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Chapter 163 – Marching HomeAlex let Hanna get some pills out of the medical kit in the back of the jeep, and she washed them down with a bunch of water and three energy bars. The food bars these guys had were definitely not as good as the stuff her mom and Jack kept buying for her. But she was hungry and feeling cruddy, so she ate them and didn’t complain.
By then, Hanna had managed to weave her way past the fallen trees and get going toward the dirt road they’d come in on.
Alex didn’t want to hang around, because the volcano was erupting, and the lava was starting really big fires all around the place. She figured that by the time anyone could come back and look around, there wouldn’t be a trace of any badness, except maybe a little colony or two of man-apes.
She asked, “Did the man-apes get away okay? They had their mates and moms and babies in the tunnels, and they were really worried.”
Jack scowled from the front seat. “I doubt it. From what I saw, nothing down in the tunnels or anywhere close managed to survive. If that’s all their females, then they’re now reduced to two dozen or so males that are never gonna be able to reproduce again. I’m going to have a chat with Princess Celestia and Top Banana about asking the U.N. to get a couple teams in here to do what they can for an endangered sub-species. And if they won’t help and there’s only a handful of these guys left out here, we’ll try to help ’em under someone else’s banner. Plenty of groups watchdog governments who use torture and physical abuse and slavery and civil rights violations on people, and this is all of the above, plus some categories they don’t even have yet.”
When was Jack going to stop with the My Little Pony codenames? If General Hammond found out that Pinkie Pie was calling him Princess Celestia, even as part of a field op, Alex was pretty sure someone would get yelled at.
Hanna said, “You will have to get ‘Shaman’ in here in a uniform to help, because those creatures are not going to be friendly.”
Alex smiled a little. “Shaman. That’s a good codename. Who picked it out?”
Hanna looked at Jack, who admitted, “Little Thornberry did. While she was riding a stampeding elephant herd to the rescue like Tarzan.”
Alex frowned. “I told her to go be somewhere safe!”
Jack smirked. “She looked pretty darn safe in the middle of a pack of really protective elephants who stomped the crap out of Singh’s Team Two. And scared the hell out of some ape-men. And rescued you and me.”
She complained, “How come no one does what I say, unless I threaten ’em with the President, or you, or Mom? Everyone does what you tell ’em!”
Jack turned back and gave her a look. “No one did what I told ’em on this little jaunt. And I notice Colonel Finn isn’t anywhere in sight.”
Alex confessed, “I called General Hammond and talked to him about Riley. He told me to make the decision myself. And I thought Riley wasn’t ready to be soldiering. He needed to be sitting by Sam’s bed, holding her hand and being there for her.”
Jack just nodded. “Good call. Treating your people like people is a lot more important than a lot of the top brass want to pretend.”
Alex pointed out, “Well, General Baylor was sure a lot nicer to Major Kuhlman than I thought he was going to be.”
Jack muttered, “That’s still not the same as being nice to the privates and corporals out in the field who he’s never seen in his life, especially when he has to give orders that may make those guys risk their lives.” He paused for a second. “Oh, and speaking of being mean to one’s personnel, since you chose to furlough Finn and command this mission yourself, that means more detailed after-action reports.”
Alex flopped back on the uncomfortable jeep seats. “Crud!”
* * *
Alex was glad that Jack and Hanna at least let her sleep for a few hours. She must’ve been really exhausted and logy and whatever else that raygun did to her, because she slept through the really bumpy parts of the trip, and at least one stop. She could tell all that, because when she woke up they were on the good road again, with Jack driving and Hanna sleeping in the shotgun seat.
Hanna was really cute when she was curled up asleep. Alex just hoped she didn’t wake up all Action Girl if there was a loud noise or something.
“Jack? Aren’t you tired?”
“Nah, I’ve been chatting with my fiancée over the sat phone while I had both the kids down for a nap. Seems she’s pretty mad at me for getting kidnapped and held hostage and traded around like Monopoly money. And anyway, I got tons of sleep last night while my guards had to stay wide awake in case Fu Man-new checked on ’em.”
