Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

dust and condensation. “Tia is always talking about the scientific foundation of the Epics,” he said. “I don’t think they can be explained that way. Too much about them breaks what science says should happen. I sometimes wonder if they came along
because
we thought we could explain everything.”
    It didn’t take much longer for us to arrive. I’d noticed that Megan was leading us by way of her mobile, which showed a map on its screen. That was remarkable. A map of the steel catacombs? I didn’t think such a thing existed.
    “Here,” Megan said, waving to a thick patch of wires hanging down like a curtain in front of a wall. Sights like that were common down here, where the Diggers had left things unfinished.
    Cody walked up and banged on a plate near the wires. A distant bang came back at him a few moments later.
    “In you go, Knees,” he said to me, gesturing toward the wires.
    I took a breath and stepped forward, pushing them aside with the barrel of my rifle. There was a small tunnel beyond, leading steeply upward. I would have to crawl. I looked back at him.
    “It’s safe,” he promised. I couldn’t tell if he was making me go first because of some latent mistrust, or because he liked seeing me squirm. It didn’t seem the time to question him or back down. I started crawling.
    The tunnel was small enough to make me worry that if I slung my rifle on my back, a good scrape stood a chance of knocking the scope or sights out of alignment. So I kept it in my right hand as I crawled, which made it all the more awkward. The tunnel led toward a distant, soft light, and the crawl took long enough that my knees were aching by the time I reached the light. A strong hand took me by the left arm, helping me out of the tunnel. Abraham. The dark-skinned man had changed into cargo pants and a green tank top, which showed well-muscled arms. I hadn’t noticed before, but he was wearing a small silver pendant around his neck, hanging out of his shirt.
    The room I stepped into was unexpectedly large. Big enough for the team to have laid out their equipment and several bedrolls without it feeling cramped. There was a large table made of metal that grew right out of the floor, as well as benches at the walls and stools around the table.
    They carved it there
, I realized, looking at the sculpted walls.
They made this room with the tensors. Carved furniture right into it
.
    It was impressive. I gawked as I stepped back and let Abraham help Megan out of the tunnel. The chamber had two doorways into other rooms that looked smaller. It was lit by lanterns, and there were cords on the floor—taped in place and out of the way—leading down another small tunnel.
    “You have electricity,” I said. “How did you get electricity?”
    “Tapped into an old subway line,” Cody said, crawling out of the tunnel. “One that was half completed, then forgotten about. Thenature of this place is that even Steelheart doesn’t know all of its nooks and dead ends.”
    “Just more proof the Diggers were mad,” Abraham said. “They wired things in strange ways. We’ve found rooms that were sealed completely but had lights left on inside, shining for years by themselves.
Repaire des fantômes
.”
    “Megan tells me,” Prof said, appearing from one of the other rooms, “that you recovered the information, but that your means were … unconventional.” The aging but sturdy man still wore his black lab coat.
    “Hell yeah!” Cody said, shouldering his rifle.
    Prof snorted. “Well, let’s see what you recovered before I decide if I should yell at you or not.” He reached for the backpack in Megan’s hand.
    “Actually,” I said, stepping toward it, “I can—”
    “You’ll sit down, son,” Prof said, “while I have a look at this. All of it. Then we’ll talk.”
    His voice was calm, but I got the message. I pensively sat down beside the steel table as the others gathered around the pack and began rifling through my life.

12
    “WOW,” Cody said. “Honestly, lad, I thought you were exaggerating. But y’all really are a full-blown supergeek, aren’t you?”
    I blushed, still sitting on my stool. They had opened the folders I’d packed and spread out the contents, then moved on to my notebooks, passing them around and studying them. Cody had eventually lost interest and moved over to sit by me, his back to the table and elbows hitched up on it behind him.
    “I had a job to do,” I said. “I decided to do it