Alien in the House

and soon.”
    Christopher rejoined us. “I think I groveled enough to be forgiven. So, I’m going to check the tunnels. But before I go, do you think Hamlin was a human or an android fooling you, Kitty?”
    “Love how you put that. We hadn’t determined before Jeff called me and Raj to dinner.”
    “I’d bet on the real one,” Raj said.
    “I think it’ll depend on what shape Malcolm is in if and when you find him.”
    “Fine. I’ll search the system within a hundred mile radius. There’s no way they could get farther than that even in this time.”
    “If they’re both really human, I don’t think they could get a quarter of that distance in the time since Raj, the boys, and I left them, but that’ll give us a good cushion. You won’t burn yourself out? That’s a lot of running.”
    “I had a big meal, I’m good.”
    “I believe the ambassador should unblock before Consul White goes. That way the ambassador can tell the moment he can feel again.”
    “Call me Jeff, Raj, please. The formality when we’re in private meetings is killing me.”
    “Good plan,” Christopher said.
    “Well, it is if Jeff’s going to be okay doing it. I’m trying not to be stressed, by the way.”
    “Yeah, baby, I’ll be fine, even if your stress is still high. Just give me a minute.” Jeff relaxed against me, took a deep breath, let it out, and relaxed some more. We were all quiet for a good couple of minutes. Couldn’t speak for anyone else but being silent that long was certainly hard for me. “Okay.”
    “Before I go, let’s get a baseline—what can you feel?” Christopher asked. “Anything?”
    “Yeah,” Jeff said finally. “Can’t feel any of you, not even Kitty, but I can feel the people over at the Zoo. They feel faint, but readable. I’m not picking up anything I shouldn’t. Then again, I wasn’t picking up anything earlier, including the fact that my wife was having visits from the presumed dead.”
    He had a point. I wasn’t good enough to hide much from Jeff in the first place, and that he’d missed that I’d visited with two assassins, chased Clarence, and chatted with Hamlin seemed so unlikely as to be impossible.
    My brain nudged—nice to know it was still with us. “You know, what are the odds—if someone could create an emotion-blocker that works to make Jeff empathically deaf, dumb, and blind—that this same someone couldn’t create an emotions-controller? The androids that Marling created were so good that they gave off human emotions and fooled Jeff and the other empaths. Good enough that we’re questioning if the Hamlin we met was the real deal or not. What if someone altered that technology and made it so that a person would give off specific, normal emotions, but not the biggies, like gloating and murderous intent?”
    “I’d believe it’s quite good, Ambassador.”
    “Raj, seriously, I’m with Jeff, start calling me Kitty. And I agree. We need to get that disk reverse engineered pronto.”
    “Can we trust the reverse engineers?” Christopher asked. “I’m going to keep on coming back to this until we have some better answers than ‘I don’t know’ and ‘we’ll find out.’ If Colonel Hamlin is right, who, besides the five of us, can we actually trust?”
    “Technically, you can’t trust me,” Raj said. “I haven’t been involved with any real activities until recently.”
    My stomach sank. Raj was right. “What if we can’t trust anybody?”



CHAPTER 27
    “I ’M NOT SAYING you can’t trust me, Kitty,” Raj said patiently. “I am saying that based on Colonel Hamlin’s warnings, and speaking somewhat modestly, I fall under Colonel Hamlin’s area of concern.”
    “So, if you’re brilliant enough to be the Mastermind, why were you hanging out at New Delhi Base all this time?”
    Raj shrugged. “My skills don’t fall toward medicine, mathematics, or science. I’m a good investigator, and I’ve been asking for a Centaurion Division Main post for years. Until the invasion earlier this year, I was told that since Centaurion Division wasn’t into creating entertainment no one needed troubadours and I should enjoy myself and catch a few more Bollywood movies.”
    “Christopher, that was very rude.” This earned me Patented Glare #5.
    “How do you know I’m the one that said that? It could have been someone else.”
    “Was it?”
    “No. But it could have been.”
    Jeff sighed. “Christopher, we have to figure out what to do with that