Alex grinned at the sudden mental image the name brought up. “Fu Man-new? Did he know that’s your name for him?”
Jack smirked. “I never got the chance to tell him. And I never got the chance to call any of his minions Wo Fat either.”
Okay, she giggled. It wasn’t her fault that her dad liked reruns of old ‘Hawaii Five-Oh’ shows. She snickered and said, “Book ’em, Danno.”
After a few more hours, Jack got tired, and she was really feeling a ton better, so she drove for a while and he slept. And she let Hanna drive the last stretch back to the compound. It gave her the chance to eat a bunch more of the really pretty icky energy bars, but she was hungry.
She sort of wondered if Eliza ever ate meat, now that she could talk to the animals the meat came from. After all, a lot of the animals she could talk to were carnivores or omnivores, and they didn’t have any trouble eating other animals. That meal in the CommVee had been a vegetarian stew, but that didn’t mean Eliza always ate that way.
When they drove into the compound, the first thing Jack did was rushing over to check on Riley and Dr. Finn. The first thing Hanna did was returning the jeep and helping them unload supplies. The first thing Alex did was hitting the mess tent and getting a bunch of good-tasting food, followed by making sure Jack and Hanna and Riley all ate something.
Well, she had planned to make Riley eat. Riley was still in the recovery room, but he had finally fallen asleep. The nurses had scooted a bed over next to Sam’s, and he was out cold on it but still clinging to her hand. It was so sweet Alex had to get some photos of it. The nurse wouldn’t let Terawatt fly in, because she hadn’t washed up and put on gloves and a surgical mask and all that, but the nurse didn’t notice a cellphone flying over to Sam’s bed and taking a couple of snapshots and then sneaking back. Alex just said, “Please, just take really good care of them. They both mean a lot to me.”
The nurse looked at her like she was stupid or something. “We take really good care of all our patients. And Dr. Finn would tan my hide if she thought I was giving her preferential treatment and ignoring someone else who needed care.”
All the doctors and everybody were glad to see they were okay, and that Hanna hadn’t crashed the jeep, although no one said anything about the jeep. So Jack had no trouble getting someone to drive him and Alex and Hanna and all their gear off to the landing strip and then bring the jeep back. Jack insisted on leaving an automatic and plenty of ammo for Riley, just in case. And he promised they would send some clean clothes for Riley to wear so he didn’t have to keep wearing the same set of BDUs.
Then Jack put on some surgical scrubs and stuff for long enough to go into the recovery room and wake up Riley and tell him that he could stay with Sam for a couple of weeks. Riley was really appreciative, but really embarrassed that he wasn’t doing his job as a soldier and a member of the SRI. Jack just threatened to call Riley’s mom if Riley didn’t stay and take care of Sam. And he was really funny about it. At least Alex and Hanna thought so.
This pediatrician named Dr. Thorpe drove them off to the landing strip, and chatted with them non-stop the whole way. Alex figured Dr. Thorpe hadn’t gotten to talk in English to anybody new in a long time, and was kind of going overboard. Then finally they got to pile into the Cessna with their gear and fly away.
Only they weren’t flying home yet. They had to go back to London and pick up Willow, who wasn’t going to get to shop and play tourist for a couple of days with Jack, but wasn’t interested in it after everything that had happened to Jack in the past thirty hours. Then they would be flying to the West Virginia base, and then they would fly Alex home. Alex was pretty sure Willow would be staying with Jack and Charlie for a while.
So Alex napped, and then wrote a really long after-action report for Jack. She stayed on the Cessna while Willow and Jack and Hanna got all the luggage put in the cargo hold, because Terawatt was supposed to be out of the country, and she didn’t have her Annie Farrell disguise stuff with her. But Willow had everyone checked out of the hotel, and she had everyone’s luggage all packed. Even Riley’s. Alex sort of wondered if Willow had needed to tear up Alex’s bed to get that Terawatt gym bag out from underneath it. She finally got around to asking, and Willow said she’d just tipped the bed over on its side to get at the Tera-bag.
