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Chapter 189 – FalloutGeorge Mack had gotten into a bad habit. Whenever Alex was away, he watched the news channels, and he focused on news from where Alex probably was. Sometimes this was really reassuring. Sometimes it was utterly terrifying. Sometimes he simply did not want to know how awful things were in the vicinity of his younger daughter, even if Alex was better at this than anyone else on earth.
It wasn’t right that all of this garbage was on Alex’s shoulders. But then it wasn’t right that all of this garbage was on Jack’s shoulders, no matter how much preparation Jack had gotten first. And it wasn’t right that Willow had gone through such a horrid childhood only to find out that the things she was proudest of were genetically engineered into her.
Sometimes he felt so guilty about not realizing Alex’s secret that he couldn’t sleep. He had failed her for four years. He would have thought he was the worst father in history, but since he learned Alex’s secret, he had learned about Willow’s parents. And Hanna’s father. And some other people so horrible it was hard to believe they could exist outside a bad novel.
Sometimes he wondered what else he could have done. He had created an antidote for Alex, but now they knew it wouldn’t have worked for long, and Alex would have needed to take it every day or so for the rest of her life. Now they knew that a biochemical he had worked on, a biochemical that he had believed was a great breakthrough that would benefit millions, had done something awful to his younger daughter. And it had done even worse things to some other people.
If only he hadn’t trusted Danielle Atron. She had utterly fooled him for so long. How had he not seen the sociopath that lurked within the smiling businesswoman? Thank God for Dave Watt.
He also regularly said thanks for Jack O’Neill. Alex could have gotten involved with some really unpleasant military and political types. Jack had protected her from so much, and had helped her with so much. Jack had helped so many people just since he pulled Alex into the SRI.
George changed to another news channel while he rode the exercise bike. This time, there was an utterly useless story about Buffy Summers getting a new reality show for late fall. Great. Just what he wanted. Another reality show about people he wouldn’t want to meet in real life. And some Maine senator was patting himself on the back for some anti-bullying legislation that Alex’s press conference was probably really responsible for. And …
And there had just been a nuclear blast in the Utah desert just east of Las Vegas and not far from St. George. Which was where Alex and Shar and Hanna had been heading.
He stopped, the pedals moving on and yanking his feet around in circles. “Barb! Get in here fast!”
“George, what on earth is … Oh, my God.”
She snatched up her tPhone and called Alex. There was no answer. She called Shar’s phone. Still nothing.
George suggested, “Maybe they’re out of range of any cell towers. Call Hanna’s satellite phone.”
She dialed and held her breath. No answer.
They looked at each other in a conjoined terror.
She frantically dialed Jack O’Neill. He answered on the third ring. “Barb? Do you have any news? We’ve lost all contact with all three of ’em. And Will says the GPS tracker in your SUV is gone.”
Barb fearfully asked, “Jack, how’s that possible?”
Jack carefully said, “They could be okay. Maybe they just caught the EMP — the electromagnetic pulse — and it fried all their electronics. I’ve got people moving toward their last known position at their best speed, and we’ll find ’em.”
Barb asked the question George was too scared to ask. “J-jack, this was a nuclear bomb. What if … there isn’t anything left to find?”
“Goddamn it, Barb! You can’t think like that! Give Alex a chance to pull something out of her hat. Again. For all we know, the badguys fired this off as their self-destruct after she flew everyone out, but they got their electronics fried.”
They talked to Jack a while longer, but eventually he needed to transfer to another line and get reports from his Team Two who were still on their way to the site. George would have asked how Jack could have people getting to the site that quickly, but he remembered Alex and Hanna had been through this kind of thing too much. They had probably called it in before they did anything drastic. And Roswell couldn’t be that far from the site of the blast. He grabbed his laptop and pulled up MapQuest to get an estimate.
Barb sat beside him, clutching his hand and trying not to whimper, as the newsman on the television talked about ‘the complete devastation just on the other side of this ridge’. He didn’t think he could bear to see what it looked like. Maybe it was a good thing that National Guard and police forces were keeping the reporters from doing anything dangerous, like venturing into a possibly radioactive crater.
Hmm … MapQuest said a straight line from the Roswell base to the blast site would be around five hundred fifty miles. And Alex had told him she’d flown a couple of times in a Bell Super Huey, which according to Wikipedia had a cruising speed of 155 mph, so about three and a half hours flight time once they had gotten the signal and loaded up and got out to the chopper.
