Steelheart r-1 Read online

  I couldn’t hear the reply, but it obviously satisfied her. A few more explosions sounded in the distance.

  She eyed me, but my hands were still raised, and she must have seen Curveball firing on me. She apparently decided I wasn’t a threat. She lowered her gun and hurriedly reached down, breaking the stiletto heels off her shoes. Then she grabbed the side of her dress and ripped it off.

  I gaped.

  I normally consider myself somewhat levelheaded, but it’s not every day that you find yourself in a darkened alleyway with a gorgeous woman who rips off most of her clothing. Underneath she wore a low-cut tank top and a pair of spandex biker shorts. I was pleased to note that the gun holster was, indeed, strapped to her right thigh. Her mobile was hooked to the outside of the sheath.

  She tossed the dress aside-it had been designed to come off easily. Her arms were lean and firm, and the wide-eyed naivety she’d shown earlier was completely gone, replaced with a hard edge and a determined expression.

  I took a step, and in a heartbeat her pistol was trained on my forehead again. I froze.

  “Out of the alleyway,” she said, gesturing.

  I nervously did as asked, walking back onto the street.

  “On your knees, hands on head.”

  “I don’t really-”

  “Down!”

  I got down on my knees, feeling stupid, raising my hands to my head.

  “Hardman,” she said, finger to her ear. “If Knees here so much as sneezes, put a slug through his neck.”

  “But-” I began.

  She took off at a run down the street, moving much more quickly now that she’d removed the heels and the dress. That left me alone. I felt like an idiot kneeling there, hairs on my neck prickling as I thought of the sniper who had his weapon trained on me.

  How many agents did the Reckoners have here? I couldn’t imagine them trying anything like this without at least two dozen. Another explosion shook the ground. Why the blasts? They’d alert Enforcement, Steelheart’s soldiers. Lackeys and thugs were bad enough; Enforcement wielded advanced guns and the occasional armor unit-twelve-foot-tall robotic suits of power armor.

  The next explosion was closer, just down the block. Something must have gone wrong in their original plan, otherwise Fortuity wouldn’t have gotten away from the woman in red. Megan? Was that what she’d said her name was?

  This was one of their contingency plans. But what were they trying to do?

  A figure burst out of an alleyway nearby, almost making me jump. I held still, cursing that sniper, but I did turn my head slightly to look. The figure wore red, and still had handcuffs on. Fortuity.

  The explosions, I realized. They were to scare him back this way!

  He crossed the street, then turned to run in my direction. Megan-if that was really her name-burst from the same road he’d appeared out of. She turned this way, trying to chase him down, but behind her-in the distance-another group of figures rushed out from a different street.

  They were four of Spritz’s thugs, in suits and carrying submachine guns. They pointed at Megan.

  I watched from the other side of the street as Megan and Fortuity passed me. The thugs were approaching from my right, and Megan and Fortuity were running to my left, all of us on the same darkened street.

  Come on! I thought at the sniper up above. She doesn’t see them! They’ll gun her down. Take them out!

  Nothing. The thugs leveled their guns. I felt sweat trickle down the back of my neck. Then, teeth clenched, I rolled to the side, whipping my rifle out and drawing a bead on one of them.

  I took a deep breath, concentrated, and squeezed the trigger, fully expecting to be shot in the head from above.

  4

  A handgun is like a firecracker-unpredictable. Light a firecracker, toss it, and you never really know where it’s going to land or the damage it’s going to do. The same’s true when you shoot a handgun.

  An Uzi is even worse-it’s like a string of firecrackers. Much more likely to hurt something, but still awkward and unruly.

  A rifle is elegant. It’s an extension of your will. Take aim, squeeze the trigger, make things happen. In the hands of an expert with stillness inside of him, there’s nothing more deadly than a good rifle.

  The first thug fell to my shot. I inched the gun to the side, then squeezed again. The second went down. The other two lowered their weapons, dodging.

  Look. Squeeze. Three down. The last one was full-out running by the time I focused on him, and he managed to get behind cover. I hesitated, spine itching-waiting to feel the bullet from the sniper hit my back. It didn’t come. Hardman, it appeared, had realized that I was a good guy.

