Bits of light sparkled around the end of the barrel. I waited to see if it did it again. It didn’t.
Good. Then I didn’t have to put it back in the locker.
I put on a little speed, and joined everyone else by the jet. Haley had touched the door, and it opened, lowering to the ground, and altering to become a short stairway.
Sean looked down at the gun and said, “What’s that? You looked like you were talking to it.”
Not even waiting for me to answer, he reached out to take it.
It fired.
I got on my stationary bike, and ignored Sean. I didn’t have anything to say to him.
As the woman in scrubs taped sensors to my arm and chest, and after she’d explained to me what I had to do, I turned to Jenny. “I saw Brooke before I met my adviser. I don’t know where she is now.”
From the row of bikes behind me, Brooke said, “Back here.”
I turned toward her voice and saw her. “Hi. I didn’t notice you.” Continue reading TBD: Part 9
The rest of the week went by in a blur, and we spent most of it in the hotel. We did take a couple field trips—probably to make it seem like we were a normal bunch of students visiting Chicago. During one field trip we went to the Field Museum.
For the other, we toured the Midwest Defenders’ Chicago headquarters.
We got a more thorough tour than most groups, but the Defenders were all out on an emergency. That was okay. As much as I missed seeing Daniel’s dad as Mindstryke, and liked most of the other members of the team, Guardian still made me feel incompetent. Continue reading TBD: Part 7
I didn’t even think about what I’d be hitting. I fired, holding the button down even though I knew it used more power.
I don’t think I panicked, but I can’t say I was thinking clearly.
Being rushed by someone who you know can kill you does that. Continue reading Targets: Part 24
Haley parked the car by the side of the road. As we got out, I couldn’t help but notice who wasn’t there–Jaclyn, Cassie and Julie. And that sucked because Cassie could have chopped them to pieces, Julie could have told them to stop, and had a pretty good chance that they’d listen, and Jaclyn…
Jaclyn could have done something. Physically, she was the only one of us who was in Prime’s army’s league. Plus she was a whole lot faster than any of them.
I couldn’t say that we were doomed, but part of me would have felt better knowing they were with us.
Continue reading Targets: Part 22
“Ask him if he can use the underwater entrance,” I told Cassie.
I was pretty sure the Defenders’ jets could.
Cassie passed it along.
“Right,” Alex said, “I remember that from when I was a kid.”
Continue reading Targets: Part 13
“You’re missing something though,” Vaughn said. “You’ve got to remember that Uncle Russ is still Lucas’ dad. They don’t always get along, but I can’t imagine Lucas totally working against him. The guy you’d want for something like that is Sean. He wouldn’t care about going against his parents at all, and with Sean you’d get Dayton and Jody for sure.”
I was about to say something, but Haley spoke first. “But if they do it, Ray and his whole team will kill everybody. That’s what they always do to supers. Everybody knows that.” Continue reading Graduation: Part 17
We managed to escape reporters only because crossing the street had gotten Brooke out of range of the devices that stopped her from opening a gate.
We couldn’t go immediately because we couldn’t leave the mech operator — both because Alex wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and because we didn’t want the mech operator to wake up and run off.
The Defenders took out the remaining Syndicate L people within a couple minutes. Blue Streak and several SWAT teams arrived while they were still fighting and joined in.
Continue reading Three: Part 17
When the brightness and the thundering boom of the explosion ended, I saw that the guitar’s charge had turned a chunk of the mech’s chest into a smoking ruin.
It fell backwards, crashing onto the street.
The left arm beat the ground with jerky flailing motions. The shell muffled the sound of screaming, but I could still hear it.
“Oh God, oh God, it hurts…”
Continue reading Three: Part 16
“Lumbering” wasn’t quite the word to use though.
It looked slow and clumsy, but it moved. Within seconds it had gotten past the piles of concrete on the street and caught up to us. It swiped at a line of Jennys with its arm, knocking some of them over, hitting others hard enough that Jenny discorporated them, probably just to stop the pain.
A few more Jennys appeared to replace the ones that were gone, but not as many as there had been. I noticed that none of the new ones had copies of my guitar and all of them seemed tired.
Continue reading Three: Part 15