Panic spiked through Jace; she dodged to the side. Her hairs raised as the air prickled with hot electricity surging past her. The lightning had missed her by a hair's-breadth.
Her fingers clamped down on Alaric's arm just in time to dissolve a patch of his tattered jacket, breaking down its molecules with her superpower. Some of her own energy drained out of her as she did so, a brief wave of nausea. It startled him enough. His body jerked as a streak of electricity burned the air, a shock pulsing through Jace like she'd been zapped by placing her hand on hot metal. It made the air quiver and smell like something was singed.
Her earpiece crackled. "Hang on, Jace, I'm almost there—"
The wiry target was stronger than he looked, and his fist collided with Jace's stomach. She gasped. But she didn't let go; she wrapped her arm around his neck and squeezed.
He gasped for breath, fingers trying to pry her arm off. Jace ripped away the syringe strapped to her thigh with her free hand. Alaric struggled, writhing, but she plunged it into his neck. As the light-blue liquid drained into his skin, his body went limp in her arms. Then she was supporting all his weight, and she grunted, easing him to the floor. She hooked her arms under his and dragged him into one of the stalls.
She waited until she could stop panting. "I'm in the farthest stall from the door. Target's . . . neutralized." She tried hard to keep all the signs of exertion out of her voice.
Propped against the floor, Alaric snarled, his upper lip curling. The stuff in the syringe didn't knock him out, just made him lose any control over his limbs. His entire body would be feeling strange and numb. Jace winced in sympathy; she knew that feeling herself, even though it had been a long time ago.
The numbness wouldn't make it impossible for him to reach for his powers. But Jace wasn't worried. She'd only known experienced supers to be able to use their superpowers while drugged so heavily, and from the careless way Alaric used his lightning, she doubted he'd cause any trouble. Still, she crouched beside him, ready to strike out if he tried anything.
Up close, his face wasn't as smoothly pale as it had looked in the picture on his file. His skin was a lot rougher, and his forehead was pitted with acne scars that made it clear he was just barely out of his teenage years. A year younger than Jace, according to his file. And already, he'd been both a famed superhero and a wanted villain.
"You're with the Council, aren't you," Alaric said. Up close, his eyes did look like they had in the photo from his file, dark purple and wide. They flickered wildly around the stall, his thin lips taut in a sneer. A sheen of sweat gathered on his pale forehead.
"Y-yeah." Jace crouched down next to him, trying to catch her breath.
"Coward," he spat. "Drugging me. You couldn't take me in a fight."
She thought about that and winced. "Probably not, no." Hard to beat someone who could fry everything with lightning. She flexed her hand, wondering what it would be like to have lightning crackling at her fingertips, to feel its heat and power on her skin.
Though if she were to escape the Super Sector, she'd never be so careless. She'd find someplace deep in the sublevels, one of the long-abandoned buildings in the bowels of the planet, closest to the earth. And she'd change her appearance much more than merely getting a haircut.
Only one agent that she knew of had successfully escaped from the superheroes, a guy named Garret who had erased all traces of himself. All the secret agents talked about him.
"What's gonna happen to me?" Alaric's tone was derisive, but fear still shone in his eyes. The drug was starting to take over all his bodily functions. Drool leaked out of his mouth, an involuntary side effect.
Jace looked away. "You ran away. So you're a supervillain now." Alaric should've returned to the Council when Xavier's hostages were found and broken out, but the guy had decided to make a break for it during the chaos of the ensuing battle. "But," she added, "If you cooperate with me and tell me the information I need, your sentence might be lighter."
"Is it true the Council kills supervillains?"
Jace hesitated for a moment before saying, "They won't kill you." She'd heard the rumors like everyone else, but the Council wouldn't kill a former superhero who had made one mistake, she was sure of it. She pressed on. "Okay, so who was that man you were talking to?"
"Huh?"
"The man, at the bar. Yes, I saw you," she said in answer to his expression. "What was his name, and why were you talking to him?"
"That was no one. A friend."
"Come on, Ali, work with me here. I can vouch for you at your trial, if you can help me now, okay?" She spoke quietly and urgently.
"Jace! Don't make promises you can't keep," Tristan said in her ear. The dim chatter in the background told her he must still be wading through crowds. "I'll get everything we need in interrogation."
"Oh, sorry," she muttered to Tristan, feeling heat rush to her face. She addressed Alaric again. "Never mind that, I can't make promises about what the Council will do."
Alaric barked a laugh.
"What happened when Xavier kidnapped you?" she asked again.
He didn't answer, just glared at her.
Undeterred, she leaned forward. "You were in a cryo-tank with all the other supers when I found you. What do you know about them?" That— the cryo-tanks— were something she really wanted to know about, so when he didn't answer again, she tensed up.
It was after two more moments of terse silence that she heard the door to the bathrooms creak open. She ducked down just to check for Tristan's polished boots, and swung open the door to the stall.
Tristan crammed his broad-shouldered self into the stall with them and locked the door behind them before spinning to face Jace, arms crossed with his stupid biceps nearly ripping open the fabric of his uniform. She'd swear he wore uniforms one size too small on purpose, just to show off.
"You handled it?" Tristan said. His voice was as even as always.
Jace blushed. "Yeah . . . it's under control."
"Oh yeah?" Tristan whipped out a pocket-mirror. She looked at her reflection; her hair was standing straight up and there was a bad burn scar on her collarbone.
Jace cringed at the reflection, reaching up to try to smooth down her hair. She looked up at Tristan. "Do you just carry that mirror on you?"
Tristan pocketed the mirror.
She didn't say anything, pressing her lips together to try to suppress the giggle. I knew he was vain!