  I stood up hesitantly. It wasn’t the first time I’d killed, unfortunately. It didn’t happen often, but once or twice, I’d had to protect myself in the understreets. This was different, but I didn’t have time to think about it.

  I shoved those emotions aside, and not knowing what else to do, I turned to the left and took off at a dead run down the street after Fortuity and the Reckoner woman. The Epic cursed and weaved toward a side street. The streets were all empty. Our explosions and gunfire had caused anyone nearby to clear out-this sort of thing wasn’t uncommon in Newcago.

  Megan dashed after Fortuity, and I was able to cut to the side and meet up with her. She glared at me as we barreled down the cross street, shoulder to shoulder, after the Epic.

  “I told you to stay put, Knees!” she yelled.

  “Good thing I ignored you! I just saved your life.”

  “That’s why I haven’t shot you. Get out of here.”

  I ignored her, aiming my rifle as I ran and taking a shot at the Epic. It went wide-it was too hard to run and fire at the same time. He’s fast! I thought, annoyed.

  “That’s useless,” the girl said. “You can’t hit him.”

  “I can slow him down,” I said, lowering the rifle, running past a pub with lights off and doors closed. A group of nervous patrons watched from one of the windows. “Dodging will throw him off balance.”

  “Not for long.”

  “We need to both fire at once,” I said. “We can pin him between two bullets, so either way he dodges, he’ll hit one of them. Checkmate.”

  “Are you insane?” she said, still running. “That would be near impossible.”

  She was right. “Well, let’s use his weakness, then. I know you know what it is-otherwise you’d never have gotten those handcuffs on him.”

  “It won’t help,” she said, dodging around a lamppost.

  “It worked for you. Tell me what it is. I’ll use it.”

  “Slontze,” she cursed at me. “His danger sense is weakened if he’s attracted to you. So unless he finds you a whole lot prettier than I do, it’s not going to help.”

  Oh, I thought. Well, that was a problem.

  “We need to-” Megan began, but then cut off, raising her finger to her ear as we ran. “No! I can do this! I don’t care how close they are!”

  They’re trying to get her to pull out, I realized. It wouldn’t be long before Enforcement arrived.

  Ahead of us an unfortunate driver, probably on the way to the club district, pulled around the corner. The car screeched to a halt, and Fortuity cut in front of it, heading to the right down another alleyway that would lead him toward more populated streets.

  I got an idea.

  “Take this,” I said, tossing my rifle to Megan. I whipped out my extra magazine and tossed it to her as well. “Fire at him. Slow him down.”

  “What?” Megan demanded. “Who are you to give me-”

  “Do it!” I said, skidding to a stop beside the car. I pulled open the passenger door. “Out,” I said to the woman behind the wheel.

  The bystander got out and scurried away, leaving the keys in the ignition. In a world full of Epics with the legal right to take any vehicle they want, few people ask questions. Steelheart is brutal with thieves who aren’t Epics, so most would never try what I’d just done.r />
  Outside the car, Megan cursed, then raised my rifle expertly and took a shot. She had good aim, and Fortuity-just a little ways down the alleyway-stumbled to the right, his danger sense prompting him to dodge out of the way. As I’d hoped, it slowed him considerably.

  I gunned the engine. It was a nice sporty coupe, and it looked practically new. Pity, that.

  I tore off down the street. I’d told Megan that I’d been a cabdriver. Which was true; I’d tried it a few months back, right after graduating from the Factory. I hadn’t mentioned, however, that the job had lasted only one day; I’d proven terrible at it.

  You never know how much you’ll like something until you try it out. It had been one of my father’s famous sayings. The cab company hadn’t expected me to “try out” driving for the first time in one of their cars. But how else was a guy like me supposed to get behind a wheel? I was an orphan who had been owned by the Factory for most of my life. My type didn’t exactly make big money, and the understreets don’t have room for cars anyway.

