Alien Research

by Gini Koch

  “Finally, a perk of being in office.”

  CHAPTER 52

  BECAUSE JAMIE DID US A SOLID and slept in, we did indeed start the day out right. Fortunately we chose not to get too fancy, because we only had time for a couple of orgasms before the baby monitor shared that Jamie and all the pets were up and ready to get on with their day.

  Was glad we’d taken the time to do the deed, though, because once we were up, dressed, breakfasted, had dropped Jamie and the pets off at daycare, and joined the others, the happy glow was quickly replaced with the reality that the prior day had been all too real.

  Most of those in the Embassy and Zoo were still reeling from what had happened. White, however, insisted that we needed to continue to function and get at least the necessary work done. Hard to argue with the guy who’d been dealing with things like this for decades, so we agreed.

  This was the day we normally did the weekly Embassy briefing, so we had the main Embassy staff who were up to it convene in the conference room. There hadn’t been a conference room when we’d moved in, but Pierre had finally had it with us constantly doing big meetings in the ballroom, and had had a couple of the salons on the second floor combined into a nice, spacious conference room.

  In addition to me, Jeff, and White, we had Raj, Doreen, Irving, Amy, Christopher, Pierre, Kevin, who was finally back from Dulce, and Stryker, representing Hacker International. No one felt it was appropriate to ask any of the Gowers to attend, though Chuckie insisted that since the rest of the Gowers were with Naomi, he should be involved in the meeting.

  Tim and Serene came to represent Alpha & Airborne; Brian was staying with Patrick and the rest of the kids at the daycare center. Len and Kyle were being relieved of child care protection duty by the Barones, so they were with us, along with Buchanan, Adriana, and Mister Joel Oliver.

  Rahmi and Rhee asked if I wanted them to stand honor guard over Michael’s body, or if it would be better for them to guard Jamie. I hadn’t forgotten Tim’s point about the animals either keeping things in or out, so I figured we couldn’t have too many trained people guarding the kids, and someone watching out for Brian wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

  Plus it would give the princesses more to do, and while they were much improved in how they dealt and reacted to Earth things in general and men in specific from when they’d first been sent to us, they’d probably get more out of spending time with Denise, Brian, and the kids. So had them join the Barones on Daycare Center Guard Duty.

  “How bad is it in terms of Imageering?” Jeff asked once everyone was assembled.

  Serene shook her head. “It’s bad. All video is corrupted. And I do mean all. Including archival footage. We can’t read anything.”

  “What about film?” Chuckie asked.

  “We can still read film images. But most of our work revolves around live video. Why?”

  “Film is a chemical process, but video stores magnetically. There’s more to it, but whatever they hit us with, it must do something to affect the magnetization of video.”

  “Mahin’s like Storm. Maybe they’ve got a Magneto in the Yates Band of Half Siblings from Hell.”

  Chuckie nodded. “Anything’s possible.”

  “How would they have sent the virus through everything, though?” Christopher asked. “Serene’s not just talking about our archives. We can’t read anything, anywhere.”

  “YatesCorp is a huge media conglomerate,” I reminded him. “They have access to the airwaves; they practically control them.”

  “The hack was good enough that I’d believe whoever did it could also have infected all existing media,” Stryker said.

  “The bigger question is, can we combat it?” Jeff asked. “Or are our imageers rendered as impotent as our empaths?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Serene said. “We’re still in too much disarray.”

  “Speaking of Mahin, where is she and what’s being done about her?” I asked Buchanan.

  “She’s still in Guantanamo. She helped us, but neither your father nor I can be sure she’s changed sides. We are sure she didn’t expect any of the hostages to be hurt, let alone murdered.”

  “Well, that’s something, I guess.” This also brought up a question. “You know, I get why they took Brian, and all the Gowers. But what I don’t understand is why they grabbed Melanie and Emily. They aren’t hybrids, and they aren’t that close to either Alfred or Richard’s bloodlines. And they aren’t in positions of real power, not like Gladys, for example. Or their daughters. Speaking of whom, where are Lorraine and Claudia?”

