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Chapter 128 – Buffy the Sapphire ArrayerOn Sunday, after church, Alex got in several more hours of study, which really didn’t sound as much fun as being outside with Shar and her dad, even if they were doing some yardwork.
Then Jo Lupo drove up. Since they weren’t using Camp Atron until Jack was sure the NID had been removed — Jack had said ‘exterminated’ like they were cockroaches — Jo was flying into Edwards Air Force Base and driving up in a car with its GPS signal disabled. They had a great kung fu lesson, and then Jo sent Shar and Alex’s folks in for clean-up. Jo gave Alex another hour’s training in Kenpo and MCMAP, which was really awesome. And Alex didn’t have any qualms about using her TK to block Jo’s strikes or to fly off when Jo showed her a judo throw, because Jo wasn’t holding back all that much, and she was really strong and really fast.
Alex showered and joined everyone for dinner. Then she changed into her Terawatt uniform and rode with Jo down toward the Air Force base. Okay, she removed the wig and wig-cap and plastic ‘makeup’ so she was just a girl wearing a white top and sitting in a car with tinted windows.
Alex asked, “So how are you doing? I mean, with the Orphan thing and all?”
Jo sighed. “Okay.”
Alex pushed, “Just okay? Not good, not bad, just okay? I worry about you. And Riley, too.”
Jo smiled slightly. “Just okay. It’s harder than I thought dealing with being a genetically-engineered freak, instead of who I was proud to be. I thought I was the hardest-working, toughest, most dedicated Army officer on the planet. Someone who could be the roughest, toughest soldier around, even if she was only a 5'7" girl, just because she worked that goddamn hard, and she trained more than anyone else, and she wanted it more. My family was so proud of me …”
Alex insisted, “And they should be! You’re awesome!”
Jo’s smile faded away. “But it’s not because of my training and pushing myself so damn hard. It’s because I’m a super-powered … thing.” She glanced over to look at Alex for a second. “You do realize my career is over, don’t you?”
Alex frowned. “No way! Jack’s not gonna let people dump on you, and Graham’s not gonna treat you like a monster … And I know Sergeant Carlson’s not gonna act all weird around you.”
Jo told her, “The guys in the SRI have been … amazing. I always expected to get the usual ‘she’s just some dumb bitch’ prejudice I ran into all the time before, but the SRI is … unique. Because of the colonel, mostly. Still, as soon as they promote O’Neill to general and move him upstairs, the new director of the SRI will find a way to shitcan me and Finn and Carlson, because we’re threats. Some regular officer REMF will look at us and see people who can do a job but are going to be potential security risks and might make him look bad in his annual reviews. The colonel doesn’t give a shit about that, but he’s not interested in promotions and bigger tasks. And there’s no way anyone above General Hammond is going to let me get promoted, ever again. I’m an Orphan. I’m the things we’re fighting! If O’Neill ever gets killed on one of our ops, Finn and Carlson and I will probably end up in Guantanamo for the rest of our lives. Or some kind of Walsh-like research lab.”
Alex gritted her teeth. “I won’t let that happen. I may be just some dumb teenager, but I’ve got pull now, and I’m not afraid to use it. I can get you guys safe jobs in the E.U., or Japan, or maybe even Russia. And anybody who can’t see how great you are, and how patriotic you are … well, they’re jerkheads who don’t deserve to get to work with you.”
Jo didn’t say anything. She just looked at the road and drove. But Alex was pretty sure there might have been a little sniffle in there somewhere.
After about five minutes, Jo finally said, “Thanks. I doubt people tell you this enough, but you’re an amazing person. And Time magazine was a bunch of dickheads for not selecting Terawatt as their Person of the Year.”
Alex blushed for a long time.
They chatted for the rest of the drive about how Team Two was treating Jo and Sergeant Carlson, and how smart Lieutenant Marshall was, and stuff like that. And things like how Jo couldn’t find a guy she liked who lasted past Date One, because as soon as she let guys see who she really was, they were out of there. It was bad enough that most guys just automatically assumed that she was a dyke just because she was a really tough soldier.
