Duir Twenty Seven, Y. Forty One: Oh, Canta the Beneficent, please watch over my Sisters as they travel across the river to the Yards tomorrow. In my heart I know those living there are no more prone to evil than I, but my gut still clenches at the thought of Sister Cheryl at the mercy of some Bag con man, or what might happen should Sister Auriemma unknowingly try to tell some criminal what to do. Please, forgive me my misanth...
2024-08-23 19:11:23 +0000 UTC
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Grace stared at the tablet in her hands, trying to ignore the quiet, steady sound of the angel's breathing. At first, she'd tried a set of earplugs, but the lack of sound nauseated her. She'd focused on the ventilation for a while, but after a time its repetitive nature pushed it into the background. Now she simply sat quietly reading the publicly available information on her temporary roommates.
Widget, the gadget maker, the super scien...
2024-08-23 15:30:14 +0000 UTC
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Jack settled himself slowly onto the broad back of the motionless giant polar bear. Stiff, slippery fur crunched under his feet. Long habit had him planting his feet at right angles without thinking about it, sliding them sideways through shattering, glassy fur. Oddly, once he'd broken bits off, they drifted to the ground like normal, if thick, hair. He reached down and lifted a few strands; they felt normal as well.
"So, what's this thi...
2024-08-23 15:20:32 +0000 UTC
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Grace walked through the halls of the headquarters. A few minutes earlier, she'd heard several doors open and close in rapid succession, far faster than she'd thought possible. She'd poked about the medical area until she found a tablet computer set up to monitor patients. With the tablet in hand showing her the angel's sleeping form, she explored the building looking for the source of the sounds.
Her sense of hearing, always excellent, ...
2024-08-08 16:19:33 +0000 UTC
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Walker stirred, the government issue cot beneath him creaking as he did. The smell of chili heavy with meat assaulted his nostrils and eyes, making both runny. Giving up on sleeping, he swung himself upright. The chili sat in the middle of a tray full of food; a ripe banana, a bowl of apple slices, a packet of crackers, and a plate piled high with cubed cheese. The tray itself sat in the little airlock his keepers used to deliver food, books, ...
2024-08-08 16:12:07 +0000 UTC
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Grace sat listening to the whisper of air through the ventilation ducts, the only sound this deep in the headquarters complex. In front of her chair lay the woman she'd seen on waking, her chest rising and falling gently. Angela had said she ought to be back before Drew woke, but just in case she'd asked Grace to watch over her.
Of course, she'd asked her to do so from the security station. Five minutes after the doctor left the building...
2024-07-27 08:14:12 +0000 UTC
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"I know why we're doing it, but I still think we're..."
A key turning in the lock on the door stopped Katrina midsentence. A moment later a distinguished older gentleman stepped into the cell, escorted by a big, bald, Black man in a suit, who could only be Agent Jamil Johnson. The older guy must be the judge. Katrina shut her mouth and vowed silently to keep it shut unless he asked her a direct question.
"Good evening, Agent Johnso...
2024-07-21 06:13:59 +0000 UTC
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A syncopated rhythm rattled Grace's skull, pulled her step by shuddering step back to consciousness. Waking up surprised her in and of itself. The last she remembered, the ocean dragged her down into the depths, hammering her against the bottom before burying her under all the unimaginable tons of water in the Zhujiang river estuary. Now her head pounded with every mistimed beat of her heart, that problematic organ thumping away just a touch b...
2024-07-06 05:34:11 +0000 UTC
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"Kill the alien bitch!"
Drew had had enough of the guy shouting from the top of the trailer. Before the guys on the ground got their guns loaded up, she leapt up the side of the truck. Her fingers found purchase on the edge of the trailer's roof, and she pulled herself up and over into a handstand. The screaming guy had just enough time to have his mouth drop open in shock before her feet hammered down on top of his head. He collapsed, a...
2024-06-28 03:52:53 +0000 UTC
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Drew rolled her car along the street, engine nearly silent, lights off. The anonymous tip they'd gotten about suspicious activity at the strip mall hadn't specified how many. With no backup, she intended to keep the element of surprise for as long as possible. More than once a group of perps had given up not because she could take them down, but because she'd ridden the surprise until all of them wore cuffs.
