Steelheart(19)

“Faultline,” I said. The Epic who had made the earth swallow the bank on that terrible day when my father had been killed, and who had later challenged Steelheart.

“David has a point,” Abraham said. “Steelheart did come out of hiding to fight her when she tried to take Newcago.”

“And when Ides Hatred came here to challenge him,” I said. “Steelheart met the challenge personally.”

“As I recall,” Prof said, “they destroyed an entire city block in that conflict.”

“Sounds like quite the party,” Cody noted.

“Yes,” I said. I had pictures of that fight.

“So you’re saying we need to convince a powerful Epic to come to Newcago and challenge him,” Megan said, her voice flat. “Then we’ll know where he’s going to be. Sounds easy.”

“No, no,” I said, turning to face them, my back to the dark, smoldering expanse of Steelheart’s palace. “That’s the first part of the plan. We make Steelheart think a powerful Epic is coming here to challenge him.”

“How would we do that?” Cody asked.

“We’ve already started,” I explained. “Now we spread word that Fortuity was killed by agents of a new Epic. We start hitting more Epics, leaving the impression that it’s all the work of the same rival. Then we deliver an ultimatum to Steelheart that if he wants to stop the murder of his followers, he’ll need to come out and fight.

“And he will come. So long as we’re convincing enough. You said he’s paranoid, Prof. You’re right. He is—and he can’t stand a challenge to his authority. He always deals with rival Epics in person, just like he did with Deathpoint all those years ago. If there’s one thing that the Reckoners are good at, it’s killing Epics. If we hunt down enough of them in the city in a short time, it will be a threat to Steelheart. We can draw him out, choose our own battlefield. We can make him come to us and walk right into our trap.”

“Won’t happen,” Megan said. “He’ll just send Firefight or Nightwielder.”

Firefight and Nightwielder, two immensely powerful High Epics who acted as Steelheart’s bodyguards and right-hand men. They were nearly as dangerous as he was.

“I’ve shown you Nightwielder’s weakness,” I said. “It’s sunlight—ultraviolet radiation. He doesn’t know that anyone is aware of it. We can use that to trap him.”

“You haven’t proven anything,” Megan said. “You’ve shown us he has a weakness. But every Epic does. You don’t know it’s the sunlight.”

“I glanced through his sources,” Tia said. “It … it really does look like David might have something.”

Megan clenched her jaw. If this came down to me convincing her to agree to my plan, I was going to fail. She didn’t look like she’d agree no matter how good my arguments.

But I wasn’t convinced I needed her support, regardless of what Prof said. I’d seen how the other Reckoners looked to him. If he decided this was a good idea, they’d follow. I just had to hope that my reasoning would be good enough for him, even though he’d said I needed to convince Megan.

“Firefight,” Megan said. “What about him?”

“Easy,” I said, my mood lifting. “Firefight isn’t what he seems.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll need my notes to explain,” I said. “But he’ll be the easiest of the three to take down—I promise you that.”

Megan made a face as if she were offended by this, annoyed that I wasn’t willing to engage her without my notes. “Whatever,” she said, then made a gesture, spinning the room around in a circle and sending me stumbling again, though there was no momentum. She glanced at me, and I saw a hint of a smile on her lips. Well, at least I knew one thing that broke through her coldness: nearly making me lose my lunch.

When the room stopped rotating, our view pointed upward at an angle. Every part of me said I should be sliding backward into the wall, but I knew it was all just done with perspective.

Directly ahead of us a group of three copters moved through the air low, just above the city. They were sleek and black, with two large rotors each. The sword-and-shield emblem of Enforcement painted in white on their sides.

“It probably won’t even come to Firefight and Nightwielder,” she said. “I should have brought this up first: Enforcement.”

“She’s right,” Abraham said. “Steelheart is always surrounded by Enforcement soldiers.”

“So we take them out first,” I said. “It’s what a rival Epic would probably do anyway—disable Steelheart’s army so they could move in on the city. That will only help convince him that we’re a rival Epic. The Reckoners would never do something like take on Enforcement.”

“We wouldn’t do it,” Megan said, “because it would be pure idiocy!”

“It does seem a little outside our capabilities, son,” Prof said, though I could tell I had him hooked. He watched with interest. He liked the idea of drawing Steelheart out. It was the sort of thing the Reckoners did do, playing on an Epic’s arrogance.

I raised my hands, imitating the gestures the others had been making, then thrust them forward to try moving the viewing room toward Enforcement headquarters. The room lurched awkwardly, tipping sideways and streaking through the city to slam into the side of a building. It froze there, unable to continue into the structure because the spynet didn’t look there. The entire room quivered, as if desperate to fulfill my demand but uncertain where to go.

I toppled sideways into the wall, then plopped down on the ground, dizzy. “Uh …”

“Y’all want me to get that for you?” Cody asked, amused, from the doorway.

“Yeah. Thanks. Enforcement headquarters, please.”

Cody made the gestures and raised the room up, leveled it out, then spun it about and moved it over the city until we were hovering near a large black box of a building. It looked vaguely like a prison, though it didn’t house criminals. Well, just the state-sanctioned kinds of criminals.

I righted myself, determined not to look like a fool in front of the others. Though I wasn’t certain if that was possible at this point. “There’s one simple way to neuter Enforcement,” I said. “We take out Conflux.”

For once an idea of mine didn’t prompt an outcry from the others. Even Megan looked thoughtful, standing just a short distance from me, her arms crossed. I’d love to see her smile again, I thought, then immediately forced my mind away from that. I had to stay focused. This wasn’t a time to let my feet get swept out from underneath me. Well … in a figurative sense, at least.

“You’ve considered this,” I guessed, looking around the room. “You hit Fortuity, but you talked about trying for Conflux instead.”

“It would be a powerful blow,” Abraham said softly, leaning against the wall near Cody.

“Abraham suggested it,” Prof said. “He fought for it, actually. Using some of the same arguments that you made—that we weren’t doing enough, that we weren’t targeting Epics who were important enough.”

“Conflux is more than just the head of Enforcement,” I said, excited. They finally seemed like they were listening. “He’s a gifter.”

“A what?” Cody asked.

“It’s a slang term,” Tia said, “for what we call a transference Epic.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Great,” Cody said. “So what’s a transference Epic?”

“Don’t you ever pay attention?” Tia asked. “We’ve talked about this.”

“He was cleaning his guns,” Abraham said.

“I’m an artist,” Cody said.

Abraham nodded. “He’s an artist.”

“And cleanliness is next to deadliness,” Cody added.

“Oh please,” Tia said, turning back to me.

“A gifter,” I said, “is an Epic who has the ability to transfer his powers to other people. Conflux has two powers he can give others, and both are incredibly strong. Maybe even stronger than those of Steelheart.”

“So why doesn’t he rule?” Cody asked.

“Who knows?” I shrugged. “Probably because he’s fragile. He isn’t said to have any immortality powers. So he stays hidden. Nobody even knows what he looks like. He’s been with Steelheart for over half a decade, though, quietly managing Enforcement.” I looked back at Enforcement headquarters. “He can create enormous stores of energy from his body. He gives this electricity to team leaders of Enforcement Cores; that’s how they run their mechanized suits and their energy rifles. No Conflux means no power armor and no energy weapons.”

“It means more than that,” Prof said. “Taking out Conflux might knock out power to the city.”

“What?” I asked.

“Newcago uses more electricity than it generates,” Tia explained. “All of those lights, on all the time … it’s a huge drain, on a level that would have been hard to sustain even back before Calamity. The new Fractured States don’t have the infrastructure to provide Steelheart with enough power to run this city, yet he does.”