Chapter 104 – Beltway Bandits

Alex stayed silvery, since she was way away from the only working vacuum suction thing. She tried to analyze the guy in the split second before he attacked again.

He couldn’t be a six-hundred-pound robot, because between her TK and her leg strength, she had tossed him once. Not that she thought she could catch him by surprise like that again. Still, he couldn’t weigh more than 240 or 250 pounds, including what he was carrying. So what was he?

Well, she was guessing ‘biochemistry monster’. Duh.

He lunged at her. Since she was a silvery blob, she used her whole body plus her TK in a big guide parry that slammed Simpkins to the side and into a wall. He smashed a huge dent in the wallboard, but pushed off and came at her again. She went normal.

She reached out at him. He moved at her like he thought she was trying some kind of martial arts move. She ran a blindingly bright spark between her hands, right in front of his face. Then she darted up to the ceiling and went silvery again.

He froze. “Fucking bitch!” She watched as he closed his eyes and listened for her, or tried to sense her movements, or waited until she attacked him again. Something. But she was a stationary blob up near the ceiling tiles over his head.

What she did was let go of herself and use all her TK to yank the tip of his weapon up and back. He didn’t let go of it, so she just pulled it further backward until it stabbed into his shoulder. She landed on top of his head at the same time she squeezed the trigger on the weapon.

He yelled a way filthier word at her and yanked the thing out of his shoulder. She could see that a nasty yellow liquid was still squirting out of the tip of the spike. And he grabbed her with his other hand.

But she was silvery, and he couldn’t get a grip. She gave him the Jo Baker treatment and hit him with a big shock right in the eyeballs.

He staggered backward and pulled out a great big combat knife. He took a nasty swipe at her, but she was already eight feet back and up near the ceiling, and he obviously still couldn’t see.

Still, it was pretty mega-bad that he had shrugged off something that had taken out Azure Crush. And he still hadn’t complained about any pain. He couldn’t see, right now. He didn’t seem to have flight or any ranged attacks, but he acted like he was indestructible.

She dropped to the floor off to his left, and made sure she landed hard enough to make a noise. Then she let him spin to face her. That was when she used all of her TK to pick up a chair and hit him as hard as she could right in the junk.

He grabbed at the chair with his off hand and cast it aside when he realized it wasn’t her.

What kind of guy takes a major whack to the privates and just shrugs it off? Not any kind of guy she knew. Maybe he really was a robot. Or at least somebody who was so drugged up that he wasn’t going to feel any pain for a couple of hours. Okay, he hadn’t acted like he was on drugs. But he hadn’t acted like a robot, either. He’d acted like a big jerk who liked to throw his weight around.

“You can’t stop me, bitch! I’ll get you sooner or later!”

Okay, that definitely wasn’t a robot. It was a jerk with superpowers.

And she suddenly realized she did know how to stop him. Jack had already told her how.

*               *               *

“COLONEL! What the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing?”

Well, Jack had expected the general to freak. After all, he’d apparently just shot Terawatt with a Taser and shocked her unconscious.

Finn, on the other hand, was on the ball, as usual. He just asked, “Sir?” and tilted his head down the hall. Jack nodded, and Finn sprinted off at decathlete speed.

Jack reported, “General, this is not Terawatt. Which means someone has managed to waylay her since she got to the security desk. On a U.S. air force base.”

Hammond immediately realized what he was implying. He pointed at two of the SFs back at the meeting room and said, “Assist Major Finn and do whatever he says.” They took off after Finn.

Then Hammond took a breath and asked, “Do you think it’s our Plan A friends?”

Jack hesitated, “Maybe.” He stepped over to ‘Terawatt’ and pulled on the wig. It was really glued down, which he knew Alex never did. The mask didn’t want to come loose either, but he peeled it off. It took off a little of the woman’s skin around the cheekbones and forehead. But it was definitely not Alex.

He checked her hands and forearms. Bingo. “Look at this, sir.”

