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Chapter 183 – Dying on the VineAlex watched as Riley stood on one side of the hole and threw a rope across to Jill, who was on the other side. While they did that, Hank Marshall and four National Guard soldiers stood with RPGs and M203s and waited for something to happen.
Oh. Riley had a mannequin dangling from the middle of the rope. He and Jill tugged the rope until the mannequin was over the middle of the hole, and they lowered it until it splashed into the water.
Burnt vines grabbed the mannequin and dragged it over to the big mound, which opened up on one side, revealing a horrible vertical mouth lined with row after row of triangular teeth. And it roared as it swallowed the mannequin whole. Alex had heard that particular roar before. Up close and personal.
Alex groaned. “Crud! It’s Birkin.”
Hank and the guardsmen opened fire on the mound. Rubble and stuff got blasted into the air, but all that really happened as far as Alex could tell was that some of the long orange spikes sticking out from Birkin’s body got uncovered enough that she could recognize them.
“Marshall to Finn. Sir, it looks like we have a new Birkin mutation in some sort of symbiosis or gene-splice with one of the plant-creatures. Based on what I saw, I’m estimating the water’s only about four to eight feet deep, but Birkin is now the root system for the vines, and his mass is perhaps six to ten times what it was before.”
“Valentine to Finn. And he’s still heavily armored. I don’t think there was any penetration.”
“Finn. Agreed. Let’s try something a little more penetrating.”
Riley trotted off to the gear in the Humvees and came back with what looked like a big surface-to-air missile launcher. He aimed it at the mound and fired it. From where Alex was, she could see the missile hit dead center on the mound and go off. But nothing else happened.
“Finn. Looks like we may have to call in an air strike.”
“Valentine to Finn. Birkin may be tough, but I’d bet a bunker-buster could punch a hole through him.”
Alex clicked her earjack. “Terawatt here. Can’t you get him to open his mouth and put a missile down his throat?”
“Finn to Tera. Sounds good. The chewy inside ought to be a softer target than the crunchy outside.”
Alex waited with her camera while Riley and Jill did the mannequin-on-a-rope trick again. A big vine came up out of the water again and grabbed the mannequin.
The vine stopped and waited. Riley and Jill tugged on the rope, but the vine wasn’t interested in a mannequin. Alex had no idea what ‘told’ the vine it had something that wasn’t tasty, but there was something it was picking up. Or not picking up. Maybe the prey wasn’t writhing in panic.
Alex clicked her earjack again. “Terawatt again. I have a really, really stupid idea.”
“Finn to Tera. Let’s hear it, because I figure it’s better than my really stupid idea.”
So she told him.
“Valentine here. I don’t like that. I’d rather we strap ten pounds of C-4 and some remote detonators to a goat and feed it to Birkin, then trigger the C-4 after he swallows the goat.”
“Marshall to Valentine. Isn’t that the ‘Tremors’ technique?”
“Valentine. Pretty much.”
“Finn to team. Marshall, start calling around and see if we can get a live goat-sized animal and enough C-4 here in the next hour. Meanwhile, we’re going ahead with Plan A, if Tera’s up for it.”
“Tera. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
She used her TK to attach the GoPro to the fake steadicam frame, and she handed it to Frank. “There ought to be some pretty good footage in a couple of minutes, and hopefully I won’t get killed.” Then something else occurred to her. “Oh, crud, I’d better call my mom as soon as I’m back, so she won’t worry.”
Frank snorted in amusement. “Does anyone really worry when Terawatt does stuff?”
Alex frowned. “My mom still worries a ton. Especially after the giant spider thing. And the Gojira thing.”
She dived into the gym bag, changed into Terawatt, and flew three blocks further away from the dig before she swept across the sky in a big curve that led her right over the press area so maybe people would stop complaining about who had better pics.
She hovered a foot above the ground in front of Riley. “Colonel Finn, I’m ready when you are.”