He and Barb might have to wait a couple more hours just for Jack’s people to get on-site and start searching for the girls. And all he could do was sit and watch news programs that were going out of their way to dramatize things and make things seem even worse. He held Barb and rubbed her back. He really wanted to tell her that it would all be okay, but they both knew that someday, it wouldn’t be. So far, Alex had come home every time, even if a few times she had been battered or sick. He wanted to believe Alex would always win. That she would always come home to them. That it could be like the old Westerns, and the hero would always win, and the villains would always lose, and you would always be able to tell who was who by the color of their hats.
It was over an hour before Barb’s tPhone rang. She flipped it to speakerphone.
“Barb? It’s Jack.”
She tried not to sob. “What’s the news?”
Jack said, “Alex is okay. Hanna had to hike to the highway and flag down someone who would drive to where there was cellphone reception. And she took the license plates off your SUV so it wouldn’t be ID’ed by the press. She said it’s covered in dust now, so it doesn’t even look like the real color, and it took about a hundred hits from flying debris, so it looks like it got left out there about a year ago. We’ll do what we can about it, but we’ll have to replace a lot of the electrical system.”
George checked, “Alex is okay? But what happened?”
Jack told them, “They’d already called in a gray goo scenario. That’s the name for nanotechnology that eats everything in sight and just makes more and more nanites until there’s nothing left but piles of nanites. Shar got infected with the stuff and it tried to take her over. Hanna also said her power levels just kept increasing. She used mental domination to knock out Alex and paralyze Hanna. Then she told Hanna to tell Alex several things. That she loved Alex. That she was choosing not to be a gun —”
“Oh, God,” Barb sobbed.
Jack continued, “Yeah, I got the ref, too. And if I didn’t, the next to last thing she said was ‘You stay … I —”
George found himself saying the line at the same time. Barb was saying it, too, while tears streamed down her face. “You stay … I go … no following.”
Jack complained, “I am never gonna be able to watch that movie again. The last thing she told Hanna was to grab Alex and run as far and as fast as she could. Hanna got far enough over the ridge and down the other side that they only got hit with the EMP and some effects from the overpressure smacking the ridge they were behind.” He took a deep breath. “Hanna thinks Shar turned herself into a nuclear bomb. We knew it was theoretically possible, based on test results from some of the crap those Shop a-holes tested her on. Hanna’s pretty sure Shar’s dead. I’m sorry.”
Barb burst into tears. George took the phone from her hand and asked, “So where’s Alex?”
Jack told him, “When Alex woke up and saw the mushroom cloud and realized the truth, she accused Hanna of failing to save Shar, and she jetted off to the west, leaving Hanna behind. I think pretty soon you’re going to have a desperately upset superheroine showing up on your doorstep, and she might not be very rational. I sure as hell wouldn’t be. You’ve got to get some food into her and just be there for her. And get her to call me and yell at me some, instead of at Hanna. And check her for radiation exposure or burns, and monitor her for radiation sickness. And we’ll have a DHS-cleared psychiatrist for her to talk to as soon as she’s ready.”
“We … Are you sure Shar’s really dead?”
Jack sounded like he was choked up. “There are no guarantees in life, George. But even if she was a hundred percent heat-resistant, the radiation at ground zero would … It would be instantly fatal. You need to accept that we’ve lost her, and that she died being a superheroine, which is what she really wanted to be.”
“How can we just … accept something like this? And how can we possibly have a funeral for a little girl who’s been atomized?”
Jack swore under his breath. “Okay, we’ll have a cover story for you in a matter of hours. And you can go with ‘cremation’ instead. Maybe a request to have her ashes scattered over her parents’ graves. I know it’s not fair, and it’s not kind, and it’s … not right. But it is. Willow and I were really looking forward to being ‘aunt and uncle’ to a nine-year-old. I’ve got to tell Willow now. She’s probably going to call you pretty soon after. She may not be speaking to me at that point.”
George didn’t know what to say. Shar was … gone. She had lived with them for less than a year, and she had already wormed her way into their lives. Into their hearts. It really did feel like they had lost a close relative. But in many ways, Alex had been more like Shar’s mother than Shar’s ‘cousin’. He knew that Alex would have given her life to save Shar, but that wasn’t that meaningful in Alex’s case, when Alex had already been willing to give her life if she had to, to save millions of people in dozens of battles all over the world. North America. Europe. Asia. Africa. Alex had protected so many people from so much, and what had she gotten for her hard work? This. She’d lost her only ‘child’.
