Universal Alien

by Gini Koch

  I went back to our seats in the sun, but Jamie had spotted the dessert table and like any other little child, had headed for it. A waiter gave her a gigantic piece of cake, and she came back with it, all excited. “Mommy, look! It’s a pink cake!”

  “Very pretty, and I’m sure it’ll be delicious, but you have to eat your lunch first.”

  “Okay,” she said cheerfully as she went to set the cake on the table. Only, she was three and the table was high and she missed. And I missed catching the plate as it went down, right onto her.

  The cake went all over her dress. Jamie looked up, round-eyed and horrified, tears already there. And the cameras snapped like crazy.

  “Well,” Tony said. “I see like mother and father, just like daughter.”

  Jamie burst into tears. “I didn’t mean to spill on my pretty dress!”

  I hugged her tightly, regardless of the fact that cake would get on my pretty dress, too, and kissed her head. “It’s okay, baby. Clothes can be cleaned, and there’s always more cake somewhere.” I picked her up and handed her to the nearest person in my entourage, who happened to be Evalyne.

  “Cyclone is on the move,” Evalyne said urgently into her lapel. “All hands.”

  “Yeah, call in everyone. I’m about to create a true political event.” I marched over to the press. “Give me the film.”

  They all kept on taking pictures. “Freedom of the press, my Sheila,” one said.

  “Yeah? That’s fine. Insult me and my husband all you want. But our daughter is a little girl. You don’t get to humiliate her for being a child, nor do you get to share her pictures with the world, so she can be a target for every nutjob out there. Now, give me the film. Or I’ll make you give it to me.”

  “The PM asked us here,” another reporter said. “We’re free to do what we want.”

  “Indeed.” Spun on my heel and went back to our table. “You two disappoint me. And more than that, you disappoint your entire country.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Tony asked.

  “My husband is a fledgling politician. You know that. You’re not. You should be helping him learn how to deal with bad situations with grace. Instead, your tender feelers are hurt because your constituents looked at our mishap from the other day as a great way to make fun of you. You want to do the same to us? Fine. But you do not get to harm a little girl for fun or pathetic revenge.” Turned to Margie. “You have three girls. How dare you allow this to happen to someone else’s daughter, with your permission, with your blessing? And to think I spent time trying to find a gift that would show how badly we felt and how much we valued your friendship. Well, screw that.”

  “You already flipped me off—” Tony started.

  But I’d realized why my CA had done what she’d done. “Oh, bull. I saw some older men making that sign and I thought it was your way of doing V for Victory. Clearly it wasn’t. But, just so you know, this is how you flip someone off in American.”

  With that, I flipped him the bird. With both hands.

  CHAPTER 75

  I WAS IN THE ROOM in a nanosecond. In fact, I was going so fast I wasn’t on the floor—I was on the wall. And then I was on the ceiling, to avoid trampling the equipment. Not that I wasn’t willing to destroy it—I just didn’t want to destroy something we were going to end up needing.

  The positive of this speed was that I was going to be hard to spot and harder to hit. The negative was that it was still harder for me to see the stationary objects in the room than it would be for an A-C.

  So, the first part of my rescue consisted of me running around the room several times. Sure, it only took a couple of seconds, but I felt like an idiot. At least I hadn’t shouted “cowabunga” or “yippee-ki-yay mofos” or similar.

  Thankfully, they really and truly weren’t prepped for hyperspeed, because there were no nets, tripwires, rods, or baseball bats set up for me to run into. Thanked the powers that be for the favor and did my best to pay attention to the layout.

  This place was textbook Bond Villain Lair. The room was a long, large rectangle, with all sorts of machines, torture devices, and cases, refrigerated and regular, that seemed to hold viruses or body parts or, in the case of one, Cliff’s trophies from his amateur softball league. I was going too fast to be sure, and figured I’d leave the categorization of all the crap to Alfred, since he was likely to know what it all was and actually enjoy the task.