He admitted, “I’m not sure I’m ready, even if you are.” He glanced over at Jill. “We’ve got our weaponry, so give me twenty seconds to get ready.” Alex glanced at what Jill had, and it looked like the kind of missile that got fired off an IFV, not the kind of stuff people carried.
Well, that was good. The more boom the better, as far as dealing with Birkin went.
Riley and Jill took up their positions with their weapons. She floated down into the hole. Then she hovered half a dozen feet above the water and slapped the surface with her TK.
Vines rose menacingly, searching for prey. She used her TK and slapped at the parts closest to her, so the vines would move at her. And then they found her.
She just hovered in mid-air and pushed with a little TK, so the vines would grab her. One big one wrapped around her waist and squeezed a lot harder than she had expected. Crud! She just let it hang onto her, and she wiggled like she didn’t know what to do. Okay, she used her TK like a tube around her waist to keep the vine from crushing her.
The vine pulled her closer to the big mound, which looked a lot bigger and a lot more dangerous now that she was down here with it.
She pretended to struggle some more, and she smacked the vine with her TK. The vine just drew her closer to the mound.
When she was only about ten feet from the mound, that massive vertical mouth opened up. It was huge. It was hideous. It was lined with rows of vicious, triangular teeth.
It was exactly what she had been waiting for. She yelled, “NOW!” as she blasted the inside of the mouth with every bit of lightning she had. She went silvery to slip out of the grasp of the vine, and she jetted straight up. The missiles seared past the spot she had been only a fraction of a second earlier, and crashed into the inside of Birkin’s mouth.
She was at least fifty feet above the atrium level when the missiles exploded inside Birkin. She kept going straight up. It was a good thing, because gross chunks of Birkin flew all over the place.
She darted back down. The whole mound that had been Birkin was blown to pieces. Jill and Riley had dived for cover, but they were splattered with Birkin-y gunk. The whole area around the hole was splattered.
She checked herself, and she didn’t have Birkin goo on her, but she realized the vine had gotten stuff on her uniform. Her nice, white leotard looked like a muddy python had given her a couple hugs around the middle. Crud. She needed to wipe that off. And she needed to wash her tights, too.
Still, that was nothing compared to how Riley and Jill looked. They looked like they were going to have to take their BDUs and burn them. It was pretty obvious they had both dived away from the hole and landed on their fronts, because the stuff was all over their back sides and worse toward their boots.
Alex hovered over the rubble and checked, “Are you two okay?”
Jill grimaced. “I landed on some rebar or something, but other than that I’m good.”
Riley looked over at her with worry in his eyes. “Penetrating wound?”
“No sir. I’m just gonna have a nice bruise.”
Alex figured it had to have been a pretty nasty impact if an Orphan had a serious bruise through body armor. And if Jill was mentioning it, the bruise was probably the size of her head and really painful.
He looked at Alex and told her, “Get some antiviral from Marshall to wipe that off your uniform.”
“Roger that,” she smiled at him.
Jill looked down into the hole and asked, “What do we do with that mess?”
Riley studied the mess. “We get an excavator over here and dump everything we can into a rock crusher and get it pulped and disinfected. Then we pour antiviral and herbicide into the water. Then we dump in enough bags of cement that it thickens up so the excavators can scoop it out when they get down to that level.”
Alex studied the mess. “And maybe we stay on duty again tonight, so a giant Birkin-y cement monster doesn’t get a chance to slorp its way through downtown Davenport.”
Riley gave her a lopsided smile. “Tera, have I ever told you that your pessimism is a very reassuring trait?”
“Marshall to team. I have antiviral for wiping down clothing, and I’ll have a decon shower with clean BDUs so you can change out of those clothes. We’ll just ditch the contaminated clothes and gear into one of the crushers.”
Jill scowled. “Damn. I like these boots. It takes a while to break ’em in the way I like.”
