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.
“Why Calamity would choose a man in a coma to grant powers to, I have no idea,” Regalia said. “The Destroying Angel’s decisions often make so little sense to me.”
“He’s been like that for a long time, then?”
“Since his childhood,” Regalia said. “With his powers, he seems aware of the world around him at times. The rest of the time, he dreams. Trapped forever in his childhood some thirty years ago …”
“And this city becomes his dream,” I realized. “A city of bright colors, fanciful paints, of perpetual warmth and gardens inside buildings. A child’s wonder.” I thought quickly, trying to put the pieces together. Why? What did it mean? And how could I stop Regalia?
Did I need to? I looked at the aged figure, so frail. She barely seemed alive. “You’re dying,” I guessed.
“Cancer,” Regalia’s projection said with a nod. “I’ve got a few weeks left. If I’m lucky.”
“Why worry about Prof, then?” I asked, confused. “If you know you’re going to die, why go through so much effort to kill him?”
Regalia didn’t reply. While her real body rasped in the background, the projection folded her hands in front of herself and regarded the center screen. Prof stepped forward in the blaze of light. He too carried a sword, one of the types he fashioned for himself by using his tensor power. And he’d dared make fun of Obliteration for carrying one.
He strode through the light, holding a hand before himself like he was fighting against the flow of some powerful stream. What should I do? Regalia didn’t seem to care that I was here—Sparks, she probably didn’t care if I killed her or not. She was practically dead anyway.
Could I threaten her? Somehow force her not to harm Prof? The thought not only nauseated me, but looking at her frail body, I doubted I could so much as touch her without provoking some kind of terminal reaction.
The screen dimmed suddenly; the real Regalia was tapping something on her armrest, a control of some sort. It darkened the screen, adding some kind of filter to cut through the glare. It allowed me to see what Prof couldn’t, because the room he was in was so bright.
The source of the glow wasn’t a person as I had suspected. It was a box with wires coming from it.
What in the world? I was so confused I just stared at the screen.
“Did you know,” Regalia’s projection said, “that Jonathan is not so unique as he assumes? Yes, he can give away his powers. But every Epic can do that, under the right circumstances. All it takes is a bit of their DNA and the right machinery.”
They cut something outta him, Dawnslight had said. Obliteration, with bandages …
A bit of DNA and the right machinery …
A mounting horror grew within me. “You created a machine that replicates Obliteration’s powers. Like the spyril, only capable of blowing up cities! You used an Epic … to create a bomb.”
“I’ve been experimenting with this,” Regalia’s projection said, arms crossed. “The Angel of the Apocalypse is … unreasonable to work with sometimes, and I have needed my own methods for transferring powers.”
On the screen, Prof had reached the device. He touched it, then drew back, confused. I could barely make out Val and Exel behind him in the room, their hands thrown up against the light.
“Please,” I said, looking to Regalia. I advanced on her with my sword. “Don’t hurt him. He was your friend, Abigail.”
“You keep implying I want to kill Jonathan,” Regalia said. “Such a terrible assumption.” The real her pushed a button on her armrest.
On the television screen, the bomb exploded. It erupted like an opening flower—a wave of destructive energy so powerful it would annihilate Babilar entirely. I watched it bloom, radiate outward.
Then stop.
Prof stood with hands upraised like a man gripping some enormous beast, a silhouette against the red light. A sun appeared right there in the center of the room, and he held it. He contained it with such tension to his body that I felt as if I could feel him straining, working to hold it all in, not let a single bit escape.
Such power. This bomb had been charging for quite some time, it seemed. Regalia could have pulled the trigger and vaporized