He held his weeping wife and moved her to the kitchen. And he prayed that this didn’t break Alex into pieces.
* * *
It was another hour before he heard the slight pop of the secret portal in the garage. A silvery shape darted past him and up the stairs at a pretty amazing speed. It occurred to him that he’d never really seen how fast Alex could fly if she really made an effort.
He scrambled out of his chair and ran up the stairs after Alex. He could hear Barb was right behind him.
In Alex’s room there was a sobbing, shaking lump under the covers of Alex’s bed. He rushed around to the other side of the bed so Barb could sit on the side closer to the door, and he peeled back the covers.
It was Alex, dressed like a normal girl, in a casual top and camping shorts and sturdy socks. She was curled up in a ball and crying miserably. And somewhere along the line, Alex’s hiking boots were gone and Piki the Pikachu had migrated into Alex’s arms.
“Her boots?” he whispered.
“Over here on the floor,” Barb whispered back.
Barb leaned over and hugged her. “Oh, Alex …”
Alex just cried even harder. “Oh, Mom! I tried, I really tried as hard as I could, and I was useless! Shar’s dead! She’s dead and I couldn’t save her, and Hanna didn’t stop her, and …”
George hugged Alex from the other side. “Honey, I know it hurts so much, but it’s not your fault.”
“Oh, why couldn’t it be me instead?”
Barb insisted, “And it can’t just be you when you want it to. You know it doesn’t work that way.”
And while Barb held their younger daughter and tried to calm her down, George slipped downstairs and got out the gear he needed. The geiger counter, the far-infrared camera to hunt for burns, and the new cellular degeneration detection system to look for epidermal radiation exposure symptoms. What did it say about their lives that he needed to keep things like this at home and ready to use?
While Alex wept, he scanned her. No radiation. No burns. No epidermal damage. How was it possible to be within a few miles of a nuclear explosion and not have more than a little sand in your hair?
His tPhone rang, and he rushed out of the room to answer it without Alex overhearing. It was Willow, who sounded like she was in tears. “Is Alex home yet? Is she okay? Hanna’s got some road rash and scrapes and bruises, but she thinks that’s it, and I really need Alex to be okay, I can’t lose her, too! And Jack’s not crying but I can tell he’s totally upset and worried and stuff.”
George cleared his throat and clenched his jaws so he wouldn’t break down on the phone. “Alex is home, and she’s safe, and she’s healthy, but she can’t stop crying. I don’t think Barb can, either.” He didn’t mention that he was afraid that once he started crying, he might not himself be able to stop.
Willow sniffled, “Me, too. This is so awful and so not of the fair! I mean, intellectually I knew it could happen, but somehow in my head it was always happening to someone I didn’t know so it wouldn’t hurt so much, and I guess I thought it would be like the TV shows where the hero always wins and saves everyone important and the good guys never die, and this is so awful I don’t know how Jack keeps doing it. I totally need to stop dissing the generals like that Flagg guy because this is so horrible and I don’t know how they keep doing it and not just quit!”
George admitted, “We’ve been afraid of something like this for two years now, and it’s been so much worse since last year.”
“When Jack rammed his way into Alex’s life,” Willow interjected.
He couldn’t dump all the blame on Jack, even if he really wanted to dump all the blame on someone. He disagreed, “When Alex decided she was going to become Terawatt and do more than just defend some local banks and stores from Danielle’s minions. But it’s not Jack’s fault. It’s Atron. And Walsh. And these evil Orphans, because you’ve shown that some Orphans can be amazing people who do incredible things to help people all over the world.”
There was a long pause, and then an embarrassed-sounding “Thank you.”
But before he finished talking with Willow, there was another call on his tPhone. Janet Fraiser was calling from the East Coast, worrying about Alex.
And Willow must have gotten word out to Alex’s ‘team’ because he got worried calls from Ray and Louis, and he figured that meant that Barb was getting frantic calls from Nicole and Robyn and Marsha and Gloria. Then Robyn called him because Barb wasn’t answering her phone. And so did Nicole. Then Marsha. Then Gloria. Then Ray’s parents called because they saw the news and Ray had told them where Alex and Shar were going camping.
