We’d want to let this knowledge out sooner or later—spread it to the lorists of the world and see if they could start turning Epics from the darkness. But first we needed to test what we’d discovered and find out if we could even make it work on other Epics.
I had big plans, plans to change the world, and they all started with one trap. One important hit, perhaps the hardest ever pulled by the Reckoners.
“I’ll tell you the secret to turning Epics away from their madness, Knighthawk,” I decided, “but I want you to promise to keep it quiet for now. And I want you to equip us. Give us what we need.”
“You’re going to bring him down, aren’t you?” Knighthawk said. “Jonathan Phaedrus. Limelight, as they call him now. You’re going to kill Prof.”
“No,” I said softly, meeting his eyes. “We’re going to do something far, far more difficult. We’re going to bring him back.”
KNIGHTHAWK had the mannequin carry him.
I got a better look at the thing, walking beside it. It wasn’t your average, everyday store mannequin. It had articulated wooden fingers and a more solid body than I had expected. It was really more of a large marionette, only without the strings.
And it was strong. It carried Knighthawk with ease, sliding its arms through straps in some kind of harness Knighthawk wore. The whole arrangement made the mannequin look like it was hugging him from behind, its arms across his stomach and chest, with Knighthawk remaining upright and strapped in place, his feet dangling a few inches off the ground.
It didn’t look comfortable or normal. Still, Knighthawk chatted conversationally while we walked, as if it were perfectly natural for a quadriplegic to be carted around by a tall wooden golem.
“So that’s basically it,” I said to him as we made our way down the nondescript corridor, heading toward Knighthawk’s armory. “The weaknesses are tied to fears. If an Epic confronts the fear, banishes it, then they can drive back the darkness.”
“Mostly,” Megan said from behind us. Abraham had gone up above to fetch Mizzy and Cody, as we’d decided that—one way or another—we were going to have to trust Knighthawk. We didn’t have any other option.
Knighthawk grunted. “Fear. Seems so simple.”
“Yes and no,” I said. “I don’t think a lot of Epics, consumed by their powers, like to think about being weak. They don’t confront these things; that’s basically the problem.”
“I still wonder why no one else has made the connection,” Knighthawk said, sounding skeptical.
“We’ve made it,” Megan said softly. “Every Epic thinks about this, I guarantee it. It’s just that we think about it all the wrong way—we connect fears and our weakness, but we connect them in reverse of the truth.
“It’s the nightmares. They’re maddening. They drive you from your bed, gasping, sweating, and smelling blood. The nightmares are about your weakness. The loss of power, the return to mortality, the return to being crassly common, so a simple accident could end you. It makes sense that we’d be afraid of the thing that could kill us, so the nightmares seem normal in a way. But we never realized that weaknesses grew out of our fears—the fears came first, and then the weaknesses. Not the other way around.”
Knighthawk and I both stopped in the hallway, looking back at her. Megan met our gaze, defiant as ever, but I could see the cracks. Sparks…the things this woman had been forced to live with. What we’d discovered was helping her, but in some ways it was also prying those cracks wider. Exposing things inside her that she’d worked hard to cover up.
She’d done terrible things in the past, serving Steelheart. We didn’t talk about it. She’d escaped that by being forced to not use her powers while infiltrating the Reckoners.
“We can do this, Knighthawk,” I said. “We can discover Prof’s weakness, then use it against him. Only instead of killing him, we’ll lay a trap that makes him confront his fears. We’ll bring him back and prove that there’s another solution to the Epic problem.”
“It won’t work,” Knighthawk said. “He knows you, and he knows Reckoner protocol. Calamity—he wrote Reckoner protocol. He’ll be ready for you.”
“See, that’s the thing,” I said. “He knows us, yes. But we also know him. We’ll be able to figure out his weakness far more easily than with other Epics. And beyond that, we know something important.”
“Which is?” he demanded.
“Deep down,” I said, “Prof wants us to win. He’ll be ready to die, so he’ll be surprised when what we actually do is save him.”
