“Fortunately,” Tia said, “we’ve found some ways to influence what the network sees and hears. So don’t worry about Steelheart spying on us.”
I still felt uncomfortable, but it wasn’t worth thinking on at the moment. I stepped up to the edge of the roof, looking down at the street below. A few cars passed, and the imager relayed the sounds of their driving. I reached forward and placed my hand on the wall of the room-seemingly touching something invisible in midair. This was going to be very disorienting.
Unlike the tensors, room imagers I’d heard of-people paid good money to visit imager films. My conversation with Cody left me thinking. Had we learned how to do things like this from Epics with illusion powers?
“I-” I began.
“No,” Megan said. “If he has to convince me, then I’m driving this conversation.” She stepped up beside me.
“But-”
“Go ahead, Megan,” Prof said.
I grumbled to myself and stepped back to where I didn’t feel I was on the verge of a multistory plummet.
“It’s simple,” Megan said. “There’s one enormous problem in facing Steelheart.”
“One?” Cody asked, leaning back against the wall. It made him look like he was leaning against open air. “Let’s see: incredible strength, can shoot deadly blasts of energy from his hands, can transform anything nonliving around him into steel, can command the winds and fly with perfect control … oh, and he’s utterly impervious to bullets, edged weapons, fire, radiation, blunt trauma, suffocation, and explosions. That’s like … three things, lass.” He held up four fingers.
Megan rolled her eyes. “All true,” she said, then turned back to me. “But none of that is even the first problem.”
“Finding him is the first problem,” Prof said softly. He’d set out a folding chair, Tia as well, and the two were sitting in the center of the imaged rooftop. “Steelheart is paranoid. He makes certain nobody knows where he is.”
“Exactly,” Megan said, raising her hands and using a thumbs-out gesture to control the imager. We zoomed through the city, the buildings a blur beneath us.
I wobbled, my stomach flip-flopping. I reached for the wall, but I wasn’t certain where it was, and stumbled to the side until I found it. Abruptly we halted, hanging in midair, looking at Steelheart’s palace.
It was a dark fortress of anodized steel that rose from the edge of the city, built upon the portion of the lake that had been transformed to steel. It spread out in either direction, a long line of dark metal with towers, girders, and walkways. Like some mash-up of an old Victorian manor, a medieval castle, and an oil rig. Violent red lights shone from deep within the various recesses, and smoke billowed from chimneys, black against a black sky.
“They say he intentionally built the place to be confusing,” Megan said. “There are hundreds of chambers, and he sleeps in a different one each night, eats in a different one for each meal. Supposedly even the staff doesn’t know where he’ll be.” She turned to me, hostile. “You’ll never find him. That’s the first problem.”
I swayed, still feeling as if I were standing in midair, though none of the others seemed to be having trouble. “Could we …,” I asked nauseously, looking back at Abraham.
He chuckled, making some gestures and pulling us back to the top of a nearby building. There was a small chimney on it, and as we “landed” the chimney squished flat, becoming two-dimensional on the floor. This wasn’t a hologram-so far as I knew, nobody had mimicked that level of illusion power with technology. It was just a very advanced use of six screens and some 3-D imaging.
“Right,” I said, feeling steadier. “Anyway, that would be a problem.”
“Except?” Prof asked.
“Except we don’t need to find Steelheart,” I said. “He’ll come to us.”
“He rarely comes out in public anymore,” Megan said. “And when he does, it’s erratic. How in Calamity’s fires are you going to-”
“Faultline,” I said. The Epic who had made the earth swallow the bank on that terrible day when my father had been killed, and who had later challenged Steelheart.
“David has a point,” Abraham said. “Steelheart did come out of hiding to fight her when she tried to take Newcago.”
“And when Ides Hatred came here to challenge him,” I said. “Steelheart met the challenge personally.”
“As I recall,” Prof said, “they destroyed an entire city block in that conflict.”