There was a ‘fang’ glued to the palm of the woman’s right glove, with a thin tube inside the glove leading to a reservoir on her forearm. Jack flexed the woman’s hand, and the fang popped out where it could stab someone who shook your hand. Like a President.

General Hammond cursed under his breath. “Were these lunatics planning on making it look like Terawatt assassinated the President of the United States?”

Jack answered, “I don’t see how they could’ve gotten this through White House security, sir.”

Hammond fumed, “So they were just going to let her poison some of us.”

Jack made a guess: “And maybe then Evil Terawatt here flees down the hall, into a room, and we find the real Terawatt incapacitated there, so we think it really was her.”

“And how did you know it wasn’t really Terawatt?” Hammond asked.

General Flagg stepped into the hallway and growled, “I’d like to know the answer to that myself, colonel.”

Jack said, “Well, sir, she has the look down, but so do about five hundred cosplayers all over the country. But she wasn’t walking right.” He didn’t trust Flagg, but he didn’t have any evidence on the guy, so he lied, “And she’s the wrong height. Terawatt’s a good six feet tall. This impostor’s maybe three or four inches short of that, and making up the difference with high heels.” He added some truth, just to confuse matters. “The voice wasn’t quite right either. Also, the real Terawatt never refers to my IT guy as ‘Mister Tang’. She always calls him by his hacker handle.” He also wasn’t going to mention that the whole ‘did you get today’s password’ bit was just a ruse, because he did not want any outsiders knowing how he handled friend-or-foe identification with Terawatt.

Flagg growled, “And you weren’t worried about making a mistake and offending America’s greatest superhero.”

Jack firmly replied, “No, sir. The real Terawatt isn’t affected by electricity like normal people. A Taser might annoy her, but it’s not going to knock her unconscious like this.” He didn’t actually know if that was true, but he knew Terawatt could take a lighting bolt from Danielle Atron and keep on ticking, so he figured a Taser would be like poking her with a pencil. Maybe flipping a paper football into her face.

Hammond said to his adjutant, “Major Davis, get a photo of our impostor and find out who she is ASAP.”

Jack suggested, “Get her a CAT scan, too, because this may be plastic surgery. Or maybe she’s a shapeshifter.”

Hammond asked uncomfortably, “Do we really have to worry about shapeshifters, colonel?”

Jack admitted, “Not yet sir, but we’d probably be smart to plan ahead for the first time one hits us.”

*               *               *

Riley ran down the hallway. There was an SF holding down another guard while he stared into a side room. There was no way of telling if the SF was friend or foe. Ditto for the man face-down on the floor with his hands behind his head.

He opted for voice recognition, or as close as he could get. “Terawatt! Tera! You okay?”

That distinctive voice came out of the side room. “Major Finn? We could use your help in here.”

The SF looked at him and tilted his head in a signal to go on in.

There was another guard down in the doorway, with a second SF standing over him. A third opponent was out cold over by a complicated machine. And a fourth opponent was lying unconscious on his back.

Terawatt said, “We could use some serious backup. They’re all trained fighters, and armed.” She pointed at the fourth man. “And he’s some sort of supervillain, too. Pain tolerance and he’s indestructible.”

The second SF reported, “Sir, I shot him five times. Three in the chest and two in the face. I didn’t even slow him down.”

Riley could see where something like bullets had torn away two patches of pretty realistic-looking fake skin. There was metal mesh underneath. He asked, “Robot, cyborg, or superpowers?”

Terawatt conjectured, “Superpowers with metal added on, I think.”

He checked, “Vulnerable to lightning?”

She sighed. “Not even close. I zapped him enough to stop Azure Crush, and I just made him mad. He didn’t even say ouch.”

Man. That was not good. He asked, “Super-strength?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But he’s got the invulnerability thing going for him.”

Riley looked at the massive dent in the wall, and the places where the guy had taken a couple of .45 rounds in the face. This guy would not be fun to spar with. He asked, “What did you do?”

