Black and White (28 page)

Iridium slumped back in her seat, tears that she hadn’t shed in her entire time at the Academy brimming. No matter how much it hurt, she never cried. But this was a different kind of pain, an insidious, ephemeral type she couldn’t guard against.

If this was being a superhero, she didn’t want it.

T
hey walked beneath the city, slowly, with Moore leading and Jet following, picking their way through the tunnels of the Rat Network. Around them was nothing but gloom that receded into damp shadows; the rounded passages hinted at what might have once been plast, or maybe steel, which was now nothing but water-smoothed blackness festered with mildew and rot. Eye-watering stench—raw sewage; filth; sodden decay—turned breathing normally into an Olympic feat. Sounds were both amplified and muffled, overriding the steady white noise from Jet’s comlink, filling her ears instead with the
plunk-plunk-plunk
of their footsteps, the constant drip of unseen water, and the buzzing spurts from overhead that must
have been early-morning traffic on the streets of New Chicago.

All in all, Jet would rather have been in bed. Or curled up in her rocker with a paperback romance. Or doing something altogether inappropriate with her new Runner.

The sewers
, she thought morosely.
It had to be the sewers, didn’t it?
Why were hostages never held for ransom or for torture in penthouse apartments?

They sludged forward, and Jet tried not to think about what diseases were in the water they stepped through. Moore carried a lightstick, which he held like a holy object. For her part, Jet saw well enough. Perk of her optiframes. But they did precious little to block out the voices, which even now she heard pressing around her, waiting for her to get careless. Which was stupid; even now, her comlink hummed its white-noise hum. The voices couldn’t touch her. Not even here, in the pit of the world.

She pressed her lips together and marched on, pretending that she wasn’t afraid.

You scare easy
, Iridium’s voice hissed.

When it came to the dark? Oh, yeah. She knew what went bump in the night. And it had teeth.

But she was the damn hero. So on she went.

More to distract herself from the looming threat of the whispers in the dark than out of actual desire for conversation, she said, “So you believe that I’m a time bomb?”

If Moore responded, she couldn’t hear it over their plunking footfalls, over the slow but maddening drip of water. Maybe his reply got eaten by the odor, which was rancid enough to be its own life-form. Her nostrils flared as she exhaled sharply. Damn it to Darkness, she was going to have to burn this skinsuit after they got Kidder out of here. Probably the cape and cowl too. Maybe Bruce would be a dear and get the whole enchilada dry-cleaned.

Enchilada. Heh.

She smiled, remembering the taste of the spicy food on her tongue. That really had been sweet of him. Bruce Hunter hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d read her file. Mexican food. Jet shook her head, the smile softening. He was … sweet.

She wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

“All of you.”

Jet blinked, lost the pleasant daze of imagining Bruce’s lips on hers. “Pardon me?”

“It’s not just you. All of you extrahumans are set to go off.”

“And … what, explode? Have a mental breakdown? A stroke?”

“Yes.”

She arched an eyebrow, which he couldn’t see. To his back, she asked, “Which is it, then? If I’m a doomsday machine, I’d really like to know which symptoms to look out for. I fully believe in prior planning.”

“It’s different for each of you, depending on your genetic structure.” He risked a look back at her, over his shoulder. She saw fear in his eyes, yes … but also something else. Incredulousness? Or … Light help her, pity? No, she had to be misreading him.

And she had this nagging sense that he looked familiar.

He said, “You really mean to tell me you don’t know any of your kind who inexplicably started breaking down, either mentally or physically?”

A flash from Second Year: Dawnlighter bleeding from her nose and ears, shooting fireballs at Jet because she was a filthy Shadow, at Iri because she dared to have a costume that was also white …

Jet tripped, but quickly righted herself before she stumbled into the murky water. “Of course,” she said primly. “But that’s nothing more than an unfortunate side effect. This isn’t exactly a low-pressure occupation.”

“No,” he agreed, sounding grave. “It’s suicide. Or, depending on how many humans are around you when you finally go, homicide.”

Jet swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. What Moore said made a frightening kind of sense—the kind that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with a primordial instinct that explained the ways of the universe. An extrahuman race memory, perhaps. The sun brings light; the gods bring destruction.

Get ahold of yourself, woman!

Schooling her face to impassivity, she said, “You’re awfully sure of yourself, considering you’ve admitted you don’t have the hard data to back this up.”

“I see things.” Moore stared ahead as he kept walking. “Files that never existed. Conversations that never happened. Anything that once was data in Corp’s systems, I’ve seen it before it was obliterated. And I know how to connect the dots.”

Clearly, the man had issues. But that was understandable; losing a family member could easily have turned him into someone driven by vengeance. While she didn’t condone that, she certainly understood. “Mr. Moore, don’t you think that if extrahumans truly were wired to explode, as you so charmingly put it before, Corp would be working to resolve the issue?”

At that, he spun to face her. “Who do you think did this to you in the first place?”

Her heart dropped to her toes.

No. He was wrong. Kidder had been wrong.

Moore pivoted and started walking again, this time splashing through the watery filth. “This is why it was so vital for me to help get the truth out there. It’s not just to educate the citizens of the world. It’s to educate our so-called saviors as well.”

A burst of rage shattered the fear that had been icing her limbs. “‘So-called’?” she spat. “I’ll have you know that
I’ve personally saved New Chicago twice in the last calendar year!”

“Yes, how very noble of you.” He shot her a look. “But maybe we mere mortals should be left to save ourselves.”

