Shattered E-Book

Lee Winter

• Herausgeber: Ylva Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 348

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Earth's first black, lesbian superheroine has had enough of humanity and disappeared. Shattergirl, Earth's first lesbian guardian—a brilliant but aloof alien superheroine who can hurl and destroy large objects—is refusing to save people and has gone off the grid. Lena Martin, the street-smart tracker with a silver tongue and a disdain for the rogue guardians she chases, has only days to bring her home. As the pair clash heatedly, masks begin to crack and brutal secrets are exposed that could shatter them both.

Leseprobe

Table Of Contents

Other books by Lee Winter

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Other Books from Ylva Publishing

About Lee Winter

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www.ylva-publishing.com

Other books by Lee Winter

On the Record series

The Red Files

Under Your Skin

The Superheroine Collection

Shattered

Standalone

The Awkward Truth

Sliced Ice

Hotel Queens

Changing the Script

Breaking Character

The Brutal Truth

Requiem for Immortals

Dedication

Everyone deserves a hero.

For all those who don’t neatly fit into society’s boxes—Shattergirl is yours.

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to Charlotte, Lisa, Kim, and Sam for your unique insights that made my book so much better.

To Astrid at Ylva, I really appreciate how much you believe in Shattergirl. Thanks for letting her shine so brightly.

And thanks, finally, to the love of my life, for sharing our home with the isle of Socotra, random, made-up swear words, and a six-foot superhero for so many months. I’m sure Nyah appreciates it, even if she’s not one to show it.

Chapter 1

Lena Martin stood still under the falling snow and listened. She held her breath, willing herself to hear beyond the yowling wind ripping through towering pine trees. Actually, not breathing was a mercy in Oymyakon, Siberia. With the temperature at –70ºF, a thousand needles stabbing her throat probably felt more pleasant than inhaling would right now.

She resisted the urge to stamp her feet for warmth, knowing that any noise would alert the nearby marauder. Beast Lord. Three hundred pounds of muscle and sinew wrapped up in an unstable guardian. Supposedly one of Earth’s beloved superheroes, Beast Lord seemed to have lost his mind in the middle of this godforsaken place.

She couldn’t entirely blame him. Oymyakon wasn’t exactly a balm for the soul, frequently topping the coldest-place-on-Earth lists.

Lena had come across Beast Lord half a dozen times in the several months she’d been out here, catching glimpses of his furred arms and shaggy head. She had been adept at each encounter in not earning his wrath, which could result in a howl so loud it would perforate eardrums, shatter windows, and flatten trees with its percussive power.

Once or twice he’d swiveled his head her way, their eyes locking. Beast Lord’s deeply lined, craggy face was disturbing when his burning, wild, red eyes fixed on hers. His tanned face was sunken; his clothes torn and dirty. He’d sure gone to hell in a hand basket since she’d last seen him on the news feeds. Maybe the Paleo diet wasn’t agreeing with him.

She had never been as close as she had been today. Lena could smell his body odor, earthy and primal, and could easily make out deep, long, clawed footprints in the snow. She frowned as she examined them. They stopped in the middle of nowhere, as though Beast Lord had leaped off to one side suddenly.

Lena spun around, her heart leaping as she tried to pick his shape from the trees. Where the hell was he?

Her answer came as the blurred, hairy giant hurled himself toward her without warning, in three enormous bounds. Stretched across his powerful shoulders was a sleeveless, worn, black leather jacket. His ripped jeans were dark with grime, beneath which emerged thick-soled, bare feet, fast and large, and dark with hair.

Lena flung herself to the side, only just avoiding his bulk squashing her. The “whumpf” as his body impacted next to hers caused the snow to shudder, and Lena bounced off the ground, landing on her knees.

Beast Lord’s clawed hand flashed out sideways, slashing blindly. Lena lifted her arm to block him. She stared at the rush of blood with a strange, stunned detachment. A second later the pain registered and seared through her.

He backhanded her, tossing her onto her back. Beast Lord flung his arm across her chest, pinning her in place with such force it crushed the air out of her lungs. Lena lay helpless and dazed, acute pain engulfing her.

“You’re persistent for a common, I’ll give you that,” Beast Lord growled.

She wheezed by way of answer, feeling like a wrecking ball had landed on her chest.

Beast Lord lifted his head and howled, a primal, eerie, aching cry that shattered the stillness. It created a wind blast—trees bent, groaned, and uprooted themselves, and snow flurries slammed into Lena’s body. She shivered uncontrollably beneath her three layers of thermals and thickly padded coat.

