Steelheart(13)

I reached the rock and crouched beside Cody and Megan, who were stealthily inspecting the two far walls of the chamber, where the dwellings were cut. Dozens of holes in the steel provided homes of various sizes. Metal fire escapes had been harvested from unused buildings above and set up here to give access to the holes.

“So, which one is it?” Cody asked.

I pointed. “See that door on the second level, far right? That’s it.”

“Nice,” Cody said. “How’d y’all afford a place like this?” He asked it casually, but I could tell that he was suspicious. They all were. Well, I suppose that was to be expected.

“I needed a room by myself for my research,” I said. “The factory where I worked saves all of your wages when you’re a kid, then gives them to you in four yearly chunks when you hit eighteen. It was enough to get me a year in my own room.”

“Cool,” Cody said. I wondered if my explanation passed his test or not. “It doesn’t look like Enforcement has made it here yet. Maybe they couldn’t match you from the description.”

I nodded slowly, though beside me Megan was looking around, her eyes narrowed.

“What?” I asked.

“It looks too easy. I don’t trust things that look too easy.”

I scanned the far walls. There were a few empty trash bins and some motorbikes chained up beside a stairwell. Some chunks of metal had been etched by enterprising street artists. They weren’t supposed to do that, but the people encouraged them, quietly. It was one of the only forms of rebellion the common people ever engaged in.

“Well, we can wait here staring until they do come,” Cody said, rubbing his face with a leathery finger, “or we can just go. Let’s be on with it.” He stood up.

One of the large trash bins shimmered.

“Wait!” I said, grabbing Cody and pulling him down, my heart leaping.

“What?” he said, anxious, unslinging his rifle. It was of a very fine make, old but well maintained, with a large scope and a state-of-the-art suppressor on the front. I’d never been able to get my hands on one of those. The cheaper ones worked poorly, and I found it too hard to aim with them.

“There,” I said, pointing at the trash bin. “Watch it.”

He frowned but did what I asked. My mind raced, sorting through fragments of remembered research. I needed my notes. Shimmering … illusionist Epic … who was that?

Refractionary, I thought, seizing on a name. A class C illusionist with personal invisibility capabilities.

“What am I watching for?” Cody asked. “Did you get spooked by a cat or something—” He cut off as the bin shimmered again. Cody frowned, then crouched down farther. “What is that?”

“An Epic,” Megan said, her eyes narrowing. “Some of the lesser Epics with illusion powers have trouble maintaining an exact illusion.”

“Her name is Refractionary,” I said softly. “She’s pretty skilled, capable of creating complex visual manifestations. But she’s not terribly powerful, and her illusions always have tells to them. Usually they shimmer as if light is reflecting off them.”

Cody aimed his rifle, sighting on the trash bin. “So you’re saying that bin isn’t really there. It’s hiding something else. Enforcement officers, probably?”

“I’d guess so,” I said.

“Can she be harmed by bullets, lad?” Cody asked.

“Yes, she’s not a High Epic. But Cody, she might not be in there.”

“You just said—”

“She’s a class C illusionist,” I explained. “But her secondary power is class B personal invisibility. Illusions and invisibility often go hand in hand. Anyway, she can make herself invisible, but not anything else—others, she has to create an illusion around. I’d be certain she’s hiding an Enforcement squad in that fake trash bin illusion, but if she’s smart—and she is—she’ll be somewhere else.”

I felt an itch in the small of my back. I hated illusionist Epics. You never knew where they’d be. Even the weakest of them—class D or E, by my own notation system—could make an illusion big enough for themselves to hide in. If they had personal invisibility, it was even worse.

“There,” Megan whispered, pointing toward a large piece of playground equipment—a kind of wooden fort for climbing. “See those boxes on the top of that playground tower? They just shimmered. Someone’s hiding in them.”

“That’s only big enough for one person,” I whispered. “From that position, whoever is there could see right into my apartment through the door. Sniper?”

