Good lie or not, I hated telling it. Couldn’t Prof be straight with the members of his own team?
Val regarded me carefully, and though her face was too much in shadows to read, I felt like the only rotten strawberry in a line of strawberries. Finally, she shrugged. “Well, nice work.”
I hurriedly slipped down into the submarine. Val followed, then locked the hatch and moved to the front seat. She didn’t believe what I’d told her, not completely. I could read it in the stiff way she sat down, the too-controlled sound of her voice as she called Tia and said we were on our way back to the supply dump to get the next set of boxes, which would restock our base.
I fidgeted, and we moved under the waves and traveled for a while in silence. Finally, I forced myself to get into the copilot’s seat next to Val at the front. I still knew next to nothing about Val. Maybe some disarming conversation would ease her suspicion about what had happened the day before.
“So,” I said, “I notice you prefer a Colt 1911. A good, time-tested gun. Is that a Springfield frame and slide set?”
“Don’t know, honestly,” she said, glancing at the gun she wore on her hip. “Sam gave it to me.”
“But, I mean, surely you need to know. For replacement parts.”
Val shrugged. “It’s just a gun. If it breaks, I’ll get another.”
Just a …
Just a gun? Had she really said that?
I found my mouth working, but no sound coming out, as we puttered beneath the waves. The gun you carried was literally your life—if it malfunctioned, you could be dead. How could she say something like that?
Be disarming, I told myself forcefully. Chastising her won’t make her more comfortable around you.
“So, uh,” I said, coughing into my hand, “you must have enjoyed it here, on this assignment. Sweet undersea base, no Epics to fight, a city full of good-natured people. Must be the best job a Reckoner team could get assigned.”
“Sure,” Val said. “Until one of my friends got murdered.”
And now I was “replacing” that friend in the team. Great. Another reminder why she shouldn’t like me.
“You’ve known Mizzy for a while,” I said, trying another tactic. “You didn’t grow up in the city, did you?”
“No.”
“Where were you stationed before this?”
“Mexico. But you shouldn’t ask about our pasts. It’s against protocol.”
“Just trying to—”
“I know what you’re trying to do. It’s not necessary. I’ll do my job; you do yours.”
“Sure,” I said. “All right.” I settled back in my seat.
Wait. Mexico? I perked up. “You … weren’t in on the Hermosillo job, were you?”
Val eyed me, but said nothing.
“The hit on Pu?os de Fuego!” I exclaimed.
“How do you know about that?” Val asked.
“Oh man. Was it true, did he really throw a tank at you?”
Val kept her eyes forward, tapping a button on the sub’s control panel. “Yeah,” she finally said. “An entire flippin’ tank. Broke open the wall of our base of operations.”
“Wow.”
“What’s more, I was running ops.”
“So you—”
“Yeah. I was inside when this tank comes crashing right through the wall. He’d dodged around Sam and managed to double back, so he could hit our operations station. Still not sure how he even knew where we were.”
I grinned, imagining it. Pu?os had been a beastly strength Epic, capable of lifting practically anything—even things that should have broken apart as he did it. Not a High Epic, but hard to kill, with enhanced endurance and skin like an elephant’s.
“I never did figure out how you beat him,” I said. “Only that the team eventually took him out, despite the job going wrong.”
Val kept her gaze trained straight ahead, but I caught a hint of a smile on her lips.
“What?” I asked.
“Well … I was there,” she said, growing slightly more animated, “in the rubble of our operations station—a little brick building in the center of the city. And he was coming for me. I was alone, no support.”
“And?”
“And … well, there was a tank in the room.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yeah,” Val said. “At first I climbed into the thing just to hide. But then, it was armed, and he walked right in front of the barrel. The tank was on its side, but it had crashed in through the wall rear-end-first. So I figured, what the hell?”
“You shot him.”
“Yeah.”
“With a tank.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s awesome.”
“It was stupid,” Val said, though she was still smiling. “If that barrel had been bent, I’d probably have blown myself up instead. But … well, it worked. Sam said he found Pu?os’s arm seven streets over.” She looked at me, then seemed to realize who she was talking to. Her expression dimmed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For not being Sam.”
“That’s stupid,” Val said, turning away from me. She hesitated. “You’re kind of infectious, Steelslayer. You know that?”