Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

“where I’d
really
like to have a backup is on the explosives under the field there. Those are the most important ones to detonate; they’re going to cover our escape.”
    “I suppose,” I said.
    “Do you mind if I take this and stick it down there before I weld it closed?” Cody asked.
    “No, assuming Prof agrees.”
    “He likes redundancy,” Cody said, slipping the blasting cap into his pocket. “Just keep that pen-dealy of yours handy. And
don’t
push it by accident.”
    He sauntered back toward the tunnel under the field, and I took the ladder into the restroom to get to work.
    I punched my fist out into open air, then ducked as the steel dust fell around me.
So that’s how he did it
, I thought, flexing my fingers. I hadn’t figured out the sword trick, but I was getting good at punching and vaporizing things in front of my fist. It had to do with crafting the tensor’s sound waves so that they followed my hand in motion, creating kind of an … envelope around it.
    Done right, the wave would course along with my fist. Kind of like smoke might follow your hand if you punch through it. I smiled, shaking my hand. I’d finally figured it out. Good thing too. My knuckles were feeling pretty sore.
    I finished off the hole with a more mundane tensor blast, reaching up from the top of my ladder to sculpt the hole. Through it I could see a pure black sky.
Someday I’d like to see the sun again
, I thought. The only thing up there was blackness. Blackness and Calamity, burning in the distance directly above, like a terrible red eye.
    I climbed up off the ladder and out into the upper third deck. Ihad a sudden, surreal flash of memory. This was near where I’d sat the one time I’d come to this stadium. My father had scrimped and saved to buy us the tickets. I couldn’t remember which team we’d played, but I could remember the taste of the hot dog my father bought. And his cheering, his excitement.
    I crouched down among the seats, keeping low just in case. Steelheart’s spy drones were probably out of commission now that the city was without power, but he might have people scouting the city and looking for Limelight. It would be wise to remain out of sight as much as possible.
    Fishing a rope out of my pack, I tied it around the leg of one of the steel seats, then sneaked back to the hole and down the ladder, returning to the bathroom below the second deck. Leaving the rope hanging for a quicker escape than the ladder would allow, I stowed the ladder and my empty pack in one of the stalls and walked out toward the seats.
    Abraham was waiting there for me, leaning against the entryway to the lower seating with his muscled arms crossed, his expression thoughtful.
    “So, I take it the UV lights are hooked up?” I asked.
    Abraham nodded. “It would have been beautiful to use the stadium’s own floodlights.”
    I laughed. “I’d have liked to see that, making a bunch of lights work that had their bulbs turned to steel and fused to their sockets.”
    The two of us stood there for a time, looking out at our battlefield. I checked my mobile. It was early morning; we planned to summon Steelheart at 5:00 a.m. Hopefully his soldiers would be exhausted from preventing lootings all night without any vehicles or power armor. The Reckoners usually worked on a night schedule anyway.
    “Fifteen minutes until projected go time,” I noted. “Did Cody finish the welding? Prof and Tia back yet?”
    “Cody completed the weld and is moving to his position,” Abrahamsaid. “Prof will arrive momentarily. They were able to procure a copter, and Edmund has gifted Tia the ability to power it. She flew it outside of town to park it, so as to not give away our location.”
    If things went sour, she’d time her flight back in so that she could sweep down and pick us up as the explosives went off. We’d also blast a smokescreen from the stands to cover our escape.
    I agreed with Prof, though. You couldn’t outfly or outgun Steelheart in a copter. This was the showdown. We defeated him here or we died.
    My mobile flashed, and a voice spoke into my ear. “I’m back,” Prof said. “Tia’s set too.” He hesitated a moment. “Let’s do this.”

35
    SINCE my post was right up against the front of the third deck, if I’d been standing I could have looked down over the edge toward the lowest level of seats. Huddled in my improvised hole, however, I couldn’t see those—though I had a good view of the