|
|
Chapter 82 – HushaboomThe next week was actually pretty quiet around town. Alex got lots of time with Ray, and lots of time working on her programming course, and lots of time talking or Skyping with her friends, and lots of afternoons helping out Gloria. Naturally, helping out Gloria also meant lots of incredibly yummy doughnuts.
Her martial arts workouts were going great, and Sergeant Meadows was talking about moving her up to the next belts in both Kenpo and MCMAP. She’d even managed to strain really hard and lift 220 pounds with just her telekinesis, even if afterward she had a miserable headache and she ate two entire boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. The good kind, with the cheese sauce stuff instead of the cheese powder.
The only big thing was the bombing of Beirut, which was a huge deal. Jack called her on her tPhone to give her a special heads-up, because he thought it was Terawatt business, and he thought the SRI might have to go in. But no one knew exactly what had happened.
Jack explained, “Ever since Hezbollah pretty much moved out of Beirut, it’s been quiet. But all of a sudden, the entire city was at war. With itself. No one knows what was going on, but something was happening, and the Lebanese couldn’t stop it, and they couldn’t contain it, and it looks like the troops they sent in just stopped doing their jobs and went wacko, too. They had to ask Israel to nuke their capital, which everyone agrees is insane. But the Israelis did it. And they did it with a medium-range ballistic missile, which we’ve suspected they had, but still it scared the hell out of every Arab country in the Middle East. We — I mean the U.S. military — have a military barracks at the Beirut Airport, but whatever happened, it happened there, too. The Pentagon’s running a closed assessment now, but Acid Burn took a peek at their data anyway. It looks like the military barracks reported a sharp spike in violent incidents among the troops, and then they just stopped communicating with anyone. That was right about the time the whole city went apeshit. And when I say the whole city, I mean the whole city: the radio and TV stations went dead, the political leaders stopped making statements, the police stopped doing their jobs, everyone in the entire city went bananas at the same time. So now the Lebanese Army is encamped around the remains of the city, and they’ve asked for military backup from Syria and Jordan, and the U.N. is moving a peacekeeping force in right now. If we get a chance I’m going to have Team Three sweep through what’s left of the city, because they have experience with high-rad conditions … And I want to know what the hell happened!”
Alex asked, “You really think it was an SRI problem?”
Jack grumbled, “I don’t know what the he–… heck else it could be. I mean, if one religious sect attacked another, or attacked the Jews in Beirut, I’d think it was business as usual. But not this. And not with the U.S. military barracks doing this. The French and the U.N. have military presences there, too, and Acid Burn’s hacking them, but right now we think all their people did the same thing.”
Alex wondered, “Could this be what happened in China?”
Jack said, “I’m wondering the same thing. And I’m worried it is. Because if it is, then someone’s figured out how to make an entire city implode. And that sounds like our pals the Plan A people, which means if they can make it work in China and in Lebanon, they can probably make it work in any city on Earth.”
Alex shuddered, and her stomach felt queasy. “And if it’s not them?”
Jack said, “No idea. But it could be even worse. I’ll keep you apprised. Over and out.”
After that, Alex just stayed at home and worried for the rest of the day. And she ate all the ice cream in the refrigerator freezer. Even her mom’s Cherry Garcia.
* * *
The next week, there was nothing but buzz about the Beirut thing. Maybe China had managed to keep a lid on the Lanzhou thing, but this was international news. Mega-huge international news. Nicole was busy with a big food and water drive for Lebanon, and Alex helped for five afternoons in a row. Everyone wanted to go do the door-to-door ask-for-donation stuff or do the protest thing downtown, but not nearly as many people wanted to do what was really needed: the sorting and carrying and packing at the miserably hot warehouse where everything was coming in.