“Sounds like quite the party,” Cody noted.
“Yes,” I said. I had pictures of that fight.
“So you’re saying we need to convince a powerful Epic to come to Newcago and challenge him,” Megan said, her voice flat. “Then we’ll know where he’s going to be. Sounds easy.”
“No, no,” I said, turning to face them, my back to the dark, smoldering expanse of Steelheart’s palace. “That’s the first part of the plan. We make Steelheart think a powerful Epic is coming here to challenge him.”
“How would we do that?” Cody asked.
“We’ve already started,” I explained. “Now we spread word that Fortuity was killed by agents of a new Epic. We start hitting more Epics, leaving the impression that it’s all the work of the same rival. Then we deliver an ultimatum to Steelheart that if he wants to stop the murder of his followers, he’ll need to come out and fight.
“And he will come. So long as we’re convincing enough. You said he’s paranoid, Prof. You’re right. He is-and he can’t stand a challenge to his authority. He always deals with rival Epics in person, just like he did with Deathpoint all those years ago. If there’s one thing that the Reckoners are good at, it’s killing Epics. If we hunt down enough of them in the city in a short time, it will be a threat to Steelheart. We can draw him out, choose our own battlefield. We can make him come to us and walk right into our trap.”
“Won’t happen,” Megan said. “He’ll just send Firefight or Nightwielder.”
Firefight and Nightwielder, two immensely powerful High Epics who acted as Steelheart’s bodyguards and right-hand men. They were nearly as dangerous as he was.
“I’ve shown you Nightwielder’s weakness,” I said. “It’s sunlight-ultraviolet radiation. He doesn’t know that anyone is aware of it. We can use that to trap him.”
“You haven’t proven anything,” Megan said. “You’ve shown us he has a weakness. But every Epic does. You don’t know it’s the sunlight.”
“I glanced through his sources,” Tia said. “It … it really does look like David might have something.”
Megan clenched her jaw. If this came down to me convincing her to agree to my plan, I was going to fail. She didn’t look like she’d agree no matter how good my arguments.
But I wasn’t convinced I needed her support, regardless of what Prof said. I’d seen how the other Reckoners looked to him. If he decided this was a good idea, they’d follow. I just had to hope that my reasoning would be good enough for him, even though he’d said I needed to convince Megan.
“Firefight,” Megan said. “What about him?”
“Easy,” I said, my mood lifting. “Firefight isn’t what he seems.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll need my notes to explain,” I said. “But he’ll be the easiest of the three to take down-I promise you that.”
Megan made a face as if she were offended by this, annoyed that I wasn’t willing to engage her without my notes. “Whatever,” she said, then made a gesture, spinning the room around in a circle and sending me stumbling again, though there was no momentum. She glanced at me, and I saw a hint of a smile on her lips. Well, at least I knew one thing that broke through her coldness: nearly making me lose my lunch.
When the room stopped rotating, our view pointed upward at an angle. Every part of me said I should be sliding backward into the wall, but I knew it was all just done with perspective.
Directly ahead of us a group of three copters moved through the air low, just above the city.
They were sleek and black, with two large rotors each. The sword-and-shield emblem of Enforcement painted in white on their sides.
“It probably won’t even come to Firefight and Nightwielder,” she said. “I should have brought this up first: Enforcement.”
“She’s right,” Abraham said. “Steelheart is always surrounded by Enforcement soldiers.”
“So we take them out first,” I said. “It’s what a rival Epic would probably do anyway-disable Steelheart’s army so they could move in on the city. That will only help convince him that we’re a rival Epic. The Reckoners would never do something like take on Enforcement.”
“We wouldn’t do it,” Megan said, “because it would be pure idiocy!”
“It does seem a little outside our capabilities, son,” Prof said, though I could tell I had him hooked. He watched with interest. He liked the idea of drawing Steelheart out. It was the sort of thing the Reckoners did do, playing on an Epic’s arrogance.
