“All right,” I said to the team. “I figure this is as good a place as any to get some information. We need intel on Larcener, if we’re going to have any shot at guessing his weakness. Go do what it is you do best.”
“Make stuff up?” Cody asked, rubbing his chin.
“So you admit it!” Mizzy said, pointing at him.
“Course I admit it, lass. I have seven PhDs. That kind of time spent learning makes a fellow very self-aware.” He hesitated. “Course, all seven are in Scottish literature and culture, from different schools. A lad’s got to be thorough in his approach to his expertise, you see.”
I shook my head, approaching the overseer. We wore different faces now, but the man didn’t care. He put us to work as easily as he had before, hauling crates from the UTC shipment. The team spread out, engaging the other workers, listening to gossip. I managed to get myself assigned to unloading crates from one of the trucks.
“This is a good place for intel,” Abraham said to me softly as he stepped up to get a crate. “But I can’t help thinking you have an ulterior motive, David. What are you up to?”
I smiled, slid the broken mobile from my pocket, and wrapped it in a dark cloth. I picked a specific crate, then wedged the slim mobile between the slats in the wood near one of the corners. As I’d hoped, it was practically invisible in there.
I handed the crate to Abraham and winked. “Put this with the others.”
He raised an eyebrow toward me, then peeked into the crate. He grinned immediately, then obeyed.
The rest of the afternoon was consumed by work, with us carrying boxes and chatting up the other workers. I didn’t learn much, as I was distracted by my plans, but I passed Abraham and Cody engaged in several relaxed conversations with other workers. Mizzy seemed to have the most talent for it.
It would have been nice to have Exel along. That man had been wide as a boat and as morbid as a…um…sinking boat, but he’d been good with people. And good with information.
Thinking about him made me sick. I had convinced myself Prof couldn’t be blamed, but sparks…I’d really liked Exel.
I forced myself to chat up one of the other workers. The older man had an accent that reminded me of my grandmother’s. As we walked to the warehouse—a different one this time than last—he seemed to know the city well. He didn’t know much about Larcener, though he did complain that the Epic didn’t rule strongly enough.
“In the old country,” the man explained, “they’d have made short work of a fellow like Larcener. He lets all the Epics in town run about—he’s like a grandfather without any sense to discipline his grandkids. A stronger hand, that’s what’s needed here. Police, rules, curfews. People complain about that kind of thing, but it’s where we get order. Society.”
We passed Cody, who was sharing a cigarette with another worker. Cody appeared to be loafing, but if you watched him you could see that he was carefully minding the locations of the other Reckoners. If you needed to know where someone was, Cody was the person you asked.
I found myself comfortably entering conversations with several other workers. I realized after some time that I was actually more at ease here than I’d been in Babilar, where the people were more open, the society less oppressive. I didn’t like what was being done to Ildithia; I didn’t like how scared the people were, how divided and brutal life here was proving to be. But I was accustomed to it.
Eventually, we accepted our grain rations and made our way to the hideout, sharing intel. Nobody knew Larcener’s weakness, though we hadn’t expected that it would simply be open knowledge. The problem was, nobody seemed to have seen Larcener either. He kept to himself, and there were a shockingly small number of rumors. Mostly about Epics whose powers he’d stolen, leaving them as common people.
I listened to it all with a growing sense of disappointment. It was evening by the time we arrived home, and Mizzy used her mobile to double-check the security sensors on the door. We piled into our narrow pencil box of a hideout and split our separate ways. Cody asked Abraham for the rtich, which he wanted to practice with. I still hadn’t been able to get it to do much; maybe he’d have more luck. Megan retreated to her room, Abraham went to tinker with some of the weapons, and Mizzy went to make a sandwich.
I settled down on the ground in the main room on the bottom floor, my back against the wall. The only light was from my mobile, which eventually dimmed. I’d always chided Prof for taking things too slowly, for being too careful. Yet here I was in Ildithia, and my entire planning meeting had amounted to “Yup, we sure do need to stop Prof. And find Larcener’s weakness. Anyone got any ideas? Nope? Oh well, good job anyway.”
