Black and White (20 page)

“Thank you,” she said politely.

“Drop dead. Ma’am.”

Remembering the earlier conversation with Frostbite, Jet sighed. She understood why he despised her. But that didn’t make coping with his hatred any easier. It never did.

Yet if there was anything Frostbite hated more than Jet, it was Corp itself. If she had to, she could turn to him. Not that he would actually help her.

And not that she would actually need to go to him at all. Because Night was wrong. Corp wasn’t involved in Kidder’s disappearance. Corp
couldn’t
be involved.

Night had to be wrong.

Enough
, she told herself as she entered Kidder’s bedroom. Worrying about Night was pointless. She was here as a favor to the old man; she should at least give the apartment a thorough search. There was still some time before she had to get over to Cohn’s for her ten-thirty.

In the small bedroom—with a lonely twin bed, she noticed—Jet stared at a framed picture on the nightstand. It showed Kidder as a young woman—twenty, maybe, looking happy and ready to take on the world—with her arms around the neck of an older man who had features similar to her own. Kidder’s father, probably.

Jet picked up the picture. And she smiled at the easy way between daughter and father, at how proud the older man looked.

You’re a bad girl, Joannie. You broke the rules, didn’t you?

Her hand trembled.
Shut up, Papa.

In her mind, her father laughed.

She didn’t realize she’d broken the picture frame until she heard the crunching of broken glass. Freed from its frame, the photograph of Kidder and her father floated down to the carpet, where it lay atop a pillow of gleaming shards.

Cursing, she glared at the warped frame in her hand. And there, sticking out of the bent silver, was a black square.

Jet plucked the object from the broken frame. It was a memory stick—a tiny thing, no larger than her thumbnail. Frowning at the electronic device, Jet absently summoned Shadow to suck up the broken glass.

A hidden file.

It was probably nothing; just family photos or some such, placed inside the picture frame for easy storage.

When the carpet was once again clean, the Shadow folded in upon itself and flew to Jet’s outstretched hand, the one holding the memory stick. The black shape shuddered,
then flowed into the leather gauntlet and, beneath that, into Jet’s flesh. She didn’t notice the sudden chill of Shadow against her skin.

It’s nothing
, she told herself again. Even so, she padded over to Kidder’s desk, sandwiched between the bed and the window, and fired up the computer there. She connected the device. And then she accessed the contents.

An hour later, she slipped out of Kidder’s apartment. In one of the bulging pouches of her belt were the remains of the picture frame. In another was the memory stick.

The photo remained behind, on the nightstand. In it, Kidder grinned and her father beamed, as if they were thrilled that a secret had been uncovered.

I
ridium waved her wristlet at the warehouse’s big doors and they rolled back, silent in their tracks. Taser followed her in, close but not too close—arm’s length, the distance it would take to reach out and snap her neck. “Who trained you?” she asked.

Taser faltered and cocked his head. “Nobody trained me. I’m a one-man show.”

“You move like military,” said Iridium as the lights flickered on. “Or maybe cop. You an ex-cop with a beef, Taser? Trying to reprogram the system?” There were other, less savory possibilities, of course—the explanation of how he’d evaded Corp long enough to grow to adulthood couldn’t be all rainbows and roses. There were rumors of gene therapy to keep you off the scanners, back-alley surgeries in places
like Bangkok 10, removal of the portion of the brain that gave extrahumans that
extra.

Taser laughed. “You’re adorable when you’re interrogating someone.”

Iridium took off her wristlet and rubbed the joint underneath. Her comm followed, her belt with its old-fashioned picklocks, cash, credits, and fake ID, and the steel baton she kept strapped to her leg under the unikilt.

Taser whistled. “For a renegade antihero, you sure pack a lot of crap.”

“At least I didn’t steal my crap from Corp,” said Iridium with a pointed look at Taser’s armor.

“This?” He tapped his breastplate. “Fell off a truck. I bought it in the gray market. Got the bill of sale right here.” He started to unstrap the armor but she held up her hand.

