No first aid I’d been taught included how to handle how to save someone you’d stabbed with a sword made out of your soul (or whatever), and I didn’t have time to take off Scream Eagle’s armor to see if I could help him anyway.
I could only hope that if he did die, it didn’t make much of a difference in that fight to steal Jody.
Flying closer to me, Grandpa asked, “Did Lee teach you that?”
“Uh… Future stuff.” Continue reading Singularity: Part 18
Energy built and then spread outward in an explosion of power, but fortunately not a physical one. Well, sort of fortunately, in the sense that it was a lot of energy that I’d rather not be hit with. It was less fortunate in the sense that Power Burst, Jody, Amnesia Angel, Artemis, Scream Eagle, and maybe again Ray had absorbed a lot of energy and I had little doubt they intended to transfer it in my direction.
If I hadn’t been flying and aiming lasers at the Cabal, I might have tried to reach in and cut off Magnus’ power. That might end the fight, depending on how giving out powers worked. If empowering minions were more like lighting a candle than plugging in a radio, it would be harder. Continue reading Singularity: Part 16
Red Lightning grinned, “I’ll be ready. We can’t lose. We’ve got two of you.”
Grandpa laughed. “Glad you think so. I’m feeling behind the times, myself.”
It felt good to see a whisper of the friendship I knew they had. They might have had a conversation, but that’s when the Cabal soldiers all jumped in our direction—not directly at us but close enough that they’d figure it out soon enough.
And that meant that the time to start was before they figured it out. Grandpa had come to the same conclusion. Continue reading Singularity: Part 15
Magnus leaned forward and as he did, I could feel energy moving around him, and remembered being told that despite losing the ability to influence with his voice, he could still do it somehow.
He could. As he spoke, everyone within the shimmery glow responded. Some turned to watch, but other reactions were more subtle—a pause before the next step, a blink, an indrawn breath.
As he did though, I saw energy move from the spheres above into the throne and to him. In the same instant I realized something else—the throne wasn’t real. Continue reading Singularity: Part 14
Power Burst looked him up and down. “How do I know you’re not lying to me about whose side you’re on?”
Knowing Izzy’s powers, Power Burst’s physique didn’t make a difference. He could have been a couch potato that spent all of every day eating junk food, watching television, and playing video games with a body that reflected that inactivity, and still been capable of ending Ray with a slap.
Instead, he fit the superhero stereotype—tall, defined muscles all over his body, and a grim expression. Combined with the military themed costume, most people would find him intimidating.
If Ray did, he didn’t show it. “Me? I’m sure you could see right through me if I were lying to you.“ Continue reading Singularity: Part 13
Ray kept on walking, never speeding up or slowing down. My guess was that he lived by the idea that if you looked like you belonged here, you belonged.
Of course, you could say that he did belong, having been empowered by Magnus and released to kill us. That didn’t change the fact that he was a man with no superpowers walking through the control center of an ancient, alien weapon.
Even if he couldn’t see all of it, the control center itself glowed with power. Though dim to my bots’ sight and my human senses, the hundreds of spheres floating in the air appeared different when I let my Artificer senses work. Continue reading Singularity: Part 12
I spoke over the comm system’s general channel, “Magnus is powering his people up. If I had to guess, he’s powering up everybody he can. Expect people with powers to become more powerful. Don’t be surprised if they develop new ones or if unpowered people start changing…”
I stopped, and Amy added more, “Magnus is trying to escape into the portal. Some of his people will be trying to escape with him. Watch for that.”
I understood how Amy knew. She’d grabbed all of that out of Rook’s head as her spear sucked it in. Continue reading The Portal: Part 1
Our first problem with following Magnus? The window. Amy and I rose to find Sean, fists clenched, staring at the window and the empty room behind it.
The window wasn’t moving at all.
And look, that wasn’t as stupid as it seemed. The frame around the window might have been made of metal. It wasn’t, but it could have been.
Colored black, but it appeared to be ceramic to me.
With a wordless scream, Sean punched it. His hand bounced off, and Dayton said, “Whoa, dude. Let them try.”
Sean wasn’t listening. Continue reading Stage Three: Part 5
Victor’s mouth opened without saying anything. He closed it, sighed, but asked, “Do you think it’s possible?”
I looked over at Cassie, who’d frowned but then started talking, “It depends. We’d need to make sure our birthing chamber has the right templates available. I’d say yes if we had the one you’d used. We all know what happened to that one, though.”
Over the implant channel, Sean asked, “What happened?”
“It’s not in working order,” I said. Continue reading Stage Three: Part 4
The sonic booms caused ripples in the golden glow around Artemis and shattered windows in the buildings around Justice Fist’s base.
Within a block of us, a car alarm had gone off (maybe more than one), but, in the whirlwind of combat, that could have been a side effect of Power Burst’s scream attack on Cassie. It was hard to know.
That would have been interesting enough, but in addition, Jaclyn’s fist slammed into the filmy, golden shield around Artemis. This time, the shield threw out flashes of gold along with a blast of static in combination with another boom. Continue reading Regression: Part 18