“Marshall to Terawatt. I think you only need some antiviral on a rag to wipe off your uniform.”
“Tera to Marshall. If I could get a small bottle of antiviral to wash this stuff in later, I’d appreciate it.”
“Marshall. Not a problem.”
She flew over and wiped off the muddy marks from her leotard. The stupid vine even left muddy marks on her butt. At least the leotard was waterproof, thanks to her dad’s spray, so cleaning off the outside was good enough for now. And there were damp traces she could feel on the upper parts of her tights, so they were going to need washing in her hotel room sink. Okay, black tights weren’t exactly unusual. It wasn’t like she would be hanging her leotard and boots out to dry in front of the whole hotel.
She decided she’d wash her leotard and tights, hang them to dry overnight, and just leave them laid out in the plinth base under her bed if there were times she wasn’t in the room. At least the boots and gloves were clean. She went over them with an antiviral-soaked rag just to be sure.
Riley said, “Tera, you’ve got five to eight again.”
“Roger that,” she replied. And then she realized that she needed to go back to her room, wash her stuff, dry ’em as much as she could, and then do the five-to-eight shift in damp clothes. Ick.
She flew over to the press area, where a bunch of reporters and cameramen were filming away. She hovered fifteen feet in the air and did the ‘hair blowing in a light breeze’ thing with her TK because it always looked cool. “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I would like to thank you for remaining in a safe area while we are dealing with various crises here. We still have multiple levels of underground lair to excavate just to make sure there is nothing else dangerous down there. I can tell you that at a minimum, down there we might find more plant-monsters, more zombies, more zombies with long lethal tongues, some shark-like monstrosities, and some other quite ugly possibilities.” A bunch of reporters were shouting her name and trying to get her attention, so she lied, “I’m sorry, but I cannot stay to answer questions. I have another task to deal with. However, Colonel Finn will probably have a few words for you at the end of the workday.”
She flew over the heads of the reporters and vanished over the rooftops before stealthily working her way back to Frank’s position.
Frank was still watching the work going on around the hole. “You looked great there, kiddo.”
She complained, “Well, look at this mess on my tights. I’ve gotta wash my uniform tonight.”
He stopped and stared at her. “Alex, are you listening to yourself? You just let a monster the size of a semi grab you and try to eat you, and you’re worrying about laundry? I’d be worrying about getting a pint of piss off the front of my pants. And out of my shoes.”
Okay, maybe she was getting sort of blasé about some of this stuff. A little.
She changed back to Alex, even if she left her tights and her leotard out of the gym bag so they wouldn’t get any yuckiness on the other stuff. There was an NBC bag folded up in the gym bag for her, so she put her tights and leotard in it, poured in the antiviral, and then zipped it sealed. She shook it up some, too, and then used her TK to scrub everything while it was inside the bag. She figured that by the time she got back to her room, all she’d need would be the Woolite.
While Frank stood watch in case there was more stuff to photograph, she ate sandwiches and made phonecalls and prepped footage from her GoPro to send off to Laura at KPVC.
“Hi, Mom? It’s me. No, I’m fine, I just wanted to warn you that there might be some scary news coverage from Davenport, but I want you to tell everyone that I did it on purpose so we could kill the monster, and I wasn’t ever in any real danger. Okay? I love you, too. See you Friday!”
“Hi, Willow, it’s me. You’ve already seen some footage? Well, there were some newsies who had cables running off to satellite-dish trucks. No, I wasn’t really about to get eaten by a monster, I just let it grab me so it would open its mouth and we could blast it. Yeah, I need you to tell Jack I’m fine, and send messages to all of the team. Thanks a ton!”
“Hi, Ray, it’s me. No, I’m totally fine, but there’s gonna be some kind of scary footage, but we planned it like that so we could kill the monster. Yes, I really am being careful, but some of this stuff is mega-icky. I’ll be home Friday, and I love you.”
