Alien Tango

uncomfortable question, but we do expect an answer. When you tossed that bomb at me and Brian, you could see every person with us, couldn’t you?”
    “Yes.” Her voice was low. “I didn’t know it would be so big.”
    “What would be?” Christopher asked. His voice was strained.
    “The explosion. I created a floater.”
    “A floater?” Martini sounded confused. Not good.
    “A bomb, small, invisible. I control it using simple transistors, like for those motorized toy cars. I didn’t think it would be so powerful.”
    “You use cloaking technology to make it invisible?” Christopher’s voice was taut.
    “Yes.”
    “Who knows about this, other than you? That you’ve created it, I mean?” Martini asked. His voice was very soothing, but I could feel that he was tensed.
    “I don’t think anyone. I worked on it at night.”
    “At home?”
    “No, at the Center.”
    I thought about it and got a bad feeling in my stomach. “Serene, you’re a typical A-C woman, right?”
    “I guess so.”
    “I mean, by human standards, you’re drop-freaking-dead gorgeous, right?”
    “I suppose.” She sounded embarrassed.
    “So, a pretty girl’s staying late working on a special project. I just can’t believe all of those many male security guards waltzed on home and told her to lock up and not let the alligators bite on the way out.”
    “Oh. No. Mr. Turco would stay late with me. Or Frank.”
    “Frank Taft, right?”
    “Right. I, um, think he maybe wanted to ask me out.” She now sounded really embarrassed. “But, uh. . . . ”
    “He’s too damned stupid to interest you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Thank God.” Truly. I could see how this was unfolding, and it was horrible scary. “Okay, Serene, you need to listen to me, and you have to, and I mean have to , trust me. Can you do that?” I looked at Christopher and Martini—they’d made the same assumptions, I could tell, by their expressions.
    “I . . . I don’t know.”

CHAPTER 54
    “SERENE, what do you think we’re going to do to to you?” Martini asked, voice very gentle.
    “I don’t know. Arrest me?” She sounded scared, and I could tell she was crying again. “I didn’t mean to try to kill you, I just wanted to scare you and make you go away.”
    “Listen to me. We have to get you. The hell with your little Unrequited Love from Hell routine. You are marked for death or worse, and not by us. Frank’s father is the head of Club 51.”
    “Oh, right. He invited me to go to a rally of theirs, but Brian said it didn’t sound like any fun, so I said no.”
    It was worse. “Did he ask you after he’d stayed late helping you?”
    “Yes, that’s when I got to know him. He said he didn’t like most A-Cs but he liked me.”
    Much, much worse. “Serene, honey, Club 51 is a huge anti-alien conspiracy organization. They believe that aliens are here, and, yes, I know, true, but you’re hiding in plain sight, normal humans don’t believe, blah, blah, blah. The humans who do believe are crazy.”
    “But Frank works with us. Of course he believes.”
    “Yes, and so does his father. That makes them dangerous. To all the A-Cs and to you personally.” I knew where she was, where she had to be. But others might as well.
    Martini moved me off his lap. “Serene, they tried to kill Alfred today, and me. And they used one of your bombs to do it.”
    She gasped. “There’s no way! I have them set to a specific frequency. And I only set off the one.”
    “Great, but we all almost died,” Christopher snapped.
    “Do any of them have something in them, something like a gas, that would knock out a human faster than an A-C?”
    “No, but we have that gas already.” She was so matter-of-fact. It was so easy to see why Reid and people like him wanted to turn Centaurion into the War Division—they were halfway there all by themselves and without realizing it.
    “What was it created for?” Martini asked.
    “Experimental. For dangerous situations—we were hoping to put human astronauts into suspended animation while leaving the A-Cs alone. We’re also working on one that does the opposite, but it’s not perfected yet.”
    It had gone from worse to “Oh My God” in seconds. “Okay, look, I can’t think of a way to get through to you other than this. You’re in the most extreme danger there is, and if we don’t get to you, someone else will. Then I can promise you’ll never see Brian again because they’ll kill you or, worse, they’ll kill