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Chapter 118 – Sophie’s Other ChoiceAlex had hardly ever been so angry in her entire life. They were threatening her family. Not just Shar, but Willow, too! Maybe she was as angry as she’d been when Danielle Atron had kidnapped her mom and dad and Ray. And they knew Shar’s real name, so they might even be part of The Shop. Maybe this McNamara was the same McNamara who had been running The Shop’s Pentagon office! She wanted to give these jerkheads a zap so big it would fry their hair!
And these guys were just standing there, waiting for her to say something. Or do something.
Wait a minute! Was this a trap? Well, duh, but what kind of trap was it? Alex tried to think. They could have hidden cameras on her, so when she attacked them, they could blackmail her into doing what they wanted or else go to prison for assaulting federal officers or whatever. Maybe it wasn’t an ‘either Willow or Shar’ decision. Maybe it was a trap to get all three of them.
Forget that whole ‘what would Terawatt do’ stuff. What would Jack do?
Well, first, Jack wouldn’t trust them as far as he could throw them. Then he’d assume it was a trap, and he’d find the trap and make it work for him.
And the trap would be … Cameras, maybe. They’d have a couple of cameras hidden in the room. They brought her into the room where she got attacked last time she was here, and they did it on purpose. To make her extra jumpy. To make her overreact and do something she’d be really sorry for later, and they’d have it on camera so they could blackmail her. Or ruin everything she’d ever tried to accomplish as Terawatt.
She couldn’t think of anything else. They didn’t have the traps that were in here the last time. They weren’t holding vacuum traps or lightning rods or guns or whatever. Unless there was stuff hidden in the ceiling, or maybe in the walls.
She stalled. “I have no reason whatsoever to trust either of you.” She looked at Colonel Maybourne and asked, “Are you aware of what The Shop did to an eight-year-old girl and her father? And yet you’re working with him. And probably a small army of his minions.” She deliberately said ‘minions’ instead of ‘soldiers’ just to get that ‘evil badguy’ insinuation in there.
But Colonel Maybourne just gave her that oily smile that made her want to zap the snot out of him. “I can see that trust is an issue here. But surely you can see that it runs both ways. If you’re one of these Orphans as well, there’s no reason for us to trust you. Unless you give us some sort of leash we can rely on.”
She really want to punch him in the snoot right then. “I’m the only one in this room who can be trusted. I’m the one who goes out and risks her life all the time, stopping these nutbars and their monsters. You’re the ones working with Maggie Walsh and members of Team Evil!”
She tried to get a grip on her anger. She’d nearly said stuff she shouldn’t say. Yet. And saying ‘Team Evil’ made her sound about twelve. Okay, at least she hadn’t said ‘The Collective’ which these jerkheads weren’t supposed to know about.
Yeah, all she needed was to say the words ‘The Collective’ to someone who was actually connected to The Collective, so they’d know their secret was out. That would ruin everything. And it might get everyone in the SRI murdered. Okay, calling them ‘Team Evil’ didn’t sound so bad compared to that.
“Team Evil?” Colonel Maybourne asked with a smirk. “You’re seeing paranoid conspiracies now?”
Alex frowned at him. “Someone spent years and billions of dollars building a secret underwater base around Novaya Zemlya with really expensive equipment that had to be smuggled in. The Russians have since found the wreckage, only it’s below crush depth on any of their standard submarines, so they’ve asked me if I could do the explorations for them, assuming they can get clearance from their superiors. Someone then spent years growing a giant amphibious monster that couldn’t be stopped by conventional weaponry. Someone spent incredible amounts of money and manpower stealing a Russian Alfa-class sub and manning it to control their monster and steer it where they wanted it to go. The Russians lost seven towns, and they won’t tell me how many subs and surface craft they lost trying to stop this before USPACOM and the SRI intervened. Japan nearly lost Sendai, Tokyo, and who knows how many other cities, before it would have attacked … what? San Francisco? Los Angeles? Seattle? Tell me there isn’t a group of people out there, trying to do as much damage as possible.”
Okay, so the part about the Russians asking her to explore that wreckage was a fib, even if it was probably a good idea now that she thought about it.
Colonel Maybourne turned to Colonel McNamara and said, “We haven’t been informed about that undersea base. We need to talk to the State Department about keeping us better informed.”
Alex asked, “Why should they? It doesn’t fall under your purview.” SAT words come to the rescue again!
Colonel Maybourne smugly told her, “If it involves mysterious ops being run by the SRI without oversight, it is under our purview. And if it involves an American superheroine deputized by the President who might turn out to be America’s greatest threat, then it definitely is under our purview.”
She clenched her teeth and silently counted to ten. “Colonel, you’re going to a lot of trouble to make me angry, when you already know I’m capable of fighting a three-hundred-foot-high radioactive dinosaur. I have to assume you’re not suicidal, or you wouldn’t be a colonel by now. So you’re deliberately trying to make me do something unpleasant.”
She went silvery, so she could see behind her, too, and she used her TK to rip all the tiles down from the drop ceiling. That looked like four cameras. She turned all of them off with her TK, and then she went to work on the walls. The drywall didn’t want to come loose with the limited pull she had, so she had to try something else. But she’d seen Ray and his dad putting up plasterboard. She guessed where one edge would be, and she pulled on the nails. They came flying out of the wall. She pulled on that edge of the plasterboard, and half of it broke off, showing her where the next nails had to be. She yanked those nails out and pulled the other half of the board off the wall. Then she did that to the next panel, and the next, just ripping it down as fast as she could.
Wow, that was a big camera set-up behind that one piece of wallboard over there.
She disconnected that whole clump of cameras, and she moved on. She worked her way around the room, yanking plasterboard down, until the whole room was a mess of white dust, and the colonels were coughing into handkerchiefs. She stayed silvery. A couple of the wall panels were hidden cabinets instead of plasterboard, and she yanked them open before pulling them off the walls, too. Then she puddled underneath the door, forcing her way through the soundproofing gasket out into the hallway. She went normal in front of the door and reached behind her. She put a big spark from the metal door to the metal frame, and she hoped she managed to arc-weld the locking parts so the bolt would be welded to the doorframe, or at least the door wouldn’t unlock.
She lied, “We need to go to the meeting room ASAP. Colonel Maybourne and I have reached … an agreement.”
