Shades of Gray (39 page)

And it got Corp off the hook. Jet’s frown increased.

“And now that we’ve captured him,” said Arclight, getting into it, “the Squadron, along with Blackbird Special Forces trained to go after Hypnotic—led by me, of course—is confident that things will return to normal soon.”

Jet sighed, picturing all the press conferences and exclusive interviews that would come out of this. Based on the gleam in Arclight’s eye, he was already there.

“And,” Arclight added, grinning hugely, “all damages to the city and to individuals should be sent to Corp-Co.”

Jet actually smiled at that.

“Ooh,” Iri crowed. “Gordon’s going to love that! Brilliant!”

Jet had no idea who Gordon was, but she nodded anyway. The plan was far from perfect. And it still begged the question of why just about all the extrahumans had, indeed, gone crazy once Corp had stopped brainwashing them—whether they really were damaged goods that Corp had been trying to control.

But for now, it would do.

Interlude

T
erry, you see this?”

“Copy. Ugly fuckers, aren’t they?”

Garth makes a face at the handheld. Next to him, Mary Janice covers a frightened giggle. “Well and good,” he says. “What’re we supposed to do, offer them a day trip to a beauty salon?”

The handheld spits out a burst of static. Then: “Any chance they’re an illusion? Some of Hypnotic’s work?”

“Fuck if I know. They look pretty damn real to me.”

“Hang on, Jose’s saying something.” The connection clicks off.

Garth mutters, “Yeah, okay, we’ll just stand here with our dicks in our hand while a bevy of beasties crash down the street …”

“You’ve the soul of a poet,” says Mary Janice, sounding all of sixteen and trying not to scream. She’s staring wide-eyed at the three enormous humanoid creatures. “Holy Jehovah … I think the female one’s wearing pearls. Isn’t that wrong? Monsters shouldn’t wear pearls.”

“Neither should swine.” Garth catches something peripherally, and he turns to see a familiar figure looming in the distance. “Terrific. Here comes Colossal Man.”

“Well,” Mary Janice says, “maybe he’ll, you know, stop the monsters?”

Garth fingers the baseball bat, hanging from its belt holster. “With our luck, he’ll probably join them.” If that happens, he and Mary Janice are rabbiting right quick back to the apartment.

The communicator clicks on. “Listen, those things are flooding Third Street. Rough count is a hundred. Reports are, they go batshit when they come across the Squadron.”

Garth watches Colossal Man stomp his way closer to the monsters in tattered suits. “Define
batshit.
”

“Attack the Squadron soldier and try to tear his fucking head off.”

That
sort of batshit. Good to know. “Is it the powers that gets their backs up? The costumes?”

“Could be their fucking horoscope for all we know. So far, none of those things have attacked our people or civvies. And they only seem to attack cops and soldiers if they’re attacked first.”

“Polite monsters prejudiced against the Squadron,” Garth says. “I think I’ve heard everything now …”

“Until we can figure this out, do not approach. Repeat: do not approach.”

“Yeah,” Garth says, wincing as one of the beasties lets out a teeth-rattling howl. “About that. Our three monsters just spotted Colossal Man.”

A long pause, then Terry replies, “Well, let them do our work for us. Do not approach. I’ll call it in.”

“Might want to call the morgue. May have a faster response time.”

“We take what we can get. Stay in the vicinity until the cops show. Do not reveal yourselves.”

“Copy,” Garth says. He tucks the handheld back into his pocket and watches as the three beasts tackle the giant extrahuman’s legs. The man’s huge hand comes down, swatting at them like mosquitoes. Contact—one monster goes flying, lands hard against some normal’s car, which morphs into an accordion.
Well,
thinks Garth,
that’ll teach the person to park streetside when there are rabids and beasties and gangs overflowing the streets.

“Uh-oh,” says Mary Janice.

Garth hears the bellow before he turns back to see the two remaining creatures savaging Colossal Man’s leg. One gets in a massive blow, and the giant goes down.

Timberrrr!

The crash is still echoing as the two things pound the fallen rabid into pulp.

Garth and Mary Janice exchange a look.

“We have to do something,” she says.

“Yeah.” He pulls the bat from its homemade holster and tests the grip.
There are times,
he muses,
when seeing in the dark means exactly Jack Shite.
“You get just as close as you need to get in range. And then CO
₂
them.”

She bites her lip. “I sort of have to touch them for that.”

“Of course you do.” He closes his eyes and says a brief prayer. “Okay. I’ll smash with the bat, and you grab on when they’re down. Right?”

“Right.”

Garth hears the terror in her voice. “It’s okay, lass. We’ll make a great team.”

She flashes him a tight smile.

Thinking of Julie, he charges forward.

He’s there before he knows it, deftly avoiding scattered piles of wreckage that once might have been cars or trees or street. The bat’s part of his arm, so natural in his hands, and he brings it back as he imagines the windup, the pitch—

A solid
THWAK
as the wood connects against the monster’s oversized noggin. The creature’s already shaking it off and starting to turn as he swings the bat the other way, feels the impact explode along his arms and shoulders and back.

“Now!” he shouts, not stopping to see if Mary Janice does her part. Blind trust in your partner goes a long way in a fight. His back to the first creature, he shoves the tip of the bat into the second thing’s bulging neck. He sees the string of pearls just as the wood hits home. If not for his momentum, he would have pulled the blow. Physics, happily, overcomes chivalry as his full weight goes into the strike. It doesn’t crush the creature’s throat, but it does make the thing stagger back, rasping for breath. Feeling like a heel, he hits the thing again, a home-run swing that sends the beast to its nyloned knees.

