Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

“We’ve got a few tricks left,” Cody said, “but it’s getting frantic out here. Abraham did manage to get in through the roof though. The two of you should grab what you can find and get out ASAP.”


“Roger,” Abraham said over the line.

“Got it,” I said, glancing around the room I’d entered. It was completely dark, but judging by the sterile smell, it was some kind of lab chamber. I flipped on my night-vision scope and gave the place a quick once-over.

Turned out I was surrounded by bodies.





I choked back a cry of alarm. Rifle to my shoulder, I scanned the room again, my heart thumping. It was filled with long metal tables and sinks, interspersed with several large tubs, and the walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves packed with jars of all sizes. I leaned in to get a better look at those jars on a shelf near me. Body parts. Fingers. Lungs. Brains. All human, according to the labels. This had to be a laboratory where bodies were dissected.

I shoved down my nausea and focused. Would they keep motivators in a room like this? Anything I found that used Epic technology would need a motivator to work—the mission would be useless unless I found a stash of those.

I started looking for them—they’d be small metal boxes, about the size of a mobile’s battery. Sparks. Everything was bathed in the green of the night vision, and through the tunnel view of my rifle’s scope, the place took on another level of eerie.

“Yo,” Mizzy’s voice said on the line, and I jumped again. “David, you there?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Fighting on my side has moved over toward Megan, so I’ve got a breather,” Mizzy said. “Cody told me to see if you needed anything.”

I wasn’t certain what she could do from such a distance, but it was good to hear someone’s voice. “I’m in some kind of lab,” I answered. “It has shelves full of body parts in jars and…” I felt nauseous again, swinging my gun to get a better look through the scope at the tubs nearby. They each had a glass lid, and they were full. I gagged and recoiled. “…and some vats filled with floating chunks of something. It’s like a bunch of cannibals were getting ready to go bobbing for apples. Adam’s apples, at least.”

I reached out and opened a cupboard, where I found an entire shelf of pickled hearts. As I moved onward, my foot touched something that squished. I jumped back, gun toward the floor, but it was only a wet rag.

“Mizzy,” I whispered, “this place is super creepy. Think I’m safe to turn on a light in here?”

“Oh, that’d be waaaay smart. The people with a hyperadvanced bunker and flying attack drones aren’t going to have security cameras in their labs. Nope. Not a chance.”

“Point taken.”

“Or they’ve already spotted you and a squad of death-copters is heading your way. But in case you’re not trapped and about to be executed, I’d err on the side of being careful.”

She said it all in an upbeat, almost excited voice; Mizzy could be perkier than a sack of caffeinated puppies. Usually that was encouraging. Usually I wasn’t on edge from sneaking through a room full of half corpses.

I knelt, touching the rag on the floor. That it was still wet might imply someone had been working in here overnight, and had been interrupted by our attack.

“Anything you can swipe?” Mizzy asked.

“Not unless you want to stitch yourself up a new boyfriend.”

“Ew. Look, just see what you can grab and get out. We’re already over time.”

“Right,” I said, opening another cabinet. Surgical utensils. “I’ll hurry. It— Wait a sec.”

I froze, listening. Had I heard something?

Yes, a kind of rattling. I tried not to imagine a corpse rising out of one of those tubs. The sound had come from near the door I’d entered through, and a tiny light flicked on suddenly near the floor in the same area.

I frowned, inching toward it. It was a small drone, flat and round, with whirring brushes along its bottom. It had come in through a little flap near the door—kind of like a cat door—and was buffing the floor.

I relaxed. “Only a cleaning bot,” I said over the line.

The bot immediately went silent. Mizzy started to reply, but I lost the words as the little cleaning bot reengaged and zipped back toward its door. Throwing myself to the ground, I stretched out a hand and barely managed to grab the little drone before it could scoot out through the small hinged flap.

“David?” Mizzy asked, anxious. “What was that?”

“Me being an idiot,” I said with a wince. I’d knocked my elbow on the ground as I dove. “The bot recognized something was wrong and made a break for it. I caught it before it got out though. It might have warned someone.”

“Might anyway,” Mizzy said. “It could have a link to the place’s security.”

“I’ll be quick,” I said, climbing to my feet. I set the cleaning bot upside down on a shelf near a rack of blood pouches hanging in a small cooler with a glass door. Several more were lying out in the open on the counter. Ick.

“Maybe some of these body parts are from Epics,” I said. “I could take them, and we’d have DNA samples. Could we use those?”