She smiled. “Remember when the colonel asked me a particular question about what I could do with my telekinesis, and I acted all girly and squeamish?”

He nodded. It was on the flight home from Finland. The colonel had asked Alex if she could pinch someone’s carotid arteries closed. Okay, Terawatt had just answered Riley’s question, and she hadn’t revealed anything to anyone else in the room. Alex was one smart cookie. He just asked, “How long did it take?”

She said, “About five seconds.”

He nodded again. That made sense. A choke-hold wasn’t anywhere near what she had done. She had literally clamped his carotid arteries shut. That was equivalent to his heart stopping, in terms of blood flow. The medical books said that if your heart stops, you lose consciousness in about four seconds if standing, about eight seconds if sitting, and about twelve seconds if lying down. He knew the numbers were different when you put someone in a choke-hold, but Alex had done something much more precise. And potentially, much more lethal. He knew Lupo was dying to spar with Alex, but he didn’t think Lupo had considered that she was never going to get to spar against an Alex going all out, because that Alex could take down an infantry brigade.

Heck, that Alex could just lift Lupo into the air and slam her against the walls and ceiling until she was unconscious.

He turned to the SF and said, “I need to contact the brass.”

“Go right ahead, sir. This guy is way outside AFSF training.”

He speed-dialed the colonel. “Finn here, sir.”

Colonel O’Neill asked, “So, how’s Terawatt doing?”

He glanced over at her and reported, “Winner, and still champion.” The colonel snickered. “They hit her with an indestructible, pain-resistant, lightning-proof fighter, plus backup.”

The colonel replied, “They underestimated her, whoever they are. They sent us a Terawatt lookalike with the old KGB ‘poison fang on the palm’ trick. Tell her we got an evil twin. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

He told her, “The colonel wants you to know your evil twin showed up at the meeting. With a KGB concealed weapon.”

Terawatt scowled. “An evil twin? I bet he teases Acid Burn about it, too.”

Riley spoke into the phone, “We need SRI containment for the Indestructible Man here. No idea about Evil Terawatt or the other threats we have here, but these other guys seem to be … un-enhanced.”

“Got it. Over and out.”

He waited for ten minutes, until Sergeant Scott and Sergeant Walters arrived with backup. Then he gave them the lowdown on the still-unconscious supervillain and let them strap him into a transfer system.

Alex followed Riley down the long hall, through a short entry area that had several surly SFs, to a big meeting room. There was a big, fancy, cherrywood table down the middle of the room, and fancy cherrywood chairs around it. There was a side table with lots of sandwich-type food and lots of beverages. There were fancy generals at the table and sharply-dressed adjutants around them. She knew Colonel O’Neill and General Hammond. She’d met General Jackson and General Flagg. She didn’t know anything about General Jackson, but General Flagg had wanted to protect Shar from a ‘witch hunt’ so she was going to cut him plenty of slack. Then there were two more generals and an admiral and a sharply-dressed colonel. She didn’t know any of them.

Jack stood up. “Terawatt, thanks for joining us. How many of ’em were there?”

She made sure she was in her best Terawatt voice and said, “Four. Unfortunately, one of them had invulnerability and lightning-resistance, and he didn’t feel pain.”

Jack told her, “We had number five, who was dressed like you. We’re still checking to see who they had for support personnel, because your evil twin didn’t just waltz onto the base looking like that.”

She went for ‘pompous’. She stated, “I’ve found you and your people to be trustworthy and competent, so that’s good enough for me.”

He smiled. “Thanks. Let me introduce you around the table. You know General Hammond already.”

She put in, “And I met General Jackson and General Flagg over the DSI incident.” She looked their way and sort-of-fibbed, “It’s nice to meet you again.”

General Flagg spoke in that growly voice that made her think of someone playing a grumpy football coach in a movie. Or maybe a movie drill instructor at a boot camp. “It’s a pleasure, Terawatt. I’m just concerned we had such a massive breakdown in security in the middle of a critical military base.”

