“Yeah,” Cody said. I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “I just wish it had been a little more dramatic.”
I pulled the pen detonator from my pocket. It probably wouldn’t do anything—the explosives we’d placed on the walls had probably already set off the ones in the floor. I clicked the top of the pen anyway.
The following explosion was about ten times as strong as the previous one. Our car shook and debris sprayed out over the city, dust and bits of rock raining down. Megan and I both spun around in our seats in time to catch the building collapse in an awful-sounding crunch.
“Wow,” Cody said. “Look at that. I guess some of the power cells went up.”
Megan glanced at me, then at the pen, then rolled her eyes. In seconds we were racing down the street in the opposite direction of fire trucks and emergency responders, heading for the rendezvous point with the other Reckoners.
PART THREE
23
I grunted, hauling the rope hand over hand. A plaintive squeak came from the pulley system with each draw, as if I had strapped some unfortunate mouse to a torture device and was twisting with glee.
The construction had been set up around the tunnel into the Reckoner burrow, which was the only way in or out. It had been five days since our attack on the power station, and we’d been lying low during most of that, planning our next move—the hit on Conflux to undermine Enforcement.
Abraham had just gotten back from a supply run. Which meant that I’d stopped being one of the team’s tensor specialists and started being their source of free teenage labor.
I continued pulling, sweat dripping from my brow and beginning to soak through my T-shirt. Eventually the crate appeared from the depths of the hole, and Megan pulled it off its rollers and heaved it into the room. I let go of the rope, sending the roller board and rope back down the tunnel so Abraham could tie on another crate of supplies.
“You want to do the next one?” I asked Megan, wiping my brow with a towel.
“No,” she said lightly. She heaved the crate onto a dolly and wheeled it over to stack it with the others.
“You sure?” I asked, arms aching.
“You’re doing such a fine job,” she said. “And it’s good exercise.” She settled the crate, then sat down on a chair, putting her feet up on the desk and sipping a lemonade while reading a book on her mobile.
I shook my head. She was unbelievable.
“Think of it as being chivalrous,” Megan said absently, tapping the screen to scroll down more text. “Protecting a defenseless girl from pain and all that.”
“Defenseless?” I asked as Abraham called up. I sighed, then started pulling the rope again.
She nodded. “In an abstract way.”
“How can someone be abstractly defenseless?”
“Takes a lot of work,” she said, then sipped her drink. “It only looks easy. Just like abstract art.”
I grunted. “Abstract art?” I asked, heaving on the rope.
“Sure. You know, guy paints a black line on a canvas, calls it a metaphor, sells it for millions.”
“That never happened.”
She looked up at me, amused. “Sure it did. You never learned about abstract art in school?”
“I was schooled at the Factory,” I said. “Basic math, reading, geography, history. Wasn’t time for anything else.”
“But before that. Before Calamity.”
“I was eight,” I said. “And I lived in inner-city Chicago, Megan. My education mostly involved learning to avoid gangs and how to keep my head down at school.”
“That’s what you learned when you were eight? In grade school?”
I shrugged and kept pulling. She seemed troubled by what I’d said, though I’ll admit, I was troubled by what she’d said. People hadn’t really paid that much money for such simple things, had they? It baffled me. Pre-Calamity people had been a strange lot.
I hauled the next crate up, and Megan hopped down from her chair again to move it. I couldn’t imagine that she was getting much reading done, but she didn’t seem bothered by the interruptions. I watched her, taking a long gulp from my cup of water.
Things had been … different between us since her confession in the elevator shaft. In a lot of ways she was more relaxed around me, which didn’t make that much sense. Shouldn’t things have been more awkward? I knew she didn’t support our mission. That felt like a pretty big deal to me.
She really was a professional, though. She didn’t agree that Steelheart should be killed, but she didn’t abandon the Reckoners, or even ask for a transfer to another Reckoner cell. I didn’t know how many of those there were—apparently only Tia and Prof knew—but there was at least one other.
