Black and White (19 page)

I
ridium was pushing it. Visiting her father twice in three days would set off Warden Post’s obsessive-compulsive sense of security, but she had to.

“What the
hell are
you doing here?” Lester demanded. “I told you I’d be in touch when my man delivers.”

“About that,” said Iridium. “I don’t want some shadow figure dealing with us. Who is he? How do you know you can trust him?”

“His name is Ivanoff. And he’s a prisoner of Corp, the same as I am,” said Lester. “Don’t question me again, Callie. Have I ever led you wrong?”

Iridium bit her lip. “No.”

“You saw what Corp did to our family firsthand. Drove my friends over the edge, threw me in prison, destroyed
your mother’s career when she wouldn’t abandon us. Are you wavering?”

“No!” Iridium snapped. “I know what they did, Dad. I saw what the Academy does firsthand. I just …” She stopped, fighting the urge to summon a strobe, expel her nervous energy.

Lester softened, extended one hand as far as he could in his shackles toward her. “What’s wrong, girl?”

“I got hit with a vigilante.” Iridium sighed. “The Undergoths have a new backer. Wreck City is going to shit and Corp is just going to keep coming. I’m not having a good week, Dad.”

“Nor will you, until Corp is put in its place,” Lester said. He didn’t believe in pity, or, in many cases, sympathy. Iridium wondered at her fellow students who’d had the family existence, with birthdays and school pictures. They all seemed so insulated, so removed from what the world really was.

Which was why they were heroes, and she was here.

“Gangs will always be gangs, Iridium.” Using her designation made Iridium snap her head up. Lester gave her a rueful smile. “Justicers will always be too eager. But you can change Corp hunting you. I suggest you focus on that.”

“I asked him to meet me,” Iridium said. “The vigilante.”

“I forbid it,” Lester said instantly. “Corp will be hunting him and it will expose us to too much risk.”

Iridium nodded. “You know best, Dad.”

“I don’t like this, Iri,” Boxer said, fidgeting with his watch chain.

“There isn’t much you do like lately, Boxer,” Iridium said. “Will you knock that off? You’re making me nervous.”

“Gee,” he said, looking over the edge of the hoverpad. “We’re perched on an aerial lander illegally, waiting for a guy who shoots electricity out of his hands—and is on the
side of justice—to question his motives. And if I know you, you’ll still insult at least one of his ancestors. Can’t see why you’re nervous, Iri. Not at all.”

“Button it.” The hoverpad swayed gently in the wake of a passing bus and Iridium deliberately looked up, at the pollution layer, and not down at the street five hundred feet below. Her father would kill her. But there was something about Taser, something that suggested it would be a bad idea not to get him on her side … after all, they shared no love of Corp. Backup could be useful, when Lester’s mystery man Ivanoff delivered.

“He’s late,” Boxer said finally, snapping his watch shut in a huff and tucking it into his lime-green vest.

“Yeah, he seems to make that a habit.”

“You’re talking about my dashing good looks, right?”

Iridium turned and saw Taser dismount a small black hover, sans license tag and flight markings. He swiveled his head toward Boxer. “You didn’t tell me we were going to have a chaperon, darlin’.”

“Somebody has to make sure you don’t get fresh,” said Boxer, patting his plas pistol.

Taser’s eye goggles irised and refocused. “I know you.”

“I don’t think so,” Boxer said, tilting up his fedora with his finger.

“You’re the third Taft brother.” Taser cocked his head. “How about that. Heard you were dead.”

Boxer’s jaw went tight. “Fanboy, are you?”

Taser snorted. “Not hardly. Nice to see you’ve found something to keep your hands busy.” He looked toward Iridium with his blank glass gaze. “Does she? Keep your hands busy?”

Iridium snapped her fingers in Taser’s face and a prism flashed, shorting his goggles. They sparked and clamped shut. “Can we focus, please?”

Boxer snorted. “Good luck with this sewer rat’s ass, Iridium. I’ll be at home.” He tapped his wristlet and signaled
a taxi, which floated to a stop at the pad. Boxer got in without another word.

After it had whirred away on its lift fans, Taser grinned. “You gonna pay me for these goggles?”

