Shades of Gray (5 page)

“What’s the song? ‘Hell ain’t a bad place to be’?”

“Christo, you really are old.”

He threw his wadded napkin at her.

She ducked, grinning, then grabbed her can of Tab and popped the lid. The pink can shimmered as its malleable metal morphed into a cup.
A division of Corp-Co
appeared in pink script. Iridium turned the glass so she couldn’t see the writing. “I saw your nephew on the vids today.”

“Tyler? He commed me a few days ago. I didn’t pick up.”

Iridium chewed on her grainy chicken. “Why not?”

“Hell, what do the kid and I got to say to each other? I ditched out of the Academy when he was in diapers, and he spent most of his better years ready to arrest me on sight.”

“Things are different now,” Iridium said. “But hey, your family is your business.” Christo knew, she didn’t want anyone poking into the Bradford clan’s dysfunction.

“Different, sure. Inmates are running the damn asylum,” Boxer snorted, flipping the vids to the news. It was, if possible, even more violent than the action film he’d been watching. Iridium caught a flash of Shadow and saw Jet in fine form, kicking ass and taking names and still letting the camera find her good side.

Training was hard to shake.

On screen, the anchor announced, “And in other news, mounting tensions in the civilian sector as prison guards at the infamous Blackbird facility for supervillains go on strike.” The anchor smiled perkily at the camera. “Cited causes are lack of pay and increased safety regulations for workers. Blackbird Prison is one of the few not disrupted by riots during this time, but we can only assume that will change. Here’s Tom with your weather.”

Boxer flipped the channel again, to a rerun of
Squad House.
“You know, my brother was short-listed for this. Before he got his bum leg.”

Iridium heard him from a long way off. She was seeing the sterile corridors of Blackbird, the narrow doors marked with designations instead of names. The screams that echoed endlessly no matter how much Thorazine the medics pumped.

“Iri.” Boxer nudged her with his toe. “You with me?”

Iridium shoved her dinner aside. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

CHAPTER 5

JET

The conditioning will guarantee that the Squadron will always be defenders of the public good. And of Corp-Co’s interests, of course. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

—From the journal of Martin Moore, entry #68

T
he baseball field had long given way to age—the grassy field now nothing but dust, and the bleachers filled with junk and old ghosts. Jet tried to picture what it must have been like to see baseball outside, to watch a ball hit so hard that it flew over the stadium’s edge until it was lost to the pollution layer. She thought that the notion of playing any professional sport outdoors was a joke, or maybe a whimsical dream. Baseball outside a dome? Impossible to imagine.

And yet, here was Wrigley Field—the original, dated all the way back to the early 1900s, not the covered astropark of the same name over in Grid 3. Jet soared over what had once been home plate, wondering what it would have been like to see Babe Ruth make his famous called shot.

“I’ll take you to a baseball game,”
Sam had said, not even two weeks before he’d be killed in the line of duty.
“You and me, we’ll get a weekend pass and we’ll hit the Downtown Grid to catch one of the Wrigley vids. You’ll love it!”

Jet blinked back sudden tears. They’d never made it to that game; third year had been insanely busy at the Academy, and Jet had too much work on her plate to request a weekend pass. And Samson hadn’t pushed. Samson had never pushed.

Light, there were times she missed him so much that it hurt to breathe.

Jet took a deep breath, then blew it out, cleared her thoughts. She’d have time for sentimentality when she took that fabled break. Hovering over the remains of home plate, she whispered, “Watch my dust.” Then she zoomed to the roof.

Flitting past the long-rusted bleachers and crumbling bricks, ignoring the broken chairs and tabletops, Jet flew into the abandoned rooftop clubhouse. At first glance, it looked like any onetime pub: wooden-style bar and matching stools; clusters of booths, their built-in seats waiting patiently to be filled; and brick face over the plast walls, complete with a moldering framed poster of an ancient baseball uniform. An old-fashioned refrigerator—complete with a turn-of-the-century Coke logo—lurked behind the bar, backlit and filled with water tabs, caffeine shots, and cold pizza.