Lena waited the roar out, studying her target. She had long wondered if wolf sensibilities applied to Beast Lord. Now she was close enough to test it out, she’d try that tack. Her eyes watered as the howl persisted, and snow and plant debris shuddered and vibrated, the wind whipping it all up in her face.

He stopped, waited for the echo to die down, then turned to look at her. His arm at last shifted off her chest, and he stared intently. Surprise lit his features when he tilted his head for a better look at her ears. Probably expected to see blood running from them.

Asshole.

If she wasn’t using a special set of earplugs, she’d be deaf by now, her eardrums pulped from the acoustic blast this close to its source. The high-tech ear pieces filtered sound and turned into white noise everything except for humanoid voices.

His body reared up suddenly and then dropped forward to crouch over her, a meaty, hairy fist planted on either side of her head, his massive thighs pinning her narrow hips.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t end you now,” he demanded. “I’m tired of you following me. How long am I to be your prey? Do you never give up?”

“No,” she said as air began to flow back into her lungs. It still hurt like hell. “I don’t give up. And no, you won’t end me. Because guardians aren’t killers. You’re heroes, remember? You protect humans like me. The commons. You’re forces for good.”

“It would be so easy,” he said, eyes flashing in realization at the truth of his statement. “So easy to just make you go away and give me some peace. I thought you’d give up. But you never quit.”

He peered at her and seemed to be weighing his options. Lena felt no fear, just a strange calmness as he decided her fate. She inhaled deeply, regretting it as the frigid air clawed at her lungs. The pain woke her up. To hell she’d go out like this.

“You think I don’t know how it feels for you?” she asked softly. “I know you miss them. Your people. The guardians. They’re like your pack, aren’t they? They miss you. They want you back.”

“Tagshart,” he swore in his native tongue. “I’m an embarrassment.”

“No,” Lena said earnestly, staring into his eyes. She lifted her bloodied arm up and touched his shaggy beard with her gloved hand. “You made a few mistakes. You didn’t mean to. The locals got scared about some strange beast running around shattering their windows and frightening their animals. But it’s just a mistake and it can be made to go away. That’s what I do. Fix the mistakes. No one outside of the Facility would ever know. Besides, don’t you know what the most important thing is?”

He leaned forward, listening intently.

“Without you, they’re incomplete. A pack without one of its members is like a body missing a limb.”

He inhaled harshly. “Don’t you know what they’ll do to me?” he rumbled. “I can’t go back. I need to be free. I need to be out here. Not trapped in some city, playing fetch for the commons.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. It’s like a call for you, isn’t it? Being out here?” She began combing his shaggy hair softly, soothingly, with her fingers. “You need to be free,” she repeated back to him. “You need to roam. It’s in your blood.”

“Yes.” His head dropped forward in agreement. “Yes. I have to. I can’t be what my people want. Or what your people want.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Lena said. “Your leader understands. He’s not angry with you. He knows why you’re out here.”

“Tal’s not mad?” His head tilted up, hope lighting his eyes.

“Of course not. He misses you. He wants you to come home, so he sent me to ask. You’re needed back there.” She ran her fingers behind his head and patted the back of his neck like one might a domesticated dog, and watched his body language shift to even more docile.

“I didn’t mean to run.” Beast Lord’s voice cracked and his strange blood-red eyes implored her to believe him. “I just had to get out of there. The city. The demands. You don’t know what it’s like. How could you? You’re a common.”

“We can never know what you go through,” Lena agreed, injecting every ounce of sympathy into her voice. “Being a hero has its burdens, I know that. But you can’t carry them alone. Don’t forget, your people are waiting for you. They can help. They understand. It’s time to stop running. Come home with me. You’ll wonder what you were so afraid of. It’ll be okay.”

She gave his shoulder a thump of solidarity.

His body sagged.

She had him. She knew she had him. Lena just needed to…

A vibration and soft ding came from her FacTrack. She frowned. Her employers wouldn’t contact her mid-assignment unless it was an emergency.

Beast Lord sat back on his haunches warily as Lena gingerly shifted her jacket sleeve off her wrist to study the screen. She narrowed her eyes.

An urgent recall order?

She tapped out “1d?” asking for a day’s delay before returning home. Even with half a day’s grace she knew she could bring Beast Lord in, docile as a puppy, now she’d gotten through his defenses and connected.

The screen lit up instantly: “NOW.”

Damn it.

