Shades of Gray

by Jackie Kessler; Caitlin Kittredge

  If Iridium was ever going to beat Blackbird, the time was now. She crouched inside the empty bot, ankle-deep in watery slime, and shut her eyes, feeling the truck roll on under her.

  Iridium hefted herself out of the bot, landing in a pile of refuse higher than her head. No one had loaded the bots in days. She looked up at the camera on the wall, the placidly blinking power light. No alarms. No guards running to stun her.

  Iridium found her way to the main corridors. She’d walked them dozens of times as Dr. Sampson, a blond psychiatrist sent by Corp to minister to Arclight, the worst of the worst locked inside Blackbird.

  Everything looked different now, sharper and clearer when her eyes weren’t dulled by Dr. Sampson’s purple contacts. The prison authorities thought that Arclight was a monster, the worst villain the city had seen in decades.

  But Iridium knew that Lester Bradford was no monster. She paused in front of his cell door, looking up at the stark black letters painted over it. She reached out, touched cool steel. “Dad?” No answer. “Dad, it’s me!”

  There was a long moment, long enough for her heart to beat faster, before he answered. “Callie?”

  Iridium felt like she could collapse right there in the hallway. “We need to go!”

  “A fine idea, Callie, but the prison’s on lockdown. Don’t suppose you’ve developed the ability to walk through walls?”

  “I’m not Slider,” Iridium said, pressing both hands against the door. Heart hammering, palms sweating—prison was bad for her health. “But I’ll go to the control room and open up your cell. Then we really need to move, Dad—the garbage bot leaves in ten minutes.”

  “You can’t seriously expect me to ride out of here in a bloody garbage scow.”

  “Dad, you’ve been in lockup for twelve years. Now is not the time to get picky.”

  “Get to it, then.” Lester’s voice was clipped, as it always was when he issued her an order. It had made him a formidable field commander during his days with the Squadron. “And while you’re at it, open up a few others for me.”

  “Dad, we don’t have time …” Iridium started, but Lester never ceased to be Lester, commanding, controlled, and in charge at all times. Iridium would admire it if she wasn’t already nearly tachycardic from the tension.

  “Good folk,” said Lester. “Mates. They deserve to be on the outside again, Callie. Would you deny unjust prisoners their freedom?”

  “I … fine,” Iridium said, her own voice taking on an edge. “Just give me their designations and be quick about it. Clock’s ticking.”

  Lester’s eyes appeared in the small window of his cell door and he put a finger against the glass for each name. “Nevermore. Kindle. Protean. Radar. Lionheart.” He flashed her a grin. “And me, of course. I may be old, but I have my uses.”

  “Got it,” Iridium said. What the Academy hadn’t drilled into her, Lester had. Her recall was perfect.

  Iridium turned and ran for the prison control room.

  The computer panel was so old, it took her a moment to figure out the protocols to open the high-security cells. Old computers were harder to hack, she supposed. That, or Corp was just cheap enough to think that a bunch of overmedicated, overweight former villains weren’t really a threat.

  Why would they be, when the real psychopaths were wearing skinsuits in Corp colors?

  Iridium was just about to send her command when cool steel kissed up against the base of her skull. Judging from the size and feel, it was a plasgun. A small one, but a bolt of hot plasma in your skull was all the same.

  “Take your hands off that keyboard, young lady.” The voice was male, high and soft.

  Iridium’s palms beaded with sweat as she called a strobe to her.

  “And should you think you’re faster than I, let me tell you that I was a trained solider before retiring to work for Corp-Co. I do not fear death. I will pull this trigger as my dying reflex and you will be less half a head. That situation does not suit either of us, so please do not insult me with your light display.”

  The gun didn’t leave her skin.

  Iridium lowered her hands. “All right, you’ve got the drop on me. Can I at least see who I’m talking to?”

  “Very well. Turn around.”

  The gun lowered and Iridium moved, dropping and kicking back. She felt her boot impact with a kneecap, heard a grunt of pain, and threw a strobe without looking.

  Carried back by the blast, the man slammed into the opposite wall, but he didn’t let go of his gun. He also shot at her, leaving a smoking hole in the control-room door.

