Shades of Gray (37 page)

A crushing pain in her back, a blow that sent her to her knees.

“That,” Doctor Hypnotic said, “was incredibly rude. And after I’ve done such nice things for you.”

She rolled and came up on her feet, her power pulsing through her. “I told you before, Hypnotic. I’m duty-bound to this world. The real world. You can’t buy me with your version of paradise.”

A smile crept over his mouth. “Maybe I should unlock the Shadow voices once more. Let them whisper to you and steal your soul.”

She froze.

“What do you say, Jet? Shall I let you go crazy again?”

She allowed herself a moment to enjoy the feeling of the Shadow working its way through her without the struggle to hold on to her sanity. “So be it,” she whispered.

And then she leveled a Shadowbolt at him, hitting him square in the chest. He flew backward and hit the wall—went
through
the wall, stopping only when he hit another wall, one Jet hadn’t been able to see until just now. They’d been in the front lobby the entire time, somehow avoiding the other extrahumans in their duels and battles. Even now, the others didn’t seem real—they were ghostlike, walking dreams that warred with one another.

Nice trick.

Hypnotic was already pulling himself up, still smiling at her. “Your mother would be proud of you, Jet. And so would your father.”

In her mind, the cell holding the Shadow voices evaporated. And the Shadow let out an ecstatic roar.

little girl little Joan missed you missed you so very much …

Adrenaline and rage and fear warring within her, Jet snarled as she hit him with another burst of Shadow.

IRIDIUM

After she’d given herself a few seconds to collect her emotions, cage them up, and tamp them down, Iridium turned to help Taser. He and a rabid—Gaslight, Iridium thought—were circling each other warily, until finally the petite heroine blinked. “Dude. Who the hell are you, and why do you have on that stupid mask?”

“Taser, is she …”

“She’s in her right mind.” Behind her, someone put a massive hand on Iridium’s shoulder. She turned to see Protean looming there, smiling. “As are we all.”

Iridium felt herself physically sag with relief. Protean gripped her, holding her up. In her ear, he murmured, “See to your father.”

“We still got a problem here,” Taser said. He ducked a cloud of noxious poison from Gaslight. “These guys aren’t our friends!”

“Burn in hell, Corp puppets!” Gaslight screamed. The dozen other rabids in the room all turned on the small knot of allies.

“Oh, bollocks,” Kindle said.

Peripherally, Iridium saw Nevermore take flight, saw Lionheart shift into his cat form. Next to her, Protean curled his fists.

“Everyone take a rabid,” Iridium barked. “Subdue, don’t kill.”

“Speak for yourself, Princess!” Nevermore screeched. She and Freefall were engaged in a midair tussle, Freefall’s antigravity field making Nevermore sway drunkenly as she fought to keep aloft.

Iridium herself went to ground under the onslaught of Knife, his steel fingernails slashing the air where her face had been.

Protean grabbed him and flung him into the far wall, but the Judge swung his massive gavel. Protean joined Iridium on the ground, dodging the blow.

“Get your father to safety,” he said, pointing to where Arclight lay in the midst of the tussling extrahumans.

Before Iridium could move, Sonic Scream opened his mouth and unleashed a wave of sound. Iridium hit the ground for a second time, cradling her head in her arms to keep her eardrums from rupturing.

“This isn’t working!” she screamed at Protean.

He just shook his head … he couldn’t hear anything in the onslaught of sound.

Well, the douche bag had to run out of breath sometime.

Iridium tossed a strobe at a lizardlike rabid who was sneaking up on Lionheart, then another at Freefall as he and Nevermore tumbled back to ground.

The rabids shied away from her strobes, gathering like a Roman legion in the corner of the lobby.

Iridium grabbed Kindle by the shoulder. “I have an idea!” she shouted, hoping he could read lips. She snapped a finger at the rabids, used her other hand to shape a cage.

Kindle nodded and pantomimed getting the rabids closer together.

“Lionheart! Protean!” she bellowed, flinging another strobe as Creeper started to stretch out and sneak toward her from the group.

The heroes caught on, and Lionheart bounded around the group, nipping at their heels. Protean simply picked up anyone not already in the corner and threw them like they were luggage on an international flight.

Dry heat swept Iridium’s face as all of the moisture evaporated from the air, the precursor to Kindle’s pyrokinesis. The Irishman furrowed his brow, and a spot of flame appeared, hanging in midair like a tiny sun.

