Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(90)

“I think I can hit a wall or two,”

I said. “So long as they aren’t good at dodging.”

“Be careful,” Prof said. “That gun drinks energy like Tia with a six-pack of cola. That power cell could run a small city, but it will give you only a dozen shots at best.

Abraham, you still with us?”

“I’m here.”

“You in the bolt-hole?”

“Yes. Bandaging my wound. It’s not too bad.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. I’m almost to you. Cody, status?”

“I can see the limo,” Cody said in my ear as Megan took another corner. “I’ve mostly shaken pursuit.

I’ve got a tensor; I’ll hit the limo with a grenade, then use the tensor to drill myself down to the understreets.”

“Not an option,” Prof said. “It’ll take you too long to drill down that far.”

“Wall!” Tia said.

“Got it,” I said, blasting a hole through a wall at the end of an alleyway. We roared out into a backyard, and I blasted a hole in another wall, letting us cut into the next yard. Megan turned us to the right, then drove us through a very narrow slot between two houses.

“Go left,” Tia said as we reached the street.

“Prof,” Cody said. “I can see the limo. I can hit it.”

“Cody, I don’t—”

“I’m taking the shot, Prof,” Cody said. “Abraham’s right. Steelheart’s going to come for us after this. We need to hurt him as much as we can, while we can.”

“All right.”

“Turn right,” Tia said.

We turned.

“I’m sending you through a large building,” Tia said. “Can you handle that?”

Gun re sprayed against the wall beside us, and Megan cursed, hunkering down farther. I held the gauss gun in a sweaty grip, feeling terribly exposed with my back to the enemy. I could hear the cycles back there.

“They real y seem to want you two,” Tia said softly. “They’re pulling a lot of resources toward you, and … Calamity!”

“What?” I said.

“My video feed just went out,”

Tia said. “Something’s wrong.

Cody?”

“Little busy,” he grunted.

More gun re sounded from

behind. Something hit the cycle, jarring us, and Megan cursed.

“The building, Tia!” I said. “How do we nd that building? We’ll lose them inside.”

“Second right,” Tia told us. “Then straight to the end of the road. It’s an old mall, and the gulley is just behind it. I was looking for other routes, but—”

“This will work,” Megan said curtly. “David, be ready to open the place up for us.”

“Got it,” I said, steadying the gun, though it was harder now that she’d picked up speed. We took a corner, then turned toward a large, at structure at the end of the road. I vaguely remembered malls from the days before Calamity.

They’d been marketplaces, all enclosed.

Megan was driving fast and heading right at it. I took aim carefully and blasted through a set of steel doors in the front. We shot through the smoke, entering the heavy blackness of an abandoned building. The headlight of the cycle showed shops on either side of us.

The place had been looted long ago, though a lot of wares remained in the shops. Clothing that had been turned to steel wasn’t particularly useful.

Megan wove easily through the mall’s open corridors, taking us up a frozen escalator onto the second oor. Engines echoed throughout the building as Enforcement cycles followed us in.

Tia couldn’t guide us any longer, it appeared, but Megan seemed to have an idea of what she was doing. From the balcony above, I got a shot at the cycles following us. I hit the ground in front of them, taking a chunk out of the oor and causing several to skid out, the others scattering for cover.

None seemed to have drivers as skilled as Megan.

“Wall up ahead,” Megan said.

I blasted it, then glanced at the energy meter on the side of the gauss gun. Prof was right; I’d drained it pretty quickly. We had maybe a couple of shots left.

We roared out into open air and the gravatonics on the cycle engaged, softening our landing as we fell one story to the street below. We still hit hard; the cycle wasn’t intended to take jumps that high. I grunted, my backside and legs hammered from the impact.

Megan immediately punched the vehicle forward down a narrow alleyway behind the mall.

I could see the ground fall away up ahead. The gulley. We only had to— A sleek black copter rose out of the gulley in front of us, and the rotary guns on its sides began to spin up.

Not a chance, I thought, raising the gauss gun with both hands, sighting. Megan ducked lower and the cycle hit the edge of the gulley.

The copter started ring. I could see the pilot’s helmet through the glass of the cockpit.

I took the shot.

I’d often dreamed of doing incredible things. I’d imagined what it would be like to work with the Reckoners, to ght the Epics, to actually do things instead of sitting around thinking about them. With that shot, I finally got my chance.

I hung in the air, staring down a hundred-ton death machine, and squeezed the trigger. I popped the copter’s