Doc_Heaven

Wired Bone: Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

It was about three hours later when the Council meeting ended.

The matter of adopting Kingston Hill’s research was revisited and argued multiple times during the meeting, once a topic was exhausted, but they always ended coming back to the same result.

Houses Sanguine, Aurum and Asclepius could not be dissuaded from their path, and neither could ...

Wired Bone: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

The Head Councilman’s office was in the borough of Gilgamesh, as the previous Head Councilman — the original Head Councilman — had decreed. The main Council Chambers were there as well, but on the other side of it, closer to the coast and what used to be New York, now known as the haunted district of Gilgamesh.

This let Zero looked out of...

Wired Bone: Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Consciousness arrived with no merciful transition. One moment there was the darkness of peaceful, dreamless slumber, and the next moment Lucas was awake with the sticky feeling of dry blood on his face and a certainty that he was going to go to hell when he died.

He was Catholic, so that last part was nothing unusual.

“Ugh.”

“Shuddup,...

Wired Bone notice

Did some restructuring of the story, nothing major, but updates should happen more often now that I'm not making 8k words per chapter on average.

Wired Bone: Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

There was an abomination against good sense standing outside the window.

Quadruped with wings, it had the head and wings of a pigeon, but the body and grubby paws of a possum, all tied together in grey fur and feathers that reflected the light in greens and purples, with bits of black fur-feathers around its beady black eyes. It was framed by the early...

Wired Bone: Chapter Six

Chapter Six

“Well,” said Crane. “Shit.”

That summarized the situation pretty well, in Luke's opinion.

Devonte Crane was a man in his forties. Black-skinned, bald and clean shaven at all times. He was tall and lithe, though the few occasions that Lucas had seen him shirtless had shown a rather impressive musculature that came from years of exercise.

Wired Bone: Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Three minutes and forty seconds later, Doctor Phan and Zero went their separate ways. The good doctor had to report his progress to his superiors, meaning Zero had the rest of the day to go about his business.

The Academy was large.

Large enough that the building and its surrounding campus occupied 12% of Third York borough of Odysseus. Granted, t...

Wired Bone: Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Gibson Heights, to the unprepared, was a nightmare that bordered on the Escher-esque.

The DeRose apartment was the only actual living space in their building’s thirty-fourth floor. Everything else had fallen apart or been turned into a business. Just outside Lucas’ door was a ramen shop, opposite to a thrift shop and next to a tattoo and piercing pa...

Wired Bone: Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The world had been made untamed, left wild and scarred.

The road the caravan crossed was unstable and shattered, a line of concrete put together from what had remained after the tungsten rain had ended. The terrain surrounding it was nothing but sand and craters, silica bent into odd glass formations that bent out and reached up like the fossilized fin...

Wired Bone: Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The light, filtered through the fluids inside the glass tubes that ran throughout the room, dyed the room in a deep red glow. They ran across the walls and just under the ceiling, barely leaving room for the lamp lights.

Though at first glance the positioning of them appeared random, Zero’s experienced eyes tracked the way they all connected to the Tho...

Wired Bone: Chapter One

Chapter One

24 Hours Earlier:

Twelve-year-old Lucas DeRose woke up to the ringing of his alarm clock.

With trained motions, he immediately slammed his hand down on the device before he fully woke up, then laid completely still in bed, avoiding any motions that might cause creaking from the old springs under him.

His sleep-addled mind bar...

Wired Bone: Prologue

The bodies were cold, and they had been for quite a while.

The crowds of onlookers, originally just a smattering of children watching from across the street — eyes wide, expressions blank and knees drawn up to the chest — had evolved into most of the neighborhood finally approaching the three corpses that had been there since around twenty past midnight.

Several police officers ...

Scraps of Flesh: Chapter 1

24 Hours Earlier:

My alarm clock woke me up at eight thirty in the morning, half an hour before my mother woke up.

As was my routine, I immediately turned off the alarm and waited with an ear open in case I heard the creaking of mom getting out of bed. Once I was satisfied that I wasn’t going to hear anything, I got outta bed.

