Steelheart

  “I’m going for it,” I said. “If you take heat, pull out.” I ran off the field and back into the hallways beneath the stands, holding Abraham’s assault rifle and listening to soldiers shout behind me. Steelheart and Prof were moving this direction, I thought. I just need to wrap around and get close enough to fire on him. I can do it from behind.

  It would work. It had to work.

  Those soldiers were following me. Abraham’s gun had a grenade launcher underneath. Any ammunition? Those were meant to be fired before exploding, but I could use my remote detonator pen and an eraser tab to make one go off.

  No luck. The gun was out of grenades. I cursed, but then saw the remote fire switch on the gun. I grinned, then stopped, spun, and put the gun on the ground, wedged back against a chunk of steel. I flipped the switch and ran.

  It started firing like crazy, spraying the corridor behind me with bullets. It probably wouldn’t do much damage, but all I needed was a short breather. I heard soldiers yelling at one another to take cover.

  That would do. I reached another opening and left the hallway, dashing out onto the playing field.

  Smoke curled in patches from the ground. Steelheart’s blasts seemed to smolder after they hit, starting fires on things that shouldn’t burn. I raised the pistol, and in a fleeting moment I wondered what Abraham would say when he learned that I’d lost his gun. Again.

  I spotted Steelheart, who was turned away from me, distracted by Prof. I ran for all I was worth, passing through clouds of smoke, leaping over rubble.

  Steelheart started to turn as I approached. I could see his eyes, imperious and arrogant. His hands seemed to burn with energy. I pulled to a halt in the whipping smoke, arms shaking as I raised the gun. The gun that had killed my father. The only weapon that had ever wounded this monster in front of me.

  I fired three shots.

  40

  EACH one hit … and each one bounced free of Steelheart, like pebbles thrown at a tank.

  I lowered the gun. Steelheart raised a hand toward me, energy glowing around his palm, but I didn’t care.

  That’s it, I thought. We’ve tried everything. I didn’t know his secret. I never had.

  I had failed.

  He released a blast of energy, and some primal part of me wouldn’t just stand there. I threw myself to the side, and the blast hit the ground beside me, spraying up a shower of molten metal. The ground shook and the blast threw my roll out of control. I tumbled hard on the unyielding ground.

  I came to a stop and lay there, dazed. Steelheart stepped forward. His cape had been torn in places from Prof’s attacks, but he didn’t seem to be anything more than inconvenienced. He loomed above me, hand forward.

  He was majestic. I could recognize that, even as I readied myself for death at his hands. Silver and black cape flapping, the rips making it look more real somehow. Classically square face, a jaw that any linebacker would have envied, a body that was toned and muscled—but not in the way of a bodybuilder. This wasn’t exaggeration; it was perfection.

  He studied me, his hand glowing. “Ah yes,” he said. “The child in the bank.”

  I blinked, shocked.

  “I remember everyone and everything,” he said to me. “You needn’t be surprised. I am divine, child. I do not forget. I thought you well and dead. A loose end. I hate loose ends.”

  “You killed my father,” I whispered. A stupid thing to say, but it was what came out.

  “I’ve killed a lot of fathers,” Steelheart said. “And mothers, sons, daughters. It is my right.”

  The glow of his hand grew brighter. I braced myself for what was coming.

  Prof tackled Steelheart from behind.

  I rolled to the side by reflex as the two hit the ground nearby. Prof came up on top. His clothing was burned, ripped, and bloodied. He had his sword, and began slamming it down in Steelheart’s face.

  Steelheart laughed as the weapon hit; his face actually dented the sword.

  He was talking to me to draw Prof out, I realized in a daze. He …

  Steelheart reached up and shoved Prof, throwing him backward. What seemed like a tiny bit of effort from Steelheart tossed Prof a good ten feet. He hit and grunted.

  The winds picked up, and Steelheart floated up to a standing position. Then he leaped, soaring into the air. He came down on one knee, slamming a fist into Prof’s face.

  Red blood splashed out around him.

