Four down.
The remaining three circled her, the two with their plasguns still not realizing their weapons were little more than paperweights. The Grendel with the morning stars must have seen his damaged blades, because the only weapons he held were his hands—but based on his stance, he’d had some formal training.
One of the gunmen pulled the trigger, and kept pulling even after the dull click. The other followed suit. Then as one, they dropped the guns and charged her, one on her left, one on her right. Too easy. She leapt into the air, springing high thanks to a thin coil of Shadow—and the two teens slammed into each other, full tilt. Down they went. She landed on her feet, almost as gracefully as Iridium had before.
The last gang member motioned with his arms, made a “come-on” gesture. Instead, Jet blanketed him in Shadow. The thick bands of blackness swathed him completely, kept holding him even when his struggles ceased. After a full minute, she called the blanket back into herself and absorbed it—no more dissipation today; she was beyond her limit—and as she shivered from the cold merging with her body, the kid crashed to the ground, his skin pale, his breathing slow and steady in a Shadow-induced sleep.
Breathing hard, Jet scanned the litter of bodies. The seven Grendels on the ground were battered, and some were bloody, but none of them tried to attack her. Actually, most looked like they were unconscious.
Nodding, she blew out a tired sigh. She was done here; all that was left was to call in an ambulance to take the gang away, and file her report with the local authorities. And then get Corp PR in the loop to take it from there.
Someone clapped.
She whirled around, already calling up her power to raise a graymatter shield and let a blackball fly, but froze when she saw the civilian leaning against the alley wall, grinning like he’d just seen a terrific show and was applauding the players.
“Man,” he said, “that was terrific! I’ve never seen you work up close before, just on the vids and in the crowds. You took them down without breaking a sweat.”
Not exactly true, but she wasn’t about to correct him. “Thank you,” she said, remembering to smile as she let her power settle down. Her left shoulder twinged sharply; her weak spot, acting up again. “But you really shouldn’t have approached until it was safe.”
The dark-haired man laughed—oh, Jet liked that deep, musical sound. A sexy sound. He said, “I wasn’t worried. After all, you were right here. What could possibly be bad about that?”
She felt herself blush from the roots of her hair down to her toes. No matter; he couldn’t see her face clearly. “What brought you into the alley before it was secure?”
“You did.” He held up a metal communications device that winked in the sunlight. “Ops sent me. I’m your new Runner.”
Jet’s tight smile melted into a genuine grin. About freaking time. She forced herself not to rip the comlink from his hand and stuff it into her ear. Professional. Polite. Powerful. A breath later, she said, “I’m really glad to meet you.”
“The feeling’s mutual. I’m Bruce Hunter. And I’m a huge fan.”
Still blushing like a schoolgirl, Jet took the comlink. As her gloved fingers brushed against his bare ones, she could have sworn she felt a tingle, like a hum of energy that danced over her body.
Nonsense; Runners were strictly normals. The feeling had to be all in her imagination.
If only the way her body was tingling was also just her imagination. Ignoring the warmth spreading through her, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Hunter. I appreciate you coming so soon.”
His blue eyes twinkled, and Jet noticed he had a dimple in his right cheek. “Please, call me Bruce. ‘Mister Hunter’ makes me feel old.”
“You can’t be more than twenty,” she said, then bit her tongue when she realized she’d said the thought aloud. What on earth was wrong with her? First she’d let Iridium escape, and now she was practically flirting with a Runner?
Chuckling, he said, “Actually, twenty-three.”
A year older than she was. Jet felt the heat travel through her torso, making her stomach flutter and her breasts …
Oh, Light.
She shrugged her shoulders so that her cape shrouded her entire body. Her body hidden, she returned his smile, was fascinated by how his eyes seemed almost electric.
After a moment, he cleared his throat, and that was when it dawned on her that she’d been staring like a lovestruck teenager. She smiled broader so that she wouldn’t groan.