Either way, Megan stayed on board and didn’t let her feelings distract her from her job. She might not agree that Steelheart needed to die, but from what I’d pried from her, she believed in fighting the Epics. She was like a soldier who believed a certain battle wasn’t tactically sound, yet supported the generals enough to fight it anyway.
I respected her for that. Sparks, I was liking her more and more. And though she hadn’t been particularly affectionate toward me lately, she wasn’t openly hostile and cold any longer. That left me room to work some seductive magic. I wished I knew some.
She got the crate in place, and I waited for Abraham to call up that I should start pulling again. Instead he appeared at the mouth of the tunnel and started to unhook the pulley system. His shoulder had been healed from the gunshot using the harmsway, the Reckoner device that helped flesh heal extraordinarily fast.
I didn’t know much about it, though I’d spoken to Cody—he’d called it the “last of the three.” Three bits of incredible technology brought to the Reckoners from Prof’s days as a scientist. The tensors, the jackets, the harmsway. From what Abraham told me, Prof had developed each technology and then stolen them from the lab he’d worked in, intent on starting his own war against the Epics.
Abraham got the last parts of the pulley down.
“Are we done?” I asked.
“Indeed.”
“I counted more crates than that.”
“The others are too big to fit through the tunnel,” Abraham said. “Cody’s going to drive them over to the hangar.”
That was what they called the place where they kept their vehicles. I’d been there; it was a large chamber with a few cars and a van inside. It wasn’t nearly as secure as this hideout was—the hangar had to have access to the upper city and couldn’t be part of the understreets.
Abraham walked over to the stack of a dozen crates we’d heaved into the hideout. He rubbed his chin, inspecting them. “We might as well unload these,” he said. “I’ve got another hour to spare.”
“Before what?” I asked, joining him at the crates.
He didn’t reply.
“You’ve been gone a lot these last few days,” I noted.
Again, he didn’t reply.
“He’s not going to tell you where he’s been, Knees,” Megan said from her lounging position at the desk. “And get used to it. Prof sends him out on secret errands a lot.”
“But …,” I said, feeling hurt. I’d thought I’d earned my place on the team.
“Do not be saddened, David,” Abraham said, grabbing a crowbar to crack open one of the crates. “It is not a matter of trust. We must keep some things secret, even within the team, should one of us be taken captive. Steelheart has his way of getting to what one hides—nobody except Prof should know everything we are doing.”
It was a good rationale, and it was probably why I couldn’t know about other Reckoner cells either, but it was still annoying. As Abraham cracked open another crate, I reached to the pouch at my side and slipped out my tensor. With that, I vaporized the wooden lids off a few crates.
Abraham raised an eyebrow at me.
“What?” I said. “Cody told me to keep practicing.”
“You are growing quite good,” Abraham said.
Then he reached into one of the crates I’d opened and fished out an apple, which was now covered in sawdust. It made something of a mess getting it out. “Quite good,” he continued. “But sometimes, the crowbar is more effective, eh? Besides, we may wish to reuse these crates.”
I sighed, but nodded. It was just … well, hard. The sense of strength I’d felt during the power station infiltration was difficult to forget. Opening the holes in the walls and creating those handholds, I’d been able to bend matter to my will. The more I used the tensor, the more excited I grew about the possibilities it offered.
“It is also important,” Abraham said, “to avoid leaving traces of what we can do. Imagine if everyone knew about these things, eh? It would be a different world, more difficult for us.”
I nodded, reluctantly putting the tensor away. “Too bad we had to leave that hole for Diamond to see.”
Abraham hesitated, just briefly. “Yes,” he said. “Too bad.”
I helped him unload the supplies, and Megan joined us, working with characteristic efficiency. She ended up doing a lot of supervising, telling us where to stow the various foodstuffs. Abraham accepted her direction without complaint, even though she was the junior member of the team.