Iridium feigned shock. “You mean to tell me you’re
not
a rich playboy during the day? I’m so disillusioned.”

Taser shocked the goggles and they opened again. Iridium saw a hint of light eyes beneath. “Why’d you really bring me up here? Because I gotta be honest—a woman who banters is not one of my turn-ons.”

“How about a woman who throws your ass off a hover-pad?”

Taser shook his head. “We did this dance, remember? It’ll just end in tears, Iri.”

Iridium pressed her lips into a line. “Only my friends call me that.”

“Then tell me what you brought me up here for so we can move down that road.”

The lights of downtown blinked softly at Iridium as she turned away from Taser. “I’m going to cut ties with the gangs in Wreck City soon. I want you to stop messing around with the Undergoths and make an alliance with me.”

Taser laughed. “You and me against the world? Romantic, Iridium. Never expected that out of you.”

“No,” said Iridium. “You and me against Corp.”

Taser canted his head. “But I’m a fanboy, remember?”

“If you were really a wannabe, you would have turned me in to Corp the first time we tussled. You would have tipped the active duty squad to the Undergoths.” She turned to him. “You would have had a pair of stun-cuffs on you so you could haul me to the prison gates and get a pat on the head from Corp.”

Taser shrugged. “Got me there. All that, and I did tell you that I wasn’t a Corp lover.”

“Yeah, but I just assumed you were a liar,” said Iridium.

“Sort of a dim view of the world.”

Iridium smiled thinly. “It’s a dark world we live in, Taser. Do we have an accord?” She stuck out her hand, trusting him not to simply shock her, tag her, and take her to the hero squad.

Taser gripped her hand, firm and warm. “Against Corp? We do for now.”

O
ne thing Jet could say about Lynda Kidder: The woman had an ego the size of Old Texas.

Amid the occasional holos and traditional paintings and posters on the walls were dozens—hundreds—of shots of the reporter. Candids. Formals. Ads and product placements. Two professional caricatures. And one life-size cardboard cutout of her, wearing an old-fashioned fedora with the word “Press” on a scrap of paper tucked into the hatband.

Well, at least Jet would know her when she saw her.

Lips pressed into a grim, determined smile, she continued Shadow-walking through the missing woman’s apartment, making sure not to leave any trace of her visit. Her feet cushioned in boots of Shadow, Jet kept moving just
slightly above the floor, searching for any hint of where Lynda Kidder could have gone. Or, as Night would insist, where she had been taken to.

Her heart lurched, and Jet forced herself not to think about her mentor losing his mind.
Maybe he’s right
, she told herself gamely. Night always had a penchant for Sherlocking things. Perhaps something really had happened to Kidder.

Jet felt a pang of guilt as she realized that part of her fervently wanted there to be something wrong, all so that Night would be correct. Well, enough. If Night was going mad, so be it. Duty first—and that duty was to the citizens of New Chicago. Kidder would be fine.

But because Night, too, was a citizen, Jet continued to give him the benefit of the doubt. So she kept examining the apartment.

The furniture, to Jet’s eye, was tasteful yet common; it served its function while not drawing attention away from the important pieces in the apartment: items about Lynda Kidder. Along with all the pictures, framed copies of her articles lined the walls of the small apartment, as well as even larger framed pictures of articles
about
her. “Fearless Reporter Unmasks Rabid Killer” got the top spot in the living room; “Kidder Takes New Chicago” was the piecè de résistance in the bedroom.

And over the mantelpiece, of course, was the coveted Pulitzer for her work on the Icarus investigation, showcased in the Origins feature that ran over thirteen weeks in the
Tribune.

Jet ran her fingers over the old-fashioned engraved
award
, a Shadow-layer between her gloved hand and the plaque. On the base, the Pulitzer read: “Awarded to Lynda S. Kidder of
The New Chicago Tribune
for her persistent, painstaking reports on Icarus Biological and its controversial connection to Corp-Co and its affiliated Academy of Extrahuman Excellence.”

Icarus.