And then there was a helicopter waiting for her, over by Jo’s Cessna. Alex gave Jo a hug and flew over to her ride. It was one of the pilots she didn’t know, but that was okay. She was just going down to L.A. and back.
It took hardly any time before Alex was bailing out over one of the nice sections of Los Angeles and flying in on Buffy Summers’ house. Alex knew from Willow that Buffy was going to be alone. Her boyfriend Fred was on the East Coast doing some football promotion thing connected with the Superbowl. Her BFF was in Europe with a new Significant Other. And Buffy tweeted way too much about her life if you wanted to stalk her or something, so Willow pretty much had Buffy’s schedule to the minute.
And Willow had gone through Buffy’s private email accounts, so they knew Buffy had just gotten that email supposedly from the Kids Of Breslynn Orphanage just in the last couple weeks, and she hadn’t yet used the dummy reply-to address listed in it, even if it really went to a dead drop at an email anonymizer in Thailand.
Alex dropped in. Buffy was just sitting outside at the pool area under a fancy covered area, and she was sitting on a fancy lounge chair in just blue satin pajamas and a fancy necklace, watching a huge TV and looking miserably unhappy and drinking something that looked like cranberry juice but was in a big martini glass so Alex was guessing there was lots of alcohol in there. There was a rolling bar not twenty feet from the lounge chair, and there was a big metal pitcher on it. Alex was guessing it wasn’t anything good for you, either.
She dropped in and floated a few feet above the pool. “Buffy Summers? I am Terawatt. Do you have a few minutes?”
Buffy took another big swallow of her drink and checked, “So, you’re totally not here for an autograph or anything, right? Because that would be, like … lame.”
Alex made herself not smile. “You don’t have to pretend. I know about the email you got. I know about the Kids Of Breslynn Orphanage. I know you’re stronger and faster than anyone around you.” Buffy stopped and gave Alex a confused expression, so Alex added, “And I know you’re a lot smarter than you pretend.”
Buffy really scowled at that. “Look, you can go tell whoever you work for that I’m not playing. I don’t know what the game is, but if it’s king of the hill, I’ll just stay down at the bottom over by the bartender.” She took another swig.
Alex asked, “Can you even get drunk?”
Buffy sighed miserably. “Well, I’m not a cheap date. I can drink most guys under the table, but they really don’t like that, so I just do the pretend-y thing and act all with the giggly and the wobbly. They’re good with that.”
Alex said, “We just wanted to find out your position on being … who you are.”
Buffy snapped, “You mean what I am? I’m a freak! I ruin everything I touch! My life already sucks beyond the telling a lot of the time, I don’t want to be some Chosen One who has to get yanked into this insano take-over-the-world dealie! You have no idea what I’m like!”
Alex softly said, “I know a lot more about you than you think.”
Buffy snarled, “Do you know I ruined my folks’ marriage because of my stupid abilities? I shouldn’t have ever told them. It just …” She took a shuddering breath. “I just wish I was normal, you know? Not that I ever was. Not even when I was little. I spent my whole life being Not So Smart Chick so I could be Daddy’s little princess and the most popular girl in school. I spent my whole life as a figure skater trying to tone it down so I was just the same as the other top skaters at my level, just so people didn’t think I was Steroid Lass. When I finally told my folks about my abilities, Dad thought I was lying and I was really using some kind of illegal drug or some freaky sports supplement, and he was all worried it would make him look bad at the law firm. Mom said she believed me, but she still checked in my room pretty thoroughly now and then, just in case. It was like living with the IOC and getting random drug tests all year long. My jerkass dad never did trust me again. I don’t think my mom really did either, even if she pretended things between us weren’t horrible. My dad even tried to get me investigated by the IOC and the USOC. Okay, there was like nothing to find, but after that, nobody really top-notch wanted to train someone like me if I was probably going to get caught doing illegal sports drugs before I ever won a world medal. Given the level I was at, that pretty much killed my skating career. At least no one in cheerleading ever accused me of that kind of crap.”