He did his best to be patient, because he really wanted Barb to be able to comfort Alex, and he really didn’t think Barb was up to talking on the phone yet. But he didn’t want to be talking on the phone, telling people some of the worst information possible. He wanted to be in Alex’s room, holding Alex and being there for her.
Then the ID on the next call said ‘Graham Miller’. It took a moment for him to remember who that was. He answered the phone, “Yes, Captain?”
“Dr. Mack, I don’t know if you remember me. We met very briefly under unpleasant circumstances. But General O’Neill is still operating off a sat phone because he was off camping with his son, so I’ve been tasked with a lot of the details, along with Sergeant Harriman. Now this may sound cold and unfeeling, but we’re going to list Shar as the victim of a hit-and-run by a truck while your girls were just east of Los Angeles today. We’ll say that Alex saw it happen and she’s completely shaken up and blames herself unfairly, so we can explain why she’s so upset. And it’ll cover why you’re not going to have an open casket funeral, if that’s something done in your family. I also want to suggest the general’s idea of ‘cremation’ and ‘scattering the ashes’ rather than burying an empty coffin, which could in theory create problems later on. You can arrange any sort of funeral you want, and we’ll provide any documentation you need. But we’re also going to have to admit that one of our superheroines died today in a battle against forces of the Empire. We will not tell anyone that Pyre was the nuclear blast. We will let everyone conclude that Empire forces used one as a self-destruct. After India, everyone knows that some of their blocs have nuclear weapons at their disposal, and after Davenport everyone knows that some of their blocs have used self-destructs.”
It took George a few seconds to think through everything. He wasn’t at his best, and he knew it. How did Alex manage to be so amazing in the middle of a crisis? She probably got that from Barb. He finally agreed, “All of that sounds … better than anything I could come up with. Thank you, Captain.”
“Graham. Call me Graham.”
George tried again. “Thank you, Graham. And tell Jack we appreciate everything the SRI is doing for us right now, because we’re really not coping very well.”
He went back to Alex’s room. Alex and Barb hadn’t moved, but Barb’s blouse was wet from Alex’s tears. He wasn’t sure how he was managing to hold up under the circumstances. “Come on. Let’s go downstairs to the kitchen and put some food into our girl.”
“I’m not hungry,” Alex sniffled.
That frightened him almost as much as seeing the news footage of that mushroom cloud. He insisted, “Alex, you can either eat in the kitchen, or else we’ll get that doctor to come over from Camp Atron and put IVs in your arms. But you have to take in some calories. You were in a battle, and then you flew at your top speed for hours. You know what happened to you the last time you didn’t eat enough.”
Alex just let him and Barb shuffle her down the stairs. She sat listlessly while Barb tried to get her interested in something to eat. Alex not wanting roast beef or apple pie or chocolate ice cream? He didn’t want to say out loud how worried that made him, but he could see in Barb’s eyes that she felt the same way. They had just lost one child — they didn’t want to lose another!
Ray let himself in and rushed over to hug Alex. Alex just buried her face in Ray’s chest and bawled. Ray looked over at him and whispered, “How much has she eaten so far?”
George made a ‘nothing’ hand signal, and Ray’s eyes opened wide in shock.
Ray made Alex look into his eyes, and he insisted, “We’re having ice cream. A really big bowl of ice cream.”
“I’m not hungry,” Alex mumbled into his shirt.
He stared at her. “We need to eat. You wouldn’t make me starve, would you?”
“No! I love you!” Alex wailed miserably.
So Barb got Ray one large bowl of chocolate ice cream with lots of hot fudge on top. Ray just picked Alex up and set her in his lap sideways. Then he fed her and pretended to feed himself, too.
Sometimes, it was hard to see just how small Alex really was. George had been seeing Alex as Terawatt for so long that sometimes he just about forgot that she was only 5'7" and slender, and she had about as much spare body fat as a Victoria’s Secret model. Not that he was going to admit to Barb that he knew what Victoria’s Secret models looked like in their lingerie. But sitting like that in Ray’s lap and hunched in on herself, she looked so small and vulnerable that he just wanted to yell at Jack for dragging her into these things.
Even if there wasn’t really any ‘dragging’ going on. Alex had stumbled into this one and the Paris one. She had gone to Davenport this last time on her own. And far too many times, she had simply insisted that she was needed somewhere. It wasn’t as if anyone could keep Terawatt from rushing to the rescue, even if the rescue was on the other side of the world or up in Low Earth Orbit.
