Shades of Gray (7 page)

And breaking stuff, no lie. This morning, the bodega on the corner got leveled by Bigfoot (or maybe by Red Sasquatch; Garth can never keep those two straight). He shakes his head. You think you’re going out for morning coffee, and instead you’re helping Jose dig out from all the rubble.

Good man, that Jose. Garth would like him even if he weren’t part of the Network. And so what that Jose thinks Garth is a nutter for even suggesting that they try to stop the chaos in the city?

Garth hugs the cup of coffee closer to him. Jose had nuked up a cup of the instant sludge—best he could do in a pinch—by way of thanks for Garth lending his back. Not his blended beans, of course, but it’ll do. As long as it’s liquid caffeine, Julie will be happy. Last night hadn’t gone well, and Garth frowns as he remembers the way Julie’s tears had sparkled like crystalline jewels as she shouted at him for wanting to get involved.

No, last night hadn’t gone well at all. His side of the bed had been cold, and lonely.
Well,
he thinks now,
a woman holds a grudge tighter than a miser holds money.
His da had told him that long and long ago, and it was Jehovah’s own truth. Thus the coffee: the morning-after peace offering. Garth picks his way along Obama Road, ignoring the steady itching of his eyes. Barely a block away from his flat, a mighty crash reverberates on the street, making him throw his arms out for balance. Coffee slops over the cup, but he doesn’t feel the hot sting. His attention is riveted on the two figures who’ve tumbled to the ground in a lover’s knot.

One’s a woman—huge and metallic, but clearly feminine, based on the curves. The other’s a wiry sort in black, complete with a death mask over his face. He’s got a noose around the metal woman’s neck, and she’s scrabbling at the rope that’s strangling the life out of her.

Garth recognizes them from the vids. Steele and the Hangman.

He senses other spectators cautiously gathering like him, watching the schoolyard fight of small gods. But Garth assumes that none of the other witnesses are extrahumans. Not that
he’s
an extrahuman per se. If he had more of that
extra,
he wouldn’t be living the life of a normal citizen, now, would he?

“We’re not extrahumans,”
Terry, the de facto leader of the Latent Network, told Garth just last night.
“It’s not our fight. We stay hidden.”

“How can you say that?”
The frustration welled up in Garth, tingeing his words with the brogue of his childhood.
“The world is falling to shite, and you’re telling me we’re supposed to sit on our arses and do nothing?”

“Just give thanks that you’re not completely wired,”
Terry said,
“or you’d be out there with the rest of the superfreaks.”

“You have to get the Network involved.”

“No.”

His fist tightens around the coffee cup, as if in counterpoint to the noose tightening around Steele’s throat.

Behind his sunglasses, Garth’s eyes burn. And he thinks,
Fuck it.

Garth strides up to the duo and hurls the steaming coffee into the Hangman’s eyes. The man screeches—more surprise than pain, Garth decides; the mask had to have taken the brunt of the heat—and releases a hand to wipe the sludge from his eyes.

Steele places both her hands around the Hangman’s wrist and squeezes. And the Hangman screams.

Yeah,
Garth thinks, stepping back.
Now
that’s
a cry of pain.

Not even a minute later, the Hangman is trussed up with one of his own nooses, whimpering like a baby over his crushed wrist, and Steele is looking around for the man who’d stepped in to distract her opponent.

But Garth McFarlane is long gone.

CHAPTER 7

VIXEN

A human being will never be able to walk through walls or levitate above the ground. Not without certain improvements at the genetic level.

—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated May 11, 1972

V
alerie Vincent hated New Chicago. She hated the cold, the rain, and the constant waft of pollution that blocked the sun. She hated the way the cops treated her like she was no better than the criminals she apprehended. Most of all, she hated her teammates.

Squadron: New Chicago was nothing like Squadron: Orlando Basin. In Orlando, she hadn’t had a real family, but she’d at least had friends. Here, she was the new kid.

Valerie hated being the new kid too.

She shivered inside her skinsuit. It was cut to reveal her midriff and a portion of each flank, a nod to growing up in a city where you could still see and feel the sun—a gleaming, glass city built on stilts over mile upon mile of waving green swamp and razor-sharp palmetto, reclaimed from the urban sprawl of Orlando Proper after Hurricane Axel had leveled most of central Florida.

She’d have to talk to Branding about creating a new costume. This one made it hard to move when it was cold, never mind fight. She didn’t even have a cape to keep warm, like Angelica.

Valerie had been in New Chicago for two months, and none of the other Team Alpha members had so much as tried to speak to her at any length, other than in the field. The four of them had come up together in the Academy, just like Valerie and her classmates had back in Orlando Basin.

But that was all over now. One graduating class, one stupid twit who had powers that were more marketable than Valerie’s, and Valerie found herself here, in the biggest, meanest, coldest city in North America. She supposed she was lucky—she could have been bumped to Team Beta in Orlando instead, and forced to stand around watching Sparkle-Brite or whatever her name was lord Valerie’s old spot on the Squadron over her.

But at least she’d be warm.

She was also on patrol alone because Angelica was off with her sponsor, posing for the cameras.

To be fair, if Valerie was as petite and blond as Holly Owens, she’d probably be a good deal less shy. But she wasn’t. Valerie was broad-shouldered and dark-haired, and taller than one of the
men
on the team. She was good-looking enough to make the Squadron, but nothing to stop hover traffic.

Just plain old Valerie Vincent, with her plain old superstrength. No glitz, no glitter, just a rock-solid arrest record and three villain takedowns to her credit, which apparently counted just enough to get her transferred to New Chicago.

She wasn’t part of a matched pair, like Angelica and her Light comrade Luster, or Night and Blackout, brothers in Shadow. The press had been calling the four Black and White, Dark and Light.

