Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(98)

She’d also forced me to do so before abandoning the hideout. I’d washed my hands too, but there was still blood crusted under my fingernails.

“Hey,” Tia said. “You’re looking pretty tired.”

I shrugged.

“Do you want to talk?”

“Not about her. Just … not right now.”

“Okay. Then something else, maybe?” Something to distract you, her tone implied.

Well, maybe that would be nice.

Except the only other thing I wanted to talk about was nearly as distressing. “Why is Prof so mad at me?” I asked softly. “He looked … He looked indignant that he had to come rescue me.”

That made me sick. When he’d spoken to me via mobile, he’d seemed encouraging, determined to help. And then after … he felt like another person. It lingered with him still, as he walked alone at the front of the group.

Tia followed my gaze. “Prof has some … bad memories attached to the tensors, David. He hates using them.”

“But—”

“He’s not mad at you,” Tia said, “and he’s not bothered by having to rescue you, regardless of how it might have seemed. He’s mad at himself. He just needs some time alone.”

“But he was so good with them, Tia.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I’ve seen it. There are troubles there you can’t understand, David.

Sometimes doing things we used to do reminds us of who we used to be, and not always in good ways.”

That didn’t make much sense to me. But then, my mind wasn’t exactly the most crisp it had ever been.

We eventually reached the new bolt-hole, which was much smaller than the hideout—only two small rooms. Cody met us but spoke with a subdued tone. He’d been briefed, obviously, about what had happened. He helped us carry our equipment up into the main chamber of the new hideout.

Con ux,

the

head

of

Enforcement, was captive in there somewhere. Were we foolhardy to think we could hold him? Was this all part of another trap? I had to assume that Prof and Tia knew what they were doing.

As he worked, Abraham exed his arm—the one that had taken a bullet. The little diodes of the harmsway ashed on his biceps, a n d the bullet holes had scabbed over already. A night sleeping with those diodes on and he’d be able to use the arm without trouble in the morning. A few days and the wound would only be a scar.

And yet, I thought, handing my pack to Cody and crawling through the tunnel to the upper chamber, it didn’t help Megan. Nothing we did helped Megan.

I had lost a lot of people in the last ten years. Life in Newcago wasn’t easy, particularly for orphans. But none of those losses had a ected me this profoundly since my father’s death. I guess it was a good thing—it meant I was learning to care again. Still, it felt pretty crappy at the moment.

When I came out of the entry tunnel and into the new hideout, Prof was telling everyone to bed down for the night. He wanted us to have some sleep in us before we dealt with the captive Epic. As I arranged my bedroll, I heard him speaking with Cody and Tia.

Something about injecting the captive Epic with a sedative so that he remained unconscious.

“David?” Tia asked. “You’re wounded. I should hook up the harmsway to you and …”

“I’ll live,” I said. They could heal me tomorrow. I didn’t care at the moment. Instead I lay down on my bedroll and turned over to face the wall. Then I nally let the tears come in force.





32

ABOUT sixteen hours later I sat on the oor of the new hideout, eating a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with raisins, harmsway diodes ashing on my leg and side. We’d had to leave most of our good food behind and were relying on storage that had been packed in the bolt-hole.

The other Reckoners gave me space. I found that odd, since they’d all known Megan longer than I had. It wasn’t like she and I had actually shared anything special, even if she had begun warming up to me.

In fact, as I looked back on it, my reaction to her death seemed silly. I was just a boy with a crush.

It still hurt, though. Badly.

“Hey, Prof,” Cody said, sitting in front of a laptop. “You should see this, mate.”

“Mate?” Prof asked.

“I’ve got a little bit of Australian in me,” Cody said. “My father’s grandfather

was

one-quarter

Aussie. Been meaning to try it out for a spin.”

“You’re a bizarre little man, Cody,” Prof said. He was back to his normal self, for the most part— maybe a little more solemn today.

So were the rest of them, even Cody. Losing a teammate wasn’t a pleasant experience, though I got the sense that they’d been through all of this before.

Prof studied the screen for a moment, then raised an eyebrow.

Cody tapped, then tapped again.

“What is it?” Tia asked.

Cody turned the laptop around.

None of us had chairs; we were all just sitting on our bedrolls. Even though this hideout was smaller than the other, it felt empty to me.

There weren’t enough of us.

The screen was blue, with simple block letters in black. PICK A TIME

AND LOCATION. I WILL COME.