A block away from the place s...
2024-06-24 02:41:14 +0000 UTC
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A light blinked on Angela's leftmost screen. She slipped her ear bud in, clicked the light, and spoke. "Hello, this is Doctor Merilyn."
"Hi, Doc. This is Andy down at the ER."
She clicked a few links on her communication screen, returned to her drafting as the unneeded information scrolled by. "I remember you. Are Ellen's lungs doing better?"
"On the days I can convince her to take it easy, yeah. That's not really important r...
2024-06-14 04:48:01 +0000 UTC
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Angela slipped both vials into her chromatograph. They clicked into place, the cover slid shut, and the machine hummed into action. She stepped over to her computer, logged in, and typed as she waited for the results. She sent an email to Charlie, letting him know about the two new potential recruits. Without thinking about it she addressed it to 'Mr. Morgan', asking him to send 'Kronos' to her lab to speak with Watkins and Wells. She went bac...
2024-06-10 05:30:13 +0000 UTC
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A huge fabric sign hung over the entrance to the warehouse. The ropes on the bottom, intended to hold it stretched out so passerby could read it, flopped around fitfully in the breeze. Damien tried to read the partially covered writing half a dozen times before he gave in. He reached out, grabbed each rope with one invisible hand, and pulled them taut.
"Damien!" Katrina's whisper barely tickled his ear, but he could feel the sudden paran...
2024-06-03 07:23:27 +0000 UTC
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Addendum M4-7: I’ve just finished analysis of a deceased Model Four in particularly bad condition. To clarify, every exposed surface, including every wound entry point, has dissolved into an acidic black slime. Apparently, when the hallucinogen produced by Model Fours comes in contact with a mixture of two different recalled UV protection creams, a chemical reaction occurs which creates an acidic slime whi...
2024-05-30 12:30:54 +0000 UTC
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May Cause Cancer
May Cause Cancer
May Cause Cancer
Maybe I can turn them cancers against one another!
***
You gotta g...
2024-05-30 12:28:41 +0000 UTC
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Right at the beginning of the century we won a huge victory against governments impeding our mandate by inserting the concept of government ‘death panels’, denying care to terminal patients, into the public consciousness.
Employees mistakenly referring to Terminal Care Triage Officers or Offices as ‘death panels’ will be penalized, up to and including loss of all company sponsored health care.
Jesse looked around the room where she'd spent most of her waking hours for the past five years. The walls bore the pale rectangular scars of posters removed, stacked in a neat pile on the left side of her desk. On top of the pile sat her grade book, patiently awaiting the arrival of whoever replaced her. To the right sat a box full of her personal items. It would have been nearly empty, but for the last-minute gifts from her students.
R...
2024-05-25 03:41:16 +0000 UTC
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Jesse stepped into the clearing in the junkyard, and the world exploded into light. When her eyes adjusted, four pillars of light drew them like magnets, beckoning her. She took several steps forward before she could stop herself. Without knowing why, she knew she would burn in the light as surely as a moth in flame. Desperate for anything to take her attention from the solid, meter wide bars of blue-white light, she glanced around for somethi...
2024-05-18 07:49:08 +0000 UTC
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Walker stared down at the world he'd left behind. Since the wind rushed through, he'd walked the surface of the station, carefully checking each of the antennae, each solar panel, each station keeping thruster. He'd finally figured out why the station hadn't received any transmissions from the surface. A redundant backup relay, only included in the design in case both the primary and backup relays failed, had been knocked out of place by a mic...
2024-05-11 06:15:25 +0000 UTC
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"...so, what I'd really like you three to do is make your unique skills sets available to the Bureau as deputized outside contractors. If the Rain hadn't cut into our available manpower so badly, I'd add 'for exclusive use in situations requiring those skills', but the fact is I might have to call you in to handle more mundane cases and emergencies."
Jesse kept up her exaggerated cartoon expressions; this time drawing down the corners of...
