Текст книги "Alien in the Family"

Автор книги: Gini Koch

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

I did. “No. Nothing like it.”

Martini and Christopher looked at each other. “Be right back,” Martini said. They both disappeared. I checked the double doors—they were unlocked.

“That has to be weird to live with,” Chuckie said casually.

“You get used to it.”

“Do you?”

I looked up at him. “Yeah. Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For still being you.”

He grinned. “Well, that’s something.”

“I’m going to fail the tests.” I hadn’t meant to blurt that out.

Chuckie reached out and stroked my cheek. “He doesn’t care. It won’t matter to him. Martini’s not focused on regaining the throne—he’s focused on protecting you, the Pontifex, and the rest of his people. Not going off to a world he’s never seen to take care of it or solve its problems.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m positive. I wish I weren’t. I’d be happy if he disappeared and left you here. But he won’t, not willingly.”

“What if they force him to?”

Chuckie shrugged. “Then we’ll do what we Americans do best.”

“What’s that?”

He grinned again, but this time it was feral. “We’ll make them sorry they ever bothered us.”

CHAPTER 13

MARTINI AND CHRISTOPHER WERE BACK, both looking angry. “Get your buddies in here, fast, and get the phones fixed,” Martini said to Chuckie.

“Not that I mind, but why?”

“Catering never took an order from the front desk for anything to come up to this suite. Catering says their phones haven’t been working all day—they’ve had to send a runner to the front desk on an hourly basis. Said runner also never took an order to or from the front desk for this suite. The desk clerk, however, is positive she gave your order to someone from her catering department.”

Chuckie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure?”

“Haven’t found a human yet who could lie to me,” Martini snapped. “Oh, and we tell the humans from the A-Cs by the heartbeats. And A-Cs can’t lie to me, either. So, yeah, humans down there, not A-Cs. Confused humans who haven’t spoken to you, ever. Who also, let me mention, didn’t send any food up to you.”

“Stop eating or drinking,” I barked. “Lorraine and Claudia, full medical scans on everybody, right now.”

Reader opened his phone and made another call while the girls leaped into action. They scanned Martini, Christopher, me, Gower, and Chuckie first, then themselves and the rest of the team. “Our telephony team’s on the way. More medical’s coming, too,” Reader told me. “Along with the rest of our supplies. And a ton of adrenaline. That we’ll want to keep under lock and key.”

He didn’t need to tell me. Martini’s empathic blocks and synapses burned out under too much stress and activity. Sleep was a regenerative, and so were some medical procedures, but he routinely reached a point where he had to go into an isolation chamber, and if he didn’t get into one, he had to have adrenaline or die. Point of fact, I had to slam a huge hypodermic that resembled a harpoon far more than a sewing needle into his hearts. It was horrible, but it was a better option than letting him die. We’d had plenty of enemies use his adrenaline dependency against him, particularly during Operation Drug Addict, so there was no reason to think this time would be any different.

The girls were done. “Nobody has anything wrong that we can tell,” Lorraine said with relief.

I looked at the table. “What, if anything, wasn’t eaten by someone on the team?”

We all examined the offerings. “That,” Chuckie pointed to a dish near the center. “I have no idea what it is, by the way, which is why I didn’t touch it. But it’s undisturbed from how it was when it arrived, so no one else had any either.”

Reader and I looked at it. “No clue.”

“Me either, girlfriend. Yo, Tim, flyboys, need you for a minute.” The rest of the humans came over. Reader pointed. “Don’t eat it or taste it, but do you have any idea of what it is?”

They all shook their heads. “Looks gross,” Jerry said.

“Sort of like boiled okra,” Joe offered.

“Only not like my mamma ever made,” Randy added.

All the A-Cs were staring at it. “Familiar?” I asked Martini.

“No. I’m with the others, that looks disgusting.”

I reached out and took the alien-detector out of Jerry’s hand and held it toward the icky foodstuff. It glowed red.

“Sentient food? I mean, after it’s been cooked?”

“They don’t find sentience,” Chuckie said. “They find something alien to Earth.”

“Why the color spectrum, then?”

