Alien vs. Alien

discretion.”
    “Dude, Olga knows everything, all the time. I have no idea how she knows, mind you, but she does. Her Magic 8-Ball is never wrong. If it’s relevant to her interests, she probably knows what you had for dinner last night. Stop being coy. She’s our friend and we trust her. You’re the one we’re not sure about.”
    “Have it your way.” He opened the briefcase and handed a folder to me.
    I pulled the pictures out. “Huh.”
    “What?” White asked. “Oh, and when do the rest of us get to see them?”
    “I want to show them to you in front of Jeff. It’s so much more satisfying that way.” I looked at Armstrong. “Was there a note with these?”
    “No. With the set that showed you and Reynolds there was. But these just arrived this morning in that envelope.”
    It was an amazingly bland envelope, your typical manila that usually held boring documents for safe delivery. The address was Armstrong’s D.C. one, no return address listed.
    “Senator, did the other pictures go to you in D.C., too?”
    “Yes.”
    I looked at the pictures some more. As with the set costarring Chuckie, I appeared to be having quite the good time. In fact, it was a very familiar time. I dug my phone out. “Hey, Christopher, are you anywhere close to home?” I could hear background noises that certainly didn’t sound as if they were emanating from our Embassy.
    “Ah, not really. Why?”
    “We have new dirty pictures.”
    “Great. Need me to read them?”
    “Yeah, but I need you to think back to the ones of me and Chuckie first.”
    “If I must.”
    “You must. If you can.”
    “Not hard, I read them yesterday.” Nice to see he was at Full Snark Level.
    “Goody. Look, is it possible for you to, I don’t know, timestamp them?”
    “Wow, a new Kittyism. Want to translate that for normal people?”
    “Since when are you considered normal?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Yes, I do. Okay, what
I
mean is—could you get a read on when each picture happened? As in, what day or month or whatever it was that my picture was taken from, and the same for when Chuckie’s picture was taken from?”
    He was quiet for a few seconds. “You mean, was each person photographed last week or last year, that sort of thing?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hang on.” He was quiet for a longer while. “Yeah, I think . . . I think your picture was from about a year ago. But Reynolds . . .” I waited. “Reynolds’ picture was only from a month or so ago.”
    “Interesting.” Very, very interesting. “Barring you killing a superbeing or saving someone’s life, I think I need you at the Romanian Embassy five seconds ago.”
    Christopher sighed. “I’ll clear it with Jeff and James and be right there.”
    “Use a floater gate or the really fast hyperspeed. Olga has refreshments.” This wasn’t said so much as a lure, since Christopher was, like Jeff, a very healthy eater. But when he used his Super Flash Level Hyperspeed, he needed to replenish, and he preferred food to sleep for it under most circumstances.
    “Got it. Be there soon.”
    I hung up and looked back to Armstrong. “Senator, do you remember when you might have been doing whichever sexual positions you’re photographed in?” I handed the pictures back to him.
    Len, Kyle and White all got up and stood behind him. Oliver smiled at me, then joined them. Wonderful. I looked at Olga. She was laughing quietly while she snuggled Jamie.
    He thumbed through them and shook his head. “Not really. They’re, ah, a little more, um . . .”
    “Athletic?” Len suggested.
    “Wild?” Kyle said.
    “More like what I’d expect to see from Jeffrey,” was White’s quite insightful statement. “At least, based on my memories from when we were all housed at the Dulce Science Center.”
    Before I could reply or think up a suitable comeback, Adriana stuck her head in. “Excuse me, Ambassadress, but we have another arrival.”
    Christopher came in. A-Cs never sweated—even the hottest days in Pueblo Caliente were cooler than their home planet—but he wasn’t breathing hard, either. Superpowers were where it was at.
    I got up and grabbed the pictures. “I Àctures. need you to read these,” I said without any introductory preamble. Hey, things were going from weird to weirder by the second. “I know they’re doctored. I know that’s really me, though I was not, of course, having a fling with the senator here. I think the head is really Senator Armstrong’s. I