CHAPTER 16
IRIDIUM
When walking the streets of New Chicago, give the sewers a wide berth. It’s the city’s worst-kept secret that the sewers are part of what the locals refer to as the Rat Network … and it’s said that gang-related activity occurs in those tunnels on a daily (and nightly) basis.
The Street-Smart Guide to Illinois, Eighth Edition
The Undergoths’ tunnels were lit by naked bulbs that hissed and flickered when Iridium passed by.
Boxer jerked at his tie, chin weaving from side to side. “This place gives me the damn creeps, Iri.”
Iridium didn’t slow her steps at all, but she created a light globe that floated gently through the dank, stinking air over hers and Boxer’s heads.
His mouth twisted up at the side. “Thanks.”
“This guy better not be jerking me around,” Iridium muttered. “There won’t be anything left of him for this purported vigilante if he is.” She cracked one gloved fist against the other. White unikilt, black stockings, black gloves, black boots. Say what you wanted about the rest of the Academy, their Hero Branding and Fashion course was solid. Iridium knew that at almost six feet, in her costume, she looked positively intimidating—and she intended to use that to her full advantage against the Undergoths.
A solid-steel access door loomed up out of the gloom, flanked by two gangsters in the colored battle kilts and leather vests accented by bolts and other found metals that characterized the Undergoths. Iridium could recite gang lore in her sleep, but all that mattered now were the bullet points.
The Undergoths were an old gang, populating the tunnels after the waters from the Flood of ’09 receded. They followed a single leader and a council of generals. They tended toward edged weapons, petty larceny, and hit-and-run heists. Far from their Rome-sacking ancestors, the Undergoths were major power players in New Chicago’s criminal faction in only one way: They controlled every tunnel, every illegal access port, every trapdoor and passageway that ran through the ruins of the old city.
And they stank to high heaven.
“Stop,” said the gangster in the blue kilt.
“We have a meeting,” said Iridium, cocking her hip. By her side, Boxer moved his hand to the butt of his plasgun pistol. Iridium held up her hand to him. “I’m sure we won’t need it, Box. These boys don’t look old enough to shave, never mind fight.”
As New Chicago had rebuilt grid after grid and closed off square miles of ruined blocks, the Undergoths’ territory had grown exponentially. Rival gangs that ran in the sewers and transport tunnels without leave told stories of bodies ripped limb from limb, pipe trees with severed hands for fruit, and screams that echoed for days through the Rat Network. Frankly, Iridium thought their reputation was highly overrated.
The Undergoth clenched his fist. “Shut your mouth.”
“I know you’re not being rude to a guest of your leader,” said Iridium. “That’d just be bad for business.”
“Be quiet and let me pat you down,” he snarled, pulling a Talon cutter from his belt.
Iridium let one eyebrow go up. Talons were police-issue rescue weapons, designed to bite through the tilithium hides of floatcars and cleave brick like butter.
“Freudian hang-ups are an ugly thing,” she said. “You should channel that aggression into something productive, like holohockey. Or taking a shower. I can smell you even in this rotten air.”
“Shut up,” said the Undergoth for the third time, and reached for her.
Iridium pushed at him, felt her power sizzle against the oily fog of the air, then the Undergoth was encased in a column of light, as if he’d been a statue on a podium in Heroes’ Hall.
He started screaming almost immediately as the light burned white-hot around him, snapping dully as the Undergoth beat against it. The skin on his face and bare torso started to blister, then to flake away.
“UV rays,” Iridium told Boxer, when her companion’s lip curled in disgust.
Boxer shrugged and focused on a lizard skittering along the tunnel’s ceiling, its seven-toed feet tapping out a syncopated rhythm and its rat’s tail swishing as the gangster’s cries floated around them.
Iridium felt the sweat creep over her again. Just as Jet had to fight to reel in her idiotic shadows, pushing light waves from the nonvisible spectrum was a task Iridium didn’t attempt if she could help it. The further away her power was, the harder it was to grasp. And that left her tired, wrung out, like she’d just hit a punching bag until her legs went out from under her.
Only the limit of your imagination, her father had whispered to her, just before the Senator slapped stun-cuffs on him and hauled him away to face the Executive Committee. Your power is controlled only by that, Iridium.
“I’m … sorry …” the Undergoth moaned. He sank to his knees, red as a summer sunset all over his exposed skin.
“You’re damn right, you’re sorry,” Iridium said. She let go of the ultraviolet throbbing along just beyond her eyes and turned to the other Undergoth, who had watched the proceedings with the childlike expression the Academy had taught her to associate with hash chuffers. “You want to try and pat me down, big boy?”
He gulped. “N-no, ma’am.”
“Good lad,” said Iridium. “Take us to see who we’re here to see, before we’re late. Being late is very rude, I hope you know.”
Boxer whistled under his breath as he stepped over the burned Undergoth. “Who pissed in your corn product this morning, Iri?”
Iridium favored Boxer with a tight smile. “I’m just not in the mood. Never am, for gangs.”
“Who is? Especially for these freaks,” Boxer muttered.
The Undergoth banged on the metal door with the side of his fist and it rolled back to reveal a much older tunnel, rounded at the top. Construction halos were spiked up at intermittent intervals along the tunnel. Iridium had to bend over, and the hulking gangster ahead of her was hunched almost double.
A greenish light gleamed ahead, and the tunnel opened up into an old water main, the exchange an arched chamber that housed a few fires and makeshift shelters from metal and old sheets of plast. Green plas burners gave off steam like the smoke of a funeral pyre, and the only sound was the low hiss of static. An Undergoth sat at a bank of pirate radar controls, twisting dials between hits on a junk pipe.