The creepy corporal, whose nametag said ‘Sanders’ but she wasn’t going to believe that for a second, said, “What’s the password, freak?”
“Down!” she hollered, and everyone she knew promptly hit the dirt. Even Willow.
And that was a good thing, because everyone still standing got hammered with a burst of her lightning. A couple of guys fired off their sidearms into the walls, but no one got hit. And she made sure ‘Corporal Sanders’ got zapped but good.
Graham hastily got to his feet and said, “Terawatt, I don’t think that was really an appropriate response.” He kept watch as Lupo and Carlson quickly checked that everyone else was really out cold.
She fumed, “In the room? Two NID guys. Colonel Maybourne, and another colonel who I think used to run the Pentagon HQ for The Shop. Now I know why Colonel O’Neill hates ’em so much. They threatened to put Acid Burn in prison forever for computer crimes, unless I gave them Charlie McGee.”
Graham warned her, “Unilateral force is still not a good idea. It’ll make you look like the bad guy here.”
Alex stubbornly replied, “They had cameras in the room. If our hacker can find where the feeds went to, we’ll have evidence that they tried to blackmail me. And that they’re really creepy.”
Graham checked, “And what did you do to two colonels in our armed forces?”
She smiled. “Nothing … much. I left them alone, even if I might’ve sorta messed the room up.” The door handle began shaking angrily, as someone inside tried to open it. “And maybe I spot-welded some of the lock.” Someone inside began yelling and pounding on the door.
Graham sighed. “This may look good right now, but it’s likely to be a real problem later on.”
Jo added, “So: tactics good, strategy not so good.”
Sergeant Carlson muttered, “It probably doesn’t matter anyway, unless the colonel’s ready to pull one out of his … umm … hat again.”
Willow smirked. “Well, he’s got a couple rabbits ready to pop out of the hat as soon as we get in there and we get set up.” She typed quickly on her phone and waited a few seconds. “Okey-dokey, captainmal and jackryanrules are already here, and in Room 117. Let’s go.”
Alex groaned, “I know where that is. It’s where I was the last time.” She led them down the long hall.
Sure enough, there were big, mean-looking guys guarding the room. One of them stepped forward and blocked their way. “You’re supposed to be accompanied.”
Alex floated forward and tried, “It’s all right. Colonel Maybourne needed the corporal’s help. I was demonstrating my powers, and I found a threat in one of the hidden cabinets in your security-check room.”
“That may be, ma’am, but I have my orders.”
Graham sternly snapped, “Sergeant, you’re not supposed to take orders from a civilian organization in preference over your own.”
“Sorry, sir, but that’s not the orders we received from General Flagg.”
Alex was thinking about zapping all five of these guards, too, when the door behind the guards opened up and Jack fussed, “It’s about time you got here! You’re holding everyone up, and generals don’t like to be kept waiting!”
Graham stiffly said, “Sorry, colonel, but the guards aren’t letting us in. I don’t want to break protocol.”
General Hammond appeared in the doorway. “Sergeant! Stand down at once, or prepare to be scrubbing toilets in Antarctica next week! You are insulting Terawatt.”
The guards eased back, and let them pass into the room. Alex wasn’t sure she was happy about that, because now those same armed guards were at her back.
Once they were in the room, General Hammond gruffly said, “Now we can finally get started. The SFs were holding things up.”
Alex used her TK to lock the door and then slide a doorstop across the floor so she could shove it under the door as a wedge. She looked around the room. She recognized General Hammond and his adjutant, plus Generals Flagg and Jackson and Baylor, although she didn’t know their adjutants. She didn’t know the two older guys in suits. But she did notice that one of them had a sidekick who looked around thirty and was really Brad Pitt-ish.
Uh-oh. That might be really mega-bad.
General Flagg pointed at Alex’s friends and growled, “I was expecting Colonel Maybourne to accompany them.”
Alex said, “Sorry, Colonel Maybourne brought a member of The Shop along and attempted to blackmail me. On camera. And their objective was apparently to get their hands on an eight-year-old girl, which sounds like a case of pedophilia to me, so I’ll expect someone to prosecute them for sex crimes. As soon as we isolate those camera feeds, we’ll have that evidence.”
General Flagg growled, “This isn’t pedophilia! I was assured that they are trying to locate and isolate terrorists who are on American soil!”
Ooh, what a creep! And Alex had thought maybe General Flagg was a good guy, too. But not now. She had stood right there while Shar told her whole story to Flagg and those other people. Flagg was a creep, and a great big liar.
General Hammond stiffly said, “Sir, we already cleared Charlie McGee of all criminal acts and allowed her to be relocated and placed in a foster home.”
Flagg backtracked a little. “That may be, but that doesn’t affect the reason for this meeting. We’re cooperating with the NID because we need civilian oversight, since it’s obvious Colonel O’Neill can’t control the SRI and keep it from being taken over from within by half a dozen traitors.”
Jack gave Flagg a look that Alex recognized instantly. It was his ‘oh look I’m being all respectful … now’ look. “Sir, none of these people are traitors, none of them have done anything wrong, and it’s unfair to cast aspersions upon them when there’s no evidence that any of them have ever done anything wrong.”
Flagg looked at his adjutant, who Alex suddenly realized was maybe 27 and extremely handsome. Oh, great. She looked carefully and noted his rank and last name off his uniform. Captain Drummond. She glanced over at Willow, who just gave her a wink as she reached into her leather valise and started fiddling with stuff.
A wink? Why was Willow winking?
Oh.
Flagg growled, “Captain Drummond, would you care to show Colonel O’Neill the emails that were sent to the personal email addresses of Major Finn, Lieutenant Lupo, and Sergeant Carlson?”
Jack smiled blandly. “Oh, that’s okay, sir.” He pulled out some papers from his own valise. “I already have copies. My people are trustworthy enough that they immediately turned themselves in when they realized what the emails meant. I notice that no one else can say the same thing.”
“Excuse me, colonel?” Flagg thundered. “What does that mean?”
Jack gave him a look like ‘what’s the prob, Rob?’ But he didn’t say anything disrespectful. He calmly said, “Well, sir, glossing over the fact that someone let the NID illegally wiretap loyal members of America’s armed forces, I can see that a deputy director of the CIA brought along Samuel Jonathan Daystrom, the CIA officer who held up valuable information when we were having to deal with the aftermath of the CIA’s Project Galinka. And you sir, brought your adjutant, Captain William Kevin Drummond.”