“Most likely,” Megan said.

“Refractionary is close, then,” I said. “She’ll need to be able to see both that playground equipment and the fake garbage bins to keep the illusions going. The range on her powers isn’t great.”

“How do we draw her out?” Megan asked.

“She likes to be involved, from what I remember,” I said. “If we can get the Enforcement soldiers to move, she’ll stay close to them, in case she needs to give orders or make illusions to support them.”

“Sparks!” Cody whispered. “How do you know all of this, lad?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Megan asked softly. “This is what he does. It’s what he has built his life around. He studies them.”

Cody stroked his chin. He looked as if he’d assumed everything I said before was bravado. “You know her weakness?”

“It’s in my notes,” I said. “I’m trying to remember. Uh … well, illusionists usually can’t see if they turn themselves completely invisible. They need light to strike their irises. So you can watch for the eyes. But a really skilled illusionist can make their eyes match the color of their surroundings. But that’s not really her weakness, more a limitation of illusions themselves.”

What was it? “Smoke!” I exclaimed, then blushed at the sound of it. Megan shot me a glare. “It’s her weakness,” I whispered. “She always avoids people who are smoking, and stays away from any kind of fire. It’s pretty well known, and reasonably substantiated, as far as Epic weaknesses go.”

“Guess we’re back to starting the place on fire after all,” Cody said. He seemed excited by the prospect.

“What? No.”

“Prof said—”

“We can still get the information,” I said. “They’re waiting for me, but they only sent a minor Epic. That means they want me, but they haven’t sorted through that the Reckoners were behind the assassination tonight—or maybe they don’t know how I was involved. They probably haven’t cleaned out my room yet, even if they did break in and scan through what’s there.”

“Excellent reason to burn the place,” Megan said. “I’m sorry, but if they’re that close …”

“But see, it’s essential that we go in now,” I said, growing more anxious. “We have to see what has been disturbed, if anything. That’ll tell us what they’ve discovered. We burn the place down now, and we blind ourselves.”

The other two hesitated.

“We can stop them,” I said. “And we might be able to kill us an Epic in the process. Refractionary has plenty of blood on her hands. Just last month someone cut her off in traffic. She created an illusion of the road turning up ahead and drove the offender off the freeway and into a home. Six dead. Children were in the car.”

Epics had a distinct, even incredible, lack of morals or conscience. That bothered some people, on a philosophical level. Theorists, scholars. They wondered at the sheer inhumanity many Epics manifested. Did the Epics kill because Calamity chose—for whatever reason—only terrible people to gain powers? Or did they kill because such amazing power twisted a person, made them irresponsible?

There were no conclusive answers. I didn’t care; I wasn’t a scholar. Yes, I did research, but so did a sports fan when he followed his team. It didn’t matter to me why the Epics did what they did any more than a baseball fan wondered at the physics of a bat hitting a ball.

Only one thing mattered—Epics gave no thought for ordinary human life. A brutal murder was a fitting retribution, in their minds, for the most minor of infractions.

“Prof didn’t approve hitting an Epic,” Megan said. “This isn’t in the procedures.”

Cody chuckled. “Killing an Epic is always in the procedures, lass. You just haven’t been with us long enough to understand.”

“I have a smoke grenade in my room,” I said.

“What?” Megan asked. “How?”

“I grew up working at a munitions plant,” I said. “We mostly made rifles and handguns, but we worked with other factories. I got to pick up the occasional goody from the QC reject pile.”

“A smoke grenade is a goody?” Cody asked.

I frowned. What did he mean? Of course it was. Who wouldn’t want a smoke grenade when offered one? Megan actually showed the faintest of smiles. She understood.

I don’t get you, girl, I thought. She carried explosives in her shirt and was an excellent shot, but she was worried about procedures when she got a chance to kill an Epic? And as soon as she caught me looking at her, her expression grew cold and aloof once again.