The others fell silent. In the quiet, my mobile buzzed. I glanced at it, half expecting it to be Cody with some addendum to his story that he wanted me to hear. Instead it was Knighthawk.
Your crate is on the move, he wrote.
What, already? I typed back.
Yeah. Out of the warehouse, on its way someplace else. What’s going on here? Who ordered that box?
“I need to chase this lead,” I said, looking up to the others. “Megan, stay here. If something does go wrong with Larcener, you’ll have the best chance of getting the others out. Be careful not to touch him, just in case. He can’t take your powers without touching you and holding on a good thirty seconds, or so my reports say. Let’s be careful and not let him have any direct contact with you.”
“Fine,” she said. “But it won’t come to anything like that. If I see a hint that he’s going dark, I’m grabbing the others and we’re bolting.”
“Deal,” I said. “Abraham, I could use some support on this mission. We’ll have to go without Megan’s disguises, so it could be dangerous.”
“More dangerous than staying here?” he asked, looking upward.
“I don’t know, honestly. Depends on how bad a mood our target is in.”
AFTER we slipped from the hideout, I showed Abraham my mobile, which displayed a map of the city. A red dot from Knighthawk showed the location of our target.
“With it moving like that, it could take hours to chase down,” Abraham said with a grunt.
“We’d better get going then,” I said, tucking my mobile into my pocket.
“David, in all kindness and peace,” Abraham said, “your plans have already made me exhaust myself today, and now you want to walk across the city again. Ç’a pas d’allure! One wonders if you have determined I am getting fat. Wait here.” He shoved his large bag into my hands—it held his gun, and was way heavier than I’d expected. As I stumbled, he strode across the street toward a vendor who had set up under a small awning.
You going to tell me what this is about? Knighthawk texted me as I waited.
You’re a smart man, I wrote back. Guess.
I’m a lazy man. And I hate guessing. Despite that, a moment later, he sent me something. Is this about the caverns, somehow? Like…you think maybe Larcener is hiding in them, and you’re trying to track him?
That was a clever guess. Caverns? I wrote. What caverns?
You know. St. Joseph?
The religious figure?
The city, idiot, Knighthawk sent. The one that used to be in this area. You really don’t know?
Know what?
Wow. And here I was beginning to think you were some kind of omniscient super-nerd when it came to Epics. I actually know something about them you don’t? I could sense the self-satisfaction oozing from the screen.
There’s an Epic from St. Joseph, I wrote, that you think I should know about?
Jacob Pham.
Drawing a blank.
Give me a moment. I’m reveling.
I looked up toward Abraham, eager to be on with things, but the Canadian man wasn’t finished with his haggling yet.
You called him Digzone.
I started, feeling a shock of recognition.
The one who created the Diggers, I wrote. Back in Newcago.
Yup, Knighthawk sent. Before he was driving people mad for Steelheart, he came from a sleepy town out there. Half that side of the state is pocketed with the crazy tunnels and caverns he made. But if you didn’t know that, then your little plot with the mobile today couldn’t be about finding Larcener in them.
Digzone. He’d been behind the strange labyrinths underneath Newcago. It felt distinctly odd to think about similar tunnels being out here, cut into the ground.
No, what I’m doing today isn’t about finding Larcener, I wrote to Knighthawk. We don’t need to find him. He showed up on our doorstep.
WHAT?
Sorry. Abraham is back with our bikes. Talk to you in a bit.
Let him chew on that. I pocketed the mobile again as Abraham returned, wheeling two rusty bicycles. I regarded them, dubious. “Those look older than two guys in their sixties.”
Abraham cocked his head.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m still surprised, sometimes, at the things that leave your mouth,” he said, reclaiming his pack. “These bicycles are old because that was all I felt I could pay for without raising suspicion. These should get us where we want to go. You…can ride a bike, can’t you?”
“Sure I can,” I said, getting onto one of the squeaky things. “At least I used to be able to. Haven’t done it in years, but it’s like riding a bike, right?”
“Technically, yes.”
He watched me with skepticism, which was unwarranted. My hesitance hadn’t come from inability, as I proved by riding around on the bike to get used to it.
Bikes reminded me of my father.
I checked my mobile’s map—and sent a quick explanation to Knighthawk to keep him from freaking out about Larcener—and we set out, joining a smattering of other cyclists on the street. I hadn’t seen these often in Newcago; in the overstreets, the rich had prided themselves on using working automobiles. On the understreets, things had been too twisty and uneven to make bikes practical.
In Ildithia they made perfect sense. Here, the sides of the streets were lined with cars made of salt, but there was open space in the road. Many of the salt cars had been pushed out of the way—they didn’t fuse to the roadway, like things had in Newcago—leaving an open and wide road. It was easy, even when you had to weave around a traffic jam nobody had cleared out. These things must grow again each week.
I enjoyed our ride for a short time, though I couldn’t help remembering earlier days. I’d been seven when my father had taught me to ride. Way too late to be first learning; all my friends could already do it, and had started to make fun of me. Sometimes I wished I could just go back and slap myself around. I’d been so timid, so unwilling to act.
After I’d turned seven, Father had decided I was ready. Though I’d whined the whole time, he’d never seemed frustrated. Perhaps teaching me to ride had been a way to distract himself from the eviction notices and an apartment that felt too empty, now that it had only two occupants.
For a moment I was there with him, on the street in front of our building. Life hadn’t been good then. We’d been in the middle of a crisis, but I’d had him. I remembered his hand on my back as he walked with me, then ran with me, then let go so I could ride on my own for the first time.
And I remembered feeling, suddenly, that I could do it. A swelling of emotion had overwhelmed me, one that had almost nothing at all to do with riding a bike. I’d looked back at my father’s tired grin and had started to believe—for the first time in months—that everything was going to be okay.
That day, I’d recaptured something. I’d lost so much with Mom’s death, but I still had him. I’d known I could do anything, so long as I still had him.
Abraham pulled up to a street corner and halted, yielding to a couple of horse-drawn wagons bearing grain from the harvest, men with battle rifles riding alongside. I stopped beside him, my head lowered.
“David?” Abraham asked. “David, are you…crying?”
“I’m fine,” I rasped, checking my mobile. “We turn left here. The crate has stopped moving. We should be able to catch it soon.”
Abraham didn’t press further and I took off again. I hadn’t realized that the pain was still so close to the surface, like a fish who liked to sunbathe. Probably best not to dwell on the memories. Instead, I tried to enjoy the breeze and the thrill of motion. The bikes certainly did beat walking.
We took another corner at an eager speed, then were forced to slow as a group of bikes ahead of us stopped. We pulled to a stop too, and my skin prickled, hairs standing on end. No people on the sidewalks. Nobody carting their possessions toward a new home, as had been prevalent on the other streets. No one leaning out windows
they’d broken open.
This roadway was quiet, save for the rattling of bike pedals and a voice, farther up the street.
“Now, this’ll just take a minute.” A British accent of some flavor I didn’t recognize. I grew cold as I caught a glimpse of a man with a shaved head wearing spiked black leather. A little neon sphere hovered to his side, changing colors from red to green. A tag, they sometimes called it. Epics who could manifest their powers visually would sometimes walk around with an obvious display—a glow about them, or a few spinning leaves. Something that said, Yes, I’m one of them. So don’t mess with me.
“David,” Abraham said softly.