Steelheart

30

Without the gravatonics, the cycle reacted like any normal motorcycle would when falling onto its side at very high speed.

Which isn’t a good thing.

I was immediately ripped free, the cycle skidding out from underneath me as my leg hit the ground and the friction pulled me backward. Megan wasn’t so lucky. She got pinned under the cycle, its weight grinding her against the ground. It collided with the wall of the tubular steel corridor.

The tunnel wavered, and my leg burned with pain. As I rolled to a halt and things stopped shaking, I realized that I was still alive. I actually found that surprising.

Behind us, from an alcove we had driven past, two men in full Enforcement armor stepped out of the shadows. There were some small, faint lights ringing the edge of the alcove. By that light I could see that the soldiers looked relaxed. I swore I could hear one chuckling inside his helmet as he said something over the comm unit to his companion. They assumed Megan and I would both be dead-or at least knocked out of fighting shape-by such a crash.

To Calamity with that, I thought, cheeks hot with anger. Before I’d had time to think, I’d unholstered the pistol under my arm-the pistol that had killed my father-and unloaded four shots at nearly point-blank range into the men. I didn’t aim for their chests, not with their armor. The sweet spot was the neck.

Both men fell. I breathed in a deep, ragged breath, my hand and gun shaking in front of me. I blinked a few times, shocked that I’d managed to hit them. Maybe Megan was right about handguns.

I groaned, then managed to sit up. My Reckoner jacket was in tatters; many of the diodes along its inside-the ones that generated the protective field-were smoking or entirely ripped free. My leg was scraped badly along one side. Though it hurt fiercely, the lacerations weren’t too deep. I was able to stumble to my feet and walk. Kind of.

The pain was … rather unpleasant.

Megan! The thought came through the daze, and-stupid though it was-I didn’t check to see if the two soldiers were actually dead. I limped over to where the fallen cycle had skidded up against the wall. The only light here was from my mobile. I pushed aside the wreckage and found Megan sprawled beneath, her jacket in even worse shape than mine.

She didn’t look good. She wasn’t moving, her eyes were closed, and her helmet was cracked, only halfway on. Blood trailed down her cheek. It was the color of her lips. Her arm was twisted at an awkward angle, and her entire side-leg up to torso-was bloodied. I knelt, aghast, the cool, calm light of my mobile revealing horrible wounds everywhere I turned it.

“David?” Tia’s voice came softly from my mobile, which hung in its place from my jacket. It was a miracle it still functioned, though I’d lost my earpiece. “David? I can’t reach Megan. What’s going on?”

“Megan’s down,” I said numbly. “Her mobile is gone. Shattered, probably.” It had been attached to her jacket, which was mostly gone also.

Breathing. I have to see if she’s breathing. I leaned down, trying to use my mobile screen to catch her breath. Then I thought to check for a pulse. I’m in shock. I’m not thinking right. Could you think that, when you weren’t thinking right?

I pressed my fingers against Megan’s neck. The skin felt clammy.

“David!” Tia said urgently. “David, there’s chatter on the Enforcement channels. They know where you are. There are multiple units converging on you. Infantry and armor. Go!”

I felt a pulse. Shallow, light, but there.

“She’s alive,” I said. “Tia, she’s alive!”

“You have to get out of there, David!”

Moving Megan could make things worse for her, but leaving her would definitely make things worse. If they took her she’d be tortured and executed. I pulled off my tattered jacket and used it to wrap my leg. As I worked I felt something in the pocket. I pulled it out. The pen detonator and blasting caps.

In a moment of lucidity I stuck one of the blasting caps on the cycle’s fuel cell. I’d heard you could destabilize and blow those, if you knew what you were doing-which I didn’t. It seemed like a good idea, though. My only idea. I took my mobile and attached it to my wrist mount. Then, sucking in a deep breath, I shoved aside the broken motorcycle-the front wheel had been ripped clean off-and lifted Megan.

Her broken helmet slipped free, falling off and cracking against the ground. That made her hair cascade down over my shoulder. She was heavier than she looked. People always are. Though she was small, she was compact, dense. I decided she’d probably not like hearing me describe her that way.

I got her up over my shoulders, then began an unsteady hike down the tunnel. Tiny yellow lights hung from the ceiling periodically, giving barely enough light to see by, even for an understreeter like me.

Soon my shoulders and back were complaining. I kept on going, one foot after another. I wasn’t moving very quickly. I wasn’t thinking very well either.

“David.” Prof’s voice. Quiet, intense.

“I’m not leaving her,” I said through clenched teeth.

“I wouldn’t have you do something like that,” Prof said. “I’d much sooner have you stand your ground and make Enforcement gun you both down.”

Not very comforting.

“It’s not going to come to that, son,” Prof said. “Help is on its way.”

