Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,57
chin proudly. Even with all his voluntary extra patrols, he hadn’t overlooked his Corp requirements. In fact, he’d been extremely accessible to the New Chicago Metro and Transit Authority, standing for photo op after photo op, all to get his serious face plastered on the sides of all city buses, hovers, and trains, just like his corporate sponsor had insisted. It didn’t matter that he was barely catching five hours of sleep every other night.
He was the picture-perfect superhero.
And yet, here Night stood in a rented room at a museum, wearing a ridiculous pink paper hat, forced to pretend he wanted to be here, celebrating and wasting time.
Smile for the cameras; there’s a good extrahuman.
It was so … fucking … humiliating. Him in his stupid pink paper cap, standing near the table with the buttercream cake and thermoses of coffee. Colorful streamers and balloons littered the walls, as did an obscenely large banner declaring that GLAMIQUE CELEBRATES VIXEN’S BABY!!! Complete with three exclamation points, to show they were really really celebrating, even though they sponsored Vixen’s partner and not the lady herself.
He hated them all.
He hated wasting his time here, wearing this stupid pink cap. He hated Vixen for spreading her legs, hated Luster for knocking her up. He loathed Blackout and Angelica for doing the same. It wasn’t any rabid or even any normal human criminal that would be the end of Team Alpha. It was his own teammates and their primal urges to have fucking babies.
“Vixen!” one of the newsies screeched. “Have you picked out names?”
Sitting on a plush chair, acting like a Junoesque queen on her throne, Vixen laughed. “We have, but my husband would kill me if we shared them.”
“It’s bad luck, you know,” Luster said, grinning easily as the cameras ate him up. “Don’t want to go naming babies before they’re born. Besides, we have to have some secrets. You already know our identities.”
Of course, everyone broke up over the stereotypical joke. Secret identities, how very droll. Their canned laughter thundered through the large room. The more they showed how much they loved Vixen and Luster, the more likely one of them would grant an exclusive—if not today, then another day. Reporters lived for the possibility of the story. Any story.
Night’s head throbbed, and his eyeballs felt like they were bleeding. In the back of his mind, in the darkest corners, he heard the whispers, the giggles, taunting him, telling him he was a good doggie, that he knew how to roll over and beg.
Telling him how easy it would be to show everyone in this miserable room what power really was.
By his sides, his fists trembled. All he had to do was listen to the Shadow and let it free. Let it embrace the guest of honor and crush the life out of her. That would give the reporters a story, all right.
No.
Fighting back a snarl, Night turned up the volume of his earpiece. The background noise of running water calmed him, and he let out a breath through his clenched teeth. See what events like this did? They forced him to daydream of the Dark, just to give him something to fight. It was that, or die from sheer tedium.
Really. Babies. Night shook his head. The things he did for Team Alpha …
“Well,” Blackout said glumly, “maybe we’ll get lucky and a supervillain will attack the museum.”
Night’s eyes widened as Blackout’s words registered.
Yes. Yes. By all that was holy, yes.
The problem with Team Alpha wasn’t the need to procreate. It was how easy victory came to them. They were New Chicago’s living legends, the celebrities of celebrities. They always won.
They needed a villain worthy of their skills—one that would force them to drop all other commitments and once again work together to defeat.
And Night knew the perfect candidate for the job.
“Hey,” Blackout said. “What’s with the smile?”
“It’s nothing,” Night replied. “Just thinking of the future.”
CHAPTER 25
LUSTER
The treatment is proven to work, now. Miranda, if only you could see. All you went through was worth something, finally. Now hundreds of children will never be sick or weak. They’ll never be you.
—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated 1989
Lester thought the old cliché of men sitting in a waiting room, smoking, while they waited on a baby to be born was a fiction, but he would have strobed someone’s eyes out for a fag at that moment.
George was reading an age-old vidmag and Night was pacing. Back and forth, back and forth.