Alex suggested, “But you could do so much more with your life than what you’re doing now. You have potential.”
Buffy frowned. “Like what? Sportscaster for women’s sports? Not much of a market there.” She downed the rest of her drink and got up to get another. She glanced over at Alex. “Cosmopolitan?”
“No, thank you.”
“Oh, God, you’re like some stick-up-her-ass cartoon superhero!”
Alex fibbed a little. “I can’t drink alcohol. Lots of organic chemicals have really unpleasant side effects on me because of the biochemical that gave me my powers.”
“Well, that sounds totally sucky. I’d be with the wacky if I couldn’t bury it all with a dozen mojitos or something.” She poured herself another glass full of the cranberry-colored drink and took a huge swig. “Look, I’m not with the world-saveage. Or the world-ruinage either. I just want to be popular and have a nice reality show and a nice husband and the whole two-point-four-kids thing. And some really great Manolo Blahniks. Is that really so much to ask? This whole super-stuff deal is gonna ruin everything. You don’t know Freddie. He’s insano with the competitive. If he’s not the starting QB, he’s grumpy. If he’s not the better QB by the end of the game, he’s grumpy. If he’s the better QB but his defense chokes and the other team wins, he’s grumpy. He’d go postal if he found out I could throw a football farther than he can, or I’m secretly better at videogames than he is, or any of this stuff I can do.” Tears began to stream down her face. “I could so totally lose him over this. And now I’ve got you swooping in like a big Susan-Storm-shaped headache, making everything totally worse.”
Alex gently said, “I don’t have to come back again, unless you want me to.” She handed Buffy a business card that had the SRI’s email drop and phone numbers. “If you need help, just call. They can get me. And if you get any more emails from the badguys, just forward them to that email address. Okay?”
“Sure. Whatever you say.” But there was a flat hopelessness in Buffy’s voice.
Alex tried once more. “I really can help you. Honest. It’s what I do.”
She lifted off and flew up into the night. Buffy just stood outside by her pool, watching until she lost sight of Alex’s form.
Then Alex did what Jack wanted, which Alex totally didn’t like. She went silvery, flew around behind Buffy, and flew back down where no one could see her. Then she spied on Buffy. Who stopped standing straight and looking okay.
Buffy’s shoulders slumped. She trudged over to her bar, picked up her empty glass, and stared at it. After long seconds, she threw it against the wall, where it shattered like she’d fired it out of a gun. She picked up the pitcher of Cosmopolitans and drank out of it until cranberry-colored liquid was spilling down the front of her satin pajamas. Then she slumped gracelessly onto her butt on the floor and just wept for a long time.
Alex had to remind herself this wasn’t her Buffy. This wasn’t a woman who had been honed into a weapon through years and years of deadly confrontations and fights to save the world. This wasn’t a woman who had died to stop an apocalypse. This wasn’t a woman who had gone through years of soul-searching to come to grips with her life.
This Buffy was more like the way other-Buffy was right after she had told her parents the truth, and hadn’t been believed. She was more like the emotionally helpless Buffy who didn’t know what to do when daddy stopped doting on daddy’s little princess.
Alex didn’t know what to do. She wanted to help, and she didn’t know how. She stewed about it the whole way to the chopper, and most of the way home, until she had an idea.
When she bailed out of the chopper about forty miles south of Paradise Valley, she dropped down to a couple thousand feet and popped her tPhone out of her morph.
“Burn? I need some advice. I did the chat with ‘Hollywood’ and she’s an emotional wreck, and I don’t know what to do to help her.”
“You’re asking me for advice about Buffy Summers? The slutty reality-TV bimbo?”
Alex fussed, “Come on, you know that’s not really the real Buffy, anymore than the nerdy programmer is the real you.”
Acid Burn complained, “Hey! That is the real me! I am a nerd! And a programmer!”
