“Abharsair e d’a chois e na Dùn Èideann,” Cody said. “It is a sweetly poetic name that doesn’t really translate to English—”
“It means ‘The Devil Went Down to Edinburgh’ in Scottish Gaelic,” Tia said, leaning in toward me but speaking loudly enough that Cody could hear.
Cody, for once, missed a step. “You speak Scottish Gaelic, lass?”
“No,” Tia said. “But I looked that up last time you told this story.”
“Er … you did, eh?”
“Yes. Though your translation is questionable.”
“Well, now. I always did say you were a smart one, lass. Yes indeed.” He coughed into his hand. “Ah, look. We’re at the base. I’ll continue the story later.” The others had arrived at the hideout just ahead and Cody scurried up to meet them, then followed Megan up the tunnel.
Tia shook her head, then walked with me to the tunnel. I went last, making sure the cords and cables that hid the entrance were in place. I turned on the hidden motion sensors that would alert us if someone came in, then crawled up myself.
“… just don’t know, Prof,” Abraham was saying in his soft voice. “I just don’t know.” The two of them had spent the trip back walking ahead, speaking softly. I’d tried to edge up to hear them, but Tia had pointedly placed a hand on my shoulder and drawn me back.
“So?” Megan asked, crossing her arms as we all gathered around the main table. “What’s going on?”
“Abraham doesn’t like the way the rumors are going,” Prof said.
“The general public does seem to accept our tale of Limelight,” Abraham said. “They are scared, and our hit on the power station has had an effect—there are rolling blackouts all over the city. However, I see no proof that Steelheart believes. Enforcement is sweeping the understreets. Nightwielder is scouring the city. Everything I hear from informants is that Steelheart is searching for a group of rebels, not a rival Epic.”
“So we hit back with a fury,” Cody said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall beside the tunnel. “Kill a few more Epics.”
“No,” I said, remembering my conversation with Prof. “We need to be more focused. We can’t just take out random Epics; we have to think like someone trying to capture the city.”
Prof nodded. “Each and every hit we make without having Limelight appear in the open will make Steelheart more suspicious.”
“We’re giving up?” Megan said, a hint of eagerness in her voice, though she obviously tried to cover it.
“Not by a mile,” Prof said. “Perhaps I will still decide we need to pull out—if we aren’t confident enough about Steelheart’s weakness, I might do just that. We aren’t there yet. We’re going to keep on with this plan, but we need to do something big, preferably with an appearance by Limelight. We need to squeeze Steelheart as hard as we can and drive that temper of his. Force him out.”
“And we do that how?” Tia asked.
“It’s time to kill Conflux,” Prof said. “And bring down Enforcement.”
27
CONFLUX.
In many ways he was the backbone of Steelheart’s rule. A mysterious figure, even when compared to the likes of Firefight and Nightwielder.
I had no good photos of Conflux. The few I’d paid dearly to get were blurry and unspecific. I couldn’t even know if he was real.
The van thumped as it moved through the dark streets of Newcago; it was stuffy inside. I sat in the passenger seat, with Megan driving. Cody and Abraham were in the back. Prof was running point in a different vehicle, and Tia was running support back at our base, watching the spy videos of the city streets. It was a frigid day and the heater in our van didn’t work—Abraham hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.
Prof’s words ran through my mind. We’ve considered hitting Conflux before, but discarded the idea because we thought it would be too dangerous. We still have the plans we made. It’s no less dangerous now, but we’re in deep. No reason not to move forward.
Was Conflux real? My gut said he was. Much as the clues pointed to Firefight being a fabrication, the clues surrounding Conflux added up to something being there. A powerful but fragile Epic.
Steelheart moves Conflux around, Prof had said, never letting him stay long in the same place. But there’s a pattern to how he’s moved. He often uses an armored limo with six guards and a two-motorcycle escort. If we watch for that, wait until he uses that convoy to move, we can hit him on the streets in transit.
The clues. Even with power plants Steelheart didn’t have enough electricity to run the city, and yet he somehow produced those fuel cells. The mechanized armor units didn’t pack power sources, and neither did many of the copters. The fact that they were powered directly by high-ranking members of Enforcement wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone knew it.
He was out there. A gifter who could make energy in a form that could power vehicles, fill fuel cells, even light a large chunk of the city. That level of power was awesome, but no more so than what Nightwielder or Steelheart held. The most powerful Epics set their own scale of strength.
The van bumped, and I gripped my rifle—held low, safety on, barrel pointed down and toward the door. Out of sight, but handy. Just in case.
Tia had spotted the right kind of limo convoy today, and we’d scrambled. Megan drove us toward a point where our road would intersect with Conflux’s limo. Her eyes were characteristically intense, though there was a particular edge to her today. Not fear. Just … worry, maybe?
“You don’t think we should be doing this, do you?” I asked.
“I think I made that clear,” Megan said, her voice even, eyes ahead. “Steelheart doesn’t need to fall.”
“I’m talking about Conflux specifically,” I said. “You’re nervous. You’re normally not nervous.”
“I just don’t think we know enough about him,” she said. “We shouldn’t be hitting an Epic we don’t even have photographs of.”
“But you are nervous.”
She drove, eyes forward and hands tight on the wheel.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I feel like a brick made of porridge.”
She looked at me, brow scrunching up. The van’s cab fell silent. Then Megan started to laugh.
“No, no,” I said. “It makes sense! Listen. A brick is supposed to be strong, right? But if one were secretly made of porridge, and all of the other bricks didn’t know, he’d sit around worrying that he’d be weak when the rest of them were strong. He’d get smooshed when he wa
s placed in the wall, you see, maybe get some of his porridge mixed with that stuff they stick between bricks.”
Megan was laughing even harder now, so hard she was actually gasping for breath. I tried to keep explaining but found myself smiling. I don’t think I’d ever heard her laugh, really laugh. Not chuckle, not part her lips in wry mockery, but truly laugh. She was almost in tears by the time she got control of herself. I think we were fortunate she didn’t crash into a post or something.
“David,” she said between gasps, “I think that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. The most outlandishly, audaciously ridiculous.”
“Um …”
“Sparks,” she said, exhaling. “I needed that.”
“You did?”
She nodded.
“Can we … pretend that’s why I said it, then?”
She looked at me, smiling, eyes sparkling. The tension was still there, but it had retreated somewhat. “Sure,” she said. “I mean, bad puns are something of an art, right? So why not bad metaphors?”
“Exactly.”
“And if they’re an art, you are a master painter.”
“Well, actually,” I said, “that won’t work, you see, because the metaphor makes too much sense. I’d have to be, like, the ace pilot or something.” I cocked my head. “Actually, that makes a little bit of sense too.” Sparks, doing it badly intentionally was hard too. I found that decidedly unfair.
“Y’all okay up there?” Cody said in our ears. The back of the van was separated from the cab by a metal partition, like a service van. There was a little window in it, but Cody preferred to use the mobiles to communicate.
“We’re fine,” Megan said. “Just having an abstract conversation about linguistic parallelism.”
“You wouldn’t be interested,” I said. “It doesn’t involve Scotsmen.”
“Well, actually,” Cody said, “the original tongue of my motherland …”
Megan and I looked at each other, then both pointedly reached to our mobiles and muted him.
“Let me know when he’s done, Abraham,” I said into mine.
Abraham sighed on the other end of the line. “Want to trade places? I’d sure like to be able to mute Cody myself right about now. It is regrettably difficult when he’s sitting beside you.”