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I didn’t fall asleep at school the next day, but I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, making me more withdrawn than usual.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.
The water didn’t help at all.
Both Grandpa’s design and my redesign assumed that the flying bots would be operating outside and made them water resistant, but they were still small. Getting hit knocked them to one side or another, making the swarm move more slowly because of the constant course adjustments.
That meant that they didn’t instantly leave the steel beams near the ceiling of the gym where I’d sent them earlier. It also meant that that Logan, Dayton, and Jody fought longer than they might have after I summoned the roachbots.
That gave Jody time to try some different attacks — a lot of them, actually, thanks to his speed.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 12
The chaperone backed away from the table as Logan, now considerably furrier, looked at him as if he were the snack.
A brush cut, blond guy I’d seen talking to Logan said, “Logan? Hey! Are you in there? Leave the guy alone.”
Joshua. That was the guy’s name.
He pushed his way around the table, standing between Logan and the chaperone. If Joshua hoped to intimidate Logan, I couldn’t see how it would work. The guy stood only a few inches taller than Haley, and she was only five feet tall.
He pulled a flask out of an inside pocket in his tuxedo jacket and chugged a few swallows.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 11
South High had money.
Unlike Central High, my high school, South had a new building built in the late 1990’s during better economic times. It looked more like an office building. Think gleaming mirrored windows, white walls, and beautifully landscaped lawns. Of course, in the middle of February lawns were a memory. Snow covered them to a depth of about a foot.
I parked my mom’s car in South’s parking lot, which, I couldn’t help but note, was definitely better plowed than our lot.
Continue reading Bullies and Counselors: Part 1