Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

know any … I don’t know. Secret handshakes? Special identifiers? Codes so other Reckoners know I’m one of them?”
    “Son,” Prof said, “you’re
not
one of us.”
    “I know, I know,” I said quickly. “But I don’t want anyone to surprise us and think I’m an enemy or something, and—”
    “Megan,” Prof said, jerking his thumb at me. “Entertain the kid. I need to think.” He walked on ahead, joining Tia, and the two of them began speaking quietly.
    Megan gave me a scowl. I probably deserved it, for yammering questions at Prof like that. I was just so nervous. Phaedrus himself, the founder of the Reckoners. Now that I knew what to look for, I recognized him from the descriptions—sparse though they were—that I’d read.
    The man was a legend. A god among freedom fighters and assassins alike. I was starstruck, and the questions had just dribbled out. In truth I was proud of myself for not asking for an autograph on my gun.
    My behavior hadn’t earned me points with Megan, however, and she obviously didn’t like being put on babysitting detail either. Cody and Abraham were talking ahead, which left Megan and me walking beside each other as we moved at a brisk pace down one of the darkened steel tunnels. She was silent.
    She really was pretty. And she was probably around my age, maybe just a year or two older. I still wasn’t certain why she’d turned cold toward me. Maybe some witty conversation would help with that. “So, uh,” I said. “How long have you … you know, been with the Reckoners? And all?”
    Smooth.
    “Long enough,” she said.
    “Were you involved in any of the recent kills? Gyro? Shadowblight? Earless?”
    “Maybe. I doubt Prof would want me sharing specifics.”
    We walked in silence for a time longer.
    “You know,” I said, “you’re not really very entertaining.”
    “What?”
    “Prof told you to entertain me,” I said.
    “That was just to deflect your questions onto someone else. I doubt you’ll find anything I do to be particularly entertaining.”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “I liked the striptease.”
    She glared at me.
“What?”
    “Out in the alley,” I said. “When you …”
    Her expression was so frigid you could have used it to liquidcool a high-fire-rate stationary gun barrel. Or maybe some drinks. Chill drinks—that was a better metaphor.
    I didn’t think she’d appreciate me using it right then, though. “Never mind,” I said.
    “Good,” she said, turning away from me and continuing on.
    I breathed out, then chuckled. “For a moment there I thought you’d shoot me.”
    “I only shoot people when the job calls for it,” she said. “You’re trying to make small talk; you’re simply not very good at it. That’s not a shooting offense.”
    “Er, thanks.”
    She nodded, businesslike, which wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d have hoped for from a pretty girl whose life I’d saved. Granted, she was the first girl—pretty or not—whose life I’d saved, so I didn’t have much of a baseline.
    Still, she’d been kind of warm to me before, hadn’t she? Maybe I just needed to work a little harder. “So what
can
you tell me?” I asked. “About the team, or the other members.”
    “I’d prefer to discuss another topic,” she said. “One that doesn’t involve secrets about the Reckoners
or
my clothing, please.”
    I fell silent. Truth was, I didn’t
know
about much other than the Reckoners and the Epics in town. Yes, I’d had some schooling at the Factory, but only basic kinds of stuff. And before that I’d lived a year scavenging on the streets, malnourished, barely avoiding death.
    “I guess we could talk about the city,” I said. “I know a lot about the understreets.”
    “How old are you?” Megan said.
    “Eighteen,” I said, defensive.
    “And is anyone going to come looking for you? Are people going to wonder where you went?”
    I shook my head. “I hit my majority two months ago. Got kicked out of the Factory where I worked.”
    That was the rule. You only worked there until you were eighteen; after that you found another job.
    “You worked at a factory?” she asked. “For how long?”
    “Nine years or so,” I said. “Weapons factory, actually. Made guns for Enforcement.” Some understreeters, particularly the older ones, grumbled about how the Factory exploited children for labor. That was a stupid complaint, made by old people who remembered a different world. A safer world.
    In my