We scouted it out even before we left HQ.
Prime’s men had parked in a dirt parking lot. Adjusting the roachbot’s position on the car gave us the name of the business — Perliss Manufacturing, Co. The roachbot’s GPS system gave us the exact location, and soon we were looking at it through Google Maps.
Continue reading War: Part 19
Standing at the podium, Principal Williams stopped the ceremony.
He held up his hands. “Everyone please be quiet, and stay where you are. We’ve called an ambulance, and they will need the aisles to be clear.”
Not everybody listened. Sean pushed his way out between the aisles of folding chairs, ran across the field, up one of the short stairways, and into the bleachers, joining his family.
I couldn’t blame him for that. Continue reading Graduation: Part 25
The next day at school, it occurred to me that I should have been more scared after receiving that message.
I can’t say that I wasn’t scared at all, but I didn’t freak out. Marcus and I called Isaac Lim, and the FBI traced the call to a payphone somewhere near Nashville. It surprised me that Prime could even find a payphone.
I mean, seriously, who uses them? Continue reading Graduation: Part 3
As crazy as it sounds, part of the reason people might not have been paying quite as much attention to Sean was that there were other things to think about. For example, prom was that Friday. The administration had been talking about canceling it after everything that happened with Keith’s accident, the massive number of reporters, and the abduction of Keith’s uncle, but somehow they didn’t.
What this meant on a practical level was that I still had to go. Not that that was all bad, but I was going to not one, but two proms.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 5
“That would be bad,” Daniel said, straightening as much as he could in the cramped back seat. “But,” he continued, “you’d probably know if it were someone in your family were doing that kind of thing.”
Off to my right, Haley said, “I might not. You don’t really think he’d be there, do you?”
“I don’t know.” Daniel sounded thoughtful. “There’s got to be some reason he’s coming back every year and that’s as good a reason as any. What I think we ought to do is get together some night and I could try to find him.”
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 5
I also didn’t feel quite comfortable with the idea. Taking advantage of the fact that my parents had the block was one thing. Installing it on Kayla (assuming that Daniel would) felt like it would cross some kind of ethical boundary.
I just wasn’t sure which one.
It seemed like there had to be something wrong with modifying a friend’s perception of reality for your personal convenience. On the other hand, one could argue that it would be for everyone’s protection — including hers.
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 2
You know what’s weird? Weird is when something you were connected with gets its own graphics and theme music on most major news channels.
I sat in League HQ surfing the web with one of the consoles at the table while I had MSNBC playing on the big screen on the wall. I had turned off the big screen’s sound, but I occasionally looked up to check the news crawl or if the main story seemed interesting.
Continue reading The New Heroes League: Part 1
With this post we start what I’ll probably call “Book 2” if I ever decide to break these up into books. What I’m going to try to do in this section is write a series of short episodes that build on each other, trying to do things with a similar speed to the Heroes League story, but with some of the interconnectedness of the “In the Public Eye” storyline. We’ll see how well it works out.
Continue reading Aftermath: Part 1
I caught Vaughn on the way out of the lunchroom. We didn’t have any classes together and we hadn’t eaten together lately because Cassie had been spending a lot of time with Kayla. Repairing relations, I guessed.
Vaughn had been talking with a couple other guys. Neil leaned against the wall next to the door, tracing the tattooed dragon on his forearm while Dave talked. “… someone called the cops and we ended up climbing the fence while holding our skateboards. They caught Mike, but Neil and I got away.”
Starting on the next one now… I’m trying to get ahead so things get up on time for Friday. Friends of mine decided to start a science fiction book club. I’ll be going to the first meeting Thursday night.