  “That was a warning shot.” He was bald, his face bright red, and he wore a nondescript gray suit and tie like a good lackey. His hands were massive—rough and scarred, hands made for beatings and breakings. “The next one will burn your heart out of your chest.”

  Iridium flared her nostrils as the scent of the plasma dissipated. “So, what? You want to lock me up in here too? I’m not real scared of death, myself. I’ll burn you if you come any closer.”

  He smiled, all teeth. “Young lady, if I wanted you incarcerated, you would be. I am not here to apprehend you.”

  “Let me guess, then … dancing contest?”

  He tucked the plasgun into his jacket and swiped a hand over his brow to clear the sweat. “My name is Gordon.”

  “That’s nice. Germanic. You got a first name?”

  “Just Gordon.” He twitched his cuffs and fixed his tie. “I am authorized to offer you a deal, Ms. Bradford.”

  Iridium crossed her arms. “I’m listening.” But only because she thought he’d probably gun her down if she made a break.

  “The city cannot sustain this bedlam,” he said. “The remaining Squadron are ineffective and too few, even if they could form a cohesive effort. We need goal-oriented men—and women. Those who are used to taking charge, who have the stomach for bloodshed, who can rip order from the screaming maw of Chaos.”

  “You like monologues, don’t you?” Iridium said. “To blab or not to blab, that is the question …”

  “Be quiet.” Gordon’s tone went from soft to slicing in an instant. “Your father and the five he mentioned—we will agree to their release.”

  Iridium felt her eyebrows rise of their own accord. “If?”

  “If,” Gordon said, rebuttoning his suit jacket over his gun, “they agree to bring New Chicago back under the control of Corp.”

  Interlude

  All Garth wants to do is get home. More accurately, he wants to get off the streets. There’s a tension in the air that makes the hair on his nape prickle. And his damned eyes are itching. Maybe it’s from all the residual energy. These past couple days, power’s been getting snapped about like wet towels at a sleepaway camp—everywhere you look, you see extrahumans practically crackling with the stuff.

  And breaking stuff, no lie. This morning, the bodega on the corner got leveled by Bigfoot (or maybe by Red Sasquatch; Garth can never keep those two straight). He shakes his head. You think you’re going out for morning coffee, and instead you’re helping Jose dig out from all the rubble.

  Good man, that Jose. Garth would like him even if he weren’t part of the Network. And so what that Jose thinks Garth is a nutter for even suggesting that they try to stop the chaos in the city?

  Garth hugs the cup of coffee closer to him. Jose had nuked up a cup of the instant sludge—best he could do in a pinch—by way of thanks for Garth lending his back. Not his blended beans, of course, but it’ll do. As long as it’s liquid caffeine, Julie will be happy. Last night hadn’t gone well, and Garth frowns as he remembers the way Julie’s tears had sparkled like crystalline jewels as she shouted at him for wanting to get involved.

  No, last night hadn’t gone well at all. His side of the bed had been cold, and lonely. Well, he thinks now, a woman holds a grudge tighter than a miser holds money. His da had told him that long and long ago, and it was Jehovah’s own truth. Thus the coffee: the morning-after peace offering. Garth picks his
way along Obama Road, ignoring the steady itching of his eyes. Barely a block away from his flat, a mighty crash reverberates on the street, making him throw his arms out for balance. Coffee slops over the cup, but he doesn’t feel the hot sting. His attention is riveted on the two figures who’ve tumbled to the ground in a lover’s knot.

  One’s a woman—huge and metallic, but clearly feminine, based on the curves. The other’s a wiry sort in black, complete with a death mask over his face. He’s got a noose around the metal woman’s neck, and she’s scrabbling at the rope that’s strangling the life out of her.

  Garth recognizes them from the vids. Steele and the Hangman.

  He senses other spectators cautiously gathering like him, watching the schoolyard fight of small gods. But Garth assumes that none of the other witnesses are extrahumans. Not that he’s an extrahuman per se. If he had more of that extra, he wouldn’t be living the life of a normal citizen, now, would he?

