Supersymmetry

CHAPTER 22

Sandra woke from a dream that she was riding a gigantic military plane. She felt disoriented, displaced. Where was Ryan? Gradually, she took in the fluorescent lights, the white walls and white machines, the sounds of curtains sliding on rings and distant people talking, the antiseptic smell. Where was she?

“She’s only just regained consciousness,” the nurse said. “She needs her sleep.”

A woman in nursing scrubs stood in the room, facing down three men in severe dark suits. Sandra recognized them as Agent Liddle and the two agents that seemed to follow him everywhere. Liddle’s face wore a scowl.

“This woman was at the scene of an apparent terrorist attack that claimed the lives of hundreds of people,” Liddle said. “I’m going to have to ask you to step aside.”

The nurse stepped aside. Liddle and his cronies surrounded the bed and loomed over Sandra. “It’s time for some answers, Miss Kelley,” Liddle said.

Sandra blinked. She felt strange. Her head was pounding with pain, but in a distant sort of way. She must be on some kind of medication. “Why don’t you start with the questions?” she said.

Liddle raised an eyebrow, but the set of his mouth didn’t change. He spoke with a false cheerfulness. “Feeling feisty, then? Good. The questions. Let’s see. Where is your sister? Where is Jean Massey? And finally”—his voice grew dark—“what in seven hells did you do to Muncy Prison?”

She thought, remembering. She had gone back inside to fetch Jean, but then… what had happened? “Where’s Angel?” she asked.

“That, my dear, is a question, not an answer. I ask the questions; you provide the answers.”

She was starting to feel irritated, despite the meds. “I don’t know where my sister is. I don’t know where Jean Massey is. Right now, I don’t even know where I am. And the prison was obliterated by a creature from another universe. Happy? Now where’s my friend?”

Liddle scowled. “Angel is being debriefed by two of my colleagues. If he’s cooperative, he may only be arrested. If not, he may find himself disappearing down a deep, dark hole of the kind only the intelligence services of the United States can create. And nobody comes out of those.”

“You don’t scare me,” Sandra said. In fact, at that moment, not even the varcolac would have scared her. She felt cushioned on a cloud of good will, and long-term consequences seemed like a distant curiosity.

Liddle leaned down into her face. “There’s a conspiracy going on here. You, your sister, your father, your boyfriend—you’re all involved. Who are you working for? Is it Turkey? Japan? What’s your goal? What are you hiding?”

He had one long hair growing out of his left nostril. Sandra could see it quite clearly, given how closely he was leaning over her. She felt a giggle rising to the surface, but she reluctantly tamped it down, realizing, at least in a distant way, that it was not appropriate for the situation. Instead, she just said, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“I’m not fooling around here, Miss Kelley. Do you admit to being at Muncy Prison?”

“I don’t think I have to talk to you.”

“What sort of explosive did you use to destroy the prison?”

“I didn’t use any explosive.”

“What weapon, then?”

“I didn’t destroy it.”

“Did you break Jean Massey out of prison?”

Sandra sighed. “I want to talk to Detective Messinger.”

“You’re talking to me now.”

“Not anymore. You don’t believe me. This is a waste of my time.”

“And Messinger does believe you?”

“Look, bring her in here. I’ll tell her everything. Then she can tell you.”

“Is she part of your conspiracy, too?”

The sound of a scuffle down the hall caught Liddle’s attention. “Let me in! She’s my daughter, not some criminal. Let me in, or I’ll call a lawyer. I’ll call the press. Get your hands off me!”

Liddle stepped into the hall. “Let her through,” he said.

A moment later, Sandra’s mother turned the corner, her face red and her curly hair askew. Sandra grinned. “Mom!”

Her mother glared at Liddle. “You,” she said. “I might have known. Do you always conspire to keep mothers and daughters apart, or is it a special interest with my family?”

“I could arrest you for interfering with an investigation,” Liddle said. “Do you have information relevant to this case? Or am I about to throw you out?”

“Leave her,” Sandra said. “And send Messinger in. I’ll talk to her.”

Liddle held her gaze for a moment. “This is your one chance. I’ll bring in Messinger, but I will also be here. If you talk, good. If not, I will have you relocated to a facility of my choosing, even with your injuries. Under the National Defense Authorization Act, I can hold terrorism suspects, without trial and without access to a lawyer, indefinitely. Do not cross me on this. I will do it.”