  “Verifying that everything’s back in order at the Science Center,” Tim said. “They’ll be joining us soon, I’m sure.” He grinned at Kevin. “We trust you, but it always pays to have another couple sets of eyes on things.”

  “No argument,” Kevin said with a laugh. “But I think Kitty has a good point about the specific hostages chosen.”

  “Before we delve into that, we have another pressing issue that’s also political in nature,” Raj said. “The President wants to do a full-on hero’s funeral.”

  Every A-C either grimaced or looked appalled. Realized I’d never seen an A-C funeral. Wasn’t thrilled that I was going to be seeing one far sooner than later. “What’s wrong with that? It’s a sign of respect.”

  “For humans,” Jeff said. “For us, it’s pretty much against our religion.”

  “Really?”

  White nodded. “We believe that once the soul has left the body, there are a few days set aside, if feasible, for the family to visit and come to grips with the reality. Then we cremate the body and scatter the ashes.”

  “The President expects a coffin,” Raj said. “And a full, military-style, twenty-one-gun salute type of ceremony. In part because Michael was an astronaut, and therefore an American hero, and in part because he died defending people against a terrorist attack and is, therefore, a worldwide hero.”

  “How much press is there on this?”

  Raj handed me the morning’s newspapers. Every one of them had Michael’s death as a front-page headline, the World Weekly News among them. The pictures chosen were all different, though most of them showed him geared up as an astronaut. The World Weekly News’ picture, however, showed him and Brian from when we were all in Paris during Operation Confusion, when we’d had them take the credit for saving innocent people from terrorists.

  Jeff glared at Oliver. “Glad you didn’t miss a chance to report on this.”

  Oliver shook his head. “Some things are required. It is my job.”

  “If he doesn’t write the story, then everyone questions validity,” Chuckie added. “He’s known to be your confidant.”

  “I did run the piece by the Embassy Public Relations Minister.” This was Raj’s official title.

  “Did anyone else clear their stories with you?” Jeff asked Raj.

  “Yes, the Stars and Stripes. Otherwise, no.”

  Jeff ran his hand through his hair. “So we have two out of nine. I suppose those are good odds for us.”

  “None of the stories say anything detrimental to our reputations,” Raj said. “They’re all focused on showing Michael to be a hero. Most of them are speculating on the risk of more terrorist activity, though.”

  “Which is, let’s be honest, quite likely,” Oliver said.

  “Very likely,” Stryker agreed. “And not just the Al Dejahl organization. This kind of thing can easily become a game of one-upmanship between the different terrorist factions.”

  “Does it get better?” Jeff asked.

  “It does,” Amy said. “The Gaultier Board is trying to use this as a reason I’m not fit to take over in any capacity.”

  “Why, because one of your family by marriage was murdered by terrorists?” Didn’t even try to keep the shock out of my voice.

  Amy nodded. “Ansom Somerall, Janelle Gardiner, and Quinton Cross graced me with a surprise conference call this morning at seven. Too bad for them that I was up already.
They expressed their fake condolences, then shared that my ties to terrorist targets clearly puts Gaultier Enterprises at risk, and for the good of the company, its employees, and shareholders, I should stop trying to gain any kind of control.”

  “What did you say to that?” Doreen asked.

  “I said that I’d be more than willing to share with any number of the reporters calling to get a story that because my cousin-by-marriage, who is being touted as a true American hero, was brutally murdered, Gaultier Enterprises feels that they now no longer want anything to do with American Centaurion. Then I said I’d be forced to ask those same reporters if they thought Gaultier’s Board had made that decision because they were racist, xenophobic, in bed with the terrorists themselves, or potentially all three.”

  “Oh, so you told them to go screw themselves in business-speak. That’s my girl.”

  “That’s what that actually meant?” Jeff asked.

  “Yes,” Amy said with a laugh. “They backed down, and in fact are now trying to offer any assistance they can to ‘catch those parties responsible for this atrocity.’”