Sonic Scream’s sound wall fell as Protean punched him in the gut.

“Get clear!” Iridium shouted in the silence. “Get out of the way!”

With a
whoosh
and a roar of displaced oxygen, Kindle’s fire cage sprang into being, like a vision or a mirage of the most beautiful oasis Iridium had ever seen.

She rubbed her pounding head. “Thank Christo for small favors.”

Protean, Lionheart, and Nevermore formed up around Kindle as he stood with his hands out, sweat beading on his forehead. “You all right?” Nevermore said. She actually sounded like she cared.

Well, Kindle was sort of cute. If you were into old guys.

“Be fine,” he gritted. “Just don’t break me concentration.”

Iridium knelt next to Lester and slapped his face gently. “Dad.”

After a moment he opened his eyes, and groaned. “Bloody hell, Calista. You strobed me.”

“I had to,” Iridium said crisply. “Only way to break Hypnotic’s hold.”

“Callie.” He caught her hand. “You have to know I had no control over what I was saying. Seeing. You have to know I didn’t mean any of it, girl.”

Iridium looked at his hand on hers, his eyes, which were clear and warm once again. But those words were still there, ugly, hanging over her head.

“Bloody hell, Callie. Say something.”

“You already said it.” Iridium pulled away and helped him up. “We need containment, backup, and crowd control before—”

There was a massive crash, scattering the group of Blackbird inmates.

From nowhere, Doctor Hypnotic suddenly appeared, groaning as he sat up. Iridium saw Jet nearby, her fists clenched, Shadows leaking between her fingers.

Protean, Lionheart, and Nevermore scattered from Hypnotic like he was radioactive. As they scampered, Jet slowly approached him, Shadows writhing around her.

“Impressive, Joan,” Hypnotic slurred. He pulled himself up, swaying like a drunk, and a deep gash in his forehead spoke to a concussion. “But can you keep the whispers away long enough to finish me?”

Jet hesitated.

“Just what I thought.” Hypnotic purred. “You can’t do it. You know what’s inside you and you’ll never let it out. The Darkness has its teeth in you, Joan, and it’s consuming.”

Jet’s forehead furrowed. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

Iridium stepped up beside Jet. “What are you waiting for?” she murmured. “Finish him off.”

“He …” Jet let her hand drop. “He took away my Shadow. It was … it was …”

“Wonderful,” Hypnotic purred.

Iridium felt a strobe grow reflexively. “You shut up.”

“I don’t have to say a thing,” Hal said. “Joan’s a prisoner of her power.”

Iridium looked away from him, trying to block out that smooth tone, that seductive voice that could give her anything she ever wanted. “No, Joan,” she said softly. “He’s lying to you.”

Twin tears worked their way down Jet’s face. “We can’t beat him.”

“I can’t,” Iridium said softly. She put her hand on Joan’s shoulder. “But you can.”

Jet shivered under her touch.

Iridium put a little light heat into her grip. “You don’t have darkness inside you, Joannie,” she whispered. “You have bright, beautiful things. I know.”

Jet sniffed hard. “How do you know?”

Iridium sensed Hypnotic looming closer, and she tightened her grip. “Because I know you, Joan. I know you.”

Iridium turned, and before she even thought about it, she released the heat in the hand that had been holding Jet. Jet’s creeper hit Hypnotic at the same time.

“You think that’ll stop me?” he bellowed, staggering. “Nothing stops me! I’m Doctor Hypnotic!”

Iridium strobed him again, and Jet’s Shadow creepers grew ravenous.

“Christo,” Jet said tiredly. “Shut up, will you?”

Hypnotic crumpled to the ground.

Iridium kept strobing him, and realized she was screaming. She didn’t care, didn’t stop hurting the monster who’d taken her mind and now her family from her.

Gloved hands pulled her away and Taser wrapped his arms around her, making her still.

“It’s over,” Taser whispered. “Callie, stop.”

Iridium felt his heart beating under his Kevlar, the rapid rhythm in time with her own.

“Callie? Can I let you go?”

Iridium forced herself to breathe. She looked at Hypnotic’s bloody, still form on the floor and nodded, slowly and shakily. “It’s over.”

