by Pen
“Good thing you got to me when you did,” said Jenna.
“I almost didn’t. Your bosses didn’t want me to come in here at all. They wanted you dead.”
“That’s what they were counting on.”
“They weren’t counting on me. Come on.” Rion opened the door at the far end of the room and refactored his psi shield for illumination. He helped Jenna through the cockeyed door frame. On the other side was the motor pool. Nothing remained there except two ATVs on their sides and a silver jeep with the keys already in the ignition.
“You’d better drive.” Jenna struggled into the passenger seat. Rion climbed behind the wheel. He turned the key and the Jeep rumbled to life.
“Buckle up. This could get rough.” Rion drove the Jeep through the slanted parking garage as chunks of cement fell around them. As they rounded the corner they found the exit flooded with rain water.
“Hold on. This might get uncomfortable.” Rion retracted his psibordinate from Jenna. The woman collapsed against her seat immediately. At full power again Rion extended his psi shield around the jeep and drove into the water, deeper and deeper until the vehicle was completely submerged. The only thing keeping it running was his psi shield, feeding oxygen to the engine down a narrow snorkel wedged into a pocket of air overhead. Just when he thought he’d lost it altogether, he found the ramp and pulled the jeep up onto the surface. He hammered down the accelerator and the jeep leaped forward as the building collapsed behind him.
“The freeway is six miles east, Gemini.” Kestrel commed at him. “Find somewhere to hunker down until this storm passes. Any idea where you’re going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Marion George Harmon
Marion G. Harmon pursued the odd path of attaining a bachelors degree in literature and a masters degree in history, and then going into financial planning. Because financial planning wasn't interesting enough, in 2011 he self-published Wearing the Cape, chronicling the adventures of Astra. It achieved #1 status in its Amazon category, and today he's working on Book 7 of the Wearing the Cape series while writing and producing a tabletop roleplaying superhero game for the world of the books. Nobody is more astonished by this than he is.
Samantha Bryant
Samantha Bryant is a middle school Spanish teacher by day and a mom and novelist by night. That makes her a superhero all the time. Her secret superpower is finding lost things. When she's not writing or teaching, Samantha enjoys time with her family, watching old movies, baking, reading, and going places. Her favorite gift is tickets (to just about anything).
She’s the author of Going Through the Change: A Menopausal Superhero Novel, the sequel Change of Life, and the three-quel Face the Change (due out July 11, 2017), all available through Curiosity Quills Press on Amazon or by request at your favorite bookseller. You can find her wasting time on Twitter @mirymom1 or at her blog/website: http://samanthabryant.com
Stephen T. Brophy
Stephen T. Brophy has been writing fiction in some form or fashion since the 2nd grade. Sometimes he even gets paid to do it. In 2013, he had an idea for a short story about a middle-aged professional henchman with a diabetic cat, a shitty boss, an ex-wife and a six-year-old daughter. An average working schlub with a machine-gun arm and a depressing bachelor pad. He named him HandCannon, and in short order the story ballooned into a novella and Brophy dove headfirst into self-publishing it under the title The Villain’s Sidekick. Good reviews on io9.com, boing-boing.net, superheronovels.com and in the pages of RazorCake encouraged him to keep banging out stories, and HandCannon kept wanting to star in them. In the past few years, Brophy’s churned out two prequel novelettes, The Eternity Conundrum and The Devil’s Right Hand, and now this one, while also working on the full-length sequel, Citizen Skin.
Ian Thomas Healy
Ian Thomas Healy is a prolific writer who dabbles in many different speculative genres. He’s a eleven-time participant and winner of National Novel Writing Month where he’s tackled such diverse subjects as sentient alien farts, competitive forklift racing, a religion-powered rabbit-themed superhero, cyberpunk mercenaries, cowboy elves, and an unlikely combination of vampires with minor league hockey. His popular superhero fiction series, the Just Cause Universe, is ever-expanding, as is his western fantasy epic The Pariah of Verigo. He is also the creator of the Writing Better Action Through Cinematic Techniques workshop, which helps writers to improve their action scenes.
Ian also created the longest-running superhero webcomic done in LEGO, The Adventures of the S-Team, which ran from 2006-2012.
When not writing, which is rare, he enjoys watching hockey, reading comic books (and serious books, too), and living in the great state of Colorado, which he shares with his wife, children, house-pets, and approximately five million other people. Follow him on Twitter as @ianthealy and on Facebook as Author Ian Thomas Healy.
Landon Porter
Landon Porter is a proud geek who enjoys comic books, roleplaying, and gaming. He knows a d20 from 2d10, the Konami Code and why Pi Day is March 14. A fan of all things Fantasy and Sci-Fi, he's been writing about them on the web since 2002 and has been telling stories since before he could write.
An avid fan of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Roleplaying Games and Superhero comics, his works tend to mix and blend tropes from each into new an original creations.
His writing philosophy heavily emphasizes themes of family, hope and redemption, rejecting the idea that works must be bleak and dark to be realistic and meaningful.
