Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,14

like she was doomed to go crazy, no matter how she fought it.

The Shadow voices giggled, and Jet pretended not to notice.

CHAPTER 6

IRIDIUM

I have no regrets. Scientific advancement never merits begging forgiveness.

—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated September 20, 1986

Blackbird Prison sat under a freeway, a sprawl of complexes old enough that the buildings still had bars on the windows. There had been a prison on this spot since the nineteenth century, and Iridium could feel the tang in the air from the security grid that surrounded the place, lasers and bots and traps pocking the old grounds.

She shifted, her leg cramping. She’d been sitting on the struts of the overpass all night, watching the prison, learning the new routine. It was chaos, like everything else. The striking guards were massed out front. The prison was on lockdown. A snarl of news hovers blocked the access road.

Iridium had spent hours of her life thinking about how she’d break into the prison. She’d managed it, too. What she hadn’t been able to do was break someone out, and that was what kept her up at night.

A garbage truck chugged down the access road and up the ramp to the rear of the prison. Whatever else was happening in the world, the garbage still needed to be shipped out.

Iridium swung herself down from the strut and joined the crowd milling in front of the prison. In her nondescript black outfit, she blended like any other gawker looking for a glimpse of superfreaks. A second garbage truck joined the first, and she waited until it slowed, the horn sounding from within. There was no driver—all of the garbage in New Chicago was bot-controlled, which made it easy for her to climb aboard.

There were no guards inside. There was a formidable security system, but no one to watch it.

If Iridium was ever going to beat Blackbird, the time was now. She crouched inside the empty bot, ankle-deep in watery slime, and shut her eyes, feeling the truck roll on under her.

Iridium hefted herself out of the bot, landing in a pile of refuse higher than her head. No one had loaded the bots in days. She looked up at the camera on the wall, the placidly blinking power light. No alarms. No guards running to stun her.

Iridium found her way to the main corridors. She’d walked them dozens of times as Dr. Sampson, a blond psychiatrist sent by Corp to minister to Arclight, the worst of the worst locked inside Blackbird.

Everything looked different now, sharper and clearer when her eyes weren’t dulled by Dr. Sampson’s purple contacts. The prison authorities thought that Arclight was a monster, the worst villain the city had seen in decades.

But Iridium knew that Lester Bradford was no monster. She paused in front of his cell door, looking up at the stark black letters painted over it. She reached out, touched cool steel. “Dad?” No answer. “Dad, it’s me!”

There was a long moment, long enough for her heart to beat faster, before he answered. “Callie?”

Iridium felt like she could collapse right there in the hallway. “We need to go!”

“A fine idea, Callie, but the prison’s on lockdown. Don’t suppose you’ve developed the ability to walk through walls?”

“I’m not Slider,” Iridium said, pressing both hands against the door. Heart hammering, palms sweating—prison was bad for her health. “But I’ll go to the control room and open up your cell. Then we really need to move, Dad—the garbage bot leaves in ten minutes.”

“You can’t seriously expect me to ride out of here in a bloody garbage scow.”

“Dad, you’ve been in lockup for twelve years. Now is not the time to get picky.”

“Get to it, then.” Lester’s voice was clipped, as it always was when he issued her an order. It had made him a formidable field commander during his days with the Squadron. “And while you’re at it, open up a few others for me.”

“Dad, we don’t have time …” Iridium started, but Lester never ceased to be Lester, commanding, controlled, and in charge at all times. Iridium would admire it if she wasn’t already nearly tachycardic from the tension.

“Good folk,” said Lester. “Mates. They deserve to be on the outside again, Callie. Would you deny unjust prisoners their freedom?”

“I … fine,” Iridium said, her own voice taking on an edge. “Just give me their designations and be quick about it. Clock’s ticking.”

Lester’s eyes appeared in the small window of his cell door and he put a finger against the glass for each