I raised my hands, imitating the gestures the others had been making, then thrust them forward to try moving the viewing room toward Enforcement headquarters. The room lurched awkwardly, tipping sideways and streaking through the city to slam into the side of a building. It froze there, unable to continue into the structure because the spynet didn’t look there. The entire room quivered, as if desperate to fulfill my demand but uncertain where to go.
I toppled sideways into the wall, then plopped down on the ground, dizzy. “Uh …”
“Y’all want me to get that for you?” Cody asked, amused, from the doorway.
“Yeah. Thanks. Enforcement headquarters, please.”
Cody made the gestures and raised the room up, leveled it out, then spun it about and moved it over the city until we were hovering near a large black box of a building. It looked vaguely like a prison, though it didn’t house criminals. Well, just the state-sanctioned kinds of criminals.
I righted myself, determined not to look like a fool in front of the others. Though I wasn’t certain if that was possible at this point. “There’s one simple way to neuter Enforcement,” I said. “We take out Conflux.”
For once an idea of mine didn’t prompt an outcry from the others. Even Megan looked thoughtful, standing just a short distance from me, her arms crossed. I’d love to see her smile again, I thought, then immediately forced my mind away from that. I had to stay focused. This wasn’t a time to let my feet get swept out from underneath me. Well … in a figurative sense, at least.
“You’ve considered this,” I guessed, looking around the room. “You hit Fortuity, but you talked about trying for Conflux instead.”
“It would be a powerful blow,” Abraham said softly, leaning against the wall near Cody.
“Abraham suggested it,” Prof said. “He fought for it, actually. Using some of the same arguments that you made-that we weren’t doing enough, that we weren’t targeting Epics who were important enough.”
“Conflux is more than just the head of Enforcement,” I said, excited. They finally seemed like they were listening. “He’s a gifter.”
“A what?” Cody asked.
“It’s a slang term,” Tia said, “for what we call a transference Epic.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Great,” Cody said. “So what’s a transference Epic?”
“Don’t you ever pay attention?” Tia asked. “We’ve talked about this.”
“He was cleaning his guns,” Abraham said.
“I’m an artist,” Cody said.
Abraham nodded. “He’s an artist.”
“And cleanliness is next to deadliness,” Cody added.
“Oh please,” Tia said, turning back to me.
“A gifter,” I said, “is an Epic who has the ability to transfer his powers to other people. Conflux has two powers he can give others, and both are incredibly strong. Maybe even stronger than those of Steelheart.”
“So why doesn’t he rule?” Cody asked.
“Who knows?” I shrugged. “Probably because he’s fragile. He isn’t said to have any immortality powers. So he stays hidden. Nobody even knows what he looks like. He’s been with Steelheart for over half a decade, though, quietly managing Enforcement.” I looked back at Enforcement headquarters. “He can create enormous stores of energy from his body. He gives this electricity to team leaders of Enforcement Cores; that’s how they run their mechanized suits and their energy rifles. No Conflux means no power armor and no energy weapons.”
“It means more than that,” Prof said. “Taking out Conflux might knock out power to the city.”
“What?” I asked.
“Newcago uses more electricity than it generates,” Tia explained. “All of those lights, on all the time … it’s a huge drain, on a level that would have been hard to sustain even back before Calamity. The new Fractured States don’t have the infrastructure to provide Steelheart with enough power to run this city, yet he does.”
“He’s using Conflux to augment his power stores,” Prof said. “Somehow.”
“So that makes Conflux an even better target!” I said.
“We talked about this months ago,” Prof said, leaning forward, fingers laced before him. “We decided he was too dangerous to hit. Even if we succeeded, we’d draw too much attention, be hunted down by Steelheart himself.”
“Which is what we want,” I said.