If Bruce saw her distress, he was too much of a gentleman to mention it. Instead, he said, “Want me to call these guys in for you, save you the hassle with the cops? I’m sure you’ve got places to be.”
She almost sighed with relief. “That would be terrific. You sure you don’t mind?”
“Hey, I’m here to make your life easier.”
That sounded incredibly nice. None of her other Runners had ever gone out of their way to do something without being asked; most, she thought, were afraid of her. Even the beloved Lady of Shadows was, after all, a Shadow power. Pushing that sour thought aside, she said, “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Bruce.”
“Same here. I’ll see you tonight, then?”
Her eyes bugged before she schooled her face to impassivity. “Oh?”
He smiled again, and Jet found herself enjoying how his blue eyes seemed to ripple with mirth. “Um, to bring you dinner? Unless you’ll be on a mission tonight …?”
“Oh … right.” Of course he’d be bringing her dinner; that was part of what Runners did. They made sure that the extrahumans didn’t have to waste any of their limited downtime by mingling with civilians to do mundane things, like order food. Or pay for it. “I’ll be home this evening. If there’s any change in my plans, I’ll let Ops know.”
Eyes twinkling, he said, “See you tonight at the Complex.”
She was in the air before she realized that she’d summoned a Shadow floater to fly her away. Bruce, she thought, his name reverberating in her mind. Bruce. Bruce. Bruce.
It was five minutes before she remembered to put the comlink in her ear.
CHAPTER 7
IRIDIUM
No student shall willfully or knowingly defy Corp’s conduct code, and no student shall willfully or knowingly engage in behavior detrimental to Corp’s approved marketing plan for their Heroic Identity …
Corp Extrahuman Academy Handbook, Chapter 3, “Branding”
Hey.” The boy standing in rank behind Iridium poked her on the shoulder. “Hey, you wanna have some fun?”
Iridium turned around and gave the boy a glare that would melt through securiplast. “Get lost.”
“What’s your handle?” he whispered.
At the front of the Academy auditorium, the Superintendent was droning through student orientation. “As members of the Academy, you are not children any longer. You will be held to a higher standard of decorum …” He paused to glance around the room, managing to meet every child’s eyes. Behind him, the row of twelve proctors stood in their costumes, or plain black jumpsuits if they were retired from active heroic service, silent and immobile as temple pillars. Eviscerator, Night, Celestina … Iridium couldn’t be bothered to remember the rest.
“You will become the finest of a new generation,” said the Superintendent. “Powerful, brave, compassionate, and heroic. Make no mistake.”
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” the boy hissed. “What’s your handle?”
Iridium stared resolutely ahead, watching the Superintendent’s Adam’s apple bob up and down under his too-thin, too-pale skin. Not that she had any interest in what he was saying, but she wasn’t about to get busted out on her first day. She could just hear her old Primary School proctor’s voice. Even rabid dogs have more self-control than you, Iridium …
“Bitch,” the boy muttered. “Think you’re so great? Well, my name’s Hornblower, and you just pissed me off.”
Iridium rotated on her heel to face him. The boy was big and bl
ond, and looked like he should be in the sponsorship draft rather than here with children. He had bright, birdlike blue eyes under a prominent brow that made him look like a pit dog about to bite Iridium’s head off.
She didn’t let the boy see he’d bothered her, or scared her. Never show weakness. Never show fear. Never let anyone smell your blood. That was her father’s voice.
“My name’s Iridium,” she hissed at the jerk. “And my real name is Callie. Callie Bradford. You got anything else stupid to say, wasteoid?”
“Shh!” another trainee admonished from farther down the line.
The Superintendent was still talking, and now he was using holoslides. The Academy’s grid lit up, along with the forbidden hallways of the Mental power’s wing as well as the situation complex, where junior heroes went to train for field duty.
“The situation levels are strictly off-limits to all students under the age of fifteen,” the Superintendent said. “And only those with the proper clearance are allowed to access the Mental wing. Any students discovered outside the designated Academy areas will be disciplined immediately and may be expelled. Your complete rulebook is downloading to your wristlets. You will be required to read this document before a comprehension test tomorrow morning.”
