Steelheart (42 page)

She was pinned. She was hurt. I had to move, to go help her! I stirred but then forced myself down.

“Please,” she said. “Please, someone. Help me.”

I didn’t move.

“Oh Calamity. Is that my blood?” She struggled. “I can’t move my legs.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. How were they doing this? I didn’t know what to trust.

Firefight is doing it somehow
, I told myself.
She’s not real
.

I opened my eyes. Nightwielder was emerging from the floor in front of the bathroom. He looked confused, as if he’d been inside looking for me. He shook his head and walked through the corridor, searching about him.

Was that really him, or was it an illusion? Was any of this real? The stadium shook with another blast, but the gunfire outside was dying down. I needed to do something, quickly, or Cody would stumble into Nightwielder.

Nightwielder stopped in the center of the hallway and crossed his arms. His normal calm had been shattered and he looked annoyed. Finally he spoke. “You’re in here somewhere, aren’t you?”

Dared I take the shot? What if he was the illusion? I could get myself killed by the real Nightwielder if I exposed myself. I turned carefully, examining the walls and floor. I saw nothing other than some darkness creeping from the shadows nearby, tendrils moving like hesitant animals seeking food. Testing the air.

If Firefight was really pretending to be Megan, then shooting her would stop the illusions. I’d be left only with the real Nightwielder, wherever he was. But there was a good chance that the fallen Megan was a full illusion. Sparks, the
girders
could be an illusion. Would a distant blast have really knocked those down?

What if that was Firefight, though, wearing Megan’s face so that if I touched her I’d feel something real? I raised my father’s gun and sighted on her bloodied face. I hesitated, heart pounding in my ears. Surely Nightwielder could hear that pounding. It was all that I could hear. What would I do to get to Steelheart? Shoot Megan?

She’s not real. She can’t be real
.

But what if she is?

Heartbeats, like thunder.

My breath, held.

Sweat on my brow.

I made my decision and leaped from the foxhole, bringing up the rifle in my left hand—light shining forward—and the handgun in my right. I let loose with both.

On Nightwielder, not Megan.

He spun toward me as the light hit him, eyes wide, and the bullets ripped through him. He opened his mouth in horror and blood sprayed out his back. His
solid
back. He dropped, turning translucent again the moment he got out of the direct line of my flashlight. He hit the ground and began to sink into it.

He only sank halfway. He froze there, mouth open, chest bleeding.
He solidified slowly—it was almost like the view from a camera coming into focus—half sunken in the steel floor.

I heard a click and turned. Megan stood there, a gun in her hand. A handgun, a P226 just like she preferred to carry. The other version of her, the one trapped by rubble, vanished in a heartbeat. So did the girders.

“I never did like him,” Megan said indifferently, glancing toward Nightwielder’s corpse. “You just did me a favor. Plausible deniability and all of that.”

I looked into her eyes. I knew those eyes. I
did
. I didn’t understand how it was happening, but it was her.

Never did like him …

“Calamity,” I whispered. “
You’re
Firefight, aren’t you? You always were.”

She said nothing, though her eyes flickered down toward my weapons—the rifle still held at my hip, the handgun in my other hand. Her eye twitched.

“Firefight wasn’t male,” I said. “He … she was a woman.” I felt my eyes go wide. “That day in the elevator shaft, when the guards almost caught us … they didn’t see anything in the shaft. You made an illusion.”

She was still staring at my guns.

“And then, when we were on the cycles,” I said. “You created an illusion of Abraham riding with us to distract the people following, to keep them from seeing the real him flee to safety. That’s what I saw behind us after he split off.”

Why was she looking at my guns?

“But the dowser,” I said. “It tested you, and it said you weren’t an Epic. No … wait. Illusions. You could just make it display anything you wanted. Steelheart must have known the Reckoners were coming to town. He sent you to infiltrate. You were the newest of the Reckoners, before me. You never wanted to attack Steelheart. You said you believed in his rule.”

She licked her lips, then whispered something. She didn’t seem to have been listening to anything I said. “Sparks,” she murmured. “I can’t believe that actually worked.…”

What?