  Completing the look, the room also had a nice “In Case of Fire” box with a fire extinguisher and an ax. So Cliff was practicing fire safety. A responsible Supervillain, how refreshing.

  The prisoners, aka my family and friends, were strapped onto what looked like metal autopsy body trays, cranked up at forty-five degree angles, presumably so they could see the ongoing and upcoming torture but not get free easily. The straps looked both sturdy and efficiently locked, going by the fact that the men were struggling but barely moving. All six of them were wearing nightclothes of some kind.

  The kids were on one side of a nasty-looking machine that Cliff was literally stroking, and the men were on the other. There were just the six of them in here, along with Dr. No, Ms. Crazypants, and the Assassination Squad.

  The Assassination Squad looked like they’d had a bad night, which I was fine with. Happily, Raul’s jaw appeared to be wired shut, indicating that I’d indeed broken said jaw and also explaining why he’d sounded funny when he was talking. Even though the Israelis had been all nice and given him medical attention, I knew without asking that he was probably a little bitter about this turn of events.

  Wished Buchanan and I had just killed all four of them when we’d had the easy chance to do so and prayed the others at the Israeli Embassy were somehow safe. But I didn’t have time to think about anyone not in this room.

  As I ran around the ceiling for a while, I focused on the machine. A cube about six by six feet made out of four-inch metal pipes made up the framework. There was a large, round, golden metal ball that really resembled a giant cartoon bomb in the middle. And there were pipes running from each section of the frame into the metal ball, so that it was supported and held in the center of the cube.

  Per what Alfred had said, I could get down to a microscopic level using the goggles. I didn’t want to see the atoms, though. I wanted to see what was going on inside that golden sphere. A roiling ball of white-hot energy circled what looked like a blinking cube. But this was all I could spot, and I couldn’t look at it too long because it was blinding. Whatever was in there, it wasn’t good.

  There was a bank of TV monitors along the wall behind the prisoners, showing various places in the compound. One was clearly in the tree that had the secret entrance. So they’d seen us coming right then. There was also a view of the concrete room where the projector had been, and of the start of the Underground Path of Potential Doom. The other cameras were focused on exterior and interior shots of the houses and such in the compound.

  All this room was missing was the wall of water and/or lava, and the pool with sharks. However, what it lacked in sharks it made up for in alligators.

  There was an alligator enclosure against the far wall, next to the stairway that I presumed went up to the ground level. The enclosure was complete with a whole little herd of gators in it. Checked using Alfred’s Super Shades—yep, those were real alligators, not animatronic fakes. Didn’t figure I’d luck into seeing Alliflash or Gigantagator here, but one never knew. Was careful not to run on the Gator Glass, just in case.

  The bad guys were clearly expecting company. LaRue had a gun right out of a Justice League Unlimited episode—a six-shooter that really had six separate mini guns that radiated out from the main gun via flexible metal arms. And Cliff appeared to be getting off on whatever that machine was. They weren’t cackling, but I assumed that was because they hadn’t seen me yet or were saving it for when my team came into the room. Or they’d gotten tire
d of cackling at the prisoners and were taking a short cackle break before starting up again.

  By comparison, the four assassins looked sane and normal. If, you know, I didn’t note that Bernie had guns pointed at Max and Charlie’s heads, and that Sanchez, Lopez, and Raul were doing the same with Buchanan, Reader, and Chuckie, respectively. This was in addition to LaRue’s super six-gun, which a quick Super Shades check confirmed was real and likely working. By comparison, Jamie was in the least immediate danger because she was only covered by LaRue. This hour’s textbook definition of damning with faint praise.

  In my world, the Mastermind wasn’t a baroque supervillain. Clever and evil, yes, but while Marling and Gaultier had had a lot of aspects of this behavior, the Mastermind—whether he was Yates, Reid, or Cliff—was just a cold, brilliant, vicious bastard.

  But that might be because Yates had been an A-C and, combined with Mephistopheles or not, Bad Guy of Bad Guys or not, A-Cs were, at their cores, formal conformists. Could imagine what Yates would have to say about this particular setup, and the term “cutting insult” didn’t begin to cover it. And if he saw this, Mephistopheles would hurt himself laughing.

