Black and White - Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge
CHAPTER 1
IRIDIUM
The thing people seem all too happy to forget is that where there be superheroes, there also be supervillans. It makes one wonder: If the heroes went away, would the villains follow?
Lynda Kidder, “Origins, Part Five,” New Chicago Tribune, April 23, 2112
Heroes always need someone to play the villain. Iridium saw the truth in this when a hero tried to slip up and coldcock her on the back of the head.
She spun around and blasted him with a strobe—nothing crippling, strictly visible spectrum, but the hero landed on his ass and started yelling. Probably “Ahhh, my eyes, my eyes!” That one was the most common.
“That was sloppy,” Iridium tsked. “Where’s your mentor? Did he go get a latte and leave you all alone?”
By her feet, a bank guard whimpered under his gag. “Shut it,” said Iridium. “It’s not like you won’t get a fat settlement in the lawsuit that you’re going to file against the bank for hazardous working conditions. Right?”
The guard considered this for a minute, shrugged as much as he could with Iridium’s disposable handcuffs around his wrists, and nodded.
Iridium turned her attention back to the vault, watching the hero stagger to his feet out of the corner of her eye. He was wearing a purple-and-black skinsuit—that alone pegged him as an amateur. No one in their right minds stuck with the skinsuits after they graduated from the Academy.
Well, except one, and her picture was splashed on every piece of extrahuman propaganda in Wreck City—or, if you had to get official and euphemistic about it, Reclaimed Grid 16, for the City of New Chicago—so the junior hero could be forgiven for thinking that skinsuits were the thing.
“Turn and face me! You’re under arrest,” the hero shouted.
Iridium continued her contemplation of the vault. A triple-retinal lock. A backup deadfall-bolt system. Two and a half inches of tilithium steel with iocore tumblers. “I’m just gonna have to melt it,” she said, more to herself than the hero.
He took out the silver baton he’d first tried to hit her with, and some kind of Energy power turned it blue and crackling with electricity. “Last chance, bitch!”
Iridium let one black eyebrow slide up. “‘Bitch’? Don’t you feel that’s uncalled for? All I did was strobe you in self-defense.”
“You almost burned my damned eyes out of my head!” He was edging up on her slowly, in some kind of textbook combat stance they must have started teaching after Iridium’s time at the Academy. It made the hero resemble a colorful, deranged crab. Aside from the skinskuit, his costume had a purple face shield and bulbous black goggles that did a poor job of hiding big, scared eyes.
“Now, see, that’s the thing,” said Iridium. “In my day, they taught us not to swear.”
The hero struck with the baton and Iridium sidestepped, then put a foot into his side, just below his last rib. There was a crack like a twig being stepped on. Oops. So maybe not exactly below it.
“They also taught us to guard our offhand side,” said Iridium, standing over the groaning hero. “Who the hell trained you? They should have their mentor merit badge revoked.”
“I …”
“Look, kid. What’s your name?”
“Blackwasp,” he managed.
“Ouch. Sue whoever stuck you with that one. My point is, Blackwasp, that to survive as a goody-goody, you need to learn when you’re outclassed.” She turned her gaze back to the safe, pushed with the part of her mind that saw in spectrums, and felt the light concentrate on the surface of the door, blossoming like a small sun. The tilithium began to hiss as it peeled slowly away from the tumblers.
“I’ll always be better than a rabid … freak … like you,” Blackwasp gritted. He was pale with pain, but he wasn’t fading. She had to give the kid credit—he had more balls than most Corp rentboys.
Iridium favored him with a close-lipped smile. “Maybe so, Blackwasp, but today, I’m the one walking out of here with e75,000 in digichips, and you’re the one who’s on the floor with a silly look on his face.”
“Never … defeat me …”
Iridium strobed Blackwasp hard enough to knock him out, then stepped through the dripping hole in the vault and collected the cases of chips from their gleaming mount next to the long boxes of cash. As she left, she leaned down and gave Blackwasp a kiss on the cheek. “Better luck next time, kid.”
Her lips left a faint imprint, like a sunburn.