Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

right,” Tia told us. “Then straight to the end of the road. It’s an old mall, and the gulley is just behind it. I was looking for other routes, but—”
    “This will work,” Megan said curtly. “David, be ready to open the place up for us.”
    “Got it,” I said, steadying the gun, though it was harder now that she’d picked up speed. We took a corner, then turned toward a large, flat structure at the end of the road. I vaguely remembered malls from the days before Calamity. They’d been marketplaces, all enclosed.
    Megan was driving fast and heading right at it. I took aim carefully and blasted through a set of steel doors in the front. We shot through the smoke, entering the heavy blackness of an abandoned building. The headlight of the cycle showed shops on either side of us.
    The place had been looted long ago, though a lot of wares remained in the shops. Clothing that had been turned to steel wasn’t particularly useful.
    Megan wove easily through the mall’s open corridors, taking us up a frozen escalator onto the second floor. Engines echoed throughout the building as Enforcement cycles followed us in.
    Tia couldn’t guide us any longer, it appeared, but Megan seemed to have an idea of what she was doing. From the balcony above, I got a shot at the cycles following us. I hit the ground in front of them, taking a chunk out of the floor and causing several to skid out, the others scattering for cover. None seemed to have drivers as skilled as Megan.
    “Wall up ahead,” Megan said.
    I blasted it, then glanced at the energy meter on the side of the gauss gun. Prof was right; I’d drained it pretty quickly. We had maybe a couple of shots left.
    We roared out into open air and the gravatonics on the cycle engaged, softening our landing as we fell one story to the street below. We still hit hard; the cycle wasn’t intended to take jumps that high. I grunted, my backside and legs hammered from the impact. Megan immediately punched the vehicle forward down a narrow alleyway behind the mall.
    I could see the ground fall away up ahead. The gulley. We only had to—
    A sleek black copter rose out of the gulley in front of us, and the rotary guns on its sides began to spin up.
    Not a chance
, I thought, raising the gauss gun with both hands, sighting. Megan ducked lower and the cycle hit the edge of the gulley. The copter started firing. I could see the pilot’s helmet through the glass of the cockpit.
    I took the shot.
    I’d often dreamed of doing incredible things. I’d imagined what it would be like to work with the Reckoners, to fight the Epics, to actually
do
things instead of sitting around thinking about them. With that shot, I finally got my chance.
    I hung in the air, staring down a hundred-ton death machine, and squeezed the trigger. I popped the copter’s canopy dead on, vaporizing it and the pilot inside. For a moment I felt like the Epics must. Like a god.
    And then I fell out of the seat.
    I should have expected it—going into free fall in a twenty-foot ravine with two hands on my gun and none on my ride made it kind of inevitable. I won’t say I was happy to find myself plummeting toward broken legs and probably worse.
    But that shot … That shot had been worth it.
    I didn’t feel much of the fall. It happened so fast. I hit mere moments after realizing I’d lost my seat, and I heard a crunch. That was followed by a
boom
that deafened me, and that was followed by a wave of heat.
    I lay there, stunned, as my vision swam. I found myself facing the wreckage of the copter, which burned nearby. I felt numb.
    Suddenly Megan was shaking me. I coughed, rolling over, and looked up at her. She’d pulled off her helmet, so I could see her face. Her beautiful face. She actually seemed concerned about me. That made me smile.
    She was saying something. My ears rang, and I squinted, trying to read her lips. I could barely hear the words. “… up, you slontze! Get up!”
    “You aren’t supposed to shake someone who’s suffered a fall,” I mumbled. “Might have a broken back.”
    “You’ll have a broken head if you don’t
start moving
.”
    “But—”
    “Idiot. Your jacket absorbed the blow. Remember? The one you wear to keep you from getting killed? They’re supposed to make up for you doing stupid things like letting go of me in midair.”
    “It’s not my intention to let go of you,” I mumbled. “Not ever.”
    She froze.
    Wait. Had I just said that out loud?
    Jacket
, I