He walked out. Sandra’s mother rushed over and wrapped her arms around her. Sandra threw an arm around her neck and held her close. Her mother’s thick dark hair spilled over her face, and Sandra inhaled her familiar scent. “I’m so sorry about Dad,” Sandra said.

Her mother leaned back. “I didn’t just bully my way through there to hug you,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “I found something.”

She held out a thin card. Sandra took it. “Dad’s phone?” she said.

Her mother nodded. “It wasn’t on your father’s body at the stadium. The police tore the house apart looking for it and finally concluded that it must have been tossed away in the blast and destroyed.”

“Where was it?”

“In the toaster.”

Sandra looked at her incredulously. “The toaster? But wouldn’t it have melted in there?”

Her mother smiled. “We haven’t used that toaster in years, not since Sean left home. Your father knew that. He hid it somewhere nobody but him would think to look for it.”

“But why?” Sandra bit her lip, trying to concentrate through the buzz of the pain medication. Her father had been in the kitchen when she saw him last, possibly right up to the point where his probability wave collapsed and he disappeared. “Do you think he hid it on that last day, when you stepped out of the room?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could look at it, figure out what was so important that he had to hide.”

“I can do that.” Sandra took the phone and slid it under her sheet, just as Melissa Messinger came through the door. Angel was with her.

Sandra smiled in relief. “I thought they were going to disappear you,” she said.

“Not yet,” Angel said. “They tried, but I threatened to use my ninja judo jiu-jitsu on them, and they fled.”

“Is that a real thing?”

“I don’t know, but it has lots of J’s in it. Sounds impressive.”

“Look, I don’t think Liddle is kidding around,” Messinger said. “He’s on his way back in. You need to spill the beans, and it better be convincing, or he’s going to start throwing his weight around.”

“He’s a scary dude,” Angel said. “But, speaking of disappearing… we’ve got to go.”

Sandra wasn’t expecting it. The room disappeared, and they were in sudden darkness. There was a loud crack, and she was falling, sliding off the bed. Her mother screamed. She was turned around, disoriented. What was happening? An eerie, multicolored something was moving to her left. She heard Angel cursing. Finally, light flooded the room.

They weren’t in the hospital anymore. It was a large, windowless laboratory of sorts, filled with machines and apparatus of various kinds. In the center stood what looked like a large laser-light display, swirling and sparking out colors. “Where are we?” Sandra asked.

“Welcome to the evil scientist’s lair,” Angel said. “We’re on the eighth floor of the High Energy Lab at the NJSC. Ryan Oronzi’s home base.”

Angel had teleported not only Sandra, but her bed, her IV pole, her heart monitor, and her mother, who had still had her arms around Sandra when Angel came in. One leg of the bed had materialized in the same location as the frame of a swivel chair, obliterating both. The bed sagged crazily to one side, and Sandra lay on the floor, with only her legs still in the bed. The IV had torn free, and her arm was bleeding. The heart monitor beeped wildly.

“Sorry about that,” Angel said, helping her up. “Not exactly a stylish rescue.” He nodded to Sandra’s mother. “Mrs. Kelley. Pleased to meet you.”

Sandra’s mother did a slow turn, taking in the room. “Amazing,” she said. “And good move, getting us out of there.”

Sandra struggled to her feet. She was wearing only a hospital gown, which was open at the back. She tried to hold it closed, but it didn’t work.

“Let me,” her mother said. She tore the pillowcase to tie a makeshift bandage around Sandra’s bleeding arm. Then she folded the sheet and wrapped it around her, under her arms, threading the corners through and tying them together behind her neck. As a dress, it was a little odd, but it kept her covered, and seemed to stay up on its own.

“Gorgeous,” Angel pronounced. “You’re ready for Paris Fashion Week.”

“Why did you pick here?” Sandra asked.

“It was the only set of coordinates already stored on the projector Alex gave me. I didn’t have time to get creative.”

“It’s a good spot,” Sandra said. “Isolated, hard to find, and with plenty of computing and communication equipment. I wish I could see Liddle’s face when he finds out we’re gone.” She looked at the display in the center of the room, with its twisting neon colors. It was beautiful. “What’s that thing?” she asked.

Angel shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Are you going to be okay?” her mother asked.

Sandra shrugged. “I’ll probably have a rotten headache when the pain meds wear off, but I feel fine.” She took a step and wobbled a bit, lightheaded. “Almost fine, anyway.”