“I think I can hear them,” I said. I’d finally reached the end of the tunnel; it opened onto a narrow crossroads in the understreets. There were no buildings here, just steel corridors. I didn’t know this part of town well.

The ceiling was solid, with no gaps up to the air above like there were in the area where I’d grown up. Those were definitely shouts I heard echoing from the right. I heard clanks from behind, steel feet pounding against the steel ground. More shouts. They’d found the cycle.

I leaned up against the wall, shifting Megan’s weight, then pressed the button on my pen detonator. I was relieved to hear a pop from behind as the cycle’s fuel cell blew. The shouts rose. Maybe I’d caught a few of them in the blast; if I was really lucky they’d assume I was hiding somewhere near the wreckage and had tossed a grenade or something.

I hefted Megan, then took the left turn at the crossroads. Her blood had soaked my clothing. She was probably dead by-

No. I wouldn’t think about that. One foot in front of the other. Help was coming. Prof promised help was coming. It would come. Prof didn’t lie. Jonathan Phaedrus, founder of the Reckoners, a man I somehow understood. If there was anything in this world I felt I could trust, it was him.

I walked a good five minutes before I was forced to pull up short. The tunnel in front of me ended in a flat wall of steel. Dead end. I glanced over my shoulder to see flashlights and shadows moving. No escape that way.

The corridor around me was wide, maybe twenty paces across, and tall. There was some old construction equipment on the ground, though most of it looked to have been picked over by opportunists. There were a few heaps of broken bricks and cinder blocks. Someone had been building more rooms down here recently. Well, those might provide some cover.

I stumbled over and laid Megan down behind the largest of the piles, then I flipped my mobile to manual response. Prof and the others wouldn’t be able to hear me unless I touched the screen to broadcast, but it also meant they wouldn’t give away my position by trying to contact me.

I crouched down behind the bricks. The pile didn’t give me complete cover, but it was better than nothing. Cornered, outgunned, with no way to …

Suddenly I felt like an idiot. I dug in the zip pocket on my trouser leg, fishing for my tensor. I pulled it out triumphantly. Maybe I could dig down to the steel catacombs, or even just dig out to the side and find a safer path.

I pulled on the glove, and only then did I realize that the tensor had been shredded. I stared at it with a sinking despair. It had been in the pocket on the leg I’d landed on when falling, and the pouch had been ripped at the bottom. The tensor was missing two fingers, and the electronics had been shattered, pieces hanging off like eyes drooping out of a zombie’s sockets in an old horror movie.

I almost laughed as I settled back down. The Enforcement soldiers were searching the corridors. Shouts. Footsteps. Flashlights. Getting closer.

My mobile blinked softly. I turned the volume way down, then pressed the screen and leaned in. “David?” Tia asked in a very quiet voice. “David, where are you?”

“I reached the bottom of the tunnel,” I whispered back, holding the mobile up to my mouth. “I turned left.”

“Left? That’s a dead end. You need to-”

“I know,” I said. “There were soldiers the other directions.” I glanced at Megan, lying slumped on the floor. I tested her neck again.

Still a pulse. I closed my eyes in relief. Not that it matters now.

“Calamity,” Tia swore. I heard gunfire and jumped, thinking it was from my position. But it wasn’t. It was from the line.

“Tia?” I hissed.

“They’re here,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. I can hold this place. David, you have to-”

“Hey, you!” a voice called from the intersection.

I ducked down, but the mound of bricks wasn’t large enough to hide me completely unless I was practically lying flat.

“There’s someone over there!” the voice shouted. Powerful, Enforcement-issue flashlights pointed my direction. Most of those would be on the ends of assault rifles.

My mobile flashed. I tapped it. “David.” Prof’s voice. He sounded winded. “Use the tensor.”

“Broken,” I whispered. “I ruined it in the crash.”

Silence.

“Try it anyway,” Prof urged.

“Prof, it’s dead.” I peeked over the bricks. A large crowd of soldiers was gathering at the other end of the hall. Several were kneeling with guns pointed in my direction, eyes to scopes. I kept low.

“Just do it,” Prof ordered.

I sighed, then pressed my hand against the ground. I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t easy to concentrate.

“Hold up your arms and walk forward slowly!” a voice shouted down the hall toward me. “If you do not show yourself, we will be forced to open fire.”

I tried as best I could to ignore them. I focused on the tensor, on the vibrations. For a moment I thought I felt something, a low hum-deep, powerful.

It was gone. This was stupid. Like trying to saw a hole in a wall using only a bottle of soda.

“Sorry, Prof,” I said. “It’s busted up good.” I checked the magazine on my father’s gun. Five rounds left. Five precious rounds that might be able to hurt Steelheart. I’d never have the chance to find out.

