Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)

The other two hesitated.

“We can stop them,” I said. “And we might be able to kill us an Epic in the process. Refractionary has plenty of blood on her hands. Just last month someone cut her o in tra c. She created an illusion of the road turning up ahead and drove the o ender o the freeway and into a home. Six dead.

Children were in the car.”

Epics had a distinct, even incredible, lack of morals or conscience. That bothered some people, on a philosophical level.

Theorists, scholars. They wondered at the sheer inhumanity many Epics manifested. Did the Epics kill because

Calamity

chose—for

whatever reason—only terrible people to gain powers? Or did they kill because such amazing power twisted a person, made them irresponsible?

There were no conclusive answers. I didn’t care; I wasn’t a scholar. Yes, I did research, but so did a sports fan when he followed his team. It didn’t matter to me why the Epics did what they did any more than a baseball fan wondered at the physics of a bat hitting a ball.

Only one thing mattered—Epics gave no thought for ordinary human life. A brutal murder was a tting retribution, in their minds, for the most minor of infractions.

“Prof didn’t approve hitting an Epic,” Megan said. “This isn’t in the procedures.”

Cody chuckled. “Killing an Epic is always in the procedures, lass.

You just haven’t been with us long enough to understand.”

“I have a smoke grenade in my room,” I said.

“What?” Megan asked. “How?”

“I grew up working at a munitions plant,” I said. “We mostly made ri es and handguns, but we worked with other factories.

I got to pick up the occasional goody from the QC reject pile.”

“A smoke grenade is a goody?”

Cody asked.

I frowned. What did he mean? Of course it was. Who wouldn’t want a smoke grenade when o ered one? Megan actually showed the faintest of smiles. She understood.

I don’t get you, girl, I thought. She carried explosives in her shirt and was an excellent shot, but she was worried about procedures when she got a chance to kill an Epic? And as soon as she caught me looking at her, her expression grew cold and aloof once again.

Had I done something to o end her?

“If we can get that grenade, I can use it to negate Refractionary’s powers,” I said. “She likes to stay near her teams. So if we can draw the soldiers into an enclosed space, she’ll probably follow. I can blow the grenade, then shoot her when it makes her appear.”

“Good enough,” Cody said. “But how are we going to manage all of that and get your notes?”

“Easy,” I said, reluctantly handing my ri e to Megan. I’d have a better chance of fooling them if I wasn’t armed. “We give them the thing they’re waiting for.

Me.”





10

I crossed the street toward my at, hands in the pockets of my jacket, ngering the roll of industrial tape I usually kept there. The other two hadn’t liked my plan, but they hadn’t come up with anything better. Hopefully they’d be able to fulfill their parts in it.

I felt completely naked without my ri e. I had a couple of handguns stashed in my room, but a man wasn’t really dangerous unless he had a ri e. At least, he wasn’t consistently dangerous.

Hitting something with a handgun always felt like an accident.

Megan did it, I thought. She not only hit, but hit a High Epic in the middle of a dodge, ring two guns at once, one from the hip.

She’d shown emotion during our ght with Fortuity. Passion, anger, annoyance. The second two toward me, but it had been something. And then, for a few moments after he fell … there had been a connection.

Satisfaction, and appreciation of me that had come out when she’d spoken on my behalf to Prof.

Now that was gone. What did it mean?

I stopped at the edge of the playground. Was I really thinking about a girl now? I was only about ve paces from where a group of Enforcement o cers were hiding, probably with automatic or energy weapons trained on me.

Idiot, I thought, heading up the metal stairway toward my apartment. They’d wait to see if I got out anything incriminating before grabbing me. Hopefully.

Climbing steps like that, with my back to the enemy, was

excruciating. I did what I always did when I grew afraid. I thought of my father falling, bleeding beside that pillar in the broken bank lobby while I hid. I hadn’t helped.

I would never be that coward again.

I reached the door to my apartment, then ddled with the keys. I heard a distant scrape but pretended not to notice. That would be the sniper on top of the playground equipment nearby, repositioning to aim at me. Yes, from this angle I saw for certain.

That playground piece was just tall enough that the sniper would be able to shoot through the door into my apartment.

I stepped inside my single room.

No hallways or anything else, just a hole cut into the steel, like most dwellings in the understreets. It might not have had a bathroom or running water, but I was still living quite well, by understreets standards. A whole room for a single person?

I kept it messy. Some old, disposable noodle bowls sat in a pile beside the door, smelling of spice. Clothing was strewn across the oor. I had a bucket of two-

day-old water sitting on the table, and dirty, beat-up silverware sat in a pile beside it.

I didn’t use those to eat. They were for show. So was the clothing; I didn’t wear any of it. My actual clothing—four

sturdy

out ts,

always clean and washed—was folded in the trunk beside my mattress on the oor. I kept my room messy, intentionally. It actually itched at me, as I liked things neat.

I’d found that sloppiness put people o guard. If my landlady came snooping up here, she’d nd what she expected. A teenager just into his majority blowing his earnings on an easy life for a year before responsibility hit him. She wouldn’t poke or prod for secret compartments.

I hurried to the trunk. I unlocked it and pulled out my backpack— already packed with a change of clothing, spare shoes, some dry rations, and two liters of water.

There was a handgun in a pouch on one side, and the smoke grenade was in a pouch on the other side.

I walked to my mattress and unzipped the case. Inside was my life. Dozens of folders, lled with clippings from newspapers or scraps of information. Eight notebooks lled with my thoughts and ndings. A larger notebook with my indexes.

Maybe I should have brought all of this with me when going to watch the Fortuity hit. After all, I’d hoped to leave with the Reckoners.

I’d debated it but had eventually decided that it wouldn’t be reasonable. There was so much of it, for one thing. I could lug it all if I needed to, but it slowed me down.

And it was just too precious. This research was the most valuable thing in my life. Collecting some of it had nearly gotten me killed— spying on Epics, asking questions better left unasked, making payments to shady informants. I was proud of it, not to mention frightened about what might happen to it. I’d thought it safer here.

Boots shook the metal landing of the stairway outside. I looked over my shoulder and saw one of the most feared sights in the understreets:

fully

geared

Enforcement o cers. They stood on the landing, automatic ri es in their hands, sleek black helmets on their heads, military-grade armor on their chests, knees, arms. There were three of them.

Their helmets had black visors that came down over their eyes, leaving their mouths and chins exposed. The eye shields gave them night vision and glowed faintly green, with a strange smoky pattern that swirled and undulated across the front. It was trans xing, which was said to be the point.

I didn’t need to act to make my eyes go wide, my muscles taut.

“Hands on your head,” the lead o cer said, ri e up at his shoulder and the barrel trained on me.