And Alex realized what it meant that Jack knew their names. Not just their last names, but their full names. Holy crud, was Jack sneaky!
General Hammond sternly interrupted him. “Colonel perhaps you could stop dancing around the issue and get straight to the point.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said obediently.
Alex suddenly realized that Jack had set this part up with George Hammond, so Jack would be able to do whatever he was about to do. Man, was Jack sneaky. And maybe George was pretty darn sneaky, too, when he wanted to be. She made a mental note not to ever try to out-sneak either one of them.
Jack stood up and pointed at Franklin Tang, who pressed something in his hand and a big LCD projector in the ceiling came on, shining a bright light on a really white rectangle of the side wall. It showed an old picture of an old, unfriendly-looking building. Jack said, “Welcome to the Breslynn Orphanage in Dover, Delaware. 25 to 31 years ago, before it burned down, it had a board of directors that included the late Howard Royer Locke.”
An old picture of Howard Locke appeared. The guy wasn’t bad-looking. He had short dark hair and look-I’m-really-smart glasses and a little triangular beard on his chin. He kind of reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Then a picture of Maggie Walsh appeared beside him, and half the room reacted as soon as they recognized her.
“Yes, Howard Royer Locke was America’s Most Wanted Maggie Walsh’s major prof, and they both worked on Project Galinka for Marissa Weigler of the CIA. In case some of you don’t know, they tinkered with DNA and tried to grow some super-soldiers, and they probably didn’t tell the moms-to-be just what they were carrying, and they did it to unsuspecting Europeans. And why did the CIA think Locke was a good choice for this project? Well, maybe someone in the CIA had a pretty good inkling that between 25 and 31 years ago, Locke was on the board of directors of The Children’s Home, which controlled six orphanages around the world. So Locke had no trouble inserting ten freshly-engineered newborns at the same time every mid-summer, every year, at every one of these orphanages. That’s 420 of our Orphans. 420 pretty, happy babies who are now between 25 and 31, too good-looking, too smart, too aggressive, too athletic, too strong, too quick, too tough, and too disease-resistant. Given that Americans adopt from overseas all the time, we can’t assume that we only have 70 in this country. We could have a lot more.”
A picture of Riley running in a track event for West Point popped up. Wow, he looked way hotter in that track outfit than a sweaty guy had any right to be. Mrs. Riley Finn was one lucky girl.
“And what happens when we have people who are too athletic and too strong and too quick? They become sports stars. What happens when we have people who are too smart and too charismatic? They leap to the head of their area of interest. So who are our possibles — let me just point out that these are only possibles, we aren’t accusing anyone yet — for our Orphans who may be linked with Maggie Walsh and the badness she’s been getting up to?”
A whole collage of pictures appeared. Alex recognized too many of them. And every one of them was 25 to 31 and way too good looking.
Jack continued, “Well, let’s start right in this room. Riley Finn, Jo Lupo, and Mark Carlson. Along with Samuel Daystrom and William Drummond.”
“Colonel!” Flagg roared. “Are you accusing my adjutant of being a traitor to this country?”
“Not yet, sir,” Jack said way too casually. He glanced over at Willow.
She lifted from her valise a plastic box that looked about the size of two sandwiches stacked together, but it had all kinds of buttons and stuff on the top side. She said, “Yep, he’s got some kind of broadcasting device on him. Probably in his briefcase. I’ve been jamming it, but we really don’t want these guys finding out how much we already know about them.”
Captain Drummond calmly protested, “Oh, please, this is a patently obvious attempt to spread blame around. Only guilty people would try something like this.”
Jack smiled malevolently. “Then why don’t you let the general go through your briefcase and your pockets? Just as a show of good faith and all that.”
Drummond shrugged calmly. “Sure. Why not.” He casually opened his briefcase, and then made a lightning-fast grab for something inside it.
Alex had been expecting something like that, so she nailed him with a lightning bolt in the chest, at the same time that a handgun fired and a bullet tore through the guy’s biceps.
There was a scream from the other side of the table.
Alex glanced over, and Samuel Daystrom was standing there, one hand halfway to his briefcase, with a throwing knife embedded in his chest.
Riley gave him a calm smile, but a ruthless tone of voice. “Mister Daystrom, if you try to reach into that briefcase again, my second bullet will go right between your eyes. And you know how good a shot I’m likely to be.”
Sergeant Carlson swiftly moved over to Drummond’s unconscious body and began searching him.
Jo stalked over and grabbed Daystrom, pushing him back against the wall. “If you try anything, I’ll take my knife out of you and shove it back in somewhere that’ll hurt a hell of a lot more.”
Daystrom looked at her with hate-filled eyes. He had a combat knife in his chest, and he was still standing there. His breathing was getting labored, and he didn’t seem to want to move his arm on that side, but he was still upright and still dangerous. Alex was wondering if she needed to hit him with a big zap, too.
Jo glared at him and murmured, “Just try it, suit.”
Jack casually added, “Maybe she could show you this cool martial arts move she knows called ‘Monkey steals the peach’.”
Daystrom flinched, and his legs involuntarily clamped together. That was when Alex realized what kind of ‘peach’ the monkey would reach in and tear off. Eww.
Jack went on, “So, as I was saying, everybody’s at risk of having an Orphan or two — or five — in their organization. I just happen to have a few who are loyal to this country and trusted their commanding officer, and they came to me as soon as they got their emails, which some sleazy organization was illegally monitoring. Now, to be fair, it’s not just Daystrom and Drummond.” He turned his head to captainmal. “Professor Winkelman, if you would be so good?”
Captainmal nervously cleared his throat. “Given all the intelligence we already had on Major Finn, Lieutenant Lupo and Sergeant Carlson, plus information on some possibles that the SRI suggested, along with data on the Breslynn Orphanage — even though we don’t have information from the orphanage on the adopting families — we were able to put together a profile. We searched for everyone successful in any important field, born mid-summer, adopted as a newborn, and ages 25 to 31. We cut that down to only those who were really attractive and really dynamic. We found a lot more than seventy, so we don’t know which of these are our Orphans and which are not.”
He clicked a control in his hand, and pictures began appearing.
