by Gini Koch
“Blank sheet of paper? If so, lemon juice and heat is the right thing.”
“Thanks, Kitty, we’re not starring in National Treasure. No, there’s writing. It just makes no sense at all.”
“Colonel Franklin had that same reaction when he saw your name, Eddy! Isn’t that cool and all? What the hell does it say?”
Stryker sighed. “Tell Centaurion to activate the Avenger Initiative.”
Yi
CHAPTER 71
I COULDN’T HELP IT, I laughed again. And got everyone staring at me like I was crazy again. “He’s amazing, he really is.”
“I’m confused, not amazed,” Tito said. He was obviously speaking for everyone else in the room.
If only Reader were here instead of Paris. He would have gotten it immediately, but he was a comics geek like me. The A-Cs didn’t go in for comics or science fiction movies and TV shows because they lived it in real life, though Jeff might have figured it out, based on the fact that he’d read a lot of my comics to be a good husband and share my interests. But Hacker International really had no excuse.
“Stryker, really, why is this hard to follow? You yourself mentioned protocols. I guarantee Chuckie has them.”
More blank stares. Well, I thought better running my mouth, so I could look at this as getting a double. “Look, in the comics, the head dudes always run diagnostics on their heroes, so they know the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, in case said heroes go to the dark side. The baddies do this, too. In Marvel’s “Onslaught” alternate universe arc Professor X had full rundowns on all the X-Men, focused on how to kill them.”
“That was from a long time ago,” Stryker said, a tad defensively.
“It wasn’t ‘Age of Apocalypse,’ I’ll grant you, but it’s still kind of a classic. And don’t even try to pretend you don’t have every issue.”
“You think Chuck wants to kill us?” Naomi sounded confused and a little upset about the insinuation.
“No. Geez, he wants to protect us. But he’s thorough, and he has to be able to take any one of us out if we go all Crazed Evil Villain on him, right?”
“Right. And he wouldn’t be the only one.” Big George had, thankfully, joined the party. He tapped something on his keyboard, and a document appeared. “I’ve found the file on you, Kitty—Katherine Katt-Martini—Confidential.” He opened it and started scrolling through, quickly. “There’s enough here to make some good assumptions about what you’d do in a crisis,” he said as he reached the end.
“Is that Chuckie’s file on me?” He’d found it awfully fast.
Big George shook his head. “These are from the C.I.A.’s ultraconfidential files. Supposedly, no one in the EDT has access.”
“So, asking the Hacker International guys this question—who’s your loyalty to? The C.I.A., the U.S. Government?”
They all gave me the “duh” look. “Chuck Reynolds,” Stryker replied. “Who the hell else, Kitty?”
“Hey, thought so, just wanted the confirmation.” Wished Jeff were here to empathically confirm, but no such luck. Bruno pulled his head out of his wing and cooed. Right. They could see him. That meant they’d passed the Peregrine test. I hoped.
Abigail nudged me. “I can read the emotions, remember? So can Jeremy. Sis has checked, too—everyone here is working for the good of Earth.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of snapping some quiet photos,” Oliver added. “William and Jennifer have read them.”
“Enemies are not present,” William confirmed.
“Not even Senator Armstrong,” Naomi added.
“I heard that,” he said, though he didn’t sound upset. “I believe, gentlemen, that what the Ambassador would like is for you all to do your jobs and find whatever protocols Mister Reynolds has hidden. Pronto.”
Hacker International took the hint, other than Ravi, who was still busily reverse engineering. The rest of them typed rapidly on their keyboards, some, but not all, with more than two fingers. Bruno went back to sleep.
“I hate to ask this,” Tito said. “But what good will finding Jeff and Reynolds do for us with a hostile force on the way to, most likely, attack and conquer us?”
Naomi and Abigail looked upset. “Girls, it’s a good, legitimate question. As I said not too long ago, you both need real field experience. Here it is. So start thinking like leaders.”
“We’ll get assistance from Alpha Four if we can get Charles back safely,” White pointed out.
“I think Tito’s looking at the bigger picture, Mister White. Tito, what are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering why everything that’s happened this weekend, other than Reynolds being kidnapped, has happened at all. It seems like a lot of work for, well, nothing, really. Earth isn’t truly equipped to fight an interstellar invasion. So why bother with all the other stuff? Take Reynolds out, one and done, the fight’s over before it can start, because we can’t get any backup.”
“It’s a good point,” Buchanan said.
Armstrong nodded. “Why bother with the naked pictures if none of it matters tomorrow?”
“Naked pictures?” Stryker asked.
“Later, Eddy.”
“Promise?”
“No, I’m lying. Never. Get back to work.” Armstrong and Tito had exceptionally good points. Time to stop being The Ambassador, run to a phone booth, and change into Megalomaniac Girl. “Per Tito’s question, pretty much every distraction they’ve tossed at us has done at least double duty.”
“But it’s all pointless,” Abigail said. “If the only goal is to get Chuck out of the way.”
“So that means getting rid of Chuckie can’t be the only goal.”
“Makes sense,” Buchanan said. “But, other than chaos and destabilization, what were your enemies achieving by everything that’s happened this weekend?”
“Why say ‘your’ enemies?” Tito asked. “You’ve been under fire, too.”
Buchanan shrugged. “Only because I’m assigned to watch over Missus Chief. Otherwise, honestly, I haven’t been in any danger.”
My brain nudged. “Maybe that’s because the bad guys don’t know you exist, Malcolm.” He’d only been assigned to be my shadow six weeks ago, and he’d spent four of those weeks in Florida.
“I don’t follow you,” Naomi said.
“So few ever do, Mimi. I mean that Malcolm’s right. Essentially he’s been ignored, and considering his skill set, that’s kind of stupid. And our enemies are many things, but stupid, sadly, is never one of them.”
Think, think. Everything we needed was in front of us, just like always. I had to stop worrying about the impending invasion and the lack of Jeff and Chuckie and focus on what we knew for sure. “Okay, every action this weekend was focused on getting everyone else completely distracted and Chuckie out of the way. But each action also did at least double duty, so that if it failed in one of its missions, it didn’t fail in the others.”
“How so?” Franklin asked.
“Sandra the Android failed to kidnap or kill me, but she slipped a bug into my purse and ensured I’d be kept out of the high-level security briefings, presumably because I might see a pattern or make a connection the others wouldn’t. Senator Armstrong didn’t take the dirty pictures to the person they’d hoped he would, but he identified that he wasn’t on their team any more by doing so. Him taking the new set to me today got him out of t