She tugged her sleeve back down and looked at the guardian, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her. Lena didn’t like his expression as he fought to work out what was going on through the haze that had been weakening his faculties of late. He’d have figured out she was a tracker weeks ago, but until this moment her subtle manipulations had gone unnoticed.

Beast Lord’s face darkened as he joined the rest of the dots. Yes, of course, she’d been hired to return him to his people, with force if necessary. There was no kinship between them. No bonding whatsoever.

This was business.

The dawning expression of awareness, doubt, hate, and mistrust told her the exact moment he realized he’d been played—and well. “New orders?” he hissed.

“You might say that,” Lena said quietly. “But that doesn’t change anything. We…”

His eyes became mere slits.

Lena knew that look. Ah crap. An ego-dented Beast Lord was an especially dangerous creature.

“Piece of tagshart,” he suddenly howled at her, and his enormous arm lifted high to deliver a vicious blow.

She kicked her legs out and away from his thighs, which had been bracketing her knees, and rolled quickly to her side, unsheathing her hip Dazr under her coat as she moved. He leapt to his feet, towering over her.

Lena had to waste precious time pulling off her glove, which was too thick to manipulate the weapon. She hadn’t been expecting a direct confrontation today or she might have risked frostbite and worn her thinner pair.

The split-second delay was all it took to give him the advantage.

“Lying shreekopf!” Beast Lord thundered. His fistful of rapier claws sliced toward her.

Lena forced herself to stay calm and, with practiced skill, tapped off the safety and flicked up the Dazr’s setting to maximum with her thumb.

“You have no soul!” he thundered.

She squeezed the trigger.

“You know you’re a broken piece of…”

A blue electrical field shot out from the gun, and Lena cartwheeled to one side to avoid the now paralyzed guardian crashing back to the ground.

She slowly got to her feet, pissed beyond belief. Why had she been recalled now? What a waste. She thumped the snow off her knees with her hands, peering at Beast Lord’s prostrate form in distaste. A voluntary return was always so much easier. They knew that. She’d been so damned close.

Beast Lord was staring at her mutinously, but his vocal cords were as locked up as the rest of his body trapped under the shimmering electrical netting.

Lena gave him a slow, unimpressed smile. She shifted the safety back on her Dazr and rammed it into her holster. “I am aware by the way. What you said? Broken and soulless. Yep, nailed it. That’s me.”

She lowered herself to a squat and met his flashing eyes. “You also left out a cynical, cold-hearted, manipulative, scheming bitch with massive trust issues.”

Lena tilted her head and added: “You really think anything that your kind could say to me could have any effect? I’ve heard it all. But as worthless as you think I am, for all your people’s alien powers, none of you has ever beaten me. Your attitude’s the worst. All guardians ever do is whine. ‘Oh poor me, life’s so hard, I can’t take it.’ Hell. You do remember that we let you take refuge on Earth? All we asked in return was that you use your skills to help us. As an added bonus, everyone loved you. Not that you’re worthy. Shit, it’s the biggest con going.”

She peered harder into his eyes and offered him a sneer. “Aww…look at you, all bitter and angry because I played you and said what I had to so you’d want to come home. You’re alive, asshole. Alive to moan about your sorry life thanks to my people. So show a little damned respect.”

She lifted her arm and flicked her FacTrack to a different menu, selected the emergency evacuation code, and hit the “Retrieve” button. She pointed a focused blue beam at Beast Lord, and waited three seconds for it to lock on to him and give an acknowledging beep.

“All right. I’ve relayed your coordinates to the guardians at Moscow’s Facility. They’ll pick you up in an hour or so. I won’t wait; I have somewhere else to be—urgently, apparently. You’ll be fine. After all, you’ve got all this nice fresh air to suck in and all this freedom that you love so much. I’d make the most of it if I were you.”

At his venomous glare, she gave him a knowing look.

“You’d kill me now if you could, wouldn’t you?” Lena taunted. She rubbed her forearm through its shredded sleeve which bore three deep, bloodied, curling, parallel scratches running up it, courtesy of his attack earlier. “Well, just be glad us commons who you hate so much have more restraint than you do.”

She shook her head and turned, leaving him in his awkward tangle of limbs.

“Humanity’s heroes, my ass,” she muttered, as she began the trek back to her base camp. “You’re fucking pathetic.”

Chapter 2

Lena hopped from foot to foot, wrenching on her black jeans. Her ass briefly landed on the lime-green armchair that had come with her semi-furnished apartment along with the crappy, glass coffee table that should have met its end dozens of times. God knows she kept almost running right through it when she was late. Like today. First day back at work after her recall from Siberia. She’d landed back home late last night.

