“V-Dog!” H exclaimed. “You’ve lost weight. And did you do something with your hair?”
Em could tell Vungus was clearly eating it up like… whatever Jababians ate up. From the looks of Vungus, that could be a wide spectrum of stuff.
“I barely recognize you,” H went on, laying it on thick. He turned and gestured to Em. “This is Em. Em, Vungus. Vungus, Em.”
“Hell-o Emmm,” Vungus said, almost leering at her. Didn’t matter if it was the Bronx, or Manhattan, or an alien speakeasy, she had seen that look a hundred different times in a hundred different bars. Em played it all business, giving the slightest of bows to the slumming, intergalactic royal.
“Hello, Your Eminence,” Em said, with her best fake-professional smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Highly redacted,” H added.
Vungus began to make horrible sounds, grunts, groans, and phlegmy wheezes. He stopped, and both Vungus and H looked at Em. After an awkward pause, H translated, “He says was your mum a Vangorian infidel? Because she must have stolen the Cillenial Vortex ammonites from the Cygnus A stellar stream nebulae and put them in your eyes.”
“I’m sorry,” Em said, “what?”
“Just a rough translation,” H explained. “Probably works better on Jababia, but you know that, since you speak fluent Jababian.”
Em attempted to hide her ignorance. “Of course,” she said. “I’m trying to find the words to express how incredibly eye-catching Vungus is himself.”
H leaned close to Vungus, but Em could still hear clearly what he said. “Em knows everything there is to know about Jababia.”
“Well, not everything,” Em interjected.
“It’s like a fetish,” H added.
“Definitely not a fetish,” Em said.
“An unquenchable thirst,” H continued. “It’s Jababia this, Jababia that. Jababia, Jababia, Jababia.”
“I am parched,” Em said, glancing rather desperately toward the bar. She could feel the hole H was digging beneath her feet getting deeper and deeper every time he opened his mouth. Vungus laughed; it sounded like a clogged toilet attempting to flush. Em laughed as well, trying to fake being in on the joke.
H ignored the awkward silence that fell. “I knew you two would hit it off.” He gestured out to the dance floor below them. “Have a dance. Em loves to dance.” Em felt a little like that time when she was ten and had tried to simulate space flight by riding the Tilt-a-Hurl thirty-seven consecutive times. “I’ll get us some drinks.” H was already bounding toward a waitress. “You’re still a vodka and cranberry guy, right?”
“You know it,” Vungus said, sliding back into his booth. He turned his attention back to Em, patting the seat in the booth next to him with a tentacle. “Sit, Em. Sit next to Vungus.” His mouth spread, wider than seemed possible, to show her rows of jagged, misshapen, and stained teeth. “I don’t bite.”
The realization fell on her harder than a mountain could. She was a cauldron of emotions, but bubbling at the top was anger. She kept her cool and raised a single index finger to Vungus.
“Just give me one sec,” she said. She rushed to H, who was with the waitress now.
“It’s alright; I’ll get this,” he told Em. “I’ll put it on the company card. Little tip: expense everything.”
“Oh, thanks!” Em said bitterly as the waitress walked away. “Just one question: Are you pimping me out to an alien?”
“First of all, that is sexist and demeaning.” H tried hard to summon some indignation from somewhere and failed. “We’re both here because we are charming and fun, and we’re making sure V has the night of his life.” He looked over Em’s shoulder to Vungus, who was alone in the booth. “Coming, buddy!” he shouted. Vungus gave him a thumbs-up. H started back to the table, but Em blocked his way.
“If you want me to be Vungus-bait, tell me the truth next time. I hate lies,” she said.
“Like pretending to be an expert in something you’re not?” he retaliated. Em’s anger guttered as she realized she was busted. “In case you haven’t noticed,” H continued, “we’re in the lying business.”
“Good luck with that,” Em said.
H wrestled with words, and Em could see he was trying to explain something real and important to him. He wasn’t very good at it.