  Stryker nodded. “They released a statement to several online news outlets within five minutes of Amy’s phone call ending. They also made calls to a variety of other numbers we’re still tracing.”

  “You’ve tapped Gaultier’s phones?” This was news to me.

  “Henry’s been working on a phone trace program that, once it makes contact with either the cell phone or the landline the call originated from, can then lock on to any other calls made from that cell or line. So yes, but only this morning. And he’s still working out the kinks. However, I can say for sure that at least three of the calls they made were to overseas, two were to the C.I.A., and one was to the F.B.I. We don’t have exact office or personnel matches yet, so don’t demand them, Chuck. And, as I said, we’re still working on the others.”

  “What countries?” Chuckie asked.

  “France, Paraguay, and Russia.”

  “Figures. Do we think we have more supersoldiers, more androids, more Yates progeny, or all three? Show of hands?”

  “How was that program not wiped out yesterday?” Christopher asked, shooting Patented Glare #3 at me while also ignoring my question.

  “Henry does his initial work on paper,” Stryker replied. “So he had all his notes.”

  “Still that’s pretty complex, even for you guys, to get back up and running in less than a day,” Tim said.

  Stryker shook his head. “We were wiped out. Our friends who aren’t attached to Centaurion weren’t. We called in some favors. We were trying to use Henry’s program to vector where the video feed was coming from, since it was the best option we had at hand.”

  Refrained from asking who they’d called in favors from—between the five of them they had a huge circle of friends, acquaintances, fans, and frenemies. Chose to also not ask if they’d been careful with what they’d shared with whom—yesterday all anyone had been focused on was trying to rescue our people. If some of us messed up security, we’d deal with it along the way.

  “That’s a lot of calls made early in the day immediately after Ames threatened them. To me, that says she did more than tell them to screw off—I think she hit a nerve.”

  “I doubt it’s a worry that they’ll be shown to be racist or xenophobic,” Doreen said.

  Len nodded. “From what I’ve seen of Gaultier, they cover most of the ‘good steward of the planet and a lover of all people’ hype.”

  “I agree. Besides, those worries would mean a call to their advertising, marketing, and PR agencies, not heavy hitter government agencies. Did they call Homeland Security?”

  “Not as far as we know yet,” Stryker said. “Why?”

  “To cover that they were worried about a terrorist connection or attack, I’d think they’d have contacted Homeland Security as well as the C.I.A. and F.B.I. If only to be able to say they did.”

  “We’re still getting back up to speed, so maybe they did and Henry just hasn’t traced that back yet.” Stryker sighed. “The bigger issue from the technology side of the house is the information we’ve lost. Yuri still insists we were hit by Chernobog.”

  Adriana sat up. “Chernobog the Ultimate?”

  “You know him?” I asked her.

  “He’s a myth,” Stryker said.

  Adriana shook her head. “No. Chernobog is real. Very real.”

  Oliver, Len, Kyle, and I all exchanged a glance. “Don’t tell me,” I said, “let me guess. Olga not only knows Chernobog, but they’re cronies and go way back.”

  Adriana’s eyes flashed. “She knows Chernobog, yes, and from way back. But friends? No. They’re not friends—they’re bitter enemies.”

  CHAPTER 53

  STRYKER STARED AT ADRIANA. “There’s no way. The Chernobog myth started in the eighties.”

  Adriana shrugged. “Grandmother was certainly alive and quite . . . active, at that time.”

  “Olga’s former KGB, Eddy. Get with the program. Does she know Chernobog on sight or merely by reputation?”

  “You’ll have to ask her,” Adriana said. She stood up, pulled her phone out, and stepped away to have a fast conversation in Romanian. She hung up and nodded. “If Len and Kyle will assist me, Grandmother would like to join us.”

  “We can go there,” I offered. Olga was wheelchair-bound due to multiple sclerosis. Saw no reason to put her out.

