Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

nodded. “Each and every hit we make without having Limelight appear in the open will make Steelheart more suspicious.”
    “We’re giving up?” Megan said, a hint of eagerness in her voice, though she obviously tried to cover it.
    “Not by a mile,” Prof said. “Perhaps I will still decide we need to pull out—if we aren’t confident enough about Steelheart’s weakness, I might do just that. We aren’t there yet. We’re going to keep on with this plan, but we need to do something big, preferably with an appearance by Limelight. We need to squeeze Steelheart as hard as we can and drive that temper of his.
Force
him out.”
    “And we do that how?” Tia asked.
    “It’s time to kill Conflux,” Prof said. “And bring down Enforcement.”

27
    CONFLUX .
    In many ways he was the backbone of Steelheart’s rule. A mysterious figure, even when compared to the likes of Firefight and Nightwielder.
    I had no good photos of Conflux. The few I’d paid dearly to get were blurry and unspecific. I couldn’t even know if he was real.
    The van thumped as it moved through the dark streets of Newcago; it was stuffy inside. I sat in the passenger seat, with Megan driving. Cody and Abraham were in the back. Prof was running point in a different vehicle, and Tia was running support back at our base, watching the spy videos of the city streets. It was a frigid day and the heater in our van didn’t work—Abraham hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.
    Prof’s words ran through my mind.
We’ve considered hittingConflux before, but discarded the idea because we thought it would be too dangerous. We still have the plans we made. It’s no less dangerous now, but we’re in deep. No reason not to move forward
.
    Was Conflux real? My gut said he was. Much as the clues pointed to Firefight being a fabrication, the clues surrounding Conflux added up to
something
being there. A powerful but fragile Epic.
    Steelheart moves Conflux around
, Prof had said,
never letting him stay long in the same place. But there’s a pattern to how he’s moved. He often uses an armored limo with six guards and a two-motorcycle escort. If we watch for that, wait until he uses that convoy to move, we can hit him on the streets in transit
.
    The clues. Even with power plants Steelheart didn’t have enough electricity to run the city, and yet he somehow produced those fuel cells. The mechanized armor units didn’t pack power sources, and neither did many of the copters. The fact that they were powered directly by high-ranking members of Enforcement wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone knew it.
    He was out there. A gifter who could make energy in a form that could power vehicles, fill fuel cells, even light a large chunk of the city. That level of power was awesome, but no more so than what Nightwielder or Steelheart held. The most powerful Epics set their own scale of strength.
    The van bumped, and I gripped my rifle—held low, safety on, barrel pointed down and toward the door. Out of sight, but handy. Just in case.
    Tia had spotted the right kind of limo convoy today, and we’d scrambled. Megan drove us toward a point where our road would intersect with Conflux’s limo. Her eyes were characteristically intense, though there was a particular edge to her today. Not fear. Just … worry, maybe?
    “You don’t think we should be doing this, do you?” I asked.
    “I think I made that clear,” Megan said, her voice even, eyes ahead. “Steelheart doesn’t need to fall.”
    “I’m talking about Conflux specifically,” I said. “You’re nervous. You’re normally not nervous.”
    “I just don’t think we know enough about him,” she said. “We shouldn’t be hitting an Epic we don’t even have photographs of.”
    “But you
are
nervous.”
    She drove, eyes forward and hands tight on the wheel.
    “It’s okay,” I said. “I feel like a brick made of porridge.”
    She looked at me, brow scrunching up. The van’s cab fell silent. Then Megan started to laugh.
    “No, no,” I said. “It makes sense! Listen. A brick is supposed to be strong, right? But if one were secretly made of porridge, and all of the other bricks didn’t know, he’d sit around worrying that he’d be weak when the rest of them were strong. He’d get smooshed when he was placed in the wall, you see, maybe get some of his porridge mixed with that stuff they stick between bricks.”
    Megan was laughing even harder now, so hard she was actually gasping for breath. I