point I stepped out to go to the bathroom and passed her working in the supply room. She looked at me and her smile faded. I could see anger and disgust in her eyes. She turned back to packing the supplies and didn’t say a word.
And so, I spent the time lying on my bed, alternatingly ashamed and furious. Was I going to get kicked out of the Reckoners? The possibility made me sick. And what of Megan? The things Prof said … well, I didn’t want to believe them. I couldn’t believe them. At the very least, I didn’t want to think about them.
Unfortunately, thinking about Prof made me furious. I had betrayed the team, but I couldn’t help feeling that I’d been betrayed even more by him. I’d been set up to fail.
When the next morning came, I woke up to noises. Preparations. The plan moving forward. I stewed in my room for a time, but eventually I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed answers. I pushed myself off the bed and went out to the hallway. I braced myself as I passed the storage room, but Mizzy wasn’t there. I heard noises from the far end of the hallway behind me, in the room with the sub. That would be Val and her team packing for the mission.
I didn’t go that way. I wanted Prof and Tia, and I found them in the meeting room with the glass wall. They looked up at me, then Tia glanced at Prof.
“I’ll talk to him,” Prof said to Tia. “Go join the others. We’ll be a man short on this mission, and I want you running operations from inside the sub. Our base is compromised. We won’t be returning here.”
Tia nodded, picking up her laptop, and walked out. She gave me a glance but nothing else as she shut the door. That left only me and Prof, lit by the lamp on Tia’s desk.
“You’re going on the mission,” I said. “The hit on Newton, to expose Regalia.”
“Yes.”
“A man short,” I said. “You’re not taking me?”
Prof didn’t say anything.
“You let me practice with the spyril,” I said. “You let me think I was part of the mission here. Was I really just bait the whole time?”
“Yes,” Prof said quietly.
“Is there more to the plan, then?” I demanded. “Things you haven’t told me? What’s really going on here, Prof?”
“We haven’t kept much from you,” he said with a quiet sigh. “Tia’s plan to find Regalia is legitimate, and it’s working. If we can get Regalia to appear in the region Tia wants, it will leave us with only a few buildings Regalia could be hiding in. I’m going to run point, execute the plan against Newton. Chase her through the city, tempt Abigail to appear. If she does, we’ll know her base location. Val, Exel, and Mizzy will move at Tia’s word and run an assault to kill her.”
“Sounds like you could use another point man,” I said.
“Too late for that,” Prof said. “I suspect it will take time for us to rebuild trust. On both sides.”
“And Obliteration?” I asked, stepping forward. “There’s been almost no talk about how to deal with him! He’s a bomb—he’s going to destroy the entire city.”
“We don’t need to worry about that,” Prof said. “Because we already have a way to stop Obliteration.”
“We do?”
Prof nodded.
I flogged my brain like a dog who had made a mess on the carpet, but I came up with nothing. How would we stop Obliteration? Was there something they hadn’t told me? I looked at Prof.
And then I saw it in his grim expression, his tightly drawn lips.
“A forcefield,” I realized. “You enclose him in a bubble of it as he releases the destructive force.”
Prof nodded.
“All that heat has to go somewhere,” I said. “You’ll just be bottling it up.”
“I can expand the shield,” he said, “projecting the heat away from the city. I’ve practiced it.”
Wow. But, then, was this really anything more than he’d done in saving me from the blast that killed Steelheart? He was right. We’d had the answer to at least delaying Obliteration right here all along. The heat probably wouldn’t kill Obliteration himself—he seemed immune to his own powers—but it would slow him. And who knew, maybe a focused and concentrated blast reflected back upon him would actually be able to destroy him. It was at least worth trying.
I walked forward, approaching Prof, who still sat at Tia’s desk before the wall of dark water.