Deathdealer.
And Martin Moore was still out there, somewhere, perhaps with more of that serum. The mutated normals were all doing well at ISP, according to Wagner, but they needed to be cured, not contained. If only the Innovator wasn’t still rabid …
Jet sighed. The logistics of actually launching the Protectors was enough to make her head spin. Life had been simpler when she’d been Corp’s puppet and just went out fighting crime and doing photo ops. Maybe Meteorite would be the chief operating officer and oversee all of the day-to-day stuff …
“You’ve got that look,” Iri said.
Jet blinked, looked up at the dark-haired woman. “What look?”
“The business look. Christo, Joannie, let yourself be on break for a day. Hell, an hour.”
“There’s just so much to do …”
“It’ll keep,” Iridium said. “For once, let yourself come first.”
“But—”
“I promise, the city will still need saving, even after you’ve had time off. Waitress, please bring this woman a desperately needed margarita.”
“It’s not even noon,” Jet said, abashed.
Iri winked. “Live a little, Joannie.”
So Jet drank the margarita.
“Where do you want these?”
Jet glanced up from her wristlet. The Runner floor captain was holding a carton labeled BOOKS. Jet motioned to the back corner of her room, near her bed. “The back corner, please. Thanks, Lowell.” She sounded distracted, even to her own ears. But then, she had reason.
Lowell left, and she went back to her black wristlet, a holdover from Academy days. It still served as portable data storage and was the tool of choice when someone wanted to send an untraceable instant message—one way only.
Police Commissioner Wagner had just sent such a message.
HG OUT. QT.
She stared long and hard at the message. Doctor Hypnotic had gotten away, and Wagner was keeping it out of the press.
How had he done it? Had one of the guards at Blackbird slipped and forgotten to medicate him one morning? Had it been an inside job?
She remembered how, on the day she and the others had defeated Hypnotic, she had thought there were supposed to be thirteen prisoners, not twelve.
Had Hypnotic even made it into Blackbird in the first place?
Jet rubbed her eyes. The how didn’t matter. Doctor Hypnotic had escaped.
And part of her—the part that listened to the Shadow and basked in the dark—was glad. Before she could fret about her reaction, her comlink chimed softly in her ear. “Excuse me, Ms. Jet?”
She sighed. For the millionth time, she told the Ops trainee: “Please, Tara. Just Jet.”
“Sorry, ma’am. Um, Ms. Iridium says you need to come to Reception. Um, she says, right now. She actually said a curse word in there, too, but I’d rather not repeat that.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Um. Yes?”
There was a vote of confidence. “On my way.”
She got down to Reception, expecting to see Iri and maybe a few others. She hadn’t expected to see roughly fifty people crammed into the waiting area.
“Jet,” Iridium said, grinning hugely, “wait until you hear this. Go ahead, Mr. McFarlane.”
A tall redhead in sunglasses stepped forward, offering his hand. Jet shook it cautiously.
“My name is Garth McFarlane,” he said, the kiss of a brogue in his voice, “and I’m an extrahuman.”
Jet blinked. “Oh?”
“We all are,” he said, motioning to the crowd of people in Reception. “We call ourselves the Latent Network, because our abilities were always small enough to stay off Corp’s radar.”
“Ah,” she said, glancing at Iridium, who was still grinning like a child locked in a candy shop.
“When the Squadron went berserk, we knew we couldn’t stay hidden. We couldn’t help you with Hypnotic, but a group of us did help with those beasties that had been rampaging along Third Street.”
“Really?”
“We took down twenty-six of them,” he said proudly. “Some rabids too. And that’s when we decided that we were joining you.”
“You … what?”
“Voted on it, and everything. It was unanimous.”
“Um. Mr. McFarlane …”
“We know we’ll need training,” he said. “Most of us don’t know the first thing about fighting. And our powers are small. But we’re extrahumans, and we want to help. We’re joining the Protectors. Only sixty-two of us were able to get to New Chicago so far, but we’re all excited about this.”
Only sixty-two? “How many of there are you?”
“One thousand, five hundred and twenty-six.”
Jet’s mouth opened, then closed with a snap.
Next to her, Iridium grinned. “Bet you didn’t see this one coming.”
“Not in a million years,” Jet said, a smile blooming on her face. “I think we need bigger headquarters.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JACKIE KESSLER (Jet, Angelica, Night, Garth) learned everything she needed to know about Good versus Evil from reading comic books. When not writing about superheroes and the villains who beat the snot out of them, she likes to write about demons, angels, and the hapless humans caught between them. In addition, she has a pseudosecret identity as a novelist for teens. For more about Jackie, visit her website: www.jackiekessler.com.
CAITLIN KITTREDGE (Iridium, Vixen, Luster/Arclight) is a lifelong lover of superheroes. Growing up homeschooled in a rural area, her best friends were Batman, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. In addition to collaborating on the Icarus Project, she writes two bestselling urban fantasy series, the Nocturne City and Black London novels, as well as steampunk stories for young adults. She lives in Massachusetts with two cats, her Cobra Commander action figures, and more comic books than she can count. For more about Caitlin, visit her website: www.caitlinkittredge.com.
Shades of Gray is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Spectra Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2010 by Jacqueline H. Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kessler, Jackie (Jackie H.)
Shades of gray / Jackie Kessler, Caitlin Kittredge.
p. cm. — (Icarus Project ; bk. 2)
eISBN: 978-0-345-52171-2
1. Superheroes—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction.
I. Kittredge, Caitlin. II. Title.
PS3611.E845S53 2009
813′.6—dc22
2010012662
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