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Chapter 184 – An American in ParisAlex couldn’t wait to fly to Paris. Even if it was going to be flying standby in crowded planes that would totally not be like taking Jack’s Cessna. Or a mega-awesome Blackbird.
But first she had to get ready, and then she had to get Shar off to summer camp, and then she had to pack. Only she needed to pack really light. If it didn’t fit in her little daypack, she wasn’t taking it. Okay, that was the plan anyway.
And she had a ton of stuff already on her tablet computer, thanks to Willow. Along with the computer coursework stuff, there was stuff for Paris. There was an article on the top thirty phrases to know in Paris. There was an article on the Parisian things every tourist wanted to see, and the things every tourist should really go see. There was an article on finding great food in non-tourist-y places that wouldn’t cost a fortune. There was an article on what you should really go see in the Louvre, and it was titled, ‘So you already know what the Mona Lisa looks like’. And Willow was still sending her more stuff, including a zoomable map of Paris.
Jack sent her an email titled ‘ten things not to do in Paris’. It was really funny, but Alex wondered how many of them Jack had done.
Alex helped Shar pack for summer camp. Shar didn’t want to take Piki, because she was worried the other girls would make fun of her. But she did want to take overalls because she wanted to be like Alex. Alex managed to talk her into a reasonable assortment of overalls and camp shorts. Plus plenty of insect repellent and sunscreen. And a couple of fun hats.
So Alex rode up to the camp with her folks and Shar. Her dad was ‘sort of friends, sort of old rivals’ with the camp director, which made things a little weird, but not nearly as weird as back when Alex had been a camp counselor there. And that great big bear was gone, because after Alex and Kelly had that problem with it, some state government people had trapped it and moved it to somewhere safer for it and safer for people.
She so did not want to see what would happen if a bear threatened Shar or one of Shar’s friends.
And the whole place was just as fun and cute as she remembered from her summer being a camp counselor there. The camp counselors were getting all the new girls to put on camp t-shirts, and Shar really liked hers, and Alex helped her dad carry Shar’s trunk into Shar’s cabin.
“So let’s go show our families how we look in our new t-shirts!” said a voice Alex recognized instantly.
She turned around in time to see Kelly ushering all of the girls of the cabin outside to see off the parents. Kelly had a freaked look as soon as she spotted Alex and her dad.
So Alex walked right over and knelt next to Shar. “This is Kelly, and I know she’s the best counselor here, so I want you to do everything she says. And I bet she’s the best campfire cook in the whole camp, so you can learn a ton from her.”
Kelly looked from Alex over to Shar and back. Oh, right. They were in nearly-matching overalls and nearly-matching hats. Alex could practically see the wheels turning inside Kelly’s head. “Alex … what a surprise. This is your little cousin who came to live with you?”
“Yeah,” Alex answered. She remembered Kelly being not-nice about that, back in September. She could tell Kelly remembered, too.
“Yeah!” agreed Shar. “And Alex is the best big sister ever, even if she’s just my cousin.” But then Shar wanted to introduce Alex to all her newfound friends, so the whole Kelly thing got diverted for a little bit.
Still, after the goodbyes, as Alex was walking to the car with her parents, Kelly darted over. “Hey, Alex … thanks for saying something nice about me back there. You know how first impressions matter on stuff like this.”
Alex smiled. “Of course I said something nice. You’re really good at this.”
Kelly gave her a lopsided smile. “We both know Libby wouldn’t have said something nice. And plenty of people at school wouldn’t. And you’re already a famous celebrity so you don’t have to be nice. I saw that stuff you filmed in Davenport. It was all over the TV news.”
Alex didn’t know what to say. “I know there’s plenty of famous people who are jerkheads, but they were probably already huge jerks before they got famous. I don’t want to be like that.”
Kelly gave her a hug, which Alex totally didn’t expect, and Kelly said, “I’ll take good care of Little Cuz.”
In the car, Alex’s mom waited a couple minutes before she asked, “Wasn’t that the Kelly from your school who you had the problems with?”
Alex shrugged a little. “Yeah, but it’s easier not to be mean back to someone when you’ve got superpowers in your back pocket. And I’ve been nice to her all year … mostly. So maybe she figured the battles are all over since the Homecoming Queen and Prom Queen stuff is done. Or maybe it’s easier for her to be nicer when she doesn’t have to keep her guard up, because I think she’s really a lot more insecure than she acts.”