Thick black socks, shiny black boots. Check. She dumped the boots beside her with a thud and shook out the socks. She slipped one on and, thanks to the jet lag, almost landed face first on the coffee table. Instead, she managed a last-minute dive onto her lumpy sofa that was drowning under the bright pink cushions her neighbor had bequeathed upon her as a housewarming present.

Lucky her. Until then she hadn’t known pink came that loud.

Bra. White T-shirt. Done and done. Lena raked her fingers through her blonde hair, which fell in a messy sweep that never quite stayed out of her eyes. She was overdue a haircut, but it was a low priority. Black padded bomber jacket. Lena slid it on, zipped it up, and almost felt human.

Finally, the pièce de résistance. Black leather cuff. She’d made it herself at shop class back in high school. Turned out halfway decent, much to the teacher’s surprise.

Armor on. Good to go. She tightened the wrist buckle on her cuff, pleased to see it covered the claw marks left by Beast Lord, as she headed to the bathroom.

She studied herself in the cracked mirror. Lena had never gotten around to asking the landlord to fix it when she’d moved in. She was rarely here enough to care. Yup, ready. She gave a savage nod. Both visions of herself nodded back.

Okay, if she sprinted the six blocks to the subway, she could just make the 7:40 a.m. express and be in before it was obvious to everyone that she was late. Her fitness, unlike the condition of her one-room apartment, was outstanding, so it was totally doable.

BANG! BANG-BANG-BANG!

Her apartment door almost rattled off its frame.

Lena sighed. No one but her neighbor—she of the lurid pink cushions—ever bothered her. And since the elderly woman knew not to bug her in the morning unless it was an emergency, Lena knew her day was about to turn to crap.

She forced on her civilized smile and opened the door.

Mrs. Josephine Finkel stood before Lena, a frantic expression on her face. “Blood!” she gasped. “Everywhere!”

Lena’s eyebrow lifted and she nodded once, as though being called to random bloodied emergencies was common. Which, come to think of it, for her it pretty much was. Not that Mrs. Finkel knew that.

“Lead on,” was all she said, locking up behind her.

* * *

On her hands and knees on a small balcony, hemmed in by potted plants in various states of age and morbidity, Lena scrubbed a widening pool of blood and feathers. It was a rather vicious-looking double pigeon homicide. She side-eyed Bernstein, the plump, smug-looking cat responsible.

It shut its moody green eyes and yawned.

This was not quite Bernstein’s worst crime scene, but it was up there.

Lena plucked an errant feather out of her hair and considered the feline’s owner. Mrs. Finkel was a sprightly woman for her age. Seventy-one years young, she’d tell anyone who’d listen. Which lately mostly extended to telling the ruthless Bernstein, her goldfish Woodward, and Lena.

The chatty widow had worked all over the US on some of the biggest newspapers—as Lena knew all too well from having her ear bent whenever Lena surfaced to collect her mail, still shaking off the dust from far-flung places.

Pinkish water spattered as Lena dunked her scrubbing brush in the bucket. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, trying to keep it off her clothes.

Damn it, she should be at work by now, finding out what the big emergency was that had yanked her out of Siberia so suddenly. But it was a bit hard to argue a work emergency with Mrs. Finkel given the old woman had no clue what she did for a living, let alone why it was occasionally vital to the human race. For all her neighbor’s natural curiosity, as befitting her former profession, she had never once asked Lena what she did. Nor had she ever enquired too closely about the array of injuries—from black eyes to strange scars and crippled knees—that Lena often brought home from various assignments.

No, she held her own counsel. Lena liked that about her. She also liked her sharp mind, which made her tales from the news desk not entirely terrible to bear for the tenth or eleventh time.

Lena hefted the bucket and trudged inside to flush it down the drain. One more rinse across the balcony, and she’d be out of here. Easy.

* * *

Lena perched on the edge of a blue, embroidered, oversized sofa, gaze sweeping a mounted stuffed pheasant to her right, a faded world map on the wall behind her, a typewriter by the windowed desk, and a now relieved Mrs. Finkel in front of her.

Lena was stuck with a cup of tar that her neighbor liked to pretend was coffee. In all their years living across from each other, the other woman had never mastered the art of making liquid caffeine that tasted ingestible.

“Thank you, again, dear,” she was saying, stroking her fat black cat.

