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Chapter 95 – After BurnerAlex was maybe a thousand feet up, and looking for any signs of super-powered mayhem. She was using her best telephoto lens, even though she knew she might lose it if she had to dive into a super-battle. But she needed to cover a lot of ground, and she could afford to buy a new lens if she had to. She couldn’t afford to let Azure Crush and whatever-name-Cready-picked-out destroy half the city.
And there was no way he would call himself Flamey the Wonder Ouchy. Sometimes Jack was so weird.
No, Cready probably had a mercenary-battles kind of name picked out. Firezone or Killbox or Friendly Fire or something like that. Maybe Unfriendly Fire.
Her tPhone went off, and she answered it as fast as she could. “Tera here. Go.”
Willow’s AutoTuned voice came through. “Police and fire calls in one area. Two people called the cops to report a super-battle on Mulgrew near 17th Street, and there’s some kind of weird maybe-prank 911 call from the same locale, and there’s a fire call on McNeill near 17th Street, too.”
Okay, she knew where that was. She said, “That’s only two blocks over from Mulgrew.”
“Yeah, one call’s from 1730 Mulgrew, one’s from 1765 Mulgrew, the maybe-prank call’s from 1733 Mulgrew, and the fire call’s from 1751 McNeill. That’s kinda too close together to be chance.”
“On it. Thanks.” She hung up and took off.
But she was in the wrong part of town. She was over near her high school, and it sounded like the stuff was going on in one of the nicer parts of town over toward the really ritzy section where Libby lived. Even at her best speed — which was maybe a little slower than usual because she was towing her camera and three water balloons, with the balloons fifty feet behind her — it took a minute or two to get there.
Nothing was happening on Mulgrew Street. Okay, it looked like there had been a super-battle, and the street was damaged, with some wrecked cars and torn-up driveways, and there were still some small fires burning, but there wasn’t anything going on now. People were even coming out of their houses to put out the small fires that were in their yards or on the street in front of their houses. She could see a fire truck about six blocks off and racing down the street toward them.
She darted over two blocks to McNeill Street. Oh.
Oh, crud.
There was another fire truck pulling up while a flaming blob lay unmoving on a large front yard. It was Cready, and he looked like he might be dead.
How horrible was that? Maybe he was dead, and he was still on fire.
Oh, crud, what if they could never put him out ever?
She landed in the yard and carefully set her gear down on the roof behind her. The fire truck pulled over near the closest fire hydrant, and guys started rushing back and forth with big firehoses. In a matter of seconds, one fireman had the fire hydrant open with one hose attached, while two more firemen were running up to Cready’s body while screwing a nozzle onto their end of a hose. Wow, you could tell these guys practiced just a ton.
And then water was blasting out of the nozzle and dousing the flames. Alex waited nervously. Was Cready dead? What had happened? How did he get over here if the fight stuff was two blocks away? And where was Azure Crush? This seemed a little too obvious to be an ambush. And an ambush wasn’t really Jo’s style. Jo’s style was more ‘stomp over and throttle anyone who got in her way’.
Still, Alex was being careful and trying to keep an eye out for any nasty surprises, like Danielle Atron sneaking out of the house behind her and launching a surprise attack. But if Atron was that stupid, or Jo was around somewhere, Alex had a surprise waiting for them. They wouldn’t be expecting an ambush from Terawatt when they sprung their ambush.
As the water poured over Cready, he moved. At first, Alex wasn’t sure it wasn’t just the blobbiness being pushed around by the force of the water. But then something like a blobby hand reached out and pushed the blobby body up off the patch of now-really-burnt lawn.
She waited until Cready’s fire was pretty much out for a few seconds, and she carefully lifted one of her water balloons off the roof behind her. She dropped it on him, and it broke open, splooshing him with about a quart of heavily diluted antidote.
Boy, was she glad her dad had 700 milliliters of GC-161 antidote locked away in his secret garage safe. When she had flown home and been all desperate, her dad told her he had antidote she could pour on Cready and Jo. And then she saw the party stuff from her birthday party sitting on one of the storage shelves in a big clear storage bin, and she’d gotten the idea. Her dad had stretched three balloons, poured 100 milliliters of antidote into each one, and then added a liter of purified water before tying each one in a knot and adding a drop of plastic sealer to keep them from leaking. Alex still hadn’t wanted to get within twenty feet of the things, but that was what telekinesis was for.