Michael Ivan Lowell
Michael Ivan Lowell is the author of THE SUNS OF LIBERTY series of superhero action novels. He lives in Florida with his wife and an army of domesticated beasts. He can be found online at: www.michaelivanlowell.com.
Jim Zoetewey
Jim Zoetewey writes the Legion of Nothing, a series of novels about the grandchildren of the biggest superhero group of the 1950s, the Heroes League. Set in the present day, the novels follow what happens when they reform the Heroes League, revive their grandparents' costumed identities, and try to survive the consequences.
The first two novels are on Amazon, Smashwords and many other online booksellers. Another will be coming out this year. The online serial that the novels are based on can be found at http://inmydaydreams.com.
Nicholas Ahlhelm
Nicholas Ahlhelm lives and works in Eastern Iowa. Previous works include the Lightweight series, Epsilon and A Dangerous Place to Live, which introduced Annabelle Montalvo. His serial novel F.O.R.C.E. deals with the aftermath of Backoff’s death on her partner Legend. His works all take place in the shared Quadrant Universe. He will continue Annabelle’s story in 2017’s The Long Hot Summer.
T. Mike McCurley
T. Mike McCurley lives in a small city in Oklahoma, where indeed, “the wind comes sweeping” and all that. He began writing superhero prose on a whim one day, and found it enjoyable enough to continue. His short stories soon formed the backbone of what became known as the world of The Emergence, describing events and players in a world of metahumanity that began in 1963 and has continued to grow since. From there came the stories of the metahuman cop known as Firedrake, which has now filled three books, with a fourth in the works.
The Adventures of Jericho Sims was born from ideas years ago and they are finally seeing the light of day. Described by the author as “Josey Wales meets Carl Kolchak”, Jericho is a gunfighter cursed by dark forces. Searching for a demonic doctor, Jericho’s travels bring him face to face with the supernatural.
The author is a founding member of the Pen and Cape Society, an online cabal of authors of superhero prose, and his Emergence setting will soon be featured in Lester Smith’s D6xD6 roleplaying game.
In another (non-writing) life, he has been a radiological monitor, an emergency medical technician, a private investigator, a videographer, a certified GLOCK armorer, and a dozen other things too varied a
nd goofy to list in one space together.
His works can be found linked at www.tmikemccurley.com and at the Pen and Cape Society, www.penandcapesociety.com.
Caine Dorr
Caine Dorr is the creator of the Adventure Frequency a multimedia platform used to experiment with genre and storytelling across all media types and formats. Within the Adventure Frequency Caine has published a small line of pulp inspired tales featuring Commander Knight of Knight INC, Lady Raven, Sky Sentry, Iron Horse, and the Huntsman Legion.
His love of antiheroes and adventure tales of all types are not limited to prose however as Caine, along with a few friends and associates, produce audio adventures of varying lengths and formats for The Adventure Frequency Podcast, the CityNewsNet podcast, and a couple of new audio endeavors scheduled to launch early in 2017.
Gemini Rescue takes place in the Psi Tide, a wave of psionic energy that crashes down upon North America every year and scours the continent for three to six months providing anyone who comes into contact with it unique psionic abilities for the duration. Rion Guard is both the C.E.O of Gemini Rescue as well as its primary field agent and specializes in performing rescues no one else dares.
You can learn more about the Psi Tide, Gemini Rescue, Rion Guard, and all of the Adventure Frequency properties at http://adventurefrequency.com/. You can connect with the adventure frequency on Twitter @adventurefreq and Facebook @adventurefreq as well as our web site contact page.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Scott A. Story
Scott Story is a freelance illustrator and cartoonist who lives in the Midwestern USA. He has been involved in the comic industry since 1992, and webcomics since 2004. He has drawn comics for dozens of publishers including Image, Amp, Arrow, Digital Webbing, Arcana, Spinner Rack Comics, and many others. His current focus is writing new material and marketing the material he has already created or contributed to.
As the creative director of Story Studios LLC., he has published three graphic novels, seventeen comics, a sketchbook, and a pinup book. He has written articles for Blueline Pro’s Sketch Magazine, and prose stories for print anthologies and the web. His webcomic, Johnny Saturn, was a past winner of the Webcomics Readers Choice Awards, and Scott was a speaker at the prestigious Graphic Engagement academic conference hosted by the Purdue University Comparative Literature Program.
Scott was the creator and a founding member of the highly successful Collective of Heroes, a juried collective of indie superhero webcomics.
Table of Contents
DATING GAMES
UNDERESTIMATED: A MENOPAUSAL SUPERHERO STORY
THE HENCHMAN’S APPRENTICE
SUN-KISSED
SMOKE SHADOW AND SHADE
SECRETS IN THE SANDS
MINOR LEAGUE
HEROES DON’T RETIRE
UNMASKED
GEMINI RESCUE
Table of Contents
DATING GAMES
UNDERESTIMATED: A MENOPAUSAL SUPERHERO STORY
THE HENCHMAN’S APPRENTICE
SUN-KISSED
SMOKE SHADOW AND SHADE
SECRETS IN THE SANDS
MINOR LEAGUE
HEROES DON’T RETIRE
UNMASKED
GEMINI RESCUE