Free for some value of free—which in this case meant not fighting someone that could potentially kill me with a punch or, more likely, kill Kid Biohack.
I took a moment to orient myself. There’s no point in getting out only to fly into the path of a Mack truck. I’d come out on the side of the arena where I thought I would, a side with no obvious doors or windows except, of course, for the hole my bots blew in what would have otherwise passed for a wall. Continue reading Rematch: Part 20
The first time I’d ever fought him, I aimed the sonics directly at his ear, keeping them at a level designed to cause pain, but not trying to hurt him. I’d been trying to distract him from a couple of guys in a mini-van who were shooting video and got too close.
It had distracted him but hadn’t hurt him much.
This time I was going for more than a distraction. Kid Biohack wasn’t fighting rationally. He might die if he came back into the fight. If it was better to maim than to kill, I felt sure I could justify destroying the Grey Giant’s hearing and sense of balance if it kept Kid Biohack alive. Besides, if the Grey Giant’s weird, transforming grey goo body was anything like Marcus’, weird, transforming grey goo body, he’d fix himself turning back.
If destroying his sense of balance didn’t work, well, I still had killbots. Continue reading Rematch: Part 19
In a low voice, I asked, “You know this guy?”
Not even looking at me, he said, “You remember Shield? He was my cousin.”
Despite the name, Shield didn’t carry a shield. The idea was that he was everyone’s shield. He’d died in a fight with the Grey Giant when I was starting high school. Kid Biohack would have been starting college. I didn’t know how old Shield had been, but I had the feeling that he’d been just starting his career.
I opened my mouth to say I was sorry and maybe find a way to tactfully remind him that we were here to delay the Grey Giant, not kill him. I didn’t get the chance. Kid Biohack ran straight toward the Grey Giant, hitting his leg and knocking it out from under him. Continue reading Rematch: Part 18
My evasive maneuvers put me over lines of machines and mech parts and materials—steel for frames, plates of armor, boxes full of bolts. It reminded me of the secret factory that Chris inherited, and it didn’t surprise me at all. When he and Larry looked over my pseudo-frog suit, he’d told me everything.
After Armory stopped being a superhero, he’d gone to Man-machine for advice on how to make powered armor as a business and they’d stayed friends after that. Well, at least until Armory stiffed him on an object I called The Ball that he made for a group of supervillains called The Maniacs. Continue reading Rematch: Part 17
All the same, it’s easy to say you went to bed, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll sleep once you get there. It gets harder to sleep when you know you’ve got something big planned the next day. That’s especially true if you know you could get hurt, that your friends could get hurt, and if one of your friends is a telepath with who you’ve had a low-level telepathic connection since childhood—at least when you’re in range—you might sense his anxiety too.
I don’t think either of us noticed it at first, but twenty minutes after pulling the sheets up, I found myself staring at the ceiling, which thanks to the mirrors on the ceiling, gave me a dark reflection of myself staring up at myself. Lit only by the stars and moon outside my windows, I could see only a little more than shadows, but it was enough for me to recognize my face. Continue reading Rematch: Part 13
Turning off the TV and leaving the remote on the chair, Cassie walked over to the table in the middle of the room, asking, “From what little I’ve heard of Kid Biohack from you and the rest of the team, he loves any camera he can find, but he’s on the right side. From what I’ve seen from your recording, Yoselin might be trustworthy for what we’re doing, but she’s probably got plans for Armory’s stuff that we might not like.”
Daniel put his phone in his pocket and joined her at the table, reaching it at about the same time I pulled out a chair, “You were saying we might want to blow up Armory’s stuff. With the Nine there and Yoselin likely to grab what she can for Cuba, it makes even more sense. It could make for a good distraction on the way out.” Continue reading Rematch: Part 10
My thoughts went in all directions. Could I maybe turn off my video when I made the return call and say, “Nope, that wasn’t me?” As much as that sounded tempting, I might actually need his help sometime. Bearing in mind his powers—the ability to alter his physical speed, strength, and toughness by altering his biology—and the fact that he could put himself into Jaclyn’s league in those areas, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
He was a bit of a bro, but he had a moral code buried somewhere underneath a need to be liked by as many people as possible. He’d fought his best friend after it turned out that the guy had been robbing armored cars. Continue reading Rematch: Part 7
Good point, I thought back at her. I don’t know what we should do with all of that, but the only thing your people suggested was that we should do something about whoever was selling equipment to the Nine and Syndicate L. They didn’t mention anything about the equipment.
Daniel gave off a hint of amusement that felt like a gentle breeze in my head. If they don’t have some kind of plan for it themselves, I’d be surprised. I’m betting that they’ve got other people on the island to clean up after we do whatever we do.
I felt Cassie thinking even if I didn’t hear it. Now that you say it, yeah. I’d bet on it. Continue reading Rematch: Part 6
Remembering back to when I’d taken Cassie’s gun to rescue her from being kidnapped by Rook, I supposed that a being that had been sitting unused for thousands of years before Cassie found it could handle some delayed gratification.
You could also argue that it might be desperate enough to do anything to avoid being alone again.
“Huh,” I said, “I guess that’s good. Time to go damage our ears?” Continue reading Rematch: Part 3
Distant sirens grew louder, and I decided that I ought to start paying attention to the world around me again. The sirens meant that the police were on their way to pick up Jillian, Hank, Latoya, and Andronicus.
Checking around the area, all four of them lay on the ground, none of them showing any sign of The Thing That Eats. To judge from what happened to Andronicus the first time, they might be out for quite a while.
He was a special case though as he’d been controlled for hundreds of years, but he could also regenerate. Maybe for people who’d been controlled for a short time, but couldn’t regenerate, it would even out? Continue reading Harvest: Part 17