Steelheart

41

I watched the shifting pattern of red, orange, and black. A wall of fire and destruction. I watched it until it vanished. It left a black scar on the ground in front of me, surrounding a hole five paces wide-the blast crater of the explosion.

I watched it all, and found myself still alive. I’ll admit, it was the most baffling moment in my life.

Someone groaned behind me. I spun to see Prof sitting up. His clothing was covered in blood and he had a few scratches on his skin, but his skull was whole. Had I mistaken the extent of his injuries?

Prof had his hand forward, palm out. The tensor he’d been wearing was in tatters. “Sparks,” he said. “Another inch or so and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.” He coughed into his fist. “You’re a lucky little slontze.”

Even as he spoke, the scratches on his skin pulled together, healing. Prof’s an Epic, I thought. Prof’s an Epic. That was an energy shield he created to block the explosion!

He stumbled to his feet, looking around the stadium. A few Enforcement soldiers were running away, fleeing as they saw him rise. They seemed to want no part of whatever was happening in the center of the field.

“How …,” I said. “How long?”

“Since Calamity,” Prof said, cracking his neck. “You think an ordinary person could have stood against Steelheart as long as I did tonight?”

Of course not. “The inventions are all fakes, aren’t they?” I said, realization dawning. “You’re a gifter! You gave us your abilities. Shielding abilities in the form of jackets, healing ability in the form of the harmsway, and destructive powers in the form of the tensors.”

“Don’t know why I did it,” Prof said. “You pathetic little …”

He groaned, raising his hand to his head, then gritted his teeth and roared.

I scrambled back, startled.

“It’s so hard to fight,” he said through clenched teeth. “The more you use it, the … Arrrrr!” He knelt down, holding his head. He was quiet for a few minutes, and I let him be, not knowing what to say. When he raised his head, he seemed more in control. “I give it away,” he said, “because if I use it … it does this to me.”

“You can fight it, Prof,” I said. It felt right. “I’ve seen you do it. You’re a good man. Don’t let it consume you.”

He nodded, breathing in and out deeply. “Take it.” He reached out his hand.

I hesitantly took his hand with my good one-the other was crushed. I should have felt pain from that. I was too much in shock.

I didn’t feel any different, but Prof seemed to grow more in control. My wounded hand re-formed, bones pulling together. In seconds I could flex it again, and it worked perfectly.

“I have to split it up among you,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to … seep into you as quickly as it does me. But if I give it all to one person, they’ll change.”

“That’s why Megan couldn’t use the tensors,” I said. “Or the harmsway.”

“What?”

“Oh, sorry. You don’t know. Megan’s an Epic too.”

“What?”

“She’s Firefight,” I said, cringing back a bit. “She used her illusion powers to fool the dowser. Wait, the dowser-”

“Tia and I programmed it to exclude me,” Prof said. “It gives a false negative on me.”

“Oh. Well, I think Steelheart must have sent Megan to infiltrate the Reckoners. But Edmund said that he couldn’t gift his powers to other Epics, so … yeah. That’s why she couldn’t ever use the tensors.”

Prof shook his head. “When he said that, in the hideout, it made me wonder. I’d never tried to give mine to another Epic. I should have seen … Megan …”

“You couldn’t have known,” I said.

Prof breathed in and out, then nodded. He looked at me. “It’s okay, son. You don’t need to be afraid. It’s passing quickly this time.”

He hesitated. “I think.”

“Good enough for me,” I said, climbing to my feet.

The air smelled of explosives-of gunpowder, smoke, and burned flesh. The growing sunlight was reflecting off the steel surfaces around us. I found it almost blinding, and the sun wasn’t even fully up yet.

Prof looked at the sunlight as if he hadn’t noticed it before. He actually smiled, and seemed more and more like his old self. He strode out across the field, walking toward something in the rubble.

Megan’s personality changed when she used her powers too, I thought. In the elevator shaft, on the cycle … she changed. Became brasher, more arrogant, even more hateful. It had passed quickly each time, but she’d barely used her powers, so maybe the effects on her had been weaker.

If that was true, then spending time with the Reckoners-when she needed to be careful not to use her abilities lest she give herself away-had served to keep her from being affected. The people she was meant to have infiltrated had instead turned her more human.

Prof came walking back with something in his hand. A skull, blackened and charred. Metal glinted through the soot. A steel skull. He turned it toward me. There was a groove in the right cheekbone, like the trail left by a bullet.

