“Because you’re one of the most capable point men I have, and I’m going to need you. The best thing we can do to protect Newcago right now is keep the Epics from fixating upon it. We’ve overthrown one emperor, and in so doing made a statement: that the day of Epic tyrants is over, and that no Epic—no matter how powerful—is safe from us. We need to make good on that promise. We need to scare them, David. Instead of a single free city, we need to present to them an entire continent in rebellion.”
“So we bring down the tyrants of other cities,” I said, nodding. “And we start with this Regalia.”
“If we can,” Prof said. “Steelheart was probably the strongest Epic alive, but I promise you that Regalia is the most wily—and that makes her just as dangerous, if not more so.”
“She’s sending Epics here,” I pointed out, “to try to kill the Reckoners. She’s scared of you.”
“Possibly,” Prof said. “Either way, in sending Mitosis and the others here, Regalia declared war. You and I are going to kill her for that—just like we did with Steelheart. Just like you did with Sourcefield today. Just like we’ll do to any Epic who stands against us.”
He met my eyes.
“Megan’s not like the others,” I said. “You’ll see.”
“Perhaps,” Prof said. “But if I’m right, son, I want you there so that you can pull the trigger. Because if someone is going to have to put her down, it should be a friend.”
“A mercy,” I said, my mouth going dry.
He nodded. “Pack your things. We leave later tonight.”
7
LEAVE. Newcago.
I’d never … I mean …
Leave.
I’d just said I intended to go. That had been in the heat of the moment. As Tia and Prof pushed out of the room, I stood there in the doorway, coming to a realization of what I’d just done.
I’d never left the city. I’d never thought of leaving the city. Inside the city there had been Epics, but outside the city there was chaos.
Newcago was all I’d ever known. And now I was leaving it.
To find Megan, I thought, forcing down my anxiety and following Prof and Tia into the main room. It will only be for a little while.
Tia walked to her desk and began gathering her notes—apparently, if Prof was going to Babilar, she’d be going too. Prof started giving orders to Cody and Abraham. He wanted them to stay in Newcago to watch the city.
“Yeah,” I said. “Gather my things. Leave the city. Of course. That’s exactly what I’d been intending to do. Sounds like fun.”
Nobody paid attention. So, blushing, I went to pack my bag. I didn’t have much. My notebooks, which Tia had copied for redundancy. Two changes of clothing. My jacket. My gun—
My gun. I set my backpack on the floor and pulled out the broken rifle, then walked over to Abraham, offering it up like a wounded child before a surgeon.
He inspected it, then looked up at me. “I’ll get you one of my spares.”
“But—”
He rested a hand on my shoulder. “It is an old weapon, and it served you well. But don’t you think you should upgrade, David?”
I looked down at the broken gun. The P31 was a great rifle, based off the old M14, one of the best rifles ever made. Those were solid weapons, designed before things got all modern, fancy, and sterile. We’d made P31s at Steelheart’s munitions factory back when I was a kid; they were sturdy and dependable.
But Steelheart hadn’t equipped his own soldiers with these; the P31 had been for selling to others. Steelheart hadn’t wanted to give modern equipment to potential enemies.
“Yeah,” I said. “All right.” I set the rifle down. I mean, it’s not like I was attached to it. It was just a tool. Really.
Abraham squeezed my shoulder in sympathy, then led me to the equipment room, where he began hunting through boxes. “You’ll want something mid-range. A 5.56 all right?”
“I suppose.”
“AR-15?”
“Ugh. AR-15? I’d rather not have my gun break down on me every second week.” Besides, every wannabe and their dog had an M16 or M4 variant these days.
“G7.”
“Not accurate enough.”
“FAL?”
“A 7.62? Maybe,” I said. “Though I hate the triggers.”
“As picky as a woman with her shoes,” Abraham grumbled.
“Hey,” I said. “That’s insulting.” I knew plenty of women who were pickier with their guns than they were with their shoes.
