Tekgrrl (8 page)

I nodded. “He hasn’t dated in I don’t know how long, and he needs to again, to get out there and stop being all about his job.”

“But, what about you?” she asked, toying with her coffee. “I mean, I know you like him…”

“He’s my friend. I want him to be happy.” I realized that was true. “And you seem like a nice person, and you two seem to have a connection. So, why not?”

“I don’t know, Mindy.”

“You’re the type of person he should be dating; not a model or a starlet.”
Nor me,
I silently added. “You’re the type of woman he should be with.”

Selena took a sip of her coffee. “If you’re sure…?”

I wasn’t, but I knew I had to be. “I am.”

She looked over at me, smiling. “Then, I will. I’m not going to lie; he just about took my breath away when I met him at Lainey’s reception the other night. And I thought there might be some chemistry there…”

“Great,” I said, my voice a bit weak. I guess they hadn’t actually hooked up. But I supposed it was only a matter of time.

As I glanced out the window, I saw Luke approaching the building. “Speak of the devil.”

He pushed open the door and looked around, saw us. Moving with purpose, his long, heavily muscled body glistening with sweat, he approached. Selena and I stared, trying not to drool.

“What happened to you guys?” he asked.

“We met you back here, just like you said,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I was ahead of you. There’s no way you made it all the way around and back before me!”

“Maybe it’s our new powers,” I teased.

“Maybe you two chickened out,” Luke argued, crossing his arms and giving us a hard look.

I maintained innocence. “No way!”

“We cut down some side streets,” Selena said. She stood and stretched, showing off her own gorgeous and lean body. This time, Luke was the one staring. “Want a green tea? I’m buying.”

As she took his arm and led him to the barista, I felt a gnawing in the pit of my stomach. She was going to ask him out now. I had done it; I had practically gift wrapped him for her. Not that she needed it, but I had helped her. Why, I’m not certain. Being a mature person sucked.

I glanced over at the television screen and saw a familiar face. Doing a double take, I looked again. Was that…?

I got up and walked to the screen, edging past a businessman who gave me a sharp look that I ignored. Sure enough, there he was: Simon Leasure. My former teammate. The last time I saw him, he’d been saving me from being devoured by a creature that looked like it was spawned at the gates of hell, and almost dying in the process. That wasn’t something I forgot easily.

Nor were other circumstances we’d shared. The second to last time I saw him, Simon was being dragged off by Luke to explain to the authorities just why he had betrayed the Elite Hands of Justice to get some extra publicity for himself.

Decked out now in the best suit money could buy, in a serious but calming tie that matched his dark blue eyes, he looked less like a movie star and more like a politician. His face was sober as he spoke, and I edged forward and hit the volume button.

“…will do the job to the best of my ability. I think my previous experiences will give me the understanding needed to act in this capacity,” he was saying. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the press.”

Simon stood behind the podium and kept his hands folded in front of him as reporters shouted out questions and flashbulbs popped. Was it my imagination, or did I see a hint of a smirk on his face?

“That was Simon Leasure, the son of Senator Jackson Leasure,” the announcer was saying, “and the new Presidential Secretary of Heroes…”

“What the hell?” Paul spat, looking around the table at us. “There’s a Presidential Secretary of Heroes now? And it’s none other than that asshole Simon Leasure?”

We were all in shock.

“What does that mean, exactly, Presidential Secretary of Heroes?” Lainey asked. “He’s going to do what, act as a liaison between us and the government?”

“Or monitor and police us,” Wesley grumbled, fingers steepled in front of his mouth.

“It doesn’t mean that necessarily,” Luke said.

“Oh, who the hell knows,” Paul blustered. “Of all the people in the world, it would have to be that self-righteous little prick.”

We all stared, surprised by the language he was using. And then I remembered why Paul might have a problem: Simon was one of Kate’s former flings.

“Toby, didn’t you meet with someone about a committee yesterday?” Kate asked, unruffled by Paul’s unnatural behavior.

