Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Cody got out his long hunter’s knife and began trimming his ngernails.

“Nightwielder’s been out in the city. People are reporting him all over, passing through walls, looking in on dens of miscreants and lesser Epics. It has everyone on edge.”

“That’s good,” I said. “It means Steelheart is taking the threat seriously.”

“Maybe,” Cody said. “Maybe. He ain’t said anything about the challenge we left him yet, and Nightwielder is checking in on a lot of regular folks. Steelheart might suspect that someone’s trying to blow smoke up his kilt.”

“Maybe

we

should

hit

Nightwielder,” I said. “We know his weakness now.”

“Might be a good idea,” Cody said, shing a long, slender device out of his hip pack. He tossed it to me.“What’s this?”

“UV ashlight,” he said. “I managed to nd a place that sold them—or, well, bulbs anyway, which I put in the ashlights and xed us up a few. Best to be ready in case Nightwielder surprises us.”

“Do you think he’ll come here?” I asked.

“He’ll start in on the steel catacombs eventually,” Cody said.

“Maybe he’s started already.

Having a defensible base means nothing if Nightwielder just decides to phase through the walls and strangle us in our sleep.”

Cheery thoughts. I shivered.

“At least we can ght him now,”

Cody said, shing out another ashlight for Megan. “But I think we’re poorly prepared. We still don’t know what Steelheart’s weakness is. What if he does challenge Limelight?”

“Tia will nd the answer,” I said.

“She has a lot of leads in discovering what was in that bank vault.”

“And Fire ght?” Cody said. “We haven’t even started planning how to deal with him.”

Firefight, the other of Steelheart’s High Epic bodyguards. Megan looked at me, obviously curious as to what I’d say next.

“Fire ght won’t be a problem,” I said.

“So you said before, when you pitched this whole thing to us. But you ain’t said why yet.”

“I’ve talked it over with Tia,” I said. “Fire ght’s not what you think he is.” I was reasonably con dent about that. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Cody raised an eyebrow but followed as I crawled back up the tunnel. Prof already knew what my notes said, though I wasn’t certain he believed. I knew he was planning a meeting to talk about Fire ght and Nightwielder, but I also knew that he was waiting on Tia before moving too far ahead in the plan. If she didn’t come up with the answer to how to kill Steelheart, nothing else would matter.

I didn’t want to think about that.

Giving up now because we didn’t know his weakness … it would be like nding out that you’d drawn lots for dessert at the Factory and been only one number o . Only it didn’t matter, because Pete already snuck in to steal the dessert, so nobody was going to get any anyway—not even Pete, because it turns out that there had never been any dessert in the rst place. Well, something

like

that.

That

metaphor’s a work in progress.

At the top of the tunnel I led Cody to the box where we kept my notes. I ipped through them for a few minutes, noting that Megan had followed us up. She had an unreadable expression on her face.

I grabbed the folder on Fire ght and brought it over to the desk, spreading out some pictures. “What do you know about Firefight?”

“Fire Epic,” Cody said, pointing at a photo. It showed a person made of ames, the heat so intense the air around him warped. No photo could capture the details of Fire ght’s features, as they were composed of solid ames. In fact, each photo I pulled out showed him glowing so brightly that it distorted the picture.

“He’s got standard re Epic powers,” Megan said. “He can turn to ame—in fact, he pretty much always remains in re form. He can y, throw re from his hands, and manipulate existing ames. He creates an intense heat eld

around him, capable of melting bullets—though they likely couldn’t hurt him even if they didn’t melt.

It’s a basic fire Epic portfolio.”

“Too basic,” I said. “Every Epic has quirks. Nobody has exactly the same portfolio of powers. That was what rst tipped me o . Here’s the other clue.” I tapped the series of photographs—each was a shot of Fire ght taken on a di erent day, usually with Steelheart and his retinue. Though Nightwielder often went out on missions, Fire ght usually remained near Steelheart to act as first-line bodyguard.

“Do you see it?” I asked.

“See what?” Cody asked.

“Here,” I said, pointing to a man standing with Steelheart’s guards in one of the pictures. He was slender and clean-shaven and wore a sti suit, a pair of dark shades, and a wide-brimmed hat that obscured his face.

I pointed to the next photo. The same person was there. And the next photo. And the next. His face was hard to make out in the other pictures too—none of them were focused on him specifically, and the hat and shades always masked his features.

“This person is always there when Fire ght appears,” I said.

“It’s suspicious. Who is it, and what is he doing there?”

Megan frowned. “What are you implying?”

“Here,” I said, “take a look at these.” I got out a sequence of ve photos, a rapid-re series of shots capturing a few moments. The scene was Steelheart ying through the city with a procession of his minions. He did that sometimes.

Though he always looked like he was going somewhere important, I suspected these were really just his version of a parade.

Nightwielder and Fire ght were with him, ying about ten feet above the ground. A cavalcade of cars drove beneath, like a military convoy. I couldn’t make out any faces, though I suspected the suspicious person was among them.

Five pictures. Four of them showed the trio of Epics ying side by side. And in one of them—right in the middle of the sequence— Fire ght’s shape had fuzzed and gone translucent.

“Fire ght can go incorporeal, like Nightwielder?” Cody guessed.

“No,” I said. “Fire ght’s not real.”

Cody blinked. “What?”

“He’s not real. At least, not in the way we think. Fire ght is an incredibly intricate—and incredibly clever—illusion. I suspect that the person we’re seeing in those photos, the one wearing the suit and hat, is the true Epic. He’s an illusionist, capable of manipulating light to create images, a lot like Refractionary—only on a much more powerful level. Together the real Fire ght and Steelheart concocted the idea of a fake Epic much the same way we’re concocting Limelight. In these photos we’re catching a moment of distraction, when the real Epic wasn’t concentrating on his illusion and it wobbled and nearly vanished.”

“A fake Epic?” Megan said, dismissive. “What would be the point? Steelheart wouldn’t need to do that.”

“Steelheart has a strange psychology,” I said. “Trust me. I’ll bet I know him better than anyone other than his closest allies. He’s arrogant, like Abraham said, but he’s also paranoid. Much of what he does is about holding on to power, about forcing people into line. He moves the location of his sleeping quarters. Why would he need to do that? He’s immune to harm, right? He’s paranoid, scared that someone will discover his weakness. He destroyed the entire bank because we might have had a hint at how he was hurt.”

“Lots of Epics would do that,”

Cody noted.

“That’s because most Epics are equally paranoid. Look, what better way to surprise would-be assassins than to make them prepare for an Epic that isn’t there? If they spend all their time planning how to kill Fire ght, then go up against an illusionist instead, they’ll be caught totally off guard.”

“So will we, if you’re right,”

Cody said. “Fighting illusionists is tough. I hate not being able to trust my eyes.”

“Look, an illusionist Epic can’t explain everything,” Megan said.