Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(31)

Cody whistled softly. He’d gotten out a canteen and held it in one hand while still leaning back against the table. “Lad, I think we need to have a conversation about how much time you’ve got on your hands and how we can put it to better use.”

“Better use than researching how to kill Epics?” Tia asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure,” Cody said, taking a swig from his canteen. “Think of what he could do if I got him to organize all of the pubs in town, by brew!”

“Oh please,” Tia said drily, turning a page in my notes.

“Abraham,” Cody said. “Ask me why it’s tragic for the young David to have spent so much time on these notebooks.”

“Why is it tragic for the boy to have done such research?”

Abraham said, still cleaning his gun.

“That’s a very astute question,”

Cody said. “Thank you very much for asking.”

“It is my pleasure.”

“Anyway,” Cody said, raising his canteen, “why do you want so badly to kill these Epics?”

“Revenge,” I said. “Steelheart killed my father. I intend—”

“Yes, yes,” Cody said, cutting me o . “Y’all intend to see him bleed again, and all that. Very dedicated and familial of you. But I’m telling you, that ain’t enough. You’ve got passion to kill, but you need to nd passion to live. At least that’s what I think.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Studying Steelheart, learning about Epics so that I could nd a way to kill him, was my passion. If there was a place I t in, wasn’t it with the Reckoners? That was their life’s work too, wasn’t it?

“Cody,” Prof said, “why don’t you go nish working on the third chamber?”

“Sure thing, Prof,” the sniper said, screwing on the lid of his canteen. He sauntered out of the room.

“Don’t listen too much to Cody, son,” Prof said, setting one of my notebooks on the stack. “He says the same things to the rest of us.

He worries we’ll focus so hard on killing the Epics that we’ll forget to live our lives.”

“He might be right,” I said.

“I … I really haven’t had much of a life, other than this.”

“The work we do,” Prof said, “is not about living. Our job is killing.

We’ll leave the regular people to live their lives, to nd joy in them, to enjoy the sunrises and the snowfalls. Our job is to get them there.”

I had memories of the world before. It had only been ten years ago, after all. It’s just that it was di cult to remember a world of sunshine when darkness was all you saw each day. Remembering that time … it was like trying to recall the speci cs of my father’s face. You forget things like that, gradually.

“Jonathan,” Abraham said to Prof, slipping the barrel back onto his gun, “have you considered the things this boy said?”

“I’m not a boy,” I said.

They all looked at me. Even Megan, standing beside the doorway.

“I just wanted to note it,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable. “I mean, I’m eighteen. I’ve hit my majority.

I’m not a child.”

Prof eyed me. Then, surprisingly, he nodded. “Age has nothing to do with it, but you’ve helped kill two Epics, which is good enough for me. It should be for any of us.”

“Very well,” Abraham said, voice soft. “But Prof, we have spoken of this before. By killing Epics like Fortuity, are we really achieving anything?”

“We ght back,” Megan said.

“We’re the only ones who do. It’s important.”

“And yet,” Abraham said,

snapping another piece onto his gun, “we are afraid to ght the most powerful. And so, the domination

of

the

tyrants

continues. So long as they do not fall, the others will not truly fear us. They will fear Steelheart, Obliteration, and Night’s Sorrow. If we will not face creatures such as these, is there any hope that others will someday stand up to them?”

The steel-walled room went quiet, and I held my breath. The words were nearly the same I had used earlier, but coming from Abraham’s soft-spoken, lightly accented voice, they seemed to hold more weight.

Prof turned to Tia.

She held up a photograph. “This is really Nightwielder?” she asked me. “You’re sure of it?”

The picture was a prize of my possessions, a photograph of Nightwielder beside Steelheart on the Day of Annexation, just before his darkness had come upon the city. As far as I knew, it was one of a kind, sold to me by an urchin whose father had taken it with an old Polaroid camera.

Nightwielder

was

normally

translucent, incorporeal. He could move through solid objects and control

darkness

itself.

He

appeared often in the city, but was always in his incorporeal form. In this picture he was solid, wearing a sharp black suit and hat. He had Asian features and black shoulder-length hair. I had other pictures of him in his incorporeal form. The face was the same.

“It’s obviously him,” I said.

“And the photo wasn’t doctored,”