So that was what Alex was doing, because it was just as important as anything she could be doing that minute. She sorted bottles and cans, and she moved stuff to the areas it was supposed to go, and she kept people from just dumping stuff in piles or putting heavy cans of meat on top of the bread and bottled water, or stuff like that. Then she helped load the container trucks that were hauling all the stuff in big metal containers that would go right onto big freighter ships that were going to sail right to Lebanon to help people. It was hard work, but she could lift a lot more with just her body than she’d been able to six months ago, because she’d been working out hard ever since she started martial arts, and she’d started lifting weights, too. Plus, she could help herself out with a little subtle telekinesis anytime she wanted.
And Alex was pretty sure Jack was right and this was another Plan A from The Collective, because nobody took credit for it. If it was a regular terrorist plot, then someone would be bragging about it and threatening people. If it was part of a war, people on both sides of the fight would be yelling about what monsters the other side turned out to be. But none of that had happened. And Alex couldn’t talk about it with anyone except Willow and Hanna and Grover and Jack. Okay, she could talk to Riley or Graham or Jo about it, but she didn’t know them as well.
* * *
But the next Monday, she got a call from Willow that Willow would be home late that night. So Alex planned to drive up and see her the next day. She had tons of stuff to talk about.
Tuesday morning, after chatting with Ray and then doing her morning exercise routine, she set off in her car, with just the small cooler and her gym bag and her purse. And her tablet in the gym bag, too, because there was no telling what Willow might be up for. Even with some annoying traffic problems, she got to Willow’s house a little after noon.
Willow had lunch all set up, and it was Chinese. Lots and lots and lots of really good Chinese food. And Willow had remembered all of Alex’s favorites, too, so it was awesome.
While they ate — okay, it was mostly Alex eating and Willow watching her weight — Alex asked for ideas about things for a utility belt.
Willow took a sip of her green tea she’d brewed herself. “Let me think. You don’t need a piton with cable to climb stuff, because you already fly. You don’t need ninja throwing spikes or throwing disks, because you can zap your opponents. You don’t need handcuffs, either, because you can knock people out for a while. Gas grenades or smokebombs? They’re really bulky. Lockpicks or handcuff keys? No. Maybe a flashlight? No, you can do the lightning arc thing. How about a cutting tool? Maybe a little diamond-coated cutting disk you could spin really fast with your TK? Maybe some thermite, or even thermate-TH3 you could set off with your lightning. Or some sort of plastic explosive, but then you’d need a detonator and a trigger system, too, and you’d have to keep all three apart until you were ready, and you’d have to get that stuff from Jack.”
Alex grimaced. “Yeah, I could’ve used something like that when Danielle Atron had me trapped in a sealed box that time. But I guess what I really need a utility belt for is energy bars. I get hungry when I use my powers.”
Willow looked at the ceiling. “Hmm. Maybe three pouches on the back of the utility belt, each of ’em with three energy bars tucked in sideways, but that’d stick out like an inch or more. Or we could go with one of those funky leg pouch things.”
Alex frowned. “Eww, you mean like a Rob Liefeld costume? Ick. I’d rather just go with a small fanny-pack full of energy bars.”
“Ohhh-kay. No on the Liefeld-ness. But I can talk to Jack about getting someone to make you a nice utility belt. Maybe in solid white, and small enough to stay in place around your waist.”
Alex said, “A fanny-pack would be okay. I mean, I can put my GoPro in the fanny-pack, anyway. And if you figure out how I can charge my own gear, then I’m down to the earjack and the tablet.”
Willow smiled. “Oh, and I figured out about the tablet, so you don’t have to bring your own anymore. We’re going to use one of my computers as your primary storage, and every time you turn off one of your tablets, it first updates to the primary storage, which then propagates to all the other tablets. So you can leave your tablet at home now if you’re meeting up with us. Jack’ll have one on the Cessna with a gym bag for you, and we’ll have one at Roswell and one at HQ, so we should be able to treat all your tablets as one tablet. And Graham says from now on he’ll have a pouch in the Blackbird for you that’ll have a tablet and a dozen energy bars, so you won’t have to haul stuff along anymore.”
So after they cleaned up in the kitchen and put a bunch of the food away in plasticware, Willow led Alex into the computer room and got Alex to show how she charged up a rechargeable battery. Alex had to pretend to hold a rechargeable AA battery while letting Willow measure voltage and stuff between her fingers.
