CHAPTER 3
IRIDIUM
Other than the occasional deviation, the extrahumans are all sworn to serve and protect, far more diligently and thoroughly than the standard officer on a police force.
Stan Kane, Chairman of Corp-Co, to Corp-Co Shareholders at the 110th Annual Meeting of Corp-Co Investors, January 31, 2112
Down the numberless alleyways that crossed Wreck City like burst capillaries, Iridium stopped walking and turned around. “You can come out, you know. That Shadow-walking trick hasn’t fooled me since we were fourteen years old.”
Iridium waited, patiently. She was so goddamn paranoid. Probably expected a lasgrid cage, or a net with pointy sticks attached. “Anytime now,” Iridium coaxed.
Yet the bricks behind her, bars and brights of light and dark, stayed quiet, still, and empty.
Iridium set down the metal case of digichips and rolled her eyes. “For Christo’s sake, Jet. Get your ass out here. I read Art of War in the same unit you did. This is not dampening my morale, or whatever it is you’re hoping to accomplish with the big, scary Shadow puppet routine.”
“You cheated in that unit,” Jet said, finally letting herself separate from the shadow of a computerized Dumpster that bore the grinning face of Green Thumb, supershill for Chicago Consolidated Hauling. The fact that a plant-controller was posing for a major polluter made Iridium smile.
“Honey, I cheated at a lot of things,” she told Jet. “Sun Tzu doesn’t actually have a problem with cheating.”
Jet flexed her hands so the night-colored leather gauntlets casing them creaked. “I do.”
“Jehovah,” Iridium muttered. “Is that some elective I missed out on? ‘How to Sound Like a Cheesy Action Vid’?”
“I didn’t come here to talk.”
Iridium felt a pang in the air, like a stray draft of cold wind had come off Lake Michigan. Just a moment before they wrapped around her ankles, she saw the shadows running off Jet’s form, crawling toward her feet. Creepers, manifestations of Jet’s power. Alive.
“Imagine that,” said Iridium, creating a strobe that hung in the air above the pair, arcing and spitting. Jet hissed as her goggles irised from the sudden burst of light. With her cowl, skinsuit, and leather belt and gauntlets, she looked more like a nightmare than anything Iridium saw when she shut her eyes.
Seeing the shadows crawl back to their mistress, Iridium pushed the strobe closer. “Any other day, I’d love to stay and continue our witty repartee, but right now I’ve got places to go and corporate slimewads to rob, so I’ll be jetting. No pun intended.”
“You stay where you are!” Jet shouted. “You can’t get past me, Iridium, no matter how much your ego likes to think so!”
“Christo, shut up!” Jet couldn’t just speak; it was always a Superman with her. A platitude, pat and rehearsed. She might as well have been one of the ’bots the Academy kept around to wax floors and wash dishes. She was wired into Corp, as much as all of their machines. “You make me sick, Jet,” Iridium said. “You can either get in my way and be burned by my strobe—careful,” she snapped when Jet tried to bat the ball of ever-brightening light away, “that’s over a thousand BTUs of heat! Or you can slither away into the dark. As usual.”
Jet held her ground.
Iridium took another step forward and felt a droplet of sweat slide down her spine underneath her unikilt. Just the light heat, she lied to herself. Don’t worry about it. “You forget that I know you, Jet.” She pushed at the strobe, making it fly at the cowled woman.
Jet dove to the side at the last second and landed in a heap of garbage, clawing at her face as her goggles overloaded from the brilliance.
Iridium went to Jet, leaned down, and ripped off Jet’s earpiece, crushing the squawk of her operator’s voice beneath her bootheel. “You scare easy,” Iridium hissed into Jet’s ear. “You always have.”
She turned her back on Jet, got the digichip case, and walked away at a measured pace, into the ruins of Wreck City, feeling only a slight prick of guilt for what she’d said.