I did the only thing I could think of. I ordered the power interface to cut off the power, but on the off chance that the tablet had a bomb inside, I did it while running for the exit and shutting the door behind me.
Theoretically, given the size of the tablet, it might not be much of a bomb, but I knew what Cassie’s gun could do. I remembered the bodies of the frogmen on the roof of a building in Washington D.C. It hadn’t been pretty and if push came down to it, if I had to come up with a species most likely develop a golfball-sized hydrogen bomb (or worse), the Abominators would have been high on my list of candidates. Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 4→
I felt her queasiness as her words echoed in my head. “No, I don’t remember you ever saying, ‘Hey Cassie, the True have your face.’ I think I’d have remembered that.”
“We just found out. I thought we passed it on. With everything going on, I really don’t remember. It’s not just you though. They also based them on Emmy, the receptionist, and also Stephanie. She was at Stapledon.”
Stepping over to the body and staring down at it, Cassie held up her hand as if waving my comment away even as my implant reminded me that I had passed it on. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 20→
“I’ve got fifteen Protection Force people following me. They can’t keep up, but I think one of them might have an Abominator weapon and I think he might catch me.”
Kayla’s voice came over the comm. “Should I have your repair pods cover you?”
I thought about it. “Yes, but don’t start firing yet.”
On the off-chance that Lim would have a chance to look at the video, I started it all uploading. At the same time, I found that I didn’t like the coincidence at all. Lim was unavailable on the night where it happened that we were going into Higher Grounds’ offices?
Lim had a habit of being sent into situations where he couldn’t talk. That wasn’t unusual. It seemed inevitable when you considered that a big part of his job was acting as a government liaison too superheroes. All the same, knowing that the Nine had infiltrated the FBI made me worry. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 2→
“It’s complicated,” I said, and after a pause to put the story together in my head, I told her about Sandy and Emmy, Victor, the birthing chamber, the ansible, and the walk down the beach. I didn’t mention everything Kals had told me because if there were ever a time to go into that, it wasn’t now.
“So, basically,” I finished, “now everyone’s going to believe we’re an item or want to be.”
Jeremy looked up from grabbing two more pieces of pepperoni pizza. “I did my internship this summer at a physics lab near Chicago. I’m pretty sure nobody was having sex with anybody there and if they were, I don’t want to imagine it.” Continue reading Deeper In: Part 4→
“I guess,” I said. “I think she’s on our side, but she kind of tricked me into doing what she wanted. I think I’d have been just as uncomfortable with having people think I was cheating on Haley if I’d known she was setting that up. She could have asked me.”
Vaughn glanced right and moved his car into the right lane, roaring past the three cars that had been ahead of us, hitting close to ninety miles per hour as he did it.
On a Saturday morning, the freeway would have been almost empty, but this was Friday around 7 pm in the middle of the city during one of the last weekends of summer.
There were cars—not as many as rush hour, but more than Saturday morning. Vaughn weaved back into the middle lane and I reminded myself that he’d only ever crashed cars when he was drinking and driving. Continue reading Deeper In: Part 3→
“They’re okay with that?” It seemed like something I could ask. The Galactic Alliance requirement that we couldn’t copy their technology had passed into general knowledge.
Dr. Strazinsky nodded. “The aliens aren’t as concerned about the math as the technology. I like to think that I’m exploiting a loophole in the system. Don’t tell anybody. The administration might get nervous.”
I thought about that. I’d heard of people doing that kind of thing in STEM courses. Our scientists and engineers seemed to be more bothered by the Alliance’s version of Star Trek’s Prime Directive than your average guy. Continue reading For His Own Good: Part 3→
When the dust settled, a flash of blue light brought me back to the Heroes’ League’s headquarters. I appeared on their starplate, a small version of the ones I’d destroyed. Control looked up from the controls to smile at me. “It’s over. All their gateways are gone.”
Then she stopped smiling. “Could you maybe step off the starplate? I’ve got to turn it off and I don’t want to accidentally send you somewhere, or worse, send part of you somewhere.”
Railgun flipped through channels on the big screen. The local NBC News 10 already had the flying dinosaur in view of its helicopter, but that wasn’t all. Many of the cable news stations followed the same feed. It wasn’t the News 10 feed.
One station labeled it as “Invaders Live Feed.”
I checked on internet news sites. The invaders were making the feed available online. They were that confident of destroying us? What else did they have? Continue reading A Day in The Life: Part 15→
“I hope my personnel files made entertaining reading,” I told him.
“Listening,” he said. “And I didn’t do it simply to invade your privacy. I needed to know how you’d handle it if the unexpected came up. It happens frequently around here. Now though, I need your answer. We’ll need more people in the next fight and I have an idea about how your specific power can help us.”
Ideally, a journalist reports the truth and nothing more. Everyone knows that perfect objectivity is impossible, but you try your best because the alternative is worse. I knew that, and I also knew that I could never be truly objective about people I’d fought beside.