Bernstein swished his tail in Lena’s direction and blinked at her. She narrowed her eyes. Smug little shit.

Grimly swallowing more tar, Lena said: “No problem.” She wondered whether two sips was sufficient before she could put the cup down and bolt. She wasn’t sure which was worse—the coffee or having to be sociable.

Mrs. Finkel laughed. “So uptight, dear. We need to find you a way to relax.”

“So you keep telling me.”

“I’m never wrong. You know, my granddaughter’s about your age. And no, no, don’t give me that look again—she’s not like most other young women. Diane’s a war correspondent. Oh, the stories she can tell. She’s very engaging. She’s stateside at the moment, and climbing the walls for things to do and new people to meet. She’d drag even you out of your shell.”

“I like my shell,” Lena said honestly.

Mrs. Finkel laughed. “Well, if you ever change your mind, here’s her card. She’s always telling me how boring people her age are. You aren’t boring, though, are you, Lena?” Her grey eyebrows lifted with a hint of mischief, as they always did when she subtly probed Lena’s working life.

It was a game they played. The shrewd widow always inched the door open a sliver, in case Lena was feeling chatty for once. But Lena never could say a word. No one even knew guardians had meltdowns or went rogue, let alone needed trackers, such as Lena, to find them. That didn’t fit the heroic narrative at all.

“Oh, I’m very boring,” Lena said, pocketing the business card out of politeness. She’d stick it on the fridge and promptly ignore it. “You know me.”

“I wish I did,” Mrs. Finkel said wistfully. “It’s not for want of trying. Whatever it is you do that has you disappearing at all hours, for months on end, it can’t be all that your life is, can it? You need friends, dear. A hobby, perhaps?”

She pinned hopeful eyes on Lena, who smiled, placing the unfinished drink on the wooden coffee table and rose.

“I have to go. I’ll have to run for the train.”

“All right, then. Sorry to have detained you. Thanks for all your help with the mess. Don’t forget, call Diane. Make friends. Live a little!”

When Lena made no comment, Mrs. Finkel gave her a long-suffering sigh, her eyes twinkling. “I don’t know why I bother.”

Lena gave her a wave over her shoulder and opened the door. “Me either. I’m a lost cause.”

“No such thing,” Mrs. Finkel protested as she shut the door behind her.

* * *

Lena caught sight of the clock on the ostentatious spire at the top of her company’s American headquarters. She was really late. She quickened her pace as she rounded the side of the black glass-and-steel edifice that had been her workplace for half a decade.

The Facility. What a nice, clean, impersonal name for what they did in there. If only people knew. She hurried to the front of the building, taking the stone stairs two at time.

Lena detested being late for one reason—she liked to know what was going on. And all the decent gossip happened before eight on Mondays outside Dutton’s office. Not post-ten.

As she entered the Facility’s granite foyer, her senses were immediately assailed by the booming, competing giant screens on opposing walls, broadcasting the daily superhero news feeds. Which guardian had saved who and what and how overnight in a light-and-sound spectacle.

Lena rolled her eyes at the excuse to parade an array of straining muscles and cleavages for the commons to get weak-kneed over. Surrounding her in ten-foot-tall, high-definition vision were scenes of adoring fans, their perfect superstars, and the tearful rescued, all on an endless loop.

They were certainly beautiful. But to Lena, the guardians would always be little more than “the talent.” It was all kabuki theater these news reels; everything for show. Censorship was rife. No imperfections in their glossy PR image ever allowed. God forbid.

Even so, it was a little hypnotic. She sometimes watched to find out who was ascendant in the Facility’s world order. Knowledge was more than just power. Knowledge meant control.

And Lena Martin preferred control in all things.

Her eye caught sight of new Talon Man footage. The orange-suited, lantern-jawed leader of the Guardians’ Confederation smiled his toothy, gleaming smile and announced how every guardian lived to serve. His voice resonated across the foyer.

Lena snorted. Sure they did. Three parallel scars on her arm said otherwise.

She flashed her ID at the security guard who was part volcanic rock, part god-only-knows-what. He grunted in reply—which was the most that particular guardian ever said to anyone. She’d never bothered to ask his name, and he’d never volunteered it.

At the elevators, she laid her palm on a chrome wall pad. The doors opened and a computer voice sounded. “ID accepted, Lena Martin, 1342-22A. Tracker First Class. Access granted for sub-levels ten to seventeen. Enter.”

She stepped inside and felt the floor drop. It seemed slower than usual.

