I stood beside a cliff’s edge above the Pacific Ocean, preparing to jump.
Theoretical physicist Wanda Pepper stood between me and the edge. Her cropped, raven-black hair had a stray, orange-dyed curl in front that bounced when she moved toward me.
Wanda patted the electrodes on my chest. “You’re all set.”
I scratched the
When I heard about our scientists’ mutation experiments, I laughed. When I saw their results, I loaded my guns.
Tranquilizer guns, of course. As the lab’s lead animal caretaker, only the pistol on my holster was deadly.
“Don’t you have anything that’s not dangerous?” I asked Dr. Jantz, our lead geneticist.
During pregame warmups for the 2035 semifinals, my players couldn’t miss the basket. Shot after shot went up, then swished through the net. That might have made some coaches happy, but I’d seen too many teams have a great warmup and then come out flat.
Besides, I worried about our star player, Jake.
With shaking fingers, Vik attached the last wire to the prosthetic arm’s microprocessor. “The patient is now fully operational.”
His voice sounded deceptively calm, belying his frantically pounding heart.
Behind him, Igor clapped. “It’s ready?”
“He,” Vik corrected, leveling a glare at the technician. “Bring me the defibrillator.”
Above, raindrops pounded against
Detachment of limbs is a superpower.
Really. Being able to pop off your legs or hands and send them to do heroic things while your body stays safely behind can be… handy.
Of course, I attach limbs. No one considers that a superpower, just like absolutely no one considers me a hero. Besides,
Percy blinked. After glancing around the room, he blinked again, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He stood naked in a giant glass tube. In his last memory, he’d been fully clothed and curled up beside a campfire in the Brazilian jungle…
That wasn’t the most startling revelation though. No. What
Thomas snuck into the graveyard at midnight.
Carrying an oil lamp low in his left hand, he hoisted the shovel in his right and slinked among the tombstones until he located his prize—a mound of dirt, newly churned, resting at the foot of a humble marker. The lantern’s quivering flame danced across
“Sal, where are we going?” Jane ducked under a branch.
“My cousin Fragar’s lab.” Sal forged down what appeared to be no more than a deer trail.
Jane avoided dew-soaked vines sparkling in the sun. “The third cousin Fragar?”
“Yeah.”
“The crazy, mad scientist, turns-perfectly-good-strawberries-blue one?”
Sal laughed. “That one”
“Sal, why are
All I wanted was to make a world.
Stop looking at me. I can feel you looking at me. Judging me. I didn’t ask for much—not to rule a world that already existed, not to bend a galaxy to my will—only to make myself a cosmos, woven by my own mind.
“Could I fly up and cut through the bars?” Deidre hovers a few feet away from me.
I shake my head. “I rigged an invisible forcefield below the cage.”
“What if we disarm it?”
“There’s a cooldown timer.” I sigh. “And the bars are titanium.”
“I could use my lasers,” Raymond suggests.
“The cage will
It was a typical night in Doomslyvania, where the weather was frequently dark and stormy. Dr. Detestable had ranked the persistent dreary turbulence high in selling points when he’d chosen to build his castle laboratory on these steep, black cliffs. Top three, at least. Ominous circling vultures and a pathetic village to terrorize
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