“That works for me,” I said. “Is Hal saying we all go in at once?”
Jaclyn’s words came out in a rush, “Not exactly. He thinks one group goes in hard and fast to attract attention. Another goes in quietly. A third stays in position here so Portal can move people in to help as needed.”
Remembering what Brooke had said earlier about not being able to teleport inside City Hall thanks to interference, that meant as close as people could get. Continue reading Courtesy: Part 19
Face hidden within his billowing, black cloak, the quaver in Adam’s voice didn’t quite match his ominous look, “It’s almost everywhere. The spores convert people from allies to minions of the… fungus brain.”
Duke Metzul waved him to silence, “I understood that much from your summoning rhyme. I need specifics.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 17
Over the comm, Vaughn said, “I hope they got everybody inside because this is all for nothing if you get everyone except for one guy—like in horror movies.”
Samita replied before I could, “I told the Wizards’ Council what the zombies do and the Council said they’d figure it out.”
Vaughn’s name blinked on the screen, “As long as the Wizards’ Council has it covered.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 15
“For right now,” Vaughn said, “I’ll be happy to keep everyone here in the air and uninfected—extra bonus if I can also help the city, but I’m not holding my breath there.”
Sean’s name blinked, “I’d be holding my breath if I didn’t know I just fall unconscious. Do you guys have more of your suits?”
“I don’t know if they’ll work for you,” I said. “I designed them to resist electromagnetism, but any suit on you will be at ground zero all the time. We might have a suit that doesn’t use nanotech back at base. There’s probably a way to get it out safely. Nanotech suits should work for everyone else if we have enough.
“If we don’t have enough, we need to get you guys far enough out of town that you’re safe.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 13
My mom had been depressed and unwilling to talk about the fact that Rachel and I were following in our grandparents’ footsteps for months after her block had fallen. Of course, part of the process had included being kidnapped by Ray and the Cabal and freeing herself so that she couldn’t be used as a hostage against Rachel and me.
Linking mental manipulation with traumatic events couldn’t be good for someone. Life as a superhero was filled with traumatic events and Major Justice had to live with that.
Realizing that I had an expert on the call, I said, “Kals, if you can see this, what do you think of Major Justice?” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 2
As Jaclyn finished, Vaughn frowned. Unless I missed my guess, he wanted to say something and couldn’t because he was in the middle of the same crowd I was. Without a Xiniti brain implant, it’d be as obvious as taking a call on a cell phone.
“Hey,” he said to Arete, “can we have a second? You’re asking us to hide something really big. We’re going to need to talk amongst ourselves for a second—which includes talking to people who aren’t here and are just watching.” Continue reading Courtesy: Part 1
I resisted an urge to shake my head. He couldn’t know. It’s not as if we’d added him to the League’s comm channel. Not looking over at Hunter, I said, “Menagerie added some new features to his… fungus things and they got out of control.”
Even though I wasn’t looking directly at him, I could still see Hunter standing with the rest of the Coffeeshop Illuminati. He didn’t scream it out, but I still heard him say, “Shroomoids. I call them shroomoids.”
Jody snickered. Dayton nudged him, “C’mon man, I’m sure he feels bad enough already.” Continue reading Roll the Dice: Part 19
“You really think it’ll be easy to get him to call it off for today? From what I’ve seen so far, it was a challenge to even get him to admit we were in the earliest stages of a zombie apocalypse,” I used my HUD to take a quick look to see where we were with that.
There weren’t any nearby at all—not even among the trees. I’d adjusted the suit’s sensors to detect them and set the implant to watch for movement.
At this point, Vaughn had stopped hitting them with lightning and Amy hovered above the forest, staring downward, doubtless trying to detect them with magic much as I was with technology. Continue reading Roll the Dice: Part 18
Waking up the next morning wasn’t great. HQ had a bunch of cots and I’d slept in one even though I could have stayed in my bed upstairs.
Even on high alert, I couldn’t recommend it. I couldn’t blame the soreness in my body completely on the cot, but I doubted that it helped. Still, it was safer than being in the house—just much less private, considering that all of the cots were in HQ’s main room.
I’d barely pulled on clothes and sat down at one of the computer cubicles when we got the first call of the morning. Continue reading Isolation: Part 2
The discussion went on after that, but no one said anything new. In the end, we took a vote with almost everyone voting yes to working with him.
Cassie spoke for everyone, though, when she said, “Alright, it looks like we’ll be working with him, but we don’t have to trust him. He’s got to pass Daniel’s and Kals’ testing. Plus, if Amy scans him with magic and finds something unexpected, we still ditch him.” Continue reading Simple Choices: Part 6