Prism: Refraction
Christie Yates ran with a growing smile stretching her lips. Ten paces ahead of her loomed a chest-high foam rectangle, made of the same soft white material as the floor and walls of the acre-wide training room. She quickened her pace, flexed her calves, and flung herself up and over, slapping down a hand to push her higher and propel her over sideways without slowing her momentum. On the opposite side was a pit, hidden from view by the barrier, four feet deep, equaling up to a fall higher than she was tall. Her stomach went tight as she plummeted, and she swiftly re-oriented herself to land feet first. The plastamic boots, fitted almost skin-tight to her knees, did their job and absorbed the impact so that it felt like she’d done no more than hop up-and-down. The impact force was transferred into a small shockwave blasting out from the soles of the shoes, which propelled her forward at a greater speed. The tempo of her favorite electro-dance artist intensified in her earphones, giving her a burst of motivation to move even faster.
Ahead the floor sloped up in a half-pipe formation, curving around to the side, with the surface covered in a multitude of pyramid shapes a foot tall and wide. She hit it at a sprint and ran along the side of the wall, avoiding the precarious footing of the floor itself, and leapt off looping around to another lane that led her back the way she came. The music in her ears cut to half of its volume as the voice of her personal trainer, Mr. Cook, spoke. “Alright, I think that’s enough of a warm-up. Releasing the birds now.”
Without slowing, Christie ran to a nearby tower, more than thirty feet tall and studded with irregular shapes, all in the same white foam material, and leapt up to grab hold. Quickly she moved from platform to platform, kicking off with the boots to give her an extra few feet of jumping height, until she stood alone on the summit. She paused for a moment, breathing heavily, music blaring in her ears, the wholesome feeling of stretched muscles and sweat dripping down her chest and back with the exertion. Scanning about, she quickly spotted three drones, each about the size of a football and similarly shaped, white with four gyroscopic rotors spreading out mere inches from the main body. They split immediately and began to fly in different directions, looping through the forest of foam structures that made up the formation of the training room.
Christie focused on the closest “bird” and marked it with a mental action she would have compared to clicking an icon on a web browser. Her power swelled within her, emanating out in an invisible wave that struck the bird. Hot-pink today, she decided, and the power followed suit, altering the refraction of light bouncing off of the drone so that its central body appeared to change from white to a bright, vibrant pink color. It disappeared behind a foam pillar, but she ignored it and turned to look for one of the other drones. The lack of sight would have no effect on her power. So long as it remained within her range, which included the entirety of the training room, the color change would remain, making the drone highly visible against the plain white backdrop of the training room.
By the time the song ended and the next one began (bass drum pounding out a steady heartbeat, accompanied by dueling melodies of ringing chimes and an electric violin) she had spotted and marked each of the other drones, turning one neon green and the other lemon yellow. She gave chase towards the green drone and hopped off the edge of the tower. Thirty feet was too high a fall for the boots to handle, so she instead slid down the side of the tower, the boots automatically attaching to the surface and slowing her fall so that she landed with ease and immediately broke into a run. Grinning wildly, she reminded herself to hug Dr. Omad in thanks next time she saw him. The boots were an awesome addition to her repertoire that made parkour about three times as fun as it already was.
She caught up to the drone before long, and it began weaving back and forth between foam pillars and under arches, trying to evade. Christie drew in a breath, feeling the power swell within her again, and flexed it out with a swift double-click. A rainbow swirl of light erupted out from beside the drone, coalescing into a bright pink clone of herself: a long-limbed teenaged girl in olympic physical fitness, dressed in running shorts and a tank top with plastamic boots, hair in a long pony tail streaming out behind her. The image flew through the air, fast as a missile, and she clenched her power, transforming it from a basic hologram into a temporary construct of hard-light. The image spiked the drone like a volleyball, sending it bouncing off the floor and directly into Christie’s arms. Before it could do anything nasty, like shock her or spray her with that awful smelling gas like the last one had done, she tapped the button in the center of its body, deactivating it and letting it drop to the floor. The song in her earbuds slowed, transitioning into a calmer bridge, and she felt herself relax in response, breathing easier. The pink Christie-clone, no longer needed, shattered with a bright flash.