“Huh,” I said, taking the skull. “If the bullet could hurt his bones, why couldn’t the blast?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if his death triggered his tranfersion abilities,” Prof said. “Turning what was left of him as he died-his bones, or some of them-into steel.”

Seemed like a stretch to me. But then, strange things happened around Epics. There were oddities, especially when they died.

As I regarded the skull, Prof called Tia. I distractedly caught the sounds of weeping, exclamations of joy, and an exchange that ended with her turning the copter back for us. I looked up, then found myself walking toward the tunnel entrance into the stadium innards.

“David?” Prof called.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I want to get something.”

“The copter will be here in a few minutes. I suggest we not be here when Enforcement comes in earnest to see what happened.”

I started running, but he didn’t object further. As I entered the darkness, I turned my mobile’s light up to full, illuminating the tall, cavernous corridors. I ran past Nightwielder’s body suspended in steel. Past the place where Abraham had detonated the explosion.

I slowed, peeking into concession stands and restrooms. I didn’t have long to look, and I soon felt like a fool. What did I expect to find? She’d left. She was …

Voices.

I froze, then turned about in the dim corridor. There. I walked forward, eventually finding a steel door frozen open and leading into what appeared to be a janitorial chamber. I could almost make out the voice. It was familiar. Not Megan’s voice, but …

“… deserved to live through this, even if I didn’t,” the voice said. Gunfire followed, sounding distant. “You know, I think I fell for you that first day. Stupid, huh? Love at first sight. What a cliché.”

Yes, I knew that voice. It was mine. I stopped at the doorway, feeling like I was in a dream as I listened to my own words. Words spoken as I defended Megan’s dying body. I continued listening as the entire scene played out. Right up until the end. “I don’t know if I love you,” my voice said. “But whatever the emotion is, it’s the strongest one I’ve felt in years. Thank you.”

The recording stopped. Then it started playing again from the beginning.

I stepped into the small room. Megan sat on the floor in the corner, staring at the mobile in her hands. She turned down the volume when I entered, but she didn’t stop looking at the screen.

“I keep a secret video and audio feed,” she whispered. “The camera’s embedded in my skin, above my eye. It starts up if I close my eyes for too long, or if my heart rate goes too high or too low. It sends the data to one of my caches in the city. I started doing that after I died the first few times. It’s always disorienting to reincarnate. It helps if I can watch what happened leading up to my death.”

“Megan, I …” What could I say?

“Megan is my real name,” she said. “Isn’t that funny? I felt I could give it to the Reckoners because that person, the person I was, is dead. Megan Tarash. She’s never had any connection to Firefight. She was just another ordinary human.”

She looked up at me, and in the light of her mobile screen I could see tears in her eyes. “You carried me all that way,” she whispered. “I watched it, when I was first reborn this time. Your actions didn’t make sense to me. I thought you must have needed something from me. Now I see something different in what you did.”

“We’ve got to go, Megan,” I said, stepping forward. “Prof can explain better than I can. But right now, just come with me.”

“My mind changes,” she whispered. “When I die, I am reborn out of light a day later. Somewhere random, not where my body was, not where I died, but nearby. Different each time. I … I don’t feel like myself, now that that’s happened. Not the self I want to be. It doesn’t make sense. What do you trust, David? What do you trust when your own thoughts and emotions seem to hate you?”

“Prof can-”

“Stop,” she said, raising a hand. “Don’t … don’t come closer. Just leave me. I need to think.”

I stepped forward.

“Stop!” The walls faded, and fires seemed to flame up around us. The floor warped beneath me, making me nauseous. I stumbled.

“You’ve got to come with me, Megan.”

“Take another step and I’ll shoot myself,” she said, reaching for a gun on the floor beside her. “I’ll do it, David. Death is nothing to me. Not anymore.”

I backed away, hands up.

“I need to think about this,” she mumbled again, looking back at her mobile.

“David.” A voice in my ear. Prof’s voice. “David, we’re leaving now.”

“Don’t use your powers, Megan,” I said to her. “Please. You have to understand. They’re what change you. Don’t use them for a few days. Hide, and your mind will get clearer.”

She kept staring at the screen. The recording started over.

“Megan …”

She raised the gun toward me without shifting her gaze. The tears dripped down her cheeks.

“David!” Prof yelled.

I turned and ran for the copter. I didn’t know what else to do.