Dixie didn’t stay to talk after that. She dived over the ledge, flew down two floors to rescue Destruction Boy, and left through the hole on the third floor.
As her feet left the ledge, I activated the roachbots I’d released earlier. They had a chance to catch her.
Jaclyn appeared out of the stairwell, and leaned over the edge of the walkway, watching them go.
Continue reading Under 30: Part 17
I barely saw him leave—just a blur of green and white. Jody followed, running away so quickly he might as well have teleported.
Out of the corner of my eye, Jaclyn appeared in the air, arcing upward, and landing at the edge of a third floor cell as I flew in. We both skidded to a stop on the floor, ripping the brown carpet.
Dayton stood on the walkway, past the shattered remains of the wooden door and its frame. He began to turn his head back toward us, probably noticing the noise, but even as he did, his eyes widened, and he began to pull himself over the metal railing.
I couldn’t see if he made it because fire filled my vision except for a string of errors from the suit’s readouts, all of which could be summarized by the phrase, “It’s getting too hot.” Continue reading Under 30: Part 15
I sent everybody a red, and a message. Then I ran back to the lab, and started to put on the Rocket suit.
I’d spent a lot of time fixing and modifying the Rocket suit that summer, but I hadn’t spent much time figuring out how to get it on faster. You know how the armor comes from all directions and attaches itself in the Iron Man movies? I needed that.
The portable briefcase version wouldn’t have hurt either. Continue reading Under 30: Part 14
I didn’t stop trying to fix the arm, but it would be hard to imagine a worse week to try to fix it than my last week of high school ever.
I didn’t get back to working on things on Monday night because the whole family got talking. With Grandpa and Grandma Klein visiting from Minnesota, that happened easily. Grandpa had taught cultural anthropology at the University of Minnesota, worked for the U.N. in the 1960’s, and had friends all over the world. Continue reading Graduation: Part 23
The next day at school, it occurred to me that I should have been more scared after receiving that message.
I can’t say that I wasn’t scared at all, but I didn’t freak out. Marcus and I called Isaac Lim, and the FBI traced the call to a payphone somewhere near Nashville. It surprised me that Prime could even find a payphone.
I mean, seriously, who uses them? Continue reading Graduation: Part 3
“Accelerando,” I said, “They’ve got people on top of the Meijers.”
“Go,” Jaclyn said. “Night Wolf, Ghost, let’s head over there.”
I didn’t wait to see what happened. I shot across the road, weaving to make myself a less of a target, and keeping low.
The parking lot passed in blur of dark cars.
Continue reading Counterattack: Part 9
On Monday, when I went back to school, I couldn’t help but notice that all the members of Justice Fist seemed to be tired.
I’d have put it down to them spending a lot of time by Lucas bedside, except I hadn’t seen any of them when we were there. And really, I only saw Jody, Dayton, and Sean. They were walking ahead of me in the hall. Sean had ditched the crutches, but he still limped a little on the leg where I kicked him.
He limped a little more that day.
Continue reading Counterattack: Part 6
Pieces of metal dropped out of the air. An engine block landed twenty feet away from me and bounced, smacking into the scrap pile, then bouncing off it and rolling to a stop.
Insulting a guy with magnetic powers in middle of a metal scrap yard might not have been a good idea.
Continue reading Dupes: Part 7
Daniel drove us to HQ and we suited up.
I got into the full Rocket suit because Sean apparently hadn’t realized that the stealth suit was also a Rocket suit at Meijers. I’d told him, but better to make things completely unambiguous if we were going to hunt him down and pretend to be voices of authority.
Continue reading Dupes: Part 6
Haley turned around and started walking back toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“They can’t do that. They don’t have any right to tell us what to do.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “She’ll probably make you turn around again. Or something worse.”
Continue reading Dupes: Part 4