Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

“No,” she said, not even looking.

“But—”

“No.”

“But they’re awesome!” I said, holding up my hands, as if that should have been enough of an argument. And, sparks, it should have been. They were awesome!

“You could barely drive some lady’s sedan, Knees,” Megan said.

“I don’t want to see you on the back

of

something

with

gravatonics.”

“Gravatonics!” That was even more awesome.

“No,” Megan said firmly.

I looked toward Abraham, who was inspecting something nearby.

He glanced at me, then over at the bikes, and smiled. “No.”

I sighed. Wasn’t shopping for weapons supposed to be more fun than this?

“Diamond,” Abraham called to the dealer. “What is this?”

The weapons merchant began waddling over. “Oh, it’s wonderful.

Great explosions. It …” His face fell as he neared and saw what Abraham was actually looking at.

“Oh. That. Um, it is quite wonderful, though I don’t know if it would suit your needs.…”

The item in question was a large ri e with a very long barrel and a scope on top. It looked a little bit like an AWM—one of the sniper ri es the Factory had used as a model in building their products.

The barrel was larger, however, and there were some odd coils around the forestock. It was painted a dark black-green and had a big hole where the magazine should have fit.

Diamond sighed. “This weapon is wonderful, but you are a good customer. I should warn you that I don’t have the resources to make it work.”

“What?” Megan asked. “You’re selling a broken gun?”

“It’s not that,” Diamond said, tapping the section of wall beside the gun. An image displayed of a man set up on the ground, holding the ri e and looking through the scope at some run-down buildings.

“This is called a gauss gun, developed using research on some Epic or another who throws bullets at people.”

“Rick O’Shea,” I said, nodding.

“An Irish Epic.”

“That’s really his name?”

Abraham asked softly.

“Yeah.”

“That’s horrible.” He shivered.

“Taking a beautiful French word and turning it into … into something Cody would say. Calice! ”

“Anyway,” I said. “He can make objects unstable by touching them; then they explode when subjected to any signi cant impact. Basically he charges rocks with energy, throws them at people, and they explode. Standard kinetic energy Epic.”

I was more interested in the idea that the technology had been developed based on his powers.

Ricky was a newer Epic. He wouldn’t have been around back in the old days when, as the Reckoners had explained, Epics had been imprisoned and experimented on. Did this mean that kind of research was still going on? There was a place where Epics were being held captive? I’d never heard of such a thing.

“The gun?” Abraham asked Diamond.

“Well, like I said.” Diamond tapped the wall and the video started playing. “It’s a type of gauss gun, only it uses a projectile that has been charged with energy rst. The bullet, once turned explosive, is propelled to extreme speeds using tiny magnets.”

The man holding the gun in the video ipped a switch and the coils lit up green. He pulled the trigger and there was a burst of energy, though the thing seemed to have almost no recoil. A splash of green light spat from the front of the gun’s barrel, leaving a line in the air. One of the distant buildings exploded, giving o a strange shower of green that seemed to warp the air.

“We’re … not sure why it does that,” Diamond admitted. “Or even how. The technology changes the bullet into a charged explosive.”

I felt a shiver, thinking about the tensors,

the

jackets—the

technology used by the Reckoners.

Actually, a lot of the technology we now used had come with the advent of the Epics. How much of it did we really understand?

We were relying on half-understood technology built from studying mystifying creatures who didn’t even know how they did what they did themselves. We were like deaf people trying to dance to a beat we couldn’t hear, long after the music actually stopped.

Or … wait. I don’t know what that actually was supposed to mean.

Anyway, the lights given o by that gun’s explosion were very distinctive. Beautiful, even. There didn’t seem to be much debris, just some green smoke that still oated in the air. Almost as if the building had been transformed directly to energy.

Then it hit me. “Aurora borealis,”

I said, pointing. “It looks like the pictures I’ve seen of it.”

“Destructive capability looks good,” Megan said. “That building was almost completely knocked down by one shot.”

Abraham nodded. “It might be what we need. However, Diamond, might I inquire about what you mentioned earlier? You said it didn’t work.”

“It works just ne,” the merchant said quickly. “But it requires an energy pack to re. A powerful one.”

“How powerful?”

“Fifty-six KC,” Diamond said, then hesitated. “Per shot.”

Abraham whistled.

“Is that a lot?” Megan asked.

“Yeah,” I said, in awe. “Like, several thousand standard fuel cells’ worth.”

“Usually,” Diamond said, “you need to hook it up by cord to its own power unit. You can’t just plug this bad boy into a wall socket. The shots on this demo were red using several six-inch cords running back to a dedicated generator.” He looked up at the weapon. “I bought it hoping I could trade a certain client for some of his high-energy fuel cells, then be able to actually sell the weapon in working condition.”

“Who

knows

about

this

weapon?” Abraham asked.

“Nobody,” Diamond said. “I bought it directly from the lab that created it, and the man who made this video was in my employ. It’s never been on the market. In fact, the researchers who developed it died a few months later—blew themselves up, poor fools. I guess that’s what you get when you routinely build devices that supercharge matter.”

“We’ll take it,” Abraham said.

“You will?” Diamond looked surprised, and then a smile crossed his face. “Well … what an excellent choice! I’m certain you’ll be happy.

But again, to clarify, this will not re unless you nd your own energy source. A very powerful one, likely one you won’t be able to transport. Do you understand?”

“We will nd one,” Abraham said. “How much?”

“Twelve,” Diamond said without missing a beat.

“You can’t sell it to anyone else,”

Abraham said, “and you can’t make it work. You’ll be getting four.

Thank you.” Abraham got out a small box. He tapped it, and handed it over.

“And we want one of those pen exploder things thrown in,” I said on a whim as I held my mobile up to the wall and downloaded the video of the gauss gun in action. I almost asked for one of the motorcycles, but gured that would real y be pushing things.

“Very well,” Diamond said, holding up the box Abraham had given

him.

What was that, anyway? “Is Fortuity in here?” he asked.

“Alas,” Abraham said, “our encounter with him did not leave time for proper harvesting. But four others, including Absence.”

Harvesting? What did that mean?

Absence was an Epic the Reckoners had killed last year.

Diamond grunted. I found myself very curious as to what was in that box.

“Also, here.” Abraham handed over a data chip.

Diamond smiled, taking it. “You know how to sweeten a deal, Abraham. Yes you do.”

“Nobody nds out that we have this,” Abraham said, nodding toward the gun. “Do not even tell another person that it exists.”

“Of course not,” Diamond said, sounding o ended. He walked over to pull a standard ri e bag out from under his desk, then began to get the gauss gun down.

“What did we pay him with?” I asked Megan, speaking very softly.

“When Epics die, something happens to their bodies,” she replied.

“Mitochondrial mutation.” I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, when we kill an Epic, we harvest

some

of

their

mitochondria,” she said. “It’s needed by the scientists who build all this kind of stu . Diamond can trade it to secret research labs.”