Her mother tried to guide her to a chair. “Wait,” Sandra said. She hunted around on the floor, and came up with her father’s phone. “Let’s see what we can do with this.”

The plane flight was the most terrifying experience of Ryan’s life. He had never even been on a passenger jet before, never mind a military transport, so he had no idea whether the sounds and vibrations he heard were normal or not. The engine roared like a famished beast, and when it started rolling down the tarmac, every tank and truck and piece of equipment rattled and shook. They built up incredible inertia, hurtling blindly at breakneck speed, and Ryan knew in his soul that this behemoth could not possibly take off. They would plow into the buildings at the end of the runway, and he would die.

The rumbling grew worse, until his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, and he felt his arms would be bruised from clinging to the straps. The plane gave a lurch, and Ryan vomited, covering his clothing in foulness. He coughed and spat, only to realize that the battering had stopped. They were airborne.

The knowledge did not calm him. It meant only that they were climbing higher and higher, their potential energy increasing every minute. He couldn’t help checking the GPS in his eyejacks and watching their altitude climb. In moments, they were high enough to eliminate any chance of survival were the engines to fail.

This was all Alex’s fault. She had practically dragged him on board, signing his death warrant. He shouldn’t have listened to her. He should have teleported a rock into her head rather than let her strap him into this flying deathtrap. Just because people sometimes survived such a flight didn’t mean it was safe. People survived shark attacks and gunshots, too, but that didn’t mean they were a good idea.

He screamed, drawing the attention of the few other passengers, a few soldiers and pilots who were strapped in farther up the decking. And Alex. Alex looked at him with pity. He didn’t want her pity, not when it was her fault he was here. If he could have reached her, he would have slapped her. Except that slapping her would have required him to release his grip on the handles attached to the plane’s fuselage. He couldn’t do that, not even to wipe the vomit from his face.

This was all Jean’s fault, too. The only reason Ryan had agreed to come along was because Jean had stolen the varcolac’s favor away from him. He had to get it back. He was the One, not her. He was born to it. With the varcolac on his side, he wouldn’t be afraid anymore. With the varcolac on his side, everyone else would have to be afraid of him.

Alex was probably laughing at him. She didn’t show it on her face, but inside, she was laughing. She thought he was ridiculous. He screamed again, in frustration and fear. Why couldn’t she just laugh in his face? At least then he would see it. He wouldn’t have to imagine her later, recounting the flight to friends, imitating him, mocking his terror.

Maybe the plane would go down, and she wouldn’t get the chance. That would wipe the smile off her face. He’d be laughing at her, then. Only he wouldn’t, would he? His fragile body would be hurtling toward the ground, then crushed and torn apart by thousands of tons of twisted, razor-sharp metal. The image sickened him, and he vomited again.

He had to get off this plane. He couldn’t take it, not a moment longer. He opened his eyes a crack and found the straps. He fumbled at the buckles, trying to get them free. The knots were too tight. He couldn’t get his fingers into them enough to separate them, especially with how they kept shaking. He was trapped. Alex had trapped him here to die.

He wasn’t made for this. He hated his body, hated every physical limitation and danger. The varcolac never had to fear something so prosaic as a fall from a height. Ryan was so much more than this. Why should his mind be trapped in this fragile flesh? He longed to be free of it. If by some miracle he made it through this flight alive, he was going to do everything he could—everything—to insure that this never happened again. He was a varcolac. He was pure mind. And he wasn’t going to let Jean Massey take that away from him.

The plane landed before Alex expected it. She had finally managed to fall asleep and thus missed the last several hours of the transit. It had definitely been a good choice to stay clear of Ryan; she had seen him lose his dinner a few seconds into the flight. She didn’t bother going over to him. She expected he could get off the plane without her holding his hand.

They had landed at the Krakow 8th Air Base in southern Poland. Since Turkey’s semi-peaceful assimilation of Greece and most of the Balkan states, Krakow was only two hundred kilometers from the Turkish army’s front lines. She saw rows of fighter planes, bombers, and helicopters, and farther afield, meadows full of tanks, trucks, and rocket artillery.

The sky was gray. A light rain was falling, but that didn’t stop hundreds of uniformed soldiers from striding purposely through it, attending to various duties. Planes roared overhead. The noises of a hundred engines clamored to drown each other out, and the air was dank with the smell of wet metal.