  “No, she said that under the circumstances, she would prefer to come here.”

  “I’ll go along as well,” White said. He and the boys followed Adriana out.

  “We’ll never hear the end of it from Yuri,” Stryker muttered.

  “Whatever. I’m just happy that Chernobog is real. Because a real person can be found, reasoned with, threatened, and, above all, stopped.”

  Tito, Melanie, and Emily joined us before anyone in the room could tell me I was wrong. Melanie looked like Raquel Welch when she’d been starring in movies mostly naked and Emily resembled a young Sophia Loren. It wasn’t hard to see where Lorraine and Claudia got their Dazzler good looks.

  Both women looked no worse for their hostage ordeal, though like everyone else, they did look a little more tired than normal. But, they and Tito looked worried.

  “What’s wrong?” Jeff asked before I could.

  “You mean besides the fact that the only research we have left is what’s on Tito’s laptop?” Melanie asked.

  “Meaning if there’s a new strain of Surcenthumain out there, we don’t know how to counter it any more?” Emily added. “Other than that and all the other fun from yesterday, Tito’s got another question we can’t answer.”

  “I’ve been thinking about yesterday’s attacks,” Tito said. “Kevin, I was wondering—was any other agency hit or affected by the computer virus that wiped us out, do you know?”

  Kevin shook his head. “Didn’t have time to think about asking.”

  “I asked,” Buchanan said, shocking me not at all. “The only agency reporting any issues was the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division.”

  “My division,” Chuckie said with a groan. “Nice. What did we lose?”

  “Your systems back up differently from Centaurion’s, so you lost less. Plus, some of your data was sent over to Homeland Security and the F.B.I., so you’ve probably lost less than it’ll first appear. Damage was still being verified this morning. Angela is aware and investigating, and before you ask, we didn’t tell you until just now because you needed to focus on your wife and her family yesterday.” Buchanan turned back to Tito. “That was a good question. Why are you asking it?”

  “It dawned on me last night, after we all went to bed, that there had to be a reason they stole and wiped out our data.”

  “Tito asked us, but we didn’t hear anything while we were captives that seems relevant,” Emily said.

  “They did it to cripple us,” Christopher suggested.

  “There are easier ways to do that than computer hacking,” Tito sai
d.

  “To learn what we know,” Irving suggested.

  Tito nodded. “I agree with that. However, why wipe us out? They could have hacked us and gotten the information without our knowing it.”

  “Two days ago I’d have told you that was impossible,” Stryker said. “And, yeah, if we accept that Chernobog is real, then that means it’s possible that everything we’ve ever been told he’s done is real. And if he could do what he did yesterday, then he absolutely could have hacked our systems without us knowing.”

  “So why let us know?” Irving asked. “To panic or distract us?”

  “To prevent us from being able to rescue our people at Home Base and the Science Center?” Christopher suggested.

  Tim shook his head. “No. That makes no sense.”

  “Why not?” Amy asked.

  Considered Tim’s statement. “We only lost one person, and they only installed one android.”

  “We were lucky,” Jeff said. “Because we almost didn’t save anyone.”

  “That’s inaccurate,” Raj countered. “While the loss is still painful, to only lose one person during this kind of takeover is more than an acceptable loss ratio. And before anyone starts yelling at me, I’m no happier than anyone else that Michael lost his life because of these terrorists. However, Kitty’s correct—why take over two entire facilities to only install one android, which is already destroyed, and only kill one person?”

  “We know they installed whatever they’ve created that can block the imageers while they were there,” I said. “Could that have been the only reason they took over the facilities?”

  “No,” Irving said. “Think about it. Whoever hacked us hacked every single A-C facility. If they could do that remotely, they could certainly install whatever’s affecting the imageers remotely as well.”

  Stryker straightened up. “Did they do everything remotely? Or even anything remotely? Proximity equals access.”

  “As Henry proved when we hacked Gaultier,” Amy agreed.

  Tim and I looked at each other. “Revenge,” Tim said.