Knighthawk regarded me. “You have a strangely persuasive way about you, young man.”
“You have no idea,” Megan muttered.
“We’re going to need technology to beat him though,” I said. “So I’m eager to see what you have.”
“Well, I’ve got a few things I could lend you,” Knighthawk said, starting down the corridor again. “But contrary to what people assume, this place isn’t some kind of massive repository for hidden technology. Pretty much every time I get something working, I immediately sell it. All those drones aren’t cheap, you know. I have to order them out of Germany, and they’re a pain to unpack. Speaking of which, I’m going to bill you for the ones you destroyed.”
“We’re here begging, Knighthawk,” I said, catching up to him. “How do you expect us to pay you?”
“By all accounts you’re a resourceful kid. You’ll think of something. A frozen blood sample from Jonathan will do, assuming your crazy plan fails and you end up having to kill him.”
“It won’t fail.”
“Yeah? Taking a look at the history of the Reckoners, I’d never bet money on the plan that doesn’t intend to leave some bodies behind. But we’ll see.” His mannequin nodded toward Megan.
That mannequin…something about it struck me. I thought for a moment, and then it clicked in my mind like the mandibles of a giant poker-playing beetle.
“The Wooden Soul!” I said. “You got some of her DNA?”
Knighthawk twisted his head to look at me as we walked. “How in the world…”
“Pretty easy connection, once I thought about it. There aren’t many puppeteer Epics out there.”
“She lived in a remote Punjabi village!” Knighthawk said. “And has been dead for almost ten years.”
“David’s got a thing about Epics,” Megan said from behind. “I’d call him obsessed, but that doesn’t do it justice.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I’m like a—”
“No,” Knighthawk said.
“This makes sense. I am like—”
“No, really,” Knighthawk interrupted. “Nobody wants to hear it, kid.”
I deflated. On the floor, a little cleaning drone zipped up. It bumped into my foot in what seemed like a vindictive motion, then scuttled away.
Knighthawk’s mannequin pointed at me, though it had to turn sideways to do it, as its arms were strapped into carrying Knighthawk, its hands peeking out the sides. “Obsession with the Epics isn’t healthy. You need to watch yourself.”
“Ironic words, coming from a man who has built his career by making use of Epic powers—and is using them right now to get around.”
“And what makes you think I don’t have the same obsession? Let’s just say I speak from experience. Epics are strange, wonderful, and terrible all at once. Don’t let yourself get drawn in by that. It can lead you to…difficult places.”
Something in his voice made me think of the laboratory, with the body parts floating so casually in vats. This man wasn’t quite sane.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
Together we continued down the corridor, passing an open doorway, which I couldn’t help peeking into. The small room beyond was strikingly clean, with a large metal box in the center. It looked kind of like a coffin, an impression not helped by the room’s dim lighting and sterile, cold smell. Past the coffin stood a large wooden display case shaped like a bookshelf with large cubbies. Each held some small item,
many of which seemed to be clothing. Caps, shirts, little boxes.
The cubbies were labeled, and I could barely make out a few: Demo, The Abstract Man, Blastweave…
The names of Epics. Perhaps those freezer chests were where Knighthawk kept his DNA samples, but this was where he kept his trophies. Curiously, one of the largest cubbies had no plaque, only a vest and what looked like a pair of gloves, set out prominently for display with their own spotlight.
“You won’t find motivators in there,” Knighthawk noted. “Just…mementos.”
“And how would I find motivators?” I asked, looking to Knighthawk. “What are they really, Knighthawk?”
Knighthawk smiled. “You have no idea how hard it has been to keep people from figuring out the answer to that, kid. Trick is, I need people out there to collect material for me, but I don’t want Joe and Sally knowing how to make their own motivators. That means misinformation. Half truths.”
“You aren’t the only one who makes these things, Knighthawk,” Megan said, stepping up beside us. “Romerocorp does it, as does ITC over in London. It’s not some grand secret.”
