CHAPTER 56
JET
It’s unfortunate that so many with special abilities feel the need to work outside the law, turning extrahuman against extrahuman. The Academy exists to stamp out such dangerous thinking and turn tomorrow’s vigilante into today’s protector.
Night, in an address to the Concerned Parents of New Chicago
Jet’s feet hurt from pacing so long.
She stared at the closed door, wishing for the zillionth time that Sensor Girl was with her so she could hear what was being said inside.
Iridium had been in the conference room for three hours. The Containment officers had dragged her in, still in her torn unikilt, her hands trapped inside stun-cuffs, her eyes glazed. All of the Academy superiors had already jammed inside the room, from the twelve proctors to the head instructors to the Superintendent himself. And then the suits from Corp had arrived, their faces stark, their spines rigid.
And Jet waited.
At least Iri hadn’t been hurt, she thought yet again. And there were no media. Small favors.
Two Runners had tried to get Jet to leave, to go to class, to eat something, to rest in her room. She’d ignored them until one dared lay a hand on her shoulder. Then she’d allowed a creeper out to play. The Runner had paled and done as his title suggested.
Iri was going to be okay. She had to be okay.
Jet wrapped her arms around herself, shivered. Light, all of the blood. Jet had been sure it was Iridium’s, when she and Night and the Superintendent had found her at the police station … until Jet had seen the man’s body. Iri had killed him.
Heroes don’t kill.
But this was Iri …
Her head throbbed when she tried to make sense of it, so she stopped thinking about it.
A short eternity later, the door opened. Iridium was marched out, still in her cuffs. Jet tried to catch her eye, tried to stop the Containment unit, but they bulldozed past her like she was insignificant.
A shadow.
Out came the suits, looking stern and self-important. Then the Superintendent and the other Academy officials. Last one out was Night.
“Sir,” Jet said to him as the others filed past. “What did they decide?”
Night’s jaw clenched. “Therapy.”
Jet’s breath caught in her throat. “No,” she whispered. “No, they can’t. They can’t do that to her.” She saw Dawnlighter, the Stepford Superhero; saw Frostbite with his impotent rage. “Not Iri.”
“Yes,” he snapped, and for a blistering moment, his fury rolled over Jet and evaporated her horror. “Damn it!” He slammed his fist against the wall; overhead, the lights died.
Jet bit back a cry as her optiframes irised to allow for night vision. Nothing to panic over. She had her goggles. She had her earpiece. She was safe from the Shadow.
“Sir,” she said, touching his arm, “can’t you appeal? Intervene?”
He pulled his arm from her grasp. “Don’t you think I tried that? They wouldn’t hear of it. Bad press, they said. All this work, all this time, wasted, because they’re worried about the media. The media!” He bellowed the word and slammed his fist against the wall again.
“But Therapy will kill her,” Jet whispered.
“No, it’ll leave her alive,” he snarled, as if he were as offended by the notion of a scooped-out version of Iri as Jet was. “She couldn’t follow procedure this one time, play the wooden soldier when it mattered most. Damn her! That stupid bitch!”
“That bitch is my friend,” Jet snarled, forgetting to be awed by his power or cowed by his ire. “And I won’t stand here and listen to you insult her.”
Night froze, his shadowed face a twisted mask of rage. And then, incongruously, he started to laugh. “And what can you do about it, Joan? What makes you think that you can defy the will of the Academy and Corp?”
“I won’t let them destroy her,” she vowed. With that, Jet spun on her heel and marched out the door, rushing to catch up to the cold men in their proper suits.
When she reached them, they almost refused to listen to her. But she was Jet, the darling of the Academy and, more important, of the press. So they listened to her words.
And to her wild suggestion.
And after a short deliberation, they agreed to her request.