Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

“Let me know when he’s done, Abraham,” I said into mine.

Abraham sighed on the other end of the line. “Want to trade places?

I’d sure like to be able to mute Cody myself right about now. It is regrettably di cult when he’s sitting beside you.”

I chuckled, then glanced at Megan. She was still grinning.

Seeing her smile made me feel like I’d done something grand.

“Megan,” Tia said in our ears, “keep on straight as you are. The convoy is progressing along the road, without deviations. You should meet up in another fteen minutes or so.”

“Affirmative.”

Outside the streetlights ickered, as did the lights inside an apartment complex we were passing. Another brownout.

So far there hadn’t been any looting. Enforcement walked the streets, and people were too frightened. Even as we drove past an intersection, I saw a large, mechanized armor unit lumbering down a side street. Twelve feet tall with arms that were little more t h a n machine-gun barrels, the mechanized

armor

was

accompanied by a

ve-man

Enforcement Core. One soldier bore a distinctive energy weapon, painted bright red in warning. A few blasts from that could level a building.

“I’ve always wanted to pilot one of those armor units,” I noted as we drove on.

“It’s not much fun,” Megan said.

“You’ve done it?” I asked, shocked.

“Yeah. They’re stu y inside, and they respond very sluggishly.” She hesitated. “I’ll admit that ring both rotary guns with wild abandon can be rather ful lling, in a primal sort of way.”

“We’ll convert you away from those handguns yet.”

“Not a chance,” she said, reaching over and patting her underarm holster. “What if I got stuck in close confines?”

“Then you hit ’em with the stock of the gun,” I said. “If they’re too far away for that, it’s always better to have a gun you can actually hit with.”

She gave me a at stare as she drove. “Ri es take too much time.

They’re not … spontaneous enough.”

“This from the woman who complains

when

people

improvise.”

“I

complain

when you improvise,” she said. “That’s di erent from improvising myself.

Besides, not all handguns are inaccurate. Have you ever red an MT 318?”

“Nice gun, that,” I admitted. “If I had to carry a handgun, I’d consider an MT. Problem is, the thing is so weak, you might as well just be throwing the bullets at someone. Likely to hurt them about as much.”

“If you’re a good shot, it doesn’t matter how much stopping power a gun has.”

“If you’re a good shot,” I said solemnly, raising a hand to my breast, “you’re probably already using a rifle.”

She snorted. “And what handgun would you pick, given the choice?”

“Jennings .44.”

“A

Spit re?”

she

asked,

incredulous. “Those things shoot about as accurately as tossing a handful of bullets into a fire.”

“Sure. But if I’m using a handgun, that means someone is in my face. I might not have a chance for a second shot, so I want to down them fast. At that point accuracy doesn’t matter, since they’re so close anyway.”

Megan just rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You’re hopeless.

You’re buying into assumptions.

You can be just as accurate with a handgun as you can with a ri e, and you can use it at more immediate ranges. In a way, because it’s harder, truly skilled people use the handgun. Any slontze can hit with a rifle.”

“You did not just say that.”

“I did, and I’m driving, so I get to decide when the argument is over.”

“But … but that makes no sense!”

“It doesn’t need to,” she said.

“It’s a brick made out of porridge.”

“You know,” Tia said in our ears, “you two could just each carry both a rifle and a handgun.”

“That’s not the point,” I said at exactly the same time that Megan said, “You don’t understand.”

“Whatever,” Tia answered. I could hear her sipping cola. “Ten minutes.” Her tone said she was bored with our arguing. She, however, couldn’t see that both of us were grinning.

Sparks, I like this girl, I thought, eyeing Megan. Who seemed to think she’d won the argument.

I tapped the mute-all button on my mobile. “I’m sorry,” I found myself saying.

Megan raised an eyebrow at me.

“For doing what I did to the Reckoners,” I said. “For making everything go a di erent way than you wanted it to. For dragging you into this.”

She shrugged, then tapped her own mute button. “I’m past it.”

“What changed?”

“Turns out I like you too much to hate you, Knees.” She eyed me.

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

I wasn’t worried about my head.

My heart, on the other hand, was another matter. A wave of shock ran through me. Had she really just said that?

Before I could melt too far, however, my mobile ashed. Prof was trying to contact us. I tapped it with a quick snap.

“Stay sharp, you two,” he told us.

He sounded a little suspicious.

“Keep the lines up.”

“Yes sir,” I said immediately.

“Eight minutes,” Tia said. “The convoy has taken a left on Frewanton. Turn right at the next intersection to continue on an intercept course.”

Megan focused on her driving, and so—to keep me from focusing too much on her—I went over the plan a few times in my head.

We’re going to do this one simply, Prof had said. Nothing fancy at al .

Con ux is fragile. He’s a schemer, an organizer, a string pul er, but he has no powers that wil protect him.

We pul up close to the motorcade, and Abraham uses the dowser to determine if a powerful Epic is real y in the car. The van pul s forward in front of the convoy; we throw open the back doors, where Cody stands in costume.

Cody raises his hands; Abraham res the gauss gun from behind. In the confusion, we’l hope it looks like he launched the bolt from his hand.

We hit the entire limo, leave nothing but slag, and then ee. The surviving motorcycle guards can spread the story.

I t would work. Hopefully. And without Con ux gifting his abilities to high-level Enforcement soldiers, the mechanized armor, the energy weapons, and the copters would all stop working. Fuel cells would run dry, and the city would run out of power.

“We’re getting close,” Tia said softly in our ears. “The limo is turning right on Beagle. Prof, use the beta formation; I’m pretty sure they’re heading uptown, and that means they’ll turn onto Finger Street. Megan, you’re still on target.”

“Got it,” Prof said. “I was heading that way.”

We passed an abandoned park from the old days. You could tell because of the frozen weeds and fallen branches transformed to steel. Only the dead ones had been changed—Steelheart couldn’t a ect living matter. In fact, his pulses had trouble with anything too close to a living body. A person’s clothing often wouldn’t be transformed, but the ground around them would change.

That kind of oddity was common in Epic powers; it was one of the things that didn’t make scienti c sense. A dead body and a living one could be very similar, scienti cally. But one could be a ected by many of the odder Epic powers while the other could not.

My breath fogged the window as we passed the playground, which was no longer safe for play. The weeds were now jagged bits of metal. Steelheart’s steel didn’t rust, but it could break, leaving sharp edges.

“Okay,” Prof said a few minutes later. “I’m here. Climbing up the outside of the building. Megan, I want you to repeat back to me our contingencies.”

“Nothing is going to go wrong,”

Megan said, her voice sounding both beside me and in my ear comm.

“Something always goes wrong,”

Prof said. I could hear him pu ng as he climbed, though he had a gravatonic belt to help him.

“Contingencies.”

“If you or Tia give the word,”

Megan said, “we’ll pull out and split up. You’ll create a distraction.

The four of us in the van will break into two squads and go opposite directions, heading for rally point gamma.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I said.