Virgil Hawkins Static Shock Novels & Stories

He was a twitchy, wire-thin man with fingers that never stopped moving. ​"Vance," Static grunted, not looking up. "Heard you went uptown. Heard you were eating off gold plates." ​"The plates were silver, Static. And the service sucked," I said, leaning against the counter. "I need a Pulse-8. Portable. High-yield." ​Static stopped typing and looked at me, his eyes darting to Julian, who was standing a half-step behind me, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze sweeping the room with a cold, professional detachment.

The mechanical arm had shifted, the plating sliding back to reveal the barrel of a built-in pulse cannon, aimed directly at my chest. "The kind of house cleaning that pays off your debts," Vinnie said. My blood turned to ice. "Vinnie, put it down." "Can't do that. Silas was very specific about the 'White Wolf' being delivered in one piece." The ship suddenly shuddered. A massive, high-frequency dampening pulse hit the hull, an Aegis-standard lockdown. We weren't jumping. We were being pinned to the ground. From the comms hub, Gideon stepped out. He wasn't wearing his usual cocky grin. He looked tired. He was holding a remote, his thumb hovering over a trigger.

I yelled. Silas turned his head slightly, his violet eyes locking onto mine. He didn’t look threatened. He looked at me the way a man looks at an insect on his windshield. “The baseline,” Silas said, his voice a perfect, terrifying harmony. “The one who thinks he can protect a goddess with a piece of lead.” He flicked his wrist, and a wave of sound hit me like a physical blow. I was thrown back against the wall, my rifle spinning out of my hand. I felt my ribs snap, the pain white and blinding.

The moment I initiated the link, my entire body seized. It wasn't disease I felt in his blood. It was a jarring, synthetic spike of electricity. The man on the stretcher wasn't a dying patient. He was a corporate Trojan horse. Beneath his skin, buried deep in his chest cavity, was a localized frequency disruptor: a piece of Silas’s technology designed to hijack the healing link and send a paralyzing shockwave directly into my nervous system. A scream tore from my throat as the synthetic static ripped through my arms. My knees buckled, but Killian caught me before I hit the ground.

It roared with a sound like a thousand dying hard drives, a cacophony of digital screams and static. Hecate Vane stood at the center of the vortex, her silver eyes gone completely black, her skin shimmering with a synthetic, oily sheen. She wasn't holding a traditional weapon; she was holding Maya and Marcus in a cage of jagged blue lightning that pulsed in time with the building's distorted heartbeat.

He looked at me and was worried why I was shocked. "How did it go?"he asked. "Solomon,"I called slowly. "Silas is the vampire hunter."

“Silas gave this to you! Use the bridge, Winnie! Come back to the dirt! Come back to me! I am the anchor! Use me!” ​The reaction was instantaneous and violent. The crystal, designed by Silas to regulate the massive electrical output of his own nervous system, acted like a cosmic vacuum. The golden fire that was lashing out at the sky suddenly reversed its flow. It poured into the crystal, through my arm, and down into the structural steel of the Hub. It was a conduit of pure, unadulterated power. I felt my bones vibrate, felt the very marrow in my arms begin to simmer. My fur caught fire, the scent of burning hair filling the small space between us.

Silas whispered. Runes etched into the metal of his suit flared bright blue. A pulse of techno-magical energy exploded from him. It hit the green fireballs in mid-air, dissolving them into harmless smoke. The pulse continued, slamming into the witches. They grabbed their heads, screaming silently as the feedback loop fried their concentration. Two of them collapsed, blood pouring from their ears. "Fascinating," Silas mused, walking forward. "Your coven relies on a hive-mind structure. If I disrupt the frequency..." He tapped the screen again. Another witch fell.

Johnny rolled his eyes, making no attempts to stop the witch as she stormed out of the kitchen. It had been several hours since Ursula made her discovery and since then, everyone had been flying around the place trying to slow down a mass shift. However, Johnny couldn't help but think they were too late. Now the wolven spirits had been given a chance to awaken, they would do what they could to stay awake. It was simply a case of natural survival instincts. But he followed orders and the orders were to slow down a mass shift until they all understood a bit more of what was happening.

However, it was too late! I looked up just in time to see Hale’s sword driving toward me, the blade glowing with fire, dark magic coiling around it like living flames. He laughed with triumph. “Say goodbye to the world, Cassian.” As the blade rushed closer, instinct took over me. I raised my arm, bracing myself to block the strike with my arm, waiting for silver to burn through my flesh. But that agony never came! BOOM. The moment the blade reached me, a violent burst of white light detonated between us, the force ripping through the air like a divine shockwave. Hale was flung backward with a tortured scream, his body slamming into the ground hard enough to crack stone.