“Come on.”
On the way to her quarters, a Runner tried to get her attention, but Jet was in a foul place and chose to ignore the woman instead of possibly bite her head off. Or worse; the Shadow had grown … unpredictable.
Once Jet and Taser were alone, she sat at the edge of her cot, arms tucked around her knees. “Well?” she said. “What’s this business proposition?”
Taser leaned against the wall, his arms casually crossed over his chest. “I think we have us an unprecedented situation. Corp’s going to want to take credit for Hypnotic’s capture, and I’m sure they’ll manipulate things so they’ll have been behind you guys reining in the poor, sweet sewer mutants.”
“Your point?”
“They can’t brainwash you and the others anymore. That cat’s out of the bag. You have that over their heads. You’re in a position to make demands, and they’ll have to listen.”
Jet couldn’t say anything about it. But Light knew, Iri could. And Frostbite. And Hornblower, still in the hospital, his leg gone. Oh yes, Jet thought, her eyes glittering, they certainly could say things. Horrible things.
True things.
“I’ve been talking to the Runners,” Taser said. “Getting them pumped up. They liked getting out there, tranqing the mutants, getting into the thick of it. They want to do more than be your Stepin Fetchits, Jet. They want to actively help the Squadron, not just run their errands and pick up their dry cleaning.”
Her own words, from just a week ago: Maybe it’s time for us to reach out to the citizens of New Chicago, work with them now more than ever before. Build goodwill.
Yes, Jet thought, a smile playing on her face as she remembered Wagner’s offer. Yes. The Runners could be their civilian counterparts, working actively with the police and Lee’s office. Branching out from New Chicago to expand the network throughout the Americas.
“What about …” Damn it to Darkness, she still couldn’t say Corp. It made her want to scream.
Taser understood. “What about them? They can’t tell you no, not anymore. Don’t you see, Jet? For the first time, you and the Squadron are in control.”
She frowned up at him. “You said this was a business proposition. What’s your role in this?”
“Me? I’ll be your friendly local mercenary, ready to do the dirty deeds you good-guy heroes aren’t allowed to do. Consider me the ultimate negotiator.”
“For a price,” she said, “of course.”
He shrugged. “Of course. A boy’s got to eat.”
“I’ll talk to the others.” She stretched, then began to massage her left shoulder—her weak spot, ever since she’d first dislocated it Fourth Year.
When she felt his hands on her shoulders, she stiffened. “What are you doing?”
“I’m still trained in massage,” he murmured. “Among other things.”
She slid out from his hands and pivoted to face him. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
He cocked his head, looking her up and down, his hidden gaze lingering on her chest. “You still want me, Joan. Don’t try to deny it.”
She swallowed thickly. “I don’t deny it.”
“So?” He leaned forward, reaching out to her, stroking her cheek. “What’s the problem?”
She wanted to lean into his touch. Instead she shrugged away. “The problem, Bruce, is the last time I trusted you like this, you betrayed me the next day.”
“That was just a job.”
Hugging herself, she got off her cot, showing him her back. “Yes, it was. I get that. But that was also the last time you’ll ever get me.”
He chuckled softly. “We’ll see.”
“Don’t you have to go find Iridium and hit on her? Or maybe one of the dozens of female Runners you keep tucked around you?”
“Thanks for the permission.” A pause, and then, “Be seeing you, Joan.”
She stayed with her arms wrapped around herself for a long time after he left. And then, finally, she went to shower.
CHAPTER 59
IRIDIUM
The horror is, I can pinpoint exactly how it came to this. How I changed the world. I wanted to save my daughter. I doomed the world instead. I doomed it to Corp, and to their Squadron of thugs. I opened a floodgate, and the tide has drowned me.
—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated 2020
By the time old Wrigley Field hove into view, Iridium was feeling decidedly less chipper.
The day she’d avoided at age seven, when Night had merely captured her father instead of killing him, was happening now. She was, for all intents and purposes, an orphan.
Would the Squadron even want her, now that they weren’t up to their asses in sewer mutants?
Would anyone even care that Iridium, no longer a villain, was still