Even though my life didn’t get immediately stranger as a result, the “national discussion” of the problem got heated. Some people hailed the unnamed leaker as a hero standing up against the potential for government tyranny. Other people described the person as a traitor who had endangered national security out of misguided idealism.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats had a consistent party line.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 4
I was about to explain when the news scanner program started beeping at me. I sent the results to the big screen on the wall.
Titles of articles that linked to websites cascaded down half the screen. The other half showed pictures of ongoing news stories on all major networks. I clicked through them, staying just long enough to get the gist of how each one was reporting the story.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 3
How do you respond to that? Saying, “How cool. Would you mind showing me your grandfather’s lair?” seemed a little off somehow. The question I really wanted to know the answer to, “So are you planning to build a new set of armor and hunt down the Rocket in revenge?” didn’t seem quite like the right thing to say either.
Keith and Courtney didn’t share my hesitation.
“So they’re just giving you his stuff?” Keith talked loudly enough that people at the tables around us looked in his direction.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 2
A lot of people care about superheroes. They’re cultural icons. Like fashion, movies or television, heroes bring back memories of the times they caught the public imagination. For most people, the Allies’ and Axis’ super soldier units will be forever associated with World War 2, the Grand Lake Heroes League with the 1950’s and 1960’s, Wonder Eye with the 1970’s, and grim anti-heroes (like Vengeance) with the late 80’s and beyond.
Some people go beyond caring and into obsession — we’re talking much more than following their favorite hero’s exploits in the paper and buying merchandise. I’m thinking about Keith and his girlfriend Courtney who were the biggest fans of Guardian I’d ever met.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 1
We managed to escape reporters only because crossing the street had gotten Brooke out of range of the devices that stopped her from opening a gate.
We couldn’t go immediately because we couldn’t leave the mech operator — both because Alex wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and because we didn’t want the mech operator to wake up and run off.
The Defenders took out the remaining Syndicate L people within a couple minutes. Blue Streak and several SWAT teams arrived while they were still fighting and joined in.
Continue reading Three: Part 17
When the brightness and the thundering boom of the explosion ended, I saw that the guitar’s charge had turned a chunk of the mech’s chest into a smoking ruin.
It fell backwards, crashing onto the street.
The left arm beat the ground with jerky flailing motions. The shell muffled the sound of screaming, but I could still hear it.
“Oh God, oh God, it hurts…”
Continue reading Three: Part 16
“Lumbering” wasn’t quite the word to use though.
It looked slow and clumsy, but it moved. Within seconds it had gotten past the piles of concrete on the street and caught up to us. It swiped at a line of Jennys with its arm, knocking some of them over, hitting others hard enough that Jenny discorporated them, probably just to stop the pain.
A few more Jennys appeared to replace the ones that were gone, but not as many as there had been. I noticed that none of the new ones had copies of my guitar and all of them seemed tired.
Continue reading Three: Part 15
They were in front of the building but beginning to run down the street. I landed next to them.
I ran around a couple Jennys to join the core of the group.
“This is bad,” I said. “They’ve got snipers and supers on the shops over there and a giant robot hiding off to the side of the Syndicate L’s building. Can you teleport yet?”
Continue reading Three: Part 14
So we had a plan. Now all we had to do was successfully execute it.
Until Jenny and I had the ability to move, however, we couldn’t do anything but wait and listen.
I heard the voice I remembered from the video talking to Raptor again.
Continue reading Three: Part 13