Iridium rolled her eyes.
After the disaster in Little Shinjuku last semester, the hover had dropped them off in the safer but equally dingy Looptown. Passing pedestrians gave the six teenagers curious looks. A New Chicago cop on a speedbike glared at them from behind mirrored sunglasses.
“Training is preparation for real combat,” said Jet in the prissy tone that reminded Iridium of a female, high-pitched Night.
“Honey, I think Iri is right,” said Samson, sliding an arm around Jet’s waist. “Nothing is going to happen today. It’s a good day.”
“But—”
He shut her up with a kiss. Which lasted until Were made pig noises. Jet disentangled herself, blushing.
“You’re a walking, talking evolutionary mistake,” Iridium told Were. “You know that, right?”
“I know you want me,” he said, waggling his shaggy eyebrows, then yelped. Iridium coughed to hide her laugh at seeing Were’s feet covered in ice.
“We’re supposed to be acting like heroes,” Frostbite said. “Pretend, can’t you?”
Were snarled and lunged for him. “You better pray you grow wings, fairy!”
Red Lotus held up one palm, which was slim but calloused from his hours of wuxia practice. “Do not touch him.”
“Hey!” Jet stuck her fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle.
The boys paused in their posturing and looked at Jet, who hissed, “I’m not failing because you’re trying to outtestosterone everyone, Were. Could we please do the assignment and get back to the transport? We’re supposed to be star students. This isn’t helping.”
Iridium was impressed. When had Jet grown a backbone?
Samson shot Were a glare that could have derailed an express train, and Were looked at the ground. “Yeah, sorry,” he muttered. “Can’t have your girlfriend getting upset. She might not give it up if she’s pissy, right?”
Iridium snapped her fingers, and a strobe appeared between them. “You want to stop that train of thought right now, Shaggy.” He growled at her, and she winked.
“Let’s go, Were,” Samson said, giving Jet a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll meet you back at the lander, babe.”
Jet smiled at him. “I’m counting the seconds.”
As the boys walked away, Iridium arched an eyebrow and looked at Jet. “What’s gotten in to you? And if you say ‘Samson,’ I’m going to hit you in the head to reengage your brain.”
Jet shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel … I feel good, Iri. For the first time in a long time.” She paused. “And I won’t let Were mess up my grades.” She touched her earpiece, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Iridium touched her own, which was linked to Celestina, who watched them from the hover’s monitors to make sure they weren’t writing graffiti or urinating in public. The earpiece gave a squeal of feedback as she brushed the volume control. Damn, she hated the thing.
“Okay, well, euphoria and Were aside,” Iridium said, “the training data indicates that we’re supposed to observe this street for twenty minutes and record suspicious activity.” Iridium surveyed the sad expanse of auto shops and bars that breathed the population of the street in and out.
“I’m recording to my wristlet,” Jet said. “Let’s do a slow pass down the north side and see if there’s anything going on in the alleys.”
“Whatever,” Iridium said. “Do you think the Squadron spends its days tromping around Looptown? I mean, really?”
“Great heroes come from humble beginnings.”
“You are a walking platitude. You know that, right?”
“I prefer ‘hero-in-training’.”
They passed a café, an electronics store with one sad tele in the window playing a news broadcast, and three pawnshops lined up in a row.
“Yup,” Iridium said, looking into the last pawnshop’s window. The centerpiece was a decommissioned creeper ’bot that gazed at her with sad headlamp eyes. “This here neighborhood is a hotbed of crime, all right.”
Jet didn’t chastise her—didn’t respond at all.
“Jet?” she said, looking around.
“Iri! Look!” Jet was half a block down, standing in front of a thrift-shop window. A faded, curled poster decorated the glass, a man in a red skinsuit, orange cape, and goggles. “It’s the Firebolt. He was always my favorite when I was a kid.”
“I thought your heart belonged to our tall, dark, and creepy teacher.” Iridium mimicked Firebolt’s hands-on-hips pose. “But I can see why that turns you on.”
