Black and White by Jackie Kessler Page B

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