A New Day (StrikeForce #1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  I didn’t respond, even though I was beginning to panic. They knew every fucking thing.

  “Our team didn’t think you’d come. Didn’t think you’d fall for the ruse. But that night you fought Nightbane a few months back… I watched the footage of that over and over again. One thing became clear: you cared more about protecting Virus than you did about yourself. Is it love, I wonder?” she asked, watching me. “Or are you just that loyal to those you let in? If it’s loyalty, it’s another trait to be proud of. There’s not much of that in the world, really.”

  How little she knew. And how ironic that the only reason I’d been so intent on saving him was to protect myself from this exact thing. My life was just one laugh after another.

  We stayed in silence for what felt like an eternity. She leaned against the wall, crossed her arms over her chest. After it became clear that I had nothing to say, she crouched down, resting her forearms on her knees.

  “Faraday,” she said, and I looked at her. “Like I said. They all want to make you disappear. Everyone. There are precisely two people in your corner right now. One isn’t on this team, so his word doesn’t mean anything. The other is me. I think you can do a hell of a lot of good. I think you can be redeemed. It’s not too late.”

  I tried not to react, tried not to let her see how her words hit awfully close to my own recent identity crisis.

  I studied her, and then I let out a short laugh. “You all are tired of getting overpowered, huh?”

  She stood up. “Pretty much. And your former partner’s team is a much bigger concern than even you ever were. We realized pretty quickly that you weren’t hurting anyone. Them, though?” she shook her head. “He’s not as careful about picking his associates as you are.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Damian.

  “Don’t you even want to know who the other person was who recommended another option for you?” she asked. I gave her a look and shrugged.

  “You’ve run into Killjoy,” she said, and, after a moment, I nodded. She’d just verified what I already kind of knew about my masked stranger. I tried to pretend that just the sound of his name wasn’t enough to make me blush. “He believes in you. More than I do. I don’t know everything he sees in you, and if my team knew I was agreeing with him on anything, they’d have my head examined. But I agree with him, and he’s never come to me for a favor until he heard we had you. There’s good in you. You’ve been given a gift. Don’t waste it making the world a worse place. Or waste it rotting away for the rest of your life in a cell here.”

  “You’re recruiting me?” I asked. And then I laughed, closed my eyes and shook my head.

  “I’m giving you a choice. Imprisonment, or service. It’s all I can offer.”

  “So no shot at freedom, huh?”

  “You should have thought about how much you loved freedom before you started using your powers to rob banks,” she said, her voice still cool, calm. “Right now, all I can offer you are those two choices: a cell here, or join up.”

  I was silent, and eventually, she left, and I was left alone in the surgical-feeling room. Join up? Was she freaking kidding me? Join up with assholes like Nightbane? Join up with people who pretty much hated me?

  But…

  Serving them would give me a chance to start planning an escape. I had no chance of escaping if they kept me locked up. Whatever the manacles they had on my wrists and ankles were made of, they were standing up really well to how hard I was struggling against them. Or was it me? How had they knocked me out in the first place?

  Shady bitches.

  No honor at all. What kind of losers bait someone, knock them out, strap them down, and then have the nerve to act like they have the upper hand? I mean, they did. Technically. I bit the inside of my cheek, working through it all in my mind. They’d be watching me, obviously. But I knew from the news reports and eyewitness videos that they were hopelessly unorganized. When they did catch someone, it was almost by accident. No, if I got myself free, I’d have a good chance at actually getting away. It was likely the only chance I would have.

  I’d have to put up with endless amounts of bullshit and cracks from people who think they’re funny or clever. I’d have to pretend to be humble while despising every single one of them.

  So, basically, it would be like middle school all over again.

  What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, I thought to myself. And then I closed my eyes and waited until someone decided to come back and talk at me again.

  It was quite a while. I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Trying to make me panicky and worried, leaving me locked up and alone. Instead, I just kept my eyes closed, forced myself to go over how I’d say all the right things. My mind kept going back to one thing: Killjoy.

  I didn’t know what to think of him. True, he’d said on more than one occasion that I was better, that I could do great things. But what did he know? He didn’t know me from any other super-powered being. Making the assumption that I even wanted to do what he considered to be “great things” was stupid beyond belief. How he tied into StrikeForce, or at least Portia, was something to think about. I didn’t know whether I was thankful or annoyed that he’d decided to intercede on my behalf. Everyone referred to him as a vigilante. It seemed pretty evenly split between those who admired him and those who thought he had a few screws loose. Personally, I fell on the “more than a few screws loose” side of the debate, but maybe that was what I liked about him. That, and he’d been nice enough to me, and he hadn’t even tried to capture me.

  If it ended up that the word he’d put in with Portia ended up being the key to my eventual escape, then I owed the man a fruit basket or something.

  After what felt like an eternity, I heard the doors whoosh open again, and I opened my eyes. Portia was there, and she held her hands up as if waiting for an answer. “So?” she said.

  “It’s not like there’s much of a choice. I’m in. Thank you for the opportunity,” I said, trying to look at least a little humble.

