Alien in the House

Chapter 62



WE GOT INTO THE ELEVATOR NOW. While we went up to the fifth floor I sent Officer Melville a text asking about any officer named Dier. Requested he keep the search confidential, just in case Dier was a legit dude and it was simply a common name around these parts. Also asked for a list of any officers named Reid, just in case.

Exited the elevator to find all of Hacker International present and accounted for, along with Amy, Jeff, and the others who’d been with us at the Embassy.

“Took you long enough,” Christopher said.

“We were figuring out what’s going on.”

For this statement I received Patented Glare #4. “I told you we’d found out what’s going on over at Gaultier already.”

“Right. Where are the Barones?”

“Sent them on an errand,” Jeff said. “And I’ve explained to everyone here that, even if they’re engaged to one of them, this is confidential in the extreme.”

“I won’t tell Jennifer anything,” Ravi said. “But she’s completely trustworthy.”

“Other than in her taste in men,” Amy said under her breath.

Stryker handed Chuckie a thick folder. “Here you go, my lord and master. Be happy American Centaurion bought us better equipment than we had at Andrews, because you’d still be waiting for the printouts otherwise.”

“Whine later,” Chuckie said. “Expect to work right now. Henry, you seem happy.”

He did. It was probably safe to consider that Dr. Wu looked close to giddy. Point of fact, I’d never seen him looking this cheerful, and that included the few times he thought he’d found a girl willing to go to bed with him. He’d been wrong those times, so I was cautiously optimistic about his joy being something ultimately useful.

“Proximity equals access, Chuck,” Henry said. “And a twenty-petabyte external hard drive, courtesy of the Dulce Science Center, means we now possess every bit of information Gaultier Enterprises has.”

“Nice work. What’s a petabyte?”

Henry shot me a withering look. “It’s a term for data storage capacity.”

“Dude, I guessed that, based on the fact that I know what a terabyte, a gigabyte, a megabyte, and a kilobyte are. I know what an octet is, too—it’s the smallest, the thing that makes up a byte. So we can stop with the idea that Kitty Cannot Grasp Our Genius Speak. However, I thought terabytes were the biggest things going.”

“They are for regular use,” Omega Red said. “But a petabyte is made up of a thousand terabytes.”

“It’s the next inevitable phase,” Big George added.

“Works for me. So, Doctor Condescending Wu, what did you find? We know you found Eugene’s laptop.”

Henry took a deep breath and Christopher put his hand up. “The highlights. We’re on a schedule now.”

Henry shot Christopher his own glare, though he had a long way to go to even hope to touch the hem of Christopher’s Glaring Garment. “Fine. I was able to use the laptop to access the entire system. We’re running the data right now to identify anything related to deep space suspended animation.”

“What are everyone’s initial thoughts—are we going to be able to help Malcolm?” Prayed the answer would be yes.

“Yes,” Stryker said. “I believe we have enough in here to be able to figure out what he was hit with and, therefore, what to do to bring him out. We’re sending relevant information to Dulce and Doctor Hernandez.”

Allowed myself to feel cautiously optimistic again. Everything going on was making it easy to focus on something other than worrying about Buchanan, but now that we were talking about him, all the worry showed up to kick cautious optimism to the curb while sharing that there was no proof Stryker was right or that we’d find a cure. Or that Buchanan would ever wake up again.

Jeff came over and put his arm around me. Clearly I was broadcasting the worry. Did my best to pull myself together—I wasn’t going to help Buchanan with worry.

“What else did you find?” Reader asked.

“There are three hidden floors in the building,” Amy said. “I’ve been there before and didn’t know about them, but Henry found them on the schematics.”

“Did you explore them?” Chuckie asked.

She shook her head. “We couldn’t get in, at least not on this trip.”

“We have the building blueprints,” Henry said. “All of them.”

“All of them?” Jeff asked.

“There are five different sets,” Henry replied. “They’re doing a lot of shady stuff over there. Anyway, I think we’ll be able to identify what’s going on with Gaultier.”

“I’m also sure that Henry found the information on the emotional blockers and overlays,” Ravi said. “However, the encryption on those files is some of the toughest we’ve ever seen. It’s going to take a while to break.”

“Be sure to include my dad in whatever you’re doing with that.”

Stryker opened his mouth. “Do it,” Chuckie snapped.

“I was going to say that we already hooked him in. Geez, Chuck, you’re as quick on the trigger as Kitty.”

“We have a lot of dead people, Eddy, and not a lot of answers about what’s going on. And who the hell are you calling quick on the trigger anyway?”

“Not you, Missus Martini,” White said with a smile. “However, what our young men here haven’t mentioned is, under the circumstances, disappointing. Other than within the late Mister Montgomery’s personal temporary office space, we’ve found no indication of anything to do with any representative, other than the usual military contracts and the like.”

“So Gaultier is likely a dead end there. Which sucks.”

“Gaultier is a dead end, but Eugene wasn’t.” Christopher handed me a bunch of papers. “We took everything of his from the facility, other than his laptop. No one seemed to care, other than the accounting manager who was in charge of his work, and he was more upset about having hired a lunatic murderer to help cover the load while he has three of his staff out on maternity leave than anything else.”

“Pregnancy leaves confirmed and legitimate,” Amy added. “And Eugene wasn’t working on anything that seems too interesting, but we’re going to run all his information through everything, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that my father and his ilk are willing to be really intricately crazy.”