“Iridium, I can hear you,” said Celestina in her ear. “Watch what you say about your proctors.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Iridium sweetly, then took her earpiece from its cradle and tossed it into a passing trash ’bot. “How do you work with that thing in your head?” she muttered. The hiss of static was maddening, and the frequencies never worked right when she brought up her powers, anyway.
“They’ve got all kinds of memorabilia!” said Jet, excited. “Look at the toy goggles. I wanted a pair so badly when I was a kid …”
“I was more of a Persephone fan myself,” said Iridium. “She was the same year at the Academy as my mother. Came to the house a lot before Dad got arrested.”
In the glass of the shop window, she saw Frostbite and Red Lotus across the street. Frostbite stuck his finger down his throat and pantomimed gagging. Behind his face shield, Red Lotus was probably smiling serenely. A garbage loader cut across traffic lanes. Horns sounded.
“I wonder how hard it would be to get a pass to come back?” Jet murmured.
“Pretty hard, considering you’d have to be a nut to ever come back here voluntarily.”
“I’d like to check out this store. When we’re not on duty,” Jet added. She glanced at Iridium, a smile on her face. “Do you think they have Night stuff? Like action figures? Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“It’d be creepy,” Iridium said absently. “Just like Night. Jet, aren’t garbage loaders ’bot-operated?”
“With preprogrammed routes,” Jet agreed, still looking in the shop window. “Why?”
The loader slowed, and its rusted doors rolled backward. Iridium saw the gleam of the plasgun barrel appear from within, caught in the light like an old flat snapshot.
“Move!” Iridium screamed at Jet, grabbing her friend by the arm and dragging her around the corner of the shop. The bolt shattered the window where Jet had stood. The merchandise inside caught fire with a whoosh.
Iridium pelted down the alley, Jet behind her, and nearly slammed into the solid back of someone much larger than herself.
Samson spun, his big fists closed, and when he saw it was Iridium, panic crept into his eyes. “What in the hell is going on?”
Behind him, a construction hover pulled up and disgorged more men, all of them wearing yellow sunbursts on their clothing, some with it painted on their faces and hands.
“Power to every man!” one of them shrieked. “Death to the freaks!”
Footsteps pelted behind Iridium, and she whirled around to see Red Lotus and Frostbite running down the alley ahead of a horde of Everymen. They had guns, Talon cutters, fixed metal knives. The weapons were all different, but the hatred on their faces was exactly the same.
Iridium looked at Jet. Her voice tight, she said, “I think we’re a little bit fucked.”
Jet tapped her earpiece. “Celestina! Celestina, come in!”
A plas bolt splashed off the brick above Iridium’s head and she ducked, cursing.
“Guys, I don’t mean to alarm you,” said Frostbite, pointing at the crowd of Everymen, “but I don’t think the cavalry is going to make it in time.”
“Told you little freaks you’d get what was coming to you,” growled one of the men at the head of the column. “You think you can come into our city, tell us how to live our lives, like fucking guardian angels gone wrong?”
Iridium touched Frostbite on the shoulder with one hand, Jet with the other. “When they get close enoug
h,” she said in a low voice, “freeze them. Blind them. Do whatever you have to do. We have to get out of this bottleneck.”
Were snarled and doubled over, his lanky body growing and re-forming into a wolf. Samson struck his huge fists together, the sound like thunder.
The men at the front of each column howled and charged, raising their weapons.
Were launched himself at the first Everyman group, teeth bared, just as Red Lotus whipped his foot around, faster than Iridium could see, and cracked the leader of the second group across the skull hard enough to send him backward into the alley wall.
Iridium waited a second longer, then created a handful of strobes and flung them indiscriminately, the light washing back over her. Next to her, Frostbite sent out wave after wave of ice, rendering the plasguns useless and slicking the floor of the alley. In front of them, a flock of men with suns on their chests fell over one another.
On Iridium’s other side, Jet unleashed her power, Shadow creepers winding around legs and feet, climbing up and over everything, drowning one Everyman at a time like an inexorable black tide.
