I stood outside the GAT house, leaning against the railing and staring at the far off stadium lights. Football season would be starting any day now and you know, while I wasn’t a big fan of the games themselves I couldn’t help but be addicted to the energy. The screaming fans, the crudely drawn paper sighs, and oh god, the after-parties. I couldn’t tell you how much I was looking forward to getting completely smashed at the DEM house and waking up with a random stranger, especially after the events of the last few weeks.

“Do you two need a minute?” Michelle asked, a smirk forming on the corners of her mouth as they stood there with the two uniformed police officers.

“Yes,” I said, as I turned back Remy. She shook her head and literally pushed me off of her with both hands; I grunted as I fell to the floor.

the same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of his worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

Stuck in a Rut.
By Rosalie Redd
Casey Church was a normal 13 year old boy, full of hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties. But in a world where there hadn’t been a girl born in over a century, what was normal?

Chapter 2.

“What…is this?” Tiffany asked me, turning her character toward me. I noticed that her character was frowning; she had motion capture turned on. Shit, how good was her computer that it could handle face tracking? “Turn voice chat on you goober.”

I didn’t like to use voice chat, mainly because I didn’t like the sound of my own voice but what could it hurt? She knew who I was. I switched it on, paused for a second, and then, finally spoke, attempting to sound as feminine as possible.

“It’s the Everburning Mines,” I said. “I’ve been here like…a million times.”

“How do the Garrons even have a million dollars to donate to Woodcrest?” Tiffany asked me as I took exit 78 onto the freeway. I’d brought her with me for emotional support, and for directions. Mostly emotional support; I could have used my GPS to get to Derringer Inc., this place where I was supposedly going to be landing a new job.

I hovered my mouse over the ‘call’ button for a good minute before I finally closed my eyes, sighed, and worked up the nerve to click. It took a second for my laptop to register what I’d done but soon enough the familiar ringtone broke through and I could see the word ‘connecting’ on the screen. I waited for ten, twenty seconds thinking they weren’t going to pick up. I think I was hoping they weren’t going to pick up; my parents were never pleasant to talk to and even less so since I’d unexpectedly changed my major.

PATTY’S PLAY PAL

Synopsis

One minute your breaking into places, making a decent living, next some damn robot is taping you into a diaper. Mark didn’t begrudge the robot the diaper, he was small enough for that, but if their robot was suppose to be all that intelligent how come it didn’t know that boys didn’t wear dresses?

“I’m sorry Ma’am,” The voice on the other end of the phone said. “We can’t accommodate a transgender individual at our shelter. While I’m sure he’s a great…person, we can’t house him with the women.”

“You can’t house her with the men either!” I said angrily. “Do you know what could happen?”

“Did you try the shelter over on Bradbury?” The woman asked. I wanted to jump through the phone and strangle her.

“Of course I tried them,” I snapped. “They said the exact same thing and this is INSANE! You can’t just turn people away! Hello? Hello?!”

“Hey, cheer up Audrey,” I said as I turned onto Main street and into a row of back to back restaurants, all lit up and making my stomach growl.
“Aleah please,” She said. “I just…couldn’t I just stay at home tonight?”

“You’ve been cooped up in your dorm for three days,” I said. “You needed to get out. I’m getting you out.”

“It’s really creepy that you know that,” She said. “Don’t you guys have anything better to do than watch me?”

“Uh…yeah,” I said. “Lots of things. Lots and lots of things but…yeahhhhhh.”

I nodded to Sakiya as I sat down at the table in the quad. She was nicely dressed, as usual. Tri Pi’s fashion sense had always been a little more refined than ours, I guess you could say. Yeah we were on top of the latest trends, but every Tri Pi girl looked like they could wake up in the morning and walk into church every single day of the week, it was disturbing, or even kind of Stepfordy.

“So,” She said. “I’m going to cut right to the chase, how can I help you exactly?”

“Audrey?” Aleah gently shook nudged her shoulder. While we’d been downstairs, she’d fallen asleep on the bed, her head buried in Lauren’s lap. “Wake up sweetie.”

She opened her eyes slowly, rolling them to look up at Aleah. She remained silent until Aleah finally spoke again.

“You’re staying here tonight,” Aleah said finally. “We don’t…usually allow that sort of thing, but...we don’t want you to leave…like this, okay? You’re staying here. I need you to get up though so you can change.”

Raven stops a few blocks away from the garage to gather herself. She was still pissed after seeing one of the men responsible for sending her to jail. She tries the breathing exercises she recently learned from Barbara.

Barbara had found her crying and upset about a memory that resurface from her time in prison. She instructed Raven on how to center herself and let the emotion flow out of her, instead of letting it have power over her. She needed to get her emotions under control before she got back to the shop.

The weeks were passing and Karen and Henry kept improving the chamber in order to speed up the manufacturing duplication process. Henry was the one to suggest a major change in the way they made the models.

I’ve always been pretty proud of my car, it was a blue Mercury Milan; my parents paid for it. I can’t say I was really proud of it as I pulled into Shawn’s driveway. If you could call it a driveway. It was more like a road, to be honest. As I pulled in I was greeted by a guardhouse and a wrought iron gate, both of which barred me from entry until I rolled down my window and spoke with the guard.

“Go right in, Miss Grey,” The security guard waved me in as the gate was pulled aside. “Mr. Derringer is waiting for you.”

the same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of his worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

Class wrapped up early so I dropped by the library to catch up on some reading. I probably could have done it at the house but it was kind of quieter here. Call me a prude I guess. I stepped into one of the private reading rooms, and I immediately remembered that it was the one we’d sent Audrey to for Lauren’s laptop.

“Have you talked to Mike?” Aleah asked me as she passed me a roll of masking tape and a poster. I held it up, it was pretty simple; it just said ‘Aleah Simms for Student Body President’. It was her second time trying, and her last chance. She would graduate at the end of this year. Probably.

“Thought Julia was doing that?” I phrased the statement as a question. Honestly, why would I do the job the police should be doing.

Chapter 1 — The Escape

I was as nervous as hell. My uncle sat behind his big desk in his home office, which was really his man cave, looking at me with a frown. The thing was, no matter how nervous I was, I was also determined.

I didn't consider my uncle as evil, just greedy and inconsiderate. My deal appealed to his greed as the carrot with the threat of court action as the stick.

“I don't know where you get this foolish notion that I am wasting your inheritance and you shouldn't threaten me.”

“Come on Todd!” Mason said insistently from across the room as his fingers worked the keyboard like an instrument. “Let’s see that epic DPS you’re always talking about”

“I’m trying!” I shouted back. “This thing has mad adds!”

We were deep in a Dark Pantheon raid, fighting the final boss. I was running low on health potions and the boss’s adds were shielding it from any physical attacks. The only thing I could get through its shields were weak frostbolt attacks but that just wasn’t cutting it.

“Target the adds then!” Mason said. “They’re weak to fire.”