Ryan pushed down the ramp past her and promptly fell on his face at the bottom. A uniformed major hauled him to his feet just as Alex reached them. The major was large and dark-skinned, his features almost invisible in the gray light. Even so, he projected a sense of lethal strength that went beyond just solid musculature and military posture. This man was a controlled killer.

“Please tell me you’re Major Hughes,” Ryan said.

The major nodded. “Welcome to Poland, Dr. Oronzi.” He turned to Alex. “And you are?”

Alex had a moment of panic. She couldn’t give them her real name, could she? They would know that she was wanted for Secretary Falk’s murder. She was still wondering what to do when Ryan said, “This is my assistant. Her presence here is code-word compartmented; her identity is need-to-know.”

Hughes seemed to accept that explanation, as if secret identities were a normal part of his life. He saluted Ryan, who made a pathetic attempt to return the gesture. “I’ve been instructed to deliver you safely to the facility and give you everything you need.” Hughes lowered his voice. “And just between you and me, sir, this is the most incredible piece of Special Ops hardware I have seen in all my days. The Rangers and Seals are going to piss themselves when they find out we got it first.”

Hughes took them on the road in an open-top Jeep. Alex studied his uniform, wishing she remembered more about divisions and insignia. He was in the Marine Corps, she could tell, and almost certainly Special Ops. Was he Force Recon? Would he know Sean? Running into him among the hundreds of thousands of coalition troops amassed on the Polish border would be quite a coincidence, she knew, but how many Marine Special Ops units could there be? Hughes probably knew where her brother was. She couldn’t ask him, though, not without giving away her identity.

The streets were packed with a mix of tiny European cars and huge military trucks and Humvees. Alex had no idea where they were going, though again, she didn’t want to call attention to herself by asking. There seemed to be billboards on every building, most of them alien and incomprehensible, though occasionally she saw products or logos she recognized. Coke. McDonalds. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Between high-rise apartments, she caught glimpses of the famous churches in the old town, though they seemed to be heading in the other direction. Finally, they stopped at a building that Alex guessed had once been an elementary school, though she couldn’t read any of the Polish signs. Soldiers in gray fatigues guarded the entrance. They saluted Major Hughes as he marched Alex and Ryan through.

The school’s gymnasium was crowded with more Special Ops types, training on the use of Higgs projectors. There were a dozen civilians in the room, but only one six-foot black woman with three-inch heels and pink eye shadow. “Tequila!” Alex shouted.

Tequila Williams saw her. Her mouth dropped open. Only then did Alex realize what a bad idea this might have been. Vijay and Lisa and Rod were here; they would recognize her. They would know she was wanted for murder. If Alex had to run, here in Poland, she’d be in bad shape. She was in the middle of a potential war zone. She didn’t know the city or the language or have any way to get back to the United States. She could turn invisible and probably evade capture, but then she would be a ghost, trying to survive without any human interaction. The best option might be to let the army arrest her and send her home for trial.

“Alex!” Tequila screamed. She trotted across the room and wrapped her arms around her. “Did they finally decide to leave you alone, honey? All that nonsense about you and the Secretary. I told them you didn’t do it.”

The rest of her team gathered around, grinning and clapping her on the back. Lisa and Rod peppered her with questions about her trip over and rambled on about Polish food and military accommodations. Even Vijay seemed pleased to see her, telling her how good it was to have her back on the team. “Though even with your help, there’s no way we’re going to train enough people in time,” he added morosely.

They all seemed to assume she had been exonerated and had now come to Krakow to join the team. “I’m not here to help with the training,” she said.

“Of course you’re not,” Vijay said. “That would be too much to expect.”

“Listen,” she said. “Don’t ever take your projectors off. Keep them with you, and keep them running, even when you eat or shower. Take them to bed with you.”

“Why? What’s going on?” Tequila asked.

Alex spotted Ryan following Hughes into an office on the far side of the gym. “I’ll be back,” Alex said. “I’ll explain it to you.”

“It’s that thing, isn’t it?” Rod said. “The thing from the demo that killed Falk.”

She could have kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “We’re fighting it. Be careful.”

Alex jogged over to the door through which Ryan had disappeared. Inside, a very serious looking Asian woman in civilian clothes was talking intently. Major Hughes stood at attention behind her. “Come in, Ms. Kelley,” the woman said. “And please close the door behind you.”