“Because we have DNA samples of what pure A-Cs and hybrid A-Cs are made of. So we can spot them. You know, so we know who the friendlies are?” Chuckie looked over to Martini. “Red means alien we don’t know about.”

Martini nodded. “That’s why the necklace and the tracker showed red. They’re metals from our home world, but not metals that are in our DNA. Baby, run it over everything else.”

I did. Only the one dish glowed red. Tim checked out the minibar and all the stuff in the refrigerator—all clean. Something in my brain kicked. “You said the front desk clerk thought she’d given Chuckie’s food order to the Catering department’s runner, right?”

“Yes,” Christopher confirmed. “And we’re not quite as stupid as you always seem to think. Already checked out every person in the Catering department. No one’s missing, no one’s extra. Everyone who’s supposed to be here today is, and no one has a day off today, either.”

“So we have an extra body. That the front desk clerk thought was someone she knew.”

“Right.” Christopher shrugged. “No idea of what to do about it, though.”

I hated to say this in front of Chuckie. “Okay, then the A-C we’re looking for is an imageer.”

“Come again?” Christopher sounded insulted. “What makes you say that?”

“Because you don’t have shapeshifters.” I looked around. Everyone else looked blank too. I had no idea why. It seemed obvious.

A-Cs with imageering talent were able to manipulate images, which was how the Imageering side of the Centaurion house kept the regular humans from realizing parasitic jellyfish things had splatted onto a human and turned said human into an alien superbeing monster.

In addition to manipulation, an imageer who’d touched the picture of a person would know everything about that person—Christopher had explained it as pictures taking a copy of the mind and soul as well as the body. The stronger the imageer, the more information he or she could glean from the touched image.

Christopher was the strongest imageer on the planet, and during Operation Fugly, he’d touched some of the pictures I’d had displayed in my apartment. This was why, during Operation Drug Addict, he’d recognized my old boyfriend from high school, Brian Dwyer, before I did. Well before, but hey, as I liked to remind everyone, I was the big picture girl. Details were for other people.

Chuckie almost never allowed his picture to be taken. I’d always figured it was because he didn’t think he looked good when he was younger and was more comfortable out of the limelight as an adult. Now I wondered how long he’d known just what kinds of aliens were on Earth.

But it wasn’t relevant to the current problem. Other imageering skills were. When we were recovering from that mad moment of not-too-wise passion in the elevator, Christopher had shown that imageers could also draw images using air molecules or some such. To me, this knowledge should have made what I was thinking obvious to all, but apparently the heavy thinking was somehow being left to me. Always the way.

“The fake runner shorted out the phones to Catering, probably after he or she heard Chuckie call for food. He or she overlaid an image of the real runner onto himself and took the order from the front desk clerk. Same faker delivered the food to Chuckie. No one’s the wiser. They’ve tapped the phones, so it was simple to call Chuckie back, since they’ve kept the lines out to Catering. They made up a restaurant name, and Bob’s your uncle.”

“My uncle’s name is Richard,” Martini said. “But, okay, that makes sense.”

“So they’re on the premises somewhere,” Chuckie said.

“One of them is, for sure. But A-Cs move so fast, it wouldn’t need to be more than one.”

Christopher closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he pulled out his phone. “This is Commander White. I want a full personnel status report for today. Every imageer, where they were, who they were with, every detail. And I want anyone who can’t prove his or her whereabouts put under immediate house arrest. Yes, I’m serious. Yes, I want this done immediately. No, it’s not a drill, it’s real. No, this is me telling you, not the C.I.A. Look, you want me to come down there and explain it personally to you?” He was snarling. “Right. Faster than that. Yes, that’s why I said immediately.” He covered the phone and looked at Reader. “James, we need Security to main Imageer control stat—I don’t think I’m talking to who I should be.”

Reader nodded and dialed. I looked at Chuckie. “I am so sick of being infiltrated.”

“Maybe they’re just confused.”

“Maybe.” Martini had his Commander hat on, too. “But maybe not.” He pulled out his phone. “We’re on internal alert. Yes. Right. Imageering. No, I’m not kidding. No, not Christopher. Every other imageer, however. Right. Handle it fast, handle it right, because if I have to come down there and handle it for you . . . Right, good. I want to know the moment you find anything suspicious. Any kind of suspicious. Right. Good. Yeah, Christopher’s very concerned. Yes, thanks for taking care of that already. Appreciate the help. Thanks, Gladys.”