  Regardless, driving had proven a tad more difficult than I’d expected it to be. I screeched around the corner of the dark street, the gas pedal pressed to the floor, barely in control. I knocked down a stop sign and a street sign on my way, but I made it down the block in a matter of heartbeats and screeched around another corner. I hit a few trash cans as I went up over the curb, but managed to retain control as I turned and pulled the car to a stop facing south.

  I was pointing it directly down the alleyway. Fortuity was still stumbling through it toward me, tripping on refuse and boxes as Megan slowed him.

  There was a pop, Fortuity dodged, and my windshield suddenly cracked-a bullet blasting through it about an inch from my head. My heart leaped. Megan was still shooting.

  You know, David, I thought to myself. You really need to start thinking your plans through a little more carefully.

  I slammed the pedal down, roaring into the alleyway. It was just barely wide enough for the car, and sparks flew up on the left side as I veered a hair too far in that direction, shearing off the side mirror.

  The headlights shone on a figure in a red leisure suit, hands cuffed together, cape flapping behind him. He’d lost his hat while running. His eyes were wide. There was nowhere for him to go in either direction.

  Checkmate.

  Or so I thought. As I got close, Fortuity leaped into the air and slammed his feet into the front of my windshield with superhuman dexterity.

  That utterly shocked me. Fortuity wasn’t supposed to have any enhanced physical abilities. Of course, for a man like him-who avoided danger so easily-there may not have been many opportunities to display such things. Either way, his feet hit my windshield in an expert maneuver only someone with super reflexes could have managed. He pushed off and jumped backward, the windshield shattering into pebbled glass, using the momentum of the car to throw himself into a backflip.

  I slammed on the brakes and blinked as the glass sprayed my face. The car screeched to a halt in a shower of sparks. Fortuity landed his flip with poise.

  I shook my head, dazed. Yeah, super reflexes, a piece of my mind thought. I should have realized. Perfect complement to a precog portfolio. Fortuity was wise to keep the secret. Many a powerful Epic had realized that hiding one or two abilities gave them an edge when another Epic tried to kill them.

  Fortuity ran forward. I could see him glaring at me, lips curling up in a sneer. He was a monster-I’d documented over a hundred murders tied to him. And from the look in his eyes, he intended to add my name to that list.

  He leaped into the air, toward the hood of the car.

  Crack! Crack!

  Fortuity’s chest exploded.

  5

  Fortuity’s corpse slammed down onto the hood of the car. Megan stood behind him, my rifle in one hand-held at the hip-her pistol in the other hand. The car’s headlights bathed her in light. “Sparks!” she cursed. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

  She fired both at once, I realized. She checkmated him in the air with two shots. It had probably only worked because he’d been jumping-in midair it would have been harder for him to jerk out of the way. But still, shooting like that was incredible. A gun in each hand, one of them a rifle?

  Sparks, I thought, echoing her. We’d actually won.

  Megan pulled Fortuity’s body off the hood and checked for a pulse. “Dead,” she said. Then she shot the body twice in the head. “And double dead, to be certain.”

  At that moment about a dozen of Spritz’s thugs appeared at the end of the alleyway, sporting Uzis.

  I swore, scrambling into the back seat of the car. Megan jumped onto the hood and slid through the shattered windshield, ducking down in the passenger seat as a hailstorm of bullets slammed into the vehicle.

  I tried to open the back door-but, of course, the walls of the alleyway were too close. The back window shattered and puffs of stuffing flew from the seats as they were shredded by Uzi fire.

  “Calamity!” I said. “Glad it’s not my car.”

  Megan rolled her eyes at me, then pulled something out of her top. A small cylinder, like a lipstick case. She twisted the bottom, waited for a lull in the bullets, then lobbed it out the front window.

  “What was that?” I yelled over the shots.

  I was answered by an explosion that shook the car, blowing scraps of trash from the alleyway across us. The bullets stopped for a moment, and I could hear men crying out in pain. Megan-still toting my rifle-hopped over the torn-up seat and lithely slipped through the broken back window, then ran for it.

  “Hey!” I said, crawling out after her, bits of safety glass falling from my clothing. I jumped to the ground and dashed to the end of the alleyway, cutting to the side just as the survivors from the explosion started firing again.