Alex did so, a little rattled that she knew her name. Though if she knew it, that probably also meant she knew Alex hadn’t really killed the Secretary of Defense. Alex closed the door as asked, and then joined Ryan. Ryan glared at her. What was wrong with him? Was he actually mad at her for helping him overcome his fears enough to take the plane?

She turned toward the woman, getting her first good look at her face. She recognized her. It was Ryan’s lab assistant from back at the High Energy Lab. “Nicole Wu?”

Nicole gave a curt nod and offered Alex a dry handshake. “Actually, it’s Colonel Wu, CIA. Thank you for coming.”

Alex gaped at her. “CIA? You’re kidding me. So you’ve been, what, undercover as a physicist? Spying on Ryan all this time?”

“No, actually, I am a physicist, though I’m afraid the agency doctored my resume quite a bit. I went to Muhlenberg, not Cal Tech, and I didn’t actually finish my dissertation. I know enough to get by, though, and not be totally useless. I was the one who first convinced the government of the feasibility of the technology Ryan wanted to build.”

“Nicole has been our main contact into the intelligence community,” Ryan said coldly, not meeting Alex’s eyes. “On paper, it was the Department of Defense paying the bills, but of course the Agency took a great interest in the technology, and behind the scenes they were really running the show.”

“Which makes me Ryan’s boss. And yours, when it comes down to it.” Nicole gave a tight smile. “Now, can we get down to business?”

The room looked like a sports director’s office, with trophies in a glass case and posters on the wall of men playing soccer—or football, Alex supposed they would call it. She was surprised to see a mesh bag full of basketballs in a corner, and a football—an American football, that is—on the desk. She had never been much into sports as an adult; that was Sandra’s thing.

Nicole sat behind the desk. Ryan promptly sat in the other chair, leaving Alex to stand. “Ryan told me about Jean Massey. I need to understand how quickly she could have gotten the technology to Turkey, and the soonest they might reasonably be able to field it. This is crucial intelligence; American lives are on the line.”

“You’re going to make a preemptive attack, aren’t you?” Alex said. “We’re not going to wait to see if the Turks attack; we’re going to start the war ourselves.”

“That decision is way beyond my pay grade,” Nicole said. “I’m just trying to establish the timeline.”

Alex looked at Ryan. “Do you think Jean could have teleported there? Or would she have to take a plane?”

Ryan shrugged. “How should I know? She’s working for the varcolac. My best guess is, she can go wherever she likes in an instant. Or at least, she can go wherever it wants her to go.”

“So we’ll assume teleport,” Alex said. “That means she’s had a full day there. She can’t have had any Turkish contacts, so it may take her some time to connect with the right people in their government. On the other hand, if she started showing off what she can do, it wouldn’t take long. It may depend what her demands are and how readily they agree to them.”

“Oh, they’ll agree to them,” Nicole said. “They’ll agree to anything, once they see what she can do.” She sounded bitter, disgusted. “Really, Ryan. She just waltzed in and asked for them, and you handed them over?”

“She would have killed me!”

“You could have lied, genius. You could have told her you didn’t have any. That you gave them all away. Or—better yet—you could have told me the truth and actually given them all to me like you said you did. Then when a mad, psychotic, escaped murderer-turned-traitor showed up in your lab you wouldn’t have had anything to give her!”

“I said I’m sorry.” Ryan’s voice was high-pitched and whiny.

“You could have been a hero,” Nicole said. “Now you’ll be lucky if you’re not prosecuted.”

“Prosecuted?” Alex said. “That’s a bit much.”

“He just handed our most significant military advantage over to our enemy,” Nicole snapped back. “American troops, perhaps thousands of them, will die because of him. I think jail time would be pretty lenient.”

Alex waved it away. “Fine. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. What I want to know is, what are we going to do about it now?”

“That’s already done,” Nicole said.

“What do you mean, done?”

“It’s taken care of. Plans are in motion. It’s a bit earlier than we intended, but some people”—she glared at Ryan—“have forced our hand.”

“You sent troops into Turkish territory?” Alex asked. But no, a significant troop movement would have been public, would have made the news. All the fighter planes and bombers she saw at the airport wouldn’t have been on the ground. “No. You sent Special Ops teams in, to take out important targets, didn’t you? You sent them with Higgs projectors, to use the advantage while you still could.”

