Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

managing to tow the other Enforcement officer out of the burning room and onto the landing.
    I felt bad, but only a little. Copters were thumping above; he’d have help soon. We scurried across the park, heading toward the tunnels that led deeper into the understreets.
    “You left them alive?” Megan asked as we ran.
    “This was more useful,” I said. “I laid us a false trail. I told him a lie that I was working for an Epic who wants to challenge Steelheart. Hopefully it will keep them from searching for the Reckoners.” I hesitated. “Besides. They’re not our enemies.”
    “Of course they are,” she snapped.
    “No,” Cody said, jogging beside her. “He’s right, lass. They aren’t. They may work for the enemy, but they’re just regular folks. They do what they can to get by.”
    “We can’t think like that,” she said as we reached a branching tunnel. She glared at me, eyes cold. “We can’t show them mercy. They won’t show it to us.”
    “We can’t become them, lass,” Cody said, shaking his head. “Listen to Prof talk about it sometime. If we have to do what the Epics do to beat them, then it’s not worth it.”
    “I’ve heard him talk,” she said, still looking at me. “I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about Knees here.”
    “I’ll shoot an Enforcement officer if I have to,” I said, meeting her eyes. “But I won’t get distracted hunting them down. I have a goal. I’ll see Steelheart dead. That is all that matters.”
    “Bah,” she said, turning away from me. “That’s not an answer.”
    “Let’s keep moving,” Cody said, nodding toward a stairwell down to deeper tunnels.
    “He’s a scientist, lad,” Cody explained as we walked through the narrow corridors of the steel catacombs. “Studied Epics in the early days, created some pretty remarkable devices, based on what we learned from them. That’s why he’s called Prof, other than that lastname thing.”
    I nodded thoughtfully. Now that we were deep, Cody had relaxed. Megan was still stiff. She walked ahead, holding her mobile and using it to send Prof a report on the mission. Cody had his set toflashlight, hooked to the upper left of his camo jacket. I’d removed the network card from mine, which he said was a good idea until Abraham or Tia had a chance to tweak it.
    It turned out that they didn’t trust even the Knighthawk Foundry. The Reckoners usually left their mobiles linked only to one another, and had the transmissions encrypted on both ends, not using the regular network. Until I got the encryption too, I could at least use my mobile as a camera or a glorified flashlight.
    Cody walked with a relaxed posture, rifle up on his shoulder, arm looped over it and hand hanging down. I seemed to have earned his approval with Refractionary’s death.
    “So where did he work?” I asked, hungry for information about Prof. There were so many rumors about the Reckoners, but few real facts.
    “Don’t know,” Cody admitted. “Nobody’s sure what Prof’s past is, though Tia probably knows something. She doesn’t talk about it. Abe and I have bets going ’bout what Prof’s specific workplace was. I’m pretty sure he was at some kind of secret government organization.”
    “Really?” I asked.
    “Sure,” Cody said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same one that caused Calamity.”
    That was one of the theories, that the United States government—or sometimes the European Union—had somehow set off Calamity while trying to start a superhuman project. I thought it was pretty far-fetched. I’d always figured it was some kind of comet that got caught in Earth’s gravity, but I didn’t know if the science of that made any sense. Maybe it was a satellite. That could fit Cody’s theory.
    He wouldn’t be the only one who thought it reeked of conspiracy. There
were
a lot of things about the Epics that didn’t add up.
    “Oh, you got that look,” Cody said, pointing at me.
    “That look?”
    “Y’all think I’m crazy.”
    “No. No, of course not.”
    “You do. Well, it’s okay. I know what I know, even if Prof rolls his eyes whenever I say anything about it.” Cody smiled. “But that’s another story. As for Prof’s line of work, I think it
must
have been some kind of weapons facility. He created the tensors, after all.”
    “The tensors?”
    “Prof wouldn’t want you talking about that,” Megan said, looking over her shoulder. “Nobody gave authorization for
him
to