Alien vs. Alien

figured you guys needed me. I took in the scene, and it was clear the target was the Pontifex. The current one,” she added.
    “We need to get Paul to safety.”
    “I’m fine, Kitty. I have ACE.”
    Part of what was going on dawned on me. “No, Paul. If they can kidnap you, then
they
have ACE.”

    Yi

CHAPTER 54

    T HERE WAS MORE TO IT, but getting Gower to safety was probably Job One. “We need to get Paul to the Dome.”
    “I need to be here,” Gower argued.
    “No, you don’t,” an authoritative female voice said. It was an authoritative female voice I knew really well.
    My mother strode onto the scene. She was dressed for action—black pants and shirt, bulletproof vest with Federal Agent on it, and black cap with P.T.C.U. embroidered. She was also armed to go bear hunting.
    Kevin was with her, decked out in the same garb. Between the two of them, I was fairly sure they could take on a small nation. Buchanan seemed to naturally fall into line next to Kevin, so both of them were behind but flanking Mom. With him along, I knew they could take on that small nation and win.
    I trotted over and gave her a hug, weapons or no weapons. “Mom, I’m so glad you’re here.”
    “Malcolm called me, kitten.” I got her breath-stopping bear hug. “Your father and I missed you and Jamie.”
    “We missed you guys, too. A lot.”
    “We’ll do a family reunion soon, but not now,” she said as she released me. “Anyway, Malcolm said we had multiple situations that were going to require authority to resolve.” She looked around and took in the scesaid ne. “Mona, how did you get involved in this?”
    I wasn’t even surprised that my mother knew the Bahraini Ambassadress. She probably knew every person involved in D.C. politics including the janitors who cleaned the office buildings and the guys who drove the street sweepers.
    She also knew Oren and Jakob, because I saw them pass a tiny sign to her, and she passed one back. I’d been looking for it, because I figured the Mossad had their own version of the Secret Handshake. What was really interesting was that Khalid passed a sign to Mom, too—a different one—and she passed a different counter right back.
    “It’s a long story,” Mona replied. “But I’m more interested in the one your daughter is trying to tell.”
    Great. Time to table my interest in my mother’s various kick-butt connections—I needed to pull it all together for everyone. If only I actually knew what “it” was. Oh, well, this meant that it was really time to do what I was good at—wing it while honing my Recap Girl skills.
    “Okay, there’s lots of crap going on, but most of it, if not all of it, is being done to distract us from what the bad guys are really doing.”
    “Which is?” Mom asked.
    “I’m not totally sure. Yet. But I know Chuckie’s a target, and so is Paul.” So was ACE, but I didn’t want to say that aloud right now.
    “Kitty, we need everyone focused on this event,” Reader said.
    “No, we don’t. Well, we did . . .” I looked at Mona and her retinue. “You know, Clarence is enhanced.”
    Buchanan was murmuring to my mother, so I assumed he was catching her up on everything that had happened so far. Fine, I was starting to rock and possibly roll as well.
    “We know,” Tim said. “But that just makes it more imperative that we catch him.”
    “So, we have a superenhanced A-C, one with no talents originally, I might add, who’s good enough now to block Christopher. For all I know, he blocked Jeremy, too.”
    Jeremy shook his head. “Not really. I read him. He was emotionally clearest to me when he was running away from us, by the way. But I have to be honest—if he’s good enough, he might have been able to fool me. You know, focus on one emotion to hide another one.”
    “Mister White, make a note—I want Jeremy and Jennifer assigned to us somehow. Moving on, my point is that Clarence is now definitely an evil supervillain, and he’s more on the Juggernaut side of the house than, say, the Lex Luthor side—the big muscle carrying out plans versus the guy creating said plans. He’s strong enough to toss Jeremy like he was a rag doll—when he wanted to. But when we arrived, what Clarence was actually doing was playing around.”
    “I wouldn’t call getting hit constantly playing,” Jakob said.
    “Trust me. I don’t care how well trained you guys are, and I know you’re the best of the best, so to speak. But Clarence is