The recording stopped. Then it started playing again from the beginning.
I stepped into the small room. Megan sat on the floor in the corner, staring at the mobile in her hands. She turned down the volume when I entered, but she didn’t stop looking at the screen.
“I keep a secret video and audio feed,” she whispered. “The camera’s embedded in my skin, above my eye. It starts up if I close my eyes for too long, or if my heart rate goes too high or too low. It sends the data to one of my caches in the city. I started doing that after I died the first few times. It’s always disorienting to reincarnate. It helps if I can watch what happened leading up to my death.”
“Megan, I …” What could I say?
“Megan is my real name,” she said. “Isn’t that funny? I felt I could give it to the Reckoners because that person, the person I was, is dead. Megan Tarash. She’s never had any connection to Firefight. She was just another ordinary human.”
She looked up at me, and in the light of her mobile screen I could see tears in her eyes. “You carried me all that way,” she whispered. “I watched it, when I was first reborn this time. Your actions didn’t make sense to me. I thought you must have needed something from me. Now I see something different in what you did.”
“We’ve got to go, Megan,” I said, stepping forward. “Prof can explain better than I can. But right now, just come with me.”
“My mind changes,” she whispered. “When I die, I am reborn out of light a day later. Somewhere random, not where my body was, not where I died, but nearby. Different each time. I … I don’t feel like myself, now that that’s happened. Not the self I want to be. It doesn’t make sense. What do you trust, David? What do you trust when your own thoughts and emotions seem to hate you?”
“Prof can—”
“Stop,” she said, raising a hand. “Don’t … don’t come closer. Just leave me. I need to think.”
I stepped forward.
“Stop!” The walls faded, and fires seemed to flame up around us. The floor warped beneath me, making me nauseous. I stumbled.
“You’ve got to come with me, Megan.”
“Take another step and I’ll shoot myself,” she said, reaching for a gun on the floor beside her. “I’ll do it, David. Death is nothing to me. Not anymore.”
I backed away, hands up.
“I need to think about this,” she mumbled again, looking back at her mobile.
“David.” A voice in my ear. Prof’s voice. “David, we’re leaving now.”
“Don’t use your powers, Megan,” I said to her. “Please. You have to understand. They’re what change you. Don’t use them for a few days. Hide, and your mind will get clearer.”
She kept staring at the screen. The recording started over.
“Megan …”
She raised the gun toward me without shifting her gaze. The tears dripped down her cheeks.
“David!” Prof yelled.
I turned and ran for the copter. I didn’t know what else to do.
Epilogue
I’VE seen Steelheart bleed.
I’ve seen him scream. I’ve seen him burn. I’ve seen him die in an inferno, and I was the one who killed him. Yes, the hand that pushed the detonator was his own, but I don’t care—and have never cared—which hand actually took his life. I made it happen. I’ve got his skull to prove it.
I sat strapped in the copter’s chair, looking out the open door to the side, my hair blowing as we lifted off. Cody was stabilizing quickly in the back seat, much to Abraham’s amazement. I knew Prof had given the man a large portion of his healing power. From what I knew of Epic regeneration abilities, that would be able to heal Cody from practically anything, so long as he was still breathing when the power was transferred.
We soared up into the air before a blazing yellow sun, leaving the stadium scorched, burned, blasted, but with the scent of triumph. My father told me that Soldier Field had been named in honor of the military men and women who had fallen in battle. Now it had hosted the most important battle since Calamity. The field’s name had never seemed more appropriate to me.
We rose above a city that was seeing real light for the first time in a decade. People were in the streets, looking upward.
Tia piloted the copter, one hand reaching over to hold Prof’s arm, as if she were unable to believe he was really there with us. He looked out his window, and I wondered if he saw what I did. We hadn’t rescued this city. Not yet. We’d killed Steelheart, but other Epics would come.
I didn’t accept that we just had to abandon the people now. We’d removed Newcago’s source of authority; we’d have to take responsibility for that. I wouldn’t abandon my home to chaos, not now, not even for the Reckoners.
Fighting back had to be about more than just killing Epics. It had to be about something greater. Something, perhaps, that had to do with Prof and Megan.
The Epics can be beaten. Some, maybe, can even be rescued. I don’t know how to manage it exactly. But I intend to keep trying until either we find an answer or I’m dead.
I smiled as we turned out of the city. The heroes will come … we might just have to help them along.
I always assumed that my father’s death would be the most transformative event of my life. Only now, with Steelheart’s skull in my hand, did I realize that I hadn’t been fighting for vengeance, and hadn’t been fighting for redemption. I hadn’t been fighting because of my father’s death.
I fought because of his dreams.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS one has been a long time brewing. I had the first idea for it while on book tour in … oh, 2007? With a long ride like that involved in getting the book finished, a lot of people have given me feedback over the years. I hope I don’t miss any of you!
Notably, thanks go out to my delightful editor, Krista Marino, for her extremely capable direction of this project. She’s been a wonderful resource, and her editing was top-notch, taking this book from plucky upstart to polished product. Also, we should make note of that rascal James Dashner, who was kind enough to call her up and get me an introduction.
Others who deserve a cheer are: Michael Trudeau (who did a superb copyedit); and at Random House, Paul Samuelson, Rachel Weinick, Beverly Horowitz, Judith Haut, Dominique Cimina, and Barbara Marcus. Also, Christopher Paolini, for his feedback and help on the book.
As always, I wish to give big thanks to my agents, Joshua Bilmes, who didn’t laugh too hard when I told him I had this book I wanted to write instead of working on the twenty other projects I needed to do at the time, and Eddie Schneider, whose jobs include dressing better than the rest of us and having a name I have to look up every time I want to put it in acknowledgments. On the Steelheart film front (we’re trying hard), thanks go to Joel Gotler, Brian Lipson, Navid McIlhargey, and the superhuman Donald Mustard.
A big thumbs-up goes to the incandescent Peter Ahlstrom, my editorial assistant, who was part of this book’s cheering section from the get-go. He was, editorially, the first one who got his hands on this project—and much of its success is due to him.
I also don’t want to forget my UK/Ireland/Australia publishing team, including John Berlyne and John Parker of the Zeno Agency, and Simon Spanton and my publicist/mother-in-the-UK, Jonathan Weir of Gollancz.
Others with Epic-level powers in reading and giving feedback (or just great support) include: Dominique Nolan (Dragonsteel’s official Gun-Nut super-reference man), Brian McGinley, David West, Peter (again) and Karen Ahlstrom, Benjamin Rodriguez and Danielle Olsen, Alan Layton, Kaylynn ZoBell, Dan “I Wrote Postapocalyptic Before You” Wells, Kathleen Sanderson Dorsey, Brian Hill, Brian “By Now You Owe Me Royalties, Brandon” Delambre, Jason Denzel, Kalyani Poluri, Kyle Mills, Adam Hussey, Austin Hussey, Paul Christopher, Mi’chelle Walker, and Josh Walker. You’re all awesome.
Finally, as always, I wish to thank my lovely wife, Emily, and my three destructive little boys, who are constant inspiration for how an Epic might go about b
lowing up a city. (Or the living room.)
Brandon Sanderson
BRANDON SANDERSON is the author of the internationally bestselling Mistborn trilogy, and he was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. His books have been published in more than twenty-five languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives and writes in Utah. To learn more about Brandon and his books, visit him at brandonsanderson.com.
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