Alien vs. Alien

Reynolds,” he said finally. “But . . .”
    “But?”
    Christopher shook his head. “Something’s wrong.”
    “Aside from the fact that Chuckie and I haven’t been having an affair, you mean?”
    Christopher nodded. “I can’t explain what, though.”
    “Do the Go Team move.”
    Jeff chuckled, which was kind of a relief. He put his hand on top of Christopher’s. Empaths, if they were good enough, could read an image through an imageer, if the imageer was good enough. Jeff and Christopher sort of defined “more than good enough.”
    Jeff looked thoughtful. “Huh. Well, you’re both really enjoying yourselves. But if you were cheating, baby, it’s nice to know what you were thinking about was me.”
    Christopher nodded. “Yeah, the only thing I can get from this specific moment is a focus on you, Jeff.”
    “Same with Reynolds. He’s not thinki [s g rng about Kitty . . .” Jeff’s eyes narrowed, and he shot a glare at Chuckie. “Interesting.”
    Chuckie shrugged. “I’m allowed to have a personal life. You, of all people, should be happy about that.”
    “I am. I suppose.” Jeff took his hand away. “Anyway, these photos are doctored.”
    “You guys are all really calm. Amazingly calm. Calmer than me and Amy, and I guarantee Len and Kyle. Jeff, I’m not unhappy you’re not trying to kill me and Chuckie, but I’m sort of surprised. I mean, I want to ask questions, and I’m in the pictures. Of course, my first question is, how the hell am I in these pictures?”
    “I got a tip,” Chuckie said. “Filtered through our favorite paparazzo.”
    “How is Mister Joel Oliver?”
    “Worried about your reputation. He called me and said he was sure there were incriminating photos of the two of us.” Chuckie chuckled. “I think he thought they were real and was warning me so Martini wouldn’t kill me.”
    “They look real.”
    “They are real,” Christopher said patiently. “This is really you and really Reynolds. Only from what Jeff and I can pick up, you’re not having sex with each other.”
    “Reynolds and I talked about this over two weeks ago,” Jeff said. “But until something surfaced, Oliver didn’t have more to go on other than the juicy rumors, to use his phrase, we had other, more important things to focus on, and we figured it would be better not to worry you in case it ended up being nothing.”
    “How did they get naked pictures of Kitty and Chuck doing the deed, with each other or anyone else, in the first place?” Amy sounded repulsed and horrified. Great.
    The light dawned. After all, Operation Confusion hadn’t been all that long ago. “The secret lab. The bad guys had a bank of screens, and cameras all looking at our bedrooms. But I thought that was so they could make accurate clones of everyone.”
    “We destroyed the lab and those clones,” Chuckie said. “But that doesn’t mean we destroyed any videotapes or pictures kept elsewhere. I know we haven’t found everything related to the lab and the people involved with it.”
    “I’d ask why they saved them, beyond being too cheap to buy their own porn, but I can clearly see the advantages for the Bad Guys Club.”
    “I think we should have questioned Armstrong and his cronies more,” Chuckie said to Jeff. “It would be helpful to have a clearer idea of who’s behind this.”
    Jeff shook his head. “It was all I could do not to pound them into the ground. Too much longer and I would have created a diplomatic incident.”
    “Yeah, I understand. But the P.T.C.U. wants this investigated before it has to be turned over to Homeland Security, and I don’t want to have nothing to tell Angela when she calls me, let alone have to explain this to Cliff if I can help it.”
    “Why is my mom involved at all?”
    Chuckie shot me a look that said my being in Florida for a month had obvi [ont-1" ously killed brain cells. “Buchanan called your mother to advise her of Armstrong’s visit, and she called me to find out what’s going on,” he said as Len and Kyle rejoined us. “Oh, and duh.”
    Two and a half years ago, this wouldn’t have been a really stupid question on my part. Admittedly, by now, yeah, it was, because, as I’d discovered when I met Jeff and the rest of the gang from Alpha Four, what I’d believed my parents did was only sort of right. My father’s cover was history professor at Arizona State University. What he did for fun and much more profit was cryptology for NASA, in their