the area around him as he drew in heat, but I pulled the trigger before he could release the burst of destruction.
He vanished while my finger was still on the trigger, exploding into a glowing afterimage. I spun around, catching him as he teleported behind me. This time he looked surprised as I shot him.
As his form exploded for the second time, I threw myself off the side of the building and thrust my hand downward. Thankfully, the spyril jet worked, slowing me. I used its stream to push myself into the building through a broken window, where I ducked down and froze.
I didn’t have time to deal with Obliteration right now. Getting to Prof and the team was more important. I—
Before I could form my next thought, Obliteration exploded into existence beside me. “I read John the Evangelist’s account a dozen times before destroying Houston,” he said to me.
I yelped and shot him. He vanished, then appeared on the other side of me.
“I wondered which of his horsemen I was, but the answer was more subtle than that. I read the account too literally. There are not four horsemen; it is a metaphor.” He met my gaze. “We have been released, the ones who destroy, the swords of heaven itself. We are the end.”
I shot him, but he discharged a burst of heat so powerful that it overwhelmed Prof’s forcefield. I gasped and the bullet I’d fired melted away. I threw up my arm as the ground vaporized, then the wall, and then half my body.
For a moment, I was not.
Then my skin grew back, the bone re-formed, and my train of thought started again. It was as if I’d skipped a beat in time, just a fraction of a moment. I was left breathing deeply, sitting on the blackened floor of the room.
Obliteration cocked his head at me and frowned. Then he vanished. I rolled and fell out the window before he could return, engaging the broken spyril to stop me from dropping into the water below.
Sparks! The blast had vaporized the handjet, along with … well, half my body. I still had the streambeam, Megan’s pistol, and my rifle—and fortunately, the single jet on my foot worked as I engaged it. But my jeans were completely missing one leg, and there was no sign of the broken half of the spyril.
Without the handjet, I couldn’t maneuver. I launched myself down the street to another building and made it into a window—this one had mostly been unbroken, and crashing through it left gashes on my skin.
The wounds healed, but not as quickly as before. Things, I realized, were about to get very dangerous. When Prof granted us power via our jackets, it ran out after taking a few hits. He’d given me a big dump of healing ability, but it seemed I was reaching the limits. Not good.
I ran through the building and pulled up in a hallway. Back to a wall, I let out a huge breath.
Obliteration exploded into existence just inside the window I’d broken through. I caught sight of him, but ducked back down the hallway before he spotted me.
/> “And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering,” Obliteration called, “and laid it upon Isaac his son. He took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and they went both of them together.…”
I felt sweat trickle down the sides of my face as Obliteration stepped into the hallway and spotted me. I pulled around the corner, out of his sight.
“Why are you working with Regalia?” I called out, my back to the wall. “You congratulated me for destroying Steelheart. She’s just as bad.”
“And so I will end her eventually,” Obliteration said. “It is part of our arrangement.”
“She’ll betray you.”
“Likely,” Obliteration agreed. “But she has given me knowledge and power. She has taken a piece of my soul, and it lives on without me. And so, I become the seeds of the end of time itself.” He paused. “She had not warned me that she had persuaded the archangel to grant you a portion of his glory.”
“You can’t kill me,” I called, glancing down the hallway at him. “There’s no reason to try.”
He smiled and frost crept forward down the darkened hallway, reaching like fingers toward me, freezing a fruit that hung from a vine like a single lightbulb above. “Oh,” Obliteration continued, “I think that you’ll find a man can do many things thought impossible, if he tries hard enough.”
I had to deal with him. Quickly. I made a snap decision and withdrew the suppressor on the front of my gun. Then I ducked around the corner and shot him, making him vanish. I tossed my gun into a side room and ran the other direction. A moment later I held down the button on the remote, triggering the rifle to fire in the room.
I charged through the building to a window on the other side and ducked out onto a balcony. I turned, pressing my back against the wall, and hit the remote again, firing the gun while digging Megan’s handgun out of my pocket with my other hand.
Cursing filtered out from inside the building. Obliteration must have found the gun and not me. Now, if I could just get out of here …
Suddenly he was on the balcony beside me, letting out a wave of heat.
Damn it! I aimed and shot him with Megan’s gun to make him vanish. It worked, though I was left with charred skin.
I clenched my teeth against the pain. With the healing coming more slowly, I had time to feel the pain.
I checked Megan’s gun. Two bullets left.
What I couldn’t figure out was how he was finding me. It had happened before; he seemed to be able to track us somehow. Did he have some kind of visionary power? How did he teleport away, then know exactly where to teleport back to find me?
Then it clicked.
I turned just as Obliteration appeared beside me again. He was shouting scripture and glowing with power. I didn’t shoot him.
This time, I grabbed him.
49
IT was something I could never have managed without Prof’s powers. The heat was incredible and threatened to set me ablaze. Obliteration’s surprise, however, worked to my advantage as I raised the pistol and shot him in the head.
He teleported.
I held tight, and he took me with him.
We appeared in a dark, windowless room, and Obliteration immediately turned off his heat. He did it so quickly, it had to be something he’d trained himself to do by reflex. Wherever we were, he couldn’t destroy this place. I let go but grabbed his glasses, ripping them free as I fell backward.
Obliteration cursed, his normally calm demeanor breaking down in his outrage at being tricked. I backed away, throwing myself against the wall of the dark room. I couldn’t make out much, though the pain of the burns he’d given me made it difficult to pay attention to anything else. I’d dropped the gun, but gripped the spectacles tightly with my other hand.
