Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

Hardman—said. “He came up in the middle of it all, caused a wee bit of trouble.” He had a distinctive Southern accent.
    “We’ll talk about him later,” the driver said, taking a corner at high speed.
    My heart started to beat more quickly, and I glanced out the window, searching the sky for copters. It wouldn’t be long before Enforcement was told what to look for, and the truck was rather conspicuous.
    “We should have just shot Fortuity in the first place,” said the man with the French accent. “Derringer to the chest.”
    “Wouldn’t have worked, Abraham,” the driver said. “His abilities were too strong—even attraction could only do so much. We needed to do something nonlethal first—trap him, then shoot him. Precogs are tough.”
    He had that part right, probably. Fortuity had possessed a
very
strong danger sense. Likely the plan had been for Megan to cuff him and maybe lock him to the lamppost. Then, when he was partially immobilized, she could have rammed her derringer into his chest and fired. If she’d tried that first, his power might have warned him. It would have depended on how attracted he was to her.
    “I wasn’t expecting him to be so strong,” Megan said, sounding disappointed with herself as she pulled on a brown leather jacket and a pair of cargo pants. “I’m sorry, Prof. I shouldn’t have let him get away from me.”
    Prof. Something about that name struck me.
    “It’s done,” the driver—Prof—said, pulling the garbage truck to a jarring halt. “We ditch the machine. It’s been compromised.”
    Prof opened the door and we piled out.
    “I—” I began to say, planning to introduce myself. The older man they called Prof, however, shot me a menacing glare over the hood of the garbage truck. I cut myself short, choking on my words. Standing in the shadows, with his long jacket and that grizzled face, hair peppered with grey, that man looked
dangerous
.
    The Reckoners pulled a few packs of equipment out of the back of the garbage truck, including a massive machine gun that Abraham now toted. They led me down a set of steps into the understreets. From there the team hustled through a set of twists and turns. I dida pretty good job keeping track of where we were going until they led me down a long flight of stairs, several levels deep, into the steel catacombs.
    Smart people stayed away from the catacombs. The Diggers had gone mad before the tunnels were finished. The ceiling lights rarely worked, and the square-shaped tunnels through the steel changed size as you progressed.
    The team was silent as they continued down the passages, turning up the lights on their mobiles, which most wore strapped to the fronts of their jackets. I’d wondered if the Reckoners would carry mobiles, and the fact that they wore them made me feel better about mine. I mean,
everyone
knew that the Knighthawk Foundry was neutral, and that mobile connections were completely secure. The Reckoners’ using the network was just another indication that Knighthawk was reliable.
    We walked for a time, the Reckoners moving quietly, carefully. Several times Hardman went ahead to scout; Abraham watched our rear with that wicked-looking machine gun of his. It was hard to keep my bearings—down in the steel catacombs it felt like a subway system that halfway through development had turned into a rat’s maze.
    There were choke points, tunnels that went nowhere, and unnatural angles. In some places electrical cords jutted from the walls like those creepy arteries you find in the middle of a chunk of chicken. In other places the steel walls weren’t solid, but instead had patches of paneling that had been ripped into by people searching for something worth selling. Scrap metal, however, was worthless in Newcago. There was more than enough of
that
lying around.
    We passed groups of teenagers with dark expressions standing beside burning trash cans. They seemed displeased to have their solace invaded, but nobody interfered with us. Perhaps it was due to Abraham’s enormous gun. The thing had gravatonics glowing blue on the bottom to help him lift it.
    We worked our way through those tunnels for over an hour. Occasionally we passed vents blowing air. The Diggers had gotten some things working down here, but most of it made no sense. Still, there was fresh air. Sometimes.
    Prof led the way in that long black coat.
It’s a lab coat
, I realized as we turned another corner.
One that’s been dyed black
.