The Judgment of Valene (Eververse, Book 2) by Darby Harn

 

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.

 

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.

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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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Ever the Hero (Eververse, Book 1) by Darby Harn

Release date: January 28, 2019
Subgenre: Superheroes

About Ever the Hero: 

 

Superheroes are big business. Imagine not being able to afford them. 

Kit Baldwin just wants to make rent. The only work she can find in the ruins of her devastated city is scavenging for alien technology. When she finds a powerful alien weapon, her discovery pays off more than she could have hoped: it draws the attention of the most powerful of the superhuman Empowered, Valene.

Valene hears everything, everywhere. She suffers for it, and as they begin a precipitous romance, Kit believes she can use the weapon she’s scavenged to mitigate Valene’s pain. If she can’t, Valene will retreat to the soundlessness of space. Without Valene’s compassion, the stricken city is left to the mercy of Valene’s ruthless father, who denies the assistance the city needs unless it can pay for it.

As Valene’s condition worsens, Kit becomes more desperate and unleashes the full power of the alien weapon. In an instant, she is transformed into a being of cosmic power. She can acquire the knowledge and energy of anything – or anyone – she touches.

 

Excerpt:

 

CHECK ONE: ◻ Empowered ◻ Powerless

     I bite my lip. “Is it a problem I don’t have any powers?”

     The woman from HR wrinkles her nose. Must be a problem. I can’t tell. I’m no good at interviews. I’m no good at people, which is unfortunate given how many of them there are. Focus. Check the box. An interview at Great Power is a big deal, even if it’s open. I should be grateful for the opportunity. I should be terrified, but I’m not. That part of me never got switched on. Maybe it never got installed. Doesn’t matter. I can’t afford to be afraid; I’ve got to find a job, and soon. If I don’t, Ma and I will be out on the street.

     “Generally, we employ Empowered,“ she says, and a stray lock of her hair levitates back in line with the rest. Telekinetic. Not telepathic, though; I probably wouldn’t have made it this far. “But some powerless work here. You can have superpowers, but not a brain.”

     “I have a brain,” I say. “Probably goes without saying.”

     “You’d be surprised.” She takes my application. “What is it you scrap and salvage?”

     Good thing she can’t read minds. “Anything.”

     A constant stream of people flows past me through the atrium of the Blackwood Building, one of the greatest engineering wonders in the world. The tower is a giant glass music box, all its floors, stairwells and elevator shafts exposed within a transparent shell free of any obvious architectural support. This woman frowning through my interview sees right through me, I think, but there’s no wonder.

     “You didn’t go to college?”

     I sit up straight. Smooth out the wrinkles in this blouse I thought was decent leaving the apartment, but now feels like someone else’s skin. “My dad died. My mom… I take care of her. It’s just the two of us. So a job here would be – ”

     “I don’t live over there,” she says, wiggling her fingers toward the west, “but I’d think at twenty-seven, you’d have a lot more experience than you do. Retail. Something.”

     I’ve loads of experience. Most of it doesn’t go on a resume. “Jobs are hard to come by across the river.”

     “Your accent. What is that?”

     My lips twist together. “My mother is Irish.”

     “I was going to say. I didn’t think there were, you know.” She wiggles her fingers again. “Black Irish.”

     “Do you have a pen? You’ll need to sign an NDA.”

     She smiles. Sort of. “What brought her over?”

     “I suppose she thought she was going to get a job here.”

     The woman puts on one of those smiles people wear, meant to convey sympathy. “What was your name again?”

     “Kit.”

 

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About Darby Harn:

Darby Harn is the author of the forthcoming novel EVER THE HERO. His fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Interzone and other venues. He graduated from the University of Iowa and studied in the Irish Writing Program at Trinity College, in Dublin. 

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