Iridium didn’t take her eyes off the blond boy.
Hornblower had gone pale, and he looked at his polished boots rather than meeting Iridium’s gaze.
She smiled. “That’s what I thought, bitch.”
“This concludes your orientation,” said the Superintendent. “Your room assignments will be transmitted to your data wristlets. You will report to your rooms for attendance-taking immediately.”
Iridium’s wristlet beeped in concert with every other student’s, and the room code D38 flashed on her readout, along with directions to the girls’ dormitories.
When she turned to march out of the gym in lockstep with the other students, Hornblower caught her hard in the ribs with his elbow. “I’m gonna see you again,” he said as he walked past.
Iridium watched the back of his crew-cut blond head bob away. “Bet your ass,” she muttered.
The girl who had shushed her before tsked. “Heroes don’t swear, Iridium.”
“Shut your fat mouth, Dawnlighter.”
Dawnlighter lifted her nose into the air and pointedly looked away as the column of girls broke off from the line of boys and marched under the arch of the Girls’ wing.
The door to room D38 was closed, and Iridium held out her data wristlet to the lock for a scan. Her wristlet was made out of iridescent white plastic, inset with a small datascreen and chip like the badge she’d worn around her neck in Primary School. The small, fully black circle branded against the white shine designated her as a Light power. The Academy was very big on branding. Yellow for Earth powers. Blue for Water powers. So original.
The latches flipped back after the Corp’s central Ops computer scanned and logged Iridium’s entry, and the door opened with a hiss like that of an isolation chamber.
“Hi,” said Iridium to the room’s other occupant.
The girl was sitting on the edge of her twin bed, twisting the fringe of the white coverlet between her fingers. Short honey blond hair masked a heart-shaped face that stared fixedly at her knees.
Iridium stepped in and squinted. Every light in the place, including the floor panels that usually only turned on during drills and emergencies, was lit. The girl’s things were already occupying one half of the dresser and closet space, as well as half the small bathroom shelf over the sink and the steam shower. She didn’t have much. No play clothes; just black or gray Academy jumpsuits and one formal white unikilt. No books, no vid console, nothing to suggest to Iridium that anyone had cared about her roommate, wherever she’d come from.
Then again, all of the girl’s things were painfully organized, so maybe she did have a fussy mother or Support tender somewhere telling her to sit up straight and eat her vegetables.
“Please don’t turn any of the lights off,” said the girl when Iridium started to wave her hand in front of the sensor panel. “I need the lights.”
“Huh,” said Iridium. She bent over at the waist and looked at the seated girl from below. She recognized the thin, serious face from somewhere, from a class in Primary School or one of the many self-defense and theory units they all had to study the summer before their work at the Academy began. After a minute she said, “Jet.”
The girl flinched at the name. “Iridium,” she muttered.
“You can call me Callie, if my handle bothers you.”
Iridium didn’t know why she had the sudden urge to be nice. She wasn’t nice. The other extrahuman kids at the Academy stayed away from her because of that. But Jet was so small, almost pathetic. Kids like Dawnlighter and Hornblower were going to eat her alive. I just feel sorry for her, that’s all, Iridium told herself firmly.
“I hear your dad’s rabid,” said Jet, fingers still braiding and unbraiding the fringe.
On second thought, screw being nice.
“I hear yours went nuts,” said Iridium without missing a beat.
Jet’s hands stopped moving. After a moment, she curled on her side and faced the wall. She stayed that way until the dinner bell sounded over the comm.
“Tonight’s menu is casserole with a vegetable side dish,” said the Superintendent’s prerecorded voice. “Your three-deefilm will be Once a Hero, the biography of Captain Colossal, showing in the recreation block at nineteen hundred hours.”
Iridium stopped unpacking the things the Support staff had dropped off from her old room, in the compartment she shared with her foster mother, Abbie. Abbie was Support, too, but she was nice and occasionally let Iridium go to the roof of Housing and practice her strobes—which was strictly against the rules.
