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Chapter 162 – March Goes Out Like …Alex had wanted to rush off toward the shooting as soon as she heard it. But she had to assume Jack knew what he was doing. Eliza didn’t. Alex couldn’t leave Eliza and Darwin all alone out here, when there were horrible man-apes that Eliza might not be able to talk with.
And there were seven man-apes that were just shocked unconscious and could be really dangerous threats as soon as they came around.
She darted back toward the jeep.
By the time she got there, the sun was up enough that Eliza wasn’t using her flashlight anymore.
Alex felt really bad about leaving Eliza around all those dead bodies, even if she was with Darwin. Alex knew that a chimpanzee was a heck of a lot stronger than you’d think, but Darwin wasn’t exactly the bravest thing she’d ever seen. And Eliza had moved as far away from the dead people as she could and still be able to check out one of the dead man-ape things.
Alex flew down and checked on her. “Are you okay?”
Eliza slowly shook her head. “I am really not okay. This is … I don’t know what it is. These things … they’re not gorillas, but I don’t know what they are. They have definite human characteristics, like the skull and the eyes and the ribcage, even if the gorilla limbs and fur and dentition hide all that. I … I have no idea how this could happen.”
Alex ventured, “Genetic splicing. Or possible weird side effects from dangerous biochemicals.”
Eliza blushed slightly. “You mean like being able to talk to animals?”
Alex answered, “I was thinking more like telekinesis, flight, hurling lightning from my fingers, and being able to turn into a silvery morph.”
“You, too?” Eliza looked kind of surprised at that. “And Action Girl?”
Alex told her, “Action Girl’s story is her own to tell.”
But right then, there was a swish of a grapple retracting, and Hanna landed gracefully not thirty feet away. “Genetic engineering. I was one of the first things created by Maggie Walsh.”
“Eww!” Eliza squeaked. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean ‘eww’ at you, you’re really nice, but that’s awful.”
Hanna wasn’t bothered. “It does have many benefits. And thanks to Tera, I get to enjoy all of them.”
Alex changed the topic. “There’s a war that’s just started over by the volcano. I need you to try to talk to at least one of these man-apes. If you can talk with them and get them to stop attacking the good guys, I’m going to want you with me. If you can’t, Action Girl and I are going to have to fly into a three-way war zone with all three sides trying to kill us, and I’ll need you to take Darwin and use the vines to get way away from here.”
Eliza frowned. “Well, Darwin would like that part.” She looked around the clearing at all the bodies. “How do we find out if I can talk to them? I mean, if they’re really half-human … I can talk to animals, but I don’t think I can do the same thing with people.”
Hanna asked, “How would you know? When you talk to animals, you talk in their language. When you talk to people, you do the same thing.”
Alex asked, “Are there any people you’ve met who speak languages you don’t speak?”
“Well, sure,” Eliza shrugged. “Donny, for one. I’ve met plenty of people who don’t speak a language I know. Why?”
“Oh, nothing important.” But Alex had really been hoping for a second that Eliza’s power would let her speak every human language. That would be incredibly useful and powerful.
Hanna asked, “How do you want to do this?”
Alex pursed her lips in thought. “We take one of the stunned guys. I hold him with TK. You splash him in the face with water out of a jerry can. When he comes to, Eliza tries to talk to him.”
She flew over to the stunned man-apes. Could she even lift one of these guys? They looked pretty massive, and she had no idea how much of that bulk was the long fur. She tried lifting the smallest one.
Oh, crud, they were heavy. She managed to get the smallest one up in the air, but she had to land first, and the effort was giving her a nasty headache. She walked over to Eliza and Hanna, with the man-ape floating behind her. She figured she had better hold it by the torso, because if she tried to hold it in the air and hold its arms and legs still, too, it would rip its way free of her TK in no time, and probably give her a migraine.
Action Girl was ready with a can of water, and hit it in the face as soon as Alex brought it close. It woke up on the third splash in its face.
It instantly lunged at them.
Okay, it tried to lunge at them. It snarled and tried to leap at them and reached out with its arms, but it just hung in mid-air. That really freaked it out. Alex was starting to worry she wouldn’t be able to hold it a whole lot longer.
Eliza looked at it and tried talking. “Do you understand me?”