Her dad said, “Alex, that’s a lot more mature than I was at your age. I’m proud of you.”
Alex just didn’t tell him about the thing with Kelly’s ink pen.
Her mom looked back from the front seat at her and said, “We’re proud of you all the time, honey. You’re the most amazing person on Earth, and I’m sure people don’t tell you that anywhere near enough.”
“So does that mean you won’t worry when I’m flying standby to Paris?”
* * *
Alex packed Wednesday night. Her mom had already solved one of her big problems by mailing a package off to Aunt Ashley at the little hotel-hostel-whatever where they were going to be staying, so when Ashley got in the next day, she’d find the package waiting for her. And it had two boxes of energy bars in it. So Alex was only packing six energy bars in the outside pocket of her daypack.
And her mom and dad had bought her a ‘moneybelt’ that was all spandex and plastic so she didn’t even have to worry about metal detectors. Alex had her passport and her card wallet and some traveler’s checks and some cash all loaded in the slim pockets. Frank had told her some tricks for changing money, so she was ready to go get some Euros when she got to Paris.
Alex had figured that she just needed to wear her bulkier stuff on the plane, so she was going to wear a pair of overalls and her sneakers and her jacket, along with the usual stuff. Then she only needed to pack one pair of jeans, a couple of t-shirts, some underthings, and her travel dopp kit and makeup kit stuff with the liquids pulled out and stuck in a quart baggie along with a little bottle of Woolite. That all fit easily, so she added one lightweight nice dress and her ballet flats which packed up really nice and small. She still had room for her tablet and the special charger Willow made for her. And her GoPro with two extra memory cards just in case. The outside pocket got the six energy bars and a collapsible plastic water bottle.
She got up early Thursday morning, showered and dressed, and then went downstairs. Her mom was waiting for her, looking worried even though this was one of the least dangerous trips she had taken in the last year.
Ooh! And her mom had half a dozen breakfast burritos all made up and wrapped so Alex could eat them on the drive up to the airport!
Alex hugged her mom hard and grinned. “You’re the best mom anywhere. And I promise not to get in a super-battle with the Venus de Milo.”
Her mom hugged her back. “Yeah, pick on that poor old lady with no arms, would you.”
Alex tried to be reassuring. “I’ll be fine. Honest. And I’ll call you and tell you all the fun stuff Aunt Ashley and I are doing that you don’t get to do.”
Her mom gave her a smirk. “You don’t think that having you and Shar out of the house at the same time is a vacation all by itself?”
No, Alex didn’t think so. She knew her mom missed having Annie around, and she was pretty sure her mom was already not happy about Alex going off to college and being gone most of the year, and she’d be losing Shar, too. At least her mom had a really good job and friends and stuff.
Alex grabbed a couple of Diet Coke cans out of the fridge and drove off to San Francisco Airport. She managed to finish all the burritos and one can of soda before she pulled into a long-term parking lot. She made a note on her tablet about where her car was parked. Then she hid her keys and the parking ticket under the seat and locked up the car. Having TK meant she didn’t need to carry her keys to get back in the car.
She should work on starting her car’s ignition without a car key. Then she could carry even less junk around. Except driving without a key would be hard to explain.
So she drank the other can of soda while she waited for the parking lot shuttle and rode into the airport. Since she was flying United Airlines, she could use her Mileage Plus card to let her go through shorter lines to get her standby ticket and then go through security.
And when she got to the gate, she was thrilled to hear the plane wasn’t full. There were five available seats, and she was third on the standby list. That was good. In fact, it was a little odd, even if it was a 5:45 am departure time.
She sat down and sent Willow a note asking if Willow had fiddled with the standby list.
About a minute later, she got a text back: not me! but J was bugging IT guys about stuff so maybe.
Somehow, she was totally not surprised. She went off and bought three sandwiches and a bottle of Diet Coke.
So she was one of the last five people to board the flight, which meant she got a middle seat and the overhead compartments were crammed full already. It was a good thing all she had was her daypack and the small bag of food. She was stuck in between a married couple, so they gave her the choice of the aisle seat or the window seat so they could sit next to each other. Score! She took the window seat.
