Cassie caught my eye and grinned, “And I’d gotten so used to Nick having the ‘normal’ family.”
I raised my eyebrow, “Normal? Rachel’s currently flying around in space without a spacesuit. Plus, my grandparents were not normal at all at least on one side.”
“Yeah,” Cassie said, “but Daniel’s whole family is full of telepaths. Jaclyn’s older brothers have the same powers she does. Vaughn’s uncle was basically Lex Luthor and his grandfather was Red Lightning—“
Vaughn talked over her, “And Haley’s family owns a lot of pizza places. Some of them offer anchovies. Definite supervillain material there.” Continue reading Memories: Part 6→
The metallic thunk of something being placed on the stove came over the line. “How interesting is Anastasia? Is this the cousin that babysat us once?”
The trouble with old friends is that they might remember any random piece of your past. On the other hand, he’d at least be able to recognize her in Uncle Steve’s mind, “Yes. She’s the one who watched us um… eleven years ago or something? I’m pretty sure we were ten. Anyway, she might be very interesting. She’s the one who connected Uncle Steve with Armory.”
My jaw dropped as I thought about how close we’d been to each other. He’d been gone by the time I’d fought with the Grey Giant, but he’d have been working when Cassie, Daniel, and I went exploring during the day.
Grandpa stared out at the water, not saying anything else.
“What precautions?” I asked.
Turning back to me, he said, “I don’t know. The regular ones they took with all of their families, but more than that on the advice of Gunther. He wasn’t there, but Joe mentioned his name.”
We talked longer than that, but he didn’t have anything more to add about the block, Grandpa Vander Sloot, or anything about the League. We talked about Grandma who’d taken the car into town to do grocery shopping. She didn’t know that Grandpa Vander Sloot was the Rocket or that I’d be flying in this morning. Grandpa Klein had chosen our meeting time to make sure she’d continue to remain ignorant. Continue reading Memories: Part 3→
I gave a half-smile, “Sorry. There’s too much going on right now. In some ways, it’s mostly in my head because none of it’s hit the point where people are trying to kill me. I’m just worried it might hit that point sooner rather than later.”
He frowned, looking down and drawing a breath, “I never wanted this life for you, and if it weren’t your best chance to survive, I doubt Joe would have wanted it for you either. If you think about how our society’s decided to handle superheroes, it’s not the best thing we could have done. I understand why we’ve done it, but I don’t think it’s good either for the people doing it or for society as a whole. Continue reading Memories: Part 2→
If you asked a random person on planet Earth what a superhero did all day, the answer you’d get is something like “beating up criminals.” If you asked me or anyone else in the business, it would be some combination of training, your day job or your cover, beating up criminals, and checking out leads on whatever case you were working on. Of all of those, beating up criminals was the least likely to actually take place.
In my particular case, the list would also include working on new technology since I could now, for the first time in my life, do that for hours at a time if I wanted to. Continue reading Memories: Part 1→
Already suspecting the answer, I asked, “Did he use a word more precise than ‘it’?”
Daniel’s laugh had a hint of weariness, “No, but if I had to guess, he said something about a device that needed to be destroyed last time, and when we asked him if he meant the power impregnator he didn’t respond.”
I thought back to the afternoon. Even besides the tablet, we had two storage rooms worth of Abominator devices. I could think of half a dozen devices that might be good candidates for destruction and I’d only opened one of the two rooms. Plus, and I wasn’t going to mention this outside of HQ, we had a whole lower level below the main level of HQ that Grandpa set up to be a fallout shelter and base for rebuilding civilization in case of nuclear war. Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 14→
Mom frowned, leaning to look into the living room which was behind Haley and in the front of the house. Following her gaze, I noticed that unlike the windows in the dining room, the windows in the living room were shut. A breeze seemed unlikely.
“I felt it too,” she said, not looking at either Haley or me.
Dad nodded, “I think a thunderstorm is in the forecast. We could use it. The heat these last few days has been miserable. Well, enough about the weather. Did you see last night’s Tigers game, Haley?” Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 13→
As I felt it, my mom opened her mouth to reply to my dad, hesitating, but then finally speaking, “We were kidnapped.”
Her words came quietly and slowly at first but then seeing that my dad was still listening, she talked more quickly, “We were leaving my office when three huge men in suits grabbed us and pushed us into a car. You tried to fight them, but you couldn’t hurt them and they were so strong that they had to be supers. They brought us to an old warehouse and kept us there for two days. On the second day, another man came to see. He was older and talked with a strange accent, but like the others, he was also a big man.” Continue reading Never Go Home: Part 12→
Haley and I stepped into the dining room. The table was already set—white dishes, blue placemats, and even though no food was out, blue hot pads were already waiting to protect the table from hot dishes. I also noticed that the water had already been poured.
“Why don’t you sit down?” My mom opened the door of the oven. “Everything’s ready. I’ve been keeping it warm.”