“Gladys? You called Gladys for this?”

He gave me a sideways look. “You’d be surprised at what Gladys’ job title is.”

I thought about it. “I supposed Center Operator isn’t it.”

“No.”

I thought about it some more. “Why does the Head of Security run the intercom system?”

He grinned. “Because we don’t want a peon disturbing our rest.” He nodded to Christopher. “She’s already got the Pontifex secured.”

Christopher nodded back and mouthed, “Thanks.”

“Yes, I really would like to know who’s in there with you. Really? How interesting. Hello? Confirm, please. Okay, good. Take them all in. I want all of Imageering under the closest scrutiny. Looking for anything suspicious, particularly anything that relates to Commander Martini. Regular updates would be nice. Yes, with extreme prejudice.” He hung up and rubbed his forehead. “This sucks, but good call, Kitty.”

“You think your department’s been infiltrated?”

“Well, the reaction time’s not exactly what I’m used to when we’re under alert, so yeah, I’m pretty sure we have a problem.”

“Only one?”

“Hilarious.” Christopher looked at Martini. “Jeff, if my department’s infiltrated, what about yours?”

“If we have a rogue imageer out there, who knows?” Martini sighed. “At least it’ll be fast.”

“How so?” Chuckie asked.

“We move fast,” Martini said. “And we move faster in these kinds of situations.”

“How fast?”

Christopher and Martini’s phones both rang. Martini grinned at me as he answered. “That fast.”

CHAPTER 14

MARTINI AND CHRISTOPHER WERE BOTH DEEP in conversation when there was a knock. Chuckie pulled a gun out of his jacket and motioned for the rest of us to get away from the door. I dug my Glock out of my purse, and Reader and Gower pulled their guns out of their jackets as well. Nice to know the three of them were wearing shoulder holsters. Martini and Christopher still refused to, another thing I was working on.

Everyone else got out of the way. Four guns were probably good for one door, and that way, the others were in fallback position.

Chuckie opened the door so that he was to the side. And we were greeted by the threatening sight of Melanie and Emily, Lorraine and Claudia’s mothers. “Nice welcome,” Melanie said dryly. She looked a lot like Raquel Welch had when she was playing a cave girl.

Emily, who looked like a young Sophia Loren, shook her head. “Nice to see things are always tense for you guys.”

We put the guns away. “Nice to see you. What’re you two doing here?”

Melanie shrugged as they started dragging several fully loaded luggage carts into the room. “James felt having people you could trust deliver your supplies, particularly Jeff’s adrenaline, would be a good idea.”

I loved Reader. “Great idea.”

“Plus, we wanted to have a good time, too.” Emily laughed at my expression. “Lucinda’s coming, we got the word. You’ll be happy we’re here, trust me.”

Lorraine and Claudia trotted over to help their mothers. “You’re going to stay?” Lorraine asked.

“We won’t cramp your style,” Melanie said. “Promise.”

“Sure, you say that now.” Lorraine grinned. “It’s great to have you here, Mom. Joe’s being a stick-in-the-mud and doesn’t want to let me gamble.”

Melanie laughed. “We’ll see about that.” I’d never really questioned where Lorraine and Claudia got their personalities from. As mothers went, Melanie and Emily were my faves, right after my own and Chuckie’s mom. I pushed the fact that I didn’t really like Martini’s mother, and she really didn’t like me, as far down as possible.

“Are your husbands coming, too?”

Emily rolled her eyes. “No. They hate Vegas. Which is good, because that way we have contacts back at the Science Center we can trust. I can’t believe Imageering’s been infiltrated.”

“How did you know about that?”

Melanie shrugged. “The Science Center’s already been searched. We’re all clean, but you never know.”

“In five minutes?”

They exchanged glances. “Um, Kitty? Hyperspeed, remember?” Emily looked concerned. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Just overwhelmed.” A thought occurred. “Hey, do you two happen to know what this is?” I pointed to the dish of creepy food. “Don’t eat it, we think it’s poisoned.”