But he knew what the problem was. Terawatt was larger than life. Terawatt was tall and powerful and frankly intimidating. Terawatt looked like the kind of superheroine who could beat Azure Crush or even Gojira in a battle. And a lot of the time, his younger daughter was more Terawatt than Alex. But not now.
Ray got Alex to eat the whole bowl while pretending he was eating about half of it. And then Gloria came by with some freshly-made doughnuts that smelled so good George’s waistline was about to explode just from the aroma. While Gloria hugged Barb and they both cried, Ray got Alex to eat three of the doughnuts, too.
It was discouraging seeing how Alex would eat for Ray, when she wouldn’t eat for her own father. But George had known Alex would eventually be more Ray’s wife than his child. It looked like they had already crossed that line.
He hadn’t realized that letting go would be this hard. Or that it would be this soon. At least he still had Annie, since she was focused far more on research than on men.
But Alex was already Ray’s. George made a mental note to push harder on the research for a power suppressant they could administer when Alex had a baby. The excitement of having a grandson or a granddaughter was tempered by the thought of the Terrible Twos only with superpowers tossed in.
Ray held Alex on his lap like she was only a few pounds. George knew his hips and legs wouldn’t take that anymore. And Ray just held Alex and rubbed her back for a long time.
After Gloria left, Nicole and Robyn came by and cried with Alex. Then Marsha and Louis came by, and Marsha cried with Alex while Louis stood with George and made awkward conversation. Then Ray’s parents came over. George and Barb took them into the living room while ‘the children’ sat in the kitchen. Even if none of them were children any longer. Even if some of them had not been allowed to be children for a while.
He really wanted to blame Danielle Atron for that, but if Danielle hadn’t betrayed his trust and done the heinous things she’d done, would Alex have been ready when Hermione Granger showed up on their doorstep? Could Alex have been prepared when Margaret K. Walsh started unleashing nightmares across the globe?
Well, he certainly wasn’t going to thank Danielle for being a greedy sociopath and endangering his entire family.
At least Vince was still in prison, and Lars was back in prison. Danielle didn’t do things like trust or support or friendship, or else by now she would have broken both of them out to help her.
When Ray’s folks left, George checked back in the kitchen. Ray and Alex were still in that chair. Nicole and Robyn and Marsha were crowded around the table on folding chairs. And Louis had powdered sugar from a doughnut all over his mouth.
Before George could complain about that, Louis looked over at him and proudly announced, “I got Alex to eat four more doughnuts!”
George wasn’t sure he wanted to know what crazy thing Louis had come up with this time, even if some of Louis’s ‘crazy ideas’ had turned out to be pretty impressive. The ‘market segmentation’ plan for homecoming, which Alex had complained about at length, had been one of them. And the plan to rescue Willow’s business. And …
He had to admit it. Louis did have a way of thinking. It wasn’t thinking outside the box. It was thinking in a completely different box that happened to have a CEO sitting in it. Maybe he needed to talk to the other company officers about getting marketing advice from Driscoll Enterprises.
He looked around the kitchen. Alex really had some amazing friends. But then, Alex was an amazing person, so it wasn’t a surprise. Even if some of them were a little … quirky.
* * *
Jack answered the sat phone yet again. It was a good thing Charlie was driving the truck, because this wasn’t a good road, and Jack was spending way too much time on the phone. Not to mention that after hearing Hanna’s report, he was really in no condition to be driving. Not that he was going to admit it.
“General O’Neill, this is Major Samantha Carter.”
He rolled his eyes a little. His newest officer was just a little too formal for his liking. He got enough of that from Finn. “Yes, major, I remember who you are. I did hire you, as you may remember.” He could tell Carter had the phone on speakerphone, because he could hear someone trying hard not to laugh and descending into snorts.
Carter just continued, “We’ve got the aerial photos processed and analyzed with the DOE software you got us the permissions for. I knew it had to be a nuke when Action Girl reported that ‘double flash’. That’s a classic indicator.”
He knew that much. He didn’t know the technical details of the physics that were the underpinnings for it, but he knew crap like that. He didn’t waste time telling Carter, because he could tell she was on a roll. He just made a little ‘mm-hmm’ noise that the science wonks always liked so they thought he was really paying close attention to what they were saying.
Charlie whispered, “Boring tech crap?”