She looked up to see Frank smirking at her. He said, “Do you have any idea how weird it sounds hearing Alex Mack casually telling Terawatt stories?”
She stuck her tongue out at him, which probably didn’t make her look more mature. Then she synched her tPhone to her GoPro, set it so it read like it was Alex Mack’s personal phone, and fired off the edited files to KPVC with a note that Frank should get half-credit.
She puddled Frank under the roof exit door, down the stairs, and out under the second-floor stairwell door. Then she flew back up to the roof and grabbed the camera bags and gym bag and cooler, and flew off to the truck in silvery form. When Frank hiked over, she had already unlocked the truck with her TK and shoved the stuff in the back of the truck. So he just hopped in and drove them back to the hotel.
The first thing she did once she got in her hotel room was wash her stuff and wring it out and hide it under her bed with the gym bag. Then she walked over to one of the fast food joints on the next block and bought two bacon cheeseburgers, two fish sandwiches with extra tartar sauce, two fried chicken sandwiches, and two chicken and bacon and swiss sandwiches with ranch dressing. Plus four large fries. She also got three cans of Diet Coke out of the hotel drink machine.
While she was eating on the way back to the hotel, she decided that Terawatt could be on duty but not be visible, so she took the elevator toward the top floor of the hotel and went silvery with her food and her sodas. She flew up the elevator shaft to the roof housing. Then she slid under a locked door from the elevator equipment area onto the roof, and she flew back to the dig. She went normal in her Alex clothes and just settled in one of Frank’s chairs on the roof of that building.
She clicked her earjack. “Terawatt to Finn, come in please.”
“Finn here.”
“Tera. I’ll be around but out of sight from now until eight.”
“Roger that.”
So she just sat back in the comfy captain’s chair and ate sandwiches and fries. And drank Diet Coke. And kept an eye out for any problems.
Any more problems.
Without Jill to chat with, she got pretty bored. Nothing happened at all. She watched as Riley went over in clean clothes and gave a little press conference. She watched as most of the journalists packed up and left. Two didn’t. It looked like they had expensive cameras and some really expensive night vision gear for after dark. She watched as some of the National Guard troops patrolled around the outside of the dig, while others set up some heavy weapons in case of badness. Boy, was she glad they’d finally taken care of Birkin. And she really hoped his brain hadn’t been trapped inside those creepy forms and then buried under the building for months as its body turned into a plant-thing. That would be mega-yucky.
When Jill showed up at ten to eight, Alex contacted her on the comms. “Terawatt to Valentine. Come in, please.”
“Valentine here. I don’t see you anywhere.”
“Tera. I’m high overhead. Nothing’s happened except there are two ’togs lurking in the press area with serious night vision gear.”
“Valentine. Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll keep an eye out in case they decide to do something stupid, like go explore the dig site.”
“Tera. Take care. I’ll see you in the morning. Terawatt out.”
She grabbed up her trash and flew back to the roof of the hotel before flying down the elevator shaft to where the elevator was. She took the elevator to her floor and went to her room. She got her still-damp stuff out from under her bed and hung it up to dry in the bathroom. Then she Skyped with people until she was ready to go to bed.
* * *
She woke up Thursday morning at the alarm, and her stuff was all dry. Great! So she re-packed her gym bag and got dressed in her overalls and ate a room service breakfast and one of Willow’s brownies before meeting Frank for another breakfast at the place around the corner. There seemed to be some really grumpy reporters glaring their way.
“What’s up?” she asked.
He gave her a tiny smile. “Someone recognized us. You made sure both our names were on your Terawatt footage, and both of us have had our faces on the news enough times, so most of the room knows we’re the troublemakers who have the secret eyrie up on some roof.”
She had to look up ‘eyrie’ when Frank wasn’t looking, and it took her like five tries because she didn’t know how to spell it either. And that turned out to be the excitement for the day. They sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Workers worked. Excavators excavated. Rock crushers crushed rocks and everything else that got dumped into them. Dump trucks trucked truckloads of stuff off to be dumped.