About halfway through the unloading, Prof came out of his planning room. He walked over to us while scanning through some papers in a folder.
“Did you learn anything, Prof?” Abraham asked.
“Rumors are going our way, for once,” Prof said, tossing the folder onto Tia’s desk. “The city’s buzzing with the news of a new Epic come to challenge Steelheart. Half the city is talking about it, while the other half is bunkering down in their basements, waiting for the fighting to blow over.”
“That’s great!” I said.
“Yes.” Prof seemed troubled.
“What’s wrong, then?” I asked.
He tapped the folder. “Did Tia tell you what was on those data chips you brought back from the power plant?”
I shook my head, trying to hide my curiosity. Was he going to tell me? Perhaps it would give me a clue to what Abraham had been up to the last few days.
“It’s propaganda,” Prof said. “We think you found a hidden public manipulation wing of Steelheart’s government. The files you brought back included press releases, outlines of rumors planned to be started, and stories of things Steelheart has done. Most of those stories and rumors are false, so far as Tia can determine.”
“He wouldn’t be the first ruler to fabricate a grand history for himself,” Abraham noted, stowing some canned chicken on one of the shelves that had been carved to fill the entire wall of the back room.
“But why would Steelheart need to do that?” I asked, wiping my brow. “I mean … he’s practically immortal. It’s not like he needs to look more powerful than he is.”
“He’s arrogant,” Abraham said. “Everybody knows this. You can see it in his eyes, in how he speaks, in what he does.”
“Yes,” Prof said. “Which is why these rumors are so confusing. The stories aren’t meant to bolster him—or if they are, he has an odd way of going about it. Most of the stories are about atrocities he’s committed. People he’s murdered, buildings—even small towns—he has supposedly wiped out. But none of it has actually happened.”
“He’s spreading rumors about having slaughtered towns full of people?” Megan asked, sounding troubled.
“So far as we can tell,” Prof said. He joined in, helping unload the crates. Megan had stopped giving orders, I noticed, now that he was around. “Someone, at least, wants Steelheart to sound more terrible than he really is.”
“Maybe we found some kind of revolutionary group,” I said, eager.
“Doubtful,” Prof said. “Inside one of the major government buildings? With that kind of security? Besides, what you told me seems to imply the guards knew of the place. Anyway, many of these stories are accompanied by documentation claiming they were devised by Steelheart himself. It even notes their falsehood, and the need to substantiate them with made-up facts.”
“He’s been bragging,” Abraham said, “and making things up—only now, his ministry has to make all of his claims sound true. Otherwise he’ll look foolish.”
Prof nodded, and my heart sank. I’d assumed that we’d found something important. Instead all I’d discovered was a department dedicated to making Steelheart look good. And more evil. Or something.
“So Steelheart is not as terrible as he would like us to think,” Abraham said.
“Oh, he’s pretty terrible,” Prof said. “Wouldn’t you say, David?”
“Over seventeen thousand confirmed deaths to his name,” I said absently. “It’s in my notes. Many were innocents. They can’t all be fabrications.”
“And they’re not,” Prof said. “He’s a terrible, awful individual. He just wants to make sure that we all know it.”
“How strange,” Abraham said.
I dug into a crate of cheeses, getting out the paper-wrapped blocks and loading them in the cold-storage pit on the far side of the room. So many of the foods the Reckoners ate were things I’d never been able to afford. Cheese, fresh fruit. Most food in Newcago had to be shipped in because of the darkness. It was impossible to grow fruit and vegetables outside, and Steelheart was careful to keep a firm hold on the farmlands surrounding the city.
Expensive foods. I was already getting used to eating them. Odd, how quickly that could happen.
“Prof,” I said, placing a cheese wheel in the pit, “do you ever wonder if maybe Newcago will be worse without Steelheart than it is with him?”