Abraham fished in a chest and came up with a rifle. “Here. What about this?”
“A Gottschalk?” I said skeptically.
“Sure. It’s very modern.”
“It’s German.”
“Germans make very good weapons,” Abraham said. “This has everything you’ll need. Automatic, burst, or semiauto settings, remote fire, electron-compressed retractable scope, huge magazines, the ability to fire flash-shots and modern bullets. Very accurate, good sights, solid trigger without too much or too little give.”
I took the rifle hesitantly. It was just so … black.
I liked guns with some wood on them, a gun that felt natural. Like you could take it hunting, rather than only kill people with it. This rifle was all plastic and black metal. It was like the weapons Enforcement carried.
Abraham slapped me on the shoulder as if the decision had been made and walked out to talk to Prof. I held the rifle up by its barrel. Everything Abraham said about it was right. I knew my guns, and the Gottschalk was a fine weapon.
“You,” I said to it, “are on probation. You’d better impress me.”
Great. Now I was talking to guns. I sighed and slung it over my shoulder, then pocketed a few magazines.
I stepped out of the equipment room, looking over my small pack of possessions. It hadn’t taken long at all to put together my entire life.
“Devin’s team from St. Louis is already on its way,” Prof was saying to Abraham and Cody. “They’ll help you hold Newcago. Don’t let anyone know I’m gone, and don’t engage any Epics until the new team arrives. Keep in touch with Tia, and let her know everything that happens here.”
Abraham and Cody nodded. They were used to teams splitting up and moving around. I still didn’t know how many people were in the Reckoners altogether. The members sometimes talked as if this were the only team, but I knew that was an affectation to throw off anyone who might be spying on the group.
Abraham clasped hands with me, then pulled something from his pocket and held it up. A small silver chain with a pendant in the shape of a stylized S hanging on the end. It was the mark of the Faithful, the religion to which Abraham belonged.
“Abraham …,” I said.
“I know you don’t believe,” he said. “But you are living the prophecy right now, David. It’s as your father said. The heroes will come. In a way, they have.”
I glanced to the side, where Prof set down a duffel bag for Cody to carry. I closed my fist around Abraham’s pendant and nodded. He and his kind believed that the evil Epics were a test from God, and that good Epics would come if mankind endured.
It was naive. Yes, I was starting to think about how good Epics—like Prof—might help us, but I didn’t buy into all of the religious mumbo jumbo. Still, Abraham was a friend, and the gift was sincere.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Stand,” Abraham said. “This is the true test of a man. He who will stand when others grow complacent.”
Abraham picked up Tia’s pack. She and Prof hadn’t taken much longer to get ready than I had. As a Reckoner, you learned to live light. We’d already changed hideouts four times while I’d been with them.
Before we left, I ducked into Edmund’s room to say goodbye. He was sitting and reading a novel by lamplight, an old science fiction book with yellowed pages. He was the strangest Epic I could imagine. Soft-spoken, slender, aging … He had a genuine smile on his lips as he rose.
“Yes?” he asked.
/> “I’m leaving for a while,” I said.
“Oh!” He hadn’t been listening. Edmund spent most days in this little room, reading. He seemed to take his subservient postion for granted, but he also seemed to enjoy his life as it was. He was a gifter, like Prof—in Edmund’s case, he granted his powers to men and women in Enforcement who used them to charge the power cells that ran the city.
“Edmund?” I asked as he clasped hands with me. “Do you know what your weakness is?”
He shrugged. “I’ve told you before that I don’t seem to have one.”
And we suspected he was lying. Prof hadn’t pushed the issue; Edmund complied with us in every other way.
“Edmund, it might be important,” I said softly. “For stopping the Epics. All of them.” There were so few Epics people had actually had a conversation with, particularly about their powers.
“Sorry,” Edmund said. “I thought I knew it for a while—but I was wrong. Now I’m as baffled as anyone.”
“Well, what did you think it was?”