“So true, Ames, so true. So, is it safe to assume that no one at Gaultier either knew about Eugene’s belief about hidden robots or was giving him the orders?”

“Unless they read through his stuff, and it didn’t seem like anyone cared. For whatever reason, no one at Gaultier knew Eugene had killed anyone or was dead until we told them.” Christopher shook his head. “I’m happy the story’s been suppressed, but we weren’t the ones who did it, I’ve already checked with Serene.”

“So the police didn’t release any information,” Chuckie said thoughtfully. “That was probably because Kitty brought in the K-9 squad. Have you heard back from them yet?”

“Nope. What does Eugene’s mystery package say?”

Reader sighed and took it from my hands. “Give me a minute.”

“Your unwillingness to read anything other than comics is still with you, I see, Kitty,” Stryker said. “I don’t know how you got through college.”

Chuckie and I exchanged a glance. He raised his eyebrow. I shrugged. While I appreciated his willingness to defend my intelligence honor with Hacker International, there was no point at this time. I’d make Stryker pay for that comment later.

“Dude, ability and desire are not the same things. So, James, what do we have? I ask because Christopher, who’s read the file and could have shared already, seems reluctant to hog the information spotlight.”

“I just thought you’d like to read the file,” Christopher snapped, gracing me with Patented Glare #1. “The rest of us already have.”

“I haven’t,” Chuckie said.

“Me, either,” Tim added. “Some of us don’t get to read at hyperspeed no matter how many times we ask.”

“It’s pretty much what Kitty said Eugene told her,” Reader said. “Lots of buttering up of the operative, though. ‘Your intelligence and dedication to country’ and all that jazz. I can understand how someone could believe the robot theory, though. There’s full schematics in here.”

“Are we lucky enough that they match what we know of the androids?” I asked, fully expecting that we wouldn’t be lucky.

“No,” Ravi said. I was currently batting a thousand on my expectations, go me. “We’ve already run this information against what we have on the androids, and the supersoldiers. If these things are real, and with the way things go, I’d never suggest we assume they aren’t, they’re a different breed.”

“Better, worse, or just different?”

“Can’t tell without a full structural analysis, which we haven’t had time to do yet,” Omega Red said. “Not sure that they’re real, though, Kitty.”

“But you’ll keep at it, right, Yuri?”

“Right, because I know that tone of voice of yours, and I don’t like being kicked.”

“Yuri, you are so much smarter than Eddy.”

“I’ve been telling you that for years.”

“Better looking, too.” Take that, Stryker.

“Anyway,” Reader said, “I can see how someone with no real background in espionage, science, or the military could believe this. What’s still hard to swallow is the way he got this information.”

“I think it’s time to visit Pia Ryan. Chuckie, your thoughts?”

“I want to investigate her and her department again, first. I investigated them when you were in Florida. But we were treading on Internal Affairs’ territory, so I had to be careful.”

“Don’t you still?” Jeff asked.

Chuckie looked around the room. “Not nearly as much, no.”

“Hacker International now work for us, Jeff. Therefore, they’re hacking into the C.I.A. illegally, but it’s not authorized by the military or by Chuckie. It’s going to be authorized by me.”

“Why you?” Stryker asked.

“Because I’m the ambassador now, no co-anything. So, make it so or make your reservations at the nearest Best Western.”

“She’s even meaner than she used to be,” Henry muttered under his breath.

“And my hearing’s better, too. But don’t worry; you did well, so you get to stay. For the moment.”

“You know she’s not going to kick us out,” Ravi said quietly. “We’re too useful.”

“I’d kick you out in a heartbeat,” Jeff said. “And I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. The ambassador’s the only reason you’re all still here. So, do what she wants or I have another location in mind for you, and it’s called the Oak Hill Cemetery.”

I looked up at Jeff. “Funny you should mention that place. That’s the cemetery where I lost Clarence but found the Dingo.”

“Really?” Chuckie asked. “That’s interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because there are a couple of infamous Confederate Civil War spies who are buried there.” He turned to Big George. “Pull a map of the cemetery up.”

“Does he actually know everything?” Jeff asked me quietly.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Big George indicated the map was live. “Kitty, can you tell me where you were when Clarence disappeared?” Chuckie asked.

“I think so.” Ran everything back through my mind. “About here. Keeping in mind that this map is a drawing, and I was running after Clarence at hyperspeed.”

“That’s near one of the spy’s graves,” Big George said.

“That needs checking,” Chuckie said. “It could be a long shot, but if someone’s got a sense of humor, I could believe they have a hideout around there.”

“Clarence doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Jeff said.

“At all,” Christopher added.

“Does this solve our problem?” Amy asked. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. “Look, I get it, Clarence is somehow alive and well and running around trying to blow us up. We think. But how does that relate to everything else? And if we rush off to the cemetery, does whatever we find there fix our problems?”

“We don’t know,” I said before anyone else could. “Last night, we were thinking we had the usual three, maybe even five plans, going. Now, I don’t know.”

“They sure don’t feel cohesive,” Tim said. “At all.”

“Am I right in believing you’ve told everyone all the details, Ambassador?” Raj asked. Realized he’d been silent this entire time.

“Yes, everyone in the room with us is presumed to be totally trustworthy.”

“Good. Then I’d like to ask an important question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Where is Colonel Hamlin and what are we doing to find him?”