Alien in the Family

started.”
    “And then you did?”
    “Then I felt how much you liked it.” He sounded so happy, had to make out again.
    “Do you two ever stop?” Christopher was laughing.
    “Nope,” Martini said with a satisfied smile.
    “Christopher, did you, um, have the wise idea to change viewpoints?”
    “You’re trying to be secretive. So not your forté.”
    I rolled my eyes. “I had cousins asking me if you guys were Mormons. My sorority sisters seemed clueless. I thought your father and Jeff and Paul’s parents had spilled the beans, so to speak.”
    “Oh, you mean the total security breach that could cause untold ramifications?” He sounded as thrilled with it as I was. Thank God someone else saw this as a potentially bad thing. “It’s handled.”
    “What did you do?” Martini asked, as he moved the three of us into a quiet corner.
    Christopher shrugged. “It dawned on me a few months ago that Kitty was probably right.”
    “Wow, I may faint. Right about what?”
    “Genetic mutations. Between us and humans.”
    “Serene is our poster girl.”
    “Right. But Paul’s talents are normal, at least as far as we know. And Michael has no special talents.” Christopher stared at me.
    “Um . . . this is a test? You’re testing me at my bachelorette party? Is it just ’cause I talked all smack about this and I’m right or is it because you like to torture?”
    “Both.”
    Made the exasperation sound. “Fine.” Thought about it. Thought about it some more. “Serene is more powerful . . . Paul and Michael are not . . . oh, wow, really?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Feeling left out and stupid here,” Martini said dryly.
    “I’m guessing that Naomi and Abigail Gower have powers no one’s told anyone else about. Right?”
    “Right.” Christopher looked around. I did, too. No one was paying us much attention. “Naomi has Paul’s talent, but it’s different, the way Serene’s an imageer but with expanded powers. Naomi can read dreams and memories, but she can also alter them.”
    “Wow. That’s a scary talent.”
    “If allowed to go uncontrolled, yes.”
    “Does Abigail have a . . . mutation?” Martini sounded worried.
    “Jeff, we’re not the X-Men.”
    “Starting to sound like it,” Chuckie said as he joined us. “Not that I mind.”
    Christopher sighed. “Yeah, we know. This is a great day for the C.I.A.”
    “Abigail?” Martini asked, Commander voice on.
    “She doesn’t need an implant to affect the gasses. It’s a combo dream-imageer talent, we think. She just moves them around without outside assistance. She can also pick up thoughts, but she feels them as emotions, sort of empathic but not quite. She can pick up if someone is thinking angry thoughts, because she feels angry when she’s near that person, as an example.” Christopher sounded only mildly worried.
    “They must have been fun in puberty.”
    “They were controlled by then.” Christopher sounded more worried.
    “By whom?”
    He shook his head. “They have no idea. They just know someone was helping them when they were little girls. They don’t know who, they never met the person, both think it was a man but aren’t sure.” He sounded full-on worried.
    “I’m going to bet that when we ask Serene, it’ll be the same for her.”
    “Probably.” Martini’s voice was brisk. “So Abigail’s altering what Kitty’s family and friends are seeing and will see?”
    Christopher shrugged. “In a way. If she spots people who are afraid, angry, and so on, Naomi will alter their memories. The girls work well together.”
    “How long have you been testing them without telling me?” Martini didn’t sound happy.
    Christopher shrugged. “A couple of months. Jeff, you were too distracted.”
    “With what?”
    Christopher coughed. “Marrying Kitty.”
    “Oh.”
    “We’re going to run some tests on them,” Chuckie said. “Standard emotional and mental stability tests, long-term effects on both of them and those with altered memories.”
    “Wait, we don’t know the results? So, what, you’re going to use my family as part of an experiment?”
    Chuckie rolled his eyes. “Yes and no. You have a choice: We can let the Gower girls do their thing, or you can allow the security breach the four of us and your mother are all unexcited about. From what White’s told me, the tests they’ve already done are pretty comprehensive; we just want to be more sure.”
    “The C.I.A. does not have the right to test any of our