CHAPTER 25
JET
Together we stand, a united front against injustice. Together we fight, a Squadron dedicated to expelling evil from our world.
Squadron Mission Statement
One 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!”
“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.