Alien Proliferation

head. “I can’t believe what you do for a living now.”
    The Security guys left, carrying my tonnage of milk. “It’s going to get more unbelievable fast.” I dug my phone out of my purse. Called Jeff. Nothing. Managed not to curse, only because Jamie was in my other arm.
    I needed the team assembled fast. Considered my options. Dialed. “Lorraine, Code Red. Need you to get all of Airborne that’s in the facility into a conference room in the library, pronto. Make sure we have med kits.”
    “On it.”
    I looked around, then remembered I had their numbers programmed. Dialed again. “Abby, need you and Mimi to find me like now. We’re at Code Red.”
    “Already picked up your panic, we’re heading to you now. Have your mother with us, by the way.”
    “Love how you think.”
    “Mimi already tried to call Chuck, no answer.”
    Managed not to curse again. “Yeah, welcome to DEFCON Worse.”
    “This is that field situation Chuck and Jeff were trying to keep us out of, right?”
    “Got it in one.” I could see them now and hung up. We were near one of the larger conference rooms, and I headed inside, Sheila and Number Four trailing me. Mom and the Gower girls came in, the rest of the team right on their heels. Pregnant women can’t move all that fast, but even going at the slow version of hyperspeed, an A-C is faster than most humans.
    Hughes was last in, and he shut the door. Happily, the room was soundproofed, and the noise level went down considerably. Did the latest nose check after everyone was seated. All five of my pilots, all three of my girls at various pregnancy levels, Brian, Abigail, Naomi, Sheila and Number Four, and my mother. Not enough A-Cs by far, but what we were going to have to go with.
    Mom got up and took Jamie from me. She looked me up and down. “Clearly you’ve had the best pregnancy recovery in the world.”
    I noted that the team were all staring at me. “Yeah, okay. I’m not supposed to tell you, per Chuckie and Jeff. But—”
    “You’ve been affected by whatever the drug was they gave Jeff, because it’s in his DNA and so in Jamie, and Jamie was in you.” Lorraine said this as though it was obvious. It was, but everyone else had been shocked.
    “Um, yeah. Did your mom tell you?”
    She snorted. “Remember what Claudia and I were doing when we met you?” She’d always been buxom, but pregnancy really agreed with her. Unlike me, her blue eyes really sparkled, her blonde hair looked luxurious, and she glowed, even while snorting at me.
    “Erm . . .” Sort of not so much.
    “We were on the Exoskeleton team,” Claudia answered for me, managing to look as good as Lorraine and managing to also remain almost as willowy as normal. She was a brunette, her brown eyes were freaking dewy, and her hair practically glistened. “We were trying to figure out why and how the parasites turned a human into a superbeing without killing the human. One figures that out by doing work at a genetic level.”
    I comforted myself with the reminder that they were my best A-C girlfriends and maybe I’d look that good the next time around, now that I had all the Surcenthumain doing its thing inside me.
    That I could keep on considering having more when Jamie wasn’t a week old probably wasn’t so much desire as having heard Jeff discuss “lots of kids” from the first hours I’d known him and constantly thereafter. He’d programmed me to plan on having an entire litter of children and, apparently, I was quite receptive to it, too.
    Thought about a little Jeff again. Then thought about big Jeff and how he was in mortal peril and dragged my mind back to present terrors. I’d thought it was pregnancy that had made my mind wander. Wondered now if it was the drug. Forced myself to not think about it right now.
    “Oh, right. Fine. Um. Great. Everyone says I’m not going to die early from it.” Well, I wasn’t thinking about it too much.
    “I think it might extend your life, actually.” Lorraine had her Dazzler scientific mind tuned to high.
    Mom coughed. “You mind explaining that for the laypeople in the room?”
    “I’m Wolverine with boobs, Mom.” I didn’t add that I didn’t have the claws. For all I knew, they were coming.
    Every human did the same thing—went bolt upright, leaned back, considered, nodded, and then relaxed. “Great. So, what’s the situation? You didn’t call us all in here to share that your comic book fascination has once again paid off.”