“Jababians are prickly.” H smiled and waved to Vungus. “We want them happy. So they don’t, you know, destroy our planet and everything on it. That’s the mission, but if you’re not down with the mission—”
“Oh no,” Em said, stopping H right there. “I’m down with the mission.” She snatched H’s champagne glass, put on a fake smile, and awkwardly danced back over to Vungus. H followed her, pulling out his own MiB-sanctioned smile. Neither agent noticed the twins enter the club below. Twins who moved fluidly as one, and bore an uncanny resemblance to a dead waiter in Marrakech.
13
“And so the Cephilax says,” H said, finishing his joke with a flourish, “‘Not if he touched it first!’” Everyone laughed uproariously. Even the stoic bodyguards hovering over their charge in the VIP booth chuckled, with all the musicality of a bodily function.
“Okay,” Em says, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye, “my turn!” She had heard this one at the office and once someone had explained it to her she hadn’t been able to stop laughing. She was sure H and Vungus would get it. “You ever hear the one about the hungry Manitabian?” A shocked hush fell on the party. Vungus’s face fell; his shoulder-humps slumped. Em looked around, confused.
“Vungus’s mother was eaten by a Manitabian,” H explained. “It was a horrible tragedy.”
Em’s heart sank. She turned to Vungus. “I… am sorry for your loss,” she said.
“She was a precious flower, taken too soon.” H handed Vungus a glass, and raised his own in a toast. “Here’s to her. Namaste.” The two clinked glasses and drained their drinks. After a solemn moment, H picked up the champagne and worked at the cork. “So, how long you in town, buddy?”
The bottle opened with a pop, and the lights in the club flickered. At first Em thought it might be part of the light show, but the puzzled expressions on everyone’s faces convinced her it wasn’t. H was pouring the champagne into glasses, seemingly oblivious to the phenomenon.
“Vungus go home tomorrow,” the Jababian said.
“Tomorrow?” H remarked. “You did a three-year hyper-sleep all the way from the Horse Head Nebula for one night out? We better make it a good one.” He handed Vungus some champagne and took a deep gulp from his own glass as well.
“Came to talk, H.” All the humor and playfulness had vanished from Vungus’s voice and demeanor. “We need to speak.”
The music shifted and flowed as a new song began—“Break Ya Neck” by Busta Rhymes—and the dancers on the floor forgot their anxiety about the flickering lights.
“Come on!” H cajoled Vungus. “You’re here for one night. I can’t go without seeing the V-man bust a move. You’re a hip-hop guy, right?”
Em watched H drag Vungus out onto the dance floor, wondering if she should stop them. They were supposed to be here to show Vungus a good time, after all—but surely two agents of MiB should also be keeping an eye out for trouble if their guest was so important. Her gaze fell on the dancers. There were two identical twins down there who looked like they’d never seen a dance floor before. The twins had spotted H and Vungus, and for a moment she was worried that they were paying too much attention—but just as she was about to stand up, they turned away. And after all, H and Vungus, together, were the kind to command a lot of attention.
She let her gaze stray away from her charges again. She’d been wrong about the twins’ discomfort on the dance floor. After a moment they began to move like the other dancers… Were they mimicking the moves of the dancers around them? As she watched, they began to combine the moves of different dancers, and then create moves she’d never seen before. Several other dancers stopped to circle them and clap as
their moves became more intricate, more complex, and faster, much faster.
The twins were beginning to glow with an aura of some strange energy. The dance-floor fog swirled around their legs, reflecting the eerie light they were shedding. And H didn’t seem to have noticed any of this—his attention seemed to be fully on an attractive girl he’d spotted. Vungus didn’t look happy about that. Em stood up. If H couldn’t spot the danger they were in, then she’d been right to come here with him. She began to dance her way awkwardly across the floor toward H and Vungus.
* * *
H was summoning his inner John Travolta, lost in the rapture of the thunderous waves of music, throwing his best moves. He wore a grimace of pleasure as he danced, commonly referred to as “white man’s overbite.” It was often credited with being a foolproof form of birth control and with frightening small children. He noticed that Vungus was dancing rather hesitantly, as if going through the motions. Something was troubling him.
Vungus caught H’s glance and danced closer. “H, Vungus need to tell you something,” he said.
