But Megan wasn’t a traitor. I didn’t know what she was, though I intended to find out.
Down below, a car pulled up to the crowd. Prof glanced at it. “Go deal with them,” he said. “I’ll meet you back at the hideout.”
I turned as the mayor climbed out of the car, along with a few members of the city council.
Great, I thought.
Honestly, I’d rather have faced another Epic.
5
I left the building as soldiers cleared a path for Mayor Briggs. She wore a white pantsuit and a matching fedora, similar to the other members of the city council. Unique clothing, well styled. That contrasted with the everyday people, who wore … well, basically anything.
During the early days in Newcago, clothing had been shockingly hard to come by. Everything that hadn’t been on a person’s back had been transformed to steel during the Great Transfersion. Over the years, however, Steelheart’s foraging crews had scoured the suburbs, emptying warehouses, old malls, and abandoned houses. These days we had enough to wear—but it was a strange mix of different styles.
The upper class, though, wanted to stand out. They avoided practical clothing like jeans, which lasted surprisingly long with a few patches here and there. During Steelheart’s reign they’d had their clothing made, and had chosen archaic designs. Things from a classier time, or so they said. It wasn’t the sort of clothing you could merely find lying about.
We’d decided that I would be our liaison with Briggs and the rest. I was the only Newcago native in the Reckoners, and we wanted to limit access to Prof. The Reckoners did not rule Newcago—we protected it. It was a division we all thought was important.
I stepped up through the crowd, ignoring those who whispered my name. The attention was embarrassing, honestly. All of these people worshipped me, but they barely remembered men like my father who had died fighting the Epics.
“Looks like your handiwork, Charleston,” Mayor Briggs said, nudging the corpse on the ground with her foot. “Steelslayer puts another notch in his rifle.”
“My rifle’s broken,” I said. Too harshly. The mayor was an important woman, and had done wonders helping to organize the city. It was just that she was one of them—Steelheart’s upper class. I’d expected them all to end up out on their ears, but somehow—through a series of political maneuvers I couldn’t follow—Briggs had ended up in charge of the city instead of being exiled.
“I’m sure we can get you a new gun.” She looked me over, not smiling. She liked to convey a “no-nonsense” attitude. To me, it seemed more like a “no-personality” attitude.
“Walk with me a pace, David,” Briggs said, turning to stroll away. “You don’t mind, do you?”
I did mind, but I figured this was one of those questions you weren’t supposed to answer. I wasn’t completely sure, though. I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.
“Your leader,” Briggs said as we walked off a little ways from the crowd. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Prof is busy.”
“I imagine that is so. And I must say, we truly appreciate the protection you and yours offer this city.” She looked over her shoulder at the corpse, then cocked an eyebrow. “However, I can’t say that I understand your entire game plan.”
“Mayor?” I asked.
“Your leader allowed the wheels of politics to put me in charge of Newcago, but I know next to nothing of the Reckoners’ goals for this city—indeed this country. It would be nice to know what you are planning.”
“That’s easy,” I said. “Kill Epics.”
“And if a band of Epics joins together and comes to attack the city at once?”
Yeah. That would be a problem.
“Sourcefield,” she said, “terrorized us for five days while you furiously planned. Five days is a long time for a city to be under the thumb of another tyrant. If five or six powerful Epics got together and came with the intent to exterminate, I fail to see how you’d protect us. Certainly you might end up picking them off one at a time, but Newcago would turn into a wasteland before you were done.”
Briggs stopped walking and turned to me, now that the others couldn’t hear. She looked me in the eyes, and I saw something in her expression. Was that … fear?
“So I ask,” she said softly, “what is your plan? After years of hiding and only attacking Epics of middling importance, the Reckoners revealed themselves and brought down Steelheart himself. That means you have a greater goal, right? You’ve started a war. You know a secret to winning it, don’t you?”
