Steelheart (44 page)

“Don’t know why I did it,” Prof said. “You pathetic little …”

He groaned, raising his hand to his head, then gritted his teeth and roared.

I scrambled back, startled.

“It’s so hard to fight,” he said through clenched teeth. “The more you use it, the … Arrrrr!” He knelt down, holding his head. He was quiet for a few minutes, and I let him be, not knowing what to say. When he raised his head, he seemed more in control. “I give it away,” he said, “because if I use it … it does this to me.”

“You can fight it, Prof,” I said. It felt right. “I’ve seen you do it. You’re a good man. Don’t let it consume you.”

He nodded, breathing in and out deeply. “Take it.” He reached out his hand.

I hesitantly took his hand with my good one—the other was crushed. I should have felt pain from that. I was too much in shock.

I didn’t feel any different, but Prof seemed to grow more in control. My wounded hand re-formed, bones pulling together. In seconds I could flex it again, and it worked perfectly.

“I have to split it up among you,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to … 
seep into you as quickly as it does me. But if I give it all to one person, they’ll change.”

“That’s why Megan couldn’t use the tensors,” I said. “Or the harmsway.”

“What?”

“Oh, sorry. You don’t know. Megan’s an Epic too.”

“What?”

“She’s Firefight,” I said, cringing back a bit. “She used her illusion powers to fool the dowser. Wait, the dowser—”

“Tia and I programmed it to exclude me,” Prof said. “It gives a false negative on me.”

“Oh. Well, I think Steelheart must have sent Megan to infiltrate the Reckoners. But Edmund said that he couldn’t gift his powers to other Epics, so … yeah. That’s why she couldn’t ever use the tensors.”

Prof shook his head. “When he said that, in the hideout, it made me wonder. I’d never tried to give mine to another Epic. I should have seen … Megan …”

“You couldn’t have known,” I said.

Prof breathed in and out, then nodded. He looked at me. “It’s okay, son. You don’t need to be afraid. It’s passing quickly this time.”

He hesitated. “I think.”

“Good enough for me,” I said, climbing to my feet.

The air smelled of explosives—of gunpowder, smoke, and burned flesh. The growing sunlight was reflecting off the steel surfaces around us. I found it almost blinding, and the sun wasn’t even fully up yet.

Prof looked at the sunlight as if he hadn’t noticed it before. He actually smiled, and seemed more and more like his old self. He strode out across the field, walking toward something in the rubble.

Megan’s personality changed when she used her powers too
, I thought.
In the elevator shaft, on the cycle … she changed. Became brasher, more arrogant, even more hateful
. It had passed quickly each time, but she’d barely used her powers, so maybe the effects on her had been weaker.

If that was true, then spending time with the Reckoners—when she needed to be careful not to use her abilities lest she give herself away—had served to keep her from being affected. The people she was meant to have infiltrated had instead turned her more human.

Prof came walking back with something in his hand. A skull, blackened and charred. Metal glinted through the soot. A steel skull. He turned it toward me. There was a groove in the right cheekbone, like the trail left by a bullet.

“Huh,” I said, taking the skull. “If the bullet could hurt his bones, why couldn’t the blast?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if his death triggered his tranfersion abilities,” Prof said. “Turning what was left of him as he died—his bones, or some of them—into steel.”

Seemed like a stretch to me. But then, strange things happened around Epics. There were oddities, especially when they died.

As I regarded the skull, Prof called Tia. I distractedly caught the sounds of weeping, exclamations of joy, and an exchange that ended with her turning the copter back for us. I looked up, then found myself walking toward the tunnel entrance into the stadium innards.

“David?” Prof called.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I want to get something.”

“The copter will be here in a few minutes. I suggest we
not
be here when Enforcement comes in earnest to see what happened.”

I started running, but he didn’t object further. As I entered the darkness, I turned my mobile’s light up to full, illuminating the tall, cavernous corridors. I ran past Nightwielder’s body suspended in steel. Past the place where Abraham had detonated the explosion.

