“I don’t like this,” Tia noted. “I think we should abort.”
“David thinks he can do this,” Prof said. “And I trust him.”
Despite the danger of the moment, I smiled. I hadn’t realized until joining the Reckoners just how lonely my life had been. Now, to hear words like those …
Well, it felt good. Really good.
“I’m bait,” I said over the line, positioning myself to wait for Sourcefield and searching in my backpack for unbroken balloons. I had two left. “Tia, get our troops into position.”
“Roger,” she said reluctantly.
I moved down the street. Lanterns hung from the old, useless street lamps nearby, giving me light. By it, I caught sight of some faces peeking through windows. The windows had no glass, just old-fashioned wooden shutters we’d cut and placed there.
In assassinating Steelheart, the Reckoners had basically declared all-out war on the Epics. Some people had fled Newcago, fearing retribution—but most people had stayed here, and many others had come. During the months since Steelheart’s fall, we’d almost doubled the population of Newcago.
I nodded to the people watching. I wouldn’t shoo them back to safety. We, the Reckoners, were their champions—but someday, these people would have to stand on their own against the Epics. I wanted them to watch.
“Cody, do you have a visual?” I asked into my mobile.
“No,” Cody said. “She should be coming any moment.…” The dark shadow of his copter passed overhead. Enforcement—Steelheart’s police force—was ours now. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Enforcement had done its best to kill me on several occasions. You didn’t just get over something like that.
In fact, they had killed Megan. She’d recovered. Mostly. I felt at the gun in my holster. It had been one of hers.
“I’m getting into position with the troops,” Abraham said.
“David? Any sign of Sourcefield?” Tia asked.
“No,” I said, looking down the deserted street. Empty of people, lit by a few lonely lanterns, the city almost felt like it had back in Steelheart’s days. Desolate and dark. Where was Sourcefield?
She can teleport through walls, I thought. What would I do in her case? We had the tensors, which let us tunnel through basically anything we wanted. What would I do now if I had those?
The answer to that was obvious. I’d go down.
She was underneath me.
3
“SHE’S gone into the understreets!” I said, pulling out one of my two remaining water balloons. “She’s going to come up nearby, try to surprise me.”
Even as I said it, lightning moved across the street, and a glowing figure materialized up through the ground.
I hurled my Kool-Aid balloon, then ran.
I heard it burst, then heard Sourcefield swear. For a moment, no energy blasts tried to fry me, so I assumed that I’d hit her.
“I’m going to destroy you, little man!” Sourcefield yelled after me. “I’ll rip you apart like a piece of tissue paper in a hurricane!”
“Wow,” I said, reaching an intersection and taking cover by an old mailbox.
“What?” Tia asked.
“That was a really good metaphor.”
I glanced back at Sourcefield. She strode down the street, alight with electricity. Lines of it flew from her to the ground, to nearby poles, and to the walls of the buildings as she approached. Such power. Was this what Edmund—the kindly Epic who powered Newcago for us—would be like if he weren’t constantly gifting his abilities away?
“I refuse to believe,” the woman shouted, “that you killed Steelheart!”
Mitosis said the same thing, I thought. He’d been another Epic who had come to Newcago recently. They couldn’t accept that one of their most powerful—an Epic that even others like Sourcefield had feared—had been killed by common men.
She looked magnificent, all in black with a fluttering cape, electricity leaping from her in sparks and flashes. Unfortunately, I didn’t need her magnificent. I needed her angry. Some members of Enforcement crept out of a building nearby, carrying assault rifles on their backs and Kool-Aid balloons in their hands. I motioned them toward an alley. They nodded and pulled back to wait.
It was time for me to taunt an Epic.
“I didn’t kill only Steelheart!” I shouted at her. “I’ve killed dozens of Epics. I’ll kill you too!”
An energy blast hit my mailbox. I dove for cover behind a building, and another blast hit the ground only inches from where I crouched. As I brushed the ground with my arm, a shock ran up it, jolting me. I cursed, putting my back to the wall, and shook my hand. Then I peeked around the side of the building. Sourcefield was running for me.
Great! Also, terrifying.
I sprinted for a doorway across the street. Sourcefield tore around the corner just as I entered the building.
Inside, a path had been cleared through what had once been some kind of car showroom. I ran straight across it, and Sourcefield followed, teleporting past the front wall at speed.
I dashed through room after room, following the pattern we’d set out earlier.
Right, duck into that room.
Left down a hallway.
Right again.
We’d used another of Prof’s powers—the one he disguised as technology called the tensors—to drill doorways. Sourcefield followed on my tail, passing through walls in flashes of light. I never stayed in her sight long enough for her to get off a good shot. This was perfect. She …
… she slowed down.
I stopped beside the door out the back of the building. Sourcefield had stopped following. She stood at the end of a long hallway leading to my door, electricity zipping from her to the steel walls.
“Tia, you see this?” I whispered.
“Yeah. Looks like something spooked her.”
I took a deep breath. It was far less than ideal, but … “Abraham,” I whispered, “bring the troops in. Full-out attack.”
“Agreed,” Prof said.
The Enforcement troops who had been lying in wait stormed in the front of the car dealership. Others came down the steps from above; I heard their tromping footfalls. Sourcefield glanced back as a pair of soldiers entered the hallway in full gear, with helms and futuristic armor. The fact that they lobbed bright orange water balloons slightly spoiled the coolness of the effect.