Until Valerie ruined it by joining Team Alpha. She had never felt odd until she’d transferred to New Chicago. Now she felt nothing but, all day, every day.

The comm in her Corp hover pinged. It was an automated alert, sent out when one of the Squadron spotted a high-priority target.

Valerie flicked on her speaker. “Ops, Vixen.”

“Go, Vixen.”

Valerie breathed a silent sigh of relief that Crush was working Ops today. The Earth power had landed in a wheelchair after Demolition Man had brought a building down on him, but he at least didn’t treat Valerie as a second-class citizen.

“I got a ping. Something up in my sector?”

“Hold on.” Keys clicked. Valerie watched the faceless gray city slide by under her feet. “Yup,” Crush came back. “Looks like your boy Luster just engaged Professor Neutron.”

The
WANTED
file popped on her screen. Neville Marsh, a.k.a. Professor Neutron. A physicist who’d lost his wife in a supercollider accident; unstable; able to alter atomic structure. He’d created a small black hole outside Des Moines, and now was on Corp’s Most Wanted list. Ironically, he’d eschewed hero training and gone to work for them in R&D before his nervous breakdown. That had apparently not worked out so well.

And of course Luster had been the one to find him. Of course.

“Got it.” Valerie sighed. “Guess I’m the cavalry.”

“Luster can handle it,” Crush said. “You go bag yourself a nice mugger or two, make the price we pay to keep the hovers fueled worth it.”

“Squadron regs state that backup must be given priority one when confronting a supervillain,” Vixen snapped.

“You know they’ll just freeze you out more if you save their asses,” Crush said quietly.

Valerie flipped over to GPS, locking on Luster’s beacon. “Like I’m here to make friends. Vixen out.”

The hover banked as she took it off autopilot, and she dove deep into a maze of half-built warehouses, their rusting girders long abandoned. Wreck City, this place was called, and it wasn’t a stretch to see why.

She spotted Luster’s white uniform and piloted down to join him. Lester Bradford turned at the sound of her hover, a smile playing around his face. It was a fine face, made for vids, with just enough insouciance in the smile to hint at danger. Luster had the total package—black hair, snapping eyes, heroic height, and a smile that could blind you if you weren’t careful.

He was a package, all right—a package that, as far as Valerie could see, was full of crap. Bradford’s smiles for the vids were fake as Cupida’s breasts.

“You’ve got Neutron?” she said without any finessing. Luster thought of her just like the others—second-class all the way. Just because he wasn’t overtly hostile … and looked like a 3-D film star …

“And a fine hello to you too.” Bradford hadn’t dropped his accent for Branding, and it worked in his favor, in a big way. “My, my—they let you out alone already? Someone upstairs thinks highly of you.”

“More like they all think I’m a joke.” Valerie bit back a curse. She’d said too much.

Lester grinned at her. “Do they? What’s so terribly amusing about you? The fact that you can twist my head off bare-handed, or the fact that with your body, I’d probably enjoy it?”

Valerie felt her eyebrows fly up of their own accord. He had cornered a supervillain … and he was
flirting
with her?

“I guess your mouth
is
the quickest thing on you,” she shot back. He wasn’t going to throw her off-balance and laugh about it with the Shadow boys later.

“Oh, by far,” Luster agreed.

Valerie hadn’t expected him to agree, and now she was off-balance despite everything. Damn it all. “Are we going after Neutron or not?”

Luster shrugged. “I could, I suppose. Flash a few Yuletide lights, give all reporters on the scene an orgasm. Or you could do it.”

Valerie choked, “Me? You called it in. It’s your collar. Protocol states the responding hero must …”

Bradford stepped closer to her, and her voice trailed off. His smile really was devastating. His eyes too. They were pale and bored into you like a diamond drill. Lit from within by his gaze, Valerie finally realized why citizens and news feeds loved Lester so much. He always looked like he was having fun.

“I haven’t commed in. For all they know, Neutron beat me about the head and you flew to my rescue like a shining princess in armor.” He brushed the back of one gloved hand down Valerie’s cheek. “Would you? Rescue me?”

“I …” Valerie stopped talking when the warehouse behind them vibrated, bending inward with an ominous groan. She felt a tug deep in her gut, as if the entire world had just jerked sideways.

Lester glanced toward the structure. “Bollocks. He’s creating another vortex.”

Valerie felt her blood race, warming all of the exposed parts of her. “We need to hurry the hell up and collar him, then.”

“Well?” Lester demanded. “Do you want point, or shall I swoop in and dazzle the city like I’ve done a dozen times before? I favor your lead. Dazzling is rather humdrum when you’re as handsome, charming, and intelligent as me.”

This close to him, Valerie felt a reckless part of herself that she rarely allowed off the leash break loose. Luster in real life was nothing like Luster in the vids or the briefing room at Squadron HQ. Here, he was relaxed. Funny, even.

She smiled at Luster and squared her shoulders. “I’ll take him down. Call Night and Blackout for backup.”

Lester snapped her a salute. “As you say. And Vixen?”

Valerie turned back as she started toward the warehouse. “Yes, Luster?”

“You look absolutely stunning in that outfit.”

CHAPTER 8

ANGELICA

Aaron still insists that Angelica should be classified as a Mental power, not as a Light power. Frankly, I think he just wants the excuse to study her in every way possible. I’ve never understood his taste in women.

—From the journal of Martin Moore, entry #7

H
olly Owens pivoted to look over her shoulder, flouncing her long, blond hair and billowing her white cape. She gave the cameras a wry smile—one that she knew suggested humor and (according to Branding stats) sexual prowess. Lights flashed and popped, and if she hadn’t been a Light power, she would have been momentarily blinded. But Holly loved the spotlight. Always had. It was a necessity if you were a superhero.