It was still a six hour flight. She was glad she had her own food. She just made sure she stayed awake the entire flight so she could try to adjust to the time difference. She mainly worked on Willow’s ‘the most important phrases in French’ and ‘other French phrases to memorize’. She figured ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ and ‘I do not understand’ were really the most important things on the lists. Still, being able to order food and maybe buy some tiny presents would be good.
She also had a list of possible connecting flights to look over. Willow had checked which of United’s global partner airlines would accept this kind of standby ticket, so there were four other airlines besides United that Alex could fly from New York to Paris. On average, there were basically about two possible flights every hour for the next five hours. She just had to get from concourse to concourse to check and get her name on the standby lists. The first flight was full, and the second flight she had no shot of making the plane because of the length of the standby list, but the third flight looked promising. She went ahead and dashed over to the fourth flight and got on that standby list, too, before she trotted back to the third flight.
So she made a flight to Paris with only an hour and twenty minute layover. She figured that was either really lucky, or Jack’s IT guys were still messing with standby lists for her. She bought an entire deep-dish pepperoni and sausage pizza before she boarded so she had enough to eat on the flight, and she called Aunt Ashley to give her the flight information.
This flight wasn’t as much fun. She was stuck in between a French guy and a New Yorker. Both of them wanted to talk to her, and both were really pushy but in different ways. And it was an eight-hour flight stuck in between the two guys. She took a nap for the last three hours of the flight.
Okay, she tucked her tablet into her pack, shoved her pack under the seat in front of her, and rested her feet on the pack so neither of the guys could steal anything out of her pack while she was asleep.
The flight got into Charles de Gaulle Airport at six in the morning, Paris time. Alex felt like it was the middle of the night. That was probably because it was nine at night back in Paradise Valley, and she’d gotten up mega-early to drive up to the airport.
She hiked down the concourse and texted her mom that she was already in Paris and safe. She was expecting her mom wouldn’t get the message until the next morning, California time. But a text came right back: tht was fast
She texted back. Jack or Willow hard at work
She got back a smiley face and a message to give Ashley their love. Well, at least her mom would be able to sleep now.
She walked through customs and had to show them her passport and declare what she was bringing into the country. Fortunately, she could use her TK to slide it out of the money belt and up inside the overalls so she could reach in and grab it like it was in an inner pocket. She smiled and asked, “Bonjour! Can I exchange dollars for Euros here?”
The nice customs officer gave her a smile back and told her in English just what she needed to do. And when she walked out of customs, Aunt Ashley was standing there looking so excited to see her that it really perked her up. Even if she could use some coffee.
Her aunt bubbled, “This is so great! We’re gonna have so much fun. Now first of all, just call me Ashley. The place we’re staying has a lot of flight attendants, and not just for United, and I get enough grief about my age already.”
Alex grinned. “Sure … Ashley.” She didn’t think of Ashley as old, but Ashley was her mom’s little sister, and there were probably lots of flight attendants who were like Willow’s age or even younger.
Ashley smiled. “Let’s get some of your currency exchanged, and we’ll go back into the city and have breakfast at a café, and go see some awesome stuff. Do you have a suitcase?”
Alex pointed at her backpack. “Nope. I’m traveling extra-extra-light.”
Ashley checked, “Do you have anything in there in case we go eat at a halfway-nice restaurant or we go have a nice dinner at someone’s home?” She looked at Alex’s expression and explained, “I know half a dozen Air France stews, and we may go over to Marie’s apartment on Saturday night.”
Alex got it. “Okay. I brought a nice dress and ballet flats and makeup, just because you said it was a maybe.”
Ashley admitted, “It’s a good thing you’re not carrying a ton of stuff, because it’s a really tiny hotel room. We’re talking one bed, a tiny bathroom, and a really small closet.”
Alex said, “All I need is one hanger and a place to pile the rest of my stuff. And if I can wash some lingerie and hang it to dry, that would be good.”
Ashley smiled. “We’ll take turns. I have clips for that. In my work, you learn to bring a few essentials that don’t take up room in your bag.”
When they got back to the middle of Paris where Ashley was staying, they went up to the room. It was pretty tiny, but the bed was big enough for two women to sleep in. Alex was pretty sure that if it was two guys sharing the room, they’d take turns sleeping on the floor or something. Not that there was a lot of floor space, either. But it was pretty, and airy, and had a nice fourth-floor view out the only window other than the little bathroom window. Alex hung up her dress, put her ballet flats on the floor of the armoire on top of Ashley’s roller suitcase, and made a little stack on the bed of her jacket and jeans and her shirts and her undies and her dopp kit and makeup kit and the quart baggie. She kept the tablet and camera in the daypack and slung it on her back.