During lunch, Frank pointed out, “I know you’re bored, but this is the way it works in the real world. Even the guys down in the press area are bored. They’re not chatting with each other about their tennis games or anything. They’re concentrating on the dig so they don’t miss that one second of great visuals that someone else might get.”
She reminded herself that A.L. Mack was supposed to be used to this kind of routine if she spent over six months listening to police band radio broadcasts in an attempt to get Terawatt photos. But she wasn’t used to it, and it was really boring.
She just stayed put there until eight that evening, with Frank hanging around to keep her company and look for something newsworthy. When Jill came on duty, Alex and Frank packed up all their stuff, even the chairs and the umbrella and the umbrella stand, and hauled it all back to the truck.
As they drove off to a nice dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet Frank had found, Frank said, “I’ll drop you at the Moline airport tomorrow morning before I go back to the dig. I figure I’ll stay until they get through the very bottom levels, just in case. After all, I don’t have a nine-year-old waiting for me. Or Jack O’Neill.”
“Same thing,” kidded Alex.
He went on, “And I don’t need fancy chairs and an umbrella and fifty pounds of sandwiches either. I’ll probably just go with my ‘repair guy’ routine. I’ve got a toolbox and a toolbelt in the back of the truck. The camera gear goes under the tray in the toolbox, and that leaves plenty of room for a bottle of water and a couple of sandwiches and a few special items like my lockpicks. I’ll probably even choose a different building.”
Not for the first time, it occurred to her that Frank was more Mission Impossible-y than he admitted. She wondered how many times he’d crawled through air conditioning ducts or disguised himself or other stuff like that.
Frank was probably the coolest mentor it was possible to get at Corcoran.
Alex took her gym bag up to Riley’s room, hugged Sam goodbye, and thanked Riley for everything. He grinned and told her he should be the one thanking her.
* * *
Alex woke up nice and early Friday morning. She shoved her stuff in her roller bag, grabbed her camera bag, and made sure she was all checked out before Frank drove her to the airport.
The flights going home were way better. The commuter flight to O’Hare was in a nicer plane that wasn’t as crowded. She sat across the aisle from a young mom and six-year-old daughter, and the daughter was just cute as a bug. She had plenty of time to walk through O’Hare to her connecting flight, which was even on time. She bought two sandwiches and a lunch salad and a bottle of Diet Coke, to go with the last two Willow brownies. She had a window seat with no one next to her, and the guy in the aisle seat was totally focused on his personal DVD viewer for hours, so he never even noticed how much Alex was eating. And the traffic was even okay on the drive home from the airport.
She did feel really sad when she drove past Willow’s exit and she thought about how Willow wasn’t there anymore. She hoped Willow’s house and computers and everything were okay.
And her family was so happy to see her when she got home. They played Forbidden Island again, since it was either that or watching ‘The Iron Giant’ or having Shar fuss a lot. After all, Alex’s mom and dad were fussing plenty, since they had watched that ‘A.L. Mack’ footage of Terawatt almost getting eaten by a giant plant monster, and it sounded way scarier than what Alex remembered.
* * *
Alex just spent most of the weekend with Ray. The two of them took Shar bike riding. They hung out at her house. They hung out at his house. They went and saw a totally cruddy comedy Saturday night and made fun of it while they ate fast food later with Louis and Marsha. Louis had taken Marsha to see a chick flick that Marsha had really liked and Louis hadn’t, but Louis had known ahead of time he’d probably not like it at all. Alex figured Louis was going to get some major rewards for being a good boyfriend later on that night.
And then, on Sunday after church, Alex went over to Ray’s house with her gym bag.
Ray dragged his mom and dad into the living room and made them sit down. “Now, I promise it’s not anything bad, it’s just something we think you need to know.”
