by Gini Koch
“Clear, and I’ll relay. Should we have Abby and Mahin get the recovered teams into the helicarrier?”
“I don’t think they can. We have what appeared to be the only keys for this level, and while Devon’s team can definitely breach the front door if they have to because it’s normal, I don’t think they can breach the ones we had to use to get down here. Everyone’s ambulatory, in part because this is a workplace and the folks down here have water and such for themselves. We’ll get everyone out with us.”
“Now that you’ve gotten the blockage down, we can monitor you from here. Your signal’s faint, but we’ve got it on the ship’s system.”
“Great. Lock onto as many of us as you can. We’re heading who knows where right now. Also, contact Drax—our goggles stopped being awesome the moment we entered the room we’re in right now. I’d like to see if he can determine what might be in this room that would affect the goggles in this way. And while you’re at it, just for grins and giggles, see if you can locate Siler or Wruck. I don’t think they’re in this facility.”
Jerry and I got off at the same time as Christopher’s call with Devon ended. We headed back to the others at a human trot. Hoped Christopher was merely reserving energy, because if he was running low, we could be in trouble, especially since he hadn’t exerted that much energy so far. That I knew of, at any rate.
“They’re in and met no resistance,” he shared. “They picked the lock without issue, by the way. And the security guards we captured are still captured.”
“Amazing.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“Yeah. There were more than four cars in the parking lot.”
He nodded. “Not a lot more, but yeah, I think we’re going to find more people wherever the last of our team is being held.”
Camilla was back with the others, looking smug, as everyone enjoyed being able to contact people past their arms’ reach. We took stock. Pretty much everyone could walk under their own power, albeit only if they allowed someone to help them. The women didn’t argue, but the men only agreed to this after both Christopher and I pulled a wide variety of ranks and Camilla made some cutting remarks about men and their overabundance of stupid pride.
So, Daniel had Buchanan, Joshua had Falk, Lucas had Len, Marcus had Manfred, White had Kyle, and Adriana had Colette. Camilla took Gardiner, which I approved of—Camilla wasn’t going to let any form of pity affect her if Gardiner tried something.
Joe and Randy had the unenviable job of taking the dead bodies. The wiser course would have been to leave them, but it was clear that Falk wasn’t going to be able to handle that and Buchanan probably wouldn’t be good with it, either. The flyboys were strong enough to carry all three bodies.
This left me and Christopher in the lead and Rahmi and Rhee bringing up the rear, while also handling muscle and fighting as might be needed and carrying the two boxes the A-Cs had filled with incriminating evidence. Thusly set up, we set off for the hidden doorway.
The bright white of this area gave way pretty quickly once we were through the illusion doorway. We were back to normal lighting and a reasonably normal corridor, which we walked down cautiously and stayed quiet, just in case. For no need, apparently—if we triggered anything anywhere it was impossible to tell.
The goggles were working again here, leading me to really believe that the room we’d been in was lined with something odd. Once again, I got information about the concrete. Still twenty feet thick, go design team.
After walking about the length of a football stadium we reached another doorway that was hidden in another blind corner. As Christopher and I peeked cautiously around the corner, it was clear that we’d found another Clean Room. It was bright white and the goggles stopped doing their thing.
This was a smaller room, with a lot less stuff in it. Of course, what was in it was what mattered.
This was a hospital setup, and it was kind of normal, at least more normal than anything we’d seen so far. There were beds and hospital-type equipment all over. There weren’t any medical personnel, but there were a couple of people in here.
Phoebe and Evalyne were on gurneys, strapped down, with various needles and tubes in them. They each had a weird white tube that encircled them and their portable beds. The tube was like a donut that was mostly hole, and it was on a track that attached to the sides of the gurneys. The tube was moving slowly up and down the length of their bodies, from head to toe. They were either both asleep, both unconscious, or both faking it. We were too far away for me to be able to tell.
There were six large men in here as well. And unlike the guys at the main entrance, these dudes didn’t look like regular security. They were all in suits and had a look I was familiar with—the Secret Service and the P.T.C.U. all had this look—these were dudes On The Job. Meaning they were likely to be actual NSA agents, albeit among those working against the government.
I’d thought we were being quiet, but whether we’d made noise, they’d had some kind of warning, or we were just lucky, two of the men turned around and stared right at us.
Then they pulled their guns.
CHAPTER 82
I DUCKED AND SHOVED Christopher back and behind me at the same time—I had the body armor and he didn’t.
“Freeze,” one of the dudes said, as he moved his gun to aim right at me, just like his buddy already had. The other four spun around and joined the Aim At Kitty Party.
Considered freezing, then remembered I had hyperspeed. Flipped into a somersault and came up ready to start shooting. Only I didn’t have to.
Poofs leaped out of my purse—Harlie, Poofikins, Murphy, and a few others—the Poofs of everyone here.
