The Infected [Books 1-6]
Page 92
“I mean talk to them, not levitate them into a wall at speed. Even if it’s tempting. You look normal, and have some fame, so that might work. Plus I don’t think Brian would hit you even if you got in his way, since he knows you. The idea is to calm things down. If that doesn’t do the trick, Denis will handle it. That includes Brian if it comes to it. Denis can’t control Brian directly, but if he throws himself in front of the man, I don’t think Proxy will kill him just to get at some police. We’ll keep Mark as a back-up, if it comes to it. Any questions?” They should have had them, but no one asked anything yet. That could be nerves, lack of confidence or simply not understanding what their job really was yet.
Either way she would have liked the questions better.
“Good. Let’s get packed, we leave as soon as the plane is ready.”
2
The only problem with the plane ride was that the jet only had twelve seats in all. As far as the comfy plush ones went anyway. There were a few more, for the cabin crew, but they were small and isolated from the main section, situated near the front. That normally wouldn’t have been an issue, since they didn’t travel in large sections like they were at the moment for pleasure, and Level, Lauren, Marcia reminded herself, using the woman’s real name, wasn’t using a seat. They were all too small for her anyway, so she had to sit in the middle of the isle, her weight centered over the wings. She was heavy, but not so much the pilot had a problem with it once she was in a balanced position. That still left them with seventeen people to find a place for.
Bridget, Scott and Charlot Chambers daughter felt that she should get to come along, since her parents were and it was kind of vacation oriented for Brian. He was her friend after all, and one of the only people that the girl would listen to all the time. She was about to just drop the girl in next to him for that very reason when a voice spoke in her ear, reminding her that Penny was around too. She’d forgotten the girl. That was bad. Not uncommon for her at all, but she might need the woman for her secret mission, so making her feel like she didn’t matter wouldn’t work very well.
“Do we get peanuts on this flight do you think?” She was playing, of course, but they probably would get some snacks or something. There was a cabin crew, which today was made up of one slightly annoyed looking crew cut of a man that was clearly assigned from one of the alphabet agencies to keep tabs on them. He wore military fatigues and looked hard, but she figured him as NSA, rather than the Marine his uniform indicated he was supposed to be. The stance was different for one thing. The NSA tended to be a little loose and sloppy about things like that and marines weren’t. The man would have done better pretending to be ex-army, but she wasn’t going to give him hints and tips on spy craft. It wasn’t her job.
Brian turned and looked at the girl sitting next to him, or at least Marcia figured that’s what he was doing and spoke, not having an ear piece like she did. He didn’t need one, since he could just see and hear Cellophane normally. No one knew why it worked, but the best guess was that Penny needed him too, so he did it. It wasn’t a very technical guess, but the psych people had just kind of shrugged when they mentioned it and everyone else had finally gone along with the idea.
“I don’t know if we get anything to eat on the flight or not. Are you hungry? I guess we could grab something before we go.” He glanced across from him at Karen, who was his girlfriend after all as well as a font of compassion, she looked worried for half a second, but then shook her head.
“No need. Mark and Warren are taking care of that for us. I think we have to be in the air first though, for safety?” The woman smiled at the clump of show people that were all sitting together, and pointed to the very large blue camp cooler tucked behind the second row of seats. They had the space in the cabin, just not the chairs. Finally she just stood and looked around as yet another person came in. Then two more.
Three black suited agents. One of them Reyes, which instantly got her attention. He might know something about what she was planning to do, if he hadn’t been invited in too. That kind of information could be dangerous if too many people knew it, or if you couldn’t trust the people that did. She trusted the man though, she reminded herself. Not as much as she probably should given their history together, but as much as almost anyone but her closest friends.
Lancaster was there too, along with Burke.
It made sense; they all had their normal details on the plane, going on the trip. Lancaster was Proxy’s handler. Brian didn’t really know that, but it was the assignment the man had. He was also Cellophane’s field man. Reyes had Tobin as his watch and Burke handled Prime and to a lesser extent his daughter. The extra bodies were a pain, but they didn’t have to really handle FAA rules either, did they? She’d known agents were coming, but these guys, two of them, had been in the old unit and them being the ones to come along was slightly out of place for what was essentially a vacation. That was fishy. It probably just meant she wasn’t the only one to get the secret invitation to play from Cal Morris. She needed to watch them, just in case.
Brian spoke up suddenly after no more than a few seconds of seeing who was there. He was kind of a natural leader after all. Oh, he didn’t think of himself that way, Marcia knew, but it was true.
“OK, some people that won’t die if there’s a crash give up your seats to the nice soft men in black here. All one big happy family after all, and we don’t want to see anyone getting squished.” He smiled, and started to unbuckle himself.
Waving him back down, Marcia stood.