“Come on,” Lena muttered, acutely aware of the time. She stared at the dropping numbers in irritation.

A sharp blue light flashed suddenly around the cabin. A random security check, assessing her credentials at the molecular level. It was an unsubtle reminder that the guardians trusted her, and the other human subcontractors who did their menial work, about as much as she did them.

The elevator stopped at sub-level eleven. Two more trackers got on. She nodded out of professional courtesy, but she had a healthy dislike for both Wills and Rossi.

“Got a big day?” Wills was asking his colleague.

“There’s a runner and a splat on the eastern division board,” Rossi said. “I’ll take the splat. Easier since it’s Becky’s birthday tonight. My kid’s gonna be ten.”

A splat. She swallowed in revulsion. When superhero powers failed, they really did. Or sometimes they overestimated their own abilities at stopping an out-of-control train or pulling out of a dive and so on. Why Rossi thought cleaning up deceased talent was “easier,” she’d never know. She might not think much of guardians but it was still revolting seeing them in that state. She was glad she no longer did that beat. Having T-stats as high as hers had its perks. She got some say in assignment choice.

“Hey, that’s great. Say hi from me,” Wills said. “I’ve got a break on the south side. Shouldn’t take too long. They already got him cornered in a warehouse. Keeps calling for his mommy.”

Both men laughed.

What asses. Guardian meltdowns—breaks—were happening a lot more often these days for some reason, not that her bosses acknowledged it. In such cases, to be even slightly effective, the Facility needed to send in a tracker who could project empathy. They would pat a guardian’s hand and tell them it was going to be okay. That they’d get help. That they’d come to the Facility and be looked after real nice.

What a joke. The Facility didn’t have a clue what “help” meant. Their secrets ran a lot deeper than being in denial about the fallibility of its super members.

Rossi turned to her. “What you got, Silver?”

Lena shook herself out of her reverie on hearing her nickname. “Not sure yet. Haven’t checked in.”

Rossi whistled, glancing at his timeslide. It was some flashy piece of pure platinum in vogue with all the commons right now. Completely redundant, of course, since he also wore his FacTrack which showed the time, as well as being a databank, multimedia player, GPS navigation, and satellite communications system.

“Shit, you’re gonna get toasted being this late.”

“Whatever,” Lena said. “Not like I’m that easy to replace.”

And it was true. Rossi and Wills exchanged pointed glances. But she wasn’t talking herself up. No one could do what she did. There was daylight between her and the rest of the office. She was the top tracker internationally this year. Same as last year and the year before, when she’d finally beaten Hastings in the London Facility office, which was the international HQ for guardians.

“You just hauled in Beast Lord, didn’t you?” Rossi whistled. “Tricky catch.”

She shrugged nonchalantly, but her bones were still aching from the cold. She wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.

“We any closer to a result on the pool?” Rossi asked curiously.

Lena gave him a thin smile. Beast Lord was a hotly debated topic. At certain times every decade, he became half wild. No one had ever told the trackers why. Hell, maybe their alien bosses didn’t know themselves. So the trackers had a betting pool of theories, ranging from brain-chemistry changes to mating season.

“Nothing new,” she replied.

Rossi shook his head. “Figures. He doesn’t seem the chatty type.” He turned back to Wills. “Here’s what I don’t get. Those guardians hiding in the middle of nowhere, like Beast Lord, why even bother us with it? Ain’t causing commons any problems, right? Just give us the clear-and-present-danger jobs. Not like the masses would be any wiser. They’re clueless. They wouldn’t know, we wouldn’t tell, everyone wins. Right?”

“Are you kidding me?” Lena interrupted, incredulous.

“What?” Rossi’s head snapped around, facing her. “I just mean this is such a waste of resources. Come on, Silver, you can’t have been too happy freezing your tits off in Siberia over a crazy dipshit like Beast Lord. Look, it’s basic math—sometimes the talent runs. So what? Let them, I say, as long as they stay low and off the news feeds. We’ve got enough crap on our plate with all the extra breaks and splats these days.”

Lena glared at him. “You know why. Hell, your kid knows why,” she said in exasperation. “People have a right to know that all the talent in the super zoo is being monitored at all times. It keeps the twitchy masses from losing their paranoid minds about having aliens loose among us.”

“I know that.” Rossi gave her a long-suffering look. He folded his arms. “I meant the public doesn’t have to know they’re missing. Why don’t we use our trackers better? Stick to the guardians who are actually a threat, not the ones who’ve gone to ground?”