Jack introduced everyone. “And the people at the table you have yet to meet are General Kremer of the U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral McCarver of the U.S. Special Operations Command, General Baylor of the U.S. European Command, and Colonel Samuels who is going to be reporting back to the Joint Chiefs.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she said, “It’s an honor, sirs.” Jack led her to a seat at the table that had an extra-thick cushion so when she sat on it she looked like half a foot taller. And Riley had a plate of food for her, including three roast beef sandwiches. And a glass of Diet Coke with ice.

General Hammond told her, “Now Terawatt, we know you’re a really busy woman, and you’ve got a meeting with the Commander-in-Chief at two, but if you could join us for lunch, I think these officers would like to talk to you about a few things.”

She nodded. “That sounds reasonable. I came all this way, so we might as well make this day as productive as possible.” That was one of the things she’d learned from her dad’s huge time management book. Why have eight one-hour meetings spread out all over the place if you can get everyone together and have one day with everyone and all eight meetings back to back? Assuming you read the other chapters so you knew how to organize and plan meetings for time management, and you knew how to keep meetings on track, and all the other things.

Admiral McCarver went first. “Yes. I’m hoping you have some thoughts on how we’re going to track down Danielle Atron and Maggie Walsh, and what we’re going to do with them once we catch them.”

She had been thinking a lot about that one. “I think we have to find them through our IT people. Both of them are scientists, and both of them are probably doing more scientific work even now. So they have to buy expensive equipment, and chemicals, and lab spaces. The scientific equipment they use is expensive and unusual, and there can’t be many high-end gene sequencers or chromatographs sold every month. I believe Colonel O’Neill’s people have already started looking into this approach, so maybe he has some thoughts on it.”

So she tricked Jack into having to say a few things, while she quickly ate two bites of sandwich. She was totally not surprised that Jack’s people had already gone through the sales records of every biomedical equipment manufacturer in the country, and were trying to get into the records of the European and Asian biomedical manufacturers.

But the questions gradually got less friendly and more pushy. As soon as General Baylor asked her why she did an end run around the U.S. European Command, which she totally didn’t, or at least she didn’t mean to, the other guys sort of ganged up on her.

“What happened to the supervillain who destroyed DSI HQ and the supervillain involved in the CIA’s Weigler fiasco?”

“What do you plan to do about the North Koreans if they unleash giant spiders across Eastern Asia?”

“Who are your contacts, and why are you afraid to reveal their identities?”

“What do you plan to do with the superhero legislation being debated for the next change in the tax code?”

“What is your real agenda?”

Okay, that one really made her mad. “Me? My agenda? I came all the way out here because you guys insisted on it. I get attacked by an indestructible man and nearly killed. Then you guys bushwhack me again while I’m trying to eat. I only got into this because Danielle Atron was trying to kill me and wreck half of California, and now I’m supposed to be saving the world in my spare time. I have a family, and a career, and a life! I don’t need to be doing this!”

General Flagg growled, “Jeff, I think that question was uncalled for. And if she really was up to something, she’d have an answer already planned out for when someone asked her.”

Boy, that was not as nice as she thought it started out to be.

But these guys were looking at supervillains inside America, and supervillains outside America, and giant monsters, and freaky weirdness like those silicates, and then there was this one woman who was claiming she was the good guy but it wasn’t like there was any evidence she was telling the truth.

Okay, some of these guys were still being jerkheads.

Jack stuck his nose in, risking getting it hacked off by some totally high-powered officers. “Excuse me sir, but I’ve been working with Terawatt on and off since last spring, and she started off wanting to make sure Danielle Atron didn’t get away with it, and she’s branched out to not wanting any of these mad scientists to get away with it. I think that’s all the agenda she has.”