It was not a Tera-bag! Why did everything have to be a Tera-something? When she complained, Jack just teased her about her doing the Tera-frown. She stuck her tongue out at him, which just made him grin even more.
The really great part was that Willow had a bunch of take-out food in cartons for them and the pilots to eat on the way home. There was Greek and Italian and Indian and French and German, and Alex ate some of everything. Okay, one of the Indian curries was sort of too spicy for her so she didn’t eat much of it, but other than that it was all great.
It just felt like it took forever to fly back to West Virginia, and then they had to unload everybody’s stuff except one Terawatt gym bag so Alex could have stuff on the flight to her house. And a bunch of leftovers. And they had to get new pilots and do maintenance checks on the plane. So Alex had the chance to hug everybody goodbye. Charlie drove down to the airstrip to get Jack and Willow, and Sergeant Scott drove down to get the equipment and ‘special’ luggage like the Annie Farrell gear, and Janet drove down to pick up Hanna. So Alex got to hug Janet and hug Charlie and shake Sergeant Scott’s hand. Then she was the lone passenger on the flight to California, so she just napped and worked on homework and napped and ate leftovers and napped. They were short naps, because she kept having really disturbing nightmares.
When she dived out of the jet and flew home, it was about nine at night Paradise Valley time. But it felt like about five in the morning to her. She swooped through the runoff system to her house, hugged her mom and dad and promised she was okay, and took a long shower. Then she just went to bed.
She woke up from a really bad Midwich-stuff nightmare and flew downstairs for a big bowl of chocolate chip ice cream with hot fudge sauce. When she flew back to her room, she just slid into the bed and hoped she didn’t wake anyone up.
Shar climbed in the bed with her and snuggled against her. “I’m here to pertect you. And I promise I won’t get all mad and blow up the whole block. Okay?”
“Okay. Good night.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, bug.”
And she managed to sleep the rest of the night without any more nightmares.
* * *
The next morning was church, and then yardwork with her dad and Shar, and then spending time with Ray and Nicole and Robyn and Louis and Marsha. And then martial arts and dinner with Jo. But Alex had more nightmares that night, too. Well, one nightmare that required lots of ice cream, and one nightmare that stopped in the middle when Shar climbed in the bed and hugged her.
So Alex was pretty glad when Monday morning rolled around and Jack had a military psychologist to talk to Terawatt about what had happened. Lots of soldiers had way worse things happen to them in wars and ‘police actions’ and stuff, so there were military shrinks who knew how to help people talk through stuff. And Jack told her she was going to be talking to headshrinkers just as much as he was, and Riley was going to get even more headshrinking because of his wife getting hurt, too. Alex thought that was a great idea.
Apparently, Janet was making Hanna get some therapy, too, only Hanna was still in the ‘I am fine so why do I need this’ camp. And Jack had no idea if Harry and Ron got to talk to SIS therapists or not. Jack acted like SIS therapists would be stiff-upper-lip types in tweed blazers. With tweed pants. When he started making up stuff about their tweed underwear, she made him stop it.
And Monday morning was also a big press conference in Washington D.C., where General Jackson announced that Terawatt had stopped a Maggie Walsh disaster in central England that the English had needed to bomb, and then she had fought evil Orphans from India and the main Empire, and the Orphans had triggered a Nazi weapon that had woken up a volcano that was now a threat to a dozen small Congo villages, plus possibly wiping out a group of people that had been slave labor that the Nazis had experimented on and mutated back in the Forties. Alex figured the more bad stuff people said about Wacky Maggie and her Orphans, the better. And pointing at them and saying the word ‘Nazi’ in the same sentence totally made them the badguys.
Between all the psychotherapy and all the Skyping with Jack and Willow about stuff and having Shar snuggling against her for most of every night, Alex was doing a lot better toward the end of the week. Still, it was a good thing this was spring break, instead of a regular school week.