“Let’s see how well you do when they fight back,” Cook said in her earphones. Christie waved cheerfully at the observation window and turned slowly, scanning the room for a hint of color.
She saw the pink drone an instant before it fired. A flash of light betrayed the blast of a rubber missile flying across the room towards her, fast enough to sting but not bruise. Reacting with trained instinct, she summoned a fluorescent orange Christie-clone in front of her, arms crossed, and hardened it. The rubber missile bounced off her shield harmlessly, though a sharp crack appeared in the arms with a sound like breaking glass. Her hard-light constructs were so fragile; that was something she was still working on.
She sent the clone flying across the room to counterattack, but the drone had already taken shelter behind a foam wall and the clone shattered against it. She started to sprint forward, but some instinct warned her and she spun to the side just in time to see the yellow drone firing at her. She snapped another shield clone into place (bright scarlet), but no pellet struck it. The drone had fired a slower moving orb in a high arc, flying over her head to bounce off the ground behind her. Christie’s eyes flew wide.
The orb exploded. The force hit her back like a pillow swung by a world-record holding weight-lifter. It didn’t hurt much, but it threw her off her feet to crash face first into the soft floor. She rolled with the impact, getting back up to a crouch, just in time to see the pink drone pop out of cover and fire off a burst of pellets.
She dodged, weaving back and forth in a serpentine manner, summoning half-a-dozen multicolored clones around her. At the same time, she changed her own color to a flat single yellow, letting her blend in among the fakes. They were holograms only; she couldn’t solidify more than one construct at a time, at least not without feeling like she’d pulled a muscle in her brain and losing control of her power. She ran, trying to watch for attack, but the drones moved in synch, always staying on the opposite side of her so that she couldn’t keep both of them in sight at the same time.
Let’s deal with that then. Concentrating, she created a prismatic rainbow of light in front of her, slightly to the side of where she was watching the pink drone. After a second, the light transformed into a perfect reflection of the room behind her, showing the yellow drone in pursuit, just in time to see it fire another explosive orb. She watched it in the mirror, tongue subconsciously tucked against her cheek as she concentrated, and timed her response just right.
The six clones around her disappeared as she combined them into a single hard-light clone of bright yellow, appearing in front of her where the orb was about to fall. Swinging an open hand, the clone batted the orb towards the pink drone. Its detonation knocked the pink drone out of the air, and Christie leapt forward and caught it as she rolled, deactivating it and tossing it to the side.
The yellow drone fled, not horizontally, but instead flying straight up. Two can play at that game. Christie ran in pursuit, climbing a foam ramp then leaping off its edge at about five feet off the ground. Just as she began to fall forward, she summoned a silvery hard-light clone, hands together held over its head, and landed on it with her feet. Using the synaptic link attaching the boots to her nerves, she fired its most powerful shockwave, shattering the clone and sending her bouncing six feet higher. She snatched the drone out of the air and landed on a nearby ledge, wrestling it until she managed to deactivate it.
“Excellent work Christie,” Brooks said from her earphones. “You’ve really improved by leaps and bounds in the last couple months. I think you’re gonna do just fine today.”
Panting with exertion, Christie got to her feet, tossed the drone to the floor below, and flashed a thumbs-up towards the observation window.
“Brilliant morning, eh Justin?”
Justin matched the plump, 52 year-old executive’s manic smile with a glower fit to make small children flee in fear. Ramona Bridges was apparently made of sterner stuff, as she simply waited patiently for him to respond verbally to her question. Or more likely, she simply couldn’t comprehend the existence of such negativity in the first place.
“Oh come on, surely you can at least show a smidge of excitement on today of all days! Celebrate a little!” Bridges said.
“Ain’t nothing worth celebrating,” Justin muttered. “And don’t call me Shirley.”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing.”
He leaned back against the wall with arms crossed and watched the matronly executive make her rounds, greeting the personal trainers and various staff waiting in the control room. Always fashionable, she was dressed in that pretentiously casual business attire Spectrum had worked to make an industry standard: a loose gray skirt over black tights, sneakers with bright yellow laces, and a sleek white blouse with a single vertical stripe of yellow falling from her neck to the middle of her ample stomach, approximating a tie. To Justin, it looked like she’d had an unfortunate accident with a pack of mustard. Justin found her carefully maintained cheerfulness personally offensive.