She snapped, “I don’t even need these stupid superhero tax loopholes, I just don’t think it’s fair for companies to be ripping someone off because they can get away with it. Right now, Mattel is ripping off Driscoll Enterprises just because they can, and because they have twenty times as many lawyers. Stop that stuff, and I’ll be happy. I have a regular job, and I like it. My ‘contacts’ are friends, and there is no way I’m letting them get hurt, even by telling people who they are. And if the North Koreans do something crazy, I’ll go help, just like I did in Ireland and Rome and Tokyo, because it’s not right to let innocent people get killed just because their leaders are completely whacko.” She stood up and said, “I think I’ll just fly over to the White House right now and go through their security, and maybe they won’t have people bushwhacking me at their security desks, and I’ll just wait there until two. Maybe they have some magazines to read.”

Riley stood up. “Ma’am, if you could follow me?”

She did. She didn’t know where he was going, but she trusted him, and she trusted that he was doing something Jack wanted him to do. But it wasn’t fair that she was really trying to be a real superheroine, and these guys were being total jerks to her! She lifted about ten inches into the air and floated out the door behind Riley.

He led her into the big hallway, and then put one finger to his lips in a ‘shush’ gesture. Then he ran down past two doors and waved her into another room. She went in after him, but she was ready to go silvery or hit someone with a lightning bolt, or whatever.

There was nothing in the room. It was just one more meeting room.

Riley whispered, “We’ll wait until the top brass leave, and then we’ll go back and you can get a decent lunch. I’m really sorry about this, but these guys are under a lot of pressure. When you asked for an EU liaison, the head people in the U.S. European Command got fried by Congress and the Joint Chiefs for not knowing what was going on, and not knowing what would happen, and then getting cut out of the EU liaison group because of the way you did things. They’re still getting grief over it.”

She cringed, “I didn’t mean to! I just wanted to get Hermione on my team because … well, the other Hermione in that other dimension is amazing.”

He grimaced. “I understand. But most of the brass in that room has gotten chewed out by their bosses, and their bosses’ bosses, for things you’ve done, or things we’ve done, that they didn’t get done. European Command got left out in the cold both times you went in and saved the day there. Asian Command, ditto for Tokyo. Strategic Command’s supposed to be handling IT and infowar issues at a national level, and your friend has made them look like incompetents. Okay, she’s made everyone on earth look like incompetents, but they don’t know that. And we can’t tell them about The Collective yet, because we don’t know if any of them, or any of their people, are compromised. So we have a problem. In fact, we have several problems …” He stopped and thought about it. “And you know, General Flagg was way too accommodating in there, after we made his command look bad in Arizona, and in New Jersey, and over the DSI issue. I think I need to talk to the colonel about that. He’s really good at reading people while he’s pretending he’s not paying any attention.”

She just floated in the air and stewed over what Riley had just said. Had she messed stuff up for other people because she didn’t know about chains of command and stuff? Had she made these guys think she was maybe trying to ruin them or take over their commands or something else diabolical? Had Willow hurt some people just by being really great at what she did? Was General Flagg really not a nice guy?

And why did everything have to be so complicated? In the comics, the Fantastic Four could destroy an entire city fighting a guy who was the head of his own country, and they didn’t have these kinds of problems.

Riley finally stepped back from the door, and Jack stuck his head in. “Okay, boys and girls, let’s go back in there and get some lunch while the mean kids are off on a field trip.”

Alex walked with Riley and Jack. The SFs were gone, and so were all the generals and admirals and their adjutants. There was no one left but George Hammond. And someone had cleared the whole table. So Alex had to start all over with a new plate of food and a new Diet Coke. And she was hungry.

Jack griped, “Whoever’s behind this had enough footage of Terawatt that Evil Terawatt could practice the voice. And the walk. And she knew who my IT guys are, which ought to be harder to find out than how Terawatt sounds.”

General Hammond nodded at Jack. Then, scowling, he said, “Terawatt, I’d like to apologize for the behavior of everyone in this room.”

