Alien Research

CHAPTER 70

“LEAVE HER ALONE!” The voice wasn’t Jeff’s or Chuckie’s—it was Mahin’s.

Dirt flew into everyone’s eyes, military and prisoners alike. Which was great in some ways and not in others.

In terms of great, it meant that no one could see to shoot at me, and they were all trained well enough that they didn’t just randomly fire at each other.

It wasn’t so great in that being somewhat blinded meant Darryl also lost concentration. At least I assumed that’s why I was no longer being held up in the air via his snazzy airbending moves and was, instead, plummeting straight for the concrete far below as if Gravity was pissed that I’d once again thought I was too good for it and truly wanted to teach me a lesson this time.

“Gotcha!” Jeff said, right before he caught me. Then he said, “Oof!” But I was incredibly happy to not have my legs shattered, so chose not to complain.

“You rock the awesome catching as always.”

“I’ve had so much practice since I met you, it’s instinctive at this point.” He hugged me tightly, hearts pounding. “We’re going to have a really big fight about the stunt you just pulled, but not right now.”

I hugged him back. “I couldn’t risk her shooting you.”

“Speaking of shooting,” Jeff said, as the military personnel began to recover and once again had their weapons at the ready. All pointed at us, of course.

“Hands up,” Dier said as she got to her feet. “Shoot them if they so much as move.” She looked happily vindictive.

“How can we put our hands up if you’re going to shoot us if we move? Just asking and all.”

Someone knocked every gun out of every hand before anyone had a time to answer the conundrum I’d posed. Nice to know Christopher was back. Nicer still that his timing was impeccable.

He’d clearly taken in the scene properly, because he’d dropped Hughes and Walker off right by Dier, and they proceeded to hit the vindictive look off her face. I was quite pleased that they’d decided the “no hitting girls” rule didn’t apply to psychopathic assassins.

Darryl was on his hands and knees and started to crawl away. “The kid near her on the ground is an airbender!” Hughes kicked Darryl in the head. Darryl went down. “Nice work!” Hey, I believed in positive reinforcement.

Some of the other prisoners made a half-hearted attempt to run away, but Christopher used the first one to really go for it as a human baseball bat, and the rest decided sitting right back down was the better part of valor. The guy who’d been used as the bat looked like he’d recover. Soon enough.

In a matter of a minute we were back in seeming control of the situation. Chuckie took the opportunity to wave his impressive C.I.A. badge around and the military personnel seemed much happier. Chuckie and my mom had the best badges—no one ever reacted in the same way to anything I tossed around.

Chuckie got Dier and Darryl into handcuffs. “What do we do to keep him from using his talents against us?” Chuckie asked Mahin.

“I have to use my hands to focus the power. But I don’t know what he does or doesn’t need to do.”

“Keep him knocked out,” Chuckie said to Hughes and Walker, who were now on Prisoner Containment Duty. “Who do you answer to?” he asked Dier.

She glared at him, but didn’t speak.

“Can you read her?” Chuckie asked Jeff.

“No, so she’s got a blocker on her somewhere or it’s on the base, because I’m not getting anyone, Kitty included. Which is how you fooled me,” he added softly.

“I’ll let you punish me for being a bad girl later. But I need you to put me down right now.”

He obliged. “I’ll hold you to that, baby.”

“Good.” I went to Dier and punched her right in the face. Was pretty sure I broke her nose. “You murdered my friend.” Punched her again. “And you weren’t supposed to, were you?” Punched her in the stomach, just to mix it up. “So talk, or I’ll just punch you until you can’t do anything but be a human target.”

“You don’t get how this all works, do you?” she asked me. “Hit me all you want. You won’t get anything out of me.”

“Yeah? Where are my Poofs?”

Dier smirked. “Saying goodbye.”

Grabbed the nearest person in uniform, whose uniform declared him Lt. Pierce. “Where are the trash compactors, or the fiery furnaces, or whatever it is you guys use to get rid of garbage?”

“I found them already,” Christopher said, as he grabbed me and we took off. Unfortunately for Lt. Pierce, I was still holding onto him. Oh well. Maybe we’d need him.

Christopher was, of course, using the super fast Flash Level hyperspeed. Figured the nausea would be worth it if we were able to find and save the Poofs.

We reached a building that proclaimed itself to be waste management and went inside, where Christopher stopped. Pierce hit the ground on hands and knees, retching. I managed to merely gag while standing up. “Where would those diabolical fiends put my Poofs?”

“Incinerator,” Pierce gagged out.

Took a look around. There were a lot of incinerators. “Crap. You take one side, I’ll take the other.”

Christopher and I zipped through the facility. No Poofs. Tried not to panic. Ran back to Pierce. “Where else could they be?”

He shook his head and I lost it and started shaking him. “My uncle is Major General Mortimer Katt. My husband is Congressman Jeffrey Martini. And I’m the Ambassador for American Centaurion. But if my pets have been murdered on American soil I will declare war and I will start by actually letting the bad guys blow this base to kingdom come!”

Pierce managed to shove me off of him, helped by Christopher, who was literally holding me back. “I’m trying to help you, ma’am,” Pierce gasped out. “If you think someone’s trying to dispose of live animals, this wouldn’t be the most likely place.”

“They’re evil people and they want the animals to suffer before they die.”

“Ah. Then this would be the place. But if they’re not in the furnaces yet, then they might be up there.” He pointed up to a conveyor belt that had big metal baskets hanging from it.

“It so figures. Lieutenant, how do we turn this conveyor belt off?”

“I don’t know. I don’t work this job.”

“I can read,” Christopher said as he took off.

I could read too, and I didn’t see anything that said Off Button for the conveyor. I did see something sparkling up above, though. The Poof cages had been weirdly shiny. “They’re up there for sure.”

Wondered if I could run fast enough to run up the walls. Maybe. But that would just put me in the basket with the Poofs or worse, and I had just enough self-control to realize that would only make things more terrible.

Heard a squawk, then Bruno arrived, followed by Jeff and Mahin. Bruno flew up and started screaming. He was hovering over a basket that looked ready to tip. “We need to get up there!” I shouted desperately.

A dust devil formed. It wasn’t huge but it looked solid. Small, but solid. It dawned on me that Mahin needed more dirt.

Ran outside and dug into the ground with my hands, ran back and tossed the dirt into the room. The dust devil got bigger. The conveyor belt stopped, but based on where it was when the belt came to a halt, the bin Bruno was near was rocking. A lot. In that way that indicated momentum was going to ensure it rocked farther and faster, versus slowed down.

Jeff followed me outside. He had some scrap metal in his hands, which he used like a shovel. He dug; I threw the dirt into the room. We were both moving at the fastest hyperspeed we could. Wasn’t sure if it would be enough.

Bruno had something in his claws and he managed to get down to the ground with it. It was a Poof in a Poof Trap alright. Bruno looked wilted. “Stay here, Bruno. The heat’s too much for you.” Meaning it was incredibly hot, because Alpha Four was a very warm planet.

The Poof Trap was hard to open, but I’d seen Brian do it, so I did what he had and was able to rip it apart. The Poof was an unattached one. “Can you save the other Poofies?”

It mewed piteously. No, it couldn’t. The substance the Traps were made of was something the Poofs couldn’t work with or around.

Resisted the urge to curse. Especially when I looked up to see the bin tip over.