“Right. You stay. Prime, Impulse, and I have this. We can camp in the back, on the floor.” She started to add that if Scott whined about his suit getting wrinkled she’d kick his ass, but he just nodded and stood without saying anything. Given his incredibly high self-esteem it really should have been a problem, but he just started moving without anyone doing more than mentioning it.
It took a second for her to get it all. Brian had set the man up for it so cleanly she’d nearly missed it. Prime was tough, wickedly so… and vain. So by pointing out that the agents would die in a crash if not belted in, it became a matter of pride for him to protect them. That and the fact that he and Brian were friends and the man had to know that if he didn’t step up, Brian would, and he wasn’t half as able to withstand a crash. It was a bit of a strange pairing, but the whole Chambers family loved the guy. Probably because when everyone else had freaked out on them and thought the adults had been having sex with Bridget, he was the only person that stood up for them. Well, him and Hobbs from Team Two.
Marcia hadn’t. She’d been the one that found the video in the archives that showed they were guilty. Fake tapes, it turned out, but at the time she’d been leading that charge to have them arrested. They’d largely made up. Not everyone had, but the family was cutting her a little slack, because of her first mode. She had to suspect them of something if there was even the slightest evidence of it, she couldn’t help it after all. That was pretty much her thing. People couldn’t help what their first mode was either, so the rule was to forgive any garbage that came from it, if you could.
Not everyone else had an excuse like that. Scott managed it pretty well, but Charlot still had some issues, having a sense of anger toward most people and situations all the time like she did. Bridget though was just plain old holding a grudge. Not against her, since she’d been ordered to go to the gym on fourteen by the Director when the Chambers’ were being confronted with the false accusations. So the girl didn’t associate her personally with the problems they’d had.
She did associate Lauren with it. They’d been best friends before that, so when the giant ex-schoolteacher found out that Prime had possibly been having sex with his daughter, a girl that might not really be able to say no on her own… she tried to kill him. One on one that probably would have been about an even fight, but Level had brought about thirty of her closest super-powered friends with her, showing a lot more foresight than Marcia had thought the woman had.
Great.
Marcia was about to say something about the scene when Brian spoke up.
“Stop that now Bridget. We’re going on vacation, so we all have to get along. It’s a rule.” He said it like it was something real, but then he was an only child which probably gave him a skewed version of things like that.
She had three brothers and knew vacations as a time of covert violent actions and psychological torture. The idea of running over and chanting “I’m not touching you” at Brian while hovering her hand over his face was tempting, but she decided to leave that for later, in case things got uncomfortably boring.
Bridget watched Lauren move back into position slowly, trying to be careful not to damage the carpet as she moved. It was nice after all the whole plane was, done in cream and gold. Everything was expensive too. The girl was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, one that had some kind of cartoon character on the front, red and yellow for her whole outfit and a pair of tiny sneakers without socks.
“Sorry. Slipped.” She lied so obviously it would have been less offensive for her to have said nothing.
Lauren held her tongue and gave no external indication of emotion at all. It was sad to watch the whole thing, since every single side of it was right in what they were doing, as far as Marcia could tell. Lauren had to try and protect the girl at the time and very few people on the planet could have taken Prime down if he really was raping his daughter. The evidence had been solid looking too. Video proof that only one or two people in the world could have put together without it being real. It just so happened one of them, a woman that used to be with the IPB, had. Trivia, the woman who knew everything.
Bridget for her part was mad because no one except Brian had believed she wasn’t sleeping with her dad, even though she’d told them she wasn’t. Then everyone had tried to kill her parents. So yeah, what the hell was the kid supposed to do now? If it had been Marcia she would have waited and set them up, taking them out one by one, making it looked like accidents.
Hopefully Bridget was a better person than she was.
Scott…
The accusations had clearly left him angry. It was something he took pains to hide and he hadn’t lashed out at anyone physically yet, but the man was all about his personal self-worth and pride. How he was keeping himself from taking out a few people himself she didn’t really know. He’d left for about a week, but Brian had talked him into coming back somehow. It was needed for their long term plan to take down Braid and her crew of super baddies that wanted to kill a few million people and start a war between the Infected and the norms. At least that was her guess. He might also just like the Chambers family and not want to see them be hurt.
Brian was a soft touch that way.
Scott shook his head and spoke calmly, almost as if he hadn’t noticed what had just happened at all.
“Bridgie, you promised to behave. This is supposed to be a fun trip, so don’t ruin it for anyone.”
The girl nodded and plunked down on the floor to the right side of the craft, after about a minute of shifting around and trying to balance the various bodies so the plane wouldn’t list to one side or the other, Peggy worked her way back toward them. Her face was long, giving her a reptilian look, though she had good hair, kept in a long golden braid and a muscular body.
Noticing the look Marcia gave her, the women motioned for the others to scoot a bit.
“Hard to hurt, so I probably don’t need a seat belt. Plus, you know, convicted murderer, so I don’t get all the same perks as everyone else. Right?” She didn’t seem abashed by the idea, though the words weren’t glib by any means. The woman genuinely felt bad for having killed the man she did. He’d deserved it, for running his mouth, as far as Marcia was concerned, but the woman had bitten his throat out on national television. That didn’t play well for some reason.
