Tag Archives: Haley

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 5

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Next to me, Haley paused as she’d been turning back toward the dashboard. “A pretty good time?”

Lee smiled wider. “The best. In moments like that people stop worrying about how you get things done. They need it done, and they don’t have time to care how. Say you have a Skerrish battle station orbiting the planet. Normally you’d try to talk them into leaving, but if you’re in the middle of a battle, barely anyone cares if you ram them with one of their own heavy cruisers. As long as the battle station’s out of the fight, no one complains.”

Haley turned back to the dashboard without saying anything, and we took the jet out the underwater airlock into Lake Michigan, the engines humming as we traveled underwater. Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 5 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 4

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“That, and I suppose when you kill as many people as he has, the enemies add up.” Plus he wasn’t exactly nice about it. The few times I’d seen him fight outside of training, he’d pushed people’s buttons deliberately.

That’s the kind of guy who would end up on the run from his entire species, leaving them pissed off enough that they destroyed any planet they found him on. Granted, it wasn’t just because of that, but it put things in perspective.

Normally they committed genocide over the long term. When they found he’d influenced a planet, they did it immediately.

“Exactly. You need someone to balance out the crazy.” She sounded amused.

Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 4 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 3

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By Wednesday night I had a response from the Xiniti—yes. I could take the League “jet” to the jump gate and go through their logs. They’d be happy to help investigate. In fact, they were already doing so on their own.

Not that they told me so directly. Lacking an official Xiniti email address, I’d emailed Isaac Lim, and he’d sent it on through appropriate channels. I had no idea how much bureaucracy “appropriate channels” involved, but the impression I got from Lim was “too much.”

Whatever the case, I’d gotten my reply within twenty-four hours of asking Agent Lim, so I wasn’t in a position to complain. At least I wasn’t in a position to complain about that. I was in a position to complain about what they’d done with the Xiniti’s reply.

Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 3 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 7

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Then Travis turned his attention back to Daniel’s dad. “OK, you said that your dad, the Mentalist saw this coming. What did he see?”

Quickly shaking his head, Mindstryke said, “It’s not exactly like that. For my dad, Daniel, and I, precognition comes without a lot of control at first. Seconds in the future are easiest. Everything else comes unasked for, but over time you become better at directing it. The problem is that there isn’t just one future, there’s an infinite number. Some of the differences aren’t much, but they’re there.

“My dad got to the point that he could see futures as collections of connected events, and even look for specific outcomes. He gave us patterns of events we should look for and a few spots where we can intervene. Mostly though, we can’t. We guess it’s because you’ll become too reliant on us, and unprepared when you need to handle things yourselves.

“And that leads us to today. We were going to wait on handing over direct control to you, but we can’t. You’ve just gotten too much attention. As of now, the League’s business issues need you to have the power to make decisions. We won’t have time to handle it. The staff doesn’t have the authority.”

“The staff?” Travis sounded confused. “The only staff I know about is Kayla.”

Continue reading Spin: Part 7 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 5

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By the time our food came, anyone who had wanted an autograph had one. There weren’t that many people in the restaurant after all.

A fair number of them pointed phones in our direction. It didn’t make me feel better. It’d be really annoying if one of us accidentally used a real name. We’d probably see it all over the internet in hours.

Daniel’s voice popped into my head. It gets worse. One of them already called a television station, and they’re sending out a reporter.

What? It was all I could do not to say it out loud. Why didn’t you say something?

It’s no big deal, Daniel said. The nearest TV station is half an hour from here. Our food should be here sooner.

Hoping that no one thought to bribe the cooks, I looked over the room again, and didn’t see anything unusual. Continue reading Spin: Part 5 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 4

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Quickly Haley said, “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but were you planning on going in costume? I don’t think any of us have real clothes along.”

I thought about that, imagining going into restaurant as we were. For all I knew, Izzy might sometimes use what she was wearing as workout clothes. Plus, eating with the Rocket suit’s helmet on was possible, but ugh…

Then I said, “Do you think IHOP does take out?”

She said, “Nick, everybody does take-out.” She straightened up in her seat. “So let’s go. I’m hungry too.”

From behind us, Cassie said, “Good. Because if you were going to say that we shouldn’t get food, I was really going to argue.”

Continue reading Spin: Part 4 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 3

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Mindstryke nodded. “She’s right, but it’s not going to be all bad. It’ll be hard to deal with at first, but it could be worse.”

He glanced to the right, toward something off camera. When his eyes were on us again, he said, “You’ve just experienced what would be a life changing event for some capes. You stopped St. Louis from being destroyed and did it with minimal loss of life. If you want, you’ll be interviewed every day of the week. People will want to pay you thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars for product endorsements. You’ll be celebrities.”

He stopped, gave a sigh, and continued. “I’ve known a lot of people who used events like this to change careers. They stayed in just far enough that they were visible vigilantes, but they spent the rest of their time being ‘the man who saved St. Louis.’” Continue reading Spin: Part 3 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 2

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I stared at the screen. “The board? As in the League’s board or the Defenders’?”

Mindstryke shook his head. “Not the Defenders’ board, the League’s. But that’s for later. Right now I’d like you to explain what happened from the point where you first became aware this was possible through to your response.”

We did. Rachel told him about first hearing about the possibility in Infinity City. I described how I’d recognized a clue after months of searching. Then everybody explained their individual part in the plan.

He nodded as we talked, no longer smiling, but taking notes, and asking questions.

After we were done, he said, “Ok, I’ll summarize this, and then we’ll go over what to talk about and what to skip if someone asks you about it.

Continue reading Spin: Part 2 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 1

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Haley landed the jet in the parking lot between the storage building and the factory.

We’d arrived less than an hour before, and aside from a little debris from the bombs, it didn’t look much different. It was lighter (past the factories and warehouses, the eastern sky glowed), and the tornado sirens were still going, but it was close to the same.

An inch of snow still covered the ground, and the temperature felt cold—if not as cold as Michigan.

For that matter, all the buildings that had been standing when we arrived were still standing. The ones that weren’t visible from here.

Still, it felt like we’d been there a week.

Continue reading Spin: Part 1 →

Arc 5.8: Chance & Fate

Chance & Fate: Part 11

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Tapping my fingers on my palms, I brought up our group’s location. Daniel and Izzy’s location came up as “Unknown”—which didn’t necessarily mean that they were dead. It could mean that the bomb had kicked out enough of an EMP that it killed their comms.

For that matter, if their signal came through, I realized, it didn’t necessarily mean that they were alive.

The thought that I needed to include people’s health in the next iteration didn’t distract me enough. I was still aware that Izzy and Daniel might both be dead or near to it.

The bombs weren’t nuclear, but they obviously included materials that I wasn’t familiar with. Even if they were only briefly radioactive or poisonous, they could still kill.

Then Daniel and Izzy’s status flickered from red to green. A good sign.

Continue reading Chance & Fate: Part 11 →