Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

And yet, I thought, handing my pack to Cody and crawling through the tunnel to the upper chamber, it didn’t help Megan. Nothing we did helped Megan.

I had lost a lot of people in the last ten years. Life in Newcago wasn’t easy, particularly for orphans. But none of those losses had a ected me this profoundly since my father’s death. I guess it was a good thing—it meant I was learning to care again. Still, it felt pretty crappy at the moment.

When I came out of the entry tunnel and into the new hideout, Prof was telling everyone to bed down for the night. He wanted us to have some sleep in us before we dealt with the captive Epic. As I arranged my bedroll, I heard him speaking with Cody and Tia.

Something about injecting the captive Epic with a sedative so that he remained unconscious.

“David?” Tia asked. “You’re wounded. I should hook up the harmsway to you and …”

“I’ll live,” I said. They could heal me tomorrow. I didn’t care at the moment. Instead I lay down on my bedroll and turned over to face the wall. Then I nally let the tears come in force.





32

ABOUT sixteen hours later I sat on the oor of the new hideout, eating a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with raisins, harmsway diodes ashing on my leg and side. We’d had to leave most of our good food behind and were relying on storage that had been packed in the bolt-hole.

The other Reckoners gave me space. I found that odd, since they’d all known Megan longer than I had. It wasn’t like she and I had actually shared anything special, even if she had begun warming up to me.

In fact, as I looked back on it, my reaction to her death seemed silly. I was just a boy with a crush.

It still hurt, though. Badly.

“Hey, Prof,” Cody said, sitting in front of a laptop. “You should see this, mate.”

“Mate?” Prof asked.

“I’ve got a little bit of Australian in me,” Cody said. “My father’s grandfather

was

one-quarter

Aussie. Been meaning to try it out for a spin.”

“You’re a bizarre little man, Cody,” Prof said. He was back to his normal self, for the most part— maybe a little more solemn today.

So were the rest of them, even Cody. Losing a teammate wasn’t a pleasant experience, though I got the sense that they’d been through all of this before.

Prof studied the screen for a moment, then raised an eyebrow.

Cody tapped, then tapped again.

“What is it?” Tia asked.

Cody turned the laptop around.

None of us had chairs; we were all just sitting on our bedrolls. Even though this hideout was smaller than the other, it felt empty to me.

There weren’t enough of us.

The screen was blue, with simple block letters in black. PICK A TIME

AND LOCATION. I WILL COME.

“This,” Cody said, “is all people can see on any of the one hundred entertainment

channels

in

Steelheart’s network. It’s displayed on every mobile that logs on, and on every information screen in the city. Something makes me think we got through to him.”

Prof smiled. “This is good. He’s letting us pick the place for the fight.”

“He usually does that,” I said, staring into my oatmeal. “He let Faultline choose. He thinks it sends a message—this city is his, and he doesn’t care if you try to nd a place that gives you the better ground. He’ll kill you anyway.”

“I just wish I didn’t feel blind,”

Tia said. She was sitting in the far corner with her datapad. It had her mobile stuck to the back so its display expanded what was on the mobile’s screen. “It’s ba ing. How did they nd out that I’d hacked their camera system? I’m locked out on all sides, every hole plugged. I can’t see a thing of what’s going on in the city.”

“We’ll pick a place where we can set up our own cameras,” Prof said.

“You won’t be blind when we face him, Tia. It—”

Abraham’s mobile beeped. He raised it up. “Proximity alarms say that our prisoner is stirring, Prof.”

“Good,” Prof said, standing up and looking toward the entrance to the smaller room that held our captive. “That mystery has been itching at me all day.” As he turned, his eyes fell on me, and I caught a flash of guilt from him.

He moved past me quickly and began giving orders. We’d interrogate the prisoner with a light shining directly on him, Cody standing behind him with a gun to the Epic’s head. Everyone was to wear their jackets. They’d replaced mine with a spare. It was black leather, too large for me by a size or two.

The Reckoners began moving to set things up. Cody and Tia entered the prisoner’s room, eventually followed by Prof. I shoved a spoonful of oatmeal in my mouth, then noticed Abraham, who was lingering in the main room.

He walked over to me and knelt on one knee. “Live, David,” he said softly. “Live your life.”

“I’m doing that,” I grumbled.

“No. You are letting Steelheart live your life for you. He controls it, each step of the way. Live your own life.” He patted my shoulder, as if that made everything all right, then waved for me to come with him into the next room.

I sighed, climbed to my feet, and followed.

The captive was a spindly older man—perhaps in his sixties— balding and dark skinned. He was turning his head about, trying to gure out where he was, though he was still blindfolded and gagged.

He

certainly

didn’t

look

threatening, strapped into his chair as he was. Of course many an “unthreatening” Epic could kill with little more than a thought.

Con ux wasn’t supposed to have powers like that. But then, Fortuity wasn’t supposed to have had heightened dexterity. Besides, we didn’t even know if this was Con ux. I found myself pondering the situation, which was good. At least it kept me from thinking about her.

Abraham

aimed

a

large

oodlight right at the captive’s face. Many Epics needed line of sight to use their powers on someone, so keeping the man disoriented had a very real and useful purpose. Prof nodded to Cody, who cut o the prisoner’s blindfold and gag, then stepped back and leveled a wicked .357 at the man’s head.

The prisoner blinked against the light, then looked about. He cringed in his chair.

“Who are you?” Prof asked, standing by the light where the prisoner wouldn’t be able to make out his features.

“Edmund Sense,” the prisoner said. He paused. “And you?”

“That is not important to you.”

“Well, seeing as to how you have me captive, I suspect it’s of utmost importance to me.” Edmund had a pleasant voice, with a faint Indian accent. He seemed nervous—his eyes kept darting from side to side.

“You’re an Epic,” Prof said.

“Yes,” Edmund answered. “They call me Conflux.”

“Head

of

Steelheart’s

Enforcement troops,” Prof said.

The rest of us remained quiet, as instructed, to not give the man an indication of how many were in the room.

Edmund chuckled. “Head? Yes, I suppose you could call me that.”

He leaned back, closing his eyes.

“Though, more appropriately, I might be the heart. Or maybe just the battery.”

“Why were you in the trunk of that car?” Prof asked.

“Because

I

was

being

transported.”

“And you suspected your limo might be attacked, so you hid yourself in the trunk?”

“Young man,” Edmund said

pleasantly, “if I had wanted to hide, would I have had myself tied up, gagged, and blindfolded?”

Prof was silent.

“You wish for proof that I am who I say,” Edmund said with a sigh. “Well, I’d rather not force you to beat it out of me. Do you have a mechanical device that has been drained of energy? No battery power at all?”

Prof looked to the side. Tia fished in her pocket and handed over a penlight. Prof tried it and no light came out. Then he hesitated.

Finally he waved us out of the room. Cody remained, gun on Edmund, but the rest of us—Prof included—gathered in the main chamber.

“He might be able to overload it and make it explode,” Prof said softly.

“We wil need proof of who he is, though,” Tia said. “If he can power that by touching it, then he’s either Con ux or a di erent Epic with a very similar power.”

“Or someone who Con ux gifted his abilities to,” I said.