“You are running out of time, friend!” the soldier called toward me.

“You have to hold out,” Prof said urgently. His voice sounded frail with the volume down so low.

“You should go to Tia,” I said, preparing myself.

“She’ll be fine,” Prof said. “Abraham is on his way to help her, and the hideout was designed with an attack in mind. She can seal the entrance and wait them out. David, you must hang on long enough for me to arrive.”

“I’ll see that they don’t take us alive, Prof,” I promised. “The safety of the Reckoners is more important than I am.” I fished at Megan’s side, getting out her handgun and then flipping off its safety. SIG Sauer P226, .40 caliber. A nice gun.

“I’m coming, son,” Prof said softly. “Hold out.”

I peeked up. The officers were advancing, guns raised. They probably wanted to take me alive. Well, maybe that would let me take a few of them out before I fell.

I lifted Megan’s gun and let loose a burst of rapid-fire shots. They had the intended effect; the officers scattered, seeking cover. Some fired back, and chips sprayed across me as bricks exploded to automatic-weapon fire.

Well, so much for hoping they wanted me alive.

I was sweating. “Hell of a way to go, eh?” I found myself saying to Megan as I ducked around and fired on an officer who’d gotten too close. I think one of the bullets actually got through his armor-he was limping as he jumped behind a few rusty barrels.

I hunkered down again, assault-rifle fire sounding like firecrackers in a tin can. Which was, as I thought about it, kind of what this was. I’m getting better. I smiled wryly as I dumped the magazine from Megan’s gun and locked a new one in.

“I’m sorry to let you down,” I said to her immobile form. Her breathing had grown more shallow. “You deserved to live through this, even if I didn’t.”

I tried to fire off more rounds, but gunfire drove me back to cover before I could get off a single shot. I breathed hard, wiping some blood from my cheek. Some of the exploding rubble had hit hard enough to cut me.

“You know,” I said, “I think I fell for you that first day. Stupid, huh? Love at first sight. What a cliché.” I got off three shots, but the soldiers were acting less scared now. They had figured out there was only one of me, and that my gun was only a handgun. I was probably only alive because I’d blown the cycle, which made them worry about explosives.

“I don’t even know if I can call it love,” I whispered, reloading. “Am I in love? Is it just infatuation? We’ve known each other for less than a month, and you’ve treated me like dirt about half that time. But that day fighting Fortuity and that day in the power plant, it seems like we had something. A … I don’t know. Something together. Something I wanted.”

I glanced at her pale, motionless figure.

“I think,” I said, “that a month ago, I would have left you by the cycle. Because I wanted so badly to get my vengeance on him.”

Bam, bam, bam!

The pile of bricks shook, as if the officers were trying to cut through them to get to me.

“That scares me about myself,” I said softly, not looking at Megan. “For what it’s worth, thank you for making me care about something other than Steelheart. I don’t know if I love you. But whatever the emotion is, it’s the strongest one I’ve felt in years. Thank you.” I fired widely but fell back as a bullet grazed my arm.

The magazine was empty. I sighed, dropping Megan’s gun and raising my father’s. Then I pointed it at her.

My finger hesitated on the trigger. It would be a mercy. Better a quick death than to suffer torture and execution. I tried to force myself to pull the trigger.

Sparks, she looks beautiful, I thought. Her unbloodied side was toward me, her golden hair fanning out, her skin pale and eyes closed as if asleep.

Could I really do this?

The gunshots had paused. I risked glancing over my crumbling pile of bricks. Two enormous forms were mechanically clomping down the hallway. So they had brought in armor units. A piece of me felt proud that I was such a problem for them. The chaos the Reckoners had caused this day, the destruction we’d brought to Steelheart’s minions, had driven them to overkill. A squad of twenty men and two mechanized armors had been sent to take down one guy with a pistol.

“Time to die,” I whispered. “I think I’ll do it while firing a handgun at a fifteen-foot-tall suit of powered armor. At least it will be dramatic.”

I took a deep breath, nearly surrounded by Enforcement forms creeping forward in the dark corridor. I began to stand, my gun leveled at Megan more firmly this time. I’d shoot her, then force the soldiers to gun me down.

I noticed that my mobile was blinking.

“Fire!” a soldier yelled.

The ceiling melted.

I saw it distinctly. I was looking down the tunnel, not wanting to watch Megan as I shot her. I had a clear view of a circle in the ceiling becoming a column of black dust, cascading in a shower of disintegrated steel. Like sand from an enormous spigot, the particles hit the floor and billowed outward in a cloud.

The haze cleared. My finger twitched, but I had not pulled the trigger. A figure stood from a crouch amid the dust; he had fallen from above. He wore a black coat-thin, like a lab coat-dark trousers, black boots, and a small pair of goggles over his eyes.

