I helped him unload the supplies, and Megan joined us, working with characteristic efficiency. She ended up doing a lot of supervising, telling us where to stow the various foodstuffs. Abraham accepted her direction without complaint, even though she was the junior member of the team.
About halfway through the unloading, Prof came out of his planning room. He walked over to us while scanning through some papers in a folder.
“Did you learn anything, Prof?” Abraham asked.
“Rumors are going our way, for once,” Prof said, tossing the folder onto Tia’s desk. “The city’s buzzing with the news of a new Epic come to challenge Steelheart. Half the city is talking about it, while the other half is bunkering down in their basements, waiting for the fighting to blow over.”
“That’s great!” I said.
“Yes.” Prof seemed troubled.
“What’s wrong, then?” I asked.
He tapped the folder. “Did Tia tell you what was on those data chips you brought back from the power plant?”
I shook my head, trying to hide my curiosity. Was he going to tell me? Perhaps it would give me a clue to what Abraham had been up to the last few days.
“It’s propaganda,” Prof said. “We think you found a hidden public manipulation wing of Steelheart’s government. The files you brought back included press releases, outlines of rumors planned to be started, and stories of things Steelheart has done. Most of those stories and rumors are false, so far as Tia can determine.”
“He wouldn’t be the first ruler to fabricate a grand history for himself,” Abraham noted, stowing some canned chicken on one of the shelves that had been carved to fill the entire wall of the back room.
“But why would Steelheart need to do that?” I asked, wiping my brow. “I mean … he’s practically immortal. It’s not like he needs to look more powerful than he is.”
“He’s arrogant,” Abraham said. “Everybody knows this. You can see it in his eyes, in how he speaks, in what he does.”
“Yes,” Prof said. “Which is why these rumors are so confusing. The stories aren’t meant to bolster him—or if they are, he has an odd way of going about it. Most of the stories are about atrocities he’s committed. People he’s murdered, buildings—even small towns—he has supposedly wiped out. But none of it has actually happened.”
“He’s spreading rumors about having slaughtered towns full of people?” Megan asked, sounding troubled.
“So far as we can tell,” Prof said. He joined in, helping unload the crates. Megan had stopped giving orders, I noticed, now that he was around. “Someone, at least, wants Steelheart to sound more terrible than he really is.”
“Maybe we found some kind of revolutionary group,” I said, eager.
“Doubtful,” Prof said. “Inside one of the major government buildings? With that kind of security? Besides, what you told me seems to imply the guards knew of the place. Anyway, many of these stories are accompanied by documentation claiming they were devised by Steelheart himself. It even notes their falsehood, and the need to substantiate them with made-up facts.”
“He’s been bragging,” Abraham said, “and making things up—only now, his ministry has to make all of his claims sound true. Otherwise he’ll look foolish.”
Prof nodded, and my heart sank. I’d assumed that we’d found something important. Instead all I’d discovered was a department dedicated to making Steelheart look good. And more evil. Or something.
“So Steelheart is not as terrible as he would like us to think,” Abraham said.
“Oh, he’s pretty terrible,” Prof said. “Wouldn’t you say, David?”
“Over seventeen thousand confirmed deaths to his name,” I said absently. “It’s in my notes. Many were innocents. They can’t all be fabrications.”
“And they’re not,” Prof said. “He’s a terrible, awful individual. He just wants to make sure that we all know it.”
“How strange,” Abraham said.
I dug into a crate of cheeses, getting out the paper-wrapped blocks and loading them in the cold-storage pit on the far side of the room. So many of the foods the Reckoners ate were things I’d never been able to afford. Cheese, fresh fruit. Most food in Newcago had to be shipped in because of the darkness. It was impossible to grow fruit and vegetables outside, and Steelheart was careful to keep a firm hold on the farmlands surrounding the city.
Expensive foods. I was already getting used to eating them. Odd, how quickly that could happen.
“Prof,” I said, placing a cheese wheel in the pit, “do you ever wonder if maybe Newcago will be worse without Steelheart than it is with him?”
