“The clones can split as well?” Abraham asked.
“They aren’t really clones,” Tia said. I heard papers shuffling on her line as she looked through my notes. “They’re all versions of him, but there’s no ‘prime’ individual. David, are you sure about this information?”
“Most of my information is partially hearsay,” I admitted. “I’ve tried to be certain where I can, but anything I write should be at least a little suspect.”
“Well, it says here that the clones are all connected. If one is killed, the others will know it. They have to recombine to gain one another’s memories, though, so that’s something. And what’s this? The more copies he makes …”
“The dumber they all get,” I finished, remembering now. “When he’s one individual, he’s pretty smart, but each clone he adds brings down the IQ of all of them.”
“Sounds like a weakness,” Abraham said over the line.
“He also hates music,” I said. “Just after becoming an Epic, he went around destroying the music departments of stores. He’s known to immediately kill anyone he sees walking around wearing headphones or earbuds.”
“Another potential weakness?” Abraham said over the line.
“Yeah,” I said, “but even if one of those works, we still have to get each and every copy. That’s the big problem. Even if we manage to kill every Mitosis we can find, he’s bound to have a few versions of himself scattered out there, in hiding.”
“Sparks,” Tia said. “Like rats on a ship.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Or glitter in soup.”
Tia and Abraham fell silent.
“Have you ever tried to get all of the glitter out of your soup?” I demanded. “It’s really, really hard.”
“Why would there be glitter in my soup in the first place?” Abraham asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the other boys dumped it in there. Does it matter? Look, Tia, is there anything else in the notes?”
“That’s all you have,” Tia said. “I’ll contact the other lorists and see if anyone has anything more. David, continue observation. Abraham, make your way back to the government offices and quietly put them on lockdown. Get the mayor and her cabinet into the safe cells.”
“You going to call Prof?” I asked softly.
“I’ll let him know,” she replied, “but he’s hours away, even if we send a copter for him. David. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“When have I done anything stupid?” I demanded.
The other two grew silent again.
“Just try to curb your natural eagerness,” Tia said. “At least until we have a plan.”
A plan. The Reckoners loved to plan. They’d spend months setting up the perfect trap for an Epic. It had worked just fine when they’d been a shadowy force of aggressors, striking, then fading away.
But that wasn’t the case anymore. We had something we had to defend now.
“Tia,” I said, “we might not have time for that. Mitosis is here today; we can’t spend months deciding how to bring him down.”
“Jon isn’t near,” Tia said. “That means no jackets, no tensors, no harmsway.”
That was the truth. Prof’s Epic powers were the source of those abilities, which had saved my life many times in the past. But if he got too far away, the powers stopped working for those he’d gifted them to.
“Maybe he won’t attack,” Abraham said, puffing slightly as he spoke into the line. He was probably jogging as he made for the government building. “He could just be scouting. Or perhaps he is not antagonistic. It is possible that an Epic merely wants a nice place to live and will not cause problems.”
“He’s been using his powers,” I said. “You know what that means.”
We all did, now. Prof and Megan had proven it. If Epics used their powers, it corrupted them. The only reason Prof and Edmund didn’t go evil was because they didn’t use their powers directly. Giving them away filtered the ability somehow, purified it. At least, that was what we thought.
“Well,” Abraham said, “maybe—”
“Wait,” I said.
Down the way, Mitosis strode out onto the steel street, then reached back to take out a handgun he’d had tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Large-caliber magnum—far from the best of guns. It was a weapon for someone who had seen too many old movies about cops with big egos. It could still kill, of course. A magnum could do to a person’s head what a street could do to a watermelon dropped from a helicopter. My breath caught.
“I’m here,” Mitosis shouted, “for the one they call Steelslayer, the child who supposedly killed Steelheart. For every five minutes it takes him to reveal himself, I will execute a member of this population.”
3
“Well,” Abraham said over the line, “guess that answers that.”
“His clones are saying it all over the city,” Tia said. “The same words from all of them.” I cursed, ducking back into my alley, gripping my rifle tight and sweating.
Me. He’d come for me.
All my life, I’d been nobody. I didn’t mind that. I’d worked hard, actually, to be precisely mediocre in all my classes. I’d joined the Reckoners in part because nobody knew who they were. I didn’t want fame. I wanted revenge against the Epics. The more of them dead, the better. Sweat trickled down the sides of my face.
“One minute has passed!” Mitosis yelled. “Where are you? I would see you with my own eyes, Steelslayer.”
“Damn,” Tia said in my ear. “Don’t panic, David. Music … music … There has to be a clue to his weakness here. What was his band again?”
“Weaponized Cupcake,” I said.
“Charming,” Tia said. “Their music should be on the lore archive; we’ve got copies of most everything in the Library of Congress.”
“Two minutes!” Mitosis shouted. “Your people run from me, Steelslayer, but I am like God himself. I am everywhere. Do not think I won’t be able to find someone to kill.”
Images flashed in my mind. A busy bank lobby. Bones falling to the ground. A woman clutching a baby. I hadn’t been able to do anything back then.