“In addition to the people we have already discussed, the CIA has James Leonard, a hotshot field agent, and two others. The NID has three possibles, not even counting Clare Tobias and ‘Neumann’, who we still don’t have an ID on, but he could be an NID officer named Zack Neumann. The NSA has up-and-comer Gerard Roger Newsom, who we already suspected because he’s our most likely suspect in the interference of our investigation into the Downingtown Blob. In addition to Captain Drummond and our SRI personnel, we have five more adjutants to important generals and admirals. We have three possible U.S. Representatives and twelve possible state senators, state representatives, and assemblymen across the country, and that doesn’t even count nine more possibles who may be running for office soon, including …” He clicked again, and a picture of a wholesome, handsome blond guy appeared. “… Glenn Howard, the ‘truther’ and shock jock.”
“Oh, hell.”
“Goddamnit.”
The CIA guy groaned. “Well, that’s going to be a disaster, no matter how we play it out, because he’s already claiming Big Government is out to get him for telling the ‘truth’.”
Alex stated, “And there’s no better way for Team Evil to attack me than to use media to discredit me first. He may have already been co-opted almost a year ago, when he started talking about me.”
Captainmal continued, “And there’s more. We have three possibles who are White House staffers, two who are Supreme Court interns, eight who are Congressional staffers, seven who are connected with Beltway lobbyists, and twenty-three more who are up-and-coming businessmen, lawyers, venture capitalists, and bankers. We have fourteen possible sports stars including a couple of Olympians, seven possibles who are actors and actresses and reality stars, and eighteen more who are engineers or scientists, including Pamela Isley AKA Poison Ivy, and the late Michael Ristersen, who had Maggie Walsh as one of his major professors, and who we believe was one of the scientists who died in the secret underground lab in Downingtown where Maggie Walsh and her colleagues made that blob monster. We also matched the late Robert James Boyle, the director of Boyle Biochemical, the company which was indirectly responsible for the giant clam monsters in Santa Monica.”
He added, “On top of all that, we checked with some political experts, and of our political possibles, they think that between five and fifteen of them might be dynamic enough and rich enough to be running for President in another ten to thirty years. We could soon be facing Presidential races where we have the choice of electing a right-wing Orphan or a left-wing Orphan.”
“That’s grim,” muttered General Jackson.
Captainmal said, “And we’re still not done. We were able to identify one of the most dangerous hackers on the planet. P$ychon4ut happens to be a possible Orphan. He’s supposed to be in prison in Texas on unrelated charges, but the person sitting in his jail cell is not the real P$ychon4ut. So our Orphans have one of the most dangerous hackers around, and they spent a huge amount of money and effort to trade someone else for him while he was being escorted to the state pen, and he is undoubtedly working for them now.”
Alex spotted Willow typing on her phone, and a second later, Alex’s tPhone vibrated. Alex used her TK to slide the phone out and hold it where she could look at it without being obvious.
The text from Willow said: selina kyle buffy summers samantha finn, too.
Buffy? And Riley’s wife? Oh, crud. Riley would be crushed if his wife turned out to be a badguy, which Alex pretty much doubted since Dr. Samantha Finn spent her time saving the lives of poor African children doing Doctors Without Borders stuff.
And Selina Kyle was married to a European shipping billionaire, so if she was involved, The Collective could have lots of ways to hide money and move money around and transport anything they wanted to.
Mega-crud.
If Howard Royer Locke wasn’t already dead, she would so give him a huge shock in the butt. The big jerkhead.
The big phone in the middle of the table suddenly rang. General Jackson nodded at his adjutant, who grabbed the control for it and flipped it on. “General Stephen Jackson here.”
An instantly recognizable voice blared through the speaker of the phone as the President demanded, “General Jackson, this is the President. Would you care to tell me why you are offending Terawatt, damaging the reputation of the United States of America, and threatening to destroy the most effective agency in the entire DHS and DOD, just when they’re making us look good to the rest of the world?”
“Mister President, I —”
The President steamrollered him. “I just got off the phone with an official representative of the Queen of England. The Duke of Wellington personally called to complain about your treatment of Terawatt and her colleagues. The Duke of Wellington! Before him it was the SIS. And the Japanese ambassador. And representatives of the European Union. And the Italian ambassador. And the Finnish Prime Minister, the President of the Ukraine, and the Russian President.”
General Jackson was standing stiffly at attention, even if the President couldn’t see him. “Sir! We received intelligence from the NID that indicated the SRI had been infiltrated by a massive number of enemy agents. We could not let that go unaddressed, particularly when the NID pointed out that Terawatt could be one of these agents.”
The President asked, “Terawatt? Are you present?”
Alex quickly replied, “Yes, Mister President. I am.”
“Perhaps you could give your version of events? My callers seemed to be under the impression that you and the SRI were being subjected to some manner of Star Chamber, and they were demanding that I step in.”
Alex said, “Sir, there is some validity to the actions of your generals, but the problem is the NID took advantage of the situation to try and control me, and to try to get their hooks into Red Tree Software, which is running security audits on all the computers in the entire DHS, and also to try to revitalize a very dangerous project that caused The Shop to be shut down permanently. I think they would have taken over the SRI as well, if they could, which would have been a disaster, because there is no way I would willingly work with Colonel McNamara after what he did for The Shop. And I certainly am not going to work with Colonel Maybourne after he tried to blackmail me into revealing the whereabouts of that Shop project, who is just an eight-year-old girl. I also suspect that the NID committed illegal wiretaps on a massive scale, and then lied to General Flagg in order to set this up.”
Okay, she didn’t really believe that last bit at all, but if she could make General Flagg owe her a favor, that might pay off some day.
General Flagg growled, “Mister President, Colonel O’Neill and his IT people gave a very effective presentation on the problem, and I think you need to see it ASAP. We’ll also need you not to tell any of your staff about this, because we now have reason to believe that up to three of your staff may be compromised. I am not saying this to be difficult, because it turned out that my adjutant Captain Drummond is also one of these agents.” He looked over at Riley and Jo, and he grimaced. “Furthermore, some of the suspected soldiers, like Major Riley Finn and Lieutenant Josefina Lupo, don’t appear to be agents at all, and may in fact be trying to save our bacon. However, some of the possibles are political forces under the age of 32, and if we don’t deal with this properly, they may soon be controlling this country as duly elected representatives of our populace.”