“Being near a dog,” he said. “But it really doesn’t affect me like I thought it did.”
I frowned, making a mental note to tell Prof about this. It was more than we’d gotten from him before. “Thanks anyway,” I said. “And thanks for what you do for Newcago.”
Edmund walked back to his chair, picking up his book. “Some other Epic will always control me, whether it be Steelheart or Limelight. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t care to be in charge anyway.” He sat down and continued reading.
I sighed and made my way back out into the main room. There, Prof slung a pack onto his shoulder, and I joined him as the last one out, entering the catacombs under Newcago.
We made little conversation as we hiked a half hour or so to one of the hidden garages near a road leading up out of the understreets and into the city. There, Abraham and Cody packed our gear into a jeep for us. I’d been hoping we’d take one of the copters, but that was apparently too showy.
“Watch out for púcas as you travel, lad,” Cody said, shaking my hand. “Could be imitating anything out there.”
“Once again,” Tia said as she settled into the seat in front of me, “those are from Irish mythology, you nitwit.”
Cody just winked at me and tossed me his camouflage baseball cap. “Y’all stay safe.” He gave us a thumbs-up, then he and Abraham retreated back into the understreets.
So it was that—a short time later—I found myself sitting in the back of the jeep, wind blowing my hair, holding a new gun and watching my home for all nineteen years of my life retreat behind me. The dark skyline was something I’d rarely seen. Even before Calamity I’d almost always been among, or beneath, the city’s buildings.
Who was I, if I wasn’t in Newcago? It was similar to the hollowness I felt inside some nights when I wondered what I was supposed to do with my life now that he was gone. Now that I’d won, and my father was avenged.
The answer was beginning to settle on me like a dinosaur upon its nest. My life wasn’t just about one city, or one Epic, anymore. It was about a war. It was about finding a way to stop the Epics.
Permanently.
PART TWO
8
PAPERS flapped in my hands as we sped down the highway. We’d hit a relatively unbroken patch of asphalt, though we still thumped across a rough section of road now and then. I hadn’t imagined that a roadway like this could decay so quickly. Less than thirteen years had passed since Calamity, but already the highway was torn up with potholes and plants peeking up out of cracks like zombie fingers out of graves.
Many cities we passed were decayed, windows shattered, buildings crumbling. I spotted some cities that were in better repair, lit by bonfires in the distance, but these seemed more like little bunkers, surrounded by walls with fields outside—fiefdoms ruled by one Epic or another.
We traveled at night, and though I saw the occasional fire, I didn’t spot a single glimmer of electric lights. Newcago really was an anomaly. Not only had the steel preserved the tall skyscrapers and elegant skyline, but Steelheart’s reign had also maintained basic services.
Prof drove with goggles on, the jeep’s headlights replaced with UV floodlights that would be invisible to anyone without the proper headgear. I sat in the jeep’s back seat and spent my time reading through the notes and essays Tia had given me. I held the sheets inside a small box in my lap that had a flashlight inside of it, and this mostly masked the light.
The car slowed, then thumped up and down as Prof carefully navigated a bad patch of rubbled asphalt. Cars lay like the husks of enormous beetles along the sides of the road; they’d first been drained of their gasoline, then gutted for parts. Our vehicle, fortunately, had been converted to run on one of Edmund’s power cells.
As we drove slowly over the rubble, I heard something out in the night, like a snapping branch. The jeep’s back seat wasn’t enormous, but it didn’t have a roof, so I could easily set my box aside and maneuver my new rifle. I raised it to my shoulder and tapped a button that folded out the automatic scope. It worked very well, I was forced to admit, switching to night vision on its own and letting me zoom in on the source of the noise.
Through the holosights I picked out a few scavengers in ragged clothing squatting behind one of the broken cars in the darkness. They seemed like wild people, with long beards and sloppily stitched clothing. I watched them with the safety off, looking for weapons, until another head bobbed up. A little girl, maybe five years old. One of the men hushed her, pushing her down, then continued watching our jeep until we crossed the patch of broken street and sped up, leaving them behind.