Lena threw her hands up. “You’re a damned tracker, Rossi. You know better than anyone else how much raw power guardians have at their fingertips. Now how much damage could a runner do if they went psycho while they were off the grid? What if we couldn’t even find them in time, let alone stop them using their powers on us?”

“One is hardly—”

“What if it’s not just one?” She glared.

“Come on, Silver, they’re harmless.” He eyed her uncertainly.

“Yeah? Tell that to the residents of Oymyakon after all their windows have been shattered every time Beast Lord decides to howl at the moon or whatever shit he gets up to. Tracking guardians protects humanity from potentially lethal weapons.” She gave the now-subdued man a withering look. “I can’t believe I have to explain any of this to a freaking tracker.”

The elevator came to a stop with a shudder and a ding. Lena strode out, ignoring the pair, who changed the topic to debating how bad Rossi’s splat would be.

Gross.

“Silver!” came a bark from the end office as she took her first step into the Trackers’ Control Room. She looked up to see the thin, pinched features of her boss, Bruce Dutton. He was in his mid-forties, and had a nervous tic which made him blink too often. The man reminded her of a highly strung, bespectacled, bureaucratic stork. He was smart, though, and fair, so she tolerated him.

“What time do you call this?”

Lena rolled her eyes. She didn’t make a habit of being late, so what was his damned problem? She didn’t answer, instead raising her chin and sauntering over. “Need me?”

“Check the attitude.” He sighed, pointing at the visitor’s chair. “Sit.”

She plopped into the seat opposite and folded her arms.

“Welcome back from Siberia. Hope you dodged frostbite?”

Lena drummed her fingers on her forearm, waiting for him to get to the point.

“Fine,” he muttered at her non-response. “Upstairs has stepped up the urgency on rounding up all the overdues and getting them back under thumb. Time is a critical issue. We’re not stopping for niceties anymore. Just tag them and bag them.”

Well, that explained her emergency recall. Lena took no small pride in the fact that when a guardian had been on the run for more than a month, their file stamped “Overdue”, it was Lena they called in to get fast results. Due to her survivalist skills, Lena’s specialty was the off-the-grid runners—the sneaky, clever ones hiding out in godforsaken places, their communications timeslides torn off as they eluded capture. She wondered how long she’d be packing her bags for this time.

“How late are we talking?”

“This one hasn’t checked in for at least eighteen months.”

Lena bit back a shocked gasp. Eighteen months? Not only was that an unbelievable length of time for an overdue to be gone, but how had she missed hearing about it?

“We’ve sent four trackers over that time, each with solid leads,” Dutton said. “Good trackers too. They all came back saying there was nothing. No trace at all.”

He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and a holographic projection appeared between them. Lena studied the back of the floating image, waiting for it to rotate to the front. “Who is it this time?”

“Surprised you don’t recognize her. She was high profile ten years ago. Like, top-tier famous.”

Lena leaned forward as the hovering shape turned to face her. A lean, muscled, tall torso encased in a black, figure-hugging costume slowly pirouetted. Dark, smooth skin. A closely cut shadow of hair which emphasized sharp, high cheek bones. Generous, wide lips and deep brown eyes that drilled right into you. Eyes that said she wasn’t taking any crap.

Lena started, swallowing her gasp. She was part of history, this one. An actual founder. And she was more elusive than all the other aliens on Earth put together.

Shattergirl had been the forgotten guardian until about ten years ago, when she was outed by paparazzi, catapulting her into the stratosphere as the first lesbian superhero the world had ever seen. Shattergirl had not hidden her displeasure at that. She had an attitude as fierce as her skills, which were twofold—she could fly, and she could fling objects about with her mind, to shattering effect.

“Seriously? Shattergirl’s an overdue?” Lena could hardly believe it. Founders never ran. Some of the second-generation guardians did, sure. And their kids’ kids were even worse, needing a white-knuckled tight rein. Teenage rebellion crossed all barriers and genetics, it seemed. Most of her day job involved third-generation guardian brats.

But the founders, the original group of aliens to make their home on Earth, were supposed to be the standard bearers of their people. They didn’t break or splat or anything else. They were the reason the whole world had fallen in love with their kind. So a founder running? Hell. This was unprecedented.

“Yeah.” Dutton ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Hence the panic from upstairs. Surprised you, of all people, hadn’t heard about it.”

“Have you forgotten I was in Outer Buttfuck, Siberia, for the past four months?” Lena lifted her eyebrow. “Only got in last night. When did I get the chance to see any internal briefings on this?”