“Yes. Forrest Ward,” Toby said, ruffling his hair with his hands. “He’s the liaison assigned to the Elite Hands of Justice. But he said the committee was being formed in an effort to improve communications between the hero teams and the government, kind of like Homeland Security. In the event of a natural disaster, the government will communicate with us through the liaisons.”

“What, it was too easy just calling us on the phone?” Kate laughed.

“Bureaucrats love reorganizing things to make them think they’re doing something important,” Paul remarked, shaking his head. “Toby, why don’t see if you can contact this Forrest, have him straighten this out for us.”

Toby nodded. “I’ll give him a call.” He whipped out his cell and punched in a number, stepping out to make the call, I suppose to hear better without us in the background. It was just like him to have already programmed the liaison’s number into his phone, in order not to lose it. Good thing, too. I couldn’t count the number of times he’d misplaced his security card and I’d had to give him a new clearance.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Wesley said. “Whenever the government steps in, that usually leads to trouble.”

We all felt the weight of his words and experience.

“We don’t know enough yet to have a bad feeling about anything,” Paul spoke up.

“We know that Simon Leasure’s in charge, which ought to tell you something,” Wesley said.

Kate gave a soft laugh. “It’s going to be poorly run and highly publicized?”

“It can’t be trusted,” Wesley corrected.

“Simon wasn’t all bad,” I put in, feeling like I should defend him. “He did save my life.”

“Mindy’s right,” Luke spoke up. “Let’s not judge someone by one mistake they made.”

Wesley snorted. “One?”

“Let’s just wait until we know more about the situation before jumping to conclusions,” Paul said. “Though I do have to agree that if Simon’s in charge, I worry.”

I glanced at Lainey, who gave me a knowing look. If Paul was agreeing with Wesley, this was the apocalypse.

Toby walked back into the room. “He’s in an executive meeting right now, probably with Simon, but his secretary said he could be available to speak with us right after.”

“Great, set it up,” Paul said, and Toby nodded and spoke into his cell phone again, walking back out of the room. “We’ll reconvene later.”

“Are all of your meetings like this?” Selena asked as she, Lainey and I exited the room.

“Well, sometimes we
know
things,” I joked.

“And sometimes we actually have criminals to fight,” Lainey added.

Having time to kill before the next meeting, I decided to do the one thing that would make me happy: go work in my lab. Grabbing a bottle of water out of the kitchen and downing another migraine pill—my head was better but still not 100 percent—I headed for the elevator and scanned my ID badge into the reader that would allow me access. In a moment, the elevator dinged, and I entered my lab, donning a clean lab coat as I walked, my boot heels clicking in the silence.

To say my laboratory was state of the art is an understatement. I had things in there that would make the top technology specialists in the country weep with joy at just being able to touch them. Things that my own hands had created, things that followed me back from my off-planet travels, both as a child and again with the EHJ, were littered everywhere.

I stepped up to the gray table in the center of the room that held my latest project, a transporter that would hopefully work like a gun: point and shoot. Instead of ending up dead, a criminal would end up in a cell in a maximum-security prison, unharmed. At least, it would if calibrated right. I had been testing it on plants, trying to transport them from one side of the room to the other, but something was making the transporter go wonky, and the plants were ending up on the other side of the room with their planters shattered and their buds ripped off. Not exactly unharmed.

I sighed as I got a similar result—the poor geranium—and got out some tools to work on the gun.

Before my first space travel (which I don’t like to dwell on, as you know) I was a precocious child, maybe even a prodigy, but I wasn’t
this
smart. I might have grown up to be a scientist like my parents and worked with a team to create something like this after months of planning and testing; but after my time with the aliens, suddenly I could just dream it up and start building on any Saturday night when nothing was on television and I was dateless. It happened all the time.

Something changes when I start working, however. It’s like I go into a trance: My fingers and hands seem to move of their own accord, and my mind processes things of which not even I am aware. Hours will pass without me realizing, I’ll skip meals and forget about bathroom breaks until whatever I’m working on is done. I always come to with an aching bladder, a rumbling stomach, and the realization that it’s now night.