Jack said, “Me, too, Tera. I should’ve guessed a couple of them would be … less than thrilled with you. After all, you’re the face of the program. All the video from Tokyo that anybody paid any attention to was you flying around looking impressive. Same for Rome. And Santa Monica, although there’s also plenty of footage of Azure Crush in a teeny bikini, covered in gray slime. Probably Larry Flynt’s secret fantasy, minus the bikini. Soldiers doing their jobs? Not as exciting or as photogenic as you blasting monsters with lightning bolts.”

Alex said, “That’s not fair. Jo and Graham are totally photogenic, and Team Two was awesome out there.”

Jack grinned. “I’ll tell ’em you said so.” The grin vanished. “I was hoping you could handle these … generals and admirals asking the tough questions, because some of the senators and congressmen the President invited to the deputization are gonna be a lot less polite, because they don’t think anybody on earth can tell them what not to do. And at least one of them leaked the news to the press corps, so you’re not gonna get away without doing a big, public interview afterward. And I think you can count on some of the press being about as polite as a shark that smells blood in the water.”

General Hammond muttered, “Perhaps even less polite, because some of them are bound to be in Glenn Howard’s camp.”

“Ugh.”

Jack teased her, “You can say words worse than ‘ugh’. Or ‘jerkhead’. Just not in front of a mike.”

She ate five of the roast beef sandwiches, a little bit of some kind of blah pasta salad, some really yummy fruit salad, and drank two Diet Cokes. Riley kept getting her more ice when she ran out. Then they had to get going to the White House for real.

Sergeant Scott drove her and Jack and Riley and General Hammond through the streets of Washington D.C., while Jack made a bunch of guesses about the kinds of things the congressmen and the reporters might ask her. The general obviously thought some of Jack’s guesses were sort of crazy. She figured if she was ready for the most ridiculous things Jack thought of, no reporter was going to catch her by surprise. Well, not too much. And maybe she’d be able to keep her temper this time. As long as no one asked her when she was going to pose naked for some scummy magazine.

Before they got to Pennsylvania Avenue, Jack’s cellphone went off. He answered, “O’Neill here.”

He flipped it to speakerphone. “…–ir, Dr. Lee has an interim report and we found some additional information.” Alex recognized the voice as captainmal. “Terawatt’s durable opponent has been tampered with biochemically, or else he’s got a natural mutation. Without knowing who he really is, we can’t tell which. He doesn’t feel pain. At all. And he heals really fast.”

“How fast?” Jack asked. “Wolverine fast, Spidey fast, or Lieutenant Lupo fast?”

“Umm, we don’t have any information on that yet, but Dr. Lee is guessing a lot faster than normal for humans. They pretty much cut him open, reinforced all his bones with titanium to make him virtually unbreakable, replaced his skin with a layered metal mesh and plastic epidermis so he’s lightning-resistant and bulletproof, and performed some additional mods on his internal organs. He’s also had so much plastic surgery that I don’t think we’ll ever know what he originally looked like. We know he’s not really Corporal Simpkins, but the only name we’ve gotten out of him is ‘Neumann’, which is pretty unlikely to be his real name given that he’s a ‘new man’ after all that surgery.”

“So far, so icky, as someone likes to say. What else you got for me?”

Captainmal said, “We ran the woman’s picture through the ID system and got a match. Clare Tobias. Engineering whiz. Supposed to be working for the NID now, but she’s denying it. So are they.”

Riley showed Alex a picture he had taken of Clare Tobias as that fake Terawatt. Alex didn’t think they looked alike, but she figured if you put a wig and a mask and enough boob padding on anyone, they could look enough like Terawatt to fool someone who didn’t know what Terawatt looked like up close. Or sounded like.

Hmm. Maybe she needed to do that press conference just so people could say ‘wait, I heard Terawatt on TV and that’s not her’. Or would people be that smart? Wasn’t there that guy who had been going around pretending to be Tiger Woods and he didn’t look like Tiger Woods and he didn’t sound like Tiger Woods but people fell for his scams anyway?”

