“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I was ready to take a chance on it. We will have to face the Nine and it would be easier with whatever you got out of Arete.”
He gave a weak nod and coughed, “There’s another chance. I knew you had to destroy us completely. I created a spore, separated from us, and encased it as completely as I could. Look past me. I’d give it to you, but I shouldn’t touch it.”
I stepped around him. Hidden from direct view, a ball made of a pearl-like hard substance sat on a bare spot of concrete. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 62→
I pushed the bot views into the background and paid attention to the world around me. Alex pointed at the mounds around us and the ceiling. All of them sagged and dripped viscous, brown goo. More liquid puddled beneath the withered skin.
“We should grab everybody,” I said. “We might be able to get away with leaving Flame Legion. I know she doesn’t exactly enjoy dying, though.”
Sean’s face tightened. He took a short breath as if he were about to blow up at her, but instead let out a long breath, finishing with, “Are you sure? Do you know it?”
Amy shook her head slowly, “No. I didn’t absorb him. Another Bloodmaiden was in charge when he got hit with the Bloodspear. So she got more out of him than I did and she doesn’t like answering questions. I don’t have his thoughts, just a whisper of his feelings. He was happy and relieved when he got the order, the way you are when you’ve been worrying about something and now you can finally do something about it.”
Sean looked over at Dayton, then back at Amy, “Couldn’t that have been part of it? The Nine can manipulate your feelings too.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 60→
I had good reason to think Kals would be fine but I didn’t know if Alex had bothered to download and install the latest update. You could reasonably ask why that wouldn’t be automatic, but even my updates had the potential of going wrong.
You wanted to install when you had a backup suit available and not midway through a mission.
In that moment, though, I didn’t spend any time checking the update logs. I jumped for Jody and glancing behind at me, his eyes widened. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 59→
I didn’t shed tears, but if I weren’t having to again slaughter humonsters, I could have. I punched a humonster that jumped down from the top of a mound toward Alex in the face, splattering it across the side of the mound it jumped from.
We might finally be done with this.
Alex stumbled toward the glowing mound, shaking his head, his footing becoming more sure with each step. He only had to make it twenty feet, but I’d seen how unpredictable twenty feet could be.
That knowledge gave me the confidence to let “Amy” and Kals protect Alex while I did my best to protect Daniel and the various Jennys.
Her ability to duplicate herself made it worse when every copy represented a tunnel into her brain.
I fired off a series of armor piercing bots. They weren’t as effective as killbots, but they were simpler and faster to produce. Plus, they didn’t have monomolecular blades constantly sucking energy until they dulled. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 57→
“I’m stating a fact. You brought me here to do a job and I’m ready.” Alex looked over at a group of Jennys, possibly for support. More than one of them rolled their eyes.
Over the comm, Brooke AKA Portal AKA Guardian’s daughter and Alex’s girlfriend said, “Alex…”
Daniel interrupted before the conversation went any further, “Our chances of success start going down the longer we take here.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 42→
She let out a breath and moved her hand up the spear, adjusting her grip. A little bit of red sparkled on the spear’s blade, traveling in a line of sparks down her arm.
Taking another long breath, she looked at me, “I’m fine. I will want to use the spear to build up energy, but we’re not fighting anything I’ll feel guilty about using it on.”
She glared at me, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m not taking donations. I don’t want to explain it to Night Cat.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 34→
We didn’t have much time to have a discussion about it either because the problem with fighting a hive mind (or at least a central intelligence that coordinates all the others) is that it constantly sees the big picture.
The big picture in that moment was that it had us off-balance and it was time to capitalize on it.
We’d destroyed the ones holding Jody, but now all the rest of them had charged in while we were doing it, trampling the bodies of the ones that we’d killed.
I’d deliberately chosen to be our right flank, knowing that I’d be in the front line. As they came toward us, I opened up with sonics, trying a medium width beam and aiming for their legs.
My plan? Slow them down.
While imperfect, it worked okay. Though a wider beam might not do as much damage as a narrow beam, it allowed me the luxury of poor aim. I wasn’t terrible at aiming, but I was running, trying to keep aware of my teammates’ positions, and also trying to point the sonics under each arm at something useful. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 31→
The Legion of Nothing: A Series of Online Superhero Novels (Updates Monday and Thursday)