Jack gave him a ‘got it in one’ gesture. Charlie knew him so well.
Carter explained, “… so the analytical engine agreed with my initial assessment that the effects were caused by an above-ground blast, probably at one to two hundred feet up, which matches Action Girl’s description remarkably well. It clearly couldn’t be a buried nuke. Also, the radiation profile and the minimal fallout we’ve tracked suggest a very high-grade fusion reaction instead of what we would find in a self-destruct device. In fact, the chemical composition of the fallout suggests that Pyre managed to create a fusion reaction using ordinary air, because the primary traces are the predicted fusion products from nitrogen, followed by those for oxygen. We’ll need a lot more samples, but I believe we’ll find a radiation profile that very closely matches everything we’d expect to find in the air here.”
Jack interrupted, “Major, we will need to provide some disinformation on this. I do not want anyone figuring out that Pyre did this, and that starts with concealing the fact that we had an airburst and a fusion reaction. I know this goes against everything you believe, but I need you to fabricate results so it appears we had a fission device that went off inside the Xymos building.”
Carter’s voice shifted from ‘technical lecturer’ to ‘quiet mom’. “Hanna told me that Pyre just turned nine, and that she was going to be living with you as your niece.”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah. Willow’s gotten really attached to her.” Like he hadn’t. He had really been looking forward to having the little squirt around the house. He wasn’t kidding himself. He knew nine-year-olds weren’t saints. He knew Shar wasn’t some perfect little angel. But he wasn’t exactly the model of a modern major general himself. He’d rather have someone like Charlie who was fun and lively and occasionally almost as naughty as his dad. It was killing him knowing that he’d already lost his new ‘niece’.
Carter carefully said, “Sir, since this is a matter of national security, it’s not like I’m illegally concealing evidence, but rather participating in a DHS effort that’s a legitimate effort against national and international threats. And since their nanotechnology seemed to be a functional ‘gray goo’ scenario, I believe we would have had to nuke the entire area to be sure anyway.”
Well, that was pretty definitely an ‘I’m opposed to doing something illegal but I’m using a loophole for you’ comment. He’d heard one or two from Finn, who made arrows look twisted.
He apologized, “I’m sorry to ask this of you, major, but I know a lot of superheroines, and I don’t want them branded as nuclear threats. And I don’t want mad scientists viewing superheroines as a target for their experiments. And she was only nine. She doesn’t deserve this.”
Carter staunchly said, “No one deserves this, sir. And you got me out of a place that was only a few steps away from ‘experiment on her for the good of science’ so I think I understand your points rather … viscerally.”
He asked, “So what do you need me to do?”
She said, “We’ll need to be in charge of all monitoring of fallout and local radiation.”
He nodded to himself. “Roger that. I’ll call Big Cheese and get him to put the HWAAA in charge of all that jazz. Are there any communities in danger from this?”
Carter carefully answered, “No sir, as long as the current weather pattern holds up. If we get an abrupt change in wind direction, which is admittedly very unlikely, we might have to worry about one of the towns to the northwest. But this is a relatively ‘clean’ detonation, and the fallout we have is extremely light, largely because most of the isotopes are gaseous, with a really tiny fraction in the lighter solid elements like carbon, boron, and lithium.” She groaned. “We’ll have to work up some possibilities for a self-destruct’s fallout profile and ensure that our monitoring registers that instead. And we’ll need to ‘explore’ the blast crater with excavation equipment so we can hide the evidence of an airburst instead of a self-destruct inside a facility. I believe we should be able to have that done in … only three days if we postulate a new type of fission device. I think I know how we can do that. We might even be able to build one for real.”
Jack told her, “Terawatt told me other-you has a brain that’s a national treasure, and I think you just proved that. Good work, major. Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. We’re getting the SUV moved into a shipping container and loaded onto a trailer for a semi. It’s not contaminated, just … affected. Once we have it in a safe area, we can unload the contents and get them returned. But the SUV itself will need an entirely new electrical system, a new paint job, and a lot of body work from all the flying debris that was knocked loose from the ridge by the blast’s overpressure. It might be cheaper to just buy a new car.”
He winced slightly. That was Barb’s SUV unless he missed his guess.
Once Major Carter signed off, Jack had to call George Hammond, and then Sergeant Harriman, and then Forrest Gates. After all, Gates had the SRI radiation exposure experts on his team.
