Black and White (6 page)

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?”

S
he’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.

After sizing them up, the red-haired girl sniffed, “That’s
Dawnlighter.”

“And
there’s
a handle to be proud of,” Iridium said. Jet didn’t see her face, but based on the sound of her voice, Iridium was rolling her eyes. “So original, they should have called you Original Girl.”

Around them, a gossip of teens said “Oooh.” Jet fought an insane urge to giggle.

Dawnlighter smiled—it was a cold movement of her lips, and it would have looked at home on the face of Maleficent or Vixen or any of the other Code Red villainesses. “I’d tell you what they call mutts like you, with a rabid dad and no mom, but heroes don’t swear.”

Iridium’s hand bit into Jet’s shoulder. “Hey, bitch, I dare you to come here and say that to my face.”

Dawnlighter smirked. “What, you didn’t hear me the first time? Maybe you should be Deaf Girl.”

Iridium took a step forward, but Jet pulled her new roommate back. “Stop that,” she hissed. “You’ll get written up!”

“Who cares about that? I’m not going to let her talk trash about me or my dad.”

“What are you going to do,” Dawnlighter said, “hit me? They’ll put you down like the dog you are.”

“Rabid,” another girl said.

“Just like the dad,” said a third.

Iridium shrugged off Jet’s hand and took a step forward. “If they’re going to put me down, it’ll be worth it if I rearrange your face first.”

Dawnlighter blanched, then darted her gaze as if seeking the nearest exit. “If you touch me, you’ll be sorry.”

“I’m already sorry we’re breathing the same air.”

Another “Oooh” from the posse—and Jet noticed at least two other girls muffling giggles.

“Just like a mutt,” Dawnlighter sniffed, obviously trying to act nonchalant and failing rather spectacularly; Jet noticed the sweat beading on the other girl’s brow, the slight tremor to her pouty lips before she clenched her jaw. “Growling big, acting like she’ll bite. Some hero you’ll be, Mutt.”

Iridium cocked her fist back.

Jet flinched, expecting the fight and the repercussions … and that was when the plastiflor bulbs overhead exploded.

The girls squealed as shattered plastic splattered them, and their cries were echoed by others in line as every bulb in the hallway outside the cafeteria shattered one by one.

In the darkness, Jet covered her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming.
We’re in the hall
, she thought desperately,
we’re in the hall and we’re safe and there are no voices here no voices it’s safe it’s safe—

A globe of white light cut through the blackness. Jet almost trembled in relief as she stepped closer to the ball of light emanating from Iridium’s hand.

“Freaking brilliant,” one of the other girls said with a snort. “Now the proctors’ll be on all our asses.”

Another girl hissed, “Way to go, Mutt.”

“It wasn’t me,” Iridium said, startled. “I was going to punch out Dawnie’s teeth. Had to be another Lighter.”

All the girls glared at Dawnlighter, who squawked, “It wasn’t me—she’s lying!”

Iridium rolled her eyes. “As if I’d bother lying about someone as lame as you.”

“Why, you little—”

“What is going on here?”

The proctor’s voice cut through the volley of threats, and all the girls hushed. The darkness seemed to creep forward until it became man-shaped, but maybe that was just the backup track lighting kicking in along the edges of the hallway, banishing the shadows.

One student whispered a prayer, the sound startlingly loud.

Jet’s eyes widened as she gazed upon Night—other than her, the only Shadow power at the Academy—who was lancing each of the students with his dark gaze. A black cowl obscured his face; the matching cape draped from his shoulders like a king’s mantle. The little she could see of the skinsuit beneath was even darker, shadows swallowed by a black hole. Around him, the very air seemed to still, as if it, too, was in awe of this one man who could repel light with a thought.

Part of Jet wanted to throw herself at his feet and beg for mercy. And part of her wanted to kiss those feet and worship him.

Hero worship
, she thought wildly. She bit her lip to keep from giggling.

When he glanced her way, Jet gleeped, and stared down at her boots.

“Someone answer me.” Night’s voice was very low, and very cold.

No one said a thing. Maybe they were afraid of risking the ire of a proctor on First Night, or maybe they were uneasy about angering a full-grown Shadow.

Because everyone knew what happened when a Shadow power got angry.

Once again, Jet thought of her father, screaming her name as they’d come to take him away before he could hurt anyone else.

Well, Jet was a Shadow power too.

She cleared her throat and forced herself to speak. She couldn’t bring herself to meet Night’s eyes, but she did manage to look at where she assumed his chin was. “Well, sir”—but Jehovah, her voice was a barely controlled scream—“we were waiting in line to enter the cafeteria. When Dawnlighter started to harass me, Iridium stood up to her. They exchanged words, and Dawnlighter got very angry. Then the lights exploded.”