“I didn’t think it was, but I need you to talk to me. Say something.” Because I think you’re hotter than hell and I can’t understand what went wrong. Fortunately I stopped myself from saying that part out loud. I also kept my eyes straight at her head, just in case Cody was watching in.
She said nothing.
“Well?” I prompted.
“Five minutes is up,” she said, checking her mobile.
“I’m not going to let this go so easily, this—”
“Five minutes is up,” Cody suddenly said, cutting in. “Sorry, kids. This mission is a bust. Nobody is moving the elevators.”
“Can’t you send one for us?” I asked.
Cody chuckled. “We’re tapped into the security feed, lad, but that’s a far cry from being able to control things in the building. If Tia could hack us in that far, we could blow the building from the inside by overpowering the plants or something.”
“Oh.” I looked up the cavernous shaft. It resembled an enormous throat, stretching upward … one we needed to get up … which made us …
Bad analogy. Very bad. Regardless, there was a twisting feeling in my gut. I hated the idea of backing down. Above lay the path to destroying Steelheart. Behind lay more waiting, more planning. I’d been planning for years.
“Oh no,” Megan said.
“What?” I asked absently.
“You’re going to improvise, aren’t you?”
I reached out into the shaft with the hand that wore the tensor, pressed it flat against the wall, and began a small vibrative burst. Abraham had taught me to make bursts of different sizes; he said that a master with the tensors could control the vibrations, leaving patterns or even shapes in your target.
I pushed my hand hard, flat, feeling the glove shake. It wasn’t just the glove, though. It was my whole hand. That had confused me at first. It seemed like I was creating the power, not the glove—the glove just helped shape the blast somehow.
I couldn’t fail at this. If I did the operation was over. I should have felt stress at that, but I didn’t. For some reason, I was realizing, when things got really, really tense I found it easier to relax.
Steelheart looming above my father. A gunshot. I would not back down.
The glove vibrated; dust fell away from the wall in a little patch around my hand. I slipped my fingers forward and felt what I’d done.
“A handhold,” Megan said softly, shining the light of her mobile.
“What, really?” Cody asked. “Turn on your camera, lass.” A moment later he whistled. “You’ve been holding back on me, David. I didn’t think you were nearly practiced enough to do something like that. I might have suggested it myself if I’d thought you could.”
I moved my hand to the side and made another handhold, placing it beside the other in the shaft just next to the hole in the wall. I made two more for my feet, then swung out of the hole in the wall and into the elevator shaft, placing my hands and feet in the handholds.
I stretched up and made another set of holds above. I climbed up, rifle slung over my shoulder. I did not look down but made another set of holds and continued. Climbing and carving with the tensor wasn’t by any means easy, but I was able to shape the tensor blasts to leave a ridge at the front of each handhold, making them easy to grip.
“Can Prof and Abraham stall for a little longer?” Megan asked from below. “David seems to be working at a good clip, but it might take us about fifteen minutes to get up.”
“Tia’s calculating,” Cody said.
“Well, I’m going after David,” Megan said. She sounded muffled. I glanced over my shoulder; she’d wrapped a scarf around her face.
The dust from the handholds; she doesn’t want to breathe it in. Smart. I was having trouble avoiding it, and steel dust did not seem like a smart thing to inhale. Abraham said tensor dust wasn’t as dangerous as it seemed, but I still didn’t think it would be a good idea, so I ducked my head and held my breath each time I made a new hole.
“I’m impressed,” a voice said in my ear. Prof’s voice. It nearly made me leap in shock, which would have been a very bad thing. He must have patched into my visual feed with his mobile, and could see the images made by the camera on my earpiece.
“Those holes are crisp and well formed,” Prof continued. “Keep at it and you’ll soon be as good as Abraham. You might already have passed up Cody.”
“You sound worried about something,” I said between making handholds.
“Not troubled. Just surprised.”
“It needed to be done,” I said, grunting as I pulled myself up past another floor.
Prof was silent for a few moments. “That it did. Look, we can’t have you extract down this same route. It will take too long, so you’ll have to go out another way. Tia will let you know where. Wait for the first explosion.”
“Affirmative,” I said.
“And, David,” Prof added.
“Yeah?”
“Good work.”
I smiled, pulling myself up again.
We continued at it, climbing up the elevator shaft. I worried that the elevator would come down at some point, though if it did it should miss us by a few inches. We were on the side of the shaft where there should have been a ladder. They just hadn’t installed one.
Perhaps Steelheart has watched the same movies that we have, I thought with a grimace as we finally passed the second floor. One more to go.
My mobile clicked in my ear. I glanced at it on my wrist—someone had muted our channel.
“I don’t like what you’ve done to the team,” Megan called up, her voice muffled.
I glanced over my shoulder at her. She wore the backpack with our equipment in it, and her nose and mouth were covered with the scarf. Those eyes of hers glared at me, softly lit by the glow of the mobile strapped to her forearm. Beautiful eyes, peeking out above the shroud of a scarf.
With a huge, black pit stretching behind her. Whoa. I lurched woozily.
“Slontze,” she called. “Stay focused.”
“You’re the one who said something!” I whispered, turning back around. “What do you mean you don’t like what I did to the team?”
“Before you showed up we were going to move out of Newcago,” Megan said from below. “Hit Fortuity, then leave. You made us stay.”
I continued climbing. “But—”
“Oh, just shut up and let me talk for once.”
I shut up.
“I joined the Reckoners to kill Epics who deserved it,” Megan continued. “Newcago is one of the safest, most stable places in the entire Fractured States. I don’t think we should be killing Steelhear
t, and I don’t like how you’ve hijacked the team to fight your own personal war against him. He’s brutal, yes, but he’s doing a better job than most Epics. He doesn’t deserve to die.”
The words stunned me. She didn’t think we should kill Steelheart? He didn’t deserve to die? It was insanity. I resisted the urge to look down again. “Can I talk now?” I asked, making another pair of handholds.
“Okay, fine.”
“Are you crazy? Steelheart is a monster.”
“Yes. I’ll admit that. But he’s an effective monster. Look, what are we doing today?”
“Destroying a power plant.”
“And how many cities out there still have power plants?” she asked. “Do you even know?”
I kept climbing.
“I grew up in Portland,” she said. “Do you know what happened there?”
I did, though I didn’t say. It hadn’t been good.
“The turf wars between Epics left the city in ruins,” Megan continued, her voice softer now. “There is nothing left, David. Nothing. All of Oregon is a wasteland; even the trees are gone. There aren’t any power plants, sewage treatment plants, or grocery stores. That was what Newcago would have become, if Steelheart hadn’t stepped in.”
I continued climbing, sweat tickling the back of my neck. I thought about the change in Megan—she’d grown cold toward me right after I’d first talked about taking down Steelheart. The times when she’d treated me the worst had been when we’d been making breakthroughs. When we’d gone to fetch my plans and when I’d found out how to kill Nightwielder.
It hadn’t been my “improvising” that had set her against me. It had been my intentions. My successes in getting the team to target Steelheart.
“I don’t want to be the cause of something like Portland happening again,” Megan continued. “Yes, Steelheart is terrible. But he’s a kind of terrible that people can live with.”
“So why haven’t you quit?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
“Because I’m a Reckoner,” she said. “And it’s not my job to contradict Prof. I’ll do my job, Knees. I’ll do it well. But this time, I think we’re making a mistake.”