Shades of Gray (6 page)

“How long’s it been since you actually thought before you opened your mouth, Tyler?”

“I don’t even want to know what you put in your mouth, fairy.”

“
Boys,
” Firebug hissed. “Come on now. Play nice, or Meteorite will take away our toys.”

Meteorite held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. No way am I getting caught in that pissing contest.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Jet growled. “There’s more than a thousand extrahumans unaccounted for. Let’s finish our business and get back to work.”

She was only a little surprised that both men actually listened to her.

“Just as high a priority as reining in the rabids,” she said, “is finding Martin Moore.”

“Working on it,” Frostbite said. “I still have my personal back door to Corp’s network. Meteorite and I’ve been downloading files.”

“Which ones?”

He grinned. “All of them. Take now, sift through later. Once we’re done with the transfer onto our local network, we’ll start on decryption. That’ll go a hell of a lot faster than the downloading, thanks to our built-in cooling system.” He snapped his fingers, sending a smattering of icicles arcing through the air. “Among other things, we’ll search for Moore’s files. We’ll find him, and maybe even Corp’s role in this mutation serum.”

“Good.” Jet paused, considering her words. “Things are hitting a crisis point.”

“Hitting?” Firebug laughed. “Jetster, where’ve you been?”

Jet spread her hands and looked at each of the heroes as she spoke, silently imploring them to listen. “Maybe it’s time for us to reach out to the citizens of New Chicago, work with them. Build goodwill.”

“Scorch me,” Hornblower muttered, “she’s freaking
branding.
”

“When do you propose we do that?” Firebug asked lightly. “Before or after we chase down the thousand or so extrahumans still unaccounted for?”

“Firebug’s right,” Steele said. “We’ve got our hands full just trying to do our jobs. We don’t have the time or the resources to play Goodwill Ambassadors.”

“Maybe we should make the time.”

“Jet’s got a point,” Meteorite said. “Not that I’m into marketing, but the Squadron approval rating wasn’t even at the 50 percent mark for the last three quarters. Why do you think Everyman’s got such a huge audience?”

“Money,” said Steele.

“Or fanatical followers with good messaging.” Firebug shrugged. “Look, I’m just as happy as the next superhero to say that it’s all about the citizens, but that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to improve our likability scores. Sponsorship’s been sewered. We don’t have Runners, or Corp backing, or any of the amenities.”

“Hey,” Meteorite said, affronted.

“Okay, or most of the amenities,” Firebug said. “Now’s not the time for us to be expanding our job scope. Let’s concentrate on going after the rabids and the bad guys.”

“Agreed,” Steele said.

“You ladies are forgetting something,” Frostbite said. “Corp-Co is responsible for everything that’s happening now. We have to go public with how they manipulated us.”

“Take ’em down.” Hornblower cracked his knuckles. “Hit ’em where it hurts: the public eye.”

Frostbite nodded. “We’re lucky that all they’re doing now is saying ‘no comment’ and dodging the media. Public favor is going to be way down. Now’s the time for us to move against them—loudly. If we do it right, we can get them delisted from the American Stock Exchange. We do it better, we can bankrupt them as well as bring them up on criminal charges. We do it perfect, and Corp-Co is a thing of the past.”

“It’ll never happen,” Firebug said. “They’re too big.”

“No one’s too big to fail. You really think the government will bail them out?”

“Corp’s got governments in their pockets,” Firebug insisted.

“You’re giving them too much credit.”

“And you’re not giving them enough.”

“What’re you afraid of?” Hornblower asked, smirking. “Maybe you liked being their lapdog, huh? Maybe you’d rather go fetch?”

Firebug stood up, snarling, “Now listen, you oversized junkfreak—”

“What’re you going to do?” Hornblower laughed. “Sic your girlfriend on me?”

“Stop it,” Jet shouted, slamming her fist on the bar counter. “This isn’t about … them.” Damn it to Darkness, she still couldn’t even say
Corp
without her head threatening to burst. “It’s about the people of New Chicago, and the Americas!”

“You’re all getting ahead of yourselves,” Steele said calmly. “First and foremost, we have to stop the bad guys.”

“Corp
is
the bad guy,” Frostbite growled. “Don’t you get that?”

“No, the hundreds of rabids out there are the bad guys!” Firebug glared at him. “I know you haven’t been heroing in a while, Frostbite, but even grounded in Ops, you should be able to remember that!”

Ice licked over the bar and cracked over the chairs as Frostbite shouted, “They sliced my brain! They raped my mind! Don’t you preach to me about remembering who the good guys are. Don’t you dare!”

“Derek,” Meteorite said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, man. Calm down.”

He shrugged out of her grasp. “I’m calm, Sheila. I’m real fucking calm.”

“Language, Derek,” Steele said.

“Fuck off, Harriet.”

And so it went: Frostbite and Hornblower insisted they concentrate their efforts on taking down Corp-Co. Steele and Firebug remained steadfast in their determination to first rein in the rabids and the other criminal elements in New Chicago and beyond. Meteorite tried to get everyone to stop shouting.

And Jet, meanwhile, sat on her barstool, one gauntleted hand pressed to her temple, willing her headache to disappear. The infighting among the six of them had to stop; otherwise, they’d be doomed to fail.

Just like she was doomed to go crazy, no matter how she fought it.

The Shadow voices giggled, and Jet pretended not to notice.

CHAPTER 6

IRIDIUM

I have no regrets. Scientific advancement never merits begging forgiveness.

—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated September 20, 1986

B
lackbird Prison sat under a freeway, a sprawl of complexes old enough that the buildings still had bars on the windows. There had been a prison on this spot since the nineteenth century, and Iridium could feel the tang in the air from the security grid that surrounded the place, lasers and bots and traps pocking the old grounds.

She shifted, her leg cramping. She’d been sitting on the struts of the overpass all night, watching the prison, learning the new routine. It was chaos, like everything else. The striking guards were massed out front. The prison was on lockdown. A snarl of news hovers blocked the access road.

Iridium had spent hours of her life thinking about how she’d break into the prison. She’d managed it, too. What she hadn’t been able to do was break someone out, and that was what kept her up at night.

A garbage truck chugged down the access road and up the ramp to the rear of the prison. Whatever else was happening in the world, the garbage still needed to be shipped out.

Iridium swung herself down from the strut and joined the crowd milling in front of the prison. In her nondescript black outfit, she blended like any other gawker looking for a glimpse of superfreaks. A second garbage truck joined the first, and she waited until it slowed, the horn sounding from within. There was no driver—all of the garbage in New Chicago was bot-controlled, which made it easy for her to climb aboard.

There were no guards inside. There was a formidable security system, but no one to watch it.

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

A
ll 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.