As quietly as I could, I went u...

Scraps of Flesh: Prologue

The bodies were cold, and they had been for quite a while.

What had previously been a collection of school kids watching from across the street — eyes wide, expressions blank and knees drawn up to the chest — had evolved into most of the neighborhood finally approaching the corpse that had been there since around twenty past midnight.

Several officers were standing outside the y...

100YoP Chapter Twenty-Seven "I can do loud."

When Billy, Farah and Yua all burst into Alice’s clinic, they found her sewing up a gash that cut diagonally across my chest, having just finished with Steph. Cass was already there, sitting in the corner, fuming and doing her best to not distract Alice as she paced around, frowning deeply and crossing her arms.

The clinic I’d bought and funded for Alice was spacious, well-staffed and...

100YoP Chapter Twenty-six "Well... Shit."

The windows were fogged up, the driver’s seat was inclined all the way back, a song was playing through the speaker, and the lights of the city could be seen through the windshield, as the car was parked just outside of Gotham, overlooking it from a popular spot for couples.

All of these factors were ignored by Ca...

100YoP Chapter Twenty-five "Young Billy"

They were six when they met.

But the firs

100YoP Chapter Twenty-four "I feel alright."

It wasn’t a long wait. I’d barely had to struggle for a minute that felt like an hour before Batman, flanked by Nightwing and Robin, showed up in front of me again.

I was leaning my full weight against the wall, using my Stick ‘Em powers to stay more or less upright while I waited. The surprise from them using their grappling hooks to show up again so soon made me slide down a bit, ...

100YoP Chapter Twenty-three "El que tenga miedo de morir, que no nazca."

Sam Reyes/Spider:

The so

Shadowrun: Clockwork Ashes 1.4

Revolution: 1.4

She’s just a Johnson, I told myself, swaying in place as I held onto a handrail. You meet her twice at most. You do the job, you get paid, you never talk again. There’s nothing to be nervous about.

This had been my mantra for the past hour or so as I took the subway to the park where I’d agreed to meet with �...

Shadowrun: Clockwork Ashes 1.3

Revolution: 1.3

Dami’s apartment was more or less exactly what I expected.

There was a thick layer of dust, dirt and grime covering the floor that seemed to prescede my brother’s disappearance. Similarly, most of the sparse, cheap furniture that decorated the place had a layer of grey dust atop it.

There were a couple shelves, mostly holdi...

Shadowrun: Clockwork Ashes 1.2

Revolution: 1.2

“You look like hell.”

It took me a minute to process that I’d been spoken to. After hearing my alarm, I’d sat on my bed before my body moved without input from my mind and carried me through the motions of showering, tying my hair back, changing into a clean white shirt, putting on my dress shoes, tie and jacket, and walking ...

Shadowrun: Clockwork Ashes 1.1

Revolution: 1.1

The small company bus was not designed for metahumans, despite the high amount of elves, orks, dwarves and trolls employed by MCT.

For some godforsaken reason, the whole thing was designed for people with human standard heights, which left the rest us to either bend to fit or jump to sit, even if I had it better than most elves by vi...

100YoP Chapter Twenty-Two "Everything special about me, I built."

Samuel Reyes/Spider:

We had gathered in Butcher’s office, slightly cramped but managing.

Farah was nervously sipping at what had been, at the start of the meeting, a pretty full glass of scotch that Butchie had offered her to cool her nerves. She was halfway through it and her hands hadn’t stopped trembling.

Billy and Yua were doing last-minute check-ups o...

100YoP Chapter Twenty-One "... worse than nothing."

Walking into Farah’s apartment was like stepping inside her brain.

Her door was metal, had a camera on the outside and opened with a buzzing noise a little after I rang the bell. It was far different than all the other doors I’d seen on the way in, and if my eyes didn’t trick me, it was custom-made.

Most of the walls inside were covered in shelves, and those shelves held dozen...