Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

complaining. I kept on going, one foot after another. I wasn’t moving very quickly. I wasn’t thinking very well either.
    “David.” Prof’s voice. Quiet, intense.
    “I’m
not
leaving her,” I said through clenched teeth.
    “I wouldn’t have you do something like that,” Prof said. “I’d much sooner have you stand your ground and make Enforcement gun you both down.”
    Not very comforting.
    “It’s not going to come to that, son,” Prof said. “Help is on its way.”
    “I think I can hear them,” I said. I’d finally reached the end of the tunnel; it opened onto a narrow crossroads in the understreets. There were no buildings here, just steel corridors. I didn’t know this part of town well.
    The ceiling was solid, with no gaps up to the air above like there were in the area where I’d grown up. Those were definitely shouts I heard echoing from the right. I heard
clanks
from behind, steel feet pounding against the steel ground. More shouts. They’d found the cycle.
    I leaned up against the wall, shifting Megan’s weight, then pressed the button on my pen detonator. I was relieved to hear a
pop
from behind as the cycle’s fuel cell blew. The shouts rose. Maybe I’d caught a few of them in the blast; if I was really lucky they’d assume I was hiding somewhere near the wreckage and had tossed a grenade or something.
    I hefted Megan, then took the left turn at the crossroads. Her blood had soaked my clothing. She was probably dead by—
    No. I wouldn’t think about that. One foot in front of the other. Help was coming. Prof
promised
help was coming. It would come. Prof didn’t lie. Jonathan Phaedrus, founder of the Reckoners, a man I somehow understood. If there was anything in this world I felt I could trust, it was him.
    I walked a good five minutes before I was forced to pull up short. The tunnel in front of me ended in a flat wall of steel. Dead end. I glanced over my shoulder to see flashlights and shadows moving. No escape that way.
    The corridor around me was wide, maybe twenty paces across, and tall. There was some old construction equipment on the ground, though most of it looked to have been picked over by opportunists. There were a few heaps of broken bricks and cinder blocks. Someone had been building more rooms down here recently. Well, those might provide some cover.
    I stumbled over and laid Megan down behind the largest of the piles, then I flipped my mobile to manual response. Prof and the others wouldn’t be able to hear me unless I touched the screen to broadcast, but it also meant they wouldn’t give away my position by trying to contact me.
    I crouched down behind the bricks. The pile didn’t give me complete cover, but it was better than nothing. Cornered, outgunned, with no way to …
    Suddenly I felt like an idiot. I dug in the zip pocket on my trouser leg, fishing for my tensor. I pulled it out triumphantly. Maybe I could dig down to the steel catacombs, or even just dig out to the side and find a safer path.
    I pulled on the glove, and only then did I realize that the tensor had been shredded. I stared at it with a sinking despair. It had been in the pocket on the leg I’d landed on when falling, and the pouch had been ripped at the bottom. The tensor was missing two fingers, and the electronics had been shattered, pieces hanging off like eyes drooping out of a zombie’s sockets in an old horror movie.
    I almost laughed as I settled back down. The Enforcement soldiers were searching the corridors. Shouts. Footsteps. Flashlights. Getting closer.
    My mobile blinked softly. I turned the volume way down, then pressed the screen and leaned in. “David?” Tia asked in a very quiet voice. “David, where are you?”
    “I reached the bottom of the tunnel,” I whispered back, holding the mobile up to my mouth. “I turned left.”
    “Left? That’s a dead end. You need to—”
    “I know,” I said. “There were soldiers the other directions.” I glanced at Megan, lying slumped on the floor. I tested her neck again.
    Still a pulse. I closed my eyes in relief.
Not that it matters now
.
    “Calamity,” Tia swore. I heard gunfire and jumped, thinking it was from my position. But it wasn’t. It was from the line.
    “Tia?” I hissed.
    “They’re here,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. I can hold this place. David, you have to—”
    “Hey, you!” a voice called from the intersection.
    I ducked down, but the mound of bricks wasn’t large enough to hide