Two floors down, where Prof said he’d left Megan, I entered a place alight with fire. Violent flames created an alien illumination. It was a place a man like me wasn’t supposed to go.
I gritted my teeth and pushed forward, trusting in Prof’s forcefield. Part of me, deep inside, panicked at the sight of all this fire-walls burned from floor to ceiling and flames dripped down from above, Dawnslight’s trees engulfed in orange. There was no way I could survive this, could I? Prof’s forcefields were never a hundred percent effective when given to someone else.
I was too worried about Megan, too desperate and shaken, to stop moving. I shoved my way through a burning door, charred wood breaking around me. I stumbled past a hole in the floor, my arm up warding against the heat I could not feel. Everything was so bright. I could barely see in here.
I took in a breath but felt no pain from the heat. The forcefield wouldn’t cool the air as I drew it in. Why wasn’t I burning my throat with each breath? Sparks! Nothing made sense.
Megan. Where was Megan?
I stumbled through another doorway and saw a body on the floor, in the middle of a burned rug.
I cried out and ran to it, kneeling, cradling the half-burned figure, tipping the charred head to see a familiar face. It was her. I screamed, looking at the dead eyes, the burned flesh, and pulled the limp body close.
I knelt in the inferno of hell itself, the world dying around me, and knew I had failed.
My jacket was burning, and my skin was darkening from the flames. Sparks. It was killing me too. Why couldn’t I feel it?
Crying, reckless, I grabbed Megan’s body and blinked away the horrid light of fire and smoke. I stumbled to my feet and looked toward a window. The glass was melting from the heat, but there was no sign of a forcefield-Prof must have already dismissed the forcefields surrounding the room. With a yell, I ran for the window, holding her, and crashed out into the cold night air.
I fell a short distance before engaging the spyril. The single jet I had fixed still worked, fortunately, and slowed my fall until I was hovering in the air outside the burning building, holding Megan’s corpse, water jetting beneath me and smoke breaking around me. Slowly, on a single jet, I raised us to the next building over and landed before setting Megan down.
Charred flakes of blackened skin fell from my arms, revealing pink flesh beneath-which immediately became a healthy tan. I blinked at it, then suddenly realized why I hadn’t felt pain, and why I’d been able to breathe in the heated air. Prof hadn’t just given me a forcefield, he’d gifted me some of his healing powers as well. I touched my scalp and found that though my hair had burned away, it was growing back-Prof’s healing power restoring me to the way I had been before entering the inferno.
So I was safe. But what did it matter? Megan was still dead. I knelt above her, feeling helpless and alone, broken inside. I’d worked so hard, and I’d still failed.
Overwhelmed, I bowed my head. Maybe … maybe she’d lied about her weakness. She’d be okay then, right? I touched her face, turning it. Half of it was burned, but when I nudged her head to the side, I could ignore the burned part. The other side looked barely singed. Just a little ash on the cheek. Beautiful, like she was just sleeping.
Tears leaking down the sides of my face, I took her hand. “No,” I whispered. “I watched you die once. I don’t believe it happened again. Do you hear me? You aren’t dead. Or … you’re coming back. That’s it. Do you have that recording going like last time? Because if you do, I want you to know. I believe in you. I don’t think …”
I trailed off.
If she came back, it meant she’d lied to me about her weakness. I wanted that to be true, desperately, because I wanted her to be alive. But at the same time, if she’d lied about her weakness, what did that mean? I hadn’t demanded it, hadn’t wanted it, but she’d given it to me-so it seemed something sacred.
If she’d lied to me about her weakness, then I knew I wouldn’t be able to trust anything else she said. So, one way or another, Megan was lost to me.
I wiped tears from my chin, then reached out one last time to take her hand in mine. The back of the hand was burned, but not too badly, yet her fingers were stuck together in a fist. It was almost like … she was clutching something?
I frowned, prying her fingers apart. Indeed, her palm held a small object that had been melted to her sleeve: a small remote control. What in Calamity’s light? I held it up. It looked like the little remotes that came with car keys. It had melted at the bottom but looked to be in good shape otherwise. I hit the button.
Something sounded from just beneath me. A faint clicking noise, followed by some odd cracks.
I stared at the control for a long moment, then scrambled to my feet and ran to the side of the building. I pushed the button again. There. Was that … gunfire? Suppressed gunfire?
I lowered myself with the spyril to a window two stories down. There, set up in the shadows of a window, was the Gottschalk, sleek and black, with suppressor on the end of the muzzle. I moved to the side and pushed the button. It fired remotely, pelting the wall of the burning building with bullets.
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.”