The President said, “Very well, then. General Jackson, bring Colonel O’Neill and as many of his IT people as he needs to bring. I’ll expect you ASAP.”
“Yes, sir.” As soon as the President hung up, General Jackson said, “O’Neill, who do you need?”
Jack said, “Sir, I’ll make do with just Winkelman and Rosenberg.”
General Jackson nodded. “Then let’s move to my transport. My driver will get us there pretty quickly. He’s had to make this trip enough times already.”
As they moved toward the door, Alex remembered to yank the doorstop out from under the door and unlock the door, too.
General Flagg was already on his phone, calling for medics and security forces to handle two more supervillains.
The door flew open, and Colonel Maybourne, still completely covered in white plaster dust, barged in with two of his ‘security guards’. They all had their guns pointed forward.
Alex used her TK and yanked the guns right out of their hands.
Jack drawled, “Why, Harry, you’re pure as the driven snow now.”
Maybourne glared at Alex. “Sir! We need to take Terawatt into custody immediately, and remand the SRI into NID control until we find out how many of their people have been suborned, perhaps by her! And —”
Alex used her TK to slap Maybourne’s uniform right below his chin, and he started to choke on the cloud of plaster dust that flew up. She was really getting cheesed off with him.
General Flagg growled, “Colonel Maybourne, you will be in front of my desk at 0700 Monday morning to explain why the NID failed to get legal permission for these wiretaps, and why you lied to me about Tobias and Neumann, and why you have several more of these Orphans in your own organization that you were unable to find. The SRI was able to build a profile and find dozens of possibles. Clearly, they’re a lot more competent at this than you are. So when you can clean your own house and you can demonstrate some competence in this arena, you can come talk to me again about this!”
Alex fumed, “And general, when he talks to you about this, don’t forget that he needs to explain how he would ever get me to work with him or people like him. Because anybody who starts a working relationship with attempted blackmail and plans for cruelty to children does not deserve to keep his rank as a colonel. And anybody who enlists a former member of The Shop to help with that blackmail and that whole ‘experimenting on children’ thing needs some time in prison to remind him of the difference between right and wrong.”
Maybourne stopped coughing and pointed a finger at her to argue with what she’d just said, so she wielded her TK and slapped his uniform again, burying him in a cloud of plaster dust. Okay, she knew it was mean, but he totally deserved it.
Maybourne started coughing again, and his people helped him to a chair. Riley politely got him a glass of water. Alex was not going to get him a glass of water. Not after he threatened Shar and Willow! And she was going to tell Jack, too, because she had a feeling Jack could be pretty darn mean to people if he thought he needed to be.
Jack walked out of the room with General Jackson and captainmal and Willow. As he moved past Maybourne, he said, “Harry, I hate to break it to you, but they already did the casting for ‘Powder’.”
Graham turned to General Flagg. “Sir. If Colonel O’Neill is likely to be tied up with the CinC for an unknown time, I need to get Team Two back to base ASAP in case another Terawatt Code Red breaks out. Permission to move out?”
“Permission granted.”
Graham saluted, waited until Flagg saluted back, and hustled the rest of his team out the door. Alex went with them.
As they rushed down the hall, Alex asked, “Is Riley really going to stay behind all by himself?”
Graham said, “He’ll do what he thinks he needs to. He’ll help out, he’ll cover for us and make sure no one decides to stab us in the back, he’ll keep an eye on Maybourne. If there’s one thing Riley is, it’s a protector.”
Jo asked, “Do you think he’ll get me my knife back?”
Graham grinned. “The one you left buried in Daystrom’s chest? I think that’ll be going to the hospital with him. Put in a requisition for a replacement.”
Jo scowled. “I really liked that knife.”
Graham asked, “Did you name it Vera?” Sergeant Carlson tried really hard not to laugh out loud.
They got driven to the Cessna and they flew back toward Camp Atron to drop off Alex. The mood on the jet was totally different from when they flew to the East Coast.
But Graham was cautioning everyone that things were not going to go smoothly. “We’ve had run-ins with the NID, and I trust ’em about as far as … okay, I don’t trust ’em as far as I can throw them. I trust them about as far as I can throw their headquarters building. They’re not going to let this drop, and if they’ve pulled in McNamara from The Shop, they probably have an agenda for every super-powered person connected with the SRI, and that includes Shar and Willow. So we need to assume we’ve got security leaks, too.”
Alex complained, “Starting with Camp Atron, because they ID’ed Willow by the time she was on the Cessna.”
Jo suggested, “Maybe one of the gate guards, or someone with a telephoto lens and an internet connection. The NID has the same facial recognition software the FBI’s running these days.”
Graham frowned. “And that means we have to assume Willow’s house is not safe for her anymore, until we can get some of our own surveillance and personnel in the immediate area to protect her.”
Alex said, “I don’t really think she’d mind an excuse to spend more time at Jack’s house, even if she really loves her place. But she’s got that whole computing set-up that someone could just get rid of with a Molotov cocktail. Plus everything else she’d be crushed if it got destroyed.”
Graham grabbed the sat phone. “This is Captain Graham Miller, Team Two of the SRI. Can I speak to General Hammond?”
Graham waited patiently while he got shunted around, and then spoke to two people before he got to the general’s adjutant. “Yeah, Paul, it’s me. We’re brainstorming here, and Terawatt says the NID has identified Willow Rosenberg as one of the people we brought to the meeting, so they suspect she’s an Orphan, too. It’s possible that they might have someone break into her home to get at her, or ransack her computers, or just torch the place. Can we get some DHS surveillance and protection?”
He nodded a couple of times and finally said, “Thanks.”
He hung up and told them, “The colonel and General Hammond are way ahead of us. The ‘middle-aged couple’ that moved in across the street and one house down from Willow just a couple months ago when a house went up for sale?”
Alex didn’t know about this part. She hadn’t even noticed a ‘for sale’ sign or anything on any of the times she’d visited Willow. She totally needed to pay more attention to her surroundings.
He went on, “The colonel noticed the ‘for sale’ sign and alerted the general. A couple of field agents wanted to retire from the DIA so they could get married to each other, and they got an upgrade. Marriage, promotion, and a DHS job protecting an important civilian asset.”