It turned out there was a beautiful café just down the block. Ashley ordered for them in French, so they had coffee and ‘pain au chocolat’ which was just what it sounded like: a totally delicious fresh-baked bread with yummy chocolate inside. Alex wondered if Ashley would complain if Alex ate that three times a day.
They took the Paris subway system, which was called Le Metro, and went to the Lido. It was amazing, but the place was swamped with other tourists. And the Arc de Triomphe was cool, but swamped with other tourists. They walked away from the tourist stuff to find a little place to eat lunch. Alex totally didn’t want to go all the way to Paris to eat at MacDonald’s. So they found a tiny place that had hardly any tourists and no other Americans, and they just ordered. It wasn’t that hard when all you had to do was say ‘je voudrais’ before the name of the item on the menu and add ‘s’il vous plait’ at the end. The waiter was friendly, and didn’t mind that their French was terrible, and Alex even remembered to say ‘Bonjour! Mon Francais n’est pas tres bon.’
Ashley giggled, and after the waiter left, she asked, “I thought you said you didn’t know any French?”
So Alex explained about Willow sending her the list of useful phrases and the list of more phrases and the internet translation program she was going to use if she got totally stuck. They walked from there over to the Paris Fashion Museum and spent the rest of the day looking at totally awesome clothing and drawings of cool clothes and all that. Alex noticed that there were hardly any guy tourists in there, except for some really bored guys getting dragged around by wives or girlfriends.
They went back to the hotel and Ashley let Alex get an hour nap, and then they walked with a couple of Ashley’s flight attendant friends to a gorgeous little restaurant where everyone tried to get Alex to eat snails. She knew what ‘escargot’ meant.
Okay, when a really mega-cute waiter told her they tasted great the way they fixed them at the restaurant, Alex tried them. They mainly tasted like garlic and butter, and they weren’t all slimy and gross, like she expected. They were pretty good, really. She even ate some of Ashley’s share. But the regular menu was kind of normal-sounding, once you translated it. It was veal and lamb and chicken and pheasant and stuff like that. It was food that sounded like what an American would eat, except it was prepared in a northern France style. And it all tasted great.
And Ashley’s friend Marietta ordered a couple bottles of ‘vin ordinaire’ which even Alex knew what that was. And Ashley poured a glass for Alex, too, since the drinking age in France used to be sixteen but it was switching to eighteen to match up with the rest of the European Union, so Alex was old enough to drink either way. And she had some of the red wine, which was really good. But she didn’t drink as much as Ashley, and she didn’t drink nearly as much as Marietta or Kathy. Alex knew she was too tired, and she knew she wasn’t used to drinking alcohol, and she knew that if the alcohol was going to do something freaky to her biochemistry, she wanted it to be a small freakiness that would wear off soon.
The rest of the women went off to some club that sounded too old for Alex, so Ashley took her back to the room. They just sat on the bed and talked about stuff for a couple of hours, until Alex really needed to go to sleep because she was about to keel over. So Ashley washed off her makeup and brushed out her hair, and Alex washed her face, and Alex just wore her t-shirt and undies to bed.
* * *
Alex woke up Saturday morning, and at first she didn’t remember where she was. But the sun was shining, and she could hear the street noises, and in a second it all came back to her.
She let Ashley shower first, because Ashley needed time to do her hair and makeup, even if Alex didn’t think she needed it. So Alex ate three energy bars while she waited. Then after Alex showered and was getting dressed, Ashley washed some lingerie and a shirt and hung them up to dry from the shower rod. Ashley had these little teeny-weeny plastic clothespin clips and some really sturdy rubber bands. She wrapped a rubber band around the shower rod, put a clip through both ends, and then let the clip hold something, like one strap of a bra or one side of a pair of panties or one shoulder of a shirt. So ten clips later, there were two bras and two panties and a shirt hanging up to dry. And the clips were small enough that they took up like no room in Ashley’s bag. Ashley also told her you could use the clips to hold curtains closed, or use them as hooks when your room didn’t have enough clothes hangers, or whatever you needed.
