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.”
“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