Steelheart(18)

“It’s obviously him,” I said.

“And the photo wasn’t doctored,” Tia said.

“I …” That I couldn’t prove. “I can’t promise it wasn’t, though its being a Polaroid makes that less likely. Tia, he has to be corporeal some of the time. That photo is the best clue, but I have others. People who have smelled phosphorus and spotted someone walking by who matches his description.” Phosphorus was one of the signs of him using his powers. “I’ve found a dozen sources that all match this idea. It’s sunlight that makes the difference—I suspect it’s the ultraviolet part of sunlight that matters. Bathed in it, he turns corporeal.”

Tia held the photo before her, contemplating it. Then she began scanning through my other notes on Nightwielder. “I think we need to investigate it, Jon,” she said. “If there’s a chance we can actually get to Steelheart …”

“We can,” I said. “I have a plan. It will work.”

“This is stupidity,” Megan cut in. She stood by the wall with her arms crossed. “Sheer stupidity. We don’t even know his weakness.”

“We can figure it out,” I shot back. “I’m sure of it. We have the clues we need.”

“Even if we did figure it out,” Megan said, throwing a hand up into the air, “it would be practically useless. The obstacles in even getting to Steelheart are insurmountable!”

I locked eyes with her, fighting down my anger. I got the feeling she was arguing with me not because she actually disagreed, but because she found me offensive for some reason.

“I—” I began, but Prof interrupted me.

“Everyone follow me,” he said, standing up.

I shared a glare with Megan, and then we all moved, joining him as he walked toward the smaller room to the right of the main chamber. Even Cody made his way in from the third room—unsurprisingly, he’d been listening. He wore a glove on his right hand. It glowed with a soft green light at the palm.

“Is the imager ready?” Prof asked.

“Mostly,” Abraham said. “It’s one of the first things I set up.” He knelt beside a device on the floor connected to the wall by several wires. He turned it on.

Suddenly, all of the metal surfaces in the room turned black. I jumped. It felt like we were floating in darkness.

Prof raised a hand, then tapped on the wall in a pattern. The walls changed to show a view of the city, presenting it as if we were standing atop a six-story building. Lights sparkled in the blackness, shining from the hundreds of steel buildings that made up Newcago. The old buildings were less uniform; the new buildings, spreading out onto what had once been the lake, were more modern. They had been built from other materials, then intentionally transformed to steel. You could do some interesting things with architecture, I’d heard, when you had that option.

“This is one of the most advanced cities in the world,” Prof said. “Ruled by arguably the most powerful Epic in North America. If we move against him, we raise the stakes dramatically—and we’re already betting up to the limits of what we can pay. Failure could mean the end of the Reckoners completely. It could bring disaster, could end the last bit of resistance against the Epics that mankind has left.”

“Just let me tell you the plan,” I said. “I think it will persuade you.” I had a hunch. Prof wanted to go after Steelheart. If I could make my case, he’d side with me.

Prof turned to me, meeting my eyes. “You want us to do this? Fine, I’ll give you your shot. But I don’t want you to persuade me.” He pointed to Megan, who stood beside the doorway, her arms still crossed. “Persuade her.”





13





PERSUADE her. Great, I thought. Megan’s eyes could have drilled holes through … well, anything, I guess. I mean, eyes can’t normally drill holes through things, so the metaphor works regardless, right?

Megan’s eyes could have drilled holes through butter. Persuade her? I thought. Impossible.

But I wasn’t going to give up without trying. I stepped up to the wall of glistening metal overlaid with the outline of Newcago.

“The imager can show us anything?” I asked.

“Anything the basic spynet watches or listens to,” Abraham explained, standing up from the imaging device.

“The spynet?” I said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. I walked forward. This device was remarkable; it made me feel as if we really were standing on top of a building outside in the city, rather than in a box of a room. It wasn’t a perfect illusion—if I looked around closely I could still see the corners of the room we were standing in, and the 3-D imaging wasn’t great for things nearby.