The fire went out, and the silvery blob began to slowly give way to normal. Only this time, he had some clothes on. Really badly burned clothes, but at least he wasn’t totally naked this time. And he looked like he’d been smacked with a baseball bat the size of a tree. Crud, was he getting a nasty bruise, and it looked like it covered about half his front side. Ouch.
She called out, “This man needs a blanket! And maybe some medical attention!”
Her tPhone buzzed, so she tapped her earjack. In a rush Willow said, “Tera! I got the sound file of the 911 call. Cready called and reported himself and ratted out Azure Crush and asked for antidote. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s really Cready on that call. What’s going on?”
As the firemen ran over with a blanket and a medical kit, she asked, “Okay, Cready, what happened?”
He looked around slowly and blinked a couple times. “Where am I? This isn’t the street we were on.”
Alex hadn’t ever heard him talk more than a couple syllables before, so she hadn’t realized he had a sort of English accent. Cockney. Or Australian. Or something. She didn’t know. She said in her best Terawatt tones, “That would be Mulgrew Street, which is two blocks that way.” She pointed off behind him.
“Jesus! You mean that bitch knocked me two blocks? I knew she was strong, but that’s mad. Did she get away?”
Alex said, “It looks like it. But there isn’t a trail of destruction, either.”
He groaned. “I hurt her with my fireballs, but I don’t think I really did more than give her a bad sunburn. She’s one tough bitch.”
Alex didn’t say anything, but she had to agree with him. That was why she was flying around with three water balloons full of diluted GC-161 antidote, even though it made her really nervous. And that was why the balloons stayed fifty feet away from her. Minimum.
A police car turned into the street and screeched to a halt right in front of Alex. The policemen flipped open the car doors, crouched down behind them, and pointed their guns. “Victor Cready! You are under arrest!”
Alex called out, “Excuse me officers, but I believe Mister Cready will cooperate with you. I think he was kidnapped by Danielle Atron and brought here. But he called the police for assistance, and he attempted to stop Azure Crush. And I believe he was injured and knocked unconscious in the attempt.”
Cready just lay face down on the grass with his hands behind his head, like he’d been arrested a jillion times before. He muttered at her, “Why are you being nice to me?”
She kept talking, “Officers, if you could escort Mister Cready to your stationhouse and let him give a statement, and provide him with more antidote and some clothes, I would appreciate it. I believe this city owes him a debt of gratitude, since he just drove off a supervillain.”
Cready muttered, “Yeah, the crazy bitch wanted to kill you and someone named Mack, and then kill as many cops as she could get her hands on until they blew her brains out. She didn’t seem real rational about it. But maybe Atron wasn’t giving her much of a chance, either.”
She pointed out, “It’s not like Azure Crush can maintain a low profile, either.”
“That’s what she said,” Cready agreed. “She thinks she’s still the ugly fat broad. She thinks she’s only got two choices: supervillain who goes out in a blaze of glory, or ugly fat loser. This Aly Mack bitch must’ve really done a number on her.”
She made sure she didn’t get mad, and she made sure she maintained her Terawatt voice. “According to the police and school reports, Miss Mack is just the kid who finally stood up to Joelle Baker, which indirectly led to Miss Baker getting expelled from school. Then, when Miss Baker came after Miss Mack with a knife, Miss Mack refused to panic, and called 911 without alerting Miss Baker, and I believe Miss Baker holds her responsible for ending up in jail.”
Cready shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. A grudge is a grudge. Doesn’t have to make sense.” He stared at his hands. “Can I get some more antidote? I can still feel it in my hands and feet.”
“The police will have all the antidote you need, Mister Cready.” She checked with the police officers: “Will you be able to get him some antidote fairly soon? I believe he’ll be very cooperative as long as he wants more.”
The police officers handcuffed Cready and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Cready looked at her. “Hey. Thanks.”
She gave him a smile. “You’re welcome.”
Alex lifted off, swooping over the roof of the house where she had her stuff, so she could grab everything without being obvious about it. With her telephoto lens in her hand and the two remaining balloons trailing fifty feet behind her, she soared up to a thousand feet and started flying in circles, trying to locate a massive blue super-strong ball of anger. How hard could it be to find someone like that? Surely Jo would stick out like a sore thumb.
Unless Jo had just busted her way into someone’s house and was holding them hostage. Or she’d carjacked someone and was holding them hostage. Or she’d just stolen a car out of someone’s driveway or garage.
