Tekgrrl

by A. J. Menden

  “And I’m disturbing anyway.” He looked around at us. “What the hell are the EHJ doing here? Do you know there’s an all-points bulletin out for them?”

  “They’re hiding out here.”

  “Really?” A gleam filled his eye.

  Luke stepped forward. “We can’t let him escape. He’ll tell them where we are.”

  “So, what are you suggesting, that we kidnap him?” Paul asked.

  “We’re taking him prisoner. He’s a known criminal,” Luke pointed out.

  “So are we, thanks to Simon,” Toby said.

  “And I’m a reformed criminal, thank you very much,” Cyrus said.

  Fantazia snorted. “You’re not going to try to claim you’re a good guy now, Cyrus.”

  “I helped your hot little friend over there when she needed some memory retrieval.” Cyrus pointed to me. I felt Paul tense.

  “You did that because you owed me one,” Fantazia remarked in a cool voice. “A very large favor.”

  Cyrus frowned. “Don’t go bringing that up, Fantazia. I mean it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Or what?”

  The room started to shake a bit, and I could almost see a change come over Cyrus as he began to power up. Fantazia looked bored.

  “Stop it!” Wesley snapped.

  Cyrus gave Fantazia a sharp look, but he settled back down.

  “See?” Luke said. “He can’t be trusted. We need to hold him prisoner.”

  “We’re not in the business of taking prisoners,” Paul said.

  “Besides, where are we going to put him?” I asked, motioning around. “It’s a bar, not a jail.”

  “He’ll turn us in!” Selena said, siding with her man.

  “Everyone relax,” Fantazia spoke up. “No one’s getting in or out of this dimension without my say-so.”

  “He got in,” Kate pointed out.

  Fantazia narrowed her eyes. “Yes, before I got the walls up. They’re in place now. No one’s going anywhere. So if anyone’s taking prisoners, it’s me.”

  “Fantazia, there’s got to be a big reward for turning them in,” Cyrus said eagerly. “I’ll go halfsies with you.”

  “Cyrus, sit down and shut up!” she snapped, and the whole room vibrated again. The lights in the dim bar flickered like there was a power surge. Judging from Fantazia’s face, even for a non-magic user like myself, it wasn’t hard to figure out where it was coming from.

  She took a moment to compose herself. “I need a drink. Anyone else?” Not waiting for a response, she went over the bar and mixed a cocktail that started glowing red.

  “So, now what are we going to do?” Lainey asked Wesley.

  Everyone turned to look at him. I could almost feel Paul cringe.

  “Lie low for now and hope everything blows over?” Toby offered.

  “I don’t see many other options,” Luke agreed.

  “We need to try to prove that we’re not the problem and we’re not doing anything wrong,” Paul said. “We need to clear our names.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Kate asked. “In case it escaped your notice, Paul, we’re on the run from Simon.”

  “Paul’s right. We need to prove we’re not doing anything wrong,” Wesley said.

  “I’m right?” Paul looked amused. “There’s a first.”

  Wesley gave him a look. “We need to show Simon, the government, all the other teams and the general public that we are not controlled by anyone—and that our focus remains the same as always: helping people.”

  Everyone turned shocked looks on Wesley.

  “What?”

  “We can’t do that!”

  “We’ll be arrested the moment we step out of this dimension!”

  “We’ll continue to patrol,” Wesley continued as if they hadn’t spoken. “We’ll go out every night and fight the good fight.”

  “Wesley, I have no powers,” I pointed out. “And now no gadgets.”

  “You have the telekinesis,” he replied.

  “That I can’t control.”

  “We’ll work to help you learn.”

  I was frustrated. “Yeah, well, I can’t fight without any technology, and I don’t see any spare engines or even a DVD player to take apart here.”

  “Technology’s not exactly my friend,” Fantazia admitted. “Television creeps me out.”

  Paul ran a hand over his face, clearly thinking about what was lost. “I blew up the labs so Simon’s team wouldn’t have our technology.”