Looking back, dealing with Steelheart seemed easy in comparison. I’d had ten years to prepare for that. I’d had Prof and Tia to work out the details of the plan.
What was I doing here?
A shadow fell on the steps and Megan appeared, lit from the kitchen above. “Hey,” she said. “David? Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Just thinking,” I said.
She continued down, eventually taking a seat on the ground beside me, lighting her mobile and setting it in front of us for illumination. “We’ve packed about forty different guns into the city,” she muttered, “but not a one of us thought to bring a sparking cushion.”
“You surprised?” I asked.
“Not in the least. Good job today.”
“Good job?” I said. “We didn’t come up with anything.”
“Nothing is ever decided at the early meetings, David. You got everyone pointed in the right direction, got them thinking. That’s important.”
I shrugged.
“Nice work with the hidden mobile too,” she noted.
“You saw that?”
“Had me confused until I checked in the box. You think it will work?”
“Worth a try,” I said. “I mean, if…” I trailed off as an indicator light hanging on the wall blinked softly.
That meant someone had walked into the entryway of the apartment building beside us. Our fake door led into that entrance, and was one of our security threats. Cody had hidden it by covering some old boards—taken from cargo crates he’d scrounged up—with a thin layer of salt on one side and a black cloth backing. From the outside it looked like any other section of the wall, but you could push it in and slide it open to make a doorway. He warned that if someone was in the entryway, they might be able to hear something coming from the false section. Hence the light, and the instructions for everyone on the ground floor to be quiet if someone was outside the door.
Megan draped her arm around me, yawning, as we waited for the people to move on. We needed a pressure plate out there to let us know when they were gone, or maybe a camera or something.
Our phones flashed, and the hidden door rattled.
I blinked, then scrambled to my feet, following Megan, who had moved a hair faster than me. Both of us had handguns out a second later, leveled at the door, while Abraham cursed in the room nearby. He charged out a moment later, with his minigun at the ready.
The door wobbled, scraped, then slipped to the side. “Hum,” a voice said outside. I imagined Prof bursting through, having traced us. Suddenly all of our preparations seemed simplistic and meaningless.
I had led the team to its destruction.
The door opened all the way, revealing a backlit figure. It wasn’t Prof, but a younger man, tall and lanky, with pale skin and short black hair. He looked us over, not a glimmer of concern in his eyes, despite facing three armed people.
“That door isn’t going to do at all,” the man said. “Far too easy to get through. I thought you people would be capable!”
“Who are you?” Abraham demanded, eyeing me, waiting to see if I gave the order to fire.
I didn’t, though I knew this man. I had several pictures of him in my files.
Larcener, emperor of Atlanta, had come to pay us a visit.
“OH, put those things down,” Larcene
r said, stepping into the hideout and pushing the door closed. “Bullets can’t hurt me. You’ll only draw attention.”
Unfortunately, he was right. This man was invulnerable in multiple ways. Our guns might as well have been wet noodles.
None of us lowered our weapons.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “Why are you here?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Larcener had an unexpectedly nasal voice. “Your friend wants to kill me. He’s been tearing the whole city apart looking for me! My servants are useless, my Epics too cowardly. They’ll switch sides on me in an eyeblink.”
He walked forward—making all three of us jump—and kept right on talking. “I figured you’d know how to hide from him, if anyone does. This place looks horridly uncomfortable. Not a cushion in sight, and it smells like wet socks.” He shivered visibly, then poked into Abraham’s workroom.
We crowded around the doorway as, inside, he spun and flopped backward. A large stuffed chair materialized out of nowhere, catching him. He lounged there. “Someone get me something to drink. And try not to make too much noise. I’m tired. You have no idea how nerve-racking it is to be hunted like a common rat.”