  “We’re not extrahumans,” Terry, the de facto leader of the Latent Network, told Garth just last night. “It’s not our fight. We stay hidden.”

  “How can you say that?” The frustration welled up in Garth, tingeing his words with the brogue of his childhood. “The world is falling to shite, and you’re telling me we’re supposed to sit on our arses and do nothing?”

  “Just give thanks that you’re not completely wired,” Terry said, “or you’d be out there with the rest of the superfreaks.”

  “You have to get the Network involved.”

  “No.”

  His fist tightens around the coffee cup, as if in counterpoint to the noose tightening around Steele’s throat.

  Behind his sunglasses, Garth’s eyes burn. And he thinks, Fuck it.

  Garth strides up to the duo and hurls the steaming coffee into the Hangman’s eyes. The man screeches—more surprise than pain, Garth decides; the mask had to have taken the brunt of the heat—and releases a hand to wipe the sludge from his eyes.

  Steele places both her hands around the Hangman’s wrist and squeezes. And the Hangman screams.

  Yeah, Garth thinks, stepping back. Now that’s a cry of pain.

  Not even a minute later, the Hangman is trussed up with one of his own nooses, whimpering like a baby over his crushed wrist, and Steele is looking around for the man who’d stepped in to distract her opponent.

  But Garth McFarlane is long gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  VIXEN

  A human being will never be able to walk through walls or levitate above the ground. Not without certain improvements at the genetic level.

  —Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated May 11, 1972

  Valerie Vincent hated New Chicago. She hated the cold, the rain, and the constant waft of pollution that blocked the sun. She hated the way the cops treated her like she was no better than the criminals she apprehended. Most of all, she hated her teammates.

  Squadron: New Chicago was nothing like Squadron: Orlando Basin. In Orlando, she hadn’t had a real family, but she’d at least had friends. Here, she was the new kid.

  Valerie hated being the new kid too.

  She shivered inside her skinsuit. It was cut to reveal her midriff and a portion of each flank, a nod to growing up in a city where you could still see and feel the sun—a gleaming, glass city built on stilts over mile upon mile of waving green swamp and razor-sharp palmetto, reclaimed from the urban sprawl of Orlando Proper after Hurricane Axel had leveled most of central Florida.

  She’d have to talk to Branding about creating a new costume. This one made it hard to move when it was cold, never mind fight. She didn’t even have a cape to keep warm, like Angelica.

  Valerie had been in New Chicago for two months, and none of the other Team Alpha members had so much as tried to speak to her at any length, other than in the field. The four of them had come up together in the Academy, just like Valerie and her classmates had back in Orlando Basin.

  But that was all over now. One graduating class, one stupid twit who had powers that were more marketable than Valerie’s, and Valerie found herself here, in the biggest, meanest, coldest city in North America. She supposed she was lucky—she could have been bumped to Team Beta in Orlando instead, and forced to stand around watching Sparkle-Brite or whatever her name was lord Valerie’s old spot on the Squadron over her.

  But at least she’d be warm.

  She was also on patrol alone because Angelica was off with her sponsor, posing for the cameras.

  To be fair, if Valerie was as petite and blond as Holly Owens, she’d probably be a good deal less shy. But she wasn’t. Valerie was broad-shouldered and dark-haired, and taller than one of the men on the team. She was good-looking enough to make the Squadron, but nothing to stop hover traffic.

  Just plain old Valerie Vincent, with her plain old superstrength. No glitz, no glitter, just a rock-solid arrest record and three villain takedowns to her credit, which apparently counted just enough to get her transferred to New Chicago.

  She wasn’t part of a matched pair, like Angelica and her Light comrade Luster, or Night and Blackout, brothers in Shadow. The press had been calling the four Black and White, Dark and Light.

  Until Valerie ruined it by joining Team Alpha. She had never felt odd until she’d transferred to New Chicago. Now she felt nothing but, all day, every day.

  The comm in her Corp hover pinged. It was an automated alert, sent out when one of the Squadron spotted a high-priority target.

  Valerie flicked on her speaker. “Ops, Vixen.”

  “Go, Vixen.”

