We all looked at City Hall and the parking garage next to it. As seeds of humanity’s destruction went, it was unassuming. Little more than multiple floors of concrete with ornamentation styled to fit in with the buildings from the 1880s that stood around it—sort of.
It was still a big grey box.
I wasn’t sure whether the city owned the parking garage and allowed Grand Lake Parking to run it or whether Grand Lake Parking owned the building and rented the lower floors to the city on some kind of long term lease. Either way, the lower floors connected to City Hall below the ground.
Over the comm, Vaughn said, “I hope they got everybody inside because this is all for nothing if you get everyone except for one guy—like in horror movies.”
Samita replied before I could, “I told the Wizards’ Council what the zombies do and the Council said they’d figure it out.”
“Both,” Daniel said. “It’s the first place I imagined trying knowing that Bouman is now part of this mess, but then I directed my prescience at what would happen if we go there. I’m feeling the potential for things to go very badly or very well. Because the potential is so extreme, I’m thinking that it has to be the center of everything. We’ve just got to go in knowing there are no guarantees.”
“Or at least going in with as much information as we can,” I said. “I’d think that would improve our chances.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 14→
Could the mushroom zombies replace Arete’s missing parts or access his memory? The latter option would represent a major security leak both for the Defenders and the Nine.
It didn’t seem likely, but if it was possible, I didn’t like it. From what I’d seen of it, even acting collectively the zombies weren’t very smart, but if they could integrate Arete in, maybe they could be. Plus, what if they could reproduce his powers in the mushroom zombies?
We needed to end this, but we’d have to figure out where to hit it. We’d destroyed the “brain.” We’d need to figure out where the backup was or if it could operate as some kind of swarm without a center. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 9→
That’s what we needed a new mystery attacker, “Do you know what it is?”
Izzy shook her head, “I don’t even know if it’s coming in this direction. It feels extremely spread out.”
“That’s not good,” I said. “I think we need to be ready to take to the air at any second. If there’s even a hint that it might be coming this way, tell everyone.”
The curl of her lips hinted that I might have said something obvious, but she only said, “Relax, I’m watching.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 4→
Major Justice stumbled, but then recovered, putting his arm out and grabbing Arete’s shoulder, steadying himself, but putting more force into the gesture than seemed necessary.
Arete stumbled, turning his head and opening his mouth to shout something. His words made no sense to me, but my buzzer went off along with the buzzers of everyone on my team including Justice Fist—plus Major Justice.
It was too bad Major Justice hadn’t used one whenever he’d first encountered Arete, but using one now might mean Arete’s influence was waning. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 3→
My mom had been depressed and unwilling to talk about the fact that Rachel and I were following in our grandparents’ footsteps for months after her block had fallen. Of course, part of the process had included being kidnapped by Ray and the Cabal and freeing herself so that she couldn’t be used as a hostage against Rachel and me.
Linking mental manipulation with traumatic events couldn’t be good for someone. Life as a superhero was filled with traumatic events and Major Justice had to live with that.
Realizing that I had an expert on the call, I said, “Kals, if you can see this, what do you think of Major Justice?” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 2→
“You really think it’ll be easy to get him to call it off for today? From what I’ve seen so far, it was a challenge to even get him to admit we were in the earliest stages of a zombie apocalypse,” I used my HUD to take a quick look to see where we were with that.
There weren’t any nearby at all—not even among the trees. I’d adjusted the suit’s sensors to detect them and set the implant to watch for movement.
At this point, Vaughn had stopped hitting them with lightning and Amy hovered above the forest, staring downward, doubtless trying to detect them with magic much as I was with technology. Continue reading Roll the Dice: Part 18→
Jaclyn’s voice came over the comm, “Exactly that. If you’ve got something that will let me destroy them, I’ll take it. I feel useless. Building barriers is nice, but it’s not enough.”
I burned down another zombie and said, “I’m sure we’ve got something—even if it’s the Burrito Gun.”
