The Defenders’ staff recommended a route for our approach that avoided air traffic from both O’Hare and Midway. Following their advice, I brought the jet in. Hal, an AI that specialized in predicting how best to win battles between fleets of starships, probably could have worked out a more direct route through Chicago’s many flight paths, but we weren’t in that much of a hurry.
Besides, it was best not to annoy people unless you needed to. Continue reading From Far Away: Part 4
As much as Sean wanted to argue, he knew better. He’d said so himself, “Yeah. You’re making it sound like you’re leaving.”
Mindstryke tapped the rollup screen and the end farthest from him rolled into the shape of a cylinder. Then the cylinder shrunk enough to fit into the pouch on his belt. “I am. The group of you need to talk about this and make a decision. This is your team and I’m not on it. You need to start making big decisions as a group and with this one you’ve at least got a few hours to think about it.” Continue reading The Power: Part 13
Jody looked up from the rollup screen on the table, “That name does not ring a fucking bell.”
Shaking his head, Dayton said, “I don’t know who that is either.”
Sean felt sure he’d heard the name before, but he couldn’t say where or when.
Sydney spoke up while he was still thinking, “Nick’s mentioned him. We were talking one time about the Cabal and he mentioned that Martin Magnus was someone he still hadn’t figured out.” Continue reading The Power: Part 12
With a brief hesitation, Sydney nodded, adding, “I sent it to the League’s server. You should be able to just pull it up.”
Before Sean could think, he found himself already talking, “Wait, you recorded us and put the video on the League’s server. That’s private! It’s none of their business—”
Interrupting him, she said, “It’s on my private folder on their server. I’m not sharing it with everybody—just Mindstryke. And I let the AI watch too because he was going to whether or not I said he could anyway. Besides, he said he’d help.” Continue reading The Power: Part 11
For a little while, no one said anything. Then a door opened at the end of the hall and Sydney walked into the room, blond hair bouncing on her shoulders.
She looked over at Sean, “I can’t believe that guy was real, and then how the lawyers were like ‘yeah, I know he’s crazy, but what can you do’?”
Sean blinked, “You heard all of that from your room?”
Shaking her head, she pulled out her phone, “I bugged the room.” Continue reading The Power: Part 10
Mindstryke of the Midwest Defenders (my best friend Daniel’s dad) had mixed feelings about the idea and he told me so over a video connection from the Midwest Defenders’ Chicago base.
“You never know what’s going on with a reporter. Do they have an axe to grind? Or just as bad, are they basically a stalker with a notepad?”
He shook his head. The Defenders had paid money to look good during video conferences. The window behind him looked out over Chicago’s skyline and Lake Michigan. It wasn’t really what was behind him, but you couldn’t tell the difference from here. Continue reading A Day in The Life: Part 1
Wind blew in the background, not loudly enough that I had any difficulty understanding his words, but loud enough that I knew it was there.
“It’s been a while since we last talked.” Daniel’s dad’s tenor voice came over the phone. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t have called you this early, but my wife assured me that you were up.”
Daniel’s mother wasn’t as strong a telepath as his father. Most of her abilities only worked on people who were asleep, but under the right conditions, there was no known limit to her range. If she said someone was awake, you could assume she was right. Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 2
I had to admit he made sense, but I couldn’t say I liked it.
When push came to shove, I didn’t want Sean to go to jail for killing Ray. You could argue that Ray’s standard operating procedure was driving people past what they could emotionally handle, and then killing them while they were too tortured to think straight.
It didn’t take much to see that if your strategy was based on giving people an irrational need to kill you, it could come back to bite you someday. Sean just happened to be the biter. Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 7
“Why won’t I like it?”
Sitting up a little straighter in his chair, Mr. Cohen said, “I think we need to take a step back before we talk about that. I asked for your thoughts on what happened because I think you need to hear yourself say them.
“I’m a big believer in taking a look at the whole picture. Can our legal system take care of the problem? What about letting the superhuman community handle it? And is it worth it? In my experience, you can never ask, ‘Is it worth it?’ enough.” Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 6
Unsure of what to say next, I paused.
Daniel’s dad said, “Start where you think the beginning is.”
“Well, the real beginning’s back in December when we found Ray at Haley’s family Christmas party, but that would take too long, and you could say the next beginning is when Ray killed Sean’s dad at graduation, but I think the beginning that matters was when Sean told Rachel and I that he was going to kick Ray’s ass, and beat us to the cottage…” Continue reading Turning Eighteen: Part 5