The three of us lowered our weapons, baffled by the slender Epic, who had started muttering under his breath as he lay, eyes closed, on his new easy chair.
“Um…,” I finally ventured. “And if we don’t obey you?”
Abraham and Megan looked at me as if I were crazy, but it seemed a valid question to me.
Larcener cracked open an eye. “Huh?”
“What are you going to do,” I said, “if we don’t obey you?”
“You have to obey me. I’m an Epic.”
“You do realize,” I said slowly, “that we’re the Reckoners.”
“Yes.”
“So…we kinda disobey Epics all the time. I mean, if we listened to what Epics said, we’d be pretty bad at our job.”
“Oh?” Larcener said. “And didn’t you spend your entire career doing exactly what an Epic told you?”
Sparks. Did everyone know about that? I supposed it wasn’t too tough to guess, now that he’d moved into town. Still. I opened my mouth to object further, but Megan pulled me from the room by my arm, Abraham retreating with us, awkwardly hefting his gun. Cody and Mizzy were on the steps leading down, looking concerned.
We ended up in the middle-floor kitchen, arranged around a narrow saltstone table, speaking in hushed tones.
“Is that really him?” Mizzy asked. “Like, the big dude, the king of the city, wazzisnamemagoo?”
“He materialized a chair,” I said. “That’s a very rare power. It’s him.”
“Spaaaarks,” Mizzy said. “You wanna sneak out and blow the place? I got the explosives all ready.”
“Wouldn’t harm him,” Megan said. “Unless we can engage his weakness.”
“Beyond that, this might be his decoy,” I said. “Though I’m not sure how likely it is, Larcener’s real body could be somewhere else. It would be basically unconscious, in a kind of trance. Breathing, heart beating, but not truly awake.”
“Seems a dangerous gamble,” Megan said, “considering how scared he’s acting. Would he want to leave his real self unprotected like that?”
“Who knows,” I said.
“I wonder either way,” Abraham said, “why is he here? His claim of seeking refuge is a front, is it not? He is a most powerful Epic. He wouldn’t need to—”
Footsteps in the stairwell. We all turned as Larcener climbed up to the second floor. “Where is my drink?” he demanded. “You seriously couldn’t remember even one simple order? I can already see that my assumption of your limited capacities was a gross overestimation.”
The team held weapons in nervous grips, subtly turning to form a unified front against the creature. A High Epic. Prowling through our base unrestrained. We were specks of mud on the window; he was a giant, vengeful bottle of spray cleaner.
Extra-strength lemon scent.
I carefully stood from my seat. The others had all been Reckoners long before me, trained by Prof to be careful, quiet. They’d want to bolt—they’d want to distract Larcener, then flee and set up a different base.
I saw an opportunity instead. “You want to work together,” I said to Larcener. “Since we have a common enemy, I’m willing to hear your offer.”
Larcener sniffed. “I just want to avoid being murdered. The whole city is turning against me. The whole city. Me, the one who protected them, gave them food and shelter in this miserable world! Humans are thankless creatures.”
Megan stiffened at that. No, she did not like the philosophy that considered humans and Epics to be different species.
“Larcener,” I said, “my team is not going to become your servants. I’ll let you stay with us, on certain conditions—but we are doing you a favor.”
I could practically hear the breath catch in the throats of the others. Making demands of a High Epic was a sure way to get yourself exploded. But he hadn’t hurt us so far, and sometimes this was the only option. Either you juggled the fire, or you let it burn everything down.
“He’s made you insolent, I see,” Larcener said. “Gave you too much freedom, let you participate. If you bring him down, it will be his own fault.”
I stood my ground. Finally Larcener’s knees bent, a stool—with a plush top—forming for him to settle upon. He slumped. “I could kill you all.”
“You could try, kiddo,” Megan muttered.
I stepped forward, and Larcener looked up at me with a sharp glance, then cringed. I’d never seen this behavior from an Epic of his stature. Most of them stood defiant even in the middle of a trap, confident they’d be able to escape it. The only thing that ever seemed to make them uncomfortable was the moment when their weakness exposed them.
