Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(62)

“I wouldn’t have to shoot the people next door,” Megan said calmly.

“And what else would you do, lass?” Cody asked. “Knock them out, then leave them for when we blow up the building?”

Megan hesitated.

“Okay,” Cody said. “Tia says there’s another way. You’re going to have to go up an elevator shaft, though.”

“Lovely,” Megan said.

We hurried back to the rst room we’d come through. Tia uploaded a new map for me, with tensor points, and I got to work. I was a little more nervous this time. Were we going to nd random scientists and workers just hanging around all over? What would we do if someone surprised us? What if it was some innocent custodian?

For the rst time in my life, I found myself nearly as worried about what I might end up doing as I was about what someone might do to me. It was an uncomfortable situation. What we were doing was, basically, terrorism.

But we’re the good guys, I told myself, breaking open the wall and letting Megan slide through rst.

Of course, what terrorist didn’t think he or she was the good guy?

We

were

doing

something

important, but what would that matter to the family of the cleaning woman we accidentally killed? As I hastened

through

the

next

darkened room—this one was a lab chamber, with some beakers and other glasswork set up—I had trouble shaking off these questions.

And so, I focused on Steelheart.

That awful, hateful sneer. Standing there with the gun he’d taken from my father, barrel pointed down at the inferior human.

That image worked. I could forget everything else when I thought of it. I didn’t have all the answers, but at least I had a goal.

Revenge. Who cared if it would eat me up inside and leave me hollow?

So long as it drove me to make life better for everyone else. Prof understood that. I understood it too.

We reached the elevator shaft without incident, entering it through a storage room that bordered it. I vaporized a large hole in the wall, and then Megan poked her head in and looked up the tall, dark shaft. “So, Cody, there’s supposed to be a way up?”

“Sure. Handholds on the sides.

They put them in all elevator shafts.”

“Looks like someone forgot to inform Steelheart of that,” I said, looking in beside Megan. “These walls are completely slick. No ladder or anything like that. No ropes or cords either.”

Cody cursed.

“So we’re back to going the other way?” Megan asked.

I scanned the walls again. The blackness seemed to extend forever above and below us. “We could wait for the elevator to come.”

“The elevators have cameras,”

Cody said.

“So we ride on top of it,” I said.

“And alert the people inside when we drop onto it?” Megan asked.

“We just wait for one that doesn’t have anyone in it,” I said.

“Elevators are empty about half the time, right? They’re responding to calls people make.”

“All right,” Cody said. “Prof and Abraham have hit a small snag— waiting for a room to clear out so they can move through. Prof says you have ve minutes to wait. If nothing happens by then, we’re scrapping the job.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling a stab of disappointment.

“I’m going to run some visuals for them,” Cody said. “I’ll be offline from you for a bit; call me if you need me. I’ll watch the elevator. If it moves, I’ll let you know.” The line clicked as Cody switched frequencies, and we started waiting.

We both sat quietly, straining to hear any sounds of the elevator moving, though we’d never spot it before Cody did with his video feeds.

“So … how often is it like this?” I asked after a few minutes of kneeling beside Megan, stuck in the room beside the hole I’d burrowed into the side of the elevator shaft.

“Like what?” she asked.

“The waiting.”

“More than you’d think,” she said. “The jobs we do, they’re often all about timing. Good timing requires a lot of waiting around.”

She glanced at my hand, and I found that I’d been nervously tapping the side of the wall.

I forced myself to stop.

“You sit,” she said, voice growing softer, “and you wait. You go over and over the plan, picture it in your mind. Then it usually goes wrong anyway.”

I eyed her suspiciously.

“What?” she asked.

“The thing you just said. It’s exactly what I think too.”

“So?”

“So if something usually goes wrong, why are you always on my back about improvising?”

She grew thin-lipped.

“No,” I said. “It’s time you leveled with me, Megan. Not just about this mission, but about everything. What is with you? Why do you treat me like you hate me?

You were the one who originally spoke up for me when I wanted to join! You sounded impressed with me at rst—Prof might never have listened to my plan at all if you hadn’t said what you did. But since then you’ve acted like I was a gorilla at your buffet.”

“A … what?”