by Gini Koch
“That’s not normal at all.” Every superbeing was a destruction machine, and their overriding desire was to kill any humanity in their vicinity.
“Right, baby, it’s not. We herded them to the Seine—we were going to use self-contained nukes to destroy them. Right before I could give the order, they all blew up. At the same time.”
“I monitor for supersoldier projects all the time,” Chuckie said. “So does your mother. Nothing like this has come up on either of our radars.”
“If the lie is good enough, and the support is high enough . . .”
“Yeah, that’s what’s really worrying me.”
“How trustworthy are your superiors?”
He chuckled. “They’re top in the C.I.A. How trustworthy do you think that would make them?”
Jeff snorted. “Not at all.” Chuckie shrugged and managed a grin.
“I meant for you, for us, for the safety of the U.S. and the world. That kind of thing?”
“They seem reliable. Your mother doesn’t trust them overly much, but she trusts them more than some.” He looked thoughtful. “There was a shake-up right before I became head of the ET division.”
“Any of our four friends involved in that?”
He nodded. “Cooper and Cantu for certain. Cooper wasn’t promoted, Cantu was.” He shook his head. “I’ll need to discuss this with your mother.”
“She’s on alert, just waiting for the baby. You should be able to get a hold of her easily enough. But I’m kind of curious why and how the people we met with today, who shouldn’t have known anything about this, knew all about the attack when none of us did.”
Jeff’s eyes narrowed. “Who shouldn’t have known?”
“A senator, a Pentagon liaison, the head of one of our terrorist units, and John Cooper,” Chuckie replied. “Cooper’s angling for my job.”
“He’s a prick,” I added. “Not that I liked any of them much.”
Chuckie nodded. “I’d really hoped to have both of you at this meeting, and White, too, if possible. I need these people read.”
“Sorry, busy trying to stop an international incident. Christopher’s still there—the imageering alterations necessary are unreal.”
“Why are you back already?” I asked. “Normally you’d be taking care of the cleanup portions.”
Jeff shot me a “duh” look. “I knew who you were with.”
Chuckie rolled his eyes. “Just the two of us and four people we can’t trust at all.”
“Am I right that all four hate you and want Centaurion turned into the War Division?” It was such a safe bet—most people were intimidated by Chuckie’s brains, drive, and success and channeled that into hating him. And there was a much longer list of those who wanted us to be the War Division than those who didn’t. Every day it seemed as though the ones who didn’t got fewer and fewer.
“In a nutshell.” Chuckie sounded like he always did when talking about people who didn’t like him—resigned. I knew there was hurt under there, too, but he hid it well.
Jeff looked like he was going to say something nasty to Chuckie, but I glared at him, and he stopped himself. Possibly he’d picked up the hurt, too, but I wasn’t sure if he cared about it. “But are they in any position to be in on whatever the hell is going on?” he asked instead.
Chuckie nodded slowly. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t put anything past Cooper. He wants my job and every job above mine, too. Cantu’s a slippery bastard. And Armstrong’s your typical politician on the rise. Cartwright I’m not sure of, but she works closely with the three of them.”
There was a knock at the door, and Wayne and William came in. “We have what you wanted, Mister Reynolds,” William said, handing him a file. Wayne handed one to Jeff.
“That was fast.”
The brothers grinned at me as Jeff and Chuckie both sighed and shook their heads. “Hyperspeed,” Wayne said.
“Oh.” Okay, had to give Jeff and Chuckie the “duh” on that one. I chalked it up to another space cadet moment and called the Poofs over to make myself feel better. I petted the cuteness bundles while Chuckie and Jeff both read through the files.
“Good work,” Chuckie said finally. “I wish I could get field reports from my operatives this well-detailed.”
Wayne and William looked pleased, but then they both looked at Jeff. He nodded. “Lots of good information here, thank you.” Both brothers visibly relaxed. “I appreciate the notes from the C.I.A. meeting, too.”