Willow looked at her meter and said, “Oh, that’s easy. You just go until the battery gets warm?”
“Umm, yeah? Pretty much.”
Willow nodded. “Okay, so all we need is a connector and contacts for your fingers, and you can watch the phone or the tablet until it says ‘fully charged’. That’s easy. The earjack we’ll have to pop the battery out so you can charge it directly, so you don’t burn it out.”
“Wow. I thought it would be a lot harder.”
Willow nodded. “Oh, there’s a lot of leeway on charging. Most chargers are set up to do a charge rate of somewhere from one-fourth C to one-tenth C. But chargers can do it a lot faster, maybe four C or six C, as you found out. You just have to monitor the temperature and the terminal voltage really carefully. And fingers are going to measure temperature changes a lot more precisely than most battery chargers want to try.”
Then it took Willow under two minutes with a wire stripper and a soldering iron to make a charger for Alex’s phones and tablet, and another minute to make one for her laptop, too. And they were just a little plug and some wire and some electronics and two fingertip connectors Alex could run current through. And that meant Alex wouldn’t need voltage converters when she was in foreign countries, too. She could leave her regular chargers at home, and just take these with her, maybe in a little pocket of her fanny-pack or in the utility belt she didn’t have yet.
So then they sat around and ate chocolate zucchini cake and watched some Doctor Who episodes on TV. Willow had a sliver about an inch thick, and Alex had about a sixth of the cake. They were just eating and watching and chatting, even if Alex was getting Willow to think about the whole ‘Harry and 007’ thing, too.
But the next episode was ‘Boom Town’. Willow said, “I like this one.” Alex hadn’t seen it. And Alex wasn’t really a huge fan of Captain Jack Harkness, who was really cute, but he was just too horny and flirty and stuff for her taste, although Willow really liked him. But Alex wasn’t going to say anything, because Jack was bi and sexually active and liked to talk about it, and Alex was worried that if she dissed him, Willow might feel like Alex was dissing her, too.
Some of the things in the ep were so dumb, like the scientist who came to talk to the mayor about the nuclear reactor that he thought might explode. And the mayor asked him, “Have you told anyone else about this?” Which anybody who’d ever watched TV knew really meant ‘I am the bad guy and if you say no I am going to kill you right away.’ So naturally, the guy said ‘no’.
Alex complained out loud, “Hello! Is there no TV or movies in your universe?”
So naturally, the evil mayor killed him. And then, later on, the girl reporter comes to talk to the mayor, and she’s noticed tons of dead people connected to the nuclear reactor, and then the mayor asked her if she’d told anyone.
Alex fussed at the screen, “Say ‘yes’! Don’t be stupid! Say ‘yes, I told my editor and I told him I was coming here, and I posted it on-line already!’ ”
“No.”
“Aagh!” Alex complained. “Why are these people so stupid?”
Willow said, just like that wasn’t totally a rhetorical question, “Because if they weren’t, the evil mayor’s plan would’ve been scotched three years earlier, and there wouldn’t be anything for The Doctor to do.”
So then they just sat there and made fun of all the dumbness, like The Doctor deciding to deal with the evil alien villain who planned to destroy the world by … taking her out to dinner. And Rose had gone off with The Doctor and left Mickey behind, and she’d been gone for a year, and Mickey was being blamed for her ‘death’, and she was just ‘oh hi, I’m back honey, why are you so grouchy’. And the TARDIS solving all their ethical problems for them with what Willow called an ‘asspull’, which made Alex laugh so hard she nearly spit chocolate cake on herself.
Then Willow wanted to talk exercise programs, because she wanted to look sexier for Jack, so she wanted to know what Alex was doing to get her abs looking like that. And Alex told her about the sit-ups and leg-lifts and crunches, but she thought Willow already looked just fine, and obviously Willow’s exercise regime was doing the job. But Willow didn’t think that running a couple days a week and cycling a couple days a week and aerobics a couple days a week was enough. But Willow was running for a whole hour in the morning, or biking for a whole hour, or doing a really serious fifty-minute aerobics routine. And Alex had a feeling Willow wasn’t talking about going for a slow jog around the block.