They rode the Metro over to Line 1 and from there to the Champs-Elysees, and they spent the day touring the place even if they had gone to the Arc de Triomphe already. It was really gorgeous, even if the shops were way too expensive. She still went into a chocolatier’s and spent sixty Euros just on chocolates. It wasn’t her fault, they were all too delicious! And beautiful. And she shared some of them with Ashley, even if Ashley kept saying she needed to watch her weight. And they went into Louis Vuitton, which was amazing, and Ashley almost spent a totally insane amount on a gorgeous handbag she didn’t even have room for in her roller bag.
Then they went back to the room and dressed up for dinner at Marie’s. Alex even did her hair and did her makeup extra-nice, because Ashley said Alex should look more adult and less like she was a kid because Marie would definitely have wine at dinner and there might even be cute male flight attendants there.
Ashley had her black purse, but Alex just tucked her phone and lipstick under the band of her bra over her sternum, and wore her moneybelt which didn’t show under the dress.
“Alex? Don’t you need your phone? And money? And credit cards? And makeup?”
She smiled a little. “Got it all, only hidden on me.”
Ashley wondered, “Then how are you going to get at your phone or whatever?”
She smiled a little more. “Magic.”
Ashley rolled her eyes a little. “Oh. Right. It’s just so weird thinking of my little niece as all grown up … and ready to go smash Gojira. I see Terawatt on the news, and I have to stop and think ‘oh wait, that’s my niece’ because you two … are not alike.”
Alex really grinned then. “That’s great. That’s what I want people to think.”
They took the Metro to a not-as-nice part of town and walked over to Marie’s apartment. It was a third-floor walk-up, and it was nice for one person, and maybe okay for two people, but Marie shared the place with three other Air France flight attendants.
Marie welcomed them in, hugging both of them even though she’d never met Alex before. She explained that she and her three roommates were on travel most of the time, so a lot of the time when she was at the apartment it was all hers, and some of the time it was cozy, and it only got to be a problem the couple of days a year when everyone was home and trying to wash clothes and get packed for their next assignments.
Marie’s English was totally excellent, and she had a bit of an accent that American guys would think was all sexy. She was a pretty brunette a few years younger than Ashley and even thinner than Alex. And her apartment-mate Elise was out on a date, and the other two were on flights, so it was just Marie and Alex and Ashley and two guys who were Marie’s friends and also lived in the building. Jean-Paul was a flight attendant, and his boyfriend Thomas was an English accountant working in France to be with Jean-Paul.
They had a really nice dinner, with a couple of bottles of white wine that Alex only had a little of. And everyone wanted to hear stories when Ashley spilled that Alex was A.L. Mack, the Pulitzer Prize winner who got close-up footage of Terawatt. It seemed Terawatt was really popular in France, too. They all wanted to hear what Terawatt was like, and what she looked like, and what Alex saw her do, and on and on. So Alex spent a lot of the evening telling people just what she wanted everyone to think about Terawatt.
After the dinner, Ashley led Alex down a different set of stairs and down the street. They got about three blocks before Ashley stopped and said, “Umm, Alex? I think I took us the wrong way. Let’s go back to Marie’s and make sure we can get back to the Metro station. Okay?”
Alex told her, “Sure, Ashley. It’s okay. I thought we were going the right way, too. Even if these buildings are totally …” The buildings looked like they were walking into a really bad part of town, which was not good when they were dressed up in pretty dresses.
Ashley turned, and then gasped, “Oh, God!”
Alex whirled around. There was a man staring at them. He was crouched forward, and he was holding his hands out like he was Wolverine. And Alex could see from the illumination of the streetlights that there was something seriously wrong with the guy’s eyes.
She took a step forward. “Ashley, get behind me. Now. And look behind us to make sure we’re not being surrounded. And look up, too. There could be a threat overhead or on the side of a building or something.”
“But …”
Alex stepped in front of Ashley. “Do it. Check behind us. Now.”
“N-no one else anywhere,” Ashley stammered.
“It’s okay,” Alex tried to be reassuring. “I got this.” But the weird eyes and the creepy posture were telling her that this might be a real problem. A super-powered problem.
The guy leapt at them. He was really fast, and his leap was just way too far for a normal human.
