“Thanks,” I said.
“Stand,” Abraham said. “This is the true test of a man. He who will stand when others grow complacent.”
Abraham picked up Tia’s pack. She and Prof hadn’t taken much longer to get ready than I had. As a Reckoner, you learned to live light. We’d already changed hideouts four times while I’d been with them.
Before we left, I ducked into Edmund’s room to say goodbye. He was sitting and reading a novel by lamplight, an old science fiction book with yellowed pages. He was the strangest Epic I could imagine. Soft-spoken, slender, aging … He had a genuine smile on his lips as he rose.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I’m leaving for a while,” I said.
“Oh!” He hadn’t been listening. Edmund spent most days in this little room, reading. He seemed to take his subservient postion for granted, but he also seemed to enjoy his life as it was. He was a gifter, like Prof—in Edmund’s case, he granted his powers to men and women in Enforcement who used them to charge the power cells that ran the city.
“Edmund?” I asked as he clasped hands with me. “Do you know what your weakness is?”
He shrugged. “I’ve told you before that I don’t seem to have one.”
And we suspected he was lying. Prof hadn’t pushed the issue; Edmund complied with us in every other way.
“Edmund, it might be important,” I said softly. “For stopping the Epics. All of them.” There were so few Epics people had actually had a conversation with, particularly about their powers.
“Sorry,” Edmund said. “I thought I knew it for a while—but I was wrong. Now I’m as baffled as anyone.”
“Well, what did you think it was?”
“Being near a dog,” he said. “But it really doesn’t affect me like I thought it did.”
I frowned, making a mental note to tell Prof about this. It was more than we’d gotten from him before. “Thanks anyway,” I said. “And thanks for what you do for Newcago.”
Edmund walked back to his chair, picking up his book. “Some other Epic will always control me, whether it be Steelheart or Limelight. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t care to be in charge anyway.” He sat down and continued reading.
I sighed and made my way back out into the main room. There, Prof slung a pack onto his shoulder, and I joined him as the last one out, entering the catacombs under Newcago.
We made little conversation as we hiked a half hour or so to one of the hidden garages near a road leading up out of the understreets and into the city. There, Abraham and Cody packed our gear into a jeep for us. I’d been hoping we’d take one of the copters, but that was apparently too showy.
“Watch out for púcas as you travel, lad,” Cody said, shaking my hand. “Could be imitating anything out there.”
“Once again,” Tia said as she settled into the seat in front of me, “those are from Irish mythology, you nitwit.”
Cody just winked at me and tossed me his camouflage baseball cap. “Y’all stay safe.” He gave us a thumbs-up, then he and Abraham retreated back into the understreets.
So it was that—a short time later—I found myself sitting in the back of the jeep, wind blowing my hair, holding a new gun and watching my home for all nineteen years of my life retreat behind me. The dark skyline was something I’d rarely seen. Even before Calamity I’d almost always been among, or beneath, the city’s buildings.
Who was I, if I wasn’t in Newcago? It was similar to the hollowness I felt inside some nights when I wondered what I was supposed to do with my life now that he was gone. Now that I’d won, and my father was avenged.
The answer was beginning to settle on me like a dinosaur upon its nest. My life wasn’t just about one city, or one Epic, anymore. It was about a war. It was about finding a way to stop the Epics.
Permanently.
PART TWO
8
PAPERS flapped in my hands as we sped down the highway. We’d hit a relatively unbroken patch of asphalt, though we still thumped across a rough section of road now and then. I hadn’t imagined that a roadway like this could decay so quickly. Less than thirteen years had passed since Calamity, but already the highway was torn up with potholes and plants peeking up out of cracks like zombie fingers out of graves.
Many cities we passed were decayed, windows shattered, buildings crumbling. I spotted some cities that were in better repair, lit by bonfires in the distance, but these seemed more like little bunkers, surrounded by walls with fields outside—fiefdoms ruled by one Epic or another.
We traveled at night, and though I saw the occasional fire, I didn’t spot a single glimmer of electric lights. Newcago really was an anomaly. Not only had the steel preserved the tall skyscrapers and elegant skyline, but Steelheart’s reign had also maintained basic services.
Prof drove with goggles on, the jeep’s headlights replaced with UV floodlights that would be invisible to anyone without the proper headgear. I sat in the jeep’s back seat and spent my time reading through the notes and essays Tia had given me. I held the sheets inside a small box in my lap that had a flashlight inside of it, and this mostly masked the light.
The car slowed, then thumped up and down as Prof carefully navigated a bad patch of rubbled asphalt. Cars lay like the husks of enormous beetles along the sides of the road; they’d first been drained of their gasoline, then gutted for parts. Our vehicle, fortunately, had been converted to run on one of Edmund’s power cells.
As we drove slowly over the rubble, I heard something out in the night, like a snapping branch. The jeep’s back seat wasn’t enormous, but it didn’t have a roof, so I could easily set my box aside and maneuver my new rifle. I raised it to my shoulder and tapped a button that folded out the automatic scope. It worked very well, I was forced to admit, switching to night vision on its own and letting me zoom in on the source of the noise.
Through the holosights I picked out a few scavengers in ragged clothing squatting behind one of the broken cars in the darkness. They seemed like wild people, with long beards and sloppily stitched clothing. I watched them with the safety off, looking for weapons, until another head bobbed up. A little girl, maybe five years old. One of the men hushed her, pushing her down, then continued watching our jeep until we crossed the patch of broken street and sped up, leaving them behind.