“It isn’t enough,” Prof whispered. “It isn’t enough to have godly powers, to be functionally immortal, to be able to bend the elements to your will and soar through the skies. It isn’t enough unless you can use it to make others follow you. In a way, the Epics would be nothing without the regular people. They need someone to dominate; they need some way to show off their powers.”
“I hate him,” I hissed, though I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. I hadn’t even realized I’d been thinking it.
Prof looked at me.
“What?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me that my anger doesn’t do any good?” People had tried to tell me that in the past, Martha foremost among them. She claimed the thirst for vengeance would eat me alive.
“Your emotions are your own business, son,” Prof said, turning away. “I don’t care why you fight, so long as you do fight. Maybe your anger will burn you away, but better to burn yourself away than to shrivel up beneath Steelheart’s thumb.” He paused. “Besides, telling you to stop would be a little like a hearth telling the oven to cool down.”
I nodded. He understood. He felt it too.
“Regardless, the plan is now realigned,” Prof said. “We’ll strike at the wastewater treatment plant, as it’s the least well guarded. The trick will be making sure Steelheart connects the attack to a rival Epic, rather than just rebels.”
“Would it be so bad if people thought there was a rebellion?”
“It wouldn’t draw Steelheart out, for one,” Prof said. “And if he thought the people were rebelling, he’d make them pay. I won’t have innocents dying in retaliation for things we’ve done.”
“But, I mean, isn’t that the point? To show the others that we can fight back? Actually, as I think about it, maybe we could set up here in Newcago for good. If we win, maybe we could lead the place once—”
“Stop.”
I frowned.
“We kill Epics, son,” Prof said, his voice suddenly quiet, intense. “And we’re good at it. But don’t get it into your mind that we’re revolutionaries, that we’re going to tear down what’s out there and put ourselves in its place. The moment we start to think like that, we derail.
“We want to make others fight back. We want to inspire them. But we dare not take that power for ourselves. That’s the end of it. We’re killers. We’ll rip Steelheart from his place and find a way to pull his heart from his chest. After that, let someone else decide what to do with the city. I want no part of it.”
The ferocity of those words, soft though they were, quieted me. I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe Prof did have a point, though. This was about killing Steelheart. We had to stay focused.
It still felt odd that he hadn’t challenged me on my passion for vengeance. He was pretty much the first person who hadn’t served me some platitude on revenge.
“Fine,” I said. “But I think the sewage station is the wrong place to hit.”
“Where would you go?”
“The power station.”
“Too well guarded.” Prof examined his notes, and I could see that he had a schematic of the power station as well, with notations around the perimeter. He’d considered it.
I got a thrill from the idea that the two of us thought along the same lines.
“If it’s well guarded,” I said, “then blowing it up will look that much more impressive. And we could steal one of Steelheart’s power cells while we’re there. We brought back a gun from Diamond, but it’s dry. It needs a powerful energy source to run.” I raised my mobile to the wall and uploaded the video of the gauss gun firing. The video appeared on the wall, shoving aside some of Prof’s chalk writings, and played.
He watched in silence, and when it was done he nodded. “So our fake Epic will have energy powers.”
“And that’s why he’d destroy the power station,” I said. “It’s in theme.” Epics liked themes and motifs.
“It’s too bad that removing the power station wouldn’t stop Enforcement,” Prof said. “Conflux powers them directly. He powers some of the city directly too, but our intel says he does it by charging power cells that are stored here.” He pulled up his schematics of the power station. “One of those cells could power this gun—they’re extremely compact, and they each have more juice packed into them than should be physically possible. If we blow the station, and the rest of those cells, it will cause serious damage to the city.” He nodded. “I like it. Dangerous, but I like it.”
“We’ll still have to hit Conflux,” I said. “It would make sense, even for a rival Epic. First remove the power station, then take out the police force. Chaos. It will work particularly well if we can kill Conflux using that gun, giving off a big light show.”
Prof nodded. “I’ll need to do more planning,” he said, raising a hand and wiping away the video. It came off like it had been drawn in chalk. He pushed aside another pile of writing and raised his stylus to start working. He stopped, however, then looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
He walked over to his Reckoner jacket, which sat on a table, and took something out from under it. He walked back and handed it to me. A glove. One of the tensors. “You’ve been practicing?” he asked me.
“I’m not very good yet.”
“Get better. Fast. I won’t have the team underpowered, and Megan can’t seem to make the tensors work.”
I took the glove, saying nothing, though I wanted to ask the question. Why not you, Prof? Why do you refuse to use your own invention? Tia’s warning not to pry too much made me hold my tongue.
“I confronted Nightwielder,” I blurted out, only now remembering the reason I’d come to talk with Prof.
“What?”
“He was there, at Diamond’s place. I went out and pretended to be one of Diamond’s helpers. I … used a UV fingerprint scanner he had to confirm Nightwielder’s weakness.”
Prof studied me, his face betraying no emotions. “You’ve had a busy afternoon. I assume you did this at great risk to the entire team?”
“I … Yes.” Better he heard it from me, rather than Megan, who would undoubtedly report—in great detail—of how I’d deviated from the plan.
“You show promise,” Prof said. “You take risks; you get results. You have proof of what you said about Nightwielder?”
“I got a recording.”
“Impressive.”
“Megan wasn’t very happy with it.”
“Megan liked the way things were before,” Prof said. “Adding a new team member always upends the dynamic. Besides, I think she’s worried you’re showing her up. She’s still smarting from being unable to make the tensors work.”
Megan? Worried that I was showing her up? Prof must not know her very well.
“Out with you, then,” Prof said. “I want you up to speed with the tensor by the time we hit the power plant. And don’t worry too much about Megan …”
“I won’t. Thank you.”
“… worry about me.”
I froze.
Prof started writing on the board and didn’t turn back when he spoke, but his words were sharp. “You got results by risking the lives of my people. I assume nobody was hurt, otherwise you’d have mentioned it by now. You show promise, as I said. But if you brashly get one of my people killed, David Charleston, Megan will not be your problem. I won’t leave enough of you for her to bother with.”
I swallowed. My mouth had suddenly gone dry.
“I trust you with their lives,” Prof said, still writing, “and them with yours. Don’t betray that trust, son. Keep your impulses in check. Don’t just act because you can; act because it’s the right thing to do. If you keep that in mind, you’ll be all right.”
“Yes sir,” I said, leaving with a quick step out the cloth-covered doorway.
21
“HOW’S the signal?” Prof asked through the earpiece.
I raised my hand to my ear. “Good,” I said. I wore my mobile—newly tuned to the Reckoner mobiles and made completely s
ecure from Steelheart’s prying—on my wrist mount. I’d also been given one of the jackets. It looked like a thin black and red sports-style jacket—though it had wiring all around the inside lining and a little power pack sewn into the back. That was the part that would extend a concussion field around me if I was hit hard.
Prof had built it for me himself. He said it would protect me from a short fall or a small explosion, but I shouldn’t try jumping off any cliffs or getting shot in the face. Not like I was intending to do either.
I wore it proudly. I’d never been officially told I was a member of the team, but these two changes seemed essentially the same thing. Of course, going on this mission was probably a good indication too.
I glanced at my mobile; it showed that I was only on the line with Prof. Tapping the screen could move me to a line to everyone in the team, cycle me to a single member, or let me pick a few of them to talk to.
“You in position?” Prof asked.
“We are.” I stood in a dark tunnel of pure steel, the only light that of my mobile and Megan’s up ahead. She wore a pair of dark jeans and her brown leather jacket, open at the front, over a tight T-shirt. She was inspecting the ceiling.