She confronted us that first night expecting to find Prof there, I thought. Sure, she could have finished off most of us without a thought. But not Jonathan Phaedrus.
She knew him as an Epic. She was familiar with his powers. She had let us live, ostensibly to deliver the message that Prof was to kill her. Well, I didn’t accept that she wanted to die. But why else would she goad Prof into coming to Babilar?
Regalia knew how Sam died, I thought. In great detail. Detail that Megan was unlikely to have explained. So either she’d watched that video, or she’d been there on that night.
Could she have pulled the strings from behind the scenes, engineering Sam’s death? Or was I simply searching for ways to exonerate Megan?
I focused back on our first night in Babilar, when we had faced Obliteration. That fight had worn us out, and after we’d run, Regalia had appeared in her glory-but had been shocked that Prof wasn’t there. What if Regalia had done this all to find a way to kill Prof? Prof knew a lot about Regalia’s powers. He knew her limits, her range, the holes in her abilities. Could she have the same intelligence on him?
I suddenly imagined it all as an intricate Reckoner-style trap, one laid by Regalia to bring Prof here and eliminate him. A plot to remove one of the most powerful potential rivals to her dominance. It seemed like a tenuous connection, a stretch. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Prof was in serious danger.
Could it really be that we had not been the hunters here at all? Were we, instead, the ones being trapped?
I stood. I had to get out. Prof was probably in danger. And even if he wasn’t, I couldn’t risk him attacking Megan. I needed answers from her. I needed to talk to her about Sam, about what she’d done. I needed to know how much of what she’d told me was a lie.
And … the truth was I loved her.
Despite it all-despite the questioning, despite feeling betrayed-I loved her. And I’d be damned before I let Prof kill her.
I strode to the door and tried to pry the forcefield out of the way. I tried pushing, thumping-I even grabbed the chair from the desk and beat it against the forcefield. All, of course, had no effect.
Breathing hard from the exertion, next I tried to break the wood of the frame around the forcefield. That didn’t work either. I had no leverage and the building was too sturdy. Maybe with tools and a day or so, I could break through one of the walls into another room, but that would take way too long. There were no other exits.
Except …
I turned and eyed the large window, taller than a man and several times as wide, looking out at the ocean. It was midnight, and therefore dark, but I could see shapes shifting out there in that awful blackness.
Each time I went into the water, I felt that void trying to suck me down. Consume me.
Slowly, I walked to Tia’s desk and fished in the bottom drawer, picking up the nine-millimeter. A Walther. Good gun, one that even I’d admit was accurate. I loaded the ammo, then looked up at the window.
I immediately felt an oppressive dread. I’d come to an uneasy truce with the waters, yet I still felt like I could sense them eager to break through and crush me.
I was there again, in the blackness, with a weight on my leg towing me down into oblivion. How deep were we? I couldn’t swim up from down here, could I?
What a stupid idea. I set the gun on the desk.
But … if I stay here, there’s a good chance they both die. Prof kills Megan. Regalia kills Prof.
In the bank nearly eleven years ago, I’d cowered in fear when my father fought. He’d died.
Better to drown. I gathered up all of the emotions I felt at looking into the depths-the terror, the foreboding, the primal panic-and held them in hand. Then crushed them.
I would not be ruled by the waters. Pointedly, deliberately, I picked up Tia’s gun again and leveled it at the window.
Then I fired.
41
The bullet barely harmed the window.
Oh, it made a tiny hole, which sent out a little spiderweb of cracks-like you see in bulletproof glass that takes a slug. Only this was just a nine-millimeter, and the window in front of me had been built to withstand a bombing. Feeling stupid, I shot again. And again. I unloaded the entire magazine into the glass wall, making my ears ring.
The window didn’t break. It barely sprung a small leak. Great. Now I was going to drown in this room. Judging by the size of that leak, I only had … oh, somewhere around six months before it filled the entire place.
I sighed, slumping down in the chair. Idiot. And here I’d faced the depths, challenged my fears, and prepared myself for a dramatic swim to freedom. Instead I now had to listen to tinkling water dripping onto the wood floor-the ocean making fun of me.
I stared at it pooling on the ground and had another really bad idea.
Well, I’ve already sold the family name for three oranges, I thought. I dragged one of the room’s bookshelves over and obscured the doorway and the forcefield. Then I took out one of the desk drawers and put it under the leak to contain some of the water. A few minutes later, I had a respectable pool in there.
“Hello, Regalia,” I said. “This is David Charleston, the one called Steelslayer. I’m inside the Reckoners’ secret base.”
I repeated this several times, but nothing happened of course. We were all the way out on Long Island, well outside Regalia’s range. I’d just hoped that maybe, if she really was playing us all, Prof and Tia’s information about her range might be-
The water in my drawer started to move and shift.
I yelped, stumbling back as the little hole I’d made in the window expanded, water forcing its way through in a larger stream. It rose up, growing into a shape, then stopped flowing as color flooded the figure.
“You mean to tell me,” Regalia said, “that all this time I had my agents searching along the northern coast, when he had a sparking underwater base?”
I backed away, heart thumping. She was so calm, so certain, wearing her business suit, a string of pearls around her neck. Regalia was not out of control. She knew exactly what she was doing in this city.
She looked me up and down, as if evaluating me. Tia’s information about Regalia’s range was wrong. Maybe her powers, like Obliteration’s, had been enhanced somehow.
Everything that was happening in this city was wrong.
“So, he locked you away, did he?” Regalia asked.
“Uh …” I tried to decide how to game Regalia. If that was even possible. My vague plan of acting like I wanted to defect to her side seemed pitifully obvious now.
“Yes, you are an articulate one,” Regalia said. “Well, brains don’t necessarily accompany passion. In fact, they might often have an inverse relationship. What will Jonathan do to you, I wonder, when he finds out you’ve revealed his base to me?”
“Megan already found it,” I answered. “So far as Prof thinks, this place has been exposed and is no longer a valid base.”
“Pity,” Regalia said, looking around. “This is a fine location. Jonathan always did have a keen sense of style. He might fight against his nature, but aspects of him so blatantly show his heritage. His extravagant bases, the nicknames, the costume he wears.”
Costume? Black lab coat. Goggles in the pocket. It was a little eccentric, actually.
“Well, be quick with your request, boy,” Regalia said. “It is a busy day.”
“I want to protect Megan,” I said. “He’s going to kill her.”