Calamity (reckoners, #3)

The story takes place in a world transformed by Calamity, a mysterious red star that granted ordinary people superpowers. These super-powered individuals, called Epics, almost universally succumbed to a corrupting darkness that made them selfish and destructive. The Reckoners are a resistance group dedicated to fighting Epics. David Charleston, the young narrator, leads what may be the last surviving cell after their former leader, Jonathan Phaedrus (known as Prof), was consumed by the darkness of his own hidden Epic powers and became a dangerous tyrant.

David's team includes Megan, his girlfriend and a secret Epic with dimensional powers; Abraham, a former Canadian special forces soldier; Cody, a lanky Southerner; and Mizzy, an engineer. Their strategist, Tia, has been missing since the events in Babilar (formerly New York City). The team raids the Knighthawk Foundry, the world's primary source of Epic-derived technology. Inside, David discovers that motivators, devices that channel Epic powers into technology, are living Epic cell cultures kept in incubators. When drones corner him, Megan summons Firefight, a figure made of flames from a parallel dimension, as a distraction. The effort pushes her toward the corrupting darkness, but she fights it by grabbing a flame from David's lighter, confronting a deep personal fear. This is the team's central discovery: An Epic's weakness stems from a personal fear, and facing that fear drives back the darkness.

Dean Knighthawk, the Foundry's paralyzed owner, agrees to negotiate after witnessing Megan use her powers selflessly without succumbing. David trades the secret for equipment and the revelation that Prof has traveled to Ildithia, formerly Atlanta, a city made entirely of salt that creeps across the landscape on a seven-day cycle. David also reveals that Calamity is not a star but a person and declares his intention to kill it.

En route, the team discovers that Kansas City has been obliterated by Obliteration, a scripture-quoting Epic who destroys cities as a religious mission, this time using a device rather than appearing in person.

The team infiltrates Ildithia by posing as workers. Prof, now calling himself Limelight, has been consolidating power, while the city's previous ruler, Larcener, an Epic who can permanently steal other Epics' abilities, resists him. David witnesses Prof's brutality but also sees him struggle and turn away when a baby cries, evidence that something human persists. The team builds a hidden base, and Larcener, terrified of Prof, unexpectedly arrives and demands shelter. David allows him to stay on condition he harms no one and steals no powers.

David uses a traceable phone and Tia's distinctive preferences to locate her hiding among a local clan. Tia is alive and knows Prof's weakness. When Prof's forces surround the clan, Tia turns herself over to protect them, pressing a data chip into David's hand. She whispers the weakness: Prof's own powers. When someone wields his gifted abilities against him, they negate his protections and his wounds do not heal. Prof fears his powers because of the responsibility they carry; he gives them away compulsively, creating weapons that could destroy him.

The team launches a rescue at Sharp Tower, Prof's stronghold. Megan and David infiltrate a party under illusory disguises while Abraham and Mizzy sneak up to free Tia. At the party, David learns Prof possesses a city-destroying bomb. Abraham and Mizzy free Tia, but she breaks away to raid Prof's computer for data. Prof detects the intrusion. In the ensuing battle, Megan summons Tavi, Prof's daughter from an alternate dimension who possesses his exact powers, to fight him. Tavi's attacks confirm the weakness, but Prof does not turn from the darkness. Tia, still at the computer, is fatally wounded by stray gunfire from Prof's guards. Prof, seeing her die, vaporizes the entire tower in anguish. The team barely escapes.

Recovered data confirms Prof's plan: to make a motivator from Larcener's power-stealing ability, teleport to Calamity, and absorb all of Calamity's powers. David sends Prof's tissue sample to Knighthawk in exchange for motivators replicating Prof's three abilities: forcefields, tensor disintegration (a power that dissolves matter), and healing. Megan, disturbed by how close she came to the darkness, attempts to have Larcener steal her powers, but they resist. She realizes they are now inseparable from her identity.

The team trains in underground caverns, planning to lure Prof by activating the motivators, which cause him pain. But Prof sends an ultimatum: Surrender Larcener in two days, or he will destroy Newcago (formerly Chicago). David recognizes the deadline as a trap; Prof's forces surround them before it expires. The team descends into the caverns for a desperate battle. Abraham wields the rtich, forming shields from liquid mercury, while Cody uses a tensor suit, gear that channels Prof's destructive motivators, to shatter Prof's forcefields. After both are severely wounded, David dons the tensor suit and, together with Megan, drives Prof back.

David realizes the full truth of Prof's weakness: not merely the powers but the fear of total failure. Prof gave away his abilities because committing everything and still failing would leave no excuses. David and Megan batter Prof until he collapses, weeping, but he does not turn. David understands that overcoming the darkness requires pushing through fear to save someone, and Prof has not done so. Unable to execute Prof, David walks away. He notices the ground around him has turned to dark steel and realizes that an emerging power has been shielding him, including from the gunfire that killed Tia. Larcener unexpectedly drains all of Prof's powers, leaving him catatonic.

Obliteration teleports David and a bomb to a glass space station orbiting Earth, where Calamity resides. David discovers that Calamity is Larcener; the figure living among the team was always a projected decoy. Calamity is a being from another realm who found Earth's sensory environment agonizing; his fear infected every Epic with darkness. David detonates the bomb, but Calamity absorbs its power effortlessly. Megan arrives by forcing an alternate-dimension Obliteration to teleport her, and Prof arrives using a teleportation device built from Obliteration's powers, part of a plan originally devised by Regalia, the Epic who had ruled Babilar and engineered Prof's fall into darkness, having donned the motivator vest and genuinely faced his fear of using his full power, breaking free of the darkness at last.

Calamity destroys the teleportation device, trapping them. David asks Megan to send him and Calamity into the alternate dimension, a world without Calamity's corruption. There, the figure wearing the costume of Steelheart, the tyrannical Epic who ruled Newcago in David's world, is not Steelheart but David's father, Blain Charleston, who in this reality received the powers instead of dying. Father and son embrace, forgiving each other. Calamity, witnessing an Epic who protects rather than destroys, whispers that he understands. Upon returning to the station, he fades away, his corruption lifting from every Epic on Earth.

David discovers he possesses Steelheart's powers: energy blasts, invulnerability, flight, and the ability to transform matter into steel. He transforms the falling station and crash-lands in Australia. Prof survives, haunted but free of corruption. Obliteration warns he will continue destroying cities, having overcome the darkness years ago and acting from genuine conviction. David realizes that freedom from Calamity still allows people to choose destruction. Megan sends David back to the alternate dimension for a longer visit with his father, who offers to teach him to fly, echoing the day he taught David to ride a bicycle. Father and son begin again.