Alien Research

CHAPTER 34

WE WERE STANDING IN A ROOM that had the faint odor of sulfur and sewage along with small tanks and equipment that said “Reclamation” and “Reclaimed Water: Do Not Drink” all over them.

We were all also completely dry. The baseball mitt was on my left hand, my purse was over my neck. Opened my purse. Everything in there was dry, too.

Pulled out my iPod and earbuds. Put them in and pushed play. “MF of the Year” came on. It’d been playing when we were in the plane and the iPod wasn’t on repeat. So Algar had a sense of humor. And, I guess, wanted me to know I hadn’t been dreaming or hallucinating.

Left the earbuds in and the music playing low enough that I could still hear everyone and clipped my iPod to my belt. Needed the reassurance of tunes right now for some strange reason.

“I’m glad we finally got that hatch opened,” Adriana said. “But I’m gladder your imagination was just overactive, Kitty.”

“Ah . . . right you are.” I wanted to ask Gower and White what the hell had just happened but I couldn’t. I also wanted to ask what had happened to the water tanks, and why there were water tanks in the Science Center in the first place. Wished I’d asked Algar when I’d had the chance. Maybe next time. If there was a next time.

“I’m just relieved none of our enemies were here in the reclamation system,” White said, as if everything was totally normal. Figured I’d better follow his lead. He’d been living with the knowledge of Algar’s existence for a long time, after all.

Took the mitt off and tucked it under my arm, then dug my Glock out of my purse and made sure a full clip was in. “I’m ready to move on, then, Mister White. I think we need to find Gladys.”

“We need to ensure that the Science Center is clear,” Gower countered. “If you’re right, everyone’s here somewhere, Gladys included.”

“Yes. Back to the excitement of being under siege, Missus Martini.”

They were right. More to the point, they were trying to tell me to forget about Algar. I didn’t call on the Elves for help with anything other than food, clothes, and cleaning, and that was how it had to be. My clothes and belongings were all nice and dry. Looked down. My hands were clean, and so were my pants. Decided not to point this out.

Gower did a hyperspeed check of the reclamation area—it was clean, so to speak. Other than the hatch, which White closed, there was only one door in or out of the room. Managed not to mention that the hatch had been closed already. This spatio-temporal-black-hole stuff really messed with your head.

Had to get my head back in the game. The music changed and “Saints of Los Angeles” came on. Let the music rev me up. A few bars was all it took. Headed for the door.

I didn’t open it right away, but listened at it first. Didn’t hear anything. Opened it slowly, ready to slam it shut or open, depending, but the hallway it opened to was empty.

Realized we weren’t on the lowest level, where the room I’d dubbed Martini’s Human Lair was, where we’d lived for my first year or so with Centaurion Division. We were on the second level, the one right under ground level.

All A-C bases went down. The Science Center went down fifteen floors. Main Operations, or what I called the Bat Cave Level, were on the third floor. The ground level had the main launch area, motor pool, main gate area, and other logistical sections.

The second floor where we were had human medical. Other than when I’d had to bash in Beverly’s head with a baseball bat to prevent her from killing or sterilizing Jeff, I hadn’t spent a lot of time on this level. Possibly because it was also where a lot of standard maintenance happened, so it made sense that the reclamation equipment was here.

What didn’t make sense, any more, was how the left fork of the pipe could take us to the second floor, but the right took us to the fifteenth, and yet never went down. And none of us had noticed or mentioned it—not Jeff and Christopher when they were little; not me, Christopher and the flyboys when we crawled through the first time; not Gladys and Security; and not even my mother when she was told about how the pipe that emptied onto the equivalent of just under ground level led to the hallway just outside of where I was sleeping fourteen floors below.

Clearly Algar was in control of that pipe in some way. Maybe the pipe was still here because it was the spatio-temporal-black-hole, or its machinery.

Chose to absolutely not mention this aloud. Not because I wasn’t sure if I even could or not, but because I had to figure that Algar had put us here for a reason. He might want to say he was just a helpful observer and wasn’t involved, but he was indeed involved. Perhaps only like an observer at a baseball game, but he was involved. And he obviously had a favorite team.

