Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,5
whimpered, cowering behind the large, swollen sack.
Just as Jet was about to launch into her standard Crime Doesn’t Pay speech, Meteorite hissed, “Incoming!”
A crackle like lightning, followed by a thunderous boom.
Jet created a Shadowshield reflexively, protecting her, the criminal, and Slider as one of the alley walls crashed over them. The man screamed and started praying in a screechy voice, which didn’t help Jet’s concentration at all. Sweat trickling beneath her cowl, she pushed her shield forward, forcing the debris away.
The broken wall warped the shape of the alley, turning its opening lip into a sneer. There, backlit by the morning sun, stood two Squadron soldiers. One of them, a man with shaggy brown hair, Jet knew all too well. The other, a woman wearing enough spangles to blind a casual passerby, Jet knew mostly by reputation.
Were and White Hot. Former comrades in arms … and now, based on the glow of power around White Hot’s gloves and the growl in Were’s throat, rabids.
Some days, Jet thought, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.
CHAPTER 2
IRIDIUM
Imagine a world without pain and suffering, a world without fear. Imagine your children growing up free of disease and the pain of age. Imagine your future. It could be so bright.
—Article by Dr. Matthew Icarus, submitted to
The New England Journal of Medicine (rejected)
Iridium almost let the kid get away with it.
The day had been too long already, tinged with smoke from the fires downtown and full of the wail of police sirens as their hovers crisscrossed Wreck City, searchlights cutting through the smoke and fog like the long fingers of a giant. So when Iridium turned the corner and saw the metal security door of the check-cashing branch bent inward, as if by a fist, and heard the alarm whooping, she almost walked right on by.
With New Chicago in its death throes, it wasn’t her problem if some guy was ripping off another, equally crooked guy.
“Hey!”
The voice spun Iridium around. She was jumpy already from the rampant anarchy that had spilled out from the implosion of the Squadron, trickling down from extrahuman to criminal gang to street thug like a virus. “Yes?”
The owner of the voice lumbered forward—bald, tattooed, a ring through his nose and surgical horns atop his bald pate, all of which marked him as a Death’s Head—and jabbed his finger at the check-cashing shop. “You gonna do something about that, Princess?”
Iridium narrowed her eyes. “How, exactly, is one of your friends lining his pockets my problem, Princess?”
The Death’s Head turned and spat a wad of something noxious and bright green into the gutter. “Fucker ain’t one of ours. He ain’t local. Just some punk kid with powers who swooped in and said this was his street now.”
“The Squadron doesn’t leave their people with the best grip on reality,” Iridium said, but she reconsidered that dented door. “He’ll get over it.”
“This is your fuckin’ city, yeah?” the gangster demanded. “You run things, and you just let some dipshit with a cute costume stroll in?”
“Easy, Damien.” Iridium held up a hand, feeling the light heat gather against her skin like a caress. The gangster backed up a step. He didn’t get her joke—Damien, the devil child from the old flatfilm The Omen. No one in New Chicago could take a joke these days. Iridium frowned. “I run a tight ship. You know that.”
“I don’t want them here,” Damien said, rubbing his forefinger against his thumb like the junkfreak he was. “I don’t like the superfreaks. No offense.”
Iridium was already halfway across the street. “None taken.”
She felt the weight of fatigue press on her shoulders as she shoved the broken door aside, along with all of the various aches and pains. She could catalog the bruises—the set on her rib cage from Howler’s sonic boom tossing her into a wall the day before last, the cut on her cheekbone from where she’d let Arachnia get too close with her stinger darts.
She’d dreamed about taking them on, everyone in the Squadron and the little voice inside their heads. The reality was proving a lot more painful and dirty and tiring than the dream.
The lights of the check-cashing shop flickered uselessly, and Iridium set a strobe to float in the air above and behind her head, creating an arch of light. “Here, little superbrat,” she lilted. “It’s not polite to put your hands on things that aren’t yours.”
The kid was squat and stocky, clear optiframes strapped to his head and a shock of faded purple