Dreadnought by April Daniels

Author:April Daniels [Daniels, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682300671
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2016-01-22T05:00:00+00:00

• • •

The shattered windows are gaping holes in the building’s side. The shredded ribbons of the blinds wave gently in the night breeze. Calamity is rigid under my hands. I’m carrying her by her armpits, and since we left the ground she hasn’t stopped praying under her breath. We glide into the building and I gently set her down before touching down next to her.

“There,” I say. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Maybe we can find another way down.” Sarah is not doing the old-timey voice right now.

Shattered glass cracks under our feet. Calamity clicks her flashlight on again and plays the red beam across the room. There’s burnt-out office furniture and smashed computers everywhere. Everything within six feet of the windows is still damp from the rain.

“What are we looking for?” I ask.

“This was your brilliant notion,” says Calamity. “You tell me.”

“Um. Well, let’s see what she was doing up here.”

Deeper into the building, past shattered cubicles and blasted walls, we start seeing evidence of workshops and laboratories. The rubble is inches thick on the ground, but in the few clear spots we can see sooty linoleum on the floor. The twisted mass of something that might have once been an MRI machine lies broken on the ground.

My heart sinks. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a big flashing sign saying THIS WAY TO THE CLUES. But I owe Dreadnought so much. Even if I’m not good enough to make good on the debt, I’ve got to try.

“Look here,” says Calamity, as she pulls something from the rubble. It’s a complicated tangle of wires that are studded throughout a piece of cloth.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, but there’s about ten of them here in this little chasm.” The way two broken walls lean against each other has created a sort of cave from which Calamity pulled the…thingy thing. She unfolds the cloth entirely, and it appears to be a skullcap of some kind. “Was that an MRI machine in that last room?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then between this and that I think we can make a leap and say these fellas were interested in brains.”

The facts loom over me, incomprehensible and yet somehow urgent. It feels like getting hit with a final exam I haven’t studied for. “So first she knocks over a lab studying bits of an asteroid, and then she hits a place doing neurology research. How does that make sense?”

Calamity shrugs. “Maybe she’s got attention deficit disorder?”

On a hunch I take a look at the lattice around here, and the bottom falls out of my stomach. “Calamity, something’s wrong here.”

A revolver is in her hand almost before I’m finished speaking. “What is it?”

“The lattice…it’s been torn.”

“What in hell is that supposed to mean?” asks Calamity, tension unwinding from her shoulders.

“I mean…I can sort of see the back side of reality, like it’s a net of light, and everything is just a tangle in the lattice. It’s where I get my powers. I’ve never seen the end of a thread before but now…” But now there’s a big tear, right across the floor.

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