Tristan huffed as he turned away, which was awkward to do in the close quarters of the stall. Between the three of them, there was barely any space to breathe. He drew out a second syringe from the pocket of his giant coat and plunged it into Alaric's neck. "We're done here. Night-night."
"Hey, wait! You didn't have to do that. And . . . And I had more questions."
"I'll handle that."
Jace had to admit that Tristan could draw information out of almost anyone just by looking at them, but she had some specific answers she was looking for, that she'd rather get herself. But Alaric was already unconscious.
"Is he gonna be okay?" she blurted.
Tristan raised an eyebrow. "He'll have a hell of a hangover, but he'll be fine."
"Okay. How'd you get stuck in a crowd for so long, anyway?"
Tristan shrugged. "While I was waiting for you in the club, I wanted to try some of the fried kelp stuff."
"Seriously?"
"What? I was hungry." He grinned. "It's good, by the way. A little salty. You should try some."
"You're not supposed to do that," she reminded him. "Get distracted during a mission, I mean. I could have gotten hurt during that fight. I haven't fought alone in a while."
"Fine, fine. You need to lighten up, though. Nice lipstick, by the way," he said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lip. Jace reached up to wipe it off and the creamy dark-purple makeup smeared on the back of her palm.
Once, she'd blushed every time she looked at Tristan. He was powerfully built for sure, muscle-bound, with bright green eyes and an imposing calm presence. But they'd both been younger and stupider then.
Jace reached up and switched the frequency on her earpiece. "Grayson? This is 524 speaking. We've secured the target."
* * * * *
By the time a private hover-car had picked up the target and Jace and Tristan had made it back to the upper levels, it was late at night. They flashed their badges to get into the Super Sector and headed back to their rooms.
"See you tomorrow," Tristan said blearily before they split up.
She smiled. "Sleepy?" Tristan never was one to function all that well once he got tired. Like a giant, beefy toddler.
"Shut up." If his eyes hadn't been half-closing from tiredness, he might've been glaring. He lumbered off to his dorm.
Jace watched him leave, but she didn't return to her own room just yet. Instead, she dug out her screen and switched to look at the recorded footage from the spy-moth. Usually, she'd mark a target for the spy-moth to follow, but she hadn't had time for that. She'd just have to hope that the spy-moth's random motions had followed the man. A small holo projected from the screen.
The moth fluttered after the target for a while, displaying grainy footage of the man's large brown coat as he weaved through alleys. He never even turned around so she could get a better look at his face. The footage lurched and spun as the spy-moth alighted near him.
Then, he turned around. His face was covered by shadows, so she only saw a lithe, tan-skinned hand that reached up and slammed into the camera. The footage went black.
Jace flinched. He killed her. She replayed the footage a few more times, frowning.
That couldn't be possible. How had he seen the spy-moth at all? Even for her, they were difficult to distinguish once they were in the air: The markings on their wings were the exact same patchy gray mottled with sickly yellow of the city around them, blending into the buildings and the Smog perfectly. That camouflage made them the perfect spy's tool. The moths had adapted their colors to the city on their own; agents had just genetically engineered them with biotech cameras embedded in their wings. According to Grayson, they had once tried to use spy-beetles instead, but too many people squashed them and destroyed hours of footage. Their shiny black covering was just too noticeable.
But civs weren't supposed to know about any of that. Was it possible he'd just squashed the moth because he hated bugs? Or did he know much more about the superheroes' secret agents and their methods than he should?
She pressed her knuckles against her mouth, biting down in frustration. Finally, realizing she wasn't going to get anywhere, she pocketed the screen and headed to her room.
A dim glow was visible underneath the door, but Jace didn't know if her new roommate, Nia, would be awake when she returned to her dorm, so she opened the door quietly and crept in. . . .
"Hey!" A flare of light, a blur of vibrant motion, and Nia was standing in front of her, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, nearly drowning in too-large orange pajamas. She crossed her arms. "You're back."
"Oh skies, you scared me," Jace breathed, shutting the door behind her.
"Sorry." Nia smirked. Apparently wide awake, she did not look sorry at all.
"Studying?" Jace asked, glancing at the textbooks and papers on the floor behind Nia, scattered by the super-speedster's dash to the door. Right next to a holo-vid episode hovering above the ground, flashing. She glanced at the ground. "Hey, uh, your shoes are on fire."
Nia looked down at the thin trail of smoke curling from her fuzzy slippers and cursed. "Damn, I keep forgetting these aren't fire-resistant. I need to stop speeding in them."
Jace helped her bat out the flames with a blanket. Then she headed over to her bed. Although a lot of Nia's stuff spilled over to Jace's half of the room, the corner that belonged to Jace was tidily organized. A single photo of her brother Luke holding her younger self in a head-lock was taped to the dresser, on the side that faced the wall. The glare of the camera made both of them look stark-white, and Jace's eyes were red from the flash, but it was one of her favorite photos. She glanced at the photo only for a second, looking away quickly.
The only other thing of significance was a glass tank, perched on top of a stack of glossy books and filled with plastic foliage, as well as a few real sticks and handfuls of dirt. Inside fluttered a spy-moth with a tiny tear in her wing.
"Hi, Richard," Jace whispered to the moth. She unscrewed the cap of her plastic container from her bag and tipped the other spy-moths inside. She watched them move their soft, fuzz-colored wings. "One of your own fell today," she said solemnly. "Don't worry, I'm sure Bernice is in moth-heaven."
The moths fluttered about.
"You don't even care, do you? Shameful."
"You and your moths," Nia said, snorting. "Well, I'm gonna—"
Both their wrist-comms started blinking red, and began making an insistent beeping noise.
"Report for a briefing immediately," Jace read out loud.
"Mine says the same thing."
The two girls exchanged a look.