Alien Diplomacy

fighting had exposed. He was about to yank when shots rang out. The bullets knocked his hand away from the wires. “Freeze,” Reader said. “I didn’t shoot you dead for a reason. But that doesn’t mean I can’t or won’t.”
    Marling looked down at the very crumpled remains of Bryce and Leslie. “You killed my children.” The water wasn’t to them yet, but if they were still able to function, Marling was the most amazing scientific genius in the history of the world. Jeff had literally smashed their heads flat.
    “No. You killed them, and your wife, a long time ago, because you were doing the whole tampering with things man is not wont to and all that jazz. These aren’t really your children and never were. You wouldn’t have done all the things you did with them, to them, made them do what you have, if you believed they were human.”
    “How can you say that?” he asked me. “I care for them. They’re mine.”
    “Yeah? Why didn’t you clone your wife, then?”
    “She…her…Madeline forbade it.”
    “Right, the same Madeline who, along with Yates, suggested cloning the kiddies didn’t somehow also suggest cloning her brilliant sister? Pull the other one.”
    “We didn’t have the right DNA for Cybele.”
    “I’ll bet. So, using whatever excuses passed muster, you didn’t clone your wife, who I definitely believe you loved very much. Speaking of those you love very much, where’s your parrot, Bellie? The one you named after your wife?”
    Marling stared at me. “Safe at home in her cage.”
    “Exactly. She’s a living thing you love. So you have her safely out of it. You haven’t made a clone of the bird.”
    “Water’s rising and spreading,” Jeff murmured. “And he feels like he’s just come out of the Washington Wife class.”
    I knew what that meant. “How do we destroy these supersoldiers?”
    Marling laughed, and it was the laugh of a crazy man with nothing left to lose. “You don’t.” He looked right at me. “Trust me. Compared to what else is out there, these are your friends.” Then he yanked on the wires as the water reached his feet.



CHAPTER 87
    I GRABBED CHUCKIE AND BOLTED, Jeff and Christopher right there along with me. They grabbed Reader and Tim as we ran by them. The A-Cs down here had already grabbed whatever stray human was near them and headed for the stairs.
    The lights went out, which wasn’t too surprising. “I dropped the remote,” Chuckie shouted as we got into the stairwell, right before he started gagging.
    “We need that!”
    No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I felt something move past us. It felt fluffy. It was Fluffy, back in a flash on Chuckie’s shoulder with the remote in its mouth.
    “Good Poof!”
    Fluffy purred at me, then went into Chuckie’s pocket, remote still in its mouth.
    The ground was shaking. I looked behind us. Sure enough, the supersoldiers were marching after us. “Um, Fluffy must have activated something.” They stepped right on the remains of Bryce and Leslie, smashing the rest of them as flat as their heads. I was too revved up to have this affect my stomach, but I had a feeling I’d be having vomit-inducing nightmares soon enough.
    The supersoldiers caught up to us and stopped walking. “Great,” Jeff said. “What the hell are we going to do with them?”
    “They seem benign unless activated,” Chuckie said.
    “Not if we crack their crispy shells and let the chewy goodness inside out.”
    “We can’t leave them here,” Christopher pointed out.
    “Not a problem,” Tim said. He was speaking softly to someone. I looked. He was talking to Harlie and Poofikins.
    “There you two are!” They purred at me, then disappeared. “What’s going on?”
    “Once you disappeared after giving Amy the big hint about what was going on, we all regrouped,” Reader answered. “Senator McMillan had us start evacuation procedures. Doreen was communing with someone.”
    “Someone?”
    “Not ACE, per Paul. But whoever the hell she was talking to told us to get the nukes, she was directing the Poofs including telling them to help the rest of us, and so on.” He shook his head. “She’s almost as bossy as you are, girlfriend.”
    “Hilarious. So, Tim, what’s coming?”
    “We’re going to airlift these things out of here.”
    “How? We’re underground.”
    “Why don’t you let Alpha and Airborne handle this?” Reader asked pointedly.
    “Because none of you are fast enough to escape the