of the soot in the day since I’d dropped them off here in the rotting remains of a small island off the coast of New York, but they seemed to have gained a healthy sense of self-preservation during that time. It must not have been buried very deep.
“Thank you,” a woman named Soomi said, bowing. Though it was evening, their spraypainted clothing didn’t glow here, so it just looked dirty. Old.
“Just remember our deal,” I said.
“We didn’t see anything,” she promised. “And we won’t return to the city for at least a month.”
I nodded. Soomi and her people believed that the Reckoners had saved them using secret forcefield technology. They weren’t to tell anyone what they’d seen, but even if it got out, hopefully the stories wouldn’t implicate Prof as an Epic.
Soomi picked up one of the last boxes and joined the others, hurrying back toward a group of ramshackle buildings with overgrown grounds. It was best not to be seen with food, in case scavengers saw you. Fortunately, the only way off this island was a bridge just to the north, so hopefully they would be safe here.
My heart wrenched to see them without homes or possessions, cast adrift, but this was all we could do. And it was maybe more than we should have done—we’d needed to have Cody airlift us supplies out of Newcago to provide rations for these people.
I turned and made my way down an empty, broken street, rifle over my shoulder. It was a short walk to the old dock where we’d parked the submarine. Val lounged, seated on top of it. She’d stacked the boxes of food on the dock, while the refugees and I had carried them inside.
I hesitated on the dock, looking out toward Babilar to the southwest. It glowed with surreal colors, like a portal to some other dimension. Though the water extending out before me looked flat, I knew that it sloped upward slightly. Regalia had sculpted this city’s look intentionally; she even maintained different water levels in different parts of Babilar, creating handcrafted neighborhoods of rooftops and sunken streets.
She does care, I thought. She built this city like she intended to stay here, to rule. She made it inviting.
So why destroy it now?
“Coming?” Val called to me.
I nodded and crossed the dock and scrambled aboard the sub—this area was outside of Regalia’s range of sight, theoretically, so we could let it surface in the open.
“Hey,” Val said as I passed, “when are you going to tell me how you saved them? For real, I mean.”
I hesitated at the hatch, light from down inside rising to bathe me. “I used the spyril,” I said.
“Yeah, but how?”
“I put out the fire in a room,” I said, using the lie Tia and I had prepared. We’d been expecting Val or Exel to prod eventually. “I was able to crowd everyone into the same room, then keep them safe and quiet until Regalia thought everyone was dead. Then I snuck them out.”
It was a good enough lie. Val didn’t know that the building had basically collapsed once the water came rushing back in. It was plausible that I’d have been able to get the people out.
Good lie or not, I hated telling it. Couldn’t Prof be straight with the members of his own team?
Val regarded me carefully, and though her face was too much in shadows to read, I felt like the only rotten strawberry in a line of strawberries. Finally, she shrugged. “Well, nice work.”
I hurriedly slipped down into the submarine. Val followed, then locked the hatch and moved to the front seat. She didn’t believe what I’d told her, not completely. I could read it in the stiff way she sat down, the too-controlled sound of her voice as she called Tia and said we were on our way back to the supply dump to get the next set of boxes, which would restock our base.
I fidgeted, and we moved under the waves and traveled for a while in silence. Finally, I forced myself to get into the copilot’s seat next to Val at the front. I still knew next to nothing about Val. Maybe some disarming conversation would ease her suspicion about what had happened the day before.
“So,” I said, “I notice you prefer a Colt 1911. A good, time-tested gun. Is that a Springfield frame and slide set?”
“Don’t know, honestly,” she said, glancing at the gun she wore on her hip. “Sam gave it to me.”