“No, I didn’t.” I’d been following the whole thing obviously, but not through the news.
Well, a little through the news, but mostly through the Michigan Heroes Alliance’s emails. The various states’ Heroes Alliance groups had come out against it.
Still, I’d originally heard about the change last spring. I wondered what took them so long.
Courtney barely gave me time to finish my sentence. “I thought they’d do something eventually, but not without more warning.”
The next day I sat down to eat breakfast with Jeremy in Hardwick Hall’s cafeteria. My first class was organic chemistry at 9 am—which seemed cruel and unusual punishment given when I went to bed.
“Organic chemistry? Don’t sophomores take that? And it’s supposed to be a hard class.” Jeremy looked up from his cereal. He’d dripped a little milk on his t-shirt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s only the first week, but it doesn’t seem that bad. I tested out of so much stuff that I’m taking everything out of order.” Continue reading Taking Control: Part 2
By the time the police took the Nine’s people away in a Box, it was already three in the morning. The fight had taken maybe ten minutes. Answering their questions took most of the time.
We never saw the helicopter that the leader—Cassie’s brother? What do you call someone who was cloned from the same person you were cloned from? Cassie had at least been raised by the original Captain Commando. It made sense if she thought of him as her dad, but for the guy we’d fought, Captain Commando wasn’t much more than an unwilling DNA donor.
Anyway, the Nine’s copter didn’t appear. The News 10 Choppercam did, but unless they were secretly controlled by the Nine, the Nine’s people must have scrubbed their mission.
That’s a long way of saying that by the time the police cars and deep sounds of the Boxes’ diesel engines faded, we’d relocated to the van I’d parked in the alley. Continue reading Taking Control: Part 1
Lightning hit the leader again, and while his body shook, the paralysis gun dropped out of his hand, falling to the roof with a clunk.
Part of me hoped it still worked by the the time I could move. I planned to grab it. A more practical side of my mind hoped it had been destroyed in the first lightning strike.
Near me, Cassie stood up, entering the edges of the helmet’s peripheral vision. She didn’t waste any time. Once she was on her feet, she ran straight at the leader as he bent over to grab the gun.
He didn’t get up easily. He pushed himself up one hand at a time, swaying as he made it up on two legs.
Taking an experimental step, he spied something on the roof, and bent over to get it—the automatic pistol. When he came up the second time, he seemed stronger. He stood up normally.
Quickly, he pointed the gun past me—probably at Vaughn.
This time the wind came up as a roaring, howling blast that drew the man into the air, and threw him off the building. Continue reading Settling In: Part 4
I tried to dive to the right, but I’d already lost control of my legs.
I crumpled, and fell to the roof of the building. I fell sideways, and then rolled halfway on to my back—”halfway” because I was mostly on my arm and right side of my back, and partly on my rocketpack. It wouldn’t let me roll all the way there.
The other guy—the only guy with an exoskeleton still standing—had pulled out a paralysis gun too. Continue reading Settling In: Part 3
Marcus followed them, lengthening his legs as he jumped, and stretching his arms to grab the ledge on the other side. His leap reminded me of a frog somehow.
If it weren’t night, I could have blamed it on his green costume. I only recognized him because I knew he was coming, and because no normal human could stretch like that.
Frog-like or not, the way his shape briefly blocked the stars made me think of Batman cartoons—which ironically brought me back to reality. Continue reading Settling In: Part 2
Even three nights later, I still found myself thinking about the conversation. I’d talked about it with Haley, (and for that matter Daniel, Cassie, and Vaughn) and we all agreed it wasn’t likely that Courtney would be able to recreate the power impregnator on her own.
Despite what you might see in the movies, being a chemistry major doesn’t automatically qualify you to construct a device that activates powers hidden in a person’s DNA.
I mean, honestly, it would have been a lot of work for me to construct one, and I had Grandpa’s documentation.
I knew that, and yet on Thursday night I lay in my bunk, staring at the ceiling, and wondering what she planned to do with her powers anyway.
She could already pass for a model. What else did she want? Continue reading Settling In: Part 1
Fifteen minutes later, she stepped out of the office, and started walking toward the hall. I waved to her, and she slowed, letting me catch up.
“Did you just see your advisor too?”
“Kind of. I got out, and then I noticed you were in there, and thought I’d say hi when you got out.”
Then I wondered if I’d been too honest. She could take that a bunch of ways ranging from “creepy stalker” to “he’s interested in me” to “just being friendly.”