Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,10
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
The 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