Jack said, “The NID. Not good. They have good connections and some powerful friends. And the NID agents I’ve run into were about as trustworthy as a rattlesnake.”

“Colonel!”

“Sorry, sir. A pet rattlesnake.”

“Colonel …”

Alex decided she’d better do something before Jack got himself in trouble again. “What’s the NID?”

General Hammond took an unhappy breath and told her, “The National Intelligence Directorate. They’re a partly-civilian oversight organization with a lot of support from all three branches of government, because no one except the intelligence agencies thinks there’s enough oversight on the intelligence agencies, especially the black ops agencies. Like the SRI, to name one. Incidents like the Marissa Weigler operation just reinforce that viewpoint. And just because the colonel has had one or two run-ins with the NID doesn’t make them the bad guys here.”

Jack said, “Yes, sir, but if I were Clare Tobias and not working for the NID on this op, I would finger them to protect my real agency.”

The general replied, “And, since that’s exactly what most people would expect, this could simply be a double bluff, so she’s implicating them by claiming she isn’t working for them.”

Jack pointed at the general and spoke to Alex. “Don’t you just hate it when someone else is smarter than you?”

General Hammond rolled his eyes. “O’Neill, try not to get us thrown out of the White House.”

“Yes, sir.”

Then General Hammond looked at Alex. “And please, no matter how rude some of the senators and congressmen might be to you, don’t take it personally. That’s how some of them are to us, too.”

Jack added, “And we can’t hit ’em in the butt with a lightning bolt, so you can’t either.”

The general rolled his eyes again. Alex figured he’d had to put up with Jack’s behavior plenty of times before.

Sergeant Scott drove them up to the main entrance. Jack whispered, “Okay, there are a ton of paparazzi within shutterbug distance, so give ’em the whole Terawatt jazz.”

He stepped out and opened the door for her. She flew out of the Humvee and went upright. Then she rose ten feet into the air. Then she let her hair move like it was in a light breeze. She’d practiced that a bunch in front of her mirror after the Berlin thing. And she held up her hands so when she did a cascade of lightning, it kind of arced all around her. As Jack and General Hammond and Riley marched up to the doors into the White House, she slowly flew over their heads.

She landed in front of the soldiers manning the doors into the White House, and drifted in with Jack in front of her. He gave her a wink to tell her he liked her entrance. She just hoped everyone else did.

She floated along a foot above the floor, and Jack led her down a hall to an alcove where three Secret Service agents were set, along with two soldiers standing holding their rifles in whatever position that was called. Maybe she’d ask Jack or Riley later, because she ought to know all that stuff. All three Secret Service agents were in black suits and white shirts and boring ties, with an earpiece in one ear, even though one of them was a woman.

“IDs please?” the guy with buzzed blond hair asked.

Jack handed over an ID folder, as did Riley and the general. Alex crossed her arms and drifted half a foot higher in the air.

“Fingerprint check,” the guy with the short black hair said.

General Hammond, then Jack, then Riley each pressed their right thumb on a clear glass plate, and the guy checked each thumbprint against the print on their ID card.

Blond Guy looked at her. “ID, please.”

She just looked at him. She ran a spark between her hands. “There you go. I’m Terawatt.” She wondered if this was going to be the way things worked forever.

General Hammond firmly said, “Son, I believe the Department of Homeland Security sent you the guidelines on dealing with Terawatt. No ID card, no fingerprint, no signature, no retinal scans. It’s crazy to ask her for an official ID before the President gives it to her in a ceremony in …” He made a show of looking at his watch. “… thirty-nine minutes. And counting.”

The man stonily looked at General Hammond. “The Director sent out a memo Friday afternoon. We need clear evidence that this is Terawatt, and not an illusion, or Danielle Atron in disguise, or something else.”

Well, there was no way she was about to tell them her real identity. Not when The Collective seemed to have its fingers in way too many places, and she didn’t trust most people’s computer security either. She had people to protect.

 
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