Alex wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “You know that’s only a teeny portion of you. You’re also a dynamic CEO and a world-saving superheroine and the world’s most dangerous cracker and a sexy girlfriend to a super-agent Air Force flyboy and an awesome friend and the world’s best auntie and you have superpowers, too! And Buffy could be like that, but she doesn’t know how!”
There was a long pause. “You want me to be a mentor to her? Tera, she’s like every girl who was ever hateful to me in school. She’s like a blonde Cordelia Chase, only not as tall!”
Alex asked carefully, “And what about Libby? She’s like a Cordelia-in-training, isn’t she?”
“No! I like Libby! She’s … Okay, if I’d gone to school with you, she would’ve been really mean to me, but … We’re friends. But you just want me to be friends with Buffy Summers because other-me is BFFs with other-Buffy.”
Alex insisted, “No, I want you and me both to be friends with this Buffy because I think this Buffy desperately needs real friends. She was all alone and so miserable it just made me want to cry.”
“Well, call CEO Willow Rosenberg on Alex’s phone and set up that meet, and then maybe we’ll talk about it. A little.”
Alex hung up, but she kept stewing about Buffy as she flew into the creek and through the pipes to her garage. Buffy could use a better boyfriend, too. Her Freddie sounded kind of jerky, even for a pro football star. Not that you fell for a guy because of his score on the Jerkiness Scale. Alex Mack had sure fallen for a guy who turned out to be a real jerkhead. Even if Hunter had been a great guy, and Ray was pretty much perfect as far as she was concerned.
* * *
And then Monday was the start of fall-term final exam week, even if the exams were all on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so Monday and Tuesday were review days. Oh, joy. Okay, she was really sure she was ready for all of her exams and she already had her final lit paper of the term turned in, but still she wanted to do mega-well.
When she got home that afternoon, she made sure to use the house phone to call Willow. “Hello? Ms. Rosenberg?”
“Yes, this is Willow Rosenberg. Who is this?”
Alex pretended she was really nervous and she didn’t know Willow. “Umm, this is A.L. Mack? Alex Mack? We talked before, and I did those initial pictures you wanted to see. Can we schedule some time next week when I can come up and shadow you through a day or two, and get some high-quality photography?”
“Right. I looked at your work, and I have to admit I was really impressed. So we’re on. Next week I have a meeting with some other industry people on Tuesday, and I have to fly to Washington, D.C. to meet with some DHS types on Thursday. Do you want to shadow me on one of those days?”
Alex asked, “Umm, could I come up Monday night and shadow you for the whole three days? I mean, I know days where you’re just programming and sitting in meetings aren’t supposed to be exciting, but it would give me the chance to capture the real you.”
“I don’t see why we can’t make that work. You won’t be missing school, will you?”
Alex tried to sound really uncomfortable. “Umm, no ma’am. I have all of next week off because it’s in between terms. If that’s okay with you.”
“That sounds just fine. I’ll expect you Monday night between ten and eleven. Try not to be late.”
Alex made a gulping sound like she was shaking in her boots, not that she was wearing boots right then. “Yes, ma’am. I won’t be late.”
“And don’t call me ma’am anymore. You can call me Ms. Rosenberg. In private, you can call me Willow. But not ma’am. It makes me sound really old.”
Alex tried to keep up the nervous tone. “Okay, m–… I mean Ms. Rosenberg. Thank you so much!”
“Some really professional photos will be thanks enough. Good afternoon, Miss Mack.”
Alex hung up and smiled. She thought that sounded just the way she wanted. Acting over a phone wasn’t nearly as hard as acting in front of someone, when they could watch your facial expressions and your gestures and your body language. And in some people’s cases, they could probably smell whether you were really afraid or nervous or not. Or just know it. She was glad she didn’t have to fool a panel made up of Jack, Hanna, and Shar if she had to be right in front of them.
* * *
Then she had to be ready for Tuesday morning, because she had classes and Terawatt had a press conference in Davenport. But Jack had it all planned out, and sneakiness was Jack’s middle name.