His dad checked, “It’s not … something bad?”
His mom asked, “But it’s so important you needed us in here for a sit-down meeting?”
Ray and Alex looked at each other, and Ray sighed. “You were totally right.” He looked at his parents and started counting stuff off on his fingers. “One. We’re not breaking up. Two. Alex is not pregnant. Three. We’re not even having sex yet. Four. We didn’t run off to Las Vegas and get married. Five. We didn’t —”
His dad interrupted, “Ray, maybe you could tell us what you are.”
Ray broke into a grin. “Okay. We are planning on staying together, and we want to get married but only after college. But there’s something about us — especially about Alex — that you need to know. Alex is the most special person in the world.”
Ray’s mom sighed. “Sweetie, we all feel that way about the person we love, and that’s normal.”
Alex decided she’d better help Ray out. “What he means is I have superpowers. I’ve had ’em since the first day of seventh grade. I was the Mystery Kid people talked about back then.”
Ray’s mom and dad looked at each other. His mom gently said, “Alex, we love you, but you’re not the only person in town with superpowers. Everyone knows Terawatt lives here somewhere. Azure Crush used to live here. I’m pretty sure Bob at the Albertson’s has some sort of plant-based power because his fruits and vegetables just do not bruise like everywhere else.”
Ray’s dad added, “And I’m pretty sure Leon at the Honda dealership has some sort of power, because he can balance a new tire just by looking at it.”
Alex smiled a little. “Well, that’s why I brought my gym bag. I figure a ridiculous claim would take a ridiculous amount of evidence.”
She glanced at the gym bag and floated it up four feet in the air before she unzipped it with her TK. Then she went silvery and dived into it. She emerged and went normal in her Terawatt uniform. She floated a foot off the floor, and used her TK to make her hair blow like it was in a breeze, and she held up her hands so she could arc electricity around herself. She pitched her voice carefully, “Good afternoon, citizens. I am Terawatt.”
Ray’s parents froze with their mouths open. She drifted back to the couch and sat next to Ray, who casually put an arm around her.
Ray’s mom came unstuck first. “Alex can’t be Terawatt! Terawatt is … tall! Really tall! And … busty! And you don’t sound like her!”
Ray’s dad managed, “You do sound like her … now. And you did the flight. And the lightning. And … how is this possible? Alex couldn’t hurt a fly!”
Alex used her TK to lift off the wig and mask and plastic makeup. “It’s all disguise so we look different. And Terawatt is wearing five-inch heels. And I had a really hard time hurting anyone when I started, but I had to stop the supervillains Danielle Atron was sicking on the town. I just slowly … got tougher.”
Ray’s mom insisted, “But I saw on the news when Terawatt punched a guy in the jaw so hard he flew backward halfway across a street!”
Alex admitted, “I faked that. I pretended to punch the guy, but I used my lightning to knock him out, and then I used my telekinesis to fly him backward thirty feet.”
Ray’s dad gasped, “But Terawatt flies all over the world at superspeed saving cities … and countries. You’re still in high school!”
Alex sighed. “Yeah, it’s been a major hassle. Over a year ago, the Department of Homeland Security’s secret SRI project came here and faked a bank robbery so they could talk to me. And Danielle Atron sent Azure Crush after little Alex Mack and she kidnapped Mom and Dad, and I really, really needed the SRI to help save them.” She figured this would go way better if she just sort of forgot to mention that Ray got kidnapped, too, and he never told his folks. “And then I found out the SRI is the good guys, and I helped them save Klar, and Action Girl, and a lot of people. And the only reason I can fly all over the world is they have like the last two still-working SR-71 Blackbirds in the country, and they fly me wherever I need to go and they trust me to do the jobs no one else can do.”
Ray’s mom turned and glared at Ray. “Raymond! You just let Alex fly all over the world and get hurt and risk getting killed? What kind of boyfriend are you?”
