Victor held his head in his hands, screaming as if in pain. I guessed it might be feedback from his connection to the birthing chambers.
Rook, meanwhile, began screaming at him. “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”
Even before he’d finished, I fired another boombot at him and aimed a narrow beam sonic attack at Victor because with all the energy flowing through me I could handle that and still have time to adjust the sonics. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 29
“Funny that you’re doing the tech stuff and I’m the one out here fighting everybody?” I mean, it was.
“Shut up and hit people!” I could feel her irritation over the implant link.
Knowing that she had a point, I fired off a few more goobots, covering all the people near me, and then I ran around them down the side of the room, passing the newly born True who were crawling, or in some cases running and falling, toward the edge of the room.
They didn’t seem to be a threat for now, but if they got control over their muscles, I’d have to do something. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 28
In the middle of all the teleportation, Cassie connected via implant. “I’m behind the birthing chambers. Can you keep them off me while I take them out?”
I didn’t see her drop through the hole, but my implant reproduced an image of her swinging across the birthing chambers and dropping to the far side next to the wall.
“I can try,” I told her, beginning to try to figure out how. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 26
Even though I had no time to process it, my implant told me what the purple shot meant. Some Abominator guns had been given the ability to attack out of phase with reality, passing their victims armor. The technology turned out to be related to FTL technology, teleportation, and Abominator intangibility tech. Rook must have reverse engineered it or been inspired by what Jared’s device did.
Either way, it wasn’t Rook firing at me. It was one of the True, a male version of Stephanie wearing silver-tinged Abominator designed armor. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 25
I didn’t have time to ask Cassie how her gun had stopped the shot because the next flash of purple targeted me.
Keeping myself in phase took everything I had. By the time that the purple glow around me disappeared, I knew that everything I’d pulled out of whatever power reserves I could access was gone. I wasn’t going to be able to prevent that if he did it again—not for a little while, anyway. All I could do was hope he didn’t realize it.
Thinking about it, I didn’t fall over, but I wobbled. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 23
Of course, maybe I’d get lucky and a killbot would work. The way the night had been going, that was nothing to count on. Also, given that purple glowing tinge to Victor’s skin, I had no idea what he could do, but if he existed out of phase, the only way I’d be able to touch him is by using what the Cosmic Ghost’s taught me to power up the killbot somehow. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 22
Not seeing anything appear yet, I directed one of the spybots to fly ahead of us and sent Cassie a memory of the last few seconds along with directions for how to see the spybot’s video.
She sent back the words, “If everyone on the team had implants, it would be so much easier.”
Then she spoke over the comm, “Ronin, remember when Rook captured me? If I get the chance, I’m going for him.”
Speaking without inflection, Tara’s high pitched voice seemed lower than it was, “I know.” Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 21
I shook my head. “We need to stay long enough for me to get a look inside the lab. We’re close right now and it would be a wasted opportunity even if it turns out to be something we can’t handle.”
Haley frowned. “I get it. I know you want to know what’s in there. I want to know too, but if we get out now, you might be able to move the bots into position and look inside tomorrow. You’ve already got bots that are close.”
Vaughn nodded. “That’s a pretty good idea.”
I thought about it. I didn’t want to argue, but, “It is, but I don’t think we’ll get to find out tomorrow. I’m betting that after tonight they’ll move anything can somewhere else and I have no idea where. They’re a billion dollar company. They can hide things all over.” Continue reading Who Are The True?: Part 9
I’d only been there for about a month, so I had no way to know if he were lying. On the other hand, even if he were telling the truth, it would still be an excellent excuse to make the birthing chambers disappear for a few days.
Combined with Emmy’s disappearance, my mind found it all too easy to imagine that they’d grab her and then create the True while the machine was out of sight. Who’d know? I certainly wouldn’t because I didn’t memorize the time needed to create the True while I was looking at them last–though I didn’t think it was too long. I’d have to look in the birthing chambers’ library to know the exact times it took to clone anything. Continue reading Truth and the True: Part 13
In the face of all that, I knew what the first thing I had to do was. Send Lim a message so that he knew that he was right. The Nine had infiltrated the FBI—and by the way, they’d also infiltrated the Engineering Department of my university.
In the grand scheme of things, the FBI was more important to the country, but the university had a more immediate impact on my life. Lim would want to know in any case. Continue reading Truth and the True: Part 12