They stared at it. “It’s familiar . . .” Melanie shook her head. “I think it’s a dish from home.”

“You think? You don’t know for sure?”

“All of you always act like there are only two generations here,” Emily answered. “But really, there are three or more. We’re a lot younger than Jeff’s parents, as an example. We don’t count as the older generation, and since we have children in it, we don’t count as the younger generation, either. Our parents came as operatives, too, but they were older, and many of them aren’t with us any longer. We were little when we left the home world, but we remember it.”

This made sense, it just hadn’t really occurred to me. I felt unobservant, which was pretty much my par for any course.

Chuckie sauntered over. “Ladies, glad you could join us. Charles Reynolds.” He put his hand out.

Melanie took it first. “Right, the new boss.” She gave him an obvious up and down. “Hmmm. Well, I suppose if Jeff ever acts stupid again, you’re not a bad option.”

Chuckie managed to keep his jaw closed, but his eyes went wide. “Uh . . .” He offered his hand to Emily.

“Oh, Angela likes him,” Emily said chidingly as she shook his hand. “I’m sure he’s not as much of a jerk as the boys think he is. Nice grip.” She turned his hand over. “No manicure? You’re not the rich pompous ass they said. Interesting.”

Chuckie looked at me. “Are they for real?”

“They’re the heads of the Bluntness Division.”

Chuckie started to laugh. “Would you two mind sharing a room? We’re going to run out of space, I think.”

“Sure, we’d rather, girl sleepover kind of thing,” Melanie said. She gave him another close look. “Angela says we can trust you.”

Chuckie shrugged. “She’s known me half my life, and she recommended me for initial hire and promotions within the Agency. I’d assume she doesn’t hate me.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Emily was also giving Chuckie another once-over. “You sure this isn’t some elaborate attempt to win Kitty back?”

“There is no ‘back’ in that sense.” He didn’t sound flippant, he sounded regretful. My throat got tight. This was not a conversation I wanted to hear, or have Martini hear. I busied myself with staring at the mystery food.

“Huh. That’s not what my daughter said,” Melanie replied. Oh, great, Lorraine had filled her mother in on my love life.

“Well, it was a long time ago.” I recognized his tone of voice. Chuckie wasn’t enjoying this conversation, either.

“Nice to see you both, glad you’re staying, think you could stop torturing the two of them? And me?” Martini didn’t sound angry, at least not with me or Chuckie.

“Just protecting your interests, Jeff,” Emily said with a laugh.

“Right. Look, I hate him, he hates me, but even I’m sensitive enough to realize that standing here rubbing in who’s got the girl isn’t a great way to work together. And we have to work together.” Martini put emphasis on the last sentence.

Dazzlers of all ages were two things—gorgeous and brilliant. Melanie and Emily were no exceptions. They got the point. “Fine, fine. Well, how do we get a room?” Melanie said with a sigh.

“Reader’s probably got that covered,” Chuckie said. Our latest female additions wandered off to find him. “Thanks, I think,” he said to Martini.

“Don’t mention it. Really, don’t mention it. I hate having to remember you’re not the antichrist.”

“Yeah, I can relate. I hate having to remember that you’re not a moron.”

Play-nice time was over. Time to swallow the lump in my throat and keep things moving along smoothly. “Jeff, Emily and Melanie think this is a dish from your home world, but they’re not sure.” I was still staring at it. It was still unappetizing. It also hadn’t moved, so I decided I could sleep again.

“We’ll have my parents take a look when they get here.” Martini came over to me and stroked the back of my neck. “I’m not upset,” he said very softly.

I looked up at him. “Really?”

“Yeah. Any inroads he made were my fault. Hard to be upset with you about it.”

“Jeff, that was six months ago.”

“Seems like yesterday.”

“Sometimes. Not always.” I took a deep breath and tried to relax. “So, have we found out who infiltrated what?”

Martini grimaced. “In a way.”

“In a way?”

He sighed. “It’s both not as bad as we feared and worse.”

“Oh, good. Routine.”

CHAPTER 15

WE WERE ALL GROUPED AROUND the conference table again, Melanie and Emily included. The rest of Chuckie’s suite had been declared clean of alien stuff, and Martini and Christopher had done some additional checks using hyperspeed, so we all felt there were no human bugs other than the ones Chuckie had removed before the rest of us had arrived.