With a soft swishing sound the door to the training room and Justin’s girl stepped inside, wiping at the sweat on her forehead with a pleased expression. Fourteen years old, tall and lanky, Christie Yates was in the perfect state of physical fitness Spectrum had spent so many millions of dollars honing her to be. At least she seemed to enjoy the training. She shot him a distracted smile, and he let the corners of his frowning lips lift a few centimeters in response. Christie’s hair, pulled back in a long ponytail that fell halfway to her hips, was tinted a deep crimson today. That wouldn’t last. Christie had a habit of changing her hair color every time she glanced at a mirror, and sometimes her eyes as well. He supposed he should be grateful she hadn’t branched out into making her skin bright green or something.
“Christie! Good morning girl.” Director Bridges swept Christie up in a bear hug, which the teenager returned with a bit less enthusiasm. “Are you as excited as I am?”
Christie disentangled herself from the director and stepped back, then shot another glance Justin’s way. “I’m pretty excited ma’am. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It’s just, well…”
“Hmmm?”
“Justin says I’m not ready. I think I am, I really want to go, but well, he’s the expert right? That’s why Spectrum hired him to consult isn’t it?”
Without changing his cross expression, Justin felt a swell of pride in the young girl. He knew how much she was truly looking forward to her debut; in truth, Director Bridges couldn’t come close to being as excited as Christie. But still, the girl was smart enough to take his warnings seriously, and to speak up for him even though she didn’t want him to be right.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. James just takes his job very seriously is all. He thinks if we never actually deploy you then he wins by default. Clever man. But seriously, you’ve had more training than most professional soldiers at this point, and they don’t have superpowers to help keep them safe. You’re going to do beautifully. Your fans are ready and waiting. I’d like to head out by 9, so why don’t you go on and get yourself ready? I’ll talk to Justin.”
Justin kept his gaze forward, staring at the various cartoon character nicknacks arranged on the desk of the local techs, as Christie passed by with a shrug. She’d tried, but he’d never expected any different. Bridges got what she wanted. She’d made a career out of it.
Christie passed out into the hallway and started up the long ramp towards the elevator. With his power active, Justin had an intrinsic sense of where she was, the distance to each nearby wall or object, and a clear sense of the exact quickest route for him to reach her, which showed up as a faint translucent line in his vision, leading to his right and through the door she’d exited. As she passed by a couple of employees in the hall, he felt his power twitch, like an involuntary muscle spasm. His power warned him of danger to whatever person or object he’d locked it to last, and people always registered as a minor threat regardless of attitude. Technically, any able-bodied person could flip out and try to beat the teenager to death, so the power let him know they were there. He was grateful; the power gave him a great deal of situational awareness even in situations where there was no true danger to be found.
While Bridges chattered at him about some cheery bullshit he kept nodding and making noncommittal grunts, the better part of his attention focused on watching Christie take the elevator up to her room on the building’s top floor. The power twitched again as she passed by the security guard outside her door and made it inside, where the power declared the room to be empty. She headed for the bathroom and he temporarily disabled his power, giving her some privacy. Technically he couldn’t see through his power, only sense a vague approximation of what activities she was involved in, but even so there were some things he had no interest in. He made a little command to his power to re-activate the moment Christie left her room, then realized Bridges was glaring at him with uncharacteristic scorn.
“Well, Justin? Do you even have an answer for me this time?”
“Justin James,” he muttered.
“Hmm?”
“My name. Justin James. Pick one. Half the time you call me Justin, and half the time you call me James. It’s annoying. Just settle on one, please,” he said.
“Which would you prefer, James?”
“Don’t care.”
“Well then.” She made an irritated clucking sound. “So what is your opinion?”
“…about what?”
“Sigh. The patrol route, Justin. The one I’ve been talking to you about for the last three minutes.”
“It’s fine.” He’d gone over the patrol route half-a-dozen times last night, after spending the last few weeks developing it and altering it according to the whims of the suits upstairs, who felt that certain places he’d picked weren’t high-profile enough to show off their darling corporate superhero. He thought he had it down to as safe a route as could be expected, but that really wasn’t difficult. As long as she stayed on this side of the river and kept to the Midtown area he didn’t foresee any serious trouble. Of course, trouble had a tendency of showing up unannounced.
