“Huh,” Melanie said. “Okay. Tell them to send it to us so we can take a look at it.”
“He already sent it. It’s back in the lab. I, uh, I told him they could use our FedEx shipping code, so he overnighted it,” Julie said. The words came out of her mouth as though she expected Melanie to yell at her.
Melanie stifled her annoyance. Budgets had been tight, but not so tight that Julie couldn’t charge the shipping costs of a package if it was actually lab business. Though, Melanie wondered, how much did it actually cost to overnight something from Peru?
“There’s more,” Bark said. He was standing straight and staring at her with an intensity he usually reserved for when they were alone.
“More?” Melanie glanced at Patrick and Julie and then back at Bark. All three looked nervous and excited, clearly unsure if what they had come to get her for was as big a deal as they thought it was. “Well,” she said, hearing that her voice was sharper than she meant it to be. “Out with it.”
Bark looked at his colleagues, then back at Melanie. “The egg sac,” he said. “It’s hatching.”
The White House
“Nuke ’em,” the president said. “Just launch the nukes and be done with it.” She leaned back in her chair and looked at the young man hovering by her side. One of the new interns. Manny smiled. He couldn’t remember the intern’s name, but President Stephanie Pilgrim liked them young and handsome. Arm candy, of sorts. She was never inappropriate with them—thankfully, that wasn’t one of Manny’s many worries as White House chief of staff—but she definitely liked having them around. The president reached out and put her hand on the intern’s forearm. “How about you go get us a big bowl of popcorn or something, maybe some chips and salsa. All this talk of war is making me feel a bit peckish.”
“Come on, Steph,” Manny said. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I’m the president of the United States of America, Manny, and you will address me appropriately,” she said, smiling. “President Steph to you. And how am I supposed to take this seriously? It’s an exercise. The other team is out there in the heat of the primaries. Pretty soon they’re going to figure out which one of those clowns is getting the nomination, and they’ll start aiming at me instead of each other. In the meantime, we’re holed up in the Situation Room pretending that we’re actually going to go to war with China. Can’t I just order the nukes and call it a day? I’ve got more important shit to do than play war games to satisfy the army’s hard-on.”
“Technically, this one’s primarily a naval situation,” Manny said.
“How long have you known me, Manny?”