“Good luck,” he said. “I knew you’d whip these guys into shape. They just needed someone with a nose for it.”
“I can smell news,” I said.
“Nah,” Perry said with a grin, “anybody can scratch up news. I meant for the truth.”
*
My parents were not waiting with sparkling drinks when I got home. They were at the kitchen table, though. “Lois, get in here,” Dad called when the door closed.
Lucy was sitting halfway up the stairs, and waved at me before grimacing and making a slicing motion across her neck with her hand.
CUTE, I mouthed to her, and marched in to greet the firing squad.
“You want to tell me what you were thinking writing a story like this?” Dad asked, and the coolness of his tone was troubling.
I decided to be relieved that he hadn’t asked about the distraction I’d used for the disruption at the lab. Hopefully that meant the prism flare could be discreetly replaced, with him none the wiser.
“That it was my job,” I said, not showing him a moment’s weakness. I knew what I was doing. I had a place where I belonged. Finally.
He said, “I’m not so sure—”
“I saw your name on the sign-in book at the lab,” I said, “but I do hope that our paths won’t cross that often. I know you’re probably grateful to me for uncovering what I did, because I also know you wouldn’t want to support a company that would do something like that. Would you?”
“Lois, of course not, but this isn’t about me—”
“I’m good at this. It’s what I want to do. Any help you can give me with Butler would be welcome.”
I didn’t think the story would make the principal lose his job. He had plausible deniability about the nature of the research, and if I was honest, I doubted he had known the details. But that was one unfortunate thing about how quickly I’d had to write the story. Not enough time to find out whether he would have defended it the same way he did the Warheads when Anavi was their victim.
There was always next time. I was curious about the rest of the companies who’d made charitable donations or become research partners with the school.
“I have to go catch up with . . . my schoolwork.” I walked over and planted a kiss on my mother’s cheek, then on Dad’s.
I’d almost slipped up and said I needed to catch up with a friend.
Somehow, when I got upstairs, I knew not to bother logging into chat, even if it did mean potentially missing a new baby cow picture.
After a day this long, I wanted to see him. I figured he would want the same thing, impossible as it was.
The CEO of Advanced Research Laboratories was the bad guy. There was a risk that the people running Worlds War Three weren’t that great either, as a baddie subsidiary, but one of the workers had helped us in the end. It was a risk I was willing to take, since this was the only way we had to see each other.
That was how I justified going back inside Worlds War Three as I slipped on James’s holoset. Well, mine now. I settled on the bed and turned on the holoset.
The game sprang into view around me and for once, the world wasn’t on fire or in the midst of an attack.
Two suns were setting with a downright poetic mix of dark, unnatural hues tinged violet and red. In the near distance, I could see Devin’s castle, rising from the rubble like a phoenix made of stone. His army was at work rebuilding it and as I went closer, I saw two figures directing them. One was King Devin, back in his full chainmail and armor regalia. The other was a familiar female form, whose grenades were emblazoned with words.
I was about to go talk to them when a voice behind me said, “Hey.”
I turned and smiled at the green-skinned alien boy—friendly—who was smiling back at me.
“We did it,” I said. “Pretty nice teamwork. Did you come up with the idea?”
“I knew I couldn’t stand by and not do anything,” he said. “So after I told him we were trying to stop the experiment, I asked if there was any way to send fiery backup. Once I explained the plan to disrupt the signals, he wanted nothing more than to help. I’m not sure he really thought we’d manage it though.”
“Well, sending Daisy, that was . . .”
Oh, god, I was blushing again. Already.
“. . . genius,” I finished awkwardly.
His smile evaporated. A seriousness took over his features and I so wished I could see it in the real world. See if that expression was real.
It felt real.
“Lois,” he said, “I wish I could have been there. I hate that I wasn’t.”
“But you were, in the way that counts. I know it’s complicated.”
“You have no idea,” he said.
And my elf face must have looked stung, because he said, “My fault, not yours.”
He waved for me to come with him, in the opposite direction of Anavi and Devin. I did.
“I told my parents about you,” he said.
My heart pounded and thumped and thudded and made a general nuisance of itself.