Still, they came, screaming insults and swinging their weapons like they were attempting to trim unruly weeds. Iridium kept strobing them, harder and faster than she’d ever done before.
Red Lotus blocked the swing of a baseball bat, then cried out as Iridium heard bones crack. Frostbite, half-dragging his partner away, froze the arm of the boy’s attacker so that it shattered, crystalline shards raining to the ground.
Jet whirled to face Iridium, her face flushed, creepers writhing around her head. She pointed and screamed, “Behind you!”
Iridium turned, nose to chin with an Everyman, and it was too late to do anything but stare.
She felt the Talon cutter slide through her skin, underneath the breastbone, hot and foreign and numbing. She felt air where no air had drawn before, felt her left side fill up with something liquid and heavy.
“Iridium!”
Jet’s scream came from down a tunnel as Iridium slumped to the ground, the cold pavement pressing against her cheek.
“One down!” the Everyman cheered. “Press ’em in good, boys!”
“No,” Jet’s voice hissed, very close to Iridium’s ear.
Iridium tried to draw breath and spat blood instead.
“No,” Jet said again. “You stay away from her!”
“We’ll hold them off!” Frostbite shouted. His voice echoed, high and tinny. All Iridium could see was the sky. “Help Callie!”
Iridium felt someone pull her unikilt aside. Fingers touched her, cold as stone. “Oh, Christo. You’re bleeding, Iri. You’re bleeding …” To Frostbite, Jet cried, “The wound’s too deep! We need a medic!”
“Sure, I’ll get right on that!” Frostbite yelled, and more ice sizzled to rest on the stones of the alley.
“Jet.” It hurt so very much to speak, more than anything Iridium could remember or conceive. “Jet.” Blood flowed freely from her mouth with the word.
“Oh, Iri …” Jet moaned. “I’m so sorry … I can’t stop it …” Her hands pressed on Iridium’s chest, cold and useless.
“Let … me …” Iridium gasped.
She reached into herself, past the pain and the dull, deadening feeling as her lungs filled up with blood. She reached for power, for the very brightest part of herself and forced it outward, into her hands, her fingers.
She pointed them toward the wound and, inch by inch, let the power escape.
The burning started, worse than the wound, and Iridium heard herself scream. Her power seared her skin and slowly, slowly closed off the gash. Then it was done, and she collapsed in Jet’s arms, gasping. Her heart fluttered, then stabilized, thudding hard enough to break her ribs. Sticky warmth flowed from her nose.
“You did it,” Jet whispered. “Sweet Jehovah, Callie, you did it!”
“Yeah!” she heard Frostbite shout. “You want it colder? I can make it colder, you pieces of crap!”
“Get out of here before we hurt you,” someone—Samson, she thought—yelled.
Jet gently laid Iridium down on the ground, then stood and shouted, “That’s right, you better run!”
Iridium’s eyes slowly refocused, her burned nerves shutting off. She saw Jet to one side, Samson to the other. And beyond Samson, an Everyman turned and raised a gun.
She didn’t have the strength to call out a warning, but she tried.
Samson fell silently, his body breaking the vacuum with a boneless thud.
Jet screamed, and went to her knees beside Samson, and in the midst of her crying, Academy hovers overflew the alley, spewing heroes, who flew or landed in the street to disband the rest of the Everyman group.
“Wake up,” Jet told Samson. “Please, Sam, wake up.”
Someone swept Iridium into their arms, and a float slammed into her back. “Careful,” a gravelly voice growled. “She’s just a kid.”
“We’ve got one unresponsive!” another hero shouted. “Miss? Miss, you’re going to have to move now.”
The last thing Iridium saw as the ambulance doors hissed closed was Samson, prone in the alley. Not moving.
CHAPTER 34
JET
In the line of duty.
Epitaph on Samson’s gravestone
Everyone had shown up for the funeral. The entire I Academy, from students to instructors to support staff; all members of the Squadron who weren’t currently out battling evil or posing for their sponsors; the mayor and his City Hall entourage; the governor of Illinois and her assorted posse. Various other government officials, looking properly grim. Corp muckety-mucks, talking loudly about the “terrible tragedy.” The media, already branding the event as “Death of a Hero.”
