Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

On Nightwielder, not Megan.

He spun toward me as the light hit him, eyes wide, and the bullets ripped through him. He opened his mouth in horror and blood sprayed out his back. His solid back. He dropped, turning translucent again the moment he got out of the direct line of my ashlight. He hit the ground and began to sink into it.

He only sank halfway. He froze there, mouth open, chest bleeding.

He solidi ed slowly—it was almost like the view from a camera coming into focus—half sunken in the steel floor.

I heard a click and turned.

Megan stood there, a gun in her hand. A handgun, a P226 just like she preferred to carry. The other version of her, the one trapped by rubble, vanished in a heartbeat. So did the girders.

“I never did like him,” Megan said indi erently, glancing toward Nightwielder’s corpse. “You just did me a favor. Plausible deniability and all of that.”

I looked into her eyes. I knew those

eyes.

I did. I didn’t understand how it was happening, but it was her.

Never did like him …

“Calamity,” I whispered. “You’re Fire ght, aren’t you? You always were.”

She said nothing, though her eyes ickered down toward my

weapons—the ri e still held at my hip, the handgun in my other hand.

Her eye twitched.

“Fire ght wasn’t male,” I said.

“He … she was a woman.” I felt my eyes go wide. “That day in the elevator shaft, when the guards almost caught us … they didn’t see anything in the shaft. You made an illusion.”

She was still staring at my guns.

“And then, when we were on the

cycles,” I said. “You created an illusion of Abraham riding with us to distract the people following, to keep them from seeing the real him ee to safety. That’s what I saw behind us after he split off.”

Why was she looking at my

guns?

“But the dowser,” I said. “It tested you, and it said you weren’t an Epic. No … wait. Illusions. You could just make it display anything you wanted. Steelheart must have known the Reckoners were coming

to town. He sent you to in ltrate.

You were the newest of the

Reckoners, before me. You never wanted to attack Steelheart. You said you believed in his rule.”

She licked her lips, then

whispered something. She didn’t seem to have been listening to anything I said. “Sparks,” she murmured. “I can’t believe that actually worked.…”

What?

“You checkmated him …,” she

whispered. “That was amazing.…”

Checkmated him? Nightwielder?

Was that what she talking about?

She looked up at me, and I remembered. She was repeating one of our rst conversations, following her shooting Fortuity.

She’d held a ri e at her hip and a handgun out forward. Just like I had

done

to

gun

down

Nightwielder. The sight seemed to have triggered something in her.

“David,” she said. “That’s your name. And I think you’re very aggravating.” She seemed to only just be recalling who I was. What had happened to her memory?

“Thank you?” I said.

A blast rocked the stadium and she looked over her shoulder. She still had the gun pointed at me.

“Whose side are you on,

Megan?” I asked.

“My own,” she said immediately,

but then she held her other hand to her head, seeming uncertain.

“Someone betrayed us to

Steelheart,” I said. “Someone warned him we were going to hit Con ux, and someone told him we

were hacking the city cameras.

Today someone’s been listening in on us, reporting to him what we’ve been doing. It was you.”

She looked back at me, and

didn’t deny it.

“But you also used your illusions to save Abraham,” I said. “And you killed Fortuity. I can buy that Steelheart wanted us to trust you, so he let you kill o one of his lesser Epics. Fortuity was out of favor anyway. But why would you

betray

us, then help Abraham escape?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“I …”

“Are you going to shoot me?” I asked, looking down the barrel of her gun.

She hesitated. “Idiot. You really don’t know how to talk to women, do you, Knees?” She cocked her head as if surprised the words had come out.

She lowered the gun, then turned and ran off.

I’ve got to fol ow her, I thought, taking a step forward. Another explosion sounded outside.

No. I ripped my eyes away from her eeing form. I’ve got to get outside and help.

I dashed past Nightwielder’s

corpse—still half submerged in steel, frozen, blood seeping down his chest—and headed for the nearest exit out onto the playing field.

Or in this case, the battlefield.





39

“… nd that idiot boy and shoot him for me, Cody!” Prof screamed into my ear as I unmuted my mobile.

“We’re pulling out, Jon,” Tia said, talking over him. “I’m on my way in the copter. Three minutes until I arrive. Abraham will blow the cover explosion.”

“Abraham can go to hell,” Prof spat. “I’m seeing this to the end.”

“ Y o u can’t ght a High Epic, Jon,” Tia said.

“I’ll do whatever I want! I’m—”

His voice cut out.

“I’ve removed him from the

feed,” Tia said to the rest of us.

“This is bad. I’ve never heard him go this far. We need to pull him out somehow or we’ll lose him.”

“Lose him?” Cody asked,

sounding confused. I could hear gun re through the line near him, and could hear the same gun re up ahead echoing in the wide corridor.

I kept running.

“I’ll explain later,” Tia said in the type of voice that really meant “I’ll nd a better way to dodge that question later.”

There, I thought, catching a bit of light up ahead. It was dark outside, but not as pitch-black as it was in the tunnellike con nes of the stadium’s innards. The gun re was louder.

“I’m pulling us out,” Tia

continued. “Abraham, I need you to blow that explosion in the ground when I say. Cody … have you found David yet? Be warned,

Nightwielder might be on your back.”

She thinks I’m dead, I thought, because I haven’t been answering.

“I’m here,” I said.

“David,” Tia said, sounding relieved. “What is your status?”

“Nightwielder is down,” I said, reaching the tunnel out onto the eld, one of the ones that the teams had used when running out to play. “The UV worked. I think Fire ght is gone too. I … drove him off.”

“What? How?”

“Um … I’ll explain later.”

“Fair enough,” Tia said. “We have about two minutes until I extract. Get to Cody.”

I didn’t reply—I was taking in the

eld. Battle eld is right, I thought, stunned. The bodies of Enforcement soldiers lay scattered like discarded trash. Fires burned in several locations, sending smoke twisting up into the dark sky. Red ares blazed across the eld,

thrown by soldiers to get better light. Chunks had been blown out of the seating and the ground, and blackened scars marred the once-silver steel.

“You guys have been ghting a war,” I whispered. Then I caught sight of Steelheart.

He strode across the eld, lips parted and teeth clenched in a sneer. His glowing hand was

forward, and he blasted shot after shot toward something in front of him. Prof, running behind one of the team benches. Blast after blast nearly hit him, but he ducked and dodged between them, incredibly nimble. He pushed through a wall in the side of the stadium, his tensors vaporizing an opening for him.

Steelheart

bellowed

in

aggravation, ring blasts into the hole. Prof appeared a moment later, breaking out of another wall, steel dust pouring down around him. He whipped his hand forward, throwing a series of crude daggers toward Steelheart; they had likely been cut from the steel itself. They just bounced off the High Epic.

Prof looked frustrated, as if he were annoyed he couldn’t hurt Steelheart. For my part, I was amazed. “Has he been doing this the whole time?” I asked.