“Okay, we have at least one rogue imageer,” Christopher told us, and it was clear he was furious. “They’re damned good, too. The reason my team was so slow and confused was because ‘I’ had just been there an hour or so prior and given them different directions.”

“More than one rogue.” Chuckie, Reader, and I said this in unison.

Christopher rolled his eyes. “Why?”

“You all move fast, but not that fast. What was going on here required someone in place to catch any phone calls you made that would have tipped you off. So whoever was impersonating Christopher in Nevada or New Mexico wasn’t the same person.”

“New York,” Christopher said.

“Pardon?”

“Imageering bases out of New York and some out of Los Angeles. The media centers?” His snark was on full. “You know, you’ve worked with us for a year, you’d think you’d know that.”

“But you base out of Area Fifty-One and Dulce.”

“I’m on Alpha Team.” He looked at Martini. “Can you explain it to her later?”

“Sure, but she’s right. It’s more than one.” Martini sighed. “They imitated his voice, too, which is hard.”

“Not really,” Reader said thoughtfully.

“Why so? I sound that average?” Christopher clearly didn’t find this amusing.

“No. But recording devices are easy to come by. And what orders did they give? Something you would normally?” Reader was playing with his phone.

“Apparently I said to pull all field imageers away from their empathic counterparts. I’d never give that order. I never have given that order.”

Reader nodded. “But you’ve used all those words at one time or another. If girlfriend’s right, and we all know she usually is, then whoever’s doing this has been around for at least six months. Plenty of time to get everyone’s voices recorded.” He flipped open his phone and hit a button.

“Pull all field imageers away from their empathic counterparts.” It was Christopher’s voice, and not tinny at all.

Reader closed the phone. “The prosecution rests.”

That sat on the air for a while. “Um, if that’s the case, then they can impersonate any one of us.”

“How long can a strong imageer keep up that kind of facade?” Chuckie asked.

“Depends.” Christopher shook his head. “Not long enough to fool someone who knows the person well.”

“What do you mean?” Chuckie’s voice was getting the knife in it again. He didn’t like the delays one-sentence answers provided.

Christopher sighed. “Okay. I’m the strongest imageer on the planet. Maybe whoever’s infiltrated is stronger, but let’s just go with the idea that they’re not, at least for the moment.” Everyone nodded. Christopher’s eyes narrowed and all of a sudden, I saw Chuckie sitting there, next to himself.

“Wow, you’ve been practicing.”

“Yeah.” It was weird hearing Christopher’s voice come out of Chuckie’s mouth. “No one else on my team can do anything to this degree, but I figured if you could think of it, I should probably make sure I could do it well and that we knew how to counter. Imitation seemed like the obvious extension to drawing on the air.”

“Thanks, I think. And, I have to say, it’s kind of creepy.”

“Glad you think so,” Martini said quietly.

“I can’t do Reynolds’ voice,” the Chuckie that was Christopher said. “But, okay, it looks like they’re two of us here, right?”

“Right.”

Christopher stood up. “Come with me for a minute,” he said to Chuckie. They both got up and walked out of the room. A few seconds later they both walked in and stood in front of us.

I got up and walked to them, and Martini came with me. I pointed to the Chuckie on the left, Martini to the one on the right.

“This is the real Chuckie.”

“Yep, because this is Christopher.” Martini grinned. “The heartbeats are a giveaway.”

“I’m more interested in how Kitty knew who was who visually,” the real Chuckie said.

“Because he doesn’t walk or stand like you. Close, but you saunter and Christopher doesn’t, so he had to imitate your movements, and he was good but not quite right. Same with how you stand.”

“Fine, but you’ve known me a long time.”

“Yeah, but I think Christopher’s point is made. I still had to study you two. If he’d just walked in as you, I wouldn’t have questioned right away.” I looked up at Martini. “But now the test is, how easy is it to tell two identical A-Cs apart?”

The image of Chuckie shimmered, and Christopher was there again. “Harder, because of heartbeat signature.” All of a sudden, I was looking at another Martini. Christopher jerked his head, and the two of them disappeared into the bedroom.