It took Alex most of the rest of the afternoon to get Willow to consider that maybe she was already doing enough. Or more than enough. Even after Alex pointed out that if Willow could go running in the mornings with Jack and keep up with him the whole time, her aerobic fitness level had to be pretty darn high already. And Alex had seen Willow in cosplay costumes, so she knew Willow already had the kind of body guys drooled over.
They had so much fun just talking at dinner that Alex didn’t get around to driving home until nearly eleven. But that was okay, because she had some really rocking music to listen to on the drive home. And she didn’t bother to get the cosplay costumes or the chocolate zucchini cakes out of the car until the next morning.
* * *
On Sunday, Annie flew in for a two week visit before she had to get back for the start of school. That was okay, because Alex’s school was starting up at almost the same time, and Alex was going to be swamped with registration and start of school and everything. Alex pretty much guessed ahead of time what Annie was going to be bringing home. Okay, her mom and dad guessed the same thing. One suitcase full of dirty clothes, one computer bag with a laptop and a stack of file folders crammed in it, and one cardboard box full of textbooks. Fortunately, the box was small enough that it only had about a dozen textbooks in it, or Annie would have been paying major overweight charges.
Alex carried the box and the suitcase when they walked out to the car. But she smiled. “This is as far as I go. You have to do your own laundry!”
Annie frowned. “As long as I don’t have to do my own cooking. I can follow a recipe like I’m doing an experiment, but that’s about as good as I can do.”
Their mom hugged Annie and grinned. “Oh, honey, that’s already better than most women can manage.”
“And ninety percent of men,” added their dad. “Scooter’s brother thinks recipes work like electricity.” Then he did this funny imitation of Scooter’s brother, too. “Let me see, I can bake this pizza for ten minutes at four hundred degrees … So I should be able to bake it in ONE minute at four THOUSAND degrees!” When they stopped laughing, he said, “I don’t understand how anyone can pass chemistry classes and not understand how to make food.”
Since her dad was really good at cooking weird stuff like soufflés and meringues, Alex was pretty sure he had to be right. Her dad’s angel food cake was awesome.
Annie laughed. “Oh, my gosh, one of my housemates is working on an EE, and he’s great at designing chips, but do not let him work with house current. And his homemade battery charger fried every battery we let him try, until he blew up two batteries and the whole charger.”
Alex decided not to say anything yet about her private recharging method.
It wasn’t until they got home and they got settled on the couches in the den … and her dad used the anti-bugging hardware that he used at least once a week … that Annie realized things had changed since she was last home. It took Alex almost two hours to tell everything that had happened since she met the Hermione Granger of another universe.
Annie just sort of made the guppy face for a while. She finally managed, “You know Willow Rosenberg.”
“Yeah.”
“THE Willow Rosenberg.”
“Yeah.”
“Red Tree Software Willow Rosenberg.”
“Still yeah.”
“You went to San Diego Comic Con with Willow Rosenberg.”
“Uh-huh. She asked me.”
“You have a computer tablet she gave you that she hacked for you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re taking online computer courses Willow Rosenberg personally picked out for you.”
“Yeah, and she wants me to turn my laptop into a linux box and do it for college credit.”
“Willow Rosenberg bakes chocolate cakes for you.”
“They’re really good, and I got some footage of Dad totally over-reacting after he ate a big slice and then we told him about the secret ingredient.”
“You know two different Willow Rosenbergs, and the other one is the most powerful magic user ever, and magically pummeled a giant hellgod. While you watched and rescued other people.”
Alex nodded. “Pretty much. But let me tell you, it totally ruined fantasy movies for me.”
Annie tried again. “And you know another version of Samantha Carter, the astronaut. And you chose the name Terawatt from stuff they told you, and you’ve been flying around the world saving the planet. And the TV stuff isn’t exaggerating.”
“Right.”
