Steelheart (The Reckoners #1)(84)

Cody raises his hands; Abraham res the gauss gun from behind. In the confusion, we’l hope it looks like he launched the bolt from his hand.

We hit the entire limo, leave nothing but slag, and then ee. The surviving motorcycle guards can spread the story.

I t would work. Hopefully. And without Con ux gifting his abilities to high-level Enforcement soldiers, the mechanized armor, the energy weapons, and the copters would all stop working. Fuel cells would run dry, and the city would run out of power.

“We’re getting close,” Tia said softly in our ears. “The limo is turning right on Beagle. Prof, use the beta formation; I’m pretty sure they’re heading uptown, and that means they’ll turn onto Finger Street. Megan, you’re still on target.”

“Got it,” Prof said. “I was heading that way.”

We passed an abandoned park from the old days. You could tell because of the frozen weeds and fallen branches transformed to steel. Only the dead ones had been changed—Steelheart couldn’t a ect living matter. In fact, his pulses had trouble with anything too close to a living body. A person’s clothing often wouldn’t be transformed, but the ground around them would change.

That kind of oddity was common in Epic powers; it was one of the things that didn’t make scienti c sense. A dead body and a living one could be very similar, scienti cally. But one could be a ected by many of the odder Epic powers while the other could not.

My breath fogged the window as we passed the playground, which was no longer safe for play. The weeds were now jagged bits of metal. Steelheart’s steel didn’t rust, but it could break, leaving sharp edges.

“Okay,” Prof said a few minutes later. “I’m here. Climbing up the outside of the building. Megan, I want you to repeat back to me our contingencies.”

“Nothing is going to go wrong,”

Megan said, her voice sounding both beside me and in my ear comm.

“Something always goes wrong,”

Prof said. I could hear him pu ng as he climbed, though he had a gravatonic belt to help him.

“Contingencies.”

“If you or Tia give the word,”

Megan said, “we’ll pull out and split up. You’ll create a distraction.

The four of us in the van will break into two squads and go opposite directions, heading for rally point gamma.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I said.

“How exactly are we going to go separate directions? We’ve only got one van.”

“Oh, we’ve got a little surprise back here, lad,” Cody said; I’d unmuted him when I’d unmuted Prof and the rest. “I’m actually hoping something goes wrong. I kinda want to use it.”

“Never hope for something to go wrong,” Tia said.

“But always expect it to,” Prof added.

“You’re paranoid, old man,” Tia said.

“Damn right,” Prof said, voice mu ed, probably because he was hunkering down with his rocket launcher. I had assumed they’d put Cody in that position with a sniper ri e, but Prof said that he’d rather have something heavier when Enforcement might be involved.

Diamond would have been proud.

“You’re getting close, Megan,”

Tia said. “You should be on them in another few minutes. Maintain your speed; the limo is driving faster than it usually does.”

“Do they suspect something?”

Cody asked.

“They’d be fools not to,”

Abraham said softly. “Con ux will take extra care these days, I should think.”

“It’s worth the risk,” Prof said.

“Just be careful.”

I nodded. With widespread power outages in the city, disabling Enforcement would leave the city in disorder. It would force Steelheart to step forward and take a rm hand to prevent looting or riots. That would mean revealing himself one way or another.

“He’s never afraid to ght other Epics,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

Prof asked.

“Steelheart. He’ll face other Epics, no problem. But he doesn’t like putting down riots by himself.

He always uses Enforcement. We assumed it’s because he doesn’t want to bother, but what if it’s something more? What if he’s afraid of crossfire?”

“Who’s that?” Abraham asked.

“No, not an Epic. It just occurred to me—what if Steelheart is afraid of getting hit accidentally? What if that’s his weakness? He got hurt by my father, but my father wasn’t aiming for him. What if he can only be hurt if the bullet was meant for someone else?”

“Possible,” Tia said.

“We need to stay focused,” Prof answered. “David, shelve that idea for the moment. We’ll come back to it.”He was right. I was letting myself get distracted, like a rabbit doing math problems instead of looking for foxes.

Still … If I’m right, he wouldn’t ever be in danger in a one-on-one ght. He’s faced other Epics with impunity. What he seems to be afraid of is a big battle, where bul ets are ying around. There was a sense to it. It was a simple thing, but most Epic weaknesses were simple.

“Slow down just a tad,” Tia said softly.

Megan complied.