Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

Some history with the tensors. It makes sense. It’s okay.”
    “No, it’s not. But it
is
what happens when I use the tensors. I … well, it’s like Tia said. Things in my past. I’m sorry for how I acted. There was no justification for it, especially considering what you’d just been through.”
    “It wasn’t so bad,” I said. “What you did, I mean.”
The rest was horrible
. I tried not to think about that long march with a dying girl in my arms. A dying girl I didn’t save. I pushed forward. “You were amazing, Prof. You shouldn’t just use the tensors when we face Steelheart. You should use them all the time. Think of what—”
    “STOP.”
    I froze. The tone of his voice sent a spike of shock down my spine.
    Prof breathed in and out deeply, his hands buried in steel dust. He closed his eyes. “Don’t speak like that, son. It doesn’t do me any good. Please.”
    “All right,” I said carefully.
    “Just … accept my apology, if you are willing.”
    “Of course.”
    Prof nodded, turning back to his work.
    “Can I ask you something?” I said. “I won’t mention … you know. Not directly, at least.”
    “Go ahead, then.”
    “Well, you invented these things. Amazing things. The harmsway, the jackets. From what Abraham tells me, you had these devices when you founded the Reckoners.”
    “I did.”
    “So … why not make us something else? Another kind of weapon, based off the Epics? I mean, you sell knowledge to people like Diamond, and he sells it to scientists who are working to create technology like this. I figure you’ve got to be as good at it as any of them are. Why sell the knowledge and not use it yourself?”
    Prof worked in silence for a few minutes, then walked over to help me pull dust out of the hole I was making. “That’s a good question. Have you asked Abraham or Cody?”
    I grimaced. “Cody talks about daemons or fairies—which he claims the Irish totally stole from his ancestors. I can’t tell if he’s serious.”
    “He’s not,” Prof said. “He just likes to see how people react when he says things like that.”
    “Abraham thinks it’s because you don’t have a lab now, like you used to. Without the right equipment, you can’t design new technology.”
    “Abraham is a very thoughtful man. What do
you
think?”
    “I think that if you can find the resources to buy or steal explosives, cycles, and even copters when you need them, you could get yourself a lab. There’s got to be another reason.”
    Prof dusted off his hands and turned to look at me. “All right. I can see where this is going. You may ask one question about my past.” He said it as if it were a gift, a kind of … penance. He had treated me poorly, in part because of something in his past. The recompense he gave was a piece of that past.
    I found myself completely unprepared. What did I want to know? Did I ask how he’d come up with the tensors? Did I ask what it was that made him not want to use them? He seemed to be bracing himself.
    I don’t want to drag him through that
, I thought.
Not if it affects him so profoundly
. I wouldn’t want to do that any more than I would have wanted someone to drag me through memories of what had happened to Megan.
    I decided to pick something more benign. “What
were
you?” I asked. “Before Calamity. What was your job?”
    Prof seemed taken aback. “That’s your question?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re sure you want to know?”
    I nodded.
    “I was a fifth-grade science teacher,” Prof said.
    I opened my mouth to laugh at the joke, but the tone of his voice made me hesitate.
    “Really?” I finally asked.
    “Really. An Epic destroyed the school. It … it was still in session.” He stared at the wall, emotion bleeding from his face. He was putting a mask up.
    And here I thought it had been an innocent question. “But the tensors,” I said. “The harmsway. You worked at a lab at some point, right?”
    “No,” he said. “The tensors and the harmsway don’t belong to me. The others just assume I invented them. I didn’t.”
    That revelation stunned me.
    Prof turned away to gather up his buckets. “The kids at the school called me Prof too. It always sticks, though I’m not a professor—I didn’t even go to graduate school. I only ended up teaching science by accident. It was the teaching itself that I loved. At least, I loved it back when I thought it would be enough to change things.”
    He walked off down the tunnel, leaving me