* * *
On Wednesday, Terawatt Skyped with Hermione to see how Ron and Harry were doing. “Hi, Hermione.”
“Hi! I didn’t think you’d call in person. Although dinner was really fun.”
Alex made sure her Terawatt voice was in place. “Well, I was worried about Ron and Harry.”
“Me, too. Ron was so upset he dropped everything and rushed over to my office and proposed. He’s wanted to get married before, but … you know. SIS rules, and his family. But he said he’d quit the SIS if he had to, and he said he didn’t care what his grandmothers said. And he made his mum get out this huge engagement diamond I can’t possibly wear. It’s worth a fortune! And he’s having a jeweler resize the ring to my finger. But I don’t want to quit the SIS, and he doesn’t want to go raise polo ponies with Charlie, or go work for the Ministry with Percival, or …”
Alex smiled. “Terawatt will call Mr. Hendriks and ask if Ron can be the lead English liaison in the E.U. Terawatt Liaison Office. He’s a peer and he’s got lots of medals and stuff, right? He’d be great.”
Hermione burst out in a huge smile. “Oh, that would be perfect! And I can keep working in the data analysis section. And … Oh, dear, I almost forgot! Harry came up with a bit of intelligence and we can’t tell you the source. We have some sort of vague hint about some of the Riddle crowd emigrating to central France because there’s some sort of Orphan cluster somewhere in there.”
Alex nodded. “And I almost forgot to tell you. Singh in India is confirmed as an Orphan, and he’s the leader of the India splinter bloc of these Orphans. We don’t know where the primary bloc is based, but they do have a home base. And both blocs just lost between ten and forty Orphans in the Congo, but you won’t be able to recover anything because of that volcano.”
“That was you, too, right?”
Alex frowned. “I didn’t start the volcano. But the Orphans set off an old Nazi weapon deep in the mining tunnels down near a part of the magma chamber, and the volcano really didn’t like it. According to General O’Neill, they got a lava bomb in the face for doing it.”
“Ouch.”
And then, after Alex chatted for a while longer with Hermione about Ron and Harry and how hard it was to get SIS higher-ups to buy into some therapist visits for them, and Rupert Giles and the meeting, and everything else, and then she remembered to call Aart Hendriks about Ron, Alex decided that she ought to check on Major Kuhlman, too. That was a lot trickier. She had to call Sergeant Harriman and get the IT guys to set it up so Annie Farrell was calling from Jack’s offices in West Virginia. And she had to be really patient while she went through all the U.S. European Command offices to get to the major. And then the major was off on ‘compassionate leave’, so ‘Annie Farrell’ had to go jump through hoops to get the major’s private cellphone number. And then Major Kuhlman was really surprised and happy that Lieutenant Farrell had even bothered to call and check on her, but she was really sad because she went home to tell her boyfriend face-to-face that she got seduced by a Double Oh boss, and the boyfriend was a total jerkhead about it and didn’t want to see her anymore and called her some really mean names.
Alex totally understood. If she had gotten seduced by some mega-suave super-spy, she would have had to tell Ray. But Ray was a great boyfriend, not some jerkhead like the Kuhlman BF. And Major Kuhlman didn’t see herself as attractive at all, so having someone like Lord Rupert Giles paying a lot of sexy attention to her had to be really impossible to resist. That was totally not fair. Alex even called up Jack and complained about it for like five minutes.
* * *
On Thursday morning, there was new news. Saying ‘new news’ should have been stupid and unnecessary, but she was seeing so much ‘news’ that was stuff she already knew, or stuff that was really repeats of yesterday’s headlines, or sometimes even stuff she already knew the truth about so she knew the newscaster was wrong. But this was new.
