Alien Proliferation

at me. “She’s checking with the agents who were here and running another scan.”
    Jeff came and sat on the bed with me. I snuggled up against him. “You think it’s like with my delivery?” I asked him quietly. “Where Jamie’s making it happen because I was scared?”
    “Maybe, but . . . I don’t think so.” Jeff looked uncomfortable. “I’m picking something up—not from anyone in here, but something else. I don’t know what it is.”
    Michael started talking again. “Really? Huh, interesting. No, I think there’re enough of us over here. Yes, good idea. Yes, please. Thanks.” He hung up. “No one felt anything. Routine personnel transfer. It was pointed out that there were no personal belongings to remove, but we already knew that. Gladys offered to send over more Security, but I don’t see the point. She’s going to keep active scans going on the Embassy.”
    “So what do we do? I ask because I’m both tired as hell and freaked out of my mind.”
    “I don’t want anyone going off alone.” Chuckie didn’t sound frightened, but I could pick up that he was as uncomfortable as the rest of us. He settled down on the floor and leaned his back against the wall. “So, what do we know?”
    “Not much. You know, since everyone’s here, want to discuss how Amy’s stepmom was at our wedding with, I’m pretty sure, Ronaldo Al Dejahl?”
    “I’d rather figure out what’s going on right now,” Jeff said.
    Tim cocked his head at me. “You thinking it’s related?”
    “Not sure.” I looked at Walter and took a deep breath. “Walt, we’re going to be discussing what . . . happened to Wayne. One of his older brothers,” I explained for the others. I saw Chuckie tense and realized he hadn’t known—either that Walter was related to Wayne and William or that Wayne had been one of the agents murdered.
    Walter nodded. “I’m guessing from your expression it wasn’t pleasant.”
    “No,” Tim said quietly. “It wasn’t. If you don’t want to be here while we discuss it, I know everyone will understand.”
    Walter shook his head. “I think I need to know. And,” he added with a weak smile, “I don’t really want to be somewhere else in this building right now.”
    “Yeah, ain’t it the truth?” I took another deep breath. “Tim, Amy, Michael—you want to share the horrific things that were done to our four agents? And by whom? And, possibly most importantly, where?”
    “I’ll do it,” Tim said. “You two chime in with anything I miss.” Amy and Michael nodded. They didn’t look eager to join in, not that I could blame them. “The only saving grace was the agents died fast. But they weren’t killed in a conventional manner—no guns, knives, or blunt instruments. They were . . . tortured. But it didn’t kill them. They were all alive after it. It seemed over, like they were going to stop and either move on to torture the rest of us or go play with something else. But then, one by one, they dropped.”
    “Lethal injection?”
    “No. I’m not sure how they died, just that they did. Mister Gaultier was by each one of them, then they went down. One minute alive, the next dead.”
    “Christopher, I know you saw this, what was it like inside their bodies, did you check?”
    He shook his head. “I was watching, but not for internal changes.”
    “Then they dissected them, in front of us.” Tim kept his tone very level. Walter’s fists and jaw clenched, but he didn’t react otherwise. “We weren’t in a medical facility. I think we were in one of Gaultier’s warehouses.”
    “Why in the world would they do that?” Chuckie sounded like the wheels were turning but getting nothing. “It makes no sense whatsoever. As we discovered during our vacation to the French prison, Cooper and his gang have been doing tests on A-C hybrids certainly longer than I’ve been in the C.I.A., and possibly longer than Kitty’s mother’s been in antiterrorism.”
    “Cooper wasn’t much older than us, midthirties, maybe. My mom’s been in antiterrorism a lot longer than that.”
    Chuckie shrugged. “I’m sure Cooper wasn’t the ultimate brains behind this.”
    “Reynolds is right,” Jeff said quietly. “From what they were saying, this has been going on for decades.”
    Chuckie nodded. “But regardless, there’s not a logical reason to do it where they did, and less to do it in front of the three of you. None of you have A-C talents; none of you have been