“Yes. Though your translation is questionable.”
“Well, now. I always did say you were a smart one, lass. Yes indeed.” He coughed into his hand. “Ah, look. We’re at the base. I’ll continue the story later.” The others had arrived at the hideout just ahead and Cody scurried up to meet them, then followed Megan up the tunnel.
Tia shook her head, then walked with me to the tunnel. I went last, making sure the cords and cables that hid the entrance were in place. I turned on the hidden motion sensors that would alert us if someone came in, then crawled up myself.
“… just don’t know, Prof,” Abraham was saying in his soft voice. “I just don’t know.” The two of them had spent the trip back walking ahead, speaking softly. I’d tried to edge up to hear them, but Tia had pointedly placed a hand on my shoulder and drawn me back.
“So?” Megan asked, crossing her arms as we all gathered around the main table. “What’s going on?”
“Abraham doesn’t like the way the rumors are going,” Prof said.
“The general public does seem to accept our tale of Limelight,” Abraham said. “They are scared, and our hit on the power station has had an effect—there are rolling blackouts all over the city. However, I see no proof that Steelheart believes. Enforcement is sweeping the understreets. Nightwielder is scouring the city. Everything I hear from informants is that Steelheart is searching for a group of rebels, not a rival Epic.”
“So we hit back with a fury,” Cody said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall beside the tunnel. “Kill a few more Epics.”
“No,” I said, remembering my conversation with Prof. “We need to be more focused. We can’t just take out random Epics; we have to think like someone trying to capture the city.”
Prof nodded. “Each and every hit we make without having Limelight appear in the open will make Steelheart more suspicious.”
“We’re giving up?” Megan said, a hint of eagerness in her voice, though she obviously tried to cover it.
“Not by a mile,” Prof said. “Perhaps I will still decide we need to pull out—if we aren’t confident enough about Steelheart’s weakness, I might do just that. We aren’t there yet. We’re going to keep on with this plan, but we need to do something big, preferably with an appearance by Limelight. We need to squeeze Steelheart as hard as we can and drive that temper of his. Force him out.”
“And we do that how?” Tia asked.
“It’s time to kill Conflux,” Prof said. “And bring down Enforcement.”
27
CONFLUX.
In many ways he was the backbone of Steelheart’s rule. A mysterious figure, even when compared to the likes of Firefight and Nightwielder.
I had no good photos of Conflux. The few I’d paid dearly to get were blurry and unspecific. I couldn’t even know if he was real.
The van thumped as it moved through the dark streets of Newcago; it was stuffy inside. I sat in the passenger seat, with Megan driving. Cody and Abraham were in the back. Prof was running point in a different vehicle, and Tia was running support back at our base, watching the spy videos of the city streets. It was a frigid day and the heater in our van didn’t work—Abraham hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.
Prof’s words ran through my mind. We’ve considered hitting Conflux before, but discarded the idea because we thought it would be too dangerous. We still have the plans we made. It’s no less dangerous now, but we’re in deep. No reason not to move forward.
Was Conflux real? My gut said he was. Much as the clues pointed to Firefight being a fabrication, the clues surrounding Conflux added up to something being there. A powerful but fragile Epic.
Steelheart moves Conflux around, Prof had said, never letting him stay long in the same place. But there’s a pattern to how he’s moved. He often uses an armored limo with six guards and a two-motorcycle escort. If we watch for that, wait until he uses that convoy to move, we can hit him on the streets in transit.
The clues. Even with power plants Steelheart didn’t have enough electricity to run the city, and yet he somehow produced those fuel cells. The mechanized armor units didn’t pack power sources, and neither did many of the copters. The fact that they were powered directly by high-ranking members of Enforcement wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone knew it.
He was out there. A gifter who could make energy in a form that could power vehicles, fill fuel cells, even light a large chunk of the city. That level of power was awesome, but no more so than what Nightwielder or Steelheart held. The most powerful Epics set their own scale of strength.