Steelheart (The Reckoners 1)

I got the screen to an old portion of the city that was mostly abandoned. “The old football stadium,” I said. “Nobody lives nearby, and there’s nothing in the area to loot, so nobody will be around. We can use the tensors to tunnel in from a nearby point in the understreets. That will let us make preparations quietly, without worry that we’re being spied on.”

“It’s so open,” Prof said, rubbing his chin. “I’d rather face him in an old building, where we can confuse him and hit him from a lot of sides.”

“That will still work here,” I said. “He’ll almost certainly fly down into the middle of the field. We could put a sniper in the upper seats, and could carve ourselves a few unexpected tunnels—with rope lines—down through the seats into the stadium’s innards. We could baffle Steelheart and his minions by putting tunnels where they aren’t expected, and the terrain will be unfamiliar to his people—far more so than a simple apartment complex.”

Prof nodded slowly.

“We still haven’t addressed the real question,” Tia said. “We’re all thinking it. We might as well talk about it.”

“Steelheart’s weakness,” Abraham said softly.

“We’re too effective for our own good,” Tia said. “We’ve got him positioned, and we can bring him out to fight us. We can ambush him perfectly. But will that even matter?”

“So it comes to this,” Prof said. “Listen well, people. These are the stakes. We could pull out now. It would be a disaster—everyone would find out we’d tried to kill him and failed. That could do as much harm as killing him would do good. People would think that the Epics really are invincible, that even we can’t face someone like Steelheart.

“Beyond that, Steelheart would take it upon himself to personally hunt us down. He is not the type to give up easily. Wherever we go, we’d always have to watch and worry about him. But we could go. We don’t know his weakness, not for certain. It might be best to pull out while we can.”

“And if we don’t?” Cody asked.

“We continue with the plan,” Prof said. “We do everything we can to kill him, try out every possible clue from David’s memory. We set up a trap in this stadium that combines all of those possibilities, and we take a chance. It will be the most uncertain hit I’ve ever been part of. One of those things could work, but more likely none of them will, and we will have entered into a fight with one of the most powerful Epics in the world. He’ll probably kill us.”

Everyone sat in silence. No. It couldn’t end here, could it?

“I want to try,” Cody said. “David’s right. He’s been right all along. Sneaking about, killing little Epics … that’s not changing the world. We’ve got a chance at Steelheart. We have to at least try.”

I felt a flood of relief.

Abraham nodded. “Better to die here, with a chance at defeating this creature, than to run.”

Tia and Prof shared a look.

“You want to do it too, don’t you, Jon?” Tia asked.

“Either we fight him here, or the Reckoners are finished,” Prof said. “We’d spend the rest of our lives running. Besides, I doubt I could live with myself if I ran, after all we’ve been through.”

I nodded. “We do have to at least try. For Megan’s sake.”

“I’ll bet she would find that ironic,” Abraham noted. We looked at him, and he shrugged. “She was the one who didn’t want to do this job. I don’t know what she’d think of us dedicating the end of it to her memory.”

“You can be a downer, Abe,” Prof said.

“The truth is not a downer,” Abraham said in his lightly accented voice. “The lies that you pretend to accept are the true downer.”

“Says the man who still believes the Epics will save us,” Prof said.

“Gentlemen,” Tia cut in. “Enough. I think we’re all in agreement. We’re going to try this, ridiculous though it is. We’ll try to kill Steelheart without any real idea what his weakness is.”

One by one, we all nodded. We had to try.

“I’m not doing this for Megan,” I finally said. “But I’m doing it, in part, because of her. If we have to stand up and die so that people will know that someone still fights, so be it. Prof, you said that you worry our failure will depress people. I don’t see that. They’ll hear our story and realize that there’s an option other than doing what the Epics command. We may not be the ones to kill Steelheart. But even if we fail, we might be the cause of his death. Someday.”

“Don’t be so sure we’ll fail,” Prof said. “If I thought this was suicide for certain, I wouldn’t let us continue. As I said, I don’t intend to pin our hopes of killing him on a single guess. We’ll try everything. Tia, what do your instincts say will work?”

“Something from the bank vault,” she said. “One of those items is special. I just wish I knew which one.”

“Did you bring them with you when we abandoned the old hideout?”

“I brought the most unusual ones,” she said. “I stowed the rest in the pocket we made outside. We can fetch them. So far as I know, Enforcement hasn’t found them.”

“We take everything and spread it all out here,” Prof said, pointing at the steel floor of the stadium, which had once been soil. “David’s right; that’s where Steelheart will probably land. We don’t have to know specifically what weakened him—we can just haul it all over and use it.”

Abraham nodded. “A good plan.”

“What do you think it is?” Prof asked him.

“If I had to guess? I would say it was David’s father’s gun or the bullets it shot. Every gun is slightly distinctive in its own way. Perhaps it was the precise composition of the metal.”

“That’s easy enough to test,” I said. “I’ll bring the gun, and when I get a chance I’ll shoot him. I don’t think it will work, but I’m willing to try.”

“Good,” Prof said.

“And you, Prof?” Tia asked.

“I think it was because David’s father was one of the Faithful,” Prof said softly. He didn’t look at Abraham. “Fools though they are, they’re earnest fools. People like Abraham see the world differently than the rest of us do. So maybe it was the way David’s father viewed the Epics that let him hurt Steelheart.”

I sat back, thinking it over.

“Well, it shouldn’t be too hard for me to shoot him too,” Abraham said. “In fact, we should probably all try it. And anything else we can think of.”

They looked at me.

“I still think it’s crossfire,” I said. “I think Steelheart can only be harmed by someone who isn’t intending to hurt him.”

“That’s tougher to arrange,” Tia said. “If you’re right, it probably won’t activate if any of us hit him, since we actually want him dead.”

“Agreed,” Prof said. “But it’s a good theory. We’d need to find a way to get his own soldiers to hit him by accident.”

“He’d have to bring the soldiers first,” Tia said. “Now that he’s convinced there’s a rival Epic in town, he might just bring Nightw

ielder and Firefight.”

“No,” I said. “He’ll come with soldiers. Limelight has been using minions, and Steelheart will want to be ready—he’ll want to have his own soldiers to deal with distractions like that. Besides, while he’ll want to face Limelight himself, he’ll also want witnesses.”

“I agree,” Prof said. “His soldiers will probably have orders not to engage unless fired upon. We can make certain they feel they need to start fighting back.”

“Then we’ll need to be able to stall Steelheart long enough to set up a good crossfire,” Abraham said. He paused. “Actually, we’ll need to stall him during the crossfire. If he assumes this is just an ambush of soldiers, he’ll fly off and let Enforcement deal with it.” Abraham looked at Prof. “Limelight will have to make an appearance.”

Prof nodded. “I know.”

“Jon …,” Tia said, touching his arm.

“It’s what must be done,” he said. “We’ll need a way to deal with Nightwielder and Firefight too.”

“I’m telling you,” I said, “Firefight won’t be an issue. He’s—”

“I know he’s not what he seems, son,” Prof said. “I accept that. But have you ever fought an illusionist?”

“Sure,” I said. “With Cody and Megan.”

“That was a weak one,” Prof said. “But I suppose it gives you an idea what to expect. Firefight will be stronger. Much stronger. I almost wish he was just another fire Epic.”

Tia nodded. “He should be a priority. We’ll need code phrases, in case he sends in illusory versions of the other members of the team to confuse us. And we’ll have to watch for false walls, fake members of Enforcement intended to confuse, things like that.”

“Do you think Nightwielder will even show?” Abraham asked. “From what I heard, David’s little flashlight show sent him running like a rabbit before the hawk.”