“That’s a relief,” Alex said. Only it wasn’t. It meant that ‘Alex Mack’ needed to stop visiting Willow at her house, which was cruddy. And with the NID probably sneaking around tailing Willow, she might not be able to visit the Macks anymore either, which was mega-cruddy.
Terawatt needed to call Acid Burn and ask if she had any genius ideas on how Alex Mack and Willow Rosenberg could be in contact, when Terawatt needed to stay away from Willow and Acid Burn needed to stay away from Alex Mack.
* * *
“ ‘They already did the casting for Powder.’ You’re so bad!” Willow giggled. “If he wasn’t making with the extortion and trying to grab Shar and all, I’d be a lot more worried about all that plaster dust he inhaled. That’s not good for you. Even if I nearly laughed out loud when Alex kept making the dust poof up around him.”
Jack stretched out in the bed and let Willow snuggle into his side. “Well, I’ve run into Maybourne and his merry men before, and I’m more worried about the poor plaster dust. Being stuck in that guy’s lungs? Complete nightmare.”
Willow snickered and then asked, “Who did you get to call the President? We called Hermione and her boyfriend Ron, who got his granddad to call, but we didn’t call anyone else in the SIS, and we sure didn’t call anyone in the Ukraine or Finland, even if Graham called someone he knew in Russia, and Terawatt made a few EU-type calls.”
Jack smiled. “Brigadier Edward H.L. Brathwaite-Thomson. He’s a really good guy, even if he likes playing ‘crusty old duffer’. And I called in a few favors from the Hanna op and the Myrhorod op.”
She mentioned, “I noticed there was one SRI ‘orphan’ who didn’t make the NID’s list or captainmal’s list. I mean, besides me. Thanks for protecting me, even if it could’ve gotten you into trouble.” Jack smiled mischievously and whispered something in her ear. She grinned wickedly. “Ooh, you are so sneaky!”
He nuzzled her hair. “Sneaky enough to get my fiancée off that Cessna and flying home with me for a few nights?”
She smiled into his chest. “Yeah. That sneaky. Speaking of which, someone at Camp Atron is ratting us out for the NID.”
He rolled his eyes. “Wow, I’m completely surprised to hear that one. Now you know why I hate those guys so much. This ‘orphan’ deal is going to be a nightmare. Right now, I am so glad Alex is under 20 and not a part of this headache.”
Willow added, “Alex is definitely not adopted, either. Her dad has a ton of pictures of Barb getting really pregnant, and he even took pictures in the delivery room. Alex was a very cute baby.”
Jack frowned. “Willow, nothing that just turned up covered in blood and goo, and all red and wrinkly and screeching, is cute.”
She looked at him with big hurt eyes and whimpered, “… What if I had a baby?”
He stalled, “Well, your baby would be cute, but only because you’re inhumanly hot.”
She pouted. “What if … we had a baby?”
He looked into her big, sad eyes and told her, “Well, I’d cross my fingers she would look like you, instead of like me.”
She got a dreamy expression in her eyes. “I’d love to have a handsome baby boy who looked just like you.” Then she gave him a naughty leer. “In fact … I might need some practice on that, because I’ve never made a baby before …”
He smiled back. “Well, then, it’s mighty convenient that we’re already in my bed, and Charlie won’t be home for another two hours …”
* * *
When Alex got home that evening, she had a Team Terawatt meeting in her kitchen, with her folks and Shar and Ray, and she explained that the NID was going to be snooping around Willow, so if anyone talked to Willow, they needed to make sure they used all the security precautions Willow had set up. Only using the tPhones, only calling from someplace secure like inside Alex’s house, letting Willow decide if she could talk or not, all that stuff.
Her mom seemed pretty upset that there was a civilian oversight committee that was apparently worse than the black ops groups they were supposed to oversee. Her dad was really upset that at least one member of The Shop was still on the loose and causing more problems. Shar was upset that Aunt Barb wouldn’t let her go to Washington, D.C. and firebend Colonel McNamara into a chunk of carbon.
Alex reminded everyone to just act like they were normal. And, while her folks were worrying, Shar showed that she was eight. “I know I’m still grounded, but can I go watch ‘The Iron Giant’ now?” When Alex’s folks said yes, Shar jumped out of her chair and headed for the living room. She stopped in the doorway and ordered Alex, “You stay. I go. No following!” Then she ran down the hall.
Ray said, “That’s a good idea. Let’s go see a movie.”
Alex smiled at him. “Sure. Sounds good to me. Just no spy movies tonight, okay?”
“How about Jackie Chan?” he asked.
Alex grinned. “Works for me!”
They got halfway to the movie theater, and she got a buzz on her tPhone. It was a text message: conf call on tphone sunday 1500 yr time.
Ray asked, “Problem? Do we need to cancel?”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Nope, we’re fine. I just have something small I need to do tomorrow afternoon.”
* * *
The next day, after church and lunch and cleaning up and chores and yardwork and stuff, she slipped into the home office and shut the door for a little privacy. Then, at three, her phone buzzed. She had her earjack on, so she just tapped it with her TK and said, “Terawatt here.”
Jack said, “Team One is present, along with Walter and Acid Burn, and the IT Trio.”
“Team Two all present except Lieutenant Lupo,” Graham added.
“Lieutenant Lupo calling in from the Cessna, sir.”
Jack said, “We have a lot of areas to touch on, but I wanted Acid Burn to cover the important topic first. Burn?”
Willow hesitated a moment and said, “Well, I managed to trace the email to me back to the international mail server where it was inserted, and that came from an anonymizer in Finland, but someone military has a lot of street cred there after the Hanna thing, so I got some help from their sysadmins that they don’t ever do, and we found the insertion point in their logs, and we backtracked that. It came from a specific computer in a specific server farm in India. So P$ychon4ut is probably working out of Khajuraho as far as I can tell, which could be a big problem, because right now there’s this guy there who’s 31, really really handsome, the adopted son of a really wealthy family, celebrated his birthday in mid-summer with a big party for a huge chunk of the city, already in political office, and he’s definitely pulling together a huge power base for himself. So P$ychon4ut could be in a really protected place now, working for another Orphan.”
Alex asked, “Okay, who?”
Willow paused. “Umm, it’s some guy named Khan Noonien Singh.”
