I couldn’t argue with him, but if I had to bet what Ray’s orders were, I’d have bet that they were to kill or delay us. That meant that we needed to take him down.
The problem would be coordinating with Prentkos. If Ray had Izzy’s hearing, he’d hear everything and Prentkos didn’t have a League communicator.
Then another thought struck me. What if absorbing energy worked on Ray the same way it worked on Prentkos? Spark had said that everyone Magnus brought through here was descended strongly enough from Artificers that they could develop into them given time.
Ray didn’t land close to us. He gave himself 20 feet—which meant that that was as much as he thought he needed. It had been years since he’d died, but I still remembered him.
As the leader of the Executioners, he’d excelled in planning on how to take down superheroes and their families—families first to increase the stress and emotional pain.
He hadn’t, as I remembered it, been quite so effective when he’d gained powers himself. It’s one thing to carry out a plan you’ve trained for and still another to copy someone else’s powers and use them as effectively as the original person when you haven’t trained to use them.
I wondered when this version of him was from and whose powers he’d copied. My first guess would have been Power Burst, but that meant we’d be fighting Izzy for all practical purposes. Continue reading Singularity: Part 4→
A human shape appeared between me and the light, stepping into it and disappearing. I followed, noting that the collapse behind me was definitely getting closer. It was maybe 50 feet behind me now.
I gave the rockets full power, feeling the speed increase and like I’d left my stomach behind. The collapse followed, growing wider, if that were possible. At first, it had only seemed like a tunnel was caving in, but after I accelerated, I saw chunks of something falling, hitting the ground(?), shattering, or bounding forward in my direction.
It would be tempting to imagine that I was pushing a lever, but this wasn’t mechanical. As I touched it, I knew what I was really doing. I was providing power to open a portal, while simultaneously drawing power to replenish my strength from the life support systems, and equalizing pressure, momentum, temperature, and other factors through subsystems in the device.
Why? Because a pressure difference could shoot you through a portal (or backwards from it). Similarly, if the different sides of the portal were traveling at different speeds or directions, it would be like jumping on or off a moving car.
The crazy thing was that I could handle all of it at once. Kee had taught me how, something that I knew was no coincidence. Continue reading Singularity: Part 2→
“Great,” I said. “How? Do you have a password or cheat code or something?”
Lee laughed. “Cheat code? Are you thinking the test Kee set up works like a video game? There are parts that might, I suppose, but no. This is real. I can tell you which parts of the control system you need to manipulate to get through the test.”
“That is kind of a like a video game,” I said. “You go to Reddit and there’s always someone who got stuck at the same point and a bunch of answers on how to get past it. Some of them even work.” Continue reading Singularity: Part 1→
“You know what I showed you? If you can keep on doing it, from what they said, you can wipe yourself clean of a dominator’s commands. Also, I’ve got a device that can block Dominators’ commands—up to a point. If you’re facing more than ten or maybe five, I’d run away and throw rocks at them from a distance.”
He began to laugh. “Rocks? I think I expected something more complicated from an inventor.”
I shrugged, “If it works, it works.”
Then I reached out with what might be best imagined as a phantom limb and opened a portal to bring him to me. Continue reading The Core: Part 12→
The scene froze, leaving Prentkos, Colette, and Magnus standing within the circle, caught in a moment where none of them were looking each other in the eye, a picture without much visual appeal.
Spark asked, “Do you want to see more? There’s no more conversation except for Colette giving the command. Instead, they disappear, and I’m not allowed to show you where they reappear.”
“You can’t tell me unless you’re in my presence? Why? Because he told you not to tell?”
The picture of Prentkos in my mind frowned. “I,” he said and paused. “I can’t say… It’s difficult. I know the Nine has me. His assistant—the blond woman who’s with him—she talked to me, and I can’t repeat anything she said.”
“His assistant,” I said. “Do you mean Colette? She’s good with a crossbow?”
I reached out to the systems that surrounded me, trying to figure out what I could use.
Though I couldn’t say that I was a massive X-Men fan, I remembered Cerebro from the comics. It was a device that allowed telepaths (or maybe just Xavier) to detect mutants.
This wasn’t the same thing, but for Artificers. I knew this because I connected with it, specifically with its systems. One allowed messaging of other beings connected to the device. That included visitors who weren’t Artificers. Another system was the life support, which allowed me to request various forms of support ranging from the energy Artificers fed off of to air and food for physical needs. I noted that one. I might be able to pinpoint Magnus’ location by tracking life support use if it came to that. Continue reading The Core: Part 9→
Using the model I’d made of the space, I followed the trail of whatever the CDPS was detecting in my head. It originated near three different spheres in a cluster.
With a glance toward Spark, I flew toward the cluster, guessing that by the time I got down there I might be able to sense something.
With my rockets firing, it didn’t take long to reach the spheres, all three glowing. While they weren’t blinding, my helmet did dim their intensity as I looked them over. Unlike a number of the spheres, I couldn’t see the inside of any of these. Continue reading The Core: Part 8→
The Legion of Nothing: A Series of Online Superhero Novels (Updates Monday and Thursday)