Their dad said, “Alex had to rescue us from Danielle Atron again. And so we met her ‘team’. Who are pretty amazing in their own right.”
Alex nodded. “And they’re a lot smarter than you’d think. Jack figured out who I am and who Willow is, in just a couple of days. And they’re incredibly brave.”
Annie said, “I saw the first Terawatt footage, and I thought maybe you took it. And I saw the news about you fighting the fire manifester, and you fighting that giant spider, and the things in Rome.”
Their mom and dad exchanged looks. Her mom admitted, “Annie, that’s not even half of it. And it turned out she’s sort of not told us all the really horrible parts.”
Alex winced inwardly. “Well, there are some things that I can’t talk about because they’re national defense secrets, some of which aren’t even American national defense secrets. And there are some things that just aren’t my secret to tell. And there are some things you just don’t need to know, because you’re already stressed enough watching me fly off to fight supervillains and monsters.”
Her mom complained to Annie, “She came back from the giant spider mission absolutely covered in bruises from head to toe. And she just sort of forgot to tell us how she got them.”
Alex refused to get all embarrassed, because this was important. “I didn’t tell, because it was the most terrifying minute of my life. And I had nightmares about it. And if I told you, you’d have nightmares, too, and you’d never let me out of the house again. This is a really important job, but it’s not safe. And if I hadn’t done it, most of the southwest would be a battleground right now, with the U.S. military fighting an army of giant spiders.”
“An army of giant spiders? Like what we saw on the news?” her dad checked.
She nodded. “It was a giant tarantula. They’re burrowers. And it was a female. And it had already laid eggs.”
Annie shuddered. “Okay, I don’t want to hear anymore.”
Her dad asked, “Tarantulas lay hundreds, maybe thousands of eggs at a time, all in a big silk egg-sac. How many were there, and how big were they?”
Annie quickly got up and hurried into the kitchen with her hands over her ears so she didn’t have to hear.
Alex quietly admitted, “About four hundred, maybe five hundred. And each baby was the size of a VW Beetle. With fangs about a foot long.”
Her dad stopped for several seconds and finally said, “Okay, I don’t think I can stand to hear what actually happened.”
She wasn’t sure if he was letting her off the hook, or if he was really that creeped out, but she still told him, “Thanks. Because I don’t think you should hear the details.”
Her mom added, “Good call, George. I bugged her and got some more detail than that, and I’m sorry I did.”
At bedtime that night, Annie got in bed and asked, “It was really even worse than hundreds of giant spiders down in a cave?”
“Yeah.”
Annie murmured, “I could never do what you do.”
Alex said, “I have superpowers and I could fly away. I don’t know how Jack and Riley and Graham and Jo do it.”
Annie yawned. “One more thing.”
“Okay.”
“Could you introduce me to Willow Rosenberg?”
Alex automatically said, “Sure.” But with her luck, Annie would tell Willow she had a huge geek-crush on her, and Willow would make a pass at her, and mega-ickiness would ensue. Or they’d have a huge screaming fight and hate each other. Alex couldn’t decide which would be worse.
* * *
The next morning, Annie was up before six. She had been getting up every morning at six Minneapolis time for her internship, and she was going to be getting up at seven Massachusetts time when she went back to M.I.T. in two weeks, so she was doing what she could to keep from having to reset her internal clock completely when she went back to school.
And that was okay by Alex. She hadn’t really thought about what she was going to do with her schedule if Annie wanted to sleep in, because Alex was basically getting going about seven every morning so she could eat and then chat with Ray and get her morning workout done and get some coursework in, and everything else.
So they ate breakfast together, and split up to make phone calls. Annie only had a couple of friends in Paradise Valley. And every local guy Annie had ever drooled over had eventually dumped her or been such a jerkhead that Annie finally faced facts and dumped him. The more Alex thought about it, the more she realized that Annie really hadn’t made the effort to know anyone outside the Science Club and the Computer Club. So there were only two of Annie’s friends — Joan and Carol — who were in town, and Carol was packing to go back to school early for something, so Annie really only had Alex and their mom and Joan to hang with.
