The van bumped, and I gripped my rifle—held low, safety on, barrel pointed down and toward the door. Out of sight, but handy. Just in case.
Tia had spotted the right kind of limo convoy today, and we’d scrambled. Megan drove us toward a point where our road would intersect with Conflux’s limo. Her eyes were characteristically intense, though there was a particular edge to her today. Not fear. Just … worry, maybe?
“You don’t think we should be doing this, do you?” I asked.
“I think I made that clear,” Megan said, her voice even, eyes ahead. “Steelheart doesn’t need to fall.”
“I’m talking about Conflux specifically,” I said. “You’re nervous. You’re normally not nervous.”
“I just don’t think we know enough about him,” she said. “We shouldn’t be hitting an Epic we don’t even have photographs of.”
“But you are nervous.”
She drove, eyes forward and hands tight on the wheel.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I feel like a brick made of porridge.”
She looked at me, brow scrunching up. The van’s cab fell silent. Then Megan started to laugh.
“No, no,” I said. “It makes sense! Listen. A brick is supposed to be strong, right? But if one were secretly made of porridge, and all of the other bricks didn’t know, he’d sit around worrying that he’d be weak when the rest of them were strong. He’d get smooshed when he was placed in the wall, you see, maybe get some of his porridge mixed with that stuff they stick between bricks.”
Megan was laughing even harder now, so hard she was actually gasping for breath. I tried to keep explaining but found myself smiling. I don’t think I’d ever heard her laugh, really laugh. Not chuckle, not part her lips in wry mockery, but truly laugh. She was almost in tears by the time she got control of herself. I think we were fortunate she didn’t crash into a post or something.
“David,” she said between gasps, “I think that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. The most outlandishly, audaciously ridiculous.”
“Um …”
“Sparks,” she said, exhaling. “I needed that.”
“You did?”
She nodded.
“Can we … pretend that’s why I said it, then?”
She looked at me, smiling, eyes sparkling. The tension was still there, but it had retreated somewhat. “Sure,” she said. “I mean, bad puns are something of an art, right? So why not bad metaphors?”
“Exactly.”
“And if they’re an art, you are a master painter.”
“Well, actually,” I said, “that won’t work, you see, because the metaphor makes too much sense. I’d have to be, like, the ace pilot or something.” I cocked my head. “Actually, that makes a little bit of sense too.” Sparks, doing it badly intentionally was hard too. I found that decidedly unfair.
“Y’all okay up there?” Cody said in our ears. The back of the van was separated from the cab by a metal partition, like a service van. There was a little window in it, but Cody preferred to use the mobiles to communicate.
“We’re fine,” Megan said. “Just having an abstract conversation about linguistic parallelism.”
“You wouldn’t be interested,” I said. “It doesn’t involve Scotsmen.”
“Well, actually,” Cody said, “the original tongue of my motherland …”
Megan and I looked at each other, then both pointedly reached to our mobiles and muted him.
“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 difficult 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 fifteen minutes or so.”
“Affirmative.”
Outside the streetlights flickered, 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 than machine-gun barrels, the mechanized armor was accompanied by a five-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 stuffy inside, and they respond very sluggishly.” She hesitated. “I’ll admit that firing both rotary guns with wild abandon can be rather fulfilling, in a primal sort of way.”
“We’ll convert you away from those handguns yet.”