Arc Angel Read Online Free

guy, and their entire weekly conversation consisted of “Thanks,” as she took the bags he’d brought.
    But now the disparities didn’t matter. She needed to know what connection she had to this pen and ink drawing.
    The origin story appeared self-contained in the one issue, probably because it wasn’t very complicated. Arc Angel had been a regular woman—albeit an already beautiful, curvaceous one—named Karen Crawford, who worked as a scientist in a research lab. One day, she’d discovered the director of the lab, Dr. Lance Kendrick conducting an experiment that would test the effects of lightning on humans. The director had found a way to channel the lightning through some type of filter so that it wouldn’t kill the person, but would turn the body into a strange kind of generator. The electricity would loop repeatedly through the central nervous system, essentially turning the person into a human battery. If the final experiment succeeded, it would be run on hundreds of people, who would then be plugged into an undercover electrical grid, where they could produce enough voltage, at no cost, to power entire towns. This would subvert the federal electrical grid, forcing the government to purchase power directly from Dr. Kendrick.
    Karen immediately saw the injustice of the plan, but it wasn’t until she learned that all the test subjects were homeless people who’d been abducted off the street that she knew she had to act. She ran to Dr. Kendrick’s private lab and forced her way in. She began to free the poor unconscious man strapped to the table when Dr. Kendrick burst in. Kendrick threw the switch, trapping Karen in the lightning beam. When she regained consciousness—now with a few tastefully revealing rips in her clothing and the white streak in her hair—she channeled her new electrical powers into blasting Dr. Kendrick’s equipment, including the filter. The story ended with the lab destroyed, the homeless people saved, and Dr. Kendrick escaping to become Dr. Malevolent, Arc Angel’s nemesis.
    Miranda enjoyed the story as usual, but she didn’t think she’d learned anything new, anything helpful. She tossed the comic on the floor and rolled onto her back. She stared at the ceiling, going over the story again and again, hoping something useful would jump out at her.
    As she lay still, thinking, she heard a faint beeping. She sat up and scanned the room, looking for the source. She finally identified it as the BlackBerry on her dresser. She must have a voicemail. No wonder she hadn’t recognized the noise. No one ever called her. All her work clients knew to text or e-mail her. She wasn’t good on the phone.
    She hauled herself off the bed and over to her dresser. The screen blinked at her: five new messages. What the hell? She stared at the screen for a minute and then entered her password and listened to the first message.
    “Ms. James, hello. This is Gavin Brooks at WIMT-TV. I tried to talk to you outside earlier about your heroics tonight, and I wanted to see if you’d be willing to sit down for an interview with me tomorrow. I’m available any time, you just say the word. Give me a call back at 555-2094, and we can set something up. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.”
    The second, third and fourth messages, also from Brooks, were quite similar: a reminder about his interview request and a request for a call back. The fifth call from the tenacious reporter started in the same way as the first four, but the message’s tone shifted at the end.
    “Ms. James. I’m sure you’d like to tell your side of this story. If you talk to me, I can be sure that what gets out there is… flattering. If you don’t talk to me, well, I’d hate to see your name dragged through the mud. Call me.”
    His tone remained as smooth and professional as it had been, but his words sent a shiver down Miranda’s spine. Even if she wanted to tell “her side of the story,” no way in hell would she talk to