I slowed, peeking into concession stands and restrooms. I didn’t have long to look, and I soon felt like a fool. What did I expect to find? She’d left. She was …

Voices.

I froze, then turned about in the dim corridor. There. I walked
forward, eventually finding a steel door frozen open and leading into what appeared to be a janitorial chamber. I could almost make out the voice. It was familiar. Not Megan’s voice, but …

“… deserved to live through this, even if I didn’t,” the voice said. Gunfire followed, sounding distant. “You know, I think I fell for you that first day. Stupid, huh? Love at first sight. What a cliché.”

Yes, I knew that voice. It was mine. I stopped at the doorway, feeling like I was in a dream as I listened to my own words. Words spoken as I defended Megan’s dying body. I continued listening as the entire scene played out. Right up until the end. “I don’t know if I love you,” my voice said. “But whatever the emotion is, it’s the strongest one I’ve felt in years. Thank you.”

The recording stopped. Then it started playing again from the beginning.

I stepped into the small room. Megan sat on the floor in the corner, staring at the mobile in her hands. She turned down the volume when I entered, but she didn’t stop looking at the screen.

“I keep a secret video and audio feed,” she whispered. “The camera’s embedded in my skin, above my eye. It starts up if I close my eyes for too long, or if my heart rate goes too high or too low. It sends the data to one of my caches in the city. I started doing that after I died the first few times. It’s always disorienting to reincarnate. It helps if I can watch what happened leading up to my death.”

“Megan, I …” What could I say?

“Megan is my real name,” she said. “Isn’t that funny? I felt I could give it to the Reckoners because that person, the person I was, is dead. Megan Tarash. She’s never had any connection to Firefight. She was just another ordinary human.”

She looked up at me, and in the light of her mobile screen I could see tears in her eyes. “You carried me all that way,” she whispered. “I watched it, when I was first reborn this time. Your actions didn’t make sense to me. I thought you must have needed something from me. Now I see something different in what you did.”

“We’ve got to go, Megan,” I said, stepping forward. “Prof can explain better than I can. But right now, just come with me.”

“My mind
changes
,” she whispered. “When I die, I am reborn out of light a day later. Somewhere random, not where my body was, not where I died, but nearby. Different each time. I … I don’t feel like myself, now that that’s happened. Not the self I want to be. It doesn’t make sense. What do you trust, David? What do you trust when your own thoughts and emotions seem to hate you?”

“Prof can—”

“Stop,” she said, raising a hand. “Don’t … don’t come closer. Just leave me. I need to think.”

I stepped forward.

“Stop!”
The walls faded, and fires seemed to flame up around us. The floor warped beneath me, making me nauseous. I stumbled.

“You’ve
got
to come with me, Megan.”

“Take another step and I’ll shoot myself,” she said, reaching for a gun on the floor beside her. “I’ll do it, David. Death is nothing to me. Not anymore.”

I backed away, hands up.

“I need to think about this,” she mumbled again, looking back at her mobile.

“David.” A voice in my ear. Prof’s voice. “David, we’re leaving
now
.”

“Don’t use your powers, Megan,” I said to her. “Please. You
have
to understand. They’re what change you. Don’t use them for a few days. Hide, and your mind will get clearer.”

She kept staring at the screen. The recording started over.

“Megan …”

She raised the gun toward me without shifting her gaze. The tears dripped down her cheeks.

“David!”
Prof yelled.

I turned and ran for the copter. I didn’t know what else to do.

I’VE
seen Steelheart bleed.

I’ve seen him scream. I’ve seen him burn. I’ve seen him die in an inferno, and I was the one who killed him. Yes, the hand that pushed the detonator was his own, but I don’t care—and have never cared—which hand actually took his life. I made it happen. I’ve got his skull to prove it.

I sat strapped in the copter’s chair, looking out the open door to the side, my hair blowing as we lifted off. Cody was stabilizing quickly in the back seat, much to Abraham’s amazement. I knew Prof had given the man a large portion of his healing power. From what I knew of Epic regeneration abilities, that would be able to heal Cody from practically anything, so long as he was still breathing when the power was transferred.