The dudes didn’t shoot. They stared. Then the guy who’d told me to freeze started to laugh. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked in between snorts of laughter. His pals were snickering, too. “You aliens are idiots. What are those going to do? Fluff us to death?”
“Laugh it up. Poofs Assemble!”
Harlie went large and in charge and roared. The other Poofs followed suit. The six dudes went from laughing to screaming quickly while they aimed their guns at the fluffy monsters that had just appeared. They didn’t get a chance to shoot the Poofs, though, because their guns were snatched out of their hands before I could blink.
“Thanks, Christopher,” I said as he stopped next to me, holding six guns.
The Poofs knocked the men down and sat on them, growling and drooling. I found that an impressive touch—it added a lot to the overall horror effect.
“So, dudes on the floor, you get one chance each to be helpful. If you’re not immediately helpful, I’m going to let my Poofs here eat you. Alive. But don’t worry—it’ll be over fast because my Poofies are starving, I’m sure.”
“Wha- . . . what do you want?” the Spokesdude who was definitely not laughing now asked.
“I want so very many things. We’ll start with what’s going on with these women—are they hurt, unconscious, or being kept asleep?”
“They were hurt,” the Spokesdude said. “They’re being repaired.”
“I need Camilla,” I told Christopher. He nodded and zipped off.
Camilla arrived a couple of seconds later. “What do you need?” She looked at the men on the floor. “They’re all NSA.”
“Yeah, I figured. You’re the only one of us trained in medicine. Need you to check out the gals. I’ve been told they were hurt and are being ‘repaired.’”
She nodded and went to the beds, though it was clear she was examining the machines that were still moving slowly over Evalyne and Phoebe.
“These aren’t doing ‘repairs,’” she said finally. “They’re copying both women’s physical structures.”
“What a pity for you,” I said to the Spokesdude.
“Wait, wait!” he shouted as Harlie lowered its face toward his. “Th
ey’re being fixed at the same time. It does both.”
Looked at Camilla. Who shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Fine. Next question. Where are all the people who work in this facility?”
“Day shift goes home at seven,” one of the other dudes said quickly. “The night shift comes on at nine. They’ll find you then,” he added, presumably because he liked living on the edge.
“Oh, they’ll find someone, I’ll grant you that. And it’s always nice to be right. So, next question. What’s really going on here? And by ‘here’ I mean this entire black site.”
All the dudes were quiet. “Many things,” the Spokesdude said finally, presumably because Harlie growled at him.
“Vague replies will not be tolerated. But we’ll try a different question. Is this a secret factory making female robots that are to be used to infiltrate an enemy’s defenses and then explode?”
The six guys all stared at me, a couple openmouthed, which was a mistake, since the Poofs sitting on their chests drooled right into their open yaps. Those guys gagged and choked, but the Spokesdude nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Underground. Aboveground we do research and development on a variety of security measures.”
“Is this site the one from which you spy on everyone?”
“No.”
“Fair enough.” And not my current problem. “Where are the completed Fem-Bots?”
“We don’t know. Our jobs are need-to-know, and where the completed robots are sent isn’t part of what we need to know.”
Had my doubts, but the Poofs were really giving it their all with the threatening and no one else shared anything more or different.
“Why did no one come over to check out all the people running around all over Forest Haven next door?”
“Freaks, losers, teenagers and ‘ghost hunters’ are there all the time,” the Spokesdude said, clearly happy to be talking about something other than what they were doing at this site. “We ignore them unless they try to come onto our property.”
“Interesting. What happens to those few who do? Do they get the same treatment my people have gotten?”
“They get told to leave because they’re trespassing, here and at Forest Haven, and we’ll call the cops. Only your people demanded entry after that.”
Had more doubts about this, but since we hadn’t found any stray teens or homeless people trapped here, this could possibly be the truth.
“What other ways out of this room are there other than the way we came in?” They were silent again, which was an interesting time to be so. “Dudes, trust me, I’ve been seriously pissed off at men I love for quite a while now. I have no qualms taking out my frustrations with them on all of you, and I’m sure they’d appreciate it if I did so. Answer my question or I let the Poofs eat you.”
Murphy opened its maw and leaned toward the head of the guy it was sitting on. “Oh, God, there’s a secret exit over there!” He pointed toward the far side of the room from where we’d come in.
“Are there security measures on this pathway?”
“Nothing deadly,” Murphy’s Potential Dinner said. “It’s secret, only high-level people know where it is. We know because we work high security here. The path lets out in the forest behind us and Forest Haven. There are other paths out from other parts of the facility. They all lead into the forest.”
“Nice of you to offer information without my having to drag it out of you. Who normally uses that path?” Silence again. “Seriously? Do I say it’s Chow Time now?”
“No,” the Spokesdude said. “We’re just afraid to tell you the truth.”
“Be more afraid of lying.”
“We don’t know. There is no normal here.”
That I really couldn’t argue with. “Okay, I’ll let that one slide. Who used that path last?”
