I didn’t stop trying to fix the arm, but it would be hard to imagine a worse week to try to fix it than my last week of high school ever.
I didn’t get back to working on things on Monday night because the whole family got talking. With Grandpa and Grandma Klein visiting from Minnesota, that happened easily. Grandpa had taught cultural anthropology at the University of Minnesota, worked for the U.N. in the 1960’s, and had friends all over the world. Continue reading Graduation: Part 23
The next day at school, it occurred to me that I should have been more scared after receiving that message.
I can’t say that I wasn’t scared at all, but I didn’t freak out. Marcus and I called Isaac Lim, and the FBI traced the call to a payphone somewhere near Nashville. It surprised me that Prime could even find a payphone.
I mean, seriously, who uses them? Continue reading Graduation: Part 3
“Accelerando,” I said, “They’ve got people on top of the Meijers.”
“Go,” Jaclyn said. “Night Wolf, Ghost, let’s head over there.”
I didn’t wait to see what happened. I shot across the road, weaving to make myself a less of a target, and keeping low.
The parking lot passed in blur of dark cars.
Continue reading Counterattack: Part 9
On Monday, when I went back to school, I couldn’t help but notice that all the members of Justice Fist seemed to be tired.
I’d have put it down to them spending a lot of time by Lucas bedside, except I hadn’t seen any of them when we were there. And really, I only saw Jody, Dayton, and Sean. They were walking ahead of me in the hall. Sean had ditched the crutches, but he still limped a little on the leg where I kicked him.
He limped a little more that day.
Continue reading Counterattack: Part 6
Pieces of metal dropped out of the air. An engine block landed twenty feet away from me and bounced, smacking into the scrap pile, then bouncing off it and rolling to a stop.
Insulting a guy with magnetic powers in middle of a metal scrap yard might not have been a good idea.
Continue reading Dupes: Part 7
Daniel drove us to HQ and we suited up.
I got into the full Rocket suit because Sean apparently hadn’t realized that the stealth suit was also a Rocket suit at Meijers. I’d told him, but better to make things completely unambiguous if we were going to hunt him down and pretend to be voices of authority.
Continue reading Dupes: Part 6
Haley turned around and started walking back toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“They can’t do that. They don’t have any right to tell us what to do.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “She’ll probably make you turn around again. Or something worse.”
Continue reading Dupes: Part 4
On Saturday morning around 6 a.m., I drove the Ball over to Man-machine’s lair. It was far too early to get up for a Saturday, but it was the best time to go.
Taking the Ball apart turned out to be a bit of a pain. Chris and I kept on discovering new wires and cables to detach from the back of the dashboard, but then we discovered an access panel for the weaponry on the outside of the Ball.
Granted when you’re making weaponry for supervillains, making access panels clear and obvious probably isn’t the highest priority, but I still wished it had been a little higher up on the designer’s list.
Continue reading Dupes: Part 3
We spent the next few days bugging the houses and cars of any family members Vaughn thought had connections to his family’s medical interests or worked in medicine.
Giles Hardwick, Vaughn’s grandfather, had had five kids and they’d each had two or three children of their own. Plus, he had a brother and two sisters and they’d had children and grandchildren too. Not all of them stayed in Grand Lake, but by the time we were done on Wednesday night, we’d bugged twenty different people.
Continue reading Decisions: Part 7
I drove Haley to her home, but ended up staying for a couple hours after that.
I left there just before eleven, dropping off the car back at HQ, and making it home on time for curfew. Then I read a book for a few more hours, and went to bed around two in the morning.
I didn’t fall asleep at school the next day, but I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, making me more withdrawn than usual. I took notes, ate lunch by myself, and stayed away from people.
This had one practical result. I didn’t know where any of my friends were going to be after school, making it hard for me to bum a ride home. That wouldn’t ordinarily have been a problem except that it started to rain during the last period, and didn’t stop when school let out.