JET

Sighing, Jet stared at the fallen man. Doctor Hypnotic looked so old, lying there on the floor. So helpless. Difficult to imagine he’d entranced hundreds of people … or that decades ago, he’d caused the deaths of hundreds more, scarred the minds of thousands.

scars and screams and sweet sweet sounds …

She clenched her fist.
Shut up!

The voices giggled, and receded. For now.

“Well,” Taser said. “That’s a big win, yeah?”

Someone brushed past Jet, nearly pushing her off her feet. Rubbing her bruised arm, Jet glowered at Arclight, who knelt and inspected Hypnotic’s face. He was silent for a long moment, then he spat on the unconscious man’s cheek.

“Hey,” Jet said, affronted.

“Don’t you ‘Hey’ me, little girl. You don’t know what he made me see.” Arclight sneered at Hypnotic’s crumpled form before he pulled himself up to his full height.

“He’s sick,” Jet said quietly, only somewhat surprised that she was making excuses for one of the most feared supervillains in recent history. “He needs help.”

Arclight laughed, the sound harsh and cruel. “He needs a bullet through the brain.”

“Seconded,” said a rabid Jet didn’t recognize, a thin Goth girl who clung to a light fixture on the ceiling. Upside down, she pulled out a Hogan cutter from her sleeve.

“Put it away, girl,” Steele growled.

“Yeah? You going to make me, Tin Can?”

Steele glared up at the girl on the ceiling, her metallic fists gleaming.

“Enough.” Jet’s voice echoed in the hallway.

For a moment, there was only the sound of the fire cage crackling and the mutters of the captured rabids. Then Arclight said, “Of course. We shouldn’t be arguing. We’re all on the same team after all.” That last made the Goth girl giggle.

Ignoring them, Jet took out a pair of stun-cuffs and slapped them over Hypnotic’s wrists. Her chest felt too tight, and behind her optiframes, tears stung her eyes. Well, enough of that too. The voices were back already, but hopefully she wouldn’t start getting the headaches again. Or at least, not until tomorrow. “He’s going back to Blackbird, as are you.”

Now the Goth girl chortled.

“Not going back there,” said one of her cohorts, a big man with oversized muscles. Protean, Jet recalled. Sent away seven years ago for smashing through the vaults of First National with his fists. How did they all escape prison in the first place? “You can’t put me back there. They junk me up so much I can’t think.”

“My team and I aren’t going back,” Arclight said, smiling as if he’d just won the national lottery. “We have a free pass, you see.”

Jet arched a brow.
“Really.”

“Really really,” Iridium said, her voice flat. When Jet turned to face her, Iri sighed. “Signed and sealed. The five of them are free, and so am I, as long as we report to our boss and do what we’re told, like good doggies.”

Dreading the answer, Jet asked, “And who would that boss be?”

“Why, dear girl, don’t you know?” Arclight grinned. “Corp-Co.”

Steele said, “You must be joking.”

“No joke,” Iridium replied. “It’s all aboveboard.”

Jet opened her mouth to argue, to deny what father and daughter were insisting, but at that moment something slammed into the building with a thunderous crash. Losing her balance, Jet toppled into Protean, who helped her to her feet.

Light, did he have to be chivalrous when he was also a villain? That wasn’t fair at all.

At the window near the front door, Taser said, “Uh-oh.”

Iridium stumbled over to him. “Uh-oh what?”

“Uh-oh that.”

Iridium looked, and then she let out a curse that made Jet’s ears bleed.

“What?” she asked, really not wanting to know.

“You remember those sewer mutants?” Iri said, her voice too high. “Looks like they’re back.”

“And this time,” Taser added, “they brought a hundred or so of their friends with them.”

CHAPTER 51

IRIDIUM

I have no illusion that I’m in control. I’m the figurehead, the man who unlocked the door to the age of the extrahuman. But Corp is the master of their fate. Those poor children. I should have never tried to save them.

—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated 2018

W
e should get out there.” Jet shoved past Iridium and started for the front door. “There are innocent civilians.”

“Fuck that,” Nevermore said. “Look at the size of those monsters.”

“You
criminals
are welcome to do whatever you want,” Jet snapped. “I have a job to protect these people.”

“Who do you think just saved your ass?” Nevermore demanded. “The Tooth Fairy?”

“Everybody shut it!” Iridium bellowed, as she saw the Blackbird fugitives and the Squadron begin to divide into sides, sides that would no doubt erupt into another superhuman slap fight.