Release date: October 9, 2020
Subgenre: Superheroes
About The Judgment of Valene:
Wealth. Privilege. Superpowers. Valene has it all… except any mercy from the person trying to kill her.
For the first time in her life, Valene Blackwood has peace. She’s been aboard her own private space station for a year, removed from the sonic duress of the world that she suffers due to her superhuman ability to hear everything, everywhere. When her father dies, she must return and take over the family business - selling superhuman protection for profit.
With her father gone, challengers emerge for control of Great Power. Valene is young, unproven, and wanting only to go back to her sanctuary in the sky. She struggles to stay focused, knowing the future of the company is at stake. The future of the Empowered. Before she has a chance to get her feet on the ground, someone tries to kill her.
Advanced technology nearly rips Valene right out of her own skin. Technology only one person in the world could have invented: the woman she left behind by going up to the space station. Kit Baldwin. But Kit is a hero. Is someone setting her up? Is someone trying to ruin them both?
Valene sets out to find the truth, and for the first time in her life, she has to listen. She has to stay in the world. She has to be the hero she never wanted to be.
If she can survive.
For the first time in her life, Valene Blackwood has peace. She’s been aboard her own private space station for a year, removed from the sonic duress of the world that she suffers due to her superhuman ability to hear everything, everywhere. When her father dies, she must return and take over the family business - selling superhuman protection for profit.
With her father gone, challengers emerge for control of Great Power. Valene is young, unproven, and wanting only to go back to her sanctuary in the sky. She struggles to stay focused, knowing the future of the company is at stake. The future of the Empowered. Before she has a chance to get her feet on the ground, someone tries to kill her.
Advanced technology nearly rips Valene right out of her own skin. Technology only one person in the world could have invented: the woman she left behind by going up to the space station. Kit Baldwin. But Kit is a hero. Is someone setting her up? Is someone trying to ruin them both?
Valene sets out to find the truth, and for the first time in her life, she has to listen. She has to stay in the world. She has to be the hero she never wanted to be.
If she can survive.
Excerpt:
The
driver veers sharp to the right and the shimmering edge of the portal
brushes against the side of the limo. Cerise lightning phases through my
window and the bolt snatches the cushion off the seat across from me.
If Frankie had come back with us, she’d be gone out of her seat, cast
away into the In Between like the point car.
I cover my ears. “What’s going on?”
Breadbox shoves me down to the floor of the car and shields me with his massive body. “Drive! Drive!”
The
car shudders with every unforgiving pothole in the untended roads of
The Derelicts. I can’t see anything. Birds chirp in choral confusion.
Alien lightning splits the air, warping and twisting everything it comes
into contact with, like the birds, there and gone. Reality tears open
again. The limo screeches to a stop and I tumble across the floor
against the seat opposite me.
“Back up,” Breadbox says. “Back up, back up, back up!”
My voice echoes like radar off of people. I can whisper, and be heard on the other side of the world. “Kit…”
Breadbox clenches his fists. “Is she here?”
“No… I don’t hear her.”
“She can become invisible. The Interdictor said so.”
I brace against the seat as the limo whirls around. “Kit isn’t out there… it’s just these portals.”
Breadbox pivots from window to window, searching for her. “She’s the only one who can open them.”
Dust
scatters off a distant street. Far from the helicopters, as scattered
as we are. Broken plates of concrete tremble in place. Blades of grass
ripple in the wake of something; something fast. Something making no
sound of its own.
I
fiddle with the controls of this new sonic suit, still unfamiliar,
trying to isolate the sound. “There’s something out there. I know there
is, but I can’t hear it.”
Breadbox peers out the back window. “What?”
Crushed
aluminum cans skitter down the road behind whatever troubles them.
Compressed air trails behind the silent vehicle in a narrow enough
stream that it has to be a motorcycle of some kind. The stream diverges.
Two of them. Three.
“Behind us,” I say.
Amazon
About Darby Harn:
Darby Harn writes for Screenrant, CBR.com, Star Wars News Net, and Movie News Net. His fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Interzone, and other publications. His novel Ever The Hero debuted this winter.
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