Steelheart r-1 Read online

  Prof just shook his head, looking bemused.

  Suddenly, Abraham laughed. “I like him. He has … something. Un homme téméraire. You sure we aren’t recruiting, Prof?”

  “Yes,” Prof said flatly.

  “At least look at my plan before you burn it,” I said. “Please.”

  “Jon,” Tia said. “I’d like to see these pictures. They’re likely fake, but even so …”

  “Fine,” Prof said, tossing something to me. The magazine for my rifle. “Change of plans. Cody, you take Megan and the boy and go to his place. If Enforcement is there and looks like they’re going to take this information, destroy it. But if the site looks safe, bring it back.” He eyed me. “Whatever you can’t carry easily, destroy. Understood?”

  “Sure,” Cody said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It’s not a favor, son,” Prof said. “And I hope it’s not a mistake either. Go on. We may not have much time before they track you.”

  It was getting quiet in the understreets by the time we neared Ditko Place. You’d think that, with the perpetual darkness, there wouldn’t really be a “day” or a “night” in Newcago, but there is. People tend to want to sleep when everyone else sleeps, so we settle into routines.

  Of course, there are a minority who don’t like to do as told, even when it comes to something simple. I was one of those. Being up all night means being awake when everyone else is sleeping. It’s quieter, more private.

  The ceiling lights were set to a clock somewhere, and they colored to deeper shades when it was night. The change was subtle, but we learned to notice it. So, even though Ditko Place was near the surface, there wasn’t much motion on the streets. People were sleeping.

  We arrived at the park, a large underground chamber carved from the steel. It had numerous holes in the ceiling for fresh air, and blue-violet lights shone from spotlights around the rim. The center of the tall chamber was cluttered with rocks brought in from outside-real rocks, not ones that had been turned to steel. There was also wooden playground equipment, moderately well maintained, that had been scavenged from somewhere. In the daytime the place would fill with children-the ones too young to work, or the ones with families who could afford not to have them work. Old women and men would gather to knit socks or do other simple work.

  Megan raised her hand to still us. “Mobiles?” she whispered.

  Cody sniffed. “Do I look like some amateur?” he asked. “It’s on silent.”

  I hesitated, then took mine off the place on my shoulder and double-checked. Fortunately it was on silent. I took out the battery anyway, just in case. Megan moved quietly out of the tunnel and across the park toward the shadow of a large rock. Cody went next, then I followed, keeping low and moving as quietly as I could, passing large stones growing lichen.

  Up above a few cars rumbled by on the roadway that ran past the openings in the ceiling. Late-night commuters heading home. Sometimes they’d throw trash down on us. A surprising number of the rich still had ordinary jobs. Accountants, teachers, salesmen, computer technicians-though Steelheart’s datanet was open only to his most trusted. I’d never seen a real computer, just my mobile.

  It was a different world above, and jobs that had once been common were now held by only the privileged. The rest of us worked factories or sewed clothing in the park while watching children play.

  I reached the rock and crouched beside Cody and Megan, who were stealthily inspecting the two far walls of the chamber, where the dwellings were cut. Dozens of holes in the steel provided homes of various sizes. Metal fire escapes had been harvested from unused buildings above and set up here to give access to the holes.

  “So, which one is it?” Cody asked.

  I pointed. “See that door on the second level, far right? That’s it.”

  “Nice,” Cody said. “How’d y’all afford a place like this?” He asked it casually, but I could tell that he was suspicious. They all were. Well, I suppose that was to be expected.

  “I needed a room by myself for my research,” I said. “The factory where I worked saves all of your wages when you’re a kid, then gives them to you in four yearly chunks when you hit eighteen. It was enough to get me a year in my own room.”

  “Cool,” Cody said. I wondered if my explanation passed his test or not. “It doesn’t look like Enforcement has made it here yet. Maybe they couldn’t match you from the description.”

  I nodded slowly, though beside me Megan was looking around, her eyes narrowed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It looks too easy. I don’t trust things that look too easy.”

  I scanned the far walls. There were a few empty trash bins and some motorbikes chained up beside a stairwell. Some chunks of metal had been etched by enterprising street artists. They weren’t supposed to do that, but the people encouraged them, quietly. It was one of the only forms of rebellion the common people ever engaged in.

  “Well, we can wait here staring until they do come,” Cody said, rubbing his face with a leathery finger, “or we can just go. Let’s be on with it.” He stood up.

  One of the large trash bins shimmered.

  “Wait!” I said, grabbing Cody and pulling him down, my heart leaping.

  “What?” he said, anxious, unslinging his rifle. It was of a very fine make, old but well maintained, with a large scope and a state-of-the-art suppressor on the front. I’d never been able to get my hands on one of those. The cheaper ones worked poorly, and I found it too hard to aim with them.

  “There,” I said, pointing at the trash bin. “Watch it.”

  He frowned but did what I asked. My mind raced, sorting through fragments of remembered research. I needed my notes. Shimmering … illusionist Epic … who was that?

  Refractionary, I thought, seizing on a name. A class C illusionist with personal invisibility capabilities.

