“I’m going to take it and let everyone listen,” Daniel continued.
He clicked a few buttons on his keyboard, and the view from his monitor appeared on the big screen, covering most of the wall.
The switchboard program showed a list of callers (ten reporters in the last five minutes) and voicemails, followed by information about the current caller. This amounted to:
Caller: Unknown
FBI Notified. Tracing…
Daniel answered, “This is the Mystic.”
Continue reading Targets: Part 10
Even the most obnoxious people will stop arguing when they know the building they’re inside is about to explode.
In theory, at least.
“What?” Julie asked.
Sean looked from me to Lucas. “You’re kidding, right?”
From behind him, Sydney said, “Sean!”
“No. And now it’s twenty-three seconds. Go!”
Above us, something in the ceiling crunched. Continue reading Targets: Part 9
I set the red alert on my communicator–not the one for the complex. That would have shut down all the entrances, and the rest of the League would need them.
From outside came the sound of screeching brakes. One of the older streets in the city, State Street ran straight into downtown from the suburbs.
Cars filled all four lanes, and between standing in the middle of the road and (in one case) getting hit by a pickup truck, the Cabal’s men had blocked three of the four.
Continue reading Targets: Part 8
We let him in, bringing Lucas up to the conference room.
He limped as he walked, sighing as he sank into the chair. “Thanks. I was going crazy standing out there. Their fliers could have come by at any time.”
Rachel and I sat down with him, but not before Rachel said, “Thirsty?”
Continue reading Targets: Part 7
After talking to Haley, I went through variations on the same conversation with Daniel, and Chris–except Chris and I also talked about getting the new armor to HQ.
I put on the stealth suit, covered it over with clothes, stuffing the helmet into the backpack that hid a mini-rocketpack, and ran to League HQ, the guitar bumping along in its cloth case on my back.
Continue reading Targets: Part 6
When the message ended, I clicked back to the communicator’s main menu to find that Daniel and Haley’s calls had made it to the League communicator too, and that they’d left messages.
Deciding that I’d have to look into why there would be a lag between the League phones and League communicators, I was about to listen to Daniel’s message when the communicator started to ping again.
It identified the caller as Lucas Hardwick.
Continue reading Targets: Part 5
We ran into the office, eyes on the security camera monitor, a flat screen hanging on the wall that showed all the entrances to the building.
Lee stood at the backdoor entrance.
Chris beeped him in.
When we got him downstairs, I asked him, “How’d you know I was here?”
“Mystic powers, and also, I called Larry, and he gave me the address.” Continue reading Targets: Part 4
“OK,” Chris said. “Let’s see what he’s got in the inventory. I don’t even know half of what’s here.”
He opened up another program, some kind of parts database, and we scrolled down the list. It felt weird at how ordinary it was. Like a whole lot of businesses out there, Man-machine’s database program appeared to be based on Microsoft Access.
Along with more typical parts categories like cables, and chassis, it included the category “weapons” with subcategories like “standard,” “lasers,” and “special.”
I didn’t recognize half the guns. The lasers included a few interesting things, but the “special” category was crazy. Continue reading Targets: Part 3
Rachel stepped inside and shut the door. “Did you happen to hear what Ray planned to do?”
Daniel shook his head. “I just got impressions. I didn’t get a chance to root around.”
We talked a little longer, but then Rachel said, “I should go. I said I’d meet Chloe in ten minutes. Call me if something happens.” Continue reading Targets: Part 2
“And there’s one more thing…”
Daniel paused, resting his left arm on my desk.
He took a breath.
“When I was listening in on his thoughts, I happened to hear him refer to you as the ‘main target.’ And you know how I can sense the major association someone has with a word? He associates ‘main target’ with money.”
“He’s here to kill me, and someone’s paying him?”
“Exactly.” Continue reading Targets: Part 1