“Never mind.” She mounted the rickety metal stairs to the enclosed second floor.

Taser sauntered around the workshop, stopping by the large table near the back. He picked up the neural inhibitor lying there and turned it over in his hands. “These things are illegal.”

“Yeah, and so is dressing up like a ninja and playing hero, but you don’t see me complaining.” Iridium turned back at the door of her bedroom. “Make yourself at home, as long as it doesn’t involve touching my things.”

She slid the opaque glass door to and watched Taser’s shadow move away to explore the rest of the workshop.

Iridium took her time undoing her unikilt and sliding it off, courteously ignoring the shuffling and muffled
thud
as Taser searched her hideout.

She’d do the same, in his position.

Iridium pushed Light into the bioluminescent gel on the walls, causing it to glow with green undertones and illuminate her bedroom in soft contrast to the tube lighting in the warehouse.

In her plain white underwear, Iridium unpinned her
hair and let the black waves fall and brush her shoulder blades. Her curls were sticky with sweat and pollution. Staring at herself in the mirror over her dresser, she touched her fingertips to the two-inch puckered scar on her breastbone. Corp had offered to remove it when she came of age and went on active duty; scarred female heroes didn’t brand well.

She’d told them exactly where they could stick their removal surgery. She had other scars, too—a Talon cutter in her lower back when a motorcycle chieftain in Little Shinjuku took exception to a rabid on his turf; the pale line across her knuckles where she’d fallen off a hover and dragged her hand along the pavement back when she was six.

Her memory flashed to that day—her father had carried her into the house, and while her mother chewed on her lip and worried about the carpet, he’d slapped a cauterizer patch on her hand and held her close when she screamed. The bandages were usually worse than the cuts themselves, but it had healed almost completely.

Taser rapped on the glass. “You alive in there?”

Iridium grabbed a T-shirt and cotton pants from a drawer and slipped them on. “You finished searching my place?”

Taser slid the door open. “No booby traps. I’m disappointed, darlin’.”

“I’ll have the gas-deploying wall sconces and the pit of live tigers up and running next time you visit me, I promise.”

“So, I’ve been wondering,” Taser said, following Iridium into the small square of mats that served as her practice area. “What exactly are we planning?”

Iridium shrugged as she took a practice swing at the heavy bag. “I’m not sure yet. But big. It will be big. Public. And embarrassing.”

Taser stopped the bag with one arm. “Do you ever relax?”

Iridium glared at him. “Having a masked vigilante trailing after me isn’t very conducive.”

“What do you do for
fun?”
he asked. “Do you
have
any?”

She imagined that if she could see Taser’s face, it would have one of those smarmy smiles that heroes like Lady Killer made sure to flash in the cameras anytime press got close.

“Are you here to help me, Taser, or hit on me?”

“Is there some law against both?” His mask crinkled along his smile lines.

She regarded him for a moment before she spoke. “I spend most of my waking hours looking over my shoulder for heroes desperate to drag me in for fame and a fifteen-second sound bite on the evening news. I spend the rest keeping Wreck City from turning into another slum like the rest of the flood grids. I keep the gangs from burning Wreck City down and I keep the cops from bleeding it dry, which is more than I can say for the rest of the grids. Everything I take, after expenses, is either funneled back into Wreck City or goes to bribing the administration at Blackbird to keep them from overdrugging and torturing my father.” She strobed the bag and it sprouted a singed hole, sand running out. “So no, Taser, my life is not all rooftop escapades and an adrenaline rush from dressing up and running around under Corp’s nose. My life is hard. It’s too hard. Corp made it that way, and it’s time they paid.”

Taser held up his hands. “Iri, I didn’t mean—”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“Iridium.” He said it very quietly, the word muffled by his costume.

She turned away from him, pushed past him. Taser came after her as she walked to the industrial kitchen and got a glass of water.

