CHAPTER 17
“WHO?” JEFF ASKED, speaking for most of the room.
“I love the names you guys come up with for yourselves.” This earned me a dirty look from all of Hacker International.
“I’m with Stryker,” Chuckie said, eyes narrowed. “Chernobog is a myth. He’s been rumored to have been around since the nineteen-eighties. He’s never been found, never been caught, and never been proven to actually exist.”
“How hard did you look for him?” I asked Chuckie.
“Not as hard as I looked for some things,” he admitted.
“Because Chuck didn’t need to waste his time on a myth,” Stryker said.
“He’s real,” Omega Red said, stubbornness more apparent. “Just because none of you can believe that the best of the best is Russian doesn’t mean he’s not real.”
Raj and White returned. “Systems are unplugged all throughout the Embassy complex,” Raj shared.
“I’m certain we were too late, however,” White added. “At least if the message on any and all active computer screens was indicative.”
“What did it say, Richard?”
“I have no idea, but I’m fairly certain the characters are Cyrillic.” He handed me a piece of paper. There were letters on it, but I didn’t recognize them. Handed it to Chuckie. Who held it up to the camera on the viewing screen that let Hacker International see us. “Someone get this into Yuri’s Braille system immediately.”
Henry did as requested. Omega Red’s expression of stubborn belief went to nova levels. “Chuck, it says, ‘Now you see it, now you don’t.’ I guarantee that’s from Chernobog. It sounds like him.”
“You mean it sounds like someone who wants us to think it’s him would sound,” Stryker said.
Decided to nip the argument I could see starting in the bud. We didn’t have time for Hacker International to go into one of their famous group fights that ended up as group sulks.
“I don’t care. Whoever it is has just hacked into what you all feel is the most secure system on the planet. I don’t care who it is, but whoever it is, we need to stop them. It’s easier to call this mysterious hacker Chernobog than He Who Is Scary Evil, so to speak, so let’s just make Yuri happy. Oh, and that was an order, by the way.”
“See?” Christopher asked of no one in particular. “She’s already on a power trip.”
Tito returned at this point—saving me from having to come up with a cutting remark for Christopher—carrying his laptop. “I wasn’t hooked into the system, Kitty, so all my data is secure. I checked.”
“No special message on your screen?”
Tito shook his head. “Just the test results I was reviewing. I checked, and my external hard drive is also secure.”
“Not that I mind, especially not today, but why weren’t you hooked in?” Wanted to ask if Tito was hitting the extreme porn sites or something, and then decided that was probably not a question befitting the current pseudo-leader of the entire A-C population. Score one for learned decorum.
“I’m doing that . . . special research we’ve discussed.” Tito was shooting me the “really?” look.
“Oh. Right!” Memory shared that Tito was searching for what we called the Yates Gene, meaning he was studying blood and DNA from Jeff, Christopher, Jamie, Serene, White, and a few others. As such, his research—the project itself along with the results—was restricted to him, Emily, and Melanie, Claudia and Lorraine’s mothers. Who were also likely at Dulce and therefore in extreme danger. “Good job, Tito. Okay, gang, we need to get our strike team over to Caliente Base pronto. Are the gates working, does anyone know?”
“NASA Base has tested,” William shared. “Gates seem to be in order. However, the agents who tried to get to Dulce via a gate were, ah, bounced back. Alfred decided not to try with Home Base, in part because by then you’d given the order for everyone to stay put, Ambassador.”
“Good, because that bouncing back thing sounds dangerous.” And nauseating. Going through the gates made me sick to my stomach. Going through and then immediately being tossed back sounded like a surefire way to pray to the porcelain god for me.
“They weren’t harmed,” William said.
“Which makes no sense,” Jeff said. “Why would our enemies gently return our agents back to where they started from?”
“Maybe it wasn’t our enemies. Walter had enough time to call me, and he used to run gates at Dulce. Maybe he flipped a switch or something.”
“It’s a good theory,” White said. “One we can’t confirm from the Embassy, however.”
“I’m with you, Mister White. Jeff, you’re going back to work. Enjoy pretending everything’s okay on the congressional floor. Chuckie, you stay with him. Raj, you’re in charge here—coordinate anything that’s actually diplomacy-related with Doreen, and keep me advised of any information. Paul, Amy, Caroline, Magdalena, go join the rest of our little flock in the daycare center.”
Gower shook his head. “You need my help.”
“No, we need to keep our Pontifex, or, rather, one of our most likely targets, safe and sound. Per you, I’m in charge, Paul. You’re on guard my daughter and the other kids duty.”
“What am I going to be doing?” Christopher asked testily.
“Going with me, Malcolm, and your dad.”
“Just the four of you?” Jeff sounded ready to freak out, though Christopher perked up considerably.
“While I’m sure the four of us can handle anything, no, of course not. What do you take me for?”
“I’m going, too,” Tito said. “For all we know, we’re going to need medical there.”
“Works for me. And no, Jeff, before you complain again, that’s not all. William, I believe our royal guests are across the street visiting the Romanian Diplomatic Mission. Can you call them and get them back here, please?”
“Yes, Ambassador. Per Walter’s notes, I should tell them they’re about to go into battle, is that right?”
“You got it.”
“Seven of you still doesn’t seem like enough,” Jeff said, sounding more than a little worried.
“You can’t go, Paul can’t go, Raj needs to stay here, I want Chuckie with you because, news flash, I don’t want this to turn out to be some plan to get you into a position of vulnerability. I’m open to ideas, but I really don’t want to throw Field agents at this until we actually know what’s going on.”
Before I could take another breath, we had more people with us. Princesses Rahmi and Rhee, from Beta Twelve of the Alpha Centaurion system, or, as I preferred to call it, the Planet of the Pissed Off But Getting Happier Amazons.
Rahmi and Rhee had been sent to us during Operation Sherlock and, without ACE around and with the unrest we’d sort of been told about in the Alpha Centaurion system, we had no idea of how to send them back. So they were living with us, which was fine for all concerned, because it never hurt to have two of the best warriors in the galaxy hanging around waiting to be of service.
All the Amazons were shapeshifters. In their normal forms, the princesses looked like all the rest of their clan—limbs slightly elongated for humans, larger and more muscular build, larger oval violet eyes, spiky hair, and really badass attitudes. Rahmi was a brunette and her younger sister Rhee was a blonde, but otherwise, it was clear they were sisters, and Queen Renata’s daughters.
However, we required that the princesses look like humans while they were with us. This wasn’t a hard request for any shapeshifter to achieve, but over the past six months they’d altered their looks just slightly and now had chosen to look like a combination of their mother and, per everyone else in the Embassy, me. It was flattering in a really weird way, but I’d gotten so used to weird over the past few years that it barely registered on my Weird-O-Meter.