I jumped out first with Yoselin following after me. We landed on the balcony and didn’t even have to smash through the balcony’s sliding door. Daniel slid both the screen door and the glass door open. Even though we’d opted to turn on our telepathy and teleportation blockers for the initial assault, Daniel’s telekinesis worked perfectly.

Thanks to the stream, I could see Master Martian’s eyes widen and his antenna shoot straight from his head as he pushed himself, stumbled, and then flew off the couch.

I could understand his shock. With the cloak up, his only warning that we were there was to see the air shimmer in vaguely human shapes as we jumped through it. Even as I ran through the open door, the cloak shimmered as Daniel and Haley jumped through it, Haley in the lead.

Opening up with the paralysis, I pointed my arms at Master Martian, blanketing him with both sonic and radiation-based paralysis technology in the hope that one of the two would work. Despite the nagging voice in the back of my head that half-expected that it would do nothing or accidentally kill him, Master Martian’s limbs and jaw went slack.

Showing that I had good instincts in expecting unexpected consequences, Master Martian didn’t go down. Despite drooling down his front and onto his white, button-down shirt and blue and silver striped tie, he floated away from us, his limbs and jaw swaying as he turned to float away toward the stairs leading downward at the back of the room.

The stain on his dark blue dress pants and liquid dripping from his left foot testified that even if his telekinesis still worked, I’d still managed to paralyze more muscles than I intended—the sphincter being the case in point.

That didn’t stop Yoselin from shooting forward over the couch and past Master Martian’s La-Z-Boy chair and television—which appeared to be showing an old Western based on the presence of cowboys and the revolvers.

With a flick of her wrist, Yoselin threw one of her discs toward Master Martian and it weaved through the air, hitting and then sticking to his neck. Master Martian dropped to the floor, not even making it to the stairs.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Unable to move or use his psychic powers, Master Martian lay on the floor, his antennas drooping across his bald head like a bad combover.

Vaughn’s voice came over the comms, “Turning off the telepathy blocker.”

I couldn’t see him do it through the cloak, but I didn’t need to. I felt Daniel’s intense concentration as my connection to him reestablished itself.

Master Martian floated upward and toward the jet. Daniel said, “We need to get out of here. Something just changed and I’m getting flashes of all of us dying.”

Still following the streams Hal had made available, I flipped through them to see if I could find a hint of what was coming. I caught the True inside the van in the street as they received more orders, all of them now fully changed and armed. The man’s voice told them, “Our new assets are nearly there. They’ll handle the League. Grab the target.”

In the next second, the building shook as shattered bricks, shingles, plaster from the ceiling, and bits of broken wood fell into the room, accompanied by massive, muscular men, all of them wearing red bodysuits with the Roman Empire’s eagle with outspread wings on their chests in gold.

It wasn’t a mystery who they were. Somehow, the Nine had hired or controlled what was left of the Cabal’s elite troops—at least some of them.

At the same time, my suit’s 360 degree vision showed several of them hitting the jet, half-hidden by the cloak, seemingly suspended in the air as they leaned forward to pound on the jet’s hull. I’d upgraded the jet’s armor over the past year, but hearing the pounding, I had to bet Cabal soldiers would get through sooner rather than later.

Tara saw everything I did, making the right decision, “Cap, go!”

The jet shot forward into the air. Tara no doubt intended to shed the soldiers before they could do serious damage. If they took out the jet, we’d have no way to get out of here and we’d have to fight the Cabal one on one until they converted us into a bloody paste.

It would have been better if we’d been able to get into the jet first, but there were two Cabal soldiers on the balcony, one of them pulling his leg out of a hole he’d created when he hit. The other glanced in the direction of the jet’s noise before turning his head toward us.

I made a quick assessment of the situation. There were two on the balcony and three in the room. Yoselin and I were the furthest into the room, standing near the television and in front of the couch. Haley and Daniel stood closer to the balcony with Master Martian floating between us, but closer to them. Two of the three Cabal soldiers had landed in the kitchen and dining room area off to the side of the living room and the other stood almost within arm’s reach of Yoselin and me.

We needed to keep them off us and get into the air. Feeling Daniel’s unvoiced agreement, I considered how.