“This’ll be a fun test for you,” Chuckie said under his breath.

I’d been thinking the same thing. “Yeah.”

Two Martinis walked out. I had to remind myself that having a fantasy about this wasn’t going to make the real Martini happy with me, since he knew who was impersonating him.

But it was harder. Christopher had spent his entire life with Martini. There were no differences in walk, stance, or even expression. They were both grinning at me, and they weren’t speaking. “Wow, um . . . I hate this.”

Chuckie put his arm around my waist. Both sets of Martini eyes narrowed. “Huh, that didn’t work.” He took his arm away.

“Oh. Duh.” I went to the fridge and pulled out two sodas. I threw both of them at the heads. The Martini on the right dodged and caught the can. The one on the left just put up his hand and caught the can. “Jeff’s on the right, Christopher’s on the left.”

The one on the left turned back into Christopher. “Good plan.”

“Only works because I know you’re shorter than Jeff. Look, what this is proving is that whoever’s out there can imitate whoever the hell they want to, at least for a short while. And in a crisis situation, a short while will be all they need.”

Christopher disappeared and Reader was there. “Yeah, but I can’t sound like anyone else.” It was Christopher’s voice coming out of Reader’s mouth.

“That is beyond freaky. Please stop now.”

Christopher was back, grinning. “Okay. By the way, it’s really draining. I’m pretty much ready for a nap now.”

“Really?”

“Manipulating an existing image is one thing—I can do that for hours and not get tired. Drawing an image on the air is another. It’s harder and requires total concentration to create and keep it there. Creating a three-dimensional image that has to move and function like a living being? That’s hard as hell. I don’t want to do it again today, for example. I could if our lives depended on it, but I don’t want to discover what that adrenaline shot to the hearts feels like.”

My stomach clenched. “It would make you that tired?”

The real Martini stepped in between Chuckie and me and started to massage my neck. “Relax. He’s fine.” I saw him shoot Christopher a look.

“Yeah, just being dramatic,” Christopher said quickly, as his eyes looked anywhere but at mine.

Lorraine didn’t buy it either. She came over, grabbed Christopher’s arm, and dragged him off into Chuckie’s bedroom. “Claudia, med kit, please.” Claudia went in with her.

I could hear Christopher protesting that he was fine. “OUCH! Stop doing that!” He didn’t like it, whatever it was.

“Think they’re harpooning him?”

“No. He wouldn’t be coherent.” Martini sighed. “They’re just giving him some rejuvenating fluids. They hurt, they’re just not agonizing.”

My throat felt tight again. I had to harpoon Martini on a regular basis. I knew it was horrible, for him and for me, but I hated hearing that it was the agony I’d always suspected it was and that he remembered how much it hurt.

He hugged me. “Stop. I’d rather be alive.”

“Me, too,” Chuckie said. “And it’s starting to sound like we may have a challenge achieving that.”

“Good point. What was the goal of pulling Imageering away from Field?”

Martini shook his head. “No idea.”

“Disruption. Ability to put rogue agents in place. Ability to murder Field agents or leave them exposed.” Chuckie was saying these things as if he were making a shopping list. “Destabilizes existing structure. Creates lack of faith in leadership. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.”

“So, what is it they want? I mean, is this going to turn out to be the usual, where there are at least two plans going on at the same time? You know, one where we have a psycho in charge and the other where we have a total megalomaniac running the show?”

“Could be,” Martini said. “My vote’s for megalomania, of course. You don’t show up on another world by choice unless you have a reason. We’re handling the good reason. That only leaves a bad reason for anyone else from the home world to make an appearance.”

“Yeah, but why are they doing all this? Are they hoping to replace you or White with a double?” Chuckie had his conspiracy hat on, I could tell by his voice.

“I’d notice if someone impersonated Jeff.”

“In time?” Chuckie shrugged. “Maybe. But in time for what? To not marry an imposter? To save his life?” He jerked his head toward Martini. “To save the world? Can’t say. We don’t know enough yet.”

“Maybe we’ll get more when my parents arrive,” Martini said. “And, if not, we’ll have the fun of my mother complaining about how far behind we are with the wedding preparations. So, you know, a good time should be had by all.”