That meant that Annie kind of hung around reading textbooks on her bed while Alex did her morning exercise and martial arts routine, and chatted with Robyn and Nicole, and then Skyped with Hanna. Okay, Annie knew Robyn and Nicole, but not super well, so some of the stuff Alex would have talked about with them was kind of not up for topics. And Alex first had to introduce Hanna to Annie and warn Hanna not to talk about anything classified. But then mainly Hanna wanted to show Alex the makeover pictures Cindy had been taking, and Annie wasn’t interested in that at all, even if Hanna in wigs looked totally different from Real Hanna, and Hanna could do lots of accents, so it was pretty amazing seeing Hanna as an Irish lass or a stiff Londoner or a Berliner or even a Boston girl.
Hanna had like the most awesome cheekbones ever. If Hanna was six feet tall and thin, every fashion designer in the world would be begging her to do runway work.
And how the heck did you genetically engineer great cheekbones? Maggie Walsh had to be terrifyingly smart.
Then, after the call, Alex ended up explaining how she knew Hanna, which really kind of freaked Annie out. After all, it wasn’t like Hanna was Miss Ordinary in any way you could ever think of. Janet had said Hanna was pretty close to high school sophomore or junior in math and spoken English and science, but totally not in things like global studies or written English, but that would probably be okay if Hanna was ‘the foreign exchange student who wasn’t perfect at English yet’. Alex figured Hanna would have to be way out of date on most ‘global studies’ things, except for stuff her ‘dad’ told her that was probably classified and Hanna couldn’t talk about. Still, Hanna had actually been to other countries, which lots of American kids had not. And if there was any foreign language taught at the high school, it would almost certainly be Spanish or French or German, and Hanna would totally rule in those classes.
Alex figured she just needed to talk to Willow and Jack and Grover and Hanna in private until Annie went back to school, because there was stuff that was not for everyone’s eyes. Or ears.
Then Annie wanted to see what Alex was doing for her online computer course, and that kind of slowed Alex down a lot. But Annie had taught herself Fortran and APL (because that was what the biochem computers at the plant had), and she had learned a couple of specialized math languages at M.I.T., but she was kind of impressed that Alex was learning C.
Okay, Fortran looked pretty okay, especially after C. But APL? That was just crazy. Maybe mega-crazy. Because seriously, tons of mega-weird symbols that weren’t even on your keyboard? That made no sense whatsoever. And who thought it was a good idea to make a symbol that was a domino that you had to make yourself by typing one secret symbol and then backing up and then typing a totally different secret symbol over the top of the first one? She needed to ask Willow what was the deal with APL, because that was just mega-weird.
Annie went down to the chemical plant to see people, while Alex went and did waitressing for Gloria. Then the whole family had dinner together, which was great. And the beef stew came out really well, and the crescent rolls were good even if they were from the store. Well, anything was good if you put enough real butter on it. Alex was sort of sad when Annie said she was on a diet, because Alex really thought Annie looked fine and just needed to work out more instead of deciding not to eat much.
But after dinner, when just the two of them were up in their bedroom, Annie admitted, “I haven’t been on a diet, but I need to start one, because I felt really fat and … blobby after watching you working out in just that sports bra and those aerobics shorts.”
So then Alex felt really awful. She said, “I could put on a big t-shirt and yoga pants before I work out, if it’d help.”
Annie stared at the floor. “It’s not you. I … Can I work out with you?”
“Oh, sure!” Alex smiled. “That’d be great. And if there’s something you don’t want to do, you can just stop while I do it.”
Annie winced. “I think it’s more going to be me pooping out while you’re doing a hundred sit-ups every morning.”
Alex just said, “Okay.” Because she used her telekinesis to hold her feet firmly to the floor so she could do her sit-ups extra fast, and she was up to two hundred every morning, in about five or six minutes. She was thinking about changing to upside-down sit-ups where she held her feet up in the air so her head pointed down, and then she did sit-ups from that position. With telekinesis, she wouldn’t need any fancy equipment or anything.