“You checkmated him …,” she whispered. “That was amazing.…”

Checkmated him? Nightwielder? Was that what she talking about? She looked up at me, and I remembered. She was repeating one of our first conversations, following her shooting Fortuity. She’d held a rifle at her hip and a handgun out forward. Just like I had done to gun down Nightwielder. The sight seemed to have triggered something in her.

“David,”
she said. “
That’s
your name. And I think you’re very aggravating.” She seemed to only just be recalling who I was. What had happened to her memory?

“Thank you?” I said.

A blast rocked the stadium and she looked over her shoulder. She still had the gun pointed at me.

“Whose side are you on, Megan?” I asked.

“My own,” she said immediately, but then she held her other hand to her head, seeming uncertain.

“Someone betrayed us to Steelheart,” I said. “Someone warned him we were going to hit Conflux, and someone told him we were hacking the city cameras. Today someone’s been listening in on us, reporting to him what we’ve been doing. It was you.”

She looked back at me, and didn’t deny it.

“But you also used your illusions to save Abraham,” I said. “And you killed Fortuity. I can buy that Steelheart wanted us to trust you, so he let you kill off one of his lesser Epics. Fortuity was out of favor anyway. But why would you betray us,
then
help Abraham escape?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I …”

“Are you going to shoot me?” I asked, looking down the barrel of her gun.

She hesitated. “Idiot. You really don’t know how to talk to women, do you, Knees?” She cocked her head as if surprised the words had come out.

She lowered the gun, then turned and ran off.

I’ve got to follow her
, I thought, taking a step forward. Another explosion sounded outside.

No
. I ripped my eyes away from her fleeing form.
I’ve got to get outside and help
.

I dashed past Nightwielder’s corpse—still half submerged in steel, frozen, blood seeping down his chest—and headed for the nearest exit out onto the playing field.

Or in this case, the battlefield.

“… find that idiot boy and shoot him for me, Cody!” Prof screamed into my ear as I unmuted my mobile.

“We’re pulling out, Jon,” Tia said, talking over him. “I’m on my way in the copter. Three minutes until I arrive. Abraham will blow the cover explosion.”

“Abraham can go to hell,” Prof spat. “I’m seeing this to the end.”

“You
can’t
fight a High Epic, Jon,” Tia said.

“I’ll do whatever I want! I’m—” His voice cut out.

“I’ve removed him from the feed,” Tia said to the rest of us. “This is bad. I’ve never heard him go this far. We need to pull him out somehow or we’ll lose him.”

“Lose him?” Cody asked, sounding confused. I could hear gunfire through the line near him, and could hear the same gunfire up ahead echoing in the wide corridor. I kept running.

“I’ll explain later,” Tia said in the type of voice that really meant “I’ll find a better way to dodge that question later.”

There
, I thought, catching a bit of light up ahead. It was dark outside, but not as pitch-black as it was in the tunnellike confines of the stadium’s innards. The gunfire was louder.

“I’m pulling us out,” Tia continued. “Abraham, I need you to blow that explosion in the ground when I say. Cody … have you found David yet? Be warned, Nightwielder might be on your back.”

She thinks I’m dead
, I thought,
because I haven’t been answering
. “I’m here,” I said.

“David,” Tia said, sounding relieved. “What is your status?”

“Nightwielder is down,” I said, reaching the tunnel out onto the field, one of the ones that the teams had used when running out to play. “The UV worked. I think Firefight is gone too. I … drove him off.”

“What? How?”

“Um … I’ll explain later.”

“Fair enough,” Tia said. “We have about two minutes until I extract. Get to Cody.”

I didn’t reply—I was taking in the field.
Battlefield is right
, I thought, stunned. The bodies of Enforcement soldiers lay scattered like discarded trash. Fires burned in several locations, sending smoke twisting up into the dark sky. Red flares blazed across the field, thrown by soldiers to get better light. Chunks had been blown out of the seating and the ground, and blackened scars marred the once-silver steel.

“You guys have been fighting a war,” I whispered. Then I caught sight of Steelheart.

He strode across the field, lips parted and teeth clenched in a sneer. His glowing hand was forward, and he blasted shot after shot toward something in front of him. Prof, running behind one of the team benches. Blast after blast nearly hit him, but he ducked and
dodged between them, incredibly nimble. He pushed through a wall in the side of the stadium, his tensors vaporizing an opening for him.