They were probably going to hear about it in the news in the coming days, but that was part of the reason to have the woman along, as mean as it was to subject her to that kind of thing. It made a great smoke screen.
It meant that a few people had to move forward and sit in the extra staff seats, not the plush comfy ones, but everyone that needed one had a seat belt. She’d been worried about that. It was weird, but since she pretty much couldn’t be hurt, it meant her biggest fears had all changed over time. Marcia worried a lot more about the safety of others than she used to for instance.
Peggy settled smoothly, next to Bridget.
“So. Vacation. I think I vaguely remember that kind of thing.” The voice was smooth and warm, so Marcia smiled and rested her head against the bulkhead behind her.
“Yeah. Really nice beaches I hear. Looking forward to it.”
The chatter was polite after that, though Bridget kept staring at the back of Lauren's head and included a few others in the mix, including Kerry from the cooking show, but not Denis, even though they sat side by side. Then, Denis hadn’t been involved in trying to kill anyone that day. Except Brian, and he’d forgiven him for it, even though it hadn’t been a first mode thing at all.
It occurred to her that their lives were a bit like some kind of soap opera. Now they just needed a few love quadrangles or the like, and they’d be all set.
The flight was long and they didn’t have movies on board, but Tobin and Peggy sang, with Lauren doing back-up at times and oddly enough Charlot as well occasionally. They weren’t bad. Well, Tobin was incredible, and Peggy was better than most pro’s, but the other two were pretty good too. It worked well. Marcia felt a bit envious for a bit, since she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, not that it had ever really come up in her life. Singing hadn’t ever been even a pastime for her. She’d always had other things to work on. Most of them pretty deadly.
The problem with travel, at least for her, was a simple enough thing. People started to get on her nerves after a few hours. It took an act of will to not snap at people in close quarters, because, try as she might, it was almost impossible for her not to start noticing the lies and exaggerations that normal people used when chatting. It triggered her suspicion in a big way, which in turn meant her attention to what people did went way up. Incredibly so. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but people in general hid things, and being too close for too long kind of meant she’d try to find out what those were.
Most of it was garbage. Just loads of things she didn’t even want to care about.
For instance, Prime was being very good with her, taking pains to be polite, even though they didn’t really get along. She thought he was a narcissist and not nearly as good at anything as he imagined himself to be, and he didn’t like the fact that she had no problem when it came to telling him all about it. That plus the fact that she’d sort of led the charge against him in claiming he was a child abuser and had once kicked his behind for letting other men sleep with his minor daughter. They were legitimate enough grievances on his part, things she could understand him not liking her over. Still, he was making a real effort not to be a self-centered jerk to her for some reason, and she just couldn’t bring herself to trust it.
It felt like he had an agenda, like there was political lobbying going on, rather than him just trying to smooth over the wrinkles of a bad situation. His voice was smooth and pleasant when he turned to speak to her directly, about halfway through the long flight.
“Quartz… is something going on? I mean…” The large, muscular and incredibly good lookin
g golden colored man in a suit way too nice for floor sitting nearly whispered the words to her. It was so furtive that Bridget instantly perked up and moved closer too.
“I couldn’t help but notice that this trip came up out of the blue. I’d suggested we go originally, since conferences are a good place to make industry contacts, but no one else seemed to see the value. Then yesterday evening we get a phone call saying it’s on? I’m not trying to be suspicious, but that isn’t the way things normally get done at the IPB. The regular format involves weeks or months of planning unless there’s an emergency involved.” He waved his large hands a little, as if trying to grab something out of the air that he couldn’t put into words, but that was pretty clear to him.
It wasn’t like him to bother with insight into anything that didn’t have to do with himself. On that topic he was warped and skewed, but perceptive as to changes. He really couldn’t help it after all, it was a part of him as much as his bullet proof skin. His questioning her triggered her own first mode, which made her want to clam up, since he really didn’t need to know about the actual mission at all, not yet. Still, he had to be given something… didn’t he? Otherwise it would make him a lot more wary, which would be harder to deal with later.
Bridget changed Marcia’s mind about what to say before she could even formulate a reply, her head ducking close, mouth pressed nearly to ear. Not that half the people on the plane couldn’t hear them anyway, one way or the other.
“Is it Braid?” The words came out serious and dry, though too high pitched for her to lend a lot of weight to at first.
For about three seconds. Then her stomach dropped and she had to fight against sitting up straight and barking out a denial that would have the girl asking even more questions. She wasn’t supposed to know about that issue at all. The fact that they were in a secret war with the original first team of the IPB, from back before they were even called that was known to only a few people and the hyper-impulsive blabber mouthed teenage girl wasn’t one of them. At least she wasn’t supposed to be.