But she knew Annie wouldn’t want to hear about that. In fact, Alex figured she’d wait until Annie left before switching to the upside-down sit-ups. So they just talked about school friends and classes and what college was like, just like they were totally normal sisters, and not one super-genius and one superheroine.
“So … Mom says these soldiers you’re working with are pretty scrumptious …”
* * *
On Thursday, Alex and Annie drove up to see Willow. Alex did her Cheerful Alex routine the whole way up, even if secretly she was really worried something would go drastically wrong.
But it went great. Willow had Italian for lunch, a bunch of it she’d cooked herself, like the zucchini and tomato vegetarian casserole, and the rotini with the red sauce made with roma tomatoes right out of Willow’s garden. Okay, Alex knew Willow hadn’t made those little raviolis by hand, but they were really good, too. And Willow had a big paper bag of zucchini to take home to their mom.
Annie got Willow to show her all about her computer room, and Alex got Willow to show her how to bake a chocolate zucchini cake, and Alex even took notes on her phone. So they had a ton of fun, and Annie got to make nerdy jokes with someone who got her sense of humor, and it went great. Alex took some pictures of Annie and Willow, so Annie could show off to her friends at school, and Willow gave Annie her email addy and phone number, too. Willow even promised to send Annie some Red Tree Software merch when Annie got back to school.
So naturally, since stuff was going too well, Jack called Willow right before they were going to go out to dinner. Only Jack called on the Terawatt system, which meant trouble. “Hey, Burn, I need you to do some research for me.”
Willow complained, “Jack, I was just about to take Alex and her sister out to dinner.”
Jack pretended to be the stern grown-up. “Willow! We’ve talked about this! Alex is too young for you. And dating two sisters at once? That’s just not okay.”
Willow turned bright red and squeaked, “Jack! Stop it!”
Annie sort of blushed a little and looked at Alex, who whispered, “Boyfriend.”
Jack must have known Willow had the phone on speakerphone, because he actually stopped and moved to the real reason he called. “It’s New York City. Marshal McCowpie has a problem. He’s gotten credit for several arrests and thwarted crimes he didn’t do. He’s sure he’s not the only one, but no one else wants to ‘fess up. They’re all happening in the middle of the night, and it’s making the local criminal element really jumpy. But here’s the part where it becomes an SRI case. The carjackers last night who got stopped and beaten up before Marshal McClod caught up to them were really insistent that they were attacked by some sort of half-man half-bat thing that flew down, beat the snot out of them, zipcuffed them to a lightpole, and then ducked into the darkness and vanished.”
Alex slapped herself on the forehead.
Jack went on, “I need you to see if there have been any bat-related research projects at any of the research sites in the Big Apple. And I need you to check all night-shift police reports for changes in the frequency of certain categories of crimes, like robberies going down while attempted robberies go up.”
Alex said, “It’s not a bat-thing. It’s a guy with no superpowers, just a lot of training, and he’s dressed in a bat costume. With a utility belt and lots of fancy gizmos, like a bat-shaped grapple he can fire out of a thing and then it pulls him along on an attached cable so he can actually do stuff like swing from building to building like Spiderman instead of running around the town.”
Jack teased, “Hi, Tera! Why didn’t you tell me you’d become psychic? I’ve got some lottery tickets I could buy, and —”
Alex groaned. “Remember I told you about going to that other dimension? One of the backups that one of my other teammates brought in was her boyfriend. Who had a black-and-gray batsuit with bat ears on the cowl and a fancy black cape and a utility belt and a bunch of gadgets. And he was about 6'2" or 6'3", and built like one of those pro wrestlers, maybe 230 or 240 pounds although some of that was probably armor on his costume, and he had a chin like Josh Holloway. And S–… umm, someone said he was really, really rich, so maybe there’s a mansion and a butler, too.”
Jack thought it over. “Well, a gadget like that would cost a small fortune to design and test. I’ll see if there’s a military application and if anyone’s built something like that for the DoD.”
