The vision of the room’s past dissolved into the equally disturbing present.
From off to my right, Haley said, “That was… horrible.”
Next to the upstairs stairway, Travis said, “It was definitely intense. Hey, Lieutenant, did you ever talk to the guy from upstairs?”
Continue reading Legio: Part 2
Around four on Sunday afternoon, Lt. Van Kley showed Travis, Haley, Daniel, and I the dead bodies. There were three of them — two men and a woman, each of them horribly burned.
The house looked as bad inside as it had outside. Outside, it stood as an excellent example of urban decay in Grand Lake. Built in the 1920’s, the house had cracked, beige paint over wooden siding with spots of greenish moss. It sat in the middle of a neighborhood of houses almost exactly like it.
Continue reading Legio: Part 1
Haley and I listened until they finished the meeting, but they didn’t have any more bombshells. Not that anything could trump the bit where Russell Hardwick had scanned the relevant bits of Red Lightning’s version of the working Impregnator plans and was handing them out to his people.
Probably at that point, people more competent than we were would have tracked down the engineers Hardwick had assigned the job, deleted their files, recovered the original journal, and scared them away from even trying to reconstruct them.
Continue reading Dupes: Part 5
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
In my mind, I tried to get Daniel’s attention, and succeeded.
+++
Me: Don’t tell him about the Impregnator. Pass it on.
Daniel: Got it.
+++
He did, and everyone looked at me.
Continue reading Decisions: Part 11
Marcus started to show Cassie the clips, but once he started Jaclyn showed up, and then as he backed up to find the start for her, Daniel stepped out of the elevator.
We decided at that point that we were better off waiting for everybody.
Continue reading Decisions: Part 10
I called Haley and asked her if she would pick us up, and she agreed. I couldn’t think of a way to tell her about Vaughn without telling Chris indirectly, so I didn’t. Knowing my identity was one thing, but I wasn’t going to blow the whole team’s.
While we waited, we talked.
Continue reading Decisions: Part 6
“Here’s a thought,” Daniel said. “Does anybody want to nominate anybody else?”
“Looking for a nomination?” Vaughn asked.
Daniel shook his head. “No. I’m willing to do communications, but keeping track of what people are doing, using prescience to sense future attacks, blocking them with telekinesis, attacking people, passing messages, and coming up with plans all at the same time sounds overwhelming. For me, just being in a crowd can be bad.”
“I think Nick could do a good job,” Haley said.
Continue reading Decisions: Part 4
Daniel and I spent the rest of the night playing video games on the big screen. Even if the novelty had long since worn off, it beat the TV my family had at home by a long shot.
It felt good.
After a week that included being chased, attacked in my own bed, and ending a second prom night in violence, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk seemed like a simple, relaxing way to finish off the week. It was made more relaxing by sending Isaac Lim an email about the original Power’s death instead of calling him.
It couldn’t last.
Continue reading Decisions: Part 3