I texted back, “I’m awake.”
It had barely been sent when my phone began to buzz. I took the call.
“Hey, Nick!” Cassie answered with her normal level of energy—high. She didn’t sound like she was faking it.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly more aware that the wooden chair I sat in lacked cushions. “So what’s going on?” Continue reading Precision: Part 3
Despite the new details, we’d collected, there wasn’t much to do in the van, and we all left for our respective rooms—within limits anyway. Vaughn, Courtney, Haley, and I all lived in the biggest dorm on campus, and so we walked together. Haley and I broke off from the rest to talk about next weekend—which wasn’t a Stapledon weekend—planning to spend some time together.
Vaughn and Courtney talked a bit as they walked off, but I doubted that they talked for long. Their rooms were on opposite sides of the dorm.
When I finally walked through my own door, I found Jeremy working through physics homework at his desk, laptop open, his screen lighting his face.
I finished the homework I had left and then used my laptop to review the speedster sightings the bots had detected so far. It was just the two I’d found out about on the way back, but in both cases, they started on the southeast side of the city. More interesting, they came in view of my spybots within half a mile of each other. Continue reading Precision: Part 2
A few people laughed, but Amy stopped moving, expression blank, finally managing to say, “That’s the plan.”
Samita stood up and walked up to the front. Dressed in a green blouse and khaki pants, it was one of the few times I’d seen her out of costume. With black hair and brown skin, she looked like she might be from southeast Asia, and her parents were. She’d been born in the US.
She stood in front of the group as Amy moved to the side and stood next to the wall. Samita’s eyes darted from one of us to another. In combination with the straightness of her stance, she gave the impression of a highly motivated student hoping for an “A.” Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 6
As the bright light faded, the first men entered the room, pistols drawn. They were dressed in black suits, none of them unusual, but seen all together, they were obviously the same design.
She didn’t see them for long.
A bolt of reddish tinged lightning surged forward from Giles Hardwick’s hands, and the men fell forward, unconscious, or dead.
“Careful with that,” Joe turned away from the dimensional gateway’s control panel to give Giles a look. “They’re not going anywhere if you short out the system.”
The next man stepped over the bodies, pistol in hand, and a web of red floating in front of him. Continue reading Bloodmaiden: Part 15
Moments later, three more people came through the door. The first two were teenagers—a boy and a girl, holding hands. The boy wore a sporty blue jacket made of wyvern leather in a style that had been popular at Court last year. He was short—only a little taller than the girl who came in with him—and his brown hair went down to his shoulders, a style that was still popular.
His eyes darted from one spot to another in the room, and he grinned as he took it all in.
A low murmuring came from the voices in her head when she saw the girl. Blonde, blue eyed and pale skinned, the girl wore a brown leather coat and pants—the kind Amy had seen in illustrations of colonists and frontiersmen. From her clothes alone, it was obvious to Amy that this person didn’t care about fashion at all, but that was the least of it.
The girl’s ears had a slight point, and her walk hinted at a physical strength that didn’t fit with her slim frame. Continue reading Bloodmaiden: Part 14
I clicked on the email.
All it said was “You know what to do,” and underneath that sentence there was a link to a Dropbox folder. I hesitated for a moment and then clicked on it. It opened to a web page that listed only one file in folder. It was called “Exposure.mpv.”
I’d heard of the video format. It only ran on the associated player and only worked once. No one knew who had designed it. The Double V forums were certain it was a known tech genius, but couldn’t agree on who.
Daniel’s bed creaked, and I heard him walk up behind me as I sat at the desk. “Maybe we should get Izzy. It’s only going to play once, and she’s got a great memory for sounds.” Continue reading Faerieland: Part 48
Izzy shot into the air, moving so quickly that she was nothing more than a blue blur. She hit the dragon’s wing at the joint where the small inner wing ended and the larger, triangular far end of its bat like wing began.
The bone made a crack that was audible to all of us below.
Izzy didn’t stop there. She followed it up with another punch that I didn’t see, but found its mark.
Artaxus stopped breathing fire and snapped at her, twisting his neck around. He failed to catch her. She’d shot upward again, hovering far above him. Continue reading Faerieland: Part 37
Touching my palms with the fingers of my gloves, I typed back, “Named Artaxus. He’s a dragon. Don’t look in eyes. Mind control.”
Rachel texted back, “Fuck.”
Amy and the dragon were still talking. I typed, “Need to get outside. Bad to fight here. Because fire.”
Kind of have a plan, Daniel thought to me. Amy’s about to suggest we talk outside. If he doesn’t buy it, we run.
That’s a bad plan, I thought back. Continue reading Faerieland: Part 36
I looked over at Daniel. “Do you know what’s going on out there? We have a plan, but all we know is that everybody is outside in the park. We were basically going to take out the leaders and go on from there, but we didn’t include dragons in the plan.”
Not giving Daniel a chance to reply, Haley asked, “And why aren’t they coming to investigate all the noise?”
Cassie looked toward the hole in the wall, into the shop, and (I’m assuming) out of the shop’s front. “She’s right. They’re not.”
Daniel closed his eyes. “Give me a second. I’ll find out.” Continue reading Faerieland: Part 34
Amy came through first, hitting the far side of the hallway with her back, or technically with her armor. Izzy came through along with her, readying another punch, her mouth curled in a snarl.
Her punch hit Amy in the jaw—she’d lost her helmet somewhere—and I heard her jaw break. Her head hit the wall hard enough that visible cracks spread out at least six feet, her red hair spreading out behind her.
The Cabal’s soldiers were tough, but I’d seen them die. If Izzy kept on hitting like that, Amy wouldn’t be able to stand up to it. Besides, however Amy siphoned off other people’s powers, she might not have gotten the total package. Continue reading Faerieland: Part 33