After that, he set the phone down and sighed. “Charlie, I’m really sorry about this. I was figuring some fishing, some hiking, some spying on pretty coeds skinny-dipping in a pond …”
Charlie laughed. “Look Dad, we got to do two out of the three, so we’re good. And really, we both knew this could happen. I know you don’t like being stuck behind a desk, but I feel better knowing you’re not out there fighting giant tarantulas and Gojira and silicates and everything else. We both know these crises don’t check my calendar first. And we had fun. And I know you really miss Willow, because you’re talking in your sleep again.”
Jack managed not to blush much. “Probably asking her to make more brownies for me. Can you get fat from dreaming about baking?”
Charlie smirked, because they both knew that wasn’t what Jack had been dreaming about. He added, “And I really appreciate the advice about Hanna. Although I am still wondering what the hell is wrong with us O’Neill boys.”
Jack smiled. “I think we should ask Ray and maybe Azure Crush’s boyfriend Sergei if they want to become honorary O’Neills, since they’re dating the rest of the world’s scariest women.”
Charlie admitted, “I’ve said it before, but there is no way Alex and Terawatt are the same person. It’s almost like one of those Hollywood ‘multiple personality disorder’ deals.”
Jack said, “They don’t even call it multiple personality disorder anymore. Now it’s Dissociative Identity Disorder. And the mere fact that I know that is a sign I hang too much with Willow. So you think we oughta start calling her Sybil instead of Alex?”
“Maybe ‘Eve’. Or ‘Aaron’.”
“Ooh, good one!” Jack tossed out, “The first rule of multiple personality is … do not talk about multiple personality!”
Charlie laughed, and then said, “We need to make Alex sit down and watch movies with us. And Willow. And Hanna.”
“Definitely. And the first couple of movies should be ‘The Searchers’ and ‘12 Angry Men’.”
Charlie objected, “No way. ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’.”
“Ooh, good choices, but ‘Raiders’ is definitely better after you’ve seen enough of the early black-and-white serials.”
Charlie suggested, “I’ll give you that one. Which reminds me. We need to show Hanna ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Alien’ and about a dozen other movies before we can show her ‘Spaceballs’.”
“Now, about ‘Shawshank’. Good call. I’ll give you that one if you’ll give me ‘The Searchers’.”
Charlie grinned. “I thought for sure you’d insist on ‘The Wizard of Oz’.”
“They’ve all seen it. And we really need to go see it in a movie theater with a big screen. Totally different experience.”
“Good point. How about … ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’?”
Jack smiled. “Sweet. You can’t do ‘please stop Dave’ jokes without it.”
They talked the rest of the way back to base. He smiled and laughed and grinned at all the right places, and Charlie didn’t notice that he felt utterly crushed inside. Jack had way too much practice at that, going back to the day Sarah died.
Well, he didn’t think Charlie realized how much his dad was hurting, although ignoring stuff other guys didn’t want to talk about was another life skill Charlie had mastered, just like not ignoring stuff that women wanted to talk about even when they insisted they didn’t want to talk about it. And listening when women wanted to complain about something, without offering half a dozen suggestions on what they should do to fix it.
* * *
Ray woke up with a start. Something was wrong.
He had been freaked — totally freaked — when Alex’s folks asked him to stay the night in Alex’s room. Even if Alex was clinging to his chest like one of those little things you had to scrape off the bottom of a boat. Barnacles. Right. But when Alex had finally fallen asleep from the sheer exhaustion of crying nonstop for hours, Ray had scooped her up and tucked her in bed fully dressed and then he’d laid down on top of the covers and let her cling to him like he was her life preserver. He felt amazing that he meant that much to Alex, and horrible that Alex was so miserable.
But Alex was gone now. The bed covers were still like they had been, and he was still holding them, but she could have puddled right out of the bed and gone anywhere. He felt like his heart was freezing in fear inside his chest. She could be anywhere. This was Alex, so she could literally be anywhere. She could be inside the walls. She could be several hundred miles away, depending on how many hours ago she snuck off.
He heard the sound of glass breaking downstairs, and he reacted. He darted into the hall, slid down the banister, and dashed into the kitchen. The light was on in the garage, so he stepped over there.
Alex was sitting on the garage floor. Mr. Mack’s secret safe under the workbench was wide open. Alex had a glass bottle in her hand, and another glass bottle was shattered on the floor against one wall.
Ray gasped. “Alex, what have you done?”