Alien Tango

another night and go with Alfred the next day. The Martinis were also keeping Serene—she was still in their antechamber, having the drugs flushed out of her system.
    That left the rest of us who all wanted to get back to Dulce. Only, there was a small wrinkle. “You all have to go to Caliente Base,” Kevin reminded us. “It’s annexed. And, from what Angela’s said, there are a lot of the younger A-Cs there already.”
    “Our stuff’s in Dulce.”
    “Probably moved over,” Martini said. He didn’t seem concerned. “We’ll deal with it when we’re back.”
    Good-byes were said, and then we all trooped to the gate room. “You sure it’s safe to go to the jet?”
    Martini shrugged. “Fifty percent chance.”
    “Oh, great odds.”
    “I don’t want to leave the jet,” Reader said.
    “Are we arriving inside the jet?” How did the gates do this? And why did I never know?
    “Yes.” Martini looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “One day, I’ll tell you how.”
    “Humph.”
    Just like before, Martini insisted on going first and tried to make me wait to go last with Christopher. I threw a mild fuss and got moved up ahead of the girls and my pilots, but still right behind Christopher. Oh, well, it wasn’t at the end of the chain.
    We moved through rapidly, about two seconds between entries. I closed my eyes and walked through. Still sucked. Opened them when my foot hit something solid. Thankfully, it was the floor of the jet.
    Everyone filed in, and Reader and Tim went to the cockpit. I followed. “Guys, what if they put a bomb on the plane?”
    “Scanning now, girlfriend.” Reader looked up at me. “Sometimes we’re ahead of you.”
    “You sure it’ll pick up things like Serene’s invisible floating bombs?”
    “Yep.”
    “Okay.” I wasn’t sure if I should relax but decided to have some faith.
    The plane deemed safe, everyone settled in and we took off. Martini still seemed tired, and as soon as we were airborne, Lorraine insisted he use the bed. I went with him, though with a full plane, the last thing I wanted was to garner Mile High Miles.
    Lorraine hooked Martini up to a variety of equipment, as well as an IV with some kind of regenerative saline drip. They both insisted this was routine for empaths who weren’t able to go into full isolation, so I stopped worrying. Sort of.
    Of course, as isolation chambers went, the jet bedroom was a huge improvement. The real ones looked like Frankenstein’s lab mixed with a creepy Egyptian tomb theme and some science fiction horror elements added in just for fun. Isolation chambers didn’t have beds so much as they had padded, super-duper hospital gurneys that rotated like the Tilt-A-Whirl. They also slept one, to use the term loosely. Individual models, particularly those for the younger empaths, resembled futuristic sarcophagi crossed with an Iron Maiden, not, sadly, the band. I figured even Eddie would hate having to go into any form of A-C isolation.
    Normally Martini had tubes and wires going in everywhere, including his head, so sitting on a king-sized bed with an IV drip into his arm and a couple of sensors attached to his chest and temples seemed tame and almost cozy. I didn’t have the impulse to rip everything out of him and run away hysterically, which was a bonus, too. The medical teams and empaths claimed isolation was harder for the empath’s loved ones than for the empath, but I still didn’t believe it.
    Right after Lorraine left, Martini tried to ask me something, but whatever he was hooked up to knocked him out before he could get more than a couple of words out. I laid us both down, but I didn’t sleep. I lay there, held him, and wondered why we were being allowed to leave so easily. There was something we were all missing. The threat wasn’t over.
    Kevin had gotten a lot of Club 51 people rounded up. Most of these were harmless crackpots, but a few had been dangerous enough to take into custody. But Kevin felt there were hundreds, potentially thousands, we didn’t have tabs on yet, and I knew he was right.
    Leventhal Reid had an airtight alibi, since he’d been with my mother, the President, or a variety of other politicians the entire time we’d been on this mission. Which meant the threatening phone call I’d gotten during dinner at Martini Manor had come from Taft.
    I tried to think like Chuckie again. Power plays like this were chess matches. You sacrificed whatever piece you had to in order to win.