Alex flew in larger and larger circles until the circles were over a mile across. But there was no sign of Jo Baker. Alex could see police cars patrolling all over the place, so she knew the police were searching for Jo, too. But there wasn’t anything.
“Okay … what would I do if I was Azure Crush and I’d just gotten burned by some crazy Fireguy and I knew the police were looking for me and maybe that superheroine was, too?” She really needed not to be talking out loud to herself. Even at about a thousand feet above the city.
But she didn’t have an answer. Steal a car? Okay, a car or truck with tinted windows would keep anyone from seeing that a blue woman was driving the thing. Break into somewhere and hole up until she felt better? That could work, too, if she broke into the right place. Hide until nighttime and then make her move? Yeah, in the dark, it would be a lot harder to spot that Jo was blue, instead of a normal color. Alex thought about it for a long time, and just kept coming up with more and more things Jo might try.
So … Alex had no idea what Jo was doing, or where she might go, or anything. She patrolled the skies for the whole afternoon, and nothing. The police didn’t find anything either, because Willow was monitoring the police bands and wasn’t hearing anything.
Alex finally gave up when it was dinnertime, because she was starving. She had brought four energy bars in her utility belt, and she’d devoured them hours ago. She dived straight down into one of the dry creek beds, shot along as a silvery jet until she got to the right runoff pipe, and headed home.
It wasn’t until she was nearly done with dinner — which Shar helped make so Alex gave her lots of compliments — that Acid Burn called again. “Tera here.”
Willow’s AutoTuned voice buzzed, “Guess what? Police found an abandoned car an hour’s drive south of here. It was stolen from a garage only two blocks from the big super-battle. And the thief ripped opened the garage door even though it was locked, and broke the locking mechanism. And it’s a big SUV with tinted windows.”
Alex guessed, “So Jo’s going south. Or she’s going to double back and be sneaky.”
Willow told her, “Somebody on the highway patrol thinks the same way. They’re patrolling the interstate and the state roads south of you, in case she tries driving back here.”
Alex hung up, and her dad said, “Maybe I’ll just keep those water balloons handy for a few days.”
She winced. “I don’t like ’em. They make me nervous.”
He suggested, “One in the chem lab safe, and one in a lockbox in my office at the plant.”
She grimaced and finally gave in. “Okay. But I don’t like ’em.”
Shar pointed a finger at her and spoke around a big mouthful of roast beef, “You already said that.”
Alex’s mom automatically said, “Please don’t talk with your mouth full, Shar.”
Alex gave Shar a big smile. “You remember everything, don’t you? Maybe you’re too smart to be in third grade. Would you like to be a high school senior like me?”
Shar’s eyes got really big, and she hastily shook her head no. “Unh-uh. You got tons of real hard homework. I don’t like that. Can I just kinda be in third grade for a while?”
Alex’s mom smiled. “I think she was teasing, honey.”
After dinner and clean-up, Alex did her martial arts practice on her side of the room, while Shar tried something new.
Shar got out her new white Mary Janes for church, and white kneesocks and black tights and a long-sleeved white leotard and little white gloves And a little Lone Ranger-style domino mask that Alex didn’t know she had. It looked like Shar had bought it in a dollar store for about fifty cents. Then Shar put all of that on, with the kneesocks going on over the tights, and she had a superheroine outfit that looked an awful lot like Terawatt, only for an eight-year-old. She got out her ‘superheroine’ Skipper and dressed it in its superheroine outfit, and then played superheroine with it for maybe half an hour, flying her little ‘Pyre’ around the room and blasting monsters and rescuing Terawatt from bad people and just generally being simultaneously heroic and cute as the dickens.
While Alex did her weightlifting, she lifted up her GoPro and got maybe two minutes of Shar being the cutest little superheroine ever. And then, without the GoPro in the air, Alex managed to lift a whopping 225 pounds. Even if afterward she needed to take three pain relievers and eat an entire quart of chocolate ice cream. With hot fudge sauce and whipped cream. And twenty Oreos.
Hey, it wasn’t her fault that chocolate was the best kind of calories.
She finished just in time for her ‘late date’ with Ray, because they were going to a late showing of the new Ben Stiller movie, and Alex was hoping it would be really funny. She loved Ben Stiller, but she thought Adam Sandler movies were too ‘teen guy’. Okay, some of them were pretty fun, but some of them? Pass.
She hugged Shar goodnight and reminded her to be good for ‘Aunt Barb’.
Shar frowned at her. “I’m always good for Aunt Barb!”