  She gave me a look that suggested she wasn’t buying any of it. “Sure thing.” She pulled a small device that looked like a phone or remote or something out of her pocket, and the manacles around my wrists and ankles opened. I stood up, took a second to get my bearings. I felt more wobbly than I should have. Weak.

  My gaze shot up to Portia. “What did you do to me?”

  “Calm down. We just dampened your powers. Necessary for all our safety until we all get used to one another.”

  “How?”

  “Your neck,” she said, nodding toward me. I put a hand up, and felt a thin metal band around my throat. Not tight. Not heavy. It felt barely there, really. “It interferes with your biochemistry, disrupts your powers. I don’t understand it all, only that it works. It dampens your powers, and tracks you—“

  “Does it give you my temperature and pulse rate too?” I asked sarcastically.

  “No, that would be stupid,” she said impatiently. “I can turn it off when we need you to do your thing, but for the most part, you’ll be wearing your new jewelry indefinitely.” She paused. “And this isn’t my call. Nightbane and Alpha decide who’s dampened and who’s not, and as soon as we’re done here, I have to give this back to them. So you may as well get used to it.”

  We’ll see about that, I thought to myself.

  “You can try getting it off, but I don’t think you’ll have much luck. Last person who tried that nearly killed himself trying to get out of it.”

  I kept my face blank. I’d keep that in mind, but it also wouldn’t keep me from trying it. She waved me out of my cell. “Let’s get you to central tower.” She walked out of the containment cell and I followed her, through more stainless steel hallways, to a small lobby. “Out there. Central is just ahead. You will be watched, closely, so don’t bother trying to run. Now is the time to start proving to us that you intend to make good on this. Right?”

  I nodded, and walked out the doors, toward the
largest of the towers. The fresh air, the breeze blowing the strands of hair in my face as I walked toward it were little symbols of freedom, cruel in how close, yet how far away it truly was.

  Nothing to do but move forward.

  I approached the central tower, trying not to stare up at the sky, which was where I really wanted to be. Two burly security guards, wearing uniforms in the same dark gray and black as StrikeForce’s uniforms, stood guard outside the entrance, right in front of the door. I approached, and they looked me over. Both wore glasses. Same style.

  Weird.

  They both looked me over, as if trying to gauge my threat level or something. Their gazes swept me from head to toe, and I waited for one of them to say something.

  “She’s clean,” the first said to the second, and the second nodded.

  “State your business, ma’am,” the second said.

  “I’m here because Portia told me to come here.”

  “Name?”

  “Don’t you all have secret identities?” I asked.

  The first gave me a bored look.

  “If you have one, then that’ll do, ma’am, but since I’ve never seen you around here before, I’ll need a name to log. And yes, I already know who you are, but I still need to hear you say it. Rules,” he added.

  “Jolene Faraday,” I said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” guard number one said. He pressed what looked like a tiny earbud in his left ear. “Jolene Faraday, for Nightbane,” he said in a low voice. A moment later, he nodded and he and the other guard stepped aside, each pulling one of the enormous glass and steel doors open for me. I nodded at them and walked through.

  The space I walked into made me feel like I was in some kind of futuristic sci-fi movie. The central area of the tower was open, from the floor to the dome of the shining steel roof. Thirty stories of open space, and around the edges, shining steel railings enclosed walkways. Doors into what I guessed were offices were spaced equally around the walls of each floor. I looked up, turning a little so I could see it all. It’s not often that I feel tiny, but I felt small just then. It was the height, the reflective surfaces everywhere, the overwhelming shininess of the space.

  I looked around some more. The only piece of furniture in the open atrium area was a long sleek steel counter, behind which sat a serious woman who I pegged immediately as former military or law enforcement, probably. Something in her posture, in the neutrality of her expression when I faced her.

  “Ms. Faraday,” she said in greeting once I finally stopped gawking and approached the desk. I nodded.

  “I’m Jenson,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. I need you to sign in, and then we need to scan you.”

  “Scan me?”

  “Typical procedure. Thumb print and retinal scan, quick DNA analysis.”

  “I—“

  “Hold still,” she said, and then she held up what looked like one of those wands they use in airport security, but smaller. She applied a sterile tip to one end. “Mouth swab,” she explained, and I opened my mouth and she quickly and efficiently swabbed my tongue. I clamped my mouth shut.

  “Look here,” she said, holding up the other end of the wand. There was a round lens there, and I put my eye to it. After a few seconds she said. “Good. Thumb please.”

  On the back of the wand was a little thumb pad, and I applied my thumb to it until she gave me another nod.

  “Am I going to have to do this every time I come in here?” I asked.

  “This is your first time in this part of the facility, so we do a complete scan to make sure you are who you say you are. I just matched it against data we already had in our system thanks to the folks over in containment.“

  I looked at her in disbelief, then shook my head. “Okay, then. Portia told me to come over here.”

  “I know. Take that elevator up to the top floor. Alpha’s office is the only one on that level. Portia handles a lot of the team relations stuff, but you’ll take orders from Alpha, or, more often, from Nightbane. Sorry,” she added, and I wondered if everyone knew how much Nightbane disliked me or if he just had a reputation for being an asshole. Probably both.

