Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,45

out, “You folks all right?”

No answer.

Frowning, Julie opens the bedroom door and steps out. Beyond the bedroom door, she lets out a gasp that cuts off abruptly.

“Julie?”

She doesn’t respond.

A creeper of ice stretches across Garth’s spine, and his mouth is suddenly too dry. On screen, Frank Wurtham is spewing more venom about the evils of extrahumans.

Garth clicks off the tele and silently rises. He approaches Julie, his hand out for her to grab onto, but Julie doesn’t move. He reaches out, turns her around.

Her eyes are white; her gaze is fixed on a spot he can’t see.

“Julie,” he whispers, stroking her cheek, his thoughts whirling about in a tempest of fear. A glance in the living room shows him that the Brewer clan and the old woman are lost in the same spell as Julie—the kids sprawled in front of their board game, Heather and Mrs. Summers on the sofa, Paul standing near the kitchen. By Paul’s feet, a glass lies shattered, reflecting light like diamonds.

Garth tries to lead Julie back into the bedroom, but her feet don’t cooperate. Snarling with frustration, he leaps toward his nightstand and grabs the phone, punches in nine-one-one.

And promptly gets a busy signal.

“Fuck!” He tries again. And again. He wants to go out into the living room, wants to run, wants to hit and hurt and scream. Instead he keeps trying the emergency line.

It’s almost twenty minutes before he gets through.

It’s nearly an hour after that before EMTs arrive. They’re able to walk through the living room without turning into statues. When Garth, too, steps into the living room, he’s fine. Either they are all immune, or whatever had happened had passed. But Julie and the others are still lost, their eyes solid white. The kids are smiling. Garth thinks that’s a blessing; whatever they’re seeing, they’re happy.

“It’s happening all over the grid,” one of the men tells Garth as the team works to check Julie’s vitals, to examine the Brewers and Mrs. Summers. Maybe he thinks he’s comforting Garth by letting him know he’s not alone. “People are just staring off,” he says, “nonresponsive, like they’re drugged. They’re calling Looptown ‘Zombietown.’”

The team loads the kids and the parents and the old woman onto their floating stretchers and hauls them out the door. Garth is told pointedly not to come. “Too crowded,” they tell him. “Patients only. Call for their status later.” Julie and the others are whisked off to New Chicago Medical Center, and the door closes in Garth’s face.

He is too stunned for it to register that he hadn’t even kissed Julie good-bye.

CHAPTER 18

VIXEN

Adult subjects are unsuitable for replicating the research conducted on 1102. No money. No test subjects. Grants are thin on the ground for a study with only one verifiable instance of success. But I saw it. I heard him in my mind. I saw what he showed me. If going to the corporate sector means seeing that again … so be it.

—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated 1985

Valerie propped herself on her elbow. “So what happened next?”

Lester folded his arms behind his head. Valerie didn’t miss the taut muscles that swam beneath his skin, his head dappled with dark hair. “Why, then we followed the Chaos Brothers to their hideout, where we surveilled them.”

“And that takes a while, right?” Valerie traced a finger over Lester’s pectorals. She liked embellishing their cover story. It was like battle-scenario training back at her Academy.

“Oh, hours,” he said. “Possibly even all through the night.”

Valerie giggled, and Lester capitalized on the opportunity to pin her to the mattress and tickle her.

Valerie shrieked in delight, because no one could hear her. Not Ops, not Corp. She didn’t know how Lester had found this apartment—if it could even charitably be called an apartment. Peeling walls, stained ceiling, radiators, for Jehovah’s sake. But what neighbors there were in the building kept to themselves.

Here, she didn’t have to be Vixen. Here, she was Valerie. And he was Lester.

Of course, the story they’d give to Ops would include the Chaos Brothers.

“You think they’re going to figure it out?” Valerie said when her breath came back. “We’ve been doing an awful lot of surveillance these past six months.”

“Ops? Or the suits?”

“Either. Both.”

“Luv, they can’t find their arses with a GPS tracker.” He tapped her on the nose. “You worry too much.”

“Somebody has to worry for the both of us.” Valerie sat up, suddenly cold. She wrapped the sheet around herself. “We are lying to Corp, Les. There are going to be