Hanna interrupted, trying some non-English languages. Alex recognized German and French and Spanish, but the others? No clue. Well, two of them sounded really Scandinavian, and one might have been Polish. Maybe. Robyn’s grandmother spoke Polish, so Alex had at least heard what it sounded like.
The man-ape just roared at them. So Eliza roared and snarled at it. That sure startled it. She snarled and roared and growled.
The man-ape growled and snarled back. Eliza and the man-ape snarled back and forth at each other for a few minutes, before it turned and looked frantically at the volcano.
Eliza said, “Okay, I’m having trouble understanding him at all. They don’t speak like a normal gorilla. But they won’t stop attacking us, because their mates and moms and babies are all trapped in the tunnels, and they’re scared. At least I think that’s what he said.”
Well, that made a lot of sense. Even if it wasn’t going to help the goodguys a whole lot.
Alex let the man-ape down, and it took off toward the volcano. Wow, those guys were pretty fast when they wanted to move. Not Hanna-fast, but she wouldn’t want to have to stay on the ground and try to outrun one
She said, “Okay. Eliza, take those vines and head north-northeast back to safety. Action Girl, you take the jeep and follow me. We leave the other six man-apes and let ’em wake up on their own, because we’re clearing out. We hit the India squadron from behind and retrieve Jack. Then we see what we need to do next.”
“Roger that, Tera,” Hanna smiled.
Eliza scowled, but obeyed. She hooted at Darwin, who looked really happy to be getting out of there. They clambered up into a tree and swung northward.
Alex waited until they were gone to say, “It would’ve been really neat if she could get those man-apes to do what she said.”
Hanna nodded. “We could send a wave of them at the India bloc, free General Jack, and then send more of them at the Walsh bloc. I would like to get to punch Karen Ross personally, because shooting Riley’s wife was mean and unnecessary.”
Alex frowned a little. “They’re not disposable troops. They’re part human. If they’re like what happened at Umbrella, they might be people who got horribly mutated.”
“I know,” Hanna nodded. “But that does not mean they would never want a chance for revenge on the Collective.”
Alex told her, “I’d rather try and protect ’em and then find out if someone like Lieutenant Marshall can come up with an antidote to turn ’em back to human.”
Hanna asked, “What if they’re gorillas and they were mutated with human DNA to be smarter, so the Collective could use them as workers?”
Alex grimaced. “Okay, I really don’t know. The people at the Spencer Mansion couldn’t be saved. At all. Maybe these guys are just as bad off. Or worse.”
Hanna’s head snapped up and she stared off toward the volcano. “Gunfire. And something exploded. Maybe a grenade.”
Crud. “Let’s move.”
Alex lifted into the air and zoomed over Hanna, as Hanna sprinted to the jeep. Now that Alex was forty feet in the air and facing the volcano, she heard another explosion. And another. She moved up another forty feet and spotted the flight of an RPG as it soared toward the foot of the volcano and then arced down to explode on something else. Crud!
Okay, if the RPGs were going toward the volcano, at least they were being fired by the India bloc and not at Jack. She hoped.
Her earjack clicked, and she pressed the button with her TK.
“A.G. to Tera. You lead me by at least a mile, so I can stop before the India bloc hears my engine.”
“Roger that, A.G.” She took off. She was above even the highest trees, so she had a great view of what was going on far ahead. She flew along the cleared ‘road’ toward the battle.
* * *
Eliza swung to the next vine. Darwin was alongside her, and really relieved to be going toward safer areas. She wasn’t. Terawatt and Action Girl were pretty amazing, but that didn’t mean that Eliza Thornberry couldn’t help. Even if she didn’t even have a cool codename.
They reached a clearing, and Eliza saw what was there. She hooted at Darwin to follow her.
Darwin looked, then looked at her and hooted back. “No! No no no no no! I am not going with you! This is a bad, bad idea!”
She grinned and ignored him. Well, she pretended she was ignoring him.
* * *
Jack leaned against the wall, but he slid a couple of feet toward the door they had come in through. There was a second door, but it was on the far side of the room over by the south window.
He’d picked a few things up when everyone else got distracted, but the weapons were over in the far corner of the room in a rack that was in between the east and south windows. And Herkermer was already over there, making sure the rack of weapons was all ready for immediate use.
Karen and Peter were studying the battle to the east, with ape-men attacking the Collective minions with massive casualties on both sides. Munro was looking out the south window, trying to get a look at the action to the west. He gave up and moved through the far door to look out one of the west windows. That left Jack with three Orphans. And one garrotte for a weapon.