  I screamed, scrambling to my feet and running for Prof. My ankle wasn’t working properly though, and I fell hard, hitting the ground. Through tears of pain, I saw Steelheart punch down again.

  Red. So much red.

  The High Epic stood up, shaking his bloodied hand. “You have a distinction, little Epic,” he said to the fallen Prof. “I believe you agitated me more than any before you.”

  I crawled forward, reaching Prof’s side. His skull was crushed in on the left, his eyes bulging out the front, staring sightlessly. Dead.

  “David!” Tia said in my ear. There was gunfire on her side of the line. Enforcement had found the copter.

  “Go,” I whispered.

  “But—”

  “Prof is dead,” I said. “I am too. Go.”

  Silence.

  From my pocket, I took the detonator pen. We were in the middle of the field. Cody had placed my blasting cap on the dump of explosives, and it was just beneath us. Well, I’d blow Steelheart into the sky, for what good it would do.

  Several Enforcement soldiers rushed up to Steelheart, reporting on the perimeter. I heard the copter thumping as it ascended to leave. I also heard Tia weeping on the line.

  I pulled myself up to a kneeling position beside Prof’s corpse.

  My father dying before me. Kneeling at his side. Go … run …

  At least this time I hadn’t been a coward. I raised the pen, fingering the button on the top. The blast would kill me, but it wouldn’t harm Steelheart. He’d survived explosions before. I might take a few soldiers with me, though. That was worth it.

  “No,” Steelheart said to his troops. “I’ll deal with him. This one is … special.”

  I looked over at him, blinking dazed eyes. He’d raised his arm to ward away the Enforcement officers.

  There was something strange in the distance behind him, over the stadium rim, above the luxury suites. I frowned. Light? But … that wasn’t the right direction. I wasn’t facing the city. Besides, the city had never produced a light that grand. Reds, oranges, yellows. The very sky seemed on fire.

  I blinked through the haze of smoke. Sunlight. Nightwielder was dead. The sun was rising.

  Steelheart spun about. Then he stumbled back, raising an arm against the light. His mouth opened in awe; then he shut it, grinding his teeth.

  He turned back on me, eyes wide with anger. “Nightwielder will be difficult to replace,” he growled.

  Kneeling in the middle of the field, I stared at the light. That beautiful glow, that powerful something beyond.

  There are things greater than the Epics, I thought. There is life, and love, and nature herself.

  Steelheart strode toward me.

  Where there are villains, there will be heroes. My father’s voice. Just wait. They will come.

  Steelheart raised a glowing hand.

  Sometimes, son, you have to help the heroes along.…

  And suddenly, I knew.

  An awareness opened my mind, like the burning radiance of the sun itself. I knew. I understood.

  Not looking down, I gathered up my father’s gun. I fiddled with it a moment, then raised it directly at Steelheart.

  Steelheart sniffed and stared it down. “Well?”

  My hand quivered, wavering, my arm trembling. The sun backlit Steelheart.

  “Idiot,” Steelheart said, and reached forward, grabbing my hand and crushing the bones. I barely felt the pain. The gun dropped to the ground with a clank. Steelheart held out a hand and the air spun around on the ground, forming a little whirlwind undernea
th the gun that raised it into his fingers. He turned it on me.

  I looked up at him. A murderer outlined in brilliant light. Seen like that, he was just a shadow. Darkness. A nothingness before real power.

  The men in this world, Epics included, would pass from time. I might be a worm to him, but he was a worm himself in the grand scheme of the universe.

  His cheek bore a tiny sliver of a scar. The only imperfection on his body. A gift from a man who had believed in him. A gift from a better man than Steelheart would ever be, or ever understand.

  “I should have been more careful that day,” Steelheart said.

  “My father didn’t fear you,” I whispered.

  Steelheart stiffened, gun pointed to my head as I knelt, bloodied, before him. He always liked to use his enemy’s own weapon against him. That was part of the pattern. The wind stirred the smoke rising around us.