“We recorded it as well, Commander,” William said, “per Mister Reynolds’ request.”
Jeff raised his eyebrow at Chuckie. “You tape everyone?”
“Just everyone I don’t trust. I’d like a copy of the recording.” Jeff nodded and William pulled out his phone.
“Coming down to you now, sir,” he said, hanging up.
Chuckie heaved a sigh. “I don’t think we have enough to go on definitively yet, but I’ll work on it.”
“It’s the holidays. You’re allowed time off. The rest of your agency’s taking their two weeks, why not you?”
Chuckie shook his head. “You know the saying—evil never sleeps.”
“Yeah, too true.” I yawned. Wow. Nap time already. In addition to the other joys, I got tired out much more quickly these days.
Jeff opened his mouth, but Chuckie beat him to it. “I’m going to get back to my office. I’ll be in touch on this, and I expect the same from you if you hit on anything. You get some rest Kitty. Gentlemen, Martini,” he said with a nod. He whistled softly, and Fluffy jumped up onto my shoulder, purred, rubbed, and then leaped onto Chuckie’s shoulder, did the purr and rub thing, then snuggled into his pocket. I managed to refrain from saying how adorable this was, but it took real effort.
Before Chuckie could leave, William’s phone rang. He put up his hand. “Yes, got it.” He hung up. “Commander Martini, we have an issue with the recorded copy Mister Reynolds requested.”
“And that is?” Jeff asked.
William looked grim. “All the recordings have been destroyed.”
That sat on the air for a moment. “How?” I asked finally.
He shook his head. “We don’t know. All recordings for the past week have been corrupted, the ones from today are completely gone.”
“Internal sabotage,” Chuckie said, and from his tone, he was certain. “Not good. Any clues as to who did it?”
“No, sir,” William said. “Imageering contacted Commander White already. He’s ordered a full investigation.”
“It’ll have to do.” Chuckie didn’t look happy, and I couldn’t blame him. I also couldn’t control another yawn. “I’ll add this to the pile of things we need to know about. Please guard those reports—you two are the only proof we have now that something was wrong with those superbeings.”
“Yes, sir,” Wayne said with a small smile. “We’ll guard them with our lives.”
Chuckie managed a short laugh. “Good job.”
Jeff seemed to be struggling with something. “I’ll walk you out,” he said finally. “You two, take down the equipment.”
They left while William and Wayne did as instructed. “You didn’t give me a file,” I mentioned.
Wayne laughed. “We’re already clear you wouldn’t read it.” He grinned and put a folder into my nightstand. “Here’s a copy for later, though. You know, when you get around to it. In about a year.”
“Wow, you are good. So, what’s the CliffsNotes version?”
They both looked at me blankly for a moment. A-Cs were capable of reading at hyperspeed, too, so why read an abbreviated version? William recovered first. “You want the highlights, Commander?”
“Please and thank you.”
“We think they’re genetically engineered,” Wayne said. “But there’s no human in there.”
“That we can tell,” William added. “Didn’t feel like there’s parasite in there, either.”
“That we can tell,” Wayne said. “They didn’t feel . . . rig
ht.”
“Robotic?”
“Could be,” Wayne allowed. “But if so, it’s a more natural robot.”
“Like an android?”
William shrugged. “Could be. We don’t really work with this side of things. Kill ’em, get the folks to safety, that’s our normal assignment.”
“Why are you doing live at the exciting scene of my bedroom, then?”
They exchanged a quick glance. “Ah, special assignment,” William said.
That meant either they were being punished or they were specially selected. “Assigned by whom?”
“Commander White,” William answered.
So, handpicked. Unless Christopher was really interested in seeing how my space cadet ways messed with their minds. I voted for the former. “Why you two?”
Wayne’s turn to shrug. “We’re really good. Commander White doesn’t trust the C.I.A. any more than any of the rest of us do.”