A similar experience came over me as I started work on my transporter. Tweaking this, recalibrating that, I worked furiously, in my own little world, my aching head eventually forgotten. The air conditioner turned off and on without me really realizing, and the tick and hum of the machinery around me was nothing but a background. I was alone.

I see you.

The voice sounded right behind my shoulder, as if someone was leaning in and whispering. I whirled to look, and a loud clatter sounded as several of my tools appeared out of nowhere and landed on the metal table.

Heart racing, I looked around, seeing nothing out of the ordinary and no one. “Who’s there?” I called, then winced, realizing how much that sounded like a horror movie cliché. “Hello?” I put a bit more edge to my voice. “You’re so funny, Toby. Knock it off.”

There was no response. Shivering a bit, I reached for the stunner I kept in my pocket. I edged toward the door, my nerves jangling and my skin prickling. “I’m going to knock your ass out for messing with me, I hope you realize.”

No one replied. My eyes landed on my “gun,” its guts sprawled across the lab table. It seemed to vibrate, clattering against the table, and then, as if an unseen hand took the weapon up, the barrel whirled to point in my direction.

“So not cool,” I said.

“Mindy? Who are you talking to?”

I jumped again, before turning to see Luke standing in the doorway near the elevator, a quizzical look on his face.

“I thought there was someone here,” I said, motioning into the room. “I was by myself, working, and I thought I heard someone whisper at me.”

“You thought you heard someone? You, the same woman who doesn’t hear people calling her while she’s working unless they set off a nuclear explosion?” Luke gave me a teasing grin.

I grimaced. “Yeah, that’s what made it so freaky! And then my project moved.” I pointed back to where it was sitting, barrel pointed away from us.

I blinked. “What the…?”

“What?”

“I swear it was moved.” I walked over and laid a hesitant hand on the device. “It’s cold.”

“It’s metal.”

“It’s extra cold.”

“What, you think it was a ghost?” Luke asked.

I shook my head. “There’s no such thing.”

“Says the coolheaded scientist who was scared out of her mind from talking to herself.”

“Ha-ha.” I made a face at him. “And I wasn’t scared out of my mind.”

“You looked pretty panicked.”

I sighed and rubbed my aching head. “Did you come down here for a reason, or just to torment me?”

“A reason. The liaison is here to meet with us, and Paul wants everyone there pronto.”

“Did he say pronto?”

“He said pronto.”

“All right, I’m coming.”

I shrugged out of my lab coat and hung it next to the hook on the door. Absently, I reached for the switch to turn off the lights. They went dark a split second before my finger flipped the switch.

I moved my hand away fast but didn’t say anything to Luke. I just knew I didn’t want to be in this room for a while.

Our new liaison was lean and well-dressed in the manner of many politicians, in a way that was polished and studiedly nonthreatening. He had close-cropped sandy brown hair that looked as if it would curl if he let it, though that would probably ruin his image. A goatee was his only rebellion against an overwhelmingly conservative appearance. He also looked a little nervous to be addressing a room full of heroes.

“Everyone, this is Forrest Ward, whom I met yesterday,” Toby was saying as we all took our seats around the large table in our war room. “Forrest, this is White Heat, Aphrodite, Sensei, Tekgrrl, Phenomenal Girl Five, the Reincarnist, and our newest member, Granite.”

Forrest nodded. “Nice to meet you all, and thank you for agreeing to see me.” As if it had been his idea and not ours. Such a politician. “Well, as I told Toby—um, the Magnificent—yesterday, the president decided better communication with the leaders of our country’s hero teams was needed in case of national emergency, and he decided to set up the committee that I am now a part of. I’m the lucky guy assigned to work with you all.” There was no sarcasm evident in his tone. “Now, who is the leader of this team?”

“I am,” Paul and Wesley said at the exact same time. They shot nasty glares at each other.

“When did you decide you were taking my job?” Paul snapped.

“When Benjamin died,” Wesley replied. “
He
was the leader of this team, not you, Paul.”

“And what makes you think you can just step in? After years of telling us we were all popularity-obsessed fools that you wanted no part of, now you want in?”