On a closer look, one would see the telltale glow of computer screens peeking out from a section of the bar counter. The constant hum of energy spoke of the power Meteorite and Frostbite had piggybacked from New Chicago Light & Heat. It wasn’t stealing, Frostbite had argued; it was an exchange. He and the others worked their asses off to rein in the rabids, and the good city gave them the power they needed to juice their computers. Jet and Steele hadn’t liked it, but they’d been outvoted four to two. Jet might be team leader in the field, but when it came to operating decisions, that was all done by vote.

The linoleum floor had been recently swept and scrubbed, and the windows gleamed with the morning sun. Meteorite’s work, Jet guessed. The former Weather power took clutter and mess as a personal offense.

“Hey, the Jetster made it.” Behind the bar, Meteorite grinned as she tapped on a keyboard. She’d gotten soft in the three years she’d been off active heroing; her gray jumpsuit strained around the middle, and her jaw was round where it used to be chiseled. While she had never been a classic beauty, the former Weather power still hinted at pretty, and that wasn’t due to her stormy eyes or her white-streaked pale hair. Instead, Meteorite had a smile that made her glow like a Lighter and a laugh that was positively infectious. And a sense of humor that rivaled Were’s. For someone who claimed to hate dirt, she had a positively filthy mind.

“About freaking time.”

Jet didn’t need to look at Frostbite behind the bar to know that he was sneering. She was too tired to argue, so she simply arched an eyebrow at him. Unfazed, Frostbite glared back at her, his face looking too old for his years. Like Meteorite, he was in a Corp-issued jumpsuit—the same one he’d been wearing for the past three days, based on the coffee stains. And the smell.

“Cut her some slack,” Firebug said with a laugh, brushing bright orange hair away from her eyes. Her black leather trench coat creaked as she moved her arm—a nod to the chilly October weather outside. “Duty first, eh, Jet?”

“Not funny, Kai.” Steele, even when not swathed in metallic bands, cut an imposing figure. Nearly two meters tall and quite muscular, she was more masculine than most male Squadron soldiers with extra helpings of testosterone. But right now, Steele’s eyes were soft, and the small frown on her lips was distinctly feminine. “Jet’s fighting the good fight. No need to make it unsavory.”

“Christo, it was a joke, Harrie.” Firebug placed her hand over Steele’s. “You used to have a sense of humor.”

“Things have been a little tense as of late,” Frostbite said as he tapped on a computer next to Meteorite. “Maybe you haven’t noticed.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Jet said, sliding onto a barstool. She nodded cautiously at the only one of the small group who hadn’t acknowledged her.

Seated at the far end of the bar, Hornblower continued to ignore her. Hulking in the shadows, he flexed and unflexed his massive hands as if eager to crush walnuts. Just looking at his sheer bulk, one would guess he was an Earth power. He wasn’t.

“No worries,” Meteorite chirped. “We were about to get a game of bridge going while Frostbite manned the screens, but now that’s been blown to hell. Can’t play bridge with five people. So we might as well have our status meeting.”

“Firebug,” Frostbite said. “Kick it off.”

The Fire power frowned. “The cleanup isn’t going well. New rabids, old rabids, the gangs, the Families, the petty criminals … Christo, it’s a fucking mess out there.”

“Language,” Steele chided.

Firebug shrugged by way of apology, and her coat creaked. “There’s just too much to clean up. And the city’s Finest aren’t making our jobs any easier.”

“That’s for sure,” Meteorite grumbled. “You should hear what they’re saying on dispatch. Most of them don’t buy that you four are still card-carrying good guys. Lee’s pressuring Wagner to extend the warrants to include you.”

Firebug rolled her eyes. “Lee’s an ingrate.”

Jet silently agreed. The mayor was quick to go whichever way the wind blew, especially in an election year. Hard to believe that not even two weeks ago, he’d been presenting Jet with an award for her service to New Chicago. But then, a lot had changed in two weeks.

“It’s not his fault,” Steele said softly. “How can any of them trust us? Hundreds of other Squadron soldiers are razing the Americas. Why should they think we’re different?”

“Gee, maybe because you haven’t tried to rip off their heads yet?” Frostbite scoffed. “Or destroy the city? Or declare war against the humans?” He punched in more keyboard commands, then scowled. “Colossal Man’s not helping, what with his ‘We’re not your dogs’ speech. That’s still getting airtime, if you can believe it. Freaking drama king. The media loves him.”

“We’re lucky that more of the Squadron haven’t gone completely rabid,” Jet said.