  She can shoot like a dream and she carries tiny grenades in her top, a bit of my addled mind thought. I think I might be in love.

  I heard a low rumbling over the gunfire, and an armored truck pulled around the corner ahead, roaring toward Megan. It was huge and green, imposing, with enormous headlights. And it looked an awful lot like …

  “A garbage truck?” I asked, running up to join Megan.

  A tough-looking black man rode in the passenger seat. He pushed open the door for Megan. “Who’s that?” the man asked, nodding to me. He spoke with a faint French accent.

  “A slontze,” she said, tossing my rifle back to me. “But a useful one. He knows about us, but I don’t think he’s a threat.”

  Not exactly a glowing recommendation, but good enough. I smiled as she climbed into the cab, pushing the man to the middle seat.

  “Do we leave him?” asked the man with the French accent.

  “No,” said the driver. I couldn’t make him out; he was just a shadow, but his voice was solid and resonant. “He comes with us.”

  I smiled, eagerly stepping up into the truck. Could the driver be Hardman, the sniper? He’d seen how helpful I’d been. The people inside reluctantly made room for me. Megan slipped into the back seat of the crew cab beside a wiry man wearing a leather camouflage jacket and holding a very nice-looking sniper rifle. He was probably Hardman. To his other side was a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length red hair. She wore spectacles and business attire.

  The garbage truck pulled away, moving faster than I’d have thought possible. Behind us a group of the thugs came out of the alley, firing on the truck. It didn’t do much good, though we weren’t out of danger quite yet. Overhead I heard the distinctive sound of Enforcement copters. There would probably be a few high-level Epics on the way too.

  “Fortuity?” the driver asked. He was an older man, perhaps in his fifties, and wore a long, thin black coat. Oddly, he had a pair of goggles tucked into the breast pocket of the coat.

  “Dead,” Megan said from behind.

  “What went wrong?” the driver asked.

  “Hidden power,” she said. “Super reflexes. I got him cuffed, but he slippe
d away.”

  “There was also that one,” the guy in the camo jacket-I was pretty sure that was Hardman-said. “He came up in the middle of it all, caused a wee bit of trouble.” He had a distinctive Southern accent.

  “We’ll talk about him later,” the driver said, taking a corner at high speed.

  My heart started to beat more quickly, and I glanced out the window, searching the sky for copters. It wouldn’t be long before Enforcement was told what to look for, and the truck was rather conspicuous.

  “We should have just shot Fortuity in the first place,” said the man with the French accent. “Derringer to the chest.”

  “Wouldn’t have worked, Abraham,” the driver said. “His abilities were too strong-even attraction could only do so much. We needed to do something nonlethal first-trap him, then shoot him. Precogs are tough.”

  He had that part right, probably. Fortuity had possessed a very strong danger sense. Likely the plan had been for Megan to cuff him and maybe lock him to the lamppost. Then, when he was partially immobilized, she could have rammed her derringer into his chest and fired. If she’d tried that first, his power might have warned him. It would have depended on how attracted he was to her.

  “I wasn’t expecting him to be so strong,” Megan said, sounding disappointed with herself as she pulled on a brown leather jacket and a pair of cargo pants. “I’m sorry, Prof. I shouldn’t have let him get away from me.”

  Prof. Something about that name struck me.

  “It’s done,” the driver-Prof-said, pulling the garbage truck to a jarring halt. “We ditch the machine. It’s been compromised.”

  Prof opened the door and we piled out.

  “I-” I began to say, planning to introduce myself. The older man they called Prof, however, shot me a menacing glare over the hood of the garbage truck. I cut myself short, choking on my words. Standing in the shadows, with his long jacket and that grizzled face, hair peppered with grey, that man looked dangerous.

  The Reckoners pulled a few packs of equipment out of the back of the garbage truck, including a massive machine gun that Abraham now toted. They led me down a set of steps into the understreets. From there the team hustled through a set of twists and turns. I did a pretty good job keeping track of where we were going until they led me down a long flight of stairs, several levels deep, into the steel catacombs.