Oswell Spencer had finally died the night before. She was expecting that. But she wasn’t expecting that he’d leave a deathbed confession that the t-virus thing was his idea to become a godlike being ruling over lesser creatures, and his obedient grandson was just doing what was asked of him. The news guy made it sound like the grandson was a helpless little puppet, when Alex knew the guy was an Orphan, and not anything like ‘helpless’ or ‘little’ or ‘puppet’.
Alex was exercising and working on her martial arts when Willow and Jack Skyped to give her the FYI. They were Skyping from Jack’s office, but Willow was sitting in Jack’s lap. Willow put her arms around Jack’s neck and grinned. “Hi, Alex! Did you hear the Umbrella news yet?”
Alex complained, “Yeah, but they made a really dangerous Orphan sound like another victim. He’s not a victim!”
Jack said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got enough emails and internal documents on him to put him away for about a geological era. Spencer might’ve been trying to help out his fave grandson, but that deathbed confession pretty much guarantees that everyone else in Umbrella is going down for hundreds of counts of accessory to murder one, aiding and abetting, kidnapping, thousands of counts of civil rights violations, domestic terrorism, and a hundred other things. And they know it. Their lawyers are already scrambling like frightened cockroaches.”
Willow burbled, “Yeah, and Jack’s buddy in the FBI called to tell him the Justice Department and the federal prosecutors have gotten twenty-five offers to testify against other Umbrellans just in the past eight hours!”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, they’re real sweethearts. They’d eat each other alive if we could just put ’em all in one jail cell.”
Given what the Umbrella people had been engineering, Alex thought there was probably a little too much literal in that last sentence.
Willow chipped in, “So this is gonna be a good thing, because every prosecutor is gonna have a copy of that confession, and no jury’s gonna acquit any Umbrellans once they see that footage.”
Jack added, “And hurry up with your exercise, because we’ve got a long-distance phone call I want you and Hanna on. And I want you down at Edwards at seven ack emma tomorrow. We have a full day of fun and festivities. First, you’ll follow a GPS beacon to my position, and I’m taking you to see Sam Carter. She’s still in isolation, because apparently she’s developed superpowers. But I can get the two of us in.”
“I wanted to go, too, but Jack says no,” Willow pouted.
Jack just kept going. “And then lunch with me and Will, and then we’re off to exciting West Virginny for a double birthday party which is at Janet’s house, because she’s far braver than I am.”
Alex griped, “And what am I supposed to do with my presents for Charlie and Hanna while we’re seeing Sam?”
Jack smirked. “Well, you can toss Charlie’s away, and Hanna will settle for you beating her up for half an hour at the gym.”
“Jack!” She squawked right about the same time Willow did.
“Okay, okay, we’re going to vector you in on my car, and the presents can go in the trunk. Unless you’re carrying several tons of presents. You know, Hanna could use a new punching bag and a Bowflex …”
Willow teased, “Or Charlie could use a nice, new sports car that would have really horrible gas mileage and sky-high insurance rates …”
“Don’t get Charlie a sports car!” Jack pretended to gasp. “If anyone in this family is going to get a Ferrari, it should be me.”
“You’re too old for a Ferrari,” Willow told him.
He grinned at her. “As long as I have a hot, gorgeous redhead at my side, I’ll never be too old for a Ferrari.”
“Oh, you!” But Willow gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Jack changed topics. “Oh, and you’ll get to see Miller. While Finn’s on compassionate leave, Miller’s running Team One and Lupo’s in charge of Team Two.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “He told them they could have extra paperwork to go with the jobs! For some reason, they both said yes. I think he’s cheating and using mental domination on ’em.”
Jack smirked. “Oh, Lupo just said yes because she’ll get to carry bigger weapons out into the field.”
Willow pretended to be trying to remember something. “And what else did we have to tell you? Oh, yeah! Jack’s now an international diamond thief!”
Alex frowned in thought. “He showed me a really dirty rock and told me it was a giant diamond, but it sure didn’t look like any diamond I ever saw. And he has been known to make stuff up.”
Willow nodded. “An unpolished gemstone doesn’t look like a gem on a starlet’s neck. It’s an industrial diamond, but it’s huge. Gigantic. It’s —”
“Diamond-jira!” Jack interrupted.
