“You’ll tell me the truth,” Mitosis said, getting closer. “I’ll wring it from you, little human. I’ll know how Steelheart really died.”
I met his gaze in the darkness.
“I wanna kiss you!” I shouted. “Like the wind kisses the ra-i-ain!”
I belted out the song as loudly as I could. Tia had played it earlier, and I knew the words, though I’d been too distracted by the whole getting-strangled-then-getting-shot thing to listen closely.
I’d heard it as a child, played time and time again on the radio until I and pretty much everyone else got sick of it.
Mitosis melted in front of me. I stopped, breathing deeply, as a second clone crawled over the melting form of the first.
“Cute,” he growled. “How long can you sing, little human? How are you feeling? I smell your blood. It—”
“I’m gonna miss you,” I shouted, “like the sun misses the ra-i-ain!”
He melted.
“You realize,” the next one said, “that now I’m going to have to kill everyone in the city. Can’t risk them having heard these songs. I—”
Melt.
“Stop doing that!” the next one snapped. “You—”
Melt.
I kept at it, though my singing grew softer and softer with each clone I killed. One of them found a knife and passed it up the line. That didn’t melt; it just fell to the floor of the pipe each time one of them died. The next one picked it up and kept crawling.
Each clone got closer. I moved back farther in the tunnel until I felt a ledge behind me. The pipe turned down toward the understreets—and an assuredly fatal drop.
“I could shoot you, I suppose,” the next Mitosis said. “Well, shoot you again. But then I wouldn’t get the pleasure of cutting off pieces of you as you scream out the truth to me.”
I screamed out the next lyric, which proved to be a bad idea, because once I’d melted that Mitosis, I found myself slumping against the rounded wall of the small tunnel. I was close to blacking out.
The next Mitosis plucked the knife from the goo, holding it up and letting bits of his other self run down the blade and drip to the floor.
He shook his head. “I was trained classically, you know,” he said.
I frowned. This was a change from the talk of torture, murder, and other sunny topics. “What?”
“Trained classically,” Mitosis said. “I was the only one in that band who knew his way around an instrument. I wrote song after song, and what did we play? Those stupid, stupid riffs. The same chords. Every damn song.”
Something about this tweaked a part of my brain, like a piece of popcorn on fire because it cooked too long. But I couldn’t focus on it now; his talking had almost let him reach me. I sang. Weakly.
I didn’t have a lot of energy left. How long had it been? How much blood had I lost?
This Mitosis wavered, but as my voice faltered, he came back.
“I am beyond you, little human,” Mitosis said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. “Now, let’s get on with my questions.”
He reached me, took me by the arm, and yanked.
That hurt. Somehow, during all the running and scrambling, I’d never noticed the pain. Shock.
I’d been in shock.
Now that pain came crashing down on me, an entire detonated building of agony. I found my voice and screamed.
“How did Steelheart die?” Mitosis asked.
“He died at the hands of an Epic,” I said, groaning.
“I thought so. Who did it?”
“He did it himself,” I whispered. “After I tricked him. He killed himself, but I caused it. He was brought down by a common man, Lawrence.”
“Lies!”
“Common people,” I whispered, “will bring you all down.”
He yanked my arm again, delivering pain in a spike of agony. What did it matter what I said? He wasn’t going to believe me. I closed my eyes and started to feel numb. It felt nice. Too nice.
Distantly, I heard music.
Singing?
A hundred voices. No, more. Singing in unison, the song that had blared earlier from my mobile. Their singing was far from perfect, but there was a force to it.
“No. What are you doing? Stay back!” Mitosis roared.
All those voices, singing. I could barely make out the words, but I could hear the progression of chords. It actually sounded pretty, since I could ignore the awful lyrics.
“I am an army unto myself! Stay back! I am the new emperor of this city! You are mine!”
I forced my eyes open. Mitosis, in front of me, shook and vibrated, though the song was distant.
The clones were all connected—and if enough of them were hearing the song, the effect transferred even to the ones who weren’t.