Tag Archives: Nick

Arc 8.3.5: Precision

Precision: Part 5

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In the background, I heard Courtney continue. “His text said that he was corralling everyone else.”

Jillian stood a little taller than Haley, and she’d braided her hair—which went halfway down her back. Just like the last time I’d seen her, she wore a flannel shirt over a t-shirt.

Courtney backed in as Jillian stepped inside—Jeremy and I didn’t have a particularly large room. We each had a closet on either side of the door, forcing everyone to move into the main area of the room, and stand next to our bunks and the desks. Jeremy’s was covered with a mixture of physics textbooks, science fiction paperbacks, old anime DVD’s, and books about conspiracy theories. Except for my laptop and the textbooks I couldn’t get as ebooks, mine was nearly empty.

Courtney pulled out Jeremy’s chair as Haley sat on my desk. Jillian and I stood in the middle of the room next to the bunk beds.

All of this meant that I couldn’t ask Haley anything about the power juice. The big questions being whether Jillian had some on her or whether she’d already drunk it or what? Continue reading Precision: Part 5 →

Arc 8.3.5: Precision

Precision: Part 4

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When I opened up the pictures on my laptop, it was the speedster I’d seen first—the one that wasn’t glowing—the guy. He’d run back to his origin point, but there was no sign of the woman.

I stayed up for another ten minutes, waiting to see if she’d show up too, but she didn’t. When I woke up the next morning, there hadn’t been any further alerts. Maybe the north end of the route was where she lived.

Maybe she’d taken a cab back? I had no idea. Continue reading Precision: Part 4 →

Arc 8.3.5: Precision

Precision: Part 2

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Despite the new details, we’d collected, there wasn’t much to do in the van, and we all left for our respective rooms—within limits anyway. Vaughn, Courtney, Haley, and I all lived in the biggest dorm on campus, and so we walked together. Haley and I broke off from the rest to talk about next weekend—which wasn’t a Stapledon weekend—planning to spend some time together.

Vaughn and Courtney talked a bit as they walked off, but I doubted that they talked for long. Their rooms were on opposite sides of the dorm.

When I finally walked through my own door, I found Jeremy working through physics homework at his desk, laptop open, his screen lighting his face.

I finished the homework I had left and then used my laptop to review the speedster sightings the bots had detected so far. It was just the two I’d found out about on the way back, but in both cases, they started on the southeast side of the city. More interesting, they came in view of my spybots within half a mile of each other. Continue reading Precision: Part 2 →

Arc 8.3.5: Precision

Precision: Part 1

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We were back in Grand Lake late Sunday night. I planned to drive about half the Grand Lake University group back to campus. Jody’s parents lived only a few blocks away, so Dayton, Jody and Sean walked over there and to pick up Jody’s car. Julie and Shannon took their own way too.

That left Haley, Travis, Camille, Courtney, and Vaughn riding back to campus in the van with me. It filled all the seats once you included everyone’s luggage. I probably could have adjusted the van to compensate, but I couldn’t show up to the university’s car garage driving any other version of my van than my own.

Arriving in the Cat Mecha would have been funny, though. Continue reading Precision: Part 1 →

Arc 8.3: Everybody's Got One

Everybody’s Got One: Part 9

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“We should step into a different hall, or better yet, a classroom.” He pointed down the hallway to our left. “How about that one?”

It didn’t look bad.

Earthmover had molded the whole installation out of rock, and he (or someone who worked for him) had kept an eye on aesthetics. The track lighting illuminated reddish-orange rock. Paintings and photos on the walls showed pictures of the West—the Rocky Mountains, the city of Denver at night, desert thunderstorms, and mesas. There were several doors in the hall, and windows let us look into each of them from the hall.

“This way,” he said and walked through the closest door. Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 9 →

Arc 8.3: Everybody's Got One

Everybody’s Got One: Part 8

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Tara grinned, and when she did, I was reminded that whoever had designed the supersoldiers she was descended from, had obviously been designing for looks too. Not for the first time, I wondered why. Still, she was in a good mood, and considering the memories I must have brought up, that wasn’t a bad thing.

“I hope you don’t think I’m telling you he’s a bad person.” She paused but didn’t give me time to respond. “He’s not. It’s just…” She stopped. “You know that I grew up in Infinity City. I grew up on the run from the True, the supersoldier group my parents left. They worked as muscle all over the city, training me the entire time because they knew the True would want me too.

“When we came here and I enrolled in the Stapledon program, the guys didn’t first of all think of me as a soldier. They thought of me as the new, hot girl. Some of them had a betting pool on who could ‘score’ with me first. I didn’t think anything of all the attention at first, but when I thought about it, I put everything together. After that, I got angry.” Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 8 →

Arc 8.3: Everybody's Got One

Everybody’s Got One: Part 7

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I raised my hand. “That makes sense, but I’ve got a couple questions.”

Amy raised an eyebrow—which I suspected meant, “You’re raising your hand? No one else did.” I put it down as Samita said, “Yes, Nick?”

“You mentioned that you were looking for confirmation that it was the same creature and not an alternate. Did you get that from the book?” Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 7 →

Arc 8.3: Everybody's Got One

Everybody’s Got One: Part 6

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A few people laughed, but Amy stopped moving, expression blank, finally managing to say, “That’s the plan.”

Samita stood up and walked up to the front. Dressed in a green blouse and khaki pants, it was one of the few times I’d seen her out of costume. With black hair and brown skin, she looked like she might be from southeast Asia, and her parents were. She’d been born in the US.

She stood in front of the group as Amy moved to the side and stood next to the wall. Samita’s eyes darted from one of us to another. In combination with the straightness of her stance, she gave the impression of a highly motivated student hoping for an “A.” Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 6 →

Arc 8.3: Everybody's Got One

Everybody’s Got One: Part 5

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Amy looked out over the group of us, brushing away a few strands of red hair that had fallen across her right eye. She took a breath. “I feel like I should tell you what you’re in for because taking part in this isn’t a decision you should take lightly. It destroyed entire kingdoms before one of the earlier Bloodmaidens figured out how to kill it. It wasn’t easy either. For her, it came at a huge personal cost.”

Amy stopped, frowning. Then she took a breath and went on. “I’ll tell you how we first found out about it. The country I’m from is a little like your United Kingdom, but not exactly. The islands are shaped differently, and some of the tribes that founded it are different, some the same, and I think many are going under different names. Well, it doesn’t matter. Just be aware that if something sounds familiar, it isn’t really.” Continue reading Everybody’s Got One: Part 5 →