He really could have been here to go after us, but I hadn’t seen any hint of it. Of course, if he were good at his job, I wouldn’t.
“Then we have to get him,” Cassie said.
She tapped away at the keyboard. “The sightings all seem to be ten, twenty miles north of Grand Lake. I wonder if he’s staying at a cottage?”
“In December?” I said. “Can people use them in the winter? I always thought they were summer only.”
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 4
We drove home from Lansing on Saturday afternoon. “We” in this case turned out to be Daniel, Cassie, Haley and I. Night Wolf’s car could barely hold four people, much less nine. Even though it only looked like a corvette at this point, it still didn’t have much of a back seat. We swapped seats and drivers at the halfway mark of the two hour drive.
Touring the offices of the Michigan Heroes Alliance had turned out to be every bit as interesting as touring the offices of your average lobbying firm, chamber of commerce, or business.
I was bored out of my mind.
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 3
I also didn’t feel quite comfortable with the idea. Taking advantage of the fact that my parents had the block was one thing. Installing it on Kayla (assuming that Daniel would) felt like it would cross some kind of ethical boundary.
I just wasn’t sure which one.
It seemed like there had to be something wrong with modifying a friend’s perception of reality for your personal convenience. On the other hand, one could argue that it would be for everyone’s protection — including hers.
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 2
You know what’s weird? Weird is when something you were connected with gets its own graphics and theme music on most major news channels.
I sat in League HQ surfing the web with one of the consoles at the table while I had MSNBC playing on the big screen on the wall. I had turned off the big screen’s sound, but I occasionally looked up to check the news crawl or if the main story seemed interesting.
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 1
The police came twenty minutes later. Haley had to knock the guy out three more times while we were waiting for them. We’d moved him back into his room to keep him warm while we waited — not that it made the room much warmer. I’d broken his window when he jumped me.
We had to deal with predictable issues in the meantime. The man with the camera wouldn’t leave us alone. He hung around and asked questions until the police arrived.
Continue reading Aftermath: Part 5
I’d never have looked at him twice normally.
The man behind the door had longish hair, wore jeans and a Chicago Cubs sweatshirt and seemed to be in his late 20’s or early 30’s. If I’d passed him in the street, I might have noticed that he seemed more fit than the average guy, but I might not.
At this moment, the main thing I noticed was that he was holding a metal flask in his hand. He placed it somewhere off to the left of the door as he opened it.
Continue reading Aftermath: Part 4
She called me on Thursday night at 10:07 PM. I’d just finished the last of my homework, and was sitting at my desk in my bedroom thinking about what to do before going to bed.
“Nick, I know where he is.”
“He?” I said.
Continue reading Aftermath: Part 3
“Nick,” Isaac said, “I’ve got two more things for you. First of all, I’ve arranged training on how to fly the jet for any of you that want it. I’ll send you the information on that along with the evasive driving I mentioned before. Second, I need you to let me know if you’ve got any hint that Magnus or any of the Cabal’s people are in Grand Lake. Some of my people think they might drop by to remove any evidence they can from the Mayor’s house.”
“I thought you got basically everything,” I said.
Continue reading Aftermath: Part 2
With this post we start what I’ll probably call “Book 2” if I ever decide to break these up into books. What I’m going to try to do in this section is write a series of short episodes that build on each other, trying to do things with a similar speed to the Heroes League story, but with some of the interconnectedness of the “In the Public Eye” storyline. We’ll see how well it works out.
Continue reading Aftermath: Part 1