“Wasn’t on the in-house briefings. But I know how good your under-the-table intel is. Thought for sure you’d heard something. For the record, this one is marked as a full news blackout, inside and outside the building. You know the drill.”

She did. Their vaunted super bosses routinely censored their people’s failings from newscasts if it was within their ability. Occasionally minor stuff slipped out on the indie media channels, such as a costume malfunction, but the guardians’ PR machine was pretty effective at controlling the big stuff. It helped enormously that Lena, along with the other commons at the Facility, had all signed non-disclosure agreements. So, to the world at large, no guardian had screwed up in any major way. Ever.

“So, let me understand this,” Lena said, “a founder, an actual icon no less, has been on the run for eighteen months and no one’s seen her anywhere? How is that even possible? Who’d you send before me?”

“Sachs, Ferretti, Cragen, and Miller.”

She stared. They were all elite trackers.

“I suspect,” Dutton continued with a sigh, “that Shattergirl somehow knows when they get near. Her spy network must be as good as yours. Every time she finds out we’re coming, she relocates before we get close. Hence, the reports that all say ‘no trace of her found.’”

Lena considered that scenario, knitting her brows together. Overdues tended to be loners, not part of any network. All her instincts told her Dutton was dead wrong. Shattergirl barely seemed to tolerate her own people, let alone Earth’s commons. The idea she was networking expertly to evade capture seemed ludicrous. It had to be something else.

She tapped her lip. From what she knew, Shattergirl did not suffer fools at all, was scary smart, and, unlike her eternally beaming brethren, refused to fake a damn thing. Lena smiled. Having a real challenge and a halfway decent guardian to track would make a change for once. She straightened.

“Why the screaming hurry that you had to recall me from Beast Lord mid-capture? I had to send him home in restraints, but I was this close to a voluntary return. You know that’s always better for rehab long term.”

“I know that, but we’ve just received a credible tip-off.” He tapped his computer keyboard. “Shattergirl’s been reported on Socotra. It’s the first fresh lead in six months.”

“Socotra? Where the hell is that?”

“Did you pay any attention at school, Silver?”

“Enough to know it was a waste of my time,” Lena said, shooting him a shit-eating grin.

Dutton sighed and pointedly pressed a key. “Okay, I’ve uploaded it all for you. We need this overdue back by August twenty-first. I know it’s less than a week, but at least we’ve narrowed it down to one tiny island for you. That deadline is fixed, by the way. Talon Man has his thing planned.”

His thing. Right. That was one word for the over-the-top extravaganza marking the first centenary of the guardians’ arrival on Earth. No expense had been spared. You couldn’t even buy tickets for it anymore, no matter how much you offered the scalpers. Obviously it wouldn’t do to have only forty-nine of the fifty founders present to celebrate landfall.

“Now I understand,” Lena said, checking her FacTrack had uploaded Dutton’s data packet. The file blinked at her. She gave him a knowing look. “I get why you so badly need my silver tongue.”

“Thought you might,” Dutton said. “We need this. Questions from the highest level will be asked if there’s a spare seat on that podium come the end of next week.”

“Yeah, god help us if the guardians look unable to control one of their own,” Lena muttered. “Fine, leave it with me. Fortunately, I have skills the precious guardians don’t.”

Dutton’s shoulders relaxed for the first time since she’d sat down, and he offered a rare smile. “I knew you were the tracker for this.” He adjusted his glasses. “Oh, and Socotra?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s also called the Island of Bliss.”

Lena grinned, pleasantly surprised. “Anything above freezing is bliss to me right now.”

“I’ll bet.” He looked at her seriously. “Pack your Dazr.”

Chapter 3

Lena unbuckled her seatbelt once they hit cruising altitude, little yellow light be damned. She ignored Air Yemenia’s shopping channel playing on multiple screens overhead. No, she did not want a “half tola of genuine Arabic oud perfume.” She scrolled through her FacTrack and called up the archival vids menu.

The early black-and-white data reels she’d loaded up on the founders before leaving home were interesting. Of course, she’d seen the footage before over the years, but a refresher couldn’t hurt. She pressed “Play” on the video of first contact with the founders.

Fifty super-fit humanoid survivors had suddenly appeared on the lawns of England’s Houses of Parliament—the epicenter of Earth’s power at the turn of the last century—as their spaceship broke up in the upper atmosphere. It was all avidly captured by movie news crews for the cinema houses.