Finding Ray didn’t sound like a good idea, but it sounded better than finding him after he’d killed everyone we knew.
Isaac Lim wasn’t available when I called about protection for our parents. I left a voicemail.
“So,” I said after hanging up. “How do we find Ray?”
Continue reading War: Part 14
I read the transcript and then played back the entire recorded conversation for everybody. Russell Hardwick stood in his home office, pacing the hardwood floor, cursing, and talking on his cell phone.
“The Impregnator disappeared? How did that happen? And why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
From there it devolved into shouting at the person on the other end, and Hardwick never did say where he’d kept it, or anything useful.
Continue reading War: Part 13
Chris glanced over at me. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I told Lee. When everybody went over the plan, I thought that I’d either have to do remotely guided missiles, or ask you. After you said yes, I told Lee, and I must have forgotten to tell everyone else. Sorry.”
With everything else going on, the important thing was that our escape had been taken care of, right? And anyway, back when we’d been dealing with Justice Fiend, the Maniacs, and the Ball, Cassie had been more than a little suspicious of Chris.
She wouldn’t have been the only one, and I didn’t want to deal with it.
Continue reading War: Part 12
For a moment, Lee and I must have been the only people who realized that Prime was dead.
He grinned as I looked up from the head, and saluted me with the bloodied blade. In that moment, someone shouted, and it seemed like everyone turned to see him standing in front of Prime’s body.
“Rocket, grab the head and dump it someplace!”
Continue reading War: Part 11
I checked the the sky, searching it for Vaughn’s cloud.
It floated above the field, smaller than most clouds, and, it struck me, smaller than the last time I’d seen it.
Daniel hadn’t been joking about not being alone in the air. At least fifteen people flew toward the cloud, dark figures outlined against the moon and stars.
Continue reading War: Part 10
Bluish sparks surrounded Rachel’s gloves, and the man let go, trying to grab her, but only passing through her body without touching anything.
Knowing that he was strong, and guessing he might be able to rip my armor off, I gave the rockets some fuel, and shot into the air, hovering forty feet above the ground. Continue reading War: Part 9
Between the unconscious bodies on the ground from Jaclyn’s attack, and my sonic blast, Prime’s people hung back until one of of them shouted, “Move!”
Well, if I could call them Prime’s people.
Some of them looked professional — black (probably bulletproof) vests, belts with pouches, knives, and guns. The rest looked like they’d been pulled from local (and not so local) street gangs.
They had guns too — not submachine guns like the professionals, mostly handguns.
Continue reading War: Part 8
Prime stood at the front of the crowd. He didn’t look like someone who had lived most of the way through two millenniums. Under the single light, his brush cut, blond hair shone. His face, all hard lines, but still smooth, could have easily passed for thirty.
As we stepped closer to him, he pulled a sword out of his trench coat. Between Lee’s teaching, and Daniel showing me some books on Roman history, I recognized it as a gladius, the Roman legions’ traditional sword.
Behind me, Marcus muttered, “There can be only one.”
Continue reading War: Part 7
The days between Prime getting back to us, and actually meeting him were a blur. A weird blur. Those of us who didn’t have exams, planned and drilled with Lee. I worked on the suit, the roachbots, and talked through some ideas with Chris, and Larry.
I’d called Larry when Lee told us to think about people who might help, and it was lucky I had. Continue reading War: Part 6
Lee leaned his arm on the monitor, pushing the keyboard backward to create more room to sit on the table.
“When I try to work out how to handle situations like this, I ask myself who’s got common interests? More often than not, I’m not the only one asking the question. For example, the League’s got common interests with Hardwick’s group and Justice Fist. They’re both probably running given what’s happened lately, but you might be able to pull in a few. Continue reading War: Part 5