Steelheart

17

“That’s impossible!” Diamond said, checking his mobile. “They’re not supposed to be here for another hour or two.” He paused, then held his ear-he wore a small earpiece-his mobile twinkling in his hand.

He grew pale, likely getting news of an early arrival from the girl outside. “Oh dear.”

“Sparks,” Megan said, slinging the gauss gun’s bag over her shoulder.

“You had an appointment with Steelheart today?” Abraham said.

“It won’t be him,” Diamond said. “Assuming he were a client of mine, he would never come himself.”

“He just sends Nightwielder,” I said, sniffing the air. “Yeah, he’s here. Can you smell that?”

“Why didn’t you warn us?” Megan said to Diamond.

“I don’t speak of other clients to-”

“Never mind,” Abraham said. “We leave.” He pointed down the hallway, opposite the way we’d come in. “Where does it lead?”

“Dead end,” Diamond said.

“You left yourself without a way out?” I asked, incredulous.

“Nobody would attack me!” Diamond said. “Not with the hardware I’ve got in here. Calamity! This is not supposed to happen. My clients know not to arrive early.”

“Stop him outside,” Abraham said.

“Stop Nightwielder?” Diamond asked, incredulous. “He’s incorporeal. He can walk through walls for Calamity’s sake.”

“Then keep him from walking all the way down the hallway,” Abraham said calmly. “There are some shadows back there. We’ll hide.”

“I don’t-” Diamond started.

“There isn’t time to argue, my friend,” Abraham said. “Everyone pretends to not care that you sell to all sides, but I doubt Nightwielder will treat you well if he discovers us here. He’ll recognize me; he’s seen me before. If he finds me here, we all die. Do you understand?”

Diamond, still pale, nodded again.

“Come on,” Abraham said, shouldering his gun and jogging down the hallway past the rear of the store. Megan and I joined him. My heart was thumping. Nightwielder would recognize Abraham? What history did they have together?

There were piles of crates and boxes at the other end of the hallway. It was indeed a dead end, but there were no lights. Abraham waved for us to take cover behind the boxes. We could still see the walls full of weapons back where we’d been. Diamond stood there, wringing his hands.

“Here,” Abraham said, setting his large gun down on a box and aiming it directly at Diamond. “Man this, David. Don’t fire unless you must.”

“Won’t work against Nightwielder anyway,” I said. “He has prime invincibility-bullets, energy weapons, explosions all pass through him.” Unless we could get him into the sunlight, assuming I was right. I put up a good front for the others, but the truth was, all I had was hearsay.

Abraham dug in the pocket of his cargo pants and pulled something out. One of the tensors.

I immediately felt a surge of relief. He was going to cut us a path to freedom. “So we’re not going to wait it out?”

“Of course not,” he said calmly. “I feel like a rat in a trap. Megan, contact Tia. We need to know the tunnel nearest to this one. I’ll dig us a route to it.”

Megan nodded, kneeling down and cupping her mouth as she whispered into her mobile. Abraham warmed up the tensor, and I folded out the scope on his machine gun, flipping the switch to burst mode. He nodded appreciatively at the move.

I sighted through the scope. It was a nice one, far nicer than my own, with distance readouts, wind speed monitors, and optional low-light compensators. I had a pretty good view of Diamond as he welcomed his new customers with hands open and a wide smile on his face.

I grew tense. There were eight of them-two men and a woman in suits alongside four Enforcement soldiers. And Nightwielder. He was a tall Asian man who was only half there. Faint, incorporeal. He wore a fine suit, but the long jacket had an Eastern flair to it. His hair was short, and he walked with hands clasped behind his back.

My finger twitched toward the trigger. This creature was Steelheart’s right-hand Epic, the source of the darkness that cut Newcago off from the sun and stars. Similar darkness stirred on the ground around him, sliding toward shadows and pooling there. He could kill with that, could make tendrils of that dark mist turn solid and spear a man.