We soared up into the air before a blazing yellow sun, leaving the
stadium scorched, burned, blasted, but with the scent of triumph. My father told me that Soldier Field had been named in honor of the military men and women who had fallen in battle. Now it had hosted the most important battle since Calamity. The field’s name had never seemed more appropriate to me.

We rose above a city that was seeing real light for the first time in a decade. People were in the streets, looking upward.

Tia piloted the copter, one hand reaching over to hold Prof’s arm, as if she were unable to believe he was really there with us. He looked out his window, and I wondered if he saw what I did. We hadn’t rescued this city. Not yet. We’d killed Steelheart, but other Epics would come.

I didn’t accept that we just had to abandon the people now. We’d removed Newcago’s source of authority; we’d have to take responsibility for that. I wouldn’t abandon my home to chaos, not now, not even for the Reckoners.

Fighting back had to be about more than just killing Epics. It had to be about something greater. Something, perhaps, that had to do with Prof and Megan.

The Epics
can
be beaten. Some, maybe, can even be rescued. I don’t know how to manage it exactly. But I intend to keep trying until either we find an answer or I’m dead.

I smiled as we turned out of the city.
The heroes will come … we might just have to help them along
.

I always assumed that my father’s death would be the most transformative event of my life. Only now, with Steelheart’s skull in my hand, did I realize that I hadn’t been fighting for vengeance, and hadn’t been fighting for redemption. I hadn’t been fighting because of my father’s death.

I fought because of his dreams.

THIS one has been a long time brewing. I had the first idea for it while on book tour in … oh, 2007? With a long ride like that involved in getting the book finished, a
lot
of people have given me feedback over the years. I hope I don’t miss any of you!

Notably, thanks go out to my delightful editor, Krista Marino, for her extremely capable direction of this project. She’s been a wonderful resource, and her editing was top-notch, taking this book from plucky upstart to polished product. Also, we should make note of that rascal James Dashner, who was kind enough to call her up and get me an introduction.

Others who deserve a cheer are: Michael Trudeau (who did a superb copyedit); and at Random House, Paul Samuelson, Rachel Weinick, Beverly Horowitz, Judith Haut, Dominique Cimina, and Barbara Marcus. Also, Christopher Paolini, for his feedback and help on the book.

As always, I wish to give big thanks to my agents, Joshua Bilmes, who didn’t laugh too hard when I told him I had this book I wanted to write instead of working on the twenty other projects I needed to do at the time, and Eddie Schneider, whose jobs include dressing better than the rest of us and having a name I have to look up every time I want to put it in acknowledgments. On the
Steelheart
film front (we’re trying hard), thanks go to Joel Gotler, Brian Lipson, Navid McIlhargey, and the superhuman Donald Mustard.

A big thumbs-up goes to the incandescent Peter Ahlstrom, my editorial assistant, who was part of this book’s cheering section from the get-go. He was, editorially, the first one who got his hands on this project—and much of its success is due to him.

I also don’t want to forget my UK/Ireland/Australia publishing team, including John Berlyne and John Parker of the Zeno Agency,
and Simon Spanton and my publicist/mother-in-the-UK, Jonathan Weir of Gollancz.

Others with Epic-level powers in reading and giving feedback (or just great support) include: Dominique Nolan (Dragonsteel’s official Gun-Nut super-reference man), Brian McGinley, David West, Peter (again) and Karen Ahlstrom, Benjamin Rodriguez and Danielle Olsen, Alan Layton, Kaylynn ZoBell, Dan “I Wrote Postapocalyptic Before You” Wells, Kathleen Sanderson Dorsey, Brian Hill, Brian “By Now You Owe Me Royalties, Brandon” Delambre, Jason Denzel, Kalyani Poluri, Kyle Mills, Adam Hussey, Austin Hussey, Paul Christopher, Mi’chelle Walker, and Josh Walker. You’re all awesome.

Finally, as always, I wish to thank my lovely wife, Emily, and my three destructive little boys, who are constant inspiration for how an Epic might go about blowing up a city. (Or the living room.)

Brandon Sanderson