“One of these days, James, I’m going to get you to speak more than two words in a sentence. Be at the van by 8:30. We’ve got a big day ahead of us!”
Justin held in his sigh, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of responding. He waited until she’d exchanged words with the others in the room and moved on, then gave it another couple of minutes before exiting the room himself. Jumping when she said “jump” would only encourage her.
In the locker room for the security team (forty heavily trained, armed and armored private soldiers, working in shifts of fifteen to twenty at a time), he gave a nod to a few of the guys coming in for the day shift and headed to his locker. Pulling off his casual jeans and t-shirt, too legitimately comfortable to fit the faux-casual style of the proper employees, he drew out his “costume.” Mask laws required alter-humans to be visually distinct when operating in-character if they wanted to enjoy the special benefits granted to his kind, but Justin had never had much of a flair for the dramatic. As a concession he’d had the lab guys whip up a custom version of the standard Spectrum security armor, black where the standard was white, with dark forest green instead of the gray. Instead of a simple flak helmet and goggles, he had a smaller, more aerodynamic helmet made of state-of-the-art plastamic, with an opaque visor complete with a digital heads-up-display to track threats, adjust to light levels or smoke screens, and display messages from the rest of the team, black with a green stripe running down the crown. Over it all he wore a heavy ankle-length forest green coat, with enough pockets and pouches to hold anything he could want. The back of the jacket was marked with a black circle, a forest-green eye symbol stenciled in its center.
Once dressed, he checked his weapons. Two side-arms, one standard semi-auto pistol, the other glass and ceramic to make it immune to magnetism or metal-warping powers. His primary weapon was an V18 carbine assault rifle with attached red-dot sight for close-to-medium range. Both it and the sidearms were loaded with rubber bullets. He’d argued that he and his men should carry backup magazines with lethal ammo for use against masks who could take the hits, since rubber would be useless against them, but the suits hadn’t signed off on it. They felt it would “send the wrong message.”
In addition to the guns he carried a number of flashbang and smoke grenades, signal flares, throw-and-stick tracking devices, reinforced titanium restraining shackles, power-suppressing tranquilizers, and basic first aid supplies. He also wore a telescoping shock baton and the lucky knife he’d picked up in Brazil. The suits had frowned at that, but he’d pointed out there were plenty of situations where you could use a good knife that had nothing to do with stabbing anyone, and they’d relented.
Dressed and geared up, helmet held under his arm, he joined his team in the break room outside the lockers. Two men and two women, all of them either ex-military or straight out of the pro-sec schools that were popping up everywhere these days, they ranged in age from nineteen to thirty. All of them felt young to him, but they were all smart, capable, loyal. They were chatting excitedly, talking hypotheticals of how they’d handle this mask or that one, yearning for action. Justin realized he was scowling again. Yes, they were all soldiers, but did that really mean they had to go looking for a fight? He’d be much happier if nothing happened at all. Christie would be disappointed, but he’d rather see her safe and bored than enjoying a fight for her life.
“Good to go, Sarge?” Jacks asked. She was the youngest, a pretty and muscular woman with blonde hair cut short enough to stuff under her helmet. By unspoken agreement, none of the squad bothered to use the official code-name Director Bridges had saddled Justin with.
“Can’t wait,” he grunted. They seemed to expect something more, so he added: “The girl’s counting on us. Let’s make sure her big day goes down alright.” The team whooped in response and went back to their chat. Suppressing a sigh, Justin leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms, waiting for trouble to show.
The sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered the entire east wall of Christie’s penthouse apartment, bringing a cheering warmth to the wide open, plushly decorated room. The rift was clear in the sky today, three-quarters of the cloudless sky taken over by the view of the distant planet Eden, cut off in an ovular shape where the rift hid the rest from sight. The planet was stormy today, much of its indigo seas covered by the golden clouds of some hurricane or typhoon. The continent facing Earth was large and squarish, with a jagged coastline, mostly deep green from the jungles that covered its surface.
The view was spectacular, looking out over the roofs of the Milwaukee’s Midtown-Heights, and across the rivers to the mirrored surface of Lake Michigan. The view was tarnished only by the decrepit towers of the Oldtown area that hugged the shore. If you looked close you could see the burned scar running down the side of the Faison Building just across the river, where it had been gutted during the Mask Wars. Director Bridges always grimaced at the sight when she came up to Christie’s room, complaining about how much of an eyesore the whole Oldtown area was. Christie wondered if her patrol route would take her across the river, and felt a thrill run down her spine at the thought of walking those villain-infested streets.