“I wanted to do that joke!” Willow scowled.
Jack said, “I also managed to steal one of the Nazi ledgers, and it’s got a list of a lot of the slaves they used in the mines, so we turned that over to some European groups who were pretty excited to see it. Turns out they mainly used Gypsies, because they thought Jews weren’t any good at long-term physical work. So no Rosenbergs went down there.”
Willow insisted, “And I’m glad of it! How would I ever tell Mom and Dad that some of those things rampaging around that volcano are really our relatives?”
Jack frowned. “Well, they were someone’s relatives. No matter how you slice it, some actual people got tortured and mutated.”
Alex just barely finished up with her workout and managed to lift 285 pounds with her TK without giving herself a migraine, when it was time for the phone call. She dialed in. “Terawatt here.”
Jack announced, “General O’Neill here, with Action Girl and some of my staff.”
Riley called in, “Colonel Finn, calling in from the Doctors Without Borders compound. And sir, thank you for the clean clothes.”
A voice Alex had heard tons of times on documentaries proudly announced, “Nigel Thornberry here, with my wife and Debbie and … Shaman.” There was some hooting and screeching in the background. “Oh. As well as Donny and Darwin.”
Eliza’s mom added, “And I’d like to thank Colonel Finn. The new satellite dish and satellite phone he installed for us yesterday are working much, much better than the old one.”
Debbie contributed, “Now finally I can watch ‘Dancing with the Stars’ without losing ninety percent of it!”
Sir Nigel snorted. “She tried to tell us that ‘Jersey Shore’ was an important documentary about American coastal wildlife.”
Jack said, “That is true, in the very loosest sense of the words.” Alex could hear the smirk from the other side of the country.
There was a tiny slap sound, which Alex figured was Willow hitting Jack for being a smart-aleck when he was on the phone with new people.
Jack said, “We also want to send Shaman some SRI gear, like one of our earjacks and one of our satellite phones, but one of our regular Terawatt phones isn’t as useful when she’s a solo superheroine out there. We’d also like to help Shaman get some official recognition, which may require going through the U.N., since a deputization by the United States is not going to be of much use there, either. We also have some people who can help with a uniform, protecting her identity, and similar issues we’ve run into.”
Debbie said, “I’ve got the uniform mostly worked out. I had to step in, after I saw what she was going to use.”
Eliza fussed, “It wasn’t that bad! And Darwin really liked it!”
So after that, the call mainly turned into grown-up stuff that Alex knew she needed to concentrate on even if she really wanted to just chat with Eliza and maybe Debbie, too. Eliza’s folks wanted to be sure Eliza would be at least as safe as usual, and Jack wanted to be sure that Eliza had a way to call for help if she needed to, and Willow wanted to set up secure connectivity to the CommVee, and other stuff that Alex made herself focus on. But she had Eliza’s new number, and the CommVee’s new number, so really she was really pretty much set.
* * *
On Friday, she ate a big breakfast and left the house in her Terawatt uniform early enough to get down to Edwards Air Force Base before seven. She’d guessed that the time of the morning meant she was going to be in the Blackbird instead of the Cessna, and she was right. And she was silvery, with her presents pulled into her morph, so she was set.
The flight took just under an hour, and it was as beautiful as ever. On flights like this when she wasn’t stressing about supervillains and other bad stuff, she got to look out and see the coolest view ever, unless you were up around the ISS. And after the Blackbird dived back into the atmosphere and slowed down, she bailed through the little port when the nice pilot told her it was time, and she zoomed off toward the ground at hundreds of miles an hour, which was so fun she wished she could share it with Hanna. Or Jo Lupo. They would both love it.
When she got lower, she popped her tPhone out of her morph and tracked Jack’s GPS signal to a military car in a huge parking lot for a huge military hospital. When she flew down to where the beacon was telling her to go, Jack was sitting in the back of the car, on the phone with someone he was not being very respectful to, given the faces he was making at the cellphone.
