Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

14

“NOW, y’all gotta be gentle with her,” Cody said. “Like caressing a beautiful woman the night before the big caber toss.”

“Caber toss?” I said as I raised my hands toward the chunk of steel on the chair in front of me. I sat cross-legged on the oor of the Reckoner hideout, Cody on the ground beside me, his back to the wall and legs stretched out in front of him. It had been a week since the hit on Fortuity.

“Yeah, caber toss,” Cody said.

Though his accent was purely Southern—and strongly that—he always talked as if he were from Scotland. I guessed his family was from there or something. “It’s this sport we had back in the homeland. Involved throwing trees.”

“Little saplings? Like javelins?”

“No, no. The cabers had to be so wide that your ngers couldn’t touch on the other side when you reached your arms around them.

We’d rip ’em out of the ground, then hurl them as far as we could.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Bonus points if you could hit a bird out of the air,” he added.

“Cody,” Tia said, walking by with a sheaf of papers, “do you even know what a caber is?”

“A tree,” he said. “We used them to build show houses. It’s where the word cabaret came from, lass.” He said it with such a straight face that I had trouble determining if he was sincere or not.

“You’re a bu oon,” Tia said, sitting down at the table, which was spread with various detailed maps that I hadn’t been able to make sense of. They appeared to be city plans and schematics, dating from before the Annexation.

“Thank you,” Cody said, tipping his camo baseball cap toward her.

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Oh, you didn’t mean it as one, lass,” Cody said. “But the word buffoon, it comes from the word buff, meaning

strong

and

handsome, which in turn—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be helping David learn the tensors?”

she interrupted. “And not bothering me.”

“It’s all right,” Cody said. “I can do both. I’m a man of many talents.”

“None

of

which

involve

remaining silent, unfortunately,”

Tia muttered, leaning down and making a few notations on her map.

I smiled, though even after a week with them I wasn’t certain what to make of the Reckoners. I’d imagined each pod of them as an elite special forces group, tightly knit and intensely loyal to one another.

There was some of that in this group; even Tia and Cody’s banter was

generally

good-natured.

However, there was also a lot of individuality to them. They each kind of … did their own thing. Prof didn’t seem so much a leader as a middle manager. Abraham worked on the technology, Tia the research,

Megan

information

gathering, and Cody odd jobs— lling in the spaces with

mayonnaise, as he liked to call it.

Whatever that meant.

It was bizarre to see them as people. A part of me was actually disappointed. My gods were regular humans who squabbled, laughed, got on one another’s nerves, and—in Abraham’s case— snored when they slept. Loudly.

“Now, that’s the right look of concentration,” Cody said. “Nice work, lad. Y’all’ve got to keep a keen mind. Focused. Like Sir William himself. Soul of a warrior.”

He took a bite of his sandwich.

I hadn’t been focused on my tensor, but I didn’t let on to that fact. Instead I raised my hand, doing as I’d been instructed. The thin glove I wore had lines of metal along the front of each nger. The lines joined in a pattern at the palm and all glowed softly green.

As I concentrated my hand began to vibrate softly, as if someone were playing music with a lot of bass somewhere nearby. It was hard to focus with that strange pulsation running up my arm.

I raised my hand toward the chunk of metal; it was the remnant of a section of pipe. Now, apparently, I needed to push the vibrations

away

from

me.

Whatever that meant. The

technology hooked right into my nerves using sensors inside the glove,

interpreting

electrical

impulses from my brain. So Abraham had explained.

Cody had said it was magic, and had told me not to ask any questions lest I “anger the wee daemons inside who make the gloves work and our co ee taste good.”

I still hadn’t managed to make the tensors do anything, though I felt I was getting close. I had to remain focused, keep my hands steady, and push the vibrations out.

Like blowing a ring of smoke, Abraham had said. Or like using your body warmth in a hug— without the arms. That had been Tia’s

explanation.

Everyone

thought of it their own way, I guess.

My hand started to shake more vigorously.

“Steady,” Cody said. “Don’t lose control, lad.”

I stiffened my muscles.

“Whoa. Not too sti ,” Cody said.

“Secure, strong, but calm. Like you’re caressing a beautiful woman, remember?”

That made me think of Megan.

I lost control, and a green wave of smoky energy burst from my hand and flew out in front of me. It missed the pipe completely, but vaporized the metal leg of the chair it sat on. Dust showered down and the chair went lopsided, dumping the pipe to the floor with a clang.

“Sparks,” Cody said. “Remind me to never let you caress me, lad.”

“I thought you told him to think of a beautiful woman,” Tia said.

“Yeah,” Cody replied. “And if that’s how he treats one of them, I don’t want to know what he’d do to an ugly Scotsman.”

“I did it!” I exclaimed, pointing at the powdered metal that was the remains of the chair leg.

“Yeah, but you missed.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I nally made it work!” I hesitated.

“It wasn’t like blowing smoke. It was like … like singing. From my hand.”

“That’s a new one,” Cody said.

“It’s di erent for everyone,” Tia said from her table, head still down. She opened a can of cola as she scribbled notes. Tia was useless without her cola. “Using the tensors isn’t natural to your mind, David. You’ve already built neural pathways, and so you have to kind of hotwire your brain to gure out what mental muscles to ex. I’ve always wondered if we gave a tensor to a child, if they’d be able to incorporate using it better, more naturally, as just another kind of ‘limb’ to practice with.”

Cody looked at me. Then he whispered, “Wee daemons. Don’t let her fool you, lad. I think she works for them. I saw her leaving out pie for them the other night.”

Trouble was, he was just serious enough to make me question whether he really believed that.

The twinkle to his eye indicated he was being silly, but he had such a perfectly straight face.…

I took o the tensor and handed it over. Cody slipped it on, then absently raised a hand—palm rst —to the side and thrust it outward.

The tensor began vibrating as his hand moved, and when it stopped a faint, smoky green wave continued on, hitting the fallen chair and the pipe. Both vaporized to dust, falling to the ground in a puff.

Each time I saw the tensors work, I was amazed. The range was very limited, only a few feet at most, and they couldn’t affect flesh.

They weren’t much good in a ght —sure, you could vaporize

someone’s gun, but only if they were very close to you. In which case taking the time to concentrate and ght with the tensors would probably be less e ective than just punching the guy.

Still, the opportunities they a orded were incredible. Moving through the bowels of Newcago’s steel catacombs, getting in and out of rooms. If you managed to keep the tensor hidden, you could escape from any bond, any cell.

“You keep training,” Cody said.

“You show talent, so Prof will want you to get good with these. We need another member of the team who can use them.”

“Not all of you can?” I asked, surprised.

Cody shook his head. “Megan can’t make them work, and Tia’s rarely in a position to use them— we need her back giving support while on missions. So it usually comes down to Abraham and me using them.”