“This is what we get,” Abraham said, “for coming out into the open. It is why Jon always wanted to remain hidden.”
“We can’t stand for something if we only move in shadows, Abraham,” I said.
“Three minutes!” Mitosis shouted. “I know you have this city under surveillance. I know you can hear me.”
“David …” Tia said.
“It appears you are a coward!” Mitosis said. “Perhaps if I shoot someone, you—”
I stepped out, lined up a shot, and delivered a bullet into Mitosis’s forehead.
Tia sighed. “I’ve got reports of at least thirty-seven distinct copies of him yelling in the city. What good does it do to kill one of them?”
“Yes,” Abraham said, “and now he knows where you are.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said, dashing away. “Tia?”
“Sparks,” she said. “I’m pulling up camera feeds all over the city. David, they’re all running for you. Dozens of them.”
“Good,” I said. “As long as they’re chasing me, they aren’t shooting anyone else.”
“You can’t fight them all, you slontze,” Tia said.
“Don’t intend to,” I said, grunting as I turned a corner. “You’re going to work out his weakness and figure out how to beat him, Tia. I’m just going to distract him.”
“I’ve arrived,” Abraham said. “They’re already on alert at the government office. I’ll get the mayor and council to safety. But if I might suggest, this is probably a good time to activate the emergency message system.”
“Yeah,” Tia said, “on it.”
The mobiles of everyone in the city were connected, and Tia could dial them all up collectively to send instructions—in this case, an order to empty the streets and get indoors.
I dodged around another corner and came almost face to face with one of Mitos
is’s clones. We surprised each other. He got his gun out first and fired, a deafening crack, like he was shooting a sparking cannon.
He also missed me. He wasn’t even close. Big handguns look impressive, and they have excellent knockdown force. Assuming you can hit your target.
I lined up my rifle sights, ignored his next shot, and squeezed the trigger. Just as I did, he thrashed, and a duplicate of him stepped away. It was like he was suddenly made of dough and the other self pushed out of his side.
It was nauseating. My shot took the first Mitosis, dropping him with a hole in the chest. He tried to duplicate again as he died, but the duplicate came out with a hole in its chest too, and fell forward, dying almost immediately.
The other clone, though, was also duplicating. I cursed, shooting it, but not before another version came out, and that one was already trying to clone itself again. I brought this one down just before it split.
I breathed in and out, my hands trembling as I lowered the rifle. Five corpses lay slumped on the ground. My rifle magazine held thirty rounds. I’d never considered that insufficient, but a minute of Mitosis cloning himself could run me out with ease.
“David?” Tia asked in my ear. “You all right?” She’d have me on camera, using Steelheart’s surveillance network.
“I’m all right,” I said, still shaking. “I just haven’t gotten used to people shooting at me.”
I took a few deep breaths, forced down my anxiety, and walked up to the Mitosis clones. They’d begun to melt.
I watched with disturbed fascination as the corpses decomposed, flesh turning to a pale tan goo. The bones melted after, and then the clothing. In seconds, each corpse was just a pile of colored gunk, and even that seemed to be evaporating.
Where did the mass for each of these new bodies come from? It seemed impossible. But then, Epics have this habit of treating physics like something that happens to other people, like acne and debt.
“David?” Tia said in my ear. “Why are you still standing there? Sparks, boy! The others are coming.”
Right. Dozens of evil Epic clones. On a mission to kill me.
I took off in a random direction; where I was going didn’t matter so much as staying ahead of the clones. “Do you have that music yet?” I asked Tia.
“Working on it.”
I dashed up onto the bridge, crossing the river. That river would have made a great natural barrier for sectioning off the downtown, except for the fact that Steelheart had turned the thing into steel—effectively making it into an enormous highway, though one with a rippled surface. The river that had once flowed here had diverted to the Calumet River channel.
I reached the other side of the bridge and glanced over my shoulder. A scattering of figures in identical clothing had broken out of side streets and were running toward me, some pulling handguns from the small of their backs. They seemed to recognize me, and a few took shots.
I cursed, ducking to the side, heading past an old hotel with steel windows and a trio of flagpoles extending into the sky, flags frozen mid-flap. I almost passed it, then hesitated. One of the main doors had been frozen open.
I made a split-second decision and ran for that opening. I squeezed between door and doorway and entered the hotel lobby.
It wasn’t as dark inside as I’d anticipated. I inched through a lobby with furniture like statues. Once-plush seats were now hard metal. A sofa had a depression in it where someone had been sitting when the transfersion took place.
The light came from a series of fist-size holes cut into the front windows, which were also steel now. Though empty, the lobby didn’t seem dusty or derelict. I quickly realized what this was—one of the buildings that Steelheart’s favored people had inhabited during the years of his rule.
I stepped on a bench by a window, leaning against it and peering through one of the holes. Outside, on the daylit street, the clones slowed in their chase, lowering weapons, looking about. It appeared that I’d managed to lose them.
“I would have the truth!” the clones suddenly shouted in unison. The effect was even eerier than seeing them all together. “You did not kill Steelheart. You did not slay a god. What really happened?”