Well, no, it wasn’t, but it should be. She could see it now. “Willow Rosenberg, do you take this man, Jonathan Sneakiness O’Neill, to be your lawful wedded husband …” That would be awesomely hilarious, and the best prank on Jack ever.
The press conference in Davenport was scheduled for eight a.m., but that was Davenport, Iowa time. That meant that Alex had to be up mega-early Tuesday morning, so she could fly down toward Edwards Air Force Base at four in the morning, and meet up with the chopper less than half an hour after that, so she was flying off a hair after five in the Blackbird. That meant that she was bailing out of the Blackbird way before six her time, which was eight Davenport time. So she flew down in silvery form to where her GPS app on her tPhone was telling her to go. She ended up landing on top of the Davenport City Hall, where Lieutenant Marshall was patiently waiting for her.
“Hey, Terawatt. Can I call you Tera, like Captain Miller does?”
“Sure, Lieutenant Marshall. That’s fine with me.”
“Umm, just Hank is okay. I mean, you call the captain ‘Graham’, and you call our 2IC ‘Jo’, and you call the colonel ‘Jack’. So if you want to call me Hank, that’s great.”
She grinned. “Okay, Hank. What do I need to know?”
He smiled back. “At eight, the major will signal us. You just fly down and hover behind him and Officer Valentine. I think the colonel’s trying to get her old Delta Force rank reinstated, so she might turn into Lieutenant Valentine one of these days, but for now she’s plain old Officer Valentine. Anyway, you fly down in one of your big, impressive displays and hover behind them, then you let Officer Valentine give the press announcement and Major Finn do the Q&A afterward, and if the press asks you any questions, you answer. Then, when she says it’s over, you take off again. Acid Burn will have a vector for you to fly to where they’ve got the Blackbird getting refueled, and it whisks you back home. Any questions?”
She thought for a moment, and remembered how her trip to the White House went. “Any chance someone will ask a really hostile question, or something totally off the wall?”
He rolled his eyes a little. “These are reporters. There’s always the chance one of them will ask something incredibly stupid or incredibly irrelevant or incredibly hostile. And then they’ll act like it’s your fault if it bugs you. There are people who have made an entire career off of ‘ambush journalism’. Just let the major handle everything you don’t want to take.”
That sounded simple, but she figured it wouldn’t turn out that simple. She just took deep breaths and told herself not to get upset when some jerkhead asked her why she hated Glenn Howard or why she was picking on those poor, misunderstood zombies. All she needed was some nutbar ‘representing’ some made-up Zombie Support Group or trying to launch a class action lawsuit against people ‘mistreating’ zombies.
So, when they got the signal over their earjacks, Alex flew behind the building and then came soaring out around it to the press conference on the front steps. She was in Iron Giant position on her stomach with her fists out in front, and she was arcing lightning between her hands, so she was really showy.
Riley and Jill were standing behind matching podiums high up on the steps, and each of them had a mike on their podium. Alex didn’t and she hoped that meant she wasn’t going to have to say anything. She floated half a foot above her step, which was a couple steps behind Riley and Jill’s step, so she looked a lot taller than she really was.
At the bottom of the steps, behind a barrier, were about two or three hundred reporters and photographers and videographers. Behind them were a dozen of the really serious news cameras mounted on huge tripods atop solid bases. Most of them were cabled directly to big news-vans with satellite dishes for live telecasting.
Alex floated there, trying to look like she knew what she was doing, while Jill gave a really nice news release. Someone had spent some time cutting it down to sound bites that would be all over the news for the rest of the week. But the bottom line was simple. And gross. Umbrella tried to unleash a zombie apocalypse on America. Umbrella experimented on live people against their will. Umbrella had people locked up in cells so they could torture them and experiment on them. Umbrella created monsters with help from Maggie Walsh, America’s Most Wanted. Umbrella higher-ups knew what was going on. Umbrella paid bribes to people like police chief Irons. Umbrella paid out millions in illegal campaign funds. Umbrella higher-ups were being arrested and would go on trial. Umbrella was doing equally nasty experiments on people and animals in Europe, so this was international terrorism.