  This didn’t mean it was any less dangerous. But it did mean that Cliff had given in to something that, in my world, LaRue had in spades but he’d kept at bay—vanity. And vanity could always be played upon.

  Did one more pass around the room and this time I raced up the stairs, just to see what was up there. The ginormous, 6-car garage with one SUV in it was what was up there, but no more assassins and no hired goons, either. No tripwires or bombs, either. This was good news, because it was going to be a lot easier to get out this way than back through the Underground Path of Potential Doom. You know, relatively speaking.

  Back down into the Secret Sanctum Insanitorium. Nothing much had changed. However, my return rattled the gator glass, just a little. But it was enough, if every bad guy head in the room turning toward the sound was any indication. Always the way.

  “I know you’re in here,” Cliff called cheerfully. “And while you might be fast enough to save one of them, I don’t think you’re fast enough to save all of them.”

  Sadly, because of how close the guns were to everyone’s faces and heads, Cliff was probably right. But Mom was a great teacher, and along with her “never drop your weapon” advice, she’d also mentioned that if the enemy didn’t know where you actually were, then it behooved you to continue to keep them in the dark. Kept on moving.

  “If I’m jostled even a little I pull the trigger,” LaRue said nastily. “And then you can watch them all die.” She smirked. “But they’re not really yours, are they? So what will you care?”

  She was baiting me. Probably. But if she knew I wasn’t the real Kitty from this universe, what else did she know? And how did she know it?

  “Or you can stay hidden,” Cliff said, “and just watch us kill everyone.”

  Right on cue, Cantu came in through the doorway at the other end of the room, gun at the ready. Heaved an internal sigh. Had I not told him to wait in the dark corridor unless it seemed like I needed help? Surely my lack of screaming was a clue that I still had things in hand. Cantu was proving why I hated working with men who hadn’t caught on that women were at least as competent as they were.

  Naturally by the time he’d fully entered the room LaRue’s weird guns were extended and floating in front of the face of each of the prisoners, basically right at their noses. All guns in assassin hands were cocked. And Cliff was swinging a part of his favorite machine toward Cantu, who wisely froze.

  “We’ll kill him,” Cliff said conversationally. “Unless you turn off your invisibility device and show yourself.”

  So they’d taken the hyperspeed to indicate an invisibility machine of some kind. And that meant Cliff was saying that, as a human, I couldn’t save everyone. Good. Not that even Christopher would have a shot of saving everyone at once in this situation, based on where the guns were in relation to the prisoners. But the less the bad guys knew I could do, the better.

  “Clifford Goodman, you’re under arrest for treason.” Had to give it to Cantu—he didn’t sound scared.

  “That’s nice, Esteban,” Cliff said genially. “Do you know what I have here?”

  “No idea,” Cantu said.

  “It’s a death ray.”

  Cantu snorted. “Seriously?” He was speaking for both of us.

  “Oh, very seriously. It’s a disintegrator, a laser with enough power to dissipate quite a lot of matter. A human being’s worth isn’t even close to its full ability. Would you like a demonstration?” Cliff’s voice was like honey.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Cantu said. “I’d like you to surrender and give yourselves up so that I don’t have to use excessive force.”

  “You and what army?” LaRue asked with a laugh.

  Decided I should take that as a cue. And considered a key fact—the prisoners were raised off the floor. But the bad guys were standing. And if there was one thing I liked, it was the classics.

  Ran to the gator’s window and did a flying bicycle kick feet first right into the glass.

  Results were immediate. And interesting. Not necessarily in a good way.

  CHAPTER 76

  AS THE GLASS SHATTERED, the gators, sensing something interesting happening, headed toward their new door. The assassins, sensing a much more immediate threat than six captured prisoners and one desk jockey with a gun, started shooting at the oncoming alligators.

  And I slammed into the other wall, feet first. And stopped.