  “What am I watching for?” Cody asked. “Did you get spooked by a cat or something-” He cut off as the bin shimmered again. Cody frowned, then crouched down farther. “What is that?”

  “An Epic,” Megan said, her eyes narrowing. “Some of the lesser Epics with illusion powers have trouble maintaining an exact illusion.”

  “Her name is Refractionary,” I said softly. “She’s pretty skilled, capable of creating complex visual manifestations. But she’s not terribly powerful, and her illusions always have tells to them. Usually they shimmer as if light is reflecting off them.”

  Cody aimed his rifle, sighting on the trash bin. “So you’re saying that bin isn’t really there. It’s hiding something else. Enforcement officers, probably?”

  “I’d guess so,” I said.

  “Can she be harmed by bullets, lad?” Cody asked.

  “Yes, she’s not a High Epic. But Cody, she might not be in there.”

  “You just said-”

  “She’s a class C illusionist,” I explained. “But her secondary power is class B personal invisibility. Illusions and invisibility often go hand in hand. Anyway, she can make herself invisible, but not anything else-others, she has to create an illusion around. I’d be certain she’s hiding an Enforcement squad in that fake trash bin illusion, but if she’s smart-and she is-she’ll be somewhere else.”

  I felt an itch in the small of my back. I hated illusionist Epics. You never knew where they’d be. Even the weakest of them-class D or E, by my own notation system-could make an illusion big enough for themselves to hide in. If they had personal invisibility, it was even worse.

  “There,” Megan whispered, pointing toward a large piece of playground equipment-a kind of wooden fort for climbing. “See those boxes on the top of that playground tower? They just shimmered. Someone’s hiding in them.”

  “That’s only big enough for one person,” I whispered. “From that position, whoever is there could see right into my apartment through the door. Sniper?”

  “Most likely,” Megan said.

  “Refractionary is close, then,” I said. “She�
��ll need to be able to see both that playground equipment and the fake garbage bins to keep the illusions going. The range on her powers isn’t great.”

  “How do we draw her out?” Megan asked.

  “She likes to be involved, from what I remember,” I said. “If we can get the Enforcement soldiers to move, she’ll stay close to them, in case she needs to give orders or make illusions to support them.”

  “Sparks!” Cody whispered. “How do you know all of this, lad?”

  “Weren’t you listening?” Megan asked softly. “This is what he does. It’s what he has built his life around. He studies them.”

  Cody stroked his chin. He looked as if he’d assumed everything I said before was bravado. “You know her weakness?”

  “It’s in my notes,” I said. “I’m trying to remember. Uh … well, illusionists usually can’t see if they turn themselves completely invisible. They need light to strike their irises. So you can watch for the eyes. But a really skilled illusionist can make their eyes match the color of their surroundings. But that’s not really her weakness, more a limitation of illusions themselves.”

  What was it? “Smoke!” I exclaimed, then blushed at the sound of it. Megan shot me a glare. “It’s her weakness,” I whispered. “She always avoids people who are smoking, and stays away from any kind of fire. It’s pretty well known, and reasonably substantiated, as far as Epic weaknesses go.”

  “Guess we’re back to starting the place on fire after all,” Cody said. He seemed excited by the prospect.

  “What? No.”

  “Prof said-”

  “We can still get the information,” I said. “They’re waiting for me, but they only sent a minor Epic. That means they want me, but they haven’t sorted through that the Reckoners were behind the assassination tonight-or maybe they don’t know how I was involved. They probably haven’t cleaned out my room yet, even if they did break in and scan through what’s there.”

  “Excellent reason to burn the place,” Megan said. “I’m sorry, but if they’re that close …”

  “But see, it’s essential that we go in now,” I said, growing more anxious. “We have to see what has been disturbed, if anything. That’ll tell us what they’ve discovered. We burn the place down now, and we blind ourselves.”

  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 off in traffic. She created an illusion of the road turning up ahead and drove the offender off 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 fitting 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 rifles 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 offered 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 offend 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 rifle 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 flat, hands in the pockets of my jacket, fingering 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 rifle. I had a couple of handguns stashed in my room, but a man wasn’t really dangerous unless he had a rifle. 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, firing two guns at once, one from the hip.

  She’d shown emotion during our fight 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 five paces from where a group of Enforcement officers 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 fiddled 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 floor. 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 outfits, always clean and washed-was folded in the trunk beside my mattress on the floor. I kept my room messy, intentionally. It actually itched at me, as I liked things neat.

  I’d found that sloppiness put people off guard. If my landlady came snooping up here, she’d find what she expected. A teenager just into his majority blowing his earnings on an easy l
ife 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, filled with clippings from newspapers or scraps of information. Eight notebooks filled with my thoughts and findings. 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 officers. They stood on the landing, automatic rifles 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 transfixing, 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 officer said, rifle up at his shoulder and the barrel trained on me. “Down on your knees, subject.”

  That was what they called people, subject. Steelheart didn’t bother with any kind of silly pretense that his empire was a republic or a representative government. He didn’t call people citizens or comrades. They were subjects of his empire. That was that.