Then the questions started flying. Riley was really good at the ‘calm spokesman’ role, and he did a great job of answering them. Most of them were along the lines of ‘how do you know so-and-so was involved’ or ‘how safe is Iowa now’ or ‘what should people do if they fear some of these things are loose in their neighborhood’ kinds of questions. Riley had good answers for all of them, especially the ones about who was involved because he had copies of some of the mega-creepy emails these jerkheads had sent to each other, courtesy of Lieutenant Bailey and Acid Burn, so he could read excerpts and people could be appalled at how creepy and jerky these jerkheads really were. And people seemed to like hearing that the government had really sound evidence to arrest the badguys and put them on trial.
When someone asked about all the video clips from security cameras and the copies of private Umbrella emails that were all over the internet, Riley said, “We had a computer forensics expert in the building at the time, and he was able to spot activity on the sysadmin logs before we had to evacuate the upper floors. Based on that, we are currently assuming that the infamous computer cracker P$ychon4ut is responsible. But it may merely be someone using one of his types of attacks.”
Alex made sure not to smile. But if P$ychon4ut was working for The Collective and some people in The Collective thought he might have created this press disaster for them, then some members of The Collective might get really mad at him and do something about it. That might even be really helpful for the SRI. It would definitely make Willow happy.
Then a guy yelled out, “Terawatt! Aren’t you ashamed being part of this government conspiracy against an upstanding family company?”
Boy, was that jerkhead asking for it.
Riley instantly replied in a ruthlessly calm tone, “And you sir, how much is Umbrella Corp paying you to spread defamations like that? Because even the ‘truthers’ know Umbrella committed heinous crimes and almost wiped out the Quad Cities with things out of a horror movie.”
“I’ll sue! I’ll sue you for that, you asshole!”
Riley stared down at the guy. “First, you’d have to prove I defamed you, and I doubt you’ll be able to find anyone who believes that, given the slanders you just said. You should be ashamed of yourself for aiding and abetting a company that has committed more murders than the worst serial killer in American history. A company that kidnapped innocent people and tortured them, then exposed them to a virus that destroyed their minds and bodies. I saw what was left of these people, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I saw an Umbrella employee gloating about the company and its victims, just before he tried to kill me. I saw clear evidence that these people have been working with Margaret K. Walsh, America’s Most Wanted. I saw a scrapbook an Umbrella employee up at the mansion was keeping, and it was full of news articles on the vicious killings around the mansion, and he knew what was really eating those poor hikers, and rather than going to the police, he was keeping a scrapbook so he could enjoy it! And why did they torture and kill all these people? Just so they could more easily kill hundreds of millions of Americans! These people make Danielle Atron look like a saint!”
Alex would have thought Riley was getting really upset, but at the same time he had one hand behind his back and he was signaling her. It was ‘optional advance’. ‘Move up if you see an opportunity.’
She tapped him on his hand with her TK, and she floated forward. Jill lifted her podium mike up so Alex would be heard.
Alex glared at the guy. “You are a disgrace to the fine career of journalism. I sincerely hope you are merely stupid and ill-informed, and not actively aiding and abetting a cabal of mass murderers and traitors to this country. I saw what was in the Spencer mansion. I saw the secret labs hidden under it, and under the Umbrella headquarters building. I saw the horrors that Umbrella employees were perpetrating on helpless people. I saw that they lured the Alpha and Bravo teams of S.T.A.R.S. to the Spencer Mansion just so they could watch how well their monsters could mangle and murder trained police officers and soldiers. I saw giant spiders and giant snakes and horrific hybrids that were clear evidence they were employing Maggie Walsh to design new and more gruesome creations. The people behind Umbrella planned to wipe out the human population of this planet so they could rule over a few hundred thousand human or half-human slaves, and you are supporting them. I would never be part of a government conspiracy, and I saw really brave men and women risking their lives to stop this threat. You disgust me.” She turned and jetted up into the air.