“So, what did he have you read on Chuckie?”
They both busied themselves with the screens. I doubted these two were going to fall into the “able to lie to us” category.
“Dudes, don’t make me pull rank. What were you monitoring Chuckie for?”
“Whatever he might be hiding,” Wayne said.
“Chuckie’s not hiding something from us.”
“Everybody’s hiding something, Commander,” Wayne said as Jeff came back in, accompanied by several other A-Cs who were clearly along to help with clearing out the video stuff. “Everybody. But not always for the same reasons.”
CHAPTER 7
ON THAT CRYPTIC NOTE, the brothers left, equipment and extra A-Cs in tow. “You want to explain that?” Jeff asked me.
“No. You want to explain what you were talking about with Chuckie?”
He grinned. “No, other than to say we’re not going to panic or spend undue amounts of time on the supersoldier theory just yet. Christopher’s handling the loss of our recordings, so you can stop worrying about that. You want to nap or are you hungry?”
“Both.”
Jeff laughed and hypersped out of the room, returning shortly with a couple of laden food trays. The rest of the day shifted back into the normal, dull routine of me being really pregnant and him being really great about it. In between, I napped and he did the paperwork part of his job. It was an unexciting schedule, but it currently worked for us.
After dinner and a variety of reruns of old, cheesy shows Jeff couldn’t stop loving if his life depended on it, we went to bed. Well, I got back under the covers again, and Jeff did, too. After some fun cuddling that was interrupted by the baby kicking the crap out of me, we snuggled up and went to sleep.
Slept for a few hours, then I woke up. For no reason, other than possibly the baby being frisky. Jeff was still asleep. I was wide awake. This was not fun. I didn’t want to wake him up, so reading or watching TV were out. So I went for thinking, which meant I tossed and turned the issues of the day over in my mind.
If there was a secret supersoldier conspiracy afoot, who was behind it? The people from today’s meeting? Someone else? The President or one of his nearest and dearest advisers?
And if there was one supersoldier project Chuckie and my mom knew nothing about, did that mean there could be more? There was so much going on at any time, and Chuckie always felt that there were a huge number of active conspiracies going all the time. So, competing clandestine groups could be creating supersoldiers. In fact, the ones in Paraguay from last year could be run by a completely different set of megalomaniacs than the ones from Paris earlier today.
After an hour or so of this, I accepted that I couldn’t sleep. I also knew Jeff wouldn’t want me to wake him up merely to fret about things we had no info for and I had less than no idea of how to solve. So I had to come up with something else to do to pass the time in the wee hours.
No problem. We still had to register for baby things. No time like the present, right? Of course, I couldn’t be expected to make these decisions alone, since Jeff was as picky about this stuff as I was.
I nudged him. “You awake?”
He heaved a sigh. “I am now.”
“Great! I can’t sleep. Let’s look at baby product catalogs.”
Jeff groaned. “I can remember a time when, if you were waking me up in the middle of the night, it wasn’t to thumb through catalogs.”
“Yes, the result of which is why we need to look at baby catalogs now.”
Jeff rolled out of bed, turned on the lights, grabbed a handful of catalogs, and came back to bed. “Maybe we should just open pages at random and pick whatever’s on them.” We weren’t having much success with the registry—if one of us loved it, the other hated it.
“Worth a shot.” We tried it. I opened my catalog to the pages with bath toys. Jeff opened his to the pages with car seats. “I don’t want twelve car seats.” I wanted one really awesome one, but Jeff felt it wasn’t safe enough. I wasn’t sure if he was going to think an armored tank was safe enough.
“What child needs that many bath toys?” Jeff felt that too many toys was a bad thing. I felt there was a lot of cute out there, and our baby should have as much of it as possible.
We closed the catalogs. “Well, we still have time. The big baby party thingy isn’t until after the baby arrives. So we have at least a couple of weeks.”
Jeff sighed. “It’s an induction ceremony. It’s traditional.”