They were quiet again, but Murphy’s Potential Dinner finally broke because Murphy drooled right onto him. “Gah! Our bosses. There’s another tunnel that branches from the exit in the forest and goes to our main offices.”
“I’m supposed to believe that whoever’s in charge hoofs it all the way from there to here and back again?” A-Cs would do it, but to an A-C, a few miles was the same as a few steps for a human. Well, as long as said A-C was in shape and all that. “Pull the other one, it has bells on.”
“No,” the Spokesdude said. “They use Segways.”
“Including on the stairs?”
“No, the path is a gradual slope.”
“Hang on,” Christopher said. He left before I could tell him not to.
“If there’s something that you didn’t tell us about, and he gets hurt, I’m going to have the Poofs eat you all slowly.”
“It’s nice to know you care,” Christopher said as he returned. “Amazingly enough, they’re not lying. There’s a network of tunnels down there, all paved, gradual slopes to the surface. I followed the one they said. It took me right to NSA headquarters and there were several Segways there.”
“They use them all the time,” the Spokesdude said. “The main day-to-day people come here several times during each shift. The bigwigs come by when they feel like it.”
“Were any of said bigwigs here today?”
“Yes,” the Spokesdude admitted after Harlie growled a deep, hungry growl. “They left after these two were injured.”
Was about to ask if said bigwigs had left with anyone like, say, a Fem-Bot or two, but my phone rang. The shock of hearing it almost made me jump, but I controlled the reflex. Dug my phone out and answered on the third ring. “Hey, Mom, where are you?”
“NSA headquarters.”
“That was fast. In force?”
“Yes, I prefer to raid with a large number of people.”
“Me too!”
“Good to know. I have P.T.C.U., Centaurion, and Air Force personnel with me including Colonel Franklin. Your Uncle Mort is heading to your location with Kevin, some Field agents, and a lot of marines. And yes, we used the Field agents to get us all here quickly, but no, the men you’re angry with are still at the White House awaiting your triumphant return.”
“Is the sarcasm really necessary, Mom?”
“Yes, kitten, it is. It’s part of my process.”
“I love you. Christopher will meet Kevin and Uncle Mort at the glass doors going down to the level we’re at. I think we have the only keys.” He nodded to me, gathered the keycards from the folks on the team who were holding onto them, and took off.
“You might, but I’m sure we’ll find plenty of keys. Kitten, once your Uncle Mort is on-site, cede authority to him immediately.”
“Gotcha. Mom . . . Evalyne and Phoebe were hurt.” Described what had happened and the contraptions they were in and mentioned the Poofs’ prisoners. Also mentioned that we had three dead P.T.C.U. agents who’d been with Falk. “So, what do we do?”
Mom was quiet for a few long moments. “Leave their bodies with the women. We have a medivac on the way anyway. We’ll take them all at once.”
“We’re like three floors underground and a long walk away from the entry point for the Underground Labs of Evil.”
“James authorized all the help we need, Kitty, I promise.”
“So, what do we do once Uncle Mort takes over?”
“I can’t speak for the others, but you need to go back to the White House.”
“Don’t wanna. Want to stay in the Sovereign and Flying Nation of Kitty Land.”
“I’m sure you do, but you’re the First Lady and, once the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arrives, you need to go back to being the First Lady.”
“Why do I think that I’m going to look back fondly on being kidnapped?”
Mom laughed. “Because you know how your life works.”
CHAPTER 83
KEVIN AND UNCLE MORT were on-site quickly,
which wasn’t a surprise. Christopher had met them upstairs with the keycards and they’d stationed people at every door so that no one needed to worry about being stuck.
Didn’t want to leave Evalyne and Phoebe, but Kevin insisted on it while Uncle Mort had his marines take the six security guys into custody while I forced the Poofs to go back to small and adorable. Which they did. Then they went back into my purse, grumbling about the unfairness of them not being able to eat the bad men. I felt their pain.
Refused to go until the medivac team—which turned out to be a lot of Dazzlers with one human pilot whose expression said he’d scored the best duty of his entire career—had come down and claimed them.
Then we gave Kevin the boxes of incriminating information we’d found and did the reverse tour so we could point out where our people had been held and killed.
Devon and his team wanted to stay on-site. Some were deemed by the Dazzlers to be in need of medical care, so they were also put into the medivac helicopter, which was military and therefore big and able to take everyone. Devon and about half of those with him were able to remain, however.
Falk and Manfred both insisted on riding with the bodies and the women, and no one argued with them about that, least of all me, in part because they both needed medical care, too, and in other part because that way the dead and Evalyne and Phoebe would be protected.
Gardiner was another point of contention. The Dazzlers wanted her to go back to Dulce for medical treatment. Uncle Mort wanted to arrest her on general principles. I wanted to keep her with us. Called Mom, who sided with me, though recommended we keep a guard around her, which appeased Uncle Mort. Promised the Dazzlers we’d have White House medical look at Gardiner, and since they knew that meant Tito, Melanie, and Emily, they were appeased as well.