At the other side of the room, Megan turned sharply to look at me, but I didn’t look at her. I won’t tell him what you said, so stop glaring at me. I just want to know.
“It probably will be,” Prof said. “For a while at least. The infrastructure of the city will probably collapse. Food will get scarce. Unless someone powerful takes Steelheart’s place and secures Enforcement, there will be looting.”
“But—”
“You want your revenge, son? Well, that’s the cost. I won’t sugarcoat it. We try to keep from hurting innocents, but when we kill Steelheart, we’ll cause suffering.”
I sat down beside the cold-storage hole.
“Did you never think of this?” Abraham asked. He’d gotten that necklace out from underneath his shirt and was rubbing his finger on it. “In all those years of planning, preparing to kill the one you hated, did you never consider what would happen to Newcago?”
I blushed, but then I shook my head. I hadn’t. “So … what do we do?”
“Continue as we have,” Prof said. “Our job is to cut out the infected flesh. Only then can the body start to heal—but it’s going to hurt a lot first.”
“But …”
Prof turned to me, and I saw something in his expression. A deep exhaustion, the tiredness of one who had been fighting a war for a long, long time. “It’s good for you to think of this, son. Ponder. Worry. Stay up nights, frightened for the casualties of your ideology. It will do you good to realize the price of fighting.
“I need to warn you of something, however. There aren’t any answers to be found. There are no good choices. Submissiveness to a tyrant or chaos and suffering. In the end I chose the second, though it flays my soul to do so. If we don’t fight, humankind is finished. We slowly become sheep to the Epics, slaves and servants—stagnant.
“This isn’t just about revenge or payback. It’s about the survival of our race. It’s about men being the masters of their own destiny. I choose suffering and uncertainty over becoming a lapdog.”
“That’s all well and good,” Megan said, “to choose for yourself. But Prof, you’re not just choosing for yourself. You’re choosing for everyone in the city.”
“So I am.” He slid some cans onto the shelf.
“In the end,” Megan said, “they don’t get to be masters of their own destinies. They get to be dominated by Steelheart or left to fend for themselves?
?at least until another Epic comes along to dominate them again.”
“Then we’ll kill him too,” Prof said softly.
“How many can you kill?” Megan said. “You can’t stop all of the Epics, Prof. Eventually another one will set up here. You think he’ll be better than Steelheart?”
“Enough, Megan,” Prof said. “We’ve spoken of this already, and I made my decision.”
“Newcago is one of the best places in the Fractured States to live,” Megan continued, ignoring Prof’s comment. “We should be focusing on Epics who aren’t good administrators, places where life is worse.”
“No,” Prof said, his voice sounding gruffer.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s the problem!” he snapped. “Everyone talks about how great Newcago is. But it’s not great, Megan. It’s good by comparison only! Yes, there are worse places, but so long as this hellhole is considered the ideal, we’ll never get anywhere. We cannot let them convince us this is normal!”
The room fell still, Megan looking taken aback by Prof’s outburst. I sat down, my shoulders slumping.
This wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. The glorious Reckoners, bringing justice to the Epics. I hadn’t once thought of the guilt they’d bear, the arguments, the uncertainty. I could see it in them, the same fear I’d had in the power plant. The worry that we might be making things worse, that we might end up as bad as the Epics.
Prof stalked away, waving a hand in frustration. I heard the curtain rustle as he retreated back to his thinking room. Megan watched him go, red-faced with anger.
“It is not so bad, Megan,” Abraham said quietly. He still seemed calm. “It will be all right.”
“How can you say that?” she asked.
“We don’t need to defeat all of the Epics, you see,” Abraham said. He was holding a chain in his dark-skinned hand, with a small pendant dangling from it. “We just need to hold out long enough.”
“I’m not going to listen to your foolishness, Abraham,” she said. “Not right now.” With that she turned and left the storage room. She crawled into the tunnel that led down to the steel catacombs and vanished.