leader of the team. Not as this figure of lines and muscles, cut of blackness and shadow.
“Do you realize how dangerous this talk of yours is?” he asked softly. “For me?”
“What?”
“Your talk of good Epics. It gets inside my brain, like maggots eating at the flesh, worming their way toward my core. I decided long ago—for my sanity, for the world itself—that I could not use my powers.”
I felt cold.
“But now, here you come. Talking about Firefight, and how she lived among us for months, using her powers only when necessary. It starts me wondering. I could do it too, couldn’t I? Aren’t I strong? Don’t I have a handle on it? When you left me yesterday, in the room by myself, I started creating forcefields again. Little ones, to bottle up chemicals, to glow and give me light. I keep finding excuses to use them, and now I’m planning to use my powers to stop Obliteration—create a shield bigger than any I’ve created in years.”
He stepped forward and grabbed me by the front of my shirt again. He yanked me close.
“It’s not working,” Prof hissed at me. “It’s destroying me, step by step. You are destroying me, David.”
“I …” I licked my lips.
“Yes,” Prof whispered, dropping me. “We tried this once. Me. Abigail. Lincoln. Amala. A team, just like in the movies, you know?”
“… And?”
He met my gaze in the gloom. “Lincoln went bad—you call him Murkwood these days. He always did love those sparking books. I had to kill Amala.”
I swallowed.
“It doesn’t work, David,” Prof said. “It can’t work. It’s destroying me. And …” He took a deep breath. “It has already destroyed Megan. She texted this morning. She wants to meet with you again. So at least something good will come out of this.”
“No!” I said. “You’re not—”
“We’ll do what we do, David,” Prof said quietly. “There will be a reckoning.”
I felt a mounting horror. I had an image of Sourcefield powerless in the deluge of Kool-Aid, struggling with the bathroom door, looking back at me with pleading in her eyes. Only in my mind, she had Megan’s face.
A pulled trigger.
Red mixing with red.
“Please,” I said, frantic, scrambling for Prof. “Don’t. We can think of something else. You heard about the nightmares. Is that what happens to you? Tell me, Prof. Was Megan right? Do they have something to do with weaknesses?”
He took me by the arm and shoved me backward. “I forgive you,” he said. Then he walked toward the doorway.
“Prof?” I demanded, following him toward the door. “No! It—”
Prof raised a hand absently and a forcefield sprang into place in the doorway, separating us.
I pressed my palms on it, watching Prof walk down the hallway. “Prof! Jon Phaedrus!” I pounded on the forcefield, for all the good that did.
He stopped, then looked back at me. In that moment, his face in shadows, I didn’t see Prof the leader—or even Prof the man.
I saw a High Epic who had been defied.
He turned and continued down the hallway, vanishing from my sight. The forcefield remained. If the jackets were any guide, it could stay in place as long as it was needed, and Prof could travel quite a distance without it vanishing.
A short time later I spotted the sub in the enormous window, passing in the dark water. They left me without my mobile, the spyril, or any way to escape.
I was alone.
Just me and the water.
PART FOUR
40
I spent the next hour or so slumped at Tia’s desk in the meeting room, the huge window looming over me like a roommate who just heard you unwrap a bag of toffee-pulls. I stood up and began pacing, but moving only reminded me of what the team would be doing out there. Running, fighting for their lives. Trying to save the city.
And here I was. Benched.
I looked up at Prof’s forcefield. I couldn’t help feeling that Prof specifically wanted me out of the way for this operation—that catching me with Megan was an excuse, not a reason.
Megan. Sparks! Megan. He wouldn’t really kill her, would he? My thoughts kept turning back to her over and over, like a penguin who couldn’t be convinced that these plastic fish weren’t real. She’d trusted me. She’d told me her weakness. Now Prof might kill her because of it.
I hadn’t completely sorted out my emotions regarding her. But I was sure I didn’t want her to get hurt.
I stalked back to the desk and sat, trying to keep my eyes off that dominating