“Bah,” the first voice said. “You think you could do a better job, Newton? You’d lose control of this place in two weeks flat.”
I frowned at that comment, but only then did I realize the conversation was growing louder. With a start at my own stupidity, I twitched toward the stairs leading down.
Mizzy grabbed my shoulder and pressed the handgun into me more firmly. By the light of her hood, I could see her lips as she mouthed, “Don’t move.”
I pointed outside. “They’re coming in here!” I hissed.
Mizzy hesitated and I risked pulling out of her grip, then scrambled down the steps as quietly as I could. She followed reluctantly. It wasn’t happenstance that Newton had been coming this direction; she’d been looking for this very building.
Indeed, I heard the door open above us. I tried to move as quietly as possible down the stairwell, but soon found myself face to face with a wall of plants. Sparks! No way through. The stairwell was completely overgrown.
I spun around and put my back to the plants, heart pounding. Mizzy, still wearing a glowing cloak, joined me.
“I’m out of sight,” Newton’s voice echoed softly in the stairwell from above. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re following. You want to keep on with this?”
Silence.
“Yeah, fine,” Newton said. “Then what am I to do?”
More silence. She was talking to Regalia and had wanted to duck out of sight while she did it, so her tail wouldn’t overhear her or record her lip movements. Ordinarily that would be smart-except for the fact that she’d chosen a location populated by two Reckoners.
Well, one and a half Reckoners.
“Yeah, I suppose,” Newton said.
More silence.
“Fine. But I don’t like being bait. Remember that.” The broken door above opened, then swung closed. Newton was gone.
“What did you tell her?” Mizzy demanded, stepping away from me and leveling the gun in my direction, pack still over her shoulder. “She knows we’re following her? How much have you betrayed?”
“Nothing and everything,” I said with a sigh, letting myself slide down into a seated position, my back to the vine-covered wall. Now that the tense moment had passed, I realized just how much I hurt from being thrown around by Mizzy. I’d started to take for granted that such things wouldn’t hurt as much as they should, because they hadn’t in a long time. Prof’s forcefields had done their job well.
“What do you mean?” Mizzy demanded.
“Regalia knew about all our plans already. She appeared to me in the base.”
“What?” Mizzy looked appalled. “You let water into the base?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the important part. She appeared there. Mizzy, that’s supposedly outside of her range. Regalia has been playing us all along, and the plan is in serious danger.”
Mizzy’s face, shadowed and lit only by the glow of her cloak, was creased in worry. She bit her lip, but when I shifted, she straightened the arm holding the gun-and her grip didn’t waver. She was young and inexperienced, but she wasn’t incompetent. My aching shoulder and eye were proof of that.
“I need to contact the others,” she said.
“Which is why I came to you.”
“You put a knife to my back!”
“I wanted to explain myself,” I said, “before you brought the Reckoners down on me. Look, I think Regalia is planning to kill Prof. She’s been leading us along, setting up a trap for him. She knows he’s the only one who can stop her from dominating, so she wants to bring him down.”
Mizzy wavered. “You’re working with her.”
“Regalia?”
“No. Firefight.”
Oh. “Yes,” I said softly. “I am.”
“You admit it?”
I nodded.
“She killed Sam!”
“I’ve seen the video. Sam pulled a gun on her, Mizzy, and she’s a trained marksman. He tried to shoot her, so she shot back first.”
“But she’s evil, David,” Mizzy pleaded, stepping forward.
“Megan saved my life,” I said. “When Obliteration tried to kill me. That’s how I got away from him, when you were otherwise occupied.”
“Prof said she was toying with you,” Mizzy said. “He said you’d been compromised by your … affection for her.” Mizzy looked at me as if begging for it to not be true. “Even if he’s wrong, David, she’s an Epic. It’s our job to kill them.”
I sat in that darkened stairwell, eye smarting-I could still see with it, fortunately, but it hurt. Mizzy had gotten me pretty good. I sat there wondering, remembering. Thinking about the kid I’d been, studying every Epic. Hating them all. Making my plans to kill Steelheart.
I knew what Mizzy felt like. I’d been her. It was crazy, but I guess I wasn’t that person anymore. The shift had started back on that day I’d defeated Steelheart. I’d flown away in the copter, carrying his skull in my hands, overwhelmed. My father’s murderer dead, but only because of the help of another Epic.
What did I really believe? I fished in my pocket and pulled out the pendant Abraham had given me. It caught light from somewhere, a glow reflecting off a metal banister above, and sparkled. The symbol of the Faithful. “No,” I said, finally understanding. “We don’t kill Epics.”
“But-”
“We kill criminals, Mizzy.” I reached up and put on the necklace, then I stood. “We bring justice to those who have murdered. We don’t kill them because of what they are. We kill them because of the lives they threaten.” I’d been thinking about this the wrong way all my life.
Mizzy looked at that small pendant, with its stylized symbol at the end, hanging outside my shirt. “She’s still a criminal. Sam-”
“Will you execute her, Mizzy?” I asked. “Will you pull the trigger, knowing you’ve negated her powers and there’s nothing she can do? Will you watch that moment of realization in her eyes? Because I’ve done it, and I’ll tell you: it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.”
I met her eyes in the dim light. Then I started walking up the steps.
Mizzy held her gun on me for a moment, hand quivering. Then she looked away and lowered the weapon.
“We need to warn the others,” I said. “And, since I was stupid enough to ruin your mobile, I need to reach the submarine instead. Do you know where it is?”
“No,” Mizzy said. “Nearby, I think.”
I continued up the steps.
“He’s planning to kill her,” Mizzy said. “While we’re here, tailing Newton, Prof is going to trap and kill Firefight.”
I continued up the steps, a cold sweat chilling my brow. “I have to get to him. Somehow, I need to stop him from-”
“You won’t get there in time,” Mizzy said. “Not without this, at least.”
I froze in place. Below, Mizzy unslung the pack from her shoulder and unzipped it.
She had the spyril inside.
44
I rushed back down the stairs and helped Mizzy get out the spyril. I started strapping it on.
“I’m helping you,” Mizzy said, kneeling beside me and working on my leg straps. “Why am I helping you?”
“Because I’m right,” I said. “Because Regalia is smarter than we are-and because everything about this mission feels off, and you know something awful is going to happen if we go through with it.”
She sat up. “Huh. Yeaaah, you should have said that stuff earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t have punched you so much.”
“I tried,” I said. “The punching kind of got in the way.”
“Really, somebody needs to teach you some hand-to-hand. Your showing was pathetic.”
“I don’t need hand-to-hand,” I said. “I’m a gunman.”
“And where’s your gun?”
“Ah … right.”
I shrugged the spyril’s main mechanism onto my back and pulled the straps tight while Mizzy handed up the gloves. “You know,” she said, “I was really looking forward to using this thing to prove how awesome I was, so Prof would agree I’d make a great point woman.”
“And do you have any idea how to use the spyril?”
“I put the thing together and I maintain it. I’ve got heaps of theoretical knowledge.”