Jet frowned. She knew precious little about the fertility clinic from the end of the twentieth century; the Academy didn’t encourage studies in that direction, and getting information from Corp about the clinic that reportedly was connected to the first-ever wave of “superheroes” was nigh impossible. Students who attempted to learn more were gently—or forcefully—steered to another topic of interest.

Until the Origins piece, the most that Jet could have said about Icarus was that Corp bought the company, Icarus Biologicals, back around the turn of the twenty-first century. Public information about the pre-Corp Icarus facility was all but missing; other than a one-paragraph description of the clinic’s purpose and its founder, there was nothing. It wasn’t as simple as the records being confidential, or top secret, or even code black.

The records had been expunged. From both public and private databases.

That tidbit came from the data Night had sent her yesterday, and it nagged at her as she moved through Kidder’s cozy apartment, taking in tiny details of the missing woman’s life. As she noted the small collection of kitten figurines—
kittens
, how very adorable—Jet wondered how Kidder could have gotten any real leads on Icarus.

She blew out a frustrated breath. The only ones who had access to the information were from Corp. Kidder, therefore, had to have an inside connection to Corp.

It was after the Origins feature started running that Corp had openly frowned on Kidder’s work: a press release officially censuring the investigation; a few well-placed opinion pieces on the net; sound bites making the evening news. That sort of thing. Obviously, Corp didn’t want Kidder snooping around the extrahumans’ origins.

So why would Corp have helped her with that information in the first place?

Jet pictured New Chicago’s fearless reporter on her beat, shamelessly waving a mic in front of Superintendent
Moore from the Academy, or Dawnlighter as she left one of her innumerable cosmetics sponsorships, demanding answers about where the heroes had come from—and why the heroes had come at all. It wasn’t like there was a
Where Do I Come From? The Extrahuman Edition
available at the library.

Kidder wasn’t the sort to be easily cowed. So how did one shut up an investigative reporter?

One gave her some information.

A red herring, perhaps
, Jet thought. Or just insipid background material that the EC had carefully vetted and deemed irrelevant.
Give her some answers, pat her on the head, and send her on her merry way.

But Kidder wasn’t the sort to stop with only a bare handful of answers. Kidder craved the truth—or, more likely, craved the attention that came from uncovering the truth. One look at all the kudos framed around her apartment was proof of that.

Did the reporter do her job too well? Had she learned something about the extrahumans that Corp didn’t want her to know?

Feeling a headache kick up behind her eyes, Jet kept moving through the apartment, her mind working even as she took in the details of Kidder’s life. Jet couldn’t investigate Kidder’s possible connection to Corp, because (A) Night was certain someone from Corp was behind Kidder’s disappearance, and (B) unless you were on the Executive Committee, there was no way, nohow, you could tap into Corp records.

Unless you had an in.

“In your face,” Ops had snarked just an hour ago, when she’d requested the personal time so she could investigate Kidder’s apartment. It had been too much to hope that Meteorite or Two-Tone or one of the other former heroes had been on call. “Oh, damn, she was in your face! Iri wiped the floor with you!”

Jet gritted her teeth and bore the humiliation. He had reason, after all. “Can you please refrain from the comments and just log the personal time for me?”

“Aw, poor Lady of Shadows got her panties in a knot?” Frostbite laughed, sounding bitter and angry. “The golden girl is slipping off her pedestal, finding out that the ground where we mere mortals walk is hard and uncaring and cold?” He paused, and Jet felt the hatred flowing from the comlink. “Sound like anyone you know, Jet?”

“I know you’re glad she escaped,” she said quietly. “I understand.”

“No, Jet. I don’t believe you do.”

“Will you file the request? Or do I need to come in and do it personally?”

A snort. “Can’t have our precious heroine all plumb tuckered out from doing such mundane tasks as filing a request, can we? I’m on it, Ms. Jet, ma’am! Let me go ahead and type in the painstaking code of numbers and symbols that indicate that you, Ms. Jet, ma’am, have requested two hours of personal time, effective immediately, ma’am! I would be remiss, ma’am, if I didn’t remind you that you have a ten-thirty appointment with Rabbi Cohn, ma’am, and that if you miss it, you would be in deep shit, ma’am!”