“Oh, but it is,” Knighthawk said. “The other companies know how important it is to keep that secret, you see. I don’t think even Jonathan knows the whole truth of it.” He smiled as he hung limply from his mannequin’s arms. I was getting tired of that smirk already.
The mannequin turned and headed down the hall toward another door.
“Wait,” I said, hurrying after him. “We’re not going in that room with the mementos?”
“Nope,” Knighthawk said. “No food in there.” His mannequin pushed open this second door, and I could see a stove and refrigerator beyond, though the linoleum floor and slablike table in the center made it feel more like the cafeteria back at the Factory than a kitchen.
I glanced at Megan as she joined me in the hallway, right outside the door. The mannequin went inside and deposited Knighthawk into an overstuffed easy chair beside a table. Then it crossed to the refrigerator, rummaging for something I couldn’t see.
“I could do with a bite,” she noted.
“Doesn’t all this feel a little morbid to you?” I asked softly. “We’re talking about machines made from the corpses of your people, Megan.”
“It’s not like I’m a different species. I’m still human.”
“You have different DNA though.”
“And I’m still human. Don’t try to understand it. It will drive you crazy.”
It was a common sentiment; trying to explain Epics with science was maddening at best. When America had passed the Capitulation Act, which declared Epics exempt from the legal system, one senator had explained that we shouldn’t expect human laws to be able to bind them when they didn’t even obey the laws of physics.
But, call me a fool, I still wanted to understand. I needed it to make sense.
I looked at Megan. “I don’t care what you are, as long as you’re you, Megan. But I don’t like the way we use corpses without understanding what we’re doing to them, or how it all works.”
“Then we’ll pry it out of him,” she whispered, drawing close. “You’re right, motivators might be important. What if the way they work is related to the weaknesses, or the fears?”
I nodded.
More sounds came from the kitchen. Popcorn? I looked in, surprised to see Knighthawk relaxing in his easy chair while his mannequin stood next to the microwave popping popcorn.
“Popcorn?” I called to him. “For breakfast?”
“The apocalypse hit us over a decade ago, kid,” he called back. “We live in a frontier, a wasteland.”
“And that has to do with this how?”
“Means social mores are dead and buried,” he said. “Good riddance. I’ll eat whatever I sparking want for breakfast.”
I went to go in, but Megan caught me by the shoulder, leaning closer. She smelled like smoke—like detonated ordnance, gunpowder from spent bullet casings, and burning wood from a forest set aflame. It was a wonderful, heady scent, better than any perfume.
“What was it you were going to say earlier?” she asked. “When you were talking about yourself and Knighthawk cut you off, wouldn’t let you finish?”
“It was nothing. Just me being stupid.”
Megan held on, meeting my eyes, waiting.
I sighed. “You were talking about how obsessed I am. And that’s not it. I’m like…well, I’m like a room-sized, steam-powered, robotic toenail-clipping machine.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“I can basically do only one thing,” I explained, “but damn it, I’m going to do that one thing really, really well.”
Megan smiled. A beautiful sight. She kissed me then, for some reason. “I love you, David Charleston.”
I grinned. “You sure you can love a giant robotic toenail clipper?”
“You’re you, whatever you are,” she said. “And that’s what matters.” She paused. “But please don’t grow to room-sized. That would be awkward.”
She let go, and we entered the kitchen to discuss the fate of the world over popcorn.
WE settled down at the large table. It had a fancy glass top that revealed black slate underneath. There was a majestic sense to it, which seemed completely at odds with the peeling linoleum and faded paint of the kitchen. Knighthawk’s mannequin sat primly on a stool next to the man’s large chair, then began to feed him pieces of popcorn one at a time.
I had no more than fuzzy knowledge of the Wooden Soul, the Epic from whom he’d stolen powers to create such a servant. Supposedly she’d been able to control marionettes with her mind. Which meant this thing in the suit wasn’t autonomous; it was more like an extra set of limbs for Knighthawk to use. Likely he wore some kind of device with a motivator that gave him the ability to control the mannequin.
