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Chapter 52 – Summertime and …The rest of the week just raced by, mainly because of the meatpacking plant story. She went with Maria McClellan and a KPVC news crew and a KDRA news crew and one of the Gazette’s reporters, and she covered Don Atron Jr.’s big public announcement. He said that KPVC had shown him that plant management wasn’t doing its job, so he was taking it back and fixing the violations and requesting a USDA inspection to prove all that, and inviting a couple of those demonstrators to come tour the plant with the USDA inspectors to see this wasn’t a cover-up or anything like that. Then A.L. Mack had to be interviewed about her amazing footage of the inside of the meatpacking plant, and how she and Maria McClellan turned it from a ‘nasty owner has unsafe conditions’ story into a ‘good owner steps in and saves the day’ story. And Nicole was on the news, too, since she was one of the leaders of the demonstration. Alex barely had time to do important stuff, like dates with Ray and practicing her martial arts and helping Gloria at the doughnut shop and doing the on-line course. Well, so far the on-line course was really mostly easy stuff she already knew.
Saturday, after her martial arts lessons and a hot shower, she got an awesome surprise. Someone was Skyping her on her tablet computer. And it was Hanna! Okay, Cindy was helping some. But Hanna looked so much better. Hanna smiled. “Alex, hello. Colonel Jack explained about your ‘Annie Farrell’ cover and your secret identity. I understand all about cover stories. But it is so nice to see you as you.”
Alex squeaked, “Hanna! You’re all better! This is so great. I was really worried about you.”
Cindy leaned in and said, “Colonel Jack told Hanna about the monkeysphere. I thought he was making it up.”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “We learned about that and a bunch of other social issues in a class I had like last year.” Her Health teacher was really big on emotional health along with physical health stuff, so there were lessons on bullying and anorexia and teen suicide and all kinds of stuff, along with the ‘drugs are bad’ lectures and the ‘unprotected sex will give you gross diseases and get you pregnant’ lectures and the ‘take care of your body’ lectures.
Cindy said, “So Jack explained that people like Marissa Weigler had a monkeysphere of zero: they didn’t care about anybody else. And he said the research said people couldn’t have a monkeysphere of over about a hundred fifty. But he said one of your superpowers was you have a monkeysphere of thousands, because you cared about someone in Europe you’d never even heard of before.”
Hanna said, “Colonel Jack is very … odd and I do not get his jokes, but he is very sweet.”
“Yeah, he is,” Alex agreed. Because what he’d said about her was making her get teary-eyed. “So how long before they let you out of the hospital?”
Hanna said, “I wanted out several days ago, but Doctor Janet is very firm.”
Cindy said, “Yeah, she had Grover toeing the line in about ten minutes. And she’s really good. I had no idea how you’d do medical tests on someone you can’t even see who has invisible blood, but she figured a bunch of stuff out.”
Hanna said, “And Doctor Janet wants me to stay with her when I get out in a few days. She says Grover’s mother is not her idea of a stable family.”
Cindy chipped in, “I love Deborah, but she’s pretty far out there.”
Alex said, “Jack has a teenaged boy, so I’m sure he doesn’t want Charlie drooling all over you constantly.”
Hanna smiled. “Charlie is very nice, and he understands there are things we cannot talk about.”
Cindy said, “And he comes over and plays video games with Grover, even if we had to get a special TV screen so Grover could see the images, too. Colonel Jack said ‘that’s what science nerds are for’ and Grover complained until I thought Charlie would fall over laughing.”
Alex said, “It must be tough on Charlie. No mom, and a dad who has to fly around the world saving the day, and now Jack has a girlfriend.”
Cindy said, “He has Mrs. Murdock. She’s this housekeeper who’s the widow of a retired officer and she lives just off the base, even if Colonel Jack won’t tell how he knew Murdock the husband, and she stays at the house when his dad has to jet around the world. But Colonel Jack flew Willow out for a couple days, and she’s great. She’s so nice. I would never have guessed she’s the greatest computer person in the world, but Jack said so. And she played video games with Charlie and Grover and was just … terrific.”
Alex said, “She is. I mean, she really is the greatest computer guru ever. She’s the one who found the hints that Hanna was in trouble, and she’s the one who found out about Marissa Weigler, and she’s the one who let us track down the HK teams the CIA had out after Hanna so we could rescue her. And she found the thing with Grover before the SRI guys.”