He would have been all over Alex if she hadn’t seen people who were stronger than her. And faster than her. Like Hanna. Or Jo. Or a real speedster. But Alex had worked out with Jo enough that she was ready for something like this. She grabbed him with her TK while he was in mid-leap, and she heaved him over her head and into the side of a building.
“Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod!!” Ashley squealed.
“It’s okay,” Alex insisted. She went silvery so she could look all around the area.
There was no one else around, but Creepy Guy got back up. Okay, she had figured on that, because guys strong enough to jump like that were strong enough to land after a jump like that.
She didn’t want to fly over and engage the guy up close, because Ashley was already coming apart at the seams and needed Alex really close by her. And she didn’t know how strong the guy really was.
The guy punched the concrete block wall and his fist went into the wall. He came away with a chunk of concrete block that he was holding like brass knuckles.
Okay, maybe now she did know how strong the guy was. Crud.
She hit him with a burst of lightning, and he staggered backward, dropping the concrete and smacking against the wall. She hit him with a bigger burst, and he went down.
When he didn’t get back up, Alex went normal and grabbed Ashley. “Hang on, we’re going someplace safer.” She hugged Ashley and grabbed Ashley with her TK, and flew straight up. Ashley screeched again, this time pretty much in Alex’s ear.
Alex set Ashley down on a fourth-story building’s rooftop. “Ashley! Calm down! We’re okay.”
“What was that? And what did you do? And … and … we’ve got to get out of here! And we have to warn Marie! And call the police!”
Alex held Ashley’s hands and told her, “Take deep, slow breaths. Calm down. You can do this. You trained to handle emergencies in jets.”
“B-but that was … That was a supervillain! In Paris! In the middle of our trip! Why is there a supervillain in the middle of our trip?”
Alex grimaced. “I have no idea, but I need to find out. Now I’m gonna fly you back to Marie’s place, and you need to keep Marie and her friends inside and away from windows. If any of them have an inside room with no windows, that would be a good place to go hide until I get back.”
“Wh-what do I tell ’em?”
“That we saw a supervillain loose on the street and we ran like heck. And your crazy niece ran out to get pictures because she’s a photojournalist who does crazy stuff like this. And you need to stay at Marie’s until Alex gets back so you can find her again. And you need to call the cops.”
Ashley asked, “Can I have a few more glasses of wine while I’m there?”
Alex looked at her. Ashley really looked shaken. Alex carefully said, “Yeah, but don’t get plastered. We may have to leave this part of town in a hurry.”
“O-okay.” Ashley tried psyching herself up. “I can do this. I can do this.”
Alex thought about Lanzhou. And Beirut. And Minneapolis. And Ogden’s Marsh. She added, “Look, this may be something in the water, or in the air. Make sure you and Marie don’t drink the tap water, and close all the doors and windows, and don’t use an air conditioner that pulls in outside air.”
Ashley worried, “Alex, why aren’t you afraid?”
Alex sighed a little. “I’ve seen way scarier things than that guy. And if there’s an emergency, you just call me.” She dialed Ashley’s cell phone using a little TK, and when it rang, Alex hung up. “There you go. That’s my ‘work’ number. Don’t give it out to anyone, and don’t let anyone know you have it.”
“Okay. If you can go fight monsters, I can sit in a room and drink wine with Marie.”
“Attagirl,” Alex grinned. She gave Ashley a hug and went silvery with her, flying her into Marie’s building and up the stairs to Marie’s place. She dropped Ashley off. “Be safe.” And she flew off down the stairs.
She flew up to about five hundred feet and started flying around the area looking for more threats. While she did, she pulled out her tPhone and dialed Jack.
“Rosenberg Synagogues and Hog Farms Incorporated, how may I help you?”
Alex was so not surprised Jack would say something like that. She figured it meant Willow was within a few feet of him. “Jack, I think we have a Code Walsh here in Paris.”
“God damn it!” Jack swore. “This was supposed to be a vacation for you! I don’t even have a gym bag anywhere nearby.”
Oh, crud, there were two more people moving oddly, just down in the street below her. And there were two more a couple of blocks further down the street. They were all moving Alex’s way.
“We’ve got people with super-strength and super-quickness. They’re stronger than Hanna but not as quick. And they seem … predatory. They’re recognizable because there’s something wrong with their eyes some of the time. And they just move in a creepy way. I have no idea how this is being spread, or how wide an area is at risk, or where ground zero is.”
