I wasn’t aiming the majority of goobots at her—just one. I’d aimed the rest at the other Cabal soldiers in the balcony and they worked, kind of.
As the lasers burned through the woman’s costume and into her body, one hitting her thigh and the other her torso, the goobots exploded into sticky gray stuff, hitting her as well as the two men next to her.
She collapsed into the balcony, held up by the goobots’ goo, and I stopped burning her with lasers. At the same time, the two Cabal soldiers were trying to avoid the goobots. One of them succeeded, jumping off the balcony in my direction, pulling a few bricks along with his foot—the one spot that did get hit with goo. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 12→
As Daniel stepped on the balcony, he broadcast to all of us, Something is going to happen as we leave, but staying would be worse. Be aware.
The first part of his statement was worth knowing. The last part was punctuated by another Cabal soldier crashing through the roof, landing in the living room, and partway through the floor. That brought the number of newly arrived and mobile soldiers to four. Knowing what the Cabal was like left me no temptation to stay.
I jumped out first with Yoselin following after me. We landed on the balcony and didn’t even have to smash through the balcony’s sliding door. Daniel slid both the screen door and the glass door open. Even though we’d opted to turn on our telepathy and teleportation blockers for the initial assault, Daniel’s telekinesis worked perfectly.
Thanks to the stream, I could see Master Martian’s eyes widen and his antenna shoot straight from his head as he pushed himself, stumbled, and then flew off the couch. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 9→
Telling the jet to throw the streams on screens in the passenger area so that people without implants could see them too, I announced, “This looks bad. At least one of these people is one of the True and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more. We should probably assume that, actually. The big question is if they have backup and how close it is.”
I flipped through the various accessible video streams that Hal’s friend (I guess?) had made available. There were more than I would have predicted, but most of them were either through laptops or security cameras that computers could access. Continue reading Old Friends & Enemies: Part 8→
Slumping into her seat, Tara shook her head before turning to look around at the group, “I’m sorry. I need to get out of True headspace for a little while. It’s exhausting to look at the world that way even though I know we need it. We need to find Master Martian first, though, and from what I was seeing, we need to find him today. When the Dominators know we met with Bullet, they’ll go after Master Martian and maybe after the woman too.”
We followed Stephanie down the hall toward the exit while she asked us questions that pointedly weren’t about what we were doing here. Except for her hint, they didn’t make any other reference to the last time we’d been together either. I followed her lead, answering her questions and choosing not to go in directions that might make her listeners suspicious.
As we reached the room we’d first entered—the one with the big TV and the two long couches facing it—she stopped, “I heard about what Cassie’s been doing—organizing multi-team training sessions at your property in the U.P. I think you’ll find plenty of people here who will be interested in working out with you. Personally, I think you’ll want to be careful about who you invite. Some people around here hold grudges. You know how that is.”
Bullet said nothing for a few seconds, but then added, “Yes. I’m part of another project now, but it’s one that I think you may already know about. I’ll send you the location. You can visit whenever you like, but give us some warning.”
I noted the “us” as he talked and wondered if I should ask more, but decided not to, “Sure. Today’s okay, right? We could be there before noon, depending on where you are.”
“I…” She stopped, “I don’t know. After everything, I have an excuse, but I know I can’t really do that. What I really want is to talk to him. After they removed him from doing anything except for a couple of combat classes one year, I never got to talk to him about everything he’d done. He nearly got me expelled from Stapledon after I was harassed by children of his friends. I never got to hear him say why he thought that was right.”
Nodding along as she spoke, Vaughn asked, “Are you looking for an apology?”
Tara shook her head, the muscles around her mouth tight. “I know better. I’ve even thought it through… dispassionately. I know it’s a waste of time. I’m not going to get anything out of him, but I still want to go.” Continue reading Memories: Part 9→
Tara paused, her expression unreadable, “But I don’t think it’s as easy as I’d guess from what we saw. From what I’ve read about the Dominators, they need more time than that to make what they’re doing permanent. Also, Bullet knew and liked the person who threw the dart and he wasn’t surprised to see her.”
“Her?” Vaughn’s smile widened, “People tell me I see women everywhere, but there was nothing in that voice that said woman to me. Well, it didn’t say ‘man’ either. It was kind of fuzzy.” Continue reading Memories: Part 8→
The Legion of Nothing: A Series of Online Superhero Novels (Updates Monday and Thursday)