2024-05-05 04:56:19 +0000 UTC
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Angela ignored Steve's maniac driving and concentrated on her samples. She had to talk with Charlie about setting up a proper lab at the Hospital. Sure, they could do simple blood counts, and the new machine spat out every conventional figure you could want from a single sample. On the other hand...
She stared at the sample rack in her lap. Despite Steve's insistence on this outing, she'd brought them along. She couldn't examine them whi...
2024-04-26 20:44:01 +0000 UTC
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Charlie lay on his cot, the blanket neatly tucked beneath him. A slight breeze wafted across the room, chilling him awake. He opened his eyes to slits; his office had no drafts. The door stood open; Troy frozen halfway through sticking his head into the room. Charlie slipped to the floor, checked the locked box holding his costume, and took a deep breath. When a few minutes of meditation brought his heart rate back to normal, he let his time f...
2024-04-22 01:39:51 +0000 UTC
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Long before Steve followed Angela through the ER doors, he caught the scent of metal in the air. Walking into the room, the smell overwhelmed him, and he stood there until the door thumped against his foot.
"There's something... Someone's bleeding in here."
"It's an ER, Steve."
"I mean bleeding out. This place smells like an abattoir."
Angela stopped, glanced over her shoulder at him, and conspicuously sniffed at the ai...
2024-04-12 08:21:12 +0000 UTC
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Sorry it's taken so long. My original intent was to put up one of these a month. Right now I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to do them, but a lot of background prep work I needed for them is done, so they'll be easier than this one.
Also, they'll be here a minimum of thirty days in advance of them going live on RR. So, y'know, advance chapter! Yay?
Hope you guys like it!
2024-04-10 18:38:52 +0000 UTC
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Tenth of Gort, Year Three Hundred Forty One After Founding: Hero Potami arrived today carrying two letters to me. The first, a missive from William noting that several of his scouts in the direction of New Amsterdam hadn't checked in at their last appointed time, and that he intends to personally reconnoiter in an attempt to find his scouts, as some of them are in his personal employ rather than that of the office of the Marshall, and they mig...
2024-04-10 18:36:21 +0000 UTC
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Angela lifted the damp rag from her face and stared across the break room at Steve. "What did you say?"
"You back?" Steve glanced up from the pile of rubble which used to be a door. Before she could reply, he reached in, grabbed a twisted metal stud and pulled. The beam slid partway out, hooked on another beam, and slipped out of his hand.
"Yeah, but I kinda wish I wasn't. My head is killing me. What's with you playing janitor?"
2024-04-05 03:58:45 +0000 UTC
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"We need to stop for some water. I'm parched."
Drew glanced over her shoulder. Jesse lay curled across the back seat, her shoes off, her eyes squeezed shut against the light. A look in the rear view showed her the trailer she'd borrowed from Charlie's junkyard. The back of Jack's head rested against the front of the trailer, his feet stretched out toward the tailgate. The trailer wasn't meant to hold passengers, and couldn't be comfortab...
2024-04-05 03:50:52 +0000 UTC
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Katrina folded her arms beneath her breasts, looking at Damien through lowered lashes.
"I am not taking my shirt off, and that's final."
He quirked an eyebrow at her and wiped down the last plate of his armor, careful not to touch the surface of the metal with his fingers. When the surface gleamed, he carefully placed it atop the rest of his armor. Siren's suit lay next to his, both tucked away at the bottom of a set of basement st...
2024-03-23 07:25:00 +0000 UTC
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Angela's mouth dropped open, and Drew smirked at her.
Yeah, I've got useful powers, like being pretty, and she's got useless ones, like summoning anything she wants, any time she wants.
Shaking her head at the irony, Drew left the others staring at Angela. If her friend warped time and space itself so she could take a look at herself, she really ought to oblige her. She sauntered over to the mirror and froze. She stared at...
2024-03-15 22:59:24 +0000 UTC
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The Raven looked down from on high, silently observing her Champion and her Lady in Waiting. They had served her well and deserved the island vacation they had taken. It surprised her that neither of them knew she watched them; her shadow lay on the sand beside them, rock still as she hovered.
She chose this place to hover because of her Champion's presence. Not only were his hideaways inevitably hard to find, but his performance against...
2024-03-15 22:36:28 +0000 UTC
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