Alex smiled. “Well, that’s just because she always lets you watch ‘The Iron Giant’ a couple times.”
“Nuh-uh!” Shar insisted. “Oh. You’re teasing me.” She put on a big pretend smile and nodded excitedly. She fibbed, “Yeah! She lets me watch it a hundred times in a row, until it’s five in the morning!”
Alex snickered and hugged Shar. “You are the best little sister ever.”
Shar hugged her back and insisted, “Nuh-uh. I bet you were the best little sister ever!”
Alex just told her, “You’ll have to talk to Annie about that. There were plenty of times when I wasn’t the best little sister ever. Back then, I was sure it was Annie’s fault, or at least someone else’s fault, but looking back, there were definitely times when I was a brat.”
Shar said really seriously, “Well, I’m never a brat.”
Alex went to get ready for her date and just didn’t mention the times when Shar got into her makeup, or the times Shar didn’t want to do her homework, or the times she didn’t want to eat the vegetables at dinner, or the times she didn’t want to clean up her side of the room, or when she decided she wasn’t giving Alex back the Pikachu plushie, or …
Interlude XVIIJo Baker looked around. It had been pretty easy stealing that first car. Once you break the lock on a door, you’re in. Once you rip out a car’s ignition, you don’t need a key to start the bastard. And it had tinted windows, so no one knew Azure Crush was driving it.
Okay, after a while she’d felt the need to ditch it and steal another one. Super-strength was fine, until you started accidentally tearing the steering wheel off the steering column, and crushing the gas pedal through the floor when you didn’t want to, and smashing the radio to pieces when you just wanted to push a button or two to get a decent station. Still, stealing another car was just not a problem. But she had just ditched the second stolen car and was looking for a ride. And some food. The secret superdrug made her lose a fuck-ton of weight, which was great, but now it made her hungry pretty much all the time, and that sucked donkey dicks when you were in prison and you could only get so much to eat. No one was going to be finding that second car, since she’d tossed it over an embankment into a creek, thrown a couple saplings and half a dozen bushes over it to hide it, and then walked over to the nearby interstate rest area.
Some food, and maybe some clothes. She was wearing a bath towel out of the back of the first car, because that dogfucking bastard Cready burned up her prison coverall and everything else she had been wearing. And it wasn’t like she was some perfect size eight so anybody’s clothes might fit her. She was big. She had been growing while she was in prison, and now she was maybe 6'4" and way over 200 pounds. Probably way over 250. She didn’t really know, but she knew she’d always been a load.
At least her skin had stopped burning like she was on fire. That bastard Cready had totally fucked up her plans. She’d needed hours to heal up from those fireballs. So now some wise-ass would probably spot that and hit her with a flamethrower the next time she tried to pull off a robbery or something. She was giving up on Alex. For now. She’d find some way to get even some other time, like when Mack wasn’t expecting it.
She just needed a new ride. There was an old van with hardly any windows, and it was parked off by itself way over at the back of the parking area. Perfect. And there were three nerds climbing back into it after they hit the john. More perfect.
She ran down and grabbed the sliding side door before the third guy could close it. She stepped in and started to give them some orders. “All right —”
“Oh, holy shit, it’s Azure Crush!”
She growled, “Yeah, and —”
She expected the guy to be terrified, or at least worried. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look anything like ‘scared’. He excitedly gasped, “Oh, my God! Can I have your autograph?”
“What?”
“Me, too!” the guy behind the wheel squealed. He actually squealed. Like a ten-year-old girl. What the hell was wrong with these guys?
The third guy, who was sitting in the seats at the back of the open area, jumped up. “Can I get you a soda? Or a sandwich? Rod made ’em but they’re okay.”
‘Rod’ was obviously the guy in the middle. He looked at Third Guy and said, “Fuck you.” Then he looked at her and asked, “Could I get a photo of you with me?”
The driver excitedly asked, “Can we give you a ride? Can we help you? Anything you want, just name it.”
And when she slipped inside and closed the sliding door, she saw there was a poster taped up on the right-hand wall of the van on one of the solid areas. It was a blown up shot of her fighting Terawatt. It was the moment she slammed that car on the bitch’s face. She was wearing a ripped-up short-sleeved wetsuit and showing more skin than she’d realized. And she looked good. That wasn’t fat, ugly Jo Baker there. That was a hot, busty supervillain.
Holy crap, that perv Cready had been telling the truth. When the hell did she stop being fat, ugly Jo?