And the dead hero, of course. He was there too.
Jet sat straight in her hard-backed seat, chin high. Eyes dry. Next to her, Iridium held her hand, squeezed tightly. Jet barely felt it.
She barely felt anything anymore.
Samson was dead.
The world had taken on a slow, syrupy feel—Jet sat, and breathed, and sometimes someone would say a word or a phrase that would capture her attention, then it would slip away and Jet was alone, sitting, breathing. She knew Iridium was on her right, poor Iri in her bandages and her pain, and next to her was Frostbite, with his fresh scars so livid compared with the bright blue of his hair, and Red Lotus next to him, his broken arm set and mending. She knew Were was on her left, as untouched as she was herself. Unmarked. Unhurt.
Undead.
She knew these things, but none of it really mattered. After the funeral, life would return to normal at the Academy; they still had to finish Third Year and apply for preliminary sponsorships. She knew this, too, and it mattered even less.
Even Night didn’t matter, not anymore.
“He’s gone, Jet,” Night had said to her after they had returned yesterday, Jet wearing blood that wasn’t hers and still feeling the ghost of Sam’s lips on her own. “He’s gone, and you have to accept it and move on.”
And when she hadn’t responded, Night had gotten cold, even for him, and told her that true heroes weren’t stopped by death. They held their heads high and did their duty. When she still hadn’t responded, he said curtly: “If you let this break you, Joan, then you weren’t worth the effort.”
She remembered turning her back on Night, actually turning her back on the man she’d emulated and maybe even loved, remembered walking away from him, then finding herself in the Infirmary by Iridium’s side, her hand in Iri’s just as Iri’s hand would be in hers at the funeral the next day. And when it was well past Lights Out and they were alone, Jet shed her Shadow cloak and became visible and cried. She’d dimly realized that she’d used her power when she was not authorized to, had used it and no one had noticed and none of the Power wards had been tripped, but that didn’t matter.
She cried, softly so as not to disturb Iridium, who was so medicated that even if Jet had wailed, she probably would have slept t
hrough it. Jet cried, feeling her heart slowly shred and drift away, leaving behind a hole in her chest that ached all the more for its emptiness. Jet cried, and lost herself to her grief.
Her fault.
She’d been too slow, again. Iri had gotten hurt because Jet hadn’t reacted fast enough, then she couldn’t stop the bleeding.
She hadn’t even heard the shot that had killed Sam, cut him down so cleanly, and he’d been standing right next to her.
She was no hero. She was just a scared little girl in a skinsuit who’d thought she had a chance at being happy.
Iri was hurt and Sam, oh holy Jehovah, Sam was dead, and if Jet had been a real hero, it wouldn’t have happened.
And now she was at Sam’s funeral, the whirring of the vids and the feedback from the speakers wreaking so much havoc with her earpiece that she’d had to shut it off.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Not Night in his cold arrogance, not even Iri, who’d almost died as well. Not the voices with their whispering and giggling—and maybe it showed how cruel Jehovah truly was, because this was the one time she would have surrendered herself to the dark and come what may, but today the voices were silent. In mourning, perhaps.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
She’d hand in her skinsuit and earpiece after the funeral. And if that meant she was resigning herself to Therapy, that didn’t matter, either.
Onstage, the Superintendent was blathering about the state of the world today, and why the Squadron was needed more than ever. Jet blinked and now it was Mayor Moulton droning on about the senseless hatred that had brought about this horrific event. She blinked again to find Mister Marvel speaking about how death is the risk every hero takes every time he walks or flies into the field.
None of this is about Sam, Jet thought, and that realization shattered her numbness.
This should be about Sam.
She thought she felt his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into his touch. Iridium whispered something nonsensical about whether Jet was okay, and Jet ignored it because she didn’t want to lose this last feeling of Sam next to her, Sam touching her and kissing her and laughing with her and telling her …
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