“Lucky?” In the corner, Hornblower let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, that’s us. Real lucky.”

Jet held her hands up, hoping to placate him. If anyone loathed her more than Frostbite, it was Hornblower. “All I’m saying is it could be worse.”

“Yeah, right.” He glared at her, and she felt the heat of his rage rolling off him in violent waves. “You haven’t had to go up against your own
family.
Oh, right,” he said, snapping his fingers. “You don’t
have
family, do you?”

Jet forced herself to unclench her fist. “Tyler …”

He slammed his palm against the table. “Don’t you ‘Tyler’ me like we’re buddies!”

“Sorry,” she gritted. “Hornblower. I know that going against Lancer yesterday was hard, but you did the right thing.”

“Hard?” The large man’s snarl would have terrified a serial killer. “You don’t know anything, you Shadow freak.”

“Hey now,” Meteorite said. “No call for getting nasty.”

“I don’t trust her,” Hornblower said, his piercing gaze lancing Jet. “She’s unstable. Always has been. She’ll turn on us faster than Slider can run.”

“Speaking of Slider,” Jet said, casting one last look at Hornblower before pointedly turning away from him, “she’s one of three I took down this morning.”

“Rogue?” Firebug said. “Or rabid?”

It was a fine line between the two. But Jet and the others had agreed that the extrahumans who were merely lashing out at the system were rogues—wannabe anarchists, born-again criminals, petty terrorists who liked the attention. Dangerous, but manageable—possibly even convertible. The rabids, though, were the ones who had lost their minds when their brainwashing stopped. They were the ones Jet and the others had to rein in as quickly as possible.

“Rabid,” Jet said. “Were and White Hot were borderline.”

Frostbite blinked. “You went up against Were?”

She nodded.

He held her gaze for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry.”

A sad smile flitted across her lips. For all that Derek hated her, part of him remembered that at one time, they’d been friends—her and Iri, and Samson and Were, and Frostbite and Red Lotus. “Thanks.”

The others gave their reports, and Meteorite checked off their list of active Squadron members in the Americas. Out of the 412 names, 36 had been marked as either “incarcerated” (for the rabids already delivered to the police) or “pursuing” (for the rogues whom they were trying to talk down from the ledge.) That just left 378 to go. And that didn’t take into account any of the missing Academy extrahumans—the students who hadn’t earned their hero status yet, or any of the Ops staff who still held their powers even though they were off fieldwork. That brought the number over a thousand.

Jet wanted to sob with frustration.

“There’s more bad news,” Meteorite said. “Everyman’s been making the rounds again. Wurtham’s all over the place, and the demonstrations are getting more popular. They’re giving out badges now.” She snorted. “
Badges.
The world has gone to shit, and Everyman is marketing.”

“Language,” Steele sighed.

“Everyman runs a tight campaign,” Frostbite said. “Always has. Nothing like preaching fear to really capture the minds and hearts of the brainless masses.”

“Everyman is nothing new,” Steele said. “We can ignore them. The larger threat is the rabids. On top of that is how we’re supposed to work with the police and now the National Guard when they don’t trust us as far as they can spit.”

“The Everyman Society is more dangerous than you know,” Jet said tersely. “And that’s because of a man named Martin Moore.”

For the next five minutes, Jet recounted her failed attempt to save
New Chicago Tribune
reporter Lynda Kidder, and how one of Corp’s techies, Martin Moore, had worked with the humans-first organization initially to kidnap, then inject, Kidder with an experimental serum—one that had mutated her into a monster.

She didn’t mention how she’d killed Kidder in self-defense. That was still too raw.

“We know that our former masters were working with Everyman,” Jet said through clenched teeth, ignoring how her head screamed even at the barest hint of slandering Corp-Co. “Whether they sanctioned Moore’s work with Everyman remains unknown. And we suspect this serum is still out there. If so, it poses a real threat.”

“Even if they spaz out and inject people with that sludge, it’s just normals pretending to be extra.” Hornblower snorted his derision. “What’s the big?”

“The big, Tyler,” Frostbite said, “is that the normals are innocent citizens. If they get juiced with this serum, we have to fight them.”

“
We?
Oh, that’s good. How long’s it been since you’ve been out of your grays, Tinkerbell?”