Rod nervously tried, “If you could autograph our poster, it would be utterly cool.”
“Where’d you get it?” she asked.
Rod said, “Umm, Tommy bought it.” He looked at the guy in back and asked, “Where’d you get the poster?”
‘Tommy’ grinned. “From AzureCrushRules.com. It was only $19.99 plus tax and shipping. Totally worth it.”
Jo suddenly felt like someone had taken her brain out of her head, tossed it in a washing machine on spin cycle, and then shoved it back in her skull. “Azure Crush rules dot com? I have a website? There’s an Azure Crush website?”
How the hell could she have a website? How the fuck could she have fanboys? Because that guy Tommy was staring at her like she was a porn starlet. And he had a fucking hard-on in his pants. Guys didn’t get boners over her.
The guy behind the wheel scoffed, “You have five websites. Maybe ten. Not as many as that candy-ass Terawatt, but a lot. If you’d let us get some photos of you, we could make some serious cash dollars.”
“How?” she wondered.
Rod told her, “AzureCrushRules and UltraHotAzureCrush have standing rewards for pics of you. UHAC’s webmaster is just down in L.A. so we could drive down, show him the pics, and pick up the cash.”
“Pleeeeeeease?” Tommy begged like a five-year-old.
The driver gushed, “Yeah! Anything you want. Maybe we could buy you something sexy to wear first, like a bikini. Or another wetsuit. You were HOT in that wetsuit. Almost as hot as you are in that little towel.”
With a sneer, Tommy said, “Let’s keep it classy. We’re not ‘Hustler’.”
She asked, “What does Hustler have to do with anything?”
Rod said, “Oh. That. Well, Larry Flynt has a five million dollar offer for a nude pictorial from you, Terawatt, Action Girl, or that Poison Ivy chick.”
This was impossible. Her brain was refusing to work right. Maybe she was hallucinating or something. There was no way anyone would offer five million bucks to take pictures of her naked. No way. Even if every guy in the car was looking at her like she was Terawatt. Like she was a naked Terawatt.
Five million bucks. She couldn’t stop thinking about that. She used to be the fat blob that not even the school losers wanted to screw, and now one of the biggest girlie mags on the planet wanted to pay her major money to take her clothes off.
It felt like a lightbulb was going off in her head. That Cready prick was right. She’d been thinking like some kind of ugly loser. Like a minion. She needed to think like … like a swimsuit model.
Like a centerfold.
She asked, “How would I even contact somebody like Larry Flynt?”
Rod instantly said, “LFP, Inc. has a headquarters building smack in the middle of Beverly Hills.” Everyone stared at him. “What? So maybe I know stuff.”
Tommy sneered at him. “Or maybe you have a hundred Hustlers under your bed at home.”
Rod just flipped him the bird with both hands.
Jo smiled smugly. “I tell you what. If you guys drive me down there, I’ll let you buy me dinner, and you can buy me the teeniest swimsuit you can find.”
Tommy stared up at the ceiling and shouted, “THANK YOU GOD!”
Interlude XVIIIHermione was nervous. Extremely nervous. She’d been called up to her boss’s office before. She’d been called up to his boss’s office before. She had never been called up to this office.
She had never even been here before. She had never even known they had offices in this building, which bothered her quite a lot given that she was in data analysis and she should have seen at least some evidence that this building was a part of the SIS.
There was a fluffy little old lady sitting at a little desk that had a simple ‘INFORMATION’ placard on it. She was knitting a jumper. Hermione didn’t really knit, but she had learned the basics and she had read some information on the subject, so she recognized the pattern. It was non-trivial, and the mere fact that the woman could focus on Hermione while still knitting said a lot about the woman’s skill level and years of practice.
Hermione stepped up to the desk. “Excuse me, could you direct me to room 324? I have an appointment at half past.”
The woman smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, dearie, this place is a rabbit warren, you’ll never find it on your own. Let me get someone to take you there.” She leaned back and called out, “Oi! Bertie! Can you help this nice young lady?”
An old man tottered out and waved her to follow him. But as soon as they went around a corner and through a solid oak door, Hermione found herself facing a standard set-up for a low traffic, high security building. There was a full-body passive-radiation scanner for her, and a conveyor belt with two different scanner modules for her handbag and her briefcase.
She took off her shoes, stepped into the scanner, put her hands on the hand placements, and let the scanner do its job.