Steelheart bellowed in aggravation, firing blasts into the hole. Prof appeared a moment later, breaking out of another wall, steel dust pouring down around him. He whipped his hand forward, throwing a series of crude daggers toward Steelheart; they had likely been cut from the steel itself. They just bounced off the High Epic.

Prof looked frustrated, as if he were annoyed he couldn’t hurt Steelheart. For my part, I was amazed. “Has he been doing this the whole time?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Cody said. “Like I said, man’s a machine.”

I scanned the field to my right and picked out Cody behind some rubble. He was leaning forward on his rifle and tracking a group of Enforcement soldiers in the first-level seats. They had set up a large machine gun behind some blast shields, and Cody looked pinned down, which explained why he hadn’t been able to come find me. I stuffed my handgun into its holster and unwrapped the flashlight from the stock of my rifle.

“I’m almost there, gentlemen,” Tia said. “No more attempts to kill Steelheart. All phases aborted. We need to take this chance and leave while we can.”

“I don’t think Prof is going to go,” Abraham said.

“I’ll deal with Prof,” Tia said.

“Fine,” Abraham answered. “Where are you going to—”

“Guys,” I cut in. “Be careful what you say in the general link. I think our lines may be hacked.”

“Impossible,” Tia said. “Mobile networks are secure.”

“Not if you have access to an authorized mobile,” I answered. “And Steelheart might have recovered Megan’s.”

There was silence on the line. “Sparks,” Tia said. “I’m an idiot.”

“Ah, finally something makes sense,” Cody said, firing a shot at the soldiers. “That mobile—”

Something moved in the opening to the building behind Cody. I cursed, raising my rifle—but without the stock it was
very
hard to aim properly. I pulled the trigger as an armed Enforcement soldier leaped out. I missed. He fired a staccato burst.

There was no sound from Cody, but I could see the blood spray.
No, no, NO!
I thought, taking off at a run. I fired again, this time clipping the soldier on the shoulder. It didn’t get past his armor, but he turned from Cody, sighting on me.

He fired. I raised my left hand, the one with the tensor. I did it almost by instinct. It was tougher to make the song this time, and I didn’t know why.

But I made it work. I let the song out.

I felt something thump against my palm, and a puff of steel dust sprayed off my hand. It smarted something incredible, and the tensor started sparking. A moment later a series of gunshots sounded, and the soldier dropped. Abraham came around the corner behind the man.

Gunfire from above. I dashed and skidded against the ground, sliding behind Cody’s cover. He was there, gasping, eyes wide. He’d been hit several times, three in the leg, one in the gut.

“Cover us,” Abraham said in his calm voice, whipping out a bandage. He tied it around Cody’s leg. “Tia, Cody is hit badly.”

“I’m here,” Tia said. In the chaos I hadn’t noticed the sounds of the copter. “I’ve created new mobile channels using a direct feed to each of you; that’s what we should have done the moment Megan lost her mobile. Abraham, we
need
to extract. Now.”

I peeked up over the rubble. Soldiers were climbing down from the stands to move on us. Abraham casually pulled a grenade off his belt and tossed it into the hallway behind us in case someone was trying to sneak up again. It exploded, and I heard shouts.

I swapped my rifle for Cody’s, then opened fire on those advancing soldiers. Some went for cover, but others continued moving,
bold. They knew we were at the end of our resources. I kept firing but was rewarded with a series of clicks. Cody had been almost out of ammo.

“Here,” Abraham said, dropping his large assault rifle beside me. “Tia, where are you?”

“Near your position,” she said. “Just outside the stadium. Head straight back and out.”

“I’m bringing Cody,” Abraham said.

Cody was still conscious, though he was mostly just cursing at the moment, with his eyes squeezed shut. I nodded to Abraham. I’d cover their retreat. I took up Abraham’s assault rifle. To be honest, I’d always wanted to fire the thing.

It was a very satisfying weapon to use. The recoil was soft, and the weapon felt lighter than it should have. I set it on the small front tripod and let loose on fully automatic, dozens of rounds ripping through the soldiers trying to get to us. Abraham carried Cody out the back way.