She was a couple thousand feet up when her earjack buzzed. “Marshall to Terawatt. Well done! Valentine’s chewing the guy’s ass off right now, and talking about how her friends died horribly because Umbrella is a pack of fiends who deserve to be put in prison until they rot. Oh, man, she’s really going to town now. She’s talking about Enrico Marini and how he got turned into a monster while trying to defend the state he loved. Finn’s letting her rip that guy apart. Okay, only verbally, because she really looks like she’d like to jump down those stairs and chop the guy into little pieces with a couple of smatchets.”
Hank Marshall gave her a play-by-play of the rest of the press conference while she flew back toward the Blackbird, until she got too far away for the comm system. Then she followed Willow’s app to the SR-71 and got flown home. She bailed out at forty thousand feet when the jet was eighty miles south of Paradise Valley and going at maybe six hundred miles an hour. She stayed silvery and didn’t deliberately try to slow down, so she rocketed home in no time. She just had to slam on the brakes once she got close to home. She ended up zooming way past the storm runoff pipe she wanted to take, because she was still going so fast, and she had to stop and go back down the creek to her pipe.
It was only 7:35 on the house clocks, so she had plenty of time to change clothes and fix her hair and drive off to school. And then, after all that, school was just … school. Ms. Walters spent most of the class reviewing ‘important’ works they had covered, and fussing at the people who hadn’t gotten their term papers in yet. Mrs. McGurty spent the whole class reviewing important formulas they had covered in integral and differential calculus, and tying things together to try and make things make more sense.
At least lunch was good. Alex had two big roast beef sandwiches on hamburger buns that her mom had made for her. And her mom had forgotten the sliced onions, which Jack would have remembered, but on the other hand it meant Alex could kiss Ray later without hitting him with horrible bad breath. And the fruit salad in the lunch line looked really fresh and tasty, so Alex had a little bowl, along with a slice of the chocolate pie which had fake whipped cream on top instead of real whipped cream. Ever since her grandma made real whipped cream at Thanksgiving with some sugar and real vanilla added, Alex could taste the difference between really good whipped cream and fake whipped cream.
And everyone in the lunchroom was talking about the Umbrella thing and the big speech Terawatt gave in Iowa earlier.
Ray looked at her and smiled. “Must be nice to be a superheroine flying all over the world and talking to reporters when she wants.”
Louis snarked, “Except she has to go to Iowa.”
Alex just shrugged. “I’d think it would get really boring spending hours flying from one place to another. And some press people are really nice, but some are jerkheads.”
“I’ll say!” Louis had part of the press release downloaded already, and he showed Riley and Terawatt and Jill chewing out that creepy jerkhead guy who probably wasn’t even a real reporter, just a paid flack for Umbrella.
And the whole thing was also a great ploy, because everyone in the school knew Alex was in school that day, and Terawatt was in Iowa.
Then the exams went really well. Each day was split into a morning exam and an afternoon exam, so the teachers could give a two- or three-hour exam if they wanted. Wednesday was periods one and two, Thursday was periods three and four, and Friday was periods five and six. That meant she had American Lit on Wednesday morning and then had the afternoon off. And there was no way to do really well on that lit test unless you could write a really good essay in ten or fifteen minutes, because there were four big essays on top of a bunch of short answer and fill-in-the-blank questions. Alex did the short stuff first so she’d know just how much time she could spend on the essays. She even got a chance to work in one of the real zingers from that Thomas Morton essay.
On Wednesday night, Ray had another basketball game, and they won easily, and Ray had a triple double because the other team was trying so hard to screen Tony and Heyward and Jerrold away from rebounds that the lane was practically wide open for a fast guard who could jump really high and didn’t mind crashing into bigger, slower guys who were also going for the rebounds.