The man in full SAS gear said, “There ye go, hop on out an’ reclaim yer shoes.”
The man behind the conveyor belt said, “Not a weapon on her or in her bags. First today. Bertie, who had first one showing up between ten and eleven?”
The old man was standing a lot straighter and moving a lot more crisply. He grumbled, “It’s that bleeding Edna again.”
The man in SAS gear said, “I keep sayin’, ye’ve got ta make sure she doesn’t get ta look at the appointment list first!”
The old man said, “I’ll take you up. They don’t like people they don’t know wandering the halls unsupervised, even if they don’t have a single weapon on them. If you’re going to be coming in and out of here regularly, you ought to talk to your people about getting you some protective gear.”
She stiffly replied, “Thank you for the advice, but I seriously doubt I shall ever be directed back here again after today.”
He smiled smugly. “That’s what they all say, and the next thing you know, you’re wearing a Walther in a back holster and meeting with Q.”
She blanched, because she knew who Q was. She had no intention of getting drawn into that life. She was just a data analyst.
Granted, she was a data analyst who had been drawn into ‘that life’ at age eleven. She vividly remembered her first year with Harry and Ron. The threat in the bathroom. The series of deathtraps they had gotten Harry through at end of term, even though Ron ended up with a nasty concussion and Harry ended up in hospital, too. The nightmare their second year, when she had nearly died, and Ginny had nearly been murdered. The battle in third year that had left Ron with a badly injured leg. Nearly drowning in her fourth year. The running gun battle her fifth year. That night at end of sixth year, when the headmaster died. The break-ins and thefts she planned out their seventh year, and then executed with Harry and Ron. The agents of Lord Deathstrike she had battled in seventh year …
Oh, good Lord, she and Ron both qualified for Double Oh admittance, too. And Appledore had probably known it and had probably informed his associates.
At that point, she was expecting to be taken to see one of the Double Oh ‘elders’ who were part of Appledore’s group. Granted, they were really more of a cabal. Perhaps a junto. For older men, they were extraordinarily dangerous in a number of ways.
Instead, the old man — who Hermione realized was probably one of the Double Oh elders, playing at being a useless docent — led her to room 324 and knocked briskly. “Excuse me, L? Your next appointment is here.”
Oh, no. If she was being taken to see L, then this was not good.
A dry, middle-aged male voice answered, “Thank you very much, Albert. Do you suppose you could convince Helen to make me two cups of tea? You know how I like mine. Miss Granger takes hers with milk and one lump.”
The old man escorted her into the office and grinned. “Get right on it. I can probably sweet-talk her into it.”
Hermione was definitely nervous now. The fact that she was meeting L, and that L knew that much about her, meant that there was probably very little they didn’t know. She would have to assume they knew about her thing with Ron.
She would have to assume they knew everything.
She also hadn’t expected to be summoned to meet with someone like L. Hermione knew perfectly well how the letter designation system went. Q and R and the nearby letters were SIS armourers and inventors and all-around boffins. The letters F through L were reserved for people directly under M. Usually, K and L were given to people who were being groomed to become the next M.
The mild-mannered man on the other side of the desk could become the next M at any time. That meant he was far more dangerous than he appeared. It meant that he was far more ruthless than he looked. It meant that he might even be one of the Double Ohs who were so dangerous that they were retired because of age, rather than because of critical injuries. That definitely did not cheer her up.
The fact that she recognized him from photos she had seen as part of her work didn’t cheer her up, either. In fact, it increased her nervousness.
She glanced around. He had a remarkable library of books, some of which were also less than encouraging. He had a glass-covered shelf of presumably-rare books in the original Chinese. Her Asian languages weren’t as strong as her European languages, but she was quite sure she recognized three of the classic Chinese books on war. That one was very definitely Sun Tzu. He had some texts on data analysis that she had, even if he had older editions of the same books. He had shelves of economic reports for countries around the world, some of them written in languages even she didn’t read.
She wasn’t sure whether she should feel reassured that she was dealing with a fellow member of the intelligentsia, or if she should feel threatened by the thought.
He gave her a gentle, vague smile and waved at the comfortable armchair that sat across the desk from his more formal chair. She wasn’t fooled for a second. People who were in line to become M were not gentle or vague.
“Please sit down, Miss Granger. Or do you prefer Ms. given that you’re a modern woman?”
She managed not to stammer. “Either is acceptable, milord.”