She’d never see Abbie again, now that she was a full-time student of the Academy. It didn’t bother her, exactly, but she did feel distinctly unwelcome. And she’d only been there a few hours.
Iridium realized that Jet hadn’t even had a foster parent to take the place of her mother and father. She’d been raised with all of the other orphaned extrahumans on the Orphanage level, which Abbie and the other adults talked about when they thought Iridium was studying or listening to her digipod.
Jet hadn’t moved when the comm rang.
Iridium bit her lip, her stomach and her reputation fighting with the pity that Jet’s hunched figure stirred within her.
Rough as it was dealing with whispers and stares, with other kids like Hornblower trying to beat her up until she’d learned to fight back hard enough to make all but the toughest bullies too scared to try, it must be harder living as the daughter of a crazy ex-hero.
Iridium tried to listen to her father, even if Arclight had been in Blackbird Prison for five and a half years. Friends are a luxury people like us cannot afford, Callie.
Did she really want to go through five years of Academy without anyone to keep her company but the net and the music on her digipod?
Not really.
“Listen,” she said to Jet. “You want me to bring you some gingerbread from the cafeteria?”
“No food in the rooms,” Jet said softly.
Iridium approached the bed. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Iridium sighed, then sat down on the bed. “Jet, this is none of my business, kay? But if you don’t go out there now, then jerks like Hornblower are gonna be talking about you for the rest of the year.”
“I don’t care what Hornblower says.”
“Hornblower’s fifth-generation hero. His dad is on the front of that stupid cereal we eat every morning. Everyone in our class cares what he says.”
Jet’s shoulder blades hunched together like a faulty doll. “You don’t.”
Iridium felt the venom creep from her chest into her voice. “With my family, believe me … I’ve heard it all before.”
“If I go out there,” Jet said, �
�Dawnlighter and the other girls are going to say things about me.”
“I’ll make you a deal, ’kay? Anyone starts talking shit, I’ll punch them in the face.”
Jet rolled over and sat up, facing Iridium. “But you’ll get into trouble and stuff.”
“My dad’s rabid, like you said.” Iridium shrugged. “What have I got to lose?”
CHAPTER 8
JET
Of all the forms our abilities take, from Fire to Mental to Shadow, each has had its share of misunderstandings and each has had its notorious disasters …
Dr. Lyle Lee (formerly known as Firebolt), from Within: Theories of Extrahuman Power
She’s just a dirty Shadow,” the girl laughed, pointing at her. “No mistaking that wristlet.”
Jet swallowed, darted a nervous glance at the inky band around her left wrist. The color branded her as if it were a mark on her skin. Black meant she worked with the shadows, bent them to her will. And everyone knew what that ultimately meant: She would go insane. Eventually. She could still hear her father screeching her name before they took him away.
A hand on Jet’s shoulder, then Iridium’s loud voice: “You’re so concerned about dirt, Dawnie, go take a bath.”
The tall redhead blinked at Iridium, then scowled as her friends laughed behind their hands. There were a lot of girls clustered around them; sweet Jehovah, it seemed like the entire Academy was in line for the cafeteria. Jet’s mind whirled as she assessed the laughing girls crowded in front of her. About ten of them, already cliquing. They’d worked fast on this first day of the Academy—and Dawnlighter had already grasped the reins.
Jet glanced around, tried to find an adult for help. Where was the Superintendent? Or the proctors? Or any of the instructors? Weren’t they supposed to have the students eat in shifts, to avoid having so many kids with powers in one place at one time? This had to be against the rules, or an oversight …
The girl cast a long look at Iridium, who was standing next to Jet as if the two of them had been paired. Ridiculous, Jet thought; pairings didn’t happen until Third Year. Besides, why would any Lighter want to be partnered with a Shadow? Jet’s lips quirked as she thought of how funny that would be—so very black and white. Dark and light. Yin and yang.
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