  I nodded, thanked her, then headed for the elevator she’d indicated. Steel doors, which was not a surprise, exactly. I hit the “up” button and waited. I looked up at the other floors as I waited for the elevator, saw someone occasionally walk along the walkway on one of the floors, moving between the offices up there. “Do all of the superheroes have an office?” I asked Jenson.

  “No. This building is central administration and storage. The team has a separate residence and meeting area.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened, and I nodded at Jenson again before stepping in. The elevator was round, mimicking the shape of the tower. It felt like I was enclosed in a very small rocket. I shook my head and hit the button for the top floor, waited as the elevator quickly rose again.

  At the top floor, the doors opened, and I was standing at the top of the space I’d been gawking up at. There was a steel railing, black terrazzo floor, which matched what had been down at the lobby level. Where every other floor had an equal number of doors leading into offices, there was only one door here, and the rest was plain steel wall. I knocked on the door, and it buzzed, then opened automatically. I stepped into the office, and a woman who could have been Jenson’s twin sat at a small black desk just inside the door. I could see another door beyond, which I guessed was Alpha’s office.

  “Good morning. Jolene Faraday,” I said, introducing myself.

  “Jenson,” she said, nodding.

  I looked at her in confusion, and Jenson smiled. “My power is projecting likenesses of myself wherever I want to be.”

  I shook my head. “We’re all mad here…” I muttered, and she laughed. “Which one is the actual you?”

  She smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Then she pressed a small black button on her desktop. “Alpha, Faraday has arrived.”

  “Send her in please, Jenson,” Alpha’s deep voice said over the receiver. Jenson, or fake Jenson, or whoever the hell she was, waved me through, and I pushed another steel door open.

  When I walked into the office, the first thing I noticed were the windows, which looked out at the courtyard below and one of the towers beyond. Instead of a desk, there was a long, black table with about twenty matching black chairs. More black terrazzo. One entire wall of the room was covered with monitors, TV screens, and other displays. I noticed views of the lobby below, outside the office, the local news stations, and a few other interiors that I didn’t recognize. Alpha stood near the windows, and he walked toward me as I entered. Nightbane was there as well, sitting at the table with another man.

  “Faraday. You decided to join us,” Alpha said, and it was clear from his tone that he wasn’t exactly happy. I noticed that all three men had shed their masks and cowls, though they still wore the rest of the uniform. Nightbane looked like the type of guy who spent a lot of his time in front of the mirror. He was handsome enough, clean-shaven, with a strong jaw and blue eyes the same shade as toilet bowl cleaner. Short, dark hair. Immaculately groomed. Alpha’s blond hair was pulled back in a low tail, and he had a bit of scruffy facial hair, and grayish blue eyes. And the other man in the room looked like a younger, less assholish version of Alpha, but with short hair. He grinned at me as I looked at him. “We usually don’t bother with the masks here in Command unless we’re in some of the more public areas. You know Nightbane already. I’m Beta. Alpha is my cousin.” Ah. Well, that explained the resemblance.

  “So, do you all know one another’s secret identities, then?”

  “Oh, hell no,” Nightbane said from where he was sitting. “We keep those to ourselves.”

  “Must be nice,” I said.

  “Your identity is known because you’re a criminal. Maybe you should have thought of that ahead of time.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. All I care about in that regard is that you all kn
ow my name, which means my family is known. Which means, one wrong word, and the supervillains you all brought me on to help you fight will know where to find my mother.”

  “Oh, please. Your little boyfriend probably knows where your mother lives. He’d be the one to tell the wrong people, not us,” Nightbane said.

  Alpha nodded, then walked over to the wall of monitors. He pointed at one, and I realized with a start that it was the outside of my mother’s trailer. “We’ve been monitoring your mother’s… house,” he said with a derisive look, “since we took you into custody,” he said.

  “Spying on her?” I asked, and he just looked bored.

  “Can you blame us?” he asked in response. Beta stood up and walked over to the monitors, stepping between Alpha and me.

  “But also because Portia insisted on trying to bring you in instead of locking you up. We protect the families of those of us on the team, just in case our identities ever become known to the wrong people. She’ll be monitored. We also installed some tech that I can deploy as soon as you want me to.”

  “What kind of tech?”

  “We installed four electro-shields around the property. Once I activate them, there will be an invisible force field around the trailer. No one in or out unless they share your DNA or they’re escorted by your mother. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best thing we have at this time.” He paused. “We also have people in the area, and will continue to do so.”

  I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Released a breath it felt like I’d been holding since I’d been taken. I didn’t trust them, but she also wouldn’t be messed with by Damian’s team if they started to worry that I’d spill the beans now that StrikeForce had me. “She’ll be safe,” Beta promised me. I kept my eyes on the monitor.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, and he nodded. Then he cleared his throat.

  “The only other thing we need to do now is get your uniform fitted and made.”

  “What is the point of me wearing a uniform, exactly? I can just cover my face.”