Interlude XXIIIMaggie Walsh walked into the two-bedroom suite that had been designated as Danielle Atron’s personal quarters. One bedroom had been turned into a chem lab, complete with fume hoods and all the biochemistry equipment Atron had requested. Danielle was in the other bedroom, getting a massage from Klaus.
Maggie was fully aware than Atron was using Klaus as more than a masseur. Not that Klaus was complaining to anyone that might tell her about it. After all, Atron was quite well preserved for her age, and — except for a few wrinkles — looked like a twenty-five-year-old fitness instructor. If anything, she looked younger than she had in the four-year-old pictures Maggie had checked when reading up on Atron’s work. Maggie considered it was theoretically possible that the ‘silver morph’ power set gave enhanced elasticity in the normal form, which could make skin look younger or give people more flexibility, but that was all conjecture at this point.
Not that Maggie believed all that research work coming out of the Paradise Valley Chemical plant was primarily Atron’s work. Maggie was fully aware of how journal mills worked. Atron had probably been stealing at least some of the credit for the work of her employees. George Mack was obviously under-recognized, given that he had synthesized a GC-161 antidote and had it fully tested up to human trials before the first supervillain hit Paradise Valley. Maggie agreed with Atron’s hypothesis that Mack had been working at curing his little daughter Alex, who then used some kind of inside knowledge about the chemical to give her a leg up on getting some early Terawatt photos.
Maggie had attempted to get a handle on the identity of Terawatt after Atron gave The Collective all her information, but she had run into a brick wall. It had been remarkably easy to put a pretty ‘nurse’ or two in place temporarily and walk off with blood samples from hundreds of Paradise Valley citizens who went into the city hospitals and clinics, but the analysis had been a nightmare. Perhaps eight percent of the people in Paradise Valley had detectable effects from GC-161 in their DNA! That stupid bitch had been illegally dumping GC-161 experiment resultants all over the town, and Christ only knew how many people had been contaminated. If one were naïve enough to assume the people at the hospitals and clinics were a simple random sample of residents, then with about a 95% probability there could be between four and twelve percent of the city with at least detectable effects from GC-161 in their genome. It wasn’t a matter of tracking down the one person in town with suspicious DNA. It was more a matter of wondering why there weren’t tens of thousands of Paradise Valley residents flying across the skies and ripping apart buildings and setting fire to everything they touched.
It would be extremely convenient when The Collective could experiment on anyone they wanted to, and then they could work out just what the genetic controls were on developing interesting biochemical pathways upon exposure to appropriate amounts of GC-161. She wondered if Atron would want to use anyone in particular when they were doing toxicological studies to determine the LD50.
Maggie took a seat in one of the armchairs in the room. Atron had an open box of Belgian chocolates, an open cabinet full of more goodies, and a small refrigerator/freezer with glass doors so Atron could look at all her refrigerated treats for something else decadent to eat. The woman seemed to revel in her ability to eat ridiculous amounts of junk without gaining an ounce. She seemed to revel in everything decadent, when she wasn’t doing admittedly top-notch biochemical work in her personal lab.
Maggie had good researchers already. If Atron wasn’t pulling her own weight, Maggie would have gone along with her father’s recommendation for getting rid of the woman. Maggie preferred to think of it as number three of the “Thirty-six Stratagems”: Kill with a Borrowed Knife. There was a lovely island in the Indian Ocean that would immediately attract the attention of the India bloc if they made an overt effort to move Ms. Atron out there along with everything she wanted. Then a few tidbits of disinformation planted here and there, and the India idiots would launch a raid. Atron was undoubtedly capable of handling a squad of them without any trouble. India One wouldn’t let such a slap in the face slide by. He’d have to avenge himself, as he did for every slight, real or imaginary. And with a little nudge in the right direction, it would be relatively easy to get him to launch one of India’s nuclear missiles at the island. Farewell Ms. Atron, hello international incident pointing right at India One and everything he wanted to keep hidden. Clearly a win-win, as far as Maggie was concerned.
Just to irritate Atron, Maggie took one of the chocolates and nibbled on it. “Not bad.”
“Not bad? NOT BAD? Those chocolates are perfect. They’re an acme of the chocolatier’s art!”
Maggie blithely replied, “As I said.”
Atron clambered off the massage table and stepped over to slip on a silk robe. She clearly didn’t care that Klaus was seeing her in the altogether. “Klaus dear, put the massage table away, go take a shower, and be back here at seven for dinner. We’re having beef Wellington.” She glanced surreptitiously at Maggie to see if she could get a rise out of her with that comment.
But Maggie was already aware that Atron was causing problems for the chefs. Maggie had simplified matters for the chefs by just having them make double of whatever Atron demanded, so that Maggie and her father enjoyed Atron’s tastes, rather than forcing the chefs to prepare two sumptuous repasts simultaneously while also feeding the entire compound. And it wasn’t as if even Klaus, or Mai-Lin, or one of the other less insistent members of The Collective, didn’t have enough taste to prefer better cuisines.
Atron sat down opposite Maggie and snapped, “I’m still waiting on my island.”
Maggie replied, “And I’m still waiting to get some bit of biochemical work that couldn’t be done by Annie Mack. While she was still in high school.” Atron flushed angrily. Ooh, that one really stung. Clearly, the files on Atron were correct, and she was still angry enough at the Mack family to do something else stupid. Maggie refrained from smirking at the success of her jab.
Danielle took a deep breath and counted slowly to ten. She was not going to let this bitch make her lose her cool. Danielle didn’t particularly care what happened to most people, but she didn’t think she was anywhere near Margaret K. Walsh’s level of psychopathy. But then, Hannibal Lecter didn’t have Walsh’s level of psychopathy.
Walsh wasn’t the first member of The Collective to have done their homework before meeting with her, but she was definitely the first one to work out how to push Danielle’s buttons. That was not to be tolerated.
“Oh, and help yourself to the chocolates. I spiked a random sample with GC-161 just to find out if anyone was raiding my treats. Hell, go ahead and eat the entire box.”
Walsh twitched slightly, so she clearly knew that the GC-161 seemed to work quite badly with at least one of the tweaks The Collective’s ‘orphans’ had in their genomes. And Danielle was going to assume that the reaction meant that Walsh was genetically engineered to some extent also. It was at least a working hypothesis.