Then Thursday was the two-exams-in-one-day thing. Calc in the morning, which went really well, partly because almost all the story problems were just like some of the even-numbered problems in the textbook that Mrs. McGurty hadn’t assigned but Alex had worked anyway. So she knew how to do them and didn’t have to stare at them and be totally confused for a huge chunk of time. Spanish in the afternoon, which included Señora Martinez reading some quotes in Spanish, and some of them you had to translate properly into English, and some of them you had to write about them in Spanish and tell what book they came from and why they were important. Okay, they hadn’t read that many things in Spanish class and Alex had read all of them like she was supposed to, so she was pretty sure about three of the quotes, and she could guess on the one quote she totally didn’t recognize at all.
Then Friday morning was the chem exam, which was totally like the homework assignments so it wasn’t bad. And Wade said he’d be happy to have her as his lab partner next term, too, because he liked getting top grades on his labs without having to spend a whole night after the lab just writing stuff up. And Mr. Hooper gave her a big smile when she turned her test in.
And then Mrs. Walters saw her in the hall and said, “Alex! That was such a good exam. Even if I had to go look up one of your references. That kind of extra hard work will really help you in college.”
Alex just sort of smiled about that for the rest of the day.
And then Ray had another great game that evening. The other team was sticking with a man-to-man defense no matter what, which Alex thought was a really dumb idea unless you knew all your team were better defenders than the other team’s shooters. Which they totally weren’t. The guys on Tony and Jackson and Jerrold were really good defenders, but Ray totally smoked every guy they put on him, and Heyward just out-muscled his defenders for open shots and rebounds no matter who they put on him, so Ray and Heyward scored just a ton of points and Heyward got a ton of rebounds, and the other team got trampled.
And Tony was pretty happy with the way his tests went, so he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be academically ineligible like he was so much of the previous year.
Ray was in a great mood when they went out on their date Saturday night, and since it was a party with most of the basketball team and their dates — or ‘us superstars and our hotties’ as Jackson insisted on saying — Alex ate a big dinner before they went over. She danced a ton with Ray and had a great time. And maybe she necked in the car with Ray for too long, but it was totally not fair that her mom embarrassed her by standing outside waiting for her when Ray dropped her off.
Interlude XXVMaggie Walsh looked at the security monitor. The newcomers weren’t looking as smug and pristine as they had when they had announced they were cleaving from The Collective and forming their own bloc. Not only was the India bloc a serious headache, but they had set a bad example for other members.
The American bloc was virtually destroyed. The ones who had been exposed by Terawatt and the SRI and avoided arrest — and had survived — had finally made their way to the compound. She was looking at Ashford, Ross, and only three others.
Wesker and Birkin and Spencer — and everyone else in the mansion and the HQ who hadn’t already been zombified or mutated — were dead. All that research was lost. Billions of dollars of construction was utterly destroyed. Spencer’s entire family was under investigation, as was Kort’s and Prescott’s. Well, Spencer’s grandfather Oswell Spencer was even more corrupt and evil and disturbing than Spencer himself, so Maggie didn’t see that there was any big loss there. And the drastic demise of the American bloc had the Europeans and the rest of the Asians cooperating properly, so The Collective was nearly unified again. She just had to deal with the India bloc in a subtle but definitive fashion. But she had several ideas on that.
On the downside, Glenn Howard was now ruined as their anti-Terawatt propaganda outlet, despite all his pathetic desperation as he continued to fight it out in Nebraska — as if anyone would want to fight for an armpit like Omaha. The SRI had pinpointed virtually every Collective member in the armed forces or in government, although a lot of that was probably due to Umbrella’s illegal payments that someone had managed to expose. She made a mental note to have someone investigate the computer techs Jack O’Neill had hired. Another eight members in America were also under suspicion, thanks to some far too effective detective work from O’Neill’s people. Maggie was calculating that at least six of them would end up being arrested, at which point the remaining one or two would flee to her compound.
Fortunately, The Collective now had some very useful intelligence on what the SRI had worked out, so they knew that not everyone in North America was compromised. Besides the Collective members in the SRI, there were still around a dozen of The Collective left in North America, and they would have little choice but to adhere to The Collective’s wishes.
And the Lanzhou Lesson was still under way. It was too bad that Spencer’s bloc would get blamed for that, too. She smiled ruthlessly.