The radio system was crackling with disheartening reports. All of Karen’s minions on the east side had been overrun, and the eastern guns were down. Most of her minions on the west side were out of action, and the Singh boys had taken down the automated gun emplacements with RPGs. That was damn good shooting.
“All quiet on the western front?” he drawled.
Karen glared at him, and as soon as she turned to look back out the window, he slid another couple steps toward the door. It was solid steel, and it looked like it would hold up to any of their weapons Herkermer would dare fire inside a closed room.
She snapped at Peter, “Damn it! We’ve lost containment on all sides.”
Herkermer growled, “There is no way I am letting those India idiots grab me and make me harvest those diamonds for them.”
Peter casually said, “I think we have bigger problems than that.”
Herkermer picked up an old metal box that had a heavy cable running to the wall. He flipped three switches, and then yanked off the molly cover over a big red button.
Oh, crap. Jack gulped.
Karen looked over and ordered, “Don’t you dare.”
Herkermer looked her in the eye and slapped the button mercilessly.
Jack felt the shockwave through his feet just as a massive explosion blasted out of the tunnel entrance, taking a huge chunk of the volcano’s side with it. Boulders and debris and dust rocketed outward, wiping out everything in the first two thirds of the way to the building. Ape-men, minions, mining equipment, everything. He was pretty sure that no one was going to be going down into tunnels to collect diamonds now.
Herkermer turned to Karen and gave her a smug smile. He started to say something sardonic, when the volcano rumbled.
Jack definitely felt that. The whole building trembled, along with everything outside.
Then there were more explosions. Something blasted out a big vent on the south side of the volcano, and the volcano ‘burped’. He didn’t know the technical term.
Jack did know the technical term for the mass of red-hot rock that flew through the air right at the compound. “I think that’s a lava bomb.”
Herkermer confidently said, “Obviously. But it’s going to fall far short of us.”
Jack wasn’t so sure. He took another step toward the door.
The lava bomb landed just short of the parking lot. But lava exploded everywhere. When Jack saw a truckload of the stuff flying their way, he hastily stepped out and yanked the steel door closed behind him.
Karen heard Jack O’Neill try to run away. Like there was any place he could go in the building, much less the compound.
The lava hit just on the other side of the parking area, only it didn’t hit like a boulder. It hit like a bucket of hot tar. Molten lava splashed from the impact.
Her last thought was ‘God’s own water balloon’. Then several tons of molten lava blasted through the picture window, turning her and everything else in the room into a blast furnace.
Jack didn’t know how much lava hit the east side of the building, but it was enough to rock the building and knock him off his feet. He scrambled back up in case he was about to have a couple of Orphans coming after him.
The steel security door was already turning red-hot. There weren’t going to be any Orphans coming out of there. He scrambled for the stairwell, but lava had splashed into the east rooms down there, too, and the heat was astonishing. He couldn’t get within twenty feet of the stairs, and the entire thing was already blazing away.
He ran for one of the west rooms. He was thinking about smashing open a window and using one of the reinforced awnings to get down to the ground. The things had enough steel ribs holding up the canvas to support half a dozen of those ape-men. But the impact had knocked that awning off the outside wall and shattered the west window, leaving jagged shards all around the window frame.
Okay, new plan. Find something to smash all those shards out of the window frame, and see if any of the vines on the outside wall would hold his weight.
Munro stepped into the room from the far door. He had a massive metal-and-plastic backpack device that looked almost two feet wide and about a yard high and maybe eight inches thick. If he hadn’t been an Orphan, he probably couldn’t have carried it. The thing had a massive cable that extended out of the top of the backpack and snaked down to a freakish thing that looked like a raygun-rifle that he was holding expertly. He smiled. “Going somewhere, Jack?”
Jack just smirked. “Do Ray and Egon know you’ve got the team equipment out again?”
* * *
Alex zoomed across the treetops. “Tera here. Passing badguys on my mark … Mark!”
She zoomed lower so she could see into the truck. Jack wasn’t in there. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. There was only one old truck, when they had figured there had to be at least two vehicles, maybe more.
Oh, crud.
There were no people around, except two Orphans on top of the truck cab, and they were holding RPG-7s. She stripped the two RPGs out of their arms and hurled one off into the trees. She hung onto the other one and jetted toward the compound.