At the other side of the room, Megan turned sharply to look at me, but I didn’t look at her. I won’t tell him what you said, so stop glaring at me. I just want to know.
“It probably will be,” Prof said. “For a while at least. The infrastructure of the city will probably collapse. Food will get scarce. Unless someone powerful takes Steelheart’s place and secures Enforcement, there will be looting.”
“But—”
“You want your revenge, son? Well, that’s the cost. I won’t sugarcoat it. We try to keep from hurting innocents, but when we kill Steelheart, we’ll cause suffering.”
I sat down beside the cold-storage hole.
“Did you never think of this?” Abraham asked. He’d gotten that necklace out from underneath his shirt and was rubbing his finger on it. “In all those years of planning, preparing to kill the one you hated, did you never consider what would happen to Newcago?”
I blushed, but then I shook my head. I hadn’t. “So … what do we do?”
“Continue as we have,” Prof said. “Our job is to cut out the infected flesh. Only then can the body start to heal—but it’s going to hurt a lot first.”
“But …”
Prof turned to me, and I saw something in his expression. A deep exhaustion, the tiredness of one who had been fighting a war for a long, long time. “It’s good for you to think of this, son. Ponder. Worry. Stay up nights, frightened for the casualties of your ideology. It will do you good to realize the price of fighting.
“I need to warn you of something, however. There aren’t any answers to be found. There are no good choices. Submissiveness to a tyrant or chaos and suffering. In the end I chose the second, though it flays my soul to do so. If we don’t fight, humankind is finished. We slowly become sheep to the Epics, slaves and servants—stagnant.
“This isn’t just about revenge or payback. It’s about the survival of our race. It’s about men being the masters of their own destiny. I choose suffering and uncertainty over becoming a lapdog.”
“That’s all well and good,” Megan said, “to choose for yourself. But Prof, you’re not just choosing for yourself. You’re choosing for everyone in the city.”
“So I am.” He slid some cans onto the shelf.
“In the end,” Megan said, “they don’t get to be masters of their own destinies. They get to be dominated by Steelheart or left to fend for themselves�
�at least until another Epic comes along to dominate them again.”
“Then we’ll kill him too,” Prof said softly.
“How many can you kill?” Megan said. “You can’t stop all of the Epics, Prof. Eventually another one will set up here. You think he’ll be better than Steelheart?”
“Enough, Megan,” Prof said. “We’ve spoken of this already, and I made my decision.”
“Newcago is one of the best places in the Fractured States to live,” Megan continued, ignoring Prof’s comment. “We should be focusing on Epics who aren’t good administrators, places where life is worse.”
“No,” Prof said, his voice sounding gruffer.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s the problem!” he snapped. “Everyone talks about how great Newcago is. But it’s not great, Megan. It’s good by comparison only! Yes, there are worse places, but so long as this hellhole is considered the ideal, we’ll never get anywhere. We cannot let them convince us this is normal!”
The room fell still, Megan looking taken aback by Prof’s outburst. I sat down, my shoulders slumping.
This wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. The glorious Reckoners, bringing justice to the Epics. I hadn’t once thought of the guilt they’d bear, the arguments, the uncertainty. I could see it in them, the same fear I’d had in the power plant. The worry that we might be making things worse, that we might end up as bad as the Epics.
Prof stalked away, waving a hand in frustration. I heard the curtain rustle as he retreated back to his thinking room. Megan watched him go, red-faced with anger.
“It is not so bad, Megan,” Abraham said quietly. He still seemed calm. “It will be all right.”
“How can you say that?” she asked.
“We don’t need to defeat all of the Epics, you see,” Abraham said. He was holding a chain in his dark-skinned hand, with a small pendant dangling from it. “We just need to hold out long enough.”
“I’m not going to listen to your foolishness, Abraham,” she said. “Not right now.” With that she turned and left the storage room. She crawled into the tunnel that led down to the steel catacombs and vanished.
Steelheart Page 20