“That, and a few other preliminary attacks,” Nicole acknowledged. “Laser disruption of their satellites. Initiation of viruses we’ve insinuated into their comm systems. The full assault is outside my control, as I said, but the normal timeline will have the fighters scrambled within hours to take out their radar and SAM sites, followed by the bombers. The infantry should cross the line sometime tomorrow.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Alex said.

Nicole raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“This isn’t about us and Turkey. It’s about the human race trying to survive against a powerful creature that wants to annihilate us. There’s nothing the Turkish army can throw at us that’s as dangerous as the varcolac. Forget about Jean Massey. Forget about Turkey. It’s the varcolac that’s the threat.”

Nicole nodded with a patronizing smile. “I’ve heard Ryan’s alien intelligence theory before. If you don’t mind, I’m going to worry about whether Turkey has the means to deliver its nukes before I worry about a ghost in the machine.”

Alex clenched her fists. There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing with Nicole. She had been there the whole time, presumably seen the evidence Ryan had that something intelligent was breaking out of the wormhole. If she didn’t believe him, nothing Alex could say would convince her, and there wasn’t time to sit around trying.

“Let’s go,” Alex said to Ryan. “Looks like it’s up to us.”

Ryan looked startled. “What?”

“Miss CIA here thinks she knows what’s going on. She’s not going to help us. We’re going to have to find Jean ourselves.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Nicole held up her hands. “You can stop right there. I brought Ryan here to analyze the Higgs projectors when the ops teams return, to make sure they’re working as well as they can be. I don’t need my prize physicist jumping off to who knows where in the middle of enemy territory. What if they kill you? What if they torture you and force you to tell them everything they know? Just because Jean gives them the technology doesn’t mean they’ll know how to use it.”

“Jean will tell them,” Ryan said.

Nicole stood up, exasperated. “That’s not the point. The point is, I don’t want my chief technologist falling into enemy hands!”

Alex opened her mouth to say something defiant, but then thought better of it. Nicole probably couldn’t stop her, but she didn’t want to give her the chance, either. Instead, she said, “Fine. We’ll do it your way.” She let her anger and frustration fill her voice. “We’ll stay here and help with the training. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Nicole’s smile was cold. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.” She turned to Ryan. “The other thing we need to do is ramp up manufacture. I’ve commandeered a cell phone factory in town and set a team to work developing a large-scale production process. Within the week, I want enough Higgs projectors for every soldier in our army. I’ll take you to the site this afternoon; maybe you’ll have some suggestions.

“That’s it. Dismissed,” Nicole said. She began flicking her eyes at something they couldn’t see, presumably shuffling through files in her private eyejack space.

“I just have one more question,” Alex said. “Is my brother Sean on one of the Special Ops teams that went behind enemy lines?”

Nicole’s eyes refocused. “Those teams don’t officially exist. I can’t tell you who’s on them.”

“Come on,” Alex said. “I gave up something for you. Return the favor. This is my brother; I just want to know where he is.”

Nicole sighed. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Yes,” she said. “Sean Kelley is on one of the advance parties. I couldn’t tell you which, because I don’t know. He’ll be back here tomorrow night.”

“Do you know the target locations?”

“What, so you can follow them? I’m not an idiot.” Nicole pointed toward the door. “Get out of here. Report to Vijay Bhargava and ask him how you can help.”

When Alex stepped out of the office, Tequila was there waiting for her. “You look like you could use a drink,” she said.

“Aren’t you working?” Alex asked.

Tequila laughed. “It’s nine o’clock at night,” she said. “We’ve been working for twelve hours. Time to hit the pub.”

Alex shook her head. “It’s night? Seriously? My internal clock is so scrambled.”

They had walked less than a block from the elementary school when Tequila turned and climbed down a set of stairs into what appeared to be the cellar under a row house.

“This is a pub?” Alex asked.

“Welcome to Krakow,” Tequila said. “Highest density of alcoholic establishments in the world. You’re always either in a pub or walking past one.”

The rest of the team was already there, all of them drinking bottles of Zywiec beer, except for Lisa, who clutched a glass of clear liquid. She held it up like she was giving a toast. “Wódka! Why come to Poland and drink beer?” she said in an attempt at a Polish accent that came out sounding Transylvanian.

Alex ordered a beer despite Lisa’s protests, and felt some of the tension start to drain away. She was among friends. It wasn’t much, given the threat to the people she loved, and to all of humanity, but at that moment it felt like the most important thing in the world.