Willow said, “And I’ll check and see if there are any tech geeks who could build something like that, and who look like that.”
Alex suddenly remembered something else. “Oh, wait, Catwoman and Batman were in Gotham City, I think, not New York.”
Jack smirked. Alex could hear the smirkiness over the phone line. “Tera, hasn’t anyone ever told you that another nickname for New York is ‘Gotham’?”
Willow asked, “Is it okay if we go eat dinner before I get started on this?”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Homer and Jethro are going to be sweating over a hot CPU, and you’ll be off dining on caviar and staring at waiters’ behinds.”
“Jack!”
“Or maybe waitresses’ behinds.”
“Jack! Stop it!”
Jack blithely went on, “Well, you just go enjoy yourself, while we’re working ourselves into the ground out here …”
Alex frowned. “Jack, stop it. Willow’s beet red and totally embarrassed now.”
“Oh! Then my job is done!” And he hung up.
Willow blushed some more and growled, “I am so going to get even with him.”
Annie asked, “This is your boyfriend? And Alex’s military guy? And a real colonel? Because he acts like he’s about eighteen.”
Willow said, “Eight. Sometimes Charlie says Jack’s been eight his whole life.”
Annie wondered, “And he got promoted to colonel anyway?”
Willow locked the front door as they walked to Alex’s car. “Let me explain about one Colonel Jack O’Neill …”
“Without lots of TMI!” Alex hastily inserted.
* * *
They had a really fun dinner, but Alex could tell Willow was really anxious to get started on the computer searches for Jack. So they dropped Willow off and made sure she got inside okay, then Alex drove home.
In the car, Annie asked, “Is that what it’s always like? You never know when stuff’s going to drop in your lap and you’ll have to rush off and go save the world, or maybe just go check out something that might turn out to be really important?”
Alex admitted, “Well … yeah. It’s been worse when I’m in school, except the time Jo Baker attacked because I was already where she was going.” She stopped and thought for a second about that particular mess. “Okay, maybe that was mega-worse.”
Annie checked, “That’s Azure Crush? The fat bully who was mean to you and you were the first one who stood up to her?”
Alex said, “Nobody should have to put up with bullying. And especially not when the bully can throw an engine block at you.”
Annie cringed some. “Do you think they’ll find anything?”
Alex told her, “This is Willow Rosenberg we’re talking about. Sure she’ll find stuff. And Jack’s people are really good, too. Let me tell you just how amazing they are …” So she told Annie about Acid Burn and captainmal and jackryanrules finding out CIA stuff that even the CIA people didn’t know, and solving a string of fourteen-year-old crimes, all while the team was sitting in a jet listening to a weaselly CIA guy. Alex couldn’t tell Annie the classified parts, but she told her how they shredded the CIA’s firewalls and found stuff in their computers even the CIA didn’t know was there.
Annie finally asked her, “And is that why you put on an earjack?”
Alex admitted, “Yeah, and it’s set for my Terawatt phone, too, because I’m figuring someone might come up with something any minute now.”
But it wasn’t ‘any minute’. It was about an hour. They were still on the road driving home, although they were in the middle of a really important discussion about which music to listen to, and why Pink was way better than Annie thought she’d be, but how Alex had to listen to her at home using her earbuds because Pink had a potty mouth, and you should totally not sing Pink songs in the shower really loud.
Willow called the tPhone. “Hey, Tera, we got some hits.”
“Burn, you should get some sleep, so when Jack calls at eight his time, you’ll be ready.”
Willow said, “Seven his time. Or earlier. He’s got the military morning thing going for him. Even if he is totally sexy when he’s waking up and all sleepy like a big cat.”
Alex totally didn’t need to hear that, especially about an old guy. She just moved on. “So what did you find out?”
Willow said merrily, “Jack was right! So get some sleep, because someone may be going to the Big Apple tomorrow. That grapple system is probably from a military contract. PaineTech and Paine Industries, which are the military and industrial research arms of Paine Enterprises. And guess what their primary stockholder Bruce Paine looks like?”