Steelheart recap

A decade after ordinary people began gaining superhuman powers and using them to take whatever they wanted, Chicago has become Newcago: a city turned to steel and held under permanent artificial night by the invulnerable Epic Steelheart. David Charleston, eighteen, watched Steelheart kill his father in a bank as a child and is the only living witness to Steelheart being wounded. He talks his way into the Reckoners, the one organisation that assassinates Epics, and persuades them to attempt Steelheart himself. The team provokes him into the open by inventing a rival Epic and dismantles his lieutenants, discovering along the way that David's teammate Megan is an Epic who returns from death, and that the Reckoners' leader, Prof, is an Epic whose powers have always been the source of the team's equipment. In the final confrontation David realises that Steelheart can only be harmed by someone who does not fear him, as his father did not, and kills him. The sun rises over Newcago, Megan leaves, and David stays on with the Reckoners.

Ten years ago ordinary people began developing extraordinary powers, and almost every one of them used those powers to take whatever they wanted. Eight-year-old David Charleston was in a Chicago bank with his father when one such Epic began killing customers and another, Steelheart, arrived. David's father shot at Steelheart and drew blood, something nobody had managed before or since. Steelheart killed everyone who had seen it, David's father included, and brought the building down; David survived. He then turned the entire city to steel, sank part of it, had a permanent darkness laid over it and declared himself emperor of Newcago. Now eighteen, David has spent a decade compiling notes on Epics and their weaknesses while waiting for a chance to reach the Reckoners, the only organisation that hunts and kills Epics. He finds it by predicting where they will strike next and inserting himself into their ambush of an Epic called Fortuity.

David's interference makes the operation against Fortuity far messier than planned, but it also supplies the detail that lets the Reckoners kill him, because David had worked out the limits of Fortuity's ability to see danger coming. Wounded and left behind, David tracks the team back to its base and refuses to leave, offering them his notebooks and a proposal: that the Reckoners kill Steelheart. Prof, the cell's leader, considers this suicidal, since no one knows Steelheart's weakness and no one has ever seen him hurt. David tells them what he saw in the bank as a child and that he is the only witness left alive. Over Megan's objections, Prof agrees to try, and David becomes the newest and least experienced member of the team.

The Reckoners settle on a strategy: rather than attack Steelheart directly, they will provoke him into appearing in person by inventing a rival Epic, Limelight, apparently moving in on his territory. That requires a run of visible attacks on Enforcement, the city's Epic-backed police, to make the fiction credible. David is put on reconnaissance and on his own archive, hunting for anything that identifies what harmed Steelheart in the bank. He and Megan are paired for undercover work and get on badly. Prof's equipment, including devices that crumble steel to dust and a kit that closes wounds in minutes, is central to every plan, and Prof will not discuss where it comes from.

The provocation campaign begins in earnest, with ambushes on Enforcement patrols and the deliberate killing of one of Steelheart's lesser Epics, and the invented rival starts to be talked about as real. David and Megan work an infiltration together and their relationship thaws unevenly. Studying how Newcago actually functions, David realises that all of the city's electricity comes from a single concealed Epic, Conflux, whose energy runs everything the regime depends on, and the team turns to finding and reaching him. David also works out that Nightwielder, whose darkness has covered the city for a decade, is intangible only in the absence of real sunlight.

The Reckoners confirm that genuine sunlight makes Nightwielder solid, and build the plan around it. The attacks on Enforcement escalate and the fabricated rival Epic is now widely believed in. Following the city's power supply, the team locates Conflux and works out how to take him out of Steelheart's hands, which would leave Newcago dark and force Steelheart into the open. Tensions inside the team rise as the operation grows: Prof is increasingly unwilling to explain his own resources, Tia is uneasy about the pace, and David keeps returning to the bank, convinced that the answer to Steelheart's weakness lies in what he witnessed as a child rather than in any record.

An operation goes badly and David watches Megan die; shortly afterward she reappears alive and unhurt, and he realises she is herself an Epic, able to return after being killed. The discovery fractures the team, whose entire purpose is killing Epics, and David is left holding it. Meanwhile the deception works: Steelheart, convinced that a rival is challenging him for his city, prepares to deal with the threat personally. The Reckoners commit to the final plan, setting their ambush in the steel caverns beneath Newcago where they can control the ground, with Nightwielder and Conflux to be dealt with first so that Steelheart arrives without his strongest supports.

In the final confrontation the Reckoners strip Steelheart of his lieutenants: Nightwielder is made solid with sunlight and killed, and Conflux is freed from Steelheart's control. Steelheart appears in person and the fight goes against the team. Megan is killed again, and Prof, to save what is left of them, uses powers of his own, revealing that he is an Epic and that the Reckoners' equipment has always been his ability lent out through devices. He refuses to use it openly because using an Epic's power invites the corruption that turns Epics cruel. David finally works out the weakness: Steelheart can be harmed only by someone who does not fear him, which is why his father's shot drew blood, since his father genuinely believed Epics were protectors and felt no fear of him. David kills Steelheart. The permanent darkness ends and the sun rises over Newcago for the first time in ten years. Megan, alive again, leaves the city. Prof swears David to silence about what he is, and the Reckoners remain to hold the freed city.

The Reckoners lure Steelheart into the steel caverns beneath Newcago after killing Nightwielder, whose power had covered the city in permanent night, and freeing Conflux, the Epic who supplied its electricity. The fight goes badly and Prof is forced to use his abilities openly, revealing to David that he is himself an Epic and that the Reckoners' equipment has always been his power channelled through devices; he uses it as rarely as possible because wielding an Epic's power drives its holder toward cruelty. Megan is killed and returns again. David finally works out Steelheart's weakness: he cannot be harmed by anyone who does not fear him, which is why David's father's bullet drew blood, since his father saw Epics as future protectors rather than threats. Losing his own fear at the critical moment, David kills him. Newcago is left without its ruler, the artificial night ends and daylight returns to the city for the first time in a decade. Megan leaves rather than stay with a team whose purpose is killing Epics, though she and David part on far better terms than they met. Prof binds David to secrecy about what he is, and the Reckoners stay in Newcago, now responsible for the city they have freed.