To...clear my prison record if I brought proof, led them on a false trail. Besides, it's not the...first time I've been held at gunpoint.""And it certainly won't be the last."They glared at Fred and he clamped up."So you've worked with Reagan before and you were okay with this." He was beginning to have one hell of a rude awakening. "Rigan. Hard to get by when you're a convict." She said while the paramedic took out a metal plate from her back with a skeptical look on his face. "You owe me." Fred said pointing at her. "Until I got shot.""I'm just glad that you're not going back to your old life of crime." "What made you think that?" Emily said smiling. He looked wild at that while the staff reeled her into another ambulance. "Please don't tell your father, pretend this never happened and go home." "I'll come...visit."... He drove home and he set the window wipers in motion at the wind blowing sand his way. He waited through traffic and parked, he gazed at Doreen contendi
The wind blew and blew until six p.m. and people with sandy blight in their eyes jumped with relief, as soon as the wind stopped. The wheezing of trumpets died down as the band retired. Spectators made their way to the tallest building. The sand rolled as the wind picked up again. [ Anomaly Detected ] He watched the long line of people eager to have a closer look from the top of the building. The sky was dimming. His system was chiming, he had to keep a lookout. There was a vessel anchored on the still waters, the captain listened to his lieutenant talking about some techie named Francis Flair. He stared grimly at the man in his early teens. "You're kidding." He said in a baritone voice at the young man. Francis beamed at him, he always liked it when they stared. "We have a sufficient batch of gunpowder and an automatically set timer. The flames will go off. The viewers will be impressed with my new and improved pyro technology, compared to the blustering fiasco on the Ch
The sand engulfed him, densed around him and dragged him out the mess hall, he fell face flat and looked up at the fallen men, others groaning at sand blights in their eyes. Granula gazed at him. She grunted and cocked her head to the firework devices. "Disarm." She said in a gravely voice. Francis Flair swallowed pulling back when she made herself look big. Her features changed even when he tried to focus and make out something out of her.Her order resounded. "I can't! It's set to blow up in...two minutes." She growled and extended her arms to shoot him off the boat. There were twenty devices and they were very dense. He landed on the boat with the head of an eagle, body of a lion. The Chimera Program's upgraded package. He dumped Francis who looked scared to death on the deck paddling away from him. Apparently all the Nian Shou were missing in action, they thought that he was one of their own. Telling by his qi energy, she could see through his tricks.Granula shot sand at him
"What?" She didn't know whether to feel relieved or to get angry when they laughed. "You're letting me go?"He took off his police cap. "Of course not, anyone who sets up sound equipment that efficiently deserves a place on Cadence. And you're delightful." Ben winked. Victor looked perplexed. "What?" "Stone, you'll get in trouble with the media if you don't cop on." "I'm sorry, Mark, that was just too good.""Cadence?" Artemis said. "So you're just a couple of low lives with no principles and nothing better to do?" Artemis braced her hands on her hips. "Whoa there. It's a gimmick." Ben said."We're trying to sell It." The third guy chimed in."On Independence Day." Mark added."Sell it? Gimmick?" Irma said re-registering their words. She brushed her eyes. "We apologize for our misdemeanour. We'd like to make you an offer to be our cover girl. You know for marketing and stuff?" "No pressure." The brown-haired guy passed her a flyer. "We'll leave you with our contacts. We'll be t
He wasted no time building up a fireball in his hands. "You're burning and I'm about to put your lights out." Maks felt the flames singe his eyebrows and crouched. "That doesn't even make any sense." He said hanging on a light pole. Heat rose from the ground as Igneous powered up and he aimed ember attacks on them. The fire spread to the library and anything flammable. He breathed harshly when it swallowed up oxygen. Irma coughed lurching through the flames. Igneous was trying to hedge them in. "I don't suppose you have a plan before he cremates us." She said running while he hovered with a raven's body and his human head intact. "Gee Irma, how am I supposed to stop what I can't touch!?" He said mildly and ducked the fireballs. "I feel like you're rubbing it in." He flapped his burning feathers off and dropped to the ground running. His skill reversed and he had a raven's head and his human body. His arms were red like severe rashes. His eyes were calculating, the fire was s
Mister Gunderson glanced at him and he fooled around reading posters and walked past him. "Morning sir.""It's afternoon." He said. "It was a military greeting but good to know." He retorted and pursed his lips leaving."Anderson." Mister Gunderson watched the bee beelining toward him and onwards. "I'd be careful if I were you."...He hobbled along after that, it was his last shift for the week. The sun was setting and gardeners worked on the shrub hedges, cutting out the flowers and one of the staff stopped a kid from snatching apples from a tree. He stretched after a hard day's work, staring at the remainder of bees stalking, he took slow deep breaths, Mister Gunderson was acting a little stranger than he was before. Drifting past them, he glanced up at the sky and saw a thick black smog moving in one specific direction, which was toward him. He took cover and his system closed in on them, calculating. [ Africanized honey bees: known for their aggressive nature, though few death
Maks zipped out and picked up running. They mimicked his speed running too, he overlooked how creepy it was to be fighting himself and he nudged them off his side counting, enraged that he was getting multi-maimed, the road stretched out in front of him, he didn't have to outrun them.[...19...20...21...] If he was able to make the clones burn out then he just might slow them down before they could do any more damage. He got a sense of his environment, he reached a sunny boulevard of trees, blue sky and clean apartment buildings with brick red bases, he braced himself before 23 and he leapt up to a tree. The copies slid past him uncontrollably surpassing 23 seconds and they died of exhaustion. He stayed aloft with a raven's aura on him. He held on to a branch. The flight of the raven felt more like antigrav than flight, he had no wings but all the same, he turned himself over and latched on to a thick branch and pulled himself down, he touched his shoulder, huffing and watched them
And the oppressive sun. The trees wafted the hot breeze. There were no promises of fall this August."Nothing as bad as you in Bermuda shorts." Victor snorted and rolled his eyes grinning."I'm going to go change." He said and trudged to one of the large stalls and disappeared. He bit his lip. "Me too." He said grinning. The adults were keeping company with the kids in the paramecium pool. Victor shoved a tuft of sand. The grass looked scanty and dry. Teen slid on a mat covered in oil and they tried to beat each other's speed record. He cleared while one sailed into a tree groaning. He wondered where Maks went. He stayed by a pine tree with a fibrous rope around it and sloped."Boo!" He appeared with his human face, the body of a squirrel and cute antlers.Victor fell over and his expression dulled while he chuckled. "Too much?" He said. Victor sighed. "Nice try, but I refuse to be terrorized by one wittle creature." He gave him one affectionate chuck under the chin. "Touch me l