“Radar transmission,” said Iridium to Boxer. “Jamming the sweeps from up above.”
“This way,” murmured the Undergoth, pushing aside a curtain made of chains. “Alaric is waiting for you.”
“I’m all aquiver,” Iridium muttered as she stepped through.
Behind the curtain, a skinny figure with long, white limbs like tentacles and black hair like a grease-stained waterfall reclined on a lopsided chair made from bones. Animal or human, Iridium couldn’t tell, but she pulled her power a little closer and felt Boxer close in behind her.
“Iridium,” Alaric rasped. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“What’s your problem, Alaric?” Iridium said, as a hulking Undergoth blocked her path. “Afraid of little old me?”
“Everyone in Wreck City with any sense is.” Alaric smiled, revealing filed teeth. “Come closer. Hugo, stand aside.”
Iridium came to a stop a few feet from Alaric. If his black kilt and the bolt through his eyebrow wouldn’t stop most people, his pointed teeth and smell would.
“As I told your associate,” said Alaric, “we down-dwellers seem to have acquired ourselves a vigilante admirer.”
“Not in my grid, you didn’t,” said Iridium. “Freelance justicers know to take their issues elsewhere, if Corp doesn’t tag them and put them in Blackbird.” Or get them as kids and send them to the Academy, which was exponentially worse.
“Oh,” said Alaric, stretching his mouth into a wider grin still. “But I have proof.” He sat up straight and moved his leather vest away from his heart, pointing at the twin black marks there. “Come closer, Iridium.”
“She can see fine from right here,” said Boxer.
“No, it’s all right,” said Iridium, looking at Alaric. “He knows what happens if there’s a misunderstanding.”
Alaric wheezed a laugh. “Indeed I do. Hugo, go get me a chuffer It’s damper than a whore’s ass after she just rode a waterslide.”
“Show me,” Iridium said, stepping to the Undergoth leader. He reminded her of a spider, crouched in the center of a wispy, rotted web.
“It caused me great pain. I won’t lie to save face,” he purred.
Alaric’s chest was red and swollen, and a mark like a lightning bolt had been burned into his pectoral, cauterized fast so that the flesh had gone black and dead. It was too stylized to be a lightning bolt, Iridium realized—more like a pictograph that you saw around power stations, warning of high voltage.
“This is supposed to convince me that you had a run-in with a vigilante?” Iridium said.
“Well,” Alaric said, “I didn’t brand myself with this symbol. We don’t deal much in light and heat down here.” He sighed and moved a hand through his greasy hair. “I was at an entry point to the Rat Network, minding my own business, when your typical black-clad figure of justice swooped in, assaulted me and my underlings, then disappeared after he’d given me a warning.”
“About what?” said Iridium. “You Undergoths aren’t exactly criminal masterminds. No offense.”
Alaric laughed softly, like steam boiling against skin. “I’m just passing information and seeing if aid will be given.”
“Let me guess. You boys get tired of holding flashlights for the streeties and decide to get a piece of the pie? Because I admire enterprising spirit, I really do, but if you’re surprised that you’ve attracted a vigilante, then you’re in for further rude f*cking surprises down the road.” Iridium tapped her finger against her chin. “Or … you’ve got someone holding your bankroll, someone a justicer would actually be upset about.” She leaned in. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re a bunch of errand boys, just like the Squadron.”
Alaric stopped smiling. “You’re a bright one.”
“Certified genius,” said Iridium. “Now, are you wasting my time or do you have something to offer?”
“Like what?”
“Get out of Wreck City, and I’ll look into rousting this man in black. Divorce yourself from this new sponsor, because he’s obviously more trouble than he’s worth. Go back to crawling around in the dark. It’s what you’re good at.”
Alaric sat forward, propping his skeletal elbow on his equally skeletal knee. “Or you’ll what, Miss Firefly?”
Iridium finally returned his smile. “Or I will come down here and personally put the power of the sun down every filthy hole that you freaks call home. I’ll make it so damn bright, your eyes will burn out of your head. I’ll light up the Rat Network like Yuletide Eve. And then there really won’t be much use for you anymore, will there, Alaric?”
Hugo, who had reappeared holding a junk pipe made from an empty cola bottle, made a move toward her, and Iridium formed a strobe around her hand, light snapping.
“It’s all right,” said Alaric. “Hugo, no need to be cross.” He considered Iridium, who kept the light high, spilling brightness into corners that hadn’t been touched by it for a very long time. More bones glowed under the strobe, and more eyes than Iridium felt entirely comfortable with shone.
“You don’t need to be thinking about this for such a long time, Alaric,” she said. “Everyone on the surface knows Wreck City is mine. You and your pasty band really want to test me?”
“No,” said Alaric slowly. “No, I don’t believe we do. Go roust this vigilante, Iridium. We’ll stay out of your grid.”
“And knock off whatever got you attention,” said Iridium. “It’s clearly not worth it.”
“Have a pleasant journey back to the light,” Alaric said, reclining on his throne.
Iridium turned her back on him, a move she wouldn’t pull with many gang leaders, but Alaric needed to be taught that she wasn’t afraid of him, filed teeth and bone throne or no.
“Come on, Boxer,” she said loudly. “Let’s get back to where you can’t see the air.”
“Good luck, firefly!” Alaric called after her.
Iridium turned on him with a bright gaze. “I may need a lot of things, but luck’s not one of them.”