Even though I wasn’t sure that he was on our side, I decided to act as if I thought so. “How soon?”
He made a gurgling noise. “I can’t say—-”
Whatever he said after that turned into indecipherable noise, and then he hung up.
I stood there, smelling my own sweat and a faint burned smell that seemed familiar. Then I knew why. It reminded me of the smell my arm had given off when I’d been hit by dragon fire. Continue reading Revelations: Part 10
Lim answered the phone, and from his tone I could tell he sounded a little better than he had before.
“Rocket, who do you need? Right now, almost everyone’s free, so you’ve got your pick.”
“Everyone?” That seemed unlikely.
“You got stuck with the largest group. Most of the rest had to deal with four people at a time. I’m not saying people didn’t get hurt, but we haven’t had any deaths yet. Plus, we just had help show up–mercenaries.”
“Who? Protection Force?” Continue reading Stardock: Part 29
Jaclyn paused, and then said, “What happens next?”
Flick said, “Well, then we have to decide whether we take them in as soon as we can, or whether we watch them, and hope they’ll lead us to other people the Nine hired.”
The tone of her voice turned sarcastic as she said, “But that’s not the best part. The best part is the committee monitoring how we do it, and second guessing whether watching him without taking him in is really worth it. Plus with this we’ll get to discuss at any moment whether what we do will cause an international incident.
“Look forward to it kids, this is what you’re training for.”
Well, the gun shouldn’t become a problem, I told myself, not if Cassie’s around to control it.
On the other hand, I thought, you could argue that it might be even less of a problem if Cassie and every one of us completely ignored it forever. In fact, thinking about it abstractly, you could argue that Cassie’s very existence was a problem. If (as government scientists suspected) spliced in DNA caused the Abominator citizen’s mark to be written as a structure in her brain, reverse engineering it would open up the possibility of humans using truly horrible technologies.
Plus, what if aliens wanted it too for some reason? If anybody, they ought to have access to Abominator technology and the ability to remake it, right? On the other hand, Grandpa had implied that outside of their appearance on Earth, the Abominators had been gone for a while.
Then I remembered that Bullet said that the Nine had been infiltrated by aliens. Continue reading Here We Come: Part 4
Haley’s lips twisted. “Are you sure you want them to connect? Remember when we flew into space and that robot attached itself to the ship? I don’t want anything like that to happen. Especially not right now.”
I remembered it very well, and I could see her point. Technically though, the gun wasn’t anything like that robot.
Arguably it was worse. The robot had just wanted to escape while the gun (at least the way Cassie described it) took joy in destroying things.
So if I was going to use the ship to boost the gun’s range, I needed to start carefully.
I reached out, detached the gun’s holster from the clip on the chair, and picked it up.
“Gun, can you contact the ship? I’d like to ask you some questions. It’ll make it easier to get Cassie back.”
We let the telepathic connection lapse, and I concentrated on flying. Specifically, I thought about the route, and whether I ought to be getting special permission. The signal had come from Canada.
Theoretically dropping by without warning could cause an international incident.
Of course, Canada got along with the US pretty well. It wasn’t as if we were going to fly into North Korea, for example.
Still, Canada had its own supers as well as an air force, and I didn’t want to run into either of them.
Bits of light sparkled around the end of the barrel. I waited to see if it did it again. It didn’t.
Good. Then I didn’t have to put it back in the locker.
I put on a little speed, and joined everyone else by the jet. Haley had touched the door, and it opened, lowering to the ground, and altering to become a short stairway.
Sean looked down at the gun and said, “What’s that? You looked like you were talking to it.”
Not even waiting for me to answer, he reached out to take it.
It fired.
I didn’t even think about what I’d be hitting. I fired, holding the button down even though I knew it used more power.
I don’t think I panicked, but I can’t say I was thinking clearly.
Being rushed by someone who you know can kill you does that. Continue reading Targets: Part 24
We pulled stir fry out of the refrigerator, heated it up, and ate. Afterward, I went upstairs to do homework while Rachel followed me upstairs and went into her own room. After an electronic crackle, I heard her play exercises on her guitar.
I finished the calculus homework in an hour. Then I took another half hour to read a short story and wrote the answers to some questions about it.
By that time, it was after nine.
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 3