Her tPhone buzzed, and her screen said it was from an E.U. Terawatt Liaison Office number. It wasn’t Hermione’s or the screen would have said so. “Jack, find out what you can, but I think the E.U. is calling a Code Terawatt right this instant.”
“Well, good! Too bad they didn’t bother a little earlier.”
She clicked her tPhone over to the other line. “Terawatt here.”
“Terawatt? This is General Nicolas du Vallée. I do not know if you remember me …”
“Of course I do. We met in London. I take it there’s a crisis. Fortunately for you, General O’Neill was suspicious of a rumor about Orphan activity, so I am already on my way.”
“Ahh … Jack said that he was going to treat you as an international resource, but … it is often difficult to hear that kind of rhetoric from your country and believe it.”
After that, she felt guilty about fibbing even more. “Can you tell me where I need to go, and what I will be facing?”
“Paris. I wish that I could be more specific. But our data analysts, including your Miss Granger, picked up some information about Orphan activity in central France, and then part of an American strike team was killed in Paris even though they were not on assignment. It turned out that three of them were slaughtered by what we believe to be two killers working with different M.O.s as you Americans call it. But both killers were very fast and very strong. Forensic analysis suggests at least one is perhaps as strong as Action Girl, if not stronger. One person was shorter than the victims and a knife fighter good enough to take down trained military men, one after the other. That person is either slower than Action Girl or else enough of a rage killer to be unable to focus on other attackers until the damage to the current victim is complete. The other attacker is over six feet tall and strong enough to punch through a hotel room wall and tear a hole as he dragged one victim back through it. The Americans involved refused to cooperate, and they may have stolen forensic evidence from the crime scene. We assembled a joint tactical team of French, British, Dutch, and German units to investigate and … deal with whoever or whatever did this. Those units are in firefights within Paris right now. I lobbied for calling you, but I was outvoted, largely by countries who did not bother to contribute units to the crisis.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, general,” Alex said in her best Terawatt tones. “But you should call me personally the next time this happens. I would rather be on alert for a false alarm than be in this situation.”
“Merci beaucoup, Terawatt. I was hoping that Miss Granger would do that for me.”
Alex scowled a little. “She should have. I’m surprised she didn’t.”
The general continued, “She was presumably instructed not to, and I have noted that Miss Granger does believe in obeying authority. However, our units found a factory run by a well-known European gangster known as Aroon, who we now believe to be an Orphan as well.”
She checked, “And do the British units include Miss Granger and her team?”
“I believe so. For a data analyst, she is very hard to keep out of the field.”
Crud!
* * *
Ron Wellesley slowly backed away, his hands held high. “I surrender, okay? No need to, you know, ram me through a wall like you did Hans. I can take a hint.”
He backed up, hoping his aim was good when he wasn’t looking. These people were really quick and bloody strong, but they weren’t tactical planners. He hoped this would work, or else his mum was going to be yelling at his corpse throughout the funeral. And the good Lord only knew what she’d say to ’Mione.
He backed into a concrete support pillar. All the concrete pillars of the factory were cast over huge steel I-beams that went up thirty feet to some really long horizontal I-beams that then supported the roof structure. And he was depending on that.
Another killer joined the six who were slowly advancing on him. It looked like Hermione was right, and they were too focused on the kill to employ any tactics in the middle of an attack.
He ducked around to the back side of the pillar.
That was the signal to action. Harry kicked open the crate he’d been hiding in, and hosed down the killers with his L85. One ruthless line across their backs at heart level.
Only three of the buggers dropped. All the rest turned to focus on Harry, even if a couple more looked seriously disabled.
The closest one to Harry suddenly acquired a terrible headache, due to the application of a 155-grain sniper bullet, courtesy of Hermione and her L129. It would have been bloody helpful if they hadn’t been separated from Sergeant Moody, who had the Minimi.
If the killers had been thinking tactically, they would have scattered and moved to protective positions. Instead, the remaining creatures charged across a large open area at Harry.
Ron slid partway around the pillar and opened fire. He had worked with Harry long enough to know Harry would sweep left-to-right, so he stayed where Harry didn’t have to worry about putting a stray round in an old mate, and he worked from his left inward.
He dropped one, while Harry dropped the other two.
Ron was about to breathe a sigh of relief when yet another killer leapt completely over a huge storage crate. He could see it was going to land right on top of Harry.