  “That’s the secret,” I said. “You keep us in darkness. You show off your terrible powers. You kill, you allow the Epics to kill, you turn men’s own weapons against them. You even spread false rumors about how horrible you are, as if you can’t be bothered to be as evil as you want to be. You want us to be afraid …”

  Steelheart’s eyes widened.

  “… because you can only be hurt by someone who doesn’t fear you,” I said. “But such a person doesn’t really exist, do they? You make sure of it. Even the Reckoners, even Prof himself. Even me. We are all afraid of you. Fortunately I know someone who isn’t afraid of you, and never has been.”

  “You know nothing,” he growled.

  “I know everything,” I whispered. Then I smiled.

  Steelheart pulled the trigger.

  Inside the gun, the hammer struck the back of the bullet’s casing. Gunpowder exploded, and the bullet sprang forward, summoned to kill.

  In the barrel, it struck the thing I had lodged there. A slender pen, with a button you can click on the top. It was just small enough to fit into the gun. A detonator. Connected to explosives beneath our feet.

  The bullet hit the trigger and pushed it in.

  I swore I could watch the explosion unfold. Each beat of my heart seemed to take an eternity. Fire channeled upward, steel ground ripping apart like paper. Terrible redness to match the peaceful beauty of the sunrise.

  The fire consumed Steelheart and all around him; it ripped his body apart as he opened his mouth to scream. Skin flayed, muscles burned, organs shredded. He turned eyes toward the heavens, consumed by a volcano of fire and fury that opened at his feet. In that fraction of a sliver of a moment, Steelheart—greatest of all Epics—died.

  He could only be killed by someone who didn’t fear him.

  He had pulled the trigger himself.

  He had caused the detonation himself.

  And as that arrogant, self-confident sneer implied, Steelheart did not fear himself. He was, perhaps, the only person alive who did not.

  I didn’t really have time to smile in that frozen moment, but I was feeling it nonetheless as the fire came for me.

  41

  I watched the shifting pattern of red, orange, and black. A wall of fire and destruction. I watched it until it vanished. It left a black scar on the ground in front of me, surrounding a hole five paces wide—the blast crater of the explosion.

  I watched it all, and found myself still alive. I’ll admit, it was the most baffling moment in my life.

  Someone groaned behind me. I spun to see Prof sitting up. His clothing was covered in blood and he had a few scratches on his skin, but his skull was whole. Had I mistaken the extent of his injuries?

  Prof had his hand forward, palm out. The tensor he’d been wearing was in tatters. “Sparks,” he said. “Another inch or so and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.” He coughed into his fist. “You’re a lucky little slontze.”

  Even as he spoke, the scratches on his skin pulled together, healing. Prof’s an Epic, I thought. Prof’s an Epic. That was an energy shield he created to block the explosion!

  He stumbled to his feet, looking around the stadium. A few Enforcement soldiers were running away, fleeing as they saw him rise. They seemed to want no part of whatever was happening in the center of the field.

  “How …,” I said. “How long?”

  “Since Calamity,” Prof said, cracking his neck. “You think an ordinary person could have stood against Steelheart as long as I did tonight?”

  Of course not. “The inventions are all fakes, aren’t they?” I said, realization dawning. “You’re a gifter! You gave us your abilities. Shielding abilities in the form of jackets, healing ability in the form of the harmsway, and destructive powers in the form of the tensors.”

  “Don’t know why I did it,” Prof said. “You pathetic little …”

  He groaned, raising his hand to his head, then gritted his teeth and roared.

  I scrambled back, startled.

  “It’s so hard to fight,” he said through clenched teeth. “The more you use it, the … Arrrrr!” He knelt down, holding his head. He was quiet for a few minutes, and I let him be, not knowing what to say. When he raised his head, he seemed more in control. “I give it away,” he said, “because if I use it … it does this to me.”

  “You can fight it, Prof,” I said. It felt right. “I’ve seen you do it. You’re a good man. Don’t let it consume you.”

  He nodded, breathing in and out deeply. “Take it.” He reached out his hand.

  I hesitantly took his hand with my good one—the other was crushed. I should have felt pain from that. I was too much in shock.