  “All of our work, gone,” I muttered.

  “Not totally.” He caught my eye. “As part of the program, all of our computers dump to a server at an undisclosed location. Any files you had are saved somewhere. That’s something.”

  I gave him a grateful smile.

  “Undisclosed,” Cyrus scoffed. “Try the office building across the street from the Elite Hands of Justice headquarters.”

  We all turned to look at him.

  He gave us an innocent look. “What?”

  “If he knows, they’ll know,” Luke said.

  Cyrus looked offended. “Hey! Do you know how long I worked to get that piece of information? That’s no easy security system you kiddies have, and no way is some government flunky going to be able to hack it like I did. Give me some credit.”

  “The point is, we can get our information back and rebuild,” Wesley interrupted.

  “Mindy and I worked for years on a lot of those inventions,” Paul said. “They’re not going to rebuild themselves in a day.”

  “I’m not expecting that. And, we’re not going anywhere.” Wesley looked around. “You and Mindy can work to rebuild with whatever spare parts we can scrounge up, and we can patrol every night. This is how the rest of the teams do it, kids, unless you’ve forgotten. Few fancy gadgets to play with, no unlimited funds, and no time as media darlings, they’re just people with abilities who want to help. That’s all. That’s how this team was founded way back when. Maybe this problem with the government is exactly what we needed to get back on track.

  “Now, to see about accommodations. Fantazia, a word.” He walked over to her and they started another conversation in rapid-fire Italian.

  “Only the Reincarnist could see us being wanted by the law as a good thing,” I muttered. Catching Lainey’s hurt look I said, “Sorry.”

  She sighed. “He’s displaying his usual lack of tact, but he’s got a point. At the same time, Emily shouldn’t have to live like this.”

  “No, she shouldn’t,” Paul agreed, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think you two are crazy for trying to raise a kid in our mixed-up world.”

  Lainey narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you saying Simon’s right, she shouldn’t be with us, Paul?” She looked ready to throw down.

  Paul raised his hands. “No, not at all! I just don’t know how you do it, that’s all. Our lives are stressful enough on a normal basis; add a kid to the mix and my nerves would be shot.”

  It was a good thing I really wasn’t interested in a relationship with Paul. He wouldn’t be interested in my own hope of someday having a kid.

  “We’ll have a problem the moment we step out of the door and the authorities see us,” Paul said, clearly trying to change the subject.

  “We’ll go to help the police round up a wanted criminal, and they’ll round us up right along with them,” Luke agreed. “Unless we fight our way out.”

  Selena nodded. “We need masks or something to conceal our identities.”

  “How’s that going to demonstrate we’re helping the world?” Paul asked.

  “How’s running around trying to help and getting caught by Simon Leasure going to help?” Kate retorted.

  “Well, you all wanted Wesley to be the team leader,” Paul exploded. “Now he’s leader and the one making the big decisions. Ask him.”

  “I’m going to try to call Forrest,” Toby spoke up. “Maybe he can get us in with someone who can straighten up this whole mess.”

  “Don’
t call him,” Paul warned. “You don’t know he won’t tell someone where we are.”

  “What, he’s going to tell Simon we’re in a bar in another dimension?” Toby retorted. “I think we’re safe.”

  He went to open his cell phone, but Paul made a motion and Toby dropped it. The gadget was smoking.

  Toby turned incredulous eyes on him. “You melted my phone!”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you jeopardize the rest of the team’s safety to make a booty call,” Paul snapped.

  “You have got to be kidding! He can help us, and you crack wise with booty-call jokes?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Toby!” Paul glared at him.

  “You’re right it isn’t. Maybe Wesley won’t be stupid enough to turn down help when we need it.”

  The whole room shook violently, and we all turned to see Fantazia working some sort of magic. The tables and the bar faded and then disappeared, replaced by several couches and chairs. The room we were all standing in seemed to shrink as well. I stumbled into Paul, who reached out a hand to steady me as we all stepped closer, getting the disconcerting feeling of the walls closing in.