She saw the shockwave ripple through the ground past her, and she went silvery a fraction of a second before the shockwave in the air smacked her backward. It hurled her up into the air and way back toward the badguys. She lost the second RPG somewhere in the jungle below her.
If the badguys hadn’t been bowled over by the shockwave, too, they would have been filling her full of bullets.
She stayed silvery, and she jetted back toward the compound.
The volcano was erupting. The mine entrance was lost in a big explosion of debris. A vent on the south side of the volcano was spewing out a massive burst of red-hot, super-fast nastiness that was probably a big pyroclastic cloud going way faster than she could fly. She knew a little something about volcanic eruptions, thanks to that year of earth sciences, even if it was an easy science course.
And about two dozen immense balls of lava were spraying out of the mouth of the volcano, going every which way. One of the lava bombs was going to land right in the compound. If Jack was in there …
The lava bomb hit behind the back buildings, and blasted everything around it. Whatever wasn’t disintegrated by lava was on fire. She zoomed in closer.
And there looking out of that shattered second-floor window in that burning concrete building was Jack. Mega-crud!
She didn’t have enough TK to lift Jack while she was flying, and those shards of glass looked nasty. She dived to the ground in front of the building, stopping just short of a mangled metal and canvas awning that was covered in glass fragments from the window.
Jack took one look at her and dived out of the window. She grabbed him with her TK and pulled him through the center of the window so he wouldn’t get sliced to pieces, and she pulled him down to her.
A big black guy with a freaky raygun thing stepped to the window and pointed it at her. She went silvery and raised an arm to blast him with lightning.
But he was a lot quicker than she was, and he fired the rifle-thing. She didn’t see anything coming out of the muzzle, but suddenly she felt like she was vibrating at a crazy speed, and …
She collapsed into an unconscious puddle.
* * *
Hanna was out of the jeep only seconds after Terawatt said, “Mark.” She was sprinting along the edge of the cleared road when the explosion knocked her off her feet, and then she was rolling to the side as several trees along the edge of the road got knocked over by the shockwave. One just missed her, but crushed her M203 into the dirt. A second one fell on top of that, burying her primary weapon just when she was about to engage the enemy.
She thought of several very colorful cursewords that Charlie had taught her.
She sprinted forward before more trees fell on her position, and she found … nothing of any use. The India bloc had left one old truck behind, with two armed men on its cab, but the truck now had several trees on top of it. The armed men were now unarmed and crushed under the weight of the trees. The other Orphans had already moved out and were probably rushing toward the front of that compound. No one seemed to be shooting at them any longer, which was not a good sign. It looked like the mountain had exploded, taking out the far third of the compound, and a huge ball of lava had blasted the center of the compound, setting everything on fire. That was a much worse sign. She was ready to take on pretty much anything that was alive, but a thousand tons of molten lava? No. She was going to pass on that battle.
* * *
Jack saw Tera quiver and collapse, so he wasn’t surprised when his ride to the ground crapped out on him. Fortunately, by then he was only about six feet up and well past the sharp edges of that damn awning, so he dropped and rolled.
But Alex was out cold, and a silvery puddle he couldn’t pick up.
Munro looked out the window. “Well, I’ll be damned! Walsh was right about this, too!”
He smirked at Jack as he shrugged out of the heavy backpack. “Okay, your turn now. Let’s dance, bitch.”
Jack just said, “That saying never works out for you guys, you know that?”
Munro pulled out a Fairbairn combat knife and dived out the window.
Jack grabbed the edge of the awning and yanked hard. The steel ribs came up off the ground like a palisade. Munro suddenly realized what was going to happen, but couldn’t do anything to stop his fall.
Munro landed right across the edge of the awning. Two steel ribs punched through his guts and tore out through his lower back. At least one of them probably ripped through a kidney. Munro hit the ground hard on his hands and knees, but still wasn’t completely stopped.
Jack took a step back so he was out of Munro’s reach. “Who ya gonna call?”
Munro groaned, “You don’t fight fair. I like that.” His right arm went for the automatic on his hip.
Jack pulled out the garrotte from inside his waistband, and snapped it like a short bullwhip. It knocked the gun out of Munro’s hand just as it cleared the holster.