  I didn’t feel any different, but Prof seemed to grow more in control. My wounded hand re-formed, bones pulling together. In seconds I could flex it again, and it worked perfectly.

  “I have to split it up among you,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to … seep into you as quickly as it does me. But if I give it all to one person, they’ll change.”

  “That’s why Megan couldn’t use the tensors,” I said. “Or the harmsway.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, sorry. You don’t know. Megan’s an Epic too.”

  “What?”

  “She’s Firefight,” I said, cringing back a bit. “She used her illusion powers to fool the dowser. Wait, the dowser—”

  “Tia and I programmed it to exclude me,” Prof said. “It gives a false negative on me.”

  “Oh. Well, I think Steelheart must have sent Megan to infiltrate the Reckoners. But Edmund said that he couldn’t gift his powers to other Epics, so … yeah. That’s why she couldn’t ever use the tensors.”

  Prof shook his head. “When he said that, in the hideout, it made me wonder. I’d never tried to give mine to another Epic. I should have seen … Megan …”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I said.

  Prof breathed in and out, then nodded. He looked at me. “It’s okay, son. You don’t need to be afraid. It’s passing quickly this time.”

  He hesitated. “I think.”

  “Good enough for me,” I said, climbing to my feet.

  The air smelled of explosives—of gunpowder, smoke, and burned flesh. The growing sunlight was reflecting off the steel surfaces around us. I found it almost blinding, and the sun wasn’t even fully up yet.

  Prof looked at the sunlight as if he hadn’t noticed it before. He actually smiled, and seemed more and more like his old self. He strode out across the field, walking toward something in the rubble.

  Megan’s personality changed when she used her powers too, I thought. In the elevator shaft, on the cycle … she changed. Became brasher, more arrogant, even more hateful. It had passed quickly each time, but she’d barely used her powers, so maybe the effects on her had been weaker.

  If that was true, then spending time with the Reckoners—when she needed to be careful not to use her abilities lest she give herself away—had served to keep her from being affected. The people she was meant to have infiltrated had instead turned her more human.

  Prof came walk
ing back with something in his hand. A skull, blackened and charred. Metal glinted through the soot. A steel skull. He turned it toward me. There was a groove in the right cheekbone, like the trail left by a bullet.

  “Huh,” I said, taking the skull. “If the bullet could hurt his bones, why couldn’t the blast?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if his death triggered his tranfersion abilities,” Prof said. “Turning what was left of him as he died—his bones, or some of them—into steel.”

  Seemed like a stretch to me. But then, strange things happened around Epics. There were oddities, especially when they died.

  As I regarded the skull, Prof called Tia. I distractedly caught the sounds of weeping, exclamations of joy, and an exchange that ended with her turning the copter back for us. I looked up, then found myself walking toward the tunnel entrance into the stadium innards.

  “David?” Prof called.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I want to get something.”

  “The copter will be here in a few minutes. I suggest we not be here when Enforcement comes in earnest to see what happened.”

  I started running, but he didn’t object further. As I entered the darkness, I turned my mobile’s light up to full, illuminating the tall, cavernous corridors. I ran past Nightwielder’s body suspended in steel. Past the place where Abraham had detonated the explosion.

  I slowed, peeking into concession stands and restrooms. I didn’t have long to look, and I soon felt like a fool. What did I expect to find? She’d left. She was …

  Voices.

  I froze, then turned about in the dim corridor. There. I walked forward, eventually finding a steel door frozen open and leading into what appeared to be a janitorial chamber. I could almost make out the voice. It was familiar. Not Megan’s voice, but …

  “… deserved to live through this, even if I didn’t,” the voice said. Gunfire followed, sounding distant. “You know, I think I fell for you that first day. Stupid, huh? Love at first sight. What a cliché.”

  Yes, I knew that voice. It was mine. I stopped at the doorway, feeling like I was in a dream as I listened to my own words. Words spoken as I defended Megan’s dying body. I continued listening as the entire scene played out. Right up until the end. “I don’t know if I love you,” my voice said. “But whatever the emotion is, it’s the strongest one I’ve felt in years. Thank you.”