I stooped to meet Larcener’s eyes. He looked like nothing so much as a frightened child, despite being a few years older than me. He wrapped his arms around himself and turned aside. “I suppose I have no choice,” he said. “He’ll destroy me otherwise. What are your conditions?”
I blinked. Honestly…I hadn’t gotten that far. I looked toward the others, who shrugged.
“Um, no killing any of us?” Mizzy said.
“What about the one in the stupid clothing?” Larcener asked, pointing at Cody, in his camo gear and old sports team T-shirt.
“Not even him,” I said. Mizzy was probably right to spell it out. Epics could have…strange ideas about social mores. “First rule is that you don’t hurt us or anyone else we bring here. You stay in the base, and don’t use your powers to make our lives difficult.”
“Fine,” Larcener snapped, wrapping his arms around himself tighter. “But when you’re done, I get my city back, right?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I said. “For now, I want to know how you found us. If Prof can repeat what you did, then we’ll need to pull out immediately.”
“Bah, you’re fine. I can smell Epics; he can’t.”
“Smell them?” I asked.
“Sure. Like food being cooked, all right? It lets me find Epics to…you know…” Steal their powers.
So he was a dowser as well as everything else. I shared a look with Megan, who seemed troubled. We hadn’t considered that someone might find us by tracking her powers. Fortunately dowsing was a very rare ability, though it certainly made sense as part of Larcener’s original portfolio.
“Dowsers,” I said, turning back to him. “Are there any others in the city?”
“No, though that monster who led you has some disc-shaped devices that can do it.”
We were safe then. Those discs were like the one we’d had in Newcago; it had required direct contact, and Megan could fool it with her illusions. Prof shouldn’t be able to sniff us out.
“There,” Larcener said. “See, I’m cooperating. Will someone finally get me something to drink?”
“Can’t you just make one?” Abraham asked.
&nbs
p; “No,” Larcener snapped, and didn’t offer any further explanation, though I knew anyway. He could create only a limited mass of items, and they faded when he wasn’t concentrating on them. Food or drinks he created wouldn’t sate, as they’d eventually vanish.
“Very well,” I said. “You can stay—but as we said, no hurting us. That includes taking powers from anyone here.”
“I already promised that, idiot.”
I nodded to Cody, then gestured at Larcener.
Cody tapped the front of his cap in agreement. “Now, what would y’all like to drink?” he said to Larcener. “We have lukewarm water and warm water. Both taste like salt. But on the bright side, I’ve tested both on old Abraham there, and I’m reasonably confident they won’t give ya the runs.”
He would fetch Larcener some water, keep him company, and see what he could find out about the man. I grabbed the other three, walking below while Cody distracted the Epic. As we reached the bottom floor, Megan took me by the arm. “I don’t like this,” she hissed.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Abraham said. “High Epics are erratic and untrustworthy. Present company excluded.”
“There’s something odd about him,” I said, shaking my head, looking back up the stairwell and listening to Cody’s voice drift down as he started telling Larcener a story about his grandmother over in Scotland. She’d swum to Denmark, apparently?
“I’ve felt that darkness, David,” Megan said. “Keeping him in here is like snuggling up to a bomb, content that it’s not going to explode simply because you can still hear it ticking.”
“Nice simile,” I said absently.
“Thanks.”
“But inaccurate,” I said. “He doesn’t follow the pattern, Megan. He’s scared, and less defiant than simply arrogant. I don’t think he’s dangerous. To us right now, at least.”
“Are you willing to bet our lives on that feeling, David?” Mizzy asked.
“I’ve already bet your lives by bringing you here.” It was discomforting to say, but it was true. “I’ve said it before: the only way we’re going to win this war against the Epics is by using other Epics. Are we going to turn away one of the most powerful when he seems willing to work with us?”