Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(116)

“I never did like him,” Megan said indi erently, glancing toward Nightwielder’s corpse. “You just did me a favor. Plausible deniability and all of that.”

I looked into her eyes. I knew those

eyes.

I did. I didn’t understand how it was happening, but it was her.

Never did like him …

“Calamity,” I whispered. “You’re Fire ght, aren’t you? You always were.”

She said nothing, though her eyes ickered down toward my

weapons—the ri e still held at my hip, the handgun in my other hand.

Her eye twitched.

“Fire ght wasn’t male,” I said.

“He … she was a woman.” I felt my eyes go wide. “That day in the elevator shaft, when the guards almost caught us … they didn’t see anything in the shaft. You made an illusion.”

She was still staring at my guns.

“And then, when we were on the

cycles,” I said. “You created an illusion of Abraham riding with us to distract the people following, to keep them from seeing the real him ee to safety. That’s what I saw behind us after he split off.”

Why was she looking at my

guns?

“But the dowser,” I said. “It tested you, and it said you weren’t an Epic. No … wait. Illusions. You could just make it display anything you wanted. Steelheart must have known the Reckoners were coming

to town. He sent you to in ltrate.

You were the newest of the

Reckoners, before me. You never wanted to attack Steelheart. You said you believed in his rule.”

She licked her lips, then

whispered something. She didn’t seem to have been listening to anything I said. “Sparks,” she murmured. “I can’t believe that actually worked.…”

What?

“You checkmated him …,” she

whispered. “That was amazing.…”

Checkmated him? Nightwielder?

Was that what she talking about?

She looked up at me, and I remembered. She was repeating one of our rst conversations, following her shooting Fortuity.

She’d held a ri e at her hip and a handgun out forward. Just like I had

done

to

gun

down

Nightwielder. The sight seemed to have triggered something in her.

“David,” she said. “That’s your name. And I think you’re very aggravating.” She seemed to only just be recalling who I was. What had happened to her memory?

“Thank you?” I said.

A blast rocked the stadium and she looked over her shoulder. She still had the gun pointed at me.

“Whose side are you on,

Megan?” I asked.

“My own,” she said immediately,

but then she held her other hand to her head, seeming uncertain.

“Someone betrayed us to

Steelheart,” I said. “Someone warned him we were going to hit Con ux, and someone told him we

were hacking the city cameras.

Today someone’s been listening in on us, reporting to him what we’ve been doing. It was you.”

She looked back at me, and

didn’t deny it.

“But you also used your illusions to save Abraham,” I said. “And you killed Fortuity. I can buy that Steelheart wanted us to trust you, so he let you kill o one of his lesser Epics. Fortuity was out of favor anyway. But why would you

betray

us, then help Abraham escape?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“I …”

“Are you going to shoot me?” I asked, looking down the barrel of her gun.

She hesitated. “Idiot. You really don’t know how to talk to women, do you, Knees?” She cocked her head as if surprised the words had come out.

She lowered the gun, then turned and ran off.

I’ve got to fol ow her, I thought, taking a step forward. Another explosion sounded outside.

No. I ripped my eyes away from her eeing form. I’ve got to get outside and help.

I dashed past Nightwielder’s

corpse—still half submerged in steel, frozen, blood seeping down his chest—and headed for the nearest exit out onto the playing field.

Or in this case, the battlefield.





39

“… nd that idiot boy and shoot him for me, Cody!” Prof screamed into my ear as I unmuted my mobile.

“We’re pulling out, Jon,” Tia said, talking over him. “I’m on my way in the copter. Three minutes until I arrive. Abraham will blow the cover explosion.”

“Abraham can go to hell,” Prof spat. “I’m seeing this to the end.”

“ Y o u can’t ght a High Epic, Jon,” Tia said.

“I’ll do whatever I want! I’m—”

His voice cut out.

“I’ve removed him from the

feed,” Tia said to the rest of us.

“This is bad. I’ve never heard him go this far. We need to pull him out somehow or we’ll lose him.”

“Lose him?” Cody asked,

sounding confused. I could hear gun re through the line near him, and could hear the same gun re up ahead echoing in the wide corridor.