Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,37
not engage. Wait for backup.”
“Hornblower is in Joliet, dealing with a riot,” Frostbite said quietly. “At least fifteen minutes ETA in a hover.”
“If that’s really Doctor Hypnotic,” said Iridium, “Steele does not have fifteen minutes.”
“I’m going,” Jet said. “Firebug, wait for backup.”
“No …” the hero’s voice was frantic. “No, I hear her screaming …”
The comm cut out, and Frostbite cursed. “She went in after him. I lost her GPS beacon.”
Jet was already booking for the door. “Download everything you can on that building to my wristlet.”
“You can’t go alone!” Frostbite shouted. “It took the entire New York Squadron and part of New Chicago Squadron to take out Hypnotic twenty years ago!” He ripped off his headset. “I’m coming with you. Sheila, cover Ops.”
Meteorite, panicked, said, “Derek, no! I can’t run the entire Squadron by myself—I need you here, doing Ops with me!”
“I’ll go,” Iridium said, holding up her hand.
“I don’t need your help,” Jet snapped. “I can take care of this.”
“You can barely stand up,” Iridium said. “And Derek’s right. Hypnotic isn’t some idiot in a dime-store rig. He’s dangerous.”
Jet considered for a moment. “Fine. You’re under my orders, and you do what I say when I say it.”
“Fine,” Iridium returned. “Now can we please go save your friends’ lives?”
“Fine,” Jet said.
Hell, Iridium had wanted to get on the Squadron’s good side, hadn’t she? She just wished it wasn’t via fighting a man that even Lester was afraid of.
And how the hell had Hypnotic broken out of Blackbird’s maximum-security wing in the first place? Even with the situation in the regular prison, the supermax wing had roboguards, foot-thick walls, neural inhibitors … a thousand safeguards to keep the monsters in.
Iridium shuddered. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
Aloft on Jet’s Shadow floater, Iridium watched Wreck City slide by on their way to Looptown. Her grid actually looked clean in comparison to the chaos all around it.
Until she saw plasgun fire.
“Bollocks,” she said softly, co-opting her father’s favorite curse. “Jet, I can’t.”
“What?” Jet shouted over the wind.
“Someone’s shooting up Wreck City. Set me down. I’ll catch up.”
It wasn’t a lie. She’d dispatch whoever-it-was and get back to the real business. Deep in her gut, she wanted to fight Hypnotic. A real villain fight. The one she’d never gotten the chance to have before Corp had tried to ship her off to Blackbird all those years ago.
At least, not from the heroic side.
“Your funeral,” Jet shouted, and the Shadow let go of Iridium, dumping her on a rooftop.
Iridium ran down the fire escape. It was over in three strobes—one for each of the gangsters robbing the liquor depot and one for good measure. They were sporting green and tats. Iridium cursed again and tapped her phone link.
“Oz, it’s Iridium. Arrest Deke O’Connor. He’s officially outstayed his welcome in Grid 16.” See how a few years upstate mellowed that arrogant little Irish prick, thinking he could do as he pleased in her grid.
Someone tugged on Iridium’s sleeve and she spun, a strobe growing.
The liquor depot’s owner beamed at her. “Thank you,” she said. “Those sons of whores would have taken everything I owned.”
“That’s all right, Mrs.…” Iridium spread her hands.
“Pak. Theresa Pak, and this is my husband, Benjamin.”
Mrs. Pak’s husband threw Iridium a salute. “We know what you do for us. Keeping the gangs out. Keeping innocent people out of harm’s way.” He squeezed Iridium’s hand. “You keep doing it.”
His wife handed him a broom and said something in Thai, pointing at the shattered plasglass of their front window. He sighed. “Duty calls.”
“We’re lucky to have a hero like you,” Mrs. Pak said before she stepped back inside and flipped the holosign on their door to CLOSED.
Iridium stared for a long moment. Actual, honest-to-Jehovah citizens, thanking her for being … herself. Calling her a fucking hero, as if that weren’t the joke of the century.
“Wonders never cease,” she muttered. Jet would have a conniption when she told her, in that oh-so-polite Jet way.
Jet. Doctor Hypnotic.
Shit.
Iridium grabbed her phone again. “Boxer, bring your hoverbike and meet me by Pak’s Liquors. I need a ride to Looptown.”
CHAPTER 16
JET
Corp is debating whether to reclassify Mental powers as so-called Mind powers. They claim it’s less derogatory. What they fail to understand is that calling a rattlesnake a flower doesn’t change the fact that its bite is poisonous.
—From the journal of Martin Moore, entry #139
Jet landed in front of the condemned building in Grid 21, commonly known as Looptown, and stared grimly at the open front doors. No Firebug.