Munro gasped, “Nice work, Jack. We … completely underestimated you … Too bad you … can’t win. You got Singh’s boys … coming up behind you … and maybe a couple hundred … really pissed off ape-things still out there … and a volcano that’s gonna turn … this entire region into a firestorm … and I just killed Terawatt … You’re finally … out of luck.”
* * *
He was finally going to achieve his goals!
He yelled in Hindi at his few remaining troops. He was down to seven good soldiers and a technical expert who was adequate with an AK-47. But that would be enough. The primary bloc’s people were already nearly wiped out. Their automated defenses were destroyed. Their buildings were ruined. Their protections against the monkey-things were gone.
He would take the last few members of their pathetic group, and move back to the trucks. Then they could go home. Surely Khan would not hold it against him that the primary bloc blew up a volcano to keep him from whatever trophies they had wanted.
The ground shook once again, only this time it was a continuous ripple of smaller tremors. Then suddenly the trees on his right were knocked down, and he saw what had made the shaking happen. For the first time in his adult life, he screamed like a little boy.
It was also the last time he ever screamed like a little boy. Or did anything else.
* * *
Jack heard the noise behind him and made a wild guess. “Hey, Munro, how much do you want to bet that Tarzan is about to come to my rescue?”
Munro had taken a licking, but he was still ticking. He was trying to pull himself off the steel ribs, agonizing inch by agonizing inch. He gritted his teeth and managed, “There’s … no such thing … as Tarzan.”
Jack stepped over to the side and carefully picked up Munro’s automatic. He shoved it in his own waistband, and then did his very best Johnny Weissmuller ‘Tarzan’ call.
Munro groaned, “Funny. You’re a funny guy, Jack. I thought you’d be … one of those … stick-up-the …” His eyes closed. He went completely limp and sagged forward, sinking deeply onto the steel ribs and crashing face-first to the ground.
Jack picked up Munro’s Fairbairn and said, “I thought you’d be … you-know, too.”
Then he moved back to Alex. He needed to get her out of there, but he couldn’t pick her up. At least she was still alive … as far as he could tell. She wasn’t a limp puddle anymore, but she wasn’t her normal solid self yet. And the lava on the other side of the building was hot enough to make concrete burn. The heat coming off the building was getting painful. This whole section of jungle was going to be a roaring fire in no time. And there were other, more immediate threats.
A herd of elephants came pounding his way, turning what was left of the fences and wood buildings into paste. He stood up and waved his arms. “Over here! Hey! Over here!”
Two of those damn ape-men came sprinting his way, looking panicked. They didn’t want to get stomped into goo by the elephant herd, but their avenues of escape had already turned into forest fires. So now he got them in his lap, just when he needed to help Terawatt instead of the other way around. Great.
They saw him and bared their teeth before charging right at him. He pulled out Munro’s automatic and double-tapped them. Mostly-human skulls and mostly-human DNA probably meant human vulnerabilities when you shot them in the head and the heart. They fell over before they got anywhere near Alex. Like he was going to let that happen, no matter what he had to do.
The lead elephant pulled up not forty feet from his position. A redheaded girl in glasses and braces and really unattractive pigtails was riding the elephant bareback, with a chimpanzee clinging tightly to her back. She made a screech and a roar like a bull elephant, and her ride just stopped still for her.
He looked up at her and asked, “Dr. Livingston, I presume?”
“Very funny, mister. Where’s Terawatt and Action Girl?”
He scowled. “That guy right there shot Tera with some sort of raygun, and she’s out cold and in silvery form right in front of me, so I can’t even pick her up and carry her out of here. Action Girl’s probably behind you, engaging any survivors of the India bloc, if I know her. And if I’d known I was going to be rescued by Pippi Longstocking, I’d have made sure my best dirndl was properly pressed.”
“You sure don’t sound like any general I ever heard of. I’m —”
He smiled. “I know. Terawatt told me. You’re Little Thornberry.”
She frowned. “That makes me sound about eight. I came up with a codename while I was riding Tembo here. You can call me ‘Shaman’!”
He smiled a little bit. “Cool.” He gave her a wink. “Anybody who rescues me while leading an elephant stampede is already totally cool.”
He looked over his shoulder. The room where Munro had left the weapon was already a raging inferno. The fires from the other side of the building were spreading. They needed to get out of there. “Hey, can you get your pals to rip another awning down? Maybe we can scoop Tera into it and haul her out of here before things get too hot.”