The others didn’t seem convinced. Take this step, move against Steelheart’s empire, and they’d be exposing themselves. No more hiding in the various urban undergrounds, hitting carefully chosen targets. No more quiet rebellion. Kill Conflux, and there would be no backing down until Steelheart was dead or the Reckoners were captured, broken, and executed.
He’s going to say no, I thought, looking into Prof’s eyes. He looked older than I’d always imagined him being. A man in his middle years, with grey speckling his hair, and with a face that showed he had lived through the death of one era and had worked ten hard years trying to end the next era. Those years had taught him caution.
He opened his mouth to say the words, but was interrupted when Abraham’s mobile chirped. Abraham unhooked it from its shoulder mount. “Time for Reinforcement,” he said, smiling.
Reinforcement. Steelheart’s daily message to his subjects. “Can you show it on the wall here?” I asked.
“Sure,” Cody said, turning his mobile toward the projector and tapping a button.
“That won’t be ne-” Prof began.
The program had already started. It showed Steelheart this time. Sometimes he appeared personally, sometimes not. He stood atop one of the tall radio towers on his palace. A pitch-black cape spread out behind him, rippling in the wind.
The messages were all prerecorded, but there was no way to tell when; as always there was no sun in the sky, and no trees grew in the city any longer to give an indication of the season either. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be able to tell the time of day just by looking out the window.
Steelheart was illuminated by red lights from below. He placed one foot on a low railing, then leaned forward and scanned his city. His dominion.
I shivered, staring at him, presented in large scale on the wall in front of me. My father’s murderer. The tyrant. He looked so calm, so thoughtful, in this picture. Long jet-black hair that curled softly down to his shoulders. Shirt stretched across an inhumanly strong physique. Black slacks, an upgrade from the loose pants he’d worn on that day ten years ago. This shot of him seemed like it wanted to present him as the thoughtful and concerned dictator, like the early communist leaders I’d learned about back in the Factory school.
He raised a hand, staring intently at the city beneath him, and the hand started to glow with a wicked power. Yellow-white, to contrast the violent red below. The power around his hand wasn’t electricity but raw energy. He built it up for a time, until it was shining so brightly the camera couldn’t distinguish anything but the light and the shadow of Steelheart in front of it.
Then he poi
nted and launched a bolt of blazing yellow force into the city. The power hit a building, blasting a hole through the side, sending flames and debris exploding out the opposite windows. As the building smoldered, people fled from it. The camera zoomed in, making sure to catch sight of them. Steelheart wanted us to know he was firing on an inhabited structure.
Another bolt followed, causing the building to lurch, the steel of one side melting and caving inward. He fired twice more into a building beside it, starting the innards there aflame as well, walls melting from the enormous power of the energy he threw.
The camera pulled back and turned to Steelheart again, still in the same half-crouched stance. He looked down at the city, face impassive, red light from beneath limning a strong jaw and contemplative eyes. There was no explanation of why he’d destroyed those buildings, though perhaps a later message would explain the sins-real or perceived-that the inhabitants were guilty of.
Or perhaps not. Living in Newcago brought risks; one of them was that Steelheart could decide to execute you and your family without explanation. The flip side was that for those risks, you got to live in a place with electricity, running water, jobs, and food. Those were rare commodities in much of the land now.
I took a step forward, walking right up to the wall to study the creature that loomed there. He wants us to be terrified, I thought. It’s what this is all about. He wants us to think no one can challenge him.
Early scholars had wondered if perhaps Epics were some new stage in human development. An evolutionary breakthrough. I didn’t accept that. This thing wasn’t human. It never had been. Steelheart turned to look toward the camera, and there was a hint of a smile on his lips.
A chair scraped behind me and I turned. Prof had stood up and was staring at Steelheart. Yes, there was hatred there. Deep hatred. Prof looked down and met my eyes. It happened again, that moment of understanding.
Each of us knew where the other stood.
“You haven’t said how you’ll kill him,” Prof said to me. “You haven’t convinced Megan. All you’ve shown is that you have a fragile half of a plan.”
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