Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,106
the most feared supervillains in recent history. “He needs help.”
Arclight laughed, the sound harsh and cruel. “He needs a bullet through the brain.”
“Seconded,” said a rabid Jet didn’t recognize, a thin Goth girl who clung to a light fixture on the ceiling. Upside down, she pulled out a Hogan cutter from her sleeve.
“Put it away, girl,” Steele growled.
“Yeah? You going to make me, Tin Can?”
Steele glared up at the girl on the ceiling, her metallic fists gleaming.
“Enough.” Jet’s voice echoed in the hallway.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the fire cage crackling and the mutters of the captured rabids. Then Arclight said, “Of course. We shouldn’t be arguing. We’re all on the same team after all.” That last made the Goth girl giggle.
Ignoring them, Jet took out a pair of stun-cuffs and slapped them over Hypnotic’s wrists. Her chest felt too tight, and behind her optiframes, tears stung her eyes. Well, enough of that too. The voices were back already, but hopefully she wouldn’t start getting the headaches again. Or at least, not until tomorrow. “He’s going back to Blackbird, as are you.”
Now the Goth girl chortled.
“Not going back there,” said one of her cohorts, a big man with oversized muscles. Protean, Jet recalled. Sent away seven years ago for smashing through the vaults of First National with his fists. How did they all escape prison in the first place? “You can’t put me back there. They junk me up so much I can’t think.”
“My team and I aren’t going back,” Arclight said, smiling as if he’d just won the national lottery. “We have a free pass, you see.”
Jet arched a brow. “Really.”
“Really really,” Iridium said, her voice flat. When Jet turned to face her, Iri sighed. “Signed and sealed. The five of them are free, and so am I, as long as we report to our boss and do what we’re told, like good doggies.”
Dreading the answer, Jet asked, “And who would that boss be?”
“Why, dear girl, don’t you know?” Arclight grinned. “Corp-Co.”
Steele said, “You must be joking.”
“No joke,” Iridium replied. “It’s all aboveboard.”
Jet opened her mouth to argue, to deny what father and daughter were insisting, but at that moment something slammed into the building with a thunderous crash. Losing her balance, Jet toppled into Protean, who helped her to her feet.
Light, did he have to be chivalrous when he was also a villain? That wasn’t fair at all.
At the window near the front door, Taser said, “Uh-oh.”
Iridium stumbled over to him. “Uh-oh what?”
“Uh-oh that.”
Iridium looked, and then she let out a curse that made Jet’s ears bleed.
“What?” she asked, really not wanting to know.
“You remember those sewer mutants?” Iri said, her voice too high. “Looks like they’re back.”
“And this time,” Taser added, “they brought a hundred or so of their friends with them.”
CHAPTER 51
IRIDIUM
I have no illusion that I’m in control. I’m the figurehead, the man who unlocked the door to the age of the extrahuman. But Corp is the master of their fate. Those poor children. I should have never tried to save them.
—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated 2018
We should get out there.” Jet shoved past Iridium and started for the front door. “There are innocent civilians.”
“Fuck that,” Nevermore said. “Look at the size of those monsters.”
“You criminals are welcome to do whatever you want,” Jet snapped. “I have a job to protect these people.”
“Who do you think just saved your ass?” Nevermore demanded. “The Tooth Fairy?”
“Everybody shut it!” Iridium bellowed, as she saw the Blackbird fugitives and the Squadron begin to divide into sides, sides that would no doubt erupt into another superhuman slap fight.
Jet flicked her the patronizing, annoyed glance that she’d learned from Night before he went nuts. “Something to add, Iridium?”
Iridium pointed at the street outside, where the mutants milled among the humans, grumbling or crying or laughing to themselves. “They don’t seem all that interested in plain old humans. I don’t think getting yourself turned into Jet pâté will be a huge help at this point.”
“I can’t leave them to rampage!”
“Just leave them alone,” Iridium gritted, “and they’ll leave us alone.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Jet shook her head. “We can’t risk that.”
Iridium sighed. She was exhausted, her head was throbbing again. “Fine. Do whatever you want, Joan.”
“Fine. I will.”
“You should listen to my daughter, girl.” Lester spoke from the back of the group, where he and Protean were watching Hypnotic.
Jet blinked at him, then turned to face Steele. “What do you think, Harriet?”