GEN13 - Version 2.0 Read Online Free PDF

their new powers and stay alive.
    It wasn’t until much later that the team learned that Lynch also had another reason for helping them escape:
    Bobby was his son.
    All of them had come a long way since then, in a deceptively short period of time. Gen 13 had fought any number of super-powered menaces and would-be rulers of the world, and they’d always come out on top. Their days on the run were over; I.O. was ancient history now, disbanded amid scandal that even the shadowy organization’s best “public information specialists” couldn’t spin their way out of.
    But it wasn’t all good news. The gang’s dream house in Southern California had been blasted into so much kindling along the way. That was what had given them the push to come east and start over again, here in New York City.
    And Kat had come through all of it before she even turned twenty.
    Kat looked back at the last year or so of her life, and marvelled at the unexpected turns it had taken. Heaven knows, it wasn’t what she had planned. If it were possible for someone to go back in time and tell her younger, bespectacled self what lay in store, she’d have thought the oracle was crazy. But then again, she thought, I guess things don’t always turn out like we plan.
    It wasn’t that Kat regretted what had become of her life, exactly. After all, not everyone can say that they’ve saved the world more times than they can count on their fingers. She couldn’t even remember the faces of everyone whose life she had saved at one time or another. Fate had handed Kat a rare opportunity, and she was grateful for the chance to live up to it.
    Plus, there were personal benefits, too. Her Gen 13 teammates were the closest friends she’d ever had in her life. They’d become like family—especially when it turned out that Roxy was really Kat’s half-sister. If truth be told, the band of friends was tighter than a lot of “real” families. Every one of them was dearer to her than anything, and she wouldn’t trade that for the world.
    It was just that Kat never expected to wind up with her teammates as her only friends. Sure, the stuff she was doing was vital in a reactive kind of way, stopping danger before it could claim innocent lives. Someone had to be there to right the wrongs, and sail in at blinding speed . . .
    (Kat smiled despite herself. The phrasing made her sound like Underdog. “ When in this world the headlines read/Of those whose hearts are filled with greed ....” Gee, she hadn’t watched that show since she was eight. How on Earth did she remember the song?)
    But that’s just dealing with the stuff that’s already happened, she thought, turning her mind back to the matter at hand. What about the future?
    What about my future?
    Was Kat going to wind up spending the rest of her life in a skintight outfit, showing off her legs while trashing the master villain of the week?
    That was the path Mister Lynch had chosen for himself. The scars on his face and the cybernetic, mechanical eye that he wore in place of his real one bore witness to an endless series of battles. For all intents and purposes, those battles constituted the sum total of Lynch’s adult life.
    Kat could imagine herself still doing this at age fifty, her hair showing touches of gray and the costume altered to allow for her sagging, middle-age spread. It wasn’t a picture that held a whole lot of appeal.
    I need a life , she thought.
    Suddenly, Kat was jarred out of her reverie. A shout came from nearby, along with the unmistakable sound of a fist striking flesh.
    Without so much as a second thought, Kat took off running. She followed the sounds into an alley, where she found a gang of four street punks in matching fatigue jackets and camouflage pants. The four were hovering like vultures around a young man in an overcoat and a conservative business suit. The young man was half-sitting, half-lying on the ground as one of the punks pawed through the pockets of his coat. A