He smiled, and this time his smile was less like that of a chartered accountant and more like … a tiger. “It is both gratifying and disconcerting to be recognized, Miss Granger. And I’m surprised you’re so formal, given that you’re sleeping with young Lord Wellesley. Still, given how your school years went, I suppose it was inevitable that you would end up seeing one of them. Is the problem his parents or is it the SIS rules?”
She got the strong mental image that he was fencing with her, expertly wielding an épée while she struggled not to be overwhelmed and skewered. He would slowly cut her into shreds if she continued the engagement. She recalled his old nickname and wondered how accurate it had been.
She admitted, “Both. His parents like me, but they are fully aware of what we did in school, so they know that Ron’s association with me and Harry is dangerous. And his grandparents are really hoping he’d pick someone more … suitable than a commoner. His mother’s mother has been introducing him to young women who are distant heirs to the thrones of several countries. His father’s mother has been pushing one of the Parkinson girls at him, only we went to school with her, and I imagine Ron would rather shoot himself in the leg than have to marry her.”
He looked at her through glasses that strongly reminded her of Harry’s glasses before Harry switched to contacts, and then had Lasik surgery after his eyes stopped changing. Ginny sometimes complained to her that she had quite liked Harry in his round, wire-rimmed glasses. Hermione suspected that it had a lot to do with Harry’s dramatic rescue of Ginny in their second year, while Hermione was injured and Ron was facing down yet another teacher who turned out to be a threat.
School teachers. Ugh. It had gotten to the point that Hermione had investigated everyone who even attempted to get a job at their school, from the headmaster down to the groundskeepers. Along with the new applicants, Hermione had found the chemistry teacher, the heads of their house and two other houses, the head groundskeeper, the gamesmaster, and the higher maths teacher had all had suspicious connections to Appledore’s group or Riddle’s cabal. Along with both of Harry’s parents, both of Ron’s parents, both of Drake’s parents, and a quarter of the school’s board of governors.
He nodded. “Hmm … I could put in a word for you with Mariam. She’s quite the force of nature, as you know. If it weren’t for her considerable temper, she would have made a remarkable M. Arthur is really more the Q type.”
“No thank you,” she told him carefully. “I think it would be better if I didn’t owe you anything.”
He gave her a twitch of the lip. “Anything more, you mean. After all, we’re not pressing your Ronald to become the next 006. And we’re not pressing you to become the next 009.” He noticed that she didn’t react. “But you have considered this before. You three were quite the team. Riddle lost far more people to you three in seven years than he lost to Appledore in over thirty. I personally would prefer to get you into the Double Oh series. Oh, Harry is quite determined, with the right reflexes and all. But he’s precisely the type that people look at and say, ‘by George, I’d bet that chap is the spy they sent’. You, on the other hand … The mere fact that the elders aren’t considering you for the series tells you all that anyone needs to know about patriarchal attitudes around the world. You would be devastating.”
She just gave him an arched eyebrow and refused to say anything. She had no intention of incriminating herself in any way.
He smiled slightly. “Precisely. We do maintain files, after all. I am fully aware of how you looked as an eleven-year-old, and how you looked at your fourth-year ball, and how you looked when you broke into Mrs. Lestrange’s bank. Men look the same in every disguise. It would be Harry, Harry with glasses and a beard, Harry with a messy wig and a mustache … People see through those disguises. But women are constantly underestimated, when they wear the most effective disguise materials every single day. Only women prefer to call it makeup and hairstyles. You are a remarkably attractive young woman who is capable of posing as the prissy scientist or the dowdy librarian or the pasty-faced secretary … or, as we already know, the insane chatelaine of someone like Tommy Riddle.”
He stopped while an older woman brought in a tray with two cups of tea. He gave her a big smile and thanked her effusively. The woman blushed slightly and rushed off. Hermione recognized that he had deliberately put on that little performance just so she could see what he really was.
He took a sip of his tea and sighed happily. Then he continued, “And you have the intelligence and background to pull any of those roles off convincingly. If you weren’t probably the best person in the entire SIS data analytics section right now, I would have suggested to someone that you were being wasted in that job. And apparently, even Terawatt has recognized how valuable you are. She wanted you to be her lone contact point for the entire continent. I hope you realize what that says about you.”
Hermione decided that some honesty was called for. “It really says something about someone else. Terawatt told me why she was interested in me. She went to an alternate universe with a team of superheroes and fought a hellgod who was trying to take over dimension after dimension until she would rule the entire multiverse. The leader of that team was an extremely powerful magic user. A witch. Her name is Hermione Granger.”