He hopped out of the car when she landed and went normal. “Ahh, Tera! Great timing. Lob those presents in here. If there’s a really good one, you could always give it to me instead, and we’d give ’em a coupon for Burger King value meals, or whatever.”
She used her TK to set the presents on the seat before Jack closed the door and signaled his driver. She fibbed, “I don’t think you’d like the boxed DVD set of ‘Sailor Moon’.”
“Of course, that must be Charlie’s present.” He put his hands on his hips in a silly posture. “By the power of the moon, I will cry like a baby if you’re mean to my Sailor Scouts!”
Boy, Jack sure knew a lot about non-guy stuff. And really, she had thought a tiny bit about getting it for Hanna, but Sailor Moon was a lot whinier than Alex remembered her being when Alex had been little. Hanna probably wouldn’t enjoy ‘Sailor Moon’.
Jack led her into the hospital and whispered, “Really scowl at these jerks. We got two doctors, a physics dork, and a computer dweeb who are giving Carter grief.”
Okay, she was not happy to hear that. In fact, her face was already turning into a scowl without asking permission first. “What’s the deal?”
“Oh, come on, say ‘what’s the sitch’. Please?”
“Stop it … Ron.”
He did a pretend whine. “Can’t I be Rufus instead?”
“You can be Mr. Barkin.” But she had a really hard time saying that with a straight face.
As they walked in, he reminded her, “Full Tera-tude.”
Tera-tude? She was so telling Willow on him.
She rose a foot off the floor, put a stern look on her face, and used her TK to make her hair wave like it was in a light breeze.
Jack stepped up to a desk. “General O’Neill and Terawatt here to see Major Samantha Carter. Now.”
“Yes, sir!” said a little nurse who looked like she was about sixteen, even if Alex figured the nurse was probably at least twenty-one or twenty-two. The nurse’s voice rose to a squeal. “You brought Terawatt!” She gasped, “Can I have your autograph? No wait, you don’t sign autographs, what was I thinking … Can I get a picture with you?”
“Of course.” It was really hard not to break into a big smile when this woman was so excited to meet her, like Alex was someone mega-awesome. Okay, it was also embarrassing, especially with Jack standing there smirking the whole time.
Alex used the nurse’s cellphone and her own TK to take a nice photo of the two of them, with Terawatt slightly behind and to one side. The nurse held the phone like it was something fragile, and asked, “Can I put it up on my Facebook page?” When Alex nodded, she added, “Can I put it up on your Facebook page?” Alex just nodded again.
The nurse squealed with excitement and rushed back behind her desk. “Oh, let me see … Dr. Burns has really detailed requirements about visitors, because of the thing, but I’m sure those don’t apply to Terawatt …” She filled out two forms and printed off two little cards that fit inside clip-on visitors’ badges. “Here you go! Third floor, take that elevator there and then turn left to the isolation areas.”
Alex noticed Jack snorting in amusement when the nurse said ‘Dr. Burns’ so she figured there was going to be a ‘M*A*S*H’ joke as soon as they stepped in the elevator.
Alex figured she’d better do something just in case. She glanced at the nurse’s badge. “Alice?”
“That’s me! I mean, yes, ma’am.”
“Alice, if Dr. Burns or anyone else is mean to you about this, here’s a card.” She gave the nurse one of the SRI business cards she had been keeping in a smaller pocket of her utility belt. “You can call General O’Neill’s office and talk to him personally, or have them call me. Okay?”
The nurse nodded excitedly and looked like she might faint if Terawatt was any nicer to her.
Alex and Jack walked to the elevator. Jack just had to misbehave. “Sweet. I wish I had my own fan club.”
Alex decided not to tell him that he did, and she was totally in it already.
Then he smirked. “So maybe Dr. Burns has a colleague, Dr. Pierce?”
They easily got past the guards on the isolation wing, thanks to the badges. In fact, one of the guards saw who she was, and personally walked them down to Major Carter’s room.
