Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

But we’re the good guys, I told myself, breaking open the wall and letting Megan slide through rst.

Of course, what terrorist didn’t think he or she was the good guy?

We

were

doing

something

important, but what would that matter to the family of the cleaning woman we accidentally killed? As I hastened

through

the

next

darkened room—this one was a lab chamber, with some beakers and other glasswork set up—I had trouble shaking off these questions.

And so, I focused on Steelheart.

That awful, hateful sneer. Standing there with the gun he’d taken from my father, barrel pointed down at the inferior human.

That image worked. I could forget everything else when I thought of it. I didn’t have all the answers, but at least I had a goal.

Revenge. Who cared if it would eat me up inside and leave me hollow?

So long as it drove me to make life better for everyone else. Prof understood that. I understood it too.

We reached the elevator shaft without incident, entering it through a storage room that bordered it. I vaporized a large hole in the wall, and then Megan poked her head in and looked up the tall, dark shaft. “So, Cody, there’s supposed to be a way up?”

“Sure. Handholds on the sides.

They put them in all elevator shafts.”

“Looks like someone forgot to inform Steelheart of that,” I said, looking in beside Megan. “These walls are completely slick. No ladder or anything like that. No ropes or cords either.”

Cody cursed.

“So we’re back to going the other way?” Megan asked.

I scanned the walls again. The blackness seemed to extend forever above and below us. “We could wait for the elevator to come.”

“The elevators have cameras,”

Cody said.

“So we ride on top of it,” I said.

“And alert the people inside when we drop onto it?” Megan asked.

“We just wait for one that doesn’t have anyone in it,” I said.

“Elevators are empty about half the time, right? They’re responding to calls people make.”

“All right,” Cody said. “Prof and Abraham have hit a small snag— waiting for a room to clear out so they can move through. Prof says you have ve minutes to wait. If nothing happens by then, we’re scrapping the job.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling a stab of disappointment.

“I’m going to run some visuals for them,” Cody said. “I’ll be offline from you for a bit; call me if you need me. I’ll watch the elevator. If it moves, I’ll let you know.” The line clicked as Cody switched frequencies, and we started waiting.

We both sat quietly, straining to hear any sounds of the elevator moving, though we’d never spot it before Cody did with his video feeds.

“So … how often is it like this?” I asked after a few minutes of kneeling beside Megan, stuck in the room beside the hole I’d burrowed into the side of the elevator shaft.

“Like what?” she asked.

“The waiting.”

“More than you’d think,” she said. “The jobs we do, they’re often all about timing. Good timing requires a lot of waiting around.”

She glanced at my hand, and I found that I’d been nervously tapping the side of the wall.

I forced myself to stop.

“You sit,” she said, voice growing softer, “and you wait. You go over and over the plan, picture it in your mind. Then it usually goes wrong anyway.”

I eyed her suspiciously.

“What?” she asked.

“The thing you just said. It’s exactly what I think too.”

“So?”

“So if something usually goes wrong, why are you always on my back about improvising?”

She grew thin-lipped.

“No,” I said. “It’s time you leveled with me, Megan. Not just about this mission, but about everything. What is with you? Why do you treat me like you hate me?

You were the one who originally spoke up for me when I wanted to join! You sounded impressed with me at rst—Prof might never have listened to my plan at all if you hadn’t said what you did. But since then you’ve acted like I was a gorilla at your buffet.”

“A … what?”

“Gorilla at your bu et. You know … eating all your food?

Making you annoyed? That kind of thing?”

“You’re a very special person, David.”

“Yeah, I take a specialness pill each morning. Look, Megan, I’m not letting go of this. The whole time I’ve been with the Reckoners, it seems like I’ve been doing something that bothers you. Well, what is it? What made you turn on me like that?”

She looked away.

“Is it my face?” I asked. “Because that’s the only thing I can think of.

I mean, you were all for me after the Fortuity hit. Maybe it’s my face. I don’t think it’s too bad a face, as far as faces go, but it does look kind of stupid sometimes when I—”

“It’s not your face,” she interrupted.

“I didn’t think it was, but I need you to talk to me. Say something.”

Because I think you’re hotter than hel and I can’t understand what went wrong. Fortunately I stopped myself from saying that part out loud. I also kept my eyes straight at her head, just in case Cody was watching in.

She said nothing.

“Well?” I prompted.

“Five minutes is up,” she said, checking her mobile.

“I’m not going to let this go so easily, this—”

“Five minutes is up,” Cody suddenly said, cutting in. “Sorry, kids. This mission is a bust. Nobody is moving the elevators.”

“Can’t you send one for us?” I asked.

Cody chuckled. “We’re tapped into the security feed, lad, but that’s a far cry from being able to control things in the building. If Tia could hack us in that far, we could blow the building from the inside by overpowering the plants or something.”

“Oh.” I looked up the cavernous shaft. It resembled an enormous throat, stretching upward … one we needed to get up … which made us …

Bad

analogy.

Very

bad.

Regardless, there was a twisting feeling in my gut. I hated the idea of backing down. Above lay the path

to destroying Steelheart.

Behind lay more waiting, more planning. I’d been planning for years.

“Oh no,” Megan said.

“What?” I asked absently.

“You’re going to improvise, aren’t you?”

I reached out into the shaft with the hand that wore the tensor, pressed it at against the wall, and began a small vibrative burst.

Abraham had taught me to make bursts of di erent sizes; he said that a master with the tensors could control the vibrations, leaving patterns or even shapes in your target.

I pushed my hand hard, at, feeling the glove shake. It wasn’t just the glove, though. It was my whole hand. That had confused me at rst. It seemed like I was creating the power, not the glove— the glove just helped shape the blast somehow.

I couldn’t fail at this. If I did the operation was over. I should have felt stress at that, but I didn’t. For some reason, I was realizing, when things got really, really tense I found it easier to relax.

Steelheart looming above my father. A gunshot. I would not back down.

The glove vibrated; dust fell away from the wall in a little patch around my hand. I slipped my ngers forward and felt what I’d done.

“A handhold,” Megan said softly, shining the light of her mobile.

“What, really?” Cody asked.

“Turn on your camera, lass.” A moment later he whistled. “You’ve been holding back on me, David. I didn’t think you were nearly practiced enough to do something like that. I might have suggested it myself if I’d thought you could.”

I moved my hand to the side and made another handhold, placing it beside the other in the shaft just next to the hole in the wall. I made two more for my feet, then swung out of the hole in the wall and into the elevator shaft, placing my hands and feet in the handholds.

I stretched up and made another set of holds above. I climbed up, ri e slung over my shoulder. I did not look down but made another set of holds and continued.

Climbing and carving with the tensor wasn’t by any means easy, but I was able to shape the tensor blasts to leave a ridge at the front of each handhold, making them easy to grip.