Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

I hid in the vault.

I wish I could claim that I was smart for making that choice, but I’d simply gotten turned around. I vaguely remember crawling into a dark corner and curling up into a ball, crying as the rest of the building fell apart. Since most of the main room had been turned to metal by Steelheart’s rage, and the vault was steel in the rst place, those areas didn’t crumble as the rest of the building did.

Hours later, I was pulled out of the wreckage by a rescue worker. I was dazed, barely conscious, and the light blinded me as I was dug free. The room I had been in had sunk partially, lurched on its side, but it was still strangely intact, the walls and most of the ceiling now made of steel. The rest of the large building was rubble.

The rescue worker whispered something in my ear. “Pretend to be dead.” Then she carried me to a line of corpses and put a blanket over me. She’d guessed what Steelheart might do to survivors.

Once she went back to look for other survivors, I panicked and crawled from beneath the blanket.

It was dark outside, though it should have only been late afternoon. Nightwielder was upon us; Steelheart’s reign had begun.

I stumbled away and limped into an alley. That saved my life a second time. Moments after I escaped,

Steelheart

returned,

oating down past the rescue lights to land beside the wreckage. He carried someone with him, a thin woman with her hair in a bun. I would later learn she was an Epic named Faultline, who had the power to move earth. Though she would

one

day

challenge

Steelheart, at that point she served him.

She waved her hand and the ground began to shake.

I

ed, confused, frightened,

pained. Behind me, the ground opened up, swallowing the

remnants of the bank—along with the corpses of the fallen, the survivors who were receiving medical attention, and the rescue workers themselves. Steelheart wanted to leave no evidence. He had Faultline bury all of them under hundreds of feet of earth, killing anyone who could possibly speak of what had happened in that bank.

Except me.

Later that night, he performed the Great Transfersion, an

awesome display of power by which he transformed most of Chicago—buildings,

vehicles,

streets—into steel. That included a large portion of Lake Michigan, which became a glassy expanse of black metal. It was there that he built his palace.

I know, better than anyone else, that there are no heroes coming to save us. There are no good Epics.

None of them protect us. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We live with them. We try to e x i s t despite them. Once the Capitulation Act was passed, most people stopped ghting. In some areas of what we now call the Fractured

States,

the

old

government is still marginally in control. They let the Epics do as they please, and try to continue as a broken society. Most places are chaos, though, with no law at all.

In a few places, like Newcago, a single godlike Epic rules as a tyrant. Steelheart has no rivals here. Everyone knows he’s

invulnerable. Nothing harms him: not bullets, not explosions, not electricity. In the early years, other Epics tried to take him down and claim his throne, as Faultline attempted.

They’re all dead. Now it’s very rare that any of them tries.

However, if there’s one fact we can hold on to, it’s this: every Epic has a weakness. Something that invalidates their powers, something that turns them back into an ordinary person, if only for a moment.

Steelheart

is

no

exception; the events on that day in the bank prove it.

My mind holds a clue to how Steelheart might be killed.

Something about the bank, the situation, the gun, or my father himself was able to counteract Steelheart’s invulnerability. Many of you probably know about that scar on Steelheart’s cheek. Well, as far as I can determine, I’m the only living person who knows how he got it.

I’ve seen Steelheart bleed.

And I wil see him bleed again.





PART ONE





1

I skidded down a stairwell and crunched against steel gravel at the bottom. Sucking in air, I dashed through one of the dark

understreets of Newcago. Ten years had passed since my father’s death.

That fateful day had become known by most people as the Annexation.

I wore a loose leather jacket and jeans, and had my ri e slung over my shoulder. The street was dark, even though it was one of the shallow understreets with grates and holes looking up into the sky.

It’s always dark in Newcago.

Nightwielder was one of the rst Epics to swear allegiance to Steelheart, and is a member of his inner

circle.

Because

of

Nightwielder there are no sunrises, and no moon to speak of, just pure darkness in the sky. All the time, every day. The only thing you can see up there is Calamity, which looks kind of like a bright red star or comet. Calamity began to shine one

year before men started

turning into Epics. Nobody knows why or how it still shines through the darkness. Of course, nobody knows why the Epics started appearing,

or

what

their

connection is to Calamity either.

I kept running, cursing myself for not leaving earlier. The lights along the ceiling of the understreet ickered, their coverings tinted blue. The understreet was littered with its typical losers: addicts at corners, dealers—or worse—in alleyways. There were some furtive groups of workers going to or from their jobs, thick coats and collars ipped up to hide their faces. They walked hunched over, eyes on the ground.

I’d spent most of the last decade among people like them, working at a place we simply called the Factory. Part orphanage, part school, it was mostly a way to exploit children for free labor. At least the Factory had given me a room and food for the better part of ten years. That had been way better than living on the street, and I hadn’t minded for one moment working for my food. Child labor laws were relics of a time when people could care about such things.

I pushed my way past a pack of workers. One cursed at me in a language that sounded vaguely Spanish. I looked up to see where I was. Most intersections were marked by spray-painted street names on the gleaming metallic walls.

When the Great Transfersion caused the better part of the Old City to be turned into solid steel, that included the soil and rock, dozens—maybe hundreds—of feet down into the ground. During the early years of his reign, Steelheart pretended to be a benevolent—if ruthless—dictator. His Diggers had cut out several levels of understreets,

complete

with

buildings, and people had owed to Newcago for work.

Life had been difficult here, but it had been chaos everywhere else— Epics warring with one another over territory, various para-governmental or state military groups trying to claim land.

Newcago was di erent. Here you could be casually murdered by an Epic who didn’t like the way you looked at him, but at least there was electricity, water, and food.

People adapt. That’s what we do.

Except for the ones who refuse to. Come on, I thought, checking the time on my mobile, which I wore in the forearm mount of my coat.

Blasted rail line outage. I took another shortcut, barreling through an alleyway. It was dim, but after ten years of living in perpetual gloom, you got used to it.

I passed huddled forms of