There was a big viewing window that looked like someone had needed to replace it and hadn’t been really careful about matching the paint around the edges. And it was completely blocked on Sam’s side of the window by a huge whiteboard that was covered in physics equations that Alex had no idea about. And there were two monitors to the right of the viewing window, only both of them had video cameras that were covered up with stuff, so they were showing a dark gray mess.
And there was one armed guard on the door, a metal bar across the door to hold it shut, and two heavily-armed soldiers across the hall, behind a big metal barrier. Oh, and it looked like someone had needed to replace the doorframe and hadn’t been all that careful about repainting around the edges.
Jack asked the soldier at the door, “So … Major Carter has started turning into Ms. Marvel in her spare time?”
“Sir! I am sorry, but I am under orders to refer all questions and concerns to the major’s primary care doctors!”
“And who would that be?”
But Alex had already pulled Sam’s chart out of its holder next to the door, and she was peeking through it. She told him, “Based on the illegible squiggles, that would be Dr. Bums and Dr. Moomoo.”
Someone snorted across the hall but managed not to laugh. The soldier at the door carefully said, “Sir! That would be Dr. Burns and Dr. Monroe.”
Jack asked, “Not Dr. Winchester?” No one acted like they got the joke. “So which of these two fine, upstanding guys who can’t write would happen to be on duty right now?”
“Sorry, sir, but that would be above my pay grade. But Sergeant Willis or Nurse Shelton would be able to tell you.”
One of the guys behind the big barrier spoke up. “General? I put in a call for Nurse Shelton. She should be here in a minute.”
A middle-aged woman in nurse’s scrubs came bustling in. Alex thought she looked like she was really tired but not going to admit it.
“Lieutenant Shelton, reporting as ordered, sir!” But underneath the crisp tones, she sounded exhausted.
Jack spotted it, too. “At ease, Shelton. Can you tell me what’s the deal with Major Carter and her room?”
Nurse Shelton stiffly said, “Sir, I have been ordered not to discuss this with anyone outside of isolation wing personnel and the United States Strategic Command’s Space Warfare Project. It would be unfortunate for me if you were to give me orders directly contradicting those given to me by a direct superior …” Then a tiny smile crept onto her face, and she hinted, “… who is only a captain. Sir.”
Jack nearly beamed at her. “And what would you need to do if a big, mean one-star did give you such an order?”
She smiled slyly. “Sir, I would have to call Dr. Burns at once and tell him, at which point he might rush over and discuss this with you himself. And I would most certainly not contradict him at any point by blinking twice.”
Jack repressed a smile. “Then assume I have just issued you such orders, lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir!”
Alex noticed that none of the soldiers in the area seemed upset about this Dr. Burns having to run over here and deal with a grumpy general.
Nurse Shelton pulled out a cellphone. She could hardly keep the grin off her face. “Doctor Burns … Yes, sir, you told me not to call unless there was an emergency but there is one … No, Major Carter hasn’t blasted down the door again … No, sir, there’s a general here ordering me to provide answers about Major Carter’s room and condition. And he brought Terawatt, so this could spin out of control really quickly unless you get right up here. Sir … Yes, sir, I’ll be right here when you arrive, unless there’s a Code Blue on one of my patients.”
She gave Jack an expressionless face. “I believe that the doctor will be here very quickly, sir.”
So Jack pulled out his own cellphone. He looked through his contact list and then picked a number. “Oh, hi, Major Sewell. It’s General O’Neill, your boss’s personal headache. Could you tell General Kremer his space warfare people have Major Samantha Carter locked up like a terrorist in Guantanamo, and Terawatt just found out, and I’m pretty sure he’d rather not have this splashed all over every news source known to man, so I’m having to step in and handle this in my own inimitable … Yes, ‘style’ would be a good word there. Thanks, Sewell. See ya.”
He looked over at Alex and said, “That ought to kick over the hornet’s nest.”