She scowled at him. “You’re infuriating.”

“We didn’t ask for superheroes.”

“And
you’re an ingrate.”

Moore shrugged. “I’ve been called worse. But at least I’m not being deluded by a megalomaniacal organization bent on ruling the world.”

Jet shook her head. “Now you sound like Mister Invincible.”

“I’m not the villain here. Nor am I the threat to the public good.”

“No, you just kidnap reporters. Why’d you do it? Why Kidder?”

“I didn’t do a thing.”

“Everyman, then,” she gritted.

Moore paused as he considered a fork, then headed down the left-hand tunnel. Jet wondered if he really knew where they were going. Once she had Kidder safely in hand, she’d tap Ops to maneuver her out of the Network. “The problem with intrepid investigative reporters,” he said, “is that they don’t know when to leave something alone.”

“Do tell.”

“What do you want me to say? Ms. Kidder started looking too closely at the Society. Or, more accurately, at a small part of the Society. And that made some people very unhappy.”

Thinking about the memory stick she’d found in Kidder’s picture frame, Jet wondered what other things were carefully hidden in Kidder’s apartment. “Did it make you unhappy, Mr. Moore?”

He wheezed out a laugh. “Me? I’m an old man. I’m interested in the truth, not in power plays.”

“I take it Everyman’s planning another attack against the Academy.” She frowned, remembering that day in Third Year, and Iri bleeding in her arms, Iri screaming …

screaming

… and Sam—

screams sweet screams

No.
Her hand pulled into a fist.
Get back.

so sweet

Back!

Giggling, the voices receded. For the moment.

Light.
She blew out a quiet breath, ignored the sweat dripping down her face. Forget the safety of white noise; she had to get out of the dark.

Soon. They had to be close to Kidder already.

Realizing Moore had been speaking, she focused on his words: “… crude as all that. But of course, it’s like your kind to jump to such conclusions.”

“My kind,” she said, “has saved humanity more times than you can count.”

“And again, we didn’t ask for your help.”

“Maybe not you, citizen. But many others have. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands.” More like millions.

“And how many of your kind are there? Ten thousand?”

She had no idea; Corp kept the exact number confidential. “Why?”

“How many extrahumans would it take to rule the world? To crush humanity under its feet?”

“We wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” he agreed, not deigning to look at her. “But if, one day, you decided to do just that—say, that internal wiring of yours melts and leaves you more likely to, shall we say, wreak havoc—what could we humble civilians possibly do against you?”

Tension, thick in the foul air as she imagined the
extrahumans declaring war on the innocent. It would be full-scale slaughter “You read way too much science fiction.”

“And you, girl, are willfully ignorant. Ah. Here we are.” They’d come to a halt in front of a steel-reinforced plast door.

Too easy, despite the darkness and the voices licking at her mind. “Convenient that none of the Undergoths interrupted our little journey.”

He shrugged. “The Society has an understanding with them.”

Of course. “How much per month?”

“I have no idea,” he said, sounding appalled she would even ask such a question. “I’m not a moneyman.”

“Just a mole. Open the door.”

He patted his pockets helplessly. “I’m afraid I don’t have a key.”

Of course not.

She approached the door, touched it. Tried the old-fashioned knob. Locked. She could Shadowslide through the crack between the doorjamb and the wall, even though she was loath to use her power in the dark. But duty first, always. Yes, Shadowslide, then see about opening the door from the inside. Worst case, she could pummel the thing with a Shadowbolt—

The blow hit her at the base of her skull. She staggered, whirled in time for the lightstick to clip her in the temple. The world tilted, and she stumbled to her knees.

Moore tinkered by the knob. “I lied about the key. But I didn’t lie about the reporter. She’s inside.”

Blinking away her dizziness, Jet let fly a runner of Shadow. It wrapped snugly around Moore from shoulders to knees, trussing him tightly. He teetered to the left, then toppled like a felled tree.

“That was a mistake,” Jet said, pulling herself up.
“Leaking information from Corp was bad, but at least it was for a decent purpose. But attacking me from behind? Moore, you just bought yourself ten to twenty.”

Behind her, the door creaked open.

From inside, a rumble, like a bear’s growl, made Jet’s stomach knot and her knees turn to rubber.

She whirled around, but all she saw inside the doorway was shadow. The growling continued—low, almost musical. “What in the Light is that? A pit bull?” She hated dogs almost as much as she hated the dark.

Stomping from within. And the growl deepened.

Jet drew back. She couldn’t cut loose inside the room, not without knowing where Kidder was inside. Hitting her with Shadow could put her into shock, especially after her ordeal.

She called into the room: “This is Jet. I’m here for Lynda Kidder. Release her, now.”

Chuffing laughter—from the trussed form of Martin Moore.

Jet couldn’t spare him a glance; in front of her, a person was lumbering into view—obscenely muscled, the clothing shredded in its attempt to contain the body beneath it. It was a mountain of a human, someone so overly padded with bulging muscles that walking should have been simply impossible. Towering, hunched over to avoid hitting the roof of the tunnel, the figure almost vibrated with murderous fury. A string of pearls strained around the bulging neck.

“Oh Light,” Jet breathed, staring up at the monstrous person’s face.

The hulking shape paused in the doorway, blinked stupidly at the feeble glow from the lightstick on the ground, then focused on Jet.

“Freak,” wheezed Martin Moore, “say hello to the new and improved Lynda Kidder.”