  Valerie breathed a silent sigh of relief that Crush was working Ops today. The Earth power had landed in a wheelchair after Demolition Man had brought a building down on him, but he at least didn’t treat Valerie as a second-class citizen.

  “I got a ping. Something up in my sector?”

  “Hold on.” Keys clicked. Valerie watched the faceless gray city slide by under her feet. “Yup,” Crush came back. “Looks like your boy Luster just engaged Professor Neutron.”

  The WANTED file popped on her screen. Neville Marsh, a.k.a. Professor Neutron. A physicist who’d lost his wife in a supercollider accident; unstable; able to alter atomic structure. He’d created a small black hole outside Des Moines, and now was on Corp’s Most Wanted list. Ironically, he’d eschewed hero training and gone to work for them in R&D before his nervous breakdown. That had apparently not worked out so well.

  And of course Luster had been the one to find him. Of course.

  “Got it.” Valerie sighed. “Guess I’m the cavalry.”

  “Luster can handle it,” Crush said. “You go bag yourself a nice mugger or two, make the price we pay to keep the hovers fueled worth it.”

  “Squadron regs state that backup must be given priority one when confronting a supervillain,” Vixen snapped.

  “You know they’ll just freeze you out more if you save their asses,” Crush said quietly.

  Valerie flipped over to GPS, locking on Luster’s beacon. “Like I’m here to make friends. Vixen out.”

  The hover banked as she took it off autopilot, and she dove deep into a maze of half-built warehouses, their rusting girders long abandoned. Wreck City, this place was called, and it wasn’t a stretch to see why.

  She spotted Luster’s white uniform and piloted down to join him. Lester Bradford turned at the sound of her hover, a smile playing around his face. It was a fine face, made for vids, with just enough insouciance in the smile to hint at danger. Luster had the total package—black hair, snapping eyes, heroic height, and a smile that could blind you if you weren’t careful.

  He was a package, all right—a package that, as far as Valerie could see, was full of crap. Bradford’s smiles for the vids were fake as Cupida’s breasts.

  “You’ve got Neutron?” she said without any finessing. Luster thought of her just like the others—second-class all the way. Just because he wasn’t overtly hostile … and looked like a 3-D film star …

  “And a fine hello to
you too.” Bradford hadn’t dropped his accent for Branding, and it worked in his favor, in a big way. “My, my—they let you out alone already? Someone upstairs thinks highly of you.”

  “More like they all think I’m a joke.” Valerie bit back a curse. She’d said too much.

  Lester grinned at her. “Do they? What’s so terribly amusing about you? The fact that you can twist my head off bare-handed, or the fact that with your body, I’d probably enjoy it?”

  Valerie felt her eyebrows fly up of their own accord. He had cornered a supervillain … and he was flirting with her?

  “I guess your mouth is the quickest thing on you,” she shot back. He wasn’t going to throw her off-balance and laugh about it with the Shadow boys later.

  “Oh, by far,” Luster agreed.

  Valerie hadn’t expected him to agree, and now she was off-balance despite everything. Damn it all. “Are we going after Neutron or not?”

  Luster shrugged. “I could, I suppose. Flash a few Yuletide lights, give all reporters on the scene an orgasm. Or you could do it.”

  Valerie choked, “Me? You called it in. It’s your collar. Protocol states the responding hero must …”

  Bradford stepped closer to her, and her voice trailed off. His smile really was devastating. His eyes too. They were pale and bored into you like a diamond drill. Lit from within by his gaze, Valerie finally realized why citizens and news feeds loved Lester so much. He always looked like he was having fun.

  “I haven’t commed in. For all they know, Neutron beat me about the head and you flew to my rescue like a shining princess in armor.” He brushed the back of one gloved hand down Valerie’s cheek. “Would you? Rescue me?”

  “I …” Valerie stopped talking when the warehouse behind them vibrated, bending inward with an ominous groan. She felt a tug deep in her gut, as if the entire world had just jerked sideways.

  Lester glanced toward the structure. “Bollocks. He’s creating another vortex.”

  Valerie felt her blood race, warming all of the exposed parts of her. “We need to hurry the hell up and collar him, then.”