“If it’s about that night in Beirut,” H shouted over the music, “I deleted the photos. Pinky swear.”
He was aware of Em struggling to get closer to H and Vungus, kinda-dancing her way through the ever-shifting maze of the dance floor. She looked almost as if she was trying not to draw attention or spoil the party—weird attitude for a club, he thought.
“H,” Em called. “Twelve o’clock.”
“Already?” H shouted, still dancing—showing her how it was done. “The night is still young!” H spun toward Vungus, who was no longer even bothering to dance. “Not feeling it? Shall I get them to play something with a bit more of a housey vibe?”
Vungus reached out with one of his tentacles and wrapped it around H’s forearm. “It’s serious. You’re the only one Vungus trust—”
Vungus stopped suddenly, looking down at his tentacle. Sparkles of pale light emanated from it where it touched H. This was part of the Jababian clair-cognizant empathy, how they “read” people’s intentions and true motives. H didn’t really mind Vungus doing it—for a Jababian, it was as much a form of communication as talking or sharing a glance.
But Vungus gasped and quickly released H as if he had just touched a hot stove.
“What happened to you?” Vungus asked. He sounded almost afraid.
Billie Ellish’s remix of “MyBoi-TroyBoi” began to play across the club. The dance-floor lights dropped to a deep blue.
H blinked. “What do you mean?” On some level that H couldn’t reach or even articulate, he understood, but on the surface, which is where he swam these days, he didn’t comprehend, and didn’t want to.
* * *
Em had watched this unfold with barely concealed impatience, aware that the twins were on the move, no longer hiding their interest in Vungus. Now she caught movement from her targets. One of the dancing twins opened his seemingly empty palm, holding it out the way you might if you were blowing someone a kiss. The other twin made a gesture, or a dance move—she couldn’t be sure—as if he were winding up the way an anime super hero might to release a planet-destroying energy blast. Em tried to reach Vungus, but H was in her way. The second twin completed his gesture, and Vungus slapped at his neck, as if swatting a bug.
Vungus’s eyes became unfocused and he stumbled into H’s chest, staring at his old friend as if he didn’t know him.
“Hey buddy, you don’t look so good,” H said.
“Vungus feel not well,” he mumbled.
Em tried to spot the twins, but they had gone.
“Those vodka cranberries pack a punch,” H said, trying to joke, but Em saw the concern in his eyes and something else she couldn’t define. “We should get him home.” H looked to Vungus’s bodyguards. “Get his car.”
As Em and H got Vungus to his feet, pulling him between them toward the exit, Em glanced over to the other agent. “Did you see that? Those guys, they…”
The music rose again, and drowned out her words.
* * *
Vungus’s armored SUV, provided by MiB, screeched up to the curb outside the club, one of Vungus’s bodyguards behind the wheel. H and Em slid the groaning Jababian into the back seat, aided by his other guard.
“Sleep it off, buddy,” H said to Vungus through the open door. “Remember to hydrate.” He slammed the door and the car screeched away down the dark street.
Em and H walked down the street in the wake of the Jababians’ car, headed toward H’s Jag.
“He doesn’t look too good,” Em said. “I mean, he didn’t look good before, but…” She let her voice trail off for a moment. “I think something happened in there, H. Shouldn’t we call this in?” The streetlight above them started to flicker.
“We’re fine,” H told her. “Trust me, as soon as you call it in the paperwork becomes a nightmare. I’ve seen Vungus way worse off—”
Suddenly there was a clap of thunder from the direction the departing car had taken. Vungus’s car flew through the air, flipping as it tumbled, and slammed into the building, embedding itself upside down in the wall.
“What the…?” H murmured.
It wasn’t that the car had crashed into the wall of the building, but more like it had phased through the brick and steel, before becoming solid again. The agents sprinted toward Vungus’s car.
Just past the alleyway where H’s Jag was waiting for them, the street looked like it had been through a miniature earthquake. Debris from crumbling streets and buildings and overturned and crushed cars were everywhere. Several car alarms whined, and thick dust swirled in the debris. The dust began to settle and clear around Vungus’s upside-down car. They stopped running as they approached it, their Series-4 De-Atomizers drawn.
