“I’ve just recovered the truth about her grandparents,” Tia said with a nod. “They tried to kill her.”
“That’s sad, but …”
“They poisoned her drink.”
“Kool-Aid?”
“A generic,” Tia said, “but close enough. The grandparents were a strange pair, fascinated by cults and old stories. It was a copycat killing, or an attempted one, based on an older tragedy in South America. The important thing is that Sourcefield-rather, Emiline-was old enough at the time to realize that she’d been poisoned. She crawled out into the street when her throat and mouth started burning, and a passerby took her to the hospital. She became an Epic years later, and her weakness-”
“Was the very thing that had almost killed her,” I finished, excited. “It’s a connection, Tia.”
“Maybe a coincidental one.”
“You don’t believe that,” I said. How could she? This was another connection, a real one-like Mitosis, but even more promising. Was this where Epic weaknesses came from? Something that nearly killed them?
But how would bad rock music nearly kill a guy? I wondered. Touring, perhaps? An accident. We needed to know more.
“I think a coincidence is possible,” Tia said, then looked up and finally met my eyes. “But I also think it’s worth investigating. Nice work. How did you guess?”
“There’s got to be some logic to it, Tia,” I said. “The powers, the weaknesses, the Epics … who gets chosen.”
“I don’t know, David,” Tia said. “Does there really have to be a rationale behind it? In ancient days, when a disaster struck everyone would try to make sense of it-find a reason. Somebody’s sins. Angered gods. But nature doesn’t always have a reason for us, not the type we want.”
“You’re going to look into it, right?” I asked. “This is like Mitosis-similar at least. Maybe we can find a connection with Steelheart and his weakness. He could only be harmed by someone who didn’t fear him. Maybe in his past he was nearly killed by someone who-”
“I’ll look into it,” Tia said, stopping me. “I promise.”
“You seem reluctant,” I pressed. How could she be so skeptical? This was exciting! Revolutionary!
“I thought we were beyond this. The lorists spent the early years searching for a connection between Epic weaknesses. We decided there wasn’t one.” She hesitated. “Though I suppose that was a challenging time-when communication was difficult and the government was collapsing. We made other mistakes back then; I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised to discover we’d been too hasty in making some of our decisions.” She sighed. “I’ll look into this further, though Calamity knows I don’t have the time these days with the Regalia issue.”
“I can help,” I said, taking another step forward.
“I know you can. I’ll keep you informed of what I discover.”
I stayed where I was, stubborn not to leave so easily.
“That was a dismissal, David.”
“I-”
“The people I work with are very secretive,” Tia interrupted. “I’ve been implying to them that you should be allowed to join our ranks, but if you do you’ll have to give up on fieldwork. Having access to our knowledge necessitates preventing you from taking risks, lest you get captured and interrogated.”
I grunted, annoyed. I’d been looking forward to the chance, someday, to meet with Tia’s lorists. But I wasn’t going to give up on running point, not when there were Epics to kill. Being a lorist sounded like a job for a nerd anyway.
I sighed and retreated from the library. This left me with the same problem as before, unfortunately. What to do with myself? Tia wouldn’t let me in on the research, and Val didn’t want me nearby.
Who would have thought that living in an awesome undersea base would be so boring?
I walked slowly back toward my room. The hallway was quiet except for some echoing sounds from farther down the dark stretch. Faint, with a rasping quality, they called to me like the ding on a microwave as it finished nuking a pizza pocket. I passed door after door until I eventually reached Exel’s room. He had the door wide open, and the inside was plastered wall to wall with posters of interesting buildings. An architecture buff? I wouldn’t have guessed-but then again, I was having trouble guessing anything about Exel.
The man himself sat filling up a large chair near a small table set with an antiquated piece of machinery. He nodded to me, then continued to fiddle with the machine in front of him. It made buzzing noises.
Feeling welcome for the first time all day, I walked in and settled into a seat beside him. “A radio?” I guessed as he turned a dial.
“Specifically, a scanner,” he said.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It just lets me look for signals, mostly local ones, and see if I can hear them.”
“How … old-fashioned,” I said.
“Well, maybe not as much as you think,” he answered. “This isn’t actually the radio, just a control mechanism. We’re buried far enough underwater that I wouldn’t get good signals here; the real radio is stashed above.”
“Still-radio?” I tapped my new mobile. “We have something better.”
“And most people above do not,” Exel said, sounding amused. “You think the people partying and lounging in this city have the resources to use mobiles? Knighthawk mobiles no less?”
I hesitated. Mobiles had been common in Newcago, where Steelheart had had a deal with the Knighthawk Foundry. While that sounded altruistic of him, there was a simpler truth to it. With everyone carrying mobiles, he could force upon them “obedience programs” and other warnings to keep them in line.
Apparently Regalia didn’t have something similar.
“Radios,” Exel said, tapping his receiver. “Some things just work. There is elegance in simplicity. If I were up there living a relatively normal life, I’d want a radio instead of a mobile. I can fix a radio; I know how it works. Calamity only knows what goes on inside one of those modern devices.”
“But how do the radios get power?” I asked.
Exel shook his head. “Radios just work here in Babilar.”
“You mean …”
“No explanation for it,” he said with a shrug of his ample shoulders. “Nothing else works without a power source-blenders, clocks, whatever you try. Won’t work. But radios turn on, even if you don’t have batteries in them.”
That gave me a shiver. Even more than the strange lights in the darkness, this creeped me out. Ghostly powered radios? What was happening in this city?
Exel didn’t seem bothered. He tuned to another frequency, then took out his pen, leaning in, writing. I scooted my chair closer. From what I could tell, he was just listening to random chatter of townspeople. He made a few notes, then moved on. He listened to this frequency for a while without making notes before going to the next one, where he scribbled things down furiously.
He really seemed to know what he was doing. His notes were neat and efficient, and he seemed to be searching to see if some of the people might be speaking in code. I took one of his sheets off the table; he glanced at me but didn’t stop me.
It looked like he was also scanning for mentions of Regalia and stories regarding her direct appearance. Most of what he had was hearsay, but I was impressed with the detail of the notes, and with the conclusions he was drawing. Some of the notes indicated the frequency had been muffled, or static-filled, but he’d managed to re-create entire conversations-the words he actually heard underlined, the rest filled in.
I looked up from the sheet. “You’re a mortician,” I said, skeptical.
“Third generation,” he said proudly. “Was there for my own grandfather’s embalming. Stuffed the eyes with cotton myself.”
“They teach this in mortician school?” I said, holding up the paper.