Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,21

a male friend, Hal would bristle. If Valerie was really coming out of her shell, then Holly would finally have someone she could talk to.

With that happy thought, Angelica joined the others in cheering Squadron New Chicago’s most recent addition.

CHAPTER 9

LUSTER

Violence is no more a genetic predisposition than is a taste for spicy food. Violence is in the mind. Violence does not interest me.

—Matthew Icarus, unpublished lecture

to his genetics students at Yale University, 1974

Lester Bradford grinned at the man facing him, then punched him in the throat. Vanisher gurgled and fell to one knee, his opacity flickering from invisible to solid and back again as he flopped on the practice mat like a hooked mackerel. “Damn it, Bradford! What was that for?”

“You dropped your hands.” Lester dropped his stance and offered his sparring partner a hand up.

“You’re a fucking Light power. You’re supposed to throw light. You don’t sucker punch!”

“And you vanishing and tripping me was so sporting.” Lester withdrew his hand. “Get over it, Mark. Extrahumans don’t always use their powers, and villains don’t always do what you expect.”

Mark struggled to his feet, rubbing the bruise forming on his neck like a giant hickey. “You’re a class-A dick, Bradford.”

“I live to serve.” Lester snatched his towel and bag and left the practice room. Of course, he didn’t have to hit Mark Villanova in the neck, just like he didn’t have to call major news stations in advance when he knew there was a major battle going on, and he didn’t have to flirt with his cohero, Vixen.

All right, that last one he’d do even if he got no benefit at all. He’d thought her just this side of plain and a bit dull when she’d showed up, fresh from being muscled off Squadron Orlando in favor of some teenage moron who threw glitter, but after the fight with Neutron … He smiled. Still waters and all that.

The truth was, until Valerie joined Team Alpha, Lester had felt boredom threatening every hour of every day of his stifling Corp existence. News crews and spectacular battles made him a hero, but he had a niggling thought that the good he was doing was transparent at best and nonexistent at worst. He didn’t miss that the Squadron protected Corp interests—Corp banks, Corp labs, and Corp employees—before they even pretended to care about places like the one where Lester had grown up.

The villains, at least, believed in something—even if that something was just greed. Lester hadn’t had that since he’d been taken for training. And it was beginning to wear thin.

Which was why he had to be the perfect hero and stay far, far away from anyone with a Mental ability.

A small sigh caused him to whip around, his heart thudding and his skin heating as Light gathered around him. Lester hadn’t experienced the sheltered childhood of a Corp extrahuman, and a few seconds in his neighborhood was often the difference between life and a bullet.

“Take a picture,” George Greene muttered. “It’ll last you longer.” He looked dreadful, his skin pale and his nose leaking blood.

Lester set his bag down, slowly. You didn’t make sudden moves around dangerous animals, or Shadow powers. His Light could burn, but it couldn’t choke the life from you. Lester had a healthy respect for predators higher in the food chain.

With Shadows, you had to outsmart them, distract them. If you came at them head-on, you’d lose.

He said, “You try to take on Behemoth again? Not smart, mate.”

“I was practicing.” George sniffed and swiped at the blood on his face. “I want to use the Shadow to fly, like Night.”

“Night’s a freak of nature,” Lester said. “Just be happy with what you have, is my advice.”

“I can do it.”

The snap in George’s voice made Lester pause. George was mild-mannered to a fault, so mild that he wouldn’t even speak up to Angelica and tell her that he fancied her to the point of pain. “All right, Georgie-boy.” Lester clapped him on the shoulder. “If you want a Shadow sled, you’ll have one. Out of curiosity, did the Shadow punch you in the gob as well?”

“I just … feel …” George’s jaw twitched. “I’m fine.”

“Maybe you should see a medic,” Lester said. “You look like death, if you want my honesty.”

“Well, I don’t!” George shouted. “And if you tell anyone, if Corp finds out about this and throws me to Dr. Moore to experiment on, it’ll be your fault, you Limey idiot!”

Lester blinked, but before George could continue his