Ray groaned, “Mom, there’s no ‘let’ around here. I couldn’t stop Alex if I had my own army. And my own air force. And my own Transformers. She’s Terawatt. Besides, what kind of person would I be if I let everyone in Japan or India die because I was being selfish?”
Alex said, “Mom and Dad aren’t real happy about it, either, but they figured out they’d rather be supportive than mad at me all the time.”
Ray’s dad asked, “And you’re telling us now because …”
Ray jumped back in. “Because it might matter someday. And I have my own powers. They’re not much. I’m a little bit stronger and a little bit quicker, but it’s enough that I’m better at basketball than I was last year. I got ’em last fall when I was helping Louis and I got exposed to some of Danielle Atron’s toxic waste dumping.”
Alex added, “Since Ray has GC-161 powers, too, we can actually have a baby someday. But that might be a very long time off, because it’s affected both our DNA, so any baby we have is pretty much guaranteed to have superpowers, too. Dad and Annie are gonna work on some sort of biochemical power suppressant so we could have kids and not have them with out-of-control superpowers until they’re old enough to control their powers and be responsible with their powers. Maybe twelve or sixteen or eighteen. And so you might need to know that your grandchildren could have a superpowers accident someday. Or you might need to know why we can’t have children.”
Ray’s mom was still stuck on other stuff. “But how could you skip school to go … be Terawatt?”
Ray grinned. “Because Alex knows the most amazing general in the world.”
Alex elbowed him, because that was totally not a helpful answer. “The director of the SRI is General Jack O’Neill. The guy who has those Medal of Honor Orphans working for him. And he figured out this dodge. Corcoran College has a mentoring program, and he got someone to tell our principal that important journalists might want me to drop everything and fly to Corcoran College to meet with them to see if they want to be my mentor. So every time we had a Terawatt crisis on a school day, I was just ‘off to Corcoran College’ again. And for the next four years, anytime we have a Terawatt crisis while I’m in college at Corcoran, my official mentor Frank West will be yanking me out of classes to go do real-world photography with him. At least, that’s what he’ll be telling the school. And when we’re married and we have kids, we’ll have a nanny with Top Secret clearance who can take the kids while I rush off to do Terawatt stuff, and we’ll be telling other people that Alex is just off somewhere being a photojournalist again.”
Ray’s dad looked at Ray. “How do you do it, son?”
Ray smiled at Alex. “It’s easy. She’s still Alex. She’s just … Alex with a little bit extra now. And sometimes she has to rush off and do stuff.”
Alex added, “And Terawatt can pretend to be so tough because she has some of the toughest soldiers in the world backing her up. And I have really useful powers so I don’t have to go punch people in the face. I don’t think I could do it if I had Azure Crush’s powers and I had to beat up everyone I fought.” She dived back into the gym bag and changed back to Alex, and then she sat back on the couch next to Ray.
Ray’s dad blinked. “When you said Alex was the most special person in the world … I guess you weren’t exaggerating.”
Ray’s mom looked over at Ray’s dad. “We already knew Alex was special. I guess we didn’t realize just how special Ray is.”
Ray looked at Alex and did a Tommy Smothers imitation. “Mom always liked you best.” Ray’s dad laughed really hard.
Ray’s mom carefully checked, “So is your trip to Paris another super-secret Terawatt thing?”
Alex shook her head. “No way, this is just a big graduation present from my Aunt Ashley. She’s a flight attendant and I’m flying standby using some of her ‘family’ miles so it’s free, and she arranged a one-week layover in Paris and I’ll just stay in her hotel room and we’ll have fun playing tourist. No Terawatt stuff at all.”
* * *
Dwayne looked at his boss and long-time comrade. “Okay, Marshall, where do we go from here? Our men were well-trained. Whoever killed ’em was damn strong, and damn fast. You don’t take down a guy through a wall without that.”
Marshall grimaced. “I knew coming to Paris was a mistake.”