For a time, they chatted about Polish drinks and food. Vijay had sampled a lime mead that he said was truly dreadful, and the team related a disastrous attempt to order pizza at a Polish restaurant that had resulted in being served a cheese-covered crust and a pitcher full of ketchup. A nearby Polish bookstore had a bigger section for books about the Pope than it did for novels, and one of the ten TV channels they could get from their hotel was entirely devoted to the Vatican.

“And don’t get me started about the toilet paper,” Rod said.

Alex laughed with them, but eventually the conversation slowed to a halt. She hesitated, not wanting to break the spell, but knowing she had to. “There are some things I have to explain to you guys,” she said.

She told them everything. About the varcolac and its attacks, about Sandra, about Jean Massey and why she and Ryan had really come.

“So… you’re heading behind enemy lines?” Tequila asked. “Turkey’s a big place. How will you even know where to go?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I didn’t really think that far. I guess I thought it would be making itself obvious.”

“Once it makes itself obvious, it’ll be too late,” Vijay said. “It’s probably too late anyway.”

“Thanks, that’s a big help, Mr. Cheerful,” Tequila said. She touched some beer to her fingers and spritzed it in his face. “I bet you’re a miserable drunk.”

“It sounds like the best thing we can do is to incorporate the teleportation and invisibility modules into our training,” Rod said. “Put it in the hands of as many of our troops as possible, and educate the officers and general staff, so they’ll figure out how to use them effectively. There’s nothing you can do by heading off into Turkey alone. You’ll just get yourself killed.”

“I’m afraid the advance teams are walking into a trap right now,” Alex said. “If the Turks already have the technology—worse, if the varcolac is there—then they may not get out alive. But I don’t know where they are, and Nicole wouldn’t tell me.”

“I know where they are,” Lisa said softly.

Everyone looked at her. She blushed. “I got on a bit with one of the guys on your brother’s squad,” she said. “He let slip where they were headed. One of the targets, anyway.”

“Where?” Alex asked.

“I don’t understand it. It was why he mentioned it; it was so strange a target.”

“Spit it out!”

“The Jozef Stefan Institute. It’s a scientific facility in Slovenia.”

There was silence at the table. Alex had been expecting military targets near the front lines—radar installations or fuel depots or anti-aircraft weapons. They were only a few miles from Slovenia, but what was the importance of this institute? Were they stockpiling weapons there? Or developing them? The name rang a bell, but Alex couldn’t figure out where she had heard it. Jozef Stefan Institute. “Of course!” Alex’s mouth hung open as a rush of adrenaline hit her. “That’s it. That’s where Jean will be.”

“Wait, how do you know?” Tequila asked. “What’s there?”

“They have a particle accelerator. It’s a small one, relatively low energies, nothing like the NJSC or CERN. But it’s probably the only accelerator in all of Turkish-controlled territory. If they want to make more Higgs projectors, enough for their whole army, then that’s where they’ll do it.”

“You’re going, aren’t you?” Tequila said.

Alex realized she was on her feet. “I have to. Sean and his team don’t know what they’re heading toward. The varcolac will tear them apart.”

“How will you get there?”

Alex started pacing, two steps one way, three steps the next. “I don’t know. I need the coordinates. The exact coordinates.”

“I can help you with that,” Rod said.

“How?”

“I have access to the bombing dictionary.”

That got everyone’s attention. “Why on Shiva’s third eye would they give you access to that?” Vijay asked.

“They didn’t exactly give it to me,” Rod said with an impish grin. “I was helping the major get his laptop on the network, and, well…”

“You devious little hacker,” Tequila said.

“Anyway, I can get the coordinates. Some of them they have down to less than a meter.”

The whole group stood, pulling euro notes out of their wallets and leaving them on the table.

“You can stay,” Alex said. “You’ve had a long day; I’m sure Rod can get me what I need without the rest of your help.”

“You don’t understand,” Tequila said. “We’re coming with you.”

“To Slovenia? Don’t be stupid.”

Tequila raised an eyebrow.

“You’re not soldiers. There’s no reason for you to come.”

“If you fail, we all die anyway, right?” Lisa said.

“Well… yes.”

“So, if there’s any chance we can help, we might as well come.”

Alex smiled. “I guess you’re right.” These were true friends, willing to follow her behind enemy lines, purely on the strength of her word that it was important. She hoped she didn’t get them all killed.

“I knew it,” Vijay said. “Somehow I always knew I wouldn’t live past forty-five.”