Hanna said, “Lieutenant Lupo said you flew into my home and took out all eight armed CIA men without even knocking over a chair. And I saw what you did to the other team, and they were very heavily armed. You are very impressive.”
Alex blushed pretty much non-stop for the rest of the chat.
And her summer kept getting busier and busier. She got packets from several different universities that wanted her to enroll in their journalism schools. She never did figure out where all of them got her name. At first, she figured Jack was behind it all. But when she looked through the packets, they had stuff like ‘famous alumni’ in there, and one of the universities was Maria McClellan’s old college, and she realized that some of the real newspeople she had met might have put in a good word for her. She asked Willow to do a little checking, and sure enough, one of the universities had Brad Winters as an alum, and one had Ed Schmidt as an alum. But a couple of the universities? She had no idea.
Okay, she was really mega-sure the packet from the Air Force Academy was because of Jack. And the Air Force Academy wanted just a ton of stuff from an applicant. Meetings with Air Force officers for ‘screening’? A letter from your Congressman saying you deserved to go to the Academy? Medical exams? Uh-oh, that could be a problem unless Jack arranged something sneaky. Tests of aerobic and physical ability? Oh, she could do that kind of stuff in her sleep.
Still, she liked being a photojournalist. And really, she could get pictures no one else could, so she could do a lot of good just being a photojournalist. And if she never took another picture of Terawatt ever again, it wouldn’t really bother her any.
* * *
She spent the next three weeks just having summer fun. Mostly.
She was putting the computer course and the martial arts training in the ‘fun’ category, because the computer stuff was still pretty easy, and the martial arts stuff was going great. She did two hours of coursework reading just three mornings a week, but by the end of the three weeks, she was through most of the units, and was doing the stuff on Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, which she already knew how to do, even if there were some cool tips she had never seen before. And Staff Sergeant Meadows was moving her up to a yellow belt in Kenpo and the ‘gray belt’ in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program even though she wasn’t doing the “Leading Marines” training course or writing the report you were supposed to write if you really were a Marine. Still, that meant all new stuff to learn and practice, along with keeping in practice on the old stuff that the sergeant might call out for her to demonstrate whenever he felt like it. And a lot of it was really cool.
And she was Skyping a lot with Robyn and Nicole and Willow and Hanna and Cindy, when she wasn’t hanging out with Robyn or Nicole. Or going on dates with Ray. Or working at Gloria’s and eating doughnuts. Louis decided he did such a great job of setting up Gloria’s accounting software and teaching her to use it that he was going to market his services locally, on top of the work he did for his dad’s business.
And a couple of times, she talked to Marsha, who finally got her dad to admit that it wasn’t Louis’s fault she fell down a hill into a muddy creek, because there was no way the paint thing could be anybody’s fault. So Marsha invited Louis over to her house for lunch with her and her mom, and Louis got stung by like a dozen hornets when Marsha showed him her back yard and he went to smell some plants and he leaned in over a hole in the ground they didn’t know about that turned out to be a new hornet nest, and they had to take him over to the clinic instead of having lunch. Marsha was starting to think Louis had a curse on him or something, or maybe she did.
And Terawatt made a lot of phone calls. She talked with Willow pretty regularly. When Willow wasn’t talking about the latest hardware and software that she wanted to play with, or the programs she was writing which were really awesome, she was talking about searching for Maggie Walsh and Danielle Atron. Or searching for signs of something else out there that Terawatt needed to investigate. Or having great dates with Jack, who sounded like a really nice guy. For a flyboy special ops colonel who ran a top-secret black ops program and went out and fought supervillains for a living.
It turned out Willow took Libby’s advice before she went to West Virginia to spend time with Jack and meet Charlie and everything else. When Jack showed Willow to her little bungalow ‘guest quarters’ that she was going to be staying at near Jack’s quarters, she stepped into the bedroom for a sec and then asked Jack for some help, and when he walked in, she had shucked off her blouse and pants and loafers, and pulled on the super-high shiny black heels. And all she had on under the blouse and pants was a totally sheer black bra and crotchless panties combination and a garter belt with sheer black nylons. And then, while Jack was standing there totally stunned, she pulled off his shirt and pants and pulled him onto the bed. So Jack, who was planning on getting in three hours of paperwork in his office before picking Willow up a little after five for dinner with Charlie at Jack’s place, didn’t manage to get home with Willow until about five thirty, and he never made it into the office that afternoon. And Willow told her way too much about the ‘in bed’ part, which Alex was really not ready to listen to, even if Willow was incredibly excited about it. Alex was sure she really, really didn’t need to know about how to do that thing with a condom and your mouth. Eww. But Alex really liked talking to Willow, and most of what Willow wanted to talk about was awesome. Maybe even mega-awesome.