I didn’t reply, of course.
“Your rumors are spreading,” Mitosis continued. “People want to believe your fantasy. I will show them reality. Your head, David Charleston, and my empire in Newcago. I don’t know how Steelheart truly fell, but he was weak. He needed men to administrate for him, to act as his army.”
The clones continued to stroll, spreading out. Several shook, splitting into multiples.
“I am my own army,” Mitosis said. “And I shall reign.”
“You watching this?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Tia said. “I’ve got the city cameras, and I’ve dialed into the video feed from your earpiece. Shouldn’t he be sounding dumber the more clones he makes?”
“I think something must be wrong in my notes,” I said. I’d been forced to burn many of my notebooks and keep only the most important ones. I’d lost many of my primary sources and speculations, and I could have easily gotten some details wrong.
Outside, Mitosis continued to duplicate himself. Twice, three times, a half dozen. Soon there were hundreds of him. They spaced themselves apart with careful steps, then, one by one, stopped in place. They closed their eyes, looking toward the sky.
What is he doing? I thought, clutching my rifle. I shifted on the bench, my foot scraping the wall. Outside, some of the clones nearest the hotel snapped their eyes open and turned toward me. Sparks! He’d created his own sensor network, using hundreds of copies of his own ears. It was clear to me now that the clones had more coordination to them than I had assumed. I slipped away from the wall, trying to step quietly. There might be a back way out of this building.
“Got it,” Tia said. “Archive of pre-Calamity alternative metal albums in digital format.”
Her voice through the earpiece was incredibly soft. Still, outside, there was a sudden scrambling of footsteps. They’d heard.
They were coming.
I cursed and ran, leaping over a couch and scrambling toward the back hallways of the hotel.
There had to be a way out somewhere.
I passed through streams of light, holes cut like spigots into the ceiling. The hotel had this flat building in the center and a tower to the side, many stories high. I didn’t want to get trapped in the tower, so instead I turned down another hallway, passing a door that had been destroyed long ago. That light ahead was probably an exit for—
Shadows moved in through the exit. Clones, around a dozen of them, one after another. One pulled out a gun and leveled it at me, but when he squeezed the trigger, the entire thing shattered and turned to dust. The clone cursed, charging.
Huh? I thought.
There wasn’t time for me to wonder. I threw myself to the side, entering another hallway. These were the administrative rooms of the hotel, behind the lobby.
“I’m trying to get you a map,” Tia said.
“No,” I said, sweating, “the music.”
“Right.”
More clones that way. I was cornered.
I ducked into a room. It had once been some kind of clerical office, judging by the desk and frozen chairs, but someone had turned the desk into a bed with cushions, and there was even a wooden door affixed by new hinges attached to the steel ones on the doorway. Impressive.
I grabbed that door and slammed it closed. An arm got in the way at the last moment.
The clone grunted on the other side as I shoved, but other hands scraped around the doorway, grabbing for me. Each had an old wristwatch on them, and those snapped and broke as they rubbed on the door or wall. When the watches hit the ground, they shattered to dust.
“They’re unstable,” Tia said—she was still watching via my video feed. “The more clones he makes, the worse their molecular structure holds together.”
The clones forced the door open, throwi
ng me backward. I whipped my rifle from my shoulder and got off one shot as a dozen of them fought into the room, heedless of the danger. Their clothing ripped easily, and when fragments fell off, they disintegrated immediately.
“ ‘Albums by Weaponized Cupcake,’ ” Tia read.
The clones piled on top of me, hands gripping my throat, others pulling my gun away from me.
“Which one?” Tia asked. “Appetite for Tuberculosis? The Blacker Album? Ride the Lightrail?”
“Kind of getting murdered here, Tia!” I said, struggling to keep the hands from my neck.
There were too many. Hands pressed in closer, cutting off my air. Clones continued to clog the room, and those nearby began to split, making it difficult to move. They wanted to trap me in here. Even if I got these fingers off my neck, I wouldn’t be able to run.
Darkness grew at the edges of my vision, like a creeping mold. I struggled to pull the hands from my throat.
“David?” Tia’s voice in my ear. “David, you need to turn on your mobile speaker! I can’t do anything. David, can you hear me? David!”
I closed my eyes. Then I let go of the hands holding my neck and forced my fingers through the press of arms. Choking, feeling as if my windpipe would collapse at any moment, I strained and got my fingers to my shoulder, where my mobile was attached. I flipped the switch on the side. Music blared into the cramped, suffocating room.
The clone directly on top of me started to shake and vibrate, like he was going to split—but instead, he began to melt, the flesh coming off the bones. The others nearby backed away in a hurry, smashing identical versions of themselves up against the walls.
I gasped in air. For a moment, all I could do was lie there, clone flesh and bones melting to goo around me.
Air. Air is really, really awesome.
The music continued unabated, a thrashing metal riff moving from chord to chord with the quality, almost, of a beating heart. The clones near me vibrated in time with it, their skin shaking like ripples in water, but they did not melt.