He pulled his sword from beneath his trench coat and looked toward me. Sparks! He could obviously see well enough without the glasses to find me.
“All you have done,” he said, walking toward me, “is box yourself in with me.”
“What nightmares do you have, Obliteration?” I asked, slumped against the wall. Prof’s healing powers were working very, very slowly now. Gradually the feeling in my hands was returning, first as a tingling, then as sharp pinpricks. I gasped and blinked against the pain.
Obliteration had stopped advancing on me. He lowered his sword, the tip touching the floor. “And how,” he said, “do you know of my nightmares?”
“All Epics have them,” I said. I was far from certain about this, but what did I have to lose? “Your fears drive you, Obliteration. And they reveal your weakness.”
“I dream of it because it will someday kill me,” he said softly.
“Or is it your weakness because you dream of it?” I asked. “Newton probably feared being good enough because of her family’s expectations. Sourcefield feared the stories of cults, and the poison her grandmother had tried to give her. Both had nightmares.”
“And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream,” Obliteration whispered. “And I said, Here am I.… So that is the answer.” He threw his head back and laughed.
The pain in my hands only seemed to be getting worse. I let out a whimper despite myself. I was basically an invalid.
Obliteration rushed to me, kneeling, taking me by the shoulders—which were now bare, and burned. Pain flared and I cried out.
“Thank you,” Obliteration whispered. “For the secret. Give my … regards to Regalia.”
He let go, bowed his head to me, and exploded into a flash of light and ceramic.
I blinked, then curled up on the floor and trembled. Sparks! Earlier the healing had happened so quickly that it had felt refreshing, like a cool breeze. Now it happened at the speed of a drop of rain rolling down a cold pane of glass.
It seemed like an eternity that I sat there suffering the pain, but it was probably only three or four minutes. Eventually the agony subsided and, groaning, I climbed to my feet. I flexed my fingers and squeezed them into fists. My hands worked, though my skin stung as if I had a bad sunburn. That didn’t seem to be going away. The blessing that Prof had given me was no more.
I stepped forward and kicked something with my foot. Obliteration’s sword. I picked it up, but all I found of Megan’s gun was a melted piece of slag.
She was going to kill me for that.
Well, Obliteration obviously had enough control over his powers to not melt objects he preferred to keep intact. I clutched the sword as I felt my way through the small dark room to a door. I opened it; beyond was a narrow wooden stairway, framed by banisters on both walls. From what light there was I could see that I’d been in some kind of small supply room. My clothes had basically been vaporized. All I had left was Abraham’s pendant, which still hung around my neck, one side of the chain melted. I pulled it off, worried that the melted chain would snap.
I found a length of cloth—it looked like it could have once been curtains—and wrapped it around myself. Then, holding the sword in one hand, pendant in the other, I climbed the stairs slowly, step after step. As I ascended the light grew brighter, and I began to make out odd decorations on the walls.
… Posters?
Yes, posters. Old ones, from the decades before Calamity. Bright, vibrant colors, women in ruffled skirts, sweaters that exposed a shoulder. Neon on black. The posters had faded over time, but I could see they’d been hung meticulously back in the day. I stopped beside one in that silent stairwell. It showed a pair of hands holding a glowing fruit, a band’s name emblazoned at the bottom.
Where was I?
I looked up toward the light at the top of the stairs. Sweating, I continued to climb until I came to the top and to a door with a chair next to it. The door was cracked open, and I pushed it farther, revealing a small, neat bedroom decorated like the stairwell with posters on the walls, proclaiming a glorified urban life.
Two hospital-style beds lay in the room, out of place, with steel frames and sterile white sheets. One held a sleeping man in his thirties or forties hooked u
p with all kinds of tubes and wires. The other held a small wizened woman with a tub of water next to her.
Another woman wearing medical scrubs stood over this patient. As soon as I entered, the doctor looked at me and gave a little start, then walked out the way I had come in. The only sounds were those of the heart rate monitors. I stepped forward, hesitant, feeling an uncanny, surreal sensation. The aged woman, obviously Regalia, was awake and staring at something on the wall. As I entered, I noted three very large television screens.
On the center one, Prof, Val, and Exel stood just inside a room glowing so brightly I could barely make them out.
“So,” Regalia said. “You’ve found me.”
I looked to the side. A figure of her as I knew her had appeared from the tub of water. I looked back at the woman in the bed. She was far, far older than her projected self. And far more sickly. The real Regalia there breathed in and out with the help of a respirator and didn’t say anything.
“How did you get here?” the projection asked.
“Obliteration,” I said quietly. “He located me too easily each time I hid from him. I realized that he had to teleport somewhere when he vanished. It stood to reason that he was coming to you and getting instructions on where to go. He can’t see everything in the city, but you can.” I looked at the television screens. “At least, everywhere with water.” She’d set these up so she could watch other places, obviously.
But why? What was going on in that room with Prof, Val, and Exel? I looked back at Regalia.
The projection glanced at the elderly figure in bed. “It is frustrating that we still age,” she said. “What is the point of divine power if your body gives out?” She shook her head as if disgusted at herself.
I slowly moved through the room, trying to figure out what to do next. I had her, right? Of course, she had that tub of water, so she wasn’t entirely defenseless.
I stopped next to the other bed, the one with the man I didn’t recognize. I glanced down at him and noted the blanket—like a child’s blanket—draped around his shoulders. It depicted fanciful trees and glowing fruit. “Dawnslight?” I asked Regalia.