And some of it was freaky. Willow had Jack’s people looking into the Desert Research Institute down in the Southwest, and the lab had mostly burned up in a fire, and there weren’t any computers that were on-line and with internet connectivity now, but Jack was trying to get the local sheriff to cooperate. It sounded like the local sheriff liked yanking federal guys’ chains as much as Jack like yanking bigshots’ chains, so Jack was getting nowhere fast. But Willow thought Jack was really funny when he talked to her about the mysterious Sheriff Codger. That wasn’t the man’s name, but Jack insisted on referring to him as Sheriff Ole Codger.
Hanna was living at Janet Fraiser’s house by then, and spending lots of time with Cindy and some other girls who had dads on the site, including Walter’s daughter, Wendy Harriman, who was really nice, and really glad to have some more girls about her age on the base who weren’t officers’ daughters. Cindy thought Hanna sort of liked Charlie O’Neill, because Charlie knew a lot about military and espionage stuff from being Jack’s son, and so he sort of reminded Hanna of Hanna’s dad. Alex thought it was just sad that the closest Hanna had to a dad was a dead guy who had pretty much put her through hell for fourteen years getting her ready to be an assassin. Alex thought Erik Heller was pretty much of a jerkhead, not that she was ever going to say so to Hanna. Or anyone who might tell Hanna, like Cindy or Grover or even Charlie.
* * *
And then there was the Terawatt call that Willow organized in advance that went to Hermione and Hermione’s boss Mister Parker. Or Sir Parker. Maybe even Lord Parker. Something like that. Alex wasn’t sure. Willow was re-routing the call off several communications and military satellites, so if Hermione had the MI-6 hackers trying to backtrack the call, as Alex was sure she’d do, they were going to conclude Terawatt was calling from Berlin. Or Tokyo. Or Mexico City. Or the International Space Station, although Alex had no idea how Willow could fake that one. But Willow said she could fake it, and if Willow said she could, Alex figured Willow really could do it.
Alex made sure she was in her Terawatt voice as she said, “Good evening, Miss Granger. Is your supervisor Mister Parker there as well? Or the brigadier with the intelligence connections?”
Mister Parker cleared his throat and said, “Yes, Terawatt. I am the head of the data analytics section here. And Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson is not physically present, but we do have him on a secure party line.”
The brigadier even sounded stuffy and brigadier-y as he said, “Yes, I am on the call, along with a legate from the European Union committee on intelligence organization cross-culturalization, Aart Hendriks.”
A voice in an accent she didn’t recognize said, “It is a pleasure, Terawatt. I was not in attendance at the Berlin meeting, but several participants that I know were most impressed with your appearance.”
She said, “That’s probably because I flew in while surrounded by lightning. That looks better than walking up and hoping someone believes you even have superpowers.”
Hermione admitted, “It was … considerably more intimidating than I expected, even after reviewing the available data on you. And then you assisted Colonel O’Neill in finding and rescuing the girl in less than six hours.”
The brigadier huffed, “That Jack O’Neill loves to play the buffoon. I warned everyone that they were merely playing into his hands, but they thought they were finally getting the chance to really stick it to the Yanks. O’Neill seems to have a gift for sizing up people and convincing them to cooperate with him.”
Alex admitted, “He also has a gift for finding people he doesn’t like, and irritating them until they do something extremely … unfortunate.”
The brigadier said, “He’s a very good man to have on your six in a crisis, and a very bad man to have as an enemy. But I’m just an old English duffer, so there’s no point in listening to what I have to say.”
Alex had the feeling he’d wanted to say that ever since the Berlin meeting.
Mister Hendriks said, “We are very interested in having the ability to call you in case of emergency, but will you be able to get here rapidly?”
She said, “Only with Colonel O’Neill’s assistance, I’m afraid. But he does owe me a few favors right now, so I will cash them in when I’m needed. Ultimately, I’d like to have superheroes around the planet, all ready to step in and help wherever people need us. But I expect it will be decades before that’s a reality, and I will have to face a great deal of disbelief. Given the number of supervillains, as opposed to the lone superheroine to date, I can see the problem.”