Voices outside the room announced new arrivals. A little drone scuttled in on the floor—Knighthawk had sent it to lead Abraham, and perhaps to keep him from poking into places he didn’t belong. Soon afterward, the tall Canadian man entered and nodded to us.
The other two members of my team followed him. Cody appeared first, a lanky man in his late thirties. He wore a camouflage hunting jacket and cap—though not specifically for this mission. He basically always wore camo. He hadn’t shaved in days, which he’d explained was a “true Highlander tradition used to prepare for battle.”
“Is that popcorn?” he asked in his strong Southern drawl. He walked over and snatched a handful from the bowl right out of the mannequin’s hand. “Brilliant! Boy, Abraham, you weren’t kidding ’bout the creepy wooden robot thing.”
Mizzy bounced in behind him. Dark-skinned and slight of build, she wore her wild curly hair pulled back so that it exploded in an enormous puff, kind of like an Afro mushroom cloud. She took a place at the table as far from Megan as possible, and shot me an encouraging smile.
I tried not to think of the missing team members. Val and Exel, dead at Prof’s hand. Tia, lost somewhere, probably dead as well. Though we were usually silent about such things, Abraham had confided in me that he’d known of two other Reckoner cells. He’d tried to contact them while fleeing Newcago, but he’d had no response. It seemed Prof had gotten to them first.
Cody crunched down his handful of popcorn. “How does a fellow score some more of this? Don’t know if y’all realize, but we’ve had an exhausting day.”
“Yes,” Knighthawk said, “an exhausting morning spent attacking my home and trying to rob me.”
“Now, now,” Cody said. “Don’t be sore. Why, in parts of the old country, it’s considered polite to introduce yourself with a fist to the face. Yes indeed, a man won’t think you’re serious unless you come in swinging.”
“Dare I ask…,” Knighthawk said. “Of what old country do you speak?”
“He thinks he’s Scottish,” Abraham said.
“I am Scottish, ya big slab of doubt and monotony,” Cody said, climbing from his chair—apparently determined
to fix his own popcorn, since nobody had offered to do it for him.
“Name one city in Scotland,” Abraham said, “other than Edinburgh.”
“Ah yes, the Burgh of Edin,” Cody said. “Where they buried old Adam and Eve, who were—naturally—Scots.”
“Naturally,” Abraham said. “A city name, please?”
“That’s easy. I can name a ton. London. Paris. Dublin.”
“Those—”
“—are completely Scottish,” Cody said. “We founded them, you see, and then those other folks up and stole them from us. Y’all need to learn your history. Want some popcorn?”
“No. Thank you,” Abraham said, giving me a bemused smile.
I leaned toward Knighthawk. “You promised us technology.”
“Promised is a strong word, kid.”
“I want that healing device,” Abraham said.
“The harmsway? Not a chance. I don’t have a backup.”
“You call it that too?” Megan asked, frowning.
“One of Jonathan’s old jokes,” Knighthawk said, his mannequin shrugging. “It just stuck. Anyway, mine isn’t nearly as efficient as Jonathan’s own healing powers. It’s all I got though, and you aren’t taking it. But I have two other bits of fun I can lend you. One—”
“Wait,” Mizzy said. “You’ve got a healing machine, and you still walk around with Smiles McCreepy there? Why not, you know, fix your legs?”
Knighthawk gave her a flat stare, and his mannequin shook its head. As if asking about his disability broke some kind of taboo.
“How much do you know about Epic healing, young lady?” he asked.
“Weeellll,” Mizzy said, “the Epics we kill tend to stay pretty dead. So I don’t get to see healing often.”
“Epic healing,” Knighthawk said, “doesn’t change your DNA or your immune system. It merely fixes damage to cells. My current state is not the result of an accident; if it were no more than a severed spinal cord, I’d be fine. The problem runs far deeper, and while I’ve found that healing returns some sensation in my limbs, they soon degrade again. So I use Manny instead.”