Shades of Gray by Jackie Kessler

childhood. “The world is falling to shite, and you’re telling me we’re supposed to sit on our arses and do nothing?”
    “Just give thanks that you’re not completely wired,” Terry said, “or you’d be out there with the rest of the superfreaks.”
    “You have to get the Network involved.”
    “No.”
    His fist tightens around the coffee cup, as if in counterpoint to the noose tightening around Steele’s throat.
    Behind his sunglasses, Garth’s eyes burn. And he thinks, Fuck it.
    Garth strides up to the duo and hurls the steaming coffee into the Hangman’s eyes. The man screeches—more surprise than pain, Garth decides; the mask had to have taken the brunt of the heat—and releases a hand to wipe the sludge from his eyes.
    Steele places both her hands around the Hangman’s wrist and squeezes. And the Hangman screams.
    Yeah, Garth thinks, stepping back. Now that’s a cry of pain.
    Not even a minute later, the Hangman is trussed up with one of his own nooses, whimpering like a baby over his crushed wrist, and Steele is looking around for the man who’d stepped in to distract her opponent.
    But Garth McFarlane is long gone.



CHAPTER 7
    VIXEN
A human being will never be able to walk through walls or levitate above the ground. Not without certain improvements at the genetic level.
—Matthew Icarus, diary entry dated May 11, 1972
    V alerie Vincent hated New Chicago. She hated the cold, the rain, and the constant waft of pollution that blocked the sun. She hated the way the cops treated her like she was no better than the criminals she apprehended. Most of all, she hated her teammates.
    Squadron: New Chicago was nothing like Squadron: Orlando Basin. In Orlando, she hadn’t had a real family, but she’d at least had friends. Here, she was the new kid.
    Valerie hated being the new kid too.
    She shivered inside her skinsuit. It was cut to reveal her midriff and a portion of each flank, a nod to growing up in a city where you could still see and feel the sun—a gleaming, glass city built on stilts over mile upon mile of waving green swamp and razor-sharp palmetto, reclaimed from the urban sprawl of Orlando Proper after Hurricane Axel had leveled most of central Florida.
    She’d have to talk to Branding about creating a new costume. This one made it hard to move when it was cold, never mind fight. She didn’t even have a cape to keep warm, like Angelica.
    Valerie had been in New Chicago for two months, and none of the other Team Alpha members had so much as tried to speak to her at any length, other than in the field. The four of them had come up together in the Academy, just like Valerie and her classmates had back in Orlando Basin.
    But that was all over now. One graduating class, one stupid twit who had powers that were more marketable than Valerie’s, and Valerie found herself here, in the biggest, meanest, coldest city in North America. She supposed she was lucky—she could have been bumped to Team Beta in Orlando instead, and forced to stand around watching Sparkle-Brite or whatever her name was lord Valerie’s old spot on the Squadron over her.
    But at least she’d be warm.
    She was also on patrol alone because Angelica was off with her sponsor, posing for the cameras.
    To be fair, if Valerie was as petite and blond as Holly Owens, she’d probably be a good deal less shy. But she wasn’t. Valerie was broad-shouldered and dark-haired, and taller than one of the men on the team. She was good-looking enough to make the Squadron, but nothing to stop hover traffic.
    Just plain old Valerie Vincent, with her plain old superstrength. No glitz, no glitter, just a rock-solid arrest record and three villain takedowns to her credit, which apparently counted just enough to get her transferred to New Chicago.
    She wasn’t part of a matched pair, like Angelica and her Light comrade Luster, or Night and Blackout, brothers in Shadow. The press had been calling the four Black and White, Dark and Light.
    Until