I lowered the gun. “It really is bad out here.”
“Anytime a town starts to band together,” Tia said from the front passenger seat, “an Epic decides to either rule the place or lay waste to it.”
“It’s worse,” Prof said softly, “when one of their own develops powers.”
New Epics were rare, but they did happen. In a city like Newcago, we’d get maybe a single new one every four or five years. But they were dangerous, as an Epic who first manifested powers almost always went a little mad in the beginning, using their abilities wildly, destroying. Steelheart had quickly rounded up such individuals and subjugated them. Out here, there would be nobody to stop their initial rampage.
I settled back, disturbed, but eventually returned to my reading. This was our third night on the road. When dawn had broken after the first night, Prof had driven us into a hidden safe house. Apparently, the Reckoners had many of them along major roadways. Usually they were hollows sheared into rock with tensors, then secured with hidden doors.
I hadn’t pushed Prof too much about the tensors. Even with me, he talked about them as if they were technology—and not secretly just a cover for his powers. He only allowed the Reckoners in his personal team to use them, which made sense. Most Epic powers had a distinct range. From what I’d been able to determine, you had to be within a dozen miles or so of Prof for the gifted tensors or energy shields to work.
What made it even more confusing was that the Reckoners did have technology that emulated Epic powers. Such as the gauss gun I’d used in fighting Steelheart, and the dowser, which was a device they used to test if someone was an Epic or not. I’d been suspicious that these things had also secretly been from Prof’s powers, but he’d promised me they weren’t. It was possible to kill an Epic, then use something about their DNA to reverse engineer machines that mimicked their powers. That’s what made Prof’s deception so believable. Why assume that your team leader is an Epic when there’s a perfectly good technological explanation for the things the team can do?
I flipped through to the back of the stapled series of notes that Tia had given me. There, I found the profile for Sourcefield, which we’d gathered soon after she’d come to Newcago. Emiline Bask, it read. Former hotel desk clerk. Fan of Asian pulp cinema. Gained Epic powers two years after Calamity.
I scanned
through her history. She’d spent some time in Detroit, Madison, and Little Blackstone. She’d allied with Static and his band of Epics for a few years, then she’d vanished for a while before turning up in Newcago to kill the lot of us. This was interesting, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted to know her pre-Epic history, in particular her personality before she became one of them. Had she been a troublemaker, like Steelheart?
For that, I only had a few paragraphs. She’d been raised by an aunt after her mother committed suicide, but the pages said nothing about her personality. There was a note at the end. Mother’s trauma related to grandparents, obviously.
I leaned forward as the jeep picked up a little speed. “Tia?”
“Hmm?” she asked, looking up from her datapad, which she hid in a box like mine to shield the light.
“What does this mean—it references Sourcefield’s mother’s trauma being related somehow to her grandparents?”
“Not sure,” she said. “What I gave you was part of a larger file that Jori had compiled; he sent us only the relevant information.”
My own files didn’t have much on Sourcefield. I looked at that paragraph again, lit inside my shoebox. “Would you mind asking him for the rest of the information?”
“What is it about dead Epics that fascinates you so?” Tia asked.
Prof kept his eyes forward, but he seemed to perk up.
“You remember Mitosis?” I asked. “That Epic who tried to take Newcago a few months back?”
“Of course.”
“His weakness was rock music,” I said. “Specifically his own music.” He’d been a minor rock star before gaining his Epic powers.
“So?”
“So … it’s a mighty coincidence, isn’t it? That his own music should negate his powers? Tia, what if there’s a pattern to the weaknesses? One we haven’t cracked yet?”
“Someone would have spotted it,” Prof said.
“Would they?” I asked. “Early on, nobody even knew about the weaknesses. The Epics weren’t quick to tell people about them. Besides, there was mass chaos.”