I wasn’t aiming the majority of goobots at her—just one. I’d aimed the rest at the other Cabal soldiers in the balcony and they worked, kind of.
As the lasers burned through the woman’s costume and into her body, one hitting her thigh and the other her torso, the goobots exploded into sticky gray stuff, hitting her as well as the two men next to her.
She collapsed into the balcony, held up by the goobots’ goo, and I stopped burning her with lasers. At the same time, the two Cabal soldiers were trying to avoid the goobots. One of them succeeded, jumping off the balcony in my direction, pulling a few bricks along with his foot—the one spot that did get hit with goo. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 12→
As Daniel stepped on the balcony, he broadcast to all of us, Something is going to happen as we leave, but staying would be worse. Be aware.
The first part of his statement was worth knowing. The last part was punctuated by another Cabal soldier crashing through the roof, landing in the living room, and partway through the floor. That brought the number of newly arrived and mobile soldiers to four. Knowing what the Cabal was like left me no temptation to stay.
I jumped out first with Yoselin following after me. We landed on the balcony and didn’t even have to smash through the balcony’s sliding door. Daniel slid both the screen door and the glass door open. Even though we’d opted to turn on our telepathy and teleportation blockers for the initial assault, Daniel’s telekinesis worked perfectly.
Thanks to the stream, I could see Master Martian’s eyes widen and his antenna shoot straight from his head as he pushed himself, stumbled, and then flew off the couch. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 9→
Telling the jet to throw the streams on screens in the passenger area so that people without implants could see them too, I announced, “This looks bad. At least one of these people is one of the True and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more. We should probably assume that, actually. The big question is if they have backup and how close it is.”
I flipped through the various accessible video streams that Hal’s friend (I guess?) had made available. There were more than I would have predicted, but most of them were either through laptops or security cameras that computers could access. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 8→
I held up my hand and waved it, “Hey everybody, Hal’s already got the location. Master Martian’s in Washington D.C. More precise information is on its way.”
Though we didn’t feel it thanks to the gravitics and inertial dampers, we could see through the windows as the jet spun around in the sky, changing direction and altitude, clouds and the blue sky a blur as the jet shot upward. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 7→
Slumping into her seat, Tara shook her head before turning to look around at the group, “I’m sorry. I need to get out of True headspace for a little while. It’s exhausting to look at the world that way even though I know we need it. We need to find Master Martian first, though, and from what I was seeing, we need to find him today. When the Dominators know we met with Bullet, they’ll go after Master Martian and maybe after the woman too.”
We followed Stephanie down the hall toward the exit while she asked us questions that pointedly weren’t about what we were doing here. Except for her hint, they didn’t make any other reference to the last time we’d been together either. I followed her lead, answering her questions and choosing not to go in directions that might make her listeners suspicious.
As we reached the room we’d first entered—the one with the big TV and the two long couches facing it—she stopped, “I heard about what Cassie’s been doing—organizing multi-team training sessions at your property in the U.P. I think you’ll find plenty of people here who will be interested in working out with you. Personally, I think you’ll want to be careful about who you invite. Some people around here hold grudges. You know how that is.”
It might not be fair to either Gifford or Hunter, but I’d never particularly liked either of them. Gifford and Gordon came from a legacy hero family, the kind that lived in private compounds and didn’t interact much with normal people. Hunter’s mother was a legacy superhero,celebrity, and superhero stage mom (from what I’d seen).
She had a reality TV show about her life in Hollywood called, “Diva!” To judge from the online commercials, Hunter and Gifford appeared sometimes.
Also, and here’s where the unfairness came in, Gifford was interested in Haley. It hadn’t caused problems because she wasn’t interested in him, but it didn’t make me like him more. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 4→
Bullet stopped wiping his face, “Who was she really? Do you know?”
“No,” Daniel continued to watch him, “we were hoping you might know. We’re guessing she’s one of the Dominators.”
Looking over at Daniel, Bullet stuffed his handkerchief back in his pants pocket, “I’m going to kill her.”
“You don’t know where she is,” Tara said, her voice level and controlled. “You haven’t seen her since and you haven’t been looking because she controlled you so completely that you never tried. What makes you think that you could?” Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 3→
The Legion of Nothing: A Series of Online Superhero Novels (Updates Monday and Thursday)
