Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

spot them.
    Even as a kid I knew there was something different about thatman. He wore a relaxed-fitting black business suit with a light tan shirt underneath, no tie. He was tall and lean, but
solid
, like a lot of Epics are. Muscled and toned in a way that you could see even through the loose clothing.
    He strode to the center of the room. Sunglasses hung from his breast pocket, and he smiled as he put them on. Then he raised a finger and pointed with a casual tapping motion at a passing woman.
    She vaporized to dust, clothing burning away, skeleton falling forward and clattering to the floor. Her earrings and wedding ring didn’t dissolve, though. They hit the floor with distinct
pings
I could hear even over the noise in the room.
    The room fell still. People froze, horrified. Conversations stopped, though the mortgage man kept right on rambling, lecturing my father.
    He finally choked off as the screaming began.
    I don’t remember how I felt. Isn’t that odd? I can remember the lighting—those magnificent chandeliers up above, sprinkling the room with bits of refracted light. I can remember the lemon-ammonia scent of the recently cleaned floor. I can remember all too well the piercing shouts of terror, the mad cacophony as people scrambled for doors.
    Most clearly, I remember the Epic smiling broadly—almost leering—as he pointed at people passing, reducing them to ash and bones with a mere gesture.
    I was transfixed. Perhaps I was in shock. I clung to the back of my chair, watching the slaughter with wide eyes.
    Some people near the doors escaped. Anyone who got too close to the Epic died. Several employees and customers huddled together on the ground or hid behind desks. Strangely, the room grew still. The Epic stood as if he were alone, bits of paper floating down through the air, bones and black ash scattered on the floor about him.
    “I am called Deathpoint,” he said. “It’s not the cleverest of names,I’ll admit. But I find it memorable.” His voice was eerily conversational, as if he were chatting with friends over drinks.
    He began to stroll through the room. “A thought occurred to me this morning,” he said. The room was large enough that his voice echoed. “I was showering, and it struck me. It asked … Deathpoint, why are you going to rob a bank today?”
    He pointed lazily at a pair of security guards who had edged out of a side hallway just beside the mortgage cubicles. The guards turned to dust, their badges, belt buckles, guns, and bones hitting the floor. I could hear their bones knock against one another as they dropped. There are a lot of bones in a man’s body, more than I’d realized, and they made a big mess when they scattered. An odd detail to notice about the horrible scene. But I remember it distinctly.
    A hand clasped my shoulder. My father had crouched low before his chair and was trying to pull me down, to keep the Epic from seeing me. But I wouldn’t move, and my father couldn’t force me without making a scene.
    “I’ve been planning this for weeks, you see,” the Epic said. “But the thought only struck me this morning. Why? Why rob the bank? I can take anything I want anyway! It’s ridiculous!” He leaped around the side of a counter, causing the teller cowering there to scream. I could just barely make her out, huddled on the floor.
    “Money is worthless to me, you see,” the Epic said. “
Completely
worthless.” He pointed. The woman shriveled to ash and bone.
    The Epic pivoted, pointing at several places around the room, killing people who were trying to flee. Last of all, he pointed directly at me.
    Finally I felt an emotion. A spike of terror.
    A skull hit the desk behind us, bouncing off and spraying ash as it clattered to the floor. The Epic had pointed not at me but at the mortgage man, who had been hiding by his desk behind me. Had the man tried to run?
    The Epic turned back toward the tellers behind the counter. My father’s hand still gripped my shoulder, tense. I could feel his worry for me almost as if it were a physical thing, running up his arm and into my own.
    I felt terror then. Pure, immobilizing terror. I curled up on the chair, whimpering, shaking, trying to banish from my mind the images of the terrible deaths I’d just seen.
    My father pulled his hand away. “Don’t move,” he mouthed.
    I nodded, too scared to do anything else. My father glanced around his chair. Deathpoint was chatting with one of the tellers. Though I