Still, so long as I didn’t look too closely—and didn’t pay attention to the lack of wind or scents of the city—I really could imagine I was outside. They were constructing this image using the spynet? That was Steelheart’s surveillance system for the city, the means by which Enforcement kept tabs on what the people in Newcago were doing.

“I knew he was watching us,” I said, “but I hadn’t realized that the cameras were so … extensive.”

“Fortunately,” Tia said, “we’ve found some ways to influence what the network sees and hears. So don’t worry about Steelheart spying on us.”

I still felt uncomfortable, but it wasn’t worth thinking on at the moment. I stepped up to the edge of the roof, looking down at the street below. A few cars passed, and the imager relayed the sounds of their driving. I reached forward and placed my hand on the wall of the room—seemingly touching something invisible in midair. This was going to be very disorienting.

Unlike the tensors, room imagers I’d heard of—people paid good money to visit imager films. My conversation with Cody left me thinking. Had we learned how to do things like this from Epics with illusion powers?

“I—” I began.

“No,” Megan said. “If he has to convince me, then I’m driving this conversation.” She stepped up beside me.

“But—”

“Go ahead, Megan,” Prof said.

I grumbled to myself and stepped back to where I didn’t feel I was on the verge of a multistory plummet.

“It’s simple,” Megan said. “There’s one enormous problem in facing Steelheart.”

“One?” Cody asked, leaning back against the wall. It made him look like he was leaning against open air. “Let’s see: incredible strength, can shoot deadly blasts of energy from his hands, can transform anything nonliving around him into steel, can command the winds and fly with perfect control … oh, and he’s utterly impervious to bullets, edged weapons, fire, radiation, blunt trauma, suffocation, and explosions. That’s like … three things, lass.” He held up four fingers.

Megan rolled her eyes. “All true,” she said, then turned back to me. “But none of that is even the first problem.”

“Finding him is the first problem,” Prof said softly. He’d set out a folding chair, Tia as well, and the two were sitting in the center of the imaged rooftop. “Steelheart is paranoid. He makes certain nobody knows where he is.”

“Exactly,” Megan said, raising her hands and using a thumbs-out gesture to control the imager. We zoomed through the city, the buildings a blur beneath us.

I wobbled, my stomach flip-flopping. I reached for the wall, but I wasn’t certain where it was, and stumbled to the side until I found it. Abruptly we halted, hanging in midair, looking at Steelheart’s palace.

It was a dark fortress of anodized steel that rose from the edge of the city, built upon the portion of the lake that had been transformed to steel. It spread out in either direction, a long line of dark metal with towers, girders, and walkways. Like some mash-up of an old Victorian manor, a medieval castle, and an oil rig. Violent red lights shone from deep within the various recesses, and smoke billowed from chimneys, black against a black sky.

“They say he intentionally built the place to be confusing,” Megan said. “There are hundreds of chambers, and he sleeps in a different one each night, eats in a different one for each meal. Supposedly even the staff doesn’t know where he’ll be.” She turned to me, hostile. “You’ll never find him. That’s the first problem.”

I swayed, still feeling as if I were standing in midair, though none of the others seemed to be having trouble. “Could we …,” I asked nauseously, looking back at Abraham.

He chuckled, making some gestures and pulling us back to the top of a nearby building. There was a small chimney on it, and as we “landed” the chimney squished flat, becoming two-dimensional on the floor. This wasn’t a hologram—so far as I knew, nobody had mimicked that level of illusion power with technology. It was just a very advanced use of six screens and some 3-D imaging.

“Right,” I said, feeling steadier. “Anyway, that would be a problem.”

“Except?” Prof asked.

“Except we don’t need to find Steelheart,” I said. “He’ll come to us.”

“He rarely comes out in public anymore,” Megan said. “And when he does, it’s erratic. How in Calamity’s fires are you going to—”