Danielle had actually considered it as soon as she had worked out what was going on with Klaus and his fellow Collective members. Maggie Walsh was too old to be part of Klaus’s cohort, but Danielle was capable of doing research, too. Maggie was also adopted as a baby. Maggie was too damn attractive as a young woman, even though the pictures Danielle had been able to find showed that Maggie had made no effort to look more attractive for a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Or any kind of friend. Maggie was too damn smart. The woman had revolutionized computational genetics and genome modification in a dozen ways, in a ridiculously short period of time.
But Walsh also wasn’t intimidated by the prospect of being poisoned with GC-161: she looked over the chocolates and helped herself to a chocolate caramel. Danielle didn’t know whether Maggie knew she was genetically distinct from Klaus’ cohorts, or whether Maggie simply didn’t have fear the way normal humans did, or whether Maggie had just decided that Danielle was bluffing.
Walsh slowly savored that treat, and then drawled, “Pretty good … for chocolate.”
Danielle decided to stop with the small talk before Walsh found some more weak points to exploit. Danielle was only assuming that Walsh had a few emotional weak points of her own, but they would be well-defended, and breaching them would probably get a lethal response. And unlike the stupid twits who had attacked Danielle before, Walsh would think up something intelligent and creative.
Danielle said, “Let’s cut to the chase. You don’t like me. I don’t like you. And there’s no need for either of us to ever like the other.”
“Agreed. I’m not here to talk you into being my best buddy.”
Danielle nodded crisply. She rather doubted that Walsh had ever had a ‘best buddy’, or had even attempted to get one. No, Walsh had probably settled for acquiring minions. “You’re here because your people are not competent to deal with me and achieve your goals.”
“Precisely.”
Danielle continued, “And you’ll plague me until you get what you want. But what will I get once you’ve met your goals? I’m still looking for guarantees that you won’t have your minions try to kill me. Again.”
Walsh dryly said, “And I would certainly do something less idiotic than have three of my people attempt to beat you up like common street thugs mugging a little old lady.”
Danielle made sure she didn’t show her concern. Because Walsh was fully capable of doing something much more deadly. Just sealing her in a room with gallons of boiling hydrofluoric acid would do it. Or letting one of those ‘blob monsters’ loose in here. She also suspected Walsh had some bioweapons that even Walsh’s own colleagues hadn’t seen. Yet. After all, Danielle had seen some of Walsh’s ‘pets’ that were roaming outside the compound walls.
But Danielle wasn’t powerless here. She said, “I got the genome data and the cell samples you provided, so I’ve been making some progress on GC-161 modifications since then. I fully intend to complete the work I promised, but there will be safeguards. You’ll get some verifiable intermediates, but you won’t actually get the final resultants until I’m on my island and my money is in my accounts.”
She wasn’t going to mention that she was also working on a toxic gas based on GC-161, so she could wipe out most of the compound, or at least most of the compound who were genetically engineered and hence vulnerable to the effects. Once she had the gas ready and placed in the compound’s HVAC systems, she would give them most of what she had promised. And if they tried to cheat her or kill her, she just wouldn’t stop the timer on the poison gas. Too bad for them.
Walsh asked icily, “Is that all? That’s nothing really new.”
Danielle smiled. “No, there’s something else. I’ve seen the work Miazaki and Rao are doing. I want in.”
Walsh gave her a raised eyebrow. “The power armor? It’s not close to a prototype yet. They’ve got the armor design and the powered joints and the control systems, and they have most of the weapons ready, but they still don’t have an adequate long-term power supply.”
Danielle smirked. She held her hands a foot apart and sent a massive spark arcing across the gap. “Not a problem for me.”
Walsh pursed her lips and thought for a second. She finally said, “A valid point, and a clear mechanism so they can get more prototyping done. I’ll tell them they’ll have to involve you.”
Danielle just smiled, enjoying the easy victory. She said, “In that case, the promised 300 milliliters of GC-161-VII is waiting for you in the bottle on the kitchenette counter that’s labeled ‘orangeade’. Enjoy.”
Walsh stood up and smiled ruthlessly. “Good. We understand each other completely. I’ll be back tomorrow. If you want me out of your hair, just get your tasks done sooner.” She popped another chocolate into her mouth, grabbed the indicated bottle, and strolled out.
Danielle breathed a small sigh of relief, once Walsh was gone. She didn’t like having the psychotic bitch around. She quickly got her biocontainment gear out of her lab, took a number of swabs from everything Walsh might have touched, and rushed them into her private lab for analysis, just in case the psycho was trying to dose her with a slow-acting poison or infect her with some sort of bioweapon that would force her to cooperate or die. Or worse.
Maggie spit the chocolate out into a sample bag. She took the three chocolates she had palmed and put them in their own sample bags. She was going to check and see if the crazy slut really had contaminated those chocolates with anything.
The bottle of fluid was first going to be tested to verify it really was a new variant of GC-161 with no surprises added, and then she was going to use minute amounts on cell samples from fifty ‘orphans’ of The Collective and fifty non-orphans in a carefully-designed paired comparison study, so she could study its effects on minor genome variations.
It was obvious that Atron knew the GC-161 was a potential toxin for most of The Collective, so it seemed blatantly apparent that any weapon Atron might develop to control the people in the compound would be based on the stoichiometry of the family of GC-161 compounds. And given that assumption, Maggie could figure Atron’s next optimal moves.
The power armor could be the best option, though. If Atron helped advance the armor construction, then it was good. If Miazaki and Rao also built a suit of ‘armor’ that was a perfectly sealed biocontainment chamber, with external overrides for all the controls and some manner of electromagnetic system to disrupt Atron’s telekinesis, then Maggie could simply let Atron climb into the new suit and seal it up behind her. Atron would be trapped in a heavy, armor-shaped coffin. A quick trip over to an Atlas rocket followed by a launch into outer space, and no more Atron problem.
All Maggie had to do was prepare for Atron’s next moves. It was like a game of chess. A game of chess played in a dark room, against an opponent who threw knives at you every time you lost a piece.
She hadn’t had a challenge like this for a while. She smiled to herself and walked toward her personal lab. She began whistling softly.
Several people who saw her in the halls recognized the piece as “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and hastily got out of her way.
—
A/N: The LD50 is the dosage at which half the subjects of a specified weight die. Reputable scientists do not use humans to work this one out. But Maggie Walsh isn’t like those kinds of scientists.