Those-the incorporeity and the manipulation of that mist-were his only two known powers, but they were doozies. He could move through solid matter, and like all incorporeals, he could fly at a steady speed. He could make a room completely black, then spear you with that darkness. And he could hold an entire city in perpetual night. Many assumed that he dedicated most of his energies to this.

That had always worried me. If he weren’t so busy keeping the city in darkness, he might have been as powerful as Steelheart himself. Either way, he’d be more than enough to handle the three of us, unprepared as we were.

He and two of his minions were in conversation with Diamond. I wished I could hear what they were saying. I hesitated, then pulled back from the scope. A lot of advanced guns had …

Yes. I flipped the switch on the side, activating the scope’s directional sound amplifier. I pulled the earphone out of my mobile and waved it past the chip on the scope to pair it, then stuck it in my ear. I leaned in and aimed the scope right at the group. The receiver picked up what was being said.

“… is interested in specific kinds of weapons, this time,” one of Nightwielder’s minions was saying. She wore a pantsuit and had her black hair cut short up over her ears. “Our emperor is worried that our forces rely too much on the armor units for heavy support. What do you have for more mobile troops?”

“Er, plenty,” Diamond said.

Sparks, but he looks nervous. He didn’t glance at us, but he fidgeted and looked as if he might be sweating. For a man who dealt in the underground weapons trade, he certainly seemed bad at handling stress.

Diamond glanced from the woman toward Nightwielder, whose hands were clasped behind his back. According to my notes, he rarely spoke directly during business interactions. He preferred to use minions. It was some kind of Japanese culture thing.

The conversation continued, and Nightwielder continued to stand straight-backed and silent. They didn’t go look at the guns on the walls, even when Diamond hinted that they could. They made him bring the weapons to them, and one of the assistants always handled the inspection and the questions.

That’s pretty handy, I thought, a bead of nervous sweat dripping down my temple. He can focus on Diamond-study and think, without bothering to make conversation.

“Got it,” Megan whispered. I glanced back to see her twisting her mobile around, her hand shading its light, to show Abraham the map Tia had sent. Abraham had to lean in close to make anything out; she had the mobile’s screen dimmed almost to black.

He grunted softly. “Seven feet straight back, a few degrees down. That’s going to take a few minutes.”

“You should get at it, then,” Megan said.

“I’ll need your help to pile out the dust.”

Megan shuffled to the side and Abraham placed his hands against the back wall, near the ground, and engaged the tensor. A large disk of steel began to disintegrate beneath his touch, creating a tunnel we could crawl through. Megan began scooping up and moving the steel dust as Abraham concentrated.

I turned back to watching, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. The tensors didn’t make much noise, just a soft buzzing. Hopefully nobody would notice.

“… master thinks that this weapon is of poor quality,” the servant said, handing back a machine gun. “We are growing disappointed in your selection, merchant.”

“Well, you want heavy gear, but no launchers. That’s a difficult prospect to match. I-”

“What was in this place on the wall?” a soft, eerie voice asked. It sounded something like a loud whisper, faintly accented, yet piercing. It made me shiver.

Diamond stiffened. I shifted the view on the scope slightly. Nightwielder stood beside the wall of weapons. He was pointing toward an open space where hooks jutted from the wall-where the gauss gun had been.

“There was something here, was there not?” Nightwielder asked. He almost never spoke to someone directly like this. It didn’t seem to be a good sign. “You only opened today. You have already had business?”

“I … don’t discuss other clients,” Diamond said. “You know this.”

Nightwielder looked back at the wall. At that moment, Megan bumped a box as she was moving steel dust. It didn’t make a loud noise-in fact, she didn’t even seem to notice she’d done it. But Nightwielder swiveled his head in our direction. Diamond followed his gaze; the weapons merchant looked so nervous you could have turned milk into butter by sticking his hand in it.

“He’s noticed us,” I said softly.

“What?” Abraham said, still concentrating.

“Just … keep at it,” I said, standing. “And stay quiet.”

It was time for a little more improvising.