“When I was seven years old,” he said, “my mother and I were living in this shitty block housing in the Manhattan Quarantine—you know, before they firebombed and started
over.” He blinked, his goggles irising. “This rabid came in, one of the Mental ones, and he took my entire block hostage … made us see things. Terrifying things.”

“Doctor Hypnotic,” said Iridium. The Siege of Manhattan was a standard in tactics training for Corp.

“Anyway, that’s not the point.” Taser sighed. “After five days, the heroes broke through Hypnotic’s henchmen. When they caught him, he was on top of our block.”

Iridium remembered the plain photographs on her datascreen—no 3-D printing back when she’d been a student. Ruined, burned, twisted metal. Screaming civilians. Chaos.

“They fought,” Taser said softly. “They destroyed our block. My mother and a few of my friends were crushed in the wreckage from the fight between Hypnotic and some musclehead extrahuman. Corp didn’t let in rescue workers, regular cops. Three months later, I got an apology and a check for e3,000 from the New York Squadron branch.” He laughed once, bitterly. “And that was it.”

“They took something from both of us, then,” said Iridium. “I’m taking it back.”

Taser nodded slowly. “And I’m right there with you.”

T
hank you, David,” Rabbi Cohn said, taking the cup of coffee his assistant offered. “Unless Jet needs anything, I believe that will be all.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Jet murmured, holding her own cup. She was far from fine; what she had read was still screaming in her thoughts.

David nodded and closed the door of the rabbi’s office behind him as he left.

Jet forced herself to smile pleasantly and pretend she wasn’t fighting a migraine. Feigning interest in the rabbi’s office, she glanced around. Small room, somewhat cluttered with a large desk and leather chair, as well as a cluster of smaller, plush chairs around a circular coffee table, where she and the rabbi were seated. Somber colors dominated
the room, accented with thoughtful paintings here and there. But the true attraction for her was the dilapidated bookcase, overstuffed with titles. She and the rabbi seemed to share an affinity for old-fashioned books. If she hadn’t been so distracted, she probably would have struck up a conversation about what they liked to read.

But she had done too much reading in the past hour. Her head throbbed, and she bit back a groan. Hoping the caffeine would help, she took some hasty sips of coffee, scalding her tongue.

“I’m sorry you missed the sermon yesterday,” Cohn said.

Pushing aside thoughts about Lynda Kidder and Corp, Jet replied, “As am I. But duty called.”

“I understand.” He regarded her, as if studying her features. Out of respect, she had pulled back her cowl and removed her optiframes. All she needed was light makeup and no perfume, and she could do another Goldwater appearance.

“How did the sermon go?” she asked, to be polite.

“Well, I think. You’d be surprised how receptive people are to the notion that whether human or extrahuman, we’re all children under
HaShem.”

“You’re right,” she said, thinking of Wurtham, of Everyman, of all the citizens too happy to boo whenever she appeared. “I would be surprised. But it’s nice to hear.”

Cohn smiled at her, his light eyes twinkling. With his long white beard, comfortable fat, and spectacles, he looked more like a Santa Claus candidate than someone from the rabbinate. “I take it you’ve been subjected to the opposing viewpoint?”

“Loudly. And in public.”

“Yes. But what a blessing it is that we live in a society that allows such freedom of expression.”

“A blessing,” she muttered, sipping her coffee.

“A responsibility too.”

“I understand responsibility.”

“You better than most.” Cohn watched her for a moment, his smile easy, his eyes inviting. “Another blessing is the ability to question.”

She frowned. “How so?”

“Well, political relevance aside, questioning is one of the joys of Judaism,” he said with a wink. “Oh, we declare ourselves to
HaShem
, of course. But then we question.”

“Question what?”

“Why, everything,” he said, laughing. “We have a hymn,
‘Ein Keloheinu.’
After we say there is none like
HaShem
, we ask, Who is like
HaShem?”

“With all due respect, sir, if you’ve already said there’s none like your god, then why question?”