Garth turns back to Mary Janice, who’s holding on to the first creature’s leg in a white-knuckled grip. The beastie itself is slapping at its face, as if trying to shoo away a fly. But the arms are moving slowly, weakly, and now they’re not moving at all. With a groan, the thing rolls up its eyes and crashes to the floor. Mary Janice lets go just in time.

“One more for you,” Garth calls out, his gaze back on the wheezing oversized creature in the tattered yellow unisuit. It’s scrabbling forward, not quite on its feet. “Now would be good!”

“Need … a second … catch … my breath.”

Right. One second, coming up. Garth lunges forward, wielding the bat like a sword as he swipes at the monstrosity. The thing skitters back, just out of the bat’s arc. It’s peering at him with flat, black eyes, and it grins at him, showing off perfectly white teeth framed by a lipsticked mouth. Garth barely notices the creature’s hungry growl; his gaze has fastened on the yellow sunburst patch, at first blending with the remains of the yellow suit the thing was wearing.

Fuck me,
he thinks,
but I think that’s an Everyman. Everymonster?

It bellows a challenge just before it launches itself at him.

He gets the bat up and knocks the creature back, and that’s when Mary Janice, bless her, clamps onto the Everything’s massive neck. A minute later, the creature is on the ground, unconscious.

Garth leans against his bat and lets out a shaky laugh. “Not bad for a couple of extrahuman wannabes, eh?”

Sitting on her haunches, breathing heavily, she flicks him a smile.

Colossal Man’s still doing his roadblock imitation across Third. Not like there’s any traffic; most people have gotten the hell out of New Chicago days ago, once the Doctor Hypnotic jailbreak hit the news.

Garth stares at the massive belt around the giant’s waist. He’s moving before he can think twice about it.

“Garth?” Mary Janice calls out, her voice shaky. “What’re you doing?”

He peers into the first of the belt pouches, doesn’t see anything useful. The second, though, reveals a pair of stun-cuffs. Giantsized. Grinning, he pulls them out. “Just securing the situation.”

By the time they hear the sirens, Colossal Man is cuffed.

“So,” Garth says amiably to Mary Janice as they walk away. “Want to go monster hunting?”

CHAPTER 53

NIGHT

The Everyman Society has everything I need: like-minded people and an unlimited supply of potential lab rats.

—From the journal of Martin Moore, entry #260

N
ight hated being naked.

He sat in the coffee shop in Looptown Mall, drinking black coffee and wishing he were in uniform. But no; for this meeting, he had to be in civvies. He didn’t even wear the comlink; he was officially off duty. It made him feel itchy, but whether that was from being in normal human clothing or from not having the earpiece soothing him, he couldn’t say.

Well, sacrifices were to be expected; Night couldn’t have Corp listening in on this meeting, and the person joining Night would have been offended by the costume. And Night didn’t want to offend him. This meeting was an unexpected surprise—one that Night had decided to turn into an opportunity.

A hero needs a villain, after all.

While he waited, Night called up the latest edict from the Corp-Co Executive Committee—distributed earlier that week—and he reread it via his wristlet screen:

POLICY CHANGE #425-C

Effective this memo, all Squadron branch headquarters throughout the Americas are hereby dismantled. While the Executive Committee encourages Squadron members to mix with their fellow crimefighters when off duty, this interaction should be limited to their individual Sponsored Housing Complexes throughout the Americas or to the sole remaining Squadron Academy, based in New Chicago. Should more than seven extrahumans, on duty or off duty, be found gathering in places other than these Corp-Co-approved sites or other preapproved locations, those Squadron members will have their active duty immediately suspended. If there are any questions about this policy change, contact your local Corp-Co Extrahuman Resources representative.

Night snorted. He wouldn’t miss the headquarters, Christo knew. Always surrounded by other idiots blathering the Duty First party line was enough to make him want to punch out someone’s teeth. But he chafed at being limited in his interactions with other extrahumans. Granted, normals were sheep and fodder, little more.

And yet, now he and his brethren had to devote more than 50 percent of their active duty time to their corporate sponsors. Those sheep had certainly learned how to put on wolves’ clothing, he mused. The triple-header of Angelica’s murder, Blackout’s sentencing, and Luster’s defection all within a two-month period had decimated the Squadron’s reputation and, by proxy, Corp-Co’s stock prices had plummeted. Stockholders had not been amused.

Extrahumans might be small gods compared to their human cousins, but money made even gods slaves.

Bradford must be laughing his ass off.

A man’s voice called out, “Rick?”

Night planted a smile on his face and as he closed the report, he turned to face his brother.

Frank Wurtham looked good. He was a man now, not the obnoxious teen Night remembered. Well, it had been more than ten years since they’d last seen each other; there were bound to be changes.

But Night was counting on certain things to have remained exactly the same. He nodded. “Frank.”

His brother offered a hand, and after a moment, Night took it. They shook, and Night was faintly bemused by both Frank’s hesitation and then by his attempt to outsqueeze his brother’s hand.

Frank eyed Night’s coffee cup. “Need a refill?”

“No.” Night kept his voice level. “Thank you.”

His brother sat, and for a minute or so, the two men said nothing as they looked at each other. Night could almost see individual emotions flitting across Frank’s eyes: worry, fear, excitement, hope. Finally, Frank said, “I’ve been reading about your exploits.”

“‘Exploits’? Do you mean my work?”

“Your costumed adventures, yes.” Frank took a deep breath. “Rick, you didn’t want to hear me out years ago. I’m hoping you will now.”

“Are you referring to the time when you called me a freak of nature? When you told me my kind were dangerous to all humanity, and we should be locked up for the good of the world?” Night smiled thinly. “I know, it’s a shock to think I didn’t want to be insulted by my little brother.”

Frank’s face reddened. At least he had the decency to be embarrassed. “I was a kid. I never should have said those things to you in that way.”

“You mean like a jealous norm?”