Hermione said, “Whether the EU wants a superhero team on standby in twenty years time, we certainly could use one superheroine who is willing to come help our citizens, particularly if the problem is the United States.”
Alex said, “As far as I could determine, the problem was one woman, who had been doing a great deal of very bad stuff for two decades, and was willing to do anything to keep her sins from catching up with her.”
“And the girl?” asked Mister Hendriks.
Alex said, “Hanna is doing much better. She took a bullet in the gut and tried to patch it up herself. Then she went on the run for a week. By the time I found her, she had terrible peritonitis, and the bullet was still in her, and she had multiple nicks and punctures in her intestines. An ordinary girl would have been dead some days earlier. She’s staying with a nice doctor that Colonel O’Neill trusts, and will get to go back to Finland whenever she wants. Colonel O’Neill says — and I support him in this — that Hanna needs to learn socialization more than she needs to go back to being a solitary hunter above the Arctic Circle who just might kill anyone who accidentally stumbled across her.”
Hermione asked, “But she does have her own superpowers, correct?”
“Right,” Alex said. “And I’m hoping that one day she’ll be part of a team of European protectors, because we’ve seen super-powered threats arising in Eastern Europe already, and being able to deal with that is going to be more and more important as more and more people get superpowers.”
Mister Hendriks asked, “Then you believe this will only increase as a problem?”
Alex said, “It may increase catastrophically fast if we aren’t prepared for it. Are you aware of what Danielle Atron tried to do?”
Hermione said, “She attempted to abscond with over a billion dollars in early receipts and advance payments from sales of foods laced with a revolutionary dietary supplement.”
Alex said, “She tried to sell foods and drinks laced with GC-161 all over America. Based on what we’ve seen in California, there could have been twenty million Americans who suddenly developed superpowers, and probably none of them would have been able to fully control them for a while, if ever. Those who managed some control might have gone on rampages, killing sprees, strings of robberies … In a number of people, it affects biochemical pathways in the brain as well. Can you imagine what would have happened if the United States had suddenly been swamped with millions of supervillains? It would have been the biggest disaster in the country’s history. And we have to face the fact that a disaster like that could happen in any of our countries. There’s a great deal of bad blood between a lot of countries right now, and if we don’t deal with that, we’re going to be helpless when the first country out there gets hit with the first superpower plague.”
Mister Hendriks said, “That is a matter of serious future concern, but most people are more worried about today. Miss Granger is only a lowly data analyst in a country that some EU nations are not happy about. We will most likely want to put together a committee to be your European contact.”
She said, “That’s fine, as long as Miss Granger remains a part of that.”
Hermione asked, “And you’re sure you’ve got the right person?”
Alex said, “Oh, yes, I’m completely sure. I have my reasons, but they’re not reasons that can be explained. They have to do with my superpowers.”
Mister Hendriks said, “Thank you for your input. I shall put your suggestions forth at our next meeting.”
Alex was kind of sure that was bureaucrat-speak for ‘kiss off, you annoying American’. But she didn’t say that.
* * *
The next day, after another awesome martial arts class where she learned over a dozen new techniques to work on and wrote everything down really carefully so she wouldn’t forget anything, she was flying back home when her Terawatt phone went off. She had her earjack in, so she just tapped it and kept going.
It was Willow. “Tera, this is Burn. The Cessna’s on its way from the East Coast to pick you up. Graham called in a Code Red down at the Desert Research Institute. Jack will brief you when he refuels at Camp Atron in a couple hours.”
Alex said, “Okay, I’ve got to get home and shower and grab my stuff.”
Willow said, “Jack said to show up at the airstrip at one thirty as Terawatt. He’ll have your Lieutenant Farrell gear packed for you. Also bring two changes of clothing for really, really hot desert weather.”
Alex asked, “What have we got?”
Willow said, “I don’t know yet. But Jack says the sheriff is in ‘local yokel’ mode, and Graham said last night, someone or something got into a big fenced field and ate some cattle. Just stripped the meat away and left nothing but bones. Completely clean bones.”
“Eww. Creepy. What, two or three cattle?”
Willow said, “Graham says over a hundred, in one night. There wasn’t a single survivor in the whole field. And if anybody saw what happened, they’re probably dead, too.”
“Uh-oh.”