Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(108)

Done right, the wave would course along with my st. Kind of like smoke might follow your hand if you punch through it. I smiled, shaking my hand. I’d

nally

gured it out. Good thing too. My knuckles were feeling pretty sore.

I nished o the hole with a more mundane tensor blast, reaching up from the top of my ladder to sculpt the hole. Through it I could see a pure black sky.

Someday I’d like to see the sun again, I thought. The only thing up there was blackness. Blackness and Calamity, burning in the distance directly above, like a terrible red eye.

I climbed up o the ladder and out into the upper third deck. I had a sudden, surreal ash of memory.





This was near where I’d sat the one time I’d come to this stadium. My father had scrimped and saved to buy us the tickets. I couldn’t remember which team we’d played, but I could remember the taste of the hot dog my father bought. And his cheering, his excitement.

I crouched down among the

seats, keeping low just in case.

Steelheart’s spy drones were

probably out of commission now that the city was without power, but he might have people scouting the city and looking for Limelight.

It would be wise to remain out of sight as much as possible.

Fishing a rope out of my pack, I tied it around the leg of one of the steel seats, then sneaked back to the hole and down the ladder, returning to the bathroom below the second deck. Leaving the rope hanging for a quicker escape than the ladder would allow, I stowed the ladder and my empty pack in one of the stalls and walked out toward the seats.

Abraham was waiting there for me, leaning against the entryway to the lower seating with his muscled

arms

crossed,

his

expression thoughtful.

“So, I take it the UV lights are hooked up?” I asked.

Abraham nodded. “It would have

been beautiful to use the stadium’s own floodlights.”

I laughed. “I’d have liked to see that, making a bunch of lights work that had their bulbs turned to steel and fused to their sockets.”

The two of us stood there for a time, looking out at our battle eld.

I checked my mobile. It was early morning; we planned to summon Steelheart at 5:00 a.m. Hopefully his soldiers would be exhausted from preventing lootings all night without any vehicles or power armor. The Reckoners usually

worked on a night schedule

anyway.

“Fifteen minutes until projected go time,” I noted. “Did Cody nish the welding? Prof and Tia back yet?”

“Cody completed the weld and is

moving to his position,” Abraham said. “Prof will arrive momentarily.

They were able to procure a copter, and Edmund has gifted Tia the ability to power it. She ew it outside of town to park it, so as to not give away our location.”

If things went sour, she’d time her ight back in so that she could sweep down and pick us up as the explosives went o . We’d also blast a smokescreen from the stands to cover our escape.

I agreed with Prof, though. You couldn’t out y or outgun Steelheart in a copter. This was the

showdown. We defeated him here or we died.

My mobile ashed, and a voice spoke into my ear. “I’m back,” Prof said. “Tia’s set too.” He hesitated a moment. “Let’s do this.”





35

SINCE my post was right up against the front of the third deck, if I’d been standing I could have looked down over the edge toward the lowest level of seats. Huddled in my improvised hole, however, I couldn’t see those—though I had a good view of the field.

This put me high enough to

watch what was going on around the stadium, but I also had a route to ground if I needed to try ring my father’s gun at Steelheart. The tunnel and rope farther up the deck would get me there quickly.

I’d drop down, then try to sneak up on him, if it came to that. It would be like trying to sneak up on a lion while armed only with a squirt gun.

I huddled in my spot, waiting. I wore my tensor on my left hand, my right hand holding the grip of the pistol. Cody had given me a replacement ri e, but for now it lay beside me.

Overhead, reworks ared in the

air. Four posts around the top of the stadium released enormous jets of sparks. I don’t know where Abraham had found reworks that

were pure green, but the signal would undoubtedly be seen and recognized.

This was the moment. Would he really come?

The reworks began to die

down. “I’ve got something,”

Abraham said in our ears, his light French accent subtly emphasizing the wrong syllables. He had the high-point sniping position and Cody had the low-point sniping position. Cody was the better shot, but Abraham needed to be farther away, where he could be outside the ght. His job was to remotely turn on the oodlights or blow strategic explosives. “Yes, they’re coming indeed. A convoy of

Enforcement trucks. No sign of Steelheart yet.”

I holstered my father’s gun, then reached to the side to pick up the ri e. It felt too new to me. A ri e should be a well-used, well-loved thing. Familiar. Only then can you know that it’s trustworthy. You know how it shoots, when it might jam, how accurate the sights are.

Guns, like shoes, are worst when they’re brand-new.