She glanced at her phone to check the time: it was 8:32 a.m. She needed to get ready and join Bridges and Justin down at the van. Skipping across the room she threw open the glass-panelled wardrobe and began to don her costume, checking her image in the full-length mirror along its interior.
The suit was made of a plain white skin-tight material, the fabric stretchy and surprisingly tough. Dr. Omad had ensured her it would stand up to a knife, not that she intended to let anyone get that close to her anyway. The suit covered her whole body up to the neck, with sleeves reaching to mid-wrist. Around her waist she strapped on a yellow utility-belt full of all the tools and equipment Justin and Omad had picked out for her to carry, and below the belt a skirt of the same white fabric hung halfway to her knees. The high-tech plastamic boots and gloves covered her extremities. Over her eyes she tied in place the simple white-and-black domino mask that covered her eyes and altered the shape of her face through its suggestion. Lastly, she wound around the long satiny pink scarf around her neck, leaving its two ends hanging down her back like a long split cape. With her eyes covered by the white see-thru fabric and a faint smile on her lips, she looked confident and ready for action. After six years of training, she was finally a real hero.
Seems rather plain though. All that white, not nearly enough color. Fortunately, she could change that. Drawing on her power, she altered the light around her, creating a continuous prismatic effect. A faint wave of rainbow light shone off of her in every direction a few inches past her skin, shifting and changing as she tilted her head like a radiant aurora. She dialed it down a bit to make it a bit more subtle, then grinned at the effect. Now she looked like a superhero.
A ringing chime rang out from the computer behind her. She hurried over and pulled up her messaging client to show she had two messages, one text and one video request. She answered the request immediately.
Katie appeared on the screen, red-haired and freckled, a year older than Christie and much more developed. She leaned casually back in her chair, green eyes sparkling as she took in the sight of her friend in her costume for the first time.
“Ah, the famous Prism deigns to chat with a mere mortal. I’m so pleased; should I ask for an autograph?” Katie said.
“Shut-up.” Prism grinned. She loved the sound of that name. Much better than ordinary “Christie.”
“You look great though. Badass, but kind of cute too? Assuming that’s what you’re going for.”
“The company designed the costume,” Prism said with a shrug. “I think I like it though. I’m just trying to decide what to do with my hair. I had a cool idea, but I think it might be a little over-the-top…”
“Hey, you’re a fuckin’ superhero, babe. Go big.”
“Alright.” Prism grinned, and flexed her power. In the webcam view in the corner of her screen, she watched her hair transform into a rainbow of color, the warmer colors gathering towards the front of her bangs, the cooler colors falling with her ponytail down towards her back. Katie whistled in apparent approval.
“You kind of look like you’re about to hit up a nightclub and drop some E. But in a good way,” Katie said.
“Haha, ok. Katie seal of approval?”
“Consider it sealed.”
“Oh crap, it’s almost 9. I gotta get going, patrol starts in fifteen.”
“Cool, I just wanted to make sure I wished you luck before you headed out. I mysteriously came down with an illness today, so I’ll be at home watching you on the stream. There’s like ten thousand people on here already and it hasn’t even started yet. Good luck out there.”
“Thanks.” Prism closed the window and started to pull away from the computer, bouncing on her heels in excitement. She paused as she remembered the other message. Glancing back, she saw a single line of text from a person she didn’t know, someone by the user name Pyrrhic_Justice. The line read simply: “Happy Birthday.”
The message certainly didn’t make any sense; her birthday wasn’t for another four months, at the end of summer. Besides which, this account was specially made by Spectrum to be unreachable except by users Prism specifically added to her friends list. It had to be some kind of mistake, but how had they gotten past the security? She considered answering, but the program indicated that Pyrhhic_Justice was no longer signed on. She decided to ignore it and move on. Most likely, it was just some well-meaning hacker fan with some bad info about her personal life. She’d report it to the lab guys, they’d want to know someone had gotten past their defenses.
For now, she had a city to protect.
Heretic 