“I hadn’t asked him… I haven’t asked anyone.”
Cassie’s voice rose as she talked. “Well, don’t skip him. I told you he’s been feeling left out.”
“Ok. I won’t. You told me about that.”
As the words escaped my mouth, I realized that I’d committed to bringing him along—which meant I ought to call him.
“Good,” Cassie said. “Are you going to let him know, or should I?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Do you have anything else? I should probably call him now.” Continue reading Chance & Fate: Part 3
Cassie noticed the men, frowned, and said, “Let’s go into my room.”
We walked upstairs. I couldn’t help but remember other times I’d been inside, most of them during the summer before we’d reformed the League. Cassie had been on bed rest after the treatments that activated her powers. I hadn’t known it at the time. I’d just thought she was sick.
I’d helped her gather everyone for movie nights while wondering if she’d make it through the summer.
Even then it hadn’t been a cluttered house. It always felt clean and orderly, but a little like a hotel. Her mom commuted to Washington D.C. a lot and had hired people to keep it clean.
Sure, her cover as a realtor had never been blown, but I’d always wondered if adding a little mess to the house might have helped.
Daniel had taught me how to telepathically get his attention so long ago I didn’t even remember when.
As we walked down the stairway, I gave him a mental poke. Hey, what did you learn from Courtney? How’s she handling it?
I felt a mental pause, and concentrated on the next step as Daniel answered my question. Chances are he was checking what was behind it.
Our footsteps tapped on the brown linoleum, and a few steps later, he replied. She’s scared. She’s wondering what she’s gotten into, and she’s wondering how we’re so calm about it.
I took a few more steps, thinking about that.
The flunky started hitting himself, and screaming, his voice reminding me again that this was Davis, the guy who’d made the offer to Courtney.
I wondered for a moment how much damage I wanted to do to him. I had questions for him, after all, but that didn’t matter as much as I’d have thought.
Rook’s suits were pretty well constructed.
The bots wedged themselves into cracks, but they did a lot more damage to the powered armor than the person inside. Plus, after the first wave, I brought in a wave of EMP bots.
The first wave withdrew as the second settled on him. He stopped hitting himself for a moment, and adjusted his footing, probably in preparation for attacking me—or possibly escaping.
Then the EMP bots exploded. Continue reading A Kind of Small Crow: Part 10
Too quickly for me to see anything but a blur, Travis punched the guy in the face—if you could call a beaked helmet a face.
His punch hit the right cheek, denting it, and twisting the beak. The helmet made a crunching noise, and bent backward. It didn’t seem to bend further back than a human head could, but it didn’t seem to be capable of bending forward anymore.
Not that that mattered. Travis’ punch had knocked the guy backward. Continue reading A Kind of Small Crow: Part 9
Unfortunately, it was also an idea that I had to use quickly instead of thinking through the implications.
The last time I’d pointed the guitar’s explosive end at a guy in powered armor, it had nearly killed him. Only Alex’s ability to heal had kept the man from bleeding out.
Alex wasn’t anywhere around here. I definitely wasn’t going to have time to fly to California to pick him up.
When the laser hit, Rook’s armor glowed, reflecting the light, but not entirely. In fact, not for very long at all.
The laser drilled through, and light came out the other side.
Rook screamed, and I stopped firing, backing up, pulling my shoulder away from the claw that had pierced almost all the way to my skin.
Rook took a step toward me, but nearly fell over, his leg wobbling.
I tried to think of the next step.
As always, Jefferson Street was a zoo. It probably had the most fast food restaurants and chain stores of any street in the city. At ten or eleven at night, the traffic became bearable—it wasn’t bumper to bumper anymore.
I brought the van to a stop on the other side of the road from the one with Lakeside Lounge–four lanes worth of cars and semi-trucks away.
We were next to a Subway, a shoe store, and Grand Lake Marina Supplies. That last store took up most of the space. Even though the store had closed, the lights were still on, and I could look in at speed boats, engines, water-skis and other gear.
“Yeah?” Vaughn looked mildly annoyed. “Cassie’s right. That is messed up. Remember that lecture of Mr. Beacham’s? The one where he compared supers to some kind of medieval warrior class?”
Everybody in our high school knew about that lecture. I’d felt that it had been over-hyped at the time.
It seemed more insightful now. Continue reading Being Watched: Part 3
“Great,” Cassie said, “Is he a Nazi too?”
“Dunno,” I said, and tapped away at the computer, heading for the Feds’ supers database.
Vaughn said, “Aren’t you the guy who knows this stuff? You’re on the Double V forums all the time.”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t know everything. The Nine keep a low profile. Everybody knows they do stuff because sometimes they take credit for things, but they employ supers, and they’re an organization. So when supers show up, you never know if it’s one of the higher ups or some mid-level guy.”
I watched as our system passed our key, and then got an encrypted response from the other server. When it verified that it came from the Feds, we could assume that we’d logged into the real server instead of some impostor.
A little later, I’d searched out the Nine’s entry. I displayed it on HQ’s twenty foot tall screen. Continue reading Being Watched: Part 2