  This was more than jarring, and I’d probably need to see a chiropractor when I got home, but accelerated healing meant that my spine and joints settled themselves back into place quickly.

  Fortunately, increased strength meant I could extract myself from the wall I’d jammed myself into reasonably quickly. Once free of the wall, I had to dodge bullets, but even the ones I couldn’t dodge didn’t do much. Alfred’s Super Kevlar was amazing—the bullets just bounced off. They stung when they hit, but I’d take feeling like someone was throwing pebbles at me really hard over leaking blood from a hundred different orifices. And most of the bullets were being sent at the gators anyway, who were getting seriously pissed about being shot at and therefore charging.

  One was near Cliff, who swung the nozzle of his Death Ray toward it and hit the button. A blinding light flashed, and then the gator was no more. He did this to all the rest of the gators. The machine was quite exact and all the zapping took very little time. There were tiny piles of dust where the gators had been, but that was all. Felt everyone in the room get very still.

  “You will stop hiding,” Cliff said, presumably to me, “you will put that gun down, and you will come here, or I will turn this on again.” He aimed the nozzle at Charlie. Who winced but didn’t cry. Max and Jamie just looked terrified and angry, but they didn’t make any noise. Awesome kids. The men were also thankfully silent.

  In this case, decided dropping the big gun was the way to go. Tossed it to the edge of the gator enclosure, right by the broken glass. “Sure, okay. Turn that on me, though, not on the kids.”

  Cliff shrugged. “Since you insist. Oh, and Esteban, in case you didn’t notice. Raul’s got his gun pointed at you. He won’t miss. Don’t try anything heroic. And you others who are hiding in the hall—I want you in here, too. Or the kid dies.”

  Alfred and Cox stepped into the room, Cox holding Stripes.

  “Take those ridiculous masks off,” LaRue ordered. The men obliged. “Off the stupid animal, too.” Cox took Stripe’s mask off. Stripes hissed at LaRue but not for the obvious reasons. He didn’t think she smelled right. LaRue turned back to me. “Mask. Off. Now.”

  “My hair’s kind of a mess. I’d like to keep it on.” At least as long as I could. Was trying to figure out where the off switch was on Cliff’s Death Ray machine or if there was an
ything I could do to it that wouldn’t hurt everyone in the room I cared about. Sadly, I wasn’t Alfred. I wasn’t Chuckie, either. There were many things in there, but they were just so many weird, moving parts to me.

  “Take the mask off or say goodbye to the little boy,” Cliff said as he swung the Death Ray back at Charlie.

  Took the mask off, though I kept it in my hand. Sadly, this meant that I no longer heard Tina Turner in the background. On the other hand, Cliff was ensuring I could stay enraged, so that was good. “Okay. Again, stop threatening a little kid. You want to threaten? Threaten me.”

  Cliff turned the nozzle back my way. “If you insist.”

  “I do.” I was tensed to leap and run and I kept Rage right there in front of me. Hoped I would be fast enough to escape the Death Ray but avoiding finding out was my preferred plan.

  “Where are you from?” LaRue asked.

  “Arizona.” Well, this was true.

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it,” she snapped. “Where are you from? And when?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “You’re not from around here. And the tech you’re using, it’s not from around here, either. So, when and/or where are you from?”

  So they thought I was a time traveler? Maybe that would help. Had no idea how, but hope liked to spring eternal. Mercifully, no one was looking at Alfred, though he was doing well with keeping his expression neutral. “No idea what you mean.” Get her talking, figure out what to do.

  “Don’t worry. We’re going to use your DNA, and hers,” she nodded toward Jamie. “You’ll ensure that we can live forever.”

  This boded. “That’s impossible.”

  “Hardly,” Cliff said. He sounded smug and excited. “Cloning isn’t even a new process. But adding in special genetics makes it work so much better.”

  Damn. They were talking about cloning themselves. Could not allow that to happen here. This world had no defenses against them. “So, you want to clone me over and over again? I get why, I mean, ’cause I’m awesome and all, but still, it seems a little pointless.”