Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen Read Online Free

asshole.”
    “If by ‘asshole’ you mean Wired ’s Man of the Year, then, yeah, I’m an asshole.”
    Jess looked at her dim reflection in the darkened plexiglass porthole. Haunted, bleak eyes looked back at her from a nervous, patrician face. She’d been gangly-beautiful at eighteen — more willowy than frail — but approaching fifty now, the neurological stress of her Gift had given her a thin, brittle aspect. She looked like a woman made of fine china. Felt like one, too.
    There was a gradual change in forward momentum, barely detectable by the plane’s occupants. Jessica marveled at the technology: the silence of the thrusters shifting to vertical descent; the businesslike opulence of the passenger cabin— like a well-appointed hotel room in the sky. She guessed that the plane was the civilian version of a military command jet, but it was so hard to parse what was military, what was corporate, what was government these days.
    She turned her most arctic gaze upon Rickard, gave him those pale polar blues. Must’ve been an accusation in her expression, because after a while he said: “Hey, you made the deal, Jess. You came to us. I’m good, but the program never would have found you . Your identity isn’t well defined— it’s as much noise as it is signal.”
    “Pareto optimal,” she breathed. That got a smile out of him.
    * * *
    The office was spartan, utilitarian, all hard edges and efficiency. Jessica lay down on the portable military cot and stared at the white ceiling tiles. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the ventilation system humming, circulating stale air throughout the complex. She guessed that it was an orphaned mine, repurposed. She guessed lend-lease: a special rendition site for uncooperative supers, foreign or domestic. There was a good buck to be made in special facilities management these days.
    Your identity’s not well defined . Bastard said that right to her face. It was true though— she drifted, Jessica Delaqua did. Came with the territory. She didn’t read minds exactly; she merged with them, changed them, got changed by them. As much empath as telepath. Life after True North was difficult— trying to find a straight job; trying to keep a job without drawing attention to herself; trying to be somebody in particular long enough to get traction in a world that just wouldn’t stand still. Without the team, without her structured role as the Seer… Jess crimped her lips, hardened her heart. She didn’t want to get emotional in this place.
    “It’s going to take a while,” Jessica had told Rickard before he’d left.
    “Like hours? Or days? Because we’d prefer hours.”
    “He knows how to shut me out. He’s strong.”
    “You don’t have to tell us how strong he is. You’re his weakness, though.”
    It’d been a long flight, it was late, and Jess needed to rest. She doubted she would sleep — she hardly ever did — but she needed to relax, let her body recharge.
    Rickard was wrong about her and Josh. It’s not that she was Josh’s weakness and vice-versa— like some kind of Hallmark Card version of need. It was more biochemical and subatomic than emotional, though there had been plenty of emotion at times. His invulnerability and her openness fit together in some strange, cosmic way. He was so solid, so present, so much one thing; she was all differential, in constant flux, sliding in and out of sight. He was matter; she was energy.
    There was no algorithm for what she and Josh were together. They weren’t two distinct parts when you put them in a room; they formed a thing that couldn’t easily be quantified. Rickard had not been merely wrong: he could never be exactly right.
    Jess didn’t have line of sight, but she could feel the various entities in the building with her. Muted, shielded the way Rickard had been. Lacking in malevolence. Rickard may have been a supervillain of sorts, but the handful of technicians and guards in the complex weren’t what