  I glanced around. In the half of the room where there once was the bar and a few surrounding tables, now there was a long hallway that led off into new rooms. Wow. The fun of owning a pocket universe must be in changing it around however much you wanted. But then Fantazia collapsed into one of the chairs and started rubbing her forehead, muttering to herself, and I realized just how much it took out of her to do this.

  “Wesley, I think we need to contact Forrest to see if he can help straighten things out with the government,” Toby said.

  Wesley shook his head. “We can’t right now, Toby, not until we’re sure we can get a secure connection to him. Maybe we can use magic to telepathically connect—that’s harder to track. Let me think of some options before you try.”

  Toby nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Paul shook his head, a frustrated scowl on his face.

  “Now there are five extra rooms we can stay in,” Wesley remarked. “We’re going to have to share, and someone needs to keep an eye on Cyrus.”

  Cyrus was affronted. “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you’ve been press-ganged into this little adventure, and I don’t trust you not to go wandering off to try to collect some reward for our capture.”

  Cyrus shrugged. “You’ve got me there, Old One.”

  “He can’t get out unless I let him,” Fantazia remarked.

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  She looked bored. “Do whatever you want. It’s not my business.”

  “I nominate her as my warden,” Cyrus said, pointing at me.

  “Me?” I squeaked in surprise. Why was it the villain who had the darn crush on me?

  Paul stepped forward in an almost protective gesture. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll do it,” Toby said, wearily raising his hand. “I’m one of the strongest here, and I can always knock him out if he gets out of hand.”

  Cyrus eyed him. “Is that a threat?”

  “No, it’s a promise,” Toby replied.

  Cyrus nodded. “Good to know where we stand.”

  “We’ll bunk together,” Luke said, motioning to himself and Selena. My heart buckled. As if things weren’t bad enough, I had to see visible proof that Luke and Selena had started sleeping together.

  “So that leaves Mindy and Kate together, and Paul…”

  “As the odd man out. Big surprise,” Paul grumbled.

  Kate nudged me and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “That’s convenient for you two.”

  I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth to not say anything back.

  “All you’re getting is four walls and a bed,” Fantazia said. “I can’t provide new clothes, you’ll have to go out and get those yourselves if you need them. We do have working plumbing here, but we’re all going to have to share that, which is going to be a chore. I’m not reworking the whole system so you all can have private baths.”

  “We’re not expecting that,” Wesley said.

  “Damn right you’re not,” she grumbled. “The refrigerator is unlimited, so you all can mooch food off of me as well.”

  “Thank you, Fantazia. We are grateful to your hospitality,” Wesley said.

  “Remember that,” she replied. “Now I’ve got a terrible headache thanks to you people, so I’ll take you to your rooms.”

  I hung back as everyone left, lingering in the open room. Paul leaned up against a wall, also watching them go and muttering to himself.

  I walked over to him. “Thanks for building that escape route for our research. I’m sorry I never thought of that.”

  He cast his suit jacket off on the arm of the nearby sofa. With just his dress pants and shirt, he looked a little less fussy. Dare I think it, he almost looked cute. Wow, I realized. That kiss really messed with my head.

  “It’s something Rath and I discussed when you were first designing the system,” he said. “We decided it would be best if it was something only the two leaders knew, so we went ahead and added it ourselves. I’m sorry for not telling you before. You could have built modifiers to the system to keep people like Cyrus out.”

  “It sounds like you did a pretty good job on your own.”

  He ran a hand over his head. “We tried.” He looked tired.

  “Well, it’s still going to take forever to rebuild everything, especially with hardly anything to work with,” I said. “The fire-sale action still dumps all of our funds to offshore accounts, right? Or did you change that too?”

  “No, the money still goes to the Cayman Islands. Now we’ll just have to figure out how to move it without raising suspicion,” Paul said. “We can modify cheaper tech into bigger and better things, but it’s going to take some time and labor.”