Walking out of the cloud on the other side of the car were the twins from the club. They made for the car—there was no question, now, what their target was.
“MiB! Freeze!” H shouted.
The twins paused and looked at each other quizzically.
“On the ground!” Em commanded, steel in her voice. “Palms down, now!”
At the same instant, H barked out, “Hands up, now!”
The twins were confused. The agents gave each other a similar look and then tried again.
“Hands up!” Em said.
“Palms down!” H shouted. He kept his eyes on the twins, and so did Em. “Which one are we going for?” he said to her. “I mean, either way is fine, but down the line we should probably come up with a system. You want ‘palms down’?”
Em gave a thoughtful nod.
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate the gesture.”
“Palms down!” both agents said in unison. The twins complied, lying down on the cracked pavement, palms down. The agents cautiously approached the twins.
Neither H nor Em spotted the twins’ hands glowing dimly as they touched the ground. The street near their fingers began to liquefy and ripple. The twins, in unison, slammed their hands down on the pavement, and kipped up to an upright position. A massive wave of liquefied concrete rushed toward H and Em. The agents spun to run from the tsunami barreling down on them. The wave crashed into them, feeling very solid, and sending cars parked on the curbs flying, and hydrants cracking and erupting up and down the street. H and Em crashed to the ground, some twenty feet away, near H’s Jag, their guns clattering into the darkness.
The twins continued their advance toward Vungus’s car. H and Em struggled back to their feet, covered in bruises, cuts, and dust.
“We should probably have gone with ‘hands up,’” H said, sprinting to his Jag.
He reached the car door handle. He lifted it to the open position and then tugged out. A squat, ugly, chromed MiB pistol with a short, wide barrel pulled free, the door handle acting as the gun’s grip. H thumbed the switch near the trigger, and the gun thrummed to life. He braced himself and opened fire on the twins as Em reached the Jag. “Petrol cap!” he shouted at her.
<
br /> Em tugged on the cap and a cylindrical, long-barreled pistol slid free of the Jag, the grip and trigger unfolding as it was freed. Em flipped the gun’s power switch, and blue energy flared to life along the silver barrel. She stood, joining H in opening up on the twins.
The twins tumbled and flipped, avoiding the agents’ fire with an unearthly grace. Beams and bolts of energy from the MiB guns exploded all around them. One of the twins backflipped, raising a column of molten stone into the air where his feet had been a second ago. The other slid into the base of the pillar, sending it flying like a giant missile of lava toward the agents. They dived for cover behind the Jag an instant before the column struck the windscreen. Red-hot fragments of rock sprayed everywhere. The Jag crumpled and groaned, its windscreen shattered as it was knocked backward by the force of the projectile. The agents crashed to the ground as they were slammed back with the car.
H, teeth gritted, got to his feet again, recovering his weapon. “Well, now I’m pissed off,” he said. Em scrambled back up, grabbed her own gun, and returned fire. One of the twins pushed his hand into the metal of the wrecked car’s door. It rippled and flowed around him, reshaping, until he tore the transmuted door free, now formed into a shield. The bullets from H’s and Em’s guns ricocheted off the door shield, which seemed to have become something much stronger than steel in the transformation.
“We need more firepower,” H shouted to Em over the whoosh and roar of the guns. “Side-view mirror!”
As H continued to lay down fire, pinning the twins for a moment behind their shield, Em examined the door mirror. She twisted it so the mirror was facing skyward and was rewarded with an electronic hum. A panel slid up over the door’s window that held four large, powerful-looking MiB handguns.
“That,” Em said, smiling. “I like that.”
She pulled one of the pistols free of its case and fired on the twins’ car-door shield. The shield shattered with a powerful explosion, exposing the twins. H took the shot the opening gave him, blasting a huge hole in one of the twins’ chests. Super-heated particles of gas spewed out of his back like a tiny nebula. He took another blast in the shoulder, which evaporated in a spray of plasma-vaporizing matter. The wounded twin looked across in time to see a round from Em’s gun hit his brother, whose face and neck exploded into particles as the spray of ionized energy tore into him.
Men in Black International Page 7