“Right. That.” The positive was that the A-Cs waited for the baby to arrive and then showered child and parents with gifts. When I’d first heard about it, it had sounded great. One big party, lots of goodies, what’s not to love? Then I realized everyone would be staring at me, expecting me to squeal with delight over every single item, and my anticipation had gone downhill.
“Lorraine, Claudia, and Serene are all looking forward to theirs,” Jeff reminded me, with more than a little chide in his tone.
This was true, because they were right behind us in the baby race. They were also all A-Cs, so to them, the whole massive group baby shower ceremony thing was normal.
But this was why Tito was covering most of Alpha’s and Airborne’s medical—our three other female members had all gotten married shortly after Jeff and I had and were, just like us, immediately pregnant. We were at the head of what was about to become a baby boom of epic proportions, and we were all scared as hell about it.
Which was the main reason Jeff and I were stalling out on the baby stuff. We were both frightened, and not just for us. If something was wrong with our baby, that meant there was a likelihood something was going to be wrong with a lot of babies.
Precedent said they’d be fine. But we’d become used to nothing working out like we planned—story of my life, really—so we’d become apprehensive. Tito’s insistence on bed rest for me after the fainting incident hadn’t made us any calmer.
“I know they’re all excited about their induction ceremonies. I am, too,” I lied.
“I know you’re not.” Jeff sighed and hugged me. “I think I understand. You’re afraid. And,” he said in a low voice, “I can’t blame you.”
I knew where this was heading. “Jeff, let’s not rehash it. You weren’t responsible for what happened to you.” I nuzzled his chest. “Besides, the drug made your powers stronger, so it all worked out.”
“What if—” He snapped his mouth shut.
“What if what?” He wouldn’t answer, so I thought about what he could be worried about. “I’m sure it won’t have hurt the baby. Tito and every medical A-C you’ve dragged by to check me out all say everything’s fine.”
“How the hell would they know?”
I managed to sit up to look right at him. “Uh, ’cause they’re doctors?”
“The last hybrid birth was Abigail Gower, and she’s twenty-four now. No one working medical was around for her birth.”
“Her parents were. And Ericka and Stanley both have said that the pregnancies were hard but nothing life-threatening.” I loo
ked at his expression. “Jeff, just because your parents had a hard time with you, it doesn’t mean we will. You and Christopher put blocks into all your nieces and nephews. If our baby isn’t an empath, Christopher will put in an imageering implant, and it’ll be fine.”
He nodded but didn’t look convinced. Point of fact, he looked worried, though I knew he was trying to hide it.
“Besides, Serene is younger than Abigail.” Yep. I could see his worry spike.
“And we know nothing about her human father, and her mother’s been dead for almost two decades.”
I sighed. “I know we’re not supposed to find out the sex early by A-C tradition. And I swear Tito hasn’t told me. But you’ve been worried since June, so I have to guess we’re having a girl, right?” We’d figured out that male hybrids had no power issues—they got standard A-C talents or they got no talents. But the female hybrids, of which there were very few, all had advanced, mutated talents.
“Doesn’t it seem odd that in all the original hybrid tests, there were only two girls born? Naomi and Abigail?”
“Yeah. It seems odd that you have two hearts and can run fifty miles in the blink of an eye, too. I stopped worrying about it, oh, about an hour after I met you.” I hugged him. “Baby, you worry too much.”
He hugged me back, so tightly I almost couldn’t breathe. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, or to our baby.”
“Nothing will. We’ll be fine.”
Before I could try to reassure him any more, a voice came over the intercom. “Commander Martini, we have a situation.”
CHAPTER 8
“WHAT IS IT, GLADYS?” Jeff asked, as he moved me gently so he could get up. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Situation is not here, sir. And, apologies, I was speaking to the other Commander Martini, former Commander Katt, now Missus Commander Martini.” Gladys had sarcasm available at any time of the day or night.