  “Joy,” I said. “Good thing we’ve got time on our hands.” Of course, I didn’t know how I felt about the prospect of spending hours locked in a room with Paul.

  “When we’re not patrolling.”

  “You think it’s a good idea to continue with our jobs as usual?” I asked.

  “I do think it is a good idea, actually. But it’s a good thing that Wesley made the call about patrolling. There’s no way anyone would have listened to me. Like Toby wouldn’t listen to reason when he wanted to call his boyfriend, but he turned around and obeyed Wesley.”

  “Aw, what’s wrong, is Mommy mad that the kids are listening to Daddy?” I joked.

  He frowned. “You saw what happened today, Mindy.”

  “Yeah, I saw you tell Toby what to do and then blow up his cell phone when he didn’t listen.”

  “He could have led the authorities straight to us! I know he trusts Forrest, but it doesn’t mean Forrest’s phone isn’t tapped or that he hasn’t been forced to cooperate with his superiors.”

  “I know, but you could have reasoned with him instead of blowing things up.”

  “It’s not like I enjoyed that.” At my disbelieving look, he flashed a smile. He had a nice smile. Too bad he was always scowling. “Okay, it’s not like I enjoy blowing things up any more than the next red-blooded American man. But I’m more concerned with keeping us safe than maintaining anyone’s love life.”

  “His love life was not the reason that Toby was going to call Forrest and you know it,” I growled.

  “I’m sure it was to try to find out if he could help. But, come on, you can’t tell me his reasons were strictly business.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever, Paul. I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in a real relationship and have someone you care about that cares about you. Toby’s probably worried about Forrest, and vice versa.” I softened my voice. “Look, I do understand why you were concerned about security breaches, but you could have handled it better.”

  “Like Wesley?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “You said it, I didn’t.”

  Paul shook his head. “Sometimes I think I’m the
only one who takes this team seriously.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The team comes first for me. Everything else is secondary. Wesley has Lainey, Toby has Forrest, and now Luke has Selena to be a distraction. And of course you’ve always had Luke…”

  “That’s been over for a long time,” I said.

  “Good.” He spoke without looking at me.

  “Good how?” I took a step closer to him, trying to catch his gaze.

  “I didn’t like seeing you following him around like some airhead when I know you’re much smarter than that.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Talk about a backhanded compliment!

  “You’re a much more interesting person now that you’re not living in his shadow.”

  I decided to return the sentiment, since we were having a moment. “And you’re much more interesting when you’re not so uptight.”

  He let out a surprised bark of laughter. “I’m uptight?”

  I laughed, too. “You say it like it’s a shock. You’re a control freak and you know it. That’s what it really comes down to. You think because you have no love life, no one else gets one.”

  “Oh, that’s exactly what it is, Mindy,” Paul said, but his smile outweighed his sarcasm. “I’m a mean, bitter old man because I don’t have a love life. Maybe if I had one I would become more understanding. Maybe I wouldn’t worry when I’m sharing a bed about how to properly lead this team and try to fix its messes.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. And then, I don’t know what possessed me, but on impulse I leaned forward, bringing my lips to meet his. Maybe I just wanted to see if sparks would fly this time around or if they had been a one-time-only fluke. Maybe I wanted to remind myself that typical type-A personality scientists didn’t do it for me. Maybe I just wanted Paul to shut up. Or maybe something else.

  The fire came back in a mad, dizzying rush. I had a moment to wonder why someone who could be so abrasive, who infuriated me and hadn’t given me a second glance under normal circumstances, could practically make me melt. It was a soft, warm kiss to start, and then drifted into hotter territory as his hands slipped around my waist to pull me in close. I ran my hands up the planes of his chest, digging my fingers into his shirt as the kiss deepened. If I was losing my mind, I wanted to catalogue every experience: the smell of his aftershave, the strength of his arms around me, how his lips tasted.