Only as I passed over the house did I realize that we didn’t have much of a plan. I was going to attack Future Knight and they were going to do what to the water elemental guy?
Too late to stop now.
In the streetlights’ illumination, I could see Travis, Jaclyn, and Cassie standing in the street. All of them were up to their knees in white stuff that reminded me of shaving cream or possibly meringue.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 45
Tag Archives: The Rocket
In the Public Eye: Part 44
My grandfather’s property (and that of all the neighbors on his side of the block) went up to the edge of Veterans Memorial Park. I followed the chain link fence that separated private property from city property.
I slowed down as I got closer to where I’d seen the shot. No point in running into somebody’s line of fire.
Three houses away from my grandfather’s house, I heard Daniel in my head.
Nick. Stop.
I stopped.
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In the Public Eye: Part 43
It took less than a second for him to fly under me, flip around to face me and grab my throat with both hands.
His face told me everything I needed to know about his intentions. Screaming incoherently at me, he squeezed the armor around my neck. It didn’t break, but I could feel it move under his fingers. Cords of muscle visible in his forearms, he strained his arms to put as much force into the squeeze as he could.
For that moment, my armor held.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 43
In the Public Eye: Part 42
Kids don’t really know adults. What I remembered of Jaclyn’s grandfather from the picnics was a man who spent a lot more time laughing, telling funny stories, and coaxing me into racing Jaclyn. I think I only ever won one race. He gave me a forty-nine foot head start out of fifty feet and even then it was a near thing.
As a crimefighter though, he had the old school, “fight the criminals, and run from the cops” approach.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 42
In the Public Eye: Part 41
As I ran toward the table in the middle of the main room, I wondered just what else putting HQ on high security did. What if it sent an alert to other hero groups? I didn’t feel like explaining all this to Guardian or the Midwest Defenders.
Glancing at the screen, I saw Travis, Haley, Marcus and Cassie crouched at the forest entrance, in costume and looking nervous.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 41
In the Public Eye: Part 40
Wind blew out of the tunnel, rattling parts in their boxes and tools hanging the walls. In the middle of it, I could see the hazy shape of the girl. I wondered what effect the sonics would have on her. Would sound do nothing or would it disrupt whatever connected her to herself in that form?
I didn’t want to kill her, so I decided not to think about it. She was Daniel’s problem.
“She’s kind of… dispersed mentally,” he said, “but I can do this –“
The hazy form flattened as it hit an invisible wall, face, glasses and the back of her skull interpenetrating each other. She dissolved into a colored gas, reforming a few feet away as cloudy version of herself.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 40
In the Public Eye: Part 39
I punched the distress call.
Above us, scattered lights began to blink slowly red.
I looked up. “I didn’t know that happened.”
“Me neither,” Daniel said. “It looks like we’ve got a lot of dead bulbs.”
With that we got another round of phone calls — except we got one less. In addition to Vaughn, Jaclyn didn’t call back.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 39
In the Public Eye: Part 33
“Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” Vaughn said. “You’d never believe it, but my grandfather’s personal stuff never burned.”
“It must be the only thing that didn’t,” I said.
A layer of dark soot seemed to be everywhere, mixed with bits that crunched when I stepped on them.
“Nah,” Vaughn said, “The side tunnels didn’t burn. That’s where I found the stuff that I handed over. Let’s go.”
In the Public Eye: Part 32
“Why are we going this way then?”
“The tunnel I used to go through collapsed during the rainstorms we got near the end of August. This is the only other one I know about,” Vaughn said.
I couldn’t see anything. Was I supposed to go down there and locate the gun by the flash from its muzzle? If I was lucky, the gun was fixed and capable of firing in only one direction. If I was unlucky, it had the ability to track targets. My armor did well against bullets, but I didn’t feel much of an urge to test its limits.
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In the Public Eye: Part 31
Hardwick House sat on a hill near the middle of downtown. It began, not especially humbly, as an enormous mansion back when Percival Hardwick made his fortune as a lumber baron. His heirs added on to it in a peculiar mixture of styles. The first section used the thin spires and intricate woodwork of the Gothic style. A later addition to the house had added an eight story tower and the extensive stonework of the Medieval Revival style. The final section of the house had been added in the late 1920’s — six, flat roofed stories, each story less wide than the story below. The final story ended in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid.
Impressively hideous, it absorbed almost half a city block when you included the grounds.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 31