The last two fit, and beside them I slid the folders about Steelheart, Nightwielder, and Firefight. After a moment I added the one about Conflux. It was the thinnest. Very little was known about the clandestine High Epic who ran Enforcement.
Roy was still coughing, though the smoke had cleared out. He pulled off his helmet. It was surreal to see that familiar face—one I’d known for years—wearing the uniform of the enemy. We hadn’t been friends; I didn’t really have those, but I’d looked up to him.
“You’re working with the Reckoners,” Roy said.
I needed to try to lay down a false trail, get him to think I was working for someone else. “What?” I said, doing my best to look baffled.
“Don’t try to hide it, David. It’s obvious. Everyone knows the Reckoners hit Fortuity.”
I knelt down beside him, pack slung over my shoulder. “Look, Roy, don’t let them heal you, okay? I know Enforcement has Epics who can do that. Don’t let them, if you can manage it.”
“What, why—”
“You want to be laid out sick for this next part, Roy,” I said softly, intensely. “Power is going to change hands in Newcago. Limelight is coming for Steelheart.”
“Limelight?” Roy said. “Who the hell is that?”
I walked over to the rest of my folders, then reluctantly took a can of lighter fluid from my trunk and poured it on the bed.
“You’re working for an Epic?” Roy whispered. “You really think anyone can challenge Steelheart? Sparks, David! How many rivals has he killed?”
“This is different,” I said, then got out some matches. “Limelight is different.” I lit the match.
I couldn’t take the remaining folders. They were source material, facts and articles for the information I’d collected in my notebooks. I wanted to take them, but there was no more room in my bag.
I dropped the match. The bed started aflame.
“One of your friends might still be alive,” I said to Roy, nodding to the two Enforcement officers who were down. The leader had been shot in the head, but the other one only in the side. “Get him out. Then stay out of things, Roy. Dangerous days are coming.”
I slung the pack over my shoulder and hastened out the door and onto the stairwell. I met Megan on the way down the steps.
“Your plan failed,” she said quietly.
“Worked well enough,” I said. “An Epic is dead.”
“Only because she left her mobile on vibrate,” Megan said, hurrying down the steps beside me. “If she hadn’t been sloppy …”
“We were lucky,” I agreed. “But we still won.”
Mobiles were just a part of daily life. The people might live in hovels, but they all had a mobile for entertainment.
We met Cody at the base of the playground tower near Refractionary’s corpse. He handed back my rifle. “Lad,” he said, “that was awesome.”
I blinked. I’d been expecting another berating, like Megan had given me.
“Prof is going to be jealous he didn’t come himself,” Cody said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “Were you the one who called her?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Awesome,” Cody said again, slapping me on the back.
Megan didn’t look nearly as pleased. She gave Cody a sharp look, then reached for my pack.
I resisted.
“You need two hands for the rifle,” she said, pulling it free and slinging it over her shoulder. “Let’s move. Enforcement will …” She trailed off as she noticed Roy barely managing to tow the other Enforcement officer out of the burning room and onto the landing.
I felt bad, but only a little. Copters were thumping above; he’d have help soon. We scurried across the park, heading toward the tunnels that led deeper into the understreets.
“You left them alive?” Megan asked as we ran.
“This was more useful,” I said. “I laid us a false trail. I told him a lie that I was working for an Epic who wants to challenge Steelheart. Hopefully it will keep them from searching for the Reckoners.” I hesitated. “Besides. They’re not our enemies.”
“Of course they are,” she snapped.
“No,” Cody said, jogging beside her. “He’s right, lass. They aren’t. They may work for the enemy, but they’re just regular folks. They do what they can to get by.”
“We can’t think like that,” she said as we reached a branching tunnel. She glared at me, eyes cold. “We can’t show them mercy. They won’t show it to us.”
“We can’t become them, lass,” Cody said, shaking his head. “Listen to Prof talk about it sometime. If we have to do what the Epics do to beat them, then it’s not worth it.”
“I’ve heard him talk,” she said, still looking at me. “I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about Knees here.”
“I’ll shoot an Enforcement officer if I have to,” I said, meeting her eyes. “But I won’t get distracted hunting them down. I have a goal. I’ll see Steelheart dead. That is all that matters.”
“Bah,” she said, turning away from me. “That’s not an answer.”
“Let’s keep moving,” Cody said, nodding toward a stairwell down to deeper tunnels.
“He’s a scientist, lad,” Cody explained as we walked through the narrow corridors of the steel catacombs. “Studied Epics in the early days, created some pretty remarkable devices, based on what we learned from them. That’s why he’s called Prof, other than that lastname thing.”
I nodded thoughtfully. Now that we were deep, Cody had relaxed. Megan was still stiff. She walked ahead, holding her mobile and using it to send Prof a report on the mission. Cody had his set to flashlight, hooked to the upper left of his camo jacket. I’d removed the network card from mine, which he said was a good idea until Abraham or Tia had a chance to tweak it.
It turned out that they didn’t trust even the Knighthawk Foundry. The Reckoners usually left their mobiles linked only to one another, and had the transmissions encrypted on both ends, not using the regular network. Until I got the encryption too, I could at least use my mobile as a camera or a glorified flashlight.
&nbs
p; Cody walked with a relaxed posture, rifle up on his shoulder, arm looped over it and hand hanging down. I seemed to have earned his approval with Refractionary’s death.
“So where did he work?” I asked, hungry for information about Prof. There were so many rumors about the Reckoners, but few real facts.
“Don’t know,” Cody admitted. “Nobody’s sure what Prof’s past is, though Tia probably knows something. She doesn’t talk about it. Abe and I have bets going ’bout what Prof’s specific workplace was. I’m pretty sure he was at some kind of secret government organization.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure,” Cody said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same one that caused Calamity.”
That was one of the theories, that the United States government—or sometimes the European Union—had somehow set off Calamity while trying to start a superhuman project. I thought it was pretty far-fetched. I’d always figured it was some kind of comet that got caught in Earth’s gravity, but I didn’t know if the science of that made any sense. Maybe it was a satellite. That could fit Cody’s theory.
He wouldn’t be the only one who thought it reeked of conspiracy. There were a lot of things about the Epics that didn’t add up.
“Oh, you got that look,” Cody said, pointing at me.
“That look?”
“Y’all think I’m crazy.”
“No. No, of course not.”
“You do. Well, it’s okay. I know what I know, even if Prof rolls his eyes whenever I say anything about it.” Cody smiled. “But that’s another story. As for Prof’s line of work, I think it must have been some kind of weapons facility. He created the tensors, after all.”
“The tensors?”
“Prof wouldn’t want you talking about that,” Megan said, looking over her shoulder. “Nobody gave authorization for him to know about it,” she added, glancing at me.
“I’m giving it,” Cody said, relaxed. “He’s going to see anyway, lass. And don’t quote Prof’s rules at me.”