Firefight characters

Appears from the start

Now an experienced member of the Reckoners and the man publicly credited with killing Steelheart. He still keeps notebooks on Epics and their weaknesses, and he has begun to think about a question the rest of the team considers dangerous: whether the corruption that turns Epics cruel is caused by the power itself or by something that can be resisted. He is a competent operative, an unreliable metaphorist, and privately determined to find Megan again.

Also known as Jonathan Phaedrus

Appears from the start

The founder and leader of the Reckoners: a former schoolteacher, meticulous planner, and secretly an Epic himself, whose forcefields, healing and matter-manipulation are lent to his team through equipment rather than used openly. He restricts his own use of them because using an Epic's power drags its holder toward cruelty. Only David and Tia know what he is.

Appears from the start

The Reckoners' intelligence specialist and the person who has known Prof longest. She keeps the team's records, watches Prof's use of his abilities more closely than he likes, and is the closest thing the organisation has to a conscience about its own leader.

Appears from the start

A young woman David served with in Newcago, and an Epic whose ability returns her to life after she is killed. She left the Reckoners after Steelheart's fall rather than stay with a team whose purpose is killing people like her. David believes she resisted the corruption that comes with using Epic powers, and finding her again is his private reason for taking this assignment.

Appears from the start

An Epic who moves and fights as living electricity, one of a series that has been attacking Newcago since Steelheart's death. Stopping her requires the Reckoners to work out what cancels her invulnerability before she can do serious damage to the city.

First appears in chapter 5

The High Epic who rules Babilar, the flooded ruin of Manhattan. She raised the sea over the city and can appear as a projection of herself anywhere there is standing water, seeing and speaking through it, which makes privacy in her city effectively impossible. She is among the oldest and most calculating of the High Epics.

First appears in chapter 8

The leader of the Reckoner cell operating in Babilar: guarded, territorial, and unimpressed by the arrival of a team from Newcago with a reputation and a plan of its own.

First appears in chapter 8

A large, genial member of the Babilar cell with an entirely professional interest in corpses and an unshakeable good humour about the work.

First appears in chapter 8

The youngest member of the Babilar cell, a fast-talking demolitions specialist who is delighted to have new people to talk to and adapts to the incoming team faster than her colleagues do.

First appears in chapter 8

A member of the Babilar Reckoner cell, part of the local team the Newcago group is folded into on arrival.

First appears in chapter 10

An Epic who accumulates heat and releases it, capable of destroying an entire city and known to have done so, and who regards the destruction as a judgement he has been appointed to carry out. He can move himself instantly from place to place, which makes him nearly impossible to corner.

First appears in chapter 12

An Epic who returns any force used against her back onto whoever used it, which makes conventional attacks not merely useless but suicidal. She runs a gang in Babilar and serves Regalia's interests.

First appears in chapter 34

The hidden Epic responsible for the fruit that grows on Babilar's buildings and glows at night, and for the luminous images that appear on its walls. The city has been quietly fed and lit by this power for years without knowing where it came from.