Touched by an Alien

didn’t say anything else.
    Of course, it wasn’t hard to figure out the obvious conclusion. “And, therefore, the harder they crash.”
    “Right.”
    I looked at Martini. “He sure seems healthy.”
    “He is. And hale and hearty and whatever other descriptions you might want to apply. At least until his blocks wear down. Then he becomes, first, almost like a regular human—can’t pick up much, it’s like the talent mutes.”
    “You said at first. What happens at second? Or third?”
    “The muting goes away, and it’s a barrage of emotions. Hard to handle.”
    “Like putting a chameleon on plaid?”
    “Yeah, pretty much. Then it starts to affect him physically and mentally. The reactions are similar to anyone who might have pushed themselves too far physically and mentally, only they hit faster and, from all I’ve seen, a lot harder. After that, if he doesn’t get care in time, and in time means really fast …”
    “The dramatic pause is great, only it’s lacking that certain something. Like actual information.”
    Reader looked over his shoulder again, only this time he wasn’t smiling. “If he doesn’t get care in time, Jeff will die.”

CHAPTER 13
    THAT CHEERFUL STATEMENT SAT ON THE AIR for a while. I resisted the urge to wish it were Christopher instead of Martini who was the walking death time bomb, then reminded myself I wasn’t attached to any of them, least of all Martini, and decided I could worry about something else.
    “So, would this evening’s entertainment mean Martini’s at death’s door?” Okay, I could almost worry about something else.
    “Nope. Believe me, when Jeff’s that bad, you’ll know.”
    “Can’t wait.” Since imminent death wasn’t on the docket, unless we were trapped in the never-ending traffic jam and were going to die from old age, still sitting in this limo, I chose to relax.
    I watched the cars as we all inched forward. Which was so very soothing that my mind raced to the next set of questions it wanted answered while we snailed along. “Why can’t we kill Yates?”
    “We have to kill him when he’s Mephistopheles.”
    “Why?”
    Reader sighed. “It’s complicated, but I’ll give it a try.” He was really pushing the complicated. I wondered if there was a hidden message Reader was trying to get across to me, but if so, I wasn’t picking it up.
    “Didn’t you ask these questions when you joined up?”
    “Yeah, I did. But the scientists handle most of this, and they don’t share all that much information with one of the human drivers, even if I am a part of Alpha Team.”
    “Seems unfair.”
    “I deal with it. You still interested in all the superbeing stuff, or do you want to head to office politics?”
    “I think I’m more at risk from a superbeing, so let’s deal with that.”
    “And you say you work in marketing? Anyway, when the parasite hits, it takes over. That’s why the superbeings mutate immediately.” I’d seen that in action, so no argument there. “But in the rare cases where the human-parasite combination doesn’t go berserk, the parasite internalizes.” He’d told me as much already, so, fine. “In those cases, the human brain seems split. So when they’re in human form, they don’t really know they have a parasite inside them. As far as we can tell, it’s only when the parasite senses a threat that it converts back into a superbeing.”
    This was news. “So in the cases where the combination is, what—stable?—the parasite is smart enough to hang out as a human unless threatened?”
    “Seems that way, yeah.”
    “Does the parasite remember it is a parasite?”
    Reader sighed. “We don’t know. There are only a few in-control superbeings, thankfully. But because there are a limited number, and we can’t find them, we don’t have a lot of intelligence about them. Most of what we know is conjecture.”
    “No Cerebro-type thing for finding parasites or superbeings, huh?”
    “No. I know a lot of this sounds like the comics, but reality means we’re stuck with certain things we can’t get around. Or haven’t gotten to yet. Honestly, I think one of the scientific teams is working on something similar to a mutant finder like Cerebro, but they’re a long way away from it working, at least as far as any field agents are aware.”
    “Okay, so, I still don’t understand why we can’t kill them while they’re in human form.”
    “Politically, it’s a bad thing. We’d come off like terrorists