“Ahh,” he nodded thoughtfully. “So she provided you with some sort of proof that alternate universes exist, and this explained the real reason why she sought you out. Does she expect that you would be a magic user like your counterpart?”
Hermione cleared her throat slightly. The man was distressingly fast on the uptake. She admitted, “No, sir. She seems quite convinced that different dimensions far enough apart according to some undefined metric have differing physical constants, so that magic cannot exist in our dimension. She sought me out because the other Hermione had demonstrated years of using her brain to outsmart enemies in fieldwork situations, and she thought it likely that I might have similar characteristics.”
He simply said, “And you do, even if we try to keep that aspect of your past sub rosa.”
She pretended she didn’t notice the implied threat in his statement. After all, if he let Lord Deathstrike’s remaining people know all about her role in Harry’s successes, as well as some of the people she had personally defeated, the consequences could be … unpleasant.
He added, “After all, did Harry ever have to stand up to extended physical torture? Granted, Lestrange was merely an enthusiastic amateur, but she was working with a professional’s toolkit. You did, and you managed not to spill anything. Hardened SAS men have been known to fold under what you endured. And you got right back in the game.”
“It wasn’t a game,” she said, trying not to lose her temper.
“Agreed,” he replied calmly. “It’s just an expression. I’m sure it was coined by someone who never spent any significant amount of time doing serious fieldwork. Still, if you truly want to keep Harry out of the series, all you’d have to do would be to step in, in his stead. I could get you the 007 spot. And perhaps you could use your middle name instead of your first, just because Hermione is rather distinctive.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t think I could bear going around introducing myself as ‘Bond, Jean Bond’.”
He mildly said, “I see no reason why one needs to adhere to the clichés as strongly as the elders prefer.”
She decided it was time to use one of her prepared tactics. “And anyway, I was considering resigning my position and emigrating. I hear that Washington, D.C. is lovely this time of year, and that Jack O’Neill’s base is not as subject to the vagaries of the weather as many places on their East Coast.”
He just grinned. It wasn’t a nice grin, but it was still a grin. “Well played! Oh, very well played. No tells, no ‘flop sweat’, and nicely underplayed. Riddle was an idiot to underestimate you so seriously.” He dropped the grin. “I’ll tell you a little secret, since the consequences won’t be all that secret much longer. One of our old 006 retirees who emigrated to America years ago just had a few words with some of the ‘elders’ and convinced them that forcing someone into the Double Ohs against their will would be quite as bad as restarting the Appledore-Riddle conflict. So your friend will be left alone until he asks for the position, or some new development on the Riddle front pops up.”
She realized instantly what had to have happened.
He looked at her face and said, “And you do know how this came about, don’t you? It’s all conjecture, but we have reason to speculate that perhaps Terawatt convinced our retiree to intervene. And the only reason she would choose to make such an effort is … you. And I take it you didn’t know this was going to happen.”
She didn’t like that someone who didn’t know her was reading her that well. She still admitted, “Terawatt did volunteer to apply pressure for Harry. It seems she met the other-dimensional analogues of Harry and Ron and Ginny as well, and liked them, too.”
He smiled. “And we do want to remain in the good graces of the most powerful being on the planet, don’t we. Given what she did for Petrie’s Island and Rome, I should think that we owed her a few dozen favours.”
Hermione nodded. “Yes, sir. And I suspect that we’re going to owe her a great many other favours over the next several decades.”
He pointed out, “Yes, that had occurred to me as well. So feel free to tell your two friends that Harry can choose his own destiny, until he requires our help more drastically. And, if Terawatt is really this attached to you, then I suspect he’ll be able to draw on a superheroine to assist in his efforts against the remnants of Riddle’s minions.”
She recognized a dismissal when she heard it. So she stood up and said, “Thank you, Your Lordship.”
“Oh, and do drop that nonsense. You know who I am. You have my permission to call me by my first name the next time we meet.”
She stepped into the corridor, and found Albert hurrying to escort her out. She paused and let him do his job.
She thought over what she had learned. And what she was not about to do. Such as call someone like His Lordship by his first name. After all, he had been a rather notorious playboy in his early years. That would probably lead to people making rather unpleasant assumptions about how she had gotten her way on this issue.
She was also not going to cross him. Lord Rupert Giles hadn’t acquired the nickname ‘Ripper’ in his earlier years because of a fondness for seamstress work.