The Thornberry kid trumpeted like a real elephant, and two of her herd did what she wanted. They ripped the awning down with their trunks, and then swept Alex’s puddle-like form onto the awning so they could move her. Four elephants picked up the corners of the awning with their trunks, and they started moving out of the compound. Jack trotted after them, hoping they didn’t start sprinting, and hoping he didn’t have to dodge huge piles of elephant droppings.
The kid trumpeted once more, and a smaller elephant swung around and wrapped her trunk around him. He didn’t struggle, although it was pretty tempting. But that trunk was obviously a hell of a lot stronger than he was ever going to be, no matter how many boxes of Wheaties he ate — that Bob Richards was a big liar. The elephant carefully lifted him over her head and settled him on her neck. Then it trotted off to join the rest of the herd.
Okay, anything with legs like that did not ‘trot’. But he didn’t know what the right word was to describe a quick elephant walk. Maybe ‘amble’? ‘March’?
They passed what was left of the India bloc’s last charge. He muttered to himself, “Note to self: do not piss off anyone who can get elephant herds to stomp the crap out of you.” Not only were all the Orphans crushed, so were their truck and jeep.
The herd moved pretty quickly away from the burning compound, and he spotted when they caught up with Hanna. She was pretty hard to miss, since she was swinging through the trees near the edge of the road, using her grapples like her own private vines. And she was moving fast enough to keep up with the herd when she felt like it.
She yelled something at him, but he didn’t hear it over the noise of the elephants. And he was too busy hanging on with both hands to make a ‘what did you say?’ gesture.
Hanna fired a grapple across the road over the heads of the elephants, and she flew along just at the right speed to drop onto his mount right behind him. She grabbed onto his shoulder with one hand and yelled, “Where is Tera?”
He turned his head and shouted, “Hurt! And in that awning up there!”
She glared at him like it was his fault.
All right, he really felt like it was his fault. He’d made a stupid decision on allocation of forces because he was too focused on helping Finn, then he got kidnapped like a rookie, he had to be rescued, and he let Alex get caught in a Terawatt-trap. He was damn lucky she wasn’t dead, like someone in the Collective had expected. And he hadn’t been able to recover that weapon, so they had no idea what the Collective had figured out, and what they might use on Alex the next time. Maybe Walsh was even smarter than he suspected. That was really not encouraging. Or ‘of the encouraging’ as a certain red-hot redhead would say.
Maybe Alex was right, and it was time to bust Sam Carter out of isolation and put that great big brain to work on something awesome. Well, more awesome than a Terawatt-powered maser that could blow up satellites. He patted his pocket where he had that big diamond. Too bad he couldn’t have it made into a ring so big Willow would faint.
And maybe Little Thornberry was going to need a great big bath, because these elephants were pretty funky.
The elephants stopped alongside a jeep he didn’t recognize. Obviously, Little Thornberry did. Hanna leapt off the elephant, unlocked the jeep, and rolled down a back window so a couple of elephants could pour Alex into the back seat. Ouch. He hoped she was doing better.
The elephant next to him grabbed him with its trunk and set him down on the roof of the jeep. He waved and called out, “Hey, Shaman! If you wanna be a superheroine, you’ve got to tell your family! And Terawatt’s gonna want you to have all the cool superhero gear so you can be a part of Team Terawatt! So start thinking up a cool uniform!”
She grinned excitedly and led her elephants away from the volcano. They picked up speed and took off roughly northward.
He hopped down off the roof of the jeep and slid into the shotgun seat, since Hanna was driving. He was pretty worried about Alex, but he didn’t want Hanna to know that, so he went with his usual bad behavior. “Does Dad know we’re hotrodding around in his new car?”
Hanna looked at him somberly and asked, “Will Alex be okay?”
He sighed. “I hope to God she will, but they used some kind of high-tech anti-Terawatt ray on her, and I have no idea what the hell it did. I think we need to get home as fast as we can, and see how she’s doing at every step of the way.”
A voice from the back of the jeep groaned, “Who’s doing what at every step of the way?”
“Alex! You are okay! I was really worried!” Hanna burst out.
“Not me,” Jack lied. “I knew you’d pull through. You’re a superhero. That’s what heroes do.”
Hanna ratted him out. “He was very worried, too.”
Alex just moaned, “I love you guys, too. But I feel totally yucky. Does anyone have some Dramamine and a couple ibuprofens?”