While White zipped through the floor to see who or what might be around, I shoved this newest wrinkle away, hard, and ran through our past experiences. The first time the Science Center had been under siege everyone other than Jeff and a few others had been herded to the top level. But when Al Dejahl had taken over he’d done it in the Research area, in the library, in fact, which was below us.

I truly had no clear idea of how wide the Science Center actually was, but I was pretty sure it was much wider on all four sides than the ground level would indicate. I always related to rats in a maze whenever I had to find my own way around here.

However, hyperspeed meant White could search it, vast or not, in under thirty seconds. “All clear,” he said when he rejoined us.

“Up or down?” Gower asked.

“That’s the hundred thousand dollar question, isn’t it? A part of me thinks Ronaldo will go for the library again, but another part says he’ll try somewhere else. So, up, I guess? It’s one floor to search if no one’s there and then back down.”

White nodded. “I’d hate to discover they were on the top floor after we’d searched all the way down.” He took my hand, Gower took Adriana’s; we headed for the stairwell, and went up.

We reached the stairwell door. Nothing and no one. We zipped through. This stairwell was back off the main floor, so we were actually hidden by a wall. White stopped walking and shoved us against said wall “We’re not alone,” he said in whisper.

We slunk up to the doorway in the wall. As with the first time I’d found people up here who shouldn’t be, there were a lot of folks in camouflage. They weren’t doing anything much, just standing around with assault rifles.

“Do we round them up or kill them?” Gower asked, keeping his voice low.

“There are too many,” Adriana replied. “We would need to use explosives.”

“We can get those easily enough,” White said.

“Wait.” There was something wrong with these people. They were literally just standing there. Sure, they could be on duty, but they weren’t at attention or even seeming to be paying attention. “Wait a second.”

Scanned the terrorist crowd. Based on the body structures, there were a lot of women in this group. Sure there were women terrorists—Mahin was one, after all—but this many in this particular organization didn’t seem statistically likely.

Searched for a face, any face. Was finally rewarded to see a couple people who were more or less facing us. They were both incredibly attractive, ill-fitting military garb or not.

Pulled everyone a few steps back. “I’m pretty sure those are our people, as in, A-Cs, and probably humans who work with us.”

“Why?” Gower asked.

“Presumably so that if anyone breaches through the shielding somehow they’ll either kill our own or our own will kill them.” This was a rather impressive bad guy maneuver. After all, if we could have gotten in when we were dealing with Mahin, we would probably have shot first and asked questions later.

“So what do we do?” Gower asked.

“We still have to find Ronaldo and everyone else. The people on this level don’t account for even a tenth of those who are missing.”

“Library again?” White asked.

Was about to reply when the song changed to “Just Another Psycho.” Should probably nominate it to be our official Bad Guy Theme Song.

But none of the Megalomaniac League thought they were ordinary. So, would Ronaldo do a repeat? And if he was, why? He’d wanted Jamie last time, and this was the last place where she’d be. She’d lived all but about a week of her life in the Embassy.

It dawned on me that Algar had told me that he watched every TV show and movie, read every book. Probably read every magazine, too, and listened to our music. So, he could have used any pop culture reference when telling me what we were about to face. But he’d picked The Mummy. Why?

There was only one reason I could come up with—to give me a clue.

There were different versions of the movie, but I’d really only seen the one starring Brendan Fraser. I’d seen it a lot. The heroine was a librarian, so maybe that indicated everything was once again happening in the library.

But if that was the case, why not use Groundhog Day as the clue? Why specifically choose The Mummy? Sure we were trapped in an underground building in the middle of the desert that contained a lot of valuable stuff along with a lot of people who wanted to kill us. And we had two teams inside. Okay, so The Mummy made sense. But not enough sense. At least, not yet.

“Why The Mummy?” I asked aloud, being sure to keep my voice low. All three of them looked at me blankly. “Really? No one’s seen that movie?”

Gower shrugged. “Why go see a movie about someone in a sarcophagus? I’d rather visit a museum and see the real thing.”

Stared at Gower for a long moment. “I know what level we need to go to next.”