50
"How was the doctor visit?" Mark asked as Heather stepped through the door.
Heather frowned. "Nothing happened."
"What do you mean nothing happened?"
"I mean the doctor didn't even examine me. He talked to Mom and Dad for a bit and then asked me a few questions. Then he referred me to another doctor."
"Another doctor?"
"Yeah, a shrink. Can you believe it? I have an appointment with her tomorrow."
Mark looked at Heather. As much as she tried to make herself sound casual, she looked angry and embarrassed.
Before he could ask her another question, she turned away. "Where's Jen?"
"She went to the mall with Mom. They'll be gone all day. Dad's at work; that just leaves the two of us."
"Any response on the message we sent Jack?"
"I don't know. I just left the system running the automatic resend program that Jennifer wrote. If he or Janet turns the computer on, they'll get our message."
"Let's check. And no, I don't want to talk about the doctor."
"I wasn't asking."
"Good," Heather said, heading for the stairs. "Let's go see if we got a response."
As Mark followed Heather into his sister's room, he paused at the doorway. He couldn't quite place it, but something didn't feel right. As different as they had always been, Mark knew his twin like no non-twin could. And something about her room was different. However, a quick look over the room didn’t reveal what was off, and Heather was waiting. He'd figure it out later.
He followed Heather over to the small desk where Jennifer's laptop sat quietly running. Heather typed in the password and the security screen was replaced by a view of the computer desktop.
Two programs were running, both minimized and out of view. Heather brought up the communication program that linked the QT on Jennifer's laptop to the one on Janet's laptop.
Heather almost jumped out of her seat. "Oh my God! They got our message and sent a response."
Immediately, all thoughts about Jennifer vanished from Mark's mind as he leaned over Heather's shoulder to read the message.
"All right. You know who I am, but I need more than your word that I can trust you. Prove it to me. Get me the name of the person who led the attack on my team. Nothing less will be acceptable. I'll give you a week to get back to me with the answer before I destroy this computer. Any attempt at contact without that answer and I will destroy the computer. You have my terms."
Mark was stunned. A glance at Heather's face confirmed that he wasn't alone.
"So Jack is alive," Mark breathed.
"Maybe so, but we can't give him what he wants."
Mark raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"
Heather swiveled the chair to face him. "Well, for one thing, we don't know the answer. Second, we can't hack our way into any network that might have the answer because we don't have the cold fusion tank anymore. Even though we kept the subspace transmitter, we don't have any way of generating the gamma flux it needs."
"Well we're just going to have to come up with some other way of making the subspace transmitter work."
Heather shook her head. "Even if we could in that amount of time, where would we start looking? We have to have a coordinate to tap into a network, and we don't have any idea who might have that information or what network the answer might be on. Besides, I don't think we should give Jack the answer even if we had it."
"Why not?"
"Even if he’s working with us, Jack is a killer. We'd be murdering that person as surely as if we pulled the trigger ourselves."
Mark paced slowly across the room. "Maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, these people killed Jonathan Riles and most of Jack's team. They’re the ones working with Dr. Stephenson."
"We don't know that."
"What do your probabilities tell you?"
Heather pursed her lips. "I don't care. I'm not going to be part of killing someone."
Despite Mark's best efforts, she refused to consider it. Finally, he threw up his hands in frustration.
"Okay. At least think about it until we get a chance to discuss this with Jen."
After a brief hesitation, Heather shrugged. "I'll wait until we talk to Jennifer."
Heather saved the message and minimized the program monitoring Janet's computer. As she did, she accidentally tapped the button that displayed the other running program. It was Jennifer's Internet browser, which showed that she had been looking at a news story about the search for Jack and Janet.
"Wait! Leave that up!" The urgency in Mark's voice caused Heather to look around.
Mark's gaze read the page at a glance and he reached across Heather to click the mouse, scrolling rapidly downward until he reached the end. For once, she didn't object.
"We’re screwed," Mark said leaning back.
"What are you talking about?"
"That news story that Jennifer was reading. It says that the search for Jack has started focusing on the canyons farther west of town. I know the place they were describing. It's the canyon with our starship. With all those people, they're bound to stumble across our cave."
For once, Heather was too shocked to respond.
Mark's eyes settled on Jennifer's bed. Now he knew what had been bothering him. Something about the sheet was wrong. Jennifer had always been meticulous in the way she made her bed, but this morning she had left the sheet untucked, the end extending just below the end of the bedspread.
Drawn forward by his curiosity, Mark knelt down. Only the lower left corner of the sheet was untucked, as if the bed had been made and then the corner had been pulled out later.
Ignoring Heather's questioning gaze, Mark lifted the corner of the mattress.
"Oh shit, Jen. What have you done?"
There, stuffed under the mattress, lay all four of the alien headsets.