Much like in the control room, the second floor mostly stayed together. Spots of concrete fell and the nearest section of floor simply bent downward toward us, giving us a view of storage rooms.
A file cabinet slid sideways, and fell into the room, landing on the melted remains of the cloning tanks.
It would have been great if that had been the end of it.
It wasn’t, but it looked like it for a second.
Cassie lowered the gun. “Let’s get out of here.”
I thought about it a little more. No, my basic plan was still possible. We could have a rescue group and a distraction group. We just might have to join up afterward instead of having the distraction group get away quietly.
No, better yet, I thought—only risk the people who can take a lot of damage and whose powers allow them to get in and get out quickly.
“OK,” I said, “here’s the plan now that I’ve got an idea of what’s going on.”
Well, the gun shouldn’t become a problem, I told myself, not if Cassie’s around to control it.
On the other hand, I thought, you could argue that it might be even less of a problem if Cassie and every one of us completely ignored it forever. In fact, thinking about it abstractly, you could argue that Cassie’s very existence was a problem. If (as government scientists suspected) spliced in DNA caused the Abominator citizen’s mark to be written as a structure in her brain, reverse engineering it would open up the possibility of humans using truly horrible technologies.
Plus, what if aliens wanted it too for some reason? If anybody, they ought to have access to Abominator technology and the ability to remake it, right? On the other hand, Grandpa had implied that outside of their appearance on Earth, the Abominators had been gone for a while.
Then I remembered that Bullet said that the Nine had been infiltrated by aliens. Continue reading Here We Come: Part 4
We let the telepathic connection lapse, and I concentrated on flying. Specifically, I thought about the route, and whether I ought to be getting special permission. The signal had come from Canada.
Theoretically dropping by without warning could cause an international incident.
Of course, Canada got along with the US pretty well. It wasn’t as if we were going to fly into North Korea, for example.
Still, Canada had its own supers as well as an air force, and I didn’t want to run into either of them.
The flight to Ann Arbor to pick up Rachel and Jaclyn took less than 10 minutes.
We picked them up at a small lake Rachel had called “Barton Pond.” Whatever it was, it was large enough for me to find from the air, and float over while they boarded. Plus it was dark enough out that we wouldn’t be too obvious.
They were in costume. All in white, Rachel’s gun hung from her utility belt. Jaclyn’s costume was purple, as ever, and unlike anyone else on our team, she wore a mask instead of a bullet resistant hood.
Being basically invulnerable, she could do that.
As they pulled on their seat belts, Jaclyn said, “So, do we have a plan this time?”
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.
Daniel, I thought at him, Why not you?
I’ve never liked being in charge, and I’ve had to do it a lot. Besides, we all need leadership experience and you managed to avoid it when we were switching off. Plus, and this is the most important reason, you’ve been part of the whole thing from the beginning. You’ll see stuff I’ll miss unless I go through your head, and search for every last bit of related stuff.
I could see that, and I did remember him hating being put in charge of things at school. He’d gone to the only Jewish day school in the area, been the grandson of a much loved Rabbi, and was tall and good looking as well. People tended to give him more attention than he wanted.
So okay, he was right, but how was I supposed to butt into Sean and Sydney’s family fight and actually make them listen?
Haley’s voice came over the speaker. “What’s Sean doing here?”
On the monitor, both Sean and Sydney looked around, neither of them sure where Haley’s voice had come from.
The two of them stood inside a sewer pipe. The door in front of them was made of concrete covered in reinforced steel.
That wouldn’t be much of an obstacle.
Sean wore his Justice Fist costume—green except for a white triangle that had a green fist inside it. Sydney appeared to be completely covered in gray metal.
She turned her head in Sean’s direction, scowling as she said, “He wouldn’t let me go alone.”
Haley barely let him finish before jumping in. “What do you mean, ‘no?’ You’re not going to do anything. You just told us so, and we can’t leave her there.”
Guardian’s jaw tightened, and he said, “We’re going to do something, but we’re going to do it right. Even if you know where she is, and it isn’t a trap, they’ll still be expecting an attack. I’m not going to throw high school students up against Rook and possibly more of the Nine’s people. If anything, I’m going to send in experienced people. Time to stop talking, and give me her location, I’ll get as far as I can.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a part of me wanted to remind him that some of us were college students, but I doubted that arguing technicalities would get me anywhere.
I clicked for more information, and realized that it wasn’t Cassie’s new communicator sending the signal. It was her old one.
The old League had alert signals that allowed them to show status using green, yellow, and red like ours did, but didn’t allow them to send sound or pictures—just location.
They’d been great at what they could do, but I’d replaced them last spring. Continue reading Ready or Not: Part 2