“I …” What could I say? This woman, who had weathered the reign of one of the most powerful Epics in the world—and who had seized control following his fall—looked to me with a plea on her lips and terror in her eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “We have a plan.”
“And …?”
“And we might have found a way to stop them all, Mayor,” I said. “Any Epic.”
“How?”
I smiled in what I hoped was a confident way. “Reckoner secret, Mayor. Trust me, though. We know what we’re doing. We’d never start a war we expected to lose.”
She nodded, looking placated. She went back into businesslike mode, and now that she had my ear she had a dozen things she wanted me to ask Prof about—most of which seemed attempts on her part to position him and the Reckoners politically. Her influence among the elite of Newcago would grow a great deal if she could parade Prof around as a friend. That was part of why we kept our distance.
I listened, but was distracted by what I’d told her. Did the Reckoners have a plan? Not really.
But I did.
We eventually returned to where Sourcefield’s body lay. More people had gathered, including some members of the city’s fledgling press, who took pictures. They got a few shots of me, unfortunately.
I passed through the crowd and knelt beside the corpse. She’d been a rabid dog, as Prof had put it. Killing her had been a mercy.
She came for us, I thought. And this is the third one who avoided engaging Prof. Mitosis had come to the city while Prof had been away. Instabam had tried to lose Prof in the chase, gunning for Abraham. Now Sourcefield had captured Prof, then left him behind to chase me.
Prof was right. Something was going on.
“David?” Roy asked. He knelt, wearing his black and grey Enforcement armor.
“Yeah.”
Roy held out something in a black-gloved hand. Flower petals in a vibrant rainbow of hues—each petal bleeding between three or four colors, like mixed paint.
“These were in her pocket,” Roy said. “We didn’t find anything else on her.”
I waved Abraham over, then showed him the petals.
“Those are from Babilar,” he said. “What used to be known as New York City.”
“That’s where Mitosis had been working before he came here,” I said softly. “Coincidence?”
“Hardly,” Abraham said. “I think we need to go show these to Prof.”
6
WE still kept a secret base hidden within the bowels of Newcago. Though I visited an apartment up above to shower each day, I slept down here, as did the others. Prof didn’t want people to know where to find us. Considering that the latest Epics to visit had all specifically tried to kill us, it seemed a good decision.
Abraham and I hiked in through a long hidden passage that was cut directly into the metallic ground. The tunnel’s sides bore the distinctive smooth look created by tensors. When one of us held Prof’s disintegration powers, we could reduce sections of solid metal, rock, or wood to dust. This gave the tunnel a sculpted feel, as if the steel were mud that we’d hollowed out with our hands.
Cody guarded the way into the hideout. We always set a watch after an operation. Prof kept expecting one of the Epics who showed up to b
e a decoy—someone for us to kill while a more powerful Epic watched and tried to discover how to follow us.
It was all too possible.
What will we do if a group of Epics decides to bring down the city? I thought, shivering as Abraham and I entered the hideout.
Lit by yellow lightbulbs screwed directly into the walls, the hideout was a medium-sized complex of steel rooms. Tia sat at a desk at the far side; red-haired and middle-aged, she wore spectacles, a white blouse, and jeans. Her desk was a lavish wooden one that she’d set up a few weeks back. It had seemed a strange sign to me, a symbol of permanence.
Abraham walked up to her and dropped the flower petals onto her desk. Tia raised an eyebrow at them. “Where?” she asked.
“Sourcefield’s pocket,” I said.
Tia gathered up the petals.
“That’s the third Epic in a row who’s come here and tried to destroy us,” I said. “And each had a connection to Babylon Restored. Tia, what’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Prof seems to know,” I said. “He said as much to me earlier, but he wouldn’t give me an explanation.”
“Then I’ll let him tell you when he’s ready,” she said. “For now, there’s a file here on the table for you. The thing you asked about.”
She was trying to distract me. I dropped my backpack—the pieces of my rifle stuck out the top—and crossed my arms, but found myself glancing toward the table, which held a folder with my name written on the top.