Prof had come, and he wore a tensor on each hand, the green light glowing with a phantom cast.

The officers opened fire, releasing a storm of bullets down the hallway. Prof raised his hand and thrust forward the glowing tensor. I could almost feel the device hum.

Bullets burst in midair, crumbling. They hit Prof as little shavings of fluttering steel, no more dangerous than pinches of dirt. Hundreds of them pelted him and the ground around him; the ones that missed flew apart in the air, catching the light. Suddenly I understood why he wore the goggles.

I stood up, slack jawed, gun forgotten in my fingers. I’d assumed I was getting good with my tensor, but destroying those bullets … that was beyond anything I’d been able to comprehend.

Prof didn’t give the baffled soldiers time to recover. He carried no weapon that I could see, but he leaped free of the dust and dashed right toward them. The mechanized units started firing, but they used their rotary guns-as if they couldn’t believe what they’d seen and figured a higher caliber was the answer.

More bullets popped in the air, shattered by Prof’s tensors. His feet skidded across the ground on the dust, and then he reached the Enforcement troops.

He attacked fully armored men with his fists.

My eyes widened as I saw him drop a soldier with a fist to the face, the man’s helmet melting to powder before his attack. He’s vaporizing the armor as he attacks. Prof spun between two soldiers, moving gracefully, slamming a fist into the gut of one, then spinning and slamming an arm into the leg of the other. Dust sprayed out as their armor failed them, disintegrating just before Prof hit.

As he came up from the spin he pounded a hand against the side of the steel chamber. The pulverized metal poured away, and something long and thin fell from the wall into his hand. A sword, carved from the steel by an incredibly precise tensor blast.

Steel flashed as Prof struck at the disordered officers. Some tried to keep firing, and others were going in with batons-which Prof destroyed just as easily as he had the bullets. He wielded the sword in one hand, and his other hand sent out near-invisible blasts that reduced metal and kevlar to nothing. Dust streamed off soldiers who got too close to him, making them slip and stumble, suddenly unbalanced as helmets melted around their heads and body armor fell away.

Blood flew in front of high-powered flashlights, and men collapsed. It had been mere heartbeats since Prof had dropped into the room, but a good dozen of the soldiers were down.

The armored units had drawn their shoulder-mounted energy cannons, but Prof had gotten too close. He hit a patch of steel dust at a sprint, then slid in a crouch forward, moving on the dust with obvious familiarity. He twisted to the side and swung his forearm, smashing through the armored unit’s leg. Powder sprayed out the back as Prof’s arm passed completely through it.

He slid to a stop, still on one knee. The armor collapsed with a resounding thud as Prof leaped forward and drilled his fist through the second armor’s leg. He pulled his hand out and the leg bent, then snapped, the unit collapsing sideways. It fired a yellow-blue blast into the ground as it fell, melting a portion of the floor.

One foolhardy member of Enforcement tried to charge Prof, who stood over the fallen armors. Prof didn’t bother with the sword. He dodged to the side, then slammed his fist forward. I could see the fist approach the soldier’s face, could see the helmet’s visor vaporizing just in front of Prof’s punch.

The soldier dropped. The hallway grew silent. Sparkling steel flakes floated in beams of light like snow at midnight.

“I,” Prof said in a powerful, self-assured voice, “am known as Limelight. Let your master know that I am more than aggravated by being forced to bother myself with you worms. Unfortunately, my minions are fools, and are incapable of following the simplest of orders.

“Tell your master that the time for dancing and playing is through. If he does not come to face me himself, I will dismantle this city piece by piece until I find him.” Prof strode past the remaining soldiers without sparing them a glance.

He walked toward me, his back to the soldiers. I grew tense, waiting for them to try something. But they didn’t. They cowered. Men did not fight Epics. They had been taught this, had it drilled into them.

Prof reached me, face shrouded in shadows, light shining from behind.

“That was genius,” I said softly.

“Get the girl.”

“I can’t believe that you-”

Prof looked at me, and I finally caught sight of his features. Jaw clenched, eyes seeming to blaze with intensity. There was contempt in those eyes, and the sight of it caused me to stumble back in shock.

Prof seemed to be shaking, his hands forming fists, as if he were holding back something terrible. “Get. The. Girl.”

I nodded dumbly, stuffing my gun back in my pocket and picking up Megan.

“Jon?” Tia’s voice came from his mobile; mine was still on silent. “Jon, the soldiers have pulled out from my position. What’s going